Category Archives: Uncategorized

woof

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And that is a deadpan, non-emotive woof. I am freakin exhausted. I slept for a couple of hours tonight and I still hurt from exhaustion. I actually got an almost-normal amount of sleep this weekend so I’m not completely sure why I am this tired.

I had quite the weekend. I went down to Santa Cruz with my nephew for the beach burn. During the weekend he did something stupid (he is 15 after all) and I said, “Good going genius.” For the rest of the weekend everyone there called him Genius and it was put on his name tag. He told me he likes it and wants it to stick as his nickname. Odd boy. He was surprised at my ability to track exactly how much alcohol and pot he did over the weekend. I kept telling him, “Dude–these are my friends. Of course they will rat on you.” He stayed at a moderate level though and given that his mother is ok with him using both substances, I kept my mouth shut. I did ask him to stop mid-way through Friday night because I felt he was at the limit of what he should do in a night and he stuck with my recommendation. I was glad. It was interesting taking him down there because he got to see examples of people who use responsibly and people who use irresponsibly and it was kind of cool to see the dichotomy up close. He also handled the sexual innuendo pretty well and told me that the party will be a whole lot more fun when he is over 18 and the girls don’t avoid him like the plague. I can see that….

I learned some lessons this weekend that I have learned before so I feel like a schmuck for not having actually absorbed them before. I don’t like loud, large, anonymous parties. I just don’t. I don’t have fun; I don’t feel safe; I don’t relax. So why do I go to them? I think I believe that they should be fun, or maybe I believe that since I am so much of an extrovert that I must like large parties… right? Well I just don’t. I hate them. And loud music makes my stomach hurt and I get grumpy. I need to not go to them anymore. It isn’t that I am a stick-in-the-mud, I just prefer smaller gatherings.

Puppy and I had a couple of blow-ups and two long and hard discussions. There are things in this relationship that are very hard for me. We really do have trouble communicating. He pointed out that a big part of our problem is that we are too much alike. We are both extremely sensitive and emotional. We both take teasing too seriously and get upset and we both feed off of one another’s upset. ugh. It is like he is a cross between Noah and Tom. He has many of the qualities that I loved so much about Tom, but he wants to process… a lot… Yeah. That is straight up Noah territory. Ostensibly this should be the best of both worlds… if we can figure one another out… I’m scared because I want to run more than I have wanted to run in a very long time. This relationship is absolutely terrifying to me on a basic level and I can’t entirely figure out why.

Nightmare

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I was a teenager again and I was going to a new high school. Little Thea showed me around. Everyone in my life was there and teenagers again. Rebecca looked damn skinny. Everyone smiled at me very benevolently, but I was being shy and wandering around alone.

Eventually I was standing at the end of a long hallway of lockers and I saw four people standing in a line. Someone standing in front of them shot all of them then ran away. I ran towards them as fast as I could. Each person was shot twice, once in the chest and once kind of in the hip. Neither wound was fatal. I tried to help one person and then started screaming for help. I turned around when I heard snarling. The “person” who had shot them looked like a zombie and told me to leave or I would join them. He started dragging them one by one towards the parking lot.

I woke up crying.

I don’t understand.

Brain dump

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My cat is here now. Yay!

My eyes hurt like crazy from all the chlorine today. I am sore from swimming for hours on end. I tremendously enjoyed the time spent with my niece and nephew and even their friend though he can be trying at times. I need to find a way to spend more time with them on a consistent people because while my back was turned they became very cool people. Raging Waters is apparently way fun.

It was really good to have bonding time with blood relatives today. I am so very strange about blood relations. I am really glad that I can be the aunt to them that I don’t have. I love them and accept them no matter what kind of quirks they have or how annoying they are or whether or not they keep their mouths shut when the topic of family secrets come up. I hug them and cheer them on and tell them I am proud of them. Even when I am stretching it a little, the looks on their faces makes it worth it.

I’m really really happy.

Question answered.

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This was not actually asked anonymously, so I am tailoring the answer. However, there are chunks of the answer that apply to many people so I’m putting the answer basically publicly.

I know that you & I didn’t really get along for a few years. To be honest, I’m not sure what the reason was at the beginning….but I know I did contribute to stirring the pot over time.

Anyways….I’ve been curious for months now….what made you decide to treat me as a friend?

First off, people often attribute my behavior to me not liking them. No really, I am much more self-centered than that. I am moody and a pain in the ass and that filters into most of my interactions and it often leads people to thinking that I dislike them when I don’t.

Secondly, I am not consistent in how I get to know people. I tend to make snap judgments but I will sometimes change my mind over time. It is rare that I will dislike someone strongly and get over that; it does happen though. Look at Miss Jenny. I hated her guts for the first year I knew her and eventually we got past that. As I get older I am trying to be more reserved with people early on until I build enough of a knowledge base of someone to draw conclusions. Unfortunately I am still impulsive. Most of the time what I do is I take a look at the veneer of a person and think it is pretty nifty and then I get to know them better and I lose respect. There are a lot of things that I am judgmental about; there are also many things that I am tolerant of that other people aren’t.

I notice that many of my relationships (the best ones anyway) go through a lot of growing pains. I’m a shit and prickly and hard to get along with. If I am dealing with someone else who also has a strong personality *cough* then there are often clashes for quite a while. Eventually I notice, “Hey! This person may not be the easiest person to get along with 100% of the time, but they are consistent (a huge thing for me) and honest (another huge thing) and forthright (alright, we have a winner) so I guess I better get the stick out of my ass about being irritable and recognize that they have some of the biggest positives that I respect.”

I will also be perfectly honest and say that there are many people out there that I may like and respect and think fairly highly of, but I will never be close friends with. I am getting better at recognizing that I may think someone is really an amazing person, but they have some personaility quirk that means I really shouldn’t spend much time with them or I will get really sick of them really fast. Frankly, complaining about the same problem(s) for years is one of them. You may be great in every other way, but if I am judgmental about something you do often then it is best that I keep you at arms length. That wasy we preserve the level of friendly behavior that is optimal.

In this specific case though what happened is that she is a woman of strong personality and probably there was something early on that set me off. I am pretty bad about holding grudges if I get a negative impression. Over the course of the nearly five years I have known her I have seen that she does conduct herself in a consistent and respectable way. I have noticed that despite my first impression in some areas, she holds many of the same values that I do in specific ways that matter to me. So I did my best at pulling the stick out of my ass. I guess she noticed. 🙂

Quotable

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I’m sitting here reading a romance novel and I start laughing just as Puppy walks in the room.
He says, “The sight of me eating a cookie in a shirt and no pants is that funny?”
“No. The scene in the book.” He raised an eyebrow and looked at my quizzically so I continue, “The woman has the opportunity to ask her husband questions about his first wife and he is surprised when she asks him a bunch of questions that more or less reflect, ‘Is she prettier than me?’ He doesn’t understand that women want to know if the earlier women were prettier and what they really want to know is that they are the prettiest one ever. And if the first wife was prettier, lie.”
“Have I ever mentioned that you are so much prettier than {insert the name of first wife}?”

So uhm… yeah…

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EDIT: Bry and Sarah have earned my everlasting devotion. They had it anyway, but they get extra props now. 🙂

Lots of people have asked me what I would like them to bring. My answer is typically: you, yourself, and anything you think you would like to have.

But uhm… I woke up this morning with a craving…

A blended vanilla creme from Starbuck’s. They are freakin good. This is one of those NO COFFEE drinks. I don’t drink coffee.

I will love someone forever. Ok, so I’m going to love my friends anyway, but if someone has a hankering to spoil me I would be very grateful.

(In other news: I am likely to be in a really good mood all day despite being very tired. I have had sex not once, not twice, not three times, but four times in the last 24 hours. I’m really sore, but happy. Looks like Puppy just needs the right encouragement. [Me crying cause I feel rejected and unhappy and I get all antsy and pissy sans sex.])

Naw… I don’t stir up shit.

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A friend posted:

“The forces of the Righteous Right are pressuring Burger King to pull an advertising campaign they launched this past weekend. My company has been involved in the mobile content, which is why I’ve had a front row seat to all this.

www.coqroq.com Look for the ringtones. We did the conversions and are delivering for BK.

Help me get the word out through blog/guerrilla marketing. Quickly, before they pull it. Post this to your blogs, and request that your friends’ list post it to their blogs, and so on, and so forth …

I have more to comment about what’s been happening in my work life, including a campaign I did that I want you to help get the word out. But that has to wait until tomorrow. For now … go check out Coq Roq. The Righteous Right doesn’t *want* you to, of course.”

Please pass this around as far and as fast as you can. 🙂 Thank you.

Is good

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So Puppy and I had one of those meta converations last night. A communication about communication. We cleared up what exactly had each of us been arguing over the previous few days, cause we really weren’t on the same topics. We talked about things that we both want to work on and things that both of us need to agree to. For example:
-I need my cool down time or I am inclined to get violent and/or shut down during arguments. Instead of just walking away like I have always done I am going to ask for a timeout for a specific period of time so that I am a)getting the space I need to have and I am commiting to coming back and solving the problem so he doesn’t feel like I am just avoiding the issue and ignoring his needs.
-Puppy has a bit better of an idea of exactly how and why I need space now and he has commited to actually letting me have the time I need. He also thinks he will feel a lot better about giving me the space I need when he feels more certain I am going to come back.
-We talked about needing to have “What are we arguing about” check-in’s as the fight is raging because we end up doing apples and oranges and that is utterly useless and frustrating.
-He feels that he wants to learn how to communicate with me differently because the way he talks to me isn’t making it through. (I think this is more of a two way street than he kind of commited to.) He thinks a counselor would be a really good idea to help us figure out how to speak the same language.

We talked about how his behavior during the big fight was a perfect example of his fathers behavior and how I cannot and will not live with a replica of that man. That wasn’t easy to talk about. We talked about the difference between slamming his friend and me setting a boundary in my life. With him (yeah, I know I am doing it with my friends and in my journal but he isn’t influenced by that) I am not saying much negative about his ex other than I don’t want her in my life because she isn’t stable. I am stressing repeatedly that I want him to continue his friendship with her because he needs to have friends and a support network that doesn’t involve me. I just don’t want to be friends with her and I don’t want her in my house. I don’t think that those boundaries for me should end his relationship and I also don’t want to spend a lot of time with him telling me I am wrong about her. He finally conceded that feelings don’t have to be rational and it’s ok for me to have my squicks. For the record, he is totally supportive of her not coming into the house if I don’t want her here. He just wishes that I would actually get to know her and make my evaluation of any potential friendship based on my personal interactions instead of based on something she did in the past to him. I feel this is a very reasonable wish for him to have and I don’t blame him. I also know that she happened to stomp on one of the things I am most sensitive to in the world and it is pretty much a deal breaker for me from the get-go. There are no take-backs of that action. I tolerate a whole shit-load of stuff from people, not that.

We talked more about birth control methods and comfort and sex and what we both need and how our squicks and needs are not matching up entirely. (He has a serious thing against getting menstrual blood on himself and that leads to me feeling dirty and unwanted. It’s a thing. It needs to be worked on.) We talked about how basically unfair it is that birth control in this relationship is 100% my responsibility and he is asking me to do even more things because he is really paranoid about an accidental pregnancy. We talked about the negative effects on my body and psyche that some of what he wants causes and how basically, I am not going to put myself at risk for any more shit. He is being flat paranoid and I am not going to pander to it because it is actually going to hurt me to do so. (I am not fond of constant UTI’s and if I used spermicidal jelly as much as he would like me to [one more preventative] I would never stop being in pain. Ever.) So yeah. There are now a bunch of websites about ovulation and fertility cycles up on his computer and he is going to read them and find out that actually no, I can’t get pregnant 30-1 days out of the month and he can stop trying to insist that I do four forms of birth control at all times cause it is kind of silly. (Starting with the premise that I am on the pill and not ovulating anyway. Oy.) And for the record, cause some people feel envy: yeah, we are up to five days without sex. Poor me. 🙁

Appreciation

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I’ve said it many times before and I’m sure I will say it millions of times in the future.

I love my friends. I am so very grateful for the people in my life who love me and support me. I don’t treat my friends as well as I should, and I don’t honestly know if I ever will be able to be as good to them as they deserve, but I try to figure out ways to let them know that I appreciate them.

Specifically in the last few days: Chris and Andrew, thank you for picking up the phone. Thank you for your advice. I will try to follow it.

and it got worse

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No. It wasn’t about the stupid Playboys.

So yesterday Puppy came home and told me that there were a few people he wants to invite to the housewarming. Wonderful. Great. He proceeds to list off a few ex’s. Including the psycho one that I threw down about a month ago. The one that I asked him to promise me that a) he would never be around her and guns again and b) she would never be in my home. So much for respecting my wishes.

I walked away immediately. I couldn’t react right away. I called a friend who told me over and over that I need to tell Puppy no. I’m grateful for the pep talk. It was hard telling Puppy no. Then he wanted me to justify my no. So I reminded him of the former promise. Oops. He forgot. He started lecturing me about how I am not giving her a chance and she is a very good person.

This is about when I went and started cutting. I couldn’t deal with it. I just shut down mentally. We have been down this path already. He is like a dog wearing at a bone. He can’t back off for anything. (I guess Puppy is so very appropriate of a name.)

I finished and came out and finished making dinner. I was comletely numb and shut down. He tried to touch me and I flinched. He got mad at me and stomped away. We sat down to eat and he started up again on how he can’t believe I am judging her before I meet her. She is a good person. He knows her. Yeah, she has done bad things–but everyone has and the good far outweighs the bad. I started saying, “stop.” Over and over and over. He didn’t. I felt the panic attack start. I started shaking. Stop changed to fine. I almost threw down my plate (bad. glass.) and I ran to the back room and sat against the door as I fought to breathe. As I fought to control the hysterical crying. I was on the verge of passing out from lack of air and he came to the door and continued his tirade. I honestly couldn’t understand him. I just absolutely lost it. He didn’t stop for several minutes. It was really awful. Eventually he stopped and left. It took a while for me to calm down and when I did I went into the guest room, grabbed Ted and Nighty-Night and passed out hard. Panic attacks make me fall asleep fast and hard. They are draining and exhausting.

This morning he tells me that he didn’t sleep because he was worried about me. He said he is just trying to defend his friend. I’m not attacking her. I’m not saying she is a bad or horrible person. I am just saying I don’t want her in my life. I am expressing a boundry. And he doesn’t respect it.

This morning I am actually missing Tom. There were bad nights with Tom, but he never escalated them. It was always entirely me doing the crazy shit. I really miss having stuff not escalate.

I slipped

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the water fills the tub

steralize the tool

pick spots that can be hidden–someone will be looking

stay shallow, don’t give in to the impulse to push harder and harder. just the surface. just the barest release

better and worse. empty and aching and guilty instead of swirling agony.

i failed.

Working out the kinks (in communication)

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We had another big fight last night. We had been sitting down having dinner and discussing the upcoming plans. There is an event I want to go to weekend after next and I will be gone Fri-Sun and he would like to come down on Sat. But it’s a long drive and lot’s of effort and trying to negotiate rides and such was a bit obnoxious. I kept being me, which is to say that for every reason he had for what he wanted I had about fifteen things to consider that could be a problem in making it happen. I wasn’t trying to cause a fight or be difficult, I was following my generic thought process. I think about all the possibilities for things to go wrong when I am planning anything. I just do. But he felt very attacked. I got up to start cleaning up after dinner and he told me, “If you don’t want me to go just say so.” Then he went off to deal with laundry. I got really angry. Most of the points I was bringing up were because I wanted to make sure he didn’t end up in a situation that meant I wouldn’t get to spend much time with him. I didn’t want him depending on a total flake for a ride so that I didn’t see him for more than a few hours.

When he came back into the house I pretty much went off. I pushed his chest and yelled at him. The look on his face for a split second made me think he would deck me. Yeah. Maybe I went a bit far there… We yelled out our respective sides. I think he finally realized that I wasn’t trying to be a pill when I say the things I say, I’m just very anal-retentive and compulsive and I want to make sure there is no possible outcome I haven’t considered. His ex-wife spent most of their marriage (they were married for two years, they had already been together for four years when they married) trying to have time away from him and didn’t ever want him to come along when she did stuff. We all have our baggage. So it is a constant issue for him to suspect that when I am examining all the ways something could potentially fail that I am really just trying to tell him to stay home. No… I want to make sure you don’t end up staying home because of something stupid and petty cause I really really want you there. *sigh*

When the fight was over he pulled me into his lap and stroked my hair and told me he was proud of me for dealing with being angry instead of stewing for days.

He is coming from a background of a partner who would do anything to get away from him. I am coming from a background of a partner who would use any excuse to avoid doing things with me. We both are afraid of asking for time with one another because we are used to being rebuffed. I’ve tried explaining to him that we are both the clingy type who likes time together (don’t get me wrong, we spend an awful lot of time apart and that is ok–there are a good 12 hours that we are apart during every day and then 8 hours of sleeping. I don’t think that wanting to spend what time we can together is obsessive.) but he still feels like he is going to stifle me. This means I am having to work very hard on my own fear of rejection and I am asking him to be with me. It’s scary…

[Day two of migraine starting. I really don’t understand why he won’t shoot me.]

Service plug

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Everytime I have to call Geico about my insurance (car or renter) I am always convinced that I am talking to the happiest, perkiest person alive. But then on the next call… there’s another! ACK!

Their rates are rather good and their customer service is extremely good. They get two thumbs up from me.

As opposed to those piece of shit bastards at Uhaul. I’m mad at at Jim for using them.not really but it sounds funny

ick

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I have a migraine building.

Cramps are so horrible that I feel like my uterus is one of those alien creatures and it is trying to claw it’s way out of my gut.

But I’m not pregnant.

enh

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I hate unpacking and I’m tired. Besides, Puppy is off doing something fun–it’s ok for me to take a break.

The trip was up and down and up and down and….
My first impulse is to say that I hate his father. It probably is an overstatement though. His father is going to be a problem for me probably for the rest of his life, though I bet we will eventually come to some sort of terms. I will never again be at that man’s beck and call night and day. Of that I am 100% certain. I am never setting foot in that RV again. I will be renting a car during all future visits. I will not stay at his house. My schedule will never be at his beck and call. He is a total jerk. Specifically: he is fond of telling people what is expected of them at the very last second and then getting really angry when they are not finished when he would like them to be. He also never gives anyone enough information and gets really frustrated when they don’t read his mind. He likes to yell and give orders when it isn’t appropriate. When things are going his way, and everyone is jumping fast enough, he can be ok though. I refuse to ever be at his mercy again. But he isn’t actually evil and I probably don’t actually hate him. I just don’t deal well with his style of interaction. He is incredibly self-centered and rude and…. I wanted to shoot him many times during the trip.

The step-mother is stupid. Literally. I think she has a low IQ. By the end of the trip I reached the conclusion that I will probably never care enough about her one way or another to have an opinion. She is annoying, but I tend to just ignore the annoyance factor from people who are that stupid.

The little brothers are awesome. The youngest one, who called me the sucky girlfriend early in the trip and made me cry, turned out to be really cool–he’s just an almost 12 year old boy and he says rude/stupid things sometimes. For the last two days whenever anyone said anything that wasn’t polite to me he would give them a dirty look and say, “Don’t say mean things to Princess! She doesn’t like it.” The boys were calling me Mother 4 (Bio-mom, step-mom, then long-time friend’s mother come before me) and when I told them to do things they would get up immediately to do it. They totally ignored their father. It was funny. We spent most of the last three days talking and getting to know one another and I like them both a lot. They are going to come visit us and I can’t wait. 🙂 I think staying for the RV portion of the trip was worth it just to get to know the brothers. I rescued the littlest one when he fell out of the raft during the white water rafting trip (ok, it would have been dealt with by someone else and he probably wouldn’t have gotten seriously hurt anyway) and he called me his hero. 🙂 The older one is heading into high school and we had some pretty adult conversations about interactions between people and ways to handle different situations (his father was yelling at him constantly) and I think I probably helped him get through the trip without some tears because he was on the verge several times.

And Puppy and I had some really awesome adventures. It was lots of fun with him. It was indeed a learning experience. Staying was the right call.