life is hard. be nice.

Can the pace of the funerals slow down a little bit, please? Janean's funeral was last week and it was terribly sad, not to mention terribly far away. She was my cousin and my "godmother"...and I spent a lot of time with her and her husband when I was a little girl. She was 57.

My aunt Linda has been married to a man named Don (who everyone has called Bear since long before my time) for much longer than my time, too. He introduced my parents. He was a nice guy and he died this morning after finding out he had cancer about 2 and a half freaking weeks ago...

So I'm sad about all this, plus I have to wade through all the stupid day to day bullshit about getting time off work and going down there and getting back all in one day...

And mostly I just don't want to go to any more funerals for a while.

Last night I:

- went in the hot tub in the rain. There is no real temperature control on it, so it's always just ever-so-slightly too hot or just ever-so-slightly too cold. It was 107 last night - that's the former. It was lovely, though...with the cool rain and the huge clouds of steam evaporating into the air. I kept thinking that I wished there was someone with me to enjoy it, but at the same time I was enjoying being alone. I always wish I had more epeople to do things with, but when it comes down to it, I find other people exhausting.

- watched Ninotchka, with Greta Garbo. She's very, very funny in it. I liked it very much when she was the dour comrade and not so much when she gave in to Paris and champagne. The plot had to go that way, I understand that, but she was so much funnier in the first half. In the second half, she was just "Garbo", being in love...and it was nice to see her do something else.

- read guidebooks about Las Vegas and went to bed at 8:30.

I have two bosses - one who needs much maintenance and one who needs very little. They are both gone today and I am at loose ends. Looking busy in the Livejournal.

Chama just got a livejournal - she experienced the heady fun of picking out her interests. She is lamasay - if anyone reads this, you should friend her.

Erik is giddily excited (and so am I, but I try to play it cool) that the season premiere of Season 7 of ANTM is on tonight. It's ridiculous and bad for us - like too much candy, but I cannot look away. He went in kicking and screaming and now he's a convert. We are both re-reading A Wrinkle in Time, as I left it in the bathroom to be read...and ANTM has sucked him in like IT sucked in Charles Wallace.

I will not drink wine while I watch it. I will eat pretzels and drinks lots of water. I have to go back to the evil psychologist in one month and want her to give me permission to see the stupid fertility doctor.

That's about right - actually it's a little high. I don't feel like I REALLY live here; I doubt I ever will. I was just thinking about that this morning listening to MPR; they mention some little place like Kasota or wherever and I'm always like, "Oh - these rural Minnesota places, who the hell knows where they are..."

But in Wisconsin, there is no where so podunk that I have not heard of it.

It's the last day of the first week of my new job. I like it (even tho they haven't had enough for me to do all week), but ohmygod do my feet and back hurt from the heels.

I've been so exhausted when I get home. The commute is :35 on a good day and 1:30 on a bad day (like when the president decides to come to town) and my rattletrap car with the hanging muffler and black interior with no air conditioner is not the most comfortable mode of transportation. Once or twice I've wanted to leap screaming from the car on 35W, teraing off my clothes as I scrambled over the wall, away from the highway and back toward the streets where things feel less hostile.

But I like it overall. I feel like a grownup.

To celebrate my last week working here at the group home...some of the clients thought it'd be cute to get LICE. Ok - so the one thing has nothing to do with the other, but I feel itchy now! I don't put my head on anything the clients put their heads on...but I gotta go home and wash my hair. Twice!

Yesterday, out the bedroom window, the big front yard tree surprised me with some bright red-orange leaves. August, in the 80's, almost 100% humidity and my leaves are starting to change.

I have spent all summer going to doctors, therapists...a psychiatrist. I have been trying harder than I've ever, ever tried before to get a grip on mySELF.

I've always had a really hard time seeing anything but negativity in myself. Then I've always been so depressed, so worried, so sure that everyone would find out what an imposter I was, or that they would see right off the bat just how horribly unlikable I was. It's a constant obnoxious, throb. I'm trying to banish the throb by TAKING CARE OF MYSELF, which is a totally foreign concept to me...unless it involved taking off of work to get high and overeat. It's so much work - it's overwhelming. Baby steps.

I got a new job. The kind of job I've wanted for years. I was so sure, so sure when I went for my interview that I could not get it. I looked around at all the other people in the building, crossing the lobby on their busy way here and there and thought, "No. They can tell I'm different. They can tell I can't wear those clothes that way. They can tell that I'm afraid of them." I seriously thought of leaving. But I stayed and I tried to act like I could belong. Then they had me come back. I almost didn't go. The feeling was back again, exaggerated by my too-tight "good" blouse and the fact that I towered over the itty bitty cute girl I interviewed with initially...but they didn't see through me (or maybe there was nothing to see?) and I got it.

Everyone says "Congratulations. You deserve it." And I kept starting to say, "No, I don't - I fooled them. You're fooled, too, if you think I deserve it..." But I've stopped.

Fake it until you make it. I deserve it.

In January...I was BACK. I was going to get back into this thing...ok. It's August. I'm BACK!

10 Reasons Why Gay Marriage is "Wrong"

1) Being gay is not natural. Real Americans always reject unnatural things like eyeglasses, polyester, and air conditioning.
2) Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
3) Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behaviour. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
4) Straight marriage has been around a long time and hasn't changed at all; women are still property, blacks still can't marry whites, and divorce is still illegal.
5) Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage were allowed; the sanctity of Britney Spears' 55-hour just-for-fun marriage would be destroyed.
6) Straight marriages are valid because they produce children. Gay couples, infertile couples, and old people shouldn't be allowed to marry because our orphanages aren't full yet, and the world needs more children.
7) Obviously gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
8) Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That's why we have only one religion in America.
9) Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That's why we as a society expressly forbid single parents to raise children.
10) Gay marriage will change the foundation of society; we could never adapt to new social norms. Just like we haven't adapted to cars, the service-sector economy, or longer life spans.

Please post this in your journal if you are for gay marriage.

I joined Weight Watchers in December and so far I have lost 2.8 pounds. In a month. But that month did include Xmas and I ate and drank everything in the whole wide world. That is still a depressingly slow pace. According to the little height/weight thing, I have 95 pounds left to lose. This will take forever AND I want to get pregnant in the next 6-8 months.

I listen to NPR all day long at work and I hate Supreme Court Nominee time almost as much as I hate pledge drive time. I want my Talk of the Nation!

Last night, I watched (through my fingers, cringing) "Country Boys" on PBS. It was part one. It followed two boys in rural Kentucky over the course of a few years. It was great and compelling and really, really upsetting to me. I have this thing where I over-identify like crazy with everything and I kept seeing glimpses of myself in the semi-literate heavy-set boy. And it wasn’t just the heavy-set part. Sure, he lived in a “holler” in a trailer with his father who was dying of alcoholism and talked like Boomhauer. I didn’t identify with that part. But this kid was going to school and his teachers (who seemed in way over their heads and like they had no educational skills whatsoever that they hadn’t read in a self-help book somewhere) were bending over backwards to help this kid out…but he kept psyching himself out and not finishing his work or not showing up…and that’s where I started over-identifying. My New Year’s resolution is to have more follow-through. Also, to not get high and watch heartwrenching documentaries anymore.

I can’t wait for part two.

I have not blogged in forever and I have forgotten how. Like riding a bicycle, it will probably come back to me. The embarrassing thing is that I was never very good at riding a bicycle, either, so my remembered skills usually send me into a bush.

I went to see midnight movies with Erik and laurapalmer813 on Saturday night. We saw The Grim Reaper, starring Mia Farrow's less talented sister, Tisa...and The Devil's Nightmare, featuring a lot of groovy 60's people. I liked The Grim Reaper better. But there was some gratuitous nipple action in the other one.

I want to bring booze and Cheez-its next time.

It was a lot of fun. But I've been going to sleep so early lately, it was hard to stay up until 3 am.

Your element is Water. You are a deep person and a
good communicator. Incredibably loving and
loyal when your trust is gained and you are
fairly mature.Myterious to the utmost water is
in everything. One can be an Ocean or a river
but nobody truly knows you.


What's your element
brought to you by Quizilla

Somebody called se_ne_vada friended me, so I went to his/her info page to check it out. Apparently, this person did random search after random search and friended the hell out of everyone they found. Which includes me. And people are freaking out. There are all these people posting to the journal accusing this person of stalking them and all kinds of crazy shit. I don't get being cliquey about your journal. It's on the freaking internet, people. This person has gotten a thread of 75 replies going just by friending a whole bunch of people. And a lot of them read like "This is ABUSE! Delete me!" Take a deep breath, everyone. This person can't read your protected stuff if you don't friend him or her, right? I'm just happy to be friended...I don't care if it's some dork with an agenda to freak people out.

What the hell is this?

http://csx.jp/~chinkoondo/flash/chinko.swf

I'm freaking miserable. I have cramps and I pulled a muscle in my shoulder/neck while having sex last night. I couldn't sleep because I was worrying about all the projects that have piled up on me at work and because my neck hurt so bad. When I did fall asleep, I had anxiety dreams where I was crying/screaming at Erik because he abandoned me at some party...

I'm a big complainy mess today.
What if I really had something to complain about?