Author: pookiebear

new digs!

if paul and i extol the virtues of our apartment any longer, someone would think we were being paid to do so.
the big move day was 3.15.01, where we both woke up at 5:30, to drop the dogs off at the new apartment (so they wouldn’t drive the movers nuts whilst loading and unloading) and to drop paul off at work. That’s right, you heard me correctly. That mother fucker had a very important meeting the day that we moved and I ended up directing traffic for it all day. Which, ironically, wasn’t as bad as I make it out to be. With my dominate nature and how much of a control freak I am, paul would have just been in the way. Regardless, the fact he had to work is enough for me to extract punishment from him. 🙂 Just kidding. Really. I am just kidding. Maybe.
The move really went off without a hitch, really. We had packed most of the house the previous days and basically all I had to pack was the kitchen and the bathroom. The movers carted all 30+ boxes (half of them books…) down three flights and were not looking happy to realise that they had to cart all 30+ boxes back up four flights (including what scant furniture we have). The movers were at the old place at 9:55am and were gone from the new place at 3:00pm. By the time paul got home, I had started unpacking most of our stuff (leaving the computer/office room and the kitchen for him) and I was lying on one of the futons watching teevee trying to keep my eyes open.
here is the floor plan to our apartment. nearly 1400sq feet and in person, the apartment is HUGE. You might be wondering why we needed a three bedroom? Good question — typical couples get one maybe two bedrooms. However, since paul’s sister was planning on living with us before we got this apartment, we had to find one that handled large dogs (she has a 50lb boxer) — and this place was perfect. Like Penderbrook, I did all the leasing information over the phone before I even saw the place — we were getting desperate looking for apartments that handled large animals and had the space we needed. When paul’s sister “changed her mind” (ie: flaked on us), we took the apartment any ways, with the option of having a guest bedroom/sitting room for me.
I took Wednesday till today off to deal with the move and get the dogs in order. Every night paul and I have been taking baths together in the “garden tubs” and we are both amazed our fat asses can fit into one 😉 I’ve been walking around on the ubersoft carpet in this daze that I can’t believe this is *my* apartment and *I* live here. With the furniture (or what little we have) spread out, I can see several buying trips to Ikea coming up in the near future. The bedroom is “technically” smaller than the one at Penderbrook, however, once we got the bed and dresser moved in, we noticed there is enough room for another dresser against one of the walls if we choose, a teevee stand and a chair/love seat. We are figuring Penderbrook shortchanged the rooms somehow because with the same bed, dresser, teevee stand we have now, we could not have fit the additional pieces of furniture in there AND have room left over. The walk-in closet is large enough to fit a twin size bed in there and the bathrooms are wonderful. The kitchen is large enough that we can have both the dishwasher door and the oven door pulled down without hitting each other. The dogs have plenty of space to roam and play and everything is just wonderful all around.
Don’t I sound like a goddamn advertisement for this company?
But it’s true (it’s true!).
There have been a few problems since we moved in here, nothing that couldn’t be fixed and for the most part, OakWood has been very gracious about getting some of the items attended to. I found out from one of the maintenance guys that our apartment was never on the “daily clean list” the day before we moved in — which is funny since they knew we were moving in a month ahead of time. But they are fixing everything in a more timely manner and there is people on staff 24/7. Hell, I’ve been so motivated by the move and just starting to realise how a new apartment makes one feel better, I’ve been thinking about starting to work out again. But as always, I let the thought keep wandering.
Sometime between Thursday and Friday, I pulled a muscle in my back and i was calling (in pain) to our chiropractor to have him put me back in shape. As Friday wore on, the pain got worse where I couldn’t even get in/out of my car without difficulty. When I got home from running errands Friday afternoon, paul attempted to “put me in my place” which resulted in me screaming like a little girly-man cos it hurt so goddamn bad. I couldn’t move to my right or bend to my left without screaming bloody murder. But, on Saturday morning when I woke up, I realized the pain was gone with no trace or after shocks, if you will. It was, very odd.
One of the great things about moving (even though there are just a few it seems) is how much you discover about yourself and how much crap you find that you forgot you had. I found my partial collection to strangers in paradise, the comic for the non-comic reader, that i had forgotten I had. I have not read any of the current books since issue 13 (and they are now up to issue 38 — shit) and sitting in the “sitting room” floor reading the comics made me realise how much I’ve missed Katchoo and Francine. I started digging around and found that amazon.com carries all the trade paperbacks for them up to the latest one and I’m thinking about subscribing to have SIP delivered directly to my door. If you haven’t read SIP, I would highly recommend you do so. NOW I SAY, NOW GO BUY IT. ahem.
I’ve also discovered I’m a bigger fan of Anne Rice novels than I care to admit. I have almost all of her work in paperback and hardcover and that alone frightens me. But she amuses me and I like being amused.
Speaking of books, TLC BookClub seems to have fallen to the wayside — it hasn’t helped that my own mind is on other matters.
I’ve also got to stop buying these books written by brits — akin to “Bridget Jones’ Diary”. I keep purchasing these books (without intention really) that tend to be all based in London and written from the female perspective and it’s always about these whiny bitches who have issues. or something. The horrid part is that since I’ve been rating my books on amazon.com, they’ve been suggesting other related authors. ARGH! It’s madness i tell you, madness.
I have more to say, but it’s 1am in the morning, I have to work tomorrow and geekbox is down so who knows when you’ll be getting this.
Go buy me something. My wish list is getting too goddamn long .
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Lisa
 

go braves!


The picture to your left is that of my brother (#5) after tonight’s pounding on Illinois State, 73-66.
the braves have had a long hard road in the past few months and I’ve been eagerly listening to their games via wmbd radio that has been broadcasting their games live every night. tonight was the only game I’ve sorta missed since we started listening since i had forgotten the game was starting at 5pm EST and not the usual 7-8pm EST.
But we caught the last four minutes of the game and I wooped loudly when i heard that they won. My own brother contributed 12-points, four blocks and seven rebounds. Jeff also has 76 blocks for the single season games, beating the old record at Bradley of 72.
Tomorrow night the braves go up against Indiana U. and will be broadcast on ESPN at 9pm EST.
I also emailed ESPN to correct them of their “error” that they show that my brother did not play tonight — he so did 😉
Congratulations jeff!
Links:
Bradley U.
Braves Mens Basketball
Braves Standings @ ESPN
Jeff’s standings via ESPN
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lisa

dear old mom

earlier this evening, after speaking to my mom for about a half an hour, i hit the “end” button on my cell with a heavy heart. this has become a common occurrence when speaking to her as of late.
>it seems that earlier this week, when she was visiting my brother in Peoria for his basketball game, she had awoken up the morning after the game with a burst blood vessel in her eye. This was due, i find out from her, to her diabetes and this was not the first time this has occurred. When she arrived home back to grand rapids, she had emergency laser surgery done on her eye to repair the damage.
it was then she dropped the ball to me that she had wanted to up our plans and move in with us this year.
paul and i had talked about this previously prior to the bombshell this evening, and while i accept my mother is getting old and sick with her diabetes, i don’t know if i can accept the responsibility of her issues. i know, that the guilt deep down inside of me is pushing to do this out of fear and out of the fact that it feels like (to me) i neglected my father during his last few years on this earth. i know i know, everyone says it is not my fault and things work out the way they are, but i feel that the longer i fight to save my mother from herself and from killing herself (she was on suicide watch mid-last year), i find myself sitting in my car alone going, “I’m too fucking young to handle this”.
please don’t get me wrong, i love my mother. and i will admit that my fathers death was a blessing in disguise as we have been working on being close as a mother/daughter for the first time in years, i feel like i can’t breathe and i feel like I’m being suffocated every time something close to commitment of anything comes on. it doesn’t matter if it’s taking care of her, or paul or the goddamn dogs, i just want to break free and be alone.
on Friday afternoon, i drove to my shrink’s office with a heavy heart. after my conversation with Dr. B the previous week, i have been more silent than usual. not silent in writing but silent in communicating verbally to those around me. she and i had talked about this all the previous week about how when I’m asked what is ‘wrong’ i say nothing. the perfect example is when i walked into her office that afternoon and she and i sat there doing the “stare” for a good five minutes before i opened my mouth.
in all honesty, when I’m talking to her or to paul, or hell to anyone that cares, when asked what is wrong i always say ‘nothing’ because it is true — there is nothing wrong. my mind is often blank (so i think) and i just stare off into outer space. this has become more apparent as of late and those around me say they want to know what’s up and why I’m not communicating with them.
i don’t have an answer and i don’t have one major issue that if i talk about it, it suddenly becomes this catharsis of “wow, don’t i feel just fucking better”. it just simply, to me, isn’t that easy to discuss.
i had said to paul in many ways i was angry at my shrink for talking about things in the past — because it brought them up to light and it was issues i didn’t want to revel. things that are in the past and better left unsaid. however, my own behavior in the last year or two has shown that keeping it down deep inside is not the best solution, no matter how much i try and say it is. i often tout that I’ve worked past all those previous issues when I know i haven’t. it’s like, as paul pointed out, there are two me’s. the one that is angry and the one that is calm.
this got further discussed between Dr. B and I as I had told her that the words “hurt” “kill” and “stab” often pepper my vocabulary more often than I like. When I don’t like something or feel intimated, i often say “I’ll hurt you” and most particularly to paul “I’ll stab you”. I’ve often had thoughts of hurting people when I was angry and in the past I used to hurt myself. I remember when I was a child I used to sit there with needle and thread and only going through the first few layers of my skin, sew my hands together. I used to pull out big chunks of my hair (often from behind my ears where it wasn’t noticeable) by twisting and pulling. Dr. B. said I sound like a bully and she was right. But why was I acting like a bully?
In my younger years, I was often intimidated by those physically and mentally stronger than me (so i thought). I wanted to be liked so bad that hell, when I lost my virginity, it was due to peer pressure and not due to the fact that i had actually wanted to fuck that guy. Of course, years of beating myself up over it coupled with what I truly wanted were used to punish myself for what i had done.
Dr. B. says that having a vivid imagination or fantasy life is sometimes very healthy. If you do not act out in that fantasy life (you know, like i wouldn’t really stab paul even though I keep using it as a line of defense) it can help deal with anger. Many people say there is a fine line between fantasy and reality — and while often I feel that I often cross that path, acting it out inside my head is often a good release for whatever I’m feeling.
i never understood people who are ashamed or afraid to admit hey are seeing a shrink or are on drugs of any sort to make their lives easier. I have not qualms about facing reality and knowing that i have “issues”.
definitely something to think about.
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lisa

d-day

i had completely forgotten today was d-day at work.
you see, for quite some time, there has been numerous rumours running rampert all over the company as well as [Not sure where the rest of this entry went to…]

about

this isn’t going to be some sort of deep psychological debate with myself. you can form your own opinions about me via reading what i write. but that is just the tip. the basics are as follows:

  • I’m 6′ tall in stocking feet.
  • I’ve driven cross country (san fran to dc) solo.
  • I’ve been engaged multiple times (but not all at once)
  • my fiance is eight years younger than me
  • my brother is 7’2
  • i was born in canada and raised in Michigan
  • i was arts/entertainment editor on the college paper
  • I’m obsessed about harry potter and anita blake books
  • the first thing i do when i get up is: feed the dogs, make coffee, pee, smoke a
  • cigarette and check my stocks in that exact order.
  • i make more snide comments than i do straight answers
  • I’m obsessive /compulsive
  • I’m a drew carey fanatic.
  • i admit to owning albums by “Aqua” “Color Me Badd” and “Britney Spears”
  • i have a purse/shoe fetish
  • i only write with pentels rsvp pens in fine point blue
  • i also tape (via tivo) beverly hills 90210 every time it’s on
  • I’m a zelda fanatic
  • my favorite comedian is eddie izzard
  • if i would, i would marry christian slater in a heartbeat.
  • same thing for brendan fraser
  • ahh hell, imhotep from ‘the mummy’ would so be my bitch.
  • i cannot live without my cellphone or my visor.
  • or cigarettes, cawfee (from barnies) and nachos

that prep school bitch

i had decided this weekend to start going through all of my stuff to sort and pack before we began the actual packing. like a lot of people, I’m a pack rat, but what i keep tends to be more paper than actual junk.
sorting out through some of stuff that was crammed into a four shelf bookcase, i came across pictures, memorabilia and other paraphernalia of days gone by. Pictures of high school friends, tickets to concerts long since seen and other stuff that I had kept for a reason that escapes me even now.
later on Saturday evening, a friend from back when I used to hang out on the mailing list fte (back in the mid-90s when my obsession for sarah mclachlan was going strong), IM’d me out of the blue. I had by chance logged into my aol account (hey, it’s free, fuck off 🙂 and he had IM’d me wondering if that was still me.
it was indeed me and we got to talking and i asked about how people were doing and what not. We had a loosely knit group of friends who had formed a sub-list off the main list as most of the people we talked with hung out in the bay area and it was easier to plan to see shows like lilith without all the chatter of the static of the main group clogging it up.
over time, i saw that while sarah mclachlan still rangs up there as one of my all fav singers, it was time to move on with myself. i unsubbed myself from fte in the spring of 99 before lilith had started and removed myself from sf-fumblers as the traffic was so slow and sometimes there would be weeks without email. I knew that if anyone really wanted to talk to me, they could always email/IM me if they choose and that was that.
talking to greg brought up a lot of painful insecurities that i had long forgotten in my daily life. you see, there were a few females on the mailing list that i alternated between hating and liking within a moments notice. the two particular females had seemingly grown up with everything being golden to them. One had gone to Vassar and the other had gone to private college in CT. They were the kind of girls who in their early 20s had already traveled fairly extensively outside of the US, knew which types of wines to order with their dinner, could afford or had knowledge of the better things in life. both had wanted to marry someone early and have babies and live the full life of a soccer mom.
yes, those kind of girls.
the kind of women my friend Jennifer at work and i mock when we head out to dulles town center for lunch, the kind bored and restless with their expensive degrees shuffling along with their 2.5 kids, the kate spade diaper bags and their stupid SUVs parked in the parking lot, wasting away the day while their husband is off having a fling with his secretary.
can you sense the bitterness here?
one of the girls was honestly sweet — but we never really became close as friends as other than a few musicians we had nothing in common. the other girl, however, has long since been a manipulator in the big scheme of things and it was widely discussed about how she manipulated people for her own things.
i can’t really fault those two for the things they have done/said/will do, but it was amazing to me the resentment that came out talking to greg when i asked how everyone was doing. it always seems that the privileged, or those i think as being privileged, are having a high time in life while i still feel like the poor student working her way through college.

Passion for Food

My food passions tend to be for things I can’t have, like faygo. I love faygo with a passion i would literally would sell my soul to get some shipped to me.
A friend and I are swapping girl scout cookies (me to her) for TimTams, which are Australian cookies. You can’t buy them in the states and goddamn they are yummylicious. 🙂 And I have them in my hot little hands! Thanks sweetie, you are the best.
Now only if i can figure out how to get someone to send me roundtable bread sticks before they get yucky!

white trash party

if i had a buck for every time i started mucking around with the design of TLC, I’d be a rich woman today.
I also realized that I could probably name several weeks worth of chronicles with afghan Whigs song titles and not repeat myself once.
They (Whigs) broke up earlier this year — Dulli is apparently going to be working full time on The Twilight Singers — pffft. Now we will bow our heads in silence for 60 seconds in memoriam of the Whigs’ breakup.
*crickets chirping*
moving right along, it’s been a quiet Sunday (you know, no fighting or anything) — and paul and i watched a few crappy movies on teevee while i dicked around looking stuff to do. we adopted another pug, this one is called Lili, and is Wednesday’s sister. They are paternal twins but from far away look identical. I call them the girls, and paul keeps saying when i move out, lili is going with me.
so thus begins our story.
a few weeks back, upon seeing my shrink, she and i started talking about sex, when i started opening up more about how i was feeling sexually — which is nothing. she suggested that i see her in a few weeks instead of a month and start talking about these issues at hand so that grow past them and carry one. i agreed.
last week, i took a spin in my new car up to see her, and things started pouring out. things i knew that i hadn’t discussed with anyone, let alone paul, in a very long time. i sniffed few times, i used urn charm containing my fathers ashes as a touchstone as i talked. fear. abandonment. lack of commitment. these were some of the issues concerning my and things that needed to be addressed. paul and i had tentively brought the wedding up to 5/01 instead of 9/01 and my shrink (correctly) was detecting that the closer to the wedding we got, the more put i closed up inside. which is true, I’m not going to lie about that — it’s like there should be a club for my ex boyfriends (such as in the show drew carey when all of kate’s boyfriends held a support group for her at the warsaw) to comment on my past behavior and how i have hurt/affected them in the past.
but i digress.
and i digressed a lot when i spoke to my shrink that day as well. i found myself jumping from one issue to another and yet in my mind it all made sense. here i had thought i was getting along marvelously well but inside I’ve been screaming for something (anything?) to get out.
i know a lot of it has to do with how paul and i interact with each other. a friend of mine had notated that in our office, our computers were facing away from each other — which he said seemed odd. i had obsessed about that one for sometime and brought that up to paul, when paul mentioned that it had been my idea to place our computers away from each other as i had wanted my space. which, of course, i had neglected to mention when i had spoken to said friend.
if i could spell out paul’s and i’s relationship, it would be under a lot of misunderstanding (on my part), misinterpretation and sometimes lack of an overall picture. paul wants to move forward and i want to stay here (where here is, is sometimes hard to distinguish). i used to think, when things got bad, that it was because of the boyfriend, and not something within me that had to change. but with paul, it’s different, how different i don’t know, it just is. i know that sometimes things seem to be more perfect when I’m with him and when I’m away from him i miss him like crazy. but in everyday situations, it always seems to be when i get antsy and it takes extreme events to make me realize that i love him.
which is bullshit, i should be thankful I’m with him everyday and not stirring up trouble to see his reaction.
but in all honesty, the only fault that i found with him is that sometimes his own lack of confidence in himself in the regards of us. it’s like, why torture me with the whole argument of “when you leave…” scenarios when you are just creating another wide open door for me to step through?
we wage this war on ourselves sometimes, and I’ve started working on being more calm within myself and not jumping the point when it came down to who was right or wrong in silly stupid arguments. but you know, as they say, pimpin’ ain’t easy.
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lisa
ps: I’ve sent emails on starting a reading club on yahoo, and the response was pretty fucking overwhelming (honestly, I’m surprised that many people still WANT to read – considering the advent of the interweb and such). If you want to join us, you can find us on yahoo as the lisa chronicles book club. I’m on yahoo as modgirllisa, so shoot me an email, sign up, just have fun.
pps: what i had also forgot to mention, was a funny (to me) incident at the shrinks office. she had said to me “do you write?” when in speaking with in means about other methods of therapy, and i just gave her this level stare and she responded with something like “you don’t like to write?” and i said something like “it’s not that, i have been writing a journal on the internet since 1995 or so”. i think, in all my times with her, I’ve never spoken about things that made me happy, including writing. so with her permission, she’s on the TLC mailing list and with my permission, she can browse my archives. i love therapy 🙂

hannibal

if there are but two movies i have been eagerly awaiting the release of this year, it’s been harry potter (yes yes, I’m a huge fan of harry potter and got a lot of nifty cool stuff for Xmas that was harry potter based) and Hannibal.
Harry Potter i could easily explain because of my obsession with the books, but even though I saw “silence of the lambs” and i liked it (not loved it), i became obsessed with seeing the movie. maybe because i have a slight obsession with serial killers, or maybe it looked gruesome, i have no idea other than i had to see this goddamn movie.
since Friday night is logans night round these parts, there was talk about going to go see it after dinner last night, but because I’m old and cranky, paul and i decided to go see it after hitting the chiropractor Saturday morning.
now, i have NOT read the series of books by Thomas Harris yet (red dragon, silence of the lambs or Hannibal); which is unlike me since i generally read the books movies are based on. So in going into the movie, i went with eyes wide open and with a clear mind.
now gore or horror movies don’t freak me out — but suspense thrillers do. i was totally expecting something as involved as SOTL, but boy was I wrong.
the good points: the cinematography was beautiful. the shots of Florence and NoVa were beautiful and the scenery was breathtaking. Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter was satirical with his tag lines of “Okay dokey”. But other than that, the movie was not that great.
It wasn’t awful either — so don’t take it the wrong way. The problem is that the movie seemed to be billed as suspenseful and horrifying when it really wasn’t. The ending, which everyone kept saying was horrific and gruesome, wasn’t and it was very obvious they were using CGI for the scenes. Julianne Moore, whom I love, was fine as Clarice Starling, but it was obvious she was nothing more than an accessory in the movie and yet was billed as staring. The movie in no way explores the relationship between Hannibal and Clarice, which it should have, but more focuses on Hannibal and his returning to the “scene” of his crimes.
Over all, on a rating scale, I’d give it a 3 out of 5 stars. I would recommend seeing it for the pure factor of Hopkins and his satirical speeches and the humor he plays out onto himself, but the gore/suspense and the thrill just wasn’t there.
I have heard the book is slightly different from the movie, and that they are planning on remaking “ManHunter” (based on the first book, Red Dragon) with Hopkins and several of the comments on the book itself have been summed up as “a manuscript produced in paperback form”.
When I finish reading the series (which I’ve ordered from Amazon), I’ll let you know what my final verdict is.
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lisa