my birthday is in 8 days.
buy me something! .
oops! i did it again!
i’m obsessed with britney spears.
get over it.
the art of death
today i had to run to cvs to grab some stuff for a gift i bought for a friend of mine whose birthday is coming up. while i was perusing the aisles, i noticed the fathers days cards that were displayed so prominently.
——
the other night, derrick, paul and i had gone to barnes and noble (as we tend to do about 2x a week) and both derrick and i laughed at the fact that we no longer have to celebrate fathers day any longer. while it was morbid in thought, it was, in a way, a welcome relief to the realization that we can celebrate our fathers life instead of mourning their death.
——
in the weeks following my fathers death, i’m still shaken by the aspect of the fact that death is all around me. i see it in the animals we eat, the flowers i pick and the obituaries i can’t tear myself from reading in the sunday paper. i’m working (trying/fighting/hoping) on moving off of this depressing kick – but i can’t shake myself from feeling that one day i too will die and what is going to happen next is the big unknown.
i try to keep comforted by the words my mother and paul both tell me: he’s in a better place now. he’s happy now. he’s not in pain anymore. but on the flipside, i still can’t work over the reality of his death: i haven’t seen him in some time, i didn’t call him enough, i wasn’t made aware of his illness. he won’t be around when i get married, have kids or celebrate other fortunes in my life.
i’m beginning to feel that i too will die. not in the way off future that is the reality of it, but in the oh so close future. tomorrow. next week. next month. this is what immobilizes me and this is what eating at my heart. i lash out to paul only to realised this is getting me no where and that everything feels stale and fake.
——
the only solace i’m finding is the beauty in the green of the trees, the look in pauls eye when he says he loves me and the feel of his hugs when we sleep at night.
x0x0x0x
Category: The Lisa Chronicles
mid-life crisis at 27
April 25, 2000 — my father dies.
April 29, 2000 — paul, jeff and i fly to toronto for his funeral.
May 2, 2000 — my fathers “wake” where i meet up with cousins i haven’t seen in 10 years.
May 3, 2000 — i bury my father and we all fly home.
May 4, 2000 — paul and i drive to virginia beach for a court date.
May 5, 2000 — go to court and get a speeding ticket on the way home.
May 8, 2000 — come home to find out that i have a suspended license and I go back to work.
May 10, 2000 — i get bronchitis.
May 29, 2000 — realise i’ve been spending the last few weeks in some sort of funk that can only be described as “depression”. i’ve gained a lot of weight, i don’t give a fuck about my job, my life and other etc related aspects. paul and i have arguments that are short of starting WWIII and i want to kill myself however the concept of death has sent me to thinking that since I don’t know what it’s like after you die, then i don’t want to do it. which is the one good thing about being a human: we have the ability to reason and to think about the consequences of our actions.
i’ve read enough trippy novels to last a lifetime. i’ve been reading anything and everything i can get my hands on, however they always fall into the same suicidal, woman is wronged, strong woman without a man genre: ie: the oprah book club. every week we go to barnes and noble and every week i pick up about 50 bucks worth of paperbacks that paul said i wouldn’t be happy unless it was suicidal, depressing or something else knocking down the human spirit.
and sometimes i get flashbacks. i’ll read about someone or watch television commercial/show about a woman who changed their life at 30, 40 and even 50. how life is precious and wonderful and we shouldn’t throw it away. and all i can do is get up at 1am and throw up the remains of my dinner into the toilet. that is what i thought about life sometimes.
and i hated work. i hated getting up and getting dressed only to speak to moronic idiots who supposedly know what they are doing and don’t. i hated pretending that i liked what i was doing. and everyone is leaving. all the good engineers are LEAVING. and i wanted to scream and shout and say “i have no fucking idea what i’m doing. stay!” but i can’t cos that would be selfish and i can’t be selfish.
and i didn’t want to, really i didn’t want to, come off being whiny and pretentious. but when the doctor looked at me (my! you’re a big girl) i suddenly became conscious of the world around me. i became conscious that i was in love even if i was hell bent on destroying it. i was conscious that i had a life that was worth living and i wasn’t living it. i remember a few days ago i was laying in my bath and i was feeling up my tummy and felt new stretch marks from the recent weight gain. the skin felt like satin and while it was glaring red against the rest of me, i felt like that was my cross to bear suddenly. that my weight gain coupled with the world surrounding me was driving me to not leave my apartment for days at a time. i can’t remember a week in the last few months i haven’t been late to work. i can’t remember a time when i wasn’t planted somewhere in front of a television or in front of the computer. everything showed my lack of attention: my relationship with paul, my body.
plan
i’ve got a plan.
you see, a lot has been going on around in my little world for the last month or so, and i needed time to not write or think or do anything really exciting. just. think.
but i’ve got a plan. and i’m going to share it with you in a bit.
x0x0x0x0x
lisa.
and why are you here
I got a very interesting email the other day:
I am one of those people who first heard about you (was it 2 years ago?) when Wired News mentioned you in passing and included a link. As I recall, you got totally swamped at that point. I remember you mentioning it in one of your posts at the time. That mention, and link, brought you more attention than you’d had before. I don’t know if your readership has continued to grow since then, or if some of the people who signed up then eventually quit. I imagine at least a few have quit. I, myself, have been very, very tempted to quit a few times. Sometimes I ask myself, “Hey, I’ve got a ton of work to do, how can I justify reading these entries from some girl who I don’t even know?” I usually feel this way either when I’m the most busy or when you’re written a really dull entry that didn’t grab me at all.
But, all in all, I stay subscribed. So I’ve been reading your entries, or at least a sampling of them, for 2 or 3 years now. My, how time flies when you’re having fun.
and with the advent of someone adding an actual PORN link to my guestbook, it’s been an interesting week here at pronstar. And in case you haven’t figured it out yet, pronstar.com is a real live porn site.
On April 22, 2000, the 100th person subscribed to the list. I was so proud that I had started screaming and dancing in my living room. I never thought that me, personally; would generate that much interest and that many people would come to the site. I’m not doing so bad with pageviews per day and I’m getting more email the more i update, which just proves beyond a doubt that updating is peachy and stuff.
river
i had spent most of the night crying.
it started when paul and i had gotten into an argument earlier this evening and had escalated when we were sitting opposite of each other on the couches. i was staring at the edge of the coffee table like it was the most interesting thing in the world.
closed.
you don’t talk to me.
you say more on your website than you do to me.
i’m never leaving you.
your problems.
you only hear what you want to hear.
at one point during all of this i had shoved down my shorts and panties, and pulled up my shirt and screamed “i am a woman” as paul claimed i was “being a woman”. (that got a raised eyebrow out of that little stunt).
and we sat and talked.
the same words reverberated over and over.
closed.
you don’t talk to me.
you say more on your website than you do to me.
i’m never leaving you.
your problems.
you only hear what you want to hear.
over. and over. and over.
i sniffled through the rest of the night though other things were going on. packing for paul’s trip to boston. folding laundry. eating dinner. aimless viewing webpages and talking to various people on aol im.
once we had climbed into bed and finished reading my book, paul climbed in being all snugly and cute. and he was tired. we have to get up at 4:45am to make his flight to boston.
———-
when i was about 7 or 8, i remember helping my mom fold the laundry. we had such a large family, that laundry was a daily chore. down to the basement to the washer. up to the kitchen to the dryer and then onto the dining room to be folded. and i remember one time i had gotten the gumption to defy my mother. i had asked her something. i don’t remember what it was pertaining to, but she looked at me and had said “stop trying to manipulate me. this is the way it is.”
all my life people have, in one form or another said that i have manipulated them. and the way i’ve always seen it was that when someone manipulates someone, it’s a conscious decision. they are thinking about some potential harm or evil they want to do to said manipulator. but i’ve never thought that. my mind is blank, as it was this evening when paul asked me to talk. i don’t feel anything pressing in my head to speak. it’s just blank. i just stared at the table edge and the sole of my feet as it were the most interesting things in the world.
i suppose, there is some truth to the matters at present. and presently i don’t feel anything. it’s like i’m going through the motions of life: i have a wonderful boyfriend, a wonderful job, we live in a beautiful area in an awesome apartment and i don’t feel like it’s special.
i don’t think about things, i just do them. i don’t mind fuck people, i just tell them what i feel. i don’t manipulate people because i have nothing to gain from said manipulation. but if the populous is right, than i must be wrong.
bare feet
have this passion for not having bare feet. which is strange because there was a time not so long ago that i could stand to have anything on my feet, cloth or leather wise. maybe i’ve always been paranoid about the fact that i have butt ugly feet or that i have cracked dry skin from said adventures. regardless, now i’m on this whole “feet can’t touch the ground kick” and i had slid off the fuzzy purple slippers and felt the carpet below. it was so…
soft.
the cure is blaring into my ears via my headphones, paul’s happily watching rasslin and i’m so relaxed that i’m about to fall asleep.
which i will as paul and i were up all night fucking and talking. so i only got about 2 hours of sleep 🙂
night.
penderbrook ho’
today was damn strange.
first derrick calls up and wants to go to 7-11, which ended up with us going to tower records (i’ve dropped more money at tower than i would care to think about), 7-11, subway, gas station, 7-11 again. Yes, we went to two separate 7-11s. Why you may ask? BECAUSE THE FIRST ONE DIDNT HAVE COKE SLURPEES! i mean, coke slurpee is the STAPLE of my diet. and how could they NOT carry it? It’s like when dayan and i were driving from Atlanta on route 58 cross the bottom of Virginia and saw a 7-11 beckoning in the distance. We were both craving slurpees like a mofo, had to pee and i was running out of smokes. And you know what? The damn store was CLOSED! Dan was lucky enough to be a guy and take a whiz behind the garbage cans, but, i had to wait till i got to our destination. and it was raining. did i mention that part?
i need to stop with the non-sequiturness (if there is such a word).
[I had tried to convince Derrick that I needed to go to Safeway, but that was a no go.]
Later on in the evening, Corey IM’s me and says that he needs motivation for him to go shopping. I said sure. I wanted out of the house. It was beautiful today (damn 82 degrees out while it was snowing last weekend) and I wanted to pick up a few things I couldn’t get earlier. That was another trip where i came lugging more crap upstairs (flowerflowerflowers) for Paul to make dinner.
I was beginning to feel like the standoff girlfriend: someone that single guys want to do stuff with without having a real girlfriend (i mean, paul supplies all my needs. heh) so they don’t have to do anything special. It was just funny to me (i guess you had to be there) that i could get anyone to go to the store with me other than Paul.
morning of the 17th
it’s somewhat early morning of the 17th and after sleeping for only about three hours (if that!), i’m finding that i’m not all that tired. i had just gotten out of the shower and had some extra time so update we go.
i loved last night.
after everyone had left, and i was getting frustrated trying to work out more stuff (verbosity, another journal i’m doing a kick off, another project, paul’s taxes, etc.); paul and i had hit the sack at around 3am. paul was laying in bed while i was folding laundry and putting it away when paul asked me “why do you act different around me than you do when you are alone?” i didn’t know what he had meant, honestly (though i did have some vague idea) and asked him to explain. he said that i had two routines: pauly routine (when i’m around him) and lisa routine (when i’m with other people or when i’m alone). he said it was like this fine line that i cross when i’m around him that provoked me to eat, walk, read and do different things than when i was alone. i had never really thought that i was actually changing myself when i was around him but after he gave a few specific examples, i could see how he could see that.
after folding his tshirts and putting them away, i climbed into bed and we talked until nearly dawn about me, our relationship, compromise, and other fun stuff. i love it when we talk like this. i know paul’s big worry is that i don’t open up to him (and this is true as i’ve realised with him that i guard myself well) and that all the things that make life enjoyable between two people i was missing out on. i could see his point and felt something click inside. for you see, as much as paul and i banter and argue (and people fear it when we get angry with each other — really), i can’t imagine opening up to everyone else but him. it’s strange for me to think, that we are going to get married and that i’ll soon meet his parents. the big deal when i’m around him, and the part that he maybe doesn’t understand, is that i feel incredible vulnerable when we are together. since we live and play together, i can see why in a way i was feeling so depressed in the last few weeks. the reality that this is coming true keeps smacking me in the face and instead of enjoying the time i have with him, i’m making myself more miserable in the process with thoughts and ideas that don’t really belong here. there is no way i would give paul up. it’s just not happening.
i realize now that one of the things that i as a person have to work on is joining the two routines together and making them one. i had explained to paul last night that one of the nicknames i had acquired in high school was “chameleon” due to the fact that i could blend in and change without seeming phoney. it was not something that i did consciously, it just happened. paul pointed it out more so when he noticed that my musical tastes had changed from more indie/industrial to power pop (which, in my behalf isn’t true. the eels, lincoln, belle and sebastian, also guster tend to fall into the indie range than power pop, but i’m sure dayan would disagree). i had argued that Travis sounded much like radiohead and echo and the bunnymen than power pop.
moving right along with the point here, love takes work. i don’t know who cooked up the idea that love was everything roses and easy to understand and simple, but it’s not. it takes work for two people to make an honest go of a relationship and figure out what they want from each other. i expressed a lot of fears last night to him, concerns and worries that came from both sides about where this relationship is going that i hadn’t felt like discussing with him until he brought up. i know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that paul is the one for me. it’s just a hard fact to swallow (though when he had said this, i mentioned coyly that he wasn’t hard to swallow).
waiting for bob
on that note, my friend doug does the writing for a really good comic called waiting for bob. they did a poll last week on what was the worse thing about the 80s and i got mentioned on their front page for my email that stated “everything about the 80’s ruled. you are all smoking crack”.
doug and i want to know if anyone has made it over from WFB to me, so if you have, can you drop me an email and let us know.
and one final note:
the most popular place on my site is the pr0n section.
damn pervs.
x00x0x0x
lisa
hey piggy piggy
i’m really beginning to hate this laptop.
the above graphic that you are seeing in the nav bar, to me, is coming out this really pretty shade of purple with the butterflies on the background. On my linux box and on paul’s mac, it’s coming out a completely different color. wait. I’ve noticed that if i tilt the monitor portion of the lappy, i can see the true color it’s coming out as. and that is just bs.
finis
okay, i think i’m done fucking with my site for awhile. At this angle colors look better, and it’s not that hard to read (kind of like the pic my brother sent me recently of the guy giving himself head). i’m just sick of spending so much time (nearly 2.5 hours at this point) fuxing with it to make it look “better”. I just really need to freaking stop. this is WHY i ‘m pimping rynsey to do site design for all my projects. i really love butterflies. i should make that my new tattoo.
htmlNOT
i’ve come to the long standing conclusion that design is not my forte and i need to give up on trying to construct web pages. I wish this was much simpler said than done: i have FIVE freaking projects on the burner that currently need my attention html wise, and I can’t do ANYTHING. I used to enjoy going to other peoples sites and seeing how they incorporated design and then steal what i wanted. but i can’t do that anymore. now sites are either OVERLY done (pages with tons of flash/dhtml/etc) or look like something a third grader did. And somehow I fall in between with okay design and kick ass content. i rock everyone’s nuts.
but i’m back to being a hits whore (ie: give me unique visitors! give me page views! give me readers! give me popularity and free sex!)
okay, i’m not that desperate. but i’m getting there. i don’t know what is getting into me. considering for the last few days i’ve been afflicting
gratuitous link: dayan
my newly updated CDs list
i’ve bought 20 CDs in the last month or so. Paul recently got another 20 through Columbia house and we are incorporating his 100 with my nearly 300 to to formulate a huge mp3 sever. while we like very similar music, we do not have any duplicate cds. imagine that.
i’m feeling overwhelmed reading these peoples lives and i felt overwhelmed reading my own life for the last four + years. work is going smoothly on getting this all automated (i heart my pooky bear), but for every five steps forward, it’s 10 steps back (or so it seems). paul says i need to find a purpose to write (and starting oh so many projects in such a small amount of time seems like a good kick in the ass) but i’ve never had a purpose. I’ve always just “been” if you catch my drift.
i guess that falls into my whole “i’m slacking. i want to get fired. i don’t care what it takes” attitude. My friend (axiom 2 u) talked to me tonight and told me that when she was leaving UU that she told the new managers to take care of me and Rob as we would end up being some of their best engineer. Like I said, I don’t care WHO you are (old boss scott — nudge nudge nudge) we are just highly paid tech support for some very serious technical issues (no ip routing == bad. encap frame relay IEFT == good). I don’t think i’m doing nearly enough to warrant any “praise” but it’s coming my way and I’m feeling like poop for not doing a better job even though every one says i am. Which is always how it is right? Murphy’s law and all that bs. When I think i’m doing really well, i find out i’m not doing well enough and vice versa. So I don’t think, I just do and everyone seems to be pretty happy because of the results.
mommy
i got a letter from my mother today. i’m not quit sure what to say considering i have not spoken to her in nearly a year. i have yet to read the letter though paul keeps pushing me to do so , thinking it would be good for me. however, i haven’t and he can’t read her chicken scratch so i’m leaving it at that for some time now.
quickie
- the poll i did a few days ago on the design of the site rendered that everyone who emailed me (even non-subscribers, i was touched) said that the splash page idea was evil (if it is so evil, why do people keep doing it?) and that i need to update more. since i’m on the writing streak, i’m not having issues with the later or the former, but i’m finding myself stuck with design ideas. anyways, so that was interesting (which also helped in the ideas of doing the uber secret project being launched may 1, 2000 :).
- a bug in the ios in SoCal rendered modgirl.net helpless today. Not my fault, not Moe’s fault and not anyones fault. Even though we were done for some considerable time. if you tried last night and were having issues, moe fucked up apache.conf and almost lost my website. moe also set up aimee for me as she kept losing her webspace.
- pauls talking to himself. someone help. he and corey sat around the apartment being geeky, singing “lisa lisa the one i adore” and basically being idiots.
- have i mentioned recently that i’m really bitchy and i’m about ready to rip someone’s head off and i can’t find a plausible action? to make it easier on my and everyone else, those who drive me insane have been put on my perm ignore list on irc. i know how can one let text get to them. i’ve been irc’ing since 1994 or something silly like that. ANYWAY, that isn’t the point. everyone is sick of me being angry, including paul and ESPECIALLY me.
- Amazon.com is fucking down. bastards. how dare they do this to me. Anyways, books and cd’s recently bought:
- The Eels “Electro Shock Blues”
- The Eels “daisies of the galaxy”
- belle and sebastian “tigermilk”
- travis “the man who”
- lincoln “lincoln”
- and three new books. all of this will soon appear in the reviews section this weekend.
i can’t take feeling like this right now. i’m going to bed.
night.