love

How do you have a girl fall in love with you?
You buy her boots.
friday
Friday, September 17 had to go down in history as being one of the worse days in mankind. Well, at least in my personal history line.
I woke up early Friday morning to take Justin to work when I noticed something odd about my car. It didn’t look “right.” I found a note attached to what used to be my drivers side mirror. It was from Cathleen. It seems that during the night she was pulling into our driveway, tried to miss one of the cats and ran into my car instead.
All of Pleasant St. heard me screaming “FUCK!” at 5am. What a way to start the day.
This is the story she’s sticking to, but, I’ve conceded that to an extent it can’t be true. See, not only is the drivers side mirror fucked up (and hanging by a few wires) but there is also a 6 foot long scratch going from tire well to tire well. ugh.
I played show and tell all day at work with dragging people out to look at this mess. I wouldn’t have been so pissed if it were not for the fact she a. left me a note and b. i had spent nearly a grand within the last month getting my car out of impound and getting it ready for the trip in a few weeks. I forgot to mention this didn’t i? My car got impounded for being parked in a “commuter” zone on 3rd street in san francisco. I had a nice little anxiety attack at the corner of 2nd and Stillman, Justin slapped me and I was back to normal again.
The other fucked up part is that while both my roommate and I go through the same insurance company, they are notoriously slow with getting their act together. Last October I had rolled into a car while waiting at the toll booth to get onto the Bay Bridge. No biggie really, my foot slipped off the break when i had leaned down to grab my cd-holder. But the woman whom I had hit claimed that she got a neck injury! Ugh, I wasn’t going any faster than less than 1 mile per hour. You heard that right. 1 mile per hour. And she’s claiming neck injury?
Lisha twitches.
Anyway, that started off this past glorious friday. Got into work and found that we had a power outage at 6am with no UPS back up. Though power was restored fairly shortly, NIS+ had taken a dump which meant that people couldn’t get logged into the network and route. And if they were logged in, they couldn’t route. I was logged in at 6am and had gotten dumped (I was in fact, writing this column). I went to log back in and got these lovely funky errors. I tried dialing into several other providers and couldn’t route for the life of me. I figured something had gotten fucked up along the way so I did some maintenance and found that my disk had errors. No biggie. Went to reinstall Windows (which overwrote LILO) and then it started crashing back to hell and forth. I couldn’t even just BOOT into windows without getting a ton of errors.
bah.
So Friday.
Car got sideswipped.
Windows partition died (I’m now exclusively in linux or mac)
network goes down.
I’m sure I can think of a few things or ten that also went wrong. I kept claiming I was going to go home and buy a fifth of vodka (750 MIL for you non-us folks) and drink it down and fix my machine. I did neither. I haven’t even ATTEMPTED to get into windows to fix it. I should, my firewall is so airtight that I can’t even freaking do DCCs on IRC. I can’t ftp (ftpd is broked — jesus) and mah stupid fucking quickcam sucks ass in linux. *growls* However, GNOME is quite pretty. I like it much better than KDE or windowmaker. I should say, Enlightenment with Gnome on top. Whatever. It’s pretty. If you want to see my KDE desktop?
obsess
The strange man lurking on all my desktops is Paul.
You wanna see something really sick? Go here.
I had conceded in my head that I was ready to talk about this. I’m not yet. Don’t ask. I’ll tell you in a few weeks.
moving right along
I’m so fucking bored at work, it’s not even funny.
A little over a month or so ago, someone had asked me to send out an email for them to the staff mailing list. I had done these requests before. This time, the letter was not (supposedly) appropriate. Both me and the letter-writer got “in trouble”. The thing is, that they couldn’t fire me and since I’m leaving anyways, they haven’t done jack. All I do everyday (and all day) is fuck around. I try to get involved with projects but they don’t give me responsibilities because they know I’m leaving. Many people wanted to see me fired — but if they fired me they would have had to fire the letter-writer which they were not going to do.
They also gave my counterpart Matt a raise so that now I AM the lowest paid person in the company (at least in our SF office) — and I am also one of the most senior people there.
Fucked eh?
To be honest, I care and I don’t care. I haven’t give a shit about my job in a few months seeing how fucked over Matt and I were getting. We were promised raises back in April and July only to never see them follow through (well, now at least for me). I spend all day doing documentation because they want what’s in my brain but yet I didn’t “qualify” for a raise.
BAH.
I’m so stressed out these days, it’s not even funny. As my leave date approaches it seems more and more shit is being thrown in my face. Carolyn, Cathleens sister moves in (making five people living in our 2 bdr house instead of the original 2). Justin is moping around because I’m leaving, we have nine cats that Cathleen promised to take to the SPCA months ago and never did (I’m so leaving that up to her). Our house looks white trashy enough to make me gag, I’m sick of my job. I hate the area (is there any real reason why it takes me 1.5 hours to drive a 20 minute drive?) and the list goes on and on. The only bright thing is that I’m leaving, but with the added expense (car stuff + misc crap that keeps popping up), I’m finding myself frightened enough to start just freaking out.
I have no idea.
You know, I told Shelly on the phone last night that I was afraid of things working out. I have NEVER been happy — at least I know not for the last four years or more. I can’t remember when I was just freaking content with my life. Many people have said that my cross country odyssey makes them slightly jealous. you know, me doing a thelma and louise bit (minus louise, minus brad pitt, minus going off a cliff) as I will be alone for four days in my car. alone. with a carton of ciggies and 260 cd’s and a trunk full of computer equipment.
And I can’t get through peoples heads how frightened I am of packing up and just MOVING my shit cross country. I do so well with impromptu things but since this is planned and this has been dragging on for months now, the closer i get to my leave date, the more I find myself falling apart.
I’ve never ever told the story of how I came to California or why I came. I think maybe less than a 1/2 dozen people know the truth, and even then it’s hard for me to swallow. The last four years of my life have been this period i like to call the dark period because so much has happened to me in such a short amount of time it’s ridiculous. I find that, when I go to tell the story, my mouth drys up and I block out events. I knew what I was doing to get me here and I manipulated my way across the west. I can’t forgive myself for doing that but I also am having a hard time forgiving the person that I was involved with.
To many of you, my life starts when you read this and for majority of the world I’ve always lived in Oakland and I’ve always worked at slip.net. To be honest, it’s always felt like i have. Like there is no time and space before this. But there is. I’m NOT a california girl and I’m not happy here.
Justin has said he is afraid that I’m running away (again) to something that doesn’t exist. That my move to Virginia will just make things worse. I know he’s being selfish. If he could, he’d live with me forever, work at PBI and watch the Hitler, I mean History, channel is his off times. But I’m such a shell of a person I used to be — that it disgusts me. I can’t deal with it much longer.
I’ve got everything lined up in a row. Prospective boyfriend obsessing over me. New job at a kick ass company (making phat bank), new place. My own place. New things to do. Education. Everything. It’s like, God finally knocked some sense into his head and said “Yanno, Lisa has been having a rough life as of late, I think I will finally put things in perspective for her and give her what she wants” and the thing is, I’m so fucking intent on destroying it because I can’t handle being happy. But see, I can’t believe in a god or a god when I can barely have faith in myself.
I know, this much is true. There has never been a righter time in my life to move on then now. I know, that despite my grumblings, this is the best thing for me. I know that the trip will be fabulous and that I will fall in love on the way and that everything will work out for the best.
Because to be honest, I really have nothing left to lose.
Except myself.
Or maybe I’ll find myself out there in the wilds of Texas and join my mom in a convent.
I’m just kidding.
x0x0x0x0x
moi

the pill vs the springhill mining disaster

My birthday is in five days.
Gifts of luv, money, new life, geeky men can be sent here.
the pill vs the springhill mining disaster
every day my roommate and i have a fight.
i get up, rinse my mouth with plax, plop my contacts in. once my vision is crystal, the first thing i always notice is the case that she keeps her diaphragm in and her damn spermicide. it sits there, so innocent on top of the shelf above the sink. and every day i get this revolting feeling in my stomach. i try not to let it get to me — i mean it’s not like her diaphragm is staring me in the face, winking at me, reminding me that I’m alone. but it’s just the class of the whole idea. i mean, it’s tacky for godsakes. i mean it’s bad enough that no one will go and fix the cracked toilet seat. Cathleens idea was to use duct tape around it the crack. my my my, aren’t we high falutin.
so.
i move the diaphragm and jelly into her bedroom. and that next morning it was back in full force. laying there in its pretty pink case – defying me. taunting me.
it’s annoying the piss out of me.
what jails is like
I’ll warn you, if cornered
I’ll scartch my way out of the pen
wired, an animal, the claustrophobia begins.”
it’s approximently 3:57am and insomnia is taking over.
again.
it’s a never ending battle it seems. today i was so proud of myself. all of the stuff i had planned on doing i got done (oh yeah, fighting with justin was on the list of priorities, don’t lemme forget that): i updated the site. i did laundry. i biored. i cleaned the house. put the clean laundry away. called the car pool people. it was going swell. so at 11:something, when i laid down to read before i went to sleep, and i check the clock an it’s 12:16, and then 1:26 and then it’s 2:27am. Justin is back to working days now at PBI, so he’s up at the crack of dawn. He decided, at 11pm, to watch Party Girl. I rented it for him, on the basis that there was nothing else at the vid store. And Danny always said i reminded him of Parker Posey. She’s got MOXY! I luv her.
An anonymous email I just sent out:

“It’s 4:16am and I’m still awake.
It’s freezing here.
And i’ve decided that I’m unbearably lonely.
Lisa”

you know, I’m tired of being strong.
Mike and i had this killer conversation yesterday (being Sunday — lets not fuck up my sleeping habits enough).
And I like him.
I like the fact that that I can be something of myself around him. I thought he was being pretty spacey sometimes — you know always good for a few laughs — he’s a funny guy. every time we are on the phone, I’m laughing so hard my stomach aches. but today was different.
and i think it was because when the fun and games were done, we got down to some serious talking. he always pesters me to ask him questions (i hate when people do that btw) about himself. and it’s hard, when i’ve lived in my head for so damn long. almost 27 years worth.
and we talked.
and it felt good — it didn’t feel contrived or that i was using one of my sparkingly personalities to do something. I’m grasping for the words to describe it — but I’m afraid I’ll sully it with some trite description. and this wasn’t really about you know, a rehash of our life — but it was more a telling of stories. about ourselves. and i felt utterly comfortable discussing things with him. it was strange — it was like something had changed. i just felt — me. and talking about my moxy vs insecurities. it was just normal.
i’ve been striving for normalcy for the last few years. a few days ago, i went to Jeff’s website and found that i was a tad green with jealousy. newly married, new loft in downtown Pittsburgh. i don’t know — i just felt sick that i didn’t have that. it’s like a part of me won’t allow that to happen. and i don’t know why. well, yesh i do know why. I know precisely why.
i can trace it all back to specific events in my life of why i am the way i am. i can explain it so clear. maybe you should work on it — i keep hearing that. but damnit. it’s like, mike is so totally the guy that i would love dating on a daily basis (well you know what i mean). not textual. just — you know beers somewhere. a movie. hiking somewhere. where i can give him a kiss on the cheek good night, shut the door and go sit on my bed for hours whispering to my teddy bear, telling him how great mike is.
real.
in your face.
i need that as bad as i need to be whipped sometimes. don’t get me wrong, i love my mind f00ks as much as the next sadist/masochist, but there is something about reality. smelling and breathing. and touching that is just so appealing. it just seems in the last five years i’ve meet guys i’ve liked on-line, we meet and it ends up somewhere has to move somewhere to date. and it’s not even that anymore. it’s like assumed we will automatically start living together. i wouldn’t give up that for anything — it’s experience, i want to be able to say i’ve done it, but the last time i was on an actual “date” was with danny back in 96.
and that makes me sad.
i get so disgusted with the pick of men in SF — hell — i know totally part of it is my attitude since i’ve gotten here — how i feel like it’s tainted and sullied with bad memories. that things shouldn’t be the way they are — that my dreams got dashed by things that i couldn’t control.
now, don’t get me wrong, geeking out is great. it’s fun. i love being online, but there is so much more to me than just what you see here, in this medium. it’s like the whole email disaster — people email me, but i don’t think they really want to know “me” — cos i might say or do something that will totally disrupt them and any illusion they have of me. and that annoys me. or they think I’m so fscking cool. cool about what? I’m just me damnit! That’s all I have ever wanted to be — was me.
Jaffo once told me I was the most complicated woman he ever met. he’s a net.legend, this must be true. he has this thing for grapefruit — Lisa get back on track!
yesh ma’am!
i just think that maybe, I’m growing up. things defiently don’t seem like they used to be when i was younger. things seem more clear — or — just more focused. and that feels like a lie, partly because well, I’m feeling vulnerable right now. and it seemed like a good thing to say.
it’s 5:31 am. Justin is up and told me i was beautiful. i keep staring at the picture to your left — and i can’t believe that’s me. that’s just one of me’s. so it’s been said.
I’ll leave you from a few words from my boy Greg Dulli:
When We Two Parted
baby, i see you’ve made yourself all sick again
didn’t i do a good job of pretending?
You’re saying that the victim doesn’t want it to end
Good. I get to dress up and play the assassin again.
It’s my favorite.
It’s got personality.
I should have seen this shit coming down the hall.
Every night I spent in that bed
with you facing the wall
If I could have only once heard you scream
To feel you were alive instead of watching you abandoning yourself
baby, you can open your eyes now
And please allow me to present you with a clue,br>
If i inflict the pain then baby only I can comfort you
Out of the night we come into the night we go
If it starts to hurt you then you have to say so.

finis
x0x0x0x0x0x,
moi

404 Not Found

From Greg: “OK, either you’re being subtle, or you have a bad link. Either way, you have to admit that the answer to “what do you want” being “Not Found” is kinda funny in a Janeane Garofalo-ish web-savvy kind of way. :)”
Uh, well, I went to upload the file what i want and my connection died last night. I dialed into three ISPs and I couldn’t route for the life of me. However, amusingly enough I could route in Linux. But the file is in winders. I’ll fix it tonight. 🙂
99% accurate
I’m not pregnant.
you are probably wondering “what?” but for the last few weeks, the only thing on my mind has been the fact that I “may” or “may not” be carrying another life within me. i was conscious of this as i sat drinking all day Sunday and i was conscious of this every time i lit up a cigarette and smoked.
but I’m jumping ahead.
As many of you who know me fairly intimately know that I haven’t been “right” with menstruation since, well, forever. I was one of those weird kids that got their period at the age of 8 (and had to deal with Mrs. Bruntrock (real name) calling me a liar and forcing my mother to come down to St. Josephs to verify my claims of having to change my damn pad) and got it again at the tender age of 13. I was regular for like a minute and then I stopped getting it. I got examined at the age of 15 where the doctor proclaimed I “may” or “may not” have juvenile endometriosis. he suggested however that i start taking the pill to regulate my periods and take things from there on in.
i think i was the only virgin who has ever been on the pill.
this worked well on and off for the last 11 years, but there has been times where the choice between getting my prescription refilled and eating and eating came out to be a winner.
when i moved to SF, I had my doctor write out a prescription for me for a years worth and diligently took the pill with no problems, however my prescription ran out last July and I haven’t been back to get it refilled since.
In the interim, I was sleeping with Justin, who was by far the only person I was sleeping with, and we were double bagging condoms on top of the pill. When the prescription ran out, I didn’t really think anything about it and just kept screwing Justin and using those damn condoms but kicking myself internally for being too lazy to get the prescription refilled. there has never been any worry of me getting pregnant as we were taking extra caution since i went off the pill.
i haven’t had my period since January.
living with another alpha she bitch (ie: Cathleen) in the house has caused, when even on the pill, disruption in my cycle. Cathleen and i would joke about who was “large and in charge” based on who was forcing the other person to go with their others cycle. it was damn annoying. then i went off the pill. and I didn’t have my period for a few months and then i got cramps from hell and got it in December and January. and i took out my Dilbert planner and marked the days so that i could finally start tracking my period to see who really was large and in charge.
for months I would get “symptoms” that i was all too familiar with: some cramping, craving of chocolate/salt for a day or so. moodiness. and then Cathleen would tell me that she just finished her cycle and it suddenly make sense. so I started jotting down my moods and they completely corresponded with when she was on her cycle.
but no blood.
I kept telling myself that it was just my fucked up body doing it’s thing, but then march turned into April turned into may turned into June.
and then I started feeling “funny”.
Ever since James went back to England a week or so back, my stomach has been acting weird. a combination of cramps and acid and major gas. i felt like someone had shoved an air pump up my butt and just filled me with 10lbs of air. my stomach hurt, i couldn’t drink anything more than milk and sometimes even that was too hard. and i couldn’t take it anymore. i hadn’t told anyone what had been going on. i was in complete denial about what was going on. and when James and I talked about it the other day, found out that both of us were having the exact same symptoms for the exact same of time (since he left). and if i was “maybe” pregnant, did that mean james was too?
so i told Justin what i was feeling.
and he said “you’re not pregnant” and i asked him how did he know? and he said that he had been through this with his ex and he did research on getting pregnant and turns out it’s harder than it seems. yeah sure, i mean if you have real respect for your body, you’ll always use protection, but even so, he kept telling me that there was like a zillion and one chance that i was pregnant (go back to the: ALWAYS using protection and double bagging at that). He said he wasn’t worried. I was worried. I kept talking about going and buying a pregnancy test and never got around to it. I kept putting it off and putting it off. and i had gotten my horoscope on Saturday for Sunday and it said something like “the news you have to tell people will be taken with more sense then you have” or some shit and i freaked out. I had planned, on Sunday to go and get the test and interpreted THAT to mean that if I WAS pregnant that people would be cool with it. So i skipped out buying the test.
But i couldn’t deal with NOT knowing absolutely for sure.
So last night, after dropping Cat off at my house, I screwed up the nerve and drove to longs. I lit up a cigarette even though I knew that it was a 2 minute drive. I parked the car and walked right in with determination in my back and my head held high.
I was so scared.
I walked down the baby aisle and just stared at all that BABY crap and a million things went through my head about abortions and having kids and my friends who had all been done this path before me. i thought about my immaturity (i can’t even take care of a damn cat hello!) and the fact that if i ever got pregnant i wanted to be married or at least very much in love with someone.
and then i couldn’t find the damn tests.
i looked to my right and saw something that said “early testing”
But of course.
Pregnancy tests are located next to the condoms. How silly of me not to have thought of that.
I grabbed the first package and read the instructions. It sounded simple enough and walked towards the cash register. I sat there, shoving the box underneath my armpit. I felt ashamed as i watched the people ahead of me buying Mt. Dew and their damn dr scholls foot deodorant. I stood there with my mind running in a million different directions. I twitched and put the box face down on the conveyor belt and started reading the Enquirer. I kept telling myself “there is ABSOLUTELY nothing to be ashamed of. No one is going to make fun of me for buying a pregnancy test.” But I couldn’t help swallowing hard as Tariq the counter guy asked me how i was doing as he examined the box a little more closely. I said fine thanks and kept my head held high and attempting not to look scared..
I drove home and read the instructions. Now all I had to do was wait to pee.
And I waited.
And I waited.
By the time i went to bed some 6 hours later (and drank enough water to kill a horse), i still couldn’t pee.
I went to bed after working out determined that regardless of what, i was taking the test the next morning even if it killed me.
as par usual, i woke up late.
I had the most delicious dream that I was dating Henry Rollins and had been screwing him in an apartment we shared. I heard the alarm go off and looked at the clock. i was determined to do this. i grabbed a plastic cub and went to the bathroom. ripped open both packages (two tests came in one package). dipped the sticks into the urine. jumped in the shower for five minutes (test takes 1-3 minutes), jumped back out. pulled the sticks out. looked that the information sheet. looked at the sticks. looked at the package. looked back at the sticks.
went out and said “hey Justin!”
got a muffled “wha?” from under the covers.
“I’m not pregnant.”
a “woohoo!” comes through loud and clear. then a “i told you so.”
As to be expected, i can’t but help feeling a tad bit disappointed. i had it all in my head that if i was pregnant i was going to have an abortion. i wasn’t in love with Justin, i was single, i wasn’t making enough money, i wasn’t in love, i wasn’t married. a thousand different thoughts went through my head of the reason “why” i wouldn’t have a child right now. but as i grow older, I’ve noticed that the more i look at some little girl with big brown eyes and dark hair and think “she could be mine”. and i can’t help feeling that all the promises i made in my head to a god i didn’t believe in were not only empty but somewhat full of some meaning. i start stressing out about how now that I’m getting older I’ll soon be too old to have kids.
the irony is that five years ago, i thought i was pregnant with Alan’s child (another “oh shit haven’t had my period in 5 months deal). and i had thought THEN there was no problems in my head with being young and having a baby. now five years later, i found that my expectations of what i want from life are completely different then they were then. i always thought i was strong then, but i was so immature. and i realize now that if i sat here and think about it, i could have handled having a little girl (or boy) NOW as I’m older than when i was young and stupid. maybe I’m not in the right situation right now, and i know there is a lot i want to do before i get married or live in sin again or whatever, but just thinking about the reasons then of wanting to have a child and now —
please god.
let me not turn into Ally McBeal.

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