Tag: ExFiance 2

predictions and journals

at the end of every relationship, it’s the same thing: the predictions. the ending of who is going to be doing what when how and whom and when this is all going to happen.
I predict that Paul will be dating again in a few months, and probably getting close to someone shortly after that. He cannot be alone, period.  He will not mourn the end of our relationship or mourn me, and hence why I’ve been doubly amused to find out that the vultures were already tap dancing around my grave thanks to Paul telling me.
Paul perdicts I’ll end up w/ either Ben or Danny. Ben because he’s new, european, tall etc ad nasuam and Danny because he’s history and apparently my eyes get big as saucers when I talk abotu either one of them.  I apparently can make no choices of my own .

english motherfucker, do you speak it

the one common thread lately that has been asked of me is to look inward. the answer lies there they say. either that or find Jesus which someone anonymously posted, but Jesus, as we all know, doesn’t pay the bills, at least in this household.
i think to ask me to look inward seems awfully silly, for what is a journal if it is not inward reflection in and of itself? to question and to grow from your own strengths and weaknesses. to wonder how you can do more or better with your life and archive more. I didn’t want to be an extraordinary person, rather, i wanted to lead an extraordinary life. i wanted to say that i did things that not that many people have done and seen things not that many people.
so i don’t understand why someone would ask me that.
i have searched for answers all my life to questions i thought that pertained to me, and turns out seem to pretrain to mankind. as someone gently pointed out to me that you must some how sieve through the bad to get to the good and even then it’s almost blind faith on knowing whether that person is truly of some decent caliber.
I guess I can’t accept that, and I never could.
I remember once when I was very little, I must of been about 5 or 6, it was before my brother was born or around that time I’m sure, my mother and i folding clothes in the dining room. Now that sounds a bit absurd but you must realise the house we lived in was an old farm house that had been added on to several times and thusly, it ended up being a 14 room house. Because the basement was a Michigan basement (called as such as it was unfinished), only the washer resided down there while the dryer was upstairs in the kitchen. [That sounds almost British!] And of course it was quite easy to shift clothing from the dryer to the dining room table (w/ leaves sat 12, w/o leaves sat 8) and fold the clothing appropriately.
I remember feeling that i had this burning question in my heart to ask, something I was afraid to get an answer on. As we sat there folding towels and jeans, I remember asking my mother in my five year old voice about something she had said/done to me that i thought was extremely unfair. I was absolutely SURE it was unfair. My mothers answer did not please me and I wish I knew what the question to this day even was, but I remember feeling when I was done how life seemed to screwed in the head. There was something so intrinsically right in my head that to hear that it was wrong didn’t make sense. First beginnings of being stubborn? Perhaps, Or about being passionate? Who knows. I just remember feeling that life was going to be difficult enough without having to worry about all these little details. Hell, I remember the cold walk home when I was 8 clutching my math book to my chest having a panic attack because there was no effing way I was going to do long division or whatever the hell it was that third graders should be doing let along going to high school? I was convinced i would not have enough time to learn it all. do not ask me why i thought this, i still do not know to this day. Might explain some of my procrastination.
I do not have a single solitary answer as to why I kept an online journal, or why I’ve seemingly abandon it sometimes or why sometimes themes are repeated. I think perhaps I’ve always written in something, and I can remember instances of flashbacks when I was a child writing outside under the stars, over by the library against a tree by the river or at home upstairs on my desk. I do not have my original diaries from that time but I wish i did. They have been lost via many shuffles.
I had a great conversation with Graham the other night, which lasted for about 2.5 hours. One thing I have noticed in my later years is my aversion to use the phone. It’s not that I won’t talk to people, but I don’t get many personal phone calls (why should i when there is e-mail) and incidentally neither does Paul. So getting two personal calls in one day seemed thrilling albeit i was a bit spacey with graham, which I apologized profusely on. Anyways, Graham called to cheer both myself and himself up and I think partially it did the trick. One thing we did comment on is that neither of us have really an older parentally figure (if you will) to guide us on the path to life. With Graham it is mostly because of his work-aholicism and being a Brit in the US (though he has lost some of his accent except when he says schedule, so he must go back to the UK for that). For me I never grew up with a father figure, save for my crazy grandfather, and my mother was a workaholic. I still carry on intense guilt thinking that I must be some intense disappointment to my father for not being around (yes I know its not my fault that he didn’t show up for 20 years, but you tell my subconscious that) or that i feel this need that I have to take care of my mother because really, who else will? Apparently not the state if (#*&#)@(#* Social Security hasn’t kicked in, but that is not here or there all together.
Reading over some comments left on the livejournal.com site about yesterdays entry along with entries that I’ve written in the past, i wonder if the problem isn’t a breakdown in communication.
My friend Ben and I have it a lot, mostly it is because of the translation of slang. Ben lives in Belgium and we all know where i live! But it’s often funny if he says something and I’m like wtf do you mean and vice versa. it’s amusing because what i say sometimes doesn’t convey well to him and i need to explain what i mean.
But herein likes the point, is that sometimes i feel like I’m not speaking English/American even though it sounds like i am. I will say/write something and there will be 10 different interpretations as to what was actually said. This was also reflected back in the day with ‘work e-mail’ due to ‘my tone’ sounded too snotty. I have zero idea how telling a customer that he misconfigured a router was being snotty but hey, who am i to argue? Even with paul, i pick apart his words to make sure I get the meaning clear and he calls me mean (apparently joking). Like today when I picked him up at work and I told him about the possible early acceptance to a school, and therefore i was leaving in a month ish he went nuts. He looked at me accusingly stating that I ruined Christmas for him since I was leaving two weeks early, he must then get a drivers license earlier and buy a car earlier and he’d have no money to buy a plane ticket back to Miami for the holidays. I apparently had it all made in the shade because everything was being “taken care of.” Somehow this is my problem that he waited three years to get a drivers license/car, with his excuse of we couldn’t afford it — trust me we could. Plane tickets to Miami are 200 bucks max and maybe if he stopped spending 250 bucks at Amazon.com on cds this wouldn’t be an issue. But apparently my one sentence span out of control to produce this litany of complaint.
I just ate my Wendy’s sammich and read e-mail and watched movies for the rest of the evening and stayed as far away as possibly as I could.
I find that i spend a lot of time defending or clarifying myself because I did not quantify my statements in whatever needs clarifying or defending. Sometimes it’s a miss of a letter or a structure of a sentence and others it’s just plain gibberish. Sometimes the other person doesn’t want to see the black/white and understand it himself.
I think save for a few obvious mistakes, I’ve stood by what I’ve said and do not regret what I say. I’ve had to reassure that I am open to apologizing to others when needed and that I’m not so arrogant to think that I’m never wrong. I do not like to think that what I say is ‘mea culpa’ rather a listing of facts told in an amusing yet entertaining way. I do not seek for sympathy rather i seek for understanding and empathy (yes they are the same thing it just sounds good).
I also know I often repeat myself and that i often reiterte what I say — I do this to make sure we are clear that my meaning and your understanding is one and the same for a grave mistake that is made is poor writing skills for if the reader does not understand basics of what the writer is saying, the writer is at fault. If the reader cannot grasp basic understanding, then reader is a moronic twit who fails to understand basic sentence structure.
now why can’t i be this prolific with my NanoWriMo Novel (0 words and counting).

the sun also rises

I’ve never claimed to be the master of personal relationships and never claimed to understand it all. But I am irritated by human behavior and the more it goes on the worse it gets. I am becoming thoroughly convinced that I pissed off a lot of gods in previous lives to deserve this.
Why do people take sides when they only know of one side of the story? It seems that when I left UUNet, which was on amicable terms with both my managers and upper management, that was not in fact what the peons were saying. Rumours of my demise were running rampart even when my body wasn’t cold. Secondly, people who claimed were my ‘friends’ and even sent me emails with contact information to contact them privately stop responding to emails when I asked them how things were going. One of my coworkers spewed me a bunch of BS and wouldn’t answer any of my questions as to why he wouldn’t meet me when I got to the building on the day to pick up my stuff. None of it made sense.
I hadn’t done anything wrong. I left a job due to a lot of reasons, none of which no one has bothered to ask me about other than a minute group of people. Upper management even wanted me to stay giving me options to stay, which I refused. Even Paul was too wrapped up in his own life to be bothered to ask. Everything was okay as long as I was employed, but since I no longer am, then the lot be damned and I’m cast out of the stone.
I know that there seems to be types of people who don’t like me, and I’ve come to realise over the years that I’ll never please everyone nor will I ever be liked by everyone i meet. I’ve always been okay with that. Always. But apparently this can’t be so.
But it seems that the general consensus of why people don’t like me is that I’m apparently abrasive, rude, aggressive (not assertive, but aggressive) and confrontational. I’ve also heard vindictive and backstabbing, which is funny because no one can actually point out a vindictive or a particularly backstabbing event. Because I have asked you see, it’s just my behavior seems to reflect that. Apparently, I’m predictable.
So I am bewildered as to why people who know me so little and yet have chosen to take sides. I saw my friends list at livejournal.com drop down a few notches within the last few days but I expected that. The thing was I expected that people would own up to their own opinions, but apparently they cannot, that is too difficult and probably a too mature of a thing to do.
When Paul and I moved to NoVa, we took a core group of people we met and expanded it via website and mailing lists, to bring in like minded people like ourselves and get to know them. We have spent thousands of dollars in the last few years throwing parties and sponsoring events. For my 30th birthday alone, the bar tab ran to nearly 1k, which I paid for out of my own pocket. People felt fine to drink my alcohol and eat my food but yet in the three years we have been here, I can only count a few and i do mean a few, people who have reciprocated the behavior. It seems we are fine and dandy as long as the alcohol was flowing, but to be invited to their soirees and their get togethers? forget it. They couldn’t be bothered.
One thing i found interesting was that one of the people who knocked me off their livejournal friend list, couldn’t be bothered to answer me out right on why he choose to mock me in the past. Apparently a comment I had said was below par in irc one day and he mentioned it to another group of people on another irc chat room which ended up on a web page. Basically it was him pointing out how appallingly stupid I was. When I asked him about it, he never responded, but he felt that drinking my beer and eating my food at later social events was more than okay and not the least bit stupid at all.
Then we have the paul thing.
You see,Paul and I broke up. Seriously. We are currently living together until i find out which colleges will take me and if I have not heard back, I’m moving in with my brother back in Michigan. It is both cheaper for both of us to live like this, as you see, paul doesn’t have a license or a car and depends on me for rides and basically keeping the house together. Now as for finances go, my trust fund (which is over 1/4 million dollars (Canadian) you nosy bastards) is paying me a stipend every month EQUAL to my pay at UUNet. 2500 hard cold American dollars is transferred into my account on the 15th of every month. There is no need to even speculate that I’m freeloading off of paul, because I made damn sure before I did anything I would have the cash to pull it off. People are already speculating, people also seem to have forgotten that in the three years we have been together, I’ve also acted as a maid/cook/laundress, and chauffeur for his royal highness. Paul apparently thinks that because he washed dishes a few half dozen times in the last 3 years that absolves him of everything. What I have done is, apparently, worth nothing.
Now the reason why I’m bringing this up is apparently Paul has been telling his family ‘something’ (not only his family, but also his little chat buddies who do not know me) — what that something is I do not know but Paul reiterated to me some kind words his family (and friends) apparently said about me which was “Don’t let her walk all over you” apparently referring to the fact that I am going to take him for everything he has. If you have seen our apartment, you would notate that is not necessarily true. It’s looks like IKEA has thrown up in it, a college students wet dream. Paul is keeping most if not all of the furniture and I’m just taking what is mine. The electronics have already been decided on and that was decided on first thing (because fuck you all, that tivo is going with me). Paul also failed to mention about the stipend to them, failed to mention that we got money from the trust every quarter since my father died in 2000. Failed to mention how many times I’ve asked for money to bail us out of something because neither one of us expected this disaster to occur.
Of course he did. For you see, I’m the evil exgirlfriend who no longer wants to be with him, therefore I cannot act like a reasonable adult. I will be vindictive and hurt him. Take all of his money which apparently I’ve already done. I apparently did not have any money of my own, My crappy 50K a year job i held at UUNet paid me nothing you see, nothing at all. All the direct deposits were blank. So, I’m a freeloading gold digging whore. I mean, I am sleeping with half of NoVa (so the story goes) and god knows who else. Apparently I have no feelings and have little regard to anything i have done. I will continue on this destructive behavior until I do, as that is my MO.
I am curious as to wonder what his family would say if i told them how many times paul had raised his hand to me threatening to punch me in the mouth for “angering” him and that i provoked it all because i should have known better. Or was he “only kidding” as he would said later on and he would never really hurt me. Or that when my mom got sick, he told me outright that my place was with him and not with my mothers and she should be shoved into a nursing home and left to fend for herself. “She has family!”, he says, “You should not have to take care of her.”
I gave up caring long ago.
If you are not gonna like me, don’t like me for an actual reason. Don’t like me cos you honestly think I’m this that or then some. If you have a valid reason for dislike, I can say I can respect that. But if you are choosing to take sides in something that you do not know what is going on, you do not know both sides of the story, I never wanted your friendship to begin with. If you wish to know what is going on with my life, the adult thing would be to ask. Do not speculate what i may or may not be doing. Because seeing as I’m the only who DOES know, anything you hear and find out will eventually be wrong.
If you are going to be my friend, you know then REALLY be my friend. Send me e-cards on birthday and holidays. Remember that what my favorite colors are (red/purple). Because I can’t tell you how many people know what my favorite movie is (Gone with the Wind) or that I had started to collect Beatrix Potter books when I was kid and still have them. That I once wanted to go into Astronomy as a career or that I adore movies from the 30s and 40s. Or that the main reason I get obnoxious is to combat being almost painfully shy because as a child I found that I was not heard unless I was loud, living in a household where loud was the norm. Because to be honest I don’t think anyone knows, if that many at all. Or that if i ask questions about something, it’s not to be sarcastic but it’s because I really want to know the answer.
Because it’s all right there you know as I’m a fucking fount of information. All you had to do was ask, and you never did.

the freshmen

I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about life and what not. More so than usual, as it were. Basically thinking where I’m going to go once I leave Paul and what direction my life will be heading at that time. i have been sitting on the fence watching both sides and I’m not quite sure which way to lean, if any.
several themes have been swimming in my head, such as friendship and how to be good. both have been ping ponging against my head like there is no tomorrow. i need to deconstruct.
m. and i got into a disagreement if you will, this week and our relationship is now considerably strained. it seems that no matter what i say, it comes out all wrong to him. at least that is what i think.
coupled with my own lovely sense of paranoia, i am probably making it into a much major deal than i thought or think it is. the bottom line is, we are not speaking to each other right now and it hurts. i have thought back and recognized times when there were weeks/months when we didn’t speak to each other. the difference being that you sometimes don’t know what you have until it’s almost gone and then it wasn’t almost gone and now i feel like it is, I realized that he was a better friend than I gave credit for. He’s not an angel by any chance and I’ll mention that in a second but still, he’s one of my closest friends and I’d hate to lose him over something that could be worked out. i think.
the second incident this week was when b. said something she shouldn’t have in public. she, in short, inferred i was sleeping or wanting to sleep or want to start an affair with a mutual friend. now, she will tell you that she is not inferring anything, other than she thinks it’s “odd” that i want to spend time with said friend. What she failed to do was put together how it was circumstantial evidence. such as, said friend and i hung out together a few weeks back because b. and her bf went to dinner without us and we both had made plans with them. Mutual friend and i got together a few days later as he had left some stuff at our house. I also invited mutual friend to dinner a few times as well as to go back up to Baltimore with me to see more of the Inner Harbor. I’m such a little heathen!
I plainly, really, do not like people who sit there and run their mouths and think it’s okay, especially when it’s inferring shit that isn’t happening just because they think it’s “odd”. It down right angers me. Paul is a very temperamental guy and gets blown out of shape if the wind blows wrong, so saying crap like this in front of him isn’t doing anyone any good.
In short, please don’t spread my bidness around if you don’t know all the facts. I tried to communicate to her how I didn’t appreciate what she was saying. She said she didn’t start it, i did by mentioning i asked him to lunch. See, personally, I don’t make the correlation between how asking someone to lunch = hot sex. But apparently it does somewhere somehow. At any rate, she then started jumping down my throat about something that didn’t have anything to do with me. When I mentioned to her that this has nothing to do with me, she got huffed and said how i should care if i care about j (her boyfriend). This woman is all over the damn place. The amazing thing is that everyone but her and her bf see how her words were wrong. Whatever. I told her bottom line is we will agree to disagree and she invited me to tell her what she did was wrong — but at this point I don’t think it matters.
Since bad things come in threes, the final thing was at work. Apparently my next up level manager is either having issues with me or something else is going on, i have zero clue. The reason I am saying this is because she called me into her office with my immediate supervisor (which I found out later that she was not supposed to) and started comparing me to co-workers who no longer work there, which was an insult to me. I got miffed because not only did she remove my team lead status, but my new backup is not up to par technically. She said that she did it for my backup to have a bar to reach to, i blanched. I don’t buy this BS any longer. She also said my lateness is a problem — which I mentioned that there were several co-workers who repeatedly were late every day as well as those who took 2hr lunches as well as those who leave work 1/2 hour+ early. I said hey, if I’m in the wrong, fine. But i want to make sure that you are being fair across the board here. She said she’ll look into it. Right. I’m sure she will. I am not quite sure what I’m going to do about that little instance but I’ve gone and gotten counseling from non-involved persons. I guess my quandary is, why kill myself to protect myself for a job that i feel burned out by?
friends classification:
COWARDLY LION-TYPE: M. falls into this type. You know these kinds, very easy to spot. They are there through thick and thin as long as it doesn’t concern them. But when the chips really fall or you try and have some sort of substantial conversation with them, it falls fucking apart. They curl up and hide. I’ve noticed that when I push M., M. doesn’t push back. I know his issues but he seems to timid to really take charge and be there, really, as a friend. example: He offered his place to stay in case shit got bad with Paul and then reneged it. Said his sister thought it was a bad idea. Too coincidental for me, thanks. I could be reading too much into this, but hey, that’s my charm.
ME-ME’S: B. and a few other of my friends fall into this type. It is never about you, it’s about them. If you fall and break your ankle, they broke same ankle but worse. It’s competition with them. And it’s about attention gathering, and people buy into this lock stock and two broken barrels. The times I’ve watched people get suckered in to this and I just want to shake them for being silly.
Fakies: Maybe I should just walk the fence.

drugco

It’s 3:15am Monday morning, and like all good boys and girls, I should be in bed sleeping. Instead, I stayed awake fretting over the slight idea that my electricity was going to be cut off tomorrow (it’s not) and the added fact that I had a five hour nap lasting until 8pm this evening also did not help.
I’m still struggling with the fact of the amount of drugs I’m taking on a daily basis. Dr. B. says we have to work on my issues one at a time and she’s adding bipolar/manic depressiveness or ADD/ADDH to the mix because apparently while both are similar, I also exhibit symptoms of ADD/ADDH but apparently some of the underlying issues with learning disorders also clearly show to be like bipolar as well. Like how Anthrax has “flu like symptoms.” Bad connotation but you get the point.
I remember, five or six years ago when our GP put me on Prozac and I woke up every morning with suicidal thoughts. Apparently, I am one of the very few that had that kind of side affect happen to them. I think Dr. B. mentioned that Lithium and it’s derivatives are the same way, but the point is to remember it’s the medication and not how you truly feel, which is also my strong point. I’m too fucking stubborn to die. I take my anger out in other obtuse ways, like chopping off my hair (I did mention that I used to pull my hair out in huge clumps when I was pissed back in the day, didn’t i?), dying my hair, getting pierced/tattooed and shopping. When I’m angry, I spend money. heh. Yet I still look at my bookshelf and think I don’t own enough books. I cleaned off my desk while I was getting bills together this morning and found a book I had purchased over a month ago and forgot about.
I keep straying from the point.
So about five or six years ago, GP puts me on Prozac and i felt like a zombie. I did not feel like “me,” i felt like someone who wasn’t me but was sharing my body. I did not know who that person was, but it was pissing me off. I did not feel the highs or the lows like I was used to and that angered me. I wanted to feel the highs and the lows, but that would require me to be off drugs and it seemed everyone wanted me to be on drugs.
It was then and there that I swore that I would use holistics, therapy or other ways to control the body chemistry and not use artificial means. But after having panic attack after panic attack for months in the summer of 2000 and feeling like you were dying will change that in you.
Dr. B. asked me why I was so defensive. heh. I spilled out words to her about growing up in my family and school and what i was like. I was always effing alone when I was growing up. That’s how i felt. I didn’t have many friends and I didn’t have very man confidences. There was me, my books and reading.
Paul was pretty adamant about me going on lithium because he said it was addictive and that he had family members who could not get off of the drug. I asked Dr. B. about it and she said that lithium was not addictive and that really, none of my meds were except klonopin. Even then, because while i have an addictive personality, I’m so afraid of being strung out on drugs or alcohol, I refuse to put myself in that situation. I hardly every drink — last time I had beer was on 9/11/2001 and prior to that was Paul’s 21st birthday. I cannot even remember the last time I did illicit drugs. It does nothing for me. Growing up in an alcoholic family will do that to you, either you become this almost fanatic about alcohol and drugs or you succumb and do it yourself. I choose not to succumb and kept my mouth away from alcoholic pleasures for quite a long time. I won’t say I don’t drink, as I’ve been known to imbibe in a few yummy alcohol laden treats a few times in my life, but I don’t use alcohol as a crutch. Never could get over some of the taste and the smell of whiskey always reminds me of my dad. I never could date anyone who liked drinking whiskey and coke, because that to me along with a few other smells reminds me too much of my father.
I’m still fucking angry at him dying on me. I’m still pissed at my mom. Dr. B. says that I need to let the hurt go and I was almost shouting “I want to! I JUST DO NOT KNOW HOW!”
I don’t know how.
Wish I did.
x0x0x
lisa

11.13.01

Seven months from today I’ll be 30.
Last night Paul and I watched some tivo’d episodes of “AB Fab” and the one episode where Paul felt would be reflective of me is when Edina turns 40. He says her attitude is very reminiscent of what I’ll be like when I turn 30, or maybe when I do turn 40.
Rob and I had met for lunch yesterday at a Mexican place close to the vet, which timed out very well since I had go pick up Pugsley yesterday afternoon. I love our vet, even if they are nearly 1/2 hour away, they are open on the weekend for neuters. Pugsley returned home minus his balls and five teeth, and I returned home stuffed on Mexican food.
The talk turned to NaNoWriMo and my writing of the novel. Rob got very serious about literary criticism which wholly made me doubt what I had written. So last night for a few hours I went over what I had written and denounced it as such crap, I plan on re-writing it. I had this lovely idea in my head on what I wanted only to discover that I couldn’t finish it at the current state it was going through.
Last night in bed I half-awake mused that if I rewrote the first three chapters and pounded out 5k a words a night, I could finish the novel in 10 days, leaving me nine days of freedom.
Don’t think I won’t do this.
x0x0x

heroin is so passe

i swear, i must have ADD or ADHD or something. I got up at 4am to upgrade a customers bandwidth and thought to myself “Self! You have about 3 hours to work on email/website before you need to get ready to go to the therapists. Use that time wisely grasshoppa!” I responded back “Your right, I’ve been so busy lately that i haven’t had a chance to get caught up on the website or do email or anything”.
So I had these grandiose plans to do an entry this morning and god damnit, I WILL! I can type fast (80wpm) and hopefully I can get this done before I jet out of here before we er I go to the shrinks.
So news news news first:
Paul and I went to the couple therapist a few weeks back and that went okay. I came out of it sounding like a bitch on wheels and he sounded like a monster. I suppose that’s normal for couple therapy. I’ve never been with another person before, so this should be interesting. I think he and I are both afraid of the outcome because we’ve both been pretty passe about going back. But I’m determined to keep my end of the bargain and make us go to get our issues resolved for I am NOT marrying him or committing any further till I feel comfortable doing so. Our fighting has toned down quite a bit but to me, the issues don’t feel so resolved. I still have a lot on my mind but since we are at the point where the arguments become almost moot and I feel like we are spinning our wheels. He IS trying to make things better and I feel so am I, but we’ll see. We have another appointment tomorrow morning.
Work has been driving me nuts — and I asked for it since I was bored so I can’t complain. I’m in the process of re-writing some of our documentation for procedures since some of it is sorely out of date and it was pissing me off. I’ve also started a new project which requires me to carry a pager — starting November 1st I will be the “after-hours scheduled on-call person”. What this means, in short, is that if a customer wants to do a cut over or dns change or whatever after hours, the engineer asks his backup, if the backup declines, than he asks the group. If no one picks it up, I will. I am hoping to do this to defer the cost of my dsl (hahahah — fuckers won’t get me my t1 😮 ) and to help out cos I like doing that kind of stuff. I will be enforcing this like a sunofabitch because we have few engineers who will tell a customer “oh, just call in and someone will do this for you after hours” and this totally pisses me off to no end because it creates false expectations and we have strict after hours procedures since our install department is only open until 7pm EST. So yah, I’ll be doing that. For being on-call (sorta) they usually will install a t1 as “incentive” however since WCOM is being cheap fuckers, this is not happening in my case AND i have dsl (1.5down/384up). BUT! I don’t have static ips, I can’t do my own dns and I can’t get the business dsl from Verizon as they don’t offer static ips ANYWAY (and I’m ohh so close to the CO 😮 ). UUNet does NOT partner with Verizon so basically I carry a pager and they pay for existing dsl line and I can VPN to our network if I so choose.
Also, there was talking of finally giving me a raise in status to level 3 engineer — which means jack to you but it means a new pay for me. BUT since the damn hiring freeze, I’m not getting it and probably won’t get it till when the hiring freeze is over. fuckers.
School is also kicking my ass. I was slacking on the reading assignments for it and I was five weeks behind. But I started hitting the books right after I got home and have caught myself up. I have a paper due this weekend which I will be working on tonight or this weekend (he’s giving us a three day lap to turn it in). I’m taking ONE class right now, but I’m also taking a mid-semester class that starts this week and I’ve already started reading for that class — have to so I won’t fall so far behind.
All of my school work thus far is on-line via UMUC which offers online degrees in various subjects INCLUDING English — hot damn. I might finally get my BA/BS (they keep switching it at UMUC) at one point in my life.
My brother Jeff is trying out for the Grand Rapids Hoops a CBA/IBL professional basketball team this week. There are currently 10 spots open and I’m really confident that he’ll make it. You can read all about the Hoops on their website and cheer my brother on. Plus the mofo will finally start paying me back for all the freaking money I loaned him in the last few years.
November is gonna keep me really busy as I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month. In short, the contest is to write a novel (50k words or more) from 11/1/2001 till 11/30/2001. I can see this is already going to take up the bulk of my time and I’m really excited as the very very very few times I’ve tried my hand at writing fiction, I’ve basically, well, sucked. But I’ve been sitting here drawing out plots and story lines and fleshing out the characters. The point is about quantity not quality but hey, i know this is not going to be the ‘Great American Novel’ that I wanted but fuck, it’ll be under my belt.
Because of this, you can watch my progress at NanNoNuts, which is a blog a few of us are using for support/etc during the writing process. I don’t know, honestly, how much time I’ll have to devote to the journal during the month of November, so at least you’ve been warned 🙂 I want to do more chronicling of what I’ll be doing during that time period, but we will see.
Lets see, what else. I’ll be heading back to MI in November for a few days to spend with my mom in Port Huron. I found out that the house I grew up in is for sale — don’t know the price but my mom said if saw the house I’d cry. We got the house in the late 1950’s and sold it in 1985 when we moved from Port Huron to Grand Rapids. One day I’ll write about it and I’ll include pictures of then and now. I’m afraid as my aunt Roberta said that the house is in total ruin. ugh.
It’s 7am and I gotta jet.
love you,
Lisa

today and everyday

this won’t be posted on my site, and in fact, after making it plaid (and earning blog babe of the week), it’s been interesting to see that more my life becomes more complicated, the more i choose NOT to write it.
oh, it’s the twine history of mine, it is. you’ll notice (if you wish) over the last 3 years of steady journal writing, I’ve skipped over large periods when really GOOD stuff was going on — you know, the drama, the intrigue, the etc.
stuff that makes life.
what I’ve been thinking about actually, is that in the last few weeks or so, my heart has been aching. not medically but emotionally. i feel pain. pain is good, is it not? it, at least, renders us alive and verifies that we can feel. i know why i feel pain, and there are many reasons why I’ve been feeling this way but lately, it’s nothing i can talk about seeing as when i have discussed it, shit got fucked up in a major way.
looking at my life from the other side of the fence, it looks pretty damn good. I’ve got a great job (and I’ve been there two years — stable in these Internet times), i live in a great apartment, drive a brand new car, make decent money, and I’ve stated this before.
usually when writing online, i was never afraid to make it known who i was — i was me. lisa rabey. I’ve fucked up a lot, loved a lot, did a lot and was never afraid (so i thought) to show it. i wanted the attention, I’ll admit that — I’m human. Paul’s been saying this a lot. he’s been saying how much i want to be adored and appreciated and loved. I’m an exhibitionist in a very true sense of the world. i climb high, and damnit, i want you to watch me climb and if i fall, i want you to feel my pain and make me feel paid. i want to be able to have that kind of power over myself and over others. i want to control and be controlled.
I miss a lot of things. I miss Danny. I was walking around target with my neighbor Chris tonight and they have all the Halloween decorations up. He loves Halloween like Paul loves Christmas. what the fuck is it about the men that i love that love these holidays? Paul has started, since October 1st, playing Christmas music and watching Christmas movies. he says it gets him in the mood, and i say, that it drives me batty. Don’t get me wrong, i love Bing just like anyone else, but Paul takes it to a new level. I bought a T-shirt at Target that says “evil” on it. Because frankly, that’s how i feel.
i have this uncanny ability to wall myself up and for a long time i wasn’t even allowing myself to feel everyday things. i worked like a robot. this is what you get get get get get. i felt myself like a princess enclosed in a castle with the fire breathing dragon waiting outside. YOU MUST PROVE YOUR WORTHY before i will let you in.
before, I’ve said this. before everything.
the world is this mix and i used to think i was the blender. i could shake up a martini like no ones business. but it was my own special mixture. now i feel like I’ve left out a few of my own ingredients and i have to find a way to piecemeal it back together again.
hubris. i like this word.
long ago, and far away in a bedroom on Paris ave in the city of grand rapids, i still have the vivid imagery of writing in longhand with a shelf over my desk and desk light illuminating the room. flash forward a few years and I’m sitting at a desk, with the same type of wall-fabric, with a shelf over me and the desk light being the only illuminating object in the apartment. but now instead of sitting there writing with a 50 cent pen on 2 dollar notepad, I’m writing in a cracked email program on a 2000 laptop (that i have bought for 600).
i was to have grown, but i seem in many ways not to.
it was there where i wrote and it was there where i wished. it was before i met Danny. before i had gotten myself a computer. before a lot of things.
perhaps i am afraid.
i have become distracted by things that have happened while i was writing. i have often found that chain smoking creates yellow stains on the walls and water not only is a diuretic, it also cleans your face.
Today was Paul and I’s two year anniversary.
Could you tell?
lisa

here there and everywhere

paul and i got into a huge argument the other day about livejournal.com. he got all pissy because he couldn’t understand why i had this AND modgirl.net. I was like “um, this (livejournal) is for on the fly adding of stuff that doesn’t fit at modgirl.net” and he got angry. as if you haven’t been reading between the lines, we’ve been fighting a lot and I told him i wanted to leave and get my own place — which resulted in a day long argument (which, we did completely over irc – ohh the irony) which resulted in nothing being accomplished. I got in touch with a couples shrink and we have an appointment on wednesday to start working this shit out. he doesn’t get it and i’m sick of explaining this shit to him.
this weekend was rolling stone type weekend for me. i went to the tool show on friday and then turned around and went back to DC to see Tori last night. Heather and I nearly froze our asses off walking from the Metro to the hall, but the show was fantastic. I’ve never seen Tori preform live before, and while I like her music, I’m not obsessed with her like i know some people are. She’s witty in concert, commenting about her new baby. We missed the opening act (Rufus Wainwright), but I was fine with that. Tool had some alterna teen band open for them, and I missed that opening act as well.
For Tool we had box seats, which were pretty decent BUT the particular box we were sitting in had the speaker diagonal to us so it blocked sexy Maynard from my view. But Tool rocks as I’ve seen them twice now. Once in 1996 with Danny and then this past friday. For Tori, we had orchestra seats stage right. About 15 rows back. It was a small venue and i could see Tori’s facial expression. I ran into one of my old friends at the hall (surprise surprise since I’ve only lived here for two years) and I forgot she would be there. We no longer speak, but I had this urge to go say “Hi.” Why I have no idea, but I suppressed this urge and didn’t say anything. The damn seats at the hall were small and built for teeny tiny little waify girls as I had to stretch my legs out to the aisle to get comfy. Then of course there were the obviously ‘freaks’ which were the females who go to Tori’s shows, pretend they were lesbians and take it from there. Why is it that both Tool and Tori had the very stereotypical people there? Why do I harp on this shit?
I’m feeling weird. LIke I miss someone/something and I don’t know what it is.