paul got fired.
from his job.
apparently what had happened, was that VA Linux (after the merger with Andover) went through and fired 30 of the 100 employees — who were all top management/CXX something or another. While paul was technically a senior programmer, he was listed as director of e- commerce (at 20! go beat that!).
Pauls in better spirits than I am. i hate rejection. I hate not knowing what’s going to happen (on the flip side, every time I’ve gotten fired, I’ve always known I’d get another job).
Paul is the exact same way. Since he found out yesterday afternoon, he has been on the phone scheduling interviews and sending out his resume. He’s fast asleep snoring right now from doing more work in the last two days looking for a damn job than he has in a long time (so I feel). 😉
I’m teasing, of course.
Vandover was gracious enough to give him a months severance plus his two week vacation time PLUS he still has one month on his health insurance (unlike me when I was frog marched out of Slip.Net).
The silver lining is that I got a bonus and a raise and can call myself a “Senior” systems engineer at UUnet. whoopee.
Or something.
Plus I got a new boss — so I’m mucho happy. I like my new boss. She’s nifty.
I’m not handling pauls firing as well as he is. I’ve gone through more chocolate and eating binges than you can shake a stick at. Paul’s happy because basically with his mad skillz he knows that he can find another job fairly quickly and the extra money is just that — extra money. But technically, I’m the breadwinner in the household, and I’m scared. because what if he DOESN’T find another job (unlikely) and then the obsession starts again.
I’ve repeated myself here haven’t i?
blame ciannait for starting on the obsession.
no really.
Another obsession I’ve found is the tv show “angel”. okay you can stop laughing now. I’m being serious.
I was BORED BORED BORED tonight (paul was redoing his resume –again to make it perfect) and i was tired from having gone to the chiropractor earlier in the morning to be aligned. all i wanted to do was rest and watch teevee.
we have 145 channels and NOTHING IS EVER ON. finally i realize the only thing that is on worth watching is “Buffy” and “Angel” afterwards. Buffy, was at best, okay. Angel was much better and I enjoyed wasting 60 minutes on fluff. Plus Angel is a damn hottie. So now that I’ve gotten this new obsession, I’ve been combing the web looking for information about the previous season. This whole fanfic thing scares me. People are damn crazy.
Tag: ExFiance 2
readme.txt
paul’s parents have left and i’ll save that for when i’m more coherent. i just finished a project (albeit a small one) that i’ve been working on this evening. the concept is called “a self portal” and it is situated on simunye.com and simunye.org. i just wrote the readme file for it, and that is tonight’s entry (i’m lazy and full of good japanese food — fuck off).
———-
what the hell is a “self portal”?
i asked myself that several times when i came up with the idea, but it basically boils down to this:
in 1996 i registered my first domain, simunye.com (which you are looking at now). initially, it was just your usual catchall personal homepage bullshit with my writings, bs, pictures and what not. starting in late 1997, i registered simunye.org and had decided to start doing “consulting work” and make .com the “business” page and .org the journal. later, .com just became a referrer for the .org and the .org became the lisa chronicles.
the lisa chronicles was the start of an almost daily journal that was included previous ‘zine work i had one as well as updates that i was doing more frequently (about 3x a week). In 1998 i had registered bitchasshoe.org as a joke and trippingonstars.org as a personal narsative on daily fragments. this brought my stable of domains up to four.
in 1999, when paul and i had moved in together, that required a new domain: geek- haus.org which then lead to novageeks.org being registered for our friends locally. soon i became tired of being associated with the word simunye (zulu/xosha for “we are one”) and registered modgirl.org as the new home for the journal. and lastly, in early 2000, i registered verbosity.org as a new ‘zine i was going to be working on with several people (it, obviously, never got off the ground).
this brings the grand total to eight domains.
having that many domains (and not doing jack with them) started to bother me. bitchasshoe.org and modgirl.org were being updated (modgirl more so than bitchasshoe). novageeks was going to be static and geek-haus, simunyecom/org and verbosity i had no idea what the fuck to do with.
i started mapping out what each domains worth was to me and what i had envisioned. it broke down to the following:
- modgirl.org: daily (well almost daily) journal of my life
- bitchasshoe.org : running commentary on current events
- verbosity.org: daily fragments that didn’t fit anywhere
- novageeks.org: local updates for the Northern Virginia area
- trippingonstars.org: my “personal” website
- geek-haus.org : lisa and paul: uncensored
- simunye.com/.org: portals
the idea of a “portal” became necessary as a way of explaining how my mind works (many tangents at once), my different interest and likes without jamming it into one page. someone may like one page and not the others or what have you. having a portal to link to the many websites made it easier for me (it is all about me) without having to figure out where everything was going. also, anyone who is a “fan” (and i use that term loosely) will be able to see so many sides to me.
cheesy? perhaps. but it sure beats having to go through one webpage through link via link via link to crap.
the website breaks down into the following parts:
- online opinions: areas where i distribute my wealth of knowledge publicly. each link takes you to my main user page where you can read my opine on books, local dc crap, movies and what not.
- on-line journals: broken down by “genre” this takes you to the sites where i do majority of my writing.
- wish list: you know, if you feel like you love me and want to send me presents.
- misc.: stuff that doesn’t fit anything in particular.
- mailing lists: mailing lists i run or co-run that you may participate in.
- local: these are going to be sites on the simunye.com domain i have created in reference to personal interests and likes. i hope to bring a more educated and informative section to things that matter to me.
if you have any questions, please feel free to email me and give me comments, hellos or what not.
xx0x0x0x0xx
lisa
the in-laws
in a scant few hours (less than 12 at this rate), paul and brian’s parents will be descending into the NoVa area. In the same vein that I am comfortable in being me on the other hand, I’m completely freaked out. Generally, as with parents — I haven’t had to meet any for quite some time, I can be quite confident in being “me.” But i’ve been noticing lately, with the changes my body has been taking (yanno — stress) subconsciously i’ve been totally on the wire about meeting mommy and daddy Sullivan.
I don’t know what it is — by all accounts (brian and paul reassuring me) I’m much better suited for paul than his previous girlfriends but if the plan is to marry this man (which, last count I am) then I should feel fine in meeting them. But as the hour grows later and sunlight will be peeking shortly, i’m scared as hell. maybe it’s my own lack of parental influence in my life (as i was saying to jen tonight, i was brought up by my mother to be self-assured and independent. this simple fact, my independence, has been chronicled throughout my life: my mothers journal when i was a mere child and my own chronicles of my life starting when I was still in grade school up till now). the recent death of my father and the new role i’m now playing in my mothers life (as erma bombeck had once said — how does the role of parent to child and child to parent shift so quickly in our life?), i’m finding there is more out there i’m missing on that I hadn’t known. partly due to my own stubbornness and my own quest to be solo in a lot of my adventures that I have taken.
i’ve had several conversations with friends recently about their own lives (me becoming more aware of these people — bad lisa for not being up to date on everything) and they keep telling me “you don’t know what you have till its gone” (about me asserting that maybe i should be living alone for some time) and i recognize that they are right. i don’t know what kind of life i had envisioned for myself but i *know* that without Paul in it, i wouldn’t t be who i was right *now*. I’d be completely different. And realizing sitting on the couch with him just how important he is makes it all worthwhile. Thanks Jen for tonight and for allowing me to recognize what everyone else already knows.
i’ve been doing a lot of reading lately (and I’m currently scarfing down the 1500 page tome on Cleopatra — ugh) and not writing. I’ve always had all these excuses about WHY i haven’t written and with my updating about once a week now (and always on a saturday/sunday — funny that), i keep putting off these projects that sounds so good in my head and i keep using the excuse of “well, brian is in town and i don’t want to start anything with him here as it’s hard enough to keep things together having to worry about him and paul” and yadda yadda yadda.
the last few days, i’ve been feeling more stressed out than ever — not in my body but in my brain (thank you to the makers of klonopin and buspar for making me not so erotic) and my whole sudden attitude of “caretaker” has been taking over with definite scariness. suddenly i was not just responsible for *me* but for paul, brian, my brother and my mother. and here i am at 28, screaming, “what about me!! godammit”. my mother had mentioned a few conversations back that i had changed so much within the time i had left Michigan (a scant 3 years ago — and so much that has happened in that 3 years) and how grown up i’ve become. and it’s true. i have become more grownup in ways i never thought possible. i don’t know when the roles had shifted, but it’s true. and i think that it’s not just a “me” thing but subtle changes that everyone else sees and recognizes in themselves.
so i was thinking today, that today would be a good day to say thank yous, apologies and what not to various people. and while this may sound mushy or cruel and maybe mean, it seemed appropriate with everything going on:
dad:
while you are no longer on this earth, and while i’m still working out the details of your death in my head, i want to tell you as i had on the phone so many times before, how much i did love you and wished i had gotten the chance to know you. i want to tell you that you were important to me as a person and i’m so very sorry i never took the time out to get to know you as i had. i know that you are still with me, as i wear the charm around my neck of your ashes, but i want you to know that your belief in my own abilities and allowing me to explore those possibilities as an adult means more to me than you’ll ever know. i miss you dearly and while i wish you were here on earth for me to say this to you personally, i know that you are at rest and at peace.
mom:
i love you more now then i did when i was teenager (big surprise there). I want to thank you for helping me becoming assertive, independent and being able to voice what i say without being afraid to speak my mind. i want to thank you for being an incredible role model to me for showing me that being a woman of strength doesn’t mean you have to be a bitch. i also want to thank you for allowing me to make my mistakes and recognizing them later on while knowing that i would see the right way later down the road. I want to also tell you that I love you and that I’m sorry for not being more in your life when you needed me and that I’m glad I finally stopped being stubborn and got over the past issues to make the first contact with you. i have realized the importance of family and want to make sure that you are there for me as i plan on being for you for the rest of your life.
jeff:
my big “little” brother. you know me more indepth than most people will ever know and would ever WANT to know. i want you to know that i believe you have the talent and the charisma to do anything that you set your mind to and that while sometimes i may be harsh or “mean” to you, it IS for your best interest 😉 All i want for you to be is successful in whatever you choose to do and that I’ll support you both emotionally (and obviously financially) in all the endeavors that you choose to do.
paul:
my black knight in shining armour. in the short time we’ve been together (going on almost two years now — geez!) we’ve been through A LOT. more so than probably most people go in a lifetime. and through it all, despite our threats that one of us is leaving (its scary when your fights with your SO become the local joke yanno?) people keep saying that there is something about our relationship that makes them want to have one too. we have something very special that you don’t find everyday and i know that beneath it all, it is what keeps us together. I know, that even when you are being a self-centered little prick and I am being a fucking bitch, that we love each other very much. Thank you for being there for me emotionally and physically through all our rough times, for encouraging me to do things other people wouldn’t have the tenacity to survive through and for putting up with all my shit. I love you with each growing day and will always love you with just as much intensity till the day I die.
keffkeff:
probably one of closest female friends i’ve had in a long long time. you’ve become my sounding board in all things men, gossip and general chitchat. i love your vivaciousness, your strength and your quiet charm. your levelheadedness, your ability to relate to me on many different levels often is the strength *i* need to keep me going. I love you like a sister and hope that our friendship remains this close through our lives.
michael:
my non-blood-related brother. i thought of you tonight and because of that spurned this memoir of sorts. i wanted to tell you, mint aside, that i love you and even though we haven’t kept as close contact in recent months as we used to, that you are always in my thoughts. you supported me through so much in the last four years that so many people would not, and like my mother, allowed me to make my own mistakes and to live by them. thank you, from the bottom of my heart for your generosity, your kindness, your humour and your ability to show me what love was really like. i miss you dearly and hope to see you soon.
jen j.:
you’ve become the second female person in my later years that i grew close to. i admire you for your independentness, your cool-headed objectivness and your ablity to let down your hair when needed. you were one of the driving forces for me to get through my day and the sanctuary i needed when i needed someone to talk to. i want you to know that i will be there for you when needed and that i hope we grow closer with time.
moe:
thank you for being you. you are god and the keeper of my domain (literally!). thank you for also being there when i needed someone to talk to and for allowing me to vent when needed. i’m so very glad you moved to NoVa.
rynsey:
you have the best intentions and the best heart. i know that sometimes things seem really hard when they really are quite simple. i think you have the ablity to do whatever you choose to do and i want you to promise me that you will act on those talents and go with it. i believe in you and you will always remain my special lovah!
and now, to say things to people i’m having “conflicts” with:
sillz:
while my words may have stung and i apologize for hurting you, i don’t apologize for the words i had stated. i know that there was probably a nicer way of saying them, but sometimes i’m not a nice person and i recognize this in my own self. taken with what i had said with a grain of salt, we all want you to succeed however what you say to anyone and how you act are two completely different things. we want you to be indpendent and self-serving and i’m worried that you are falling down the trap that most women do. i want you to be happy (i honestly do) but at the rate and path you are continuing on, your true heart desires just don’t seem to be what you say they are. i applaud you for taking the chances that you have on many aspects but while i don’t agree with what you are doing in many areas, the simple chance of coming to a new country with literally nothing in and of itself is extraordinary.
ciannait:
i went to your website today and read something you had posted on the loss of a friend whom you had known that many people loved while you yourself had not gotten along with that person. i thought about our past and while we don’t see eye to eye on many things, i have realised that it seemed silly to continue on with this polite anomosity we have towards each other instead of just putting down the walls and being sincerly honest with each other. I recognize that we may have many things to learn from each other and if i extend the laurel branch, are you willing to accept it?
brendan/sam:
i still have not figured out, in all these months, why sam is so heated against me. in all honesty, i cannot think of one singular thing that i could have said or done that could have pissed her off. this also seems to be a mystery to many others whom you have been friends with in the past so now i’ll ask publically: why? to be honest, i’m tired of all the bickering and gossip that goes on in the circle of people we are friends with. but there has never been a direct conversation as to why. and if one of you can tell me, i’d be greatly appreciated.
FirstWorld/Slip.Net:
I’m still trying to figure out, after nearly a YEAR, why you keep coming to my website. I don’t know exactly what you’ll think you’ll find or simply you find this amusing but it is frightening to me to have the same employers who fired me for “hacking their nt server” (what a fucking joke) has the audacity to keep visiting my site. maybe it’s not the same people but someone else within the company who likes reading this. if that is so, then so be it. but here in lies the irony: i now work for the company you are purchasing your circuits from. In fact, the cheap ass gear you gave to your employees, i handed to the engineer you’ve been working with as a “gift” (he thought it was amusing). You also know, very well, that I had grounds for suite for unlawful termination. However, that would have required me to stay in Cali, which like the horrid two years i put in with your shitty company, was not worth it. Your business ethics, your choice of hiring AND firing procedures (amusing how my exit interview consisted of THEM telling me i was hacking their servers and that i was lowering their morale — how trite can you get without a shred of proof). And it’s also amusing that I was able to confirm your firing decisions from within the company prior to said firing. It is with sheer joy, that I’m happy that tech stocks have gone down.
And lastly to my readers:
I want to thank each and everyone of you for coming here. for reading. for offering advice even when it wasn’t asked for and for simply being there for me as a general consensus. TLC has turned 2 in July, and while it’s birthday has gone without fanfare and digging up archives of the old crap, it is with happiness and some sadness that i am able to be me. thank you all so much. you’ve been part of the family i never thought i had.
x0x0x0x0xx0x
lisa
as to why this was written:
jen and i had gone out tonight for a much needed girls night out. my almost total seculision in the rabey-sullivan household was driving me batty and i had not spent time with jen in quite some time. sitting with her at the table tonight over dinner (and both of us being hit on by the waiter and the gm was amusing to be sure) and telling her for the first time in a long time how i felt on differnet subjects i realised most of my conversations have been taken over email/irc/icq/aim or this journal. i had not told, someone face to face other than paul, how i really felt. after the breakdown of LWE, keth and i had spent some considerable time discussing the weeks events and i realised that most of my information was political: in the sense that everyday when i speak to someone it was with an agenda — no matter how minute. the poltical skills i thought i never had were becoming abundently clear as time progressed. and i really realised sitting with Jen that i really didn’t like the person i was slowly becoming. I was becoming someone who I had never liked — and this realization was becoming more clear with recent events both at home and at work. While i know that i can be incredible hard on people and hit them when i’m feeling defensive (that is one of my more “popular” traits it would seem) a lot of the anomosity that was being stirred up both on irc and in real life was being dumb. i never tell people what i really think of them or what i want to say unless it comes to the breaking point (as danny and paul both say to me quite often: you simply don’t talk). there were questions i had been wanting an answer to and had simply wanted to asked but never did. Paul, in particular, thought it stupid (and i can see why) to keep digging up the past. But the thing is, to most of the people I addressed in conflicts, i am in contact with them in some form or manner — even indirectly. and seeing them, even in a virtual format, brings to minds said thoughts and questions that i never address because it is the past and we should all move on right?
there is no hidden agenda on my part this time. the receipitants can choose to ignore this, which is their right and fine by me if they so choose (and i would not disagree with in being such a public matter) or they can address me privately. i have addressed them publically because i know they either a: visit my website or b: are subscribed to the email version of the journal. i know it will be read at some point or time while this is up. now that i have finally stated what should have been said so very long ago, my conscious is clear and i can move on knowing that i was willing to take the first step. even if none of my questions are ever answered i at least feel better letting them know, in my own way, that this was worth it to write.
and now i slumber.
nini.
x0x0x0x0x0x0x0x
twilight as seen by me
the last few weeks have been a surreal experience. suddenly i’m seeing myself in positions and places and acting in this strange netherworld that i didn’t think belonged to me.
i’m in this very strange place and it’s called being 28.
the rock and the hard place — the times i told paul i was leaving and today i come home and he prepares a bath for me, makes me a screwdriver (75% oj, 25% absolut), and lets me soak away the stress with harry potter (cause for divorce? she reads harry potter your honour). exes swinging back into your life and everything else in between.
brian’s leaving here in a few weeks. both paul and brian have been bugging me for “what do you want” as their mom wants to buy me something for taking care of brian and of course of pauly. taking care of someone is second nature to me. it feels that way. its like all those times i never asked for help and now i’m giving it and asking for it.
jeff and i have been going through some rather intense conversations lately on the status of my mother. the other day he and i spent an hour on the phone while i flipped around my sparc at work doing stuff. it was so much easier with a headset on to work and to talk. and my mom. at 58 she’s struggling with things i’m going through now and i want to reach to her and say it’s okay because i’ve been there. and she says to me “i cannot ask for help.” and before when she did ask for help, i ignored her because it was what i did best. and i kept coming home from work this week thinking about her and calling my brother. she’s broke. her job screwed her over. and i said JEFF! i buried one parent this year, I can’t go through another one. I just can’t.
sometimes i want to be free. i’ve always felt like a bird. relationships were temporary, measured by months and years invested and shuffled away to another spot where i couldn’t access them. and i think about all of them all the time. alan. danny. justin. and i wonder what they are doing right now at this very point in time and i wonder if they are happy? and i wonder why i care so much.
andrew said to me tonight ‘it always amazes when people think it’s so hard to find me.” and i said “get over it, i’m in my happy place” someone remind me, if i ever meet him, to bring him a box of crayolas.
love is blind.
love is good.
i had always envisioned that when *I* got married and had kids, i would have a family i never had. i wouldn’t have the bs and the bullcrap i had gone through. and i would create this stable environment where they could feel like they could belong. when i’m trapped i keep giving myself this out. jeff told me to set up seperate bank account and start saving money and if paul pissed me off, i would have enough to leave. and i’m thinking “yanno, it can’t be like that. we are in a relationship and yah things can get horrid but that is normal” but i run run run run run run when things get horrid and here i am.
harry potter strikes again
in the space of two weeks, i finished the first three harry potter books. but of course if you checked alt.stuff and clicked on reading list, you would see this already. so go check out and make fun of my damn tastes. but don’t make fun unless you plan on telling me what you THINK i should read.
and i don’t give a fuck what anyone says, those harry potter books are damn scary! i had nightmares the other night after reading a particular scary scene. the problem i had/have with the books is that i can’t see how they are written for “kids 9-12”. i mean, they aren’t certainly adult books, but i dunno. paul was reading over my shoulder one night and he was like “this is for kids right?” and i grunted “mhm” and he couldn’t see how kids wouldn’t be freaked out by it. fuck, i’m 28 and some of the things Rowling wrote scared ME and i used to be the horror queen.
i do love the books but damn they are addictive. i stayed up till 2am to finish book 3 last night and paul found book 4 in pdf format (but i’ll probably go purchase it anyways). and i’m highly recommending it to all my non-reading friends because well fuck, the books are fun to read. and i’m so fucking tired of all these whiny, late 20something women books that i’ve been finding in the “just published!” section at BnN. it seems that every book i’ve been picking up lately has to do with some woman in her late 20s having a midlife crisis.
go figure.
also, i finally put away all the cds i had piled in a 100 cd-case from the cross country trip (nearly a year ago — geez how time flies). my desk is clean again and i also updated the list of cds and will probably be buying more this weekend. again, now that the radio in my car is fixed, i am sure that i’ll probably go back on a spending spree with cds again.
ironies
so, as i’ve talked about in the past, my father has set up a trust fund for me. it’s not much (at least in terms of USD) but it’s considerable and the lawyer offered to pay for my plane tickets and hotel stay and stuff when I was in Toronto, which equaled to some nice change. The lawyer calls me earlier this week and tells me that the probate has gone through and i can get that reiumbusement this week and it’ll be wired into my account. i was feeling a tad relieved because an unexpected bill came up and we were short for rent due on the fifth. by the conversation i had with the lawyer, i would have it friday at the latest.
so thrusday night (last night, whatever); i’m leaving work and i hear this loud squeaking noise. i start freaking out and brake hard a few times and the brakes feel really really soft — and so i drove, very very carefully home. i’m bummed out. depressed. the money isn’t in yet. rent is due. i don’t get paid for another week and we don’t have any money for gas or anything “extra” that might come up.
i make up my mind that rent will be late and that my car is more important. so i get up fucking god-awful early friday morning (this morning– err yah) after crashing out for only 3 hours after finishing mr potter. i stumble into the server room and check citibank (sometimes they are very good at what they do) and see that my account is suddenly flush. i dance around in joy at 7am and take my car in to get fixed.
So now i’m over 1k poorer: 700 for the car, 350 to my mom, 100 to brian (pauls brother — he pitched in cash for some stuff and i paid him back. i told him he should use his money for crap for HIM), 150 to my brother to fix his car (again).
The funny thing was, when I was at Satryn of Fairfax and intialing my life away to get a rental car, they required a cc. I said “I’m planning on pay by check and is that going to be a problem?” and they said no, this is just in case and we won’t charge anything against the card. So i find a card that has some money on it, give it to them and no less than an hour later, i get a phone call from Enterprise telling me i have to come up with 250 cash deposit or else another credit card. So i call another one of my cards and realised since i made good on payments try to get an emergancy limit increase of a min of 500. Because my brother is primary owner of the card, they required him to call — so I call my brother who calls the company and they will let him know “in a few days” if the increase went through or not. Even though my brother had stressed the importance of the reason WHY we were requesting the increase.
Call Satryn of Fairfax and my car will be ready tomorrow (Saturday — uh yah) and call Enterprise back and since the car rental is less than 24 hours, i don’t have to have the deposit.
i just thought it was funny with the credit card companies personally.
So I’m sending my mother money because she had emergancy surgrey on Monday and didn’t notify me about it. Jeff was out of town for basketball and he tells me late last night/this morning that she is out of commission for three weeks and the company she is working for changed her normal 90 day waiting period to 150 and so she has no health care benefits OR pay. ugh.
i told jeff that he better start taking better care of her because i do not plan on having two parental funerals this year.
this week has been weird with all these little things coming up. brian is still staying with us and now that we have money again we are finally going to go do stuff in the area before their parents come up in two weeks — whom i meet for the very first time. the funny thing is that since i’ve been living with paul for nearly a year (yah time does fucking fly) i’m not the least bit nervous. probably because i’ve got the sullivan brothers wrapped around my pinky fingers.
“lisa is a very well liked bitch at uunet” — our friend derrick (not moe) at dinner tonight.
moo.
this week has been strange. strange because i came up with an idea the other night from reading mightywords about publishing some of my older stuff — however i don’t have anything really “large” to contribute other than some of the older stuff like downpour on my soul which was over 20 pages when it was first contrived. so i re-read it for the very first time in quite some time (over a few years at least). and then i got depressed and then i had to go searching for andrew again.
and i found him.
he’s so easy.
and i decided in the same time frame to start cleaning out my harddrive and MY GOD, how much shit i have written and forgotten about it. just shoved away for the “rainy day” to finish and never did.
now i have something productive i want to do.
i had such a incredible response to the entry i posed a few days back “Open Letter to MTV Execs” that i got persuaded (like it’s really hard to persuade me) to send the letter to MTV. I rewrote it and cleaned it up before i sent it.
Of course I never heard anything back.
x0x0x0x
lisa
bodice rippers
brian and i had been walking around bNn tonight (last night?) when i confessed my passion for bodice rippers. jackie collins, judith krantz — the whole strong woman whose been beaten, raped, damn near mutilated but by the time she’s 30 she’s the owner of her own successful company, beautiful, thin and perfect to the bone. And, you can’t forget, that in the end, she always gets her man.
i think those damn things are probably part of my problem. though i haven’t admittedly picked up a good old fashioned bodice ripper in ages (though jackie collins has released a few new books and i’m trying really hard not to read them), it brought to mind tonight after having sex with paul, part of my problem.
you see, i’m a reader. a voracious one at that. some freaky guy in texas has been keeping a book list since he was like four (there is of course the obvious link but i can’t find it now). and most of what i read, obviously has impact on my thoughts and feelings. and i’ll read anything, that i will, being the book whore that i am. i’ve already finished harry potter and the sorcerers stone and have books 2 and 3 on order with amazon. books by f scott fitzgerald, terry pratchett, and a biography on cleopatra sit on my bedstand (amongst others).
this all has to play about my idea about love and romance.
of fucking course (you knew this was going to be cliched didn’t you?)
i’ve always had this ideal — this man, who would come and take my blues away (like calgon — but with a penis). and every man i have ever dated and met has always lived short of that ideal because DING DIN GDING he doesn’t really exist. but he’s safe enough to make real and happy because then no one can touch me.
except for paul.
paul is a lot of wonderful things. pauls is also a lot of nasty things just as i am full of wonderful things as well as some very horrid things. for the last few days i’ve been in a snitch about something. there is no rhyme or reason to what i’ve been being in a snitch about just that I have been and that is important to this dialogue.
paul once said it would probably would have been better if i had a guy that was just a dog. because then that way everyone would be happy and i would stop bitching.
which is to say, that i say i want one thing and expect something else entirely.
(and this would suffice to say go on with the rant on why i generally hate the female species but i won’t go there).
I keep forgetting that relationships take work. and they take time to mature. i’m not talking about the passion here (insert oblig REM reference), i’m talking about understanding, love, friendship, and trust. Most, with me, does not come easy. YOU HAVE TO EARN IT BABY!
So yeah, i totally hate our media. i keep thinking of the “friends” episode where monica proposes to chandler, and i’m thinking “why don’t I have that?” and then it takes a ton of bricks to realize that i do have that. Pauls not fucking perfect. Well, neither am I. but together, we are perfect.
We have our bad days and we have our good days. and some days are better than others. But the thing is, we want to make this work. We want to make this relationship — really last and not be a flash in the pan of lust and hot sexors every night. And that some days I’m gonna want to either love him to pieces or rip his penis off and other days he’s going to want to chop my tits off.
BUT THAT IS US.
I mean, that is us, in a nutshell. because we are a real couple with real feelings, everything gets amplified. this isn’t something that is going to be solved on page 10 and our relationship isn’t going to end when the sweeps are over.
and that my friends, is what i can’t gel in my betty paige looking head.
like most people in america, i’m deathly afraid of commitment. but i’m also deathly afraid of being alone with 10 cats. i’m afraid of making the wrong decisions, the wrong choices and the wrong everything. i want my life to be a bodice ripper where everything gets worked out and my whole world will be boxed up neat and clean and set off by page 300. but real life isn’t like that. and that’s what i need to learn. that paul isn’t some schelp that i can abuse/use and that i’m not some sextoy for him to abuse/use. and we are both slowly coming to terms that that is what the problem is and that is what is making it scary and wonderful all at the same time.
because we are willing to make a stand with ourselves and willing to say hey, we love each other. this is going to work.
there are a million and one reasons why i love paul. and the best one i can think of that describes how i feel is that when my face is smushed up against his chest, THAT is home. it’s not the things around us or where we live or where we stand geographically to each other. it’s how i feel when he’s wrapped around me at night. what keeps me sane, through all my turbulent moods especially when it comes to men and relationships, is how paul treated me when my father died. his love and his understanding was what i would have wanted IDEALLY that having it happen was a dream come true.
the bottom line is, most people don’t know how to make a relationship work. because it’s hard. because it requires you to care about someone else and to provide for that person and frankly, i don’t think most people, hell adults, can make that kind of relationship work.
If i were to choose any one couple that best suited paul and i, i would have to say he was my rhett butler to my scarlett o’hara. but to those of you who are hip to GWTW, you know that Rhett leaves her at the end of the book. WRONG! In the sequel Scarlett, she does get her man.
Like me. 🙂
barnes and noble
Brian (Pauls brother) and I hit barnes and noble tonight for me to get some quality writing in and for brian to get out of the house for awhile. I came across a book in the clearance section called Writing For Self-Discovery. I had brought along my notebooks so I went ahead and sat in the cafe and started reading the damn thing. The first exercise on the very first page (which surprised me as most books go into more theory on why you should write before going to the nitty gritty) was to sit in one spot and write about what’s around you. Pick and object and go from there. This is what occurred:
barnes and noble cafe. people. feeling anxious. left breast has slight pains from being anxious. feeling stupid sitting solo at the cafe table with my white painted fingernails, people milling about. various people studying. remembering the cool cafe in Berkeley, CA where all the CalState kids went to. drank coffee. study. college. missing school. thinking of my father. small silver urn around my neck. thin people. beautiful people. grad school. college university. hard tables/chairs. people still here. sitting with Cathleen at the cafe. her sister Carolyn who was way cooler. why is it that people with “Ca” beginning names are called “cat”? on some people it sounds wrong. on others it sounds right. what can one say about the name lisa? derived from Elizabeth. fear to run. flight or fight. i ‘m in a public place and i’m scared.
dreaming about my father more. i’m not sure but it dawns on me in the bathroom tonight that the dreams are a realization he’s okay. he was younger and happier looking. there were scars on his forehead. “Dad, I say,” where are those scars from?” and he points to my necklace — the small silver urn with some of his ashes on it that i wear daily. My father, close to my heart.
i was watching la femme nikita the other night with brian and i saw what i wanted to be — her. Nikita. she is tall, blonde and perfect. except i don’t want to be blonde, just tall and perfect. and she’s was wearing this long black skirt that hung low over her hips and there was an inch or so of skin showing between her shirt and the damn skirt. with her pale skin and deep blue eyes. she looked amazingly exotic. and that was my inspiration. that is what i want to be. i have to lose 100lbs.
fuck.
i remember when i was 14? 15? I weighed 140? 150 pounds. I was like 5’9 or so. And I remember laying on my bed at night, obsessing about my weight and running my hands over my concave stomach and thinking “i’m never going to be fat. i’m not going to allow myself to get past this point in weight.”
that was 1/2 a life ago!
been reading more journals online again. going through diarist.net and sorting by women and ages and reading generally anything of anyone within my age group. and i realize that the 25-32 age bracket is nearly empty — not empty but it’s like what overcomes people between that age group to not write. i’m looking for a REASON and i’m finding it. Ana Voog is 34. Cheryl Tigs is a mom at 54. She can, next year, legally qualify for the AARP. I have 30 whole years left before I need to. And for once I smile. At the cafe. Where the cute goth girl works.
I’m obsessed about ages. People think i’m 22. Brian thought I was 22 or 23. No one believes I just turned 28. But i’m obsessed with other people’s ages. When someone tells me a story, I almost always ask “how old are they?” so that i can make the comment of “she’s immature” or “he should have known better”. and it’s stupid to gauge other people’s life by my age. at 28 i should have accomplished many things and i haven’t. but in a way, i’ve accomplished more than other people ever will. because i took chances. i took the chance, no matter how stupid, on flying to SF with nothing and making a go of it. and when that didn’t work, of driving cross country solo to another state and trying again. and seeing those stupid “jesus knows” signs along the highway. meeting paul for the first time in atlanta. BUT the thing is, i did it. myself. these are my stories and i know lots and lots of people who don’t have the balls to leave within 50 miles of where they were born.
west texas sucked.
my dad was 45 when i was born.
and today i really like me, imperfections and all.
-finis-
so tonight, when the urge struck me to redesign again (and i really do like this new design btw), i felt it. the cold crushing feeling in my chest. and it’s different from all the anxiety attacks i had before. because this time i was not obsessing about anything — I WAS FREAKING WORKING IN PHOTOSHOP. and i start crying. paul is freaking out because i can’t breathe (or so i say between the sobs). my pulse is normal but my chest felt like a ton of bricks landed on it. i call the 24 hour hot line my hmo has set up and i get picked up on the first ring. i tell the woman, mary, what is going on. she assures me i’m not having a heart attack. “you’re on klonopin” she says. “what’s your dosage?” i tell her i’m taking the bare minimum these days – .5mgs .25 in the morning and sometimes .25 later in the after noon. “did you take a dose?” she asks. “yes, i replied — a few moments ago”. klonopin takes 30 minutes to kick in before it works. she talks to me. calms me down. turns out she has done over 15 years as a coronary specialist nurse. i’m not having a heart attack. i’m so low risk it’s disgusting. ‘but this crushing” i keep telling her. it hurts. i don’t know what to do. the klonopin has been my miracle drug for the last two weeks. tonight was worse because it was fast and furious. and i’m so scared something is going on with me. she tells me if the pain doesn’t stop within the next 15 minutes, take another klonopin. after an hour, if there is still pain call. they are open 24 hours. i can be seen.
within an hour brian and i were at 7-11 buying slurpees and a big bite.
a new beginning
for the last two days i’ve been uploading the old chronicles into the new format that i talked about oh so long ago. you see, pauly had created this neat database for me that allows me to write a chronicle anywhere in the world via a web browser and while it doesn’t have all the tricks of blogger he felt really slighted i wasn’t using it. i told him that going through the past was hard and especially if i had to reread it all over again as i uploaded the crap to his new database. but he was insistent that i give it a try (and modify it to my own needs so that it would be completely personalized to my tastes).
so i did it.
over 200 entries later, i started reflecting to the writing i wrote and the person i’ve changed. what really hit home with me today was that going through all the old stuff within the last year about moving to virginia, being with paul and start a whole new life.
looking back on the last 6 months, i noticed that all the dreams and promises i made to myself to make that a reality wasn’t happening. shit got fucked up. and i started getting sick — really sick. having anxiety attacks, feeling like crap, gaining weight, not talking to anyone — stuff that was chronicled here and not chronicled anywhere but inside my head. i was going to the doctor literally every week because i couldn’t take feeling like this — and who can. the chest pains, feeling of being not being in control of my body, the whole nine yards. PHYSICALLY there is nothing wrong with me. Mentally, well, that would take years to fill.
so i’m wanting to the do the right thing. i really do want to do the right thing. but that requires a lot of change on my part and a lot of the changes aren’t that easy to make. like quitting smoking, and losing weight and working out. finding a job i like and doing stuff FOR. ME. stress takes a huge toil on your body — whether or not you want to believe it or not. my body is acting like it’s 90 and the funny thing is — after all the talk of death and morbid crap that i wrote in the past — i don’t want to die. i really really do not. i want to LIVE.
as the chronicles has it’s second anniversary this month and goes onto entering it’s third year, i thought that i would start all over. reintroduce myself to you. introduce yourself to me. lets meet and befriends. and hopefully, when this all blows over, we’ll be happier for that.
so hi.
my name is lisa.
i’m a 6′ tall 270lb network engineer living in virginia. (well depends if i have my job tomorrow or not heh).
i live with my boyfriend Paul. he’s a programmer for thinkgeek. we have a lot of flakey geeky friends who hang out here. we make plans and break them occasionally. like every weekend. or something.
moving right along, my goal is to lose weight (can we say 100lbs. whose rooting for me over there?) and to finally quit smoking (i’m down to my last two right now). and to just FEEL better and not have to pop pills every five minutes because i think i’m dying (i’m not — really).
i boast an impressive cd list and an even more impressive shoe collection. i like texture and fabrics. i like the colors orange and lime green. i love bands like rem, afghan whigs, the eels, blur, new order and luna. i like things british. i like reading. i LOVE wildflowers. i love wild kinky sex (as long as it’s from paul). i love reading and doing things creatively. i like tacky and kitsch.
that’s me in a nutshell.
and so we begin on another journey with lisa — and this time hopefully she’ll get some shit straight.
or die
home by ikea
we love ikea.
almost every room in our apartment has *something* by ikea in it. our living room has two futons, three tables, bookcase, floor rug. bedroom has dresser (new from today’s outing), two end tables. kitchen has assorted things as well as the bathrooms. i heart ikea. the only ONLY fucking problem is that it’s out in Potomac Mills, which on a good day I can do the drive in 25 minutes (and that is getting on four different highways to get to). But the good driving days here are few and far between. I also heart Potomac Mills as its one huge shopping mall that carries nothing but outlet stores. When Jeff saw the Nautica store, he cried. Now i have a dresser (that i put together, thank you very much. all paul did was screw in the knobs — but he is very good with screwing) with two drawers that are empty as i don’t know what to fill them with. figures. i bitch about not having enough space for months and now i have boatloads of it and nothing to put into it.
the funny thing was, that i was willing to pay the 69 bucks for delivery of the dresser when the guy looked at me like i was crazy as this was my only item. if you are not acquainted with ikea, the premise is that the reason why the furniture and crap is so cheap is due to YOU putting the damn thing together as well as taking it home. Generally this is a good idea, but i was already lugging around two huge frames for art work we had bought plus a heavy bag. carting out two heavy boxes for the damn dresser didn’t make sense to me. when i explained to the clerk that we were lazy (we do have to add in that i live on the third floor AND paul is the king of lazies), he just started laughing. the clerk promised to watch my stuff while i trot out to hell (er the parking lot) to grab my car and pull up. right when i had pulled into the parking spot to load my stuff, it started trickling rain. when i threw the frames into the back seat and had gone to get the dresser boxes, it was down pouring. by the time i had gotten the boxes into my trunk, i was soaked and had to remove my shoes and flip the air on as the steam from the heat of my body being wet was fogging up the windows. The clerk helping me load my boxes gave me a thumbs up seeing my “FSCK ME” plates and the “I brake for pornstars” bumper sticker.
i drove home at a leisurely pace (while talking to paul on my cell about buying a doggy — the verdict is still out) and pulling out ont 495 it was clear — no rain, no storm, no nothing. my windshield wipers were making the “squeak squeak” noise of rubber against dry glass. when paul, derrick and i had left an hour later to go to dinner, i got caught in the same storm — and this time i was wearing a white t-shirt.
some days you just can’t win.
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.