![[The beach, Scheveningen, Holland] (LOC)](https://i0.wp.com/farm3.staticflickr.com/2661/4120033600_0c127fcd5c.jpg?resize=500%2C362&ssl=1)
Tonight is my last night as a free person for tomorrow I head back to work. The nostalgia factor in my jobs doesn’t escape my attention, and in fact, we relish all the opportunities it gives me such as long holiday breaks, mostly summers off, and a bit more freedom than if I were a librarian somewhere else.
The bittersweet component I keep close to my bosom, trying to not let it suffocate me or me suffocate it. The proverbial question of what did I do this summer and what I wanted to do this summer, always separated by miles of truth. I had a lot of questions I needed to get answered, plans I wanted to put into action, and places I wanted to be. While I never got the opportunities to do the things I wanted to do or fuck, even have the vacations I wanted to have, I don’t regret the outcome of this summer at all. A lot of digging deep into my psyche was achieved and its given me a better handle on what I need to do for the future.
The one thing I learned this summer is I work much slower than I had envisioned myself to work. Meaning, I had plans in place to do X things at X times and never factored my actual TIME to do the thing so it was always a mess. Now I know.
This morning I did some work work from home and in the afternoon, worked on getting more content from the archives back online. I’m almost done with 1998 and there is a variety of adjectives about that jaunt down memory lane. 1998 is a good year to illustrate my maniaism. The primary descriptors of me at 26 would be whirling dervish. But I know that all changes in the following year, when depression comes and smacks me about like an angry Frenchman. I wasn’t on drugs in 1998, other than birth control pills, and it wouldn’t be until 2000 when my primary descent into my imaginary mental ward would begin. I smile a lot at Lisa at 26 (and TheHusband too since he and I were living together then), but I’m afraid for what happens after.
So let us talk about the good things then, rather than stew over what we cannot change.
Wednesday was back to the vet again for yet another UTI. She’s a low riding pee-er and this will apparently be the source of discomfort for her until her death. She’s two days on her drugs and so far, no more accidents in the house, no blood in the urine, and she’s not peeing 19 times a day.
This weekend is the kickoff for the 2013/14 EPL season and I am beyond giddy to find out a local pub is opening up early to start serving for the matches (Arsenal starts at 730A). I support West Ham United, whose game starts at 10A and which I’m dragging TheHusband to. TheHusband and I have an agreement: He’ll come to the pub with me for the games and I’ll sit through a basketball game.
I’m not quite sure which one of us is going to be more bored.
I also found out today the city’s rec department has an adult fencing class offered this fall, which I hope to get signed up for. I’m also going to sign up for swimming, starting with beginners and see how I do.
Also, the other big news is next week I’m going in to see a neurologist to talk about if whether or not I have epilepsy. I was diagnosed when I was a wee lass when I had a grand mal seizure, and until I was 12, I was carted to Children’s Hospital of Detroit to find out what is going on. So nearly a decade after it happens, I get the “eh” clear from the doc, who my mother laments now she should have sued him for malpractice.
I’ve had small seizures infrequently over the years but I haven’t seen a neurologist in over 20 years. I need to make sure my i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed in case anything happens to me. Maybe THIS will explain it all?
Lastly, I got a bit of fiction writing done today but no major word counts to even worth mentioning. My Scrivener project for notes and ideas grows, so just as in all things, baby steps.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #26)
P.S. I forgot to mention EPbaB finally has a working contact form again which has been out of commission for most of the summer. Thanks to TheHusband’s nimble BOFH skills, and my bitching, he finally got it working.
Tag: TheExHusband
In which the dog hate pees, my boyfriend shows up, and thehusband admits he has no sense of humour
Hercules vacuum cleaner, 1930s; State Library of New South Wales. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.
Dear Internet,
First I must tell you it’s much later than what the time stamp says on the entry. The second thing I must tell you is that I’m fairly high on Klonopin, which is in part thanks to having a physical anxiety attack this late evening. One pill couldn’t cut it, it seems, so I took two.
This week was kind of adventurous, which I’ve got started as another post-dated entry, but to bring you up to speed, we’re up at Throbbing Cabin which was solely to be for our vacation and not for renovations. Yet instead, it has turned into a comedy of errors.
As some of you may know, earlier this week I had a round of The Plague which changed everything, namely this entire week was to be our vacation week where the cabin was to be our actual vacation home and not a money pit of despair. The hope was to have day trips all over the area and see things we haven’t seen yet outside of our little 10 mile area.
We were obviously too ambitious.
We came up to Throbbing Cabin late Thursday afternoon, two cars packed with goods. After getting unpacked, it is discovered I left the non-perishable groceries on the counter in the kitchen back in Grand Rapids, which leads us to quick on the fly thinking of where to do for food, ending up having dinner at Little Traverse Inn, where their gastropub specialize in British foods with a twist. I really enjoyed the haggis parcels.
After a marvelous dinner, we head into Glen Arbor to grab the missing dry items left in Grand Rapids, head to the cabin to get ready for bed and sleep.
Except that didn’t quite happen. Wednesday had been acting odder than usual since I picked her up from the bordering place earlier in the day. I had thought it was their off her schedule walking that twas giving her troubles, but even after we right the wrong she decides to do two things:
- She pees on the new wood floors right after we arrived
- She pees on our bed at the end of the night, soaking through the duvet, sheets, and the mattress pad
Even better? TheHusband had been laying on some of the pee.
Thankfully we had back up sheets and comforters on hand. Also thankfully the mattress pad was designed for just such an occasion so the mattress itself never got wet.
Now I can speculate for as long as the day as long as to why both instances happened:
- She’s 13 (or 101), and she’s incredibly picky how things are done. If they are not done just so, she gets upset
- Boarding place said they had walked her twice before I picked her up at 11:30AM that morning, yet she almost immediately shat and pissed in my car. So see point the first.
- We walked her more as soon she got home and after, yet our punishment was the peeing in the house.
It’s worth nothing that today she’s been fine. As a precaution, we’ve removed the water bowl we kept for her in the bedroom (since we’re upstairs, and she cannot get up/down stairs).
With that incident having now occurred, we knew we were going into Traverse City to do emergency laundry and then the thinking went, well as long as we’re in Traverse, might as well run a few other errands since we’re in the city.
Which completely shot our damned day. We were thinking beach! Hikes! Things! Not sit in a laundromat, watching DEAL OR NO DEAL.
My boyfriend, as he’s referred to, is the contractor who laid down our flooring and also builds homes. We’ve been getting price quotes from him to do work beyond our means, like rip out the second bathroom and redo it properly. We’ll also be contracting him further down the road to gut out and redo the kitchen (hopefully via IKEA).
He’s called such because it seems he only calls me, not TheHusband, for anything and we’ve now moved on to texting. The luck of the draw is that he looks like someone I would date. And there might be slight chemistry between us. But it’s kind of hard to feel the allure when the only times he’s ever seen me is when I look my not so very best.
After TheBoyfriend had come and gone to drop off some contract work, breakfast was made and consumed, we spent time putting together yet even more IKEA items from our haul this week. I prodded TheHusband to call a pest control person for we were finding little piles of dust in the master bedroom area and as luck would have it, the pest control could be out there early evening.
With our chores and bathing done, we started the slow trek into Traverse as we had stops such as at the recycling and gas station to embark on.
The bane of my existence during our courting years was TheHusband’s obsession on finding the perfect engagement ring. I looked at hundreds, if not thousands, of rings that all began blend into the same one.
Shopping for floor rugs with this man has the exact same experience. Online or off, there is always something not quite right about anything we have seen. We stopped at a rug showcase on our way to the laundromat and one after. My eyes were glazed over with all the seemingly same choices. My final threat was we were going to pick up something from Target, which turned out how our search ended with two area rugs thrown into our cart. Now we’re finding ourselves saying things like, “Well, if we don’t like it, into the guest room it goes!” which was also our mantra for Throbbing Manor.
Which explains so much about our decorating process.
Errands done, finally, headed back to the cabin, we meet up with pest control guy who showed up a little early. After poking and hunting around the cabin, he can’t quite find any trails to suspect carpenter ants are eating at the cedar. Since it’s either them or carpenter bees, and the bees are not here, then it’s got to be the damn ants. Traps were laid about the house and the outside perimeter was sprayed with poison. We report back to him in a week.
After all of this is done, it’s now closing in on 8PM. We wolf down dinner, grab the dog, and head to the local beach to watch the sunset and ended up staying for little over an hour. I was hoping to see more stars, with zero light pollution, but we were woefully unprepared for hanging out on a darkened beach.
We headed back to Cedar and got slushies before heading home, and here we are.
Mood update: Mood update has been pretty chill, though I’ve been sick for the better part of the week. I skipped a few days of the klonopin because I didn’t want to have an interaction with Day/NightQuil. I have not started Wellbutrin but several friends are reporting they are feeling good things about it, so that is still a might see.
I cancelled my appointment with Dr. H. on Monday because I had completely spaced on the appointment AND I don’t have the ready cash. Dr. P. and I have been unable to connect for a few weeks so hopefully I’ll get to see him soon.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #21)
i wandered lonely as a cloud
Dear Internet,
If you have been paying close attention, and I know you have been, you would have noticed I missed a day this week — Monday. As the bugs get worked out of this system of daily writing, I’m sure to miss a day or two and I am allowing myself to be okay with that. But don’t be terribly surprised to find back dated entries showing up in your RSS feeds to feed my OCD monster.
Last night we apparently got a storm that myself and the dog slept through but woke TheHusband. He closed most of the windows in the house to prevent the rain from coming in and my clue was the half-closed bedroom windows that something was amiss. It’s been a cool summer, almost too cool in fact, but the spurts of extreme warmth continue to tease us and the storm didn’t dissipate the burgeoning heat. I ran around most of today wearing a cardigan, which was making me feel like I was sweating my proverbial balls off. Why I didn’t take off the damn sweater when I was in the elements is beyond me.
Work today was slow and not much was done. There was a meeting for the new faculty evaluation program that is coming into place and to be honest, it feels like a lo tof busy work for not a lot of real pay off. Okay, that may be a stretch since the pay off is having a job, but a lot of the documenting, professional development, and the like seems to be rather useless. It’s hard to talk about this here for changes come swift through the halls of academia and I don’t want to take any chances. The process, I’ll document over at Tales of a Cunning Systems Librarian.
I cut out of work early and headed over to the GrandCon volunteer meet-up, which was scheduled for tonight at a local bookstore. The organizer was late (he thought it was 5:30, not 5:00 as he told everyone else) but in the interim, I met a few of the other volunteers and they invited me to play Love Letter which turned out to be quick fun. Once the volunteer organizer showed up, the meeting was quick and there seems to be a lot to do in the next few months. I’m kind of excited about volunteering for this and if you’ve been following me around the social sphere for the last few years, my interest in comics and gaming has picked up considerably. I’m beginning to wonder if I should start putting together a comics resume of sorts because my activity is starting to increase significantly.
An interlude:
Wednesday night is Pub Trivia Night and myself, TheHusband and a few other friends play at a local bar every week. TheHusband and I have been absent the last few weeks as we’ve been up north, but the team has solidly rocked on without us. Tonight, however, we found out after we got to the spot our captains were unable to make it, so four us went for the glory and almost but not quite made it. I like our team and I like our event, but I’m not crazy about the location, the service of the staff, or even the food. TheHusband says he doesn’t care one way or another what we do, but I feel like we’re in a pickle.We’ll see how it is in a few weeks.
I’m thrilled to report that this is day 2 of not feeling like I’m going to keel over and sleep my way to Olympic Gold. It’s also day 2 of my period and day 2 that I went off the Metformin. What does this all mean? How are these related? I’m thrilled that I can get some semblance of focus and life back, but now I’m curious if I should start taking the Wellbutrin as directed by Dr. H. or not. I’d discuss this with Dr. P., but he had to reschedule our appointment tomorrow for Monday so I’ll wait until I see him before making any big moves.
And the coolest part about today? Thorarinn Leifsson, the graphic novelist/illustrator I mentioned earlier this week, found my blog and the entry about him and offered to send me his work in English, in PDF. I was so beyond thrilled, I was high fiving a million angels.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #13)
This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2012, 2012, 2010, 2010
Life is Beautiful (Sometimes)
Wirth Bro[ther]s’ new & greatest all feature combined show direct from America! Lithograph, Auckland, N.Z. circa 1890. Courtesy of The Commons, Flickr.Dear Internet,
A few days ago I came across a chat transcript between TheHusband and I from our early days of courting, circa 2009. There was much gagging going on in my head over the saccharine of the language. Were we really like that? Yes, yes we were. Now, he says, it’s doom, gloom, and despair.
What they don’t tell you, what no one tells you really, is that after you’ve been partnered up with someone for awhile, perhaps you’ve moved in together or even perhaps, you’ve gotten hitched! However the configuration, the daily mysterians of getting to know the other person gets dialed back. A lot. The day to day bits of the relationship – who ate the last of the cereal? Must we have the fan on so high? What’s another puppy? All the daily give and take, the negotiations and compromises – those are never discussed anywhere. It’s all sunshine, unicorn farts, and sparkles. Relationships are hard work and if any writer, nay blogger, worth their salt will tell you, writing about the mundane does not get you hits.
An interlude:
When I’m up north, TheHusband and I use our time to do the errands and the jobs that could not be completed over the weekend. Sunday afternoon or early Monday morning, I’m back on the road to GR, the dog in tow natch, to work for the week. Thursday night, I’m back on the road to Throbbing Cabin and it starts all over again. I feel like my life has become nothing more than errands and chores.
This week, however, TheHusband has come home to me for he needs to do some work that can’t be done from the cabin. This worked out well for me because this Friday night, myself and 7 girlfriends are descending to the cabin for a girls only weekend, so the timing works out for everyone.
With TheHusband home, it was to continue the ritual of chores before play. I mapped out our path for the day, starting with getting gas (which was an ulterior motive for getting a slurpee) and ending with antiquing at a few of our favorite haunts. Our dinner plans were to make pizza, using Buffalo mozerella to see how I could tolerate it and maybe see a movie.
Four hours into our jaunt, and no where near completed with our errands, I had to give in and just give up on the day. We moved on to having dinner at one of our comfort places. The rest of the night was slow as I read news feeds and magazines and TheHusband video gamed.
I could not shake the sleepiness, no matter what I did. I slept deeply for nearly nine hours and to top that off drank gallons of caffeine during the course of the day. My energy level remain low, but I powered through what I could, but my limits were apparent and I had to respect that, no matter what my mind says.
Our neighborhood has been going through serious bouts of gentrification in the last five years. An old electrical and heating company building at a corner down from our house, long ago someone had graffitied “life is beautiful” on wall near the roof and it always made me smile when I drove by. Now it’s been painted over and my heart tugs down every so little when I drive by.
x0x0,
Lisa (Day #10)
This day in Lisa-Universe in: 2012
Exit, Pursued by a Bear is back!
Hey there!
I’m pleased as punch to announce EPbaB is back. TheHusband and I migrated the content and did the DNS cutover on March 30 to the new provider. The DNS migrated within a few hours and the site for the last two days has been super snappy. While everything is more or less in place, a few notes:
Continue reading “Exit, Pursued by a Bear is back!”
She who sits foremost
Dear Internet,
When I wrote The Summer Tale on my 40th birthday, the intention was to to write more, write raw, write honest of my feelings. Work out the discord, work out the pain, figure how to move forward from that spot, harness it, channel it, make it work for me.
That hasn’t happened.
A recent Friday night, I was working on an old lady craft1 when it came to me this would always be my life. Home. Alone. Doing something that required aloneness. And then I began to panic and then cry.
Shortly after, my thoughts have turned to flight: Divorce TheHusband, quit my job, and then ride the rails. Everything we’ve been working on, dreaming for, saving up for gone in a blink of an eye. Everything good in my life, I want to leave.
Flight.
I have no idea where I’d go, no idea what I’d do, no idea on cash. I’d leave everything behind, even my beloved dog.
Here is what I said to Kristin earlier today (it echoes what I verbally told TheHusband earlier this morning):
I haven’t been (using my anxiety drugs)
It’s like living in my head in exhausting
I have no motivation or desire for antyhing
I feel like this is it and there is no hope
…
I haven’t finished a book, listened to a song, or done anything that used to make me happy
I won’t even create something because I feel like what’s the point?
…
I just feel like I’m missing out on a life
that I don’t know yet
…
Getting tired of lving in my head
it’s not working anymore if it ever did
And I feel like anytime I try and figure thigns out the depression cockblocks me moving on
…
LIke with school, the hope was “Well one day I’ll have a good job and pay for things”
and then with Justin it was, “one day we’ll build a life”
I can’t deal with the day to day it seems
…
So everything that I dreamt about or hoped for came true so now what is THE POINT
…
I feel crippled.
So since i feel crippled, what’s the point. What’s the point, then might as well read the g-d intenet.
…
I’ve become quite the self-shamer
I’m not a good writer, why bother. I’m not/would not be a good mother, why bother trying to get pregnant. I’m not a good librarian, why bother trying to work it out.
That kind of thing.
The ellipses represent Kristin’s comments/questions and I’ve left the content in all of its grammatically erred ways. I don’t feel anxious, I just feel consistently sad. My heart feels heavy and all I can think about is flight. I need to leave, need to go, don’t know where, just fly.
During my convalescence this summer, I got really angry at a lot of my local friends for forgetting me. Some relationships were strained, some were broken, some have been repaired. But now, as we delve deeper into fall, the lack of social contact is noticeable, but now it is not because I have been forgotten by friends, it is because I am not reaching out. For the brieftest of moments, I make plans in my head of things to do: Join a club, learn a new language, take up a new hobby that requires me to interact with people other than my husband and I feel too paralyzed to move. Why should I head to X meeting when they probably won’t like me anyway. I sound like an asshole, so might as well save the effort and sit home. It’s too late to call/text X person, so why bother?
And of course it moves on: Why start a book when it probably will suck? Why listen to music when it’s all trite and dumb. Why do anything when it’s already all been done before?
In June I said,
I don’t have a desire to kill myself but I don’t feel like there is any hope. It seems that I’ve presented myself with a conundrum. Perhaps I am my own unreliable narrative for the second I had written the above, I knew it to be a lie: I want this to go away and I want to be happy.
When I can’t listen to a song, read a book by a beloved writer, enjoy a movie, or even want to see the world beyond my door, this is obviously something I cannot easily fix on my own.
I kept the business card of the therapist who worked with me after TheEx and I broke up, and I found it a few months ago. It’s been sitting in a letter holder on my desk, taunting me to call, as I bargained with myself every day to make the call but only if I felt if things were too drastic. But that is the funny thing about depression, it’s slow, wavering hold over you like a snake coiling itself up your body. You almost always don’t notice how depressed you really are until it’s almost too late.
I called him this morning and left a message. A small sense of relief? Yes. A small ray of hope.
Fight. Not flight.
TTFN,
Lisa
1. Cross-stitching.
Thruster, Mover, Inciter
Dear Internet,
It’s a beautiful afternoon here at Throbbing Manor and I plan on taking full advantage of it before the cold eventually sets in. Since I’ve spent most of the summer, okay all of the summer, cooped up in the house, the desire to be outside sometimes borders on desperation.
TheHusband and I got into one of our many fake fights this morning because I’ve not been after the doctor’s and physical therapist’s rules to the letter. When he pointed out this was the exact same behavior as my mother1, I decided if there was any good time to change it would be now. I’ve been monitoring my behaviors all summer to figure out routines which would not only work on my days off from the library, but also I could easily modify as I move from working part to full time.
The big time suck, of course, is social networking. You cannot just login and read Twitter/Facebook/Tumblr or whatever your vice is and get off (figuratively and literally) in a short amount of time. There is some stickiness to this wicket as many of my friends are only on X network and often, that may be the ONLY way to communicate with them. Social networking is also part of what I do for the library, so I need to be up to date with what is happening in those worlds, so it’s a lot harder to just kiss off social networks or even specific services.
Ultimately, I think the real motivation of what’s keeping me on these networks is I want people to read what I write. I want my words to connect, resonate, laugh, and perhaps give others courage (or fear depending on what it is I’m writing about) so that at the very least, we do not always feel so damned alone. I find it hugely interesting with all of these tools to connect us, so many of those that I’m acquainted with often still feel like they are all alone. This may not happen all the time, sure, but even I have found while I may have over 300 friends on Facebook, but when TheHusband had seizures in the spring of 2011 and I rushed him to the hospital, I had no one to call locally for comfort. I not only want to be big in Japan, but I want a more locally fulfilled life.
With that being said, I received a lot of outpouring of support across the networks as of late over this morning’s entry and others. While I may not have responded to all of those who have written, I did want to publicly let everyone who has reached out to me to let them know how much I appreciate and adore everything you have said and given me.
This space, here, is my safe space. While I am grateful for those who have reached out to me and tell me they are there for me, please understand if I do not immediately take you up on your offer. I use this space to work out what I’m feeling, but attempting to express those thoughts does not always work vocally or in an area I cannot control. Each piece takes me hours to write so to vomit emotionally on a person is lot more complex then it is here. Also understand that I have a difficult time discussing my feelings with TheHusband and I live with him.
With that all being said, I still encourage people to comment, whether via the comment option at the bottom of the posts, via email, or on any of the social networks I am. I want to know that you’re alive and listening.
By the by, Wedensday the Pug and I were chased out of the backyard this afternoon by an indignant squirrel who kept yelling at us, for over a half an hour, from the tree tops. At first I thought it was several squirrels fighting, only when I looked up in the trees, I saw one squirrel running up and down the branches, squawking, but no other squirrels were (that I could see) in the vicinity. The squirrel made a point to jump lower and lower, keeping its gaze on the dog which is when I figured the squirrel must of thought Wednesday was intruding and it wanted to protect its space. Fair enough. I took Wednesday in and as soon as we were in the garage, the squawking immediately stopped. My office looks out onto the back area and I have yet to hear a single peep for the rest of the afternoon.
There is a metaphor in there somewhere, I just know it.
TTFN,
Lisa
1. He was commenting on how mother has been hospitalized and then placed in a physical rehabilitation center for nearly four months each time, two years in a row. Both of these incidents stemmed from her own negligence of her body, meaning that as someone who is a brittle brittle brittle, has congestive heart failure, and severe arthritis to the point that she’s had joint replacement surgery, she takes terrible care of her health. The doctor’s have told her repeatedly that all of this could be circumvented if she stopped eating like crap, exercised, and was more proactive.
Precious or costly things
Dear Internet,
I often feel like a spectator to my own train wreck of a life.
After years in the making, my mother and I broke up on Sunday. I spent much of the afternoon and night writing about it, only to find that I could not wrap my brain, and apparently my fingers, around the whole episode. Thousands of words were written and thousands were tossed aside.1 Instead of the world lifting from my shoulders, I felt the guilt that often hides in the shadows and was now dancing around my peripheral heart with glee. My heart itself felt like it was tightening so hard that I could not breathe.
The cumulation of our break-up, for me, was the realization she may have lied to me about something very big. After getting over the initial shock of, “Why in thee fuck have I not thought of this sooner?”, I felt my entire world crumble and I was instantly emotionally drained
Her potential lie has two consequences:
- If what she told me was indeed a lie, then she not only poisoned me with her hatred against my father, but she ruined my relationship with him; whom I’ll never get a chance to make-up with since he’s been dead 12 years.
- If what she told me was not a lie, then why did she never protect me, ever, from that danger?
What started down this road of holy fuckery was putting the connections together after her birthday lunch earlier in the day. She and I were buffered by TheHusband and my brother, ensuring that we barely spoke a word throughout the entire strained meal. After, I spent the better part of the afternoon obsessing over how thin our links had become to the other in the last year; with TheHusband wondering loudly, and quite rightly, why I had not broken the connection long ago. I steadfastly believed, until the very second I did not, I could not be that girl. I could not, no matter how horrid our relationship was, give up on her as a daughter. I did not want to be filled with regret after she was dead for missed chances and opportunities for maternal connection. I was barely on speaking terms with my father when he died and it has haunted me for over a decade on everything I may have potentially lost with him and I did not want to go through with that with her.
I’ve never known a time when she said anything even remotely kind about him. As I got older, I started piercing together some of the mistruths she had told in relation to him and of course to me, and rationalized it was all due to, at various times of her life, depression, being bi-polar, or general bitchiness about her divorce from him. But whatever reason she may have had for what she said, in this particular instance, could only come from pure evil and I could not rationale away what she did any other way.
When that connection was made, that I knew she had lied to me in the past and that this one event that shaped much of my teenage years and beyond could also potentially be a lie, the bond between us was finally broken.
Just so we’re clear, there was a long period of time in my ’20s when she and I did not speak. However, since the death of my father in 2000, I have tried desperately in vein to work things out with her. And in the years since then, anytime I’ve tried to tell her or even just to discuss my thoughts and feelings about our relationship (good or bad), it usually boils down to she either telling me if she hurt my feelings, she didn’t mean it and she’s sorry or that I’m insanely jealous of my brother (because it is always about him) or she claims she never said whatever it is I’m supposing telling her she said. There is no real discussion, catharsis, emotional break throughs or fuck, even understanding.
In the very near future, I will be removing myself from her legal documents and transferring that over to my brother. I will be canceling and/or removing her from any accounts or services she may use through me.
While I know I may be revisiting this again and again in the future to work out feelings, she no longer exists in my world.
TTFN,
Lisa
1. The baby was not quite thrown out with the bathwater just yet. I have been using, daily, Day One for all of my personal journaling needs. Since I have it on all my devices and machines, it syncs seamlessly with iTunes and Dropbox. The tossed aside content was added as Sunday’s journal entry and will probably remain there until I feel braver discussing it publicly.
Sunday Fits and Starts
Dear Internet,
This is how it goes:
Wake up.
Get ready for the day. Read the Internet. Wipe the dog down after her romp outside. While both lounging on the bed, have a discussion with TheHusband about Canterbury Tales vs Inferno vs Decameron vs Arabian Nights. Intrigued, TheHusband brushes up on his medieval authors on his tablet while I finish writing a blog post that was started earlier in the week. TheHusband moves to obtain sustenance for us while I move to my office.
Begin the final prep of the white Macbook (Rakish Cad) I’m selling, I finish installing software on TheHusband’s old Macbook (Brazen Hussy) which I’m turning into desktop. Update The Sims Medieval, start new game, and use iPhone (Wanton Harlot) to find names of a famous/infamous medieval woman to name character. Find an interesting woman to model my Sims charceter on but get discouraged by how the game continues to crash on a machine that is far better equipped to handle said game then on Rakish Cad. Kill the game, turn on Of Courtly Love and Bawdiness Pandora station. Start writing a new blog post, interspersed with beating up Rakish Cad and eating lunch.
Think about earlier seen websites about medieval women, Chaucer, and medievalism in general plants the seed to see A Knights Tale again. Check Netflix to see if it is streaming, IT IS. Add to Instant Queue. Netflix then recommends I should watch Trailer Park Boys. Which means since Kristin is not on gTalk, get on Twitter to let her know about the my Trailer Park Boys discovery (find out later, she’s already known). End up having a great discussion with @hubbit [snippets] on the changing of the Englisc/sh/sch language. Titles are swapped, I end up back at “ye olde shoppe, Amezone” and end up purchasing a few more books, The Anglo-Saxon World: An Anthology (Oxford World’s Classics)
and The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales for a project I’ve been ruminating about for a few years.
Close out of Twitter, for it is dangerous.
Go back to working on blog post. Ruminating, ruminating. Marvel at how much I bounce from one thought to the next. Open up Twitter to tweet lines of thought and opted to write a blog post on the subject instead. Close out Twitter before I get sucked in yet again.
That was several hours ago.
It is now after 5PM, Rakish Cad is almost ready for its new owner, and my office is no closer to being cleaner or as organized as I had planned. What should have taken me a few hours from start to finish (prep Rakish Cad, move Brazen Hussy, sort out desks, vacuum) is in the process of being an all day affair. Which means the work that I had slated to get done today on my other projects will get pushed out to later this evening or tomorrow.
Plato reputedly said,
The first and the best victory is to conquer self.
But Plato didn’t have access to the Internet.
ttfn,
Lisa
Insecticide! (Or how I may die)
Dear Internet,
When it comes to bugs inside of Throbbing Manor, I take a very druidic approach: They can hang out here as long as they are not going to damage anything or annoy me. If they keep their end of the bargin, I won’t kill them. Spiders hang out, I don’t scream like a banshee when I see something inching along the floor; all in all it’s a pretty symbolic relationship.
Until I saw this crawling across the wall the other day:
True to my word, I let it go on its merry little way.
Until I saw another one.
Until I saw a few more.
That night, TheHusband and I killed close to 20 of them and we haven’t stopped the killing since.
And the best part? They are ONLY in the master bedroom, the one room I’m in 98% of the day.
TheHusband did research and found the bugs are harmless, and not really invasive, mainly nuisences. According to University of Minnesota’s Department of Entomology:
They are most abundant during hot, dry summers when followed by warm springs.
Considering the weather we’ve been having this year, this makes total sense! It also explains why didn’t see them last year. We’ve identified that they are coming in through the sitting room windows in the master bedroom somehow. We’re not quite sure HOW but since there are boxelder bug carcases inbetween the double glass window panes, and every morning when we wake up, the floors look like a boxelder bug massacre occurred, that seems to be the most logical reason. And Wednesday? She can’t be arsed by all that is going on as long as she has her fan.
But the real fear is not the bugs themselves (UofM’s site says that what we see is all that we get, they do not nest in homes), but because my lackadaisical attitude towards bugs in the home has flipped 180 degrees and I’ve become an insect killing machine, TheHusband may one day find me covered like this:
ttfn,
Lisa
