women! 30 October, 2007

criminey.

i’m having some serious-ass girl problems, yo. and it’s seriously bringing me down.

problem girl #1 is more like a friend of the group…she and her husband play wow, and they’ve been down to visit the crowd here in raleigh. they even went to the beach house with us for a week. and normally, she’s really sweet, but things lately have been…weird. she’s complained to a couple of us in private that she “feels like a fifth wheel,” and how she feels like our group is elitist. this, from someone we invited into our homes, into our private chat rooms, into our lives. she almost never talks to me anymore, not since i didn’t share her disgruntled opinion of the group, and any talking she does do has to be initiated by me. frankly, i’m getting tired of it, and i wish i could talk to ben about it, but he gets all grumpy and calls me silly. which infuriates me even more.

the other problem girl is an old friend, but i haven’t heard from her in forever. normally, this wouldn’t bug me so much…i’m kind of notorious for not being very good at keeping in touch, and i often take for granted and assume that my friends know i love them without regular communication. i’m weird like that. but i digress. i was talking to a coworker friend the other day, and we were discussing how women “break up” with each other. like, if you date a man or woman, there comes a need in some situations to break up. when you do so, there’s a pretty standard way of doing it…whatever your method, you give a clear signal to the other party that the relationship is over. but when it comes to our female friends, we often don’t have that formal ritual…we just stop talking, or stop hanging out, or stop returning calls…i mean, unless there’s a big fight or something. and that got me to thinking about this girl. i’m just not sure where i stand with her. i miss her, and i’m sure if we saw each other we’d hug and talk and there’d be the general presentation of friendship, but would that be out of habit, or because we really are still friends? after all, we don’t really know much about each other these days. and see, in my mind, there can still be friendship, even in this situation…if i care about someone as a friend, we can go years without communicating, and i’ll still love that person as much as i did the last time we talked. all the lapse in communication means for me is that much more to catch up on when we do talk. but i’m starting to wonder if i’m a rare breed in ladyland in that respect…apparently, women like to talk and stay in close touch and go shopping and stuff.

sometimes, i really wish i was a gay man. and not just because of the occasional fantasy i have of the doctor and captain jack…

crummy day blues 26 October, 2007

despite the glory of much-needed rain over the past couple of days, today has been pretty crappy so far.

first, i can’t get to sleep until nearly 3 am because of a headache i haven’t been able to completely shake for days now.

then, i check our finances online, only to realize that we are about a hundred times broker than i thought we were, and since ben doesn’t get paid until next friday (and even my piddly little paycheck doesn’t drop until next week sometime), things aren’t gonna look up anytime soon.

this brought about the grim realization that, regardless of how much i love my library, i need to find more fruitful employment PRONTO.  so i applied for another library job at another library.  and while part of me hopes desperately to get this job, a tiny, tiny part of me hopes i don’t.

then, i go and stick my big foot in my big mouth and end up offending a good friend by talking shit about a friend of his…complicated situation, but the friend-o’-friend is a nice guy outside a certain online game we play, but a bit of a pain in said game.  i sort of elaborated too much on that, to say the least.

and lastly, as if life weren’t kicking me in the pants hard enough, the aforementioned headache has returned.  with a vengeance.  and it’s not getting any better with my mind racing and obsessing over all these other little problems that, whether they’re within my control or not, just won’t go away.

so i think i’m gonna go assume the fetal position in bed and cry myself into a nap.  rainy days are good for much-needed cries.

dude, wtf? 23 October, 2007

95% of the time, my family is good. never completely normal, mind you, but i love them.

and even during the 5% of the time that they make me wince, i love them. just to clarify.

i just had one of those wince-worthy conversations with my mom.

and i won’t go into too many details, so that my eyes won’t become permanently squinty from all the wincing, but i think the worst part was when she started defending my baby sister’s meth-head, alcoholic, hep-c-positive, 32-year-old jailbird boyfriend.

“well, you can’t really blame him,” she says. “his mom was giving him alcohol and morphine when he was a kid to make him stop crying.”

wince. wince. WINCE. that is unfortunate, truly, but it doesn’t make me any less disgruntled about his annoyingly-persistent relationship with my already-fucked-up baby sister. my baby sister who, i might add, is also hep-c positive now, thanks to him being a jackass and sharing a needle with her.

and then, i guess to make sure my head would completely explode and not just fizzle a bit, mom concludes with, “well, we pray for him.”

in her defense, though, i have not, in the 7 or so years since the fateful decision was made, told her of my split with the faith. i probably should at some point, but i figure my parents have enough to worry about without me adding perceived danger to my immortal soul to the list.

i love my family, more than life. but sometimes, they melt my face right off.

*giggle* 23 October, 2007

i heart j.k. rowling.
and lolcats.

oh, wobegon… 10 October, 2007

for many, many years, i’ve been a big fan of prairie home companion and garrison keillor. the tales of life in lake wobegon, the stories of guy noir, private eye…i was never much of a fan of the musical guests, typically, but sometimes they had some really good ones, like mark knopfler.

i’ve always thought garrison keillor was one of the coolest people ever to exist, but my faith in his awesomeness was tested today…

oh man, weird dream 9 October, 2007

like everyone, i have my fair share of weird dreams. last night’s, though, was a bit of a doozie. i’m writing it here, b/c i woke up thinking, “i should totally use some of that in a story.” and, since nanowrimo’s coming up, i’m starting to really write down any and all story ideas and/or elements…

what might’ve been 4 October, 2007

so i’m watching last night’s episode of ghost hunters. it’s a guilty pleasure, but i can never get ben to watch it, so i have to record it and watch while he’s at work. anyway, in this episode, they’re investigating at the presidio in monterey, california.

and it’s kinda bringing me down.

see, if things had worked out and i had made it through basic with my back intact, i would’ve gone to russian school at the presidio, to be a russian linguist. it was sort of a dream of mine…and it was gonna be a sweet life, since, from what i’d heard, linguists, especially very good ones (and i’d already taken some russian in high school, so i was already a step ahead), were guaranteed to rise in rank very quickly. i was gonna go to officer school and lead a life of excitement as a russian translator. but then, stuff happened, my back went *BREAK*, and here i am, frumpy housewife in a mumu, watching the ghost hunters investigate at the language school i didn’t get to attend.

but then, on the flip side, had i actually gotten to go there and continue my military career, chances are extremely good that i’d be deployed somewhere right now, almost certainly not married to ben. and sure, i’d be all hardcore, with my russian fluency and (probably) knockout figure and excitement and stuff, but…life without ben? is that even possible?

sigh.

wow, flashback 2 October, 2007

3 entries in a day…i must be really bored.

but i just had a flashback.

chester made me think of it…can you remember back in the day when friendship books were popular? or maybe it was just a thing in our little town…you’d basically make a little booklet asking different questions, like favorite color or biggest crush or whatever. then you’d get your friends to fill it out…yeah, maybe that was a little lame. but we were into it at the time. anyway, it must’ve been like 5th or 6th grade, and one of those was circulating among my little circle of friends. among all the usual questions was one in particular that asked, “what are your pet peeves?” well, there was one girl, a friend of a friend, who didn’t like me (and didn’t make a secret out of it). for her entry on that page, she wrote my name.

i, meanwhile, didn’t even know what a pet peeve was, but since there was a bus driver named mrs. peavy who lived on a domestic farm, i figured maybe it had something to do with which of her pets was your favorite. i couldn’t imagine what the asker was thinking, or why girl-who-hated-me thought i was one of mrs. peavy’s pets. i didn’t even ride her bus.

incidentally, this girl and i later became friends. so there’s your happy ending.

(i miss sifl & olly…)

the mountains sing in me 2 October, 2007

the title, indeed the inception of this entry, was inspired by a recent blog post by melissa. one of the things i love most about mel is we share the same pain of living so far from the mountains we grew up in. mel’s family, like mine, has lived in those mountains for generations, and they flow in her blood just as strongly as in mine.

as much as i agree with mel’s sentiment that living out here in the city is a blessing and a curse (distance from mountains = bad, distance from family drama = good), i think she’s overlooked one other small detail. the mountains we grew up in have changed drastically since we were barefoot little girls running around in the woods. our hometown has been developed so much, growing so big and so many people moving in, it’s not the same anymore. time was when i could go to the local wal-mart and run into at least half a dozen or more people i knew. nowadays, it’s like i don’t know anyone. seems like every time we go home, there’s a new building, a new shopping center, a new patch of land that’s been clear-cut for a new house (or houses) or whatever.

the mountains that melissa and i love and miss are still there…they’ve stood long before any of our ancestors, and will still be standing long after we’re gone. but the world we knew in those mountains, the people, the atmosphere, the life, went away a long time ago. the culture we were raised in is slowly disappearing…but i will make sure my children know their roots, where they came from, and most of all, i will make sure the mountains sing in the blood of my children, too.

scooby and sniffles and books (oh my!) 2 October, 2007

today is a good day to be off work. cartoon network has started my day out with 2 episodes of a pup named scooby-doo and another of my childhood favorites, the new scooby-doo movies. i am in my happy place…well, as much as i can be. my real happy place would be grannie’s living room, circa early 1980’s, with a bowl of cereal, watching these with grannie. but that aside, i gotta admit, i was a little disappointed when i read the wikipedia page for the new scooby-doo movies. stupid greedy rights-holders.

in other news, i haven’t felt entirely right for about a week now. i think i’ve been fighting off ben’s cold…my nose has been all kinds of wonky, and i’ve had an on-again, off-again headache for days. i wish this cold would either set in and kick my ass, or go away and leave me alone. the whole “not sick but not feeling well” jive is harshing my gig, yo.

in other other news, i think things are okay between april, the aforementioned workplace friend, and me again. i think the problem is she’s got a lot of stress at work, between issues of time management and drama between coworkers. we hooked up on sunday for last-minute planning for our banned books read-out and some gaming. ben and i got to meet michael, another of april and josh’s friends, and got to play two more card games which we must now try to own: guillotine and chrononauts. chrononauts was my favorite…by the end of the game, we had reversed john lennon’s murder so that he lived, became a senator, banned guns and made weed legal. *sigh* if only…

as for the read-out, i think it was a success! despite the fact that half the audience was made up of friends of mine, we still had a pretty good turn-out. the readers were mostly library employees and folks we guilt-tripped into reading, but 3 little girls also came up and read the first chapter of junie b. jones is a graduate girl, a selection from scary stories to tell in the dark, and the sorting hat scene from harry potter and the sorcerer’s stone. i was kinda bummed…i read 3 poems from a light in the attic by shel silverstein, and i’d also wanted to read a passage from annie on my mind by nancy garden. i ended up not reading the latter, though, partly because we had enough participation to fill an hour but also because the book deals with homosexuality, and since the 3 little girls (and their moms) were still there, april and i were kind of concerned about undoing any positive vibes we’d managed to create for the event. it kinda pisses me off that it had to be like that…i mean, in a world where racism, prejudice and hate in general are usually the flavor of the day, the fact that people would be offended by who other people love makes absolutely no sense to me. but, that little rant aside, i can’t complain…the turn-out and participation was better than we’d hoped for, and i think we really made people aware of banned books and some of the ridiculous reasons books are challenged.

i mean, who would challenge uncle shel?