The night is dark and full of cats!

Ellie-belly

Forget "the night is dark and full of terrors" as the Red Priestess from Game of Thrones always says, the night is dark and full of cats. Three of them to be exact and all three demand that I feed them and then get my ass to bed so they can either lay on me, my pillow, and or around my feet.

Yoda-chan

I really should be in bed but unfortunately I am staying up long enough to see if money came and if so then I need to go to the store. Groceries are a necessity and I really don't want to fight the 1st of the month shoppers tomorrow. I don't do well with people en-mass, they are loud, pushy, and down right rude. I can sleep when I get back and then even sleep in since I won't have to spend an hour or two tomorrow shopping.

Galen-Monster

I've been spending almost every afternoon at the city library. It is marginally quieter there, well until the kids get out of school and then things are a little iffy. I didn't know this until a day ago, but there are actually employees whose only job is to walk through the library and monitor what goes on. Kind of like library bouncers if you like. It's actually really awesome, so when a group, and it's always a group, of kids gets rowdy and loud, one of the monitors comes along and shuts them up for a bit. But I think from now on, when Skoora and I go, I am going to make sure that we rent a private study room by the time the kids get to the library. It will just make things easier, I think.

Speaking of the library, I applied for a circulation clerk position. It's only 10 hrs a week but it is a start and I wouldn't be lifting too much. Also, it's a library job and that's one of my dream jobs.

Well, two minutes until I know if I am going shopping. See ya later.

It's just that kind of day

First let me post a nice video from Youtube Misty Mountians (Hobbit OST)

I actually own this soundtrack, I've kind of mentioned it a time or two on Facebook and to my Dad, and have been listening to it off and on. It's a little hard to really listen to it but a little at a time because my laptop is wonky and on the down slope. Any time I open a new program or something is loading on a webpage, the speakers crackle. It's very weird and pretty much held together by gorilla tape, hope, and regular maintenance to software and basic cleaning. Come to think of it, I need to back up said sound track and recent writings from the last few days.

Anyway, it's the kind of day where I feel sluggish to the point that I am having trouble keeping my eyes open. but new medicine will sometimes do that to a person. So, I think I will toddle off bed for a little bit, get some reading done, as much as I can do, and get up in time to make dinner, then tackle some writing and update blogs I am behind on.

Galen Gladamir

Oh and weirdly enough, the cats have been bickering, all day, all three of them. I've had to corporal cuddle Galen. Corporal Cuddling is just holding him and petting him. He doesn't like to be held or petted very much by anyone, for those who do not know him in person and he's quite the little punkass. So when he's being mean to the other kitties, we give him love. 

Mrs. Sharp's Traditions

I've been doing some research for a story I am writing and a lot of that research has been on the Victorian period. To be honest, I didn't really read the book on Victoria and Albert like I wanted too, and I didn't get The Writer's Guide to Everyday life in Victorian and Regency England finished before it was due back at the library. At least that latter is on my Amazon wish list and I can check it out again next time it becomes available.

However, I've stumbled across a neat book called Mrs. Sharps Traditions: Nostalgic Suggestions for Re-Creating the Family Celebrations and Seasonal Pastimes of the Victorian Home, by Sarah Ban Breathnach. It's a fun look into how the 'proper' Victorian woman should run her house (at least how Mrs. Sharp thought during her time- lots of advice and ideas), very crafty, very family oriented, and pulls all that Mrs. Sharp wrote forward in time for the modern woman.

The first half of the book talks about Mrs. Sharp's life, how she adjusted to her husband getting sick and having to run the house on her own. How she became short and cranky with her children from being a full time working mother. Being that this was a different time period and the fact that Mrs. Sharp and her husband were of some means monetarily and not living pay check to pay check like most of us do, she was able to quit her job and stay at home with her children when she saw what her working was doing to them and herself. There's some other factors in there but I won't mention it in case anyone wants to read the book.  Oh, and also in this first part, she talks about how a woman needs to make the home the happiest place for everyone living in it and very much a stable environment.

The second half is about every month of the year and what little celebrations and crafts you and your family can do together as well as some of the traditions from the Victorian time period. There are even some recipes and lots of little craft ideas from major holidays to rainy days.

The book has already given me some craft ideas of my own as well as some ideas of what I could add to my story/characters to make things a little richer. And believe it or not, there's a lot that I agree with as far as Mrs. Sharp's thoughts on child rearing and homemaking go. Not everything mind you, but there is a lot of stuff that just rings true. 

Fibromyalgia

I got up early today to see my doctor about the possibility of me having Fibromyalgia. I've actually wondered about it for the last couple of years but never really thought to look into it. Well, I did think to, but either I didn't have the money to go to the doctor, there was some other pressing medical issue, or the little annoying echo I sometimes hear in my head that is my Dad's voice said, "This is as good as it gets, suck it up and get on with your life". Generally, I've been able to do that until about a year or so ago when I hurt my back and when your back hurts all the time, having anything else hurt pretty much makes you more miserable than you can stand.

So like I said, I talked to my doctor, she poked at the trigger/pressure points, which, of course, hurt, and she prescribed me with a medicine to that will hopefully help.

Fibromyalgia is a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain accompanied by fatigue, sleep, memory and mood issues. Researchers believe that fibromyalgia amplifies painful sensations by affecting the way your brain processes pain signals. Taken from the Mayoclinic website.

But I am not going to rely on only medicine to deal with this. I've taken various antibiotics, Ritalin (I had ADHD), migraine medicine, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, birth control (for medical issues), a brief time period of sleeping pills, various OTCs for pain, allergies and heartburn, and pain medication for chronic pain. Quite frankly I don't enjoy taking medicine and I am worried about my liver, so I have been looking at other means to help alleviate some of the symptoms of depression, anxiety, heartburn, and pain. A change in diet and exercise hasn't really helped that much although I have been more consistent with the change in diet than the exercise (kind of hard to get motivated to go swim or walk or get on an elliptical when you have trouble getting out of bed). I've even done a chronic pain study that focused on getting people to relax more, meditate, and you get the drift. I've never really been able to meditate and I don't deep breathe for long because for some reason I get light headed, I still try. I have managed to knock out most of my problems with heartburn, which is really cool!

Next up, even though I don't like taking medicine, I am going to look at some vitamins. I'm not too interested in giving up caffeine but I can cut down on my intake, not that it's that much anyway, and I don't know, I will see what I can find.     

Taking Responsibility

I never really was too terribly enchanted with most people and as I get older (sounds strange saying 'as I get older' when I am only 28) I think I become further disenchanted. In fact, a lot of the time I find myself deeply disgusted and even furious even with the people around me, family, friends, associates ect... It's not that I think or view myself as being better than this person or that person, I don't. I'm actually very fucking self-abasing and not because I think I need sympathy or even want it, it's because I truly believe that I really don't have anything worthy to give the grand scheme of things and feel like a general waste of space. No, really, I have these thoughts on a daily basis and me actually saying it is in no way an effort to garner sympathy, trust me I don't want your pity it just pisses me off.

But how I view and what I think of myself and what others think/view me isn't really the issue of this particular post. The issue is that I am exceedingly tired of hearing and seeing people not take responsibility for their actions. We have some asshole who wants to go shoot/ stab/ beat a bunch of people and the first thing the media and lawyers want to do is say it's because the bad person has some mental malfunction. Okay, so maybe 25%, 50%, or even 75% of those cases that's true, but not every single one. At some point people are fucking evil and enjoy hurting others because that's what makes them happy and no amount of 'well that's not normal they must be insane' is going to fix, alter, or change that. Blaming the bad person's personality, wants, or kicks off on mental instability instead of looking at the blatant fact that they have no moral compass is down right myopic.

Most criminals are a good example of the not wanting to take responsibility  There's a million reasons why they had to commit their crimes, even text book examples. 'It's societies fault', 'Mommy and Daddy didn't love me enough', 'I was bullied', 'My dad was a dead beat', 'I never learned right from wrong', 'someone made me', really the list goes on and it's all whiney-bullshit which brings me to the next example. 

Drug addicts and alcoholics are just as bad if not worse. A druggy and an alcoholic will use any excuse. They blame their actions on the drug(s) and alcohol and they blame the reason for the abuse of these substances on everything and anything they can. In the case of my cousin Tony, who has been an alcoholic since he was 17 or 18, he started drinking because he wanted to be like his adoptive father. Then he started driving drunk and nearly killed himself when he rolled his van. His reason for drinking that night was that his girlfriend broke up with him. Then he had to drink because he was in a lot of pain. Now it's because his adoptive father has passed away and he can't handle the pain of that. He recently attacked his sisters because one of them didn't want him drinking in her house. He got angry, why was he angry? Because he was drinking and then he attacked his sisters. The next day not only did he not want to own up to it but he didn't even care and he was drinking again.  

In the case of drug addicts they will use the same excuses and I've even seen first hand what drug addicts can and will do to the people they claim to love.They will lie, cheat, steal, beat, abuse, and destroy everything around them. And they will try and push the blame off themselves and on to someone or something or some situation. Either way it's not their fault. 

 

One of the last things that I absolutely loathe is when parents refuse to take responsibility for their children. No, I am not a parent and perhaps someday I will get the chance to have kids of my own and you can be damned sure I am not going to blame my child's lack of decency, respect, manners, and notions of right and wrong on the fact that they have ADHD or other mental impairments if they have them or not. I see a lot of parents not disciplining their kids. I see a lot of parents not grown up themselves pushing their kids on other people or telling their kids to go play. I see a lot of parents ignoring their kids. Guess what, your kid is your responsiblity and when your kid gets to be 16 and gets expelled from school because he beat the shit out too many people and you didn't do a damned thing to correct that behavior, then it's not just your child's fault, it's yours too. 

Now before you think I am an advocate for 'let's blame the parents' knock that thought out of your head right now. At some point there is only so much a parent can do. You can have model parents and one really shitty child who grows into a shitty adult. the parents could have done everything right and tried their hardest. That doesn't make them the ones to blame because at some point the responsibility for a persons actions has to begin to fall on them. In the end you as an individual person did this or did that, said this or said that, took this drug or that drug, drank this drink or that drink, hurt someone, killed someone, set that fire, broke into that house, stole, lied, cheated, whatever. You decided to do those things, you made that conscious decision to do what you did or didn't do and it's you who needs/should own up to it and take responsibility for it. Because when you don't, you look like a piece of shit and less of a person.

Back in the Inland Northwest pt. 2

I decided to write this post in two parts because I have a little more to say than I normally do. So while the first post was kind of a 'good stuff' update, this one is a little more of how things have been since I arrived home.

First I just want to say that I am not thrilled with United Airlines. I would love to give the flight attendants the benefit of the doubt but they were so cranky. I think they were expecting everyone to be bitches to them but no one was gruff or angry that the plane was delayed two hours due to maintenance, at least not that I observed. Frankly, I would rather wait two hours and ride on a safe plane than risk something going wrong and it crashing. In the end I think I much rather prefer Frontier.

Getting home was nice. Skoora and I had dinner out and I really missed her. She had so much to tell me and it was really nice to be able to have a conversation with her that wasn't a text or over the phone. But we pretty much came home, talked for an hour or so, I showed her some pictures, and then we slept. Yoda has been my shadow since I've been home, by the way. He is so happy to see me, so happy to lay on me, and so happy to sleep next to me.

Oh boy did I sleep. I slept all night and woke up yesterday long enough to start going through my mail, go to the store, and have some lunch. Then, because I was hurting so much I went back to bed and slept all day! I really couldn't believe it. Of course we had company, I knew that before I laid down, and I felt really bad about sleeping so long. So I got my butt out of bed and tried really hard to hang out with everyone.

We had dinner and the noise level in the house was a bit louder than usual. I thought, well it's been three weeks of quiet, I just need to get used to it again. Well, it got worse. I tried to play as many rounds of the card game we were playing after dinner as I could before my back was unbearable and the chaos and noise just overwhelmed me. When it got to be too much and I started to panic, I hurried to the bedroom. I wanted to get away before I upset anyone and also because I need to take a minute to breathe.

As usual, nothing goes the way I plan it and I ended up crying and freaking out pretty bad, quietly. Always quietly, I don't want anyone else to know when things get super bad on the off chance it might piss them off. Skoora, my parents, and my cousin Sheena are the only ones who really know exactly how bad it gets. And I will not go into details here just know there are no worries for suicide. Sure, I could do it, but I care too damned much about my parents, family, Skoora, and my cats to hurt them.

One of the things that has been bothering me is how surreal things feel sometimes. I'm not saying that I feel disconnected from myself or reality necessarily, it's just that I will start the day and by the time I go to bed I sometimes ask myself what I did or if I really did this or that and did it really take that long to this task or that task. I suppose it has to do with having to make several life adjustments and the Yo Yo affect I feel from moving, from going to visit people out of town. I don't really feel grounded and the sense of stability I desperately need never quite attainable. It's not for lack of trying.

Lastly, I am really scared for my Cousins and my Aunt. My cousin Tony is so fucking out of control. He hurt me while I was visiting. He got into the car and grabbed my shoulders and collarbones and it hurt so much I wanted to cry. He was trying to be affectionate but he was drunk. Also his ex-girlfriend has been threatening to shoot people because she doesn't like that he left her and went back to his old girlfriend. If that wasn't enough, he refuses to abide by my aunt and Cousin's rule of no drinking while he stays with them and last night he got pissed and beat up Sheena and tried to choke her sister to to death. Screw trying to get him psychiatric help or trying to do interventions. He loves to drink, he's never going to give it up. He loves being a drama queen and playing the woe is me card and never ever taking responsibility for his actions. Fuck him! His ass needs to be in jail where the real bikers can kick his ass.

Back in the Inland Northwest pt. 1

After almost three weeks of near peace and quiet, I am back home where I live. Leaving Kansas was a hard thing and I would be lying if I said that I didn't wish that I could have stayed. All the pretty scenery, my own bed, and familiar material things of my current home, and even the people here can't compare to the absence of my first home in Kansas with my parents. It probably didn't help that I wasn't able to see a friend I haven't seen in years, that I was barely able to visit with my Grandparents, or that my Dad couldn't come into the airport when it was time for me to leave because he refused to cry in public. Another unhelpful aspect was that my cousins weren't doing well nor did the fact that both my parents were sick with the flu.

The good things:
One of my cousin's had surgery to get her tubes tied and also to see if she had ovarian cancer and get a cyst removed. Thankfully she doesn't have cancer nor is there any sign of it. The doctor thinks the cyst ruptured and dissolved, and her tubes have been tied. We thought she was going to be okay but it looks like she will have to get some intestines removed. Frankly, that's better than her having cancer.

I spent some time with my Grandparents, not as much as I would have liked and I am worried about my Grandma's bad feeling over going to Texas this year. I am also worried about Grandpa. He's slipped so much since being in the nursing home while Grandma's leg was broken. But he did remember me and even though he didn't talk much, he did say so himself, that me just being in the house for a few hours was very comforting. He signed his book "To my Hannah," for me and I read a little of it in the air port while waiting for my plane.

I got to see a friend from High school and talk with him for a bit. I saw Jeffery and Sandra for an evening and I was able to see Lucas and Emma three times. I spent a good deal of time with my cousins watching movies and talking.

With my parents, I played Guild Wars with my Dad, went to the Hobbit where Dad and I shamelessly made fun of my Mom in good fun. Mom slept a little through the movie and when she snored it was really funny. At home, when I wasn't feeling so well, my parents and I watched movies and random TV shows and talked about all manner of things. Apparently my Dad wants to get two tattoos and quizzed me on prices and how long things took. Well, I don't know a lot about tattoos except my limited experience and what I have heard from others. So we watched LA Ink, which Dad says he will never watch again. Also, Dad will be getting some more hours at work, which is awesome!

Kali, my parent's dog, is a little punk. She was very excited to see me when I first arrived that she did circles all over the place but do you think that damned dog would let me take a proper picture of her. Not a chance in hell. I had to sneak pictures.

There's no place like home. There's no place like home.

Thanks to my parents I was able to click my ruby red slippers and fly home (yes, back to Kansas) to visit. This is the first vacation I've had in years where I wasn't attending the funeral of a family member. Being that this is a vacation, I don't feel that I have really taken advantage of getting much 'play' time in. The reasons being that my back has been really bothering me and I caught some bug going around. While I am pretty much over the bug, my back is still bad and I have been a little overwhelmed and tired. That being said, I have had the opportunity to do a few things.

I've been to my Grandparent's house. I would like to visit with them more but Grandma didn't want sick germs and so I've stayed away so I don't make them sick. I'm hoping to get over to their house this weekend and while I am there I will visit with a friend I haven't seen in years.

I've visited with my pseudo brother Lucas and his fiance Emma. We watched the new batman move, talked about Mass Effect and how much they think I should get an Xbox or Ps3 and play it. Emma and I chatted about photography for awhile. I've also had them over for pizza at my parent's house where we watched Batman Forever on TV, talked about all manner of things, and they begged for five minutes of guilt tripping about how much they miss me and Skoora and really wish we would move back. Point being, they really fucking miss us to the point that they talk about us almost every day and even try to emulate some of our strange little sayings and quirks. It's really adorable and frankly I felt very special, wanted, and loved. It was so damn nice I almost cried.

I have also spent some time with my Cousin Sheena and her family. I've stayed over night with them three nights and even went with my Cousin Amanda when she had surgery. Good news on that front is that she doesn't have any more cysts or ovarian cancer. One night while staying with them my little cousin Kayleigh (who is soon to be five) and I watched a barbie movie and made necklaces. Kayleigh is so much fun and I've really missed her. Actually, when I came through the gate at the airport she saw me and ran up to me and gave me a big hug and she was so excited! She told me she wanted me to go to the Nifty Nut House, it's a candy and nut store here in town, and she wanted to tell me just about everything on her mind. She also wanted to know why Skoora wasn't with me and wanted to know when Skoora was coming home.

Aside from that I've been spending some time with my parents. I curled up at the foot of my parent's bed with their dog, Kali, and watched Captain America  and the Avengers one night. We tried to watch Red after that but my parents fell asleep midway through and I was falling asleep so I headed downstairs. Mom and I started watching Firefly together and at the moment my Dad and I are watching Van Helsing. Needless to say none of us have felt very well so conversation and movie/TV show watching has pretty much been the happening thing for us. Mom did get her new glasses. I really like them. Dad and I did play Guild Wars for a couple of hours one night but either I haven't been home or neither of us really felt like playing.

For the rest of my trip, I would like to see a couple of friends, spend some more time with family, and just relax.