What is this, dirt bike day?!

View out my patio door.

It is lovely it is here today. The clouds make me very happy and it's generally nice outside. I opened the patio door to bring some fresh air in the house. We have a large lot across the street from us that is for sale. There are trees and brush, someone has left some stuff and some people like to dump their unwanted crap there. Aside from the trash, it's a really nice lot except for today because every idiot in the area with a dirt bike is out there. I wouldn't mind it so much if I didn't have to hear it. There's just something nerve grating about the inconsistencies in motor rhythm. I don't rightly know how to explain it but to be sure it's fucking annoying. I can't even shut it out by closing the door. 

Next to said lot, there is a wooded area, kind of like a mini forest. It's the place Skoora and I love to drive through. Since it's so nice and provided that it isn't raining and my back isn't so bad tomorrow, I kind of want to go out and clean up our spot and maybe have lunch there or even dinner. I just really want to get out while it's nice. I'm tried of sitting in the house and only going somewhere when we have an errand to run. I love the library, don't get me wrong, I just want to do more than just go to the library all the time. I figure half an hour outside, away from the house, will be nice too. I'd go for ten minutes. 

As usual, I'm not making any progress in trying to get things done. Part of that is due to my back and today I have a migraine. I was going to take a shower when I woke up but I decided to have breakfast first. While I was eating I ended up with a very needy kitty on my lap. Yoda has been so clingy in the last couple of days. He follows me around the house, meows at me, and pretty much insists on being either right next to me or on me. It's really cute. But, I need to go take a shower.

The good news is, I have managed to get some pictures edited and will get some prints ordered soon. Aside from reading and writing, my next goal is to get the craft and culinary blog going again. 

This side of haggard

Please forgive any and all errors, I am too tried to edit this...

My new medicine, the one for fibromyalgia, is helping a little, and believe me every little bit helps. However, it sure does make me tried and I certainly seem to exert some form of energy trying to fight against the drowsiness, which in turn just makes me exhausted. It;s kind of like I am too tried to stay awake and just awake enough that I can't sleep. And since it feels like I am running on fumes, I haven't been doing so well in staving off panic attacks or rationalizing with myself enough to keep myself from getting overwhelmed.

In the last week or so, I've panicked about writing and not writing enough to suit the new, more manageable goals I set. I've freaked over how long it's taken me to write the first chapter of a novel I am rewriting and reworking even though I know the characters very well. I've even been upset because I feel like I can't relax enough to write because I've been doing it earlier in the day, at the library, and I keep thinking of everything I still have left to do in the day.

I've also been upset because I'm not reading as much as I'd like. I'm not doing the crafts I'd like or keeping up with blogs. I've had a whole slew of bizarre and unsettling dreams. I'm becoming overly critical about food again in the way that no matter how healthy the food is and how small a portion, think each meal will make me gain a pound. That's really dangerous, especially because there are times that I haven't eaten enough and then get sick, weak, and shaky. Funny, how I've been trying to balance the right combinations of food, cut the portions down, and eat more than three times a day and I still can't seem to lose weight. Don't worry, I'm not in any danger of hurting myself food wise. I'm not that stupid. I still eat and I do not throw my food up. It's the thoughts in my head that aren't very good.

Anyway, all of this is I'm usually pretty good at rationalizing and working through, even if I have to vent about it for a bit and just get it off my chest. I usually feel better and can look at it differently afterwards. But not recently, not being so tired.

I'm pretty sure I scared my Aunt when I called asking to talk to my cousin Sheena the night before last. I was crying and when I started to unload, which I usually never do with my Aunt, she woke my cousin up and I talked to her for a minute before my Dad called. I cut my call with my cousin short and then spoke to my Dad. As you can guess, I ended up unloading on him, at which point he told me to put the phone down and get one of my nerve pills, and then come back to the phone. After awhile I started to calm down and when I was, I left my room and finished cooking dinner.

Today is going to be a doozy, I can tell. Neither Skoora or I could sleep last night so we gave up and decided to work on somethings. But we are so tried that we aren't getting anything of any value done. I think we are going to give up, set an alarm, and try to get a few hours of sleep before ramming the rest of the day a little later. I bet we can get a good solid 4 hours in before we really have to be up.

I do have some good news though, I have some really nice new pictures of my cats, and I am going to order some prints. I want to get some for myself and order just a few of the really nice ones for friends and family. Here is a teaser pic for my friends...

It's Galen and he was laying on the book I was reading.

       

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.