There are some things in life I have never denied my love for. Men, sweet tea, my children, reading, shit talking, and TV. Actually, it's a much longer list, but this will have to suffice for right now. Since I've banned the TV in the house when the children are awake (okay, I did give just a teensy bit for spring break, but not much), I have determined I have to be much more judicious in what I choose to watch when they are asleep or not here. I have to be selective now. I can't just be running through the channels all willy-nilly watching anything.
So here's some of what I'm watching. Some of it I'm not even watching because I keep forgetting about the shows and they aren't on demand (should that be capitalized?), so I am a little aggravated with myself for missing out on some of them. And no, I don't have the good pay channels, so this is just the tripe I'm catching on regular cable.
In no particular order, and not even alphabetized, because I feel like that would get on my nerves tonight.
The Deadliest Catch - Testosterone wafts out of my TV electronically when this show comes on. I mean, really, how can it not? I am a little annoyed that some channels have taken the whole "men-in-danger" genre a little too far, because honestly, I don't really want to watch Swamp People. Or Swamp Truckers. Or Ice Road Truckers. The Deadliest Catch was one of the pioneers of this genre (in the last five years or so, I would estimate), and it's still the gold standard. I've decided that I could be a great cook on one of those boats, but not The Wizard because that captain is a DICK, but I would be a good cook mainly because those men are so beat down, tired and hungry they'd probably eat anything and still be happy. Oh, wait a minute, I got sea-sick on the Annabel Lee when it was floating down the James River on a sunny April afternoon. Who the hell am I kidding?
Survivor - I think I've watched almost every season of this show and it still rocks. Boston Rob is the J.R. Ewing of reality TV. He just gets better and better with each show he's on. I think more reality shows need Boston Rob, mostly because he'd bring more viewers and it would just be interesting to watch. I might actually watch American Idol if he were a judge. I could never be a contestant on Survivor though, because I am too much of a princess. But it's still fun to watch.
The Real Housewives - Of anywhere, except Atlanta and Miami. I even liked Washington, DC, although I didn't like the blond gatecrasher. That woman does NOT need more attention. I don't care for Atlanta because it's too ghetto and I didn't like Miami because those women were just too blah. Orange County, New York City and New Jersey, you bitches are the bomb. But they're all preschoolers compared to...
MobWives - Trust VH1 to bring this little reality jewel to TV. This is a rough group of women wearing Louis Vuitton and Prada if there ever was. Every other word... bleep. Bleep. Bleep. Bitch. Bleep. I wonder what the feds think of this one? Most of these women have husbands who are locked up, and I'm pretty sure if they were getting laid on the regular there would be a whole lot less drama going on. Getting laid on the regular, and correctly, would be key for these women.
Chopped - I don't watch cooking shows because I just think it's gay. I don't like most of the chefs who have their own shows because their egos are out of control, but this show is interesting. It's a competition of four chefs, going three rounds with mystery items in their baskets and a really severe time limit. I find it interesting that these people are able to make edible food out of Fruit Loops, fish heads, some strange piece of fruit not native to any damn where and something else no one has ever heard of. I mean, I wouldn't eat the food, but it seems to be pretty palatable to the judges.
Cake Challenges - Okay, this whole genre has gotten a little out of hand, but it's amazing what people can come up with and then attempt to execute in eight hours. How the fuck can they do that and I can't make an edible one layer cake in a whole afternoon? I suck. But not at pies. I rock out some pies.
Ghost Adventures - Interesting premise. Hot guys. I'm watching.
Paranormal State - Not as good as Ghost Adventures, and I'm a little annoyed that they only seem to travel to run-down blue collar towns where every day is cloudy and dreary. But still, something to watch if I can't find anything else.
So... this is what I'm watching. Or trying to.
Showing posts with label tripe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tripe. Show all posts
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Monday, April 4, 2011
Technology Is A Bitch
When I was little, there was no cable TV. There were three channels in the Richmond area on VHF, and then a couple of channels on UHF. If you wanted to change the channel, you got up from the sofa and walked to the TV and turned the dial to whichever of the ten numbers that was on the dial, and then you sat back down and watched the TV show. Most everyone had an antennae attached to the roof of their house so that they could catch the VHF waves floating through the air, and maybe if the weather was just right, you could get a UHF channel on a good day. ABC, CBS and NBC were VHF channels and FOX (before it was FOX) and PBS were the UHF channels, which meant they didn't get much viewing.
Cable came to the Richmond area when I was in third grade, and I remember the girl next door got cable. There was a box about the size of a small shoe box attached to a cord that ran to the box on top of the TV, and there were buttons on the box. This was how you changed the channels, and as long as you didn't trip over the cable running from the box on the TV to the channel changer, you were good. Even then, if I recall, there were only about thirty channels to chose from, and some of those were New York or Chicago stations, so if you got tired of watching the Richmond news, you could quickly switch over to a Chicago channel and watch the news. Then you would just be grateful you didn't live in Chicago.
There were no cell phones. I remember watching Charlie's Angels and such when I was little and they had car phones. There was a box between the front bucket seats, or built into the lower console under the dash, and the phone was corded and ran into the box. Logically, this didn't make sense to me, because there was no cord running out of the car into a phone outlet anywhere, but that's Hollywood for you. The Six Million Dollar Man was never logical, either, but that's a whole other topic. And when I was in high school, Miami Vice burst upon the television, and we all learned that car phones looked like long narrow shoe boxes that didn't need cords. The beginning of the cordless phone, at least in my consciousness.
We all had record players and tape players, and if you were really, really cool, you had a boom box with a double tape deck where you could copy tapes that you borrow from your friends, or *even* make a mix tape for the guy you were "going with". Which makes me wonder if kids even call it that anymore? What's it called now? I remember those little notes that would get passed over in between classes, or would travel from one pubescent hand to the next until it made it to your hand, that would say, "Will you go with me?" And the excitement in the girls bathroom between classes when you would tell anyone who was there to listen and sneak a cigarette, "So-and-so asked me to go with him!!!" Because the only thing left to do was nurture that relationship through hand-holding in the school auditorium, necking in the corner at school dances and make that budding relationship last long enough to get The Class Ring. The Class Ring, to be immediately wrapped with tape so it would fit snugly on your forefinger and sported about. Every girl was sure The Class Ring would immediately be followed by The Engagement Ring, and a few were. None of mine were, and that's fine. I'm where I am because those incredibly intense teenage relationships weren't meant to be, though some have worked out to be incredibly endearing and comforting friendships.
Anyway... technology. I got started on this whole thing because I'm trying to link my damn blog up with my damn page on facebook. I've got the little like button on the side bar of the blog, and I thought that if you clicked the like button it would immediately transfer over to my facebook page, and it would just all be linked together in some mysterious and awesome technological way. Um, it has not worked out like that. For real, when it comes to technology, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I have no idea, and I'm frustrated by that. It should work on the computer like I have it worked out in my head. Because how I have it worked out is really so much easier than the computer is making it. Fucking technology. So if you like my stuff, and really, who doesn't?, then check out my page on facebook and HELP ME GET MORE THAN EIGHT FREAKING FANS.
Cable came to the Richmond area when I was in third grade, and I remember the girl next door got cable. There was a box about the size of a small shoe box attached to a cord that ran to the box on top of the TV, and there were buttons on the box. This was how you changed the channels, and as long as you didn't trip over the cable running from the box on the TV to the channel changer, you were good. Even then, if I recall, there were only about thirty channels to chose from, and some of those were New York or Chicago stations, so if you got tired of watching the Richmond news, you could quickly switch over to a Chicago channel and watch the news. Then you would just be grateful you didn't live in Chicago.
There were no cell phones. I remember watching Charlie's Angels and such when I was little and they had car phones. There was a box between the front bucket seats, or built into the lower console under the dash, and the phone was corded and ran into the box. Logically, this didn't make sense to me, because there was no cord running out of the car into a phone outlet anywhere, but that's Hollywood for you. The Six Million Dollar Man was never logical, either, but that's a whole other topic. And when I was in high school, Miami Vice burst upon the television, and we all learned that car phones looked like long narrow shoe boxes that didn't need cords. The beginning of the cordless phone, at least in my consciousness.
We all had record players and tape players, and if you were really, really cool, you had a boom box with a double tape deck where you could copy tapes that you borrow from your friends, or *even* make a mix tape for the guy you were "going with". Which makes me wonder if kids even call it that anymore? What's it called now? I remember those little notes that would get passed over in between classes, or would travel from one pubescent hand to the next until it made it to your hand, that would say, "Will you go with me?" And the excitement in the girls bathroom between classes when you would tell anyone who was there to listen and sneak a cigarette, "So-and-so asked me to go with him!!!" Because the only thing left to do was nurture that relationship through hand-holding in the school auditorium, necking in the corner at school dances and make that budding relationship last long enough to get The Class Ring. The Class Ring, to be immediately wrapped with tape so it would fit snugly on your forefinger and sported about. Every girl was sure The Class Ring would immediately be followed by The Engagement Ring, and a few were. None of mine were, and that's fine. I'm where I am because those incredibly intense teenage relationships weren't meant to be, though some have worked out to be incredibly endearing and comforting friendships.
Anyway... technology. I got started on this whole thing because I'm trying to link my damn blog up with my damn page on facebook. I've got the little like button on the side bar of the blog, and I thought that if you clicked the like button it would immediately transfer over to my facebook page, and it would just all be linked together in some mysterious and awesome technological way. Um, it has not worked out like that. For real, when it comes to technology, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing. I have no idea, and I'm frustrated by that. It should work on the computer like I have it worked out in my head. Because how I have it worked out is really so much easier than the computer is making it. Fucking technology. So if you like my stuff, and really, who doesn't?, then check out my page on facebook and HELP ME GET MORE THAN EIGHT FREAKING FANS.
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
Love Thy PTA
It's been a few days since I've posted any new non-craigslist related tripe, because, well, I have to wait for life to happen sometimes. While my life is full of stupid, yet mundane stuff, I can't just fill a blog with nothingness every night and I'm not going to write about my job in detail, well, because I'm just not. Being there for eight hours is enough. Writing about nothing for the hell of writing is what most people with blogs do, and I don't want my writing to be about complete nothing. I mean, some of it is about nothing, but it's a special kind of nothing that I find humorous and maybe relatable to other people. I think. So I have to wait for life to happen and then I can write about it.
Anyway, we are officially into the fifth week of school and I'm already sick of all this SHIT the PTA is sending home on what seems like a nightly basis. I've had enough, already. Stop slaughtering trees to tell me what you could be sending me in an email and what you are already telling me on facebook. Just fucking stop. Between the PTA and the regular school stuff, I don't even know what I've signed at this point, and I'm getting to where I don't care anymore. I'm extra annoyed that I'm getting this shit in duplicate, too, because now the younger daughter is in school. I think I may have suddenly developed an appreciation for home school - no PTA full of busy-body stay at home moms with nothing else to do except organize shit and try to backseat drive the school administration (because these women all majored in Elementary Education, but walked away from college with the infamous MRS. degree). Hey, how about I went to college part time for seven fucking years while I worked in some crazy and hellacious places for 8 to 16 hour shifts and now I use my degree? And no, smartasses who read this, I wasn't working a stripper pole. Even if I did pioneer the tramp stamp.
My older daughter is struggling with second grade, which means that I am struggling with second grade. I have suddenly developed a loathing of second grade, which is odd since I did well the first time I went through it. My older daughter did fine in first grade, or so I thought. I realize now that either she didn't retain that first grade knowledge, or she wasn't taught the first grade knowledge, or the separation during the second half of the first grade school year was more damaging than I thought it was. I've had a note sent home regarding her behavior, which has included playing with the shit in her desk when she's supposed to be doing work, playing with her lip gloss (what's wrong with that? That's exactly what I do at work. Duh.), not paying attention during reading time because she's playing with her little friends' hair (what's wrong with that? That's exactly what I do during meetings at work. Duh.), and a few other things. All of this was designed to make me feel instantaneously guilty and blame myself for getting a divorce, not being a good enough parent, having a career, signing her up for cheerleading, letting her watch Survivor, and so forth. But then I wonder if this is her checking out the boundaries to see what she can get away with, because she does that. She's a boundary checker, and she always will be. I can't blame her for that; I kind of am, too. I actually thought about taking her to our child psychologist to have her tested for ADHD, but that's not it and I know it. I know what ADHD looks like and it doesn't look like my older daughter. It doesn't look like either of my children, but might possibly look like the dumbass that I married.
I'm frustrated that second grade puts such an emphasis on spelling and punctuation. I sent a note back to the teacher last week to debate her scoring of two punctuation mistakes, because actually, one of the sentences could have ended with a period, question mark or exclamation mark. The teacher called me later that day to argue with me telephonically. Whatever. I made my point and I hope she knew at that point that I do actually read the shit they send home. Most of it. What I really wanted to do was explain to the teacher that I have this fabulous blog that's pretty much grammatically correct (even, though, I, am, addicted, to, commas,) and that if she checks my blog out, she might find a reference to herself in it. But that would be unnecessary and would undoubtedly make things even worse for my daughter. So a big shout out to my older daughter's prisspot teacher with 30 years experience, or something like that. Kiss my ass and you suck. But back to the phone call, even if she had folded to my argument and changed the grade, it wouldn't have mattered because my daughter had scored so far into the range of failing it still would have been a failing grade. So the next night, Mommy and children hauled off to our favorite big box book store to get three workbooks for additional work at home (not recommended by the teacher, by the way). I got a second grade workbook, but then realized the issue isn't the second grade knowledge, it's the fact that we don't have much first grade knowledge retention. So we also got two first grade workbooks. Geez. I haven't even bothered to discuss any of this with her father, other than the behavior shit, because I know he probably won't care, other than to make a pointed effort to blame me to my daughter. I'll send a workbook along in her bookbag for her to work on this weekend while she's at his house, but I am not holding out much hope that anything is going to get done in the workbook. That might cut into his WoW time. Jerkoff. I also know that he'll manage to blame all of this on me, and that this wouldn't be going on if I hadn't decided I didn't want to be married to him anymore.
I am also somewhat surprised at the level of reading that's expected in second grade. I remember second grade, and I know I wasn't reading the following story. Freddy the Frog lives with his family in a tree house in the woods. He likes to watch TV. His favorite thing to watch is the weather. His family knows he will be a weather reporter one day. [I've removed the paragraphs for the sake of space. Pardon.] "It looks like rain today," said Freddy to his mother. "It looks like a lot of rain! I better warn all my friends." Freddy went to see Betty the Bird. "Hello, Freddy. It's so nice to see you," smiled Betty. "It's going to rain today," said Freddy. "That's silly, Freddy. The weather is beautiful today," she replied. Freddy could see that Betty did not believe him, so he went to tell Robbie the Rabbit. Freddy got to Robbie the Rabbit's hole, and he pounded on the ground. "Hello, Freddy. I was just trying on my new jeans. I'm going to wear them to the park later," said Robbie. "It's going to rain today," said Freddy. "But the sun is shining. The weather is perfect," said Robbie. "Okay," said Freddy. "But I warned you!" Freddy went to tell Barry the Bear. The story goes on much longer, and discusses Rita the Raccoon, and what happens when it rains and Freddy rubs it in everyone's face that he was right and they were wrong. But he does it in a really nice, non-bullying, second grade kind of way.
Okay, I know I wasn't reading this shit in second grade. I was reading about Dick and Jane and Spot. In fact, I'm extra confident of this because another mother at the spirit night at the bouncy place tonight said the exact same thing. I guess this is all the hoopla about teaching to the SOLs or something. I'm hoping we can get over this hurdle and just have a good time in second grade and not be all stressed out about grades. It's too early to be stressed about grades. This is too much pressure for seven and eight year olds, for god's sake. I'm not looking forward to the parent-teacher conference in November, primarily because dickface will be there, but also because I'll walk out of that thing feeling even more incompetent, guilt ridden and full of self-doubt and self-blame than I have all school year, which I'm sure The Ex won't feed off of at all. I won't be one of those PTA moms who spends 30 hours a week at the school volunteering, because I decided early on, oh, at 18 or so, that having a career and not sponging off of a future husband was okay to do, and that it's okay to teach my daughters how to be independent, strong willed women who will rely on themselves first and foremost. I'm not meant to be a PTA mom and that's okay. I'm finally good with that.
Anyway, we are officially into the fifth week of school and I'm already sick of all this SHIT the PTA is sending home on what seems like a nightly basis. I've had enough, already. Stop slaughtering trees to tell me what you could be sending me in an email and what you are already telling me on facebook. Just fucking stop. Between the PTA and the regular school stuff, I don't even know what I've signed at this point, and I'm getting to where I don't care anymore. I'm extra annoyed that I'm getting this shit in duplicate, too, because now the younger daughter is in school. I think I may have suddenly developed an appreciation for home school - no PTA full of busy-body stay at home moms with nothing else to do except organize shit and try to backseat drive the school administration (because these women all majored in Elementary Education, but walked away from college with the infamous MRS. degree). Hey, how about I went to college part time for seven fucking years while I worked in some crazy and hellacious places for 8 to 16 hour shifts and now I use my degree? And no, smartasses who read this, I wasn't working a stripper pole. Even if I did pioneer the tramp stamp.
My older daughter is struggling with second grade, which means that I am struggling with second grade. I have suddenly developed a loathing of second grade, which is odd since I did well the first time I went through it. My older daughter did fine in first grade, or so I thought. I realize now that either she didn't retain that first grade knowledge, or she wasn't taught the first grade knowledge, or the separation during the second half of the first grade school year was more damaging than I thought it was. I've had a note sent home regarding her behavior, which has included playing with the shit in her desk when she's supposed to be doing work, playing with her lip gloss (what's wrong with that? That's exactly what I do at work. Duh.), not paying attention during reading time because she's playing with her little friends' hair (what's wrong with that? That's exactly what I do during meetings at work. Duh.), and a few other things. All of this was designed to make me feel instantaneously guilty and blame myself for getting a divorce, not being a good enough parent, having a career, signing her up for cheerleading, letting her watch Survivor, and so forth. But then I wonder if this is her checking out the boundaries to see what she can get away with, because she does that. She's a boundary checker, and she always will be. I can't blame her for that; I kind of am, too. I actually thought about taking her to our child psychologist to have her tested for ADHD, but that's not it and I know it. I know what ADHD looks like and it doesn't look like my older daughter. It doesn't look like either of my children, but might possibly look like the dumbass that I married.
I'm frustrated that second grade puts such an emphasis on spelling and punctuation. I sent a note back to the teacher last week to debate her scoring of two punctuation mistakes, because actually, one of the sentences could have ended with a period, question mark or exclamation mark. The teacher called me later that day to argue with me telephonically. Whatever. I made my point and I hope she knew at that point that I do actually read the shit they send home. Most of it. What I really wanted to do was explain to the teacher that I have this fabulous blog that's pretty much grammatically correct (even, though, I, am, addicted, to, commas,) and that if she checks my blog out, she might find a reference to herself in it. But that would be unnecessary and would undoubtedly make things even worse for my daughter. So a big shout out to my older daughter's prisspot teacher with 30 years experience, or something like that. Kiss my ass and you suck. But back to the phone call, even if she had folded to my argument and changed the grade, it wouldn't have mattered because my daughter had scored so far into the range of failing it still would have been a failing grade. So the next night, Mommy and children hauled off to our favorite big box book store to get three workbooks for additional work at home (not recommended by the teacher, by the way). I got a second grade workbook, but then realized the issue isn't the second grade knowledge, it's the fact that we don't have much first grade knowledge retention. So we also got two first grade workbooks. Geez. I haven't even bothered to discuss any of this with her father, other than the behavior shit, because I know he probably won't care, other than to make a pointed effort to blame me to my daughter. I'll send a workbook along in her bookbag for her to work on this weekend while she's at his house, but I am not holding out much hope that anything is going to get done in the workbook. That might cut into his WoW time. Jerkoff. I also know that he'll manage to blame all of this on me, and that this wouldn't be going on if I hadn't decided I didn't want to be married to him anymore.
I am also somewhat surprised at the level of reading that's expected in second grade. I remember second grade, and I know I wasn't reading the following story. Freddy the Frog lives with his family in a tree house in the woods. He likes to watch TV. His favorite thing to watch is the weather. His family knows he will be a weather reporter one day. [I've removed the paragraphs for the sake of space. Pardon.] "It looks like rain today," said Freddy to his mother. "It looks like a lot of rain! I better warn all my friends." Freddy went to see Betty the Bird. "Hello, Freddy. It's so nice to see you," smiled Betty. "It's going to rain today," said Freddy. "That's silly, Freddy. The weather is beautiful today," she replied. Freddy could see that Betty did not believe him, so he went to tell Robbie the Rabbit. Freddy got to Robbie the Rabbit's hole, and he pounded on the ground. "Hello, Freddy. I was just trying on my new jeans. I'm going to wear them to the park later," said Robbie. "It's going to rain today," said Freddy. "But the sun is shining. The weather is perfect," said Robbie. "Okay," said Freddy. "But I warned you!" Freddy went to tell Barry the Bear. The story goes on much longer, and discusses Rita the Raccoon, and what happens when it rains and Freddy rubs it in everyone's face that he was right and they were wrong. But he does it in a really nice, non-bullying, second grade kind of way.
Okay, I know I wasn't reading this shit in second grade. I was reading about Dick and Jane and Spot. In fact, I'm extra confident of this because another mother at the spirit night at the bouncy place tonight said the exact same thing. I guess this is all the hoopla about teaching to the SOLs or something. I'm hoping we can get over this hurdle and just have a good time in second grade and not be all stressed out about grades. It's too early to be stressed about grades. This is too much pressure for seven and eight year olds, for god's sake. I'm not looking forward to the parent-teacher conference in November, primarily because dickface will be there, but also because I'll walk out of that thing feeling even more incompetent, guilt ridden and full of self-doubt and self-blame than I have all school year, which I'm sure The Ex won't feed off of at all. I won't be one of those PTA moms who spends 30 hours a week at the school volunteering, because I decided early on, oh, at 18 or so, that having a career and not sponging off of a future husband was okay to do, and that it's okay to teach my daughters how to be independent, strong willed women who will rely on themselves first and foremost. I'm not meant to be a PTA mom and that's okay. I'm finally good with that.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Stuff I Don't Like
Since I was laid up in the house all day, being sick for real, I had the opportunity to watch a couple of movies, completely uninterrupted by some child wanting this, wanting that, can you do this, can you do that... I'm not a movie person. I generally say that I don't have the patience to watch movies, but I think that might make me sound like I have ADHD, which I don't have. I think the problem is that the movies just aren't good enough to hold my attention. Most movies could actually be a 30 minute short film, or whatever they call them. Longer is not always better, Hollywood. I haven't been to the movie theater in years, 2001 to be exact, because movies are too expensive to not be fucking awesome. I'm intrigued with the new Bow-Tie Cinemas on the Boulevard, though, because it's a dinner, beer and movie kind of place, like the old Cinema and Drafthouse was. Maybe if I ever go on a date again, that might be a good place. The key words in that sentence are maybe, if and ever.
Not only do I not watch a whole lot of movies, the movies I do watch are usually watched standing up running from one room to the next, doing the mom thing, because it's impossible to sit down and watch a movie when you have children in the house. It's just impossible. My children, and don't get me wrong--I love them to DEATH--are little cockblockers. They cockblock me having a clean house, watching movies all the way through, sleeping late, having money, getting laid. All the fun stuff that a normal adult wants to do. Anyway, I've actually watched a ton of movies, but I've seen on average, about 34.892 minutes of each movie, and even that was broken up into segments. I've seen "There's Something About Mary" at least 20 times, but I've never seen any of the segments I've watched in the correct order, and every time I watch it I see something new. I'm left to believe that the movie doesn't make any sense, and therefore why would I want to sit down and watch the whole thing through? Every segment sucked. I'm sure it actually didn't, but you try to watch a movie in 5 minute increments for years, and you'll eventually believe that it sucks, too.
So today, since I was home alone, I watched a few segments of "Charlie Wilson's War", which I've seen other segments of, and quite honestly, I'm not impressed. What I'm left with is that maybe, just maybe, we should have just let the Russkies have Afghanistan. If we had just left the whole thing alone, I bet we wouldn't be messing around over there right now. I just bet. Furthermore, this will get me into the whole conversation that we don't need to be the world's police force. Since I haven't watched the whole movie all the way through, and because I'm not up on my Afghan history, I don't know if we were providing them weapons and shit to protect our investments or just to be dicks to the Soviets and because it was the height of the Cold War. What continues to piss me off is that now we're sending our servicemen and women over there to try to find some slippery bastard in a mountain range and our people are getting shot up and killed with the exact weapons we provided them with in the early 80's. But hindsight is always 20/20, right?
And then I watched, no segments here, the entirety of "Bridget Jones's Diary", which is one of those quintessential chick flicks. This bring me to the topic at hand, stuff I don't like, which would be chick flicks. In fact, I hate chick flicks, and I watch them very sporadically for two reasons: to give the genre yet another chance to not be complete tripe, and then to be completely annoyed when I discover, yep, it's still tripe. And here's why: chick flicks = fairy tales, albeit of the modern sort. Now, as a disclaimer, I am jaded. Obviously. But these movies, it's all about the happily ever after. And life doesn't work like that, or at least, it hasn't for me. I've lived a million fairy tales, and I've had a million happily ever afters, but the ever afters were never really ever afters. They were finite, and maybe some were over before they ever started and I just didn't know it. I'm annoyed that I'm two days away from not being 36 anymore, and I'm faced with the fact that I haven't had my happily ever after yet. I'm faced with the fact that I may never have my happily ever after. I don't know, it's hard to say. People come into our lives for a reason, and some stay in our lives for a reason, and others don't. Or maybe, I need to realign my thinking, and realize that this is my happily ever after. I don't like being negative, because it takes a lot more work to be negative and unhappy. I functioned like that for most of my 20's, and it didn't work out well. Maybe that negativity is what led to my marriage, my desperation for a happily ever after, and all of this shit has come full circle and this is my happily ever after. Like I said, I don't know.
In the interest of not being an unhappy and cranky bitch, here's a movie genre that does falls into the category of "Stuff I Like"--this would be action films and stuff with men in it. And not the dumbass men who are in chick flicks, at least not the characters. I've seen parts and pieces of all the "Bourne" films, and that's good stuff. I like movies with crazy car chases and/or heavy weaponry. That makes me happy. My primal estrogen was stirred up for about a week after watching "Jarhead". I'll never tell, but if any future date wants to get lucky, that's the movie to pop in the DVD.
Not only do I not watch a whole lot of movies, the movies I do watch are usually watched standing up running from one room to the next, doing the mom thing, because it's impossible to sit down and watch a movie when you have children in the house. It's just impossible. My children, and don't get me wrong--I love them to DEATH--are little cockblockers. They cockblock me having a clean house, watching movies all the way through, sleeping late, having money, getting laid. All the fun stuff that a normal adult wants to do. Anyway, I've actually watched a ton of movies, but I've seen on average, about 34.892 minutes of each movie, and even that was broken up into segments. I've seen "There's Something About Mary" at least 20 times, but I've never seen any of the segments I've watched in the correct order, and every time I watch it I see something new. I'm left to believe that the movie doesn't make any sense, and therefore why would I want to sit down and watch the whole thing through? Every segment sucked. I'm sure it actually didn't, but you try to watch a movie in 5 minute increments for years, and you'll eventually believe that it sucks, too.
So today, since I was home alone, I watched a few segments of "Charlie Wilson's War", which I've seen other segments of, and quite honestly, I'm not impressed. What I'm left with is that maybe, just maybe, we should have just let the Russkies have Afghanistan. If we had just left the whole thing alone, I bet we wouldn't be messing around over there right now. I just bet. Furthermore, this will get me into the whole conversation that we don't need to be the world's police force. Since I haven't watched the whole movie all the way through, and because I'm not up on my Afghan history, I don't know if we were providing them weapons and shit to protect our investments or just to be dicks to the Soviets and because it was the height of the Cold War. What continues to piss me off is that now we're sending our servicemen and women over there to try to find some slippery bastard in a mountain range and our people are getting shot up and killed with the exact weapons we provided them with in the early 80's. But hindsight is always 20/20, right?
And then I watched, no segments here, the entirety of "Bridget Jones's Diary", which is one of those quintessential chick flicks. This bring me to the topic at hand, stuff I don't like, which would be chick flicks. In fact, I hate chick flicks, and I watch them very sporadically for two reasons: to give the genre yet another chance to not be complete tripe, and then to be completely annoyed when I discover, yep, it's still tripe. And here's why: chick flicks = fairy tales, albeit of the modern sort. Now, as a disclaimer, I am jaded. Obviously. But these movies, it's all about the happily ever after. And life doesn't work like that, or at least, it hasn't for me. I've lived a million fairy tales, and I've had a million happily ever afters, but the ever afters were never really ever afters. They were finite, and maybe some were over before they ever started and I just didn't know it. I'm annoyed that I'm two days away from not being 36 anymore, and I'm faced with the fact that I haven't had my happily ever after yet. I'm faced with the fact that I may never have my happily ever after. I don't know, it's hard to say. People come into our lives for a reason, and some stay in our lives for a reason, and others don't. Or maybe, I need to realign my thinking, and realize that this is my happily ever after. I don't like being negative, because it takes a lot more work to be negative and unhappy. I functioned like that for most of my 20's, and it didn't work out well. Maybe that negativity is what led to my marriage, my desperation for a happily ever after, and all of this shit has come full circle and this is my happily ever after. Like I said, I don't know.
In the interest of not being an unhappy and cranky bitch, here's a movie genre that does falls into the category of "Stuff I Like"--this would be action films and stuff with men in it. And not the dumbass men who are in chick flicks, at least not the characters. I've seen parts and pieces of all the "Bourne" films, and that's good stuff. I like movies with crazy car chases and/or heavy weaponry. That makes me happy. My primal estrogen was stirred up for about a week after watching "Jarhead". I'll never tell, but if any future date wants to get lucky, that's the movie to pop in the DVD.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
I Married A Creepy Stalker
I think the title says it all. I'll just get right to the meat of the whole topic. This is his weekend, which means that the children are with him. This also means that this is my weekend to do whatever in the hell I want, which is basically sleep. I got up early this morning to get my oil changed, and then made it back home pretty early, and watched some TV, cleaned my bathroom and my bedroom, and decided I had had enough. Nap time. So I put this little tripe post on facebook that says something to the effect of "I've been up long enough to need a nap" or something to that effect.
I get in bed and drift off, because I can sleep anywhere, anytime. But then the phone rings, about an hour after my post and a half an hour into my nap. It's The Ex. Here's the entire conversation:
The Ex: Hey, Steph, sorry to wake you up from your nap, but where are the shirts that go under the cheerleading uniforms?
Me: They haven't come in yet.
But I'm thinking, it's 80-some degrees outside and they don't need to wear their turtlenecks and besides, the game isn't for another five hours. Why are you calling now about this?
The Ex: Oh, okay. What about the hair bows?
Me: I told you the other night I would bring those to the game with me and do their hair there.
The Ex: Oh, that's right. Well, go back to sleep then.
Me: Hangs the phone up.
And here's the creepy part of this exchange. I un-friended him from facebook in February and my profile and everything on my page is private. This means that you can see my picture, send me a message and send me a friend request. That's it. I know this because I'm super secret about my stuff for the masses, because of where I work and what I do. I'm not one of these people who thinks I have a private profile but don't, I'm one of those people who actually do. When I un-friended The Ex, I cut most of our mutual friends out, unless they were friends who I brought to the relationship. Periodically, I've culled the herd even further down. I left a couple of people who were his friends, because we had the same games, and because I thought these people were mature enough not to be passing on my information to him. As of this afternoon, those few remaining people will no longer be able to count me as a facebook friend.
Well, I realized as soon as he got the first sentence out of his mouth that he's still watching me. I swear, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and my heart started beating a little faster. I thought, oh my god, he's still watching me. If you've never felt like an someone is watching you, studying you, memorizing your every move, you have no idea how absolutely terrifying and blood chilling this is. This is how I felt through most of my marriage, although not constantly. But every now and then, I would catch him just staring at me. I would catch him watching me doing nothing. And the way he looked at me then was creepy. He would randomly show up at my office, and if my car wasn't in the parking lot, he would sit there in the parking lot and wait for me to come back to work. Sometimes, when we were married, I would wake up in the middle of the night and he would be leaning over me asking me questions, I suppose trying to get me to talk in my sleep (which I do sometimes). He would search my car, go through my phone, find a reason to be in the room with me when I was talking with my girlfriends on the phone, and he hacked into my email. I found out later that he even answered my work cell periodically. There were times during the separation when I was sleeping on the sofa, and I would wake up to see him in the glow of the blinking blue Wii connector watching me in the dark. I would lay there, and fake sleep, and watch him between through my almost closed eyes, and try to keep my breathing even so he wouldn't know I knew he was watching me. He tried to insist that he would be the person who moved me into my new house, and then tried to insist that we should exchange keys to each other's houses just in case of something. Yeah, I don't think so. After I moved out, we arranged for him to drop something off at my house and leave it on the front porch. He texted me later that day and asked if I wanted him to get rid of a piece of gutter laying in the side yard. Okay, we agreed he would leave the bag on the front porch - why the fuck would you be in the side yard? So now I insist that he not drop anything at my house unless it's the children. My mother is of the opinion that he probably rides by my house at night when he doesn't have the children. The whole thing is just so creepy, it's almost creepy scary. I still catch him looking at me sometimes, when we have to be somewhere together, watching me, and I fucking hate it. I hate the way he makes me feel, I hate him for being the way he is and I hate me for marrying him.
The hardest thing of all for me is when I wonder if I was in an abusive marriage. I mean, it was never physically abusive, although there were a couple of fights where things went south so quickly I was pretty sure I was within a few seconds of getting the living shit beat out of me. Of course, when someone is screaming that they're going to drag you by your fucking hair and make you do what they want, this would be easy to believe. I keep going back to this thought in my head, how could I marry someone abusive? How could I have married someone who treated me like this? I'm too fucking strong for this, I'm too smart and I've got too much experience in the ways of how this stuff works for me to have married someone who thinks it's okay to threaten me, to intimidate me, to throw stuff at me, to manipulate me and guilt me into as much as he did. He told me for years that the reason he did all of these things was because of the way I treated him--he had no choice. I drove him to it, and that's left me wondering if I'm the one with the problem, if I'm the one who caused and created all of our problems. But somewhere deep within me, I know that's not it. After all of these years, I feel like the fog in my brain might be clearing and I know that it wasn't all my fault. I wasn't the person that he almost succeeded in making me believe that I was. I think my shroud of denial about this marriage is slowly falling away, and I'm faced with the fact that this probably was an abusive marriage, and no one else has named it as that because either they just don't know, or they don't want to be the person to say it out loud. When I make little pithy comments on here about the psychopath I married, please believe that I'm not joking. I'm being dead serious.
I wonder to myself, what do I have to do to get this man to leave me alone? What do I have to do to feel normal again, to not feel paranoid? Sometimes, I think the paranoia is in my head, maybe this is one of the after effects of being in a marriage that was never right, and maybe this is me just kind of slowly working my way out of the shell shock. He told me for years that I was the fucking nutjob, and that I was the one who needed psychiatric help, and that I was the one who had all the problems. It's hard not to kind of start to believe that, if you hear it enough. I decided a few months ago, the best revenge for all the shit he's done to me will be for me to just live well and look good doing it. But then something like today's phone call happens, and it's hard to feel like you're living well when you're being semi-creeped, or whatever you can call this dysfunctional shit. It's frustrating, too, because he has a girlfriend. Why make comments or worry about what I'm doing? Worry about your girlfriend, although, that woman will turn into me one day and will run the fuck away from him, too. I guess if there's any lesson in this, it will be that The Ex is the first and last creepy stalker I'll ever marry.
I get in bed and drift off, because I can sleep anywhere, anytime. But then the phone rings, about an hour after my post and a half an hour into my nap. It's The Ex. Here's the entire conversation:
The Ex: Hey, Steph, sorry to wake you up from your nap, but where are the shirts that go under the cheerleading uniforms?
Me: They haven't come in yet.
But I'm thinking, it's 80-some degrees outside and they don't need to wear their turtlenecks and besides, the game isn't for another five hours. Why are you calling now about this?
The Ex: Oh, okay. What about the hair bows?
Me: I told you the other night I would bring those to the game with me and do their hair there.
The Ex: Oh, that's right. Well, go back to sleep then.
Me: Hangs the phone up.
And here's the creepy part of this exchange. I un-friended him from facebook in February and my profile and everything on my page is private. This means that you can see my picture, send me a message and send me a friend request. That's it. I know this because I'm super secret about my stuff for the masses, because of where I work and what I do. I'm not one of these people who thinks I have a private profile but don't, I'm one of those people who actually do. When I un-friended The Ex, I cut most of our mutual friends out, unless they were friends who I brought to the relationship. Periodically, I've culled the herd even further down. I left a couple of people who were his friends, because we had the same games, and because I thought these people were mature enough not to be passing on my information to him. As of this afternoon, those few remaining people will no longer be able to count me as a facebook friend.
Well, I realized as soon as he got the first sentence out of his mouth that he's still watching me. I swear, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up and my heart started beating a little faster. I thought, oh my god, he's still watching me. If you've never felt like an someone is watching you, studying you, memorizing your every move, you have no idea how absolutely terrifying and blood chilling this is. This is how I felt through most of my marriage, although not constantly. But every now and then, I would catch him just staring at me. I would catch him watching me doing nothing. And the way he looked at me then was creepy. He would randomly show up at my office, and if my car wasn't in the parking lot, he would sit there in the parking lot and wait for me to come back to work. Sometimes, when we were married, I would wake up in the middle of the night and he would be leaning over me asking me questions, I suppose trying to get me to talk in my sleep (which I do sometimes). He would search my car, go through my phone, find a reason to be in the room with me when I was talking with my girlfriends on the phone, and he hacked into my email. I found out later that he even answered my work cell periodically. There were times during the separation when I was sleeping on the sofa, and I would wake up to see him in the glow of the blinking blue Wii connector watching me in the dark. I would lay there, and fake sleep, and watch him between through my almost closed eyes, and try to keep my breathing even so he wouldn't know I knew he was watching me. He tried to insist that he would be the person who moved me into my new house, and then tried to insist that we should exchange keys to each other's houses just in case of something. Yeah, I don't think so. After I moved out, we arranged for him to drop something off at my house and leave it on the front porch. He texted me later that day and asked if I wanted him to get rid of a piece of gutter laying in the side yard. Okay, we agreed he would leave the bag on the front porch - why the fuck would you be in the side yard? So now I insist that he not drop anything at my house unless it's the children. My mother is of the opinion that he probably rides by my house at night when he doesn't have the children. The whole thing is just so creepy, it's almost creepy scary. I still catch him looking at me sometimes, when we have to be somewhere together, watching me, and I fucking hate it. I hate the way he makes me feel, I hate him for being the way he is and I hate me for marrying him.
The hardest thing of all for me is when I wonder if I was in an abusive marriage. I mean, it was never physically abusive, although there were a couple of fights where things went south so quickly I was pretty sure I was within a few seconds of getting the living shit beat out of me. Of course, when someone is screaming that they're going to drag you by your fucking hair and make you do what they want, this would be easy to believe. I keep going back to this thought in my head, how could I marry someone abusive? How could I have married someone who treated me like this? I'm too fucking strong for this, I'm too smart and I've got too much experience in the ways of how this stuff works for me to have married someone who thinks it's okay to threaten me, to intimidate me, to throw stuff at me, to manipulate me and guilt me into as much as he did. He told me for years that the reason he did all of these things was because of the way I treated him--he had no choice. I drove him to it, and that's left me wondering if I'm the one with the problem, if I'm the one who caused and created all of our problems. But somewhere deep within me, I know that's not it. After all of these years, I feel like the fog in my brain might be clearing and I know that it wasn't all my fault. I wasn't the person that he almost succeeded in making me believe that I was. I think my shroud of denial about this marriage is slowly falling away, and I'm faced with the fact that this probably was an abusive marriage, and no one else has named it as that because either they just don't know, or they don't want to be the person to say it out loud. When I make little pithy comments on here about the psychopath I married, please believe that I'm not joking. I'm being dead serious.
I wonder to myself, what do I have to do to get this man to leave me alone? What do I have to do to feel normal again, to not feel paranoid? Sometimes, I think the paranoia is in my head, maybe this is one of the after effects of being in a marriage that was never right, and maybe this is me just kind of slowly working my way out of the shell shock. He told me for years that I was the fucking nutjob, and that I was the one who needed psychiatric help, and that I was the one who had all the problems. It's hard not to kind of start to believe that, if you hear it enough. I decided a few months ago, the best revenge for all the shit he's done to me will be for me to just live well and look good doing it. But then something like today's phone call happens, and it's hard to feel like you're living well when you're being semi-creeped, or whatever you can call this dysfunctional shit. It's frustrating, too, because he has a girlfriend. Why make comments or worry about what I'm doing? Worry about your girlfriend, although, that woman will turn into me one day and will run the fuck away from him, too. I guess if there's any lesson in this, it will be that The Ex is the first and last creepy stalker I'll ever marry.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Freakshow of the Day
It's taking more and more work to find my freakshow of the day. I've checked out the craigslists in other areas and I must say, not much better than the Richmond craigslist. I mean, I haven't ventured far beyond the men for women, but I might have to start. Of course, I could just be getting numb to this tripe.
Anyway, here goes:
"Hey ladies im not going to waste your time, so please dont waste mines.. Im a single male thats in the swinger lifestyle. I had a partner that i use to attend parties with. But she moved. Im looking for a mature sexi drama, clean female for some nsa fun that like to attend parties or who wants to give it a try."
Ahhhh, a swinger's party. Good stuff. I've never been to any swinger's parties, and I never will. Not my ball of wax. But I know a couple of people who have done that, and I probably know a couple more people who have done it but I don't know they've done it. Anyway, one guy was a friend of The Ex's, and the way The Ex explained it to me was that this guy's ex-wife sucked his friend into it because the ex-wife wanted to screw around and not get in trouble for it. This was the explanation given years before I realized The Ex tends to blame everything on the ex-wife. Thanks to me, he'll soon have two ex-wives to blame. The other person that I know, we used to work together, and she said that while she and her husband were stationed at this military base (god, there's always a military base in one of these stories, right?), her next door neighbors used to have dinner parties quite frequently, and she was somewhat insulted that she and her husband never got invited. So she said something to the neighbor one time, and the neighbor fessed up that the dinner parties were actually swinger's parties. Dinner of a different sort. But that was the cover story, a dinner party. My friend said she would have never known, because everyone going in the house always had some kind of casserole dish with them. She and her husband were in the Air Force, thus explaining the nifty cover story. If we were talking about oh, say, the Marines, the cover story would have just been it's a swinger's party.
Since I've never been to a swinger's party, I have no idea what happens. I don't know if it's just one straight orgy in the living room, and everyone is just going at it, or if they split up, or what happens. I am left to my imagination, which is really a scary thing. I wouldn't get involved in this because, like I said, it's not my ball of wax, but what if you get stuck with someone who isn't that attractive? How do you decide who gets who? Draw names out of a hat or something? Is it like picking teams for middle school kickball (which we all know was excruciating)? Who picks first? What's the order of the picking? How does this work? Do you switch in the middle or something so you get more variety? Who decides that? So many questions, so few answers. I'm obviously not up on the swinger's etiquette, as you can tell.
The dumbest thing about all of this is what I can't get out of my mind. This would be that there's some kind of swinger's ref kind of running around the party, and after about an hour (I guess?) this person - and this is the absolute dumbest part of my imagination - blows a whistle or something and yells "Switch!" and then everyone switches. I don't know how I've got this association stuck in my brain, and this bothers me, because I remember where most of my brain associations come from. I wonder if this is the remnant of some drunk ass conversation I had with someone sometime, and this is what's left. I remember one drunk ass conversation I had when I was in high school at a party. I was talking to this guy I knew only very remotely who went to the private school, and I was on this uncircumcised rant, and I blathered on for about a half an hour and finally this guy looks at me and tells me he's not circumcised. Oops. Anyway, back to swinging. I can't listen to the Will Smith song "Switch" without thinking about this. I can't hear someone say this word without cracking up. And then they look at me, and I just shrug and say, "Swingers". But they don't get the humor in it, because they aren't in my brain, and so it just takes too much time to explain what's in my brain and the humor is lost by the time I try to explain the whole thing. So I don't explain anymore.
If you know how this whole thing works, feel free to drop me a line to explain it. But be warned, I'll cut-and-paste the email onto the blog, because I think everyone should know this. So at least make sure it's grammatically correct.
Anyway, here goes:
"Hey ladies im not going to waste your time, so please dont waste mines.. Im a single male thats in the swinger lifestyle. I had a partner that i use to attend parties with. But she moved. Im looking for a mature sexi drama, clean female for some nsa fun that like to attend parties or who wants to give it a try."
Ahhhh, a swinger's party. Good stuff. I've never been to any swinger's parties, and I never will. Not my ball of wax. But I know a couple of people who have done that, and I probably know a couple more people who have done it but I don't know they've done it. Anyway, one guy was a friend of The Ex's, and the way The Ex explained it to me was that this guy's ex-wife sucked his friend into it because the ex-wife wanted to screw around and not get in trouble for it. This was the explanation given years before I realized The Ex tends to blame everything on the ex-wife. Thanks to me, he'll soon have two ex-wives to blame. The other person that I know, we used to work together, and she said that while she and her husband were stationed at this military base (god, there's always a military base in one of these stories, right?), her next door neighbors used to have dinner parties quite frequently, and she was somewhat insulted that she and her husband never got invited. So she said something to the neighbor one time, and the neighbor fessed up that the dinner parties were actually swinger's parties. Dinner of a different sort. But that was the cover story, a dinner party. My friend said she would have never known, because everyone going in the house always had some kind of casserole dish with them. She and her husband were in the Air Force, thus explaining the nifty cover story. If we were talking about oh, say, the Marines, the cover story would have just been it's a swinger's party.
Since I've never been to a swinger's party, I have no idea what happens. I don't know if it's just one straight orgy in the living room, and everyone is just going at it, or if they split up, or what happens. I am left to my imagination, which is really a scary thing. I wouldn't get involved in this because, like I said, it's not my ball of wax, but what if you get stuck with someone who isn't that attractive? How do you decide who gets who? Draw names out of a hat or something? Is it like picking teams for middle school kickball (which we all know was excruciating)? Who picks first? What's the order of the picking? How does this work? Do you switch in the middle or something so you get more variety? Who decides that? So many questions, so few answers. I'm obviously not up on the swinger's etiquette, as you can tell.
The dumbest thing about all of this is what I can't get out of my mind. This would be that there's some kind of swinger's ref kind of running around the party, and after about an hour (I guess?) this person - and this is the absolute dumbest part of my imagination - blows a whistle or something and yells "Switch!" and then everyone switches. I don't know how I've got this association stuck in my brain, and this bothers me, because I remember where most of my brain associations come from. I wonder if this is the remnant of some drunk ass conversation I had with someone sometime, and this is what's left. I remember one drunk ass conversation I had when I was in high school at a party. I was talking to this guy I knew only very remotely who went to the private school, and I was on this uncircumcised rant, and I blathered on for about a half an hour and finally this guy looks at me and tells me he's not circumcised. Oops. Anyway, back to swinging. I can't listen to the Will Smith song "Switch" without thinking about this. I can't hear someone say this word without cracking up. And then they look at me, and I just shrug and say, "Swingers". But they don't get the humor in it, because they aren't in my brain, and so it just takes too much time to explain what's in my brain and the humor is lost by the time I try to explain the whole thing. So I don't explain anymore.
If you know how this whole thing works, feel free to drop me a line to explain it. But be warned, I'll cut-and-paste the email onto the blog, because I think everyone should know this. So at least make sure it's grammatically correct.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
The Day After Labor Day
It's back to school for the kiddies, and facebook is full of everyone posting pics of their kids in their new school duds, getting on the school bus, standing in front of the school, blah blah blah, and all of these teary eyed statuses. Oh my god, kill me now. I'm so over the back to school thing I've started calling it The Day After Labor Day. This would also be The Day That I Finally Got A Huge Reduction In My Childcare Bill Because They're Both In A Real School. And that is what this day was really about to me.
But because it's all about The Day After Labor Day, I feel almost obligated to write some complete tripe about how the children did, how I did, how the day felt, how I was worried, so on and so forth. What I was really doing was going through my day at work, trying to catch up, since I went in late so I could stay at daycare and take pictures of the girls getting on the school bus. This is the first year I've actually done this, having sent The Ex to take pictures for the last two years. But since we're separated now, I can't be one-upped. This is due to two reasons: my competitive nature, which means this divorced family thing might just be turning into a one-sided competition to see who is the more doting parent (I am), and my fear of the shit that he might talk to the children about me if I don't show up to these events now.
My younger daughter was super excited, because she thinks she's super cool and ready to head straight to college. I actually think she's a little above her grade level, but we'll see. She's caused me so many problems with her fucking logical thinking throughout most of her five years of life that I actually had her IQ tested when she was three because I felt like I was dealing with a child who had the reasoning abilities and motor coordination of a nine or ten year old. However, just to see if the school people are worth their salt, I'm keeping that to myself. We'll see what they come up with. I know if she ends up skipping a grade here or there, her older sister is going to be devastated and that's what I really don't want to deal with.
My older daughter was too cool for Mommy to take any pictures of. Just to be a mean Mommy, I did it any damn way. I was so annoyed with her acting like that I almost followed the bus to school to take more pictures of her, just to really ruin her first day at school. But I didn't, because I realize that I need to space out my embarrassing her. I want my embarrassing her to really have it's full effect, and thus, I can't just be doing embarrassing shit all the time. She'll work up a tolerance to it, and that in turn will cause me to have to go to a higher level of embarrassment, which will ultimately end up just embarrassing me. She's lucky I know this, because otherwise I'd just be acting like all of the other helicopter moms running around the school. I get to be the cool mom because I don't do that, at least not all the time. I've also discovered that just a simple threat of embarrassing her is starting to work. She'll pull herself together in short order to avoid that. The younger daughter, this totally doesn't work for, because she thinks it's hilarious and she just laughs that screaming belly laugh when I try to do something that might embarrass her. And we've come full circle back to her logical skills. She knows, even if it's subconsciously, that if she resists being embarrassed and just acts delighted instead, that I'm the one who will walk away from the whole interaction feeling like a damn fool, and she and I will both know that she won. The younger daughter, she is me, and that is what really scares me.
The Day After Labor Day. It was a good day.
But because it's all about The Day After Labor Day, I feel almost obligated to write some complete tripe about how the children did, how I did, how the day felt, how I was worried, so on and so forth. What I was really doing was going through my day at work, trying to catch up, since I went in late so I could stay at daycare and take pictures of the girls getting on the school bus. This is the first year I've actually done this, having sent The Ex to take pictures for the last two years. But since we're separated now, I can't be one-upped. This is due to two reasons: my competitive nature, which means this divorced family thing might just be turning into a one-sided competition to see who is the more doting parent (I am), and my fear of the shit that he might talk to the children about me if I don't show up to these events now.
My younger daughter was super excited, because she thinks she's super cool and ready to head straight to college. I actually think she's a little above her grade level, but we'll see. She's caused me so many problems with her fucking logical thinking throughout most of her five years of life that I actually had her IQ tested when she was three because I felt like I was dealing with a child who had the reasoning abilities and motor coordination of a nine or ten year old. However, just to see if the school people are worth their salt, I'm keeping that to myself. We'll see what they come up with. I know if she ends up skipping a grade here or there, her older sister is going to be devastated and that's what I really don't want to deal with.
My older daughter was too cool for Mommy to take any pictures of. Just to be a mean Mommy, I did it any damn way. I was so annoyed with her acting like that I almost followed the bus to school to take more pictures of her, just to really ruin her first day at school. But I didn't, because I realize that I need to space out my embarrassing her. I want my embarrassing her to really have it's full effect, and thus, I can't just be doing embarrassing shit all the time. She'll work up a tolerance to it, and that in turn will cause me to have to go to a higher level of embarrassment, which will ultimately end up just embarrassing me. She's lucky I know this, because otherwise I'd just be acting like all of the other helicopter moms running around the school. I get to be the cool mom because I don't do that, at least not all the time. I've also discovered that just a simple threat of embarrassing her is starting to work. She'll pull herself together in short order to avoid that. The younger daughter, this totally doesn't work for, because she thinks it's hilarious and she just laughs that screaming belly laugh when I try to do something that might embarrass her. And we've come full circle back to her logical skills. She knows, even if it's subconsciously, that if she resists being embarrassed and just acts delighted instead, that I'm the one who will walk away from the whole interaction feeling like a damn fool, and she and I will both know that she won. The younger daughter, she is me, and that is what really scares me.
The Day After Labor Day. It was a good day.
Sunday, September 5, 2010
Groupthink
Facebook groups. Since I love to make lists, here's a list of my facebook groups. I was going to put them in alphabetical order too, because I have a slight case of OCD, but then I was like, fuck it. Who cares? In my quest to stay somewhat anonymous on the www, I've removed the groups that are related to my profession, those groups that only have, like, three members and the groups that my friends have for their bidnizzes and stuff. Go away if you don't know what a bidniz is. And, yeah, my commentary to each group is attached, because I think my commentary is full of fabulosity and awesomeness. I was going to bullet it, but only douchebags bullet stuff.
Google it, b i t c h - Yep, I've said this before. A couple of years ago you could go to Google Maps/Directions and type in New York to Paris and would get directions to jump in the Hudson River and swim to somewhere on the coast of France, and then make it from that point to Paris. It was hilarious. I hope the freakshow who did that got promoted.
I like your makeup...LOL JK, it looks like you got gangbanged by Crayola - We all know this woman or one just like her. The Ex is dating her.
Unsent Letters - What you wish you could say... - I have a couple of these letters. I wish I had the guts to send them, but things keep changing and the letters aren't so nice, so I keep them in reserve because they would be things that you really can't unsay.
Fresh Balls - No explanation needed. Fumunda's a bitch.
Anything About Guns - I AM Southern. I love guns. Big guns. Heavy artillery. No, for once I am not making a veiled reference to genitals, but I love those too, just to clarify. I'd love to be able to get my hands on a rocket launcher, just once in my life. This is also why not joining the military has been my only regret thus far in life.
Walgreens - love, love, love Walgreens. I don't know why, I just do. Best drugstore ever.
Using the Word "FUCK!" - Fuck yeah!
"Shitload" is a Standardized Unit of Measurement - Perfectly true.
Little Debbie - Crack to women everywhere who are premenstrual, postmenstrual, hormonal, and overall crazy bitches.
Don't Be An Asshole - No explanation needed. I have to remind myself of this periodically.
Bitches on a Budget - I've got this one hidden from my page because I really don't care about what is essentially a coupon bukkake.
Smart B*tches, Trashy Books - AKA girl porn.
Sweet Tea - Goes nicely with guns and ammo, especially when you're sitting on the porch and see a big assed 8 point buck roaming through the field and BOOM! Dinner hath arrived.
Country Style Donuts - Hands down, best doughnuts in Richmond. It's on Williamsburg Road, right around that gray area of urban decay that is leaving ghetto projects and moving into white trash East End. Open 24 hours a day with a film of nicotine covering every surface that hasn't been wiped off in 10 years, from when you could smoke in restaurants. I am so disappointed in our tobacco lobby. Jesus Christ, this is our native crop. Get it together, Phillip Morris/Altria (fancy new name that doesn't sound like lung cancer).
ShitMyDadSays - Just saw a commercial for this - it's being turned into a TV show on CBS? I hate TV most days because it sucks. What happened to the good shit like Kung Fu movies and the Dukes of Hazzard?
shit talking - I talk mad shit about everything. I talk shit about shit I don't even know about. And I do it well.
people who make an effort to stay in your life, no matter what happens♥ - Love ya'll!
www.peopleofwalmart.com - Okay, this was funny when it first got started, but there are apparently so many freaks trolling through Wal-Mart that it's just gotten old.
Qdoba - Taco Bell goes upscale.
not getting raped by aroused donkeys - How does anyone not like this?
Sometimes your knight in shining armor is just a retard in tin foil - I wonder sometimes if I know this guy. He might be the one referenced in the unsent letters thing. Or, he might be the dumbass dating the woman who looks like she got gangbanged by Crayola. I need to spend some serious time revising the type of men I tend to get involved with. Something is lacking in my brain about this.
Firehouse Subs - Subway goes upscale.
Extreme Pizza - Pizza Hut goes upscale. Bonus! They deliver downtown! Better than Bottom's Up, which I happen to think is overpriced and overrated. Last time I went to Bottom's Up my car got towed. Mad shout out to Marshall Brother's Towing in Richmond for giving one hell of a tow job.
McDonalds Sweet Tea!!!! - For when you are too lazy to make your own.
You don't just stop loving someone, either you never did or you always will - I really ponder the truth to this one.
oh, i didn't tell you? must of been none of your f*cking business - This is what I said to myself when I found out The Ex had hacked into my emails and fb account and gotten all big in the head, and I had to change all of my passwords to "strong" passwords.
I promise you will never meet anyone else like me, ever - Did I mention I'm awesome?
Flip Flops - I don't know why I joined this group, because I really prefer shower shoes. I really even prefer that they not have gotten lost in the Atlantic Ocean when I got all drunked up at the Polar Plunge and ran like a girl into the freezing cold surf, although I had no choice. That shit was like the human migration on the Serengeti. Class act all the way, right down to the shower cap I was sporting because when I tripped and fell like some crazed wildebeest, I didn't want that nasty February ocean water-pollution in my hair.
I ♥ Kissing - Except men who slobber.
YOU AINT GONE DO SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT - You have to, have to, have to flex a little when you say this.
Maymont - Sentimental value to me. I'm so glad I didn't get married there, because then I'd never want to go back. Thank God for me having one small bit of common sense related to that marriage.
Perlys Restaurant - A tricky proposition for me since this is downtown and I can't fucking parallel park. Me parallel parking is about 59.674 rotations of three inches of back and forth while I turn the wheel as far right and left as it will go. It looks like some shit that should be a skit on SNL. So either I have to try to convince someone that they want to go there to eat for lunch and then bum a ride, or try to get there around 11ish so I can find a pull-in parallel parking spot on a street nearby that's not scheduled for street cleaning. If you know the Richmond street cleaning schedule, this is not an easy thing to accomplish, because the streets that aren't scheduled for cleaning are packed full of cars that would not normally be parked on those streets.
Five Guys Burgers and Fries - McDonald's goes upscale. Kind of.
There is no "I" in team. But there are three "u"s in shut the fu*k up - Can I refer some of my co-workers to this group?
Wikipedia - Lunchtime crack.
102.1 The X - Not really because they talk too damn much. The whole "Smell My Face" thing is old, and really, I don't know if he could pay me to sit on his face. I need something good looking down there. I've always wondered if I'm just really dirty, or are they talking about something else and I just don't get it?
Coldwater Creek - Best ever internet clearance site. I just ordered a ton of clearance clothes from them, then when I got my packages, nothing fit because I've lost weight. Bonus! Except I can't return ANY of it because it was clearance. Not so bonus.
Wanda Sykes - Who doesn't love some Wanda?
The Boathouse - Where I will most likely go when I'm ready to pick up some rich, moneyed Brandermill/Woodlake divorced dad. Then he'll figure out that he can't handle me and that will be that. Back to my craigslist peep show.
I have more, but I'm tired of this already. I just realized I don't have any porn favorites. I must be slacking. Anyway, you've got my facebook essence.
Google it, b i t c h - Yep, I've said this before. A couple of years ago you could go to Google Maps/Directions and type in New York to Paris and would get directions to jump in the Hudson River and swim to somewhere on the coast of France, and then make it from that point to Paris. It was hilarious. I hope the freakshow who did that got promoted.
I like your makeup...LOL JK, it looks like you got gangbanged by Crayola - We all know this woman or one just like her. The Ex is dating her.
Unsent Letters - What you wish you could say... - I have a couple of these letters. I wish I had the guts to send them, but things keep changing and the letters aren't so nice, so I keep them in reserve because they would be things that you really can't unsay.
Fresh Balls - No explanation needed. Fumunda's a bitch.
Anything About Guns - I AM Southern. I love guns. Big guns. Heavy artillery. No, for once I am not making a veiled reference to genitals, but I love those too, just to clarify. I'd love to be able to get my hands on a rocket launcher, just once in my life. This is also why not joining the military has been my only regret thus far in life.
Walgreens - love, love, love Walgreens. I don't know why, I just do. Best drugstore ever.
Using the Word "FUCK!" - Fuck yeah!
"Shitload" is a Standardized Unit of Measurement - Perfectly true.
Little Debbie - Crack to women everywhere who are premenstrual, postmenstrual, hormonal, and overall crazy bitches.
Don't Be An Asshole - No explanation needed. I have to remind myself of this periodically.
Bitches on a Budget - I've got this one hidden from my page because I really don't care about what is essentially a coupon bukkake.
Smart B*tches, Trashy Books - AKA girl porn.
Sweet Tea - Goes nicely with guns and ammo, especially when you're sitting on the porch and see a big assed 8 point buck roaming through the field and BOOM! Dinner hath arrived.
Country Style Donuts - Hands down, best doughnuts in Richmond. It's on Williamsburg Road, right around that gray area of urban decay that is leaving ghetto projects and moving into white trash East End. Open 24 hours a day with a film of nicotine covering every surface that hasn't been wiped off in 10 years, from when you could smoke in restaurants. I am so disappointed in our tobacco lobby. Jesus Christ, this is our native crop. Get it together, Phillip Morris/Altria (fancy new name that doesn't sound like lung cancer).
ShitMyDadSays - Just saw a commercial for this - it's being turned into a TV show on CBS? I hate TV most days because it sucks. What happened to the good shit like Kung Fu movies and the Dukes of Hazzard?
shit talking - I talk mad shit about everything. I talk shit about shit I don't even know about. And I do it well.
people who make an effort to stay in your life, no matter what happens♥ - Love ya'll!
www.peopleofwalmart.com - Okay, this was funny when it first got started, but there are apparently so many freaks trolling through Wal-Mart that it's just gotten old.
Qdoba - Taco Bell goes upscale.
not getting raped by aroused donkeys - How does anyone not like this?
Sometimes your knight in shining armor is just a retard in tin foil - I wonder sometimes if I know this guy. He might be the one referenced in the unsent letters thing. Or, he might be the dumbass dating the woman who looks like she got gangbanged by Crayola. I need to spend some serious time revising the type of men I tend to get involved with. Something is lacking in my brain about this.
Firehouse Subs - Subway goes upscale.
Extreme Pizza - Pizza Hut goes upscale. Bonus! They deliver downtown! Better than Bottom's Up, which I happen to think is overpriced and overrated. Last time I went to Bottom's Up my car got towed. Mad shout out to Marshall Brother's Towing in Richmond for giving one hell of a tow job.
McDonalds Sweet Tea!!!! - For when you are too lazy to make your own.
You don't just stop loving someone, either you never did or you always will - I really ponder the truth to this one.
oh, i didn't tell you? must of been none of your f*cking business - This is what I said to myself when I found out The Ex had hacked into my emails and fb account and gotten all big in the head, and I had to change all of my passwords to "strong" passwords.
I promise you will never meet anyone else like me, ever - Did I mention I'm awesome?
Flip Flops - I don't know why I joined this group, because I really prefer shower shoes. I really even prefer that they not have gotten lost in the Atlantic Ocean when I got all drunked up at the Polar Plunge and ran like a girl into the freezing cold surf, although I had no choice. That shit was like the human migration on the Serengeti. Class act all the way, right down to the shower cap I was sporting because when I tripped and fell like some crazed wildebeest, I didn't want that nasty February ocean water-pollution in my hair.
I ♥ Kissing - Except men who slobber.
YOU AINT GONE DO SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT - You have to, have to, have to flex a little when you say this.
Maymont - Sentimental value to me. I'm so glad I didn't get married there, because then I'd never want to go back. Thank God for me having one small bit of common sense related to that marriage.
Perlys Restaurant - A tricky proposition for me since this is downtown and I can't fucking parallel park. Me parallel parking is about 59.674 rotations of three inches of back and forth while I turn the wheel as far right and left as it will go. It looks like some shit that should be a skit on SNL. So either I have to try to convince someone that they want to go there to eat for lunch and then bum a ride, or try to get there around 11ish so I can find a pull-in parallel parking spot on a street nearby that's not scheduled for street cleaning. If you know the Richmond street cleaning schedule, this is not an easy thing to accomplish, because the streets that aren't scheduled for cleaning are packed full of cars that would not normally be parked on those streets.
Five Guys Burgers and Fries - McDonald's goes upscale. Kind of.
There is no "I" in team. But there are three "u"s in shut the fu*k up - Can I refer some of my co-workers to this group?
Wikipedia - Lunchtime crack.
102.1 The X - Not really because they talk too damn much. The whole "Smell My Face" thing is old, and really, I don't know if he could pay me to sit on his face. I need something good looking down there. I've always wondered if I'm just really dirty, or are they talking about something else and I just don't get it?
Coldwater Creek - Best ever internet clearance site. I just ordered a ton of clearance clothes from them, then when I got my packages, nothing fit because I've lost weight. Bonus! Except I can't return ANY of it because it was clearance. Not so bonus.
Wanda Sykes - Who doesn't love some Wanda?
The Boathouse - Where I will most likely go when I'm ready to pick up some rich, moneyed Brandermill/Woodlake divorced dad. Then he'll figure out that he can't handle me and that will be that. Back to my craigslist peep show.
I have more, but I'm tired of this already. I just realized I don't have any porn favorites. I must be slacking. Anyway, you've got my facebook essence.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Next to the Tenth
Like millions of other bloggers out there, I am pretty sure the next Great American Novel lives in my head. Well, maybe not the next, but quite possibly the next-next-next. I've got it all mapped out in my head, and it's a pretty interesting concept. I've been thinking about it for a couple of years, because sometimes really good ideas should sit and stew for a while. If it still seems like a good idea a couple of years later, then you might be on to something. Sadly, I didn't know this when I was engaged for a total of nine months. If I had sat on that for a couple of years, then I would have known, run away, little girl, run away. But I digress.
The only thing is, regarding my concept, I haven't lived enough of my life yet to make it a complete novel. It would only be about half of a novel at this point in my life. So I'm sitting on my idea, waiting for another 25 or so years to pass, and then I'm good. Actually, we might not be talking about the next-next-next Great American Novel, but more next to the tenth. We'll see. As long as it's not categorized as chick lit, all will be well in my world. I take great offense to the chick lit categorization, mainly because I find it pretty misogynistic in a really subterranean feminist sense, and I take even greater offense to the fact that women are continuing to perpetrate this label. These female authors have so much more to say than just tripe chick-y stuff, but they get sloughed off in the chick lit category. I say, let's leave the chick lit category, but to level the playing field, we need to do some re-categorization of works by male authors. And we shall call that dick lit. Because what's fair is fair, right?
But back to my novel. I've been thinking about what my photo on the book jacket would look like. I think I've already got a picture in my mind's eye of the cover art, but I need to have a phat ass photo, because that just kind of wraps the whole thing up. I hate it when I read a book and there's no picture of the author. Dammit, I want to know what they look like. If I bought your freaking book, you can at least be decent to put a pic on the inside of the back cover or something. The photos always fascinate me, because they are usually of professional quality, and if it's not, then this is their first book. If this is an author who has written some halfway scholarly non-fiction book, the photo they use is probably the same one shown on either their corporate website or the departmental website for whatever university they are tenured at. If this is a regular, albeit famous, author, then the photo is generally pretty staid, yet always classy in that I'm-rich-because-you-just-bought-another-of-my-books-and-I-can-afford-to-pay-Annie-Leibovitz-to-take-my-book-jacket-photo. Or the publishing house just took it out of their advance. Whatever, same thing.
I like to picture myself all dolled up in some really nice duds, the kind of clothes I can't really afford right now because I own children, and they in turn own my money. But I'd have some nice shit on, but the background would be kind of gritty in that inner city sense because that's a huge part of who I am and what I'm about, even though I can still bale hay and split wood like a motherfucker. I can guarantee that it wouldn't be on Belle Isle or any other island in the middle of the James River, because that's been done to death. Over it. So yeah, I'd probably be in an alley somewhere, maybe sitting next to some nasty ass dumpster or something. But then, to totally offset the clothing and the background, there would have to be that element of stupidity, because that's an even bigger part of who I am. I've given a fair amount of thought about the kind of stupidity my photo should have. Not a whole lot of stupid, but just that one thing that's totally off that would make someone look again, and think, what the fuck is she doing? I'll call that the WTF element. So here's me in this alley in downtown Richmond, standing next to a dumpster totally rocking out some Manolos, and maybe I'm pouring a can of Milwaukee's Best into a champagne flute. Or I've very casually got this huge veiny dildo dangling from one hand. Maybe we'll do a close up and I've got this ghetto-ass necklace, like the kind that say your name in cursive, but my necklace wouldn't say my name. It would say something like "I heart midget porn". It's got to be the smallest visual element of the photo, but jarring enough to to be the one thing that makes the biggest impact. I'd like to think that's how my writing is. Sometimes the shortest sentences make the biggest statements, so I need that to translate visually. In a really stupid kind of way.
The only thing is, regarding my concept, I haven't lived enough of my life yet to make it a complete novel. It would only be about half of a novel at this point in my life. So I'm sitting on my idea, waiting for another 25 or so years to pass, and then I'm good. Actually, we might not be talking about the next-next-next Great American Novel, but more next to the tenth. We'll see. As long as it's not categorized as chick lit, all will be well in my world. I take great offense to the chick lit categorization, mainly because I find it pretty misogynistic in a really subterranean feminist sense, and I take even greater offense to the fact that women are continuing to perpetrate this label. These female authors have so much more to say than just tripe chick-y stuff, but they get sloughed off in the chick lit category. I say, let's leave the chick lit category, but to level the playing field, we need to do some re-categorization of works by male authors. And we shall call that dick lit. Because what's fair is fair, right?
But back to my novel. I've been thinking about what my photo on the book jacket would look like. I think I've already got a picture in my mind's eye of the cover art, but I need to have a phat ass photo, because that just kind of wraps the whole thing up. I hate it when I read a book and there's no picture of the author. Dammit, I want to know what they look like. If I bought your freaking book, you can at least be decent to put a pic on the inside of the back cover or something. The photos always fascinate me, because they are usually of professional quality, and if it's not, then this is their first book. If this is an author who has written some halfway scholarly non-fiction book, the photo they use is probably the same one shown on either their corporate website or the departmental website for whatever university they are tenured at. If this is a regular, albeit famous, author, then the photo is generally pretty staid, yet always classy in that I'm-rich-because-you-just-bought-another-of-my-books-and-I-can-afford-to-pay-Annie-Leibovitz-to-take-my-book-jacket-photo. Or the publishing house just took it out of their advance. Whatever, same thing.
I like to picture myself all dolled up in some really nice duds, the kind of clothes I can't really afford right now because I own children, and they in turn own my money. But I'd have some nice shit on, but the background would be kind of gritty in that inner city sense because that's a huge part of who I am and what I'm about, even though I can still bale hay and split wood like a motherfucker. I can guarantee that it wouldn't be on Belle Isle or any other island in the middle of the James River, because that's been done to death. Over it. So yeah, I'd probably be in an alley somewhere, maybe sitting next to some nasty ass dumpster or something. But then, to totally offset the clothing and the background, there would have to be that element of stupidity, because that's an even bigger part of who I am. I've given a fair amount of thought about the kind of stupidity my photo should have. Not a whole lot of stupid, but just that one thing that's totally off that would make someone look again, and think, what the fuck is she doing? I'll call that the WTF element. So here's me in this alley in downtown Richmond, standing next to a dumpster totally rocking out some Manolos, and maybe I'm pouring a can of Milwaukee's Best into a champagne flute. Or I've very casually got this huge veiny dildo dangling from one hand. Maybe we'll do a close up and I've got this ghetto-ass necklace, like the kind that say your name in cursive, but my necklace wouldn't say my name. It would say something like "I heart midget porn". It's got to be the smallest visual element of the photo, but jarring enough to to be the one thing that makes the biggest impact. I'd like to think that's how my writing is. Sometimes the shortest sentences make the biggest statements, so I need that to translate visually. In a really stupid kind of way.
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Random iPod Selection #1
I try to think back to life before the iPod, and I really can't. I mean, I obviously can, but how did I survive without an iPod? Life was all about signing up for kazaa, limewire or some other shitty service where most of the song titles or musicians were incorrect, and then downloading a bunch of tunes and burning it onto a disc that you could listen to. You also got the priviledge of downloading a virus or two as well. But you could only get about 20 or so songs on a CD, and if you have OCD, like me, you needed those songs to be of the same type of genre and in some type of alphabetical order, which meant you had a lot of CDs to tote around.
I got an iPod a few years ago for Christmas, a little 4gig nano, when the new nanos came out. Life changed for me, because I got one of those accoutrement's to be able to play the iPod in the car, and then figured out how to get the input/output on my work computer set so I could hook the iPod into that. And poof! My favorite selections of music all the time. I get so tired of listening to the radio, because they play the same songs over and over and over again, and they talk too damn much. Yes, I know they have bills to pay too, but damn. I don't need to hear the same commercial for penis growth or extenders or supplements, whatever it is that I'm sure is just snake oil, all the time. Life with an iPod is good, until you fill that mother up. Since I'm too cheap to go buy an iPod with more gigs, I've had to be selective with which songs to put on it. I'm up to about 579 songs right now, but I've had to remove a few to make room for the new ones.
Of course, everyone thinks they have the most eclectic selection of music on their iPod, just as they will tell you they have the most eclectic collection of books. Have you ever noticed that no one ever wants to admit they have the most eclectic collection of porn? You never hear anyone bragging about that. Because it's not eclectic, it's probably more freakish and deviant. But enough of that sidebar. Of course, I used to think that too, that I have the most eclectic collection of iPod songs. But I don't want to be that person anymore. I have shit on my iPod that I like, and a few songs on there that my kids like, and if someone (The Ex) doesn't like it, then just hang the fuck in there and wait for me to walk away.
So my random iPod selection for today is Matchbox Twenty's "How Far We've Come". My random selection isn't about critiquing the band, or analyzing the lyrics, because I'm not that good. I will never be a Rolling Stone correspondent. I don't know enough about the band, or the lyrics to really wax poetical about it. My random selection is more about what I think about when I hear the song, and what it means to me. This song... liberal tripe. I used to feel guilty about paying for, via download, music that was not conservative friendly. I really had a lot of guilt over downloading the Dixie Chicks (and I don't even like country music) because I felt like I had cheated on Dubya. It was my dirty little Republican secret, but like all dirty little secrets that we feel somewhat ashamed about, it felt kind of good, too. But then a friend of mine from high school gave me a pass and said that when it comes to music, politics doesn't count. Good enough benediction for me.
I don't really like Matchbox Twenty, and this is the only song of theirs that I have. I don't watch videos, so I don't know what the band interpreted the song to be, but I think I saw the vid once or twice years ago and it's a statement of where we, a country, are now, and what's wrong with it. Kind of like the new version of R.E.M's "It's the End of the World As We Know It" but not as good. I know this Matchbox song got played whenever CNN needed a 30 to 45 second montage of something and wanted to make a statement about America, the economy, the war, etc. If I recall correctly, and I usually do, I think this song came out about the time that Obama was a freshman Senator from Illinois, and scuttlebutt whisperings started about how he might just be our next JFK. Actually, my statement about me recalling correctly is just mad smack talking on my behalf. Because I love to talk shit and stuff. More on that in another blog. The other reason I like the song is that there's something in it, maybe the drum beat, that reminds me of U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday", which is definitely one of my most favorite songs ever.
This song, this song makes me think of where I am right now. I disengaged myself from a not-so-great (or worse) marriage, told him it was okay to blame me because I just couldn't lie anymore about loving him, refused to go to counseling because counseling wasn't going to make me love him, and walked the hell away with my dignity packed up in a bunch of boxes for me to piece together at a later time. It's been a little over six months since I told him I wanted a divorce, and in that time, I lived the absolute worst three to four months of my life (which hasn't all been bread and butter), really fought within myself to not seek some type of psychiatric hospitalization or at least heavy psychotropic medications, got involved in one really ugly domestic dispute involving the po-lice, because that's what we call them in the South. I managed to buy a house and move the FUCK out with absolutely no desire to ever go back down that nasty, bumpy, dysfunctional road. I've dealt with lies, manipulations, accusations, threats, some of the worst passive-aggressiveness I've ever encountered, insecurity, intimidation, and at least one not-so-fabulous attempt at being blackmailed. A lot of it throughout the course of the marriage, but the worst of it during the separation. As a caveat, let me just throw this out there - I am not, nor was I the victim of this marriage. I wholly contributed to most of the dysfunction. I always feel like I need to say that, because I don't want people to feel sorry for me. I got myself into this whole mess with an "I do" that probably never should have happened, and by God, I'll get myself out of it. Anyway, the game playing continues, but whatev. I'm learning how not to play back, because relationship head games are no fun if you have to play them alone. I'm getting my frame of mind back to where I want to be, need to be, for my own sanity and happiness and for the sake of my children.
I'm proud of what I've done. I'm proud of the stand I've taken, and the person that I can see myself becoming again. I'm okay with being proud of what I've done, because this has taken a lot of internal fortitude and the ability to reach deep down inside of myself to make all of this shit happen. I'm incredibly grateful for what I've been able to do, because I know that what I've been able to do, just walk away from a marriage and buy a house, buy what I need to buy for my children, is not the norm. I'm incredibly grateful I didn't have to move into an apartment or shitty rental house like my mom did when my dad left. I'm incredibly grateful for my super family, who remind me on the regular that their loyalty is with me, despite The Ex's victim role and comments to them about my infidelity (that didn't happen, but I guess for an egotistical bastard it's hard to admit you got LEFT for no one) and anything else he thinks might hit a nerve. I'm incredibly grateful for all of my friends, many of whom have checked on in a totally random fashion out of nothing but concern and caring.
So yeah, "How Far We've Come" - I've come a long way.
I got an iPod a few years ago for Christmas, a little 4gig nano, when the new nanos came out. Life changed for me, because I got one of those accoutrement's to be able to play the iPod in the car, and then figured out how to get the input/output on my work computer set so I could hook the iPod into that. And poof! My favorite selections of music all the time. I get so tired of listening to the radio, because they play the same songs over and over and over again, and they talk too damn much. Yes, I know they have bills to pay too, but damn. I don't need to hear the same commercial for penis growth or extenders or supplements, whatever it is that I'm sure is just snake oil, all the time. Life with an iPod is good, until you fill that mother up. Since I'm too cheap to go buy an iPod with more gigs, I've had to be selective with which songs to put on it. I'm up to about 579 songs right now, but I've had to remove a few to make room for the new ones.
Of course, everyone thinks they have the most eclectic selection of music on their iPod, just as they will tell you they have the most eclectic collection of books. Have you ever noticed that no one ever wants to admit they have the most eclectic collection of porn? You never hear anyone bragging about that. Because it's not eclectic, it's probably more freakish and deviant. But enough of that sidebar. Of course, I used to think that too, that I have the most eclectic collection of iPod songs. But I don't want to be that person anymore. I have shit on my iPod that I like, and a few songs on there that my kids like, and if someone (The Ex) doesn't like it, then just hang the fuck in there and wait for me to walk away.
So my random iPod selection for today is Matchbox Twenty's "How Far We've Come". My random selection isn't about critiquing the band, or analyzing the lyrics, because I'm not that good. I will never be a Rolling Stone correspondent. I don't know enough about the band, or the lyrics to really wax poetical about it. My random selection is more about what I think about when I hear the song, and what it means to me. This song... liberal tripe. I used to feel guilty about paying for, via download, music that was not conservative friendly. I really had a lot of guilt over downloading the Dixie Chicks (and I don't even like country music) because I felt like I had cheated on Dubya. It was my dirty little Republican secret, but like all dirty little secrets that we feel somewhat ashamed about, it felt kind of good, too. But then a friend of mine from high school gave me a pass and said that when it comes to music, politics doesn't count. Good enough benediction for me.
I don't really like Matchbox Twenty, and this is the only song of theirs that I have. I don't watch videos, so I don't know what the band interpreted the song to be, but I think I saw the vid once or twice years ago and it's a statement of where we, a country, are now, and what's wrong with it. Kind of like the new version of R.E.M's "It's the End of the World As We Know It" but not as good. I know this Matchbox song got played whenever CNN needed a 30 to 45 second montage of something and wanted to make a statement about America, the economy, the war, etc. If I recall correctly, and I usually do, I think this song came out about the time that Obama was a freshman Senator from Illinois, and scuttlebutt whisperings started about how he might just be our next JFK. Actually, my statement about me recalling correctly is just mad smack talking on my behalf. Because I love to talk shit and stuff. More on that in another blog. The other reason I like the song is that there's something in it, maybe the drum beat, that reminds me of U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday", which is definitely one of my most favorite songs ever.
This song, this song makes me think of where I am right now. I disengaged myself from a not-so-great (or worse) marriage, told him it was okay to blame me because I just couldn't lie anymore about loving him, refused to go to counseling because counseling wasn't going to make me love him, and walked the hell away with my dignity packed up in a bunch of boxes for me to piece together at a later time. It's been a little over six months since I told him I wanted a divorce, and in that time, I lived the absolute worst three to four months of my life (which hasn't all been bread and butter), really fought within myself to not seek some type of psychiatric hospitalization or at least heavy psychotropic medications, got involved in one really ugly domestic dispute involving the po-lice, because that's what we call them in the South. I managed to buy a house and move the FUCK out with absolutely no desire to ever go back down that nasty, bumpy, dysfunctional road. I've dealt with lies, manipulations, accusations, threats, some of the worst passive-aggressiveness I've ever encountered, insecurity, intimidation, and at least one not-so-fabulous attempt at being blackmailed. A lot of it throughout the course of the marriage, but the worst of it during the separation. As a caveat, let me just throw this out there - I am not, nor was I the victim of this marriage. I wholly contributed to most of the dysfunction. I always feel like I need to say that, because I don't want people to feel sorry for me. I got myself into this whole mess with an "I do" that probably never should have happened, and by God, I'll get myself out of it. Anyway, the game playing continues, but whatev. I'm learning how not to play back, because relationship head games are no fun if you have to play them alone. I'm getting my frame of mind back to where I want to be, need to be, for my own sanity and happiness and for the sake of my children.
I'm proud of what I've done. I'm proud of the stand I've taken, and the person that I can see myself becoming again. I'm okay with being proud of what I've done, because this has taken a lot of internal fortitude and the ability to reach deep down inside of myself to make all of this shit happen. I'm incredibly grateful for what I've been able to do, because I know that what I've been able to do, just walk away from a marriage and buy a house, buy what I need to buy for my children, is not the norm. I'm incredibly grateful I didn't have to move into an apartment or shitty rental house like my mom did when my dad left. I'm incredibly grateful for my super family, who remind me on the regular that their loyalty is with me, despite The Ex's victim role and comments to them about my infidelity (that didn't happen, but I guess for an egotistical bastard it's hard to admit you got LEFT for no one) and anything else he thinks might hit a nerve. I'm incredibly grateful for all of my friends, many of whom have checked on in a totally random fashion out of nothing but concern and caring.
So yeah, "How Far We've Come" - I've come a long way.
Plans
My plans for today were to sleep in, get some laundry done, run downtown and work for a few hours, come home, watch some complete tripe on TV, finish the laundry and housecleaning, and go to bed. Yes, I realize that tripe is the stomach of an ox that people eat, but isn't that pretty descriptive for most of the crap on TV nowadays? Another one of those fancy words I like to use. I work that one into my everyday conversation, usually in the place of the word crap. Stomach of an ox is crap, but to say something is complete tripe seems so much more accurate than just calling it crap. That, and calling something that is crap chitlins doesn't work, although chitlins are far deeper in the realm of crap than tripe is. If you know what chitlins are, you will get the double meaning of that statement. If you don't know what chitlins are, please stop reading my blog. I will be willing to sacrifice you as a follower.
But my plans for the day were completely waylaid yesterday when I was running to Wal-Mart to get stuff to hang up my daughter's curtains, and the car died on me. Literally, just stopped running. I considered myself lucky to have not been at a stoplight, but was able to coast over to the side of the road. Definitely not the battery, because the radio and electric windows were still working. Probably the alternator, because I've never had it replaced and the car has 112k on it. I love my car, more than I've loved any other car I've ever had. My grandfather bought this car about three months before he died, paid for it outright brand-spanking new, and then when he died I got the car. I really needed a car at that point in time, too, because The Ex had just totalled my truck and I was still trying to pay down what the insurance hadn't covered. A big lesson to me on GAP insurance, that's for sure. So this car has sentimental value, because of my grandfather, but more than that, it's just been a great car. Yeah, I'm the only person I know under 70 who drives a Buick, but that car amazes me. It's held up well to my abuses (which are really minor), my children's abuses (which are somewhat moderate), and the abuses of driving on I-95 daily and driving too fast through Shockoe Bottom (which are really major). With my financial situation being what it is right now, I don't think I could afford another car, and really, I don't want one. I love my Buick. I love the fact that it's got a sleeper engine, or something like that, according to Wikipedia. I love the fact that when I get down on the gas pedal the car shoots forward in some dangerous hemi fashion, and what I love more than that is that I got the car.
When my grandfather died, The Ex had a car which we had just purchased (used) the year before, so his car was about 3 years old, total. But he had a fucking fit about the fact that I should get his car, and he should get my grandfather's car, because, well, he drove more and needed a more reliable car. Of course, his car would have been more reliable if he had taken care of it. Taking care of a car to me does not mean a spit shine every other weekend, it means getting the oil changed every five thousand miles - because I refuse to buy into the oil companies demands of a three thousand mile change, and addressing the knocks and weird sounds when they pop up. He didn't know how to take care of a car, and didn't seem interested in learning. I'm of the opinion that if you spend THOUSANDS of dollars on something, you should at least be decent enough to take care of it. I mean, protect your investment, for God's sake. It's not a hard thing to do. But there was other stuff he couldn't or wouldn't take care of either, so I don't know why his inability to take care of a vehicle was surprising to me. I think you should take care of your belongings as well as you take care of your genitals. Either you love your shit or you don't. Time will tell, in the end.
But I digress into that muddy cesspool of badmouthing, which is sometimes fun, like it's fun to watch mud wrestling and swim in a swimming hole on a road named Hard Times. However, all three wear thin pretty quickly, and the joy is gone before you've even seen the main mud wrestling event, and instead are just wishing it were jello, and then thinking to hell with wrestling, jello shots would be so much more fun because after enough of them, we can just do our own wrestling. Or wrasslin', which is what it's really called. Naked wrasslin'. So anyway, The Ex had a fit to have the Buick. And I stood my ground, and insisted no, you are not getting that car. First of all, he was my grandfather and the damn will named me as the person to get the car. Not you, the grandson-in-law. And secondly, didn't you just, three weeks ago, completely wreck my year old truck? Need I remind you that you didn't just total my vehicle, you totalled someone else's vehicle as well and let's just be happy they aren't going to sue you? Or sue me, by default of a faulty, error-ridden marriage? He pouted about that car for at least six months. I think that I love the car more for the fact that I didn't cave into the manipulations and bullying more than anything else. The car kind of symbolizes my inner strength. Nope, that sounds too gay. That car... that car... is my big giant middle finger. My big 2003 Fuck You. That's why I love that car and will probably do anything I can to keep it as long as I can.
Plans for today... we'll see. Stuck in the house, watching tripe, waiting to get my Fuck You back. Life is good.
But my plans for the day were completely waylaid yesterday when I was running to Wal-Mart to get stuff to hang up my daughter's curtains, and the car died on me. Literally, just stopped running. I considered myself lucky to have not been at a stoplight, but was able to coast over to the side of the road. Definitely not the battery, because the radio and electric windows were still working. Probably the alternator, because I've never had it replaced and the car has 112k on it. I love my car, more than I've loved any other car I've ever had. My grandfather bought this car about three months before he died, paid for it outright brand-spanking new, and then when he died I got the car. I really needed a car at that point in time, too, because The Ex had just totalled my truck and I was still trying to pay down what the insurance hadn't covered. A big lesson to me on GAP insurance, that's for sure. So this car has sentimental value, because of my grandfather, but more than that, it's just been a great car. Yeah, I'm the only person I know under 70 who drives a Buick, but that car amazes me. It's held up well to my abuses (which are really minor), my children's abuses (which are somewhat moderate), and the abuses of driving on I-95 daily and driving too fast through Shockoe Bottom (which are really major). With my financial situation being what it is right now, I don't think I could afford another car, and really, I don't want one. I love my Buick. I love the fact that it's got a sleeper engine, or something like that, according to Wikipedia. I love the fact that when I get down on the gas pedal the car shoots forward in some dangerous hemi fashion, and what I love more than that is that I got the car.
When my grandfather died, The Ex had a car which we had just purchased (used) the year before, so his car was about 3 years old, total. But he had a fucking fit about the fact that I should get his car, and he should get my grandfather's car, because, well, he drove more and needed a more reliable car. Of course, his car would have been more reliable if he had taken care of it. Taking care of a car to me does not mean a spit shine every other weekend, it means getting the oil changed every five thousand miles - because I refuse to buy into the oil companies demands of a three thousand mile change, and addressing the knocks and weird sounds when they pop up. He didn't know how to take care of a car, and didn't seem interested in learning. I'm of the opinion that if you spend THOUSANDS of dollars on something, you should at least be decent enough to take care of it. I mean, protect your investment, for God's sake. It's not a hard thing to do. But there was other stuff he couldn't or wouldn't take care of either, so I don't know why his inability to take care of a vehicle was surprising to me. I think you should take care of your belongings as well as you take care of your genitals. Either you love your shit or you don't. Time will tell, in the end.
But I digress into that muddy cesspool of badmouthing, which is sometimes fun, like it's fun to watch mud wrestling and swim in a swimming hole on a road named Hard Times. However, all three wear thin pretty quickly, and the joy is gone before you've even seen the main mud wrestling event, and instead are just wishing it were jello, and then thinking to hell with wrestling, jello shots would be so much more fun because after enough of them, we can just do our own wrestling. Or wrasslin', which is what it's really called. Naked wrasslin'. So anyway, The Ex had a fit to have the Buick. And I stood my ground, and insisted no, you are not getting that car. First of all, he was my grandfather and the damn will named me as the person to get the car. Not you, the grandson-in-law. And secondly, didn't you just, three weeks ago, completely wreck my year old truck? Need I remind you that you didn't just total my vehicle, you totalled someone else's vehicle as well and let's just be happy they aren't going to sue you? Or sue me, by default of a faulty, error-ridden marriage? He pouted about that car for at least six months. I think that I love the car more for the fact that I didn't cave into the manipulations and bullying more than anything else. The car kind of symbolizes my inner strength. Nope, that sounds too gay. That car... that car... is my big giant middle finger. My big 2003 Fuck You. That's why I love that car and will probably do anything I can to keep it as long as I can.
Plans for today... we'll see. Stuck in the house, watching tripe, waiting to get my Fuck You back. Life is good.
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