Hello again my beautiful Internet People! Sorry if my vagueness led to some confusion yesterday. I am not quiting Facebook, or this Blog, or anything else. Not sure where that idea came from, but that was not what I was getting at, not even close.
I know my tendency to be so vague, and to talk in circles, confuses some people. Sorry about that. I have mentioned that I am an emotional basket-case, haven't I? I run from one end of the spectrum to the other, constantly, all day long. What I may not have mentioned is that I am not allowed to talk to all of you about anything that I am mad at my husband about. I can tell you about anything good that he does, that's allowed, just not the bad stuff. That's the rule. So, when he pisses me off in one way or another, you get vague, slightly hysterical, and otherwise indecipherable Blog Posts. Does it make any more sense now? Probably not.
Anyway, the point of yesterday's post was that I am writing a new book. That's where the "new world" comes from, its the one I am creating for the book. (Actually, I am seeing a whole series of books now, there could be all kinds of different directions to take this idea, but for now, I am just working on one.) The story will be of a sci-fi/ fantasy genre, which is something new for me. I have read lots of sci-fi and fantasy, but I haven't tried writing it before.
This will be a story about empowerment. That's what I want to write about. I am tired of victim stories, I want to write stories without victims, only heroes. I think it can be done, and I think I can do it well. Whether the rest of the world is ready for it or not remains to be seen, but I know I am. I need to be the hero of my own life, even if it is only in a story. You have to start somewhere, ... right?
If I can ever get some of the pesky little details worked out I hope to be spending a lot of my time working on writing this story, which is why I said I might not be around here as much. I am not putting the Blog aside, not at all, I just need to put as much time and energy into this story as possible. And that may leave me with less time to write here. On the upside, you will probably get a whole lot less of those boring "what I did today" posts that I flooded you all with last winter. Maybe. Can't promise you that. But the odds are in your favor. Probably.
Right now I need to sign outta here and get busy figuring out just what the futuristic, Eco-friendly, self-managed homes and cities will look like in my new world. Details, details, details, its all about the details.
Until next time ...
Hello there all my favorite Internet People! I hope everyone out there in the interwebs is happy, healthy, and living in peace with their world. Hahaha, yeah, like that might happen. Mother had another little tiny nervous breakdown again this weekend, but this one came with a bonus!
I have come to the conclusion that no matter how hard I try, I am never going to be able to change this world into one I can fit into. It just isn't going to happen, not in my lifetime anyway. So, since this world is not fit for me, I have decided to create my own. That's the bonus.
I have always loved the line from the show "Myth Busters", Adam always says, "I reject your reality and substitute my own". That is what I am doing. I am creating a new reality. Okay, maybe not a reality, but I am creating a realistic fantasy world where everyone is actually equal, where greed and corruption are non-existent, where all people are valued, all life is valued.
I am still working through the details, but this is going to be epic! I had spent the weekend working on other writing projects, but none of them were giving me much to work with. The idea for the story about "Camp Purgatory", I am just not ready to relive all of that hell right now. I thought I was, but I was wrong. I do believe it will make a great story someday, but I still have too much anger and resentment that I haven't been able to let go of yet, and rehashing all of it right now is not going to be healthy for me. Then I had the idea to pull out the historical fiction novels I started working on 15 years ago. I have actually three novels, all written out in my head, all I have to do is get it out of there and onto paper, but the subject matter is just not something I can deal with right now either. Instead of filling me with enthusiasm to get the story out, it just pisses me off that the story could be true, even though it isn't.
So, after spending an entire day running around in circles like a chicken with its head cut off, trying to find a story I could write, I just broke down. Everything was pointless. This world is never going to accept anything I do as having value, why bother? I am never going to be allowed to be a free person in a society that discredits everything I believe, everything I am. I am just one tiny little poor woman fighting against centuries of oppression and degradation, I don't stand a chance. And don't give me that line about how one person can change the world, that may be true for some people, but it is never going to be my truth. I have to accept that or I will drive myself crazy, or crazier, as the case may be.
So, since I know I cannot change this world, what options do I have? Well, I can just keep on suffering, just like I have always done, or I could kill myself, like I have always wanted to, or, ... is there another option?
Why yes, yes there is! It finally came to me yesterday morning. After spending hours crying my little eyes out for how badly I have fucked up any chance I might have had for the life I really wanted, it finally dawned on me: If you don't like this world, maybe you should create your own! So that is exactly what I am doing.
What would Earth look like if there had never been any religions? What would it look like if patriarchal systems never existed? Where would we be if all people were actually valued, equally? What if intelligence and education were treated as priorities, rather than something to be ridiculed? If the common good had been our priority, rather than individual greed? What if war was never even considered as an option? This is the world I am creating, and it is good. No, it is better than good, it is Freakin' Fabulous!
So, I hope you all will forgive me if I may tend to neglect you all a bit in the coming weeks. I like my world better, and I think I am going to start spending a majority of my time there. I will keep finding to time to pop in here occasionally, to keep you updated, but I don't want to get stuck in your world anymore. It is just too damn depressing for me. I am building my world as quickly as I can, so hopefully you all can come join me in it soon, if you so choose. Just remember, we don't allow for mean or stupid in my world, so check those at the door before you go dragging that foulness into my beautiful brave new world!
Until next time ...
Hello all you wonderful Internet People! It has been a very long day here at Mother's house, very productive, but very long. I went to bed early last night. I didn't mean to, it just kinda happened. I was sitting here just typing away on something and my computer started getting hot, which it does, a lot (or it did, but I will get back to that in a minute), so I closed it up to let it cool down. I was really hot too, so I laid down across the bed to line my head up with the fan that was blowing the air around, and that was all she wrote. After about an hour my husband woke me up to make sure I was all right, at which point I got up, put the computer away, told my youngest son to clean his room, and then laid back down and went right back to sleep. That was at 9 o'clock! I never intended to go to sleep, I just couldn't stay awake.
So, of course, I was awake at 5:30 this morning. What an ungawdly time of day! I managed to stay in bed until 6:30 at which point I just couldn't get comfortable anymore, so I had to get up and get dressed.
I did make it outside again today, the first flower bed is nearly finished with the first go through. I was right, it doesn't really look like I have done anything, unless you compare it to the other ones. The salt grass is already growing back in where I had it all torn out a couple of weeks ago when I first started this. Today my husband helped scrape the grass off of the seam in the side of the driveway next to the flower bed, so when he was done I took pots of boiling water out and poured them down the line, and a couple down the outside edge of the flower bed where there are no other plants. Hopefully that will kill some of it off for a while.
Okay, so, back to the laptop overheating. This has been an ongoing problem all summer. I dug out the old laptop cooler unit I had and that helped a little bit, for a while, until I broke it. This morning asked my husband if he had a spare fan or something that I could use to force air at the bottom of the laptop to cool it off. He didn't think that would be effective so he told me to give him a few minutes and he would think of something. What I really needed was something to raise the laptop off the surface of whatever it was sitting on to let air get to the bottom unimpeded. About an hour later he came back in with one of those cheap accordion style peg racks you get at the dollar store. Like this one: 
The pegs are large and flat, so I turned it upside down, sitting on the pegs on my tray table, and then set the laptop on the bottom side which is pointed up. I have had the laptop turned on for 10 hours straight and it is barely even warm! I have mentioned before that I married a genius, haven't I?
So, since the laptop is now working the way it is designed to, I spent the day writing. I finally picked the topic for my first book, and started writing it! Don't get too excited, I am only 4 pages in, but I think it will be good when it is done. It will be a tragic comedy about a self-destructive young woman and her time at Camp Purgatory.
Yep, its a autobiography. Sort of. It will be fiction, more or less, but loosely based on a point in my life that is replete with comedy fodder. The names will be changed to protect the guilty, except for my ex-husband, he doesn't get a name. He is, and always will be, the Moron. That's the only name I will ever use in reference to him, well, that's the nicest name I will ever use in reference to him. He doesn't deserve a name in my world, he lost that right 7 years ago, all he gets from me now is to be called, the Moron, for as long as we both shall live.
The goal is to have a finished rough draft by this time next year, and a final draft ready to submit to a publisher by the following September. I think this is reasonable, but I am open to readjusting the time frame as necessary. The point is just to have a goal and start taking steps towards reaching it. At the moment the plan is to try for at least 1,000 words a day. That's around 3 pages. I think I can handle that most days. Right now I am just free-writing, kinda like what I do here, but I will go back and edit and rewrite many times before I am done, I just need to get it all down in writing, I can fill in the details, and rearrange the order, later.
I hate to admit that my Mother was right about something, but she did tell me I should have been writing everything down back then when it was happening. She was so right. I sure wish I had kept a journal or a diary back then. I just never had the time, and I never trusted the Moron not to exploit every thing I wrote down, which he did, every chance he got.
Oh well, I am writing a fiction book anyway, so whatever I can't remember I will fill in as I go along, and I think I remember most of the best of it anyway. I couldn't forget that shit if I tried.
Anyway, its late, and I am tired so I gonna sign outta here for the night. I hope you found something in there worth reading. I do try. Until next time ...
Hello there Internet People! I am having some trouble getting going on the writing today, so please bear with me as I use this post to try to jump start my brain. I did manage to make it outside this morning and I spent another hour and a half yanking and tugging at salt grass. My right hand is so sore I think I may have let out a little scream a time or two when I tried to close my fingers around a clump of grass. I think it may be the beginnings of arthritis because it did seem to get a little better the more I used it. Of course now it feels like I ran over it with a tractor, but I suppose that is to be expected.
I did manage to do pretty good with the whole eating food thing yesterday, I even managed to eat enough to feel full at one point. That was different. Usually I just eat until I am tired of chewing, or tasting, whatever I am eating, which generally happens long before I am actually full. Yesterday I made a point to try to just eat, as much as I could, as often as I could. And apparently it all added up by the end of the day. I am trying to do the same today. So far it seems to be working. I just need to keep on with it.
I am feeling much better than I have in a very long time. I still have my moments, but I think I am developing actual goals for my life, for my self. I have never had the confidence to do that before. I took a class in College about setting goals and planning for the future you want, but at the time the entire concept seemed rather unrealistic to me. Honestly, I saw setting goals as a one-way ticket to guaranteeing disaster. I used to have this recurring nightmare that I was alone in a car going very fast down the highway, but I was always sitting in the passenger seat, trying to steer the car from over there. I was NOT in charge of my own life. I am still not sure who was, but it was not me. Whatever choices I made or goals I set for myself were sure to be overridden by forces beyond my control, so why bother?
Fortunately I know better now. I may not be "in control" of my life, but I can take control, of my choices and my abilities, and use them to make my life better. I don't have to just go along for the ride in life, I can get into the driver's seat and decide where I am going to go, if not the rate at which I am going to travel. It has taken me a long time to get to this point, but I think I have reached it at just the right time. And while I hope I still have a long way to go on my journey through life, for the first time, I think maybe ever, I am really looking forward to the journey, and not just the final destination.
Until Next Time ...
Hello again you Beautiful Internet People! I have recently arrived at the conclusion that my Sub-conscious is actually a spoiled rotten, foul-mouthed, self-destructive 3-year-old that is clearly intent in causing as much mischief as a herd of elephants in a china shop. Just what I needed.
So, how did I come to this carefully worded conclusion? Funny you should ask, it all started the other night. If you have been following along around here you might remember I told you all about that terrible nightmare I had the other night, the one where I woke up needing to die. Yea, that one. Anyway, the next night, my husband, being the oh-so-wonderful guy that he is, took my bad dreams away from me and had them for himself. (Don't ask, he just does that kind of stuff for me, a lot. I have no clue how, but he does.) So, last night, as we were settling into bed for the night he says, "there will be no bad dreams tonight, for either of us." Now, when I say things like that to him, like "no stealing all the covers tonight", or, "Stay on your own side of the bed tonight", his subconscious actually listens, and usually does what I have asked. Mine, on the other hand, apparently took this as a challenge. "You can't tell me what to do! Fuck you! I will have all the fucking bad dreams I want! And there is nothing you can do about it! How do you like me now, mother fucker?" Yeah, she's kind of a little bitch like that.
So, of course, I had at least half a dozen bad dreams last night. Most of which involved my husband kicking me out of the house saying he was "tired of dealing with your shit". When I told my husband this morning about the dreams he says, "well, that's easy, just quit with your shit then." Which was immediately met by my response of: "No. Fuck you. I put up with your shit, you will put up with mine. That's the deal." I told him when he married me that I am not going through another divorce, ever. The only way out of this marriage is by somebody dying, and since I am a little busy right now figuring out how to live, dying is no longer an option for me at this point.
NO, that was not a challenge to the Universe. Yes, I know I am going to die eventually and there ain't much I can do about that, but lets not speed it along right now, okay? Pretty please.
I think I digressed for a moment there, let's get back on topic. Um, ... what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the 3-year-old that is running the show in the back of my head. It would appear that she is a little upset with me. Can't say I blame her. I am pretty tired of my shit too. And so it comes down to my husband being right, ... again, ... damnit. I reckon it is time to just "quit the shit" that got me here in the first place. Not to keep him from throwing me out, but to convince myself to let Me out of the self-imposed prison I have used to punish the rest of the world for my inability to conform.
That's what it is you know, I have been beating the shit outta myself for 30 years in order to punish a society that refused to acknowledge my value. That worked out really well for me. Not. At any rate, I think everyone has been sufficiently punished now, so it is time to get to work on acknowledging my own value and sharing that with the world instead. Now that sounds like a better plan. And that is the one I am working on right now.
Until next time ...
Hello again my Dear Internet People! I hope today finds everyone out there enjoying life at least a little bit. I am doing my best over here. I am sure you all will be thrilled to hear that I did make it outside this morning, and I managed to put in a whole hour into the flower bed! You would be hard pressed to tell where, but I did. I made it to the Irises and Roses, and after an hour of yanking and pulling, I have decided I am going to dig the whole section up and clean it out that way.
The roses were there when we moved in. The Irises and assorted other flowering plants that are hidden in there all came from my parent's backyard. And all of them were inundated with salt grass before they ever went into the ground, which was also inundated with salt grass. I didn't have the time to clean them out before I put them in the ground, so I need to take the time to do it now. I may end up digging up the whole damn flower bed before I am done, knowing me, so I have to be careful now to go all obsessive-compulsive on this one. Um, ... I mean, ... Not to go. No going OCD on something else now Mother, that would not be good.
Once I finished cleaning up from my foray into the great outdoors, I came back in the house and ate some yogurt. Then I did the dishes, and cleaned the kitchen, and ate one of them breakfast Hot Pocket things that I don't like. Well, I ate most of it anyway. I only mention this because I am still having trouble forcing myself to eat an adequate amount of food, so I am trying to give myself some credit and encouragement when I do eat. The temperatures around here are finally supposed to fall down into the low 80's by the end of this week, so I am preparing to start baking in hopes that that will get me more enthused about eating. I love home made breads and pies, can't stand most of the store bought stuff, its just nasty, but home made, now that is good. So, since the only one around here that is going to make me any home made baked goods is me, I am anxiously awaiting the temperature drops of Fall so that I can get on with it already.
When I first moved out on my own, I never bought much of anything pre-packaged. I mean like cake mixes, and bread mixes, Hamburger Helper, stuff like that, I didn't buy that stuff. Heck I never even tasted Hamburger Helper until after I married the Moron. I made most things "from scratch" as they say. I have never made pasta, I bought that, but I always put together the whatever that went on it. Anyway, my point was, that I think I liked food more when I made it "from scratch". The more I moved towards the pre-packaged stuff as I got older, and busier, the less I wanted to eat. Not that eating was ever something I did a lot of, but I don't recall a time when I have ever eaten less than I have been the last few years. I wasn't exaggerating when I told you all before that the average 2-year-old consumes more solid food in a day than I usually did.
Notice that is a "did", past tense, as in not doing that anymore. (By the way, I also just went and ate 6 Club crackers with that nasty ass Easy Cheese stuff spread on top too.) Yes, at the moment I am still eating crap, in addition to the good food, but I am also working towards eating mostly the good food, that's just gonna take a little longer. The point right now is to just keep eating. It doesn't matter what it is, as long as I can swallow it. We will work on eating healthy once I relearn to actually eat.
I keep telling you, its all one step at a time. And I will probably keep saying it, because it is so very true, and because I need to be reminded of it, constantly. I didn't make this mess in one day, I ain't gonna clean it up in one day either. And since there are so many messes, on so many levels, well, I think it is safe to say that clean up on aisle 4 (and aisle 5, and aisles 6, 7, 8, etc.) is going to be an ongoing process for the foreseeable future.
Well, now that I have put away the groceries my husband just brought home, ate half a croissant, and bored you all to tears, I guess I better sign outta here and get on with the rest of my day. I think I will go in search of new recipes for good things to eat this afternoon. Wish me luck.
Until next time ...
Hello, Hello, Hello! Well, now I am done with the grapes. When I posted yesterday I had forgotten about the 3 quarts of raisins that were still in the dehydrator drying. But they are also now done, bagged, and cleaned up after. All of the assorted accoutrements utilized in processing the grapes are also washed and put away now too, so that is one more task accomplished for the year.
I didn't make it out to the flower bed this morning, but hopefully tomorrow will bring me better motivation. I had a terrible dream of some kind last night, I don't remember what it was, I never remember my dreams, but I woke up feeling this overwhelming need to get straight out of bed and go kill myself. That shit ain't good. Obviously, I got over it, but I have no clue why I felt that way, or why the feeling was so severe. I haven't felt suicidal in years and years, what the hell was that shit about?
My husband tells me I shouldn't worry about it. "Quit thinking" he says. Bwahhaahhahha! Like I could do that! He's so funny! No, I know what he saying, and he is right, I shouldn't start fixating on it, but just trying to understand something does not make it fixating! I have been asking my body to tell me what it is that keeps holding me back from taking care of myself, and it is telling me, so I think I need to listen. My problems came about because I have made a life around ignoring what my body says, If I am going to get well, I need to listen, and to respond, preferably with some kindness and love.
He is absolutely right though. I do spend way too much time thinking about shit instead of doing it. And I am thinking about how to change that. Haha. I am working on changing it though. Not as much as I would like, but like I said before, as long as I keep taking steps in the right direction I am doing good. The size of the steps is not relevant, only the direction. Keep pointed toward your goal and you will get there. Everyone is a work in progress, unless they are dead.
