The Random Dilettante

Sorry for the lag. Trust me, I’ve been falling behind in more areas then blogging though. I’ve just been struggling to keep it together. Usually I would log on to my blog and get it out, but lately that just seems too exhausting. Sometimes I just wish I could curl up inside a cocoon and wake up a few months from now..all bright and refreshed with a hand reaching out to welcome me back.

In the real world that isn’t practical though; I have daughters to raise and take care of, which is a blessing in itself. They keep me from just throwing in the towel…because they bring too much to the table to just throw it all away.

The lesson I have learned lately is having to be an adult and just bite the bullet and drive on. There is no instant cure to what ails me. Living closer to family would help. If Andrew wasn’t gone it would definitely help. Having more friends and not having just moved across the country would also make it easier. But none of those things are in my stars for now, so I just have to deal with what I have. I guess that’s what all of us have to do.

Times like these, you think back to being in a parents arms.. your spouses arms, and just being held tight and told that it’s all going to be ok. But then you realize your an adult now and sooner or later you just have to learn how to stand on your own two feet. It’s hard..and each day is a struggle in my head, but I just grit my teeth and move on. Right now I think there is something out there trying to challenge me and teach me that I have what it takes to get through whatever I want too, no matter the circumstance.

Soon enough I will have the support that is essential sometimes and that I so desperately need, but for now, maybe it’s all about me learning about ME. In the past I have done things to drown out the sadness, frustration or pain…but all those things did was hurt me even worse in the end..physically or mentally..they drove me further into my hole. Lately I haven’t done any of those things and I think that’s why I am feeling the way I do. I’m letting myself “feel” I guess? Which sucks..but maybe something good will come out of it.

In the meantime, in an effort to get myself back on track I think I’m going to resort back to giving myself “chore days” so that if nothing else..I know what the purpose for that day was SUPPOSED to have been. I tried it a while back and it seemed to really help..I would wake up and not remember what was designated for that day so I would look it up again on my blog…and say “oh yeah…” and go do what I needed to do. That way everything didn’t seem so overwhelming and pointless.

Like I always say…baby steps! Even my “up” days are somewhat off, but I’m still here working at it..and I guess that says something. I can’t give it ALL right now..but I can handle SOME….because some is definitely better than NONE.

Awww. A poem… hehe

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFsXv9Lc-F8]

Happy late Thanksgiving everyone! I was pretty depressed as the day began, but it has ended on a wonderful note, and for that I am grateful.

I watched the Comic Relief special on HBO tonight and laughed my ass off to most of it. As always, Dane Cook totally had me cracking up. It feels good to laugh sometimes, ya know?

This year Comic Relief’s mission is to help rebuild New Orleans and I fully support the cause. I don’t care what anyone says, there is too much history and culture there to simply abandon it, for fear of it getting flooded again. We need to build better and stronger homes, and invest more time, energy and money into building a stronger levy.

Here are some quick facts for you:

50 - Approximate percentage of homes in New Orleans still lacking electricity 83 - Percentage of New Orleans schools damaged by Katrina

1/3 - Amount of debris yet to be picked up

49 - Percentage of bus routes now operational

17 - Percentage of buses back in service

$44,800,000 - Amount given to Louisiana by U.S. Dept. of Education for charter schools since Katrina

$0 - Amount given for traditional public schools damaged by the storm

100 - Number of destroyed miles on U.S. Highway 90 running along Gulf Coast between New Orleans and Pascagoula, MS

Ultimately, there are so many reasons to support this cause, and that’s what I did tonight. I even got a free T-shirt out of it! More than that though, I have the satisfaction of knowing I did my part..as small as it may have been, I cared enough to give something.

I know Christmas is fast approaching, and wallets get tighter as the days progress, but I urge you to consider cutting back on a present or two and instead give a little money to this cause.

This season is about giving, but a lot of the times we get caught up in buying useless presents for people that half the time they don’t use, and never needed.

So I say..

Give to a cause that you know needs your help.

Give to the elderly that lost their homes,

The children who lost their schools,

The pets that lost their owners…

Do your part, no matter how small, to bring back this soulful city that is part of our nations history, and should stay a part of our nations FUTURE.

Visit http://www.comicrelief.orgto learn more, and to donate.

And remember, it gives back!

Donate

$30-$59 you get a t-shirt

$60-$99 and you get a t-shirt + sweatshirt

$100 or more and you get a t-shirt, sweatshirt, and a “20th Anniversary DVD”

It’s a winning situation however you look at it

I finally went and bought a sleeping aid my neighbor suggested. It’s called “Simply Sleep” and it’s made by Tylenol. I took some last night and about an hour later I was ready to hit the sheets….at a decent time!! Whooo hoo!

Trust me, this is huge. Lately my system has been so outta wack it’s not EVEN funny. It wanted to be up all night and down all day. Even if I had been up for 24 hours straight and by all rights should have crashed the next night…I still couldn’t sleep. Then when I finally passed out I’d wake up 3 hours later and be wide awake. It was a disaster. So then of course..my days were a disaster.

Today was great though…productive too.

In other news, it doesn’t look like Andrew will even be around a good chow hall for Thanksgiving. He’s been tasked out to a few different bases to update their systems, or fix them..I can’t remember. I don’t even know where he’s at right now, which bites. I get nervous when he’s flying like that too…ya just never know..but I do try to keep my thoughts positive. It’s not always easy though. Anyway, here’s hoping he gets a decent meal out there some where.

Oh..I almost forgot. My cell phone company seems to have cut me off. The no good bastards. I was under the impression I paid them a few weeks ago (online) but apparently I didn’t? I never thought twice about it until today when I went to make a call and it brought me straight to Verizon Wireless…which is weird because I use Altell. It would let me make a call, but mentioned it would cost $2.99 a min. Haha. Yeah, that’s going to happen! I can’t get into my voice mail or anything, it’s really weird. They didn’t text or mail any notices or anything, and technically it’s only 2 weeks late…which isn’t good, but damn! Just cut me off? No mercy.

I’m not tripping though..I’ve been thinking about switching carriers. I just think it’s shitty to not even let me know what was going on..I’ve been a customer for around 4 years now. Hopefully it’s what I think it is though, because today I signed up for new servic, which is cheaper, AND I got 3 lines.

Your not going to believe it, but one of the free phones is for Taylor for Christmas! I know, I know..but just the other day I was at the PX with my neighbor and I pointed out a $60 text messenger they have out there for the kids…it comes with 2 “phones” so that they can give one to a friend and then text each other all they want back and forth. I mentioned that Taylor wanted one of them and my neighbor looked at it unimpressed and said ” Why don’t you just get her a cell phone?” then I said “Because Andrew would kill me” hehe. Her daughter, who’s the same age as Taylor, has one and uses it on occasion. Originally she bought it for her so that when she went out with another friend she had, it was easy to call her and vica-versa.

Anyway, it got me thinking about it a little bit, and then this shit happened with my phone, so I just went with it. Taylor will have a COW Christmas morning when she finds out. She’s asked for one for at least 2 years now, and I’ve always looked at her like she was crazy..because until this point I would have never fathomed she’d have one before 15…at the earliest.

I’m rationalizing it though, because it doesn’t cost me a dime extra since I can have up to 3 lines for a flat rate. Plus, I’ll be a phone Nazi..she won’t be chatting it up very often. Family can call her directly too, so that will be very cool in her eyes.

Hopefully Andrew doesn’t kill me. The girls will play when daddies away.. hehe.

Ehh.

It could be a lot worse, no?

I am probably due for a severe ass kicking when he gets home, but that’s ok…I can handle it

I don’t have any of the phone numbers yet, but when I get them in the mail later this week, I will send out an email to the people who need to know.

Hey, maybe with a new phone & new provider, my phone habits will improve!! I will have to make an effort to answer it more often, and call people more often. Phones aren’t near as scary as I make them out to be..I have to keep telling myself this!

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, I just haven’t been in the “mood” to the past few days.

On to more exciting things!

OK, it’s not exciting to most people, but I wanted to share anyway. Recently I’ve been using Opera for my browser and I’ve been seriously impressed. Usually I prefer Firefox, but for some reason when I downloaded the new version it put up a Yahoo toolbar that I couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard I tried. Every time I closed it out and went to bring it back up it would always reappear. Anyways…I LOATHE unneeded toolbars. I cringe when I see peoples browsers so full of toolbars that cut into their viewing space of the web page they are looking at. Especially when I find out that they don’t even use the tool bars! I like my browser clean, organized, and efficient.

I took some screen shots to explain a few things I like about it..

(I had to divide the pic in half to make sure it would fit on my page)

Notice the “New Tab” circled in RED - this allows you to bring up consecutive web pages in the same browser window. Unlike, Explorer which pulls up a whole new window each time you want to view a different page. In this picture you can see I have a ‘AOL’ tab and my blog as a tab, while I am actually on my Tripod page. It makes it so I can easily click between pages if I need too. Very useful if I’m working on a template or something.

Also notice the BLUE STAR - this is known as the “Magic Wand” which stores passwords for you. You store your password once, and then the next time you visit the same page you see the wand light up with stars. One click on it and it logs you in and does all the foot work for you!

The PINK TRIANGLES are links that I have dragged over from my address bar. If you drag and click on the icon of the page your viewing, and drop it too the left, it will leave a little icon of the page you were viewing. Some of mine are, AOL, My Blog, Sitemeter, Myspace..etc..etc… It’s nice because usually when you drag a link over it is in Text, and depending on the description of the site, it can be a WHOLE lot of text, and then you have to go in and edit it…which is a pain.

Now in this next picture you see my address bar, and in this instance I have clicked on it. When you click inside the window (where it says www.tripod.lycos.com) it will bring up a sub-window that keeps track of your ‘Top 10′ pages viewed when you click on the arrow, which I love. There you also find a icon to click on to go back to your homepage, all of your bookmarks, and more space to drag links.

Anyway, these are just a few things I like about this browser. If you give it a try, make sure and click click on “Tools” on the top of the toolbar and go into “Preferences” - there you can find all sorts of stuff to customize your experience. For example, the default setting is to automatically bring up your last viewed page when you first bring up your browser. You can change this to bring up your homepage every time instead. (which most people like better)

Go here if you want to download it! And if you do, let me know if you like it..or even what you don’t like about it

You Are: 20% Dog, 80% Cat

You are are almost exactly like a cat. You’re intelligent, independent, and set on getting your way. And there’s no way you’re going to fetch a paper for anyone!

No seriously…my dogs piss me off.  If I could find a nice older couple with a fenced yard,  I would consider giving Chief the boot.  I love him, but he really needs a yard so that he can take all the time he wants out there to contemplate taking a shit..cause obviously it takes a lot of thought on his part.  When we had a fenced yard it wasn’t a problem, but now days he’s all about sneaking away somewhere in my house to drop a deuce.  I am getting tired of it.  Especially now that Gatsby has assigned himself to cleaning up Chiefs little messes. Mmmm. Yummm..

Damn Dogs.

OK, there is officially no more “mama drama” on this blog. I wasn’t aiming at creating what I did, but it’s a chance I took. I guess that’s why more people don’t say whats on their minds, you never know how it may be perceived. In retrospect I wouldn’t have not posted it though, cause I would rather be honest with how I feel than pretend that every things ok and be fake.

I remember a long time ago I gave my birth father an ass chewing in my sister’s defense because he had said some things I didn’t agree with and was overreacting to the situation that was going on. Anyway, as you saw..I can give a good ass chewing! So after I wrote him I was expecting World War III, I just knew there wasn’t anyway he wouldn’t come back with a retort of some sort. Well, I was wrong and the next reply he sent me didn’t hardly say anything at all, it said something like:

“Your right. I’m sorry, you’ve made me think about things a little differently”

Something like that..it was short and too the point. Anyway, I read it and sat back in amazement. I was instantly ready to give him a second chance when just 30 minutes prior I had thought it was the end of our relationship. It caught me off guard, and definitely earned some respect from me. Not many people in this world are open to hearing when they are wrong, or to hearing the other side of the story, they are usually to busy thinking of their own defense. the problem with doing that is that it’s impossible to ever learn anything about yourself if you don’t listen to people once in a while.

Anyhow, enough of that for now!!

Happy Veterans Day!

Have you thanked a soldier today? I’d give one a big hug and kiss if I could

I actually got something in the mail today that I thought was really cool. It was a package that had a letter, a Certificate of Appreciation, and a lapel pin that said “spouse” over the army’s logo.

The letter was really nice, here’s a small section of it:

“Ours is an Army of tradition. Our greatest tradition is selfless service to our country, and in that service we ask our Soldiers to carry out tough missions that take them away from home and family. Today, soldiers answer the call to defend us against new kinds of threats. Deployments have increased and frequency and length in order to maintain our commitments to freedom, to our way of life, and to the American Family. The Nation has no choice. The Global War On Terrorism is one that touches us all - and one that we must win.

As Soldiers serve, the support of families sustains them so they do what must be done to protect our freedoms. Our nation would not have the service of Soldiers without your support and patriotism. You make a difference to your Soldier and to your country.”

Nice huh? I thought it was pretty neat. I’m not sure why I got it, or if every Army spouse got one today, but it’s cool either way.

I scanned the Certificate of Appreciation so you could see it. For obvious reasons I faded out where our last names were. Click on the pic and have a look though, it’s a nice one.

Some people just don’t get the point. The last thing I thought I said was that I was TRYING with what I could for now. Dyslexia you think?? Cause she thinks I said I wanted a good-bye from her. Ummm. ok.

Here is what she posted in her blog. Good luck on understanding it.

“I guess you want a goodbye……
I tried and that is all I can do and what you have its ok with me .. I am not going to beg for any thing from you i just wanted to start someting . But i see that is not what you wanted.. That is your lose I am a good person and yes we all have our fault you do too and everyone does so just do whatyou feel what you think is best for you . I will always have love in my heart for you but if you dont want it thats ok.. You have to deal with that in your own way.. I never said that i was perfect and yes i did have to put you in the children home and talked to you about that .. Your dad was drunk and didnt want to deal with any of this and when he got that way he beat me and that is some that no child needs to see he was in fault as well so keep that in mind an d may GOD be with you in this…. I am not going to let this end my life I do have other children that do love me and grand children too and i am great person once someone gives a chance to someone… So say what ever you want to say about me because i dided it and you didnt so you dont know the whole truth. You are getting one side of it and that is fine if that is what you want i am not going to make you hear me if you dont want to .. And to let go for what happen to me and the things i went thur there will never be any chance for HIM to get in this life and what he did God what is due to him… So hate me is that is what you want to do .. But you can never take what is in my heat for you so .. THis is the end until you decide what you want to do with me and if that is nothing so be it .. I will leave you alone and hope you have a wonderful life and take care of your children and just live each day and smell the roses and take care …
MY love is there if you ever want it… so i guess this is the end and have a good life and I am sorry that your life was such a Fuck up but you arent the only on on this earth that has been thur shit … This is the end of this and i wont let you commment on this you know my email address if you have some thinkg to say let me knot there is shouldnt be on the the blpog for everyone but if that is what you want to make me look so bad ok and i am just going to let you know what all you think you know just remember there are aallways tow sides to a story.. good luck in life and my God be with you”

WELL.

If that doesn’t make you feel proud of where you come from then I don’t know what will!!!

jeeze louise, somebody get me a drink.

You know what’s funny? I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not this is the best place to vent my current frustrations, mainly because I don’t want to perpetuate more drama, which I feel might be inevitable if I do say something.

But then I checked my email and opened up my daily horoscope and lookie what it said:

Libra (Sep 23 - Oct 22)
You know what’s important to you today, but still may be very worried about the reactions of others. You may feel overly responsible for someone else at work, yet your concern might have more to do with your insecurity than altruism. Think it through first; if your motives are clear, then go ahead and act on what you believe.

Oh snap. I can do that..my motives are crystal fucking clear.

Here’s the thing:

Who I choose to deal with, and in what manner I deal with them is MY BUSINESS, and ONLY my business.

And guess what? Why I deal with someone the way I do..you guessed it…it’s also my business.

I give those I know that respect, and all I am asking for, is it in return.

I am getting fed up with people thinking they know the way I should see things, like they have my perception all figured out and ready to bottle feed me. Perception doesn’t work that way folks. It’s mine and mine alone. Everyone has a different way of looking at things, it’s just how it is. Until you’ve walked in my shoes, the smart thing to do is just stop trying to meddle and let me come to you and explain myself…that is if I feel I owe you an explanation.

Weakness

1. Lacking physical strength, energy, or vigor; feeble.

2. Likely to fail under pressure, stress, or strain; lacking resistance: a weak link in a chain.

3. Lacking firmness of character or strength of will.

We are all weak in our own ways, I understand this and I know I’m not above it. What differentiates myself and others from people that I have a problem with, is that even though my life has had it’s own share of adversity and at times I’ve felt like nothing and ready to quit - I DIDN’T.

Like I always say. I got stories. Tons of them. My life was no bowl of goddamn cherries, and it still isn’t. But I’ll be damned if I’d ever quit or even want to quit. I have too much to live for, too much to prove to those who thought otherwise of me, and too much pride to ever let anyone get the best of me.

What happened in my life doesn’t define me. I define me.

So although we all crumble at times from the pressure, it’s essential to pick yourself back up and drive on. I have little tolerance for those who can’t seem to understand that they are in control of their own destiny and like to play life’s victim. Bad things happen to good people all the time, and it’s up to you whether your going to let the bad guy knock you down.

If your one of those people that is forever playing your violin and at the same time hopes to get respect from me, you have to understand that it’s not an easy thing for me. I’d prefer to take your violin and smash it over your head in hope to snap you out of your self-pity. Out of love..I would totally break your violin, because it does nothing for you…nothing but drive you further into your own sad psychosis, and that’s just a waste of what would have otherwise been a person with great potential in life. If you can’t move on from your past all you know how to do is feed off of others like a parasite because you don’t believe your strong enough to stand on your own.

Anyway, I know I am being harsh, but this is how I feel. So when I have a birth mother who wallows in self-pity and a sister who can’t understand why I keep my distance from her, I get pretty frustrated. One, no one really knows how much effort I’m putting into someone but me.

My MOTHER died only 3 months ago.

3 months.

She was mean and heartless and used the fuck out of me, but she was my mom, and we had our good times too. It was her damn idea to take me out of the children’s home, she liked my red hair and thought I was cute to boot. I didn’t have the best home life, but at least I wasn’t busy being an orphan and visiting countless foster homes of people who enjoy locking kids in closets when they are tired of them.

She took me away from that and I have to respect that and love her for it regardless of how she hurt me in the past.

So please consider my position on things and understand where I am coming from. I haven’t even been able to wrap my head around my own mother dying and at the same time I’m supposed to embrace another “mother” - it’s not so easy, and any little contact with her is EFFORT, and it’s my way of trying to give her a chance. Stop trying to create drama and figure out what my INACTION means. When I say nothing, I mean nothing. After I don’t talk to someone for 4 days and all of a sudden they are emailing me and assuming I don’t want to talk to them EVER AGAIN and I’m ready to write them off, it annoys the shit out of me. It tells me that too much shit has been going on in the background and that people are wasting their time trying to figure out things that they can truly only know if they ASK THE SOURCE. It pisses me off to the point where I just want to give them what they’ve wasted all their time on,…… what they think they’ve got all figured out. How in the hell you try to figure out whats going on in someone elses head is beyond me…it’s so damn pointless.

Anyway I’m done. I got more personal than I wanted, but I’m not going to write long emails pleading my case and I’m certainly not going to explain myself over the phone. I won’t defend myself against your THOUGHTS of me and nothing that I have actually done. All I have done is tried, believe it or not. I am trying to give a little and work with something that I don’t even feel comfortable with yet, so my advice is to get off the campaign trail and let me make my own decisions in life.

OK I feel better now.