One Word

Only Type One Word .. first word that comes to mind (Not as easy as you might think!).

1. Where is your cell phone? Deceased
2. Your significant other? Josh's
3. Your Hair? Brown
4. Your Skin? Olive
5. Your mother? Maddening
6. Your favorite thing? Books
7. Your dream last night? Obamalust
8. Your favorite drink? Guinness
9. Your dream/goal? Published
10. The room you're in? Office
11. Your ex? Asshole
12. Your fear? Spiders
13.Where do you want to be in 6 years? Published
14.Where were you last night? Home
15.What you're not? Undepressed
16.Muffins? Sure!
17.One of your wish list items? Airbook
18.Where you grew up? Auburn
19.The last thing you did? Typed
20.What are you wearing? clothing
21.Your TV? On
22.Your pets? Annoying
23. Your computer? POS
24. Your life? unfinished
25. Your mood? meh
26. Missing someone? No
27. Your car? Mazda5
28. Something you're not wearing? bra
29. Favorite Store? DSW
30. Your summer? Long
31. Like someone? no
32. Your favorite color? aubergine
33. When is the last time you laughed? today
34. Last time you cried? Morning
35. Who will respond to this? Dunno
36. Who's Answers are you anxious to see? Dunno

The Return Of Sparkle

The Bug has this large 2" square yellow die. I don't know where it came from, but she fucking LOVES it. Carries it with her everywhere. She calls it "My Sparkle." Why? No clue. She's two, that's why.

Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, Sparkle disappeared. I looked in our room, in her bed, under the sofa, all the usual places, but didn't turn it up. Oh, the despair. Every day, at least three times a day, she looks at me mournfully and says "Sparkle gone, Mama. Sparkle gone." She was a very, very, very sad little girl. A girl with no Sparkle.

Today That Canadian Boy I Married was putting his shoes on to get ready to leave the house and lo and behold, there was Sparkle, nestled down in the toe of his shoe.

He brought it out to her and she just about went insane. I think every blood vessel and corpuscle was smiling, she was so happy.

That, ladies and jelly spoons, is a smile of glee. And a very messy table.

Please to ignore the Very Messy Child. When she gets into her yoghurt,
she really gets into her yoghurt.

This I Promise

To my children:

I am sure (oh, hell, I know, who are we kidding here) that I have broken promises to you and for that, I am sorry. I am sure that I will do it again and all I can offer, again, are my apologies, for whatever they're worth. I am human and we humans tend to fail, often and sometimes spectacularly.

But I can promise you two things, things that I will never back out of. Two promises that will never let you down.



I promise that I will always love you, no matter what. Even when you're driving me to drink distraction, I will always, always love you.









Also, I promise that you will never be eaten by a dinosaur.






This post brought to you by The Bug's latest fear, which seems to involve dinosaurs lurking around every corner, just waiting to pounce.

To Quote Christopher Robin, "Bak Sun."

I can't think of a damned thing to write about except my search for meds (which is boring even to me), so I'm taking a bit of a break.

More Crazy

I had to fire my primary care doctor. She wouldn't prescribe the anti-depressant that I've been taking. I'd been seeing a prescribing psychiatrist, but his office moved 25 miles away from where I live, so I've been looking for a new one (a Herculean chore if ever there was one) . In the meantime, I ran out of medication. Actually, I was getting low on medication and then Boo decided to throw the bottle, containing my last 4 or 5 pills, into the toilet and that was that. Out of meds.

So I called my primary care doctor, assuming that she'd write the prescription. I explained the situation to her nurse and she said she'd get back to me. Well, she didn't. So I called again. I was told, again, that she'd have to talk to the doctor and call me back.

Three days of this shit and by the end of the third day, I was ready to kill someone. By this time, the pills were gone and I was starting to feel lousy. I'd been kind of weening myself, since I had a suspicion this might be an issue with this doctor, but still. I'd counted on another week of pills and now they were, literally, flushed down the toilet.

The doctor refused to fill the prescription. Even thought I gave her the name and number of the psychiatrist who'd originally filled it, even though I told the nurse I'd had no side effects, even though I said I was having trouble because of the withdrawal side effects, she didn't care. When I said that I was having trouble getting a prescribing psychiatrist, she didn't care.

So I fired her.

And now I'm not on any anti-depressants and oh my holy hell, is it kicking my ass. I spend most of every day trying not to cry and have been having some really dark thoughts. I keep thinking about how I'm fucking up my kids and fucking up my marriage and how the last thing I want to do is pass on this crazy to my children. I worry so much that they'll be like me when they grow up and I so don't want that for them.

Because this sucks. This black hole is miserable. I want out. And I can't get a fucking psychiatrist to call me back and help me. This is one of the things about depression - you need help so badly, but the system makes it so difficult. And it's so easy to give up. And that's what I want to do. Just give up. Completely. Crawl into a hole, find a cave, hell, even hide under the blankets for a few days. I just want to stop feeling like this. I fucking hate it.

I hate that I can't see the fun any more, that I don't feel the happy. All I feel is bleak and dark and sad. I don't want to go anywhere, I don't want to do anything, I don't want to talk to anyone and I just want that all to go away. I feel paranoid - that people are talking about me, that people are laughing at me behind my back, that I'm a useless lump, a forgettable bit of flotsam, no one worth bothering about, no one worth befriending. And I know this is the depression talking, but the voice is very loud in my head and very hard to ignore.

I want my life back. It might not be much of a life, it might not be what I wanted it to be, but it was my life.

Crazy

So I'm starting to think this job at Big Box Store was not such a great idea. I didn't realize how deep my misanthropic curmudgeon streak ran until I started having to interact with the public on a regular basis.

I got a job to make a little extra money and to get away from the kids and the house a couple of times a week. However, most of my time at work is spent listening to children scream and holler and whine. Also? Folding towels? Not really all that fun. Picking up aisles of crap, Halloween costumes and clothing and food - not really all that fun. And people are slobs. Lazy, lazy slobs. I spent two and a half hours last night cleaning up the Halloween section. Costumes were ripped out of their packaging and left strewn from one end of the aisle to the other. I wound up having to trash two carts full of costumes because pieces were missing or ripped. The complete and utter disregard that people have for the store's property is astounding. The pinnacle of this was reached yesterday, when someone took a shit all over a bathroom stall. All over the floor, on the toilet and even on the walls. Thank god I wasn't the one who had to clean it up. The poor manager had to do it and she was not happy about it. I don't want to have to deal with that. Not for $8 an hour.

One of the managers told me that she really likes me and asks for me specifically to go do things like fold towels and clean up aisles of stuff because I'm smart and I'm good at it. Which, y'know, nice, but I feel like such a loser, which then makes me feel guilty for feeling that way. Why do I find it so demeaning to work there? Why am I absolutely mortified every time I see anyone I know come thru my lane? I want to crawl into a hole and die. Am I really that much of a snob? Apparently so. Lovely.

I don't know where I'm going with this post. Aimless rambling seems to be my specialty lately. I just know that I don't like this job all that much and I can't even stand the thought of having to work there thru the holidays. I've been looking for another job, full-time if it pays enough to cover the exorbitent cost of putting two kids into daycare, or part-time in the evenings if it doesn't involve having to deal with the public for too long. Those requirements are even tougher to meet than the full-time/daycare thing.

I just wish I could figure out what would make me happy. I can't seem to nail that one down and it's really not a pleasant way to live.

Well. That's One Way Of Dealing With Gang Violence

Next month's special: Bucket o' Bloods.

This sign is on the Friendly's restaurant down the street from my house.

And Another Video

Swiped from Sweetney, because it's too funny not to post in multiple places.









ETA: Yay, Sox!! Now if we can just beat Tampa Bay. *bites nails*

My Not-So-Guilty Pleasures

I like to pretend that I have a modicum of hipness when it comes to music. I love The Killers, I'm into They Might Be Giants. I like Ben Folds (sorry, Ms. Pru) and Rufus Wainwright and other not-so-well-known bands.

But some of my musical preferences are downright old-fashioned. Or just plain odd. Witness:



I love this man. Love. Him.





I used to sing this stuff in high school. For real, live people. And loved it.




(Sorry for the lack of an actual video here - the live versions all sucked.)

And I know this was a tv theme song, but the show was brilliant and the song even more so.






And finally:





If you ever have a chance to go see Great Big Sea, go. They are fantastic in concert. Fanfuckingtastic. (Just the other day, while I was putting things away out of one of the random boxes of junque that had yet to be unpacked, I ran across the bones I stole off the stage when I was at their show at Avalon.)

1,001 Books

This meme is from Poppy via a blogger named Jasmine, who writes Flip Front. I don't know her, but I am a sucker for a book meme. This one's a biggun. And I can't figure out how to get the italics and bolds out of there, so I'm just going to delete the books I haven't read. You'll thank me. It's 1,001 books. That's a fuckton of books.

2000s

• Drop City – T. Coraghessan Boyle - I own it. Haven't read it yet.
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon - Great book.
• Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides - Also great.
• Atonement – Ian McEwan - Think I'm one of a very few who did not enjoy it.
• The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen - Own it, started it, put it down somewhere.
• At Swim, Two Boys – Jamie O’Neill - Own it, haven't read it yet.
• Life of Pi – Yann Martel - Own it, started it, didn't like it much.
• White Teeth – Zadie Smith - Own it, haven't read it.

1900s

• Disgrace – J.M. Coetzee - Hated it.
• The Hours – Michael Cunningham - Really liked it.
• Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden - Loved this
• Underworld – Don DeLillo - Have started this a couple of times but may give it up as a bad bargain.
• Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis de Bernieres - Captain Corelli can take his fucking mandolin and stick it where the sun don't shine. I hated this book so much that I threw it across the room and swore. A lot. The ending STILL pisses me off, mostly because the rest of the book was so well-written. And whatever you do, DON'T see the movie.
• A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth - Door stop of a book. I didn't really get it, but I did read it.
• The Stone Diaries – Carol Shields - Depressing.
• The Things They Carried – Tim O’Brien - Meh.
• Like Water for Chocolate – Laura Esquivel
  
• The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul – Douglas Adams - Loved it like I love all his books.
• Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency – Douglas Adams - see above.
• The Bonfire of the Vanities – Tom Wolfe - Didn't care for it much.
• Less Than Zero – Bret Easton Ellis - I am a child of the 80s after all.
• Contact – Carl Sagan - Read it but couldn't stop hearing "billyuns and billyuns."
• Perfume – Patrick Süskind - Very weird, but in a good way.
• The Color Purple – Alice Walker - Read this several times.
• The Name of the Rose – Umberto Eco - Started this a couple of times, but never finished it.
• The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams - Of course.
• The World According to Garp – John Irving - Read this when I was far too young to understand it.
• The Shining – Stephen King - Scared the shit out of me.
• Interview With the Vampire – Anne Rice - Read it, loved it.
• Fear of Flying – Erica Jong - Read it in high school, simply for the sex. Didn't get the angst.
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas – Hunter S. Thompson - Read it in exerpts in Rolling Stone. Deeply, deeply weird.
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings – Maya Angelou
  
• The French Lieutenant’s Woman – John Fowles - Liked it when I read it but can't remember much about it now.
• In Cold Blood – Truman Capote - Read it and really liked it.
• A Clockwork Orange – Anthony Burgess - Read it in high school and found it deeply disturbing.
• To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee - Of course. Excellent book.
• Breakfast at Tiffany’s – Truman Capote - Didn't like it as much as the movie, but still, a great book.
• The Once and Future King – T.H. White - I am a sucker for King Arthur books.
• Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov - Did not like it at all.
• Lord of the Flies – William Golding - Found it disturbing, which, I suppose, was the point.
• Invisible Man – Ralph Ellison - Read it a long time ago.
• The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger - Thought what'shisname was a foolish character and had very little sympathy for him, even though I was the "right age" for reading it.
• Nineteen Eighty-Four – George Orwell - Read it under duress because I was in the class of '84. Didn't like it at the time but appreciate it a lot more now. They shouldn't make you read this stuff when your world view doesn't extend beyond Friday's dance.
• Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh - Loved it. Wanted a teddy bear named Aloysius.
• Animal Farm – George Orwell - See above comment about 1984.
• The Little Prince – Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - Read it. Still don't get it.
• The Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck - Had to read it in high school.
• Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier - Read it. Still love it.
• Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck - One of the few books I read in high school that I really loved.
• The Hobbit – J.R.R. Tolkien - Read it and liked it, but man, those hobbits sing a lot.
• Out of Africa – Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen) - Loved this.
• To Have and Have Not – Ernest Hemingway - Did not love this.
• Gone With the Wind – Margaret Mitchell - Yes. 847 times.
• The Nine Tailors – Dorothy L. Sayers - LOVE Dorothy Sayers. Love. Her.
• Thank You, Jeeves – P.G. Wodehouse - But of course.
• Murder Must Advertise – Dorothy L. Sayers - See above re. D.L.S.
• Brave New World – Aldous Huxley - Read it in high school. 'nuff said.
• The Maltese Falcon – Dashiell Hammett - Really enjoy noir detective stuff.
• All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque - Read it in high school. Found it unbelievably depressing. Helped solidify my hatred of war.
• Lady Chatterley’s Lover – D.H. Lawrence - Read this on my own in high school and was disappointed that it wasn't as steamy as I thought it would be.
• The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway - Do not like Hemingway.
• The Murder of Roger Ackroyd – Agatha Christie - My least favorite Agatha Christie.
• The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald - Loved this book. A lot.
• The Age of Innocence – Edith Wharton - Read this a few years ago. Loved it. Need to read more Wharton.
• The Forsyte Sage – John Galsworthy - Read it a couple of times.
• The Hound of the Baskervilles – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Love SACD.

1800s

• Dracula – Bram Stoker
  
• The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - See above re: SACD
  
• Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy - Read this on my own in high school and thoroughly enjoyed it.
  
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – Mark Twain - Never could understand why people wanted to ban it.
  
• Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy - Enjoyed it but not enough to read it again.
  
• Far from the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy - Didn't like it much.
  
• Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There – Lewis Carroll - One of my all-time favorites.
  
• War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy - Read this on a dare made by my 11th grade history teacher. He never finished it. I did. Lots of snow and -ovskys in this book.
  
• Little Women – Louisa May Alcott - Uh, yeah. Just a couple of times.
  
• Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll - Yep. Love it.
  
• Les Misérables – Victor Hugo - Did not like it.
  
• Great Expectations – Charles Dickens - I LOATHE Charles Dickens, but especially this book.
  
• A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens - OK, this one I did enjoy. But don't tell anyone.
  
• Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert - Read this a couple of times.
  
• The Scarlet Letter – Nathaniel Hawthorne - GAH! Hated this book with a passion.
• David Copperfield – Charles Dickens - And this one as well.
  
• Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë - Wasn't too crazy about this one either.
  
• Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë - This, on the other hand, I loved.
• Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray - And this.
• The Pit and the Pendulum – Edgar Allan Poe - Creepy and thrilling, like all his stuff.
• Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens - See above re: Dickens.
• Frankenstein – Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley - Found this very, very sad.
• Northanger Abbey – Jane Austen - Jane Austen freak here.
• Persuasion – Jane Austen - See above.
• Emma – Jane Austen - ibid
• Mansfield Park – Jane Austen - ibid
• Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen - ibid
• Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen - ibid

1700s

• Tom Jones – Henry Fielding - Loved this. A total romp.
• Gulliver’s Travels – Jonathan Swift - A bit too long for me, but good.
  
• Pre-1700
  
• The Thousand and One Nights – Anonymous - Of course. Fantastic stories.
  
• Aesop’s Fables – Aesopus - Hasn't everyone read these?
  

There. Now aren't you glad I didn't post the entire list?

Bullets? I Dodge 'Em.

*whew*