"Maybe people who played with boats that were really boats

I don't know what to do. Everything she says at this point.. how can I believe it? She says anytning off the top of her head. Like last night and that bullshit about how she can't drop Elaine because she made a promise and aplways keeps her promises. How can people not see the lies? Today when I came home, ready to go to mom's we get all the way to the car and she says "well, I never did the water for her fish this morning."

Me "did you think we could go without it" yeah I was pissed and I didn't care how I sounded. We were in the damned car and she waits until THEN to tell me the water isn't there? I came in, put my things down, went to the bathroom... she took the dogs to the car... it's not like there wasn't TIME to say "hang on while I fill the jugs. I didn't do it today." Or even give me one to fill in the tub! Instead she started arguing about how she didn't have enough time in the morning, so of course we were going to go to mom's without it and getting the how dare I insist on doing something to take care of another living being! She doesn't give a crap about anyone but herself. She never asks what is wrong. She watches me get hurt or fall or hears me cry out in pain and she says nothing. Nothing. Or she waits 2 minutes before asking "do you need any help?" Do you know how fucking hard it is for me to get out of bed in the morning? How the fuck do you think I can even put on my pants?!



The lies and manipulation have got to stop. I've touched on it in LiveJournal. I'll put that in here too. Or send it. Or something.



I'm at my absolute end with this. I have run out of the last dribble of patience that I could possibly own.



Just spent 30 minute on a discussion over breakfast.

"We are having chicken biscuits" knowing that we JUST had that for dinner and that I have REPEATEDLY said I need a balanced diet because of my surgery.

I looked unsure.

With attitude, rolling of eyes, throwing back of head "what do you want then?"

"Well I'm eat whatever, but you know I don't want that right after eating chicken and starches"

Same attitude "well I don't know what to do then because you told , me last week that you didn't want bacon and eggs any more."

"No, I said that we had been eating bacon and eggs every day on the weekends for the last two months and that I needed you to switch things up again because eggs were really not appealing any more."

More head and eye rolling, more pissy attitude, all the body posture and gestures that she puts on when she then tells me that is not what I said, but she is going to go along with it to save the argument... She behaved like that for the whole time I translated that "switching up" meant not having the same thing every day and all I got was silence. So we went into the repetition thing because I couldnt get anything out of her. Not an acknowledgement that I had spoken, not an acknowledgement that she had heard me, just the same fucking eyeroll that says I'm making shit up. And I'm not reading into the expression, she used to tell me I was making things up WHILE she was making that face. The face hasn't changed, just the words went away and were occasionally replaced with "alright, fine." Or something thereabouts.



We have HAD this conversation thousands of times. When she stops being  On her "Im new and energized and everything is awesome" kick (which usually lasts a week or so) then she is right back down to frozen dinners or potatoes every night. Removing fruit from the menu... and complaining when I am in the bathroom too long in the mornings because I'm not getting a balanced diet. She knows what I need to eat. WHY?!



And then in the car, we were talking about how I had to email a client and I said "could you put a reminder in the calendar for me" I got silence "or the alexa would work too..." silence. "Or just wait until we get home, but please remember for me because if we get home and you can't remember you will get angry " "I'm not angry!" "I didn't say you were and you just cut off my sentence" silence. I gave up.



This is my life. This is my life every damned day.
Continuing on. We just had this argument causing conversation...

Me "there's a bit of paper or something beside the trashcan that the dogs probably pulled out"

Silence followed by "where is it..."

Me "beside the trash can"

This started a yelling match where I was told "No, it's in the door". I'm thinking what the fuck? And then comes the lecture that the thing that was being looked for was supposed to have been on the counter but was in the cabinet.

Me "how was I supposed to know? I said there was paper on the floor and the next thing you said was where is it?"

Then she says "look let's start over because you getting like this isn't good for me."

What the fuck? I have said all day that I was unhappy with how things were going communication wise. I spent the whole day being miscommunicated to. I have only raised my voice when one was raised at me first. I AM NOT ALLOWED TO HAVE FEELINGS BUT AS SOON AS I IGNORE HERS IM A SHIT!





I can not love like this. That k God I'm moving put next week to a client's house. It means being up at 3am and in bed at 11, but it's fucking worth it. At least when I'm alone and childless and dealing with these two massive growths on my chest, I don't have to have anyone around while it's happening. And yes. I AM alone even though we live together. I'm alone every damned day.

Wanted to get this down as it had just happened, so that I could keep in mind things and questions.

Background: Everything from our bedroom was taken out during the floor removal and is piled into the back bedroom, which was already floor to ceiling crammed with stuff, starting at the back walls and tapering down to hip height when you get to the door. The back bedroom has been a major issue with me. It's the place I'm always talking about that I can't get in to and can't help clean. Cleaning the back bedroom is one of the things Eirian claims she wants to get done. It's one of the things she has promised to get done since she moved here and started using it as a storage facility. For the last week and a half I have heard nothing but complaining about how this particular chore was on her list of things to do but it just wasn't going to get done because of some thing that I did. Maybe I sneezed. Maybe I said I was taking the dogs up to the mailbox. Maybe I said I wanted to lie down for a while with the rats. Anything I said or did or said that I hoped to do for the day (whether it involved her or not) I got either lectured, griped at or yelled at because whatever I said meant the back bedroom wasn't getting done. Half the time the complaint didn't even make any sense!

What happened just now: After doing my chores for the morning, I told Eirian that I was thinking I'd like to help with the back bedroom today and suggested that if she gave me two of the boxes to sort through while she did one of the sets of plastic drawers, we could get that work done for the day while watching something on tv or whatever. She rolled her head back and her whole body posture SCREAMED that she didn't want to hear this and wasn't okay with it. And when she said "okay" it was definitely NOT okay. So I asked her to be honest with me and tell me what she was thinking about it, which started a yelling match. Back and forth about how she wanted to get her OWN things done today. She wanted to get writing done today. She wanted HER list of things to get done. This was cutting into HER things. Every time I reminded her that this WAS on her list of things to get done, it just got worse and she started talking in circles. Any time that I said I was only trying to HELP her get one of her things done, her attitude and behavior spiraled.

What the hell do I do? There were times when she sort of reset herself, I'll give her that, but then she cycled right back into how my saying we should get this thing done today was cutting in to what SHE wanted to get done. This IS something she keeps telling me she wanted to get done!

How do I feel right now? I'm stuck asking myself which statement is the lie. IS the back bedroom really on a list of things she wants to get done, OR is she just saying that it is when something I want to do interrupts her mysterious plans for a perfect day. (Remember, she NEVER tells me what she wants to do, just walks around the house silently until I suggest something. If I ask what the plan is I get this kind of thing happening because it is assumed I am trying to cut in to her plans.) WHY can't my personal plans be separated from her plans? IF she really does want to get the back bedroom done, WHY does she not do it when we are sitting and watching television? Yesterday /I/ wasn't feeling well and all I heard all day long was how SHE wasn't getting done what SHE wanted to get done. What the hell was I doing to interrupt that? I was on the fold out in the living room, sipping water! What is stopping her from getting out of the chair and walking into the room to get a box and bring it out and sort through it while we watch?

I'm going to stop here for her to put in her own input, but come back to me because I have more to say.

***

So she probably said that I was in the way and she couldn't get up because then she would have to step over me, right? Or maybe she can't pay attention to the television and sort at the same time. Or maybe she is going to say she was sore from the 5k and didn't want to do physical stuff. I bet she brought up the fact that what she REALLY wanted to do that day was her writing. Okay. So what was stopping her from saying "I'm going to go into the other room and write while you are in here?" Ignore the fact that there IS no other room to sit in comfortably because the're all crammed to the brim with boxes of stuff. She could have gotten up, gone into our practically empty bedroom, and written in there. What was stopping her from doing that? Instead, all I heard was how she wasn't getting anything done. Guess what? I was LITERALLY getting nothing done! I was laying down the entire day because my walk had tied my guts up and the acid combined with some dehydration was making me feel really ill. What the hell am I supposed to do? I spent the entire day yesterday depressed and wishing I didn't live here because I was sick and couldn't be useful, all while listening to her complain that whatever I wanted to do kept her from doing what SHE wanted to do, even though it didn't.

I just don't understand. I offer to help, I offer to get up and go watch something in the other room so that she can have peace and quiet... I just get attitude. Serious fucking attitude. Then I get told that I'm NOT getting attitude. I don't get an explanation of WHAT she is feeling, WHAT she is wanting, I have to guess at everything in my entire life. This is me every day, wandering around the house, wondering if the next thing I am going to do is going to piss her off or interrupt her peaceful attitude because if I even sneeze at the wrong time I'm interrupting her entire schedule.

And why the hell can't we be in different rooms of the house? Why is it that if she is home, I have to be within sight of her at all times? She's going to object to this and say that isn't true, but if it's not true, why can't I go read my book in the bedroom without being criticized for the certainty that I will fall asleep doing it? (yes. If I say I want to go read, I get told "Well I guess I'll come in and wake you up when it's time for bed then." in a very snotty way.) It has always been like this. We CAN'T do things as individuals in her eyes. Except things like walking the dogs. If I offer to help with chores. Then I get attitude about that. I'm starting to think she doesn't REALLY want to do this stuff and is just using me as the excuse not to. And that hurts. It really, really hurts.

I tell you what, it took a LOT of convincing to get me over to dreamwidth, and I'm still on the fence about it. I'm keeping my livejournal for now, and I'm posting to both, which is probably going to get annoying really fast, but I've been harassed and ... whatever other word there is for that... by a friend who writes and has also just transferred over. "If you are sharing your icons with me, you have to be on dreamwidth too." was the gist of it. Not sure that I follow that, but I /do/ understand the kerbubble about fanfiction and sharing space for that as one person. That isn't happening any more. It's was originally meant to confuse people, to keep him hidden but we figured out real quick that if we were sharing fanfic sites AND icons, it was going to look just a /little/ sketchy and I don't want trouble. Separate accounts for everything now... And I guess that means I came here out of guilt? I don't know. Anyway, I'm here and I'm there, and I MIGHT be getting a fanfic site at dreamwidth if it doesn't cause commotion...

In other news, shit is going on and I feel like shit. Mostly just overwhelmed by freaking everything and feeling really let down, too. People that are supposed to be around for me just are mentally or physically absent and it's like... I want to just run away to New York (really Jersey City now) or Austria or several places in California and just live the life I miss with the folks there.

Conventions coming up: Once Upon a Time NJ, where Eirian and I will then get to visit Max and family for Lena's birthday. I hope. God I hope so hard. Also, there's one in Burbank next month, which we wanted to go to, but good luck finding the money for after all the shit that went down. Finally, I ended up getting a message that a certain someone WAS going on the cruise and we had just enough warning before the public to spend money on that too. I tell you what, my friends are DAMNED good at making me broke. :p

I've gotten swept up in the virtual race craze as well. There's a site called yes.fit that is amazing. You take as long as you want to do the thing, and you get to look at a map of your virtual course and actually FOLLOW it on google maps! I am currently in Scotland, headed toward Edinburgh, if anyone is interested. ;) I want to create a similar thing that raises money for charity and uses Star Trek actors... But my plan is actually a good bit of volunteer work for the actors, requiring that they do a walk themselves first... And I have NO idea how to set up the virtual map once it's done and all that nonsense. I was just going to create a twitter and facebook group and go from there. I mean, is that something people even WANT anymore? Blame Rene (and partly Nana) for this idea merging with the virtual race fever. Just ugh.

More on my ACTUAL racing will follow, but I want to go back and get pictures first... Which won't happen until this weekend, if I'm super lucky.

Last note is going to be that my fish, Nix, isn't well. I'm worried he is on his last days and there is nothing I can do for him. At 8 years old, he's just so young... I'm heartbroken.

How I heard about it	It popped up on my facebook page.
Why I signed up for it	I had always wanted to walk Historic Hillsborough
Where it started	In front of the Alliance for Historic Hillsborough
Where it finished	Farmer's Market area at the Riverwalk
Route info	Passed the courthouse crossed main street (Churton) passed library and Matthew's Chocolates and historic school into a neighborhood passed a few churches and the run down inn also some historic spots and signs old mill house Riverwalk and Mountains to Sea Trail

When I signed up for this I had a converging of very different emotions. I was both excited and terrified at the same time. Most people hear "5k" and they think it's something huge, when it's really just 3 miles and some change. I do that all the time walking dogs, usually in an hour, so I knew it was something I could physically do, but was I actually ready to be "racing" again?

I started on the track team when I was in 7th grade. I ran hurdles (bad idea on the coaches part, but I'm tall, so he didn't have a choice, really), the 400 and did the mile once or twice, but that got dropped fast. A guy on the track team who was high school age but had been held back (probably so he could legitimately be with young kids) threw me into what is now the "me too" movement. Seventh grade is too young for that shit. I shut down. I never ran on a team again. When the high school cross country coach saw me run in gym class one day, he desperately tried to recruit me to the team, but I told him flat out no. I'd given up on running for teams. I'd run from the house to the car, I'd dart around like a bounding deer for /any/ possible reason, but I wouldn't ever run on a team again. It wasn't safe. (I didn't tell him that last part.)

In all honesty, besides my past, I didn't like the atmosphere. He had my parents bring me to one of their summer parties and I was cast aside right away. No one wanted a freshman around them, no one spoke to me, no one looked at me. The only time anyone had anything to do with me was when the coach had them call me up and to try and convince me, and they called at 11pm at my GRANDMOTHER'S house. I didn't want to be with people like that.

Fast forward to the year I had back surgery and my doctor asked me what physical activities I liked to do. Well, I hike a lot, I run sometimes... Oh no, I was flat out told (and cheerily, at that!) that I would never run again.

Then I found this community called yes.fit. They run virtual races for real rewards. How it works is like this... You sign up for a race (I started with Beauty and the Beast, so I'll use that as an example) and when you sign up you pick your reward. You can buy the medal, the t-shirt, or both items. I wanted the medal, Eirian decided to sign up too and got the t-shirt so we would have both things. Once you have paid, you have access to your races. The race you are "running" can be any number of miles from just a few to 120 or more, but you don't run it all at once. You log your miles as you go. When I walk dogs, my walking app sends the mileage to yes.fit and it gets logged into my race.

Lots of places do virtual runs like this, but none that I have found include my favorite part. What made me sign up was that you actually get a google street view course that you can sort of follow as you go. Each run or walk that you log puts another point on the map that you can look at and you can go from one to the next to actually SEE what you would see if you were running the race. For Beauty and the Beast we were, of course, in France, which I didn't really care about, but it went through a part of the country that supposedly inspired the story. Some of the images from that were so beautiful...

Anyway, the point of this post is to talk about my first LIVE race, which I signed up for because I'd done all this yes.fit stuff and had caught medal fever and wanted more medals to put on my soon-to-be-Aslan-themed display. (More on the theme later.)


(Photo from the official Flickr page.)

Standing at the start line, I was surprised how happy I was. There was some disappointment to be standing behind the "Walkers" sign instead of the other paces, but I've almost come to terms with my inability to run. Almost doesn't count unless it's horseshoes, but eh... I had been channeling all of my "we lost all our babies" sadness into doing these virtual races and here was my chance to do the thing as a real test. They called out the go, the runners crossed the line and we started moving forward... I looked down at that red line as I went across it and thought to myself, "This is it!"

I actually got chills, not because it was cold (it was very mild) or foggy, but because here I was in a real race again. After SO many years! As a walker I was determined to take in the surroundings, just as I would if I were walking the yes.fit races (both literally in my home town and virtually on the google street view). I mean, that's what appealed to me in the first place. It went through Historic Hillsborough, a place I'd always wanted to actually /walk/ through, but never get the chance. I hustled off past the courthouse, crossed what you'd call "main street" and I was on my way. It hit me that the thing was real when I actually crossed the road downtown. Cop cars had traffic stopped and that wow moment hit me. I was on the road doing this!


(Photo from the official Flickr page.)

I don't remember much else from the very beginning of the race, going past the library and into a neighborhood, then turning back on ourselves and back toward the downtown road. I was way too excited to pay attention to the beautiful houses down that stretch and I didn't really start paying attention to my surroundings until I passed an old, run down place.

My immediate thought was that it had to be one of the buildings from colonial times, or that it had come straight from Louisiana. Then I saw the sign, which /looked/ as if it might have said "Colonial Inn" and realized just how run down it was.



(After the race I searched for information on the building, here's what I found... It was built in 1838 by Isaiah Spencer - so NOT Colonial at all - the building was called Spencer's Tavern by locals and the Orange Hotel officially. It's had other names since then, but ended up as the Colonial Inn some time in 1924. There is a full history here and an report on the renovation here. It is on the National Register of Historic Places and is one of the few remaining buildings of it's kind in the country.)

Getting over my Ichabod-like glee at seeing such a thing, I kept plowing forward at almost top speed, turning onto the main road again and past all the favorites, including Nana's preferred sweet shop, Matthew's Chocolates. (She hasn't been there, but we deliver to her.) When we got past the main part of downtown (only a few blocks) I reached the Orange County Historical Museum building and noticed my first historic marker (there are MANY in front of that building!) and thought I really ought to come back and get pictures of this run, which I did a few weeks later, though we had the dogs with us and only did the main highlights of the course.



At the top of the road, a lone family was perched on a stone wall, cheering everyone on and I wished I'd had a way to take pictures as we were going along. They had chats with individual walkers, the children asking the women ahead of me why they were wearing blue tutus. The women's answer? "Because we can!" The thought of picture taking crossed my mind again as we passed the Burwell School site, which has ties to Lincion. I realized just how deeply I really, really want to spend a day exploring this place. There is SO much history here that I drive through every day!



As we turned onto Union Street and headed back in the neighborhood, I saw a yellow sign with a red 1 on it and stumbled over the meaning in my mind until I realized that it was the 1 mile marker. I was shocked. How had I walked a mile and seen so much in what felt like such little time! (I figured I'd been walking for about 10 minutes, which wasn't too far off, it turns out.) Then the following hill nearly killed me going at my normal speed and I instantly realized that the world wasn't flat and the race course wouldn't be either. That was a BIG eye opener!

As I settled into a new rhythm, we passed a house where the homeowners had parked their car at the edge of their driveway so that they could put up an anti trump sign. "Run like (picture of trump) was trying to take your cat!" I really, really wish I had a picture of that one. That had a lot of runners laughing. There was also a dad somewhere along here, who dutifully stood in the wet grass of his yard, bouncing his baby as they watched us together. The blue fairies who were walking beside me at the time thanked him on his willingness to introduce the baby to race life and supporting others. We also passed a family who were outside in their pajamas somewhere in along these streets. They had one small child and one young one playing with a toy, they cheered on everyone that walked past, but I couldn't read their sign. I couldn't read anyone's signs, really, they were written in thin lines and I was moving too fast. Some part of me wondered if that was a representation of my own kids cheering me on, but I tried not to think about it too much. I was having way too much trouble concentrating on the downhills.

Halfway along I realized just how dangerous the downhills were for my gimpy leg and my stability. The volunteer marking the halfway mark announced cheerily, "You're halfway and there's a nice downhill ahead!" and I thought, "Shit." First thing I did was feel like I was going to faceplant, so I turned sideways and watched where I put the bad foot, steadying myself with the good one turned sideways from my body... It sounds more complicated than it is. At the bottom of the hill was a surprise photographer, so I'm sure they got a terrible picture of me being careful. From that point on, every time I was told a downhill was coming, I braced myself for a fall that never came.

Now, Eirian /did/ go with me, but she told me that I should go at my own pace and leave her behind if I felt like I had to. (She told me at the end of the race that I basically left her in the dust from the start.) Every once in a while, when there weren't that many people around me and the road was flat, I would turn around and try to find her, but I never did see her. I thought about her most of the time, especially when we passed things I'd want to talk about... as if talking was possible going at speed.



One of those things was an old house that had some connection to Bellevue Mill (the overseer lived there or something) and the actual mill itself, which had a huge fire a while back. That story is probably told better by the news folks than by me. I was fascinated by the house, but I can't at all find ANY information on it online, so I might be looking for the wrong thing.



From the mill, you turn for the Riverwalk and I was really feeling good about my ability to do this at a decent pace, though I had no idea how fast I was going. I figured it had been almost an hour and I was happy with that. Along the road, across from some tiny little buildings, a mocking bird was singing and I turned to whistle to it as I walked backward along my way. The volunteer chuckled, but I don't know if it was at me or the blue fairy people who were just ahead of me. (I'd kept pace with them the whole time.)


(Getting on to the Riverwalk. The way is filled with bridges. I was going so fast, the boards were flashing under my eyes and making my head spin.)

The Riverwalk was a stretch I knew well and I absolutely breezed through. We got a stick of honey to eat along the way, then the 5k and Marathon runners branched off, never to see each other again. When we reached the main entrance to the Riverwalk, at the parking deck, a woman came up to me and said, "You've got a great pace, I've been following you the whole time." I told her I used to run, but couldn't any more and this was my first race since I was 13. We walked the rest of the way together until I kicked up my pace for the final bit. I don't believe I outwalked her, I have a strong feeling she eased back so I could feel better about myself, which wasn't what I'd intended. By the time I saw the yellow sign with the big number 3 on it, I couldn't believe it had come up so fast. I thought the volunteer's head was most certainly in front of the number 1 that indicated an hour's time, but did a double take when I saw it read "0"!

Crossing the finish I couldn't get my eyes off the official clock. From the second they started it until the second I crossed the finish line, only 47 minutes and 58 seconds had gone past! I stood at the finish line and waited for Eirian, who was only a few minutes behind me. When she crossed the line, I gave her my medal and went to get another for myself. We had our snacks, checked our times again, then went home, only to discover that the official times were even shorter than those posted. I'd done the race in 47:04:56 and Eirian had finished in 53:46:31!


(Photos taken from official Flickr page.)

I have to say that this one race, going through a part of a town that I really wanted to see anyway, finishing in a park that I have visited so many times, and being so close to home that the anticipation and excitement lasted the journey to and from the race... That probably made this the absolute /best/ choice for my first live 5k. I honestly don't think I will be able to match this experience on any of the ones I do, though I'm sure I'll say that at the end of each of these reports, because I'm sure there will be more.

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Let me tell you what, working five jobs... getting a sixth, letting that one go because I did NOT trust the company... There was something liberating in that. Standing with everyone doing the Me Too thing on twitter and facebook? There's something liberating in that, too, especially when one of your friends posts this video of an octopus coming out of the beaker and says that's what posting Me Too feels like... And said friend is the one who started you on this healing path with it in the first place. It has been an eventful few months and I'm still working my backside off so we can all see each other in January.

What's been missed? Lee had to be put to sleep because his tumor... Turn away if you are easily disgusted... became infested with maggots. His vet said there wasn't any way we could have prevented it, that he probably got something in his bloodstream one of the days we had taken him in to be seen for said tumor. He was seen on Monday night, the crawlies appeared Wednesday... Thursday morning... Well, that was one of the saddest days of my life, because he actually FELT nothing. He had no idea what was going on. Now five out of seven of our girls have tumors, all inoperable. So it is going to be a whole lot of upset come January, when we have to leave them and rush off to sail on a cruise, knowing that these girls will all have to be put to sleep or ... I don't even know... I just can't right now.

Eirian has been pushing me on my writing, which I needed a little bit. I am still trying to work out a schedule where I can do all of the following in one day:

* read
* write
* work job 1
* work job 2
* work job 3
(Jobs 4 and 5 are occasional nanny/babysitting type gigs, so they just squeeze in)
* relax
(playing games, watching television, going to the theater... see my friends!)

My latest fanfic for Once she told me should have been made into an episode. *shrug* I can't really judge.

Stuff we've been reading... Now this is really cool. I got Eirian a pagehabbit subscription as one of her gifts for our anniversary. She loves this subscription and the last book was apparently fabulous. They send you little trinkets with your book, of course, but the books are annotated by the author, which is really cool. They have just added a feature where we can add different types of books to the boxes if we want, at the cost of the book... which I MAY do if I can keep myself down to one or two more books. Needless to say, my extra paycheck is also going to fund this stuff as well.

Our anniversary weekend was spent at Cherokee Mountain Cabins and OH MY GOD was this ever nice! I think that all of my writing friends should all come for a visit some time, we can each pitch in and spend a week lounging around in front of a fire place, sipping wine, taking turns with dinner duty and writing until our hearts burst from the joy of it all. I'm serious about how nice this was. It was NICE. The weekend itself was a surprise for cedargrove, she had no idea.

As far as watching television goes... Discovery (YAY JASON ISAACS!) and Once REALLY surprised me. This season of Once is one of the best I've seen. I may be able to predict it still, but gosh is it much more interesting... Maybe because it's dealing with alternate realities? Just a hunch. ;)

All that's really left is to see if I can survive until the cruise... and then survive the CRUISE... without killing anyone. These people have turned out to be... just... ugh. The fans I mean. It's like a job. No one should know who got promised what and where and how... They have to sell cabins. That's it. Eirian and I are paying more for our upgraded cabin than others are paying for the more expensive kind. It's life. We didn't wait long enough because last year sold out and this year didn't. Oh well. Moving on.

Not sure what else to throw here. Ask questions and I shall answer?

So Eirian and I have, on several occasions, gone on Star Trek cruises. The company we cruise with is called Cruise Trek and they are one of the first ones around that I'm aware of. The guys that run it are awesome and the atmosphere is incredible. You are a bunch of Star Trek fans sharing one experience with a handful of celebrities on one big ship. You might be strangers when you get on, but you are all friends when you leave.

Here's the best part: EVERYONE is basically normal. I mean yes, there are famous people there and they are scheduled to do Q&A or games or whatever, but in the end they are just people who are working instead of paying for their trip. I mean, I have NEVER seen a fan sit around with their camera on a Cruise Trek cruise, desperately waiting for a celebrity to walk by so that they can mob them for pictures and conversation. You talk or you don't talk. You have breakfast together or you don't. That's life on EVERY ship, with every other passenger.

Last year, for the massive anniversary, the Star Trek people decided to make an "official" cruise, turning the experience from a relaxing vacation into one massive convention. There is no rest from the fandom, there is no expectation of the fans to behave like civilized strangers to everyone else. Charlie (who runs Cruise Trek) tells you right off: You are getting an autographed photo in the mail. Don't ask for photographs, don't ask for autographs, harassing the guests won't be tolerated. The magical thing is he doesn't HAVE to say that. Everyone just does it anyway...

Compare that to this:

This official cruise ENCOURAGES mob scenes around the actors. Some people have even gone so far as to remind new cruisers that they have 8 whole days to harass the guests, don't do it all at once!

This sparks up the age old question of what rights a celebrity has. Do they put themselves in the spotlight by doing their jobs every day, KNOWING that their job is to be famous and have people swoon over them? Yes. Does that give us the RIGHT to swarm them with cameras and pens and demand satisfaction because that's their job? No.

Let me put it this way. If I'm walking down the street and bump into the mail carrier for my neighborhood, does that give me the right to demand my mail? If I'm in the mall and run into my child's pediatrician does that give me the right to expect a diagnosis of my child's rash, right then and there, simply because he's their doctor and he should know what it looks like? Of course not! So why the hell do people think it's okay to harass anyone in the spotlight like this? Just because it is occasionally their job, doesn't mean it is ALWAYS their job. Bless the people who tolerate this kind of behavior, because they sure as hell don't have to.

I am so ashamed of going on this cruise in January... but my friends are going to be there and I'll be damned if I'm not there with them through this nonsense. Then again, the way things are being run, we may never be allowed to see each other because guests get paid to mingle with fans, not hang around with their friends.

Then again... Settling down in someone's cabin with a good movie and a bottle of wine kinda sounds like a great evening. If only it were the way of things.

Why have I been gone for almost a year? </p>

I hate myself.

I hate my life the way it is.

I've given up on changing it.

I love what I do.

I love the people and animals that make my life worth living.

But if I am left alone with myself for only a second I realize just what kind of a person I am to the world.

I've spent the last two months hiding myself inside of T2 Trainspotting, an odd movie to cling to for one's sanity, but a fitting one none the less. Now that it has left theaters and awaits home release, I have nothing to wallow in, nothing to wrap myself in and lose my mind to. I listen to the soundtrack and relive memories of being a fan in a theater, drunk off my backside, dancing away to the beat so that I can keep in the tears that threaten to blind me while I'm driving.

The truth is that I'm blind already.

Blind to joy.

Blind to happiness.

Once, I thought I would be living for my children, but we have lost two pregnancies now and don't have the money to try with the remaining 4 in storage. Why did we choose this expensive path? Ask it. Everyone does, even though it makes me feel more the failure. We didn't pick this exact path to our children, we had an affordable option set up, all ready to go... until we were kicked out of the doctor's office for being gay. That left us with two options: pay twice what we had already paid, knowing that we would pay twice more again once the process started... or abandon all hope, wasting the $30,000+ that we had already spent.

You aren't me. What you would have done doesn't matter. What matters is that WE chose hope, we scrounged and scraped... we took out loans, I have been working five jobs just to pay the bills... All of that lost to the hatred of some prick.

I chose to have hope.

I didn't know that starting over would mean the new doctor laid down more expensive rules.

I didn't know we would be sentencing four unnamed souls to an existence of frozen dreams, never to be realized.

None of this is the initial cause of my sorrow though. I know everyone thinks it. It's only natural to assume such things, but the truth is that I have felt this hate for myself for many, many years now, since my unexpected surgery took away all feeling of usefulness. I tell my wife that I feel like some trinket on a shelf, up for display, left to collect dust without any other purpose, but I don't think she can comprehend what that feels like. No one can, really, unless they've lived it. For someone who can walk a dog on a broken foot or drag themselves along the floor, determined to get ready for work even though their back had spontaneously exploded... For someone like that to stand, looking at the simplest chore and decide not to bend to it because the pain is too great... What life is that? With nothing to do and no one to understand the emotional weight of uselessness, it is a weight that keeps me at the bottom of a bottomless sea. I am running out of air and I dare not swim to find any, knowing there is none to be found anyway. Why try? At least from where I am I can see the interesting deep sea creatures as they swim past my life and occasionally bump into it.

SO many things going on right now that it feels unreal. I've got my regular job and the babysitting gig, but I've landed two regular dog walking jobs that make my work schedule 7:30 am to 6:00 pm every day, without a break. Thank goodness I eat lunch with the kids. This summer has been wild with it, too, because I have been taking care of one family's dogs/hamster/guinea pigs that requires me to work 5:30 am until 9:00 pm. It's a good thing my writing doesn't seem to be in demand right now, because I my sit-in-front-of-the-computer time has diminished to parts of Saturday and Sunday. For a while I was trying to get work writing book reviews, but not only is that a darn hard job to get, but I no longer have the time to actually read. Oh, I listen to a lot of audio books when I'm driving from house to house and when I'm walking the dogs, but holy cow! I love it though.

One of the best things I've done for this dog walking gig is download the Map My Walk app. I don't just use it for the dog walking, we use it for hiking and regular walking too. This thing is amazing! A coworker pointed me in the direction of the app while I was saying I wish there were a way to track my walk with the dogs, so I should show the owners where we went. With that app, not only can you map the walk, you track how many steps, how far you went, how fast... It records elevation and all of that nonsense, including calories burned, which has been an awesome motivator for me. If the dog's owner also has the app, they can be notified when you have completed a walk, and you can comment on it with them. None of my owners do that, though it's good to know the option is there and they absolutely LOVE seeing the maps. I absolutely love seeing how much exercise I'm getting. It's a win-win. :)

News on the home front is that we are trying to clear out junk and sell it all away. Well, sell what is sellable anyway, I doubt people want actual junk. ;) I have tried the local facebook online yard sale pages, but the people there don't want my stuff when they will take that of anyone else. Who doesn't want picture frames and men's jeans, for christ sake?! I mean... seriously! I'm about to give up on these sites all together and just trash everything, but for reasons I can't get into right now, we REALLY need the cash. I'm at a total loss. What are other people doing that I'm not doing? The prices are equal to, if not cheaper than what others are asking. Ugh. Sitting there watching everything else go while my stuff gets ignored just makes me so depressed and makes me feel judged. It shouldn't, but it does. I have been deemed unworthy.

Vegas. No we weren't supposed to go this year... Yes, we are going. We have hotel and plane tickets, but are uncertain if we will be gifted with actual convention tickets. Still, we decided that we really should be there and with the hotel prices going on super sale at Thanksgiving, we couldn't pass it up, especially since Creation is getting rid of most of their conventions next year and keeping what looks like only Chicago (I think it was) and Vegas. Not even the big one on the east coast seems to be worth it to them any more. Sad thing, because it means less traveling to see our friends. Luckily Rene canceled the con down here, where we were supposed to take him out for his birthday, only to have Nana take his place. That was a really nice time, being able to spend the day just talking about this, that, or the other thing. Sharing stories and updates about family over a meal. Gosh I miss being around everyone. It feels like it has been ages since we all saw each other. These small non-creation cons like the one that Nana did in Charlotte seem to be the way we will go now. They are laid back and give plenty of time to divide between fans and friends. Now, if only I can do some convincing on the cruise thing... ;)

As far as other conventions go... There's this 50th anniversary thing in NYC... I have NO idea if we will go to that or not. I know very little about it, only that a lot of people are going there and NOT to Dragon Con, which has the Dragon Con fans all in a tizzy. There have been days when I have had to stop myself from posting some kind of frustrated rant after reading all the complaints about how wrong it is that if ONE actor can go to both conventions, ALL the actors should do it. Sometimes I just want to smack people about the head with a wet noodle. Of course, these people have no idea what it is like to work the conventions, what the actors schedules are like and exactly how much effort it would take to jump on a plane (Shatner has is own personal one, doesn't he? That's MUCH easier for him to do.) and travel from NYC to Atlanta or the other way around... and be certain NOT to miss a layover or be delayed and therefore miss your engagement? I could go on and on... Really... Just... I was contemplating going to the NYC thing and got sidetracked...

When I first heard about the thing it was like.. some kind of immersion experience? Maybe I'm looking at the wrong page, but that doesn't at ALL seem to be what it is now. The whole "pretend to be a member of the crew" does NOT do it for me. I'm not that kind of fan. I love the show, I love acting, I love good writing... The actors were hired to play the parts, they don't need me to do it for them. :) Anyway, the site says there are props and stuff, which sounds a lot like what creation does these days with their promenade hallway, where you can take your pictures with all the various backdrops. With Nana and Rene there it's worth thinking about it... We never get to see Rene these days... But Connor and Dominic will be there also. Plenty of incentive to drive the 9 hours up and back again. I've done it plenty of times before for a much smaller head count. :) We will see.

Um... What else? I just seem to be rambling, really. I suppose I should get myself off this thing and on to somewhere a little more productive. Let me sling the website down here, in case anyone reading wants to see what it looks like. Chase did the layout, I put in all the text where I was told to. I really love it. And just in case anyone wants web design services, I'll just advertise her work right here. ;)

Holy cow does time fly when you are super busy. It feels like it was only a month ago my sister and I were planning my mother's birthday trip to New York City, so we could announce our idea back in December! Not much has really happened, except that it feels like nothing has stopped happening, so I guess you say that not much of importance has happened. There has been excitement in getting new babies and their aunt from the animal shelter... and I guess for us that's about it. Oh, our immigration papers went in today. This should be the final time we have to deal with the government on our rights to live together as a couple... Unless someone gets elected that decides to end our rights, then the devil only knows what is going to happen. Will we be grandfathered in with the legal immigrants, or will we be split up again? I'd assume nothing would change. One thing at a time, though.

First off, we have to kill these ants. No, literally, our house is infested with like three different colonies, AND a colony has decided to nest inside my car. No, not open the doors and sit on the seats... I mean LITERALLY inside... IN the frame. WTF, world? I recognize the animals were here first and climate is changing and all but I have NEVER had a problem like this in my entire time of living here... And we moved in 16 years ago!

Otherwise, I've been very down and very depressed. I know I've said it before, but it is difficult being someone who is used to doing for themselves, who then CAN'T do for themselves and has to rely on other people. We're teachers, so we can't afford to pay someone to come out and do the lawn or haul away the crap that the construction people left in our yard LAST YEAR when they build the shed around our house. Nothing says poor white trash like an unmowed lawn piled with scraps of metal, glass, wood and god knows what all. Oh yeah, and we live under a shed. I hate living like this. If I were me before surgery, my lawn would be habitable by more than snakes. I'd have mowed it regularly, removed all the crap to the dump and by now I would have spent hours relaxing outside comfort on beautiful spring evenings. Now I can't even sweep my deck and no one else is going to do it for me. Literally no one.

There is no way to explain how heartbreaking injuries like this are to a person. Any person. I don't care who you are. If you are used to typing at a computer all day and suddenly someone took away your sight... what would you do? No, you didn't lose your job, your job is something else, you just can't use your phone, check facebook, do emails... you have to relearn how to do all of that and you will never be able to do it again. (Yes, I know there is read aloud technology and all that now, but imagine with me because nothing really compares to suddenly losing the ability to walk, only to get it partially restored without feeling to one leg and extreme pain for the rest of your life if you do something simple like lean over a sink to wash your hands.)

I don't mean to be complaining, because I'm really not. Do I wish that people would reach out to me and say "Dude... I've got a mower, want me to drive over there with it and tackle your lawn?" Yes. That would be awesome. Do I expect it of anyone? No. That is my responsibility and quite frankly, when people would call me up just before and after my surgery and say "Is there anything that you need?" and my answer was "I just need someone to take a leaf blower to my lawn because it's November and the leaves are killing my yard...." no help came, so why should I expect it now? I learned quickly that stuff like that wasn't an actual "I'll come help you," though I had always assumed that when someone told me what they needed in a time of crisis, it was an honest answer and I did whatever it was if I was able.

The world is a strange place. Totally, completely strange.

Anyway, other major news that I left out... Rene was supposed to do ConCarolinas down near Charlotte at the beginning of June. We had told him we were going to take him to a birthday dinner, which we were all looking forward to.. this was back in the winter. Fast forward to last month, when we went up to New Jersey to rescue Nana from a convention up there (even if just for lunch) and she says "Wait, I'm going to be down your way soon..." She pulled out her phone but when she said "Rene was supposed to go, but couldn't so I am going in his place" I knew right away. First weekend in June! The irony of this is that we will be up in New York the weekend before that, with Mom... But in order to see Nana, SHE has to come all the way down here to us! HAHA! Strange world indeed. We are trying to get a vacation sorted out, but I don't know if it will work out. It'd be nice. We have her totally addicted to Matthew's Chocolates. :) Even more funny stuff, since her husband is named Matthew. ;)

I pulled out two random questions from my bag of questions today. One fell into my lap. I'll start with that one:
If you could meet anybody, from past or present, who would it be?
I think I've answered this one before, but I would be after horses, not people. There is an entire herd's worth of horses that wish I could meet, including Barbaro, Zenyatta, Dynformer, Ruffian, Secretariat, Cas Ole... Extra points if you know that name 'cause it doesn't "belong" with the others... :)

If I had to go with people, I'd want to talk with my great grandfather (is that the right number of people back in my family tree?) who trained jumpers... so horse stuff again. :)

I'm keeping the next question because it was recently Teacher Appreciation Week:
Thinking back, was there a teacher who had a great influence on you?
Sure, Mrs. Jochum. (Pronounce that Yo-kum) I woudln't at all be the same person without her. She encouraged my individuality, my love of rats (which made my father love rats), my creativity, and my abilities as a writer. Every damned book I hope to publish will be dedicated to her. I don't care if that's the done thing. I write because she was just amazing on teaching HOW to write... All these tricks and tips that I have used to help inspire other people when they are on writer's block... If you have NOT written a constant paper or done a sticker story journal page (yes, sticker and story AND journal) then you'd better get going because you get some AMAZING stuff out of that.

Here's an example play along:
Try finding a magazine page that has words on one side and a photo on the other, don't study the photo, just quickly turn over to the words side and cut out a random shape. Nothing big, nothing fancy. Write the fragment of the picture. Don't put restrictions on yourself. You want to write about color, do that. You want to make up a story about a foot in the sunlight, do that. You want write about the shape of the scrap of paper and not the image, do that. Keep your scrap. Revisit it when you have completely forgotten what you wrote before. Write something new. Compare your stuff... ENJOY it. I have filled in several gaps in my stories this way, just by revisiting random things I wrote about or random images that I could draw inspiration from. I have to admit something like this was mostly my idea, but Mrs Jochum was the one who inspired that sort of creative style. She wanted the writer to find their inspiration from anywhere. She was a damned amazing teacher. Still is, I hope.

Shit. Now I want to get out my sticker and magazine story journals from years ago... :p