Not All Those Who Ramble are Lost

Every time I try to log in at OSA, I get re-routed to the welcome page, even though I can see my stories etc. that's aren't rated NC-17.

Uh, help? Anyone know what's going on?

It is better to be alone and safe than afraid and trapped in the same room with a human time-bomb.

I should not feel that settling someone who may, with very little warning and no intentional provocation, dissolve into violence and emotional manipulation, is a better alternative to a safe, comfortable level of adulthood just because my only companions are animals.

I'm going to have to keep repeating that until it sinks in.

I trusted someone that wasn't worthy of it. I guess craving physical touch so much all I can do is sob is just one of the consequences of that action.

It is better to be safe and alone than trapped with an armed bomb.

Bath or shower?
Shower alternate days. Bath once/week. Warm cloth at the sink the other two.

Straight or curly hair?
Wavy. Usually I straighten it.

Favorite movie?
Too many to choose.

Favorite holiday?
Halloween... when I don't have to white-wash it for other people.

Android or iPhone?
Android based (Samsung Galaxy).

Texting or call?
Text or email/online message. I don't talk on the phone much at all.

Facebook or twitter?
Facebook, though it was a lot more fun before the ads.

Favorite type of food?
Italian mostly.

Dream job?
Animal rescue

Favorite pizza?
Olives and mushrooms on thick crust. :)

Favorite cake?
Black Forest

Night or day
Night

Summer or winter?
Summer if I can't have Autumn

Wine or whiskey?
Whiskey

Makeup or no makeup?
Maybe a bit of eye shadow once in a month of Sundays.

Favorite TV show?
Of all time: Jeopardy. At the moment: How to Get Away with Murder

Hair up or down?
Almost always a ponytail. Wore it down for a funeral today and everyone noticed.

Jeans or leggings?
Jeans.

Painted or not painted nails?
Not painted.

Favorite color?
Red

T-shirt or dress shirt?
T-shirt

Flip flops or sneakers?
Barefoot unless we've had snow.

Big purse or small?
Attache case, small purse inside it.

How many tattoos?
Two

How many piercings?
Ears once

Diamonds or pearls?
Pearls if I have to wear jewelry.

Favorite animal?
Too many to name.

Rap or country music?
Country

Sports or couch?
Neither. Been spending a lot of time at the gym on the stationary bike and treadmill, but people annoy me so I don't usually join teams for sports. And my couch is dangerous, like the Old Man Willow. If I sit down on it, I fall instantly to sleep.

What's it mean when AO3 tells me a story "has already been imported from" a given website? I'm trying to archive my OSA stuff on AO3 and that message just popped up, and I got a 500 error when I tried to read the importing FAQ.

I'm also too pooped to copy pasta the whole damn thing (even though it's only 4 chapters).

Yes, the American that's up at the arse crack of a European dawn is suddenly part of the "in bed by 9:30" crowd. Chasing nuns will do that to you, apparently. *sigh*

After I realized there was no point in trying to stay in such a shitty marriage, I called it quits and (emotionally) started to mourn and move on.

Cue "Andrew"-- a friend of a friend that I've known for almost as long as I'd been with Chad. I remember with vivid details every single interaction with this man over the last four years from the first day he walked into the store and the bashful smile I caught when I tried to meet his eyes through the look of delighted confusion on his face the second time he came into the store and I remembered him by name to the shock on his face when I visited his home and the cat who "doesn't like anybody" asked to be picked up and cuddled me for ten minutes.

Now then, even though I'd declared the marriage over, I was still stuck living with Chad for a few months while I hoarded money to get on my own two feet. It was slow going. But even while we were married, we'd had what I believed was an Open Relationship. But, it turns out, that since he hadn't successfully found another partner, he "called it off"... after I'd already made arrangements with "Andrew" (who knew about the open relationship and was comfortable with the idea).

Fast forward a few weeks, Chad hacked my Facebook and told most of our IRL friends group that I've "cheated".

Now, here's the thing; I didn't tell him any details of where I was going that day or what I'd be doing, but he knew who I'd be with and when I planned to return. He knew I was safe, which was the arrangement we agreed on when we discussed opening the relationship.

The night before the date, I'd asked him to scoop litter boxes and take out the garbage while I was gone.

Instead, he sat at home masturbating to the thought of "Andrew" and I in bed together.

And yet, when he found out that's what had happened, he was so "repulsed" and "disgusted" and "ashamed of [me]" that he called everyone that had been in our wedding party bemoaning my "cheating".

And now, he uses this "cheating" and my reputation among those friends as points of control (unsuccessfully, since I see it for what it is). It was a discussion about this "cheating" that incited his fit of rage, the car chase, etc.

Because I followed through on what I said, and we'd agreed, we were going to do. Because I hadn't been able to get enough of my money away from him to file divorce papers, or register a vehicle in my name, or any of the other steps to escape that money require.

So now I'm left with "Andrew" on my mind. We can't date in the conventional sense; even though we share a friend group (which, incidentally, Chad is not and has never been a part of, but also tried to tell his twisted version of events via online means) there's a pretty significant distance. And until recently, transportation was difficult for me.

Just for the hell of it, since I can't sleep, I dug out my tarot deck and shuffled with my mind on "Andrew".

First card:
8 Cups/Hearts, reversed
Hmm.
Upright, the 8 of Cups represents Sacrifice and enduring more than you want to. Reversing a card usually alters/reverses the meaning.

So I went to Facebook hoping for cat videos to still my mind so I can be up for work in four hours, and instead came upon a meme.
"Pay attention to your gut feelings. No matter how good something looks, if it doesn't feel right, walk away."

Well, "Andrew" looks damn good. (Straight out of Rohan kind of good.) And it feels good. Exciting and cheerful and full of promise and none of the "I have to take care of him" vibes I had the whole time I've known Chad.

But hope, regardless of whether or not it has feathers, is a frightening thing. So fragile, so hard to hold onto, and so easy to use as a distraction.

The full reading I pulled for myself (I know, I know!) shows me on the right path, with an outcome of a reversed 6 of Cups/Hearts, "future" "moving on" "letting go of the past".

Do I dare hope?

Do I get to sleep?

So there's what's in my buzzing brain at ten until three in the morning on a work night, rattling around beneath the tinnitus and the timer on the lizard tank clicking through the wall behind my bed. Maybe I'm a cheater in some peoples' minds. I'm not the only one who broke our vows. I don't regret leaving him at all.

I just regret that I can't fall asleep where everything feels right, and that I spent four years convinced I can't trust my own gut and brain when they were screaming in whispers to just cut my losses and run.

I'll keep this short and sweet.

4th October 2014, I married someone that I thought loved me in spite of both our problems and would work to keep us both comfortable and happy.

7th August 2015, he lost his temper at me for the last time, and after chasing me in his car for over 2 miles and blocking my safe path at every pinch point and other opportunity to get help, I filed a police report and left.

14th November 2015, I signed the lease on my own apartment and began the process of getting my new driver's license, car registration, etc.

In August I'll attempt to file the "no fault" divorce allowed in our part of the U.S. since we'll have been separated for a year at that point. If he follows through on his vow to "never sign any papers" because "he loves me" and "won't see me with anyone else" then we'll get into the down and dirty, immature, back and forth bullshit of a nasty divorce.

In the mean time, TieDye the cat and I are doing well.

Hence my... 6 month? Hiatus from LJ, OSA, AO3, and every other damn thing I've always enjoyed but suddenly couldn't because somehow life suddenly had to revolve around my owner husband.

But in an unexpected twist that still makes me laugh my ass off, I've finally found someone more perverted than me-- in a *bad* way. Never thought that would happen.

*love to all*

Neu

(P.S.-- My new job is an activities coordinator in a nursing home for retired nuns. I've lost 30# [which I needed to do anyway] just running around spoiling old ladies with paper thin skin and spines of steel. :D They've inspired a new work of original fiction that I might try to market one of these days. And that's something I *never* thought I'd say.)

http://theastrarium.tumblr.com/pos…

Important excerpt:
"The image of the Horned God in Witchcraft is radically different from any other image of masculinity in our culture. He is difficult to understand, because He does not fit into any of the expected stereotypes, neither those of the "macho” male nor the reverse-images of those who deliberately seek effeminacy. He is gentle, tender, and comforting, but He is also the Hunter. He is the Dying God-but his death is always in the service of the life force. He is untamed sexuality-but sexuality as a deep, holy, connecting power. He is the power of feeling, and the image of what men could be if they were liberated from the constraints of patriarchal culture.

The image of the Horned God was deliberately perverted by the medieval Church into the image of the Christian Devil. Witches do not believe in or worship the Devil-they consider it a concept peculiar to Christianity. The God of the Witches is sexual-but sexuality is seen as sacred, not as obscene or blasphemous."

My father didn't deserve the burdens he carried; he was simply taught that it was his place not to permanently institutionalize my mother, at the risk of losing me, and chose addiction to cope with that emotional burden that he didn't know he was taking on with his wedding vows.

When I think of meeting his mistress as a small child, and how much happier we all could have been if I'd understood what he was really asking when he asked if I'd like for him and me "to go live with her," I wish I could go back and change things.

But I can't. I can only mourn what might have been and carry the lesson into the now.

I do that by trying to build up the men around me, and in that, I am as much a feminist as I am a humanist. My religion guides me in a kinder path than any other religion has offered thus far, and I'm thankful that now, seeing another side of a Patriarchal culture known for devaluing women while turning most men into sacrificial offerings to a cult of money and power, I stand on the path I do, poised to learn from the strength of these overlooked female heroes and use that knowledge to undermine the very system that caused their misuse and oppression for (literally) millennia.

"It is easier to raise strong children than rebuild broken men." W.E.B. DuBoise

http://distractify.com/matt-buco/a…

and laugh myself silly.

Toys like those are actually illegal in at least two US states. Sometimes I hate living in a country founded by capitalists and taken over by the Religious Right. It's very confusing.

SO I read this:
http://blogs.disney.com/oh-my-disn…

And it made me want to smack some heads together.

Let's go in order, shall we?

1) She's a 10-12 year old girl on a ship the size of a soccer pitch for 6 weeks, and you expect her to not learn a song that's probably as commonly sung away from the officers on that particular tub as "Uptown Funk" is played in shopping malls today? Not to mention you assume she'd never been on a ship before (when shipping was as common as air travel today for rich families) and boatmen/sailors were quite literally *everywhere* in major cities like London. I can remember snatches of song I've only heard once from the car in the next lane at a traffic signal, and I'm 33; I don't have nearly as many synapses connecting as even a 12 year old. Don't underestimate Elizabeth because you're a molasses-brained twit.

2) If the Governor found out Will made the sword, he'd be within his rights to pillory both Will and the blacksmith for defrauding him. He paid for a masterwork, not the next best thing (no matter how damn good it is) from the apprentice of a drunken sot that happens to wake up at the right moments. Will is well and truly fucked.

3) Bead-making developed independently in multiple cultures in the world many thousands of years ago. Shiny glass ones like the few he wears interspersed with the bone and clay and wooden beads were common trade goods as Britannia tried to take over the planet. Bone and wooden beads sailors often carved for themselves in what became known as the art of scrimshaw. So, put short, "Fucking anywhere, dumbass."

4) I'm guessing something like being born the third son of a family with some standing, so he developed ambition and wit to make up for the fact he wasn't particularly necessary as long as both elder brothers were alive? (Headcanon I know, but purchased military commissions were common for "extra" sons in rich families, and he's clearly been raised as a member of the gentry or minor nobility.)

5) That bed-warmer was rubbed around under the blankets for a few minutes to break the worst of the chill, not left overnight. Better question: It's the BLOODY CARIBBEAN, why the hell were they WARMING her sheets!?!? I've been to Aruba (further south, so colder) in the middle of March (one of their coldest months) and only needed a sheet and light blanket. We're supposed to buy that all those quilts and a bed warmer were *necessary*?

6) I think Mythbusters tried this and called it plausible over a short distance.

7) Macaws can live in excess of 80 years. There's no way of knowing how long Cotton had the macaw or where it lived before he ended up with it. That could have been a 50 year old bird Cotton inherited from someone independent of losing his tongue, but in my head canon the guy who was *really* at fault for whatever he was punished for taught the bird to talk for him to make amends.

8) Monkeys are assholes much of the time. I don't see an irrational hatred of one particular person he'd never met before being out of character for the species. Bonus, Jack has weird hair and an ostentatious hat and moves like he's been licking toads or weird mushrooms, which can spook just about any animal. And, please note, never once did the little beast fling poo or piss on anyone, so over all, it's a very well-behaved monkey.

9) Her hair is healthier than yours to begin with b/c she doesn't use shampoo and then try to rehydrate it with more drying chemical gunk from having too many natural oils stripped out.

10) Headcanon: he totally did it with King George's mistress/daughter/wife/all of the above. He's Captain Jack Sparrow, savvy?

Please tell me I'm not alone in knowing at least some of that stuff off the top of my head before ever watching the films? Are my countrymen really becoming that thick, or am I just a deeper level of nerd than I ever realized?