Wait... moving means decorating, doesn't it?

It occurred to me earlier as I was picking up the baby's toys off of the living room floor, he's going to have his own room. This means I can finally decorate with that animals theme we've got going! I'm not sure if I'll be able to find prints of pictures like this:



But it'd be pretty awesome if I could. :) I've realized that I need to make or buy curtains for his room and I think it may also be necessary for there to be a few things like shelves put up in the room as well. As I think about it, I realize that it could be pretty awesome in there with out an insane amount of work. Fortunately, I've got yards upon yards of fabric I can use.

While the landlord of our new apartment doesn't want us to put up wallpaper or repaint the walls, we can hang pictures. I need to check and make sure that putting up shelves isn't a problem. If not, then I can do things like make a few shelf liners that go along with the animal/jungle theme that we've got going on. I know that the living room is going to keep some of the Asian theme that we've had in here. I want to make things kid friendly, though, and incorporate some of that theme from the boy's room in there. I've been thinking about it and I'm just at something of a loss at the moment.

Perhaps if I try to arrange for a small 'downstairs' toybox or something else akin... Actually, I could make him a toy bin that could go with the open storage unit! If I either iron on or applique something Asian and animal related, it could work well. We've some carvings that my husband inherited from his maternal grandfather with a pheonix and a dragon on them. I'm pretty sure that I could put something on a red canvas bin with that on it. Our living room curtains are red and gold colored, with something of a brocade-ish pattern to them. It makes them blend somewhat well with the rest of the asian themed stuff. The wall art that we have up, however, is black fabric fans with painted birds on them in gold and a few other colors.

Hmm... I think I'm going to split this into different posts. I'll brainstorm here on my blog, giving all of you folks in the world something more plesant to read then my whining about local politics or how stressful moving could be.

Ugh. I hate packing.

On one hand, I'm thrilled that we've got our new place to be moving into. I think it's fantastic! At the same time, I hate packing because it depresses me. Looking around and seeing bare walls, empty shelves, and such makes me feel like my home has ceased to exist and I'm living in but a shelter.

Then, today, I feel the urge to smack myself silly because I feel this way as some friends of mine have no such things to be in boxes for them to trip over and curse when they stub their toe in the middle of the night. I'm torn between being depressed by seeing empty space where there was books, pictures, and other little things that catch the light and being angry with myself for feeling so upset.

Happy birthday, darling. :) (Yeah, it's early.)

---

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Here is your cake!

Happy birthday! we love you!

Your Wife & Son

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What on earth is wrong with people?

Before you read this blog entry, read the item at this link here. Now, I have a very simple question. It's a question that I would love to have any person who works in law enforcement help me answer, especially if they're in New York State.

Is my picture of my son chewing on his toes after a bath that I posted on my blog child pornography?

Now, before you answer this, I have one more question to ask:

Am I responsible for the reaction that some one viewing my blog has to this picture?

With sex and sexuality, there's a really wide range of things that people find exciting. There is the distinct possibility that some one who views the picture of my son says "Wow, that's hot!" and then engages in a bit of masturbation. I really don't see any form of logic that can hold me responsible for the reactions of others to this photo either because there's a few monstrously huge holes in the logic that some one would attempt to use here to argue this is child porn.

The logical test for culpability asks a few simple questions:
1. Did you know the outcome was going to happen?
2. Did you intend for the outcome to occur?
3. Could you have prevented the outcome from happening?
4. Did you cause the outcome to occur by actions or inaction on my part?

Well, if you apply this logic test to the question of some one using the picture of my son as inspiration for masturbation, what do you get?

1. Did I know that some one was going to use this picture as inspiration for masturbation?

I did not know that was going to happen. I recognized it as a possibility at the time I posted the picture, but determined it to be of a low probability of occurring.

2. Did I intend for some one to use this picture for that purpose?

No, my intention was not for this to occur, but rather to show accomplishments my son has made.

3. Could I have prevented some one from using this picture for that purpose?

Yes, if I had not made the picture available for the public to view.

4. Did I cause some one to use this picture for inspiration for masturbation by actions or inaction on my part?

No. This action was done on the part of the individual viewing the picture. I have no control over the decisions they make at any given time, as I do not have the capacity to force another person to act in any fashion when I am not in their presence or have sufficient leverage (be it real or perceived) to force them to choose a given course of action.

Now, perhaps some one may go so far as to say that any picture involving the nudity of a child qualifies as child porn when it is available for view within the public setting. If this is the decision that the law intends to make, all ads featuring naked babies need to be eliminated, the vast majority of classical paintings showing Jesus nude need to be locked away, and each and every other occurrence of child nudity needs to be removed. If you think about it, it turns into a rather ridiculous list. It ranges from ads for diapers to classical paintings, to stamps, all depictions of Cupid, and much, much more.

We also need to consider one other thing, just who is the arbiter of how a child is raised? Is the responsibility for the rearing of a child the domain of the parents or of the public? Once the government begins to dictate how I raise my child, they are stripping my child of privacy. No, that doesn't say it quite right...

It turns my child into public property. Until my child is of legal majority, it turns my child into as much an item of public property as the highway you drive your car on. What is worse in your mind? Is it worse for me to have a few pictures of my son just out of the bath chewing on his toes here on my blog or the precedent that my son is chattel? By the way, it doesn't just say that my son is chattel, but also would say that I and each and every other citizen is chattel. I am not a slave and I am not a serf. My liberty is not tied to the amount of debt I owe to anyone, thus I am not an indentured servant. For the law to establish that my son, a natural born citizen of this nation, is common property, is to deprive him of his liberty.

Men have fought and died for such rights to be preserved for their children. To disgrace the nation founded by these men by a few strokes of a pen and pat words about how it's for the 'sake of the children' is disgusting.

And people wonder why I am so disappointed by the government that we have and it's repeated refusal to do the right thing?

A Room of His Own

I've got to admit, I chuckled when I first heard the term 'man room' and 'man cave'. Now, I'm amused to see this item linked on the CNN main page. I am not laughing at the men who have taken it upon themselves to do this. I'm not laughing at that at all. It's the fact that such a simple thing is getting so much attention. I've been somewhat halfhearted about following this, but CNN has been spending a little time on this 'man cave' concept. It's a soft-news item that's actually been getting a fair amount of attention.

Here's what my thoughts are on a 'man room' (or it's brother concept the 'man cave'):

Everyone needs a space where they can go and lay claim on it as their own exclusive domain. When you live together, you find that you have times where you just need to get away from the other people who you are sharing that space with. A few generations back, that 'man room' was the den. Women generally had reign over the rest of the house as they were there more often and actively in charge of domestic affairs. Virginia Woolf pointed out that women also needed a private space, but I can't recall if there was any real social change effected, unless the parlor, which was generally used for entertaining guests, was used for that purpose.

To everyone who insists that it is insensitive of a man to demand breathing space and something of a sanctuary of his own within his home, you're all fools. What on earth is he supposed to do? If he wants to relax and have time just to himself is he supposed to go sit in the car? Are we denying people the comfort and respite of their homes because all of the space is to be shared?Let the men have their 'man room' and let women have their own special room. If it's possible to make happen, do it. If you can't, then make a section of a room that person's sole domain.

It may drive you crazy and irritate the living daylights out of you to have that picture of dogs playing poker up on the wall there. It may even make you mad how he leaves candy wrappers on his desk and that you can never find anything there. That, however, is his problem. Let him have his own space and privacy. It shows respect for the man in your life. Taking time like that allows him the opportunity to 'recharge' and bring more of himself back to the relationship. It's healthy.

I recognize, healthy isn't popular. Perhaps it's time to buck the trend and do what's best for your well being, folks, because I think things like this are the reason why my marriage is healthy.

Restless thoughts.

Sometimes, when everything is quiet, I feel unsettled. Sometimes, it's as though there are things inside my head vying to get out, but writing and artistic efforts never are quite enough. It once was that writing helped and I could just pour this all out on the page. It did work at one point in time, and the lives that I lived inside my head just were translated to written word and didn't seem to cause so much pressure.

I was happier when I was younger, in some ways, because I didn't censor it. I didn't struggle to keep it all inside and make it still. Daydreams weren't exactly a bad thing, even if I was trying to get things done. It was acceptable for me to have flights of fancy, because I was a child. It made it easier to cope with the disparate things that were inside my mind. Stories that I wrote were just wearing a different mask and putting the things attached to it down on paper.

Recently, I thought... I thought that it would be terrifying if I were to have been laboring under the effects of MPD for all these years with out any diagnosis. All those things I kept quiet and bottled up inside me as best I could. Those thoughts that ranged from contemplating murders to actually seeing myself in a different place, a different life. I kept those things quiet and inside my head unless I expressed them on paper. Then, as I began to learn about MPD, I discovered that really wasn't my situation.

It could perhaps work, in some fashion or way, to expunge the build up of tension and stress in me to do so, but I would lose something in the process. I'll deal with the whispers inside my head until I need to experience a splitting or a break like that. I came close to needing it, but I managed to pull thru without it some how. I don't know where I am on the path of owning and mastering myself, but I don't believe that allowing myself to shatter like that will serve me well.

For some people, such a sundering of themselves works quite well. They find it to be a source of empowerment and liberation. I believe that I need to find my empowerment and liberation elsewhere. Until I am at a place where I don't wake up in the morning afraid that all that is good in my life is either a lie or going to be swept away by a capricious and sadistic act of God, I will continue with my mantra regarding pain.

• What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.
• Thru pain, I am purified.
• I am stronger then fear, misery, or pain.
• My will shall prove greater then any emotion that comes over me.

Sure, this isn't exactly comforting and it's hard as hell to remember. It is, however, what I have learned thru my life thus far.

Thoughts on Love.

I blogged a bit about this at one point a while back into the past, I think. If I've covered this ground already, I apologize if I bore you by doing so again.

Love is a funny thing. It can inspire wonders and things of great beauty. It can inspire horrors and things of great tragedy. Love truly is a powerful emotion, perhaps almost enough to call a force of nature. I'm not sure, as I don't know how the minds of other creatures work to say if the love or love as we humans do. It's hard enough to determine if other people love, so I'm not going to attempt to move beyond my species to understand that. And we're not even touching any theological elements, look at my other blog for that line of thought please. :)

I can't exactly do anything in half measures. Love is one of them. And I've come to recognize that we can't exactly control our emotions very well. If we're going to feel something, we can control how we respond to it and how we act with respect to the feeling, but we can't generally turn that off. Love as a very powerful emotion, is particularly difficult to mute or step away from and act with any sense of reason when you are caught in the grips of it's full force.

All of this said, we need to always remember that we can not control who or how our heart loves. I struggled with that for years. Then... somewhere along the way I realized that I was doing myself an enormous disservice and denying a huge part of myself.

It's somewhat terrifying to realize just how deeply this part of me touches the rest of my life. It is perhaps equally terrifying to realize that all those years of attempting to deny my capacity to love beyond the typical relationships of family and spouse, I was struggling to choke out something that is such an essential part of who I am.

I do love my friends as my family. There are people whom I hold in affection as deep as that which I have for my husband. There are people whom I would die for and people whom, more importantly and more challenging, whom I would live for. I don't know if that makes me polyamorous. It's confusing. I do know that the people whom I love I am loyal to as the day is long.

This makes me extremely forgiving and tolerant in areas that I wouldn't usually be so. And when I finally am pushed to where I need to act, it hurts deeply. Right now, I am hurting deeply because I had to take action against someone whom I cared for a great deal. I feel betrayed, furious, and wounded by the progression of years of mistreatment from that person. It has been quite a while since I had to distance myself, but it still hurts quite a bit. The thing that hurts the most right now, however, is realizing that they never did love me in return. And, as I work on packing up things in my home, I stumble onto items that were from that person and that served as a reminder of my affection for them.

I still do love them. But I know I can not be around them, because they have hurt me in the past and will do so in the future. This is so different from the other person who I was beginning to feel something of a deep affection for and then they hurt me. That person, I've been able to cleanly break that tie. But... the person whom I loved for years and had hurt me and broken my heart over those years... I don't know how to break that tie cleanly and I don't know what would serve to cauterize this wound.

*yawn*

I want to sleep but I want to get stuff done.

Isn't it always this way? :P

Sleep has not been my friend of late.

I have been having strange nightmares, like the one I posted on my other blog, pretty much every night. Sometimes, I don't have a nightmare. But, that's been the exception rather then the rule over the last month and I'm getting sick of it. It seems like every day, I have a headache and I'm tired from a poor nights sleep. When night comes, I dread falling asleep, so I've recently been staying up. Going to bed at 1 am doesn't exactly make for a good morning when my boy wakes up at 7 am or even 6:30 am.

I don't remember these nightmares that clearly, but I thought with the search and drama surrounding locating a new apartment resolved, I may have my nightmares go away. I was wrong. So, now, I don't know what to do. The nights where I take something to help me fall asleep, I don't generally remember the nightmares. I just wake feeling uneasy. It's getting harder for me to fall asleep, this is part of the reason why I stay up as well. The slightest noise wakes me up and if there's just a little bit of light, I can't fall asleep. It was bothering me to such an extent that I unplugged my alarm clock because it's too bright.

I've been using a "sleep mask" and it helps, sort of. Earplugs have never done me much good, they just don't stay in my ears. So, I toss and turn a fair amount before I do finally fall asleep. I'm at something of a loss for what to do about this. I don't exactly want to talk to my doctor about it because I'm pretty sure that all of this is anxiety related. For some odd reason, I just can't stop worrying about money. We've got enough to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table, so it's not that we're hurting. Sure, we can't go spend it like we did before the baby came along, but that's part of what we knew was going to happen when I got pregnant. We were prepared for that. Or at least, I thought that I was.

Now... Now, I don't know what my issue is. Perhaps I need to stop watching the news so much. Perhaps I need to stop talking to my folks about money, as they're getting into another paranoid fit again. It's not like I am convinced that the economy is going to fail tomorrow. And if it did, sitting on a pile of money isn't going to do us any good. After all, when the Deutchmark failed back before WWII, it took a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread. I find myself wondering how much of this fiscal trouble that we're seeing is caused by the media freaking out over it. At the same time, however, I recognize that we didn't do our economy any good by shifting away from being based in real goods and manufacturing. A service based economy and a trade deficit isn't going to really help you build wealth unless you're at the top of the pyramid. Because I think that the whole service based economy is alot like a pyramid scheme.

The whole system sucks, and I'm working in that sector right now. I don't know if I'm a fool or not. I think I'm going to just stop rambling for now and go wash dishes. That's a real, concrete problem for me to deal with. And after that, I'll wash my hair while I've got a little peace and quiet before the boy is up from his nap. Perhaps, with luck, I won't feel quite so anxious later.

Images speak louder then words, in this case.

View this prior to reading this post.

Before you click that link, let me warn you, it's Amnesty International's newest anti-torture advertisement. It's NSFW and graphic.

I've got a problem with torture being used to get information out of people. I've got a big problem with the fact that my government, the United States of America, is currently engaged in it. I recognize, Amnesty International is appealing to the emotions of the viewer with the format and setup of this commercial. I can't however, say that this should be discredited because of that or that it should be discredited because it is not a depiction of an actual waterboarding session.

As a BDSM aficionado, I realize that waterboarding has been around for a while. I recognize that in some contexts, this and other torture techniques can be used in a non-injurious fashion. So, the question is not if the practice of waterboarding itself is abhorrent. It's a question as to if torture as a mode of interrogation is abhorrent. I think one can add also the question if torture used as a punitive measure is abhorrent as well.

Perhaps because I am not an expert, or some how otherwise well placed to say with any authority on the topic, my stance here is going to be disregarded. Perhaps, I'm sad to say, my stance would have been ignored anyways. After all, I am but one person in a nation of many and I am in the middle-lower end of the economic spectrum. We all know "he who has the gold rules" and such. All of this said, I still have to say my piece, again, on this topic.

Torture is wrong as a punitive measure and as a mode of interrogation. If it were consensual and all parties involved were willing participants in all stages of the planning and enactment, with provisions made for the care of any accidental injury, this entire situation would be different. Safety, however, is not a primary concern when torture is applied as a punishment or as a tool to pry information out of someone. And I am quite sure that all parties are not consensually involved in the planning or enactment of this, especially the subject of the action.

There's alot of reasons why I can describe as to how torture is wrong to use for these instances. I've gone over them in the past, as well as the emotional appeal against torture. I can't say anything more then the images of that video I've linked to, however. And I doubt that my meager words fail to convey the injustice of this practice used as a punishment or tool of coercion when they're compared to the sound of the scene at 1min 9 sec.

If this is the sound of a man who consensually entered into this situation, assured of his safety and knowing that this was the extent of what would occur; what of the one who is subjected to this under duress and doesn't know if he is going to be drowned or if something worse is going to happen when they finish?

Spread the link, make people aware of it and ask the question:

Why are we condoning this with our silence?

from the interwebz...

i'm bored... so sue me.


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So...

I've been trying to learn html. It's been a bit aggravating but I think I may actually beginning to get the hang of this. I've yet to show the people I know who are nuts about computers what I've been up to. Only my husband has really seen what I've been working on. He thinks it's a good start and is quite proud of me.

What he doesn't know is that I'm working on something special for him. As he does read this blog, I know that he may see that I just said that now. It's ok, though, because it won't spoil his surprise too much. Hopefully, I won't have to ask him to check my work on his birthday surprise for later this month! That'd be a little embaressing to have him do that. All said, however, I think I might just get this right and have something pretty fun to show for my efforts.

On a slightly different front, I have been thinking about it and I finally decided that I needed to publish some of my work. I'm starting out with a few small things via Keen. Eventually, I'll be getting some stuff printed up and put out there for sale in hardcopy format. Until then, however, I'm working on making sure that my material is copyright protected and such. It's a bit difficult to do, because I'm trying to do work off-line and on-line at the same time with all of this even as I'm dealing with the insanity of being a stay-at-home mom.

I dare say, however, I might even be getting the hang of that juggling act as well.

ZOMG DOOOOM! THE END IS NIGH!!!

Yeah, that was impressive, wasn't it?

I'm sure that if you look up the LHC, you'll find alot of people insisting that we all must repent because the end times are upon us, for we're about to create a black hole and our doom. There's been alot of people who are far smarter then I am who are concerned that when the flip the switch, the LHC will create a strangelet. I'm not terribly worried about it.

In my opinion, the likelihood of this is on par with the likelihood that we're going to be pulled into a wandering black hole. I'm also of the mind that we should be more concerned with nuclear winter due to a series of severely fucked up accidents on aging nuclear powerplants and poorly secured military devices. My husband hates it when I say that I think we're more likely to see our planet get hit by an asteroid or something else. He insists that I'm damning us all to a grisly doom by adding to the list other relatively low probability modes of death.

On the other hand...

Immenent doom does make for a good excuse for one hell of a party. Perhaps I should start working on getting supplies together to make fantastic umbrella drinks and such. After all, if you're going to blink out of existence, you should have at least one bit of orgastic joy prior to it, right?

Still can't shake it...

I'm sitting here listening to the news/watching the news on the tv. I still can't manage to shake that feeling of anxiety. It looks like the tax return has come in, thank goodness. I figured that'd make me less nervous, but it hasn't. I'm just a bundle of anxiety today and I can't get over it. Yesterday's nervousness and anxiety hasn't gone away, though I've done what I could to refocus my attentions on other matters.

I've been torn with the desire to go curl up under a blanket and sleep, as I haven't slept well for several days now, and the desire to just sit down and cry. I've spent the day working on making a flyer to advertise my tarot reading business and cutting out stuff from magazines to use in making the collage that is this flyer. I've been trying to play with the baby, having made him laugh several times today. I even took a nap. But I can't get past this terror that something is horribly wrong with me because I can't handle going out and being around other people.

The worst thing is in all of this, I find myself struggling with some other fustration. I can't quiet the desire and/or hunger for rather harsh attention mingled with affection. It's ...

I don't know, it seems like that helps me to feel safe at times. Having the terrors ripped away from me by the immediate focus of what is happening just at that moment helps me to become calm. It helps because I know the illusion is the scene, the pain and fustration may be real but there is no harm. And... I'm not sure how to prhase it... It helps to have a place where it is safe to give up control and to let someone else handle everything for a moment. I worry so much about everything. I try to be as responsible as possible in handling all of the day to day concerns. To beable to take that burden off my shoulders and lay it aside for a moment, where my only worry is how I play the role before me, it's easier.

I feel like a fool for wanting it, though.

I don't know... It is so hard to focus sometimes and I just need help with that.

Social Anxiety vs. Life

I really have no better title for this post because I think that about summarizes what my difficulties are right now. I have a rather... well... enormous bit of social anxiety and it is making a fairly huge impact on the rest of my life right now. I've been trying to run a business on-line but that's not going as well as I thought it would initially. I tried out the whole reading at something of a party where I essentially had a captive audience. I didn't do exactly well.

I'm not saying that I didn't get any business. I did, but I didn't do well in my comfort levels here. I spent a large chunk of time desperately trying to stay out of everybody's way and not saying much for fear of being verbally attacked. The whole experience kinda slapped me in the face with the fact that I am generally terrified of interacting with other people I don't know, specifically women and I'm not exactly sure of what to do about or with it.

When I interact with people on the internet and to a lesser extent over the phone, it's easier. I suppose it is because it's easy to trick my brain into thinking that they're not 'real' people so I'm not at risk. I have times where I desperately want to go out an interact with people but I just can't bring myself to do it. I try, I really do try, to go out and make friends. I just can't bring myself to do so very much because I'm terrified of being hurt.

I don't really know how to handle this. I need to interact with people to build my business, it's just a part of it. But I'm afraid to do so. When I'm doing a reading, it doesn't generally get screwed up by my anxiety. I hit a certain point and it feels like I'm just reading out loud. Sometimes, I get uncomfortable because the information that I'm reading doesn't make any sense to me or the details given are such that I question if I really should know them. For example, I don't generally want to know about my client's sex life. That's private and if anyone tells me, it should be them.

On the rare occasion that I may have some sort of a question, it's usually if this person is safe. Aside from that, I don't want to know or care. If everything that happens is consensual and done responsibly, I could care less. I get embarrassed when I have information about how their lover performs because I feel that I'm being shown something that I really have no place knowing. As such, I try to make sure that the information is phrased delicately and as factually as possible. Unfortunately, when I'm shown things like this (and it happens more often then I'd like to admit), I find myself becoming even more anxious.

I just don't know what to do about it.

What an odd day..

I'm not sure if the weirdness is exaggerated or illustrated by what I just listened to on the radio. I've found my mood swinging back and forth between a state of high anxiety and irritation to feeling apathetic/depressed. It's been rather upsetting. I didn't really get anything I planned on doing today done at all. I fell asleep on the couch for about 3 hours, possibly 4, this afternoon. I don't know why I was so exhausted, but I was. In the midst of all this, I found myself dreaming of various strange things. Such as lotus blossoms coming up out of a sink full of filthy dishes and mold, the baby laughing and having teeth sprouting out with each laugh, and a friend of mine serenading me even as my husband played accompaniment on a battered old electric guitar, that looked like a very beat up version of B.B. King's Lucille.

On the radio, I just listened to Meredith Monk's song Last Words and found myself torn between irritation and amusement. I can say this, while some may say that it is fine music, I think it's a form of auditory torture. I, however, also feel the same way about rap music and love bagpipe music, which most people seem to think sounds like the pitiful screams of cats in a blender or being beaten in a sack.

I've been dreaming again.

And those dreams are not good things.

No, they've been a cross between bad memories, nightmares, and well... something vaguely reminiscent of Dante's vision of Hell, if Dante was modernized into the gratuitous gore and violence fest of today's vision.

And I rather hate this.

I especially hate that these dreams happen as I'm on the edge of waking up and sometimes find myself struggling not to flail about, succeeding only barely at times.

I would vastly prefer if the dreams weren't so terrifying to me. And if they were to terrify me, didn't manage to some how linger in my awareness thru the day, leaving me with a vague sense of danger at odd moments because I can almost hear that horrible voice in my head saying wretched things to me.

Thank god that voice does not have an actual face to go with it, as I fear it would probably prove to be something beautiful in a most terrifying way. And I'm most thankful that I only have to suffer it within my head, rather then in flesh and blood. Facing such a monster on a daily basis in a 'real' person... well, I'd either be committing murder or suicide.

I need a vacation!

I suppose it makes sense that the kid wakes up at the crack of dawn. It's the first whisper of daylight and he's awake. A little while later, the boy plays and then he begins to scream because he wants attention. Mama and Daddy, of course, are not allowed to sleep in, as the purpose of our existence is to attend his whims.

I would love an escape from the duties and responsibilities of my life right now. A weekend off from housework, child care, and all of the other myriad of things I have to deal with on a daily basis would be fantastic. I think, however, that might be asking too much at the moment. Somedays, I think that it would be fantastic if I could just wake up to a clean house. I could deal with my son's temper-tantrums better if I didn't have to attempt to navigate my way thru a maze of toys and laundry to get anywhere in this place, I suspect.

And when the boy is down for the night and sleeping, I look around and see the pile of papers that need to be sorted, answered, and filed. Thank gods that I at least got the bills paid this week. The sewing machine is sitting on the table, waiting patiently, as is the laundry basket under the table full of clothes that need mending and fabric for baby clothes that needs cut and sewn waiting as well. I see my writing projects heaped around the computer. The never ending mass of dishes, where the only change is the number of them dirty at that precise moment.

I try, I really do try, to keep the fact that I have the life I wanted, that I dreamed about as a child right now. Right at this moment, however, it's very difficult to feel greatful and blessed when I am incredibly fustrated and angry with how my efforts to keep a clean house seem to be for nothing. Heck, it seems like what I do all day is as effective as sitting on my ass doing nothing. And then, I spend a day doing nothing and discover that I was wrong, I'm just barely keeping ahead of a monstrosity of a disaster.

Hmm... this is unusual.

I'm not typically a morning person but here I am wide awake. I think I fell asleep at about 3 am last night. I say last night because the sun wasn't up, so it doesn't count as morning. :) Anyways, I am running on about four hours of sleep, maybe four and a half hours of sleep. Yet, I'm quite alert and even in a cheerful mood. Perhaps this will continue thru the rest of the day. If it does, fantastic. :) I may even sleep well tonight, if that's the case.

But, this is not terribly unusual. No, the thing that is unusual is how loud my son snores. I have heard him snoring before and have thought it a little odd. I asked the doctor about it and he said that it was ok, that was at the boy's 3 month check up. Then, I suppose it was last month or the checkup before that one, I asked again. At that point in time, he suggested that if the little darling wasn't showing signs of a cold that it *could* be allergies.

So, I've been trying to keep things cleaned up more in the way of getting rid of dust and such. I'm honestly quite happy that my husband has been helping out more with the vacuuming around here. (I feel foolish but I worry that I'm going to have an asthma attack using this bagless vacume and that's what stops me. It probably shouldn't but it does.) I've been trying to get more dusting done and make sure that the air around here isn't as dry as it has been. All pretty much as the doctor suggested.

There really hasn't been much change with my son's snoring. It actually seems to be getting a little worse. That, however, I believe is my worry speaking. One thing that has remained consistant here in all of this is my husband's smoking. I hate to think that the doctor is right and that this is due to my husband's smoking. I feel like it would just make life more difficult for my husband. He already has a lot to worry about and he has made so much progress on improving his health as it is.

He's cut down quite a bit on his smoking over the last several months. I'm quite proud of him. And he's been getting more exercise, even trying to make his diet become more healthy. On one hand, I realize that I am probably worrying too much about adding to his stress. At the same time, however, I don't want to make life more difficult for everyone then it has to be. In all of this, though, I need to recognize that putting the boy's well being before the comfort of everyone in the home is necessary. It's just one of the things we all signed on for when we decided that we were ready to have a baby.

So, I suppose, what needs to happen is I need to find a way for us to afford or otherwise manage to get my husband the help he needs to quit smoking. Our good friends Jerry and Jamie have quit. They're doing fantastic and have made alot of positive changes in their lives as well. They've been encouraging and supportive to my husband in his efforts to make the same kinds of changes in his life as well. Perhaps I should contact these people, like they did. Maybe we qualify for thier assistance as well.

Sheesh...

I'm sitting here listening to Jay Leno fail at being funny.

The whole experience simply reminds me as to why I don't bother watching late night TV. Aside from that, I made the foolish decision to watch the democratic debate prior to the primary in Pennsylvania. Looking at that decision, I'm reminded again why I don't bother watching politics on television as well. Actually, to be honest, all of the stuff I've seen on TV recently has bored, disappointed, or disgusted me.

Between the inane commercials and the alarmist news reports, I can't really say that I have found any redeeming value to television. I watch the news because I don't subscribe to the local newspaper. I'm inclined to just get my news from the internet and just stop bothering all together with the drivel that they call TV programming. The morning talkshows generally serve as background noise.

...

Wow! I didn't expect it... Ok, this is entertaining for no reason relating to Leno at all.

Who knew that Charles Barkley sounded like Gomer Pyle? I know that I didn't! I'm sitting here almost ready to giggle as he's talking to Leno. It's just impossible to take seriously, especially with things like him saying that the state of Alabama needs his help. It's just sad.

Am I a bad person? I still can't stop giggling at the idea of Gomer Pyle in an elected office. :)

Do we just try to function?

Gods... it has been a hell of a day. I wish I could say that it was just because of a poor night's rest or something. Heck, it'd be easier if I could just blame it on my screwed up hormones, even. But I honestly don't know why the hell I had such a rotten day.

I suppose it is a good thing, in some respect, that my husband finds me to be sexy when I'm angry. I guess my bitchy mood can do a little tiny bit of good by putting some kind of a smile on his face.

I feel like everything I touch of late turns to shit. I recognize that it's an exaggeration, but it is how I feel right now. I've been trying to make a new skirt for myself. Because the pattern I had was screwed up somehow, I now have 12 yards of wasted fabric. And I have no idea how to recover it and looking at it makes me angry. Never mind the amount of anger I feel over the fact that I basically wasted money that could be better spent on more important things.

I can't manage to get this place as clean as I feel it needs to be. And I feel damn angry about that because I know that if I don't get this place cleaned up and in good order, it'll make my lungs start causing problems again. I also know that it could be a problem for my son. I worry that the boy has my consitution, not that of his father, whom doesn't ever seem to get sick with anything. I feel like I have no room to even turn around in my own home because the apartment is really too small for us now.

I don't know what to do. On one hand, I want to just go and throw everything away. But I recognize that I can't throw away my son's things and I can't do that with my husband's stuff either. And if I throw away all of my stuff... well, where exactly does that leave me? It makes me angry because it feels like I'm getting blamed for the mess around here when it gets pointed out that I've got more stuff that got brought in here when we moved in. But, I know that's unreasonable of me.

I know that there's so much in my head right now that is unreasonable. But I don't know what to do with or about it. This evening, I had to walk out pretty much as soon as my husband got home so that I wouldn't do something stupid or rash. I was so angry with how dinner wasn't coming out right, I wasn't able to get my laundry put away, or any of the cleaning that needed done in the rest of the apartment, despite my efforts, that I just couldn't handle the boy's temper tantrum. I had to walk out before I did something stupid.

I wanted to keep walking, but I recognized that if I didn't come back home soon there'd be problems. After all, dinner wasn't done and my husband wouldn't have known what I was working on because I walked out with pretty much saying anything.

God, I wanted to just run. It makes me so aggrivated that I'm not in good enough shape to run anymore, and that I haven't been in many years. I would have loved to have been able to just run until my lungs burned and my body ached with the effort. It would have pushed away that discomfort and anger, it would have done me good. I also had the urge to break things and hurt things.

I'm a generally compassionate woman. I will try to avoid stepping on bugs and such when I'm walking. It's messy and the animal didn't do anything to me. Where's the sense in killing something that was there minding it's business for no purpose other then I felt like it? As I was walking, however, I had to restrain myself from stomping on worms and insects as I saw them on the ground. It really made me feel like I was one of the lowest people on the face of the earth for the fact that I contemplated killing an animal that literally has no defenses and only basal ganglia for anything remotely like mental processing.

So, what the hell is the point to all of this? How the hell is this living? Are we just trying to function while we complete some screwed up circumscribed circut of bullshit thru the day, one that is dictated to us by the mesh of gears which make up this machine that grinds us down, where in we are but one of the cogs? Seriously, what is the point?

Ah well, I suppose I'll just go be bitchy and morose elsewhere.

Family trauma?

I blogged a little about this elsewhere. I'm still tossing this about in my head, trying to make sense of it. I've been having, as I said in that other blog, abit of difficulty of late. About 90% of it revolves around my family. I had a rather sudden epiphany this morning that my family is perpetuating a collection of habits and attitudes that are rooted in some past trauma that had an enormous impact upon people a few generations back. It leaves me rather stunned and troubled to realize this. At the same time, however, I'm comforted by this awareness. It means that I can break that cycle, if anything, in my own home.

As I've thought about this over the last few hours, it's increasingly become clear that things like cycles of abuse are perpetuated because the abuse is a failure in resolving the issue that was the initial trauma to the family. Let me give a bit clearer of a description of my thoughts here. We'll take my family's issues out of the picture and just look at the abuse cycle in random family X. Then, we'll track down the origins of that abuse cycle.

The abuse cycle has a few phases to it. This gal, Dr. Irene, did a pretty good job outlining it here. Now, it may sound a little funny but I think we can put the whole issue with random family X into the context of the abuse cycle, deconstruct it, and then possibly find that original trauma. Now, let's say that random family X has a problem with verbal abuse. One of the parents is hypercritical of everyone, including their two children and the dog (dog = child # .5). This parent has very high expectations for everyone, including themself. As the parent find their expectations not being met, they begin to yell, chastise, castigate, and other wise verbally rip to shreds the person who has not met their expectations.

Now, as a parent, the abuser feels that the children need to be shown by examples what the appropriate way to behave is. As such, when there is a failure to behave appropriately, there must be an example made as to what the punishment is to be, thus making it a learning experience. This, unfortunately, exacerbates the emotional pain of the verbal abuse for the person whom is being made into an example. One may ask, why does parent X act in this fashion?

I suspect this would be because parent X was raised in this kind of environment. I'm certian that parent X is most likely dealing with the echos of their own hypercritical parent in their mind, urging them on to have such impossibly high expectations, not realizing how damaging it is to them. Now, we are forced to ask why that person had such a perspective. Now, it is possible to track back in this fashion and find generations of abuse. It, however, does not help to pin point where it all began. Here, I suspect, we'd need to look at the larger collection of issues surrounding the situation.

Are there topics that seem to be hot buttons for the abusers in the family, topics that are consistent? If the abusers in family X all have fits over money, it is possible that there was some major financial issue in the past that caused an enormous amount of stress. As a result, it's somewhat burned into the familial memory which turns money into a topic of anxiety and confrontation. Perhaps something else is a common topic but, that common topic can usually track back, I believe, to an event that proved extremely traumatizing.

I think that abuse is a result of a failed coping mechanisim. Stress builds up to a point that is virtually unbearable. The person whom is suffering the stress finds that yelling at some one serves to reduce the stress. They then begin to use that coping mechanisim at other stressful times. When anxiety begins to rear it's head, the person begins to engineer situations that can play out the tension building, climax, and release of stress, there by alleviating the discomfort of the anxiety. Here is where, I think, abuse begins.

I also think that it is possible, once the source of it is known, that one can possibly heal that problem. I believe that if you work to build new coping mechanisims, one can break the cycle of abuse. I believe that if you work to integrate the experiences that were traumatic into your life, you can find them to be sources of great strength and transform them from an open wound in your psyche (one that may or may not be festering with the rising sickness of an abusive habit) to a fairly neutral memory, where it's no longer so emotionally charged. I'm also beginning to think it is possible to do the same with the 'group think' of the family as well.

I can't say that this will necessarily do much to resolve the situation with my family. On one side of the family, there is the progressive desecalation of abuse, moving from a few generations back where there was rampant physical, psychological, and verbal abuse to mainly verbal and psychological abuse. And this could be claimed to be progress, though it does not go far enough, in my opinion. On the other side of the family, we find a very tangled and entrenched pattern of verbal and psychological abuse.

I know there is a way to save myself and my child from all of this monstrosity. It is simply refusing to engage in it. However, I do not want to perpetuate the habits that have sprung up around this. I'm still working on how to combat all of that mess, but I know there is a way, somehow.

I'm not sure what to say.

I feel... well... sad, hurt, depressed... I don't know, perhaps heartbroken.

I really don't know what the correct way to describe this is. It just settled on me last night at about 10 or 11 pm. At about then, I decided that I was going to sew and maybe make myself something pretty. That didn't work out well because of the screwed up directions that I had to work with, but I gave it a shot. That feeling, however, grew stronger.

It's just more present now that I just got off the phone with my sister-in-law.

I recognize that part of this is because it strikes me as terrible to be watching how her marriage to my brother is falling apart because my brother wants to be a boy, not a man. When I think about all of that, and how my whole family is attempting to interfere and save the marriage and help them in some retarded fashion... Tragic is an understatement. As would be disgusting, I think.

Disgusting because I can't stand how people in my family feel the need to know everyone's business. I hate it. Yeah, privacy is good. I know, we're family and I should be able to share with you what ever I want. I know that you believe that you can ask me why I need your help and it's reasonable to expect me to tell you the story behind what the problem is. I wouldn't have quite so much of a problem with that if it wasn't for the fact that once that happens, there seems to be the intense desire to tell how one should run their life, raise their children, handle their finances, and such.

I think the biggest thing is I feel a crushing sense of disillusionment with my family.

Aside from that, I just want to sit down and cry.

I realize my hormones are going to be completely out of whack. Between the whole recovering from pregnancy thing (which I think by 7 1/2 months, I'm going to be fairly recovered) and having my hormones fairly fucked up to begin with due to PCOS, I'm going to have some mood swings and such. But, there is something different here to all of this that makes the mood changes based in hormones look like too simple of an answer.

I think it is fear of the financial difficulties growing around us. I think it is concern that these difficulties are going to affect our basic needs in a very large way. And I feel like all of my efforts to try to make things better just aren't working.

I mean, how hard is it that you're supposed to struggle before you get things on an even keel?

Stargazer, I had a dream about you!

It was pretty odd, too. In it, were back at CND in that room we had in Meletia. These girls got into a huge screaming match which then turned into an all out brawl. You then turned to me and said, "This isn't real."

I replied, "Yeah. No shit it isn't real. This is fucked up, even for my head."

You shook your head and then held up my left hand. You drew my attention to the white gold band that I wear and said, "No this isn't real." As I looked at it, the band melted like ice. I looked over at the silver one that I wear on my right hand. You then said, "Oh, don't worry about that. But this one..." You shook your head. "Somebody scammed you both and you got the wrong thing," you said, looking a bit angry.



Now, I'm at a loss for interpreting this one. Your ideas may be helpful because I'm stumped here. The silver one that I wear is from the handfasting hubby and I did years ago before our wedding. The white gold one is from the wedding.

What do you think?

Some days....

Some days, I question what I was thinking when I so desperately wished to be a mother. When the boy is having temper tantrums and nothing I do seems to help... Well, it leaves me feeling more then a little fustrated and like I've some how failed or missed some stupidly obvious solution to his problem. I mean, I'm an adult, right? So, I should be able to figure out what the baby needs, right? I've even got some advantage in having life experience in dealing with children.

It feels, sometimes, like no matter what I do, I'll still have a child who swings back and forth between temper tantrums and periods of brooding silence, refusing to laugh despite everything I do to attempt to coax one out of him.

What scares me, however, is the thought of turning into what my mother was like when I was little. I remember her temper and pots getting thrown across the house. We had a very small house and the pots were cast iron. I don't want to be that kind of a mother. I don't want to be that kind of woman. I don't want to terrify my child into behaving. I don't want to go into a screaming fit of fury over something, with my child wondering what they did to earn my wrath when the anger was at something entirely unrelated to what the child did.

When I get to the point where I just don't know what to do, I ... I feel horrible for putting him down in his crib. But I recognize that it is better to set him down somewhere I know he is safe and just walk away for a few minutes.

A reason why I question my sanity.

I tried to tell him about this yesterday but I failed horribly. Heck, I tried to tell counselors about this in the past, and they didn't really listen to me even. I'm afraid to talk about this because I'm pretty sure that I'd be declared the dangerous kind of crazy and locked away somewhere, never to really live the rest of my life. I'll admit it, I'm terrified of the thought of being insitutionalized. I'll talk a bit more about that in another post, because it'll just serve to distract me from what I want to say here.

Sometimes... sometimes, I suppose I could say that I hear voices in my head. Sure, I know, I hear whispers from the other side and such as a psychic, but I know this is in my head. There's always a difference between what is inside my head and what is not. I'm not that fractured yet. I hope to god I never am.

I suppose it all started when I was a kid. I had a voice in my head, a male voice, that usually said pretty horrific things. It's the voice that whispered to me how I should have killed my beloved pet cat Sandy because it would be possible. It suggested that doing so would relieve the anxiety that I felt. That happened when I was about 15. I don't know when that voice started whispering to me, possibly when I was about 9 or 10.

I don't remember much of those early whispers, but it was present. This was the voice that told me I should just start hitting people when I'm angry, that it'd make me feel better. I knew that was wrong, so I didn't do it. But that voice still whispers such things to me in my head. It scares me, because it's become more complex in the things it says. I think I hear it whispering to me around 30 times a day. If I'm having a bad day, I'm angry, or something else like that, that voice makes it's presence known even more.

I can't say if I'm comfortable with it. Other people I know apparently have a similar monster in their head. Some have chosen to ignore it and other have chosen to find amusement in it. I don't know what to do with it. I'll have times where I am filled with a sudden, visceral urge to do something horrible, like throw a pot of boiling water on my infant son or shove the little old biddy walking in front of me on the sidewalk, jabbering away on her cell phone right out in front of the truck that's barreling down the highway. Those times, I immediately distract myself with something else, usually the exact opposite of that urge. I'll pick up my son and cuddle him, and tell him how much I love him. I'll walk in the opposite direction of the old woman who's presence irritates me.

It's not that I don't love my son. It's not that at all. I adore my son. I love him and would rather die then harm him. I haven't harmed him and will do everything in my power not to. Please, don't anyone think that is the case. And this has been in my head alot longer then the postpartum depression thing too. My ability to shut that voice up... to just turn it off... well, that's what got screwed up by the postpartum depression. I used to be able to just will it into silence. Now... now it doesn't work that well.

My family wonder why I listen to music so often, it's because it distracts my attention from that voice and the others in my head. On the whole, it scares me. What happens if, someday, I'm no longer strong enough to resist it? What happens then? I don't want to hurt people. Especially the people I love or people who are defenseless (like children or the elderly). It's there, though, in the back of my head all the time.

I've had people look at me like there's something horribly wrong with me because I can tell them with relative ease where to cut a person to make them bleed out quickly. They get disturbed when I will sit and talk about poisoning people as though it's as easy as cooking dinner. It's actually easier, but they don't generally want to hear that. No... instead, I get troubled looks and people who move away from me. I find myself more isolated then I began because I just was talking about the wrong things, apparently.

Social isolation really isn't good for me. It makes me more depressed. I'm usually dealing with some degree of depression most of the time anyways, so I try not to think about the bad days where I find myself in a position where I'm actively being pushed away. The worst part of it all is how that male voice in my head tells me that no one really wants me in their life. It tells me that I'm not really loved by people but being used by them, that I'm only as valuable as what I can do for others. That male voice tells me about how everyone I love... I hurt them just by existing. I have some how emotionally hurt them and will someday cause them greater harm just by the virtue of my existence. It tells me that I'm the reason why my family has such financial difficulties, and the only way that we'll be in a better place financially is if I go out and prostitute myself.

I hear other ugly things in my head on a daily basis. At one point, I was put on medication for depression and I had the idiot thought that maybe it would work to help shut that voice up in my head. The other voices in my head, I like them. They're generally decent and nice. They don't get abusive towards me or others. It, however, is something I don't talk about. It's bad enough to have a raving sociopath inside your head, to admit that there's a child or something else in there... you start sounding like Sybil and people start to look for a white coat for you. And don't you dare mention the fact that the sociopath is violent, or you'll be at risk for getting drugged.

No... no, I don't mention this. I'm terrified of being pushed away by the people I love for that reason on top of so many others that could be found for some reason. I've already been met with scorn for my choice of religion. I'm terrified to even bring sexuality into the conversation, as I've seen the people who I thought were tolerant suddenly have the highest degree of scorn towards the remote idea that I may enjoy BDSM or anything else remotely like it.

So, I do my best to be the person that I'm expected to be, that I'm supposed to be. In a limited fashion, I'm allowed to let some of the other less threatening elements out. The artist is welcome, as is the poet. I'm tolerated the child's presence in the correct environment, like when I'm playing with children. It's funny... people wonder why I'm so good with kids. It's more then the fact that I have few qualms about providing structure in their lives via guidance and discipline. I think like them at times too.

Honestly, it bothers the hell out of me when people tell me that I should relax and just let myself be who I am. With all of this noise in my head, what exactly am I supposed to let out? Do I admit to the fact that each aspect/element/voice in my head have a personality that is different from the others. I try to synthesize all of this into one but it doesn't work too well. Hence my fairly regular struggle with depression. I feel like I'm trying to glue together a crystal goblet that has shattered into hundreds of pieces. I may be able to cobble together some of it, but there's a lot that I just can force together.

So, I wonder, am I crazy? Because I can ask that question, does it mean that I'm not?

I don't know and that scares me.

Some pictures!

I haven't recently updated pictures of how big my little one is getting. As such, here's a few that have been taken over the last several months.


This picture above is the most recent. It was taken just last week. We've been practicing pulling him up to sitting and then up to standing. As you can see, my 7 month old boy has figured out how to stand. He hasn't gotten the hang of crawling, but he may not crawl. He might just go to walking. We'll see how it goes.


In the picture above, he'd figured out how to chew on his toes a day before hand. Now, after a bath, he decided was a good time to do it. So, Daddy brought in the camera and got a picture of it. He's 3 months old here.


In this one, the boy is playing with a spatula. He's 4 mo. old and in his new high chair. He looked so tiny in it when we first put him in it. Now... now he's not looking quite so small in there.

What a lovely spring day!

The boy and I just came in from spending about half an hour outside. It's warm and the sun is shining. There's a light breeze from the west and the birds have been making their presence known. Mostly, we heard crows cawing in the trees just down the road across from the big pond in the little dell over there. Across the street, the neighbors have started work on some landscaping.

My son was just awestruck by the way the men worked. He was just fascinated by watching these two men pulling dead wood out of the yard that was blown down in our recent windstorm and their pointing at various things to be dug up. He also appeared to greatly enjoy watching the traffic passing by our home as much, if not more, then watching those two men.

He got very excited each time a semi came by, especially if it was blue or red, more so if it was red. I think it was the cutest thing, however, to watch his head whip around from side to side trying to watch all of the cars as traffic was moving from both directions. He simply couldn't decide what way to look. To say the least, a good time was had by all. Mother quite amused with the baby and the baby quite amused with the world.

Well, we had an adventure yesterday.

I took my little boy out for a walk yesterday. The weather was gloriously warm when we started out. Just shy of 65 degrees and sunny, the only potential problem was the wind. I found that proved very quickly not to be a problem at all. The baby absolutely loved the wind.

As the breeze blew hard on us, he kicked his feet happily, waved his arms, and stuck out his tongue as far as he could. Great smiles, laughter, and happy noises accompanied this display of delight. I'm forced to admit, I'm not sure what he loved the most. He was thrilled with the wind but he also just was delighted with the wind blowing the clouds across the sky, watching the trees sway in the breeze, and seeing how it made my shawl flap around me as I kept fixing the blanket that he kept kicking.

Now, the thing that did prove a bit problematic was the booties. He kicked them off a few times. I thought I had managed to get him covered up in such a manner that they weren't going to go flying again. Somehow, when we had managed to get to the little restaraunt we stop at for a drink and a rest on our walk (where I discovered that the boy likes a little bit of iced tea if there's no sugar in it), he had managed to lose the booties and his socks. I still feel a bit upset about this. The socks really aren't the cause of my dismay. It's the booties.

You see, his great-grandmother (my paternal grandmother) had made him a matching set of booties and a little bonnet. She knitted them with red, white, and blue yarn. They really were just the cutest thing and barely fit him at Yule, when she gave them to him. When we left, it was warm enough, that I wasn't going to put the bonnet on him, but I put the booties on him. I figured we could get one, maybe two more uses before his feet were too big for them. Sadly, in the course of our walk yesterday, he lost them.

So, we started home and searched for them along the way. By this time, the weather had taken a rather sudden turn for the worse. The bright, sunny sky was fairly full of heavy clouds and threatening rain. The temperature had dropped almost twenty degrees and the wind started howling even more then it was earlier. By some strange miracle, I managed to find one of the booties. The baby was getting upset because his feet were cold.

I picked him up out of the stroller in my arms, wrapped the blanket tighter around him and then held him under my shawl as we continued on. We made it as far as the post office, which is a 1/4 of a mile from home before I had to take shelter. We stopped in there and I called for his father on the cell phone. The boy was very upset, but a bit calmer since we were out of the weather. I'm glad that I have a woolen shawl and that it was the one I picked. His major source of upset since I had him under the shawl was the wind making the shawl flap around him.

I'm thankful that I can say that we didn't have the branches falling around us or even a tree fall down beside us (some girls playing in their backyard up in the city had a tree come down beside them). I'm just trying to keep myself from getting upset with the fact that the other bootie is literally gone with the wind.

Time to get y'all ready for gardening and such.

For more reasons then just the fact that it's spring. Have a look at this. And I've had folks telling me I'm paranoid. Yep, keep sayin' that.

I'll just continue to stock up on my gardening supplies and such. Because, like the expression says:

Just because you're paranoid, doesn't mean that they're not out to get you.

Hope for the best, plan for the worst, and such... :p

Thoughts.

Sometimes, we just can't get a thought out of our head. At times, it seems impossibly difficult to voice it. At other times, voicing it doesn't seem to do anything to relieve it. It's like listening to the song that keeps playing in the back of your mind. And then, you suddenly hear it on the radio. Sometimes, it works to make it stop playing in your head. Other times, it just doesn't work at all, possibly even making things worse.

I've been having recurring thoughts to the point of having difficulty sleeping. It's ... distracting and embaressing to find myself thinking so much on sex. Even more so when I realize that I just don't know what to say or do about it.

Wow, lame advertising!

I love the people at Blogger. The service they provide is awesome.

I question the people who are coming up with their advertising. I hadn't heard the line Guess what's cooler then a box of crayons? since when I was a kid. As in, when I was in 3rd grade was the last time I heard it, and that was because a friend of mine was showing me their brand new matchbox car. It was a burgundy colored corvette with teal racing stripes and cream colored plastic interior. I thought it was ugly but that's just me.

Seriously, what the hell is the matter with the advertising people?

I know, I know, if I know so much, why the hell didn't I go into advertising?

The answer to that is fairly simple. I hate being a lemming and I refuse to encourage other people to be lemmings as well. That seems to be the way the advertising market works and I am generally disgusted with it.

I am even more disgusted with the idea that the advertising industry has become focused on presenting things in a format that is progressively more stupid. I really don't want to purchase a product when you insult my intelligence by implying that a 18 yr old needs to worry about wrinkle cream or that using a hair dye product will suddenly make a 50 year old man look 20. Seriously, what the hell is up with that?

And why are there so many insane advertisements regarding erectile dysfunction and genital herpes on during Saturday morning cartoons? Can some one please explain that to me? Last I checked children didn't have to worry about those things! Kinda like all of the feminine hygenie products marketed at that time.

Oh, and what the fuck, are there no fathers who have an interaction with their children?

God, I hate this crap.

Yay! Sleep deprivation!

For the last few weeks, I haven't been sleeping well. Partly because of my damn teeth. :( Aside from that, I honestly am not entirely sure what the problem has been. I rather hate it because during the day I really am a zombie.

I want to go lay down and sleep but I don't think I'd wake up in time to go make the boy's lunch.

On the upside, however, I've been finding myself able to write again. So... I guess it's not too horrible, even if editing this is going to be hell and I'm finding that I'm typing like a dyslexic again. :P

Thank god I'm not at college right now. I remember the term papers I turned in. When they got handed back to me with out a grade and i was told to retype the whole thing because after the second page it was incomprehensible gibberish... it was a sad day. :(

God, I think somehow so much of this is connected to my hormones being out of whack but I honestly don't know. At the moment, I'm debating just what to add here. On one hand, this is a great forum for me to do stream of consciousness writing, not that I don't do that anyways, but I'm not sure how well the rest of these thoughts coming to mind relate to anything else.

I'm rambling in an desperate effort to avoid sleep so that I will be awake enough to finish cleaning dishes, make a few bottles, and get some other chores done.

I really do suck sometimes.

~ Edited to Add ~

And I'm so screwed up due to lack of sleep I posted this initially in the wrong blog. :P

Facing fear head on.

We all have times where we're afraid. Sometimes, that fear is so intense that the world seems to become nothing but a vast morass of oppressive forces at work for your destruction. It may sound funny, but I think that the high influence of science fiction classics in my education and upbringing has proven to have an interesting effect upon how I view fear.

I present to you this gem of wisdom from Frank Herbert's Dune:

The Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.

Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.

I will face my fear.

I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.

Only I will remain.

It may sound a little foolish, but I try to keep this in mind when I am facing my fears.

So, as I sit here facing fears regarding small details of life, such as money, I strive to keep this in my mind. It's been something that has been there in my mind since I saw a movie version of Dune when I was a kid. It's funny, however, that something like this would stay in my mind in the face of so many things.

I think, however, that precious little from my forays into science fiction as a girl has ever served me better then this. (I've cross posted this into my other blog as well.)

Places of safety.

I have places and people that make me feel safe. I don't usually think about it much. I guess it makes me feel a little uncomfortable. Apart of me believes that I should be able to feel safe no matter where I am. That, however, is simply not the case. If I'm not somewhere I do feel safe or with some one that makes me feel safe, I am somewhere between fear and ... wary caution.

If I don't feel safe, I work very hard to maintain as neutral of a response to my environment as possible. If the context of where I am demands a more happy air, I would supply it, but I strive not to be one to allow persons close to me in those settings that I don't know.

Perhaps it is because some where down deep inside, I am still a victim. I don't know. It makes me uncomfortable to admit that. It also makes me feel a deep sense of shame. I feel shame for the fact that I had been victimized in the past. I feel shame for the fact that my efforts to prevent that victimization failed.

Usually, that shame doesn't even enter into my thoughts. It's something that's been fairly well eradicated from my daily thoughts. Thank goodness for competent councilors and years of effort, as well as having wonderful people supporting me. At times, however, it does come back to mind. And then.. then I just want to hide because I feel that I shouldn't even show my face because my mere presence sullies the room, just by the fact that I failed to protect myself. And at those times, I also desperately want some one to take me into their arms and hold me, to push aside that horrible choking feeling of shame by the pure force of their will, telling me all of the good that there is in me to help me see past it.

When I'm somewhere I feel safe, I'm insulated from that shame. Just as when I'm with some one who makes me feel safe. Then, I can let myself express pretty much everything. I'll take risks and do foolish things. I will laugh more easily and allow myself to be as affectionate as I want, all to my heart's content. I am an extremely affectionate person, I just keep it on a tight leash. Being affectionate seems to get you hurt alot in this world, so you need to keep it restrained until you're somewhere or with someone who won't hurt you for the sake of doing so.

That fact is one that breaks my heart. It's one of the reasons why I cry at night sometimes when I think no one is awake or listening. The fact that the world is so... so full of people who'll hurt others for no reason then the fact that they can is a terrible tragedy.

Thoughts on an evening.

This will seem a non sequitor, but since when has a person's thoughts been required to make sense?

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

It was shock and delight that you saw on my face. Sometimes, I can't help it. I get so caught up in the sensations and I can't really do anything. That was one of those times. It's like... it's like feeling pleasure so intense that you can't quite breathe properly, never mind see straight, and you're not sure if you'll continue to stand up if you move.

I think that may have disturbed you or upset you. I'm sorry if it had, I really was perfectly fine. I was just rather overwhelmed by such a sudden rush of sensation.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

You know, sometimes, sometimes I can't stop thinking about things like that. It's not like I fixate on it and ... well, maybe I do fixate on it, I don't know. I've always felt a little embaressed about the fact that I can get so utterly captivated by what I'm feeling and that ... well, it's like I'm drownding in emotion, sensation, and something more... ephemeral that's only present when such games are played. And I don't mind it, which sounds a bit odd given my past. Actually, probably alot more then odd, maybe a bit closer to sounding down right disturbing to most people.

But it's a rush that very little in life has ever compared to. On one hand, I am afraid to let myself be fully caught up in it. So, when I'm surprised, it's even more intense and I react like I did the other day. I'm afraid that I'll get so collapsed into that experience that I won't come out of it, I won't be able to function normally. Being responsible and adult even as you're utterly distracted, among other things, is somewhat ... well, I guess it's mutually exclusive. I fear this part of my psyche because it's such a potent force within me and it's always there.

At the same time, however, I want... no, I need to experience that heart stopping ecstacy almost as much as I need to breathe. It's a ... it's something that I crave. It's not like some silly thing where you really enjoy chocolate, for example, and justify your indulgence by saying that you craved it. It's closer to the maddening hunger for vegetables and chicken that I had when I was pregnant with my boy. God, I wish it was as simple as just that I was indulging a sweet tooth. Then, I think, I wouldn't find myself having times where I am trying to put so many aspects of my life into that context.

I can go thru a day and find so many ways to put things into the context of games of power play. Never mind the more physical elements of it. Mind you, when I do find the fleeting mental images come to mind of different scenes, it's with sufficent intensity where I can almost feel it. I have a very... vivid imagination and I've worked years on attuning my skills at visualization for other practices. Unfortunately, when my imagination decides to run away on me, it likes to hijack those skills for it's own purposes.

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

I don't really know what to say now. There's so many things that I want to say and yet so many things that I'm terrified to say. And I don't even know if it's a conversation that I should have. It's rather confusing to be in a relationship like the one my husband and I have. It's even more confusing when I can't even figure out how to make sense of the things going thru my mind, even as my husband tells me that it's fine for me to consider those things and he'd only want to have a bit of a plan before any action was taken.

I probably should stop now. It's... it's something that has one part of my brain saying that this is all foolish nonsense, another part saying that it's dangerously stupid, and ... so much more.

I will say this, though, in that moment, I would have done almost anything for more. And I haven't been able to get that out of my head.

Good for a giggle.

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Half of a confession.

I can't fully voice this. So, I am going to only say what I can comfortably, or at least as comfortably as is possible at the moment.

I think of it often, more so when I find I'm fustrated. Ideas and images that come to mind are so... so very intense that I can almost feel it at times. Sometimes ideas strike me so strongly that I can't shake them.

The thought of being restrained is one that frequently comes to mind. The image that comes to mind the most recently is that of arms pushed back and tied together. I could say more, but it's just too... to much at the moment.

I wish I knew what to do with it all. I can't exactly write this down. But I don't know how to voice it.

Fear.

He who lives in fear never really lives. He is a prisoner of death, dying a thousand deaths a day. ~ an old proverb

Fear tends to stalk me thru my day on a regular basis. I genuinely hate it. I'm not sure what is worse, being depressed or dealing with chronic anxiety. Either way, it really does feel like I'm a prisoner. There's this horrible hypercritical monster in the back of my head that is always telling me what I'm doing wrong, what I'm forgetting to do, or that I'm failing somehow, somewhere to do something that needs done.

It's a lot worse when I'm depressed. I can't say that I feel that I'm all that helped by anti-anixety medications. Sure, it does do wonders. It tones down the 'volume' of that little monster, but it doesn't make it go away. There's alot of ads out there which presents this false picture that anti-anxiety medications and anti-depressants will magically reverse the condition and give you some type of euphoria.

My experience has been closer to having these medications serve to dull the edge of it and blunt the sharpness of that internal criticism. This is in addition to the fact that I find myself feeling apathetic towards everything. I'm left wondering, what on earth do you do to master fear? I'm getting sick of these drugs. They're really not that good for me, I know that in my gut.

Dieting stragegies.

Well, I've been trying to stick to a healthy diet. I generally do eat fairly healthy, though I think my portions are a bit too large. That said, I've been doing what I can to gradually move away from junk food and bad habits (like skipping meals). I figure if I can get my portions under control, use only healthy foods in my diet, and break my bad habits, I can accomplish two goals.

My first goal in all of this is to become healthier. I remember just how difficult it was when my lungs were causing me a lot of problems a few years ago. I recognize that some of the problem was due to weight and lack of proper exercise. I don't want to be in that position again, it was rather scary. No, scary is an understatement. It was terrifying to be left wondering if I was going to wind up in the hospital on a nebulizer or having some other treatment for my breathing possibly for the rest of my life. Looking at that prospect before you're even 25, well, it's pretty damn terrifying. That was a really rough year.

My second goal is to put forward a good role model for my son and the other children around me. The children of both my brothers, they've got their own bit of weight problems. My sister-in-law is struggling to show her girls how to eat healthy, but she's got some family members that are sabotaging her efforts. Slipping the girls junk food and such after their mom said no or letting them have what ever foods they want (or protesting when their mother doesn't do that) are just two of the stupid things that they do. I see how hard my sister-in-law struggles and I recognize that she's done a lot of great work herself. I admire that and I want to accomplish this for myself.

There are two good reasons to be doing this. I think they're reasons to be proud of. It's not like I want to fit into that bikini that I've got in the closet this summer. Though I admit, that would be kind of nice. I've only worn it for one season, then I got pregnant. I'd like to have the opportunity to use it again.

My problem, however, is my strategy is just not working. At first, I decided that I would just eat when I felt hungry. Then I found myself swinging back and forth between not eating properly and eating when I was bored or upset. So, I decided that I would cut out emotional eating. That's been something of a chore, but I have been making some progress in that area. It's left me, however, unsure what to do with these most uncomfortable feelings. I'll figure something out.

Getting rid of the emotional eating, however, didn't resolve the other problem. So, I thought that I could use small special things to help me stick to things like the eating schedule that I've been trying to keep. It turned into my witholding those special things from myself as punishment for failing to stick to it or doing well with portion control.

So, what on earth am I going to do now? I'm struggling with ideas. I can't afford to go do the weight watchers thing or some other program. I just don't have the money. Heck, I don't even have the money for the anti-anxiety medication/ anti-depressant that I'm taking right now. But, I'm doing that because I have to.

I wish I could think of something, but I'm just stumped and feeling miserable. I look in the mirror and I see myself so close and yet so far away from my goal. I've made a lot of progress but now... I'm stuck and I don't know what to do. It's a terrible thing.

Sexuality, pt 2

Here's a different thing in the same topic arena.

(Perhaps I should make a label for the topics dealing with this... I'll decide later.)

I love the fact that my husband and I have a healthy and active sex life. I hate the fact that I feel limited in expressing just how happy I am with it. I hate how stress manages to get in the way of our expressing ourselves. I really don't like the fact that I need to limit my expression for the sake of the domestic comfort of the neighbors. These are the same people who seem to feel that their drunken outbursts are acceptable for me to hear thru the walls for some reason.

It offends me that I need to lead something of a double life. In public, I can't express myself in this aspect of my personality. It's not because I want to engage in indecent exposure or something else like that (though the thought of public nudity as indecent has almost always irritated me, even when I am feeling extremely body shy). No, the problem that I have is the fact that it's some how viewed as morally wrong for me to be attracted to people aside from my husband. It's even more questionable in the eyes of others for me to be attracted to people of my own gender in addition to men.

What is so wrong with bisexuality? Can some one *please* explain this to me? Seriously, this offends the hell out of me! I'm a woman who happens to be attracted to both men and women. What the hell is wrong with that? This doesn't mean that I don't love or desire my husband. This doesn't mean that I'm disloyal to him. People who assume that he and I are being disloyal on the basis of who ever we may possibly be attracted to outside of our marriage really need to get a god damn life.

This makes me angry as hell, too. Who has the right to tell me how my relationship with my husband is supposed to go? Who aside from my husband and myself has that right? Never mind the fact that our relationship is well within the norms of our own beliefs. Can some one PLEASE tell me why the rest of the town apparently has the right to sneer at me if I am not wearing my wedding ring or if I'm out and about with out my husband?

Mind you, the times where I have encountered this attitude is especially when I'm out running errands with the baby in tow. I feel disgusted and furious, as well as embaressed, by the looks that I get for being out of the house with my baby and not wearing my rings. Never mind the fact that my hands were too large for them to fit me properly for almost a full year between the pregnancy and the weight gain from the pregnancy. What am I supposed to do, apologize to every blue haired little old woman I see for the fact that I'm not wearing my wedding band and pushing a baby stroller, explaining that my husband is at work, then getting him on the phone to prove that we're married?

Do I need a signed note telling me that I can go out of the house and do things with out my husband attendant, or some other relative of mine? Please, somebody, tell me what the fuck is the issue here? I'm seriously getting sick of this small minded bullshit. And these are the people who I'm supposed to let dictate my sexual appetites and preferences? I think most of these dried up sticks are horrified by the fact that they have any distinguishable gender traits.

Quite frankly, I *like* the fact that I'm a woman. It's pretty awesome. Especially the multiple orgasm thing. It's hard as hell to keep in mind that there's nothing wrong with the fact that I'm a woman when I encounter this kind of bullshit on a semi-daily basis.

God, some people really make me angry as fuck.

Sexuality

Some people have a real issue with sexuality of any form. To be honest, I feel that if no one is getting hurt and it's consensual, do what you will. There are some limits that I feel are hard and fast (unintentional puns there, sorry). Sex with children or people who are unable to give fully informed consent is wrong and reprehensible. A child does not have the capacity to make the decision to engage in sex with any sense of the long term ramifications, as a general rule. Consent derived under duress is the same as refusing to listen to denial of consent, as such, it consitutes rape. Engaging in practices that are categoricly unsafe (including various unhygenic ones) is another thing that I just won't do and I highly advise others against doing so.

Now, this said, there are ways to engage in practices that seem to be unsafe or have the potential to be unsafe. This where one needs to be responsible in choosing their partner(s) and in their exercise of the practices they're employing. Bondage can be a beautiful thing and it can also be incredibly exciting. It can also be a thing of very real horror and incredibly dangerous. The difference between the two is responsiblity and consent. Many of the practices used in the BDSM community look to be quite unsafe and horrible to the casual observer. They are generally things that are pushed away to the fringes of sexuality (no one ever breathes a word about it in any of the *college level* sexuality classes even). If you are responsible, set clear limits, and maintain open lines of communication with everyone involved, pretty much any sexual appetite you indulge is fine.

I don't know why the rest of the world doesn't seem to see it this way. Oh, there's nothing wrong with sex but it needs to be within this specific set of circumscribed rules. If you do things a different way, you're going to automaticly be morally suspect and otherwise an undesireable figure. Gods help you if you happen to actually take into account other factors such as emotions, relationships, or anything else of the real world. Suddenly, you find yourself dealing with such a mess of social sterotypes, that it's really quite ugly.

I hate the way society tries to tell me what to do in the bedroom, who to do it with, and how I should feel about it. I hate the way that society attempt to dictate to me what my interests should be and that if I fall outside of those norms, I am somehow flawed as a person and of lesser value.

I think if society at large worried more about how to empower people to take some measure of pride and a healthy acceptance of the diversity of personalities in the world, and less about putting us into boxes, we'd all be better off. Sexuality and relationships included.

Censoring myself.

I've come to the realization that I've been censoring myself again. It's a bit of a bad habit that I have when I'm speaking. I'm not saying that self monitoring is a bad thing, but too much of it can be. I began using this blog as a writing exercise and a place to vent my stress with work and life in general. Somewhere along the way, I started to censor my comments here and this does not help me achieve the goal of this writing exercise.

So, I'm going to stop censoring myself. I recognize that there is a chance that my family may encounter some of these posts and have some hard questions. I can't let that stop me from writing as I feel I should or using this to explore various facets of my writing voice. It's just not fair to me and it also runs counter to the purpose of having this blog. It's not a way to be an exhibitionist about my life, but rather a forum for me to experiment with finding my voice in writing.

I have other blogs that serve different purposes. I've generally done a good job of sticking with the objective that I set out for myself at the outset of using them. As such, I really need to return to the initial goal of this blog. And that means I need to stop censoring myself.

Silliness of the adult variety.

I just lifted this from one of my other friend's blogs. It was good for a giggle.

1. Your Name:
2. Age:
3. Favorite position:
4. Do you think I'm cute?
5. Would you have sex with me?
6. lights on or off?
7. Would you have to be drunk?
8. Would you take a shower with me?
9. Have you ever thought about having sex with me?
10. Would you leave after or stay the night?
11. Do you like cuddling afterwards?
12. Condom or skin?
13. Have sex on the first date?
14. Would you kiss me during sex?
15. Do you think I would be good in bed?
16. Would you use me as a booty call?
17. Can I use you as a booty call?
18. Can we take pictures of the act?
19. How long would we have sex?
20. Would you tell your friends about me?
21. Will you post this so I can fill it out for you?

Answer the questions, if you want. :)

boredom strikes again. :)

Take the quiz at dicepool.com

Hmmm....

Have you ever found yourself so distracted by an idea that it manages to creep into your thoughts on a semi-regular basis? It makes me wonder, is that how obsessions begin? I kinda doubt that I'm obsessing over anything, because it isn't like this idea has taken over my world. Over the last several weeks, however, I'm finding myself quite distracted by the idea that my antidepressants are not working as well as they should be.

It was somewhat amusing that when this idea was really looking like it was turning into a sources of distress there was a big news article about it. I'm not entirely sure how to approach this, though. Not taking them makes these rather ugly thought surge up in roaring volume and I find myself so... listless that I just can't keep up with myself, let alone running a household and caring for the boy. Depression scares the hell out of me, so I want to take every possible route in fending off the beast that I can in good conscience.

That said, I'm finding the anxiety is building again and the thoughts are beginning to creep thru the barrier of numbness and drug induced apathy. I don't know what to do, though. In the past, when I was struggling with rather intense depression and was taking antidepressants, I went thru about four different drugs over the course of as many months. The only one that worked for any period of time is the one that I'm currently on. Even then, I wasn't fully alleviated of my symptoms. It just took the edge off enough so that I could function.

I had something else to add but I forgot what it was. So much for that, but such is life with a kid in the house.