Missing.

A dear friend of mine is in a terrible situation right now. Her mother has gone missing. If you are in Anne Arundel Co. MD and you happen to see this woman, please, for the love of everything holy let the authorities know!

Here's the news story about it from the Examiner.

Lady_Cinnibar, you and your family are in my thoughts and prayers. While there isn't much I can do for you from up here in western NY, please, call me as soon as you know anything. The time doesn't matter. *hugs*

from the interwebz comes my new band...

Your Debut Album

1 - Go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Random quotations: http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

If you want to do this again, you'll hit refresh to generate new quotes, because clicking the quotes link again will just give you the same quotes over and over again.

3 - Go to flickr's "explore the last seven days" http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

Put it all together, that's your debut album.

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

for mine...

Japanese holdout ~ when we're in love

[click here for the pic, because I can't seem to make it show up here]

Now, here's the question:

what kind of music would my band play?

What! You don't have Starbucks!?!

I'm pretty sure that all y'all have read about the great Starbucks closures going on right now. As I read the list of locations that are being closed, I chuckled because the one that opened up in my hometown is closing. It's only been open for about a year and a half, and now it's gone. When they opened, my husband's sister was absolutely delighted. She felt that our little town was finally beginning to become something of a respectable place.

She's always been in love with the city. While I enjoyed the city when I was at college, I didn't want to stay there. She, however, would love to go back and live there. So, when our small town got a Starbucks, she was on cloud nine. This happened at about the same town that the eastern end of town started getting some of the stores that are more associated with the suburbs. For example, there's a Sears there and we've got Peebles too. It's a big difference from the small village shoe shop and the clothes store next door where if you wanted something different then what was in stock you had to order it out of a catalog.

Now, the influence of the city is starting to go away. The Starbucks is leaving. Some of the new stores are having difficulty and will probably be leaving soon also. On one hand, the loss of business is a sad sign and an indication that the economic down turn is affecting more people today. At the same time, it's an indication of what I knew the whole time. A small farming community can't afford to support the overpriced glitzy services that you can find in the city. I say over priced because stuff like $4.00 for a cup of coffee is overpricing. It'd be one thing if the coffee was worth $4.00 a cup.

It's not, though, because the coffee that I make at home with the cheap coffee that I got at the grocery store tastes better then that stuff from Starbucks.

self-soothing...

It's something that I've yet to master. I've found, however, that working on learning how to spin has been doing wonders for that.

I have a drop spindle that's just like this one:



It's been surprisingly soothing to sit and spin the wool that I bought with it a few weeks ago. I actually went out and bought more last week. Now, I have been working on learning to make yarn that is even and relatively fine. Some day, I want to spin my own embroidery thread. As of right now, however, I've managed to make a bit of yarn that will be useful for something crochet. I'm not sure what, though.

I hate this right now...

I'm so upset and fustrated right now with so many things that I just want to cry. I try so hard to make things more settled and easier to deal with right here in my home but I feel like I'm making no progress. I'm struggling to just keep my home clean. I simply don't feel that I can do this successfully because I've got no apparent room right now. I realize that I'm probably looking at this all the wrong way. It most likely makes me an idiot.

The mess with the damn car... I hate that car. I really have begun to hate this things with a passion. And I'm beginning to hate the entire mess surrounding locating a new car as well. I'd add more but I think that would just spawn another argument with my husband. He reads this too and I think he knows where I stand on this, so I won't hit the matter on the head again.

I'm so upset and fustrated with the way things stand right now that I feel torn between crying and throwing things. I wonder somedays if there is a point to my continually attempting to do things like get my home clean or anything else like that. All it adds up to is an attempt. I feel like I'm not really treading water here. Each dish I wash winds up dirty later and needs washed again. Each scrap of clothing I clean needs to be cleaned again later. Folding up and putting clothes away is just not possible right now because of all the crap piled up everywhere. I can't put things away because I have no place for them. Why?

Because stuff is packed in boxes. Because the damn boxes are piled up everywhere. Because I can't carry shit into the damn storage shed between it being too heavy and I have no way to secure it in the shed. Why can't I secure it? Because the stupid lock that I had in the kitchen has gone god knows where after I put it on my husband's desk almost a month and a half ago when I asked him to move a few boxes out there.

So... what the hell is the point?

I spend my time during the day attempting to find some way to balance keeping the domestic concerns in check with raising the boy and also getting back into my writing, and possibly even attempting to run a business on-line doing tarot readings. I feel like all of the effort I'm putting in is futile at best, worthless at worst, and at the end of the day I don't know what the hell I'm doing wrong.

Sure, one could say that I'm trying to do too much but it doesn't change the fact that it needs done.

I'm not bitching about how my husband doesn't do anything to help. He works and brings home the money we need to put food on the tables, to make the car run (and to even get us a car), and to keep the roof over our heads. I can't say that's not enough because it's all I can ask of him. It's the reasonable thing to ask of him.

But... gods help me, I don't know what I'm going to do on keeping up my end of the bargin because I think I'm doing it wrong. My anxiety problem is making it hard for me to sleep at night and for me to write. I'm having difficulty feeling safe because the constant cat-fights next door are aggrivating my PTSD and I keep feeling that I need to be ready for some one to assault me. Everytime I look around here, I see constant reminders that I'm falling down on the job here, even if it is in my own head.

~ Edited To Add: ~

I've spent a little bit trying to get a few things done and I've since found that lock. Maybe I'll be able to get a few boxes over to the storage shed this afternoon. We'll see.

Ugh!

I love my family, I really, really do. My grandmother is driving me nuts.

I am having some difficulty planning my son's first birthday party. I admit, I am a bit nervous about this. At the same time, however, I'm not looking to go nuts.

I made some phone calls and found out where I could get a free cake. I have a set of invitations and a set of thank you cards to send out. I'm in the midst of planning the decorations and everything for it. The guest list has been made and I've even resolved the potential scheduling conflict that was going to come from his birthday being the day after his cousin's. All I really need is a location.

I thought that I could get it taken care of easily by calling the village offices. There's a park just a few minutes away from here that is a place that we go to often. It's larger then our townhouse and would be a great location for a party. Unfortunately, the pavilion at the park is booked until the beginning of September. There's been some drama surrounding finding another place to hold it. My grandmother said 'yes, you can have the party here' only to change her mind about 72 hours later. Since then, I've found myself getting increasingly frustrated with the insinuation that I'm planning a party that's too complicated and just too much for my son.

Maybe it's just me, but I thought that some cake, some ice cream, and giving him the opportunity to play with his cousins while his father and I visited with his uncles, aunts, and grandparents was just right. Make the party no longer then an hour and that leaves plenty of time for him to enjoy himself without it being too long with too many people.

Seriously, I want to beat my head against a wall right now. Cake, ice cream, and family is not the same thing as renting a tent, a pony, clowns, and god knows what else. I'm thinking that this thing can be done for around $50. That's a hell of alot less then what alot of other people I know spent for their kid's first birthday.

Am I being unreasonable thinking that I can actually do this?

So, I thought I was losing my mind...

First, I need to open this blog post with two different things that make sense only to the people involved.

Stargazer, thank you so much for talking with me last night. That call helped me alot. While I'm still feeling incredibly anxious, I am not quite as ready to fly apart with it all.

Stormcrow, I'm sorry that my recent e-mails have been ... well... have like they have. I think this may help make sense of some of it.

For years, I've been terrified that I was crazy in a bad way. It's only recently (within the last 10 years) that I have begun to understand that even if I was, it's not a terrible end of the world thing. And, it wouldn't make me a bad person. It'd be like saying that the person with a bad head cold was somehow morally deficient because they caught the cold to begin with. Morally deficient people are not the only ones who get sick. Crazy in a bad way, by the way, means not able to really function.

I suppose I really should start at the beginning here. When I was a kid, I was regularly threatened with being insitutionalized by my parents, specifically my mother. This was the same woman who talked about me as though I wasn't her daughter when I didn't behave the way she wanted me to. She still does that to some extent and still even will talk about me as though I'm not even in the room. To be honest, I have always hated that and I think it is a toss up between which of those two I hate more. I was regularly accused of being a hypchrondriac, by both my parents and several others in my family. I was also reminded on a frequent basis that I was a difficult and expensive birth, that I was an investment and I had better not fuck up. The last bit of that statement was generally implied most of the time, but on occasion it was said to me by my mother.

If you're seeing a pattern here, it's not a coincidence. I found myself frequently in the position of having the blame for alot of different crap shoved on me and when blame wasn't shifted to me, I found a great deal of encouragement to blame myself for it. As a result, I lived alot of my childhood in my head. I've a fantasy novel that I'm working on that is based to a large extent on those years of retreating to inside my own head to escape the misery that I faced frequently. I feel terrible to admit it, but I was psychologically abused as a child. And I'm still struggling with the effects of it today.

So, between high levels of stress with this whole crap with our apartment, my on going anxiety over money, and dealing with a bit of depression, I kinda freaked out over the last month. I was corresponding some with a person who has dissociative identity disorder/multiple personality disorder. As he was describing his experiences, I saw alot of parallels between my own situation. Then, this whole bit of hogwash started with the new apartment. I found myself in a difficult place.

I had found myself suddenly facing the echos of my mother's bullshit with the question if I actually had another personality. I looked at the 'voice' in my head and I became terrified. Did that monster in my head of my repressed shadow-side actually have a 'life' of it's own? What of the other 'aspects' of my personality? Did my bit of minor gender identification issues (which again are due to how I was raised) actually indicate a split personality?

These questions have been there for a long time. In the past, I had dismissed them as foolish. Or I simply refused to look at them. I was building up to something of a crisis on this matter and I think all of the stress in these other areas came together to reveal this. Between my having difficulty sleeping and dealing with some of my PTSD issues, I found myself suddenly flailing around in terror over a new possible problem. Last night, I had a conversation with Stargazer and I found reassurance that even if I did have multiple personalities, I was ok.

She then proceeded to explain to me that I never did manifest another personalitiy in the years that we'd known each other, and that being a cranky and surly person in the morning didn't count as that either. We talked for a while. Alot of the conversation revolved around my mother, as they frequently do. I came away from the conversation on stable ground. Suddenly, it didn't feel like I was just going to fly to peices.

It also left me feeling more then saddened by things between my mother and I. It had taken me almost two years of therapy to recognize that I was abused by my parents. It's something I've been struggling with ever since that recognition came to me, almost 10 years ago. It seems like there is always something new revealed as having it's roots back in my childhood.

My massive guilt complex, the anxiety problems, and my attempts to be superwoman all go back to that. I know that I've a long standing problem with depression. While some elements of it may be neurophysical, more of it is just because of how I was raised. I realize that my fears regarding not having enough money to buy food is rooted in my childhood when we had times like that. Sure, my mother may act like my brothers and I didn't know it, but we knew when she and my father didn't eat so that we could.

I don't know how to break away from this stuff. Stargazer suggested talking to a psychologist. I don't know if we can afford that or if it's even something that'd be covered by the health insurance that my husband has thru work. It is such a struggle not to just go find a corner and cry in it when the enormity of it all hits me. At least I can say that I'm not as bad off as I was afraid I was. After all, I manage to take care of my son and our home reasonably well. And I don't have mpd/did, just a lot of bad messages to get out of my head.

You know, somedays, I'd kinda like to be wrong.

So, anyone else been following the news about that HPV vaccine? You know, the one that they've been advertising that girls who are about 13 should get and that some states are seriously contemplating mandating?

Well, here's the latest chapter in the saga:

It appears that it has a 'causal' connection to several girls and women who've received the injection getting seriously ill and a few deaths.

Perhaps it's just me, but it's pretty damn suspicious when the government starts screaming about how a brand new vaccine must be implemented. It's even more suspicious when there's a huge blitz of advertising of the same slick variety as the stuff that's designed to sell erection enhancement pills. Especially when they're using scare tactics.

I think that the FDA knew these vaccines weren't fully tested. I think that somebody bought off the FDA's approval. Yep, you heard me, folks, the FDA, who're supposed to be our safeguard against such things most likely are complicit in this bullshit. Now, here's the question...

How long before the FDA attempts to sweep this crap under the rug or some how attempt to make the complaints of these people look illegitimate in the eyes of the media?

I *so* don't like the way this looks. I've a feeling that something else equally unpleasant is on the way from the same source.

hmm... so, the gods have a sense of humor.

Why do I say this?

Because there was a rather unexpected development today. Just 15 minutes ago, I met with the landlord of where we live. She's just gotten the note and the check from last month. I hand delivered the check for this month and I've been assured that the lease agreement went in the mail today.

My suspicions regarding the previous manager getting fired were correct. At either the end of this week or the beginning of next week, maintenance will be by to look at the various issues that are problems for us. We shall see how this plays out. First order of business is to review the lease when it arrives. After that, I think we'll either be having a conversation with the owner or exchanging letters back and forth.

I hope that this will be resolved quickly and painlessly.

I still have a sense of foreboding here, though. I could see that she was a woman who was overworked and disorganized. I'm hoping that today was just one of those crazy post 3 day weekend mondays for her. I'm not entirely sure, though.

It gives me a feeling that something's off.