Where Are We Going And Why Am I In This Handbasket?

Kill This Blog....

2011-11-13T17:05:00.000-08:00

I've finally decided to end my days of blogging. A lot of things have changed and for a number of reasons, this blog should probably go. I'm not deleting it, I sometimes enjoy going back and reading some of the more interesting things I've written, but it's just not a practical thing for me to spend time on anymore. I'm a writer, so it's going to be a little difficult not having an outlet to vent some of my major frustrations or share big milestones, but for now, I have to do what I have to do. And this is why:

1. I simply don't have time. Because I'm a writer and somewhat of a perfectionist, I can take hours to write just one post, hours of time I simply don't have anymore. Between searching for and applying for grants and loans to get through school next year, learning about London and trying to learn to speak German, plus the fact that I work and maintain my own household, I can't justify spending several hours at a time trying to write just six paragraphs.

2. I don't have enough readers to justify writing this blog regularly. I do enjoy reading the blogs of others, and some of these folks are people I wish I knew in "real life", because I'd definitely be friends with them. People like The Vegetable Assassin, Kirby, BeckEye, and Kristina. Some of them already are friends in real life, Skyler's Dad, Dale, Flannery Alden and Doc. I'm grateful for the reading of this blog they've done, and the often supportive comments they've left.

3. Most of what I post here, with a little thought, can be condensed into a Facebook status, and those of you who know me, know I'm all over Facebook with my silly thoughts, mildly-controversial statements and everything fun (sometimes not so fun) that I go through on a daily basis. Stuff that doesn't end up here on my blog, mostly because I don't have time. Or it's meant to be short and there isn't anything else to say. When I am on Facebook, I jump on, say what I need to say, make a breeze through the status updates of my friends and then jump off, because I don't have time to chill on Facebook all night either.

4. Most of what I post here isn't pleasant. Some of the worst thoughts I have about my life and other people in it end up here. It's become more of a venting outlet than a true picture of my life. I'm more real on Facebook because it's easier to access, there's more people there (people who can't know my true thoughts and feelings on some things), and because I only choose to blog when something horrible is happening. On Facebook, I post all kinds of things, good news from my doctors, bad news from work, incredible meals I've made, thoughts on everything from football to what I experience riding the bus in to work. I'm a much more "fun" person on Facebook.

So here's the sort of good news:

1. I'm not going to stop reading other people's blogs, though I'll be doing a lot less reading than I have, my stupid comments will appear less. In a way it sucks because I genuinely take interest in the lives of the people whose blogs I read, which is why I can't give that up completely.
2. If any of you bloggers are on Facebook, I'd like you to "friend" me, I'd like to still keep in touch regularly even if I'm not on blogger. I'm "Gennifer Harding-Gosnell", the only one on Facebook. I'll also be deleting my name within the next couple weeks so I'm not too identifiable with this blog, but I want to put it there to give you the opportunity to find me on FB if you like. Those of you that are friends on FB with Skyler's Dad can find me on his list of friends.
3. I may not be done blogging for good. If it happens that I do end up moving to England, my adventures there will be quite blogworthy, both the good ones and the bad ones. Blogging from there will be a great way to stay connected to the US and what's familiar to me, and having my adventures documented in some way is pretty important. Not 100% sure I'm going to start blogging again once I'm there, especially during school, my free time will be slim, but I'm leaning toward it.

That all being said, on to new beginnings knowing the door is open to return.

:)
G

Six Days And Half The UK Team Is Gone, Maybe With Good Riddance...

2011-09-04T16:13:00.000-07:00

I called M today to make sure we were on for S's wedding. He's my standard date for all this shit, as we watch our friends tie the know while me, the perpetual spinster, and him, the gay guy too afraid of being really gay, continue on with our lives without partners and no chance of getting them.

But then I guess I'd rather be single than be in S's situation.

In a way I'm proud of how I chose to get into the UK, by furthering my education rather than finding some lonely, old bloke to marry me in and give me everything I want...

For those of you who don't know the back story, it's blogged here, but a brief catch-up: S and I were the best of friends and decided about two years ago that we wanted out of Cleveland. We were bored, broke and miserable. I suggested leaving and told her the UK was on the list. She said "If you make it the UK, I'm in". So we started making plans. I thought we'd be doing this together.
But she met R playing bridge online and everything started to change. S and R developed an "online relationship". About six months in, he came here to visit her. She picked him up at the airport, drove back to her place, and once inside, he straight away asked her to marry him. She said "yes" because, as she told me, she thought "Why not?"
R's been here three times since. They go on nice vacations, not too expensive, but expensive enough. They've planned this wedding over the past year now. He's paid for most of the wedding, given her money to cover bills, even bought her a cute little convertible sports car he's going to teach her to drive once she gets there.
The man is a lorry driver, that's "truck driver" to most of you, so I don't know where all this money's coming from. Even she's questioned exactly how he's getting the funds to support all this. Regardless, she keeps taking it, and I'm sure it's hard to say "no" when the man's offering you everything you want. She tells me about how they're going to move into a bigger place so she can have her elderly mother move over there, I guess he's gonna pay to support mom, too?
I don't feel sorry for the guy, really. I think she's been fairly honest with him and he's just a sucker looking for somebody to love him and willing to offer her the world so she will. I remember a conversation her and I had not long ago when her back was out and she was unsure about her medical future:

S: "I talked to R and explained to him that I'm not a very caring person, like I could never be a nurse or anything like that, I just don't have that kind of personality that I'm capable of helping people."
Me: "I know, I'm the same way, couldn't do it."
S: "So I explained to him that if he wanted to break off the engagement I would totally understand. I mean, he barely knows me and if my back can't be fixed, I could end up in pain, even in a wheelchair for the rest of my life and he would have to take care of me constantly, and I would totally get it if he wanted to back out of the marriage".
Me: "What did he say?"
S: "Oh, of course he was like, "Oh, no, honey, if something happened to you I would be willing to take care of you, don't worry about a thing-"
Me: "Wow."
S: "Yeah. And so I had to tell him, I had to be honest, 'Well, just so you know, if something were to happen to you, I can't say that I would do the same for you. I'm not the kind of person that can just take care of people and I couldn't do that for you.' And he said, 'Well, then I hope I don't ever need you to.'"

She's 39, he's 52. The chances that she'll end up take care of him at some point are much higher than it being the other way around, especially considering the age he is now. And though I'm not a caring person myself, if I love a man enough to marry him, I am going to do everything I can to try and take care of him before I just give up and walk out. But she was honest with him, so if he's that much of a sucker, I can't say I feel sorry for him.
As we've gotten closer to the wedding date, I've drifted further out of her life. The whole thing is just shady to me, and the more I hear the more soured I get on my friendship with her, I don't want to be friends with someone who's a user, even if the person they use let's them. She's not making as much of a mistake as Roger is, she's going to get what she wants out of the relationship: someone to pay her way through a dream-princess life in Europe.

Maybe I'm jealous and just can't admit it.

But then there's the "bed" thing. I've been griping to her for over a year that I needed a new bed. The mattress I had was the same one I'd had since I was 19 years old. I'm 36 now, so it's more than time to go. I woke up in pain all the time, so around March, I pitched the bed and started sleeping on the floor. She had started getting rid of her stuff back in June and mentioned in that conversation that she was giving her bed to her friend, N.
I was livid. It wasn't that she "owed" it to me or had to give me the bed, but I thought damn, I've been sleeping on the floor since March and you didn't even bother to offer it to me first? If that was me in her shoes, the first person I'd thought of to give the bed to is the friend I have that has no bed and has been sleeping on the floor for months. That kind of showed me just how uncaring she really is, and how low on her totem pole I really am.

Maybe that's jealousy too, and I just can't admit it.

And then there's the whole cheating issue. R has been married three times before, and all of his wives cheated on him. That's why he wanted something about remaining faithful in the vows, he has issues with that. I get it. That means he's gonna have a real problem with S. Her first marriage was to a guy that was a total pushover, and she ended up cheating on him and flaunting it to him. The man was such a pushover, she walked all over him and tried to get him to grow a pair. Then she gave up and the relationship soon ended. She wants a man who's going to be a man, not a baby, and she's convinced herself that R is a "man's man", but he's willing to put up with her shit and give her everything she wants, which means she's gonna get tired of that soon enough and end up cheating on him.

So if/when I do make it to the UK, I wonder if we'll be friends. Part of me thinks I won't even bother to contact her, another part of me wonders if I will just because I won't have any other friends there. At this point, I'm almost happy to see her go just so I don't have to deal with her anymore, but again, maybe I'm just JEALOUS!!!

Ok, I am jealous. I'm extremely jealous. She hasn't had an easy life, but she hasn't had a very hard one, either. I on the other hand, have buried my whole family, lived in poverty more years that I have fingers to count them on, and yet here I am struggling and facing tens of thousands of dollars in loans to get myself overseas and she's getting a life on easy-street just handed to her.

But at the same time, at least I have an education to fall back on. We both took the assessment test to get into the UK just with what we have, I was short by 35 points, her, 65. She has no degree and no career that is in demand there, so she knew up front she had no other choice but to marry her way in, so I can't say I really blame her for what she's doing. She's marrying R because he's the idiot who offered and when he asked her to marry him, she didn't have any other choice but to say yes. She has no other options.

I could find someone to marry in if I really wanted to, I have a guy similar to R that sends me gifts at Christmas and we talk all the time. I know that if I suggested we start a more intimate relationship he'd go for it in a minute. But I already know I'm not interested in that kind of relationship with him, and I like him, I'm not going to convince myself to be in love with him just so I can take advantage of him and what he has to offer.
He says he can help me get a job once I'm there, that's good enough.

In the meantime, M and I will go to the wedding next week, have a good time, and other than to wish them luck, I'm keeping my mouth shut. Just let things end where they end and see what happens. I have a feeling it's not going to be the bed of roses she's expecting...or maybe it will be, no one knows.

I don't know how I'll feel once she's gone, and once I'm there, too. Despite our current differences, we see the world the same way, we enjoy the same kinds of things, we have almost the same values. For now I think I'll just leave the door open and ride this out until my own future gets settled....

Must Be Football Season....

2011-09-02T20:28:00.000-07:00

I'm starting to feel human again. So I thought I'd humour myself by posting some of my favourite things about football. Self-gratuitousness follows:

It's that time of year when good friends become enemies, my favourite football players become my employees, and I have to explain to my boss why I'm checking football news during the work day. It's already been a hoot. I set up the league, fixed the draft so I get to pick first, and they didn;t even bother to bitch about that. Instead I get Georgie complaining that it's too quarterback-heavy and anybody that drafts below #5 is fucked, and Brother Barry complaining that it's too complicated. So I told Georgie to not be an idiot and scroll down the screen, I added just as many points for defensive plays as I did offense (that shut him up) and I told Brother Barry that he's Mr. Play-The-Points-Guy, he's just pissed cuz he's gonna have to work harder. He'll get over it...

The Spanish league has the best players, but the English Premier League has the best plays, like Wayne Rooney's overhead kick from last year that had the whole world talking about it for a week. I went into the market a few days later and one of the foreign boys who knows me saw me coming and just yelled "Did you see that kick?" and I knew exactly what he was talking about. At least once a season, if not more, you get a play like that that just totally blows people's minds, but living in the U.S. requires finding foreigners to discuss and celebrate it with. Fortunately, I know where to find them now. There's a lot of foreigners in my new apartments building, Arabs, a few Greeks, I doubt I'll be watching soccer alone for much longer. :)

The characters on Real Madrid are growing on me, and to see them all on the pitch together again makes me feel like a giggly schoolgirl. Especially these two: Marcelo and Karim Benzema. Marcelo is the most animated character on the field, kind of like Brett Favre was, he's just a joy to watch play. His gestures, mannerisms and facial expressions show exactly what he's thinking, and usually, what he's thinking is something hysterically funny. He's been known to steal other players shirts and put them on pretending he's them, start play fights on the sidelines and spit water at his teammates. When he gets others involved, it's the Real Madrid comedy show.

Karim Benzema is probably my favourite player on the team because he's the underdog who always has to prove himself and always does. Fans and media are quick to jump on him when he's not doing well (lack of confidence, questioned ability), but he always finds a way to fight back to the top of his game. He's kind of low-key, quiet, and I don't think that helps him much, but when he scores, he knows damn well she's shutting them all up.

The Pack is back. My Super-Bowl winning team returns looking for a repeat, and with most of the same players, which is uncommon in the NFL. Not that I'm not thrilled about last year's win, but it was the same day as Grampa's funeral, so there's always going to be that downside to this victory. Having another Super Bowl that I can fully enjoy, especially with it most likely being my last year in the U.S., would be a great send-off and a win I could relish in for life.

I never had a hot quarterback until Aaron Rodgers came along. Most American-football players are ugly, but quarterbacks tend to run along the cute side, though my Browns and Packers were never among the recipients. We had Bernie Kosar and Brett Favre, neither of which made for great eye-candy. Along comes Aaron Rodgers and I'm in love. See that rainbow? Even God thinks he's gorgeous...

But Mesut Ozil's got him beat. This kid makes me drool all over myself, all the way down to my private parts. He would be my favourite player on Real Madrid, he really is that good, but because I just love to look at him so much, I can't justify making him my favourite player based solely on that. Stalking him upon my entrance to Europe has crossed my mind, but because I'm sane, I can never get to far with it. What a shame.

School Daze....

2011-07-28T18:23:00.000-07:00

I was accepted to the university in London.

No, really.

But that ain't even the half of it.

And the first major roadblock to prevent me from going has already popped up, so don't get too excited.

So here we go...

In my earlier post regarding applying to the school, I'd said "It almost happened too easily", which turned out to be an excellent premonition. My sister had given me the head's up on some info about the school I wasn't too keen on seeing, but glad I'm aware of. Here's a clip:

SACS placed the university on probation in December 2005. In 2006, SACS renewed --U's probation for failure to comply with various Principles of Accreditation.On December 11, 2007, CEC announced that SACS had removed --U's probation and that the university's accreditation remained in good standing.
On May 15, 2009, --U received initial approval for accreditation by the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools-The Higher Learning Commission and is now listed as an accredited institution by NCA-HLC rather than SACS.
In June 2008, The Quality Assurance Agency closed an audit published in May 2005 based on an examination of the London Campus in 2004. This report had noted that at the date of the Agency's review in 2004, there were "fundamental concerns regarding the academic standards being achieved." Following successful efforts on the London campus to remedy deficiencies, the QAA noted that, "Since the audit QAA has been provided with information that indicates that appropriate action has been taken by the ------ University in response to the findings of this report. As a result the audit was signed off in June 2008.
--U's critics have scrutinized the university's student recruiting practices. One anonymous professor told The Chronicle of Higher Education: "If you can breathe and walk, you can get into the school." In July 2008, former employees filed a lawsuit alleging that the school's admissions practices defrauded federal grant and loan programs."

In a way, I wasn't surprised. The application process was a bit informal and lacked some professionalism, the phone interview seemed a bit short, only ten minutes. You don't get a job with a ten-minute interview, but I got accepted to a grad school?? The idea that "if you can breathe and walk you can get into the school" makes sense, they accepted me for Christ's sake.

I don't think it will stop me from going. For one, it's probably the only opportunity I'll have to get into Europe without marrying in, I don't really have any other options. For two, in all the criticism I read of the school, their internship program seems to have met best-practice standards; that's where I feel the true learning and potential job opportunities will come from anyway. For three, I don't care that they defraud the federal government, if I thought I could get away with it, I'd defraud the government myself, shit. As long as they get me the money I need to get through the school and stay there long enough to find a job and get myself on the road to success, I don't care if I have to spend the rest of my life paying back loans, I'll do it just for having been given the opportunity. I am a bit concerned that the material I'll be learning won't be up to par for what I will be expected to know on the job, but again, the internship will help make up for some of that, and if I have to study subjects outside of what I'm being taught, so be it. And, Plus, I'm still studying my languages, if nothing else the combination of the MBA plus being fluent in Spanish and German may be enough to convince someone there I need to be hired. And, thinking back to the mess CSU's administration was the years I went to school there, I can say I've already had practice with whatever bullshit --U can put me through. I'm smarter now and I know to stay one step ahead of this school the entire way and that may be enough to make it a successful venture.

But then there's the money issue. Because the dollar is so weak against the pound, I'm going to need about double the American dollars to cover my expenses for the entire program. 20,000 pound equals 40,000 dollars. According to FAFSA, I"m only eligible for $20,500 for the entire academic year, which means I've got to come up with another $20,000, let's say $40,000 to include the expenses of living there while I try to find work, on my own. I was told to apply for graduate loans, but all the federal graduate loans require a credit check and stingy requirements which I most certainly won't meet. My credit report isn't all that bad, we're talking maybe a few thousand dollars in unpaid bills, but enough that I won't be able to get loans without a co-signer. And as most of you know, with Grampa gone, I'm pretty much out of family. Neither of my sisters is in financial shape to be able to co-sign for me, nor would I feel comfortable asking them to. I'm not comfortable asking anyone to co-sign for me for that matter, but if I did, it would have to be my family. Both my uncles are fairly well-off, and now that they've got Grampa's house and his money, they're even better well-off than they were. It comes down to a) would they be willing and b) would I be willing to suck up the pride to ask them to and c) would I kill them if they said no.
I am going to apply for grants also, and if I can get some of those that will certainly help, but I have no academic merit, only financial need. Grants are a possibility, but I'm not putting much stake in it.
I spoke with the Financial Aid advisor I was assigned to through the university. Because I applied to the school so early, there isn't much I can apply for right now regarding loans and grants until after the first of next year; when I applied for Sallie Mae it rejected my online application because it has to be within 6 months of your beginning attendance date. The advisor told me I was welcome to call in the meantime with questions, but that otherwise he wouldn't be in touch with me again until April. Are you kidding me? I'm supposed to go to school starting in July and they want to start the financial aid process then? That's ridiculous, and he may be inclined to wait that long, but I'm not. When he said that I thought again about the info I'd read on the quality of --U's admissions process and thought to myself that he just confirmed why I need to stay one step ahead of these guys.
So I'm going to apply for everything I can now, apply throughout the next six months for as much else as I can apply for by way of grants and applications, keep up with the language learning, and figure out how in the hell I'm going to ask my family to co-sign for this loan and pray to God I don't have to. Apparently, getting accepted was the easy part....

Amy Winehouse Dead at 27, Pete Doherty Still Alive...

2011-07-24T18:17:00.000-07:00

By now everyone's heard the news. The infamous "27 Club" of dead rock stars claims its newest member, British uber-talented R&B/soul goddess Amy Winehouse.
Millions of fans worldwide are shocked, but no one's that surprised; her masterpiece album from 2006, "Back To Black", was followed up with the remainder of her years as tabloid fodder. Drunken fights, drug abuse, slurring her words and falling over on stage to the sounds of boos from disgruntled audiences; clearly the latter years of her life were not pleasant.

But maybe they weren't meant to be. As part of the 27 Club, once the dust settles, she'll be remembered as an icon, much in the way Jimi, Janis and Kurt are. Her pain, though, is so much a part of what created the music that moved us, in the same way the music of Janis and Kurt did. Would all these artists be who they were musically if they hadn't suffered?

There is a mentality among many music lovers, the "sex, drugs and rock n' roll" lifestyle of the musicians whose music we listen to is revered as a part of what makes their music so "real". It reflects us, but it becomes them. They live the lives we wish we could live but realistically know we can't because a)we're not musically-talented, and b)we know it would kill us. So we watch the stars do it instead. And the star that burns twice as bright also burns out twice as fast.

Sometimes.

The horrors of addiction, as seen with artists like Winehouse, Doherty, Cobain, and Staley, can create effective, stunning, beautiful, arousing music that touches true music-lovers into the bottom of their souls. We feel that. I have never had my heart truly broken, but I know how it feels because Amy Winehouse felt it for me and then wrote songs about it that just blew my fucking mind. I've never done heroin but I know what it feels like to be "Down in a hole, and I don't know if I can be saved, See my heart, I decorate it like a grave, and you don't understand who they thought I was supposed to be" (Layne Staley, Alice in Chains) after struggling for years to come to terms with my mother's death. The source of the pain is different, but the way it sounds is the same.

People don't want to admit that "Tortured Artist Syndrome" is among the more attractive sides of rock n' roll, music in general, but deep down we know it is. It's exciting and gives us the opportunity to live vicariously through the music without having to experience the actual suffering first-hand. We like our musicians tortured because ultimately, it makes for better music. Trent Reznor's still making music all these years after kicking drugs and depression, but it's nowhere near as powerful and moving as the music he made when in the throes of all that chaos. How do you compare "You see your world on fire, don't try to act surprised. We did just what you told us, lost our faith along the way and found ourselves believing your lies", to "Something inside of me has opened up its eyes, why did you put it there, did you not realize, this thing inside of me it screams the loudest sound, sometimes I think I could, I'm gonna burn this whole world down." ? Not that what Trent's doing now is bad or of lesser quality, it's just that the raw emotion that fed so many of us Nine Inch Nails' fans has been drowned out by the reality of our rock star hero having money, fame, beautiful women, a nice house, famous friends...and no dope.

Why is this okay? Because rock stars like Reznor, Doherty, and Cobain got paid millions of dollars and led the most fantastic lives in exchange for their misery. They live the pain, do all the suffering, create the amazing music that makes the world respond with money and fame and all the things in life anyone could possibly want in exchange for it. As a result, they become less miserable and life isn't so bad anymore, the raw intensity of the music starts to fade and they live the rest of their lives making halfway-decent songs and becoming rock icons and surviving off the millions they earned when they were still on the edge. And that's okay, too, because the majority of the tortured artists who make this great music don't want to die, and they do have the right to some day be happy. It will make room for the next generation of tortured artists to shine their own light.

But sometimes they die along the way, like Cobain, Joplin, Morrison, and now Winehouse.

And that's okay too, because in their short lives, they saw and did and lived some of the greatest moments that can possibly exist for a human, things most of us will never see. Amy Winehouse was on top of the world at one point. She was untouchable. Treasured by millions of people, bought homes most of us will never come remotely close to affording, toured and traveled the world to places most of us will never see, met and had relationships with others of the most famous and revered people on the planet, won the highest awards available in the music industry, had gorgeous men throwing themselves at her, (at one point) made her parents the most proud parents on Earth, performed for millions of fans screaming her name, people wanting to be near her, people wanting to be her. Is that worth losing it all at just 27 years old?

Sure it is. The music she contributed was timeless and will probably hold up longer than the life she would have lived had she been given a normal human's lifespan.

Not all good music comes from tortured artists; guys like Neil Diamond, the Beatles, Justin Timberlake, U2, Jay-Z, David Bowie, Bruce Springsteen, all make incredibly good music without the tortured-artist label attached to them. But the music they make still reflects who they are. They're the lucky ones that didn't create music out of misery or need their careers to ride on the back of personal pain. And though they may have used considerable amounts of drugs at some point, none of them were addicts.

It is truly a shame that all that potential for more great masterpieces from Winehouse was lost, and of course it's beyond-the-imagined awful for a family to lose their child, but to say she didn't live a full life and reach the highest attainable successes of human existence is simply wrong. May she rest in peace wherever she's at now, and those of us here find comfort in what we were given by her instead of hoping for what might have been.

Up In Smoke...

2011-07-24T17:07:00.000-07:00

After twenty years, I have officially quit smoking.

Well, for now.

As it stands I've been five days without a cigarette, the longest I've been without in that twenty years, so I guess you can call me a quitter. But only time will tell. I decided I needed to quit primarily because I simply can't afford it anymore, not to mention the associated health risks and the idea that I am essentially tied to these bloody things. If I think I need to have one, I need to have one; it's like being shackled to something I felt I would never get away from.
I had mentioned the idea to my doctor back in March after my thyroid incident got me scared of dying and he said "Not yet". I intended to quit this month assuming I would be moving in with a roommate, most of whom don't want to live with a smoker. Though I'm by myself, I still intended to quit because the cost was just eating up more of my paycheck than I could stand. I was back at the doctor last week for follow-up and he agreed to get me started on the patches.
I'm a creature of habit, so really what I needed was something that would ease the nicotine addiction while I did the work of re-training the brain to not think we needed to smoke. The last time i was in the hospital over several days they gave me the patch, and I was amazed with how well it worked, I didn't crave a cigarette at all. So I told the doc, if you can make it a one-month step-down instead of a two-week step-down, I might be able to quit on my first try. I know most patches go two weeks at each nicotine level to gradually ease down the amount of nicotine released into the system, but for a creature of habit, two weeks is nowhere near enough time. He agreed, so I will be on the 21mg patches for a month, the 14mg patches for the next month, and the 7mg for the final month, three months of quitting time instead of the normal six weeks. Now, THAT my friends, is a plan to quit.
I knew it would be hard, that's why I prolonged quitting for so long, I didn't want to go through the struggle. Shit, everything about my life is a struggle, I didn't want to add to my misery any more than necessary. But knowing that I'm in a "rebuilding" stage of my life and that things are going to mostly suck for a very long time, I figured this would be a good time to put myself through that. Fuck it, I'm going to be miserable for a while anyway, right?
So I did it, I put on the first patch last Wednesday. I did fine initially, but toward the middle of the day I started craving a cigarette so badly I was nearly in tears by the time I called the Quit-Smoking Helpline for the state of Ohio. The craving was so bad I couldn't concentrate on work anymore, all I could think about was having a cigarette. I registered, talked/cried through the process with a coach, and eventually just took the patch off for about an hour so I could smoke at least one. I had to allow myself that moment to be weak. I ate lunch and took one of the nurses outside with me to go have that cigarette in case something happened to me (apparently it's very dangerous to smoke while you're on the patch). I survived, and was fine the rest of the day. But it was so shocking to see just how big a deal smoking had been for me all these years. I wanted a cigarette so bad I cried. But according to the coaches at the helpline, this is not unusual and not bad compared to the reactions of other quitters.
Since then, I've been taking the patch off at night (wearing it at night can give you vivid dreams), smoking a cigarette first thing in the morning, slapping one on before I leave work and going all day long without a smoke. No intense cravings like that have hit since. Because I know the severe risk of heart attack and stroke that can happen from smoking while on the patch, any cigarette I do try to sneak in leads to a near panic attack that I'm going to die right then; I've had three panic attacks since I started wearing the patch, every one of them occuring while I"m trying to sneak in a smoke. Since then, I've managed two whole days with no cigarettes at all and no panic attacks.
Retraining the brain seems to be an interesting and successful venture. It's like my brain knows when it's time to smoke a cigarette and I have to consciously tell it "No, we don't do that anymore". It's interesting how that damn thing works, our minds really are in control of what we do. Even with no craving, my brain is activated to know exactly when it's time to smoke, when we wake up, when we're done eating, when we accomplish a long task. The brain is so conditioned to smoking and leads me to believe that smokers don't consciously think of smoking a cigarette; they just do it because after so many years their brains just tell them to.
So if I can reprogram my mind to "forget" that we are a smoker, I can beat this. But God help me if/when any more cravings come. I am terrified of that moment, because I know I'm too weak to fight it. The only way to get me to completely quit is by reprogramming the brain, so I have to believe it will work. I'm amazed...I quit smoking weed cold turkey after the thyroid incident because it scared me so bad and haven't craved it once, and I never had to tell my brain that we don;t smoke weed anymore. This has been completely different and a lot more work.
Keep your fingers crossed, people. My brain is not known for it's willingness to co-operate, and I expect this may be one bumpy path through all that smoke...

And Maybe Next Year I'll Have To Move Again...

2011-07-10T16:02:00.000-07:00

As difficult and unsettling and disorienting as this whole move was, there's a part of me that is a bit excited. A very small part. Finally, something new and better has happened in my life. I'll save money, I'm in an apartment that is actually taken care of, there's a chance here to start life over.
And it may happen all over again next year.
After the debacle with getting rejected for grad school by CSU, I went online and started looking at other schools because at that point, what the fuck else am I gonna do? The day after I got the rejection letter, I found an American school with a campus in London that offers a MBA in International Management. I started the application online and started speaking regularly with an admissions advisor, but I almost wasn't serious about it at first. I didn't expect they would actually be interested in having me attend school there, but the further I got into it, the more hopeful it seemed. This all happened almost too easily. I completed the application, and sent in my transcripts and the $50 application fee. I struggled with the letter of intent, but got it completed in a week and sent that over with my resume. We scheduled a phone interview, the last step of the application process. Before we ever got to the interview, they sent me the financial aid application information.
By this time it was the end of the month and I knew I was going to be moving, so I did my best to try and keep up with school stuff at the same time. My brain was constantly switching gears between work, scheduling appointments and meeting with potential roommates, and dealing with the details of enrolling to this school.
I got a phone call last Tuesday at work from someone with an English accent. They wanted to do the phone interview right then. It caught me a bit off guard, I thought they would at least call to schedule something first. He told me the interview would only take about ten minutes. In the back of my head I'm thinking, you can't even get a job at McDonald's with a ten-minute interview, but okay. I explained I was at work and would need to schedule a time, so we scheduled it for the following Thursday. No one called, so I called the admissions advisor and explained there must be some miscommunication going on. We scheduled the next phone interview for Friday, because I had the day off.
As it turned out, I signed the lease to the new place, got the keys and ten minutes later, the phone call comes. I'm walking back to my old place after just signing on to the new one, it's 80 degrees outside and I'm trying to talk my way off-the-cuff through what may be one of the most important interviews of my life, regardless of how nonchalant they happened to be about the whole thing.
I get the impression that these folks get a lot of kids coming to their school. Kids who want to come to London to party their assess off and get a degree in the meantime. They asked me questions they would ask of any 18-year-old kid, some of them weren't even relevant to me. I answered them pretty blatantly too.
"How does your family feel about you coming here for school? Is there any chance anyone would be opposed to it?"
"Um, I'm sorry, could you repeat that?"
"Your family, is your family okay with you coming to school here?"
"Well, um...I'm 36 years old. I'm single, I have no children, my parents are both deceased and even if they weren't, it wouldn't matter. The family I have now can be opposed to it all they want, but they don't have any influence on my decisions. At 36, I tell them what I'm going to do and that's just it."
"Is there anything that would prevent you from coming to London?"
"I'm sorry, what do you mean?"
"Are there any reasons you would change your mind?"
"Well, um....I'm 36 years old, so I'm not really in a place in my life where floundering on decisions is something I can still do. If I make a commitment to do something I'm going to do it. I understand consequences, I can't afford to be afraid or back away from difficult decisions, that's just a part of life when a person is my age."

Before we hung up, the guy with the English accent on the end of the line said, "We look forward to seeing you in London next year". I said "Thank you". And that was it. By then I already had the financial aid application. I want to say it's a done deal, but because I'm the kind of person bad shit just happens to, I don't think I'll really believe it until I'm unpacking my things in my new dorm room. Even then it might feel so surreal that I still may not believe it.

And then there's the issue of the financial aid. Before I applied with CSU I called FAFSA to check on my records and was told everything was okay. I graduated in 1998 and haven't paid back a dime of my loans because I've never made enough money to. I've been on forbearance or economic hardship ever since. But when I spoke to FAFSA they said I was in good standing and they couldn't see any reason from my past loan record that I wouldn't be approved. I didn't believe them, so I went to financial aid officers at CSU and spoke directly to them and they also told me not to worry. I applied for the graduate loans, but the results aren't released if you're not accepted to the school, so I have no idea if I was actually approved or not since CSU rejected me.
And because I have the kind of luck I have, I am calling FAFSA again tomorrow to find out if I'm really okay to apply for graduate loans. And I still won't believe them....

Home Sweet Home...

2011-07-10T14:43:00.000-07:00

I wish I had a camera phone, I'd take pictures for all of you, but I don't, and there isn't much to see anyway.
But it's home now, apartment number 608.
I spent a month searching for the perfect roommate situation and almost found it. It was hard, going to work every day and then going on bus lines I'm not familiar with to places I've never been, meeting with people and catching the bus back home by 10:00 at night. I was hoping to move to Cleveland's East side, mainly because it was far away from everything I'd ever known as a born-and-raised West-sider. It's a different way of living, too; because of the universities and the Cleveland Clinic, the East side tends to cater to the more educated, intellectual types, where the West side is more blue-collar. I had 28 appointments total, 20 of them out East, 8 of them in Lakewood where I live now.
I had met with D, who is a classical music teacher and has a lovely house he rents out rooms in. The house was on a main thoroughfare, close to a bus stop and a convenience store. He has a dishwasher and a dog.
But I didn't wait. He called to accept me into his home about two hours after I signed the lease on this place. It would have saved me a bit more money, but I am still living on my own and I didn't have to quit smoking cold turkey, as I would have had to do if I moved into D's place, he doesn't want smokers. His call made me wonder if I'd made the right decision, as I really did rush into signing the lease, but I keep telling myself it makes no sense to ponder it, I can't go back on it now.
I signed the lease last Friday, went home and started packing. I'm not a hoarder, but I was surprised by the amount of shit I'd accumulated in twelve years' time. So I threw away anything I didn't need and realized when I was done it still wasn't much compared to what most folks have. I packed all day Saturday, moved Sunday (with the help of friends) and unpacked Monday. By Tuesday, I was mostly done.

So I live here in my own apartment, in a building about a mile away from the cruddy old corner-of-a-house I was living in. I'm on the 6th floor, with a view of the Metroparks, all trees and sky, something I don't care about much now, but will appreciate much more after the first thunderstorm rolls through, and in the fall when everything is rich in autumn colours, and in the winter when the trees are bare and you can see through them. The kitchen is way too small for someone who actually cooks, so I used my breakfast table to block off one end of it and give myself extra space to work. The cabinets barely fit all of my cooking supplies, but I made them fit. There will be no pot-smoking allowed here, I don't know these neighbours and we're far too close together for it to not stink up the whole hallway, so my friends will have to just muck it up and get high before they come here. That will also kill any football parties I may have planned on having, since they're all pot-smokers. Once I quit smoking cigarettes and disallow that too, I'll be lucky if any of my friends want to come over here. I make friends easily, but doing laundry seems to be the most social interaction I'll have around here. I ran into three young guys, one of them was completely gorgeous, on my first trip to the on-site laundry. Needless to say I'll be doing laundry often. :) Otherwise, I rarely see people. The walk to the bus is longer, so is the trip. I'll have to leave by 7:10 to get to work on time, I used to leave at 7:30. And I'm further from the grocery store, so walking with groceries is a no-go. I'll have to call a cab or get a ride with a friend. The TV doesn't work without cable or a converter box, and I just got the Internet on yesterday, so now I have something to do. I will probably go buy a converter box this week to prevent having to spend money on cable, Cox wants $58/month for cable here, they've got to be kidding!! For all that's worth, I'll stick to watching everything on the Internet.

And now the upside: There's window air-conditioning built in (a must), and the blinds tend to keep everything fairly cool in here. The windows are new and double-paned, not the single-pane crap and apartment screens that E had duct-taped in for me. The faucets all work and the hot water is set correctly so taking a shower is actually a pleasurable experience, rather than getting scalded all the time because E wouldn't fix the water pressure. The sewer pipes would back up and leak all over the basement floor and the smell of raw sewage would come filtering in through the furnace vents, so those of us that lived there would come in to a home smelling literally like shit every few months, and it would take E a week to get someone out there to clean it all up and rather than do something about it and actually FIX THE PIPES, he just keeps getting them cleaned out. We'd all be so sickened we couldn't sleep at night. Well, now I don't have to deal with that anymore. There are maintenance guys here on site 24 hours. The company that runs the building offers discounts to pensioners, so there's a lot of old folks living here, and trust me, those people will not put up with a landlord that doesn't take care of the place. I remember when my refrigerator died at the old place and I had to keep a cooler on ice for three months and all the money it cost me because E wouldn't move a new fridge in. Only when I threatened to call the city did he finally do something about it. That kind of shit won't happen here. And no more begging for rides to the laundromat and dragging two weeks worth of laundry up and down stairs and in and out of cars, I have laundry facilities on the second floor and can do it whenever I want. The trip to work and back is longer, but I get to take the train for the last part of the trip instead of a second bus, and I love taking the train, so there's a bonus. I don't have a bed, a dresser or a couch yet, but I work at a social services agency and we have connections. My co-workers wrote me a referral for a furniture bank that provides low-income folks like me with furniture super-cheap. For $150 total, I'll get a mattress, box spring, dresser and couch delivered to the door. We have an appointment scheduled at the end of this month, so by August I'll be fully functional in this new place.

So for all the upheaval, I guess I'm managing okay. My thyroid is still under control, no panic attacks, no head swimming, the brain zaps are coming less and less. I've had a few nights of poor or no sleep, but I guess that's to be expected living in a new home so abruptly. If it's the only trouble I have, I won't complain...

The Other Shoe Drops....

2011-06-05T08:20:00.000-07:00

"We appreciate your interest in the MAGI program. We received a large number of applicants, more than we can accommodate. We regret that we are unable to accept you into the program.

We wish you the best in your pursuit of further education."

That was all the letter said, but it was enough.

I've only cried once so far. At this point, knowing I'm going to lose my home and now have lost my chance at a future, I believe I'd be better off dead.

I'm not suicidal in any way, I just don't have the balls to kill myself. But if God were to call my number to come home, I wouldn't protest at all. I have no idea where I'm going to live and no hope that my financial situation will ever improve. I could get lucky and die after only 40 years like my mother did, or I could be stuck here until I'm in my 80's, like Grampa was. Then what? The last thing I want is to spend another 40 years on this Earth in the state I'm in now.
But because I won't kill myself and God isn't trying to wipe me out any time soon, I have no choice but to carry on. So I'm back on this stupid computer, looking at ads for roommates and looking at other Master's degree programs to apply to. Obviously, I have nothing better to do.

Back to square one. And hoping it doesn't last long. I had a friend say he believes it's always darkest just before the dawn. I hope he's right. A lifetime of darkness isn't worth being around for....

When It Rains....

2011-05-31T08:44:00.000-07:00

I looked back over this blog, there's so little by way of happy posts. I'm like the Eeyore of the small blogosphere I hang out in. Everything is dark, depressing and miserable. It's like I never have anything good to say.
But I tend to only write things here that I need to, mainly because I don't have the time to blog much and I need to vent. Good things don't require venting.

But I will start by saying I've just returned from a fabulous weekend with fellow bloggers Doc, Spooky, Ergo Jinglebollocks and Flannery. They are my bright spot, one of the last clues left that I can be happy and relaxed and lead a normal life.

Now it's back to the hell that is the rest of my existence. Starting with my garnishments. I owe income taxes to the city, and they finally decided to come after me for them by way of two wage garnishments. I live paycheck to paycheck, so taking that money from me means other bills I need to pay to survive don't get paid. i met with the magistrate of the city after the first garnishment notice came and tried to appeal it by entering into a contract with a consumer credit counseling service to pay them. He agreed to hold off the garnishment as long as I continued to make the payments through the credit counselours.
The second appeal I wasn't so lucky. I was supposed to meet with the magistrate, so I expected the same result. He got stuck in an eviction hearing, so after 4 minutes of waiting, a court official comes out to tell me the judge will do my garnishment hearing. I pretty much begged to just reschedule with the magistrate, but they insisted the judge would do the hearing.
I've been in front of Lakewood's judge before, for the same reason. The police gave me a ticket for warming up my car in zero-degree temperatures this past winter. I couldn't pay that ticket fast enough, so I had to go in front of the same judge and he could give a rat's ass if it's the food off my table for something ridiculous. He wants his money. So I knew going in front of the judge on this would get me nowhere.
And I was right. He held up the garnishment. My luck with the magistrate on the first garnishment was not to be.
At the same time, I get a shut-of notice from the gas company and a bill for over $4,000. I was originally on a Percentage-of-Income payment plan, had been the entire time I've lived here. After several conversations I find out I was kicked off of the PIP plan in 2009. Since then, I've only been paying my PIP amount, which was apparently not enough.
I talked to several people at the gas company and the public-assistance programs about getting back onto PIP, but your bill has to be completely paid before you can get back on it, and the fact that I never knew for two years gave me no leverage whatsoever. If the bill is over $4000 now, it had to be about $2000 back in 2009, so why did it take them TWO YEARS to send me a shut-off notice? Back then, I could have done something about it. Now, there's no chance. That fact also got me no leverage. The gas company wants $500 per month, which is more than my rent.
So after several appointments and a multitude of phone calls, I am scheduled for shutoff on June 7. Being the middle of summer, heat isn't an issue, but I can't cook and and I can't take a shower with no gas. It renders my place almost unlivable.
So I have to move. I managed to get a neighbour who will let me use her place to cook and take a shower, I'll pay her $25 a week for the privilege, but I can't abuse it, which means I need to be gone by the end of June.
I've started looking on craigslist and various roommate websites to sell myself out as a roomie. It's been a lot of work. I am literally busy from the time I wake up til the time I go to sleep. In addition to my normal life of going to work every day and maintaining the house, cooking, etc., I'm on the computer constantly. In one week, I've sent about 50 emails, made about 25 phone calls, scheduled 4 appointments, had one appointment already (the woman was nice but a little crazy and too much drama), and worryworryworry. I'm supposed to move the same month my wages are being garnished.
Fortunately I found someone who will buy my car, so I'll be able to use that money to move. But even that has to get complicated. I had a flat tire so I had a donut put on it, got a new tire and a neighbour offered to pop the new tire on over the weekend while I was in Canton. I get a phone call Friday; he says my back tire is now flat, so I have to get another new tire and replace both before I can sell the car to this girl. Can't nothing be easy right now?
In the midst of all this, I had $275 hacked out of my bank account (got it all back), and I had to take the GRE to get into grad school.
Low pressure. Ha.
I still haven't gotten the accept-or-deny letter from the university but it's supposed to come this week. With everything else that's happened, I'm not feeling very hopeful.
Amazingly, my stress levels aren't that high. I am severely stressed out, but the head-swimming, brain zaps, and panic attacks I was experiencing when things first started to go downhill after my thyroid problem aren't coming back. I'm not snapping at anyone, I'm not irritable, my mood is fine. I should be a basket case right now, many people in my situation would be in tears all the time, losing their minds. I'm not freaking out, I'm just doing what I have to do to work it out step by painful step. The initial hit that I was losing my home was quite shocking and overwhelming, but after a couple hours, I was making phone calls and starting the process of figuring out where to go.
I wanted to leave this shitty place anyway. The landlord doesn't take care of it, never has. One of the biggest problems is in the basement. Old pipes back up and leak. rather than replacing them, the landlord calls a plumber to clean them out. By then, there's raw sewage all over the basement and the smell seeps up through the furnace vents into where the rest of us have to live. Once every few months I come home to an apartment that literally smells like shit for a week at a time. I've been talking about moving since I started the path back to school. I've wanted out for years, but I could never afford to go anywhere else, unless I roommated, which wasn't a very appealing option, especially after so many years of living on my own. But as I've aged, I've found that I wouldn't mind living with other people, that it seems exciting, you have a set of built-in friends. Once I got sick, living alone became a lot less appealing, I'm now sometimes afraid to be by myself, fearing that if something happens to me, no one is around to know.
So maybe this is a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. Maybe it's just time to go. I've been looking at places on the other side of town, far away from everything I know. This is almost a new adventure, but with some bad timing and the most difficult of circumstances. Doesn't mean it won't work out, I had just hoped there was an easier way to do it rather than to be forced out in a months time from the home I've been in for the last thirteen years.
So, off we go! Wish me luck, cross your fingers. If I get accepted to school I'm sure I'll feel more positive about the future, but for now, it's bleak and miserable and I come June 7 I can't take a goddamn shower or cook in my own home. I won't end up on the street or in a homeless shelter, so there's the good news. Everything else is a crapshoot.

Rural vs. Urban: Nature Adds Fuel To The Fire

2011-05-15T10:59:00.000-07:00

The bottom line is, Mother Nature always wins. Whether you're a citified 9-to-5er or a country bumpkin, the earth will always find you, and what she says, goes.
The amount of snowfall and rain the U.S. received over the winter and early spring months is now causing fallout throughout the Midwest and South thanks to the giant Mississippi River. All that water has to drain somewhere and normally drifts South via the Mississippi and then is channeled out to the Gulf of Mexico where there is room for it to disperse.
This year, there is so much of this damn water and melted snow, the Mississippi is flooding. Water levels in the river are as high as anyone under the age of 80 has seen in their lifetimes.
The flooding has wiped out towns and cities up north in Tennessee and Missouri as states further south have a bit more warning notice and are taking preventative measures their neighbours to the north didn't have figured out before half their stuff was buried under 15 feet of water.
As the huge amounts of water drain south, decisions have been made by FEMA and the Army Corp. of Engineers that are responsible for both disaster management and the management of the river to bust open levees and spillways, flooding rural towns and farmland like Tunica Cutoff, Missouri (population 10,000) and Butte La Rose, Louisiana (population 11,000) in order to spare the damage from larger cities like New Orleans and Baton Rouge, Lousiana, cities we've all actually heard of with populations in the hundred thousands.
The people that live in these areas around the Mississippi River are warned when they initially purchase the property and then every year by letter from the federal government of the possibility that the levees and spillways could be opened in the event of the river rising too high to prevent damage to the larger cities, so it's not like they didn't know it could happen. Easements were created after the Mississippi flooded in 1927 to allow the government to use that land for emergency drainage, easements that are still in place and being enforced today. That's why the land is so cheap. People choose to live there based on the idea that it "most likely" won't happen. But knowing it could happen and it actually happening are two different things. In the case of the Morganza Spillway, the last time it was opened was in 1973, nearly 40 years ago. It's the difference between a threat and actually having your entire home wiped out.
Because the residents of these smaller towns were aware of the possibility, they seem to be taking it pretty well. People have had time to gather their things and evacuate, farmers know they will be compensated for lost crops, families expect to return to the flooded areas by fall after the water dries up.
It's the idea of hurting the few to spare the many, and I have to wonder if that doesn't add to a little resentment between the urban and rural populations. As most of us in the U.S. (and around the world) are aware, there is a big disparity between Americans of the urban mindset and those of the rural. Just look at our voting record, for starters.

In the last presidential election, it looks as though more of the U.S. voted for the Republican candidate than the Democratic candidate, but Obama won. The majority of blue votes came from areas that house large cities and larger populations; look on the map where Atlanta is, and Detroit, Cleveland, New York, LA, Phoenix, New Orleans, Miami, Seattle, Boston, Portland, Minneapolis, St. Louis, Denver. The more sparse, rural areas that voted Republican take up more area but house less people, thus showing how the Republicans lost, and how the political views of those in urban areas tend to differ from those in rural.
Stereotypes exist for a reason; because they are partially true. City folks don't want guns in their neighbourhoods, rural folks carry shotguns openly on the backs of their pickup trucks. City folks eat exotic salads and Indian food, rural folks eat barbecued ribs and deep-fried everything. Rural people have 10 kids, city people have abortions. Rural folks go to the three local bars they have in town on a Friday night, city folks go to the theatre and high-end restaurants. Rural people get through high school, city people get doctorate degrees. Rural folks like peace and quiet, city folks dig the noise and excitement.
Of course none of that is true of all urban- vs. rural-living people. You'll find deep-thinking, healthy-eating people in small-town Kimball, Nebraska (I know one), and you'll have uneducated, baby-factories in places like Boston and New York, especially among the poorer populations of the cities. But it's like living in two different Americas where one population despises the other and thinks they're all "wrong".
The gun control issue is a great one to show our disparity. Rural folks and city-goers mostly disagree on gun regulations because the rules are different depending on where you live. Everybody thinks the other side is "wrong", rather than just admitting that it's two separate worlds we live in that require different regulations.
So I have to wonder if there's resentment there among the folks whose homes and lives are being up-ended in order to spare the damage to the citified parts of the country that they have no connection to, and no desire to be a part of. Is it right to hurt the few to spare the many in this case? Are white farmers along the edge of the Mississippi pissed that their homes are purposely being flooded to save the largely black population of New Orleans? Does something like this only further add to the polarity between the two populations that reside in America?

Kill This Blog....

2011-04-23T03:02:00.000-07:00

So I've noticed my blog is getting spammed, like, TO DEATH. Debating just getting rid of the damn thing, wasting my time, really. I won't have time once school starts to be writing much anyway, and most of what I have to say has been reduced to 140-character-or-less Facebook posts and I'm actually able to get my point across. So if you want, look me up at Facebook. This bullshit can go. I'm sure this post will get spammed like mad too, bloody hell...

Driving Miss G...

2011-04-10T03:31:00.000-07:00

So I've been debating getting rid of my car.

The American dream, a necessity to life. A vehicle means freedom, convenience, status. Most people I know swear they couldn't live without one. The people I know who don't have one miss out on an awful lot. Life without a car around here is difficult. I've never been without one since I was 16. Even though I've managed to get by without driving for months at a time at various stages of my life, I have one, at least I can look downstairs on the curb and see it, I know it's there.

But I only drive it 3-4 times a month. And now since I got sick, I'm not driving at all. It's almost not worth hanging on to. Situations have changed.
I have always used the bus to get back and forth to work, and my own two feet get me everywhere else I need to go; the only time I ever used the car was to go visit friends and family who aren't accessible by bus, or to go out late at night to the clubs, concerts, etc. And to do grocery shopping and laundry.

I only do grocery shopping and laundry twice a month, if I plan ahead and pay gas money, I can probably get a ride for that. I don't go out much anymore, if I am, I'll be with friends who can ride me around, or shell out the money for a cab, considering how much money I'll be saving compared to current vehicle costs. Once I'm back in school, I'll be lucky to go out at all. If I line up 4-6 people as chauffeurs, we're looking at once a month for each person to drive me. I'm looking at $40-60 per month to pay people for their gas and time, versus the $100 per month I'm paying now in gas and insurance costs, not counting any repairs, which on a 16-year-old car, should start skyrocketing any time now. For the last six months I've been paying $50 a month insurance on a car I only drive two days.

But again, I've never been without a car, it's always there if I need it. Trips to the emergency room, days I don't feel like walking anywhere, it is convenient for that, and I'm sure there will be days I'm going to miss having a car. But is it worth it? Just for those few occasions?? The debate continues...

I'm also contemplating moving. This old house is falling apart, and neither the landlord nor the folks in charge of maintenance are willing to do anything about it. The sewer pipes leak into the basement every year so when you first turn on the furnace in cold weather, the smell of methane nearly knocks you out. My downstairs neighbour usually gives up quick and calls the city, only then does it get fixed. Toilets leak, drains clog, for nearly three-four months at a time. The landlord of the place across the street usually fixes that stuff for us because he knows we're two single women with no clue and is well aware of the work that doesn't get done around here. The rent is so cheap and I can't really afford to move unless I am with a roommate, so I'd be giving up my freedom and personal space, and be forced to keep things clean, whereas now, I can let things slide on days when I'm too busy or don't feel like it. And I was blessed with awesome neighbours, they're more like friends, really, would I be so lucky anywhere else? In a way, I'd be preparing myself for the big move out of Ohio once I finish school. Wherever I end up I'll probably have to start out with roommates and will be surrounded by strangers, maybe a little practice is good...

Notes, Updates and Random Bitchings

2011-03-27T15:57:00.000-07:00

Wow, my life is boring. But there's light at the end of this very long, very dark tunnel. I just haven't found it yet.

Picking up the pieces of what was left by Grampa: An email exchange between me and Uncle C. He told me that no one was listed in Grampa's will but the two sons, him and uncle K. They get everything.
In most ways, I'm not angry, I didn't expect that I would get much and I do know Grampa considered his sons "closer" relatives than his grandchildren. The words "blood is thicker than water" had come out of his mouth at one point many years ago. Uncle K has no children, so everything he gets is his and he'll be well-off for some time. Uncle C hasn't done too badly in his own life, so he's very well-set, and so is his wife, and their kids will be set when they're gone. But I was left nothing, and I've got no one. My parents are both dead, I have no husband, I'm the only one who is left to just flounder on my own. The rest of them will be just fine.
In a way it's no different than the rest of my life, what little financial support Grampa ever gave me was enough to help me get by and I am certainly grateful for it, but I really did think the circumstances of my life being so different and so much more difficult would have lent themselves to some consideration. Apparently not.
Uncle C says he is going to give me what Grampa had of my mother's possessions, but it will take a long time to clean out the house. He said he'd already found things like possessions of my mother's from when she was a child, her wedding dress, pictures of me and her, and that he is giving them to me because he feels I should have them. Well, that's big of you, considering what a hard time you gave me about the wedding pictures. But what am I supposed to do with it? The pictures obviously I'll want, but what about the things that were hers when she was a kid? I never knew about them, they were before i was around, and if they're kid things, I don't have any kids, what would I do with them? And her wedding dress? It won't fit me, it's nearly 40-years-old and probably yellowing by now, what do I do with that? He's gonna give me all of that shit just to get it out of what-is-now-his-house. He said he's let me know when they had everything packed up, so I'm just going to go over there, take what I want and leave the rest. He thinks being her brother trumps me as her daughter anyway, so fine, it's his and he can figure out what the fuck to do with it.

The head rushes and panic attacks have mostly subsided. I haven't had a panic attack in 11 days, my longest stretch. The head rushes are almost non-existent, and when they do happen they're very slight. Saw the doctor again, we're going to do our damnedest to control the anxiety without medication and I was given a list of things to do to bring about recovery. It will be another two months before we can determine if my thyroid meds are working, and I'm still not good enough to drive a car, but the progress is coming daily. I still have off days but they are less frequent and I'm learning how to accept them in the short-term.

***********

I am having the chicken vs. egg problem with my school. My financial aid applications have all been processed, but the school won't look at those records until I've been accepted into the Master's program. The problem is that it doesn't matter if I'm accepted, if the financial aid isn't there, I'm not going back to school, period. In order to get accepted, i have to turn in two letters of recommendation and pass the GRE exams, which costs $160 to take. I'm not going to shell out that much money to take this stupid test for nothing; I need to know first if I've been approved or not and no one seems to get that.

************

Me and F have been friends since high school, but have gone our different paths since then, as most high school mates do. He grew up to be a Republican NASCAR-lover who "hates niggers" and for a while, "hated fags" too. The only thing he had in common left with me by our mid-twenties was that we'd both been "orphaned", both parents dead young. When I was younger and still recovering from those losses, it was important to have someone in my life who understood that, but as I got older the things about F I didn't like made him less tolerable. And then when he came out to me as a cross-dresser about ten years ago and was willing to accept homosexuality (he's hetero, but cross-dressing made him more tolerant), I thought maybe our relationship had taken a turn for the better.
But it's not enough, and as time went on, the other things that always bothered me about F continued to bother me and hanging on to the friendship just seemed pointless. Frankly, I don't find him interesting or fun or intelligent, and though it sounds harsh, I have no use for him in my life anymore, and I've felt that way for some time now. As one of my other friends said once "Just because he's a freak doesn't mean you have to like him."
Because there's no hard feelings, I had decided a few years back to gradually end the friendship with him and his wife, just slowly stop talking and hanging out with them until I just wasn't around anymore, but damn me if they didn't persist. F and his wife are also friends with several of my other high-school pals I still hang out with, so we still see each other on those occasions of mutual invite. And because I don't necessarily dislike them and they have been good to me over the years, I never felt it was right or fair to just tell them it's over, and I'm always nice to them when we're together. I just can't get rid of them, that's all. When F called and said they'd be at Grampa's funeral, I tried to tell them not to come, that I would be just fine, but of course they insisted.
So it gets posted on Facebook that I'm doing a Girls Night Out last night, and it happened to be with some of the girls that F also knows. Part of what turns me off about F is that he tries to invite himself to things like that and wants to go as his cross-dressing alter ego, "Ramona". There are gay bars and places in Cleveland where "alternative-lifestyles" are accepted; when Ramona first came to be, it was me who introduced her to those places. Now with time, she's developed her own fellow-cross-dressing friends and they go to those places to hang out. But Ramona insists on pushing herself into occasions where she wouldn't be considered appropriate, like a group dinner at Olive Garden or an upscale dance club downtown. When F is Ramona he looks like a man in drag, there is no mistaking that is a man in women's clothes, speaking in a man's voice, the whole nine. I have other friends who are totally trans-gendered who don't have that problem; you would never guess J was once a man. But a cross-dresser is not a transgendered person, they're literally men in women's clothing, and that is not considered acceptable.
Now I'm all about going against society's rules and that every type of person deserves acceptance, but a situation like that would make everyone uncomfortable. Ramona will get stared at, some stranger might even have the balls to say something to her. Ramona's answer is always to just "bring it on", but the rest of the people Ramona's there with, including me, are not looking to get in the middle of a morality war, we just want to have dinner. And trying to force yourself onto society is no way to gain acceptance and respect. Of course Ramona takes this personally and then starts whining about not getting invited and persist, persist, persist. I've been listening to F whine to me on phone and email for years now, I even get the whiny voice attached, "Well, if it was girls' night out, how come Ramona wasn't invited? One of you could have called me. You girls just don't love me anymore." F thinks he's being cute but he's really just being annoying and that shit is getting old, and I'm getting tired of the persistence and the explaining. D, one of mine and F's mutual high school buddies, has had this conversation with F more times than I have, and it just doesn't sink in. Society does have rules and you have to be careful with how you choose to bend and break them. Everyone, even the biggest rule-breakers, figure out what they have to do to be accepted and make those compromises within themselves. Ramona doesn't want to, she just wants to get on Facebook chat and grill me about why she wasn't invited to such-and-such event.
I agreed to go to F's surprise birthday party in a few weeks and from there restart the gradual drop-off of the friendship that had been working out so well before F insisted on coming to Grampa's funeral. Again, because I don't dislike them and there are no hard feelings, I'm not willing to just outright drop them and let things end badly. So here we go again.

***********

The vitiligo is getting worse on my face, I now have what looks like a dark brown ring around my lips where the pigment has faded all around my mouth and then darkened at the nerve endings. I wear make up to cover it, but any time I have to wipe my face (after eating or drinking, the make up comes off and the brown ring is very visible, especially in bright light. All these years I've done a great job of hiding the vitiligo with long sleeves, pantyhose, fake suntan lotion, but it's virtually impossible to hide now that it's on my face and right square on my lips. It almost looks like I don;t clean my face. Now is the time to start talking to the doctors about depigmentation. Creams are available that will remove the remaining pigment from my skin; I'll essentially be an albino. Since I'm already very fair-skinned, it won't make too much of a difference, and the vitiligo already covers over half my body so I'm not losing much. But I'll be all one colour, and the days of having to hide myself will be over. Typical depigmenting takes 1-4 years, since I don't have much to lose, if I start now, by the time I'm done with school, I'll be almost, or maybe even completely white. Moving to a place with little sun means I won't look out of place among all the other very-white people. My next appointment with the doctor about my thyroid is in the beginning of June; I'll be asking for the referral to a dermatologist then.

************

I'm still no good at reading for pleasure, blasphemy for an English major. When I first got sick, I went to the library and took out Toni Morrison books because she's one of the only authors I can be convinced to read, and because it helped eat up time being out of work unable to get stoned and focus my mind away from panicking. I got through three of the books, but I took them back before I managed to open the fourth. I tried, but I just don't take interest in reading books, and it's a something of myself I'm just going to have to accept.

************

"I'm just not a caring person. I'm not the type who can spend my life taking care of people, I guess I'm just selfish in that way".
"I know, me too. Maybe it's from being an only child, but I don't have it either. People have been telling me I should go into health care because it's a field that's in demand, but I'm just not interested in taking care of people. I'm willing to help and I could do it in a short-term way, but no, not a care-giver. I get it."
"I gave T the option of backing out of this marriage when my back was all screwed up. I knew there was a possibility i could end up in a wheelchair the rest of my life and I know that's not what he signed up for. So I told him, 'If you want to call this relationship off, I totally understand. I wouldn't want you stuck taking care of me for the rest of my life and I wouldn't blame you at all if you wanted to back out. I know it's a lot to take on and it wouldn't be fair to you.'"
"What did he say?"
"He said 'of course, not', that he would take care of me if something bad happened, he wasn't backing out of the relationship."
"Well that's good to know."
"But I had be honest with him, so I told him that if roles were reversed that I probably would have backed out. That I couldn't just spend the rest of my life caring for him. He has to know that I'm just not good like that, so I was up front about it. I told him I just couldn't do it."
"Well, you know, because of your age difference, that the odds are a bit higher that some day you would end up having to take care of him. What did he say?"
"He said 'Well, I guess I hope I never need you to take care of me, then.'"

I don't feel sorry for him if something does happen to him health-wise and she leaves him for it, she told him up front and apparently he's so desperate to be loved by someone he's willing to accept that risk. I understand where she's coming from, our friendship has worked out so well because we're both uncaring and selfish.
But if I'm in love with someone, truly in love, I would be wiling to try 110% to do everything I could to take care of him and if it just wasn't enough and I had to go, then I would go. But the point is I would give it my all first, and I would try with every ounce of willpower I have to stick with the relationship and take care of him the best I could before I succumb to the selfishness. That's when I knew for sure that she doesn't love him. This truly is a marriage of convenience. He's desperate for someone to love and she needs someone who will give her money and a free pass into the UK. Have fun, kids!!

Ending An Era: Part VIII - The School

2011-03-13T19:52:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows I've been floundering for some time about what to do with myself, and how to change my life so I'm not so miserable and poor anymore. They've heard teaching ESL, becoming a translator, getting a Master's Degree in English.

Tuesday, in the midst of all this panicking, I managed to make it to an appointment I'd scheduled at Cleveland State University to review a Master's program they call MAGI, a Master of Arts in Global Interactions. It features economics (ugh), international business, communications, and political science courses, and a study broad program that will open the doors for me to get a well-paying job in international companies and move permanently to the UK. The application and recommendation letters have been completed, all that's left is the financial aid (people are guaranteeing me that won't be a problem) and the GRE, a test I only have to get half-right, a 50%. I've never scored as low as 50% on anything.

Because I've essentially lost my mind I've decided to hold off on the testing and starting the pre-requisites until June, but within two years I'll have studied in the UK, gotten the degree and be applying for jobs making a minimum of double the salary I bring in now.

It sucks that I had to go through all this to get here; I can't even tell you how horrific the feeling of knowing you are going to die actually is until you've been there yourself, but it does change your life.

So will my Master's Degree.

The post about the panic attacks was short because I had to get it out without bringing back the symptoms, I didn't really do the story itself any justice. The details, the hours that turned into days of being so crippled I couldn't take showers or sleep without a light on, couldn't watch a TV show, the days I finally broke down and prayed to God to help me. The days I've watched coverage of the Japan earthquake and thought of Hatsuko, and how selfish of me to worry of my own death when Mother Nature had just wiped out thousands of people who deserved to live probably more than I do.

I get to go to school. And earn a Master's Degree in Global Interactions. And complete a study-abroad program in the UK like Hatsuko did coming here to the U.S. And earn $50,000 in a year living in a place where everyone is more like me, but different. And doing a job meant for smart people; the folks you see on CNN discussing political issues and public policy, the people they call "senior fellow" and work for whatever-Institute. I won't be them, but I'll be close. I'll have money to bring my friends and what's left of my family to me for visits. I might even find a man. I'll have a nice little flat where I won't have to do any yard work, and when the window breaks I'll just call the landlord to replace it. I might get a dog. I might even break down and eventually get a car. I'll get season tickets to the city's soccer team and see U2 in their stadium. I'll buy fresh, non-processed fish and vegetables and milk at the market, just like I do here at the West Side Market. I'll know more than one language. I'll be out of the sunshine and have all the cloudy days I can stand. I'll have good teeth and pretty grey hair and fabulous clothes I didn't have to have thrift-store luck to buy.

I'll be the person my Gramma, my Grampa, my Ma and my Dad wanted me to be....

That is the end of this story. The running joke is that I've learned more about life from listening to Bob Seger records than I ever learned from that family I thought was mine. So as Bob would say after hearing my story, "There I go, turn the page..."

Ending An Era: Part VII - The Panic

2011-03-13T19:15:00.000-07:00

And then I snapped.

I lost my mind. I tried to die, too.

A month had passed, my head swirling with the loss of Grampa, the uncertainty of how to get out of Cleveland, the fear I may never get out, the anger at that family, the shitty changes to my job, the anger at J for being a shitty friend in the days that followed Grampa's death and for marrying T just to get out of the country.

I've always used drugs because I wanted to, never because I felt I had to. That changed after Grampa died, I spent the next few weeks smoking myself stupid on weed, barely leaving the house other than to go to work, quieting any emotions I'd had over Grampa, telling myself I was just being weak.

I had trouble sleeping last Sunday, so I thought I'd hit the bowl a few times. And then my head started to rush, I saw flashes of light, my body started to get warm and suddenly I was convinced that I was going to die. I couldn't go to sleep because I was going to die in it.
A panic attack. I'd had one once before, many, many years ago, driving in a snowstorm I was convinced would kill me.
I did everything i could to calm down and it worked enough to get a couple hours sleep in. I woke up a few hours later and went to work.
I was doing data entry and the bouncing in my eyes brought back the head rushes and flashes of light. Suddenly I felt my temperature rise again and I felt like I was going to die at my desk, and these poor co-workers of mine would have to deal with it. I threw my coat on, went downstairs and smoked a cigarette, tried to calm down. I came back upstairs and felt only worse, so I took my coat off and went back downstairs and started walking around the parking lot. I told the parking attendant that I was feeling ill and going to walk around, just so he didn't think i was nuts out there with no coat on walking around. I finally did go back upstairs and declare to a couple of co-workers I'm close to that I was in a full-blown panic attack. They took me to the ER. I was given a CT scan, an EKG, and I told them I had thyroid disease, so they tested, that, and it was a 13, three times the levels of a normal thyroid. I spent the whole day in tears, convinced that years of screwing around with marijuana and other occasional harder drugs had screwed up my brain and if I didn't die right then, I had permanently damaged myself so badly that I'd never recover. I was relieved for the night to find out that I had not permanently damaged myself, and swore up and down I'd never do drugs again. The docs were more concerned about my thyroid than anything else and believed that the thyroid was the actual cause of the panic attacks. I tried to explain to them about the drugs but they kept going back to the thyroid.
I went to my regular doctor the next day and he raised my thyroid prescription but nothing for the panic attacks and said the symptoms of the marijuana would dissipate with time. I battled the fear almost constantly for four days, even made it to work all day Thursday. The panic came back Thursday night, and in a blizzard snowstorm I walked a mile and a half to the hospital to surrender to the panic. They gave me a prescription for Ativan and a nurse who couldn't have been any better at he job. She talked to me pot, that no one's ever died from it, no one's ever OD'd on it, how THC works and that I will feel like shit until the THC is out of my body. She explained that taking an Ativan would not kill me either. She talked me down and within a couple hours, I was able to face the walk home in the bitter, blinding snow and felt good about it.

Six days later: the flashing is gone, the head rushes are only occasional. Walking helps, so I go for walks whenever I feel the symptoms coming, and each day they get less and less. I haven't needed the Ativan yet. I am still somewhat afraid of falling asleep alone and taking a shower with no one in the house because I'm afraid I'll die there. But i haven't yet. And I haven't touched marijuana since. J was over here the other night smoking in front of me and I'm not even remotely urged to or interested. The deep breathing exercises are now working. I am still a little shaky at times but considering how I was that first day, Monday, I have to say this is getting easier, but very very gradually. Writing this post has made some of the symptoms come back so I'm hurrying to get this done as quickly as possible and will go for a walk. I am not afraid, I am not afraid, I am not afraid...

But I am afraid of the drugs enough that I will not be doing them again. I have been in situations that are far more realistically frightening than this and yet never been this afraid in my life. Nothing like a little panic to make shit change for you. I told the nurse Thursday night that when all this is over, I will be one hell of a wine-drinker. I never want to feel this again, but if this is what I had to feel to give up smoking weed, let's keep me that afraid and I swear I'll never touch it again.

And my thyroid, that's a whole different matter. The raise in prescription will help I'm sure, but docs say it will take months to recover and start to feel normal again and he levels I had at the ER on Monday were dangerous.

Monday was Grampa's birthday.

Ending An Era: Part VI - The Aftermath

2011-03-13T18:31:00.000-07:00

I continued for the next few days to get back to people's condolences. I took an extra day off work to get my head screwed back on, catch up on sleep and return to normal eating habits, and to stew over the awful cold-shoulder I'd gotten from that family I thought was mine, and to reflect on the family that appeared from out the woodwork. Grampa was in the ground and now there was nothing left. Before they closed the casket, they allowed just us, his family, to come up to the casket one last time. C and M and their four kids and K had taken up most of the space, I couldn't even see Grampa with the room they'd left for me. C had misspelled my name in the obituary on purpose because he didn't approve the of the "G" in it. "That's not the name your mother gave you", even though at the same time I'd changed the spelling to a G I'd also changed my last name to my mother's last name, the same one he had.

The squabble over the pictures was quite enlightening. It made me realize that C did what he did because he has no respect for me, and that I don't deserve to be stuck in a family that thinks so low of me. Uncle K was pretty much gone this whole time; his dad had died on his birthday and because they were so close it was clear K was torn up, so he gets a bit of a pass for his attitude toward me, though throughout the years he has been just as distant as the others. He doesn't disrespect me, he just acts like I don't exist.

So I fumed, and fumed, and fumed. C called a few days later and told me to come by and pick up the pictures from "your mother's wedding." Again, no acknowledgment that I had two parents. I texted him I'd be there the next day, and prepared myself a speech to let his ass have it.
I get to the house and I see K's truck and all the kids inside, and since I wasn't going to call C and K out in front of the children, I chose to just go inside and get the pictures and leave. They were eating pizza. C offered me a piece.
"No, I'm meeting friends for dinner. Just give me the pictures. My pictures."
Before I rip them out of your hands and beat you in the head with the fucking book...
He repeated me, "Just give me the pictures...okay, then." And he handed them to me.
And then I walked out.

I got an email from him a week later that him and K were not planning to sell the house, that he had a copy of the will and that if I had any questions or anything on my mind to please say so.
I emailed him back thanking him for the update. I explained to him that I did have things on my mind but that they concerned primarily me, him and K and that discussing those concerns so soon after Grampa's death wasn't good and in the future a conversation would be had.
I haven't heard from him since.

My initial feeling was that I was going to sit my uncles down and make them explain to me what they're problem with me all these years has been, to call them out on their bullshit with not acknowledging my dad and to make them decide if I was still a part of this family or not.
But I already know, I'm not a part of this family, and with time, my anger at them both has dissipated. I'm not as much angry anymore as I am finished. C will never have the opportunity to make up for the disrespect he showed me during Grampa's funeral; you only bury someone once. That damage is done and is permanent. Because I've never had a real relationship with them, there's no relationship to save/fix. They don't need to decide whether I'm a part of their family or not, they decided that years ago, it's just a formality now. I don't want to know what their problem with me all these years has been because I don't care what their problem is. And because I'm leaving Ohio, they won't have to deal with me anyway. We could still play fake-family, and I can be a once-a-year phone call they ignore, a catch-up email at Christmas they don't have to read. No harm, right?

Ending An Era: Part V - The Funeral

2011-03-13T16:29:00.000-07:00

I hadn't listened to music since I'd gotten the news, and I don't know why, I know how important music is to me.
So when I got in the car to go to the funeral, I turned up the radio and thought what should be played will.

I'd taken on Bruce Springsteen "Born To Run" as the story of my life nearly two years ago when I first decided I was ready to leave Cleveland. I cried when I heard it in the car. I knew that I'd lost the last thing keeping me in this city in Grampa, and it was time to start the leaving process.

This song came out about four years ago; Christina had written it for her dad after he died, and I could never listen to it all the way through because it made me think of losing my dad and the realization that I would eventually lose Grampa. I listened and drove and cried and heard it all for the first time.

The Eagles were one of Dad's favourite bands, and when I hear them I think of him and the beautiful American South that with him, I could accept. I found the serenity I needed to get the rest of the way to the funeral home without an accident.

I arrived early so I could see Grampa and be alone with the family I thought was mine. I walked in, C barely said hi, M did say hi, but otherwise no one spoke. Lost in our own thoughts, or just had nothing to say to me. I allowed myself to cry but kept it to a minimum, it's not like I really felt comfortable having emotions in front of this family.
Others started to arrive, co-workers, friends, and the extended family, the K's. I felt relieved by my friends and co-workers. By the time both my supervisors showed, I was feeling as relaxed as is possible in this type of situation.

The K's are technically Gramma's family, Grampa's wife. She was a K and her brother was my Great-Uncle Art, the patriarch/father/grandfather of the K's that remain. I grew up visiting them like any other family does, and, like any other family does, as we grow up, go to college, get jobs, acquire families, we dont see them as much. After enough years of this, you drift apart from them. I still spoke to Uncle Art, called him a few times a year; he was definitely my favourite of the K's, mostly because he had opinions and spoke his mind, and was funny as hell. Grampa used to bitch about Uncle Art's "big mouth"; I would just laugh and think that must be where I inherited my colourful language abilities from.
When my dad died, not one of that family, Grampa or my uncles, even called to say they were sorry to hear about my dad. They never acknowledged that I had a relationship with my dad when he was alive, and to my knowledge none of them had any problem with my dad, so I never really understood why that was the case and never really thought much of it. I did talk to my aunt, M, the whole time I was dealing with Dad's illness and death and she was as supportive as she could be and I was entirely grateful, but the others, not a single bloody word.
Uncle Art had hated my dad, and hated him enough that my dad had told me after I met him about how much Uncle Art hated him. Art and his sister, my grandmother, both hated my dad because he just wasn't good enough for my mother. But after Dad died and I came home, Uncle Art gave me all the pictures he had of my dad, a man he hated, not because he felt guilty but because that was my father and he respected the relationship I had with him, something my closer blood-relatives didn't have the balls or the respect for me to do.
When Uncle Art died, I felt like I'd lost my only connection to the K's. They had all grown up, had kids of their own, they were people I didn't know anymore. And because I had felt the strain between myself and my immediate family and never understood what their problem with me was, I felt like the K's were doing the same, that they couldn't relate to me because I was so different and had decided I was useless. And I felt i couldn't relate to them.
But here we were at my own Grampa's funeral and slowly I started to notice that I could talk to them, and amazingly enough, they were talking to me back. For so many years I felt like they were strangers, but now, they were talking to me not only like I was a person, but someone they knew, someone they could relate to, and then I realized the family I thought I didn't have was coming out of the woodwork in the form of the family I didn't expect.

No one mentioned the Super Bowl. I had thought we would all watch it together. Uncle K is also a Packers fan, so I figured he'd want to watch, but considering how the last few days had gone, I wasn't even sure they would bother, but I forced the issue. I went back to C and M's house with every intention of watching the game. they did finally turn it on, and I may have well just watched it by myself, I sat in the chair turned away from them, trying to stay as absorbed in the game as I could. All the excitement I'd had all season watching my Packers get to this game had gone out the window, watching the Super Bowl seemed much more a formality. C sat on the couch the whole game, rooting for the goddamn Steelers. He's a Browns fan, so what he was doing was pretty much blasphemy, and he kept saying over and over "I don't know why I'm rooting for the Steelers." "I don't know why I'm rooting for the Steelers. I want them to make a game of it though." "I don't know why I'm rooting for the Steelers." You're rooting for the Steelers because I'm sitting here and you're just trying to upset me because deep down you can't stand me.

The next day was the cemetery proceedings. It was a beautiful Masonic ceremony, I rode in the limo mostly silent while the other members of the family made small talk and my youngest cousin, E, made us laugh some. The last time I'd made this trip in the limo was to bury my mother nineteen years earlier, on a November day just as cold and bleak as this February one. My very ill sister K made it out to the cemetery. The funeral director gave Grampa's military flag to aunt M and I smiled as wide as my mouth could go; she did a lot to take care of Grampa and she deserved that flag.

I rode back with K so I could smoke cigarettes and talked to her about how I was feeling. We drove back to C and M's for the after-funeral get-together, and lucky for me the K's were already there when we arrived. K was worried about leaving me alone in C and M's house with them; she was aware of all the tension going on, but after i introduced her to the K's she said she felt well enough leaving me with them that she soon left.
The K's had brought photo books, and for the first time since I was a teenager, I remembered being one. I was amazed and almost frightened at how much of my early life I'd forgotten. I'm not the type of person that ever reflects on or longs for the past; the "good ol' days" should keep on happening. My childhood wasn't all bad, but even the good things I'd forgotten about, maybe because no one in my life now was there then to remind me.
C had apparently been to Grampa's house looking for pictures, and at the get-together, pulled out the photos of my mother and dad's wedding. He'd used some in the collage he made for Grampa, so I knew he had taken the book from Grampa. We were in the living room and I said, "So, can I take those pictures?"
And C said, "No, you can't."
I was stunned, so stunned that he'd actually said no. And his reason shook me to the very core of my being.
"Well, these photos were in my father's possession and that's my sister, and you're her daughter, so who trumps who?"
You monster. You fucking son of a bitch. You're a piece of shit and I'm sorry it's Grampa we just buried and not you....
Because I don't have the ability to be that disrespectful to people, I chose to joke that him and I could go out back and beat the crap out of each other and whoever wins gets the pictures.
That's the marriage of my mother and my father, both of my dead parents, and because you never acknowledged that I had a relationship with my father, of course you wouldn't think of that. That's the marriage I was born out of, you ignorant motherfucker, I trump you about five times over.
I had to let it go just for a while, but I told M what he'd done and she said she'd get the book back for me, and then asked me if there was anything else I wanted out of the house.
"I see myself getting pushed out of this family, so i have to say no, if I get away with an ashtray I'll be happy."

Again, as they'd done the day before, the K's talked to me like a real person, not a stranger, but someone that was family. They told me that yes, I was a teenager at one time. They talked to me about ho I was, who my mother was, who Grampa was, who they were. And I felt like I was surrounded by family. People who knew I existed and actually thought it was a good thing. I remembered Hatsuko, the Japanese foreign exchange student who lived with them and came swimming with us in Grampa's pool when I was a kid. I remembered having poofy 80's hair, and the house in Parma that the K's grew up in. It was like I had blocked all these memories, but it's not like they were bad memories, so I don't understand why I didn't remember them.
But they came flooding back like a head rush, and beside me was the family who remembered them too....

**FYI that my sisters K and K are half-sisters through my dad and therefore no relation to Grampa.

Ending An Era: Part IV -The Third Day

2011-03-13T16:26:00.000-07:00

I called and left a message with Aunt M, just to check on her and make sure she was doing okay.

I got no response.

I called Uncle K and left a message, just to check on him and make sure he was doing okay.

I got no response.

I sat here alone, just me and my thoughts.

Ending An Era: Part III: The Second Day

2011-03-13T14:34:00.000-07:00

I had backed off most of my friends. The ones I talked to I had told it wasn't necessary for them to be at the funeral or follow-up with me right now. Having been though this too many times already, I knew that the people I needed to be with right now were my family, that was how we would all recover.
48 hours after the first call from C comes the second call, with the details of the funeral arrangements. By that time, though, my sister K had already called me and told me she'd found the obituary online and had sent me the link. Of course, C had spelled my name with a "J", just as I expected he would. I'd already seen the obituary online, but I played stupid when C called, like I didn't know. He told me the arrangements were online and seemed almost surprised by his tone that I hadn't seen them yet. He told me that "I scheduled the funeral for Super Bowl Sunday." I didn't say anything. and then he repeated it, like he was waiting for a Packers fan's reaction. I just said "Ok", I didn't know what he expected to hear. What I expected at that point was to be told to get my shit packed and come on over, but he didn't say it, so I asked him, "Can I come over?" he said he'd have to get back to me.

The only members left of this family are me, my two uncles, my uncle C's wife M and their four kids. I was close to Grampa and saw him regularly, but haven't had much of a relationship with the others. My aunt M would be the one person I was close too out of the rest of them.
Because my mother died before I was an adult, I have no reference to her relationship with her brothers, but I know from what I've been told that her and C were not close, and K was her baby brother and a fellow diabetic, so they were a bit closer. After her death, I established the relationship with Grampa but never grew close to the others. For one, C and M's kids were kids, and I don't like kids, and the adults never really reached out to me. My aunt was there when I needed her and never denied me, but I honestly can't say we were very close, though the critical moments I needed someone she was there, and I'm to this day grateful.
We don't hate each other, we're just not close. I think it's hard for us to relate to one another sometimes (I'm such a black sheep), and there are certainly things about them I dislike, the close-mindedness, the closed-off emotions. They fit the bill of what the liberals call "stereotypical Republican", judgmental, racist, only concerned with what affects them directly. My aunt M, C's wife, is the most level-headed, caring one of the bunch. I guess the best way to describe it is that I love them but don't really like them much.
And I felt that was reciprocal, they love me because I'm family, they just don't like me because I'm not like them. For so many years it was okay, we played the game, got together on holidays when we had to, spoke when we had to, went through the motions. I thought that Grampa's death would bring us together, not because death changes people, but because that's what families do, especially when there's no hate. I was angry at C for being immature and misspelling my name on purpose, but wasn't even planning on bringing it up, it wasn't that big of a deal and I knew he was gonna do it anyway.

C got back to me and said no, I couldn't stay with them, there'd be too many people fighting for the bathroom, etc. He said to show up at the funeral home Sunday a little early so I could see Grampa before others started to show up. And then he asked if I was worried about the car, that if the car wouldn't make it to get a cab and he'd pay for it. How gracious of him. Show up Sunday, just like anybody else. He really didn't seem to get that I was sitting here alone trying to deal while he was surrounded by his family, the family I thought I was supposed to be surrounded by.
I called Elizabeth and A, I was confused and hurt. They both assured me that my reaction was normal and that yes, most families do come together at times like these and that their reaction was definitely not normal. I was still convinced they didn't hate me, so why was I being shoved out?

I guess I did need my friends, the family I thought I was gonna be with was busy doing their own thing and I was clear on it that I was not a part of it.

Ending An Era: Part II - The First Day

2011-03-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

I was convinced I shouldn't go to work the next day. It was 5 a.m. and I was still awake, having kept K and Elizabeth on the phone for hours and spending the time alone with every thought a human can have on the subject of losing a loved one racing through my brain in a matter of hours, and because I'd already buried both my parents, I was thinking through experience:

I-cant-imagine-my-life-without-him-what-do-I-do-now-how-will-I-manage-I-guess-this-is-the-real-signal-that-its-time-for-me-to-leave-ohio-since-I-would-have-felt-guilty-leaving-him-I-never-paid-him-back-for-all-he-did-for-me-what-a-complete-life-he-had-hes-with-his-wife-and-daughter-now-and-what-if-there-is-no-heaven-or-no-afterlife-he-went-on-his-terms-oh-fuck-the-Super-Bowl-I-forgot-about-the-Super-Bowl-will-I-even-see-it-will-I-even-care-he-died-on-Uncle-Ks-birthday-K-may-never-enjoy-his-birthday-again-they-were-close-he-died-eight-days-before-my-birthday-the-funeral-will-probably-be-at-Busch-all-our-families-funerals-have-been-there-I-bet-that-sonofabitch-Uncle-C-misspells-my-name-in-the-obituary-it-would-be-just-like-him-to-do-that-he-never-approved-of-the-G-in-my-name-anyway...

I finally did sleep. C had said he'd call me about the funeral arrangements. I got on the computer and waited. My supervisors had responded to my email, of course they wanted the funeral info as soon as I got it. I told them from now on to just contact me by phone since I expected I'd hear from C and probably end up out in Parma for the rest of the week and have limited computer access.

I saw on Facebook that my cousin P (from the extended family, the K's) had posted a status update about her "Uncle Chuck" passing away, so I posted my own status update. I wanted to wait until they'd gotten the news from C, didn't want them to find out from me on a computer screen, so when I saw she'd posted I felt safe posting it myself. I emailed my other sister K, my dad's friend F, the folks I don't have on Facebook. The condolences started pouring in, by phone, by email, by Facebook comment. People rarely know what to say when something like this happens, very little can be said to comfort the grieving, but the condolences are always appreciated and I responded to them in the stoic fashion most grieving people do, "thank you for your thoughts and prayers." Before I knew it, it had been a full 24 hours and I hadn't heard from C yet about what the arrangements were. I was starting to get a little unnerved, I'd been alone all day, though not really lonely because the outpouring of support of others had been consistent. But I had expected to hear at least something from them.
M,uncle C's wife, had told me that she was going to work that day and the kids were going to school as normal, not much else they could do. I was amazed, I was not even close to capable of being able to work through all these thoughts and emotions, what were they thinking? I had expected to be packing a bag by now, that I would be staying at C and M's house with them and the kids, but C didn't call.
So I kept up with the phone calls/emails/Facebooking throughout the night, responding to people, talking through things. Looking back on it, I'm more grateful for those people than I realized even then, I had no idea how important other people were about to become....

Ending An Era: Part I - Grampa

2011-02-19T02:18:00.000-08:00

I've been gone for a long time now. Really, really gone...

Grampa died on Feb. 2. I got a call that night from my cousin L to call Uncle C. I don't speak to them often; the calls from them usually come close to the four holidays a year that I see them, just to tell me what time to be there for dinner. So when they do call and it's not a holiday, I get worried. It must be something with Grampa.
I called Chris back and I told him that those guys freak me out when they call out of the blue like that and he told me I should be freaked out, that Grampa had died today. My other uncle, K, had called Grampa several times that afternoon trying to reach him and go no answer. Uncle C and his family live just a few minutes away, it's an understanding that when we can't reach Grampa one of them goes over and checks on him.
So they sent L, my cousin, C's son, Grampa's youngest grandson, and he found him on the floor in the dining room. He had just recently passed. L called his mother, my Aunt M, uncle C's wife and she came over, and then called 911. Aunt M decided not to do CPR, if she had brought him back it would have led to another decision about pulling the plug, the brain damage would have been too extensive.
So he had died. On his terms. Grampa was not an emotional guy, a hardened WWII vet who believed in tough love and hard work. Life wasn't meant to be easy, those who struggled and fought had better character and if you weren't strong enough to take it, that's too bad. He worried about getting too old and being a burden to us, not able to think or care for himself. He would not have wanted to linger in so me hospital with all of us standing around boo-hooing about how we loved him in his last days, it would have made him uncomfortable. He would not have wanted us to save him. He was ready. One of the last times I'd seen Grampa, C was over and bitching at him about not eating because that would "make you die". Grampa didn't respond. I knew then that the lack of an answer meant he was ready, but because C was still in the room I chose to not ask Grampa if he was ready, but deep down I knew, I just didn't realize how close.
All those things he worried about were not to be. He died at the home he built for himself and his family in 1954. There were no nursing homes or feeding tubes, no "nurses wipin' my ass for me cuz I can't do it myself." His mental capacities were not stellar, but he was still capable of living in that house safely, paying his own bills and grocery lists, making his own decisions. He never quit smoking, they found three cigarette butts in his ashtray, and that was his choice, his pleasure, his something-to-do to ease the boredom of getting old and less able. He died most likely instantly, without pain, little confusion or fear. And because he was ready I believe he wasn't afraid.

Grampa was an only-child, selfish, unemotional and detached and he raised us all to be like him. After my mom died when I was 17, he wouldn't take me in even though I had no one else. He helped me financially and taught me things, but he also let me go into a halfway house and get food stamps. At first I was angry that he wouldn't take me in, and I still blame him for the way the rest of that family is unemotional and detached, just like him. But as time passed, I realized that he'd made the right decision by letting me fight through life on my own and that being unemotional and detached is something we as people have the right and the responsibility to overcome on our own. And nobody's perfect; Grampa was a spectacular human being, and even spectacular human beings aren't perfect. The good qualities we inherited from him far overshadow the bad qualities we got stuck with. Plus, losing Gramma, his wife, in 1989, and my mother, his daughter, in 1992, destroyed us as humans far more than anything he could have done. I'm sure it destroyed him too.

The first night was hard, obviously. I spoke to Elizabeth and my sister K, worked my way through the initial shock and devastation very well because of them. We rationalized the loss, talked about how death is inevitable and we should all be as lucky as him to have it happen under those circumstances. We talked about life-altering changes, what this means to me and the recent decisions I'd made to leave Ohio and start my own life over, how this was the signal it was time. We talked about what I could/should do to begin moving forward. We talked about everything Grampa had meant to me as an otherwise-orphaned child.
I emailed my supervisors so they knew I would not be in to work for a few days. I knew they would want the funeral info; they'd heard Grampa-stories out of me before, the funny and not-so-funny ones, knew he was my last living parent, they would take this very seriously.
And I cried. I stopped myself when it felt like the emotions were getting too strong. Even though I was alone that night I felt it necessary to keep my head together, to not be weak, to not be someone he wouldn't want me to be. And I made a commitment to myself to begin moving forward with my life immediately, as he would have wanted.

Easy Like Sunday Morning....

2011-01-27T13:51:00.000-08:00

Many thanks to BeckEye for reminding me I hadn't posted anything about it yet, though I'm sure she could do without. :)

But anyway,

THE GREEN BAY PACKERS ARE GOING TO THE SUPER BOWL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

MY Green Bay Packers are going to the Super Bowl.

thanks to this guy....

and this guy...

I'll take my Ring in a size 9 please...

Open Blog Thread for Translating/Interpreting Professionals

2011-01-24T16:24:00.000-08:00

Please leave a comment introducing yourself if you are a professional translator or interpreter, or someone who knows one. I am looking to speak to someone who can provide me with career information related mostly to education, salary, and working overseas. Thank you.

Get A Load Of This!!! A Facebook War Gets Ugly...

2011-01-15T07:05:00.000-08:00

I have some former classmates on my Facebook. One of them, J, writes some pretty inflammatory comments and because I'm an inflammatory gal, I post my $.02 on the subject. I'm assuming neither H nor A knows who they were sparring with, the name I grew up with that they knew me as, hasn't existed for nearly 20 years, so unless someone who knows has told them, they shouldn't know who I really am. And yes, I do remember both girls. They weren't bullies or friends to me, part of what we called the "burnout" crowd.

Anyone who knows me knows two things: Though I insist my life is miserable, I'm extremely grateful to have gotten the hell out of Parma, Ohio and away from those back-woods people, and even more grateful that I never had children.

J's status update said: In my mid thirties I am in a very interesting and rare field of view...I get to watch as the daughters of some of the girls I went to school with turn out to be as free spirited as their mothers were. To help answer the age old scientific question...Is "slut" an inherited x linked trait;)???

My comment: "they have teenage daughters? That by itself is funny."

H: OK!! G what thats supposed to mean? I have a 20year old son!

Me: "I guess it depends on how old you are and what your school culture was like ?? I chose a different path, a child-free one. I'm grateful for all the life-luxuries it's afforded me. Some former classmates/friends, girls with way more potential than myself, became parents, but never experienced or accomplished much else, and are now facing the real possibility of being made a grandparent at 36. J's comment reminds me how grateful I am to be missing out on all that. The only time I hear about "sluts" is when the younger girls call each other that in a nightclub bathroom. :) "

H: Wow, For one I've never been called a SLUT! and J & I was in the same grade and I cant pic my life w/out my boys, and I would love nothing more than to be a G.M. Some of us were happy just being a mom. my children never stoped me from doing what I wantted Yes, sometimes it was hard but, it has been worth it. I feel sorry for those who think a chilless life is a good one. because you are truly missing out on what life is about, and when your left by yourself in a nurseing home, and on your death bed you will die & it will be over, me I will live forever in the memories of my Grandchildren and theirs. plus I will be the best looking Grandma out there. and I will be able to keep up w/ my Grandkids and still be alive to see my great grandkids!!So, for any teen Moms out there, dont ever feel that you cheated yourself out of life by having a child. Im 37 I have a 20year old son and a 5year old son I attend college and keep a job. and still have time to have snow ball fights w/ my boys who are greatfull for me, because they have time to taste life. Js comment made me think of the apple dont fall to far from the tree!!
Childless life, sorry moven faster than puter!!

Me: "Now a "chill-less" life would be very bad for anyone, lol. :) I see your point, there are some wonderful benefits to having children and there are ways to be a parent without losing your identity in it. Just not for me. I keep a wide circle of friends and the few relatives I have I'm close with, so I don't feel like I'll ever be "alone". I was the only-child, I've always relied on friends and it's gotten me excellent results so far. If I can brave settling down and can manage to outlive a husband, I might have that going for me in my old days. But I will live in the memories of the people who's lives I affected through my career, my experiences with them, the places we've gone, all the cool shit we've ever done, so I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything either. Besides, I'm the type of person that can't even keep a houseplant alive for 2 weeks, I don't know that I should be having children. :)"

A: I have to step in here, G, how old were your parents when you were born, and did that turn out to be a tragedy? Your knocking people on facebook that have childen at a young age, God decided they could handle it, not for you to judge. There's nothing tragic or shameful about having a child, sounds like your bitter because someone made H a mother and your still hanging out in nightclubs around young girls who call each other sluts. I can give you a good list of places to go in the Cleveland area that offer a much more pleasant crowd, just costs a few dollars extra. H, make a couple snowballs in my name with your boys:)
Oh and I'm not saying there's something wrong with not having children, but if I'm in my mid-thirties with no other life to look after but my own, I would be sipping tea in London, checking my iphone for updates on stocks, not getting on facebook with clearly alot of time to spare, let's define lifes luxuries.

Me: "Technically I'm not knocking people who had kids at a young age, I'm knocking the idea of parenting altogether. It's not a "knock" or a judgment, more like an opposing viewpoint, that kids aren't the plan for everybody. I hope H didn't take my opinion as a judgment against her, I can easily respect those I disagree with. Getting what you want out of your life is what counts. Your judgment of me was quite, um...interesting. I've had to give up on some pretty good relationships because guys were certain they wanted kids, it hasn't been easy. If I'm bitter about anything, it's my doc saying I must quit smoking to keep my birth control. I've already sipped tea in London (don't eat at the McDonald's there, very bad), marched on Washington, saw U2 from the front row, watch the Browns lose week-in-week-out with the best friends&boyfriends a girl could have. I'm not wealthy, but I'm not hurting, either. I think we can all agree that snowball fights are great, though...And seriously, not sarcastically, if you want to make suggestions of places to go in Cleveland please feel free to do so, I'm open to that."

H: "Where did you march, I also march on them steps w/ a 3year old on my hip now my 20year old stands up for what he belives in and once in a while something will come my way and mother and son march. Do you all remember your 20s? ( lighten up J. This is what women do, were not spaten were expressing our feelings:)Ha-Ha! hay J you have a PHD! Remember Psy class?) We love you J, only you could bring out the best/worst in us:) Ya and Im open to plases to go in Cleveland!"

A: Oh please hahaha, nice try G. Is there some great feat in seeing U2 front row? I'm not getting into some contest with you, no need to at all but the fact that you even spent two mins of your life thinking of a U2 and a Browns comment is really entertaining. I can top that all day long but don't see any point in it. Good luck in your life, and trust me, I don't even attempt McDonalds here is Ohio, on my 5th trip touring Europe and London I'll laugh and think of you when I pass a McDonalds.

Me: " @H: the front lawn outside the White House in the late 90’s and the pools at ?Lincoln Memorial? 2008 or 9?? Voicing your beliefs is excellent to instill your children.
@A: Are you kidding me? Am I supposed to take that seriously? If you’re not getting into a contest with me then please stop trying to start one. You missed the point, that the things I want from my life, I get. Friends, family & fun, emphasize fun. You and I don’t know each other, my opinion is of no consequence to you, so I can’t imagine what right you think you have to attack me personally or decide what I’m all about based on a few FB comments?? I’m not sure who you think you are, or who you think you are to me, but...really?! You don’t have to think of me when you’re in London, this is not that important. I guess the best/worst I can say is that I hope Europe enjoys you as much as you enjoy Europe. :) "

Now this is a big deal on many levels. For one, I did shut this bitch down, literally. I went looking for A on FB and she's removed herself from J's friend list, search, all of that. She must have hid her account ?? I think? And by the time I last responded to the comment thread, all A's comments had disappeared, either her or J may have deleted them ?? I posted my response anyway, I hope the idiot at least gets to see it, but if not, everyone else will. :)
For two, I lied. I've never lost a relationship over kids, and I've never sipped tea in London. I try really hard to not lie, but in this situation, I decided I didn't care. So I lied.
And three, my life isn't as spectacular as it could be and she somehow managed to call me out on it and that pissed me off. I really should be in London sipping tea and checking stocks right about now, she's right about that. This really feels like a challenge to commit myself to obtaining a better life. I don't know what else to say about it.

Late Humbug...

2010-12-27T11:07:00.000-08:00

Congratulations, Christmas, you actually had an impact this year. Per my "Reason For The Season" posts, it could have swung any way, I could enjoy the holiday, be completely miserable, or be indifferent to the whole thing, which is my usual m.o.

I am still indebted to the Lakewood PD for that joke-of-a-ticket for $95. I plead my case to the judge, resorted to the safety issue of sitting in an idling car with the windows frozen shut because of the fumes, and the judge could have cared less. Paying up and moving on, but the bitterness stays. I hope I never actually need the police for any reason; at this point I'd rather die in the street with my dignity than deal with those mouth-breathing idiots.

I discovered that the corner of Public Square that was so absolutely beautiful in all that snow looks almost as boring as every other Christmas light I ever see when the snow isn't there to play with it. That's why they call them "moments".

Other than that, I have to say this was definitely among the better of my Christmases. My sister sent me beautiful hairpieces that match about half the clothes I wear, my UK friend Mark sent me my first-ever fan gear for the Aston Villa football club, which makes me "officially" a Manchester United AND Aston Villa fan.

The only people left I know related to my dad are my sisters; P does as little Christmas as she has to and F's lovely Christmas is celebrated by me vicariously from across the ocean. So I spend Christmas Day with my mothers family, a 20-minute drive away in the farther-reaching suburbs of Cleveland, where I was actually raised. Her dad (Grampa), her brothers (my uncles) and their families (my aunt, four cousins). We're a small bunch, and I'm very different from the rest of them.

Which made me worry that sitting down and having this talk with them would not turn out well. It was mostly just me and my uncle H, who would now be considered the "patriarch" of the family seeing as Grampa's mental capacities are failing. H can swing either way, sometimes he's very helpful, other times he's a total asshole; we've definitely had our moments over the years. We discussed my current financial situation, what he felt I should do with the experience and education I already have (I should build on my glorified secretary background), what he thought of becoming a translator (too hard to learn foreign languages at my age), and what he thought of leaving Cleveland (England's a pipedream, but New York, Boston or Toronto seem doable). Some of it I don't agree with, most of it I do. England is a pipe dream, especially if with no "other person" on board. I argued about developing my glorified secretary skills as I don't feel that I could build a career or a self-sustaining salary for the rest of my life on that path. H became more supportive of the translation idea when he realized I'd already started learning German and was doing okay at it. He told me to keep him updated on my progress and they would offer their support. He understood my hesitations and thought they were realistic, and he understands that there are no guarantees to any of this and I could fall flat on my face. Never once did he mention any kind of family responsibility or leaving all of them behind, no one did. So as much of a go-ahead as I can get is what I got, and I'm terribly happy with it.

And now for the tag from Flannery Alden at Prone to Whimsy, though I grabbed it somewhat belatedly.

1. When do you usually know it's the holidays?
Usually I don't know it's the holidays. This year I knew when they put up the tree right in front of my desk at work. The first time I felt like I was sitting in a pine forest, I knew.

2. What do you want for Christmas this year?
Money's always good. :)

3. Do you go all out with decorations?
Nope. I have two Christmas ornaments but no tree to put them on, lol!

4. What are you doing Christmas Eve?
Watching soccer games online and eating a fantastic meal, Japanese-style fish.

5. What are you doing Christmas Day?
Hanging out with my mom's family. Usually only a few hours but this year I was there for nearly 8 hours.

6. It's Christmas time. What are you reading?
Nothing different. News, blogs, sports news.

7. Favorite movie to watch during the holidays?
I don't really watch movies, but if I did it would probably be The Christmas Story, the one that was made in Cleveland, or the Grinch cartoon, I love the narrator's voice and the faces the Grinch makes.

8. Favorite Christmas song?
Flannery posted the David Bowie/Bing Crosby duet of the "Little Drummer Boy". That probably would be my choice too, but "The Chimney Song" runs a very close, very hysterical second-place. (ignore the video, but hear the song.)

9. Favorite holiday drink?
Mead (that was Flannery's answer, but seeing as mead would be one of my favourite drinks at any time, I'll be happy to stick with that.)

10. How is your Christmas shopping going?
Christmas shopping? Uh...not here, lol!

11. If you could spend Christmas Day anywhere else, where would you spend it?
It doesn't matter to me, really. Because my participation in the holiday is so limited, I don't feel like I need to be anywhere special on it. I even told my family that once I move I would probably be visiting at off-times just so I don't have to deal with the "holiday travel" stresses.

12. Any holiday traditions?
Nope. I guess you could say I'm not one for traditions ??

13. Favorite thing about the holidays?
I'm very productive at home because everyone else is busy with Christmas and usually leaving me alone. I also like the opportunity to catch up with friends and family that I don't really get to see or speak to any other time of year.

Reason For The Season, Part IV: The Ugly

2010-12-14T23:03:00.001-08:00

I had just hung up the phone with D. I told her I had to go to the store, which is within walking distance, but I had to drive because my knees weren't doing too well that night and I could barely walk on the right one. Plus, the temperature was in the single-digits.

Got my shoes on, grabbed the garbage, my wallet and my keys and headed slowly down the stairs. I dropped the garbage at the bottom of the stairs, propped the door open and walked over to the car. Fired it up. I looked around, there was no one else on the street. I feel comfortable leaving my car running alone warming up in this neighbourhood, but if I see someone hanging around that I don't recognize, I won't go far. I didn't see anyone else, so I went back inside to the stairs to get the garbage, door wide open. I had some wastebaskets sitting outside to cleaned off in the snow, so I brought those in, and gathered up the garbage so I could carry it. I was about ten feet away from the car the whole time. I turned around to come out the door and see two Lakewood police vehicles sitting in the middle of the street next to my car. I figured they were somebody else's problem, so I grabbed the garbage and started hobbling down the sidewalk and paid them no mind. The second squad car pulls up to the end of the sidewalk, the cop gets out of his car and walks right past me. I got to the end of the sidewalk, turned the corner, threw the garbage in the can, turned back around and started walking back down the sidewalk toward my car. The span of distance between the car and the garbage can, maybe 30 feet at most.
Because there was snow and ice on the ground and my knees weren't working too well, it took me almost a full minute to walk that 30 feet back to the car. As I get closer, I realize my car isn't running anymore. I get in and see the keys were taken out and that's when I knew these pigs were after me.
So I throw the door open and start hobbling towards the first squad car. Both officers get out and the tall one, Badge No. 77, hands me the keys and says that he could have stolen that car if he wasn't old and so slow. I laughed and said that it was my 90's throwback car and he was welcome to have it. He told me that it was dangerous to leave my vehicle unattended because children could crawl into it, it could be stolen, or someone who's drunk could drive off in it and hurt themselves or someone else.
Point taken.
So he asks me for my driver's license and insurance card. And then he told me to have a seat in the car. At this point, I still had no idea an actual law-breaking had occurred. I thought that he was just calling in to report what he's checked on and needed me there and was being nice by telling me to wait in the car because it was so damn cold outside.
I was sitting in the car still oblivious and realized I forgot my phone upstairs. So I opened the car door and pulled myself out and started hobbling around the car to go upstairs. The second cop gets out of the squad car and asks me what I'm doing. I'm stunned. Like it's any of his business anyway.
"I'm going upstairs to get my cellphone. I've got errands to run and I need it."
"Ma'am, you need to get back in the car. Once we're done you can go ahead upstairs and do whatever you gotta do, but right now you need to have a seat in the car."
And that's when I realized this was more serious than some pig warning me about the dangers of leaving my car running. I got back in the car and JUST FUMED. I had a feeling they were gonna write me a ticket, but I still couldn't figure out exactly what for.
Finally they came back. By this time I'd realized the windows on the car were frozen shut, so when I saw them coming, I opened the door so I could speak to them. And here goes No. 77, "I'm glad you opened the door, we would've wanted to break in through the window."
At that point, I was wishing I was a man just so I tell him to suck my cock. What he'd really just said to me was that if I didn't open the door for them, they would have busted in the glass two inches from my face to get at me, all over an unattended vehicle. These thugs must really have nothing better to do. What kind of intimidation tactic is THAT? Am I supposed to be afraid now? Go ahead, asshole, knock my glass window out all over my face over something this trivial, I'll sue the life outta you and your whole department. I should have just asked, "And why would you do that?" just to see what he really intended.
He then tells me he's giving me a citation for an unattended vehicle. I asked him if he was serious. He said "Yes, Ma'am," and started talking about waiverable rights and all that other bullshit. I sat there on the edge of the car seat just shaking my head and laughing. Then he tells me about some drunk kid who stole a cab that was left running unattended and ended up driving himself off a bridge.
"Well, that's not too bright now is it? Drunk people shouldn't be behind the wheel of any car, unattended or otherwise."
"Thank you for your co-operation, Ma'am."
"And thank you for yours." (add the evil-G tone)
And they left.
And I was hot. But I had three things I had to pick up from the store, and one minor complication...I'm almost out of gas.
The nearest gas station to me had closed in the time I was busy screwing around with the cops, so I had to try for the next nearest one, and I wasn't sure I was gonna make it. But I ventured off and made it there, a whole 2 miles.
And then I realized my wallet wasn't with me. After the cops left I went upstairs to grab my phone and had set my wallet on the table, and never recalled picking t back up. Of course I didn't realize it until I'd driven all that way and pulled up to the gas pump. My only choice was to just try to go home and hope I had enough gas to make it back.
I did make it home. And I was able to get the car to the gas station right around the corner from me today and throw a few bucks in, so it all ended well. But it was still a hassle I didn't need.
I get home and I am running with all cylinders firing. I screamed and yelled and cussed these idiots all over my living room to no one but myself. I listened to NWA "Fuck Da Police" several times over. I posted on Facebook what had happened and how I planned to deal with it. A lawyer-buddy commented on it, "Fight it in court."
What a brilliant idea.
So that's what I'm doing, I go to court Monday morning to wage this war against the Lakewood PD. Here's what I've determined so far that works in my favour:

1. The cop says I left the car unattended for four minutes. Technically, I was present and within 30 feet of the car the whole time. The only time the car actually left my line of vision was when I rounded the corner to dump the garbage into the can. At that time, Cop No. 2 had already gotten out of his car and walked right past me without saying a word or bothering to ask if that was my car. They watched me gimp around the corner and dump the garbage and then watched me hobble all the way back to the car, get inside it, look around for the keys and get back out before acknowledging they were there for me. Because it was snowy and icy and my knees weren't good, it took me probably three-four minutes to do all that. I know it took about a minute just to get from the end of the sidewalk back to the car. They watched me that whole time without bothering to tell me that I was breaking the law, even when one of them walked within inches of me. The cops know damn well most Lakewood residents are totally unaware of this law until they get popped for it, I see people leaving their cars warming up on the curb all the time in these temperatures, some with people in it, some not. The police allowed me the time and space necessary to unknowingly break the law, watched me do it, and then jumped in at the end to ticket me for it. They took advantage of the fact that I most likely did not know the law and could not walk fast enough to get back to my car very quickly, and they hung me out to dry from the start when the first cop walked past me and said nothing. I was set up.

2. The officer had no right to enter my personal property and remove other personal property from it. Because I was technically "present" at all times and not told I was under suspicion of committing an offense, the officer needed my explicit permission to enter, search, or alter the vehicle in any way. He did not ask, I did not give.

3. The officer explained his reasoning in a few different scenarios:
a) a child could crawl in and move the gear shift
b) a drunk person could drive off in it
c) that car could have been stolen.
d) I should have stayed inside the vehicle while it was warming up.

And here's the reality/common-sense of the situation:
a) it's 7:30 at night, completely dark outside and single-digit temperatures. There are no children anywhere.
b) there aren't any other adults out either, sober or drunk. I'm the only person on the street as far as the eye can see. I don't live by a bar, and it's 7:30 p.m. on a Tuesday night...who's drinking then?
c) and if I'm the idiot who leaves it out there running unattended to be stolen, then so be it, I can hold myself accountable for getting my own car thieved. That car is 15 years old and below 'E' on gas. If somebody steals it and manages to actually get it out of Lakewood still running, I can just buy it back for $150.
d) Hindsight's real 20/20. The windows were frozen shut. If I'd stayed closed inside the car while it was running, I would have run the risk of carbon-monoxide poisoning. It's a stretch, but considering the stretching the cops had to do to get me wrapped into this, I'd say we're even here.

I am not accountable for the actions of other people's children, intoxicated random strangers, car thieves, or whatever Mother Nature does to my windows. I understand that there are things I can do to prevent such events from occurring, and with no other humans anywhere in sight, all those reasons become irrelevant to the situation. In order for a child to get in the vehicle and move the gear shift, there must be a child in the vicinity of my vehicle. I was fully aware when I started the vehicle that there were no children around because I was already aware that there were no PEOPLE. Ultimately I am not legally or morally responsible for what other people do, and a person who simply isn't there can't do that much.

4. They can't use the fact that I got out of the car to go get my cellphone against me, because I had no idea I was being "detained" or under any type of "suspicion". Good thing I needed to go back upstairs; if I'd had the phone, I would have just finished letting the car warm up and started driving off. They didn't tell me, and because I was still under the belief that I hadn't done anything wrong, I didn't know I "couldn't" get out of the car. I thought they told me to have a seat in the car because it was so cold and they were being nice.

5. Why was there no written warning issued, since it was clear that I had no knowledge of that as a law and my breaking it was unintentional? I was cooperative until after he'd already written the ticket. And what the fuck was that stupid comment about breaking my window? If he was trying to intimidate me, all he did was piss me off.

I'm getting a little help from my friends building my argument, and I'll have a statement prepared for the judge on Monday for when I show up to court. I hope to God this works. Every time these motherfuckers get in my way, they mean to just get a little extra dough for themselves, line the city's wallet a little bit, but they're taking the food off my table to do it. These pigs ought to find somebody to harass that can actually has the income and the patience to put up with their whiny little games...

Reason For The Season, Part III - The Bad

2010-12-14T21:29:00.000-08:00

(read Part II first.)

Mom was born October 22 and died November 14. Gramma was born October 20 and died November 17. Dad, November 22 and December 14 (all different years). I get hit with all the birthdays and anniversaries at once.
I remember the days when I was younger and those days, this time, used to hurt hard. Now the individual days pass like any other, some years I've forgotten "that day" altogether. I don't feel any real pain, just a general overall sadness that leaves a coating on everything, like a fresh layer of snow. Gradually, with time, that coating becomes a dusting.

And every now and again you slip up, and the days of feeling down on the holidays returns, though a bit different than it was before.

Yesterday would have been the 36th birthday of my dear friend Tracy who passed away in September. I have all these things to tell her, things I need her opinion on, things I need her to reality-check my ass for. Now I'm feeling what it's like for her to really be gone.

My fantasy-football teams ended this week. I didn't even make the playoffs in my own league, in J's league I lost the first round of playoffs by three points. Also this week, the Browns lost, the Packers lost, MY quarterback Aaron Rodgers got a concussion, and Brett Favre's career officially came to an end.

The greatest accomplishment in sports' history, Brett Favre's consecutive-game streak, stands at 297, actually 321 if you count all the playoff games. I was a senior in high school when he started playing for the Packers. In 18 years he's gone from being a kid to a champion to a hero to a legend to a joke, and I watched all of it, and my life as a football fan has been all the better for it. But I'm so sad that it's finally, really, over.

Today is nine years since my dad passed away. He's another like Tracy, I want to know what he thinks of all these thoughts and ideas I have swirling around in my head. My memories of him are still so wonderful and I don't hurt the way I used to, but when I need a parent, I need a parent, and I guess at 35 I'm discovering I still do sometimes need a parent.

My sister is expecting to become divorced today. I'm certainly not sorry to see the guy go, he's been nothing but trouble ever since she met him, and that was over a decade ago. But it's still an end, a family broken, a child with split parents, a relationship I kinda knew was doomed from the start but had hoped for better of because I wanted K to be happy.

Is it worth taking the risk of marrying someone you're not certain you truly love enough to marry in exchange for the opportunity to change your whole life? I know she loves him for what he has been willing to do for her and what he will do for her when they marry and he sweeps her off to live happily ever after somewhere else. I believe she loves the idea of him, but sometimes the way she talks about it, I wonder if she really loves him, the real man behind the knight in shining armour, the guy she's got to learn to live with every day.

The saddies are creeping in. Soon to be replaced by the maddies. (see Part IV)

Reason For The Season, Part II: The Good

2010-12-13T09:45:00.000-08:00

(read Part I first)

Now that I've completely bashed Christmas, I can say this holiday season has been a roller-coaster for my head and my heart. I had no expectations, for the most part, the holidays usually fly by without me much noticing, but so much has happened that just keeps pounding me down and now I've got the "lost" holiday blues again. But for as bad as it's been, it's had it's really strong points, too.

For example, didn't I just say I was not interested in Christmas lights? I soooooo take that back. Below are a few shitty camera-phone shots of the northeast corner of Public Square in downtown Cleveland. About a week ago, a massive snowstorm hit Cleveland, about 24 hours straight of near white-out/blizzard snow. I left work at 4:30 that afternoon and got home at 8:50 that night. It took 45 minutes to get across the Detroit Bridge, normally a 30-second drive. I got off the bus at Public Square to catch my Lakewood bus home, and waited outside 3 hours. Traffic was gridlocked, I was moving faster than the cars. It was snowing so badly you almost couldn't see anything. But here's the beautiful part: I was dressed for the weather and stayed warm those whole 3 hours, and there was NO WIND, just straight-falling buckets of snow and what felt like a slight chill in the air.

I've been in messes like this before so I knew I was in for a long night with nothing to do but stand there and wait, so I started walking back along the bus route, thinking eventually I would just meet up with bus. And for three hours I did that, just walking between stops, trying to go slow so I wasn't completely outpacing the street traffic, getting into some awesome conversations with random strangers.
Along the route is the corner of Public Square where I took these shots. It has honestly been decades since I was so blown away by how beautiful Christmas lights were. So I took some shots, they're not good, but you get the idea. It was like a winter wonderland, and with all the snow blanketing everything, it had to be one of the most perfect "winter moments" I think I've ever had. I know I spent about an hour just walking around looking and appreciating.

I remember when I was a kid I used to lay down underneath the Christmas tree with the dog and stare up at the lights through the tree because it was such a neat perspective. This "winter moment" on Public Square reminded me of just how cool that was.
The driving part of all this I could easily forget. It wasn't the snow that was backing up traffic, it was the idiot drivers. I stood on the street corner of the main intersection in downtown Cleveland watching them, amazed by how stupid people can be in large groups. Because traffic was already backed up, people started trying to cram their cars through the intersection while they had a green light and would end up stuck in the middle of the intersection with nowhere to move to get out of the way when that light turned red, thus blocking the traffic moving the other direction. I saw no less than three fights break out in the middle of the road over it. A co-worker in a different part of town also saw three fights over the same thing.

I was having my "winter moment" surrounded by all this. Needless to say, it didn't matter. I'm comfortable in the city and able to tune out and move away from what I don't need to know. :)

I have a Christmas gift from my sister. I am going to open it tonight. For reasons I'll explain later, I could use the cheer-up moment and I know opening an awesome Christmas gift would make me feel much better right about now.

I often take an advance from my bank to get through between paydays. As soon as I get paid, all that money gets allotted to survival needs for the next exactly 14 days till next pay, and whatever's left gets divided among the bills, $200 to rent, $30 to this utility, $45 to that utility, $15 to a tax bill, however I can divvy it up to cover my ass for the next two weeks. I expected my electric bill to be outrageous this month, I've been using space heaters to cut back on cost because electricity is still cheaper than gas.

With the money allotted and/or gone, I was still short about $45 to cover what I thought I needed to give the electric company. So I advanced myself the $45 and pulled it from the bank the next day. But the electric bill shows up and apparently I've paid "too much" to them this year, and my bill for $87.79 was credited to the amount of $0. I owed nothing.
Now THAT'S Christmas. $87.79 worth of money back into my pocket that I did not expect. Of course I could have turned all of that money right around into the gas bill and still barely made a dent in what I owe them, so I decided to compromise. I paid $40 to the gas and used the rest to buy a new pair of winter boots.
It gets better. They have a sale going on, and for my $40 I get not only the super-winter boots, but a pair of these bad boys:

My pair is black and they are super-hot and super-sexy and I love the way it feels to wear them. For all the years I've shopped in thrift stores and needed hand-me-downs, and for the shoes I have now that I wear until there's nearly holes in them because I can't afford to replace them, I deserve these damn boots.

Being a football fan hasn't been easy this season, but in the "other" football, I've done entirely well. My fantasy soccer league is currently in 763,459th place out of over 2.6-million players. yeah, it's like that. :) I've been complaining that ESPN3 hasn't been showing any Real Madrid games online and finally got one this weekend.
I've found that absence really does make the heart grow fonder. For all I've missed of Real Madrid's season so far this year, this weekend I got to see my rockstar-crush/soccer-love Mesut Ozil score his first away goal as a Real Madrid player, followed by one of the most beautiful bend-it-like-Beckham penalty kicks I've ever seen by anyone that wasn't David Beckham, courtesy of Cristiano Ronaldo. It was a solid hour and a half of the kind of smiling you hope your face freezes in.

The part about my job I still love is the people. Every time I think I can't stand the crap anymore, the people always pull me back in. T is one of them, a manager but not my supervisor, and I do really, really like her. She won more points a few weeks back by giving me "Otto". He's a Cleveland Browns-themed Christmas ornament, named after Otto Graham, the Browns' star-quarterback from the 1950's and '60's. And don't you know, again, not impressed by ornaments, but blown away by just how cool Otto is. We decided to try taking a "photo album" of Otto in his daily travels with me. Because I don't go anywhere cool anymore, like bars, clubs, concerts, etc., I only got shots of him in his "routine", but they were still kind of funny.

Here's Otto on the dashboard of the Gennmobile cruisin' through Lakewood.

Here's Otto watching his Cleveland Browns play.

Otto gets eaten by G's dog.

Otto finds a train-set about his size on a vendors' counter at the West Side Market.

I'm sure T had no idea Otto would make such an impact for me, but it really started me looking forward to Christmas.

Reason For The Season, Part I: The Back Story

2010-12-12T20:57:00.000-08:00

Some people who know me think because I've had so many close family members die at this time of year, that it prevents me from getting into Christmas. At first, yes, especially after my mother died, Christmas was extremely difficult and I dreaded every minute of it. I used to spend the night at Grampa's on Christmas Eve just so neither one of us would have to be alone.
But I'm old now, and the searing pain of having to deal with holidays "lost" is over. Now I just don't care. Once I decided Christmas was not the end of the world without Mom anymore, I just never picked up an interest in it again. I can't afford to buy people gifts, even if I could, I would have little patience for the "fighting" over products and parking spaces and insanely long lines.
Decorating is work. I don't even decorate for Halloween anymore and that's my favourite holiday. My living room is autumn-themed; it's always October around here anyway.
People do get weird around the holidays. I've heard on many occasion that more of us commit suicide at Christmas than any other time of year. I totally understand that; I can't say I was very far from that myself at some points in my life. For some it's the stress of dealing with relatives they don't like, or out-of-town family members "moving in" for the holidays, spending money on gifts for their kids they really can't afford, the general stress of driving in winter, the general increase in activity for anyone who is a parent, being alone on the holidays. There's a lot going on and people get pushed easily.
Christmas has no religious significance to me. I like Jesus, I think he did exist and he was a wonderful person, but the "religious" aspect I'm not so sure on and is an argument best left for someone else to figure out. I certainly take no issue with celebrating his birthday as a religious holiday, but I'm more interested in celebrating the things he stood for, like how we treat each other, what we should value, and how we execute those principles in our every day lives.
All the fun things about Christmas really died with Santa Claus. After my parents told me they were Him, the "magic" was over. I was an only-child who didn't ask for much, so I got everything I wanted. I remember my mother handing Christmas lists back to me, "You've got to want more than four things, G." Music was always a winner; she could make up for all the big gifts the other kids were asking for and getting just by throwing a shitload of 8-tracks/records/cassettes at me. After she died, Grampa was actually buying me CDs for Christmas. But since I was about 20, he just writes a check. There are really no gifts anymore from anyone in my family, just the few friends that really get into the holidays will buy me an actual "something". Because I can't afford to give gifts, I feel uncomfortable accepting them. The only person who will ever buy me a seriously-significant gift at this point in my life is a seriously-significant other, of which I do not, and may never, have. So I just nixed the whole idea and figured Santa Claus was about as good as it was ever gonna get. I'm sure if I had children of my own I would be celebrating it right about now, but part of why I don't have children is because I don't want to be forced to get involved in "kid stuff".
Christmas songs have little to no musical credibility. Most of what I hear in relation to the holiday season is jingly crap with cookie-cutter lyrics. I give props to the Trans-Siberian Orchestra; though I'm not a fan, I appreciate the concept and they are very good at what they do. And I absolutely love the "Little Drummer Boy", all versions of it. The beat, the tone, the lyrics, the movement of the song, it's all just beautiful. But for the most part, I'm not impressed.
Same with Christmas lights. And ornaments. They're just like fireworks, I'm simply not impressed anymore. Sometimes the snow does neat things to them, but I much prefer the setups we get for Halloween.
My only responsibility nowadays regarding Christmas is to show up for dinner at my aunt and uncle's house and hang out for a while. Real easy, low pressure.

As awful as all that sounds when I read back through it, it's all true, and I don't feel like a "Christmas-hater" or a Grinch at all. I'm old enough to know what piques my interest and Christmas isn't it, that's all. It's like, not being into basketball. But I certainly respect the right of other people to celebrate it. My sister is the Queen of Christmas. She's also into vintage items, so her Christmas always seems sentimental, and everything she does to decorate the home and her tree is just beautiful and I'm happy that she has this time of year to feel special about, kind of like I do in autumn. For the people for whom this is a special time of year, I want them to have that. And I certainly don't understand people who get offended by being told "Merry Christmas". The trend now is to say "Happy Holidays" to not offend anyone. I don't celebrate Christmas, but I know the intention is to wish me well in this time of year, and those words are a pleasure to accept.

So, wish me a Merry Christmas! :)

Everybody Bitching About The Weather On Their Blog Is Making Me Depressed...

2010-12-03T10:54:00.000-08:00

I'm just one of a handful of people who actually looks forward to winter, and it's okay. I know I'm a bit screwed up so I just chalk it up to that.

But I have my logical reasons. Because I have vitiligo I'm much more comfortable covered up in clothes. I've grown to love things like cute scarves and gloves, thick socks, how my hair still looks awesome under winter hats, snow boots that match my sweaters.
And I overheat a lot in the summer. I can walk from my house to the bus stop at a slow pace and break a sweat in under two minutes. But in the cold, I can walk for hours, and often do.
I don't see well in the sunlight. Some say it's because I'm secretly a vampire, others say it's my light-coloured eyes that don't deal well with bright sun.
Other than music festivals and air shows that I can't afford to attend, nothing I care about happens in summer. There's no NFL football, no soccer (World Cup only happens every four years). Everybody wants to go to the damn beach where they swim in water that isn't clean and walk barefoot around rocks and dead fish.
July 4 doesn't mean anything to me in regards to Independence Day, I'm past the age of 10 and no longer impressed by fireworks. I don't even appease people anymore by going along, I just stay home. Where the air-conditioner is.

Snow is awesome. It makes everything so perfect and clean. Like Mother Nature thought we needed a deep-suds washing.

And all kinds of cool stuff can happen in the snow. I've been out walking in it and gotten picked up on a snowmobile, had snowball fights with random teenagers in the neighbourhood, I even almost got laid in the snow once.

Football is played in the snow.

The other football is also played in the snow.

It's the wind that sucks, but that's what layers are for. Never think you're brave enough to tackle a short distance in that wind in just that flimsy coat, because you're not. They don't even have to be all thick layers, any added layer blocks more wind. And if the wind isn't blowing, it doesn't matter how cold it is, any temperature becomes just "a chill in the air".

So buck up and deal, people. Love y'all anyway....

I Love It When A Plan Comes Together...

2010-12-01T19:48:00.000-08:00

I've been trying for years to convince people I'm OCD, but they keep referring to me as just "well-organized", or "prepared". The joke is that I plan when I'm going to take a crap every day so the toilet is aware a week in advance.

Part of my most recent gripes at work involve a new job duty that was assigned to me by a committee to begin implementing, though we had no actual step-by-step procedure in place yet. Certain paperwork was still in re-design stages, details and kinks had yet to be worked out, questions still had no answers. And I had to start, like, immediately. And it did not go well. I've officially decided that I no longer heart my job, and a lot of it is just having to do all this and deal with the problems as they come rather than knowing what to do ahead of time. Everything's a fucking crisis when you're not prepared. So I went ahead and wrote up my own SOP and started following it. Now I'm on vacation and everyone else is back at the office playing catch-up.

That being said, my other "plan" is quickly losing momentum. It's sinking in that my official "other person" is gone, and that sort of fucks me. I have actually been talking about leaving the States for several years now, but realized that I couldn't do it alone. I had to have a buddy, someone to split bills, have culture shock with, one person in a totally new place that I actually know. Going solo seems the much harder way to do it, and less guarantee of success. Because of my monetary state being what it is here, going alone seems financially impossible. I'd kicked the idea around with friends just sort of as a pipe-dream, until L said "If you make it England, I'm in."
So I made it England. There were other reasons England was on the short-list, but her commitment to go was what I needed to actually start making this thing happen.
But now she's going to be somebody else's wife and living two hours north of London, which means it's physically impossible for her to to be my "other person". I'm back to doing this alone, which means, back to pipe-dreaming.
The problem is that I've already invested so much energy and time and hope into this, that I don't want to back out now. But again, the idea of doing it alone makes it seem just as impossible as it was before L said "yes".
I've been questioning my career path a bit too. Being a translator is not a simple as just speaking/reading/writing two languages fluently and just getting hired for it. There's professional certifications, international organizations, people spend years learning and mastering this shit. The one exam to get certified in the UK, they give up to FIVE YEARS to complete the exam. Are you fucking kidding me? What did I just get myself into? The way I laid out the plan it looks so easy, but in between all that are the details that are just bowling me over. And the deeper I get into this, the deeper it gets. And the deeper into anything you go, the more it costs, and the smarter you gotta be.
But the plan exists. On paper...er, well, computer screen anyway.
And I've been on vacation all week, so I've had plenty of time to work out the final details of the plan, shore up some of the finer points. I still have a few things I'm waiting to hear back on, but I was able to get most of it into an outline form that makes sense and doesn't make the whole process seem so daunting. It's a lot, but laid out in steps it actually looks like it could work, quite possibly even work without needing a other person. Essentially, if I could get by on my own in London financially, I would still be able to obtain the emotional and cultural support I'll need through L and my sister by phone, email, and with a physical distance of less than two hours, they're still "reachable".
So I've spent most of the week doing more research and trying to find a way to make this happen without needing the financial support of another person. Easy, right? I think I'm onto something though.
Each "step" is given a PCF (Potential for Catastrophic Failure) rating, 1 the lowest chance, 10 the highest, as in a 10-rating has the potential to kill the plan for good. Unfortunately, it seems like the further into this I go, the more potential there really is for it to fail. I don't know how much I like what I see, but it's the closest thing I have to any real assessment of this crazy idea:

1. Get people

a new "other person" (PCF: 8)
professional translators to discuss the business, earning potential, possibility of being hired by a UK translation company. Preferably Londoners. (Tier-2 Intra-Company Transfer??) (PCF: 2)

2. Know German and Spanish fluently enough to pass assessment test for New York University online program.

To earn the Professional Certificate in Translation for German-English, Spanish-English and English-Spanish will take me two years and cost about $10,000 (including books and materials). It's a total of 18 10-week classes that all happen online. They are a "Translation 101"-type course for each language-pair, and then classes in each language pair on specific topics, more specialized areas of study. My focus would be on Commercial Translation and Project Management. And I'm so gonna need a new computer. (PCF: 9)

3. Get a new computer. Preferably a laptop so I could study out-of-house. Must play music CDs, burn music CDs and have kickass speakers. (PCF: 7)

4. Get student loans. I haven't paid off the loans from the first time I was in school so I don't know how willing the government's going to be to give me money again, but without loan approval, I don't go to school. Period. (PCF: 10)

5. While I'm in school (and trying to work full-time, great.) start looking for menial translation jobs, something around Cleveland or online.

Preferable to get online work through a UK company. Enough to gain experience and credibility. (PCF: 5)
I'll need to get a Student Membership to a professional translators' organization. (PCF: 1)

6. Graduate the program. (PCF: 9)

7. Register with the Red Cross as a volunteer translator. (PCF: 1)

8. Make a resume and/or a CV.

If I've played my cards right, by the time I go to actually make a career of this, I've got a Professional Certificate of Translation in three language pairs specializing in Commercial Translation and Project Management, a Student Membership to a professional translators' organization, work experience with at least two different companies, and a volunteer accreditation. That sounds so fancy, doesn't it? Worth $36K a year to somebody? Anybody? (PCF: 9)

9. Find full-time work as a translator, either in Cleveland or online. Have to make at least $36,000/yr., have medical benefits. Might help to find out exactly what I'm worth and ask for it. (PCF:10)

10. Save money. What's amazing is that I'd actually have the opportunity to save money if I made $36K. Based on what I live on now, if I didn't change my lifestyle at all, I would be able to stock away $6,000 in a year. How ridiculous that saving the money would be the easiest part of my plan, when it's the hardest part of anybody else's. :) (PCF: 3)

11. Start looking for jobs in London with translation companies that could also result in a relocation.

must be able to guarantee 33,000-pounds per year salary. I must be able to guarantee myself first that I can live on that salary alone in London and be able to pay my bills comfortably and still have about 3,000 saved away every year. (need advice on this!!) (PCF: 10)

must be a Licensed Sponsor in the UK and willing to sponsor my visa. Aiming for Tier-2 Intra-Company Transfer (?? still need advice on this), which would give me my first three years in the UK. (PCF: 10)
getting sponsorship into the UK will probably rely heavily on the demand for my skills and how valuable I am to the company. I have to be worth sponsoring in the first place, meaning there has to be a need and a want for me to be in-house and I have to prove my skills are worth the investment. (PCF: 10)
At this time I also need to be learning how to live in London, and my only resources will be online. I need to learn about the Borough Market, online grocery shopping, how to ride the Tube and the buses, figuring out which neighbourhoods are safe to live in, proper office etiquette in the UK, and most importantly, where the nightclubs are! (PCF: 6)

12. As I'm in school, working part-time translating, switching to full-time, making/saving money, and looking for jobs in London, I'll be accruing the hours and experience I need to apply for highest national and international accreditation there is for a translator. The American Translator's Association and the Institute of Translating & Interpreting in the UK seem the most likely victims. The ATA certification may not be relevant if I'm accredited overseas, but that's one of those questions I'd like to ask professionals (See Step 1: "Get people") (PCF: 8)

13. Obtain the certificate of sponsorship from my employer.

This ultimately means I am banking this whole thing on the idea that somebody in charge of hiring at a translation company on that goofy little island across the ocean will think highly of me enough and feel sorry for me enough to give me a chance. This is starting to feel a lot like "luck" may have to play a role in this. Since luck is neither predictable or dependable, I think it sucks. (PCF: 10)

14. Apply for the visa.

At this time I see no reason other than my financial background (known as "bad credit" and "bankruptcy") why I should fail to get the visa. No criminal background or suspicious activity. If I've played my cards right to this point, I will have enough points to pass the assessment provided by the UK Border Agency by a whole five with Tier-2 requirements. Doesn't automatically mean I'll get the visa, but it's the major hurdle you need to get over before applying for a visa is even realistic. (PCF: 10)

15. Obtain the visa. (PCF: 10)

I can always appeal if denied, but the point is to go into it with all my ducks in a row knowing damn well that I will be approved.
may require professional immigration advice
If I don't get approved, I'll find out why and see if it's something I can fix. I can't imagine how I could possibly be "banned" or "disqualified" for the rest of my life.
if the UK just isn't possible, I have the German and Spanish languages to back me up into living there, though the culture shock I think would be much more extensive and harder to overcome with my sister and L that much further away. On the short-list before everything bounced to England was Boston, New York, and Toronto. If I have to reopen those possibilities I will. (PCF: 1)

16. Move. The final stage of the plan. As much crap as it looks like I'll have to go through to reach this point, I can't imagine how this part could be any more difficult and daunting. But it will, because this is the ultimate do-or-die move, does or doesn't she get on the plane? (PCF: anywhere from 1-10, go figure!)

All this shit has to GO. All I'm taking with me is personal and sentimental items. I'll probably have to ship boxes over to L or my sister to store until I arrive. Should I take my kitchen supplies? Bedding?
I'll need to transfer my money into a new British bank account. (need advice on this!)
Anything I need to know to get through customs on both sides?
I'll need a place to stay while I'm looking for a more permanent settlement, probably a cheap hotel.
I'm going to need Internet, phone access, a computer and a phone, a fan and a coffeemaker straight away. Note to self to find out if this is something I can set up in advance (need advice on this!) before my actual arrival. L or K would most likely have to purchase the products for me physically before I get there and have them "set up". The phone has to have a vibrate alarm clock and the computer has to be TV quality since it will essentially be my TV.
I'll need to find a place to live that meets the "requirements". Yep, there's a list for that...
I'll need to get "officially registered" inside the country, make sure I'm paying all the correct taxes, get a NHS number, all the immigration services not directly provided by the UK Border Agency, and ready to officially begin work at my new job. (need advice on this!)

17. Welcome to your new life. This is what you wanted. Right? PCF is still a "10".

Celebrities Who Have Appeared In My Dreams: I'm In Love With A Dog-Murderer

2010-11-28T19:28:00.000-08:00

I've been lucky enough to be both a celebrity and in the subconscious of Flannery Alden as a fantastic dream. Fortunately for her, she has these types of dreams somewhat regularly and they're always interesting.

I, however, do not, which is why I hope she doesn't mind if I steal her blog feature, I won't be doing it often. :) I rarely dream, if I do I don't remember them. The dreams I am lucky enough to remember aren't anything good, no celebrities, and definitely no sex.

And then, finally I get a two-in-one. Must've been somethin' I ate ??

Even if you don't watch NFL football, you know who Michael Vick is because you know what he did, and what he did pissed off a LOT of people. Me, too. Believe me, as a bonafied animal-lover (dogs at the top!) and an NFL fan, I had no choice but to partake in my fair share of Michael Vick hate-jokes, the Photoshopped images of Vick taking it from behind by a really angry dog, it was sweet.

But the reality is, I've always had a rockstar crush on Vick since he came into the league in 2001. Something about those eyes, that smile. And he was always so bad ass.

And then he got a little too bad ass for me. What could I possibly find attractive about a man who's capable of putting a gun to an innocent dog's head and pulling the trigger? Nothing. With me, you're almost better off starting a war than killing a DOG! And that was it. Rockstar crush over circa 2007.

Now it's 2010 and Michael Vick is the poster-child of second-chances, being touted by the sports world as having made a real comeback, and doing all the beautiful PR stuff America wants to see him do to prove that he's become a better person and sincerely sorry for what he did. And he's leading the Philadelphia Eagles straight into the Super Bowl.
Of course I'm buying every word of it, I'm a football fan, I want to believe him. Unlike other athletes who get themselves in chaotic situations (Lebron James, Tiger Woods), nothing Vick does seems rehearsed. His answers to serious questions are very specific, he's still apologizing for the dogfighting, and he's called himself out on all the bullshit he pulled in his early days playing at Atlanta. Philly coach Andy Reid talks about how he has an incredible work ethic and leadership skills, stays humble and supports his teammates. And he's still absolutely fucking beautiful.

I must have taken the thought into my sleep with me Sunday night:

I was riding shotgun in a small car with tan leather interior. The sky was a solid grey; it was the middle of the day, but completely overcast. It looked like I was riding down a highway, just flat greenery on both sides of the road. Kate Moss was driving. No, really. Kate Moss. We were giggling about something and singing along to the Gorillaz' "Stylo". And she looked just like she does in this pic, jeans, hair all over the place.
The song ended. Kate reached over to turn down the volume and turned directly at me. I don't remember words, but she was saying that me and "Michael" were just like her and "Pete" (I have to assume Doherty). That we were destructive to one another, our relationship was volatile and intense in ways it shouldn't be. She kept talking for several minutes, and then we just sat there in silence, I didn't respond.
We pulled up in front of a row of tall brick townhouses, Kate stopped the car. I opened the door and somehow it had become nighttime, though the conversation we'd just had appeared to have happened in daylight. I got out and walked up a few steps to the door of one of these townhouses and let myself in. The door opened up to a small living room with white walls and all white furniture. The couch was pulled away from the wall, and Michael Vick was standing behind it next to a set of stairs. And he said "Would you like a soda?"

"No, I don't drink soda, really." And then I walked over to the couch and sat down. He came out from behind the couch and sat down next to me. He put his hand in my hair and within seconds, I just pounced on him and shoved my tongue down his throat. It got hot pretty fast, I remember feeling like he was pulling my hair almost too hard, but I was still all up in it. I was looking down, had just pulled his shirt from out of his pants and started undoing the buckle, and I heard what sounded like "kitchen noise". I looked up, and Kate Moss was standing behind the couch looking down over me and Michael.
"So you really don't do soda, huh?", she says. She takes a swig of a can of Coke and looks back down at me.
"No, I mean-sometimes I'll drink a Pepsi, I like Pepsi, but no, I don't normally do soda." (note: this is also true in real-life, hate Coke)
I look back to Michael and he's gone. I mean disappeared...but not entirely. The Michael Vick I though I was making out on the couch with was totally gone, but in front of the couch was now a wide-screen TV, turned on to a Philadelphia Eagles game. The screen shot was of Michael Vick throwing a pass. I looked back to where Kate Moss was and she was gone, too. The can of Coke she'd been drinking was sitting on the edge of the couch. I reached over and picked it up and shook it, it was about half-full. I looked at it for just a moment and then guzzled it down. Almost immediately, my face puckered up and I let out a giant "Eeeeewwww, that was awful!".
And then Michael Vick reappears on my couch, in just the last position I'd left him in, next to me with his pants half undone. He says, "Now why'd you go and do that? You know you don't like that shit. Gimme that can." So I handed him the can.
And then I woke up.

Meaningless Update...

2010-11-13T17:44:00.000-08:00

I'm not a fiction writer. I'm not even really a good writer. I'm just very good at reporting what I see and explaining what I know very clearly. But I'm not creative or imaginative in the slightest; the only reason I don't dress up for Halloween is because I can never think of anything cool enough to be that won;t cost me and arm and a leg to have made for me.

I haven't blogged in a long time, mostly because I haven't had anything really to say. Not much happens to me anymore. I was the coolest person I knew, but my rock-star-on-a-budget lifestyle went out the window. Now I got nothin' but a lot of German lessons to catch up on and a kitchen that needs cleaned. And because I'm not capable of making shit up, I don't blog about anything.

But there are at least a few things of note, as much of an update as is worth giving:

Halloween was my shining moment in the midst of all this sameness. Ever year my neighbours across the street decorate their home. (the pics aren't great, but...)

It's gotten bigger and bigger every year, now nearly 1/3 of the neighbourhood participates in our "street party". This year we had at a minimum 250 people come through our corner. We have guys dressed up sneaking around the house to scare the kids and chase them down the street, we have a ghost that swings down from my window across the street down to the entrance to their house (even the adults get scared of that one!)

And the alcohol doth freely flow. G makes jello shots, this year to the tune of 325 of them. Even better was the vodka-infused whipped cream she blitzed on top of each one. K makes "apple pie" shots that keep your whole insides warm for days, and it really does taste like apple pie. Been drinking them for years and I still don't really know what's in it.

Regardless, I spent most of the night on my ass watching all the excitement from a lawn chair placed strategically in the driveway, getting drunk and talking to everybody that came by. We moved from house to house the way other people change rooms at a single-house party. And continued to drink. Like animals.

It was a beautiful night. It's always a beautiful night. I am very lucky to live in a cool little city with some really fun people. Plenty of things we don't see eye to eye on sometimes, but we enjoy each other's company and we don't judge and there's a lot to be said for that.

That same weekend, my office moved. We're now in a beautiful little neighbourhood in Cleveland right outside of downtown. It's actually almost a pleasure to go to work every day. Well, not really. I'm still grossly underpaid, and quite miserable, but not nearly as miserable as I have been at other jobs. STILL this one ranks as the third-best, no matter how bad it gets. And it has been BAD. The move hasn't gone as smoothly as we all would have liked, and a new job description was just sort of thrown at me, and I'm expected to start this whole thing without a procedure nailed down as to what to do, and only pieces/parts at a time are getting done, so it's all over the goddamn place, and anybody who knows me knows that I only operate well in chaos if I can organize it. This makes my work life hell, at this point I don't even know what my job description is.

And the car is acting funny again, leaking water. With the winter coming, I'm going to have to start using antifreeze, and with as much money as that shit costs, I can't afford to be spilling it out all over the road, so until I have the money to fix the car, it's going to have to sit. And that could be all fucking winter long.

I watch a lot of football.

I watch a lot of the "other" football.

And I learn German.

Ich spanne Deutsch. Gut nicht.

That is all.

Carry on.

Unfinished Business Gets Finished

2010-10-07T18:42:00.000-07:00

Easy come, easy go. You made that bed, you lie in it. It is what it is. (enter accountability cliche here.)

G,
I truly don’t want our work place to be awkward and I hope you feel the same. While I realize I’m probably one of the last people you want to talk to, I would greatly appreciate the opportunity to talk with you for at least ten minutes or so, would you be available some time today? If you would prefer to talk after work hours I’m fine with that as well, just let me know what would work for you. Thank you, T.

T,
LOL, I’m sorry you feel this is awkward. I figured you would mind your business and I would mind mine and we’d all be just fine. We don’t work together, really, so I don’t see it being a problem. The whole situation just isn’t that important to me that I feel it necessary to be discussed nor am I interested in anything you have to say about it. You’ve proven yourselves to be manipulative and immature and between everything I have going on with my friends, my job and my school, I have neither the time nor the brain capacity to be bothered with it. I’m done with the whole thing, I expect you should be too.
Thank you anyway,
Enjoy,
G

Untitled

2010-09-29T18:52:00.000-07:00

The picture can now not get any clearer that my life needs to change. Dramatically...

Tracy and I were friends as children. She lived in my neighborhood for a few years. We became friends, swam in the pool, went to Cedar Point, she knew my mom, my stepfather, my dog. She moved away in 1989 to live with her mother in the city of Cleveland, which to a kid my age was a world away. We did briefly reconnect at 18 just after she'd married Tim.
But what we had was important enough that when she found me on classmates.com about 5 years ago, she emailed me and I followed up.
30-year-old Tracy was amazing. She had gotten married at 18, which to me would have been a life sentence of boredom if it even lasted at all. But her life was awesome. Her and Tim had many wonderful years together partying up and enjoying life and were still together. She had always wanted kids but had so much trouble for so many years, and then finally had two babies at once, a boy and a girl. There were severe complications for both children; the boy has multiple disabilities that affect his attention, behaviour, and vision. The girl has cerebral palsy. Tim and Tracy were constantly in the hospital with the girl and trying to manage on one income so someone was home with the children.
What amazed me the most about her is everything she knew, what she understood about the world and what life really was. She grew up in the same environment I did, good old Parma, Ohio, with a long history of being intolerant and simply back-woods. We weren't raised to be open-minded, thoughtful, accepting of other people that were different than us. Well, I take that back, in my family my mother and stepfather raised me to be that way, but most everyone else in my life followed that same old mindset. In Tracy's family (and my mother's family) that has not changed. But we did. And we got the hell out of Parma.
So it was double-amazing that Tracy turned out to be so intellectual and passionate about the world. And a bit of a comfort for me, somebody else who's from there actually gets it. The conversations between me and Tracy were downright beautiful.
And then Tracy really laid it down for me. I had sent an email to a few select people about a potential run-in with my stepfather, whom I have not seen or spoken to in nearly 20 years now. Of course I badmouthed him some, and I sent this email to the people who knew my stepfather, two of them being Tracy and my uncle Chris, my mom's brother. Chris read this email and shot back with a "reply all" about how ungrateful I was to my stepfather for the upbringing I was given and how I was dishonouring my mother regarding the way I had stated something in the email. And then he signed off on it, "this is your Uncle Chris".
I wished I'd saved that email, it's like gold to me now. But I didn't. And then my sister replied and was (surprisingly) very diplomatic in my defense.
Tracy on the other hand was not. She was very direct and very firm, to say the least. She opened her response, "Uncle Chris", and it was on. Several key phrases came up like "You obviously don't know Genn very well if you think for a minute she would ever disrespect her mother." And this gem: "Apparently your sister wasn't telling you everything that was going on in that household, but I was there and saw it for myself". She went on for two whole paragraphs and just blasted the hell out of Chris, basically telling him he had no idea what he was talking about and offered him a nice cup of STFU
It was brilliant. At that point, she became more my family than he did. I responded to just her from that email and all I could say was "I love you."
And I'm glad I did. Tracy passed away last Friday at 35 years old. She had multiple health problems, most likely related to gastric bypass surgery (that I really don't think she needed) she had about three years ago. She developed pancreatitis and multiple urinary infections last year. About two months ago she was diagnosed with liver sclerosis and put on the list for a transplant, which normally takes about two years. She was told to return to the docs in two months. She waited those two months, but she had deteriorated badly, much faster than most people who have it, and by the time she got back to the docs there was nothing they could do for her. So many other problems arose in the last week, from brain bleeds to kidney failure, the doctors had a full plate and the damage was just too extensive.
I'd wish I'd made a better effort to see her/talk to her in her last days. Part of me didn't want to believe this was happening, part of me believed it was fixable, part of me was just downright afraid. But Tracy was always very clear, especially after the "Uncle Chris" incident, that I loved her and there was a very clear understanding of just how important we were to one another. That makes it okay that we didn't talk before she died.
And now I'm talking to her husband nearly every night since. He really doesn't know what to do with himself with her not in the house and it really hits him late at night. Since I'm one of the few people available at those late hours, I've been doing some talking. Tim's going to be a single dad raising two disabled twins; this is going to be one hell of a long road for him. It's quite possible that he may never fully recover. I can't help him with the kids but I can at least get him through the rougher hours of the night.
So that's what I do, that's how I recover on my own. Of course the reflection on one's own life that often occurs during these occasions hasn't been too pleasant either. Reviewing the list of what I have and haven't accomplished at 35 and having it thrown in my face that I could be gone just as quickly, and that I haven't necessarily done the right things by which this life is ultimately sustained, it's a bit overwhelming.
So with that being said, I guess I start moving forward here, cleaning the kitchen, sitting down with my German studies and look toward a new start and a way to complete my life successfully. It's what Tracy would want, my parents, Uncle Art, everyone who's left me. I don't know that they'd agree with how I've chosen to do it, but I know they'd want me to keep pursuing the life I want.
Tracy's funeral was Tuesday. When I'm talking to Tim it all seems very real, and there are still times when I'm kind of dumbfounded by the whole thing, like it really doesn't sink in that she isn't there. The first wave hit when I walked into the funeral home for the night service. I saw a girl standing in line that from the back looked like Tracy. She was short, had her hair the same colour as when I'd last seen Tracy but cut a few inches shorter. She was wearing similar black glasses and a black suit, which is definitely something Tracy would have worn. For a split second, my brain saw her. I knew I was coming there to see Tracy and there she was. Alive and well. And when the girl turned, I saw the side of her face and she was definitely not Tracy, and that's when the tears started to flow. That whole second went away and reality dropped in.
At my age and with as many people as I've had the non-luxury of burying, I understand the grieving process very well. Problem is, because every person means something different to you, the loss is different every time, and thus felt differently every time. This one is painful and eye-opening and frustrating and somewhat inspiring. Thank you Tracy for helping me get my act together.

The Aftermath: An Update

2010-09-10T19:08:00.000-07:00

So it's still a big old "fuck you, G!" because I'm on the losing end of this little triangle, but it's not as bad as it could be.

K went back to T with the email I sent her. He came to me and said "This conversation needs to happen." So we had it out on smoke break. He says he had no idea I was interested, as in totally oblivious and if he did he would have not talked to me about K. He said he was sorry that my feelings were hurt and that he was sorry if I felt I was lead on. I told him I thought he knew and that made everything he did seem like a slap in the face. I explained I don't believe he led me on at all, and that I'll get over it just fine. I don't want to hear about whatever happens between the two of them, and whatever else happens, well, whatever.

So basically it comes down to you have two fairly nice people who are attracted to one another, and the ugly girl in the middle that everyone likes and doesn't want to hurt, so they find a way to let her down easy because they feel sorry for her and they still want to be friends with her because she's cool. I know this story pretty well, actually.

When all this first happened with T, one of my BFFs sat me down and said that she didn't think I was "open" to these kinds of things, that if guys don't think I'm available, if I don't put myself out there, that I won't get anybody. I hope now she understands why I don't put myself out there. Because when I do, this is the kind of shit that happens. And I am MUCH better off not having this in my life.

I've been very fortunate, really. I have lots of friends, and I mean, these are some AMAZING fucking people. If I rolled through the list of everyone on my cellphone roster, you'd find a mix of some very different yet equally captivating people who are all important to me for a variety of reasons. I'm the only person I know who is "alone" but doesn't know what it's like to be lonely. All the companionship, true love and affection, buddy-systems that other people get out of their spouses/significant others, I get from my friends. The only thing I miss out on is sex and that's what I've got hands and one-nighters for if I get desperate. But other than that, I've felt the elation and downright giddiness associated with being in love from the people I'm friends with. Because they're just that good. :)

It makes sense and it's okay by me that I was not meant for that type of relationship with anyone, just like I was not meant to have a relationship as a mother. Maybe that's why I am who I am and was given the physical factors I have to contend with, because that is not a relationship I was meant to have with people, it's not my purpose, not part of the Plan.

And the Plan is to get the fuck up outta here. In less than 6 weeks my company will have moved and I won't have to physically see him ever again if I don't want to. And if I can get my ass moving on finding another job, I won't have to see her either, and they can live happily ever after and I'll just be oblivious to it. I still think I was manipulated to some degree, people knew things before they say they knew it. I do think genuinely neither one was aiming to hurt me, but at the same time, people are also going to look out for their own best interests and if that means having to slight me to do it, well, can I say I blame them? If roles were reversed and K was the outsider, would I have gone after T anyway? Probably....

So I move forward, I study my languages, I work hard to fix all these broken pieces so I can give myself a fighting chance at a decent life. Love is a very powerful emotion and moves us to do some really big things, like relocate halfway across the Earth for it, write Grammy-winning songs and Academy Award-winning films about it, even kill for it. Love is quite big among humans. If that's not part of the equation for me, then everything else about life must be....

Adding Insult To Injury....

2010-09-09T14:53:00.000-07:00

That's about what T did to me today. First he gave me the middle finger. Then he did everything in his power to straight beat me up. I am again on the floor.
The background is that I developed a mad crush on a guy I work with and didn't realize it until I was already too far in. He seemed to take a significant interest in me, which is how I developed this crush. Two months later he tells me he has a girlfriend and planned to marry her next year. I was just devastated.

A lot changes in three weeks. I got over it and have tried to stay focused on my Big Move out of Ohio with great success. I was almost to the point that I didn't care at all anymore. Me, him and a fellow colleague, K, had all met up for lunch last Friday, and T went out with K and her friends later that night.

T went on holiday for a week and came back minus a girlfriend. And he told me about it first thing Monday morning. He said she was too immature, didn't understand things like fiscal responsibility, etc.

I was DUMBFOUNDED. After all that misery finding out about her had put me through, and just like that, boom, she's gone. He said it had been a long time coming, but still, for me, it was instant.

And then, he asked me for status on K, the colleague we'd had lunch with. So I told him, "Yes, she's single, but she's also gay." He later made comments about another female co-worker and at that point, I took it to be him just reacting to the break-up and talking shit.

But he wasn't kidding. He told me today that he's asked K out, and that she'd said yes.

No, really. Crash and burn and what the fuck happened to lesbianism?

It took him two months to tell me about the girlfriend, and two days to tell me he'd dumped her and now wants K. It didn't mean too much to me because I thought K was only into girls, but apparently she bats for both teams. ??

Again, stunned. Because I'd done such a good job of gaining perspective and moving forward, it didn't sting nearly as bad as when he hit me with the news about the girlfriend three weeks ago, but believe me, the sting is there. And it revisits the same problem that I've always had, that I'm not the girl anybody wants. I understand, the vitiligo, the facial paralysis, the missing tooth, it can be a lot to get past physically. That's part of the beauty of moving to the UK; no sun to complete with the vitiligo and everybody's got bad goddamn teeth. It's not like T is any major prize, but for me, this is a repeat of past performances. Because I'm always the "just friends" girl, I have been blessed with some really, REALLY good friends, but there's that slight downside...

And it gets worse. Next smoke break, we were joined by S, who does the custodial work around our building. We do training for people with disabilities; keeping in that spirit, we hired S, who is developmentally-disabled. He's wonderful and does work well, but he can be a lot to keep up with sometimes; his mental abilities range about that of an 8-year-old child.
As I'm standing there, T starts talking to S about going to the Browns games, tells him he has season tickets and then asks him if he'd like to go to see a game. Of course S wants to go. They chat back and forth about it and T asks S for his phone number and asks him what game he'd like to go see. T has almost no interaction with S whatsoever outside of the occasional same time smoke break and now he's inviting him to hang out and tailgate all day when he knows damn well what a huge football fan I am, he's on my fucking fantasy league and we've interacted outside of work fairly often. He may as well have pulled a stranger off the street and asked them to go just to prove he wouldn't ask me.

Literally anything he could do to upset me. To put me down. To let me know just how unimportant I am. Well, I got the message this time. Loud and fucking clear. He couldn't find anyone else to ask about K's status besides me? He was quick to tell me he'd asked out Beth and she'd said yes. And then to invite a guy you barely say "Boo" to any other time to go to a Browns game and let him pick the game like he's your best goddamn friend when you damn well I would LOVE to go. S isn't even capable of having an adult conversation and he still pulls rank over me? I mean, really, it was like T sat around thinking of ways to burn me and then executed them with sheer brilliance. It's like he is intentionally trying to hurt my feelings so I'll lose interest because it's easier on him than just telling me he's not interested.

To add to that, I'm starting to not trust K. Seems kind of interesting that she was the one who arranged for the three of us to go to lunch together, he ends up hanging with her and her friends later that night and now all of a sudden she's "not gay" ? I know she's dated men in the past, but I figured that was during the part of her life when she was either in the closet or didn't know.

K did send me an email earlier in the week about me "just being friends" with R and hoping I was okay with that. The email seemed almost apologetic. I should have known then something was up, and I think deep down I suspected, but because I believed she was totally into women, I never considered it as anything but watching out for my best interest and me just being paranoid. Now I'm starting to wonder if that wasn't K looking out for her own best interest.

So I come home from work and get this on email from K:

So I'm on vacation so thats why im writing you on fb rather than asking you out for a smoke. Let me first say sorry and then say that I hope you are like me and would rather ask for forgiveness then permission. So i'm guessing you know that T asked me out to dinner, and he told me that he asked you about me prior, firstly, I'm sorry if I ever gave you the wrong impression, I've never identified as gay, rather just down-right-queer, secondly, as soon as he asked I felt bad about your feelings towards him, but at the same time, do genuinely want to get to know him better. So, I did say yes, although I feel badly and in some way disloyal to you, but do hope that you understand it's just dinner and obviously not with any intention whatsoever of hurting you. So, again, G, I'm truly sorry for any hurt feelings and hope you accept my apology.

My response was:

Awww, nope, I understand. I'm trying really hard to not be angry about this, it's sort of working and sort of not. Not angry at you, really, you have every right to say yes and he has every right to ask. I'm sorry, I thought you were only into girls, that's what I told him, but you are down-right queer. :) I am sore but I understand you don't have bad intentions, otherwise you wouldn't have emailed me. I'm really bothered by him, though, he's had every opportunity to say he's not interested. That's really what I'm upset about. He couldn't have found a way to slap me in the face any harder and I can't understand why I deserved to get it like that. He couldn't think to ask someone else to inquire about you? It took him two months to say he had a girlfriend but less than two days to throw out that he'd asked you out. And then to invite S to a Browns game right in front of me, having never invited me, it's like he did it on purpose just to spite me. So even S is higher up on the list than I am? It's like we're not even friends; I thought I had at least that much going for me.
That being said, your respect for my feelings is greatly appreciated and I'm going to totally adore you anyway, so don't feel bad or awkward. Apology accepted, but not really necessary. :) If anybody owes me an apology it's T.
Have a great vacation.

In six weeks my company will have moved and I won't have to physically see T anymore. I don't expect him to take up the invite to come over for the Sunday games with the football gang, (he hasn't yet), and he's no longer welcome. I preserved the relationship with K and let no indication that I'm concerned about her role in this. As long as I'm at this job I'm going to have to maintain a good relationship with her, and I can do that and still keep her at arm's length. I will make it clear that I don't want to discuss him or know what's going on. She may possibly tell T what I had to say in my email, which is great. He should know exactly what's up. If I'm really lucky, I'll be finding another job pronto and I can dump the both of them, and then whatever the fuck happens isn't my business. K becomes a Facebook friend I will forget is there and he will become another anonymous first name on the fantasy league that I won't have to deal with again after the fantasy-season ends.

Which leads to my next problem. This weekend, of all times, T and I play each other in the fantasy league.

I have to win this game. My dignity is at stake here. If I lose this game, he's got me on the floor, I've got nothing....

New Possibilities, Old Fears...

2010-09-01T17:49:00.001-07:00

A few weeks ago I was starting to feel like this was never going to happen. That I would be stuck here in America pushing paper for a career and unable to afford a car, a phone and a place to live at the same time for the rest of my life. And the heartbreak happened, which put me in the dumps even further. P will be living in the UK by next October. I'm excited for her, and really, her successes are no reflection on my failures. It's only helped to make it more obvious that I am failing.

But I've had a good string of luck as of late, and the last week or so I've been getting this feeling like I already have the answers, they just haven't really hit me yet, that things are about to get much clearer. I've met several more people online who are in the UK and willing to help with sharing thoughts, ideas and opinions on my plans. And I think I finally found a good one. So I've shopped it around among my UK folks, and gotten some good feedback.

I got the idea watching the football transfers. One of my favourite German players just took a contract with Real Madrid, one of the biggest soccer clubs in the world, in Spain. I watched their first game of the season online; my new star signing played the whole second half and I got to thinking.

It occurred to me that most of these guys during the last few days of the transfer window are being shipped out to other countries with maybe a day or two's notice at the most. They don't have time to learn a new language because they don't have any idea yet where they'll end up. Like Mesut Ozil, my German player. He got transferred and was in Spain practicing with the club within two days. I just assumed that because most Europeans know more than one language, they either sign up with a team in a country whose language they already know, or they get an interpreter and a teacher to help them acclimate to the language once they arrive. Ozil probably already knows Spanish.

So I did a little research. Apparently translation and interpreting is taken pretty seriously as a career. There are different systems of interpreting and translations you can specialize in, like medical, legal, business, and you can earn Master's Degrees in it. In big cities like London, Manchester, and Birmingham, that are more "cosmopolitan", there seems to be an actual need for people who can speak multiple languages. It seems that being able to write and speak several different languages would make me a valuable asset in a place like London, meaning someone may actually want to hire me.

My time, my money and my patience with actually having to go to school again are short, so in order to do something like this, I'm going to need to take the cheapest, easiest, fastest road possible and rely on my basic intelligence to help push me through. I looked at German and Spanish because they're two of the most closest related to English and therefore the easiest to learn.
I would have to use online language learning programs like Rosetta Stone and TellMeMore to learn two other languages as quickly as I could, and then start shopping myself around Cleveland to get interpreter work here to help build up money and experience. I would use that money to enter a certification program (maybe a MA/MBA?) like the one I found at New York University, seven online courses gets you a Professional Certificate of General Translation. And then I could start shopping myself to companies in the UK that hire translators/interpreters. Either I'll have enough by way of qualifications to get in under the High-Skilled Worker program, or I'll get a job offer by a company willing to get me a visa.

But the hard work starts here, and I need a better job making more money or I'll never be able to afford to do this. The online language-learning programs alone are $600 a pop. The classes through NYU are $700. I'm looking at nearly $8000 bill, about $10000 if you add in the cost of having to get my own visa, there's no way in hell I'm going to come up with that kind of money if what I'm making now is barely enough to keep my utilities on and the rent paid.

So I have this idea mulling around in the back of my head for the last few days, plenty of research and sore eyes from staring at a computer screen way too long and a fried brain from trying to mix and match keywords on search engines. I give myself a mental break and head over to The Spoiler for some mindless football news and the top article was this:

Life Is Hard For Real Madrid's Two New Signings

Language barrier a problem for Sami Khedira and Mesut Özil

"Speaking to one of the Spanish sports papers, AS, Jose revealed both players haven’t had the easiest start to their Real Madrid careers.
'Life for the two Germans is not an easy life. They don’t speak a single word of Spanish. They only say ‘buenos días’ and ‘hola’. They don’t go further. The work we do in field is intense and luckily I have an assistant who speaks some German and gives them my instructions. But it’s not easy for them to get my message as I wanted. Besides, social life with the group is still zero for them. Khedira lives with Özil and Özil lives with Khedira. Their entry into the group is not easy yet, even though the group is young, friendly and easy to deal with. They don’t even speak English well. They speak it a little better than Spanish, but it’s so hard that way. Patience, we have to give them time.'"

Well, that's just fan-fucking-tastic. The kid is going to struggle all season because he can't understand what the coach is telling him, and if I'd come up with this idea two years ago and gone for it, I could realistically be applying for this job right now. I could be teaching, translating and interpreting between German and Spanish for Mesut Ozil and Sami Khedira. And partying my fucking ass off in Madrid, one of the most incredible cities in the world, in Cristiano Ronaldo's playground. Now that's big-time.

Any thoughts, opinions, reflections, comments, feedback, good, bad or ugly, goes in the comments section. Someone tell me why this is a bad idea....

The Battle For Aaron Rodgers: Fantasy Football Edition

2010-09-01T17:14:00.000-07:00

As you may already know from the below post, I fixed the draft order in my fantasy football league so that I would pick first. That way, I could guarantee myself I'd get Aaron Rodgers, my Green Bay Packers' quarterback. Repeat.

Mine.

And I did get Aaron Rodgers in my league. But there's also Georgie's league, and along comes Brother Barry with the notion that he should have Aaron Rodgers.

Oh, fuck nooooo. He did not...

Oh, yes he did.

And I get this email:

"Genn, I was waiting for you to jump in the pre-draft quorum and was keeping an eye on the "active teams" postings, but hadn't seen your logo before it was my time to pick and thought it proper for me to grab him before one of the unknowns (people not in our football group) nabbed him. Besides, Rodgers' 330+ projected 2010 fantasy points was too much to pass up...
Or....you deserved a slap for "customizing" YOUR draft so that you'd have the number one pick...pick your poison...lol - curious how Geo got the first pick in HIS draft, though...hmmmm. - I'm just sayin'. :)
Brother B
p.s. It is quite possible that I'll never be happy until I come up with the first pick in a draft!!!!!!!! lol"

"Brother B,

I will tear your head off and have Charles Woodson run it back for a pick six...
Motherfucker....
Aaron Rodgers is quite irresistable. I can't say I blame you, but still. Lucky you, you will pay for this all season long, I'll be, like, spitting in your food and shit. :)
Remember last year I had top pick in my draft and I never switched the draft order, it just "randomized" us that way, so maybe it automatically puts the Commish at the top? Or me and Georgie just got "randomly" lucky.

Fuckin' creep. :) G"

This is gonna be one long season for you my Brother.

Comment on that. :)

Saved By The Football...

2010-08-15T15:51:00.000-07:00

It's that time of year again, folks. It's kind of like I go into off-season when they do and only come back to life when coaches across the world start doing pre-season roll call.

Life suddenly seems like it might be falling back into place right now; the stability that is the return of both my footballs and regaining a sense of purpose to waking up early Saturday and Sunday mornings. My sanity has returned just in time.

That idiot, D, the one that I got my heart stepped on by last week, is in my fantasy football league. I'm no computer whiz, but when I set up the league, I saw this link that said "Customize Draft Order". Heh-heh (evil grin), now I know what that means!! So I clicked on it and set the draft so that I would draft first. The rest of the league would draft in the order they signed up.

And then I admitted it to everybody, because I'm an asshole. I mean, I bragged about it, totally. And then I told them I'm taking Aaron Rodgers and we're going to bury all you sonsofbitches this season, and that was that.

D was the very next person to sign up for my league, so he drafts second. He's been bitching at me about customizing the draft order, they all have, but I'm going to have to tell him that he drafts second and he needs to shut up. And now that he's unloaded the girlfriend-story and I'm pissed at him, I want to go back in and change the order again so his punk ass can draft last.

But I can't. Really, that's not fair. Just because he has a girlfriend doesn't mean I have to turn into a complete dick to him, which I kinda have. He's asked me several times over the past week why I've been so pissy lately, and I told him it's because of people dying and other people moving away; I sort of left out the part about where he'd really stung me with the girlfriend part. But I have been a bit sharper than usual on the sarcasm and he's noticed. I need to get my head in check and start acting normal again. As much as I'd like to say "You wanna draft high? Fine, have your fucking girlfriend start a fantasy league, I'm sure she'll let you draft first", I just can't bring myself to be that unfair and unreasonable. So D will continue to draft second.

I was up long before 7:30 a.m. to catch the first English Premier league game of the season, Manchester City v. Tottenham. They took over 30 shots on goal and not a single fucking one of them actually went into the net. After multiple fan heart attacks, the game ended 0-0. No wonder Americans don't like soccer. We're all about the destination, soccer is more about the journey, and that was one very, VERY exciting first game.

Less than twelve hours later the Cleveland Browns open the pre-season at Lambeau Field against the Green Bay Packers. My two favourite football teams. Had this been a regular-season game I would have been a mess, but playing each other in pre-season is just me having my cake and getting to eat it too. I haven't seen Aaron Rodgers in six months; God, is he perfect. Even seeing Eric Man-gina on the sidelines was kind of special...

A Plane Crashes In Alaska And Sarah Palin Isn't On It....

2010-08-10T18:01:00.000-07:00

...Former NASA chief Sean O' Keefe is on it and survives. Former Sen. Ted Stevens is on it and does not. Palin was nowhere near it.

What a sad day for America.

In The Black....

2010-08-10T17:03:00.000-07:00

I guess the best way to describe me right now is "broken". No idea where I'm going, what I'm doing, where we're all going and why am I in this handbasket? The roller-coaster ride continues:

P is getting married next September and will be moving to the UK then. I've tried so hard to be happy for her and I really am. She's one of my best friends and I do want her to be happy. But as I watch her move forward, I'm getting very discouraged about the failures of my own path to the UK. I haven't been able to find ANY loopholes, I don't qualify for any of the available visas, and I can't do an online relationship like she has. I'm down to almost nothing and losing a little more hope every day. And now that it's actually happening for her, I'm scared to death. She's gonna leave me on this side of the ocean in just over a year and I was the one who started this whole mess and now has nothing to show for it but to put her on a plane to leave me.

*************************************

F drops by the other day and says he's been in Michigan all week, where his family is from. His parents are elderly and having difficulties maintaining their lives, and he hasn't been able to find work here for over a year. That being said he is most likely going to move back to Michigan. It really is the best thing for him to do, I'll be the first to admit it. He has a good shot at getting a job through his mother, and they really need him, there's no reason he shouldn't go back. Except me, of course. I rely on him a lot. He's willing to drive me around, he's a party pal, a football fan, and I can tell him just about everything that happens to me and he understands it, or disagrees and tells me exactly why.

****************************************

I could lose one of them and not die. But BOTH? Oh fuck no....

****************************************

Spooky and Cap'n Ergo Jinglebollocks came up Saturday, I'd been invited to a benefit concert at a local bar they were both familiar with, so we decided to make a day of it. H entered us into a 50/50 raffle and wrote my name on a ticket.
H: "Get out your ticket."
Me: "Yeah, with all that great luck I've had lately, sure, they should just hand over the money. Whatever."
60-some-odd people, and they called my name. They had to call it three times, I didn't believe it the first two. For someone as broke and miserable as I am, this had more meaning to it than anyone there could have known but S and CEJ, and I'm blessed that it was them who were with me...

****************************************

D has died. D was part of my crazy/fetish/party-friends crowd. She was booted a couple years ago. She'd been a close friend and roommate of L for many years, and he finally cut her loose, which led to the rest of us doing the same. She had stolen money from him, and that doesn't fly in a righteous bunch like us. The last I saw her was a year ago outside at the Ministry show. D and I were never really close, but we had "moments" together, and she was one of the first people to break open my insecurities about my appearance. I mean she threw it straight into my face, literally. D was hardcore, a bad-ass party girl, and the path she chose to live was a somewhat dangerous one. But live she did, much more than some people who live to be twice her age, and she was very much loved. May she finally see all peace...

Freida Bee Needs Some Tool....

2010-08-03T19:15:00.000-07:00

That sounds so wrong, and it's not like she asked for it, really, but to a music-person, someone who's never heard Tool, well, it's almost a crime. So let me explain the laws to Freida Bee, MD:

These are what I think are Tool's most popular songs and a decent sample of the bigger picture. I wonder if I'm posting this more for Frieda or for myself...

Toothaches Are To Die For...

2010-07-27T18:03:00.000-07:00

July 9 - 9:00 a.m. : Pain starts. Take two ibuprofens, might be TMJ, I've been a bit overstressed lately.

July 9 - 6:00 p.m. : This pain isn't going away, and now it's throbbing so damn bad I could cry. Grab leftover Darvocets from the medicine cabinet and start popping those, but I only have about 5, that won't get me too far....

July 10 - 5:30 a.m. : Wake up from the pain, take last Darvocet. The whole left side of my jaw is on fire. Might be a tooth...

July 10 - 10:30 a.m. : Call dentist, it's a Saturday, if I can be there by noon they'll get me an emergency exam and a prescription for painkillers. My dentist is "The Dude", I'd love to go see him and let him handle it. but I'm in between paydays and only have $20 left. Think I'll try my friends first, see if any of those crazy people have any painkillers they'll just give me until this pain dies down and skip out on all the dentist stuff...

July 10 - 11:00 a.m. : J calls, says he'll be over by 1:00 with something the doctor ordered and he'll just give it to me, no cost. I like the sound of that. :) Besides, I have no insurance on the car and a suspended driver's license because of it and since nobody else can be here within an hour to drive me to see The Dude, the risk is just too big.

July 10 - 2:30 p.m. : J is still here, the World Cup game is on and the pills he brought aren't working. Too late to go to The Dude.

July 10 - 3:30 p.m. : J is gone (doesn't like soccer), the World Cup game is still on and I'm in so much pain I'm crying because I have no other way to release it, and I don't even know what "it" is that I'm trying to release. I get in the car with my suspended driver's license and start down Detroit Rd. to the Lakewood Hospital ER. What would have been a $20 copay to go to the dentist will now be a $75 emergency room visit and the risk of getting pulled over by the po, my only leverage being that it is a medical emergency. But the pain is so intense I'm not left with much choice. Should've just driven myself to see The Dude when I had the chance for all this was worth...

July 10 - 5:45 p.m. : Sent home from the ER with most likely a toothache and a prescription for Vicodins. PARTY!

July 10 - 7:15 p.m. : Party ends very quickly. Apparent Vicodins don't agree with me very well and the intense pain is now accompanied by intense vomiting. Turn off the Lady Gaga CD, get back in the car and illegally drive myself back to Lakewood Hospital to get Darvocets. Most likely gonna get charged for coming back a second time, for a total of $150. Thank God I don't need this up front, I'd have had to jack the neighbours by now.

July 11 - 2:30 a.m. : I have a tooth infection, could have been caused by any number of things. Threw up Vics once more for the docs to put on a good show, got an IV for pain and for antibiotics, and a CAT scan. In all that time my face had swelled up so bad I looked like I had a gigantic growth underneath my jawline, like a giant dog who'd unsuccessfully tried to swallow a tennis ball. I was pumped up on the IV, given a prescription for antibiotics and Darvocets, and sent home.

July 11 - 4:30 a.m. : Wake up in pain, take meds.

July 11 - 7:15 a.m. : Wake up in pain, take meds.

July 11 - 10: 30 a.m. : Wake up in pain, take meds. I think I am going to kill someone today. I'm also vaguely aware that it's the World Cup final.

July 11 - 4:30 p.m. : Vaguely recall that Spain may have won the World Cup. Reminder to follow-up on that.

July 11 - 8:45 p.m. : Too many Darvocets can be just as bad as any Vicodins. Hurling again...

July 12 - 1:00 a.m. : I think I'm dying. Is the World Cup over? Did I miss something?

July 12 - 8:30 a.m. : Call dentist, The Dude says 'Have your ass in my office pronto.' So I did. And then he said, 'What the hell did you DO ?!?!' I explained everything but left out the part about ODing on Darvocets last night. I just said I was still throwing up. Dude says it's a profoundly infected tooth and to go to an oral surgeon and get it pulled. The tooth next to it is also infected but he can clean it out with a root canal and fix it with a crown after the other one is out. He gives me three referrals. He also shows how much this is going to cost me, and we try to apply for a "dental credit card" that would finance me so I could get the work done and just make payments that way. I was denied. The Dude did a double-take when he saw my income on the credit application; he asked me how old I was and then asked if I was the fry girl at McDonald's. And then he had the nerve to tell me I was grossly underpaid for what I do. This is why he's The Dude....

July 12 - 7:45 p.m. : God I am SO WASTED....

July 13 - 8:30 a.m. : Call the oral surgeon referrals the dentist gave me. I have dental insurance but apparently I can't get service without paying up front for it anyway. These docs are kinda expensive, but then when you have only $20 left four days before payday, everything's fucking expensive. With my dental insurance, I still have to pay about $120 to get the tooth pulled, and I'm gonna have to wait till Friday when I get paid again. It's finally starting to sink in that this is going to be a money problem, it's not going to be as simple as just "walk in the door and fix me" and the amount of pain I'm in isn't going to make a shade of difference. Cry all you want, Red, with no money, you ain't gettin' shit done.

July 13 - 3:45 p.m. : At work, one hour to go, feeling resentful. I could be this poor and stay home. If they fired me right now, I could walk down the street to the county hospital, get rated as a "no income" and get the fucking tooth pulled for free in a few hours. Instead, I'm going to put myself through two extra days of the most intense pain I've probably ever had just because I don't have the money to save my own ass any faster. And it's not like I need that much, on the grand scale of things, $120 is easy to obtain, I simply don't earn enough to survive without shelling out every penny I have so that when an emergency does happen in between paydays, I'm not so completely fucked. I have no room to breathe whatsoever. I'm doing my job a favour simply by showing up.

July 14 - 12:15 p.m. : Feeling extra resentful and totally doped up. I don't want to stay home, there's nothing to do there but take pain pills and sleep and I've done so much of that already. I might as well be at work, at least it's something to do.

July 14 - 6:00 p.m. : I think I really am going to kill somebody. I could tear my own head off right about now. Fuck.

July 14 - 9:00 p.m. : I fell down the rabbit hole into Happy Darvocetland! WOOO!!! Reading gossip news about super-hot soccer players and listening to Tricky, "Christiansands".

July 15 - 2:30 a.m. : I slept for 4 whole hours straight. I woke up in pain, which is always a bit torturous, but the idea that it took 4 hours to get there...I almost feel "refreshed" in a twisted kind of way...

July 15 - 9:00 a.m. : I hate my job. Why am I here? Why am I STILL in fucking pain? Why am I still taking all these goddamn pills, is this some kind of fucking joke? Am I some kind of fucking joke? Maybe I'm losing my mind, like really fucking losing it....

July 15 - 4:00 p.m. : "If it's love, it's electric..." Listening to "Stylo" by The Gorillaz and thinking happy Darvocet-related thoughts.

July 15 - 8:15 p.m. : ggggggrrrrrrraaaahhhhjdsgfdkjgflkjghe;ogfjfhglfhg'seghjkawkehgr

July 16 - 12:00 a.m. : direct deposit rolls over. Folks, we have a PAY DAY!!!

July 16 - 8:30 a.m. : The cheapest place I found to pull it was the county hospital at $83 as an emergency walk-in. Have a seat in the chair and here comes the Novocaine needle. Best lookin' needle I ever saw...

July 16 - 9:45 a.m. : The wad of gauze in my mouth may appear uncomfortable, but not as much as having to take the goddamn bus home after all this. I just hope I make it home before the Novocaine wears off so I can spit out all this gauze and get a drink so I can take a pill.

July 16 - 11:30 a.m. : Make it home just in time to start shedding tears again. Just took the last Darvocet. Walking to the drug store for a refill in 90-degree heat. Fantastic.

July 16 - 12:15 p.m. : That was terrible. 45 minutes out in this heat with a goddamn new hole in my mouth all fucked up on pills and with throbbing pain. Again considering tearing my own head off. Supposed to go out with the Parma friends tonight but I don't think that's happening.

July 16 - 4:00 p.m. : Yeah, I'm not going out with anyone tonight. I almost feel like I'm not able to tolerate the pain as well as I was when all this first started six whole days ago...

July 17 - 2:45 a.m. : Wow. I just slept 6 straight hours, the longest I've slept in six days.

July 17 - 8:00 p.m. : Partying on Darvocets and listening to the Sex Pistols. Pain? What pain?

July 18 - 1:15 a.m. : Oh, yeah. That pain...

July 18 - 7:15 a.m. : Another great round of sleep in. I think I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel here.

July 18 - 3:30 p.m. : I have made an executive decision that I will attend the party tonight. S is driving, I can get as screwed up as I need to, I'll get through it.

July 18 - 8:00 p.m. : Yeah, uh, not feeling this party-thing at all. I've taken over 40 Darvocets in the last week, it's not much fun anymore, my brain is totally fogged out, I'm not feeling very sociable and I'm STILL in pain! And L wants to fit me into that tight-ass corset to wear to this party...dude, you'll pop my head off! I swear to God as I feel him tightening the corset I can feel the pressure building in my jaw.

July 19 - 1:30 a.m. : A meal of wine and Darvocets does me just fine! I'm having the time of my life at F's party, I'm dressed all cute, talking crap with my friends who are just as fucked up as I am but for different reasons. I feel comfortable for a change...

July 20 - 9:15 a.m. : Feel pretty good for someone who partied that hard under those kinds of circumstances. Gonna take a walk before it gets too hot to the corner market and buy some seriously fresh fruit and do a little detox.

July 20 - 5:45 p.m. : I am so sick of being in pain. Just tired of feeling it all the bloody time...

July 21 - 4:45 a.m. : Just woke up after 8 straight hours sleep and for the first time PAIN-FREE. I scheduled an appointment with The Dude next Monday to get the root canal on the other tooth, but being pain-free feels so nice I may call and reschedule.

July 22 - 9:00 a.m. : Call The Dude to reschedule the root canal. He tells me to man up and he'll just see me Monday.

July 26 - 9:30 a.m. : I'd been sending the dentist money for over a year now in hopes of saving the two teeth that caused all this problem. Once a month I send him a check, $20 here, $35 there, anything I could afford so I could build up some credit with him. But it wasn't enough, I mean not even remotely. I lost one of the teeth, and all that scrimping and saving I did only managed to get me within $50 of a root canal. So I shelled out the last $50 and did it. I still need a crown and my balance is back to zero. At the rate I'm going I'll be old enough to have dentures by the time I save up the money to get the teeth I have fixed. The Dude told me to go find a better-paying job. He says because it's just me I'm supporting, if I had an adequately paying job I'd have all my teeth fixed in less than a year.

July 26 - 11:15 a.m. : That was some root canal. The Dude said I hung in there good, though. He also said no skydiving or flash mobs for 24 hours. Gee, thanks, Dude. What CAN I do?

July 26 - 2:30 p.m. : Bring on the Darvocets! WOOOO!!!!

July 26 - 9:15 p.m. : Not so fast. Why don't you vomit a few of those up before you start taking more, idiot....

July 27 - 4:45 a.m. : I guess this means my love affair with Darvocets is over? My God, we had such a great run.

July 27 - 9:00 p.m. : Have not taken a Darvocet in 7 hours. Have not thrown up in 6 hours. It may be too soon to call this officially "over", but I'm gonna do it anyway just for the symbolism of shoving it into my past. I will not see The Dude for at least another six months while I pay off the emergency visits. The Dude says I need to get the crown as soon as possible or I could still lose this tooth; I have to find a way to pay for the crown, another $320. After a year of saving up with the dentist, I only managed to pull together $315, I have no idea how the hell I'm supposed to make this happen any faster. Again, the purpose of dental insurance would be what? $300, hell, it might as well be $3,000. An unattainable cost is an unattainable cost.

July 27 - 9:30 p.m. : Realizes that the cost of all this total for the ER visits, prescriptions, deductible, tooth extraction, root canal and crown will be $820 out of my pocket with insurance coverage. Also realizes that living in the UK I would have had the same thing for about $300, no additional insurance required. Also realizes that living in the UK I could have afforded to fix my teeth when I started having real problems instead of waiting until they become so bad I have to yank them just to survive. Problem in the US is because it costs so little to yank the teeth and is so extraordinarily expensive to fix them, poor people have no choice but to go for the pull option just to make the pain stop. That's how you end up with a nation full of poor folks with no damn teeth.

July 27 - 9:45 p.m. : Thinking I deserve better.

People Are Strange....

2010-07-23T19:03:00.000-07:00

I thought I'd take the Detroit Rd. bus to work Friday because it was a more direct route to where I was going for the staff meeting. So I walked up to the stop, about two blocks from my home. There was a woman, mid-late 50's sitting inside the bus shelter wearing a denim cap and a white shirt, nothing unusual, and a younger man, about my age maybe a bit less, standing against the outside of the shelter with headphones on and reading a Scene magazine. I finished smoking my cigarette and the bus still hadn't arrived, so I started my normal slow-pacing up the sidewalk. I don't really "pace" like a nervous habit, I just sort of walk around a bit for something to do. I walked past the two people at the bus shelter and started up the sidewalk past a couple empty store fronts. And that's when I heard-

"You evil bitch! I told you all I wanted was enough money to get something to drink! Why do you have to be like that to me! You didn't have to treat me that way, you bitch! You're a nasty, evil bitch!"

I turned around and the woman who had been sitting inside the bus shelter was now standing on the sidewalk next to the curb, her body facing me but her head turned sideways. I looked in the direction she was looking, but all that was there was empty grass that led to the windows of a building set about 50 feet back. There wasn't a person in sight. She suddenly stopped screaming, turned her head back, folded her arms across her chest and lifted her hand to place her chin in it. And just stood there, staring out onto the road.

I looked at the man standing at the shelter, he was just as dumbfounded as I was. In my normal pacing routine, I would have eventually turned around and walked back, but I decided it best to stay far west of the woman. Whatever had happened in her head had apparently stopped as she was now almost motionless standing at the curb, but I wasn't comfortable. She could see me and think I'm that evil bitch and my ass is history. If I kept my back to her I wouldn't engage her with eye contact. With my back turned just the right way as I was walking, I could see her reflection in the storefront windows as I walked by them, if she came up behind me I would know it. So I just stood there and walked very slowly until I was about 50 or so feet away from her.

And she did it again. "Stop! Just stop it! Why won't you leave me alone, just leave me alone, you evil bitch! I don;t think I"m asking for too much. Why do you have to be such a bitch, why?!?!" I watched her reflection in the windows, she'd turned her head back to the same empty grass and was screaming. There was very little body language and she was still standing in my direction, she otherwise didn't move, just stood there screaming very loudly. And I swear I looked SEVERAL times to make sure there really was no one there and that I wasn't the one completely losing it.

The longest-ever wait for the bus finally came to an end, I debated whether or not I should get on. This woman had really creeped me out, and when the bus pulled up there were only three people on it. If she did decide to go off on that "evil bitch" that was haunting her brain, there woudn't be many passengers to choose from, thus increasing my odds that I could get hurt. I realized the man at the bus shelter was safe, she'd not gone after him though he was in much closer proximity to her than I was, but this was obviously a female that was harassing her and I wasn't willing to take my chances.

So I lit up a cigarette and watched her get on the bus. Ironically enough, the man at the shelter decided to wait for the next one too...

*****************************

Twenty minutes later I get on the next bus and figure it's just gonna be one of those days...

A woman gets on a few stops after me and is asking for change to get on the bus. She's talking very fast, very loud, and keeps repeating herself, saying that she is going to school, "going to school full-time, I'm a student and I need money to get on the bus, does anyone have any change?" Because she's holding up the line, people start giving her change just so we can get the bus moving again. She sits down up front and keeps saying thank you to everyone and telling the whole bus how she's a full-time student and going to school and really appreciates good souls who are willing to help a person. And then she turns toward a woman standing at the front of the bus, maybe ten feet away from where she's sitting.

"Excuse me, excuse me, hey! Why'd you come up in back of me like that? Why did you get on the bus after me? You had to pay to get on this bus, bitch, who the fuck do you think you are? You a shady motherfucker, ain't you. What the fuck is wrong with you, bitch? Who do you think you are getting on this bus behind me?"

There was no initial exchange between these two women. My girl was wearing sunglasses so we couldn't see her eyes but she had to be Freaked The Eff Out. And this was a very well-dressed, higher-class black woman, I'm sure she's not the kind who's used to being on the receiving end of ghetto and crazy.

And the verbal attacks keep going, the bus driver finally says "Miss, please!" "Okay, bus driver, I'll be quiet, I'll be quiet, I'll be quiet. You know I ain't normally like that and-oh my god, did I say that around kids? I'm sorry, I really shouldn't be saying that in front of children, you know I-I'll be quiet. But she a shady motherfucker, I'm telling ya. That's a shady, shady bitch if I ever seen one, with your bald-headed ass (the woman had very, very short hair), bitch, I will rob you! Who the fuck you think you are?"

This went on for about 3 minutes. The woman being attacked finally had the nerve to step back and move to the back of the bus, for a moment we all feared our girl who'd lost it would get up and follow her, but she didn't. She actually shut up. For a few seconds.

An older woman with a cane gets on the bus and before anyone can warn her, she sits down right next to our crazy girl. They say "hello" to each other, the mentally-ill woman says "How are you?" Our elderly friend answers "Fine, thank you." And that's when it starts, at top volume-

"So how's Charlie doing, girl, how's Charlie? He still out fucking all them prostitutes? Cuz you know Charlie was waaaay into that. But look, I know what you said about me, I know what the fuck you said about me, you went around telling everybody and telling my husband I smelled like sex and that I was getting fucked in the ass. That's right, bitch, I know you did. You told my husband that I was getting fucked in the ass by another man and that I smelled like sex. Who the fuck do you think you are?"

This part went on for about 5 minutes. By then, the older woman had moved to the other side of the aisle, and crazy girl got up and sat down in the seat diagonally next to where I was. I started to panic and worry that I was next. If she didn't have enough conscience to not say those kinds of things in front of little children and Muslims and to attack higher-class folks and senior citizens, I'm sure she was capable of letting me have it. The man directly across the aisle from her got up and moved, but I hesitated. She was still closer to me than she was to him, and I was afraid of triggering her, just like I was the first woman. If I just cower away and they don't really notice me, I won't get targeted. So I waited till she turned her head and I bolted to the back. More and more people kept getting on the bus, and the yelling about the sex and accusing this older woman continued. The bus had stopped again, and suddenly she just said "In fact, let me get the fuck off this bus." She stood up and followed the last person off and started walking down Detroit Rd. And that was it.

Everyone on the bus was shaken up. The driver had already called transit-police, but she exited the bus before they got to us, though the bus driver did stop and tell them who she was, what she was wearing and briefly what had happened. People were whispering to each other in hushed tones about what they saw and heard, most of the conversation I couldn't make out and I was so stuck in my own head I didn't have room to hear anybody else....

**********************************

I'm the paper-pusher, but I've been at this job over two years and I have some version of common sense going on and I know bad when I see it. This is bad.

The students just completed the first training class, four weeks of basic computer skills. K is the instructor. These students all have various disabilities, which is why they're working with us.

The second-leg of the computer training just started this week, M is the instructor. Several of the students from K's class have carried over into M's class, and apparently, so have their problems.

P is probably the most mentally-ill person I've seen come walking into our classroom. The man "looks crazy"; his hair and clothes are unkempt, his eyes are downright frightening, his motions and body language are very exaggerated. He can be a bit overwhelming and unnerving under first impressions. To P's credit, he is intelligent and with a good support system will someday be able to live a somewhat normal existence, but it's obvious that this fella is nowhere near that yet.

I met with the students individually to do intake for the second part of the computer-training class. P was one of the first I sat down with. I asked how things were going and he said "Not good." He's been having problems with one of the girls in the class, and that this girl in particular was making fun of him. He said it happened everyday for four weeks, it was now continuing into this class, and he was tired of it and about to tell her off. I didn't ask P what was said to him, I get it. This girl he was talking about is an 18-year-old hothead who just graduated high school and thinks her shit don't stink and doesn't know that bullying won't fly in the real world. All she sees is this crazy guy who's weak enough to not fight back so she took advantage of it. She's doing to P what she probably did to somebody else in high school.

So I asked the instructor, K. Apparently it's two girls ganging up on P, both recent high school grads who have some growing up they need to do. K wrote up in her case notes that these two girls had "been disruptive", but nothing about them bullying another student or what was done about the disruption.

K explains to me that when the girls were in her class she would tell them to "Be quiet" and they wouldn't listen, they'd just keep on talking and getting louder. She even wrote that in her case notes. K told me when I questioned her further that the girls would eventually shut up for a bit when they were done saying what they wanted to say.

K just basically admitted to me that she let these two punk-ass little fucking girls run her class for four whole weeks AND bully another student, one who happens to be severely mentally ill. These children were never offered any consequences or held accountable for their actions. They should have been pulled out of class after the first day it started, had the behaviour addressed, and if it happened again, we call the caseworker and they get booted from the class. Instead, they overtook the class from the teacher for four straight weeks and all we did was smile and hand them a graduation certificate. Are you bloody kidding me?!?! I couldn't directly say to K "What the fuck were you thinking?!?!", so I just asked her that if that happens again to please notify me and the boss so one of us can deal with that behaviour before it gets out of control. She said she would, but she's so full of shit. K only has the students for four weeks, if she can manage to deal with them just that long she can pass them off onto M in her class and make it M's problem to deal with, then K doesn't have to be the bad guy. K even said to me, "G, you know, M ain't gonna put up with that in her class." It was all I could do to not say "Then why the fuck did you put up with it in yours?"

I haven't been in the office for a few days because of my tooth issue, so I'll find out soon what the fallout is from all this. M and I talked about it, but I haven't discussed it with the boss yet, still waiting to catch up with her. What I know now is that I've lost a lot of respect for K as a teacher and a bit of respect for the work that we do, that I do. And that's not fair...

Hot Chicks My Dad Would Have Dated: Lindsey Lohan

2010-07-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

So America's favourite Hollywood princess that never truly left the trailer park gets a stint in a place that should feel just like home. This is news here; though I can't remember what the girl even became famous for. I think she was an actress...

Lindsey Lohan would date Dad because he's also from a trailer-park and loves to party himself stupid.

Lindsey Lohan would not date Dad because apparently she's into chicks (??).

Dad would not date Lindsey Lohan because she's just a slight bit too young and too stupid for him, and it's not like Dad sets those boundaries all that high.

Dad would date Lindsey Lohan because she's probably easy, probably still has some money, she's very cute, and understands his world as much as she is capable of understanding anything.

Friends 101

2010-07-18T19:08:00.001-07:00

Because I believe the most accurate measure of a successful life is the relationships we have with other people, I have to say I've been quite the Renaissance-Genn lately, living vicariously through the trials, travels and tribulations of the people who shape my existence. Here's what I know:

I don't know why Devil's Tower isn't on my bucket-list, but I've always found myself fascinated with it; maybe because of it's role in "Close Encounters of the Third Kind", which is one of my favourite movies. It's eerie, menacing, and very, VERY big, a humbling reminder from Mother Nature that she is still in charge and very much capable of kicking our pint-sized asses all over her planet.
And my dear friend Y was just there as part of a much-needed vacation. Mother Nature already played into Y's summer earlier this year by way of a freak hail storm in Nebraska that did thousands of dollars of damage to her home and her stuff that is still being repaired. Y understands very clearly the spiritual side of nature and our human-relationship to it. I know she took away from the visit to Devil's Tower what she was meant to take away from it, and that's because she's so amazing, not just the rock....

How's this for perspective? Climbers on Devil's Tower prove just how BIG that thing really is...

In just four days, my dear friend L will have her visitor from the UK; boyfriend T will be here for about 10 days. They'll be visiting spots in Cleveland and taking a few days' romantic trip into Canada through Niagara (awesome). I will get to meet T in person spending a day with them at the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame next week.

Of course L's freaking: what to wear, getting the house ready, the anticipation, excitement, nervousness, the entire range of emotions one can have with a relationship like this finally coming together. This is a very big deal for her, and I'm riding along with my own very mixed emotions.

My initial impressions of T have been "okay". The best I can say is that I certainly don't dislike him. He's not a con-artist, a criminal, or even just a simple asshole. He seems polite, generous, overall good-natured. The worst I can say is that I don't find him all that compelling. My hope is that I will find him much more interesting as I get to know him. My fear is that I won't. Bottom line is, L isn't getting into the UK without T, and I won't survive the UK without L, meaning my relationship with him also has to work...

I put my friends high enough on the pedestal that sometimes I forget they're human. They make mistakes, they get screwy perspectives, they hit rock-bottom, and it seems to be those dark points where I care for them the most. With every exposed flaw, they become more perfect. And I don't even know for sure if I feel that H screwed up, almost screwed up, or that it was a sign that he's done with his relationship. All I know is that I love him and find him more perfect now than I ever did because of what he told me....

This, ladies and gents, is a bejeweled butt-plug. It was just that kind of party....

Lebron Fallout: Cleveland Is In Hell

2010-07-09T19:26:00.000-07:00

Every sports fan has "The Day After". In Cleveland, we have a lot of those.

The analysis, opinions, and pure savagery that is "The Decision" are now in full force. The reactions of my fellow city-mates is making national news. Clevelanders are now famous for burning hundreds of Lebron jerseys and posting said bonfires all over YouTube. The entire nation is voyeuring in on our misery. The "background analysis" to the story is all about our miserable sports history and even more miserable economy.

And in a moment that can only be headlined as "classic Cleveland", the Cavaliers' owner Dan Gilbert writes a seething rant email on the Cavs' website, calling Lebron's decision a "cowardly betrayal". Then, he GUARANTEES that the Cavs will win a championship before Lebron wins one. But the biggest criticism Dan Gilbert is getting right now is the fact that he chose to use the Comic Sans font to write the letter in.

No, really.

God damn Comic Sans.

Thanks, Dan. You're an idiot.

The best cheer-up message is here.

I Gotta Get The Eff Outta Here...

2010-07-08T19:09:00.000-07:00

Because I'm a Cleveland Browns fan I remember "The Drive" and "The Fumble". Because I'm from Cleveland I know the history of "The Move" and "The Shot".

And now we have "The Decision".

Cleveland's sports history is notoriously bad, and I'm not just saying that because I'm from here; this is not news to anyone that knows American sports. Our baseball team, basketball team and football team have never won a championship of any kind that is remembered by anyone from Cleveland under the age of 65.

I really don't care what Lebron does with himself because I'm not a basketball fan, but I do care because I live in Cleveland, and King James' signing with Miami is going to hammer the final nail into the coffin of this dying city.

Cleveland has made national headlines over the past several years for the major impact the downfall of the economy has had here. Thousands of jobs have been lost, mostly manufacturing jobs like steelworkers and automakers. OfficeMax and BP had headquarters here and moved out, taking hundreds of office jobs. Retail markets went sour when unemployed people had no money to buy.

I live in Cleveland and I know all of it like the back of my hand; what others know as stats are the things I live and see every day. Massive skyscrapers are sitting empty, store fronts in the very center of downtown that have been empty for years. Rush hour used to be hell, now it's barely an annoyance with so many fewer cars on the roads. The population has decreased so much that Columbus is now the largest city in Ohio. All the big concerts and music festivals go there now, Cleveland is considered a "secondary market" by most entertainment standards. The few really cool, chic places we have left to hang out are squeezed in against a franchised backdrop of themed pubs and fratboy-hangouts. You know when there's an event downtown, like a Lebron James basketball game, because all the traffic is moving in one direction and the rest of downtown is empty.

This is why I want to leave. Everything I love about being in the big-city is no longer here, or has no real value. I feel more and more isolated, more "small town". Like I'm missing out on something big.

Lebron really is adored by his people here; they admire and idolize him the way kids did Jordan in my generation. The city's moral couldn't sink any lower. I'm sure "The Day After" will be a complete bummer; now is when all the analysis, summary, deep-thinking starts.
Exactly why Lebron's leaving is not for me to know or care, but if he's thinking anything like what I'm thinking, we weren't meant for a place like what Cleveland's become. Miami's too hot for me, I'd have taken New York, but to each his own, as "bigger" as it's gotta be...

Hotter'n Hell....

2010-07-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

A woman sits down next to me on the bus and says "Good morning."
Me: "Good morning, how are you?"
Her: "Fine, you?"
Me: "A little warm, but I think that's everyone's story today."
Her: "Yeah, it's that humidity. I love the heat, but it can get to be a bit too much sometimes."
Me: "It sure can. I don't like the heat at all, anything about 75 and I'm starting to complain."
Her: "Oh, 75 is nothing! How long have you had those extensions? Maybe you'd keep cooler if you took those out?"

***************

(coming in from smoke break)

Me: "That's almost not worth going to smoke for. Waaaay too hot."
Co-worker: "Have you considered taking any of that hair off? You know, you have a lot of hair, you don't really need those extensions."

***************

But that's my real hair....

***************

Summer sucks.

(gasp!)

Yeah, I know, I'm totally in the minority on that one. And I no longer care.

Thank God it's World Cup season and I took all this time off from work; I've pretty much stayed locked inside watching games with the AC on for the last month, while the temperature outside has hovered between 80- and 90-degrees and consistently HUMID. The whole three-day stretch I actually had to go to work last week I was gifted with a cold front, mid-70's.

I live in Cleveland, it's not like it gets that hot here. I had good timing with this vacation business, so I can't even imagine how pissy and miserable I'd be if actually was forced out into it this whole month. What little I've had to do out in the sun has been enough.

With the vitiligo I don't need a tan, but because it's always so sunny out and my skin gets exposed to so much light, the parts of my skin that do tan take on a beautiful brown colour, which makes the vitiligo harder and harder to mask.

I can't see for shit in all the sunlight. Even with sunglasses on I have to squint. After I go outside from being in the office all day, it's damn near blinding. I wear sunglasses all year round; I've actually fallen in the snow because I can't see where to walk with the sunlight reflecting off it, which I'm sure was funny for whoever saw it.

That's the other thing. I'm a big-time walker, and for the last month I've barely gotten the garbage out without breaking a sweat. I tried waiting till late at night to go, but it never cools off enough. Because I'm sitting around on my ass so much for World Cup games and can't go outside, I have to actually exercise. Turning my living room into a club dance floor has been fun, even the weights have been tolerable, but it doesn't make up for the hours I normally time-thieve walking all over the city.

And then there's the hair. The top half is dyed bright red, the underside dyed black, so it makes sense that people would think I have red hair with black extensions, but no, I really just have that much hair.
And cutting it short doesn't help. I end up a Lenny-Kravitz-style 'fro that I don't wear nearly as well as he does. It doesn't have to be any longer than three inches around my whole head for me to be covered in a full head of thick hair. The added length is just extra that can be pulled back, it doesn't add any more to the mass of mop that's attached directly to my scalp.

So screw summer. Soon enough I'll be back to wearing my fur coats and thick socks, and long-sleeve thermal shirts under my T-shirts, which is still cool for a chick my age.

*sigh*
It won't be long now...

The God of Football Loves Me....

2010-07-06T12:23:00.000-07:00

So all the teams I care about have been booted from the World Cup. Considering the odds of me ever actually winning the Cup are 15-1 and we only play it once every four years, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Of course none of my teams have actually won a World Cup in the eight that have been played in my lifetime. It's kind of like being a Cleveland Browns fan.

And just when I start thinking God really is a German, I get this from The Spoiler:

Torres tries to convert Lionel Messi into a Kasabian fan

"It seems English bands have been adopted as the cheerleaders of choice in this year’s World Cup. Hot on the heels of news Lionel Messi and Carlos Tevez blasted stirring Oasis anthems in the Argentinean dressing room, comes Fernando Torres’ revelation he regales the Spanish camp with music from strutting lad-rockers Kasabian. The Sun report Torres and Messi had the least believable conversation in the history of discourse when the Liverpool striker caught wind of Leo’s fondness for the Gallagher brothers:

'I read that Messi had discovered Oasis and was listening to them before World Cup matches, so I texted him to say that, while Oasis were good, Kasabian were the best British band since The Beatles. [that’s honestly what it says here - TS] He replied saying ‘No chance!’ So I texted back saying that I bet Kasabian take Spain further than Oasis do Argentina. I have already won that bet, but I’m now backing them to help Spain win the World Cup.' "

I can't imagine anything better right now than knowing Leo Messi is going to get Kasabianed. The only bummer about it is that it's not me doing the introduction, no offense to Torres. I commented on this post without shame that Nando should tie Leo to a chair and make him listen to all three CDs one right after the other. He'll be hooked long before he'd actually need to be set free.

Start here:

Gratuitous Glastonbury

2010-06-28T22:33:00.001-07:00

The absolute best of this year's mother-of-all-music-festivals, on her 40th birthday:

Every year I watch Glastonbury, I get an "aha" moment, someone I've never heard before that just blows my fucking mind. I spend the next week downloading every CD, doing research online, learning all about them. That's how I found the Scissor Sisters, Kasabian, Pete Doherty.

That didn't happen this year, no major earthquakes for me out of any of the new stuff I heard. I did see Florence and The Machine for the first time, and now I'm pissed that they won the BRIT award for Band of the Year over Kasabian, because now I realize they suck.

The biggest disappointment was my favourite band U2 having to cancel their headlining spot at Glasto because old-ass Bono hurt himself rehearsing for the upcoming tour and had to have back surgery.

And having to deal with the US and England both getting kicked out of the World Cup in the midst of all that sunshine and fun. Ugh.

The show itself wasn't a letdown at all, really. Every year I find a reason to cry over something beautiful that happens at Glastonbury and there was no exception to that this year. See below:

Maybe the closest thing to an "aha" moment was this: Snoop Dogg and somebody I've never heard of named "Tinie Tempah" with an awesome singalong song called "Pass Out".

The best thing about Glastonbury for the artists is that it's not all about them, but they still have to bring their A-game because it is the gig that makes and breaks careers. I guarantee you Little Stevie Wonder, at 115 years old, was very well aware when he took that stage Sunday night that his legacy was being put on trial. He remains a superstar, Glastonbury loved him.

I'm a hardcore GNR fan and a music snob, when I pulled up the video I thought, "I need Slash to do this song just like I fucking know it and have been listening to it for 20 years or I am going to be PISSED."

I got what I asked for. I got taken home...

Because U2 is my favourite band ever, I would have had to cancel on Glastonbury if I'd had tickets before Bono's accident. But this sure does a LOT to make up for it. Muse headlined Saturday night and invited The Edge to cover "Where The Streets Have No Name" with them on stage. It was 1/4 of U2, and was a very good quarter to have. And of course, Matt Bellamy nailed Bono's part byootifully, as he probably knew he'd get killed if he didn't.

Here's your feelgood story for Glasto 2010. Kylie Minogue had to pull a U2 and cancel her Glastonbury debut five years ago because she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She joins the Scissor Sisters this year for her comeback and performs a well-rehearsed dance routine with Jake and Ana to "Any Which Way".

The Gorillaz close their set Friday night with "Clint Eastwood", featuring Snoop Dogg, who refers to Damon Albarn as "my nigger Damon". I love Snoop Dogg, I love Damon Albarn, and now Snoop Dogg and Damon Albarn love each other. It was a special moment for all of us.

Gorillaz Ft. Snoop Dogg! - Clint Eastwood (Glastonbury 2010) - Watch more funny videos here

Gratuitous Messi Via Gallagher...Or Is That Gallagher Via Messi?

2010-06-24T20:24:00.000-07:00

The quickest way to my heart, even for a soccer player, is through my music. I will birth Messi's baby if he gets Noel Gallagher back in that band. Via Deadspin.com:

"Carlos Tevez and Lionel Messi have promised to offer swaggering Mancunians Noel and Liam Gallagher a blank cheque to reform Oasis, if Argentina win the World Cup this year. Apparently Tev has converted the squad into hardcore Oasis fans — none more so than Lionel Messi, who's spent the whole World Cup rocking out like it was 1994 all over again.
According to The Sun, Leo has pledged to bring the warring Gallagher brothers together again for a celebratory gig should Argentina triumph in this year's tournament, and is willing to hand over however much coin is necessary as to make it happen.

Says Messi: 'On the plane on the way to the World Cup Carlitos made me listen to their first two albums. They are absolutely amazing. I would have to say Supersonic and Live Forever are my favourites. I have been listening to their stuff on my iPod dock in the hotel room, on the way to the matches and in the dressing room. I can't believe it's taken me all this time to finally listen to them. I've been watching their live performances on YouTube and they look like they'd be amazing to see in concert. I asked Carlitos if we could go and see them in Manchester or London in concert, but he told me they have split up. I promise you, everybody absolutely loves it. We have agreed that if we win the World Cup we want to fly them over to Argentina for our celebration party. We just need them to name their price.'"

I am a GOD

2010-06-24T19:54:00.000-07:00

My computer had a virus, or a "malware", or an "adware", or a something. I don't know. My computer was all fucked up, that's what I know.
Somehow I had clicked on something that gave me a virus warning, that my computer was being attacked and I had to activate my spyware program right now, and because it had the Windows logo in the corner, I followed the directions, but all it did was want me to click to purchase anti-virus software. And once I clicked on it the first time, I couldn't make it stop. Every 30 seconds, a warning would appear in the corner, then another little screen behind it, and then a little box to "connect" or "stay offline". Wherever I clicked on that, it opened a new window for "www.viagra.com" or "www.porn.org" (how does porn classify as a "org"?). I'd end up having to click off 4 different boxes every 30 seconds I surfed the Internet.
I used my anti-malware program; it didn't work. I downloaded other ones and couldn't get them past set-up, I got error messages or my operating system is too old. Finally downloaded a SUPER Anti-Spyware program that worked. I ran a scan, and it found 1132 threats, so I deleted all that. Restarted the computer, get all my virus-warning screens still. So I ran it again. And I ran the anti-malware program again. And restarted again.
Still there. Every time I run a scan it keeps finding new threats, even though I just did a scan three minutes prior. I keep deleting them, but the same problem is still there. By now I'm near furious, these warning screens show up as soon as I turn the computer on, there's no way I can avoid having to click on all of them just to get them off the screen so I can access the programs I am using. While playing around on the anti-malware site, I see a thing that says "check for updates" so I click on it, and get an error message. I start thinking that maybe I just don't have the most up to date version of the anti-malware program, but it's not letting me update it either. So I look online and download the newest version, and the computer actually lets my current program update itself.
So I start the updated version of my current program, run a scan, find more errors, restart the damn computer and guess fucking what?!?!
The warning screens are gone.

I have conquered evil. I type in peace. I am a fucking genius.

I may not know what a USB port is, what "sync" means or how to permanently change the font size on this stupid thing, but I got rid of a virus ALL BY MYSELF.

Thank you in advance for all your kind words and adoration. I will now attempt my next feat, attaching a "webcam".

Oh! It's Father's Day!

2010-06-20T07:29:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I'm not the kind that pays much attention to holidays and all that. It's World Cup season, for Christ's sake, you think I'm really paying attention to anything else ?!?!

So I get on Facebook this morning and notice all the Father's Day messages. My Dad died nearly nine years ago and Grampa cares about holidays as much as I do, so I just don't bother. Same thing with Mother's Day, though it's been nearly 17 years on that one.

I don't seem to "miss" Dad the way other people in his life do, my sister, his friends. I accept that he's gone and I'm forever grateful for the time I had with him. He is a beautiful character in my story, quite possibly the hero of my story.

Dad spent most of his life a drifter, loving the ladies and being a truck driver, always on the road. He volunteered for Vietnam to get away from his crazy West-Virginia family. A hillbilly, yes, but ignorant? No. Well, maybe, but not by the time I met him in his late 40's. Dad loved everyone and everyone loved him back. He loved drinking Jack Daniels, eating steak and being with his friends. And he was a music-person; he is biologically responsible for making me the music-person I am. "Hot Chicks My Dad Would Have Dated" is a an extreme exaggeration of what is mostly truth.

Dad was a very good man who did some awful things. His playing with the women brought him four kids by four different girls between 1968 and 1975. He lied to a lot of people about a lot of things, and a lot of feelings got hurt along the way. I think as he got older he realized the mistakes he made and was sorry for them, but was unable to change the past and talk himself back out of bullshit he created.

What's sad is that he didn't have to make anything up, his real life was plenty fulfilling on it's own. I watched in amazement as he charmed his women and his friends, he'd been all over the world, loved to party, he lived on the road in his truck, a certified "rock star". He went to concerts and car races. He was like a redneck-Renaissance man.

The best thing about Dad was how he treated people and took a general interest in them. He was fun to be around and had a great sense of humour. He loved to talk and make people laugh. His friends said he was the first guy there to help you when you had a problem, and he never judged them. He is proof that our relationships with people are what defines our lives.
Dad taught me peace, love, and why lying is bad. He also taught me about freedom, living the life you want. He made "running off" seem okay. Which makes me wonder what his take would be on me moving to the UK. I have a feeling he would tell me to go...
I really never have had a better relationship with any person than what I had with my Dad and possibly never will.

Gratuitous Kulash

2010-06-19T23:03:00.000-07:00

With all these beautiful soccer players being thrown in my face every day, I almost forgot that I'm much more into the musician-type.

That being said, I'll feast my eyes on the ever-handsome Damian Kulash of OK Go and take pride in being into smart guys...

Stupid Little American Soccer Crybaby....

2010-06-19T21:30:00.000-07:00

So far I've managed to keep my emotions mostly under control during the tournament, though there have been occasions where I've let them get the better of me. It comes from three places: the part of me that absolutely loves this sport, the part of me that is contemplating leaving the US for the place that birthed the beautiful game, and the part of me that is a bonafied asshole.

Anticipating the torture of watching the US and England play each other was much more torturous than the game itself; I wanted them to draw just so I wouldn't have to watch one of them lose, and I got my wish. I purposely missed the national anthems because I knew it could stir a bit more emotion than I wanted to deal with. I was afraid of feeling like a US-basher, but it was just the opposite. I did end up having a few moments of sentiment about America and the prospect of leaving it than involved the welling of tears.
It's almost like the amicable end of a relationship. I don't hate America, and we had a great run, but I'm tired of the bullshit and it's time for me to move on. I guess I cried less about wanting to leave than just being grateful for and missing what we once were.

He's a god to us, the five people in America who love soccer. Football fans around the world can't change the fact that he's American, he's fucking OURS. As long as we have Landon Donovan, we have SOMETHING. And so of course I have to cry when he scores a goal, because he's all I have of American soccer and he's one of the few things about this place I still believe in.

Michael Bradley scores the second goal for the US against Slovenia. This game was surely dead in the water at half-time, Slovenia was up 2-0 and the US were asleep at the wheel. Donovan's goal rallied the troops and they played like they were on fire the rest of the game. Bradley's goal tied the game 2-2, all the mistakes and sloppy play of the first half had been nullified. Of course I cried, the United States saved their own asses and were about to make soccer history.

As if being a Browns fan and having "The Drive" and "The Fumble" wasn't enough, I now have "The Call". Of course I'm talking about the disallowed goal that would have given the US a 3-2 victory over Slovenia in Friday's game that was simply a shitty call on the part of the referee.
These were angry tears and went along with some pretty strong fightin' words about how that son of a bitch better NEVER referee another game again and how the five of us American soccer fans are gonna kick his ass all up and down the coasts of Africa for this bullshit.

I had purposely skipped the national anthems before the USA-England game because I knew I wouldn't handle it well. But I forgot about the roller derby.
One hour after the game ends I'm at the roller derby with friends and they have the absolute gall to play the national anthem before the start of the races. Of course my mind drifts to the two countries I'm now torn between and my soccer teams and I'm now officially fucking crying at the roller derby. How lame. I wiped my eyes in a way I hoped no one else noticed, but still...I guess I just needed that "release". Yeah, that's it...

The US-Slovenia game started at 9:30 a.m. here on Friday. Approximately 9:10 a.m., I was sitting right here on the computer getting my Facebook updates in before settling permanently on the couch.
And all the power goes out. The computer screen goes dark, the air conditioner goes off, and most importantly, the TV goes silent. In a matter of seconds, my brain realizes this could be a potential miss of the United States-Slovenia game and all mental hell breaks loose. I run to the TV yelling at it to come back on, but my pleas fall on deaf rabbit ears. I start thinking that if I lived in any other country this wouldn't be a problem, my neighbours would just be home watching the game and let me in themselves, but since everybody works through the World Cup here in the US, I'll have to break in.
And as soon as I think I might be suffocating, everything pops back on, the computer, the TV, the coffeemaker, all of it. It took a couple of minutes to bring my heart rate back down to normal and I was not in the slightest bit amused. No tears were shed, but still. The stupid little Life things that make you think the Powers That Be have a sense of humour, and some horrible timing....

The Best Storylines To Watch From World Cup For People Who Don't Care About Soccer...

2010-06-19T19:14:00.000-07:00

1. The Goal that Wasn't - the whole world is still talking about it, and unless you live under a rock, you know about it, soccer fan or no. The US made a courageous comeback in the second half of the Slovenia game that ended in a draw, 2-2, but would have been 3-2 if not for a goal disallowed by the referee based on a penalty no one else saw. To beat the band, the ref had already made a few questionable calls earlier in the game. Just because we're American fans and there's only five of us doesn't mean we're not passionate about our team. And we have big guns here. That ref is toast he ever steps on US soil...

2. Pele v. Diego Maradona - the greatest Latin-American football player of all time versus the second-greatest Latin-American football player of all time, they've been trading barbs for a few weeks now. Pele says he's unsure of the nation of South Africa's ability to host the World Cup, Maradona says SA will prove him wrong. Pele says Maradona took the job of Argentina's national team coach because he needed the money; Maradona responded that Pele should "go back to the museum."

O.U.C.H.

Maradona is one of the greatest characters in the sport, much more interesting now as a coach than he was a player. Everything from womanizing, weight gain, alcohol and drug abuse, telling non-believers to "suck it" at FIFA press conferences and getting emergency plastic surgery after his own dog mauls him, Maradona has the kind of crazy life-in-the-fast-lane we all wish we had, and the ESPN coverage of the World Cup has one camera strictly trained on Maradona so his antics are always caught on tape and rebroadcast for your viewing pleasure.

3. Vuvuzelas - the African horn is a tradition in African soccer, but they're driving the rest of the world batshit crazy. From 7 a.m. when the first game starts till 4:30 p.m. when the last game ends, all you hear is that god-damn buzzing noise, like something's wrong with your TV or there's a herd of lazy bees swarming around your head. Hours after the TV goes off I can still hear that thing buzzing in my ear. And I'm not alone, everybody else is bitching about it too, from other fans to players on the field complaining they can't hear, and that other teams fans are coming by their hotels and blaring vuvuzelas in the middle of the night to wake them up. Out of respect for African tradition, I'm willing to suffer along, but don't bring those fucking things back here.

4. England Sucks - The team from the place where football was born plays more like they should be from the place that doesn't care about soccer. We're at war with ourselves; watch us self-destruct World Cup-style. Wayne Rooney fires back on us about booing them after the game when we have every right and reason to. Not long after, an England fan breached security, got into the team dressing room, and confronted David Beckham and select others, hopefully saying what we'd all like to say to the team right about now.

5. The Big Guys Are Falling - England isn't the only football superpower looking to self-destruct in these games. Nearly all but Argentina are struggling with mostly internal drama; they just can't get their shit together. France drops one of it's best players after he goes on a tirade against the coach, Germany choked against Serbia after cleaning house with Australia last week, and Spain is at the bottom of their group. Argentina is on a serious roll, but keeping pace with them are several underdogs, including Greece, Slovenia, the Netherlands, and Uruguay. (who?) This could be the year that a "new" country gets to win the big prize.

6. Soccer City Stadium - this may be the coolest place ever to see a soccer game, but I think it's one of the coolest places ever to see...

Football Sucks. Both Footballs Suck.

2010-06-06T06:20:00.000-07:00

Yeah, buddy. That's about how I'm feelin'.

Seven days before the World Cup and Team England needs a new captain. AGAIN. Via the Seattle Times:

"Center back Rio Ferdinand, England's captain, has been ruled out of the World Cup with a knee injury suffered during training Friday. The injury came eight days before England is set to play the United States in Rustenburg, South Africa, where Ferdinand damaged a knee ligament during a tackle in training."

And just when I think the coast is clear, the NFL decides it misses me and throws itself back under my radar with this doozy from Deadspin:

"Seven Green Bay Packers were found at a rented condo where two women told police they were assaulted on Saturday morning. Six of the players were cleared, but one unnamed player is still under investigation."

ARE YOU BLOODY KIDDING ME?!?! I've said before my goal is to keep the NFL on the front page of the sports news the entire off-season (Lebron who?), but it was not meant to be at the expense of my Packers. This is ridiculous.

I hate football.

I Need Friends...Really?!?

2010-05-30T07:11:00.000-07:00

Finally! Some brave friends have provided both opposition and challenge to my decision to move to the UK. It's fired me up some, apparently I don't like being opposed or challenged, even if it's necessary. I'm not resentful at all, but I'm surprised at how much I feel I need to defend my position now that people have actually spoken up against it.

And it's got me thinking about the part that will be the most difficult to leave behind: my friends. I was raised the only child, so I learned to depend on my friends at a very young age. Everything my parents took me to, Cedar Point, Niagara Falls, Amish country, trips on Lake Erie in our boat, the m.o. was always for me to invite a friend. My friends were the only reason I bothered showing up at high school, and after my life flipped upside down, it was the old friends I had and the new friends I was making that kept me in one piece and taught me the things I needed to know about the world to survive in it. Having good friends has been a primary source of personal happiness throughout my entire life.

I guarantee, this move wouldn't exist if S weren't in it. I extended the invite to my other friends because I believe the more people we have on board, the more successful we'd be, and because I'd be more comfortable surrounded by people I know and trust. Moving by myself was a dealbreaker; I simply could not do it. S getting involved gave me the green light to start looking into this seriously.

But the chances of any of my other friends being up for this are pretty slim. Many of them own homes, have children, stable jobs, families they are close to, lives that are established. It's the ones that don't I'm looking at. We don't own anything, no kids or significant other, very little family responsibility, some of us have floundering careers, we're in a much less stable situation, with more room to move, no pun intended.

Which leads to the ultimate realization that I am going to need friends. I've always needed friends, so I've become very good at making them. But for now, my only option is to make friends online, so I have them there ready for me when I do finally arrive.

It may also be the only golden-ticket I have in. All the research I've done has shown that I have very few options for actually getting into the country. I can marry in, work for an American company and hope to get transferred there, or line up a job ahead of time that is willing to hire me, relocate me and "sponsor" me to work in the country. We know marrying in isn't an option. Getting hired, established and then transferred to England through an American company could take years and be as difficult as just going there and trying to get hired.

Making friends may be the only option I have to get in. I need someone with hiring authority that sees value in the intangible skills I have that are worth the effort and cost of helping me get there in order to obtain them. Someone who's going to trust me enough to make that kind of investment. Someone I have to make a commitment to that I will make the investment worthwhile.

That's got to be one damn good friend. Now how the hell do I do that from an ocean away? At least I have documentation, recommendation letters, resumes, portfolios of writing projects, I can provide some hard evidence of what I can do. But I'm still just a glorified secretary with a writing dream and an English degree to try and justify it all with.

I've got to be worth something to someone English....

RIP Dennis

2010-05-29T07:02:00.000-07:00

For The Love Of God, Would Somebody OPPOSE This?!?!

2010-05-23T22:09:00.001-07:00

I post on my Facebook status that I'm wondering who else would be interested in living in the UK and get several comments back in support of pursuing this. I change my status this morning and ask for anyone to tell me why I should NOT move to the UK, and nobody responds. But they all like that I posted the YouTube video of "More Than A Feeling".

Could somebody please stand up to me on this? Tell me why this is a bad idea. Tell me why I'm going to regret it, what I'm going to miss out on, how awful England is.

I can't do this without an opposing viewpoint to consider....

Losing "Lost", Among Others

2010-05-23T15:07:00.000-07:00

What a shitty year for me and my television.

It's not like I watch all that much TV in the first place. With the exception ofthe NFL and the EPL, I only watch like, five actual TV shows. Everything else I see is online and is usually not an actual show.

But the shows I do watch, I love, and I schedule my time in to see them. And I'm losing EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM THIS YEAR except "Grey's Anatomy", and I'm only an occasional watcher of that.

"Ugly Betty" - it was hugely popular when it started, a spinoff of a Brazilian show about an awkward young woman badly in need of a makeover who takes a job at a high-fashion magazine as an editor's assistant. Betty's adventures in the hyper-reality and ridiculousness of the big city and the fashion world were full of sarcastic, biting wit, bright, colourful characters and story lines that made Betty more like us and the typical "snooty" fashion-types actually likable. ABC did their best to defeat themselves at running the show successfully any longer. Ratings started to drop a year ago and the writing got a little predictable, so instead of fixing it, ABC moved the show to Friday nights, and since nobody watches TV on Fridays, the show tanked. Only then does ABC move it back to Wednesdays and the following week, announces the show had been cancelled. The series finale of Betty ironically ends with her taking a job and relocating to London.

"Lost" - I wasn't crazy about the idea of watching my biggest fears played out on TV, so I skipped the first episode with the plane crash over water. I knew I was interested, though, from the previews, "Lost" looked like it was going to be a "tropical Twin Peaks", so I thought I'd give it a shot. Now I know the characters, some of them I'm actually pretty emotional about (yes, I cried when Sun & Jin died), they grow on you, and their back stories made them fascinating. I remember Hurley trying to explain to Jin that he needed him to pee on his foot and poor Jin wasn't having any part of it, I laughed the whole rest of the episode. Knowing when the series was going to end has made it easier to deal with hanging it up, and I'm sure made it easier on the writers and producers, giving them plenty of time to wrap it up well, which so far, I believe they have.

"24" - Jack Bauer has been saving the world for 8 seasons/"days". Complaints have been trickling in that the show was becoming predictable a couple seasons ago, so they decided to end it this year while it was still respectable. I had heard about '24' when the first season premiered and thought I might like to catch an episode or two just to see how the concept of "real time" was presented. By the third episode of Season 1, I finally did catch that episode and was hooked within that hour. The end of the first season with Terri's death seconds before the clock runs out was one of the bigger "shock and awe" moments in TV history, we weren't used to main characters being killed off like that without warning or buildup and with no explanation or follow-through after. All these years later, Jack Bauer has proven to me that it's not as much about the destination as it is the journey. "24" ends tomorrow.

"Flash Forward" - The most recent addition to my watch-list only lasted one season. Like "Lost", there's mystery, characters that grow on you, a certain level of intelligence that's required to watch it. After much hype last year, ABC has given up on the show and announced it's cancellation three weeks before the last episode airs. It started out great, the story moved along well, then ABC announced Flash Forward would be on hiatus for three months; they basically sold the story short on the cheap and then foolishly expected viewers to stay involved and compelled. Anyone with half a brain realizes that you can't do something like that with a show that is both brand-new and complex. Again, ABC defeats itself.
In the same article I saw announcing the cancellation of "Flash Forward", ABC also decided to keep the "V" remake for another season. Unlike "Flash Forward", the writing is poor and predictable, the story lines are transparent, and with the exception of a few actors, the characters are stale and robotic. I wanted to check it out because I watched the original series and couldn't bear to watch more than a couple episodes.
It's disappointing in so many ways. That ABC would invest so much money in a show like "Flash Forward" and then do everything possible to kill it. I have a hard time believing the people paid millions of dollars to manage this network are that stupid. But I do believe that American public is that stupid; that they can't stick with a show after three months because their attention-span isn't that long and they won't invest the mental energy to understand complicated plot lines. The only shows that will survive are those that appeal to the lowest common denominator and the networks are willing to play right into that.

For the most part, I don't care. I don't watch that much TV that it really matters to me. I think most reality shows are ridiculous, most comedy shows are not funny, most dramas are not complex enough to hold my interest. I don't watch "Desperate Housewives" or soap-opera-type crap, I don't have the fancy cable channels for shows like "The Sopranos" and "Mad Men", and I simply don't have time to just sit around and watch TV and look for something interesting.

Wow. I just realized, if it weren't for football and soccer, I wouldn't need a TV anymore. But I will need something else to do....

What Prompted All This? ...

2010-05-23T06:18:00.001-07:00

I've been slowly letting people in on the secret that I've been seriously considering moving to the UK. It's now officially an attempt, as in I can now tell people "I am going to try to move to the UK." I posed the question as a status update to my friends on Facebook about others wanting to live in the UK too just to see if anyone showed any interest. And of course I'm getting asked how this decision came about so suddenly.

It didn't really happen as suddenly as people think, I've just been thinking about it for a long damn time. My main reason for staying in Cleveland has always been that I couldn't survive anywhere else alone, in a place where I knew no one, and because I owed it to Grampa to be here for him when he reached an age where he needed my help, in response to everything he's done for me. Well, now I've got S as a "partner-in-crime" for getting the hell out of here, and it's become clear to me that Grampa has all the help he needs through the rest of my family and they're doing an excellent job, so I'm not really needed. I worry about my sister, though, the one I'd be leaving behind. I believe she needs me, and that will be a sore spot as this journey continues.

At the same time my reasons for staying were being eliminated, I also started to realize I'd outgrown Cleveland. All the big things about the big city that I love so much have disappeared. The downfall in the economy has torn the life right out of Cleveland. We have only three "entertainment districts" that barely take up one block of space on their own, and two of them are "overly-franchised", as in lacking in any real culture. The big concerts and music festivals don't come here that much anymore, they all go to Columbus. (Columbus I hear is actually larger than Cleveland in population now??).

I'm fucking bored. And that's about the worst thing that could happen to someone like me.

So I figured out exactly what I wanted and needed out of a new location and a new life. Better health care options, cooler weather/less sun, a livable wage, a much larger/lively population, more variety of culture and nightlife, more stuff to do. I need a place where I can live without needing a car, still watch American football, and still buy "real" food that doesn't come in a box.

I narrowed it down to New York, Boston, Toronto, or London and talked to S about it. She said she'd be in if I decided on London. The UK is the only place of the four where I actually know someone. And then Glastonbury happened.

The real answer to why I want to move to the UK is because of the music. I know it is, I'm just ashamed to admit it because unless you're a music-person, it seems so trivial. Being a soccer fan is just a bonus. Last June, I watched the Glastonbury Festival via YouTube, sat here all weekend clicking on illegally downloaded videos of Neil Young, Springsteen, etc. before they were pulled by the BBC.

One of those videos was Kasabian doing "Fire". My move to the UK is ultimately their fault. I watched the video several times, I was simply blown away. To this minute, it's one of the coolest things I've ever seen/heard and one of my finer moments in musical enlightenment. The next day I called S and said "Okay, it's London."

I started doing some research, asking questions, trying to figure out if this is something I could actually do. A year later, I'm still looking for those answers, still researching, still looking for loopholes, still unwilling to marry my way in, and still trying to figure out how to pass the assessment test. S met R playing bridge online before the idea of moving to the UK actually took shape. Their relationship has developed throughout that time and is now as "official" as a long-distance relationship can be. Because of her daughter, S is stuck here another 2 years; I have that long to "catch up".

Maybe these "bad influences" I'm so worried about aren't bad influences after all, but a way to light a fire under my ass and figure this out....

Hot Chicks My Dad Would Have Dated: Gloria James

2010-05-22T11:11:00.000-07:00

Lebron's Mama has been a little off-the-chain as long as we've known her. She bought Lebron a $80,000 Hummer for his 18th birthday. The bank gave her a loan based on Lebron's future earning potential; he hadn't even been drafted yet, and the "gift" would be paid back with his own money. The joke everyone from Cleveland knows: "Lebron's Mama gave him a Hummer..." Her reputation as a party-girl living vicariously through her son's riches is old news to us Clevelanders. She's had run-ins with the cops, most notably a DUI a few years back.

Now comes the rumour that Lebron's Mama has been nailing one of his teammates, Delonte West. The boy is already a mess, facing weapons charges in July that could land him jail time and battling bi-polar disorder for years. The Cavs blew it big-time in the playoffs after they were heavily-favured to win everything this year, and this rumour came about as a result of that. The story is that Lebron found out about the affair while they were in Boston and him and Delonte couldn't get themselves together to play the games out. There's just as many reasons to believe the rumour as to not believe it, so I guess you choose.

Dad would date Gloria James because he likes dark-skinned black women, she has a rich son, and she gives Hummers.

Gloria would not date Dad because he's not ghetto enough for her, he stares at other women too much, and he's no 26-year-old (crazy or no) Delonte West.

Gratuitous Krancjar

2010-05-17T22:05:00.000-07:00

Add to the list of awesome players sitting out of the World Cup this year Niko Krancjar. He's one of my favourites simply for the purpose of looking at him. I could melt into every part of him.

His home country, Croatia, played disappointingly bad in the qualifiers, leaving Krancjar at home watching the games from London.

The last World Cup Niko went to, Croatia was eliminated in the first round. His dad was the coach. The whole country hated him. Probably took him all four years and a temporary residency in England to recover.

He's one of the finer things to walk the Earth, World Cup or no, and with all the players out of the games now, dammit, I deserve a little eye-candy treatment.

Ten Reasons NOT To Watch The World Cup

2010-05-17T15:51:00.000-07:00

Did you feel that? It was like the Earth stopped rotating for a few seconds. It happened early Saturday morning??

That was all of Germany gasping for air at once.

28 days before the World Cup, their Team Germany captain Michael Ballack became the latest superstar to suddenly find himself so cruelly uninvited to South Africa.

Some of the biggest names in the sport are missing from the team rosters, a result of injuries with bad timing and a lot of "changing of the old guard" in player selection.

The following is who NOT to look for at this year's World Cup:

1. WAGs - Word in the 'hood is that many of the ladies are staying home, much to the pleasure of the coaches, who find their players' significant others more trouble, drama and distraction than support. It's winter in South Africa, which doesn't bode well for spray tans and skimpy clothes, and despite the insistence it's safe, going to South Africa certainly isn't like going to Miami or Dubai.

2. David Beckham - A torn ACL on March 14 meant what is most likely the end of Beckham's career for Team England, maybe the end of his football career all together. He's been invited to join Team England as moral support, but not seeing him on the field is going to be awkward and kinda lonely.

3. Ronaldhino - He scored the kick that took Brazil into the 2002 World Cup semi-finals, and will most likely not be called up, Brazil's coach citing the "diminished skills" theory. He is one of the most popular players in the WORLD, reaching the level of fame where he is known by only one name, like Madonna.

4. Fernando Torres - Team Spain coach Vicente Del Bosque named Torres to the squad, but he's been on the sidelines for three weeks and is almost sure he won't be ready for the first game of the World Cup; they'll be cutting it really, really close. I don't think Torres is ready to play, but if Del Bosque actually tried to keep Torres off the roster, hooligan Spaniards would kill him.

5. Francesco Totti - He hasn't played for Team Italy since 2006 and kinda/sorta retired from the national team after repeated injuries, but one of the most well-known players in the world. Totti was completely absent from the roster, whether he wanted to be included or not. The team needs him and he has been exceptional this season, this makes no sense to me and I think Italy will find it to be a big mistake come game time.

6. Charlie Davies - The dramatic story of the American soccer player who was nearly killed in a car accident last October has ended. This week, the French football club Davies plays for in his day job refused to sign a medical release for him to play for the national team, and Davies is "blaming" them. Everyone supported and appreciates his efforts, but trying to hurry his recovery just isn't safe, his docs know it, and they made the right move.

7. Freddy Adu - The boy wonder of the American League has floundered in Europe, bad enough to get overlooked for the United States' team selection. At 20, he still has plenty of years and World Cups ahead of him to aim for, but we know now it won't be this one.

8. Wayne Bridge - The biggest soccer story of the new millenium so far has been the affair between Wayne Bridge's ex-WAG and his married former-team-captain, John Terry, that ended in a terminated pregnancy and the bitterness of a nation who really didn't want to deal with this kind of shit so close to the World Cup. Wayne fell on his sword and decided he couldn't play on the same team with Terry and withdrew himself from Team England selection. The entire country still hates John Terry.

9. Ruud van Nistelrooy - another claim of diminished skills against the highest-goal-scorer in Holland history and the second-highest goal scorer in the history of the Manchester United. But at 33-years-old and after an injury-prone season, maybe it's time the old dog pack it in??

10. Hookers - Do not look for them at the World Cup because they don't actually go to the games, or come out in the daylight. 40,000 prostitutes are expected to flock to South Africa just in time to meet the 450,000 foreigners expected to attend the World Cup. Hooligans are famous for caring about nothing but booze, sport and sex; it's way of life, but not safe for television.

Communication Breakdown....

2010-05-15T02:52:00.000-07:00

Okay, I admit it. I'm a bad speaker. I'm a Communications major. I'm also an English major. I can write the shit out of anything.

But I can't speak worth a damn. My verbal communication skills are garbage. Any time I've been in a situation of conflict, I've frozen, haven't said things in a way that my point gets across efficiently, forget main points, or don't come up with the "perfect response" until too long after the fact. I can be redundant. I'm not good with body language or eye contact. And I've paid for it every time. I've embarrassed myself or failed nearly every time, especially when it's something work-related.

So I look up articles online about how to deal with an office bully. One of the top listings is a PDF file called "How To Bust The Office Bully" and it gives you tips on how to address the issue with management. I decided to look at it, already thinking that my conversation with my boss had not gone well.
Seven of the eight tips mentioned in this article were things I did the exact opposite of. No wonder it went so badly.
And now I feel like I'm being set up to fail. The four main issues I have with this woman are: 1) she walks around the place like her shit don't stink 2) she's verbally abusive to the staff and the consumers 3) she monopolizes everything in her path 4) she tries to intimidate and manipulate anyone who will let her. And the boss wants me to sit down and talk to the office bully about these behaviours myself?
She's going to barrel right over me. The exact things I have to complain about with her are the exact things she's going to do once I start talking.

So I'm not sure what to do. In a way I feel like I'm walking into a trap. On the other hand, I've been given the opportunity to tell this woman myself exactly how I feel about her and that's kind of empowering. If I felt my verbal skills were up to par. And this woman is no easy takedown. She's very manipulative and very intimidating and there is a part of me that is afraid of her.

I can't screw this up. I have to win or she will make my life miserable....

On the flip side. I am a Communications major and an Engllish major. I've been listening to gangsta-rap and alternative-rock for over 20 years. I've lived through some seriously bad things in my short life and I'm kind of a hardass. I'm also right, and the majority of the staff agree agree with me. There's no reason other than me pussying out that this woman should be able to overpower me. I have all the qualifications to verbally destroy her.

And then there's this. Two separate articles that say a bully is actually threatened by someone like me:

"The most destructive thing about office bullies, says Namie, is that they tend to target co-workers who are the best and brightest employees. 'It's much different than school-yard bullying,' he says. 'This target isn't the kid with the Coke-bottle glasses.' Instead, workplace bullies tend to drive out colleagues they view as threats: those who are technically competent, independent, possess good social skills, and have strong ethics (and thus may be whistleblowers)."

AND

"People who constantly offload their anger and fear on a selected victim do so for a reason and the reason is the desire for control. Employees who are hard working and diligent, technically/socially adept and those who possess a strong sense of ethics are viewed as threats by workplace bullies. As a direct consequence, they will be targets."

So basically, I am a threat to her. I'm very good at my job, and I've become a bit of a "pet". From the Executive Director on down, everybody loves Genn. Everybody thinks I work hard and do an exemplary job. People know they can depend on me to do something and do it right. They're fascinated with my organization skills. They think I'm witty and funny and have a good rapport with the clients. And the majority of the staff that I've spoken to about the office bully agree with me and are well-aware of how she is and don't like her. The bully is no idiot, she's got to know I've stolen her thunder some just by being around and having a personality that people are attracted to. She might even be jealous.

So now that I've been given free rein to talk to her myself and to set boundaries, the power falls into my hands, right? I am now in charge and she will have to abide by the ground rules I lay down. I have been given the opportunity to overpower the office bully and am well qualified to do it, so there's no reason I should lose.

That perspective is empowering in many ways, but is it real? If I can't hone my verbal communication skills and get myself prepared, I'm going to end up worse off than I am now.

Shot Down In A Blaze Of Glory....

2010-05-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

"So what you tryin' to say
Is you don't wanna play?
Well what you want and what you need
Don't mean that much to me.
I can see your
Back is turnin'
If I could I'd
Stick a knife in...."

-Tool "Crawl Away", 1993.

So I finally decide that it's my turn to speak up about the office bully.

By conversation's end, the responsibility was put back on me to find a way to make this relationship work. To speak with the office bully myself. To use "I think " and "I feel" statements and set up boundaries to address the issue. And then if I still have a problem to come back.

Right now I'm feeling defeated and sad. Almost everyone else in the department has complained about her; I was warned that my words would fall on deaf ears. I don't understand why it's my/our responsibility to fix the situation when I'm not the one who's causing the problem. I was not expecting the bully to actually be defended, and my statement of praise about another co-worker to be taken the way it was.

As we can see from my problems as of late, there are a lot of things going on lately that I would be better off if I just trusted my own thoughts and skills instead of listening to and depending on everybody else. This seems like a similar situation. I don't agree at all with the response I was given, but I just might be smart enough to be wrong.

The flip side is this: I have a degree in Communications and English and my supervisor just gave me the order to speak directly to the office bully myself. And God help everyone, I plan to be honest.
I could bury this bitch.
I mean, really. She's manipulative, intimidating (yes, the bully routine sometimes works on me too), arrogant and controlling, and she would be one of my hardest takedowns yet. But I could still bury her. I just need time to think...