Why I shouldn't be left alone in an office during a dark rainy day with no internet access
I'm sitting here in my office. Our T1 is down, along with half of the eastern seaboard, so it seems. All I have to do is play solitaire. I'm very tired, as I didn't get home until about 1 am last night from northern Kentucky, where I saw Neil Gaiman. As I sit here and click click click the cards on the screen, I start having arguments in my head with other people. I'm not reliving previous arguments, but I'm imagining what they might say in various situations, and getting annoyed at their probable answers. I think of stupid things people have done, and argue with them over that. I think of people judging the things I've done, and then I get mad at them for judging me. I make innocuous comments, and people argue with those. In my head, of course. I guess I have some sort of persecution complex. I don't do well with lack of sleep.
Neil Gaiman was grand last night. He's such an interesting speaker. He read 1/3 of his children's book,
Coraline. Wow, talk about a book that's going to give me nightmares. I saw one set of EWF. The set that makes you want to call child protective services. If you have questions, ask me directly. heh. The people I were with I know from various places, and we all pretty much the same people. We got into a discussion about The One Without a Soul (you know who he is. If you don't, ask. I'm avoid names here.) The Pissy Boy (another ex, now married) was in the back seat (when we found out Cracker Barrel was closed, he just wanted to drive the hour plus without eating.) When we went to Perkins, he whined over the menu, and at one point left and went outside, only to come back in to pout pretty much the entire meal. That'd be ok if he was say... five, or so, but at 26 years old, that's just ridiculous. It makes me feel for his wife. She has to regulate his temper tantrums for the rest of her life. I couldn't handel that. It also makes me appreciate Jay all the more. He doesn't have tantrums in public, he definitely has a soul, and he's courteous. Gah. The temper tantrum last night really made me want to bitch slap him. There's a point in time when that kind of behaviour just isn't appropriate. We don't always get our way. It's called "life." And it just ruins the experience, wherever you are. No one wants to walk on eggshells all the time lest Mr. Pissy Boy get miffed, and it taints the times when he's acting perfectly normal and non-Pissy. I've been talking to him on AIM lately, and it's harder to have a tantrum there. Blog: Appropriate place to whine. Out in public:
Inappropriate place to whine and pout if you don't get your way. Example?
Whine: I miss Moxy Früvous touring. I'm listening to Live Noise right now. It makes me sad to not be able to see them in shows.
Cracker on Friday really kicked ass. Aimee and I staked ourselves some spots on the balcony right over the stage, and sat on some barstools. (See Illustration) Are we getting that old, where we'd rather not be on the floor, instead sitting in a nice cushy chair? I contend that we aren't... if it was a group I was really into (Read: TMBG, Moxy Fruvous, or Tori Amos), I'd be up front. There'd be no stopping me. We're supposed to go see the Push Stars tomorrow night. I'm afraid I'm going to wuss out, because I don't want to drive an hour plus for the third time in a week (it gives me new respect for you people that commute that far every day.)
My Mountain Dew is oddly refreshing this morning. It's 11am, and all I've done today is change a few "Inc." to "LLC" on a client's site. That took all of five minute. Well, I made that stage graphic.
About smoking: There was an article in the
Onion last week. This makes me think of my roommate/bunch of friends who, as Pissy Boy described it last night, "Their idea of a good time is going to a cramped bar and sitting there smoking non-stop." And that's what it seems like. Kids that are trying to "rebel" by smoking. Especially those that don't normally smoke. We get it: You're badass. Oh, yeah. Let's watch you disintegrate your lungs into little pieces. "Oh, I'm not addicted." Bullshit. It just kills me to see normally intelligent people smoke. I give a little more leeway if they started smoking when they were a teenager, and got hooked. At least there's some hormonal teenage ignorance there.. they don't truly
believe it's addictive, they're immortal. But after age 21 or so, it's no longer novel. You know what they do to you. It's never been my idea of fun to go into an incredibly smoky bar, and shout two seats over to your friends while they inhale known carcinogens for the fun of it. It was bad enough after coming back from Headliners the other day.. I didn't even smell that much smoke, but when I got home I took my hair out of the ponytail I had it in in the car. It smelled like someone had smoked a pack of cigarettes and blew the smoke directly into my hair. Something else that's stupid about these people smoking at this age.. it's peer pressure. I doubt one of them would go out and buy a pack of cigarettes on their own, if their other friends didn't do it. Then they'd be different, and ostracized. Because other people push them on you, you take one. Then you smoke. What the hell kind of sense is that? I have no sympathy for intentional idiocy. When they're sucking off an oxygen tank at age 50, we'll see how cool they feel then. It really does amaze me that people in their 20's are so swayed by peer pressure. Few would admit it, but it's obvious they are. That's something I expect to see diminish after high school, but in some ways, it's worse. And it bugs me. I have a few friends that don't drink, or drink very rarely. A few Halloweens ago, me and a friend were at a party. She thought there was a possibility she might be pregnant, so she wasn't drinking. She didn't state the reason to the general public, but whenever someone offered her a drink, she said, "I don't drink." Did that make any difference? No, the same people just pushed alcohol at her more ardently (is that a word?) She was small, cute, and blonde... did they think there was a chance that after she got a few drinks in her, she was going to go upstairs with them? If someone doesn't
want to drink, respect that decision. It's not your business how or why they don't want to, but I think we've reached a point in our life where individuality should be respected, not refuted.
Another issue.. I've been discussing this with a friend lately, who's not in the best relationship. She's built a good part of her life around this person, and re-arranges her priorities around him. That would be fine, if she were older, and there could be more flexibility built into her schedule.. but her main focus right now should be her education, not her social life. She shouldn't be guilted into staying with him, rather than spending time in her own domain, learning what she needs to (she knows who she is when she reads this, but there's no need to name names, once again. I'm not trying to be passive agressive, I'm just spouting off my thoughts.) I came up with a good analogy: A relationship should be the icing
on the cake, not the cake itself. I think parts of you get eaten away when you try to make someone else your entire life. I think relationships should complement our lives, not overwhelm them. Living your life for someone else is a losing battle.. no one can be everything to one person. When a relationship becomes so all-inclusive, it's easy to lose site of your own goals and aspirations. Your goals get pushed to the side by the relationship, and what it needs. There's no need for that. It
is possible to have a balanced life while in a relationship. If you can't do it, then it's probably not the right relationship for you. Everyone grows at different rates... Someone can be mosre mature at 18 than another person at 25. We all grow and change, and sometimes, that can break apart a relationship. It can also make it stronger, but it's a lot harder to do what we have to do for ourselves. It's easiest to placate someone, to not make them mad, to walk on glass around them (I'm now in a tangent back to my original topic of Pissy Boy.) But there comes a time when enough is enough, and you realize no amount of placating is going to make the situation better; no one can make your happiness, and you can't make anyone else's. Anyone that thinks otherwise is fooling theirselves. You can certainly
contribute to someone else's well-being, but you can't make it, and you shouldn't be able to break it. That's not to say that I wouldn't be heartbroken if Jay wasn't in my life. I would be, but I've never relied on him to make me who I am. In other relationships, I lost who I was, and I learned from that. You can't fit a square peg into a round hole. I'm full of cliches. And here's one more: Time heals all wounds.
OK, enough of that. I've been typing this off and on for hours now. Our T1 is still down, so I have no contact with the outside world (outside of the phone, the US mail, and my car, which allows me to escape. Ok, so I'm not really all that isolated here.) Tonight I will be cleaning my apartment, in preparation for my mother's visit this weekend. My room and the bathroom, in particular, need a good cleaning. I should probably mop the kitchen too.
Discovery of the Day: Right clicking when you've got all your cards lined up to go in the piles at the end of a game of solitaire will put them all in place, without having to click every single card so it goes to the right place. Important info, that.
Last night I woke up and heard Anastasia scratching at the door. I prepared to throw Roosevelt (a heavy stuffed cat Jay got me while back) at the door. That usually scares her, and she runs away. The thinking is that she'll associate the loud sudden noise with scratching at the door, and she won't do it any longer. While I was groping for Roosevelt on my bed, a bright light flashed outside my window, and a huge long crack of thunder boomed. heh. I think Anastasia ran away from that door right quickly. Maybe it taught her a lesson.
When Neil Gaiman was lecturing, he mentioned his kids a few times. He has 4 or 5 (or more, I'm not sure.) It made me wonder, "What would it be like to have Neil Gaiman as a dad?" Wow. hehe. You'd get the
best bedtime stories, provided you didn't wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat after dreaming that ladies in velvet dresses were going to suck the life out of you. He mentioned that his eldest son is about 20. He said that his son came to him awhile back and said, "Everybody keeps trying to talk to me about the Sandman comics, and I've never read them. I suppose I should." Neil said, "Well, you know where they are." His son went up to his room with a huge armfull of the comics, and stayed up there all night. The next day he came downstairs, gave his dad a strange look, and never mentioned them again.
That amused me.
The above story is how I remember it. Use details from it at your own risk.
I've copied and pasted all of the above into work, and it says it's about four pages. That's a lot of rambling. It's 3:30 pm now, and our T1 is still down. There was a fiber optic cable in Indiana that got cut during an ice storm. However, that's not
supposed to be a problem for us, the way things should be set up. Grr.
Beth, if you've made it this far in my post, I'd like to share with you that I can't listen to "Polyester Bride" anymore without thinking of Suzanne. Damn you. heh. It's ok. I still like the song.
and now our internet connection is back up again, so I'll post this novel of a blog. If you made it this far, leave a comment. Respond to an idea I've expressed. hehe.
