Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Zounds!'s LiveJournal:

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Monday, August 18th, 2008
mon. aug. 18.08. 7:51pm	.multicat household: PS. Huh. Now the cats like each other so much that they're ignoring me. :(
.1 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
mon. aug. 18.08. 7:10pm	.bed of awesomeness. First off, I know I'm 25 years old, but this does not change the fact that the only thing I've ever wanted in my entire life was a canopy bed. (Well, okay, not the only thing. I've wanted puppies, ponies, roller blades, plastic surgery, wallpaper, and two weeks as the only person existing on Earth, but right now I'm talking about the canopy bed). So I got myself a canopy bed. I'm 25 now and I can do it if I want to. Now, it turns out that NO ONE sells canopies anymore-- at least not in department stores, where I can take a good look at them. I didn't really shed any tears over this, because Bed, Bath, and Beyond had the next best thing: MOSQUITO NETTING. Mosquito netting sounds like a really great idea until you actually try to get it ON your freshly delivered canopy bed. In spite of the fact that I've been looking forward to trying to hang mosquito netting for about two decades, I still nearly lost my temper and tore the whole thing to shreds. BUT, two hours later, I have a ludicrously girly bed. I mean, it's got the netting. And the pink sheets. And the white (but not ruffly) bed skirt. And the pink and white and red pillows (I like pink and red together. It makes me happy and has nothing to do with Valentine's Day). I'll have to post a picture of it. It works. Just leave it at that. THIS IS A SEGUE. Okay, so, I've only had two mattresses in my entire life. The first one I slept on until the springs poked up through the holes. Whenever I got a bedsore from the springs poking through on one side, I just flipped the mattress over and got new sores from the springs poking through the other side. (I had a redneck childhood. It was awesome). The second one just went all swaybacked and stained on me. I expect it got thrown out when Dad died. After I left old Swayback at Dad's place, I went on to dorm room beds (model mattresses: thin, long, and skinny), and finally, when I was on my own, I hit the big time: sleeping on a foam mat. Which is surprisingly comfortable, and I encourage anyone with an incorrigible back problem to give it a try. Mattresses are horridly expensive, yanno. The only problem is the cold, and what you do then is you roll yourself up in all your blankets and comforters and sheets until you are a little person burrito with just a pair of eyes and a tuft of hair peeking out the end. Is tasty! But not as tasty as my new bed, which I am very pleased with. YAY, IMMATURE GIRLISH AND GIRLY BED! (Edited to remove double-post idiocy).
.3 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Sunday, August 17th, 2008
sun. aug. 17.08. 1:36pm	MESSAGE: Go hug your mom. Go hug your dad. Give no explanation. Wander away. Okay, so you know how in the movies they make the music swell all sad and grand when they want you to burst into tears? I'm not saying that the following circumstances make me BURST into tears, but last night at work I thought of two things that make me really MISS my parents. 1) ILLNESS. Even though Mom was of the "Suck it up and walk it off" school of accident- and illness-recovery, every time I'm sick I imagine my mother bringing soup and drawing steam baths. And, weirdly, this fantasy kinda helps. 2) HUGE ANNOYING TASK. Moms and Dads are terrific at being useful when there's a huge, annoying task to be tackled, like, say, moving across the country, or moving anywhere, period. And as a postscript, I'm incredibly happy I took a drive across the country with my dad. Those two circumstances are my equivalent of the sad, soaring orchestral score: they make me think of my parents and go, "Aargh, I never WAS nice enough to them." Kind of like people from my past. One of the reasons I've been MIA on LJ (haha) is because of MySpace. Now, I hate MySpace. The site is slow and often broken, and the whole "sort your friends" bit? It's the Diet Pepsi of Angst: it's something fourteen to twenty year olds can totally fuck their shit up over, but ultimately empty. BUT-- all that said, I have started paying a little more attention to that site, because old friends keep finding my protoprofile and going bananas, and that a) pleases me a little (you know the feeling-- "I made THAT MUCH of an impression? REALLY? Wow!"-- even when it's just people looking to pad their friends page so they have 100+ like all the other MySpacers) and b) reminds me that, no matter how nice I am, I'm never QUITE nice enough. (And let's all-- by "all" I mean me-- stop for a moment and marvel over that sentence. I wrote that? ME? Whatever. The years change you and sometimes you turn from a badass into one of those wussy Hallmark people who just wants everyone to sit down, shut up, and be happy. The goal is the same-- to get people to sit down and shut up-- but instead of snarling at people to leave me alone, which only encourages them, I am now just so incredibly pastel that they leave me alone by choice... some of them). Speaking of people leaving me alone, I'm lying. They aren't. There's this dude who comes into work. He has a curly mustache and he's old enough to be my grandfather. So this guy, who has been hanging around (never buying anything, just staring at me and waiting for me to take a break so he can eat it), finally calls me one day to ask me to dinner. WTF. So I tell him, NICELY, that I am in a relationship that I'm very serious about, etc. etc. sorry about all that and go soak your head in a tub full of formaldehyde. The guy got REALLY PISSED that I didn't tell him about Paul. And when the hell was I going to do that? I don't make a habit of divulging personal information to friggin BARNES AND NOBLE CUSTOMERS. I mean, can you imagine that overhead announcement? "Good evening, Barnes and Noble customers. The time is 9:45 and we will be closing in fifteen minutes. By the way, your announcer is 25, orphaned, and in a serious relationship with a man she adores. Thank you, and have a terrific evening." Seriously. Great jumping Jesus. So after he tells me I should feel bad (for what? Turning him down? Having a boyfriend? Not, like, handing out fifty-five word biographies printed on the back of our business cards?), we parted telephonic ways and I expect he meandered on to the rest of his life.
.14 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Sunday, August 10th, 2008
sun. aug. 10.08. 9:54am	.multicat household. Watching Jubal and Buffalo, NY adjust to one another is a fascinating experience. For the record, I didn't follow the cat books about introductions. I met Buffalo when I moved into my new apartment. He was kind of the grounds kitty, but the owners of the building didn't want him traipsing around, so they had a flyer up to the effect of: "Take this cat in or we're calling the pound." Trouble is, there's this new law where all strays are immediately euthanized, even if they're young, attractive, and healthy, all of which Buffalo is. So I leaned on Paul, and the groundskeeper leaned on Paul, and the upshot is, I got a new cat. Buffalo had gotten into the habit of waiting near the front door and love-ambushing me as I came home from work, so Jubal already knew his scent from sniffing my hands and shoes (Buffalo is very mouthy and likes to lick and nibble). And Buffalo kind of knew Jubal's scent from sniffing me. So I just dumped them together and watched. Buffalo was initially nervous, but not aggressive. Jubal was overjoyed with his new friend and followed him from room to room with his nose up Buffalo's behind. After a couple of days, Buffalo got used to it and started trying to play (he is much younger than Jubal and very high energy). And the dominance battles started. Nothing heavy. Neither cat ever got aggressive. But they each selected THEIR chair, and THEIR food bowl, and THEIR litter box, THEIR toys, THEIR time to sleep in the bed with me, and the list goes on. Jubal is the Alpha, and he gets open rights to all food bowls and litter boxes (Buffalo once expressed his displeasure with this arrangement by pissing in my bed, forcing a reshuffling of the boxes so one is definitely his and his alone). Jubal treats Buffalo like a little brother, right up to the pawslaps to the head when Buffalo is being too annoying. It's fun to watch. Other than Buffalo's bounciness, they get along fine. They're not cuddling up into little catballs and grooming each other yet, but I think they will be, at least once Buffalo grows a little more and calms down some. They both are very fond of me, so that helps them become friends. I train them together (Buffalo is not as trainable as Jubal. He's still stuck on "sit." I think this is because Buffalo just doesn't care as much about food as Jubal does) and I exercise them together with Da Bird (bought to keep Buffalo from absolutely shredding the furniture in his madcat dashes around the apartment). Even though I free-feed them both, neither one is overeating. JUBAL has stopped overeating. Probably because he's less bored now, although I like to make up dialogues between the two of them in my head, and I imagine Buffalo saying something to the effect of, "Dude. What's with the constant gorging?" The upshot is, Jubal is getting thinner and more active. The funny thing is, just as soon as I decided that Buffalo was definitely going to work out, and I was going to keep him, ANOTHER cat showed up on the grounds of the building, and I raised my eyes to the heavens and asked, "Oh Lord, is this the point where I become a crazy cat hoarding lady?" The new cat is a big scarred blue-gray tomcat with leaf-green eyes, unneutered, with ear mites-- an EXTREMELY affectionate tomcat who, once I talked him over, started rubbing on me and loving on me, and I said to him, "Veteran, sir, the trouble is, I have two cats, and you have parasites, and you are unneutered," and Veteran nodded (or would have, if he'd had the proper bone structure) and went on his way. So give a thought for Veteran, or all the big gray tomcats wandering around in a big gray tomcat-unfriendly world.
.6 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Friday, August 1st, 2008
fri. aug. 1.08. 6:05pm	Ladies and gentlemen, we are live in Baghdad. I have: A) A swank new apartment B) A swank new cat (name of Buffalo, NY; age, approximately eighteen months; status before joining my colony: abandoned by jerks). C) And swank new furniture (a sofa, an entertainment center, my first! bed! ever!, a coupla chairs, some tables.... okay, yes, I went overboard, but it's FURNITURE, goddammit-- I'm allowed). Work has been surpassing itself in horror and defeat. I still, at times, like my job, but there have been a number of increasingly insane Loss Prevention Directives from the Home Office, and an increasingly out-of-hand amount of side work. I HAVE BEEN BUSY, basically, all in caps, just like that, and it doesn't help that I've been glommed on to by a couple of work people who eat my time like York Peppermint Patties whenever I let them. There will be pictures. I almost swear this. My apartment is going to be so excellent when I finally get the mess put away. Just, as usual, it's me, so it's slow going. Bear with me. The LynneLife is almost under control. e
.2 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Thursday, May 29th, 2008
thu. may. 29.08. 10:18pm	.life, again. All right. Yes. I've been absolutely terrible at upkeeping this thing. It doesn't help that my comment emails have been sporadic beyond all sense. I'm not ignoring you, I'm just not getting your comments! So, brief factoids: I've lost seven pounds (apparently permanently; my new setpoint seems to be 130) and at least five inches off my waist, all due to the colon cleansing. I've not spied any new life forms in my poo, though. And I'm not going to be talking any more about that, because I'm in North Carolina and everyone in my family is obsessed with colonoscopies. As my Uncle Jimmy put it, speaking of his wife, Melba: "You have the prettiest a--hole." Melba replied, "No, I just married one." And that's all I mean to say about that. I went canoeing today with Uncle Danny, and I did right well; I've only paddled a few times in my life, but I was all right at steering and I had some decent power. The scenery is lovely. There are cypress trees and ferns, and Uncle Danny keeps bringing me little wildflowers (jack in the pulpits, bay magnolias, and butterfly weed), so I now have a cute little bouquet in a shot glass on the kitchen table. Everyone is, as usual, being really nice to me, and I feel comfortable and relaxed. That will probably change when Ginni gets here tomorrow, as I know she'll bring stress along with her, as she has a tendency to do (she doesn't mean it, and she's a great sister, but dang, is she high strung). Work is fine. Paul is fine. I really think I haven't been updating because for once in my life, EVERYTHING IS FINE. I'm happy. There are no perturbances to my happy, except for the occasional urge to talk to Daddy, which is now impossible, and some small guilt trips related to the fact that I am not in touch with much of anyone from either my past or present. I don't mean to fall off the face of the planet, but if everything is going well, I don't like to fuss with it. I got a new apartment in a beautiful historic building, and since I've finally caved and decided to get a cell phone, I see no reason why I wouldn't take pictures of the before and after (there's a before, the raw apartment; and the after will be after I decorate, because I've decided to start living like a grown up, and that means getting furniture and learning how to sew my own curtains and pillows. I'll let you know how it goes). The building is expensive, but SAFE and NICE and QUIET, which makes it a vast improvement over, say, the last four places I've lived. I like my life. If this were some mad euphoria, I'd be worried about it, but it all appears to be very logical and sane: I'm taking care of myself, not drinking, working out, eating right, getting enough sleep, taking care of my bills and monitoring money-in versus money-out, keeping my relationship healthy, etc. etc. ad nauseum-- in other words, I'm doing everything I require of myself in order to DESERVE to be happy, so I think I've earned this bit. Or, in other words, I've done all the suffering I aim to do and I don't intend on doing any more. I still have to work on myself. Things trigger me and I take care of it. Things hurt me, anger me, frustrate me, and I take care of it. A lot of things are out of my control and I don't take care of them, of course, but I work hard at monitoring my responses and making sure they are reasonable. And if I fuck up, I make sure I track down whoever I hurt or offended or inconvenienced, and I apologize. This earns me some weird looks, but it also means I can't use anyone else's pain as a reason to hate myself, and so I'll take the weird looks. The last problem I have is that people (and here I'm talking about my coworkers, pretty much the only social pool I participate in now) like me. A lot. And a lot more people like me than I have time or energy or interest in. Additionally, they like me for false pretenses: part of this new life I'm creating is that I'm polite and kind to everyone, whether they have earned it or not, and so those people think that means something more, and I have a hard time trying to let them know that that's just the way I am, at least in public. In private, I still strive, consciously, to be cheerful, helpful, and happy, but I allow myself a bit more RANGE, if that make sense. No one has accused me of being fake for doing this, but I can see how I could deserve to be called that. I have no defense. The way I see it, I'm just applying the same amount of energy towards being content as I used to apply towards being discontent, and I like myself better this way, so that's all the justification I need, I think. It is truly beautiful here, and I miss the sound of the insects. But I will be happy to go back to Spokane and begin work on my new apartment, restart at Barnes and Noble (which has given me a raise and more responsibility), and love Paul. I'm not sure when I'm going to get around to updating regularly again. I won't have Internet for awhile, because I hate Qwest from the marrow of my bones, and that's the only game in town so far as landlines and hi-speed Internet goes. That's why I'm getting a cell phone, because I hate them so much. (I tried to call them before I left Spokane to cancel my service and tell them precisely how much they have made my life suck both now and historically, but they were closed for Memorial Day weekend, so I delegated that to Paul, who was only too happy to take it on). I AM SORRY FOR BEING ABSENT AND I'LL TRY TO BE MORE RELIABLE. It just looks like I only update when my life is hell, which isn't fair to anyone, but them's the apples.
.11 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Monday, April 28th, 2008
mon. apr. 28.08. 11:37am	.life sans poo. I reread some of my more recent entries (and they have been sporadic, which is something I need to fix-- I LIKE you guys and waaah, I haven't been hanging out online nearly as much as I used to). First, I guess I've taken "Responsibility" instead of "Take it Easy." I go out with friends at least twice a week. Yesterday I went to a horse show, which was fantastic fun, with Tiffany. (The only problem was I got locked out of my apartment and the locksmith I called broke the lock to get me back in, so I'm going to have to call my rental agency and let them know the lock is busted now-- SPOKANE, JUST LET IT GO, DON'T BURGLE ME). (I've taken to speaking to Spokane as its own entity, asking it to leave me alone, as this is not a nice place). And I'm going to hang out with Lance in North Carolina for a day when I fly home to see my family at the end of May. (As for Lance, I had that crush, yes, I did, but that's over now; he went through a super-clingy phase and now he is perfectly fine, I think. In any event, we can hang out without him assuming that he's next in line for the position of my consort, thank heavens). I also hang out with Paul's friends, as that pleases him, and then, when I can, I hang out with Paul. There's been trouble with Paul, but nothing massive-- he's worried about completing his thesis and he's been expressing it by being REALLY MICROMANAGING about every little thing I do, which, when I pointed it out to him, upset him. He promises he'll fix it, as long as I promise to help out more in the house. This compromise is acceptable. As for Barnes and Nobles, they've given me a fake raise. I'm going to take on the responsibilities and training of a lead, but without lead hours and without lead pay, as they are getting rid of that position (a lead is a bookseller who is responsible for setting up a portion of the store. Setting up is the process of putting the books on display, stickering them appropriately, and putting them in the system as discounted or not, depending). I am getting screwed-- I'm pretty sure they're giving this to me not because they think I'm the best choice, but because I am currently the lowest-paid bookseller, since they've fired everyone beneath me. I've taken this on, and I'll do it as well as I can, because it gives me job security (which is important in a recession like this) and because it gives me a better position to bargain from should I ever apply for a management position. Since I'm going to be in Spokane for at least another year, waiting for Paul to graduate, I might as well advance as I can. Plus, jobs are jobs. I'm never going to be that concerned about what I'm doing as long as I'm doing something. Eventually I'm going to have to ask for a raise, as I'm not making enough now to cover my expenses, but I'm going to put that off until I understand what they're asking me to do. Once I'm good at setting up the side of the store I'm responsible for-- better than anyone else, anyway-- I'll let them know that I'm highly qualified and there are other places that could use my training. And then I'll grin. More or less. But I don't think it will come to that. I'm one of the few booksellers-- one of the two, actually-- who can cover all of the areas of the store, except cafe. I can cover down in receiving, on zone team, in music, cashwrap, and customer service, and now I'll know how to set, so I can cover for a lead. Most of the booksellers, by comparison, only know their one area. So that's life. I have stories out in the world, and all is well.
.4 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
mon. apr. 28.08. 11:01am	.and more poo!. I haven't seen any more organisms since Sir "I'm a Fluke" was born, but stuff is happening. If you go to Dr. Natura's website, you'll see pictures of the kind of thing I'm seeing in the bowl, only not, err, spread out along the rim as trophies. Not only that, but somehow, I am getting very thin-- my midsection is so flat my hipbones are sticking out. And this is without any change in diet or exercise save taking fiber and a handful of pills, and getting rid of some excess intestine rubber. So. A few people have been emailing me individually asking me for more information, since they've been thinking of doing this themselves-- my response is, if you want to, and you have the cash handy to pay for the kit, do it. It's completely gentle (and with my jumpy stomach, if this stuff was going to cause either the runs or the dry heaves, it would have happened already). The only downsides are the cost (which is still less than colon irrigation, which was what I was looking at first), the timing of the drink and the pills, and the fact that you WILL come down with a cold in your first month. I just got done with my cold. You'll catch a cold from the fact that your immune system is dealing with toxins released in your body. Mucous production skyrockets, as that is the medium by which irritants are conducted out of you (on both ends, believe it or not). Any detox program is going to lead to a sensitivity to respiratory infection, not only because of what I just mentioned, but because any sub-clinical infection will take the opportunity to get big and bad, and finally DEALT WITH and done. If you've never detoxed before, don't start the program with the detox kit included; you'll kill yourself. Detoxing can truly suck if you've never done it before. I'm trying to find a way to write about this that isn't so hippie that it will get dismissed outright. Okay. We all know that the stuff we eat doesn't really resemble anything in the natural world any longer. We can digest most of it, but some of those chemicals get lodged in our fat cells, which is our bodies' way of encapsulating crap it doesn't know how to get rid of any other way, since it didn't get eliminated with the waste. When we break down fat, we release those chemicals (which is one reason why it's so tough to stick to diet and exercise; you start feeling like hell right when you start going into ketosis). And then we either get really sick or we think we got really sick, and go back to our normal eating habits. Now, I've been in the habit for a couple of years now of conducting three day fasts whenever I feel run down. This is to help eliminate toxins and also give my body a rest so it can rebuild whatever it is that's broken. (This also puts a quick stop to most of my flares). So I felt like I was probably clear enough to do a three month detox without too much pain, and so far I've been right-- except that cold was a doozy, but I'm glad it's done with. The scientist in me insists that it's unlikely for thousands of people to have the exact same results with this system for the exact same reason. I don't think the black, stringy, rubbery things I'm passing are made up entirely of old, dead food. I think quite a lot of its mass is the fiber, and the fiber, as it passes through, drags the old crap, which has been loosened by the mucous formed through detox, out. And that's okay with me. Even a little old crap down the old commode beats having it still stuck with me. I don't want to take a McDonald's hamburger with me into the grave, thanks. So... I hope that helps! Oh, and I decided on this rather than the cheaper MasterCleanse (the lemonade-sea salt-cayenne pepper fast) because a) MasterCleanse is HARSH and I would be sick as a dog and b) those who have done MC have then subsequently done Dr. Natura and reported more thorough results. I like thoroughness, so Dr. Natura it is.
.3 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Saturday, April 19th, 2008
sat. apr. 19.08. 1:41pm	.poo update. RESULT! Paul is now clamoring for me to order him some Dr. Natura. I passed something today. It was red. (Not blood red. Not marroon. A bright, technicolor, orange-y red totally unlike the blue-tinged blood I'm accutomed to seeing). It was about two centimeters long. Its head was buried in my-- err, refuse-- and its tail whipped into a coil. IT WAS A THING. So I researched it, because that's what I do, and it turns out it was A LIVER FLUKE. (Best match-- color, length, and shape right).  A FRIGGIN' LIVER FLUKE, Y'ALL.
.25 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Tuesday, April 15th, 2008
tue. apr. 15.08. 11:22am	.detox, taxes, and the god of small things. First, detox continues, and is having its effects. For one thing, my pee is green, which every time I notice it, gets turned into an alternate lyric for the Beatles' "Sea of Green." For another, I have all the classic symptoms of detox (which I've noticed before during fasts): funny body smell, funny taste in mouth, dry mouth, coated tongue, etc. I'm also very hyper, getting up on time, NOT sleeping fifteen hours a day. I'm also passing plaque, or what I assume is plaque due to its rubbery consistency and passing-foul odor. No parasites yet, but then again I haven't precisely been burrowing around in the bowl like some do before flushing. So, that's out of the way. Taxes must be done today, and I go to do just that, but first, a book recommendation. "The God of Small Things," by Arundhati Roy. It has parallels to "The Joy Luck Club" and "The Ya-Ya Sisterhood," just in that it's a family drama-- even closer parallels to "The Sound and the Fury" and "The Prince of Tides," except those are both masculine dramas concerned with malehood. "The God of Small Things" is concerned with womanhood as well as the political upheavals of India, the godlike nature of a decaying family, and love. Annoying tics in the book: Roy likes to Randomly Capitalize Significant Words. It gets very old. She also overdescribes occasionally, but politely: the language is beautiful, but the details don't really help the story, so you can skim over those if you're in a short-attention span mood. And that is all.
I'll come to no good.
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008
wed. apr. 9.08. 12:46pm	.detox, day two. No, not detox as in court-ordered-for-your-glass-rose-pleasure, either. Consider the subject a warning. Detox here equals "poo vacuum." Colon cleanse. Evacuate all ballast. Etc. I assume it will turn both gross and weird, as my number one reason for being on this program is morbid curiosity about what will come out of me (which, I'd hazard, is the reason most people do it). Well, that, and my stomach has historically been a jumpy and nervous little organism (since I was 15, now officially ten years ago) and I'm tired of it. If the cause is some penny I swallowed back in 1988, then I'd like to see that penny again and wave it goodbye as I send it on to its watery doom. This is not a simple procedure. This is like old-folks medicine, with little pills in little rows, and a BANANA-FLAVORED FIBER DRINK to take in the morning, and eight cups of coffee-- whoops, I meant water-- throughout the day. I'm too impatient to actually MIX the fiber drink (because, as those who have taken fiber know, it does not mix-- it achieves a uniform suspensory state in the liquid and still must be chewed on the way down, so screw it)-- I take the scoopful in my mouth, chew it, and chug it down with the water I was supposed to mix it in (16 ounces instead of 8). I still have fiber stuck in my teeth. Then comes the parasite capsules. I know better than to question the wisdom of this-- I eat too much raw seafood; I've got to be a habitat for something. I feel kind of bad though, if I am, because I haven't noticed any poor side effects. Besides, if I have a tapeworm sucking my life, it might also be responsible for my slim physique, which I've gotten pretty fond of since I got it in 2005. And then there are some other caps to take throughout the day (five, to be precise); and then, to finish it all off, a couple of bullets of friendly bacteria and a laxative tea and off to bed. (I skipped that last step last night because I've never had a problem with constipation-- quite the opposite-- and as for the friendly bacteria, well, I flaked. I'll take them tonight). So far, so good. No side effects either positive or negative. A greenish and slightly frightening BM this morning, but I won't call that a result because all BMs are slightly frightening if you take the time to inspect them. But rest assured, your fearless reporter will tell you all as it occurs.
.14 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Wednesday, March 19th, 2008
wed. mar. 19.08. 5:59pm	.googling my name has gotten totally awesome. So, I defended today and passed. Yes, congratulations to me. The defense was pretty interesting-- Jonathan Johnson saw some connections between the stories in the collection that I had completely missed (and I looked real cool too, hemming and hawing about "Oh, sure, I meant to do that...") and I didn't have enough books on my reading list (which wasn't fair. I'd read like twenty, was told I needed ten, put ten on my list-- turns out I needed fifteen, so I had to add five with all my committee members looking at me-- yikes). But it, the defense, was also short, because my advisor had gotten burgled last night and needed to leave halfway through to recover his property from the police.  When I came home afterwards, I felt a little dry-- kind of empty, knowing that this whole period of my life is over and I can get on with becoming a middle-class thud-- so I decided to Google my name, which is something I haven't done in ages. (To be frank, I haven't even touched my computer in the past couple of months, mostly out of guilt and trepidation re: the upcoming defense).  Damn. Googling my name has gotten a lot more interesting since I published "Tokyo Rising." People reviewed it! And I get to be all cool and sit back and say, "Oh, that's fair, that's fair, ooh, good point, and ooh, that was too nice to the work." I'm proud of myself for being fair about the bad reviews. No, I don't like it when people CLOSE to me don't like my work, but strangers? Sure. I can take their opinions in a much better state of mind, because it doesn't feel personal. This observation makes me feel good, given that I have a rep for being oversensitive. Greg is going to give me some leads for other places to publish (he's excited about "Rope" and "Found Objects"-- Jonathan, too, was real interested in "Found Objects" and thought it was a lot deeper and weirder than I thought it was [I love readers])-- so, the point is, to wind it all up, I get reviews, and I'm going to graduate, the end.
.3 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Tuesday, February 12th, 2008
tue. feb. 12.08. 11:25am	.good news. My thesis is done, my paperwork is done, my ducks are rowed, and I will graduate in a few weeks. My advisor referred to one of my revised stories as "transformed." I no longer have to write stories about sad children and little dead animals. Now I can write stories about sad shapeshifters and little dead dragons. I feel quite pleased with myself, and content.
.7 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Saturday, February 2nd, 2008
sat. feb. 2.08. 11:35pm	.thesis and life. So my thesis is due by the 7th and my advisor doesn't like much of it, so I'm panicking. All right, I'm being melodramatic. Just because he didn't praise me and pet me doesn't mean he didn't like my work. But, pretty much every story in the collection needs revision, and he wasn't sounding overly enthused about the chances of it succeeding-- it being the thesis-- so I'm kind of, well, panicked. Hrmm. That's not totally true either. See, the trouble is, I've lost my motivation (and this isn't a my parents-are-dead-oh-poor-me thing either, this is something that's been going on since I started here in Spokane, or maybe even before that. Oh, I'm going to ramble on this, so I'll provide a nice LJ cut. <b>ETA:</b> Except my code doesn't seem to be working...).<lj-cut>  All right. Long story short, I used to be a determined person. In fact, I once held a LJ comment-post-a-thon asking people what one word describes me and that was the one used most often-- determined. And now I'm not. I really, really am not. The "determined" thing came from, well, I was going to be a writer, and in order to be a writer, I needed this education, and in order to get the education, I needed the scholarships, and in order to get the scholarships, I needed the kick-ass grades. So I did that. Grades, scholarship, etc. etc. But the flaw was, I didn't really get why I was doing any of it-- I told myself it was because I had this dream, but in fact it was because I got praised and petted for being a good student and getting scholarships and, basically, doing the things I was good at. I leaned on that approval, and gradually I stopped doing things I knew I wasn't going to be good at, because it would take time away from things I knew I could do in order to be praised. It really had nothing to do with writing, but with attention. I didn't think too much about any of that until just recently, when Dad died and I had to face completing my MFA within a month. I had kind of known, subconsciously, that I didn't care about the MFA, and that I didn't want to write what I'd have to write in order to earn it. I got in this program to avoid the real world, remember, and I stayed in it when it started getting annoying because Dad wanted me to, and now I'm completing this thesis so I can kind of give my degree to Dad post-humously, you know, a kind of, "Oh, well, you didn't get one and you wanted one, so here's mine, and it's all for you," thing. Oddly, the not-giving-a-shit is making the writing and revision a lot easier, because I don't really worry about whether or not it's up to my standards. I don't have any standards. My thesis advisor wants sappiness in Found Objects? He can have it. More character in the not-dead hanging guy? Sure, here. I feel detached from the stories, and whatever I add or take away, I don't have the anxiety about what the end result will be, so long as my advisor likes it so I can defend it and move on with my life. And that's very Buddhist of me. Basically, I feel aimless. I feel like I've gotten the legs knocked out from under me <I>again</I>. It's not like I feel like staying down this time, but more like I can't remember which way is up. I have absolutely no idea what kind of life I want, or what I want to be doing with my time now. I know this isn't anything crucial, and if I had the luxury of time and space I could figure it out, but there's other things at work. One is the approval issue. I don't have much family left and I want them to be proud of me. I wanted them to be proud of me all along-- it's a whole <I>thing</I> in my head because I am not convinced my mother was proud of me when she died (why would she have been? I was this fat awkward thing that did embarassing stuff in public. I had no notion of manners or what one should and should not do around others. I was awful)-- so. My family wants me to complete an MFA? Sure. I can do that. I can do anything that will make it so the people I look up to don't think I'm useless. But the main problem is just a question of aim. Back when I was so determined, my aim was, "Become a writer," and so I wrote constantly, and writing was my Buffy the Vampire Slayer, my Final Fantasy XII, my fill-in-the-blank-with-the-thing-I'm-wasting-too-much-time-on-now-here. And I lost that aim sometime during the relationship with Jared-- not his fault, by the way, just saying, chronologically, that's when it happened. So, now, I have these two possible aims, which have to do with how I want to live my life, and they basically boil down to "Responsibility" and "Take it Easy." If I went with "Responsibility," that means getting a real job, and beginning to build a family, and actively attempting to make real flesh-and-blood friends as opposed to the people in my head. It means regular checkups, diet and exercise, and basically just living for others, which is VERY NICE and LAUDABLE, but I'm not sure I want that, because of the other aim, which is-- "Take it Easy." Take it easy means just do what I do on a normal day. Be nice to people, deal with them, but wait for them to leave so I can read a book or watch Buffy or play video games or have a beer or draw a picture or any of the hundred things I do when I'm by myself. Take it Easy means I avoid a family with every cell in my body, because children mean responsibility, as do spouses, most of the time; Take it Easy means I live very simply and pretty much exactly the way I do now, only without even the small compromises I've made to keep others happy. They're equally appealing and I'm not sure which one I want, because I tend to focus on the downside of each, and those downsides are basically my parents. I do the "Responsible" aim, and I possibly turn into my mother, dying while my children are young and wrecking their tender little lives or whatever. (Not liked they asked to be here). If I take it easy, I run the risk of turning into my dad, sitting in a dirty house in a pair of boxers and a wife beater watching Andromeda on repeat. Take it Easy is actually slightly more appealing than Responsibilty, because at least that way I'm only goofing up my own life and no one else's (I can't think of a way of starting a family without goofing up someone's life at this point-- mine, the kid's, the family connected to mine who get stuck with the babysitting 'cause God knows there's not anyone on my side to do it except Ginni, and she's way busier than I'll ever be). And writing doesn't figure anymore. This is a hard admission, but it's one I've known for a while now: I'm not going to make it. I'm not going to be able to make a living doing this. If I stick with it, then I'll always be trying to answer people asking me if I've sent stuff out, if I've heard back, and how much I made from this sale or that sale, and I can't describe the sense of hopelessness I have about it. I need approval so much and to be asked how much a story sold for, when perhaps all I got was credit-- No. I'm proud in the bad way, and I hate that feeling. In addition, I need security. I love steady paychecks. I love budgets. When I sold "Tokyo Rising," the whole process of remuneration took months. I can't live like that. I could do it as a hobby, and probably will, but if food and clothing rely on it? No way. Oh, no way. I'll never be the kind of writer who makes more than five hundred bucks a year, unless I get really lucky and win a contest.</lj-cut> So, right now, I'm feeling completely freaked out and panicked and pissed off at myself and the world and aimless and lost. And there's a whole nifty name for this now in pop-culture-- "quarter-life crisis." Nice to know I'm not alone, then.
.7 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Saturday, January 26th, 2008
sat. jan. 26.08. 7:56pm	.a thank you note. Thank you, Aunts and Uncles of the Edwards lineage, for providing me, via condolence cards, with the wherewithal to get home tonight. See, Spokane got itself about six or seven inches of snow. My little Toli does not have snow tires. I got stuck. Tow truck came to the rescue-- at a price-- so thank you, Aunts and Uncles of the Edwards lineage, for keeping me from walking home. Which wouldn't have happened. My flash-frozen corpse would have surfaced sometime in the spring. I am doing as well as can be expected. It's been a grim month.
.2 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Monday, January 14th, 2008
mon. jan. 14.08. 7:47am	.denial. Every time someone says, "I'm sorry to hear of your father's passing," I think they're bitching about his driving ability. (Which was, to be fair, terrible. He couldn't see well, couldn't hear well, and couldn't steer well. These things do not add up to a professional driver. Amateur status, maybe?). I spent the weekend in Richmond with my sister, Ginni, doing a fat lot of nothing. Actually, we were playing "let's pretend." Let's pretend I'm just down for a visit and Ginni finally convinced me to travel to Richmond. Let's pretend that at any time we can pick up the phone. We knew it was let's pretend, but we did it anyway. How many stages are there to grieving? I always form snap judgments of people's character based on which ones they remember off the top of their head. I mean, there's a big difference between someone who remembers only, "Denial, Guilt, Acceptance," versus someone who remembers "Anger, Guilt, Acceptance." I'm pretty good at this by now. I know, from when Momma died, that pretending isn't going to do much for me. Anger won't either. Guilt can be handy, in that I can use it to actually DO something (what do I feel guilty about? What can I do about it?), and constructive activity is helpful. But mainly what it's about, and what I keep telling Ginni, is time. You feel things that make no sense. Give it time. Either they turn out to make sense in retrospect, or you stop feeling it, or you feel something that puts the first feeling in context of some sort. In any case, telling yourself to NOT feel never works. Even worse is to tell yourself that what you're feeling is wrong. For instance, there's a part of me that feels relief. People who knew Daddy would interpret that to mean I'm relieved that the slow crumble is finally done, but it isn't. It's because Daddy and Momma, as a unit, represent my past, where I came from, etc., and those are keystone issues in my life. And I'm also relieved at the timing-- if this had happened during one of the eras when all I was brooding on my past 24/7, the fallout would have been a lot worse. Focused in, say, China, instead of Greenland, if loss of human life=amount of emotional fuckup. And there's a part of me that feels fear, because Momma and Daddy were my PARENTS, and they're both gone, and as parents they are the people I have a God-given right to run to when the world isn't being run to my specs, when the computer crashes and I lose my job, when I'm breaking up with the man I thought I'd be with forever and my best friend turns out to be carrying sabers in her mouth. I mean, they were the fall-back position, and when Momma died my reaction was mainly to deny my femininity (because who was there to teach me, and without teaching, how was I to get it right? Keep in mind I was ten when Momma died, and I don't do anything if I don't think I can do it right) and to freak out over who was going to guard me as I slept (these are condensed milk versions of the actual fallout). Gotta go.
.1 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Sunday, January 13th, 2008
sun. jan. 13.08. 12:52pm	.funny stuff archive. Because I'm sick of googling it, here's all the stuff I feel like people need to see before they die. Now it's in a handy reference so I can share it at will. Yay. Robot Chicken Star Wars Star Wars Gangsta Rap Badger Badger Dugong Weeblstuff in general.
I'll come to no good.
sun. jan. 13.08. 11:48am	.sunday morning. I'm reading a book by Nelson DeMille that I picked up in the airport at half price to read on the plane. It's a farfetched scenario wherein an obsessed oil billionaire resolves to wipe out Islam by nuking American cities himself, thereby forcing us to launch a fictitious program called "Wild Fire," where America nukes the heck out of the Middle East without any questions (based on the real doctrine of MAD we had during the Cold War). In the plot, there's a lot of exposition about ELF (extremely low frequency) trasmitters, which send signals to communicate with submarines. There are only three of these transmitters in the world, according to the book, and their locations are known. Now, this leads a question I would normally run by Daddy on a Sunday morning, drinking my coffee; I'd look up and ask, "All right, Dad, so say there's a war-- wouldn't a good strategy be to knock out all the known communication transmitters first, so the other side won't be able to talk to their military?" And Daddy would either say it was a good idea or he'd explain why it's a bad idea, and then we'd get into another of our conversations about the state of the world, etc. ( The funeral, the procession, and other matters. )
.3 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Thursday, January 10th, 2008
thu. jan. 10.08. 3:26pm	.daddy is a mess. I've been back in Virginia for a couple of days now. Of course, since Dad's death was so sudden (heart attack), there were no arrangements made. Sorting that out ate my first and second day here. We had to find him a grave, and we had to find pall bearers, and I still have to write the eulogy, because I remember Daddy wanted me to. The people Ginni and I had to deal with while doing all this were fascinating, and even better at putting their feet in their mouths than I am, but they are a subject for a different post. But the bad news keeps on rolling. The day after I got here, Daddy's house was burgled-- probably by someone who saw him die, which makes me sick to my stomach-- but fortunately the thieves were dumb. They took all his DVDs, his computer monitor (but not the tower, thank God), and the portable DVD player Ginny and I had bought him last Christmas. Also, we can't find Daddy's will, and we don't know who his lawyer is, so that's a big mess that Aunt Bonnie is alternately sorting out and cursing about. And this morning was the private viewing. I cried. I don't know if I'll ever want to talk about it. I've run out of gumption to finish this post. Basically it's a collection of notes to myself for things to expand on or explain more fully, but I can't concentrate. I'm going to call Paul and then redo my makeup. The public viewing is in a couple of hours.
.6 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.
Sunday, January 6th, 2008
sun. jan. 6.08. 7:25pm	.official condolences post. My father is dead. I know that's pretty stark, but there it is. He went for a ride on his motorcycle, parked it, lay down beside it, and died. I'm going home Monday night for the funeral.
.25 person told mepeople told me I'll come to no good.