I used to hate taking history classes in school. I've never been good with names and dates; history classes are mostly names and dates, and the tests in history classes are usually nothing more than a test of your memory for names and dates. So basically I don't like history because I'm not good at it. I don't remember where or who I heard it from, but I've heard that we as a society have a responsibility to study history so that we can learn from it, and ensure that we don't make the same mistakes. That makes history sounds a lot more important, and less like nothing but names and dates. I should probably work on getting good at history.

Until you've learned from history, you're pretty much doomed to live in a longer and less comical version of Bill Murray's life in "Groundhog Day". Could you imagine how great the world would be if our elected officials had done better in history? We wouldn't have twice in two decades brought war upon an already savaged part of the world. We would have figured out this economy thing a long time ago, and racism would truly be extinct. We wouldn't have presidents getting blow jobs in the oval office, we wouldn't have them trying to hide information from us, and we wouldn't have them spending money on shit that isn't in our best interests. If they were better at history, they would have already figured out what doesn't work.

Not being good at history leads us to spinning our wheels, both on large and small scales; we pick the concept that comes easiest to us and go with it, no matter what. Out of panic and fear, we cling to the most comfortable situation, forgetting that we've tried that already. And we drill at it, and go for it time and again, each time expecting different results, each time not paying any attention at all to history. Sometimes there are moments of clarity, those often suck, where you realize what you've been doing and are like "damn, I've been fucking up", but once you're faced with the situation again there's the panic, and you're back to Square One.

Square One means that you haven't gone anywhere. You haven't moved. It's a nicer sounding way of saying "you've failed". Unfortunately, Square One can be a deceitful whore. Some of us unenlightened individuals find a sense of comfort in Square One because it is familiar. It's usually comfortable in the most uncomfortable kind of way, but it's something. People like comfort, even when it's bad for us, or Applebee's wouldn't still be in business. We're afraid to go elsewhere because we've never been there before. So we sit in the parking lot spinning wheels and doing donuts, but we never leave, and we revel in the familiarity, even though it's probably killing us.

Normally this is the part in the story where the author would reveal their personal connection to the idea they've just outlined, maybe try to get the reader to feel a connection as well. I don't really feel like I need to do that. I'm sure that anyone reading this can connect me to it in their minds, and maybe possibly even themselves. Most of my friends aren't dummies. I've recently begun to realize that I've racked up most of my life mileage just by spinning my wheels, and I'm not too happy about it. And I'll end with that.

I am very sad to be back in Baltimore. In Florida, the trees were still alive and beautiful; here, our trees look like dangerously miserable sticks in the mud. The temperatures got into the 70s during the day, but it gets cold enough to see your breath at night. It was perfect weather to get in the hot tub in the evenings, so I did, and now I have a rash. Also, the dry heat in the car on the way down and back has given me sinus issues and a sore throat. I pretty much take those things as a sign that I shouldn't have left Florida. So I'll probably move down there in June.

Thanksgiving was great. I haven't experienced a family Thanksgiving in years, not since Devin was still an infant, and it was everything I wanted it to be. Not too many people, but definitely better than my last Thanksgiving, which I spent making a dent on my couch while watching a marathon of "Jon & Kate Plus 8", waiting for my roommate to bring me leftovers from her family affair. The only thing missing was Devin, of course, and sauerkraut. Apparently sauerkraut is a "northern" thing. Well I plan on taking it down there because they don't know what they're missing.

The babies were great, and I didn't even get bored with them and their antics until the morning of our last day there. I consider that an accomplishment. I'm proud to say that I no longer want a baby to get up in me, and that feels good, man.

RECAP

-Florida is great. There are many rednecks, but no more than I'm used to dealing with from living in Dundalk for so long.

-Babies can all fuck off for a while.

-I got to spend my Thanksgiving afternoon in my bathing suit, sunning myself on a hammock. Can't say that about Baltimore.

-Motorcycles are fun, but Florida doesn't have a helmet law, therefore my uncle has no helmets and I felt like I was going to die.

-BEACHES!

Things

-I leave for Florida on Tuesday after work and will be coming back the following Saturday. Shit should be so cash. I miss my family, and there are tiny baby additions to said family, so that makes me even more excited. I need to be around a baby or two, it's been a while, and I've been feeling an itch in my womb that only a fetus can scratch, so hopefully being around my cousins' babies will get rid of that not so fresh feeling. Also, the beach, on Thanksgiving.

-Of course, since I'm about to have a nice thing happen next week, this week has made me want to cry, so I have. Work has reeked of privilege so far this week, and I'm highly allergic, so it needs to stop sometime in the very near future. I'm sick of daddy's babies getting yelled at and them feeling small because of it, and I'm sick of them making me feel small in return. I'm very happy that today is pay day so I can be reminded of why I even bother.

-THE HOLIDAYS are coming. I won't be getting any presents to open for Christmas because my mother is paying for my teeth fixings, so maybe I'll wrap my new teeth with paper and bows so I can join in on THE HOLIDAY CHEER.

-Hanging out tonight like it's 1999. It's been feeling a little too much like 2009, so this evening's time travel is more than welcome.

Devin and I were on a train, heading to a grand re-opening celebration for a newly renovated baseball field and park complex in Dundalk. There was a slide show of pictures showing how the park looked before the reconstruction, and a parade, and moon bounces, and face painting, and all that kind of stuff. The flier for the event mentioned a "special celebrity guest", but that most likely meant "someone in a Ronald McDonald outfit".

We were sitting in the grass on the field, my mother had arrived out of nowhere, and I was trying to find the perfect blade of grass to make a whistle out of it. I felt a tap on my shoulder and I heard someone say "excuse me", so I turned around to see what they wanted. It was Katy Perry. But for some reason I wasn't shocked. She wanted to know how to make a grass whistle. I showed her how, and was surprised in my dream because I'm only marginally good at this in real life. As it turned out, the "special celebrity guest" was Barney. So I wasn't too far off.

A whole bunch of other shit happened real fast after I showed her the fine art of grass whistling: Devin started coughing, so my mother took him home; me, Katy Perry, and her manager (but sadly, not her hot piece of Russel Brand boyfriend) went to this shopping center in Dundalk, but it reminded me of Massachusetts; then we all went out to dinner at the Olive Garden. Then Katy Perry tells me that they couldn't find a hotel room (apparently Dundalk is the place to be in Dreamland), and then asks if they can stay at my house. They meaning her, her manager... and her baby.

After making some wrinkles in time, we all magically arrived at my house. Sleeping arrangements had apparently been decided on the way, and we pretty much just did our regular pre-bed routines and then went to sleep as soon as we came through the tesseract. Space and time travel is exhausting. Even when it only happens in a dream.

We all wake up. Katy Perry had some sort of famous people thing to do, and her nanny had called in the middle of the night to cancel on watching the baby. So she asks if I can watch the baby, and I do. The first thing I notice is that this secret baby of hers was only physically as developed as an infant not yet old enough to walk, but was really fucking smart, and talking, and had a whole lot of super long curly hair. That's pretty much all I got to notice before space and time had been fucked with again, because it was the next morning and Katy Perry had just woken up.

This time Katy Perry (who was starting to prove that celebrities are as needy as many believe them to be) asks me if I'd like to be her new, full-time nanny. And I said yes, again. But this time shit started getting real rad: Devin and I got to fly around the country, the world for that matter; Katy Perry hired a great private tutor to come around with us, and their fee didn't come out of my salary; sometimes Katy Perry would hire a babysitter for our kids so that I could come out on the town with her, and pretty much every other famous person in the world. It was fucking awesome. Of course this is the time when I woke up. Damnit.

I woke up SUPER pissed off because, well, who wouldn't? Yes, Katy Perry's music is only really good at being really fucking catchy, and that "Super Twins" thing she has going on with Zooey Deschanel is really fucking creepy. But who wouldn't want to be able to do something they enjoy very much (childcare), and make a fuckton of money, AND get to see the world? The famous people part isn't really anything too special, as I don't really care. But you know... maybe get knocked up by one of them and you're set for life, amirite? I could see past having to deal with a moderately cool, yet obscenely needy bitch in order to have those opportunities.

I would deal with a lot of bullshit to have those kinds of opportunities. To be able to do something that I love to do. I love childcare, but the pay is shit, so there's no way I could afford to live on that salary. I also love to write too many words, and I love to do it a lot. Even though I'm not good at it, if I could get paid for it, I could shape up real fast.

It's funny that the two things I'd most like to do with my life are things that are damn near impossible. Now I doublehate that dream.

Scutigera coleoptrata

These motherfuckers are ruining my life. I realize that you can't handle the cold and everything, and therefore feel the need to venture into my house, inhabiting my nightmares, but that only leads me to ask this of you; if you can't deal with colder weather, how the hell have you survived for however long you've existed on Earth? There hasn't always been ugly rental townhomes for you to sneak into in order to ensure that you live for way too long, because you assholes have the longest lifespan ever.

Too bad I can't look at you fuckers this close up when you're hanging from my wall. You're actually almost kind of smiling. I wouldn't be smiling if I were you though, I've got a giant can of... any kind of chemical cleaner you could imagine, and I'm not only unafraid of using it, I'm totally gonna. So go ahead and run at your abnormally high speed of up to 16 inches per second, call it a head start, and I'll meet you in the bathroom.

Aww, centipede, what's the matter? You're not so fast and creepy now, are you? I'm sad that it had to come to this, really I am, but you have to realize that this is my house. Go be outside. If I'm come across you out there, I'm less inclined to kill you because I respect your habitat. So please respect mine, and stay the fuck out.

Kay, bye.

I ate myself back into a size ten over the course of the past two weeks. They're not tight-fitting, but I definitely won't be needing to go buy those size eights that I've been eyeing up. I've since gotten myself back on track, and I'm proud of myself for doing so before I gained back everything I've worked so hard to lose. But I knew what I was doing when I gained these few pounds back, deep down anyway. I'm afraid that if I get to a point where I'm no longer considered fat, or even chubby, that I won't have any more excuses to avoid life.

I can't go out because I'm fat and have nothing to wear. I can't dress up for Halloween because all of the costumes are slutty, and fat girls, if they know any better, shouldn't do "slutty". I can't run any further than a quarter mile at a time because I'm fat. I can't get or keep a man because I'm fat. I can't have fun because I'm fat.

The excuses also cleverly disguise themselves as almost positives: I'm meant to be fat, look at the rest of my family. I love it when fat girls make my meals for me because they know what we like, and we know how to make it right. I'm so happy to be seeing average women in magazines, it makes me feel like I'm being represented. "Zero is not a size".

I'm torn between wanting to keep my excuses so that I'm not forced to deal with my ever growing social anxiety, and finally being free of the one thing that has consistently upset me the most throughout my life; my size. Most days, I'd rather just throw out an "I'm fat" than have to bother leaving the house, or even worse, bothering to figure out why I feel so horribly uncomfortable when I go out.

I guess I'm glad that fall/winter has arrived. That will give me time to think about what the hell is wrong with me, and why I (apparently) don't like nice things.

Things

-Dropped my car off at the body shop this morning. They'll have it for at least a week. I forgot to mention that my mother backed into my front-end a couple of weeks ago, and she managed to cause over $1,000 in damage... before I even made my first payment. I'm driving mom's car today but will probably be driving a rental until they're finished fixing my car. Hopefully the rental car isn't much sweeter or more awesome than my car, because I like my car pretty hard and I don't want to start not liking it. My mother has a Honda CR-V, and I don't like driving it because it's giant compared to my car. Driving a giant car makes me feel like an asshole.

-I finally made it to the point where I can consistently run a single lap around the track, actually running. On an impromptu Sunday morning run yesterday, I managed to run an entire lap, and the straightaway to the next corner. One day at a time I guess, I'm just a very impatient person and would like to see results a little faster than I've been. Of course if I were to quit smoking I'd be able to run a lot further than I can now, but that's a promise I'm not yet willing to make. Speaking of quitting smoking, I did quit for almost 72 hours, but I'm afraid I'll need to learn a coping mechanism other than setting something on fire and inhaling the smoky results before I can give quitting a real go.

-The size 10 jeans I referenced in one of my previous posts are about to be replaced with a size 8. But, due to financial reasons, I'll be keeping these 10's held up with a makeshift belt for another three weeks. Fucking financial reasons. I hate you.

-Winter is coming, I can feel it in my bones. Expect either a whole lot of nothing on here from me, or a whole lot of thinly veiled threats to my own life and/or the lives of other people. Don't worry though, once the sun manages to be up for both my morning and evening commutes again, I'll be fine.

Losing weight has made me realize how big I let myself get over the years. I've always been on the heavier side of average weight, so being a fat girl never really bothered me too hard because it was a thing I was used to. I wore a junior's size 9 when I was in the sixth grade, and I stayed that size until around tenth grade. It was then it occured to me that I should feel a little more sad about losing weight. I remember how horrible I felt when I had to suddenly jump up to a junior's size 11, which is about the equivalent of the misses size 10 that I wear now. I remember how fat it made me feel to wear that size, when most of my classmates were probably still wearing their size 9's, or worse, smaller. I remember how it made me feel like a bad person.

I have come down to a size 10 from a size 16, which was the largest I'd ever been except for when I was pregnant with Devin. Pregnant fat is not like regular fat; it's being fat for a reason other than being a hungry, lazy hippo. I feel super excited to be in a size 10 for the first time since early high school. But then I let myself think about how a size 10 isn't really small at all. I was unhealthily large in early high school, and I'm unhealthily large today. I still have a long way to go, I'd like to eventually be wearing a size 6, and I'm proud of myself for being able to add the word "eventually" to my dieting vocabulary.

The main thing that has gotten in my way in regards to my various quests for relative thinness has been my own impatience. I'd always start a diet on Monday and expect to look like a goddess by the following Sunday. Of course I wouldn't wake up on that day resembling any sort of goddess other than the short, squat, fertility variety, so I'd give up. What little common sense I have about health and fitness tells me that waking up after a week of dieting, looking any different was impossible, but common sense usually tends to fly out the window just when you need it most. Now that I've come to terms with "eventually", it's been much easier to live healthier all around, not just eat a little healthier for a predetermined period of time.

Since I started "living healthier" at the end of June, I've lost 20 pounds, which puts the loss at rate of about 2 pounds per week, which is considered healthy. I've hit a plateau. It seems like no matter what I do, I can't get that scale to budge at all. It's becoming a pain in my ass, and I'm trying to keep it from shaking my resolve. Losing 20 pounds the healthy way is a decent feat, and I'm pretty proud of myself for doing it this way. I need to tuck that feeling in a pocket somewhere so that I can pull it out when I need the encouragement to continue.

Eventually.

The last of my mother's living family, besides a few long-lost cousins, Devin, and myself, is currently dying in a shared room at the FutureCare center in Dundalk. I don't take to sick old people very well. Especially sick old people with whom I've spent a decent amount of my life. Like my Aunt Cora, the one sitting at the nursing home, waiting to die. When my grandmother, the woman who half raised me, was dying, I made efforts to not have to go and see her. It's disappointing and very upsetting to see a person you loved so much in so much pain, and that's never a way you want to remember someone. Eventually my mother managed to guilt trip me into going to see Aunt Cora with her this evening, and when we walked into the room my Aunt looked at me and burst into tears. Tears, coming from the eyes of this bald, shrunken, sack with the face of the woman who taught me how to play Gin Rummy. And instead of saying "hello", or "I haven't seen you since you were still in school!", she tells me "You are your grandmother's granddaughter. Oh my God you look exactly like she did when she was your age". And this is why I don't take well to sick, old people; it's because of the fucking things they say.

It's probably because I spent an angst-filled year of my teenage life studying the fine arts of Wicca that I have weird thoughts about death and the possibility of an afterlife. I think that people who are actively dying are actually downloading the knowledge of the Universe at a speed that is directly proportional to the speed with which they are dying. I don't mean "actively dying" as in people my age who are inching towards death, barring any unforeseen accidents along the way. I mean people who are the process of having their internal organs switched off on a daily, or even hourly basis. I feel that this is just another one of life's cruel jokes, the ultimate in hindsight facepalms; you spend an entire lifetime attempting to carve out your personal niche in this world we've developed, then you receive the pertinent information as you're dying. This situation would be the "cherry on top", the big "fuck you" of the Universe, and it is this situation that leads me to believe that people who are dying have very important things to say. If you can wade through the gibberish, you might have access to a piece of Universal Knowledge, and I'm not sure that we're supposed to know about any of that shit until we've started dying.

So before going into the nursing home, my mother and I sat in her car, and she told me to keep my cool, "don't fall apart in front of Aunt Cora, she doesn't need to see that we're upset". We finished our cigarettes and began walking through the crumbling parking lot toward the squealing automatic doors. There were three elderly men sitting in rusty wheel chairs, armed with oxygen tanks, smoking cigarettes directly next to these doors; glaring at us for our walking legs, the orange light of the evening sun setting fire to the windows of their souls. The look of them sent chills directly to my urethra, bypassing my bladder entirely. The peanut butter sandwich and large diet coke, no ice I had for lunch immediately sank to the ass end of my intestines. I avoided eye contact with them as best I could, besides the fact that these old men seemed dangerous, looking at old people in general is depressing; it's a glimpse into a future that I'd rather not see right now. "These bitter old men think that just because they're dying, there's no use in paying any attention to the safety of others? So much for keeping my cool. I've managed to be dragged into a place where people go to die, and well, I'm going to die. Thanks, Mom", I muttered to her as we walked out of the old men's hearing aids' earshot and into the center's lobby.

My aunt has a rather secluded room, away from the hustle and bustle of the rest of the center; this is assuming that there's much of any hustling or bustling going on in a nursing home. There was an old man sitting by himself in a corner of the hallway, just sitting in a wheelchair, staring at what I believe was his reflection in the curtained window of the nurse's lounge. I can only imagine how it feels to look at yourself when you're that old and sick, knowing about your life before this state. I'd rather lose my memory if that's the case. There were carts piled with mostly uneaten plates of food, children's food; pudding, grilled cheese and tomato soup, goldfish crackers, mashed potatoes. If the Lion King were about people, "The Circle of Life" would have contained more lyrics about old people, and how you come out in diapers and leave in diapers, you come out with no teeth and leave with no teeth. Ah, it's the circle of life, and it rules us all.

So when Aunt Cora looked at me and started crying and going on about my grandmother, the fiber-bulked shit that had been growing since the silent death threats from the trio of oldheads dropped, and was being held in by only a thread. The other half of my lunch seemed to have traveled upwards and lodged itself in my throat, but of course that was just the lump that always accompanies tears. I made a dying woman cry. She's on oxygen, so I'm not sure that crying is in her best interests. I could have killed her. I'm not sure what upset me more; her crying or her mentioning my grandmother. Conversation ensues, and I admit that I was only half listening; I was too preoccupied with thoughts of my own mortality, my ambiguous feelings towards Aunt Cora's receipt of Universal knowledge, and the various medical equipment in the room to be bothered with conversation. I was grateful for the distractions though, I had the loosest possible grip on my cool, and I needed to focus on not going to the bathroom in a nursing home.

As it turns out, I don't think Aunt Cora is dying hard enough to be receiving any great amount of knowledge. She's too coherent, too... alive to know things. That eased the pressure in my guts a little, knowing that I wouldn't be accidentally be exposed to any information that would open me up to a possible real life "Final Destination" scenario. Removing the thought of choking on the dinner I had no idea when I'd be eating made the visit a little more pleasant, but still no where near pleasant. I was still in a nursing home surrounded by death and people who have given up. I was still visiting with a person who was not only dying, but had also accepted this fact. I was still visiting with a woman who eerily resembles my grandmother as she was dying, and this was the thing that upset me the most this evening.

The thing that upset me second most was that I didn't get to eat dinner until 8:30, after I stopped by the grocery store as I had originally planned to do before going to visit "Death Becomes Her", picked up a salad at the salad bar, came home to eat the salad, then proceeded to spill the contents of a one pound salad after I had only consumed ten bites.

I shrugged the salad off. After seeing old people who are dying due to certain life choices, I figured that I wouldn't miss the extra calories or the rise in blood pressure from getting pissed at such trivial things.

Things

-Running is good. It makes me feel young again, and it makes me feel like I'm able to revisit doing things that I gave up on because they were too hard, as I'm able to use the life experiences I've gained since then to tell myself that I've done harder things than running. I ran 1.75 miles in the woods yesterday, that made me feel pretty great. Using my body for what it was designed is a pretty cool thing.

-I now wear a size 10. I got a few cheap, basic things from Old Navy to help bridge the gap from this size to, hopefully, an 8 in the near future. I have a pair of size 15 "skinny" jeans and, even though they are falling off of me, I can't tell a difference in my size when I look in the mirror. I can't tell a difference in the amount of space I take up when sitting on the sofa or lying in my bed. I've read that a lot of people who go from really fat, to not so fat and beyond, have a problem with seeing their "new" bodies. I guess it'll just take some adjusting.

-Devin starts school in a week. It's really hard for me to believe that my baby is a second grader, but I don't see anything but my baby when I look at him, so it's really hard for me to believe a lot of things. There was so much I was supposed to get done over this summer break, but I can't help the fact that time flies. I feel like Devin's birthday was last week, not a whole month ago. Another thing that needs some adjusting.

I've never been a fan of the songs that Christine McVie wrote/sang for Fleetwood Mac, and I've also never been a fan of using other people's words in order to convey what I'm thinking or how I'm feeling. This is probably because Christine McVie's songs contain too little imagery for my tastes, plus she sings like a man. Also, there is a very slim chance that some other person feels the exact same way I do about a given situation. Taking the above into consideration, if I were attempting to branch out and try new things, I'd probably say that "Over My Head" might be a good song to express how I feel about certain aspects of my life right now. Go ahead and look at those lyrics if you're so inclined. If you don't do that, then you might feel like this was supposed to be the entry about my trip to the beach last weekend where I almost drowned. Then you'd be wrong, and no one likes to be wrong.

Things

-I didn't almost drown during my trip to the beach last weekend, but I'm pretty sure there was a little extra bit of sea life trying to nip at me. Cons: Being eaten alive by millions of tiny fish, some sharks, and a few stray crabs would probably not be a pleasant experience. Pros: Treading water so that your feet don't have to touch the bottom of the ocean is a brilliantly disguised form of exercise. It isn't going to give me the arms of Madonna circa 1998, but it's a good start for someone whose lifestyle would be considered more "dormant" than "sedentary".

-There was a fair amount of kayaking during this beach trip, more than any of the other times I've kayaked. Before this trip I'd only ever used a tandem kayak. There's a big difference between singles and tandems. Singly kayaking for two hours in a choppy bay, darting across lanes of boat traffic, and dodging the boat's wakes was also a secret workout; one that left me feeling like Henry Rollins' neck and shoulder region when I woke up on Sunday.

-All of the sneaky exercise I did made me think, "Hmm. All that sneaky exercise I got this weekend made me feel real good, man. I wonder if I should just come out of the working out closet and just be a real exerciser?". So I opened the door, and I've been looking around a little, and I kind of liked what I saw, so that leaves me smack dab in the middle of the first week of a couch to 5K training schedule, leaving my legs feeling like fuck.

-Having a new car is pretty rad. Until I have to make that first payment. Then I'll probably stop being so damn excited.

-Links are neat.

I started off this morning writing an entry about my trip to the beach on Saturday, but it's really hard to have a consistent enough train of thought to write while I'm at work. I saved the draft, so it might make an entry someday, but unfortunately I have no idea what I intended to write about so it might be a while before I finish it. While I was busy not writing, I read many articles today regarding healthcare, and a whole bunch of opinion articles regarding the same subject, so I figured that I'd write my own.

Point: Socialized medicine is evil. I'm not paying for some sloppy layabout's or illegal immigrant's healthcare.

Counterpoint: Socialized medicine is not evil. Whether you like it or not, you are already paying for some "sloppy layabout's or illegal immigrant's" healthcare. It's likely that the people complaining about paying for these programs make too much money to qualify for these already existing government sponsored healthcare programs, so they're angry that they are paying for a thing that they can not have. I have to lie on applications so I can ensure that Devin has health coverage, but if the proposed changes are made to this system, I would actually be entitled to the thing I'm already paying for. This is basically a win-win situation. Now I'm just waiting for the bigots to speak up and say that they don't want to have the same insurance that "illegals" have because they feel that they're entitled to better.

Point: Fat people and smokers shouldn't have their entire healthcare bill footed by taxpayers because they are a burden to society. They should have to pay a portion of their own healthcare.

Counterpoint: Where to start? Fat people and smokers are fat and smokers by their own choice only to a certain point. Once an addiction has you in its grip it's hard, very hard, to get out. I'm fat AND I smoke, but I'm hardly lazy, or even an overconsumer of food. Rather, I'm a part of the often overlooked class known as "the working poor", and buying canned, boxed, and frozen foods is more cost effective pound for pound over buying fresh meats, fruits, and vegetables. I'd like to not have such a dependency on the frozen food aisle, but until something is done regarding the price of healthier options, me and Mrs. Pauls will continue to have our quick and delicious meetings. I can understand that people dislike smoking, but god DAMN, I'm sick of hearing about how shitty smokers are. I hate alcoholics, but I don't run around screaming about it every day.

While we're writing lists of things we don't want to pay for, there are certain things that I personally wouldn't like to pay for either. What about the parents who rush their children to the doctor every time the kid fucking sneezes? What about the people who are in so much "pain", that they're constantly at the doctor trying to get pain pills in order to feed their addiction, I mean, cure their "pain"? What about the people who give birth to horribly retarded children (probably due to the breeding horse of a mother being past her prime, or inbreeding) and then refuse to give up the ghost? What about people like Terry Schiavo? I don't really care if that made me sound like an asshole, so please, do tell me if I did.

In a nutshell, there is no such thing, and there never will be such a thing as "united we stand". There will always be something that someone doesn't agree with.

P.S. I got a little excited when I heard rumors that old people would be killed under the new insurance plan.

Cheers!

Things

-I got a new car. A 2009 Hyundai Accent. They say it has 3 doors because they count the hatchback as a door, but I only ever used the hatchback of my old car as a door once; when I locked my keys in the car.

-XM Radio is worse than cable television because it's pretty much impossible for me to choose something to listen to when I have 3247923874 choices. So I pretty much just listen to NPR.

-I'm restarting the Super Control Lady Diet and Exercise Program™. I gained a few (4) pounds back because Devin's birthday party threw me off track with the diet part and I haven't been able to get back on. Also the horrible Wal-Mart fall mostly prevented me from doing any sort of exercise for two weeks. I'll restart tomorrow. There's a Coffee Toffee Twisted Frosty at Wendy's that's been calling my name, and it would be mean to ignore it.

-A person I had through a friend for some business arrangements up and moved to California to go and work on a sort of farm, leaving me jealous as all hell and scrambling to find someone else to make business arrangements with.

-I forgot how fun Super Paper Mario is.

-I work for a bunch of fraudulent assholes and need to find a new job, but am kind of trapped here because the average secretary doesn't make anywhere near what I currently make.

That's about it.

My brain seems to think it's winter when clearly it's not. Two weeks ago I pulled two nights of sleep out of one night; I went to bed at 5:00 on Friday night, woke up at 12:45 Saturday morning, went back to bed at 3:00, and slept until 9:00. Granted, it was excellent fuel for one of the most productive Devin-less weekends I've had since we moved into this house, but it's just not right for a person to sleep so much.

Now that I've finally gotten around to putting up some decorations and curtains and things, it finally feels like a Home, and I'm really scared that Annie won't want to renew the lease in August of 2010. I know that's over a year away, but I don't even feel like we've lived there for a year already. Time flies when you're paying bills, and I need to keep that in the back of my mind when it comes to my financials over the course of the next twelve months.

Annie has a boyfriend I think, and I'm currently... something. A lot can happen in a year; she might decide to move in with her dude, I might find someone with whom cohabitation would be an option... but the best scenario would be if we just renew the lease in 2010. It's much easier having a roommate than it is having a live-in boyfriend though: I don't HAVE to cook for her, I don't have to clean her personal space or do her laundry, and at the same time the bills are getting paid because of the extra income. When I look at Annie in that light, as an extra source of income, I am more able to find some sanity in my current living situation. But when I look at Annie as a person, I sometimes want to rip her head off.

My mother asked Devin if he had been promoted to second grade, to which he replied, "yeah, but I'll be going to a different school for second grade". When she asked him why he thought that he said, "because you have to go to a different school for every grade you're in". And that is a conversation my mother should have filed under "things that I should have kept to myself". If she didn't tell me this while sitting on the porch watching the children play at Devin's party on Sunday, I would have asked her why she told me that, I would have asked her if she were intentionally trying to make me feel as though I am completely unable to provide my son with a sense of stability. But I didn't. Instead I just agreed with her that yes, that is indeed a sad thing for a child to say.

That conversation is what started me thinking so far off into the future. I wouldn't be mad at Annie for wanting to move out after the next year is over, I could only be mad at myself for not making preparations for that possibility. I've learned by now to not be dependent on anyone for anything, partly because I am a perfectly capable person, and partly because whenever I get too comfortable leaning up against someone else, they always pull away and laugh at my fall.

So my plan is to bank as much money as I can until next August, especially starting in February 2010 when my car will be paid off, and bank my entire tax check except for the cost of one tattoo cause it's been quite a while since I got a new one. If we don't renew the lease with Gray Haven, I'll be checking into the apartments right across the street from Devin's school, where hopefully he will finish out his elementary school career. Saving money *shouldn't* be too hard in the coming months as I tend to not really leave the house once the temperature drops below 50 degrees Fahrenheit.

So there you go, a wordy update.

I haven't felt like writing lately. The warmer it gets, the less I feel like using my words because I'm onto doing bigger and better things like eating too much Rita's and sitting on the porch until 11 P.M. most nights. Summertime Jessica is out in full swing; introspection is a color that only flatters me in cold weather.

News: Devin will be turning seven on the 20th; this makes me feel both old and unaccomplished. Annie told me about a cigarette store that rolls and sells their own cigarettes for $21/carton of loose cigarettes; I will be carrying around a giant sack of cigarettes and can only hope that this doesn't make me smoke more than I already do. Our new neighbors are now our new friends; they're pretty rad people, if a bit 'Dalkish for my Rosedale standards. I really miss not being in school.

The end.

I'm going to campus tomorrow after work to drop my sociology class for a 50% refund. It would have been rad to get the syllabus before July 2nd, when I could have gotten a 100% refund, but you win some, you lose some. This class would have been entirely too fast-paced for me: 4, 3-page papers; a midterm exam and a final exam; not to mention the "portfolio" which was to consist of my analysis of 3 professional journal articles, 5 newspaper/magazine articles, and 2 movies, all related to a social issue of my choosing. The example portfolio she posted in the course contents was 25 pages long, there's no way I would have time for all that. I'm able to get a lot of school work done while I'm at work, but that amount is crossing a self-imposed line. I mean, let's be honest, the job market is a little rough these days, so I can't afford to lose the job I have. I need to at least pretend that I devote some brain power to work during the course of the day.

I also didn't really like the way the assignments were handled by the teacher. "Write a 3-page paper on one of the three sociological theories. Make sure to include information about the founders of the theory. Is the theory still relevant today?" What? Those directions are entirely too vague for me to write three pages worth of words. I managed to write at least three pages or more for papers in my English class, that were edited down to as close as I could get them to the requirements, because my teacher was very clear with what she wanted. I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing in general, but I liked it; it gave me a precise direction in which to go, and I never felt like I was floundering for information. The other thing I wasn't too keen on was that all of the papers for this class had to be written in APA format, which would be fine if I was at all familiar with the APA format, but I'm not. Given that this course is only 5-weeks long, getting used to a completely different style of writing while following the vaguest of outlines for a whole lot of work, I doubt I would have done well in the class.

On the upside, I got 101 points out of 100 as my final grade for my English class. That makes me feel pretty good, ish. I'm not sure if I did so well because the course was "easy" or because I actually have what it takes to be a good student, but either way it's a pretty cool guy. My English teacher said that she would recommend me for the Honors program if that would be something I'm into, but I looked into the class schedule and it just wouldn't be possible. I'd have to either miss a lot of time from work or miss out on spending time with Devin, and I'm not willing to sacrifice either of those things. I won't be taking any courses on campus until Devin is older and can better understand why I'm not home. At his age now, I don't think he'd be able to see my going to school as something that's good for both of us, he would just see it as "mommy's never home".

But I'm not going to let failing at sociology before I even had to do any actual work stop me from finishing this school thing. I'm using some of the money from the refund to have Devin's birthday party and banking the rest so that I can maybe take a fall class that isn't sociology. I need to remember to see this "failure" as just a speed bump that's slowing me down, not as a brick wall that's stopping me completely. Hopefully I won't need to be reminded.

July 4th came quick this year. Time has been speeding up since I graduated high school; then I got a job and it sped up a little bit more, then I had a kid and it sped up a big bit more. It feels like time has both simultaneously slowed down and sped up: each individual day feels almost infinite in length, but when I review a collection of days in my mind, I find myself wondering where all the time went. I wonder what I did with my time when I let Devin go outside to play with his friends rather than walk down to the park with him. I wonder what I did with my time when I decided to call out of work. I wonder what I do with my time when I go to work.

Sometimes I feel like I spend so much of my time wishing my time away. I'm unhappy at work; it's a terribly boring job, some of the guys in the office are assholes, and there's absolutely no room for growth. The longer I stay at this job, the longer I will be someone's god damned secretary. I feel like I'm unhappy at home, but I'm fairly certain that most of that comes from being nearly completely miserable for 10 hours of each day. I wish that I could astrally project while I'm at work, go somewhere interesting and different, experience some new things, so that when I come home I'm not an exhausted, raging bitch.

Though I feel dissatisfied with my life, I have no idea how to go about changing it or what I even want to change into. The Pursuit of Happyness is not normal. Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovich is not real. I understand that those movies are based on true events, but how do you let certain things drop while tending to others so that you feel you can garner the attention you think you deserve? How could I possibly be mother of the year while being an A student? Won't Devin grow to resent me for spending more of my time with my face in a book than with him? The only movie that my situation brings to mind is Riding in Cars With Boys. It's unfortunately rather close to my real life.

Despite what all of the above would have you think, I'm feeling good. I exceeded my own expectations for the class I just finished up, money is tight but I've found myself not even wanting to spend it, and I'm getting things moving with Devin's situation. I'm on a serious diet, now that I finally have the support of my roommate, and I've lost seven pounds since June 26. Work has been slow lately, but the office guys have been in relatively good moods, so there's been a more fair balance of shit and sugar. The weather has been gorgeous, it almost makes me forget that I live in Dundalk. Things are looking up. This could also all be due to the fact that it is summertime, and everything looks better in the hazy glow of extra daylight hours.

I get cautious when I feel optimistic because I'm used to good things either never lasting long enough or coming with strings attached. I want so badly to do well in school. I want to break the family curse of chronic underacheivement so that Devin can have a strong example, and use that example to eventually experience success for himself. I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up, and I am grown up. I have to play some serious catch-up, I feel like I'm lifetimes behind where I should be at this age.

I finally got a perfect score on a paper. I am feeling optimistic that this will not be the last. If I were a lazier person, I would just settle for the 78% I currently have in this class, and just not bother turning in the final paper. But this is... fun. The most expensive fun. Writing things based on an assignment gives me a clearer objective, something I don't have when I write here or in my paper journal. I like writing about whatever is going through my mind, but it seems I also enjoy the challenge of having to follow guidelines. Weird.

The laptop is burning my thighs. Considering the exercising, this is not entirely a bad thing.

Devin is with Jesse for the next week. I'm not sure what to do with all this free time, if I do anything at all. I haven't had this much free time since July 20, 2002. There are a lot of things I need to get done, but that has absolutely no bearing on whether or not I actually will get them done. I really, really need to set up Devin's intake to get him started on whatever medication they want to put him on, so that this tutoring I've arranged will take hold and he can be closer to where he needs to be come the start of school. His tutoring starts next Monday and I hope he doesn't play shy-guy and make me mad because he needs this, he needs it a lot.

I'm half tempted to not do anything but whatever immediately makes me happy for this week. I've been feeling easily overwhelmed as of late; school meetings about medication; making calls and arrangements to start medication; making arrangements to get a tutor for Devin over the summer; keeping the house immaculate basically by myself; keeping the yard up to the management's specifications basically by myself; "working" full-time; doing all of the cooking; being on a diet; being back in school; being a shoulder for friends when I have no shoulder myself to cry on. Shit wears on a woman, you know?

In no particular order, here is a partial to-do list, because I find it easier to get shit done when I have committed it to "paper":

-Take Devin's winter clothes and baby books/toys/movies to Goodwill.
-Clean out the living room closet and pantry in the kitchen.
-Figure out what to do with all the free crap we got when we moved in here that it's obvious we'll never use. Probably take that stuff to Goodwill too.
-Finalize getting Devin on medicine.

Obviously the Devin/medication thing should be the most important thing, but it's the hardest. I've already come to terms with the fact that he needs to be on some sort of medication, but can't seem to bring myself to actually get it done. I feel like there's more I can do before I jump to medicine, but I've done it all; I've tried the dye/preservative-free diet; I've tried using an egg timer while studying with him; I've tried the "competition with Mommy cause she's in school too" thing; I've tried taking him outside to work on school stuff; I've talked to him and tried various "punishments" and none of it seems to work for more than a few days. No one wants to feel like their baby is broken, and that's how I feel. I feel like he is this way because of genetics or something I did or didn't do while I was pregnant with him, and because of those things I feel like it's my job to "fix" him, and that has never really included putting him on medication. I feel like a bad mom.

On top of all that, I'm sick, so that's only going to make it extra-hard for me to get motivated to do anything besides lay around the house. Well there's only one of me, so I'm going to have to get motivated somehow because by now I've learned that shit's not going to get done unless I do it myself.

I should be writing the rest of my paper. I called out of work today so I could spend the day writing... well this counts as writing, right? Out of the four paragraphs required for this fourth paper in my class, I have only managed to write one and a half. I'm not sure if it's the subject matter (pretty much everything I can say in this paper was said in the last paper, therefore it has already become "boring"), my ultra-short attention span, or the fact that I'm a sprinter and expect everything else to keep up with me. As is usually the case, it's probably an amalgam of those things.

This paper is getting my ass, which is fine. I got the asses of the first, second, and hopefully third and fifth papers. One out of five papers getting my ass shouldn't discourage me. But it will. And it has. Perhaps a side effect of higher education is gaining the ability and drive to push past things that are tough, that challenge us. I could give up, six years ago I would have, and did. I'm trying to learn from this. I'm trying to learn that sometimes shit is hard, and sometimes shit makes us flex muscles we didn't know we had, but just because shit starts burning doesn't mean we are supposed to stop.

I mean, look at Oprah. She wouldn't be where she is today if she hadn't fucked so many people over at WJZ while high on coke. She busted her ass, probably literally, to get where she currently is. I'm sure along that seemingly pleasant path of sex and drugs she got a bad batch of drugs or had to screw someone with bad body odor or missing teeth. But those are the sacrifices one must make in order to achieve greatness.

So I'm gonna go fuck that stinky man as hard as I possibly can. I'll just get in there and get the job done before I even have to stop holding my breath. This paper is not even gonna know what hit it. Maybe.

I can't get motivated to work on my fourth paper. Last night my mother took Devin overnight and I had every intention of at least skimming through the chapters I need to read for this paper, but decided my time would be better spent going bowling. While fun, I got nothing accomplished at the bowling alley other than giving my saddlebags a nice workout. Even on notes unrelated to schoolwork, last night was a complete waste of my increasingly valuable time.

I'm really happy that I decided to take this class online, and even happier that I decided to take it during a mini-mester rather than for a full semester. My interest is waning and obviously my motivation is taking a hit as well, and I'm sure if I were spending 14 weeks rather than five on this course I would be failing. As of right now I'm holding down a strong A in this class and I hope I can get through these last two papers to get the grade I should have gotten almost 9 years ago.

It'll be a while before I feel like taking another English class. Although I like words a whole lot, and I like writing a whole lot, I don't think I'm cut out to be an English major. There don't seem to be many practical applications for it anyway. I'll find something equally as generic to latch onto, maybe psychology or sociology. One of those degrees that just says "I have a degree".

But, if my calculations are correct, it will take me at least another five million years to get my 4-year degree, so I have some time to figure it all out.

The animated movie idea that I came up with didn't come true. Last night, after more than two weeks of living in a Styrofoam bowl on top of my stove, near the heat of the pilot flames, I had to put Robo-Robin to rest. I was turning the egg over in its "nest" yesterday morning, the internet told me to do that, and felt something hard flop over inside of the egg. I think I might have accidentally cooked our robin. Oh well.

I only say "oh well" because life would have been hard for a crippled-ass baby robin. In the animated movie, Robo-Robin would have been able to triumph over his disabilities, essentially making lemonade out of his lemons. But in real life that poor baby robin wouldn't have stood a chance against the elements, let alone the stray dogs and cats and my neighborhood's slight rat problem.

So I did Robo-Robin a favor. At least I hope I did. Anyway, disposing of the egg seemed like the right thing to do. Either I would have let it go a few more days and the scent of rotten egg would have filled the house, or the egg would have hatched and I'd end up with a wild pet bird because putting him outside of the house would have killed him. I already have a child, so I don't really need a pet anything.

Now I'm hoping this wasn't a sort of birdie late-term abortion, I really hope it was dead inside that egg. I'm having a little bit of freak out time now. I'm taking the trash out as soon as I get home, and I really hope I don't hear chirping coming from inside when I do.

But Robo-Robin would still be a pretty awesome movie.

I've been going tanning for the last two weeks or so, and I can already see a difference. So, because I can't see myself properly, I conducted a survey of my peers, Annie, to see if I look "better" with a tan. She said that I do. Being told that I look "better" with a tan only further solidifies my opinion that I shouldn't have been born in Maryland, or any other state that has four clearly defined seasons.

All of the above only further solidifies my opinion that I am a test-tube baby. Perhaps I was subjected to intense cold when in the tube, a la Brave New World, and that is why I crave the heat. Maybe I'm destined, or was designed, to be the palest banana picker ever. Or maybe I crave heat because my mother was pregnant with me during the spring and summer, so I grew fond of nice weather in utero. It really could be any number of things, even things I didn't list here. Probably only things I didn't list here.

I'd love to live in a place with no weather, as I've often heard California described. I'd love to live in a place where I don't have to look forward to the weekends to take a trip to the beach because of the three-hour drive, I can just go right after work. The beach is the only place where I actually feel grounded; I see the sometimes violent convergence of two opposite elements, and it's completely awe-inspiring. The beach makes me feel awake. I asked Devin if he wanted to move to California and he said, "NO! I'll stay here and live with Travis!". No. Travis is Devin's best friend and he's evil, and unless they build a house on top of my grave, they will not be living together.

So it looks like Maryland it is, for the time being anyway, which is only kind of disappointing and depressing. It's fine from between May until all of the leaves have fallen from the trees, then I'll get that itch up my ass that can only be scratched by, getting in my car, and seeing how far I can go on a single tank of gas. Or the itch that can only be scratched by imagining that I can just get into my car and see how far I can go on a single tank of gas.

This day was shit. Work was extra boring. No one was there and they left me no work to do. It was hot, but not in a way that I like, so I was uncomfortable all day long. I used the extra time to do too many peer reviews for my class, smoke too many cigarettes, and get way too grossed out by my school book. Seriously. I was SO hungry, but no one was at work today to let me take my break, so I made myself a cup of tea, and snuggled up to The Omnivore's Dilemma.

All I have to say about that book is, "really? I mean, really?". I already know that food is disgusting and that half the shit we shove into our mouths didn't ever grow from the ground somewhere. I already know that people are greedy and are willing to be destructive in order to get the tiniest bit ahead. This book killed my appetite, forever. I felt like I was there with Pollan when he went to the feedlot to visit with his "beef". I felt like I was there when he described the cow's eyes being bloodshot from standing in its own shit all day and night. It made me think a lot, but unfortunately I'm not entirely sure how everyone in the house would take the news of my becoming a vegetarian other than vegan.

So there was all that. But then I got home and saw that the first school paper I've written in six years received an almost perfect score; 9.5 out of ten! That was the kind of news I needed to be sure that I'm doing it right. Sure it wasn't a ten, but it was GOT DAMN close, and I'm so fucking proud of myself right now that I think I might need an extra pillow for my extra giant head tonight.

Right after getting the news of my close enough to perfect paper, Annie called me and told me that a friend of her mother had two tickets to go see none other than FLEETWOOD MOTHERFUCKING MAC! I don't think there's a person in the world who is unaware of my deep and intense love for the Mac. They were my first favorite band outside of some "Rainbow Brite" and "My Little Pony" shit I used to blast. I'll never forget how the Chuck E. Cheese version of "Don't Stop" made me feel. Despite the creepy ass animatronic purple blob guy. What the hell is that thing supposed to be anyway?

So I went, and surprisingly the set was completely different from when I saw them in DC back in March. I cried at "Gold Dust Woman", I cried at "Stand Back", I cried at "World Turning"... ok, I cried the whole time. Music hits me harder after I've smoked, otherwise I probably would have only cried at "Gold Dust Woman". Stevie Nicks is my imaginary mother, and Lindsey Buckingham has NO IDEA about this, but he is my old man boyfriend. The hair, the face, the way he makes that guitar beg for mercy... oh lawd!

OK, I just watched some douchebag on David Letterman feed some chick spaghetti from a fork that was shoved up his nose. I think it's time for me to end this day on a rad note, I'm going to go to bed and pretend I didn't just see that. So, good night!!!

So far, and only because I'm managing to stay ahead of the course requirements, I feel like I'm busting serious ass in my class. Then I catch myself thinking, "well this is only English 101. Bottom of the barrel, there are much harder things to come. Doing well in this class basically means nothing." I really thought I'd have a much harder time with it; whether it be due to my age, my dislike of being told what to do, or the fact that I have Devin. I've read numerous articles about how our capacity for learning is greatly diminished at or around age 27, and as most of you know, I'm inching closer to that age every day. And it's always easier to blame a failure on external influences rather than accepting that your own lack of effort is what actually caused it. I'm pretty damn lazy. Lazy and self-defeating; a more lethal combination than bleach and ammonia.

At first I was worried that my early paper submissions would earn me some enemies amongst my classmates, that people would think I was sucking up. Then I remembered that this is college, this is college on the internet, and that the only important opinion is that of my teacher. I'm paying for these classes out of my own shallow pockets and if I want to turn my papers in early I will. Along with declining learning skills as I age, there has also been a decline in the skills that enable me to give a fuck. I've spent entirely too much of my life worrying about what other people think about me. From the things I say to the things I wear to the way I raise my child, I just don't care what other people think anymore. It's hard to go from trying to please every person to just worrying about pleasing myself, but I'm working on it.

As someone who sometimes likes to take personal time to write about personal shit, doing peer reviews is hard. Much harder than I anticipated. I feel dirty after doing them, I feel mean. I just try to remind myself that no one is going to improve themselves if everyone is just telling them that everything is perfect. At this point we should all know that there is no such thing as perfection, especially when it comes to writing. But some people just don't like hearing about themselves and those are most likely the people who will fail. Not even just in this class; in future classes, in relationships, in life.

So hopefully I learn from this class how to accept constructive criticism for what it is, not as a personal attack. Hopefully I'll be able to give good criticism to others without feeling like an asshole. Hopefully I'll come away from this with a good grade and enough of a sense of pride to keep me going until I'm done. And hopefully I'll also learn a good synonym for "hopefully".

Here is a perfect animated film plot that is somewhat based on true events.

-On a dark and stormy night, a Robin's egg gets blown out of the nest. The next morning a mother and her son find the egg, unscathed, laying on the parking pad next to their car. They take the egg into their house, place it into a bowl with some shredded paper towels and set the bowl on the stove to keep the egg warm. Cut to the egg's parents, desperately searching their neighborhood for the lost egg. Perhaps they're an older couple, or a couple with fertility problems, so this egg was extra important to them. The human family takes all the necessary steps to ensure the egg hatches, even though it's unlikely that it will because of the fall from the nest.

-A few weeks later the humans return home from their daily activities to find the egg has hatched and that there is a squawking, giant mouthed baby bird in the bowl on their stove. Excitement blah blah blah. Upon closer inspection it is revealed that the baby bird, which will probably be named Robin because these types of movies love the obvious, is horribly yet cutely disfigured. Think withered, gimpy wings. The human mother then tells her son that the bird will not make a great pet and that it will most likely die in the wild, and after her child goes to bed (on yet another dark and stormy night) she puts the bird outside. She wishes it luck and cries a little bit maybe.

-This part needs lots of details. There will be a cat; a fat, old, mean, black cat probably named Mortimer or Lewis Black who is stalking the baby bird as he hobbles around outside in the storm. Lewis Black is just about to pounce on his meal when he notices Robin's horribly cute deformities and is like "Dude, you're too fucked up for me to even eat. Let's be friends!". So Robin is all like "Bawwwww I'm looking for my family I'm so ronery and scared!" and Lewis Black says "I'll help you and be a source of humor so that grown-ups will enjoy this movie too!". So the next bits will be the epic journey. There's probably a rat that makes fun of Robin and Lewis Black is just like "Man, that's wrong, straighten your shit and help us find this gimp's family." So a rat named Pedro (in the interest of diversity) joins their gang.

-A whole bunch of other shit happens and the trio finally finds Robin's bird family and his parents are all like "Yeah right! This gimp? He's not our child! Baawwwwww OUR baby is dead!". So his bird family makes him leave and just as that happens, something horrible happens to the tree his family lives in, probably a fire or the tree getting cut down or some shit, and Robin (triumphing over his deformities) saves the day. Yay yay yay woo!

-I'm not sure how this part will work out, but near the end of the movie, Robin acquires some robotic wings. This is pretty key to the story because it'll be called "Robo-Robin" or something else that includes birds and robots. Maybe the little boy from the human family has an obsession with robotics and after his cunt of a mother expels the bird from the house, he takes to his room working on some prosthetics for the gimpy little bird. He tracks down Robin and his gang and fits them on the bird so he can fly like a real bird, but with more noise, and everyone lives happily ever after.

THE END

When I went to pay for my class a month or so or more ago, they neglected to inform me of the $25 registration fee, so I went to pay that yesterday. And because I had some extra money due to skipping my car payment this month, with Hyundai's permission of course, I decided to go ahead any buy my books for the first college course I've taken since 2003. I don't expect a parade for it, this isn't the first time ever that someone has decided to go to college. But it is a big deal to me because this is the first time I've ever genuinely wanted to do this. All of the other times felt more like rehab than something I should want to do; I knew I had to go, I didn't want to go, but I went anyway to make everyone else happy. "Went" is a rather generous term to describe my previous college career. I was enrolled in courses that were paid for, but that's about it. Aside from my generous 0.83 GPA, the only proof you'd find of my time spent in college is a dusty book or two in my mother's storage unit.

This is the first time I've genuinely wanted to do this specific thing, and this is the first time in years that I've put myself ahead of certain other aspects of my life in a positive way. I'm putting some really strong opinions aside in order to do something for myself that could greatly benefit me and my son. I guess maybe you could call it "constructive selfishness". It's my own little special thing that I'm super proud of. Until the newness wears off and I get bored and decide to...not engage in negative self-talk any more? That'll probably take a lot more effort than passing English 101 on my fourth try.

Less than two weeks and we'll see if I'm cut out for this. Again.

Last night I played a high guy game I haven't played in ages. It's really easy to play and I think it's fun because it's nice to dream.

-Pick somewhere you'd like to live, obviously other than the place you currently live. I tend to go with left coast cities as the weather is ridiculously gorgeous, and I'd probably prefer earthquakes and wildfires to hurricanes and giant bugs. Also, weather is probably way too important to me, so pick your own damn reasons.

-Google the place you've chosen, read up on it a little. I've chosen places based on weather before that I've had to change due to my disagreeing with local politics, cost of living being too high, too many old people in the area, etc. Wikipedia usually works out for this.

-Use Google maps to choose a subsection of the city. I always do that because the big cities are typically really expensive to live in. I could never afford to live in Los Angeles or San Fransico proper, but there seem to be surrounding areas that would fit my needs.

-Go to the Craigslist page for your chosen destination; look at the housing and job listings. This can be especially fun if there's an address listed for the apartment cause most places have street view now, so you can actually see what your new neighborhood will look like.

-Try to find a job that would cover your expenses. Look at the area schools, daycare centers, recreational areas... whatever you feel you'd need to have around where you live. One time I found an apartment listing and the complex was right across the street from a Wendy's, which works out for me because spicy chicken sandwiches are pretty great. Though now that I'm no longer high it doesn't seem like "having a Wendy's within walking distance" should really be a top priority.

-Fantasize about moving there. Cry when you realize you can't.

On the upside, at least it's time consuming, and time is something I generally tend to have plenty of. I get to learn a little bit about places other than Baltimore, and I get to see maps of palm tree lined streets and that gives me a little hope. I'm not sure why but it does. Do it or not, but trust me it's fun.

I keep putting off taking Devin to the carnival by my house because I am a grown-up. Carnivals are fun, don't get me wrong, but most of the time age just kind of ruins some things for me. I remember from my childhood that going to carnivals and amusement parks was a really special thing. Growing up with not a lot of money and not being able to take week-long treks to Ocean City or various other destinations along the Eastern seaboard, they became my vacations. They were close to home, yet not so much of a constant presence that they became boring or routine. And I got to have giant machines spin me around in ways I could never accomplish in my backyard, allowing me to reach higher levels of dizziness; a feeling I have always loved.

But then experience came along with age and, as with so many other childhood activities I once partook in with reckless abandon, ruined carnivals for me. I don't remember when exactly the news started talking so much more about amusement park and carnival ride injuries and deaths. I don't know that they ever talked less about it. Perhaps I just reached an age when one day the news became a lot more interesting to watch than MTV. I don't know for sure. I went from craving the spinning of the Round Up and the thrashing of the Scrambler one day, to thanking my mother for being too broke to take me to ride on those possible death traps.

Injuries and deaths caused by thrill rides are few and far between, but have you ever read about them? They're such gruesome, horrible injuries to sustain that one would certainly be praying for death in the event that they found themselves thrown from a ride, only to be hit in the back of the head by the very seat they were just occupying. Scary shit there, man. Having your head crushed by the ride's motor; having a cable snap and whip around to cut off your feet; the ride you're in that's moving at around 100 miles per hour tips over... And I'm supposed to pay money for this? I realize that my chances of having any of those things happen are slim, but I'm just not sure if I'm willing to place money on whether or not there will be a malfunction of the hydraulics keeping me in my seat.

Uncertainty is a shitty thing for me to wrap my head around. I much prefer the comfort and security that certainties provide. I've been swaddled up in certainty's comfort for so long that if a strong breeze so much as ruffles a neatly tucked corner, it's freak out time. I've been thinking a lot about it lately, and my consensus is that it's getting to be a little hot for blankets. My usual strategy when this happens is to learn to be comfortable being a little warmer than I'd like by removing the blanket, but keeping the sheets. In keeping with this analogy I have going, I want to be able to sleep without my blankie. But I'm scared.

And I'm so good at imagining myself stripping my bed of its cold weather bedding, so very good. In my mind things always turn out so wonderfully, but then I hear the house settling at night and it scares me, so I scramble down to the end of my bed to pull up the blanket it turns out I didn't really have the balls to pack away. It's the fear, I suppose. What if I get to the point where I'm able to store my blankets in the closet and I end up liking sleeping without them more than with? At that point I'd have to come to the conclusion that I've been thinking about uncertainties in the wrong light ever since I can remember, and as neurotic as those thoughts are, no one likes to be confronted with the fact that they were wrong. I'd be laying there naked and ill-equipped. An unarmed soldier trying to fight the invisible things that go bump in the night.

Sometimes the mind can fixate on the most negative example of something gone wrong that it is unable to see past it, even if the something that went wrong didn't happen to them. A fine example of this would be not eating at a certain restaurant because you "know a dude who got food poisoning there and it wasn't pretty". Perhaps the line cook who forgot to wash their hands after taking a shit has been fired. Another example would be reading in a fashion magazine that certain colors are not flattering for people with specific skin tones and then purposely avoiding any shade of the offensive colors. In reality, there are so many varying shades of any given color that finding one that doesn't work for you would be damn near impossible.

But as they often say, "the only certainties in life are death and taxes", and I'm beginning to question my thoughts about the comfort levels contained within certainties. According to that statement, I am missing out on a shitload of life, as that statement implies that everything but death and taxes is uncertain. It's an uncomfortable thought to think, again with the no one likes to be wrong rhetoric. I've been depriving myself of a lot of possible joy; all because there is also a fairly equal possibility that I might have to feel some discomfort. Because it's kind of true, the death and taxes thing. So far nothing in the world has gone according to plan, none of the great things that have been accomplished throughout history would have been accomplished if it weren't for someone willing to take a chance. I probably wouldn't have the computer I'm typing on if it weren't for someone willing to make mistakes more costly than a failed community college class. And I would probably die without a computer.

That was a really long way to say that I basically need to change my entire way of thinking. I need to just ride the ride and see what happens. All of that said, I'm still going to have to think about the carnival thing. I'm pretty low on funds and it's been raining a lot in the past week, which probably increases the likelihood of having the Zipper tip over, electrocuting us with pulsating lights and crushing us with steel. I'm a grown ass woman and if age and experience have taught me anything, they have taught me that there are much cheaper and somewhat safer methods of achieving a nice case of the spins than going to the carnival.

I really need to stop having sexytimes dreams about Seth Rogen.

I really need to stop having sexytimes nightmares about Seth Rogen and tornadoes.

But considering the recurring nightmares I've had in the past, these have been more than pleasant.

Got into a fight with my mother on Sunday and haven't spoken to her since. It started with her asking me if we were doing anything for Easter, to which I replied "no, I'm not Christian". Sensing her easily hurt feelings being hurt through my mobile communication device, I immediately followed that with "but if you want to have dinner on Sunday, I'll bring a salad". She agreed, we made our plans, and nothing further was said about it. So we show up to her house on Sunday, things are going well until she gets a picture message from her friend. It was a picture of an egg and said "should I bring some of these with me?". She showed it to me, which she didn't have to do unless she were actively pursuing a fight, and I asked her what he was talking about. She told me that she mentioned to him that we weren't doing anything for Easter, that he felt bad for Devin and wanted to bring him some things for Easter.

As if that last paragraph wasn't long enough, here's a little backstory. I grew up in a home with pretty much no religion. Sure, I went to Sunday school for a while, but I'm fairly certain that the only reason I went was so that my mother could have a few hours to herself in order to nurse her hangover from drinking a little too much the night before. When I was a teenager I went through a Wicca phase that lasted a few months, but what teenaged girl in the 90s didn't have a Wicca phase? Aside from that, religion wasn't really a subject in my house; nor were politics or... anything else of any importance. I was pretty much left on my own to decide what my own opinions were, which isn't a bad thing at all really, but any kind of input is usually better than none. When you as a parent decide that you're going to give your child absolutely no guidance in areas such as these, you have to be able to deal with the outcome of that lack of involvement.

Because of that, I have developed into my own person, imagine that. I come complete with my own set of values and beliefs and opinions, and once I settle on something it's quite hard to shake it from me. I finally came to the conclusion that I'm an atheist when I was in unmedicated labor with my son. Usually childbirth is something that helps a woman become closer to god, but I refuse to believe that I am supposed to worship something that would let anything it personally created hurt that bad. Which makes me wonder why the more religious a family is, the more children they seem to have. I've never been too vocal about my non-belief because religion, or lack thereof, is a very personal matter and I'm aware that it's a very divisive issue. I'm not one of those militant atheists who seem to find a reason to argue over everything because in my experience with people, unless religion comes up in a conversation, it's really hard to tell the believers from the non-believers.

But it would seem that I'm not allowed to have strong beliefs that go against the stream, even though my mother doesn't have any beliefs of her own, let alone those belonging to the "mainstream". So I found it very upsetting that she would feel the need to talk to her gay, Republican, Christian friend about my not celebrating Easter. One because he's obviously a confused individual who loves to place himself into social groups where he's not accepted, two because family matters should stay... I don't know, in the family? So we argued for a minute before my mother changed the subject in the middle of my speaking, which just further angered me. I hate not being listened to, especially when I actually bother discussing myself with her. I think the fact that I manged to become a somewhat strong person without much influence from her makes her feel guilty, so whenever I have a strong opinion on something, she gets pissed.

It's really too many words for me to write the entire argument, so I'll do my best to paraphrase. She was mad at me for not getting Devin an Easter basket or anything for the "holiday". I was mad at her because she has no religious affiliation and therefor has no right to be mad at me for not celebrating a traditionally Christian holiday. Yeah, there's a whole lot of history behind the Christian holiday known as Easter; there's a whole lot of history behind the religion itself, but that's not for right now. She was mad at me because I didn't at least celebrate the "secular" part of it with him; the egg hunts and the small gifts and candy part. I was mad at her because if it weren't for religion of some sort, we wouldn't even have the "secular" aspect of Easter to take part in. And so on and so on. Trying to explain myself to my mother is like trying to explain how awesome hugs are to an autistic child.

I wrote a lengthy entry in my now defunct Myspace blog regarding Christmas, and the same principal can be applied here. I hate holidays. And not because I'm single, not because I'm broke, not because I have no real family outside of my mother. I hate them because they're nothing but big money days, and I feel that by celebrating them in the way that we tend to do is nothing short of disrespectful to the people who take that shit seriously. I mean, Christmas and Easter are pivotal to the Christian storyline, and when you really remember "the reason for the season", they seem like pretty somber days; especially Easter. If I could put myself in the shoes of a believer, I'd almost be pissed to see people who claim themselves to be atheists celebrating a holiday that belongs to me just because they have an insatiable sweet tooth.

Now I've made myself sound like a horrible mother, and a horrible person in general, but really I'm not. I try to teach Devin that he should be nice to people and do the right thing year round, instead of when the calendar dictates you should. I try to teach him that he can get and have nice things at any time, as long as he works hard at doing his best. Holidays, especially the wintertime ones, are phony to me; all those tidings of comfort and joy that everyone seems so loose with during that time are nowhere to be found during the other say, ten months of the year. All the family gatherings that are so pervasive during the holidays are something people shrug off at other times. Ever since my tax refund shopping extravaganza I've been making an effort to not be such a thoughtless consumer; not because I'm cheap or can't afford things, but because there's really no sense in buying so much shit. Shit that's going to get lost or stolen or broken by the next time Santa or the bunny come knocking on the door. I do special things with my child all the time, not just because they've started playing Christmas music on Lite 102 or because I've started seeing Peeps in the grocery store.

I was discussing this issue with a friend who told me that I should have just kept the peace and given into my mother, but that's not how I roll. I hate a hypocrite almost as much as I hate a liar, so why would I purposefully exhibit those traits myself? Hypocrisy is not an ailment that belongs solely to the religious crowd. Hypocrisy is simply someone acting out of accordance with their stated beliefs, so no one is immune. So by keeping the peace, does that mean I am to play the hypocrite until my mother dies or is otherwise rendered useless? Say one thing and do the other just so she can sleep easy at night? I don't like that. I was raised by her, and I don't want to be a mother like her. I don't want my child to feel that his ideas are pointless, that his opinions are invalid. I also don't want my child to feel like he has to make some of his most important life decisions alone.

There are so many things that go into making this argument. I don't want religion shoved down my child's throat, but yet sometimes I feel that I might be shoving the lack thereof down there instead. I try to rationalize this by saying that I only really come out to him with my beliefs in a defensive manner, say if he comes home from his father's house talking about Jesus. And that's true; again, I'm not a very outspoken atheist, but I will protect my young from something I see as poisonous. This parenting job really isn't as easy as it looks once you get past long nights, early mornings and constant diaper changing. I want to live one way, but society and apprently my own family wants me to live another. Of course Devin's going to be exposed to certain aspects of my belief system, he's my child and he lives with me full time. I feel like a bad person during these times. I don't want to make him feel alienated at school for my (our?) beliefs, but going against your own natural flow for any reason is hard. Is this yet another part of parenting that requires you to put yourself aside? Will it ever get any easier? Am I just further proving the point that only children are selfish bastards?

And because I have no doubt that my mother will someday stumble upon this entry, just because I get frustrated with you doesn't mean that I don't love you.

I deleted the Myspace today. I had a lot of blogs on it that I considered keeping but as with the contents of this journal, sometimes you have to cut out certain things that are no longer relevant to your life or interests; for better or for worse. I had to really think hard about this weeding I was about to do because you know, words are powerful things and they can often place an idea one step closer to manifestation, so I had put some time and effort into some of the entries. Naturally I got a little wistful for a minute, but the truth of the matter is no one reads anyone's blogs and everyone who bothers writing them is desperately hoping that people will. Unless your shit manages to make it onto the front page of a popular social "news" website, no one reads any of it. Don't come at me wearing your serious business face, yelling, "Well I don't care if anyone reads it! I write for myself and I'm just expressing my creativity". We all know that's total bullshit. I write for myself too: in an actual notebook, with an actual pen. And if that makes me feel a little out of touch with the digital age, sometimes I get a little technological and open up the text editor to jot down some notes. I can admit it even though I'm currently mocking it, I'm totally guilty of writing on the internet with hopes that people will care. Besides, if you really want attention for your words, the last place you're going to look for that attention is Myspace: A Place for Misleading Camera Angles.

So yeah, no more Myspace. I've moved onto Facebook which I think still places me far behind the times in regards to the whole social networking thing but if Twitter is the future, long live the good old days. I actually have a Twitter, and the reason why I signed up and never used it is... it probably had something to do with Talk of the Nation, feeling horribly optimistic one day, and thinking I would embarrass myself by posting the least intellectual comment of the day. If I remember correctly I think I might have had something to say about marijuana legislation, surprise surprise, but thankfully I chickened out. Like the time I tried to call Marc Steiner regarding places in Maryland to go hiking. If anyone is curious, I was going to say that I think Double Rock is a good starter place to hike because it makes you feel like you're doing something rad because of the rocks and water and trees and shit, but really you're only like five minutes from the safety and comfort of Baltimore City so it's ok. But it was Marc fucking Steiner, he's like a god among men, so I giggled and hung up when the screener answered the call.

I also use far too many words to describe the smallest shit so that's why Twitter couldn't work for me, obviously. I tend to have a lot to say about one thing as opposed to the Twitter format, where in order to fit inside the space you have to be able to say a little about a lot. "I took a walk today. My feet hurt", "I have a headache", "I just shit on myself". Also, Twitter seems to be for whiners and I don't whine, I rant. To me whining sounds like a child, whereas ranting sounds like a grown person, and we all know that children don't know as much as adults and must be some sort of inferior beings because of that. It's fine that I just said that, everyone thinks it but never wants to say it, especially parents. I dare you to find a single parent who hasn't lost patience with their child for not knowing something that we know seemingly by instinct. Anyway, ranting about something isn't really better than whining, but it's different in a way that I like. Ranting forces the writer to think about the best words to express their discomfort in any given situation, therefore coming away from the experience feeling a tad bit smarter.

At least that's how I feel. And since I guess LiveJournal qualifies as some sort of blog, I'll say these things:

1. No one is reading this.
2. Even though I hope they do.
3. I have probably put pictures on Myspace that may or may not have utilized misleading camera angles in order to make me look a little better. But nothing as bad (or as good?) as this bitch:

I know it's still early, but this is the most entertaining thing I've found all day.

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/snoop-dogg-live

I've been getting really sick of complaining, mine and that of others, a lot in recent months. Lately I've been trying to focus more on my current situation and what I do have instead of times past/future and what I don't or never will have. I've been needing to remind myself of this constantly so it's harder than I thought it would be, but it's been working out I suppose; though it seems I don't have nearly as much to talk about now that I'm trying to cut the "poor me"s from daily conversation. And it seems that by not having much to say, people listen more when I decide that I do have something to say. So there's a plus. Being listened to is pretty rad.

My thought process has been doing nothing but making me miserable so I can only imagine how I am perceived by others. Then I had one of those straw breaking the camel's back scenarios, or maybe one of those sorts of revelations that only come with the ingestion of hallucinogenic substances. So I tried to step outside of myself and watch myself having conversations in various formats. Surprisingly, most of them were about how so and so's whining really gets on my nerves... or how driving in the rain gets on my nerves... or how needing to have roommate gets on my nerves... and so on. I realized that I actually whine about other people's whining; that's when I knew shit had to change. I've spent my whole life talking so much without even really having anything to say. For someone as talkative as I can be, this is sort of a harsh discovery.

Being as positive as possible feels like when you're wearing a pair of old underwear that's missing most of the elastic from around the waistband. Sometimes you'll get a tickle from a stray rubber string and freak out because you think it's a bug that is going to poison you with its bite, but really it's not, then you're relieved. That's how being positive feels for me; freak out time. For example, last week during the rain I wanted to cry because I do genuinely dislike "bad" weather... but when my mind started bitching about it, this other part of my brain spoke up and was like "Well we had a pretty dry winter and early spring, so this rain is good; it's preventing a drought that would prevent you from having summertime fun". It felt good to not have my blood pressure spiking from my inner ranting but it was weird because I don't know about being positive. I was confused, but also relieved.

But there always has to be a but with me. How does one know what constitutes whining? What's considered whining to one person may just be small talk to another. Say, for example, I read a piece of pending legislation that gets my panties in a twist... does stating my opinion about it or perhaps even writing a blog about it constitute whining? Or is whining more of an immediate reactionary comment such as "I HATE WHEN IT RAINS!" as opposed to something more carefully stated? Is the frequency with which the complaint is made the basis of whining? Fuck, now I feel like I'm entering the whine zone and I didn't even get to properly close this entry. Damn.