National Talk Like a Pirate Day

Am I a Monster?

Why are little girls scared of me? I stare at my photos and try to figure it out and I can't. Why do I intimidate people? I don't know what it is and its killing me.



I know how Frida felt when she painted this:

My Friends in the Dark

the other night I got to go to Kerby Lane with five of my beautiful friends. Here are some pictures of them as we sat in the dimly lit patio talking about everything.

This is the beautiful M who doesn't recognize how lovely she really is.


R, the "divas" role model, cook, poet, creator of knicknames and instigator


Michelle, showing off her new haircut


Iron Katherine, who inspires me everytime I'm running, and keeps me from giving up



Claire, who for some reason is always blurry in my pictures. I think because everytime she knows her picture is taking, she starts moving and making faces.


A picture of M's ear which for some reason I had to have a picture of

Not Been Grateful

I've been negligent on my posting of what I'm grateful for.

So here's some:

1. Tonight I get to hang out with my friends at Kerbey Lane: M, R, michelle, ironkat and claire. I am grateful that my life is such that I can drive places to see friends and eat out. I might be low on funds, but I can still eat out occasionally.

2. Yesterday I got to eat with my parents at Wildfire. I am grateful, so very grateful, both of my parents are alive when I'm old enough to appreciate them. And I might not like their politics and sometimes I get really really mad at them, but I do love them very much and for the most part we're pretty decent friends. I'm working on being more open with them about regular things.

3. I'm grateful I'm smart. I've been doing some amazing things with the beta of my test template for the work website. Gonna use xpath, ajax, javascript div showing and hiding, etc.

4. I'm grateful that I'm healthy. In fact I'm really really healthy. I've been running, kickboxing and doing the cardio at the rec center AND eating better. Taking my lunches to work (inspired by M!) and taking a lot of vitamins. In Oct I am wanting to get a physical so I can see how awesome a job I've done.

Update:
I've found out why I haven't heard from CNN - my salary requirements were way too high for their entry level web techs. Oh well.

J.K. is very very angry and wants nothing to do with me now and maybe forever. I am working hard on staying out of his way as much as possible. I hate that he's hurting and wish I could fix it and I regret a number of things that I've done, but I know we're both moving toward a better place. I just have to hope someday he recognizes how much he deserves from life and that he finds it.

Boss has stopped hitting on me, which is good, but now he really won't speak to me at all. Negative of that is that I'm unlikely to get a bonus this year since I'm now in a 'doghouse' of sorts, but there's nothing I can do about that. Let's hope he doesn't explode when I deliver the documents I'm gonna submit for a salary adjustment. Should be an interesting next couple of months.

Billy wants me to write him some letters of recommendation for the graduate programs he's applying to and its making me incredibly nervous. I don't want his chances screwed up because I didn't target the audience of the letter correctly or because they don't like the things I've said, the order I said them or the way I said it. Its a big responsibility but I'm gonna work on them this wkend.



Prof. Heng is wanting me to make her a logo and site design for her new globalization project and that makes me nervous too. I've never really been a designer, and even though I did a really good job on her previous site (above), that was more of a fluke and I for sure can't do a good logo. And I told her that, but she really wants this, so I'll do it. I've been trying to think in my head of what is homogenous across the middle ages (non-Euro-Centric), and the only thing I can come up with is the North Star.

I camped Leaping Lizzy last night and got bounding boots! Yay! I camped an nm successfully. It was a rush. So now I'm gonna camp the emperor a lot. Hopefully I can get a hairpin. And this weekend Gar is wanting help killing a scythe ws nm, so I will be doing that as well as maybe meriting online.

Also going to try to dig in the front yard and work on the front area. I've been putting it off and I'd like to see the front yard a little cleaner. Need to mow too. And finish up the wallpaper in the bathroom. Have to be careful not to be tempted to go to Lowes and spend a ton of $$ because I'm doing well financially as long as I don't buy anything :p Soon as I buy anything, I'm in the hole. So there's gonna be a lot of eating at home and holding off on home improvements for the next couple months.

I will miss you

The revealing of an origin story for some of you although some of you already know the origin of my online name. (Its more complicated a story than I'm making it into below, involving the attempt of trying to come up with a unique email name with which to open a hotmail account without having 8 numbers after the name. This attempt led me to look around my office at the things which I kept around me, including, in this case, some treasured panels from a comic book which I'd framed and had on my desk.)

So there's a comic called The Dreaming which was a spin off of The Sandman. Unlike The Sandman which was written by Neil Gaiman, this was written by Caitlin Kiernan and was based off the lives of the secondary characters that were in The Sandman. One of the issues focused on two of my favorite characters, Lucien and Eve. Lucien was the librarian of the King of Dreams for millenia and had previously been the King of Dreams' raven. He was contemplating ending his life. The issue dealt with his regrets of not recognizing what in life was important - the people who loved him that he'd been too wrapped up in common life to appreciate.

Eve, was "the" Eve, mother of Cain and Abel who upon her death, had been offered the chance to live in the realm of dreams rather than pass on.

Eve and Lucien were good friends, so when Lucien was thinking about killing himself, he came to see Eve.




From a strict English analysis though, by making that into a name, if you re-read the paragraph that would make me Eve, which is a bit of an irony, mother of mankind, mother of sorrow etc.

Which leads to Missy's challenge: to name every day something for which I am grateful. Today was a day of endings and when I was incredibly sad in the car on the way back from the park, I noticed the sky. I am grateful for the sky. Especially the Texas sky which is magnificent.

friends

It is when you are going through something really difficult and have to talk out your feelings over and over that you know the value of your friends. The ones that sit and listen to you, comfort you when you're sad, continue to see you even when you're no fun and cause them awkwardness, offer advice even when its something you don't want to hear and shut up when its something you have to learn for yourself - those are your true friends.

I have from the events this year learned that I have chosen very well when it comes to friends. This is my "grateful" for today. I am so very grateful for M, R, Master Poet, Quiz, Ln, Red, Mero, Jaeda, Gar and J.K.

J.K. who has remained my friend despite the cost is someone whose strength I will never find another to compare to.

On a random note, above is a picture of me that I am fond of (in brown shirt), taken recently. Also another picture of me 15 years ago (to the right, in the jacket). It is so very obvious that I am much older than I used to be, but looking at the two pics makes me think I am now someone I like much better.

Off to kickboxing soon. Get to hit on things and release frustration, of which I have lots. Oh! two things. I faxed in my background check to volunteer at ABC to tutor GED applicants (yay!), and I found out you can't run the 1/2 marathon with an ipod on. How could they do this to me?

Grateful

This is a moment (and I've been having more and more of them) that I am very grateful for the friends I have, my family, my home, my health, and the good things in my life. M has posted to her blog that this month she is going to try to post every day about something she is thankful for. I am going to try to do the same thing and since its already the 4th I have to do four things.

1. I am grateful that I am strong and healthy. I think right now I am in the best shape I've ever been in in my life even if I am not at my target weight (almost!). I worked out incredibly hard tonight at the rec center and I feel good.

2. I am grateful that I have a roof over my head and I can pay the bills.

3. I am grateful that I was married to J.K. who was a wonderful man who loved me and made me feel special.

4. I am grateful for the clouds in the sky above and that they have different shapes and textures and make the sky more beautiful when the different ones mix together.

Five year goals and volunteering

As you probably know, I have been struggling with several things:
1. Loneliness
2. Lack of a sense of purpose
3. Questions about whether I'm not meant to be a mom because of some cosmic purpose or whether just coincidence

Well I recently decided on two five year goals:
1. I will purchase the place I live
2. I will adopt a child by my 40th birthday

#1 means I need to figure out where I'm going to be living/working. If I am staying in this area, I could either buy a condo in Austin and therefore be closer to things to do and be around more single people and not have to deal with taking care of a yard and such a large house or else I could buy the house I'm living in. Buying the house I'm living in would give me advantages such as not having to figure out what to do about Monster and Finn so soon, not needing as large a down payment saved up, having equity from the start, not having moving expenses. So I decided this weekend that if I stay in Austin, which seems likely as CNN hasn't written me back, I will buy the house. Financially, its the smarter move even if emotionally it might not be. I will have to commute into Austin for entertainment and someday another job but oh well.


But #1 is necessary for #2. But there's also the question of whether I should be a mom or not that I have to answer first. So I'm thinking of volunteering at some kid-focused charities in the meantime. I'm going to start with Any Baby Can, but first do the older kids focused things like GED preparation tutoring http://www.abcaus.org/. I'm going to fill out my application today or tomorrow and see what they have to say.

I asked M her opinion on whether or not volunteering at ABC will be a bad idea considering my fragileness about child issues, and she didn't exactly answer until I said I would be helping the GED aged kids. She seems certain that won't be a bad idea, but her hesistating when I first brought up the subject I think is very telling. I was suspecting it myself. And it will be hard being with a charity that helps abused, impoverished, challenged and neglected kids because seeing that always makes me wonder why the universe has decided I'm not a good bet to give a kid to and some of these other lowlifes are, but maybe this is another one of those things I'm supposed to be learning something from.

January 27, 2008 - My first half marathon!

Ok so I went to Austin to do the 7 mile trail last Sunday morning. I've done this trail twice before, but both times I did it with Hunter, so it was easier to do and harder to back out of because people were expecting me. This time it could have been really easy to chicken out and make excuses why I couldn't go and/or to give up running some part of the way on the trail and walk. But I didn't, I ran the whole thing. I even moderately sprinted the last mile. Yay!

And at the end I felt like I am just about ready to make a 10 mi run my "long run". Maybe after another couple times doing the 7 mile trail.

But that also means I think I am ready to commit to a half marathon. 1/27/08 is going to be my first half. Its the 3M half marathon and is supposed to be a really good one, according to Runner's Magazine. Its one way and mostly downhill. I'm making my parents go to meet me at the end and drive me home (they don't know the 'drive me home' part).

I'm excited. As a reward for doing the 7 alone, I bought myself a new pair of shoes at Academy on the way home and they're a step above the running shoes I've been getting. New Balance, of course.

And this is my first 10k which I will be doing with M on October 21. I think Michelle (R's friend from work who seems really cool) is also doing it. Michelle is asking about running with me the 7 mile loop. I worry about running out of things to talk to her about if we run together and how she could get really grossed out by sweaty me. :p

Then there's the Livestrong, which I'm also doing with M - Oct 13.