UGH!
This blog thing has my mind in a whirl.

I read all this blogs and these people are so good. Their design is awe inspiring. I will be adding several things soon. Will I be able to come close to measuring up?

There was a long time I read blogs and found myself not wanting to admit it. They are like soap operas.

Anytime I found a new blog I had to read ALL the archives. I wanted to know every detail. When finding new blogs I always get really frustrated if they do not have profiles. I WANT TO KNOW WHO THESE PEOPLE ARE. It helps me become invested. With every good one I find, I find some that are just downright mean, like a blog dedicated to how much this girl HATES her roommate. (Why don't you just move?)

It takes a special type of person to have a blog. One that likes to talk about themselves. I really don't mean that in a bad way, it's just the way it is. You have to feel comfortable that there are people out there in the world that want to know what you do everyday. And I don't.

I've never been one to talk about myself. If someone asks me how I'm doing... I say "O.K." If someone asks me how my apartment is.... I say "O.K." If someone asks me if I like my job... I say "O.K." If someone asks (fill in the blank) I generally say... "O.K."

So why did I start this blog? It's not that I don't have thoughts about a particular movie, or want to discuss things that happened in my day, I generally just don't know where to begin. I guess starting a blog is my way of talking. I don't have to see your face and if you don't want to read it... then don't read it. I have some things I want to work through, some thoughts I want to convey and I never felt comfortable doing it, so I decided to try a blog. It's making me feel very vulnerable. Not so much because I might get criticism. That part does not really bother me.

When I did decide to finally start one, I really considered not telling my friends or family. I didn't want them reading my inner most thoughts and feelings. Those things are private! Having perfect strangers read it, that was O.K. There is just something really wrong with that sentiment. So, I told them anyway.

So here it is. I'm wide open people.

ZEALOUS
I love my father.

My father will be the first to admit he was not a perfect parent. He made mistakes. Some serious, others not so bad. He raised three girls and no sons, and had 3 sisters growing up and no brothers. He’s been around a lot of women.

He’s an insightful man, a courteous man, a loving man.

When I was young, toddler age, I was scared to death of my father. He had a wicked temper and it seemed like the smallest thing could set him off. If I was home alone with my father a lot of time was spent playing in my room. He was witness to his father beating his mother. Properly dealing with anger is something he struggles to learn. Later in years his temperament greatly improved.

We saw his anger, but we also saw a man that bathed, fed and put 3 girls to bed while there mother worked the 3-11 shift as a nurse. Sometimes he would even let us eat cookies for supper.

When my parents divorced I was 13 and it was a sigh of relief. My mother had a very hands off approach to parenting. To a girl that was fully developed at the age of 9 and had 20 year old guys hitting on her, along with the fact that she always had friends that were older than her, this was an equation for destruction. My father was the strict one. He was the one that would not let us pierce our ears until we were 18. He was the one that gave us curfews.

We were his life. We were his daughters.

After he moved out, he would call and say someone just called and hung up. He wanted to know if it was one of us. To this day, that still breaks my heart.

My sophomore year of high school I was no longer able to hold my shit together. My absent days surpassed my days of attendance. I cried myself to sleep every night. My sisters who kept me partially together were gone. I was alone in the house with my mother. She was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and was getting into relationships with men. Men that were poisonous, men that were in prison. She even had a relationship with a man that had called the wrong number. They started talking and doing god know what on the phone.

I hated myself, I hated my life, I was tired and being 14 and 15 years old my options were limited. All I could do was baby-sit and earn as much money as possible so I could buy myself a car and maybe then, things would improve. The middle of my Junior my mother informed me she no longer wanted to take care of me, that my father would be moving into the house.

I was scared. It saved me.

He drove me to school, he picked me up from school, he gave me lunch money and took me to work, he bought me school clothes without complaining how much everything costs, he made me dinner, he told me goodnight. He was a parent.

A few years later when my mother really did go off the deep end. He was there. Sure, he wanted to be controlling about everything and there were many fights, but he was there. Helping her and us in ways he shouldn't have too.

There are two definites I have in my life. 1 – I am loved, if by no one else, then I am loved by my father. 2 – He will ALWAYS be there for me; prison, cancer; always.

I have some really funny stories about my father but I think I will save those for another time.

Happy Father's Day Dad.

FARCE
This is part of an e-mail correspondence between me and my friend J.

"....this is actually funny, despite my general resistance to the website. Perhaps because I'm not inclined to love the new Star Wars. He puts his finger on it. It's his middle finger: www.thebestpageintheuniverse.net."



I'm desperately trying to figure this guy out. He is also responsible for a book called Real Ultimate Power. If you want an easy read with some serious potty humor, it's a good buy. He also has a Ninja Website with music, pictures and all.

I don't really know what to think. Is this guy a comic genius, able to convey thoughts and feelings of every 11 year old boy in a way that adults will find insightful, frightening and witty, or is he.... not?

PERSPICACIOUS
I found this while doing some research for the place I volunteer. Devil's Dictionary. Here's one of my favorites. I'm afraid this guy is right on when it comes to some. The definition that I found a real connection with is this one:

defeatism
1. an intelligent look at one’s situation and options; clarity.
2. continuing education; the act of returning to school.
3. depression revitalized.
4. running out of blood-sugar mid-sentence and regretting the day one began learning to read and write.

DOLOR (part II)
Since we have an interest (thanks Random Reader) if I was to make a CD and had to choose 14 songs that make me cry, here it goes. Please note they are in no particular order and these are in addition to those posted in DOLOR part I.


Beatles - Blackbird

Beth Orton - Don't Need a Reason

The Smith's - There is a Light That Never Goes Out

REM - You are the Everything

Dave Matthews Band - Space Between

Tracy Chapman - The Promise

Coldplay - In My Place

Pete Yorn - Turn of the Century


If you want me to walk around in a depressive stupor, make me a CD containing these songs. This was really hard to do. Future installments will be songs that make me happy, songs that make me want to exercise, songs that remind me of particular people, songs that make me wish I was dancing in a nightclub and songs that remind me of certain situations.

Rock on.

What are some songs that make you cry?

FAULTY
"A woman's ability to have an orgasm is at least partly determined by her genes and can't be blamed entirely on cultural influences, new research suggests."

That's what I want. To be told it will require more work and that it really is my fault.

I guess I can no longer blame it on the insensitive assholes I have, on occasion, slept with.

DOLOR (part I)
These are songs that make me cry (with the corresponding lyric that really gets me going.)

Coldplay - Shiver
"On & On from the moment I wake,
To the moment I sleep,
I'll be there by your side,
Just you try and stop me."


Gladys Knight and the Pips - Midnight Train to Georgia
I know what you're thinking - Gladys Knight? In high school I worked in the mall at a store that sold memorabilia stuff from the 40's to the 70's. I heard this song 4 days a week 13 times a day for a year and a half. I HATED this song. Then one night several years later I'm laying in bed with my TV on half asleep and this song starts playing. For the first time, I actually listened to the words. And then I cried. Thus, it made my list.

"I'd rather live in his
world, than live without
him in mine."


Dave Matthews Band - #41
I dated this guy for a while and I was never really into Dave Matthews. The stuff they played on the radio was alright, but nothing I found spectacular. I was really trying to understand the obsession so back when Napster was still free I had him make me a CD. The very first song was this one, only it was all acoustic. I was in love.

"Why won't you run
into the rain & play
and let the tears
splash all over you."


Goo Goo Dolls - Sympathy
I'm very frustrated by this group. All their stuff is OK, yet I've managed to buy 2 of their Cd's's. Some of their lyrics are really incredible, like DMB and REM incredible.

"I wish for things that I don't need
All I wanted
And what I chase won't set me free."


Fleetwood Mac - Landslide
As my father would say, "Let's have a little respect for some good music." And yes, for the record I liked this song BEFORE Smashing Pumpkins covered it. I went through a Fleetwood Mac faze in my late teens. My friends thought I had lost it. Then I got them hooked. My love for them has wavered. They had three last concert tours (or was it 4.) Their website is bad.

"If you see my reflection
in the snow covered hills
The landslide will bring it down."


Death Cab for Cutie - A Lack of Color

"And all the girls in every girly magazine can't make me feel
Any less alone."


This is by no means a complete list, just the ones that came to me at 1am while I should have been sleeping.

CHIMERA
I'm not really a cat person. We never had pets growing up. I always thought the "this family hates cats" came from my father, but years later I found out it was my mother. Not just my mother, but EVERYONE in her family. Needless to say, being a product of my mother I hated cats too. Friend J would lovingly refer to me as dog girl. When the movie Cats and Dogs came out we had to go see which pet was better. If you recall, the dogs won, but the cats were way cool.

Jump ahead many years and Friend J, Friend A and I are roommates. Friend J decides to get a cat and names her Lolly. Come to find out a few months after we get Lolly, she's pregnant, so one of the kittens are kept and she is named Lena (after Marlene Dietrich particularly the movie where she wears the tuxedo because Lena is a tuxedo kitty.) Lena as a kitty was sweet and nice and liked to sit on your lap and be petted. Lena as a kitty teenager turned into a real bitch and wanted nothing to do with you unless you were Lolly. Lolly on the other hand found her very annoying, so many days were spent with Lolly hiding and Lena walking around meowing loudly and continuously wondering where Lolly was. A few times you would find Lolly and throw her to Lena just to get some silence. Lolly would get this look of "oh no, please don't," and you would give her a sympathetic nod and toss her in Lena's direction anyway.

Come to found out, Lena was all talk. When Friend A and Friend J moved to a house, Lena peed all over herself and Lolly in the pet carrier. Lolly, besides being pissed off at Lena for being peed on, took the moving situation in stride. I love these cats.

One of my favorite things to do is picture them in totally funny situations. Here's a few of them

1. Lolly's been around (if you know what I mean.) She came from a house where the owners had 500 cats and none of them were fixed. Friend A and Friend J acquired her because she was living underneath the house of a friend. The friend could not keep her because they already had some very large dogs. After she had the kittens she went through heat. I've never been around a cat in heat before, but it was awful. Friend A would be found screaming at her to be quiet and then ask her if she understood. I'll sometimes picture Lolly, lounging on a bed in the red light district of Calcutta, smoking a cigarette, with one of those raspy, on the verge of croaking from lung disease voices, meowing at passerbys.

2. Lolly and Lena are math wizards. Think God Will Hunting Matt Damon math wizards and often argue over really complex problems in the middle of the night.

3. I do not mean this to be blasphemous, so please forgive me. Not that Lolly was not a sweet cat, but there was a period after she was fixed that she was super sweet. A sign of pregnancy for cats is pregnant cats like love and affection more than non-pregnant cats. I was a little concerned. What if she was pregnant? What if it was immaculate conception? Its happened before. So sometimes I'll see Lena wearing a robe and sandals walking to towns spreading the gospel. Humans are standing around listening, hanging on every word she says, "meow. Meoow meow meow. Meeeeeow." All the followers are standing around shaking their heads. But, here's the funny part, no one understands her. She is speaking meow. No one wants to admit they don't understand her, so instead they nod their heads in agreement.

4. Friend J is a writer. She has a masters degree in creative writing and has several typed stories laying around the house in various stages of completeness. Lolly would be found laying on the stacks of papers often. I would picture Lolly reading these stories in the middle of the night and when Friend J would wake up try to communicate with her what is wrong with her story. For example, Friend J would hear "meow meow meow, meowwwww, meeeeeow." While Lolly would be saying, "Where is the character development!"

When I was
.... in 4th grade we had to do this project for Easter which also coincided with an Open House. Ms Byrd gave us pieces of colored paper in the shapes of eggs for us to write Easter related stories and draw pictures.

I had no idea what I was going to write and then it occurred to me.

Now, let me give you some back history. I am the youngest of 3 girls in my family. No boys (well, we'll save that for another time.) My sister A and I shared a room and we had a TV. My sister H had her own room and no TV (this was very important to note in sister H's mind.) Whether it was because we were all girls, my fathers a male replica of Debbie Downer from Saturday Night Live or we were just of the age; stories of kidnappings, rapes, murders, etc. had us absolutely terrified. Many nights I would sleep with a down comforter wrapped around my neck in case someone broke into the house and tried to cut my throat. In 4th grade, my down comforter would save me. My limbs were not in danger of being sliced open, only my neck. I spent a lot of time sleeping and being very hot. I was also terrified that the bunk bed would collapse on me. Sister A slept on the top bunk so every night I would fall asleep with my arm over my head. I was very confident in the fact that my arm would save my head if 200 pounds of wood, metal and human body was to fall on top of it. Between the 10 lbs. of blanket wrapped around my neck and my arm over my head I didn't get very much sleep at night.

So I'm sitting in my 4th grade class and it occurs to me.

This is my best story ever. I was so proud and thought it was far more creative than any other story anyone has ever told in the entire world. The teacher would post them up and all the parents would read them and wonder "who is this girl!? I need to meet her! she's super! what creativity! what originality! why can't bob (or Suzy or whomever) be more like this girl!?" (Picture the scene in A Christmas Story where Ralphie writes that story and the teacher gives him an A.)

The evening of the open house came and I entered my classroom with my mother. Taped to the door were all the colored paper eggs with stories inside. I found mine and handed it to my mother, beaming with what was going to be the most gushiest mother loving moment in my life. My mother read it. She had a somewhat horrified scared look on her face. Her usual comments of praise did not come. "What was this?" I thought. Even when she's not impressed with something she still does a decent job of faking it.

"Don't you like it?" I asked beaming with pride.

"Um, yea it's good. Has your teacher seen it?"

A few days later my mother took me to see her therapist.

Why? you might ask.

The evening before sister A and I watched Unsolved Mysteries. For all that don't remember this show it was stories of kidnapped, murdered, raped victims who they were looking for or trying to solve. It even talked of ghost and extraterrestrial life. This show was my inspiration for my Easter book. Inside it contained stories of raped, murdered, kidnapped chicks whose parents were looking for them. It even had pictures of wanted posters inside. This book was my pride and joy and my mother took me to therapy.

About a year ago I was discussing this at friends house and my father was there. He never knew the true story of what happened and was quite relived to hear it.

No dad, a TV show caused your daughters psychosis.

A few months ago...
... I moved out of an apartment I was sharing with my 2 bestest friends in the whole wide world. (I know I'm 27 years old and that term is very middle school, but I'm using it anyway) One of which I've been friends with since high school, the other, her partner (i dislike that term, but i can't think of a better description) I meet in high school, but the friendship came a little later. Anyhoo (that term used by a former co-worker all the time, God rest his soul) I was able to find a really inexpensive place that offered free cable, free washer/dryer in every unit, ice maker and microwave. The term they use is "luxury" but there is really nothing "luxury" about it besides the crown molding.

The cable thing was new to me, since I have not been exposed to cable in a long while. One of my favorite shows is Law & Order. As for anyone who has cable knows, Law & Order comes on ALL the time. Maybe not the original, but being a fan of all of them, it really doesn't matter. I was watching more Law & Order in a week then what I usually watched in a year.

I was totally digging this living alone thing. I've always been a person that needs a lot of "space" and "alone time" so I was loving it.... until I started having these really bad nightmares. Every time I fell asleep - naps or anything - I would dream someone was trying to murder me. It was never the same dream exactly except for the me and the murder part. It got to the point where I was only sleeping 2 hours a night due to the tossing and turning and constant waking up in cold sweats.

I talked to my dad about it and his response was, "Are you taking your medication?" My mom said it was stress from moving and being alone. My sisters were saying "Oh my gosh!"

I was tired and grumpy and thought my mind had finally decided to do me in after years of struggle.

A week after the nightmares started it occurred to me while watching a particularly heart wrenching episode of Law & Order SVU, maybe I should lay off the Law & Order for awhile.

I did.

The nightmares stopped.

Who would have known Law & Order can cause such distress.

I now have a rule. For every Law & Order episode I watch, I have to watch 2 episodes of The Daily Show so everything can be right in Girl Viking's head. Picture... yin and yang.