For reasons I'd rather no go into right now, I'm scrapping this blog. Don't worry, my multitudes of devoted readers, I'm only changing addresses. From here on out, you'll be able to find me here. Sorry for the inconvenience.
I have a serious case of RDGAS (Really Don't Give A Shit), Internet, and I'm having a helluva time pulling myself out of it. I'm still dead tired from my long-ass trip last week, my sore throat is now accompanied by a lovely cough and I had dental work done on three teeth yesterday. I'm way behind on my school work – still – and just can't bring myself to care. Hoping a decent night's sleep is in the cards for me and that I'll be able to get myself back on track in time to head to Florida next week. A day at the beach might be just what the doctor ordered.
Well, I've finished up my stint here in Huntington, but we got the room for an extra day so that I can have at least ONE day off to lounge by the pool get caught up on two weeks' worth of school while The Husband and kids play in the pool. Work went well – as is usually the case, the IT staff on site were a friendly and hospitable bunch and everything went smooth as silk. It was nice not to have to deal with the responsibility of being in charge of the team, and a HUGE relief not to have to work with an asshat egomaniac for a change.
After a week of hotel confinement and junk food overload, The Step-Daughter and The Baby are pretty much intolerable, which is not making for a very pleasant atmosphere between The Husband and myself. I'm dead tired from working all week (5 PM to 1 AM is a KILLER schedule), stressed out about not getting any school work done for THIS week (on top of not having finished my assignments for last week yet either) and feeling more than a little resentful at the double standard that seems to be in place when it comes to Neil's discipline of The Step-Daughter. Basically, she does whatever she wants and because 'she's only here for a little while – I don't want to spend the whole time fussing at her', he doesn't fuss at her for ANYTHING. I'm finding this a pretty bitter pill to swallow after SIX YEARS of his constant griping at The Boys for everything under the sun, all day every day. I'm glad he got to spend some quality time with his daughter, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't relieved that she's got to be back home in just a couple of weeks.
Speaking of going home, on the way up here I realized that we are only an hour and a half from my old Kentucky home, Howardstown – a teeny, tiny little speck of a town that I haven't seen in almost 25 years. Since the chances of me being anywhere near this close again in another 25 years are pretty much non-existent, I've bullied persuaded Neil to make a detour on our way home. I know the place will most likely be something completely unrecognizable, but I'm excited anyway. I plan to take LOTS of pictures and will do my best to actually upload some of them.
Avery has a handful of movies he likes to watch, over and over, and they mostly serve as white noise when we're trying to get him ready for a nap or going to bed for the night. He's become such an observant little guy that almost each time we watch one he'll find some new detail that he may not have noticed before, and that little tidbit will be his obsession du jour until it's replaced by something even more attention worthy. His latest fascination is a scene from "Madagascar 2" – a backside view of the four main characters dancing in an elevator. "There's Gloria's butt!" he'll shout as soon as the hippo comes into view, but that's hardly the end of it. "Avery's got a butt," he'll inform us. Followed by "Grandmommy's got a butt. Mommy's got a butt. Daddy's got a butt," pretty much going through his entire toddler Rolodex of People Avery Knows Who Have Butts while whoever is with him at the time is required to affirm each entry. "Yep, Avery's got a butt. Uh-huh, Grandmommy's got a butt, too," until he loses interest and takes off in a new direction. Parenting Rule #1: Don't do something once you're not prepared to do 10,000 times. The word monotony does not exist in a toddler's vocabulary.
Yesterday Avery and I took a walk out by the pool at the hotel here in Ashland while Neil was getting lunch ready. There were three young ladies standing near the water's edge. One was dressed in street clothes, one wore a very modest swimsuit (the kind with bottoms that look almost like a pair of shorts) and the third was sporting a skimpy little number that left very little to the imagination. I'd guess she was about a size 16, so there was definitely more out of than in her bikini bottoms. Avery didn't miss a thing: "Whoa, she's got a butt!" I don't think she heard him, but I still didn't waste any time in getting my pint-sized Sir Mix-a-Lot back to the room.
In an effort to clean up both my life and this here blog-thing, I'm going to be making some changes. Again. Sorry for the chaotic mess, but that's kinda how things are going for me right now, and as irritating as it might be for the handful of people who actually read this, just know that it's easily TEN TIMES more irritating for me. So, in the next few days I'll be re-doing a lot of the existing posts, editing tags and categories and possibly changing the layout. I'm also going to be refining my future posts, working on things a little at a time until I have an idea completely hammered out BEFORE I hit 'publish'. I think it'll work out a little better for all of us if I can actually finish a thought in one post instead of just throwing shit up piecemeal as I get five minutes here and there while The Baby is being cooperative. I'd like to think I'm using this site as constructively as possible as opposed to just adding yet another pool of verbal diarrhea to the already cloudy bowl. For those of you who subscribe via RSS, my apologies for crowding your inbox with stuff you may already have seen. Hopefully I won't lose any of you in the shuffle as I really do appreciate your willingness to acknowledge my existence, and thanks in advance for your patience.
Isn't it ironic that waiting to seek medical attention until you are at death's door always makes you feel better, while going in for preventive treatment ends up making you feel like shit? Spent yesterday morning at the dentist's office – a place that I shall from now on refer to as The Ministry of Pain and Minty Freshness – having a 'routine checkup and cleaning'. Spent yesterday afternoon, last night, this morning and – wait, what time is it now? FIVE something? great – ALL DAMNED DAY today feeling like someone jammed a hot poker into the bottom of my jaw, up through my brain and out the top of my skull. To make matters worse, I have until I get back from Huntington to decide whether I'd like to go ahead and have a root canal done on two teeth or have them pulled. Nice. So not what I needed added to my pile right now. On the bright side, I do have a gap between my front teeth today that wasn't there yesterday, so maybe I'll be able to pursue professional whistling after all.
Slowly but surely I am working through the pile of mess on my plate. Despite the throbbin' in my noggin I've managed to get all my paperwork done for my trip, ordered prescription refills, confirmed our hotel reservations and gotten most of the laundry done. I still have to pack, but that should be pretty easy – ooh, what to wear on Monday? I know! Polo shirt and khaki pants. How about Tuesday? Polo shirt and khaki pants – you get the idea. I'm starting to relax a little, at least as far as the trip itself goes, and am looking forward to getting the hell away from here for a little while, even if it is work. I'm hoping that the change of scenery – and air quality – will improve the perpetually lousy mood I've been in lately.
One major obstacle to my actually relaxing is school. Not really into my CIS206 class, so naturally I'm way behind. Textbook is dull as dirt so far, professor's lecture notes are very hard to follow – Um hello? You have a fucking PHD!! Doesn't that come with spellcheck anymore? – and threaded discussions are beyond ridiculous; rather than ask an actual question, the professor does the Linda Richman copout: here's a topic – discuss amongst yourselves. UGH. Somehow I've got to get two-and-a-half chapters plus lecture notes read, a paper written and a quiz taken before we leave Sunday. Oh, and let's not forget the lovely discussion boards – guess I'll go cut-and-paste some CNET crap so I can match step with the rest of the class, ha ha.
I gotta say, I'm more than a little disappointed with myself right now. I feel like I'm half-assing my way through so much of life but am powerless to do anything about it – lack of time and lack of sleep, money stress, family stress, school stress – it's piling up like an avalanche and every day I just seem to get further and further behind. I'm waking up with a pounding headache every morning and it's not going away no matter how much Tylenol I take. I'm aggravated and irritated with everything and everyone. I can't get a minute's peace. I gotta find a way to get a handle on things and soon or else I'm just gonna snap.
If, while I am talking to you, you choose to stare off into space, while at the same time, slowly and very deliberately engaging in some mundane activity that seems to consume your entire being – for example, eating the tiny little crumbs at the bottom of the chip bag as if they were Godiva chocolate – with a look on your face that could only be described as the epitome of arrogance, disdain and boredom all rolled into one, don't be too surprised if the next time you open YOUR mouth, I just get up and leave the room.
I'm not a religious person. I don't look for some deeper spiritual meaning in everyday things. I don't take random coincidence as 'signs from above' and I've never seen an image of the Virgin Mary in a Dorito, grilled cheese or highway overpass. I don't agree with the tenets of a lot of organized religion, and for all intents and purposes, I usually consider myself an atheist. I find that this tends to anger a lot of people – usually compels them to get all preachy and indignant and full of self-righteous obnoxiousness. It's amazing to me that in an era of seemingly open-minded tolerance of everyone's beliefs, there is pretty much zero tolerance for non-belief. It's OK if I don't believe that Jesus Christ is my personal Lord and Savior, just as long as there's SOMEONE in there to take his place. Whatever. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not decrying all religions or the people who practice them. Quite the opposite. I truly admire those people who can see something beyond this world and can find solace or take comfort in the knowledge that some higher power is looking out after them. Me? I tend to think that we're alone in this plane and should be good simply because it's the right thing to do, not because we'll be sentenced to eternal damnation if we don't. I believe in balance – do unto others, what goes around comes around – that kind of thing. Something like karma, I guess, although I must admit to having done no real research on the topic, so please, Internet, do not bombard me with a ton of email about how my perverted views of your assigned faith have caused you great personal discord and you felt there was no other way to assuage that discord than to send me an all caps missive directing me to go die a thousand deaths, OK? Unless you want it posted here for me to mock your grammar and spelling errors, which I will do in a heartbeat because usually that stuff makes for way more interesting reading than 95% of what I write myself.
So my version of karma goes like this: if you go around acting like an ass to everybody, at some point you're bound to get shit on. If you're basically a good person, who usually does the right thing, doesn't kick anybody when they're down, always takes the high road…well, there's a pretty good chance you'll just get run over by some asshole down the line, but at least you'll be able to sleep at night. That's where I am. I'm sleeping at night. I'm getting screwed over day after day, but at least I can look myself in the mirror, and I'm OK with that. I refuse to be an asshole just to get more stuff, which is basically all a lot of success comes down to for the majority of the world – having more stuff than everybody else. Or having nicer stuff. I'm happy with the stuff I've got. It may not be as good as someone else's, but I didn't have to screw anyone over to get it.
At this point, you're probably wondering where I'm going with this. I'm a little short on time at the moment, otherwise I'd lay the whole sordid story out for you right now. For the mean time, I ask that you please bear with me and look at this as a primer, if you will, a little glimpse into my ideology so that you can better understand and appreciate what my current situation is. Because if I don't get to vent by writing about it here, I may just lose my shit and kill someone. God only knows what that would do to my karma.
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