I gave in… It cost me $50.88 with tax to pay for the year (the cheaper option) to bring you a few more photos… Of course, I’d have a lot more space if I could figure out which of the doubles I have that I used and which I didn’t. When I get motivated, I may do that…

So this was from my 50th birthday bash… I was on the dance floor (alone at the time), taking a selfie video, just dancing in a circle while singing to the song playing, “More, More More” by Andrea True Connection, wearing my glittery fedora and beads (I had difficulty seeing through the LED ladder shades I also got for party favors) and the pixie lights my friend (we’ll call her Jamie) strung on me. I was still fairly drunk on the bottle of Moët & Chandon I bought for myself and my mother’s boyfriend just sat watching me, shaking his head as he watched me look like the silly asshole I was being. But I had a blast! Whether I was by myself or with Jade twirling me around the floor, with Morticia and sometimes my mother joining in, I had the absolute best time! But… I learned a valuable lesson… If you party like you’re in your 20s when you’re 50, it takes at least a week to fully recuperate. I was beat! But it was well worth it!

So I decided to do a few things for myself in the past few months because, hey, life is short and more of my life is behind me than ahead of me now… One thing I’ve always wanted was a grandfather clock, but even the cheap ones that the bargain outlet would get in were $2000! So when I saw this stunning beauty on Facebook for $450, I jumped on it! Now, supposedly, the only thing wrong was that it didn’t keep time correctly (but I have a relative that works on watched who said he could try to look at it). So I got a moving box truck and some muscle and brought it home. We were really careful, but I think we may have messed something up. It chimes, that much I’ve gotten it to do at least. But I can’t keep the pendulum swinging. I think I may have wound it too tightly… It’s definitely level as I got a level to make sure of that. So that’s the only thing I can think of. At first it wouldn’t chime because I had it wound too tightly, but now it chimes just fine. But the weight that controls the pendulum hasn’t dropped because I can’t keep it going. I think I may need to just sit for hours and manually swing it until it starts dropping for it to go on it’s own. If I need it repaired, it’ll still cost less than a new one anyway…

I also decided to resume my guitar lessons recently… I had put them on hold, partly due to financial reasons, partly due to my mother having a heart attack, having a triple bypass and, consequently, needing my assistance when she first came home. She only needed me for that first week before she felt comfortable doing basic care and other light things on her own, but still… I suppose I felt I should be available should she need me, seeing as how the “good daughter”, the nurse practitioner who works from home and can take time off whenever she wants, couldn’t be bothered to take time off to help care for her own mother. No, that was left to me, the youngest child who was only a nurse’s aid for a few years, the child who was neglected growing up in favor of her sister and quite bitter about it. But someone had to look after her, so I waited. It’s been almost two years, she’s doing fine, so time for me and Constantine to jam once again!

But not everything has been sunshine, lollipops and unicorn farts these past few months…

My already strained relationship with Morticia has gotten that much worse… I did something to help her and, though everyone seems to think I did this because I’m a kind, caring person, I really didn’t. I don’t know why everyone, including my psychologist, still doesn’t get it. Maybe it’s because it’s easier for them to ignore it, but I am a sociopath. I don’t mean that figuratively, I mean that quite literally. Oh, not to the degree as some. But I don’t feel sympathy or empathy, I don’t understand those emotions except by definition. I manipulate people when I want to get my own way and I don’t feel bad about it. And if I do something nice for something nice for someone, it’s always because it benefits me. That’s the only reason I did what I did for Morticia…

Morticia was in a state of major financial hardship. Not surprising; she’s terrible with money and has been overspent every month for years. She’s borrowed a lot of money from a lot of people (and hasn’t always paid them back or done so in a timely fashion) and was still overspent and never able to catch up. I could have let her drown, listened to her sobbing to me for hours every single fucking day. But that’s not good for my mental health, now, is it? No it’s not… I was in a relatively stable enough position to loan her $2000 to get a used car. One of her family members then decided to chip in and sent me $500 towards the payments Morticia has to make every month. Part of that I used to pay for the tax, title and plate transfer. Part I used to pay off what she owed on her storage unit so she could get in there to clean it out and finally get rid of that bill. The rest I used to help her start up a better internet service and save $100 a month from the one she had. So the money I loaned her didn’t come without strings. It came with a lesson…

The problem with Morticia is that you can’t teach her shit… Oh, she was incredibly grateful at first. But, as time went on, she didn’t seem to like being told, “You can’t afford that,” or “You can’t afford to be spending money on things like that right now,” or “If you can’t afford your bills, you shouldn’t be buying booze”… Fucking alcoholic… God forbid, don’t call her that, though… It wasn’t long before she began developing a major attitude and getting nasty with me about everything that had to do with getting that storage unit cleaned out in time and making sure she would have that first payment (which I was nice enough to give her almost two months grace to get her shit together to be assured she’d be able to handle the $125 a month). And it literally baffles me what in the blue fuck makes her think she has the right to talk to me that way? I didn’t have to help her and, financially, I shouldn’t have.

Yikes, I’m showing my ugly mug a lot today… But there was a reason for this one (and it’s not to show my ripped up siding, thank you stormy weather). I found this amazing shirt at the flea market! Good old Buffalo Bill…

Let me tell you something, there are days Morticia pisses me off so bad, I want to toss her ass down in a hole and send her down a basket with a bottle of Jergen’s on a string and tell her the very thing printed on my shirt… I’m just feeling like she thinks that she’s the one in a position of power, here, and she’s abusing it every fucking chance she gets. Absolute power corrupts, absolutely… But the thing is, she’s not the one in the position of power. That would be me… And, as we can see, I don’t want to abuse that power. I didn’t see a need to. I loan you money, I set the payback amount and schedule, you pay me back, it’s all good. I don’t need to lord it over you that I did you a solid, especially since I did it for myself, really… But this attitude problem… This is something I absolutely will not tolerate. Nor should I! For someone who is forever telling me they were raised to see the good in everyone and believes everyone is good in some ways, she certainly doesn’t live according to how she sees other people… I learned over the years that people, for the most part, are shit… And if you don’t want me to think that, deep down, you’re inherently a piece of shit like everyone else, you need to prove yourself to me. It’s fun growing up around nothing but assholes, isn’t it…?

I’ve also taken notice to the fact that she doesn’t seem to care that, right now, I could really use that $2000 I loaned her to make my life a lot easier at the moment… Will I lose everything without it? No, not exactly… But I recently had to call in a plumber because I had a leak in my dining room. He couldn’t find the source no matter how hard he tried (and he was here for hours) so I was to leave the ceiling open until the end of the month. If there were no more leaks, it would be safe to seal the hole he’d cut. This past weekend, I had a waterfall come running from that hole and I had to call him again. Now I have two holes in my ceiling. Where he thought the leak was coming from, it wasn’t coming from. So I shelled out $600 for the work he did and I’m still not certain the issue is resolved with the mystery leak. And the mortgage is due soon… I mentioned that to Morticia, as if saying, “Hint, hint, that $2000 would come in handy right now, seeing as how I have bills to pay and now a plumbing disaster…” All she could say was $600 for the work he did wasn’t bad… Does she think I’m fucking made of money?! Because I’m not and I know that she’s aware of this. Yet she’s so empathetic and sympathetic towards everyone on the face of the planet, except in this instance. It’s because I think she has no intention of paying that money back at all.

I’ve been very depressed lately… I feel like everything is falling down around me and there’s little I can do to stop it. Well… I’m sure there is something I can do about this Morticia situation, aside from flipping shit on her dumb ass, but I have to be smart about it. And right now, my brain isn’t functioning well enough to do that.

I got more bad news from my plethora of doctors yet again… So my osteoporosis, emphysema and now the beginning of aortic stenosis are all caused by my premature aging from losing my ovaries so young. Apparently you don’t see aortic stenosis until people are 70. Lucky me… And I have to start pulmonary therapy (like physical therapy) for my lungs. Good times… I’m feeling so down and sorry for myself, I can’t think about how to deal with Morticia right now… I need a vacation from reality, that’s what I really need…