If You Like Piña Coladas…

Hello, dear readers!

So as I was cleaning out some cupboards and drawers over the weekend, I found this picture I had no idea I had… It was rather odd that I should happen to find this picture right after my last entry where I made mention that I wasn’t the same girl I was 30 years ago… because this picture was taken 29 years ago when I was about 23… And I wish I hadn’t…

Look how thin I was! And how nice my hair was! Wow… You know, until the last year and a half, I was still relatively thin. I’m not so delusional that I thought I’d stay super thin and taut as I grew older (especially after going through menopause so young). It’s just that I’m still currently having those weight gain issues the doctors are ignoring. I don’t even recognize my own face anymore… So seeing this picture, the way I’ve looked until this all started, is really depressing. And it’s made me miss those puppy slippers… I’ve never successfully found another pair as comfy.

And, you know, it’s not as if I haven’t been depressed, stressed and anxious enough lately…

I’ve never been concerned about politics or the state of the country. Hey, you’ll have things under any administration that suck, why stress yourself, right…? But the culmination of events over the year have been more than a little concerning and have caused me to actually give the fucks I thought I had no more of to give.

I don’t care which side you lean towards, I really don’t. To each his own… But when the current leader of the country is abusing power, using hate speech, threatening to jail or sue people who oppose his ideas, bullying people into submission when they use their right of freedom of speech just because it rubs him the wrong way, you have a major problem! I don’t care which side you’re on, you can’t ignore the fact that having this kind of behavior is going to be our downfall.

Just hear me out for a moment…

There’s a lot of people out there, all of them listening intently, to the things being said. The problem is, a lot of people aren’t listening to what is not being said. All people are hearing is what they want to hear and, more importantly, what he wants you to hear. He literally uses what people are concerned about, the things they’d like to see happening, and uses it to his advantage. So now he’s got you listening and paying attention, which is exactly what he wants. He’s manipulating you into believing everything he says to the point that you’d follow him anywhere…

And this is, by far, not a new tactic. It’s actually an old one, proven time and time again to work. It starts with promises of making a nation great again. Then it moves on to creating a feeling of unease and hatred against a certain group or groups of people in an attempt to weed them out, claiming they are what’s bringing the nation down. Then those people are bounced out, put in special holding areas with deplorable conditions. And if you speak out against the ideals being foisted upon you…? You are effectively silenced one way or another. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it…? If it doesn’t, you either need to study up on your history or you’re one of many who will blindly follow a false god…

Look, I don’t really give two hoots and a rat’s happy ass what political party you identify with or consider yourself. What’s going on today has nothing to do with political affiliation and has everything to do with the fact that we’re getting to the point of allowing one man to have absolute power over us all.

Last time I checked, our forefathers founded this nation to avoid just that…

And I’m not the only one experiencing stress, anxiety and uncertainty over current events and state of the nation. I’d say most people I’ve talked to are feeling much the same as myself. Except my mom’s boyfriend… But he’s a narcissist that’s a wannabe Rambo, some vigilante for… Well, I have no idea what he’s for anymore, I’ve learned to tune him out over the past 40 years that I’ve had the displeasure of knowing him. But I digress…

The point is, no one, no individual person, no matter how “good” their intentions seem to be, should be given absolute power over anyone or anything. No one person should be followed so blindly and without question. The moment that starts is the moment you start the ball in motion and will, inevitably, wake up one morning to find all your freedoms gone. And by then it’s too late… That’s the “Bottom Line”…

So with all this depression, stress and anxiety I’ve been experiencing , it’s become more and more evident that I need an escape…

Does the title of this entry make sense now…? No, because you’re not an old fart like me, you say? The title of that particular song is “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”. Bet some of you didn’t know that… No reason you should, actually, unless you are an old fart like me. And even then you may not know… I once went to a record store (that sold vinyl) and found a Harper’s Bizarre album. An employee had been speaking with me at the time. He was about ten years my senior, so imagine my surprise when I said, “Damn, it doesn’t have ‘The 59th Street Bridge Song’ on it”, and he looked at me as if I was speaking a foreign language. He had no idea what song I was talking about until I said he might know if I said, “Feelin’ Groovy”. As soon as I said that, recognition flooded his face and he knew exactly which song.

See…? Last song on side one…

And they are, by far, not the only group who had to add to their song titles because people didn’t recognize the song by the actual title. As you now know, Rupert Holmes did the same with “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)” and U2 did it with their song “Pride (In The Name Of Love)”.

Not surprising that U2 changed the title… He only mentions the word “pride” once during the entire song. The most prominent lyrics are, “In the name of love”. And that was the case with Harper’s Bizarre as well. Nowhere in the song do they mention the “59th Street Bridge”. But they do sing the phrase “feelin’ groovy” over and over again. It really makes you wonder why they do things like that… I’m sure they’re aware that people aren’t going to know what song they’re looking for if the title doesn’t reflect anything sung in it. So why not put the most prominent phrase in the title right off the fucking bat…?! It can be frustrating…

The point to all this is that I have been in dire need of some sort of escape from all these ill feelings I have for a long time…

I suppose that was one reason why I started collecting Labubu (or in my case, Lafufu), to give myself something to fixate on and use as an escape.

This series in particular is one I was really fixated on… There are six in total plus one secret one. They’re all so bright and colorful, I just had to have them all! So there I was, hitting up any and every one of the local gas station/convenience stores that had them in an attempt to get every single color that was shown on the box. I spent so much money… So much money… I have about half a dozen green ones, currently, and about as many of the secret ones. And all of this in a vain attempt to get the last color I needed. It got to the point that the stores didn’t have this series anymore. But, over the weekend, I found one store that still had two of them left. I was hoping like hell to get the last one I needed. The first one I opened was green… Again… The second one was finally the red one I needed! I was so happy!

But now that one fixation/obsession is finished, I’m finding myself without an escape…

So enter my old escape, Animal Crossing…

Now, I started this game over five years ago when it was released. And in all those years, I never restarted it to get a new island to work with. I have so much stuff I’ve acquired, currency I’ve saved… And I love my current line-up of villagers. I don’t want to lose that but I’m just not happy with the look of my island. I’ve been struggling with whether or not I wanted to level my island (make it one flat level with no water) for some time, but I didn’t have the room or the funds to move things around. I have funds, currently, but I still have no space to do this. Regardless, I’ve decided I’m going to change things up anyway. Why not, I’ve been wanting a change for a long time and I really need that escape more now than I did when the game was released.

And, you know… I could knock back.a bunch of these… Because I like piña coladas… and getting caught in the rain… And I’m not into yoga and have half a brain…

That was so bad; I know. And I apologize to all of you for getting that song stuck in your head, especially if you don’t like it. Ear worms are painful sometimes…

Well, dear readers, I’m off. I have an island to flatten and rebuild, villagers to talk to, stuff to collect… I swear, this game can turn into a hoarder’s dream. All the stuff you can dream of keeping that doesn’t require real life space. Can’t beat that, can you? I know I can’t! But it didn’t stop me from making my game house look just as cluttered with furniture and shit like my real house, hahahaa!

Okay, I need to skate after that whole thing…

I Need To Be A De-Motivational Speaker…

Brain… something I was seriously lacking this morning…

Last night, I took my glasses off to play this game on my phone I’m currently obsessed with. I always take them off to read or do shit on my phone because I don’t need them for reading, just distance. But, right before I laid down to go to sleep, I realized I didn’t remember putting my glasses where I usually do. I didn’t think much of it, figuring I’d just had a brain fart and forgotten. But you know what? Turns out you need a brain to have a brain fart! Hahahaa… Anyway, this morning I woke up and, when I reached for my glasses, they weren’t where I usually put them. Okay, so it wasn’t that I forgot if I put them down in the normal spot. But I had no idea where I did set them down. I literally ripped apart everything, and I do mean everything, in every place I had been the night before and where I knew I’d done things. I found nothing… I looked for about an hour, beginning to wish that Apple made air tags for glasses (maybe I should suggest it, but I want royalties). I finally located them after all the searching… They were lost inside my blanket. And I’d already looked there… What the fuck…

So after giving me a week to recuperate, my neighbor across the street, I’ll call her Ronnie, came to see if I wanted to go for a walk again. I wasn’t really feeling it, but it was a nice night and I know I have to exercise more. I told her yes, but after dinner because she came right as I was getting ready to eat.

I was better prepared this time… I had one of those cheap, drawstring backpacks that I put my phone, a drink and some tissues (for my allergies) into, I wore comfy clothes and a good pair of sneakers. Ronnie even brought me a water for the trip! I felt it was going to be a good walk. I was actually prepared and dressed appropriately… And I promised myself, this time I was only doing one or two laps. I haven’t exercised much (okay, not really at all) in a very long time and jumping right into three laps (which is about three miles) was too much for my first walk. So Ronnie and I began our journey. We got into such a good conversation that I ended up doing three laps again before I felt so horrible that I didn’t care how good our conversation was, I said “fuck it” and tapped out. It was a call made too late; the image was already done. I was hurting when I came back in the house already. I’m sure you can tell that, the next morning, my right hip and both feet hurt so fucking bad I could hardly walk again. That was just the worst… My back, my arms… So much hurt…

I know, some of you are laughing at me… I’d laugh at myself if I didn’t hurt so badly…

I realize that I have this horrible personality of going to extremes… When I lost my gall bladder and couldn’t digest fatty and fried foods, I cut them out completely. When I was diagnosed with GERD, I completely cut out all acidic food and drink (except coffee), soda and spicy foods. When they put me on cholesterol meds because my levels were too high, I completely changed my diet. Although there was little I could do because, you know, I’d already had to cut so much out of my diet already. I was actually a really healthy eater that would eat occasional junk like pizza and chips. But after I cut out all those other things, I couldn’t figure out how my cholesterol was high so I didn’t know what they wanted me to cut out… But I went super healthy after that and cut out anything I thought could be the issue. My diet was very boring after that… I tend to do things like this, when I need to do things for my health. I go to such extremes that I’m doing a complete 360 every time I need to change something in my life. Sadly, that doesn’t work with exercise…

Thankfully, I did have enough brains before I came in the house that night to tell Ronnie to give me a few days to recuperate before hitting me up for another walk. I’m going to need it…

As luck would have it, the gel pens I ordered showed up that night. Deliveries for me are always the very end of the day despite other people getting theirs early. Go figure… Anyway, last night, I got a Temu delivery! Say what you will about them, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen washi tape as gorgeous as the ones I find on Temu. Some people complain because the quality “isn’t very good”… Let me tell you something, I have some washi tape that I’ve spent a pretty penny on that don’t stick for shit… The Temu ones stick about as good as the other ones. And they’re a great price! All these came in a really nice box at a fraction of the price of other big sets. I have quite a bit of washi tape I got from Temu and they’re all amazing!

And it couldn’t have come at a better time… With how bad I’m hurting, I’m not going to be up and about much. The problem is that I get bored when I’m forced to rest. When I feel fine, I can’t get my lazy ass up, but when I need to rest I get bored, hahahaa… Isn’t that ironic… I’m glad my new pens and the washi tape came now. Hopefully I’ll be inspired to create some art that will keep me occupied for a while so I can rest properly.

But putting myself in so much pain wasn’t enough… That night, insult was added to injury…

I had to run to the drug store that evening after my walk to pick up a few things I’d forgotten. That was fun… In the short, ten minute drive, I had stiffened up so much that I had to gimp my way into the store. That was fast, right? Yeah it was… I’m not sure why I’m surprised. I’d taken ibuprofen before I went for my walk and it did fuck all nothing, so why would I be surprised that I stiffened up so fast..?

In any case, after I was done gimping around the store and paid for my stuff, I headed home. Just as I’d gotten in the driveway, a song came on I haven’t herd in probably about 30 years… It was “Heaven” by Warrant! I was hit with such a wave of nostalgia that I sat in the car in the driveway to listen to it, singing at the top of my lungs. I hadn’t forgotten one word after all those years… It was so nice hearing it on the radio again, but… the station I was listening to was the classic rock station… Oof, that hit hard. That song came out I think it was my junior year in high school. Some of the best years of my life, now brought to you by the classic rock station… But I started to think about other tunes I was feeling nostalgic for and Ratt came to mind. This is from my favorite of their albums. It was released when I was thirteen. I feel so old…

And you know I was totally singing “Way Cool Jr.” at the top of my lungs while I was writing this, hahahaa! Of course I was; it’s an amazing song! Seriously, you guys need to start taking a listen to all these screen shots from my iTunes… Some of the stuff I listen to is a bit weird, but I promise you’ll find some amazing old song you fancy.

I took notice, when I was downloading stuff I listened to in high school, that I was actually a bit of a poseur back then… If you weren’t listening to hip hop/pop/rap, you were listening to hard rock/heavy metal. That was what the record companies were selling at that time. Now… I was always someone who listened to whatever I found that spoke to me. I didn’t care what genre it was or how old it was; I listened to it all. And I had a particular penchant for hard rock with 70s and early 80s music (early Ratt, early Motley Crue, Quiet Riot, etc) anyway, but when I look back, I went through high school listening to this kind of music pretty much exclusively. I’m finding that odd now as I never cared if people looked at me weird for my musical tastes. Odd…

The only music I didn’t care for in that era was what I call “heavy metal vomit music”. You know the kind, where they sound as if they’re belching into a microphone… The best example I can give is Slayer, I loathed them and still do.

Yeah well… Who I am now is a far cry from that hard rocking girl with the teased hair, heavy makeup, leather fringed jacket and ripped up jeans.

Now I’m a crazy old lady who collects creepy, so ugly they’re cute dolls and has taken to buying clothes for them so I can dress them up in adorable little outfits…

Then I wonder why the fuck I feel so old sometimes… I mean, I always collected toys/weird dolls, that’s not unusual. But wanting to buy little outfits to dress them up in?! Who the fuck even am I anymore?! That’s a really good question… but it’s not exactly accurate. I do know who I am. It’s just that, when I think about the person I was over 30 years ago, it just makes me realize that, somewhere deep down, I’m still that 16 year old girl who was rocking out, living free and enjoying life. The down side is that I’m not physically that girl anymore. The body and mind don’t match anymore… I suppose that’s why I periodically listen to some of those old tunes so I can kind of reconnect to the vibrant, free spirit.

In other news…

My oldest cat, Sebastian, hasn’t been doing well the last several months… He turned 14 in March and he’s been on a very steady downhill spiral ever since. He’s gotten so thin that you can feel every bone in his spine. I don’t like to pick him up anymore because of that and because he feels so frail. He’s also gotten really confused… Sometimes, if you can get him to look at you when you call, he’ll do this weird thing where he’ll stare in your general direction with these crazy eyes, tilt his head and stare either at a spot right next to you or stare at you in this unsettling way as if he’s looking through you. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to tell him, “Stop staring at me like the cat from Pet Sematary; it’s fucking creepy!” No lie, he does…

I’m having a really hard time making the call that I know needs to be made. He has days when he’s really lucid and getting around like he always did. But those moments are becoming few and far between and he cries most day…

Oh lookie, I finished my drawing…

Okay, I could have done a much better job on the coloring. I just wasn’t feeling it and I wasn’t feeling the whole fucking around with Prismacolor sticks thing… Don’t get me wrong; I love them and the way they look. The problem is how hard you actually need to use such a soft lead to get that painted effect. And when you do, you always have to go over the outlines again (not easily) because the sticks cover the outline entirely too much, especially with light colors. I didn’t feel like dealing with that shit…

Are you seeing the pattern, here…? I can’t be consistent in my exercising, I procrastinate about what to do with my cat, I was too lazy to bother with all the extra work that using Prismacolor Sticks to their potential would have given me… I’ve lost all motivation.

I swear, I’d make the perfect de-motivational speaker. You don’t have to give me a good pitch for me to give you a hundred different reasons why you should put off today what you can do tomorrow. Or never…

Somehow I don’t see there being an overwhelming need for that particular service I can provide, hahahaa…

The Amazing Jackie Blue…

Hello, dear readers! Greetings from my crappy deck where I chill and grill, haha!

Perhaps I should change the name of this entry to “The Dumb Ass Jackie Blue”… Over the weekend, my neighbor asked me if I wanted to join her in a walk around the block, which is, disturbingly, a mile… I agreed, wanting to try and lose some of this weight I’ve got going on. Let me tell you… I am severely out of shape. I was having a tough time breathing on slight inclines but, in all fairness, it being ragweed season doesn’t help. Anyway, we did our lap, enjoying each other’s company. When we arrived back at our homes, she asked if I wanted to go around again. I wasn’t feeling great, but I said sure. By the end of lap two, I was feeling pretty dead. She asked for lap three and I just groaned, to which she told me I could do it. Okay, lap three and by then I really was dead… But she cheered me on so I would be proud of myself and I was. That was a three mile walk! But the next day, I wasn’t so proud… It’s been three days and I’m still in a lot of pain walking around the house. I was dumb…

“Rip and Tear”… What I did to my joints and muscles on that walk, haha!

No, seriously… It’s been three days and I hurt so bad when I get up that I can hardly move. My hips feel better, but my feet… They feel absolutely horrible! I mean it’s so bad that I considered going to a podiatrist to find out what the fuck I did! Aside from wearing the wrong shoes for the walk (as I only planned on a mile, not three). The problem with any exercise, aside from the fact that I shouldn’t overdo it when it’s a foreign concept to my body, is that I have to be careful no matter what I’m doing, really. Osteoporosis is no joke… especially when you’ve already had a few fractures in your spine. Everything I would do, I have to make sure it’s not going to be hard on any part of my body that is affected by it. It’s a pain, figuratively and literally…

What I’m supposed to be doing are core building exercises. That’s fine for my spine, but what about my hips and legs? I guess they don’t care about those… I don’t really think they care about what I do, period. I’ve asked them so many times to give me examples of core building exercises because I don’t know what the fuck they are. Apparently, neither do the doctors that tell me that. They can’t even name one. They spit and sputter before telling me to look some up online. That’s helpful… not…

Last week, I went to a different GP for a second opinion for things and because I need a new doctor. My current one is only physically in the office once a week… Anyway, I went back to a doctor I had decades ago before I found one that was more convenient. So I was telling him what was going on and, like every other doctor, I got the, “You need to get up and move,” thing. He looked at me skeptically when I said “no, I eat healthy”, “no, I don’t eat a lot of carbs and sugar”, “no, I don’t overeat”. Unlike my fat fucking slob of a cat, here… He totally blew off the other issues I’m having because, “All your levels are fine except your cortisol.” I suppose that means nothing, right? He asked if I was depressed… Why do I even fill out the paperwork if you’re not going to fucking look at it…?! I put down I was diagnosed as bipolar! But the most annoying was what I’ve been dealing with for years… He didn’t believe I had osteoporosis or fractures in my spine because I was “too young”. Even after I told him I went through menopause (18 years ago next month), he still didn’t believe me until I told him to access my records. He found the DEXA scan and told me I definitely had osteoporosis… No, you don’t say…

However, he did order a sleep study, something that other doctors have recommended. I don’t sleep well at night which is why they think I’m tired during the day. But they seem to think I have sleep apnea or some shit… I’m almost certain it’s not that. I’ve been dreaming an awful lot lately (like the last several months), more than usual. That’s what wakes me up at night, like several times a night every single night. So I told the doctor this and he looked at me weird, like people dreaming that much and remembering them isn’t normal… Wow, what a concept, a bipolar brain not being normal! But in all seriousness, I’ve been like this my whole life. Sometimes it’s not so bad, but when I’m stressed it can get a lot worse. Honestly, I think my current pattern is the worst I’ve ever had this issue… But… Well, you know how gaslighting works, right? Of course you do. So the doctor tells me I should exhaust myself during the day so I sleep at night. I tried that already and told him as much. I told him it didn’t help, I still kept waking up because of these annoying dreams. Again he looked at me skeptically, as if I wasn’t telling the truth. Why would I lie about this shit?! Even if I had Munchausen’s (which I don’t), why would I lie about these things?! The only things I get from telling people I have osteoporosis is a bunch of shit about taking calcium and doing core strengthening. And if I tell them I’m having trouble sleeping, I get sedatives. I never get or want sympathy.

In all honesty, I think a lot of my distress and sleepless nights come from the current state of the country right now. I grow so tired of hearing all the shit going on right now, I’m tired of this shit ass economy, I’m really tired of the bullies who support the current goings on and having stupid loudly fall out every time they open their mouths… or fall out onto the computer keys as they’re too cowardly to say these things in public to people’s faces… And I’m really tired of them thinking that getting loud and insulting gets their point across. Try gaining several dozen more IQ points so you can argue your point properly, then maybe I’ll listen to you… I’ve stopped talking to a lot of my friends because this is how they are as well. I just can’t handle these one sided conversations. I don’t dare try to reason with them or it becomes an annoying battle.

But I did get a few moments of peace…

I was watching a YouTube review on some art products, one of which was this amazing mechanical pencil that turns the lead as you draw or write so your lead always stays the same shape. I decided to try it out yesterday. I drew a few things that were kind of meh, just sketchy doodles (or my version of doodles anyway). All of a sudden, I got this idea in my head to draw one of my original characters. I haven’t drawn her in a very long time, haven’t worked on or looked at the storyboard I was working on for several years. But I thought what the hell and decided to give it a go. That’s how I came up with this… I plan on inking it soon because it came out so nice. I was afraid I’d forgotten how to draw her. I’m so glad I didn’t!

That’s the thing… When I get into that zone when I’m working, I lose all track of time and all problems are gone from my mind while I’m doing it. It’s a zen thing for me, sort of… The problem is, I can’t exactly draw when I’m sleeping, so there’s no way to shut my brain off. Actually, I’ve had art wake me up as well. Some idea will pop in my head in the middle of the night and I have to get up and sketch it out quickly before going back to sleep so I don’t forget what the fuck it was I had in mind. But, for the most part, art has been a huge help to me when I need to sit back and chill for a bit.

Or, you know… I could buy little clothes and dress up my fake ass Labubu… Which I did…

Hey, I look at it this way… No matter what it is or how stupid and goofy it seems, if it keeps me happy and stress free, so be it! Me keeping my sanity is worth people looking at me like I’m completely retarded.

So go now, dear readers, go find your zen, your happy place! I’m going for a hot bath to relax my aches and pains and plan never to take walks like that again…

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