You Mean You Forgot Cranberries, Too?

“In that line is that guy I’ve been chasing all year..”

Anyone else know that song by The Waitresses? You should… Pretty much every year they play it for a good month on every radio station in the US.

When I was in my early 20s, I worked as a secretary for a small computer company (this was in the mid 1990s). They had just hired a new secretary, a bit older than me. She was really sweet… but she was a bit weird when it came to music. One day, an Al Stewart song came on the radio, “The Year Of The Cat.” She told me she didn’t like that song because she hated the way he pronounced the word cat… What the fuck?! And if that’s not bad enough, when Christmas came and they started playing “Christmas Wrapping”, she told me she hated the song because she hated the line, “You mean you forgot cranberries, too”… Who the fuck judges a song based on how a word is pronounced or one goofy ass line?! Well, apparently she did. I think about her every year when I hear this song and laugh at that memory.

I know… That was totally random and meaningless. But it’s been a part of Christmas for me ever since that day…

Oh Christmas tree… You are a pain to decorate…

I’ve been really busy since Thanksgiving, which is part of the reason I haven’t written a blog entry in quite some time.

The house won’t decorate itself, ya know… It takes a long time to drag all the shit up out of the basement, decide what I want to put up and what I don’t, what I have room for and what I don’t… I’m sorry to say, I didn’t have room for all my nutcrackers this year. I also didn’t have room for my beloved music box that plays my favorite, “White Christmas”… It was enough to get the damn tree together. And even though nothing has changed in this area from last year, I swear this fucking tree took up more room than it did before (not counting presents). I love my tree, I really do… I bought one of those Balsam Hills trees several years back (the midpoint realistic ones) and I’m so glad I did. It’s easy to put up and it’s beautiful. But… it’s so big it literally swallows lights, garland, ornaments… What you don’t see is that the part of the tree facing the corner has no ornaments. It took 1100 merry midget lights to cover this fucking thing… And it takes forever for me to put the ornaments on. I’m so fucking picky, it takes hours for me to finish because I’m always looking to find the perfect spot for each ornament. Is the look worth it…? Meh… I guess that depends on how you look at it…

Another reason I haven’t written a post in a long time is because I’ve been suffering from this horrible, deep rooted depression…

I won’t lie, part of that is due to this fucking weight gain… I had an appointment with my cardiologist at the beginning of the month and I don’t even want to tell you what the scale said. I had already had an emotional breakdown before I went and knowing that number just made it so much worse… But at least he listened to me, which is not as much as I can say about my other doctors. Granted, as he told me, he’s not a nutritionalist, but he did make some suggestions as to what the issue might be. Did you know you can gain weight if you’re not eating enough protein despite how well you eat? Yeah, I didn’t, either… So his suggestion was to eat a certain amount of lean protein (which is the only kind I do eat) with my salads and eat breakfast because I don’t.

Despite how it might sound, I don’t drink often… Once in a while I like a glass of wine with dinner and on veery special occasions (like New Year’s Eve) I can pound it down with the best of them. What do you expect? I’m Gen X, we pretty much grew up being hammered, hahahaa!

I know they say alcohol is a depressant, but I’ve always found it makes me slap happy. I’m not surprised… I’m the same way with meds that should make you dopey; they hop me up like I’m on speed. And some wine helps me get through some rough times, like having to deal with my sister’s off-putting boyfriend, my mother and her boyfriend and the million other stresses that come with the holidays. Don’t lie, I know some of you drink your way through the holidays, too. You kind of need to in order to deal with your family, haha! Who among us doesn’t have some annoying, overbearing relative they just want to throat punch at the dinner table…? And where there are obnoxious relative, there’s a nice Cabernet or Chardonnay to help us get through. And for those really annoying relatives, there’s a bottle of Jim Beam and some ice cubes in the freezer.

Listen… I don’t promote or condone alcoholism… However, I do endorse saving what little of your sanity you have left during the Christmas season. Decorating, shopping in crowed stores, dealing with the public, wrapping… You deserve a break, at least from those relatives. right?

There are some nuts I’d like to crack about now…

Speaking of presents…

My sister is so hard to buy for… She’s a nurse practitioner and her boyfriend is a doctor. Whatever she wants, she just buys herself. She doesn’t need anything or want anything. And she has horrible taste…

So every year, I go out and try to find the absolute perfect gift to suit her, which you’ll never see displayed in her house anyway because the boyfriend seems very particular about those things (yeah, he’s an ass like that). One year I bought her a journal that the cover was a 3D Han Solo frozen in carbonite (she’s a Star Wars fan and loves Harrison Ford). I figured she’d at least find it useful. Another year, I made her an abstract painting. I’d never done one before, but that’s what she has in her house and she’s never hung up my landscapes where people can see them, just those fugly ass abstract pieces of shit. One year I got her a gel candle in a wine glass (she likes wine) that actually smelled like wine. I thought maybe she’d like that but nope… What a pain…

This year, my mom had bought me two nutcrackers to paint (because she knows I love to do that). One is this ceramic guy right here. I know my sister loves the ballet as much as I do, so I thought I’d paint it for her the match the depressing grays with a splash of yellow she has in her house… I had talked to my mom about this idea and she was as concerned as I was as to whether or not I could pull it off. I think I succeeded… Sadly, they didn’t have any more of these to paint one for myself. Oh well…

Not that any of this mattered…

Last week I received some stressing news I didn’t need. I can’t really talk about what’s going on… Just know I’m healthy (just fat). This is another issue that’s a huge stressor, which is not something I need right now. Worse, it’s so bad that I fell to the bottom of the depression pit. I’m down so far that I don’t see light when I look up… This started a few days before Thanksgiving and peaked last week. I went spiraling down faster than you can imagine. I stopped caring, stopped watching Christmas movies and listening to Christmas music. I haven’t even watched The Nutcracker (yes, I bought one of the versions of the ballet). I was seriously considering taking everything down and putting it away because it depresses me more to look at it. I’ve never been so fucking low as I am right now and I hate it.

To add to this depression, I also have the added depression I face most years, Every year, the only thing I really want is a white Christmas. Even if it’s just enough to cover the ground, I want to wake up and see the world blanketed in snow. We actually had some significant snow falls already, but as is usual with the rejected state I live in, it got really warm last week. My yard turned into a swamp from all the melted snow and rain. It was going to be a shit Christmas all around… But today we got a little snow. With how warm it’s going to be, I doubt it will last…

This is the best thing I’ve ever tasted!

But here I sit, laptop on my lap, writing a blog post with a lot of holiday pictures to try and get you, dear readers, as well as myself into the Christmas spirit… Is it working for you? Because it’s not for me…

However, this little gem here just might…

I went to the wine and spirits shop to get a bottle of Moët & Chandon for New Year’s Eve and to get a bottle of wine for my sister’s boyfriend. He’s Jewish, so he doesn’t celebrate Christmas, but I get him a bottle of wine so I can give him something. The best was the first year she was with him and I found a Lego type dreidel that came with a mini figure of a Hasidic Jew, hahahaa! He’s not Hasidic, but he found it funny nonetheless.

Anyway, I couldn’t find the bottle I wanted after walking around the entire store, so I went to ask one of the employees. Turns out he was doing a wine tasting… Hey, free wine is for me! He had four to try and, after I tried this amazing port, I knew I had to have a bottle! From what he told me, they don’t get them in often, so I’ll have to check in every now and again to snag one so I can keep it on hand.

I have yet to crack it open, but I’m thinking I’ll do that tomorrow afternoon…

You may be wondering why I would plan to get hammered so early in the day on Christmas Eve. Well, let me tell you… Every year my mother comes to do Christmas with me Christmas Eve (Christmas Day is reserved for the apparently better daughter). If you’ve been a reader for a while, you know I have a kind of a love/hate (mostly hate) relationship with my mother… She’s an odd woman as anyone who has ever met her will tell you. And if you think I can get through a holiday celebration with her without being sloshed…

Enjoying quality time with my villagers…

Yeah, I didn’t feel I needed to finish that sentiment. You all know what I was getting at…

Despite my being down in the deepest pit of depression and being unable to climb out and bother with this holiday… I do wish all of you, dear readers, the Merriest Christmas and the Happiest New Year. I do hope it’s better than I anticipate mine will be…

And when you sit down to dinner, questioning you judgement when you decided to have said dinner with your crazy family, think of me and have yourself a tall, stiff drink for me; you’re going to need it, hahahaa!

Now stop reading and get your ass to the liquor store before they close up for the holiday… Seriously, why are you still reading this?! Go! Get some alcohol to make Christmas merry and bright as your nose will be!

Happy Holidaze! ❤

For Whom The Bell Tolls…

Well, dear readers… Long time, no write, huh?

I’m sorry to say that I haven’t been feeling very well lately. I’ve been getting a lot of headaches lately and pressure in my skull for some reason. I think it may be from either a really bad sinus infection that moved to my brain (that happened to me once before) or from the arthritis in my neck (as that’s where a lot of this pain starts). It’s been going on for months, slowly getting worse. I finally caved and went to my GP. He didn’t even examine me… After telling him my symptoms, he decided it was a muscular issue and wants to send me for physical therapy. Forget that I told him prior to this conclusion that muscle relaxers didn’t do shit… I’m not sure what’s happened. He used to be a good GP. Now it seems he’s like all the other doctors, out to make a buck with doing the least amount of work possible. I tried going to a different GP to get a second opinion on another matter and that went even worse. I’m beginning to think that there aren’t any descent doctors around me anymore…

I’ve also been incredibly depressed… I’m still having issues with my weight. I’ve been on this, for the most part, no calorie diet (salads with nothing fattening or high in calories) and I’m still gaining!! I haven’t found a doctor yet who believes me when I say I’m not overeating or eating bad things. Even my friends agree I’m not doing these things. So what’s with the weight gain?! I’m so ashamed of myself that I don’t want to leave my house anymore. I was never fat. I was always a skinny twig, except when I was on certain antidepressants. Even then I didn’t gain as much as I have now. So they check the things that make most sense and, when that’s not it, they just give up. I know I’m getting older… I know your metabolism slows… I know menopause is also a factor. But I went through menopause 18 years ago! I would have had this type of weight gain before now! I’m so down on life right now, I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to look up again. Thanks, doctors…

Now this is fat… Haiku is just this amorphous blob of a cat, haha…

Aside from fat shaming my cat, I haven’t really done much. I’ve mostly been sitting here, binge watching shows and movies. Depression is a horrible thing… But it does allow you to catch up on those shows you started and never finished.

I did, however, go grocery shopping for Thanksgiving to get everything I needed. But even that didn’t go well… I didn’t realize one of the bags was incredibly heavy until I went to put it in the back of the car. When I picked it up, I was totally unprepared for that and had to quickly toss it in the car before I dropped it. That was dumb… I ended up pulling a muscle in the lower part of my ribs. Do you know how bad it hurts to pull a muscle there?! If you don’t, let me assure you that it’s incredibly painful and makes it more than uncomfortable to breathe (because of the pain). So I’ve also been lying around to try and allow that muscle to heal. So far it isn’t going very well. Not only that, but since I have osteoporosis, I need to be careful that I don’t break anything.

And when I’m bored with television, I’m spending time in my little Animal Crossing world with my villagers and my best bud, Punchy (the blue cat). Isn’t he adorable? He runs around my island, playing airplane, with that same expression and I can’t help but smile at the cuteness of it all. Believe me, I’ll take anything I can get that makes me smile at this point… If Punchy running around my island is what it takes, so be it. Besides, I wanted to redo some things on my island that weren’t making me happy anymore and things I thought were weird or didn’t make sense (some things just don’t happen in a natural landscape). I also finally decided that I only wanted a few colors of flowers around my island and more of certain flowers than others. I still have a collection of all the types and colors in a garden, but the rest of the island only has a few. That took forever… But there’s a major update in January for the game and I want my island to be at least satisfactory when it gets here.

I do have one thing to look forward to… If it ever gets here…

I happened to have the good fortune of being able to snag two of the latest Labubu series from Pop Mart! How I got to them before they sold out, I have no idea… Anyway, they finally shipped 9 days ago! But here’s where it get’s weird… It got into my neighboring state, to the intake part of their shipping facility, Monday night. It went to the delivery facility Tuesday night… The city it’s in is an hour to an hour and a half by car away from here. Why is it currently not in my hands?! It’s moving slower since it got to the US than it took to move all through China and a plane ride from there to here! Seriously, what the actual fuck?! Are we this inept here that we can’t move packages through a fucking system?! Good heavens! I made it through pretty much all of fucking China and survived a plane ride here! You can’t figure out, two days after you get it in the delivery area, how to get it to my house only a hour or so away?! If I thought I could, I’d drive there and show them how it’s done.

And there are other perks to being depressed and binge watching… You get to return to those deep, philosophical thoughts, like how stupidly the movie Ghost ends. Aside from being so annoying that it ruined “Unchained Melody” for me forever… My mother and I used to argue about the ending. Look, I realize the reason she said “Ditto” when he told her he loved her was reversing the roles (that was how he always responded to her saying it). But it’s not a sweet, romantic gesture to me. This is the last time she’s going to see him, he’s going to ascend to heaven and no more Sam. You would think, since she loved him so much, that she’d want her last words with him to be profound, a declaration of how wonderful he had made her life, something meaningful… Nope, she chooses to say “Ditto”… What the actual fuck… That’s stupider than Titanic when Rose promises Jack she’ll “never let go” before literally letting him go to sink into the ocean. Maybe I shouldn’t be so damned literal…

BBQ with my buddy Punchy, Pekoe, Marshal and Zell

I know, you’re all thinking like my mother on that subject. But it’s always been in my nature to over analyze absolutely everything. It’s not a bad thing per se, but it does kind of ruin the enjoyment the writers/actors/animators wanted me to have. I know this… But the logical side of my brain just can’t let it go without trying to make their reasoning make sense. I obviously fail, but I give it the old college try, hahahaa. I could make an entire entry about tv programs and movies I watched that made no fucking sense. Actually, I did… It was about one of the original Star Trek episodes. If you want to listen to me rant on and on about a paradox, it’s somewhere in my early entries…

But don’t think I haven’t been productive…

You see this? This is a five gallon soup pot full of foulness. That’s cut up pumpkin… Yes, much as I hate/loathe/despise pumpkin pie, I make it every year (for everyone else) and refuse to make it if I don’t have fresh pumpkin, This year I got pumpkins called Blue Hubbard because the guy at the produce place assured me these were the best for pie. They’re so tough you need to cut them open with a saw, but they made the most amazing looking puree! As to how the pie will taste or how the thick seeds they had will roast, that remains to be seen… But yes, I cut up, boil and smoosh it by hand through a ricer. It may be time consuming and sound like a huge waste of time to you, but I assure you, nothing tastes as good (so I’m told) from this labor of love.

Listen… I come from a long line of bakers. My grandfather owned a bakery in my hometown. If I used anything less than fresh pumpkin, I’d be disgracing that lineage, wouldn’t I…?

So to end this rambling about nothing, I’m going to tell you what I’m most thankful for. That’s my baby, Baxter. He’s been there for me and has helped me through a lot of mental issues over the years. He’s loving, patient, devoted… And he’s just too fucking cute! I don’t know where I’d be today if I didn’t have him. He’s my best friend and I can only hope that I’m his as well. He is what I’m most thankful for. How about you? What are you most thankful for? Leave me a comment to let me know!

Have a happy, healthy Thanksgiving!

Break Out The Hoodies!

Hello, dear readers!

And so it’s begun! The season of hoodies, “sweater weather” and brightly colored leaves! I love fall… I get so excited when I see the leaves turning! That’s something that doesn’t happen very frequently anymore… Once upon a time, when I was still a teenager, leaves here would turn gorgeous shades in September already and stick around until they started falling around this time. Now you’re lucky if they change colors at all… Most of the time they just dry up while still green and fall… Isn’t that awful? So when I see something this amazing, I take pictures. A lot of pictures… But how can you resist that gorgeous Bob Ross type scenery when you find it in real life?

Currently my phone is just letters with pictures I took of leaves… That makes me sound like the most boring person on the planet. I should be out there taking pictures of amazing, artistic things! Nope, I’m just taking pictures of fall leaves… I’m not saying that other people don’t do this, but I’m probably the only one who complains that I should be taking more artistic photos…

The sad thing about all this is that I’m not as excited or into any of this as I normally am. There’s just too much shit going on to make me feel anything but depressed… There’s so much crazy, stressful shit going on in the country right now, I can’t bring myself to look at any news right now. And if you don’t believe there’s crazy stuff afoot, just look at this picture. That is a lilac and leaves blooming on my bush, in fucking October!!! Lilacs generally bloom in late April and are usually done blooming in the middle of May. Mine bloom a bit later because the backyard doesn’t get much sun… The leaves that usually fall off around this time fell off before summer was over and are now sprouting again. What the actual fuck?! I’ve talked to other people and found that they’ve had flowers blooming again in their flower beds! In October! That’s so not normal… I know we had an overly warm Indian Summer, but to make plants and flowers bloom again? That’s just weird… Especially because it’s now getting cold. I’m a bit fearful that, when spring comes, my lilac won’t bloom again at all. I hope that’s not the case but I have a bad feeling about it. See…? Climate change is an actual thing! Who knew… Well, most of us knew, to be fair. It’s the government that was telling us it was bullshit. What do you say now, Washington…?!

I didn’t take this picture, someone I know did. Isn’t it great, though?

Anyway… Usually I would have read most of the stories in my “big book o’ Poe”, as I refer to it. But I haven’t read one single story. Halloween is just a few days away and I haven’t read one fucking story. That was always my indulgence in October, to cuddle up with my book and read Poe stories all month. But I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. My depression is getting really bad… I still have no idea why I keep gaining weight even though I’m not eating much and am eating good food, I’ve been having a lot of pain in my lower joints and I feel like everything is just going to shit. I can’t seem to shake this funk, either. No matter what I do, it’s here and I just have to deal with it.

I’m hoping Halloween does something to snap me out of this at least a little. I love Halloween, seeing the kids dressed up so cute. Some of these parents get really creative with their trick-or-treating! One year there was a dad and his little ones all dressed up like Toy Story characters. The punchline is the baby was the alien toy from the claw machine, HA!

I have, at least, been watching horror movies, just as I do any other year. That’s another activity I enjoy, just curling up under a blanket with a hot cup of whatever and watching horror movies. And I’ve seen some stupid ones this year. Normally I have a list of what I watch, but I went rogue this year and watched a lot of movies that I’d never heard of. I’m wishing I didn’t do that because they were so bad!

So… if you’re looking for movies to watch for Halloween, I suggest the Psycho movies, Poltergeist (the only horror movie that scares the living shit out of me), Friday The 13th (they’re all good), A Nightmare on Elm Street (also all good) and pretty much any Stephen King movie. If you want a laugh, go with the classic Arsenic and Old Lace (Cary Grant at his finest) or Love At First Bite (make sure it’s the version with “I Love The Nightlife”). And, of course, The Exorcist…

I know I put The Exorcist in with the comedic films… I think it’s funny when she pukes on the priest, haha!

Anyway… To help battle my depression, I’ve been buying stuff. I know; that’s bad. This is one of my latest purchases! They’re called Cat Looong; this one is the musician. Isn’t she beautiful? I got her out of a blind box and I was hoping that I didn’t get the only one of the group that I didn’t care for. I’m glad I got this one because she was one I really liked! She’s very soft and has the biggest, poofiest tail! But my spending didn’t stop there… I went to that store in the mall near me that actually had real Labubus… Yup, I was stupid and spent $100 just to say that I have one real Labubu. And you know what? I like the fake ones better… They’re bigger and just as soft. Do they have some flaws? Sure, but that makes them quirky! I was disappointed in the real ones… I also bought another Mickey blind box. And the other day, I went out shopping and bought a bunch of new long sleeved shirts. I didn’t have many and the ones I had didn’t fit anymore. Not me trying to justify my spending…

Counter-clockwise: Me, Zell, Marshal, Pekoe and Punchy

For a while, I had my Animal Crossing game to distract me. I was trying to reconstruct my island, as much as I could, anyway, and that kept my mind off of other things that depressed me. But now I’ve done all I can or think I’m capable of pulling off. I don’t want to mess things up. Even if I did, I don’t have the funds (in-game) to do much more. The bad thing is that, now that I’m done, I don’t know what to do. I’m out of things to keep me busy and keep my mind occupied. I also have little to do when I play now… However, my villagers seem happier as you can see. They decided to break out the barbecue and toast marshmallows in the island square. I love this picture so much…

Clock-wise: Wolfgang, Me, Punchy, Marshal and Pekoe

Of course I’ve been making it a point to play Saturday nights… I don’t need to as I already have all the K.K. Slider songs, but my villagers have been so happy that they’re sitting out and listening to him play again. So since they’ve been so into it, I decided to spend time and requesting a lot of songs. It’s been so much fun, to be honest! We wave our little light sticks while K.K. plays whatever tune I’ve asked for and have a mini concert experience! I know it sounds stupid and silly, but just look at those cute faces! Everyone, no matter what they are, getting along and having a great time together! That’s what the game is really about, being close knit with everyone despite what they are and what they look like. It’s a really nice and much needed escape in this world where that’s not really possible, you know? Maybe it’s just me… Anyway, Happy Halloween, dear readers!

I Survived!

Yes, dear readers, I survived an overnight trip with my family! And no, it’s not because I pushed them in front of a moving bus, hahahaa!

Well… the cocktails helped… They were named after my niece, her new husband and their dog. I had one named after the dog and three that were named after my niece. Bourbon, blackberry syrup, Sprite and lime juice. Man, were they tasty! A little too tasty because I was knocking them back like they were fruit juice… Sadly, it apparently wasn’t enough to get me drunk. I was kind of disappointed, but I guess I didn’t really need the alcohol. My mother and Sponge weren’t around me much (or I them) so it was a really nice time! And my niece looked so beautiful… As soon as I saw her in her dress, I started to cry. I didn’t think I would as I’m not that type to cry at weddings. But… she was born right after I turned 18, I held her when she was just a few hours old. And we were always close. I guess that’s why I cried… But not to fear, her new husband is a really good man. I know because he didn’t set my radar off… And she deserves a good man because she’s a sweet girl.I was so proud that day!

And the hors-d’œuvres!

Let me tell you… If I knew dinner was going to be so lackluster, I would have filled up on hors-d’œuvres… I got the chicken, as I can’t eat certain cuts of beef and I didn’t want lasagna or a vegan meal. It was literally just a breaded chicken patty type deal, like the frozen ones you buy, extremely processed. It came with string beans and a tiny dollop of mashed potatoes. No dessert, no wedding cake… I just assumed that such an expensive affair as this was that the food would have been better. But whatever, there were hors-d’œuvres and they were amazing! There were soft pretzel sticks (that were really soft) in little glasses filled with spinach dip, mini grilled cheese in tomato bisque (shown here, so good and I hate tomatoes), fried dill pickles spears in little glasses of ranch dressing to dip them and teriyaki braised pork belly on thin slices of toasted bread! You know I was cleaning them out of fried pickles, right…? Hahahaa… They also had some raw veggies, bruschetta, ring bologna and cheese, some fruits… Seriously, who needed dinner? But I decided to try and reign in my taste buds because I knew we were going to have dinner. In hindsight, I should have said fuck it to dinner…

A new build on my Animal Crossing island…

All in all, it was a beautiful day.

Then the morning came…

Now, before you say, “Well, after all that alcohol, of course you woke up feeling like shit, Jackie,” let me tell you one of the biggest reasons I felt like shit… This was an outdoor wedding in the middle of bumblefuck, during ragweed season. I already wasn’t feeling well prior to this. Then spending an entire Indian Summer day in a place that is a lot more rural than where I live (shocking that there is such a place) with that nice gentle breeze blowing… gently blowing ragweed pollen up into my sinuses… And this is the time of the season that it’s at the worst. Well… I woke up with my right eye throbbing from all the pressure and so congested I pretty much drank a bottle of Sinex through my nose over that day and still couldn’t breathe through my nose! I was sneezing and had the worst headache all day.

Hahahaa, I love weird Snapchat filters…

So as if the allergens waging war against my sinuses wasn’t enough to give me a headache, so was the way I slept…

Periodically, I wake up with horrible headaches, stemming from the right side of the back of my neck, that last me an entire day. I think it’s arthritis that developed from a car accident I had when I was 19. The driver’s side slammed into the curved piece in the break of a guardrail, I got whipped to the side, bashed my head off the guardrail and was whipped back into the car… I was fine for years, but now I’m finding that I’ve been getting these headaches that stem from neck pain if I sleep wrong. That’s been going on a few years and is just getting worse. Don’t get me wrong, the hotel was amazing! It had a queen sized bed (I sprawled out) that was so soft and squishy! And the pillows! Your head literally sank into them! But my dumb ass didn’t stop to think that might upset my neck… To top it off, I slept on my stomach (that’s how I sleep best). I was so damned comfortable, I slept like the dead for the first time in decades! Then I woke up with that hellacious headache… It literally took all day for the neck pain to go away and that was with a lot of pain pills. I still have the sinus headache, but it’s not bad…

The day my niece got married was also my favorite J-rocker testu’s birthday! Happy 56th birthday, tetsu! Don’t feel bad, I’m not far behind… Oof… Now I feel bad. Because I didn’t feel old enough watching my niece get married…

Speaking of music… That was something I could have done without. I knew all of three songs played at the reception. One was Elvis, “I Can’t Help Falling In Love With You”, LeAnn Rimes “How Do I Live” and this weird dance remix of AC/DC “You Shook Me All Night Long”… The other shit they played was– well– shit! It was newer dance/rap/techno kind of shit. I mean, it’s good to dance to if you’re drinking, I guess… But to be honest, I don’t know that you can dance to that shit, and I don’t think anyone else did, either. Most of them were just kind of jumping around. What the fuck is that?! Is that what they call dancing?! Absolutely not… I was looking forward to dancing, but I just couldn’t figure out how… Plus my feet were killing me from my new shoes, which I took off and then the deejay announced that everyone needed to put their shoes on…

Thanks for making me targeted, dickhead… Like shoes are cleaner than my stocking feet…

Anyway… There was a shuttle to take everyone from the hotel to the wedding and back again, which was nice, no drinking and driving. And these weren’t little buses, they were like luxury liners with a bathroom and everything! I told you it was an expensive affair…

One thing I didn’t know about these kind of busses is that you can connect with Bluetooth to the speakers. But one of the guests knew it… It wasn’t long into the half hour ride to the wedding that some absolutely horrible music started playing loudly. Now, I’m not a fan of much rap as it is. But when it sounds like some guy just talking, saying the filthiest things and dropping the “N” bomb every few seconds, that’s a huge no for me. And I listened to 2 Live Crew! Some of their shit was flat out vulgar and they used “fuck” more times than I could count in one song! But the stuff today, for some reason, I find horribly offensive. And the thing is, I may be 52, but it’s not a matter of age. I just find that inappropriate, especially when you’re in the company of older people.

I don’t really consider myself to be old, or at least I don’t feel like it. But there were relatives and family friends from both sides on that bus that were my age and older, like my mom who will be 76 in a few days. Now… I was raised that you respect your elders. You don’t swear in front of them, you treat them with respect and you don’t do disrespectful things like being loud and completely obnoxious in front of them. This idiot pretty much did all those things and got everyone else all fired up and obnoxious. Ah well… Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe I really am old, too old to relate to these kids… I just think it’s sad that this is what society has become. And with every new generation, it gets a little bit worse. When did people stop teaching good manners? Can we please bring them back…?

I’m sure you figured out that I started playing my Animal Crossing game again…

I’m not sure why, but all of a sudden, my YouTube feed was just littered with videos of people who made some amazing looking islands in their game. It got me thinking… I had been wanting to redo mine for a very long time, but there were some factors that stopped me. One was that I didn’t want to erase the island I had to start a new one (you can only have one game actively going at a time). That would mean I’d lose all my villagers that I love, all the stuff it took forever to acquire… Nope. I could have just leveled my island to a flat working area and start terraforming from a blank slate, but I had nowhere to put all the trees, flowers and villager homes in the meantime. And it would have been ridiculously costly! Nope… So the best I could do was change what I could and move homes a little at a time with what currency I had…

And, you know… I also took some time to visit with my villagers and talk to them. One night I found my little bestie, Punchy, in the museum and followed him around. Then he graced me with the most adorable photo op!

Look how fucking adorable he is!!

Laugh if you will, but I find this incredibly relaxing… I get to be creative and everything moves at a slow pace. I get to design clothing (we’re both wearing my designs), pathways, lots of things… I get to shape my surroundings… It’s all very relaxing but very controlled, a place where I’m the “puppet master”, so to speak. It gives me that illusion of control that I desperately need in the current state of the world, the US in particular. And at least I still have freedom of expression and speech in this game…

Sadly, I’m not as creative as some people who play this game. I find that frustrating… I’m an artist, damn it! I should be able to terraform and decorate a video game environment!

But I digress…

Halloween will soon be upon us! I love Halloween… But for some reason, I’m just not in the spirit this year. Maybe it’s because I’m feeling so bleh… It’s hard to be festive when your head hurts and your nose is so god-damn stuffy you couldn’t get air up through it if the vacuum of space was up in your sinus cavities. I still have yet to decorate and I should have already done that…

But hey, at least I can decorate my island, right…?

Plus I get to make cute little scenes to take pictures! That’s probably the most fun of the holidays and other special occasions that pop up. I like to make silly things, it helps keep me somewhat sane. And let me tell you, we should all be happy for that!

Until next time, dear readers! Go create your own worlds!

Familial Is Not Familiar…

If you have a family, and I’m sure most of you do, you know that it’s not like the fucking Brady Bunch. Far from it… Recently, mine has been more like an episode of Snapped…

The last week or two has been an absolute shit show… I wish I could say I was exaggerating, but I’m not. I’m just so fed the fuck up with everyone and everything that I’m about to say “fuck it” and miss out on a very important event. I’ve been so fucking stressed, I can see where my hair has started to fall out… And most of this is due to family over said event.

So… Buckle up, dear readers. I’m about to take you down that dark ass road, into the insanity and flat out stupidity of my family. And I apologize in advance… I know you don’t really want to hear me vent and complain about what’s going crazy in my life right now, but I need to write this. I have to vent my frustrations somehow and I figured sharing it with all of you may help me find some relief. Who knows? Maybe one of you will have some insight or some suggestions on how to avoid losing my ever-loving, fucking marbles…

My oldest niece is getting married in two days…

Aside from the stress this is causing because it makes me feel old, I’ve been looking forward to this for months. The ceremony takes place in the late afternoon, there’s a reception and an after party. There’s also a Renaissance Fair the next day that guests can attend. There’s a hotel guests can stay in and a shuttle that takes guests to and from the venue. Sounds amazing, right? As this is a two hour drive for me, I was planning to stay overnight so I wouldn’t have to drive home extremely late (I’m too old for that) and go to the fair the following day. But you know what they say about “the best laid plans of mice and men”…

I was doomed…

I had spoken to my sister a few months ago concerning the wedding… She was so upset, which is unlike her, all because my mother told her that she and her boyfriend, Sponge, would not be attending. One excuse was that her car would not make such a long drive (she’s probably right on that one) and she gave a plethora of other, more lame excuses. My sister was beside herself… “How’s it going to look if the grandmother of the bride can’t be bothered to show up?!” I agreed… And it’s especially bad when you realize my niece will be missing her father: he died years ago. It just wasn’t right…

Aunt Jackie to the rescue!

It took quite a lot on my part, but I finally convinced my mother that we could rent a car and they could go with me; that way neither of them has to drive. She would never make such a long drive. Thank heavens because the woman is a menace on the road. And Sponge… Well, he’s had cataract surgery and, ever since, he’s not exactly confident in his driving abilities because his eyesight isn’t what it used to be. Understandable since he just turned 75 and my mother turns 76 in about a week… Going with me in a rental (no milage on my car that way) was the best option. She still hemmed and hawed, reluctant to go. I’m not sure why… This is her granddaughter! Why wouldn’t she want to see her get married?! It was just weird… So I got loud with her, pointing out that she would make the entire family look bad if she didn’t go and she would make my niece cry. I told her she was going and we’d travel together. Sponge could come or not, I didn’t give a fuck…

Now… I knew my mother and Sponge didn’t want to stay overnight after the wedding. I sacrificed a night in a nice hotel and a day at the Renaissance Fair just to get those two rejects to do the right thing. Are you following so far? Good…

A week ago, my mother decided to drop this bomb on me: Sponge was going to drive the rental because, “he kinda knows where we’re going and he has GPS”… Everyone has fucking GPS! It’s in our fucking cell phones! And “kinda” knowing where we’re going isn’t the same as knowing! And since when has she been in charge?! Last time I checked, it was me who came up with this plan and invited them along for the ride!

So when she came to visit on Friday, as normal, I sat her down for a nice talk. I had figured out the best way to say what I needed to ad present her with the logic. Sponge is 75 which means his reaction times aren’t as good as someone my age. He has difficulty seeing and he would have to drive unfamiliar roads. I told her I didn’t feel safe doing it that way and asked why Sponge would change his mind at the last minute when he doesn’t feel confident in his driving anymore. The only answer she gave me was to tell me that didn’t know why he changed his mind, but she agreed with my logic and said she’d talk to him.

I have no idea why I thought she actually would…

Just the other day, she told me that she rented a vehicle (fine, I don’t need that extra cost) but guess what… Sponge is still insisting upon driving. Not only that, but she decided that we are leaving right after dinner to come home! Excuse me?! I am a grown ass woman of 52! Who the fuck is she to be telling me when I’m going to leave?! Absolutely not! I’m not a child; I decide the things I’m going to do! She’s held me back enough… So I did what any person in my position would do…

I called my sister…

I know my mother often times ignores what I have to say, either because she still sees me as a child, she chalks it up to me having a bipolar moment or because placating Sponge is just easier… He’s literally a big, incredibly noisy baby and she gives in all the time because she doesn’t want him going off on a tangent. And she expects me to placate him as well. After 40 years of this shit, I’m just exhausted and over it. I refused to deal with my mother and her selfish bullshit. So I called my sister, the one person I know my mother listens to, and vented to her about the current shit show…

My sister agreed with everything I vented… So she came up with this plan that she would pay for my room and one for my mother and Sponge, then call my niece and have her tell my mother that some of her guests couldn’t come and there were extra rooms, already paid for, if they wanted to stay overnight.

That didn’t work…

Heaven forbid that she should have to pack two change of clothing, a pair of pajamas and their pills… Plus she needs to be home in the morning to go buy lunchmeat for her and Sponge because, you know, the store doesn’t sell fucking lunchmeat once noon hits… Seriously, what the fuck is up with that?! Go buy lunchmeat some other time of day! Unbelievable…

I was more that done at that point… I decided to call my mother yesterday and I told her my niece texted me the same offer and I was taking her up on it. At that point, I didn’t care about the dangers of them driving. I wasn’t going to put up with this shit and their poor treatment of me.

So, once again, I called my sister. She was livid! And coming from someone who always keeps themselves so composed, you know she had to be pissed. We vented to each other about their stupidity, then she said she had to go make dinner, think about all this and would call me back.

I did not expect the call from my mother, telling me that my sister had just called her and gone completely nuclear on her… I had a hard time not laughing as she told me what was said. And, soon after I answered, I got a text from my sister telling me to call her, hahahaa! So after I got off the phone, I called and my sister confirmed what was said, the biggest of these being that she didn’t want them to have an accident and make her have to plan a funeral after her daughter’s wedding. My mother blew her off at first, but she soon realized my sister wasn’t fucking around… And she can’t dismiss it as a bipolar moment like she does with me because my sister is the most mentally stable person I know. Go figure…

Needless to say, she talked to Sponge and they agreed to stay over. Neither of them are happy about it, however. And I can almost guarantee that they’ll try to or succeed in skipping out and driving home right after the dinner because that’s what the big baby wants. And if they do, you know my sister and I are going to blow like Krakatoa…

I also vented to my sister about this behavior, treating me like a child and not allowing me to make my own decisions in this particular case…

I’m sure some of you know that my mother was the reason I couldn’t attend college and she admitted to lying to me in order to keep me at home so I could get a job and help her pay bills, support Sponge… I told my sister I felt like she robbed me of my future and her reply was, “She pretty much did…” You have no idea how wonderful that felt, to finally have someone validate the way I’ve been feeling since I was 17… I know that’s a long time to hold onto resentment, but it’s hard not to. I’ve wanted to be an animator since I was six years old; it’s all I ever wanted to be. I had it all planned out so I could go to school and live my dream. But my mother literally shattered that dream with her lies, all so she could keep me there and help her support lazy Sponge. I could have been something… instead I’m a nothing who lives in a shitty house in a shitty neighborhood and have been going nowhere my entire life… The point is, my mother has always been very selfish, except where Sponge is concerned… With him, she’s overly generous, giving in to absolutely everything just so he won’t think to leave. No matter that she sold herself and me into servitude by holding onto that thought process… It didn’t even cross her mind. probably because she wouldn’t let it.

BOOM! My life blowing up out of proportion…

And if you’re wondering why I’ve bothered to have a relationship with (and continue) to have one with a person who is obviously bat shit insane… I honestly don’t have an answer for you.

I suppose it’s because, in some really weird and unhealthy way, I have an attachment to her. That sounds weird and unhealthy to say it that way… But I think it’ the most accurate way to describe it. She’s a fucked up individual who really fucked me up over the years. And yet… I go out of my way, change my plans of what I want to do, all to make everyone as happy as I can. But that’s never enough for her. you know?

I can guarantee you, after this wedding is done and over, I’m seriously going to reevaluate my relationship with my mother. I’m convinced that my associating with her is more than toxic for me. If need be, I’ll cut off all ties with her. I did that once before, about 19 years ago. I didn’t talk to her for months, not even after my sister called, begging me to call my mother because she was going to her house crying about it…

Wish me luck this weekend, dear readers; I need it. In the meantime, enjoy my finished Labubu collection (for this series, at least). See you soon…

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…

The Beat Of A Collectively Stupid Drum…

Hello, dear readers! Are you ready to go down a really weird rabbit hole for a moment…? Good, because that’s where we’re going today…

This morning, I happened to come across this gem of a video on YouTube. If you’d like to watch it first, you can do so here.

I assume that, if you’re here, you’re a critical thinker, are open to ideas, can discuss ideas without offense, don’t blindly follow the masses and march to your own drummer. If that’s not you… well, you may want to skip this post. This may go to places that will outrage the easily offended and I really don’t want to deal with that headache. But if you’re a free thinker, buckle up because this could possibly become a very bumpy ride down a really weird road… Are you ready to travel with me? Okay, here we go…

Is it just me, or has anyone else noticed this pattern lately…? It’s as if the entire world has turned into Forrest Gump, “stupid is as stupid does”, and they’re putting it all out there on the internet. It’s as if it was some huge, elaborate plan to make everyone on the planet a stupid sheeple like themselves by means of bullying. Critical thinking…? That’s just not allowed. You’re expected to think, act and believe the same things. Everyone… No exceptions…

Critical thinking, the ability to use your brain to form your own thoughts and beliefs (and not belittle those of others) is becoming a thing of the past. And we have the internet, and television to a lesser extent, to blame for that…

Consider this… How much time do you spend mindlessly scrolling through your feed on a social media platform? It doesn’t matter which one, really; it’s the same thing no matter which one you’re on. If people can express their thoughts and opinions, you’ll find those who do so, very loudly and forcefully, trying to squelch people thinking for themselves. How often do you have an original thought or opinion that’s all your own…? Better yet, when was the last time you weren’t afraid of backlash for sharing said original thought with someone else…? Is your answer, “It was so long ago that I don’t remember”? If so, you’re not alone. This is what social media is designed to do.

Originality and free thinking are a thing of the past, thanks mostly to social media. It’s easier to adopt someone else’s ideas and viewpoints as your own as opposed to sitting back, giving a topic some careful consideration and forming your own opinion. We’ve gotten lazy in this age of digital everything and social media. We’ve also gotten quite savage when protecting those adopted ideals, so much so that we’re ready to wage war to protect them. And, in that process, we’re preyed upon… By who you ask? Pretty much anyone that stands to benefit from you not having your own opinion.

It’s all around you if you just wake up and take a good look… But I warn you; if you’ve been asleep for a long time, waking up might be one helluva shock to you. Staying asleep is a nice coping mechanism, after all. It’s comfortable, like an old, worn sweater. You can snuggle up in it, all safe and warm, and be perfectly content without taking in what’s going on around you. But that’s not why we’re here…

Did you ever see the movie They Live with Rowdy Roddy Piper? There are aliens walking among us, controlling the media, hiding subliminal messages we can’t see… unless we have a pair of cheap sunglasses made to help us see… Newspapers, magazines, billboards, even newscasts on television… They all have these subliminal messages, telling us things like “obey”, “sleep”, “consume”, even “procreate”.

Now I’m not saying there are aliens actually doing this or that you need to brandish a weapon to “chew bubble gum and kick ass” (and be all out of bubblegum, haha). But, much like the movie, there are people who use those loud, strongly expressed opinions to their advantage. If it can benefit their company, their cause, their agenda, they’ll use an opinion, exploit it and use it against the population in a positive light to turn us all into mindless sheeple. Most people don’t even notice this is what’s going on. We see what we want…

Now I know what you’re thinking… “You’re full of shit, Jackie! You didn’t plead your case, gave us no evidence!” Geez, hold the fuck on, will ya? I’m getting to that…

I know I’m old, but… For anyone who has ever listened to the radio back in the 70s… Have you noticed a major change? Back then, stations had this huge library of songs and they played a mix of everything. Today, even if you turn on the classic rock stations, you’d swear they only have about a dozen or so songs in their library because you hear the same song over and over… Some are so bad that you can set your watch by what song is playing. And a lot of them are the shittiest songs ever made. Why…? Well I’ll tell you… It’s because the music executives decide what songs they want out there and get the stations to play the fuck out of them. It’s the premise of, “This is what your friends like and are listening to… You should like and listen to it, too!” And television is no better… “These are shows your friends all like and watch; you should, too!” It doesn’t matter that the content isn’t funny or is stupid and makes no sense… They sell these things like the second coming of fucking Jesus. Someone wants you to like specific things because it gets out the message they wish to convey, to be able to control you by means of the media you’re taking in. The same thing happened with those Facebook fact checker bots. They took out what someone didn’t want you knowing…

I’d like to do this, for different reasons…

I know, that sounds crazy, doesn’t it? But is it…?

Take music, for example. From the time I was born, I listened to everything… My iTunes library has so much different music that, according to my music player, I can literally play music for 12 days without listening to the same song twice. Not on Apple Music, mind you… These are songs I purchased, converted from cassettes and vinyl, ripped from my CDs… No one has any clue as to exactly how vast my music collection is. Even my iTunes library, it’s missing some tunes I want that I haven’t purchased yet. They don’t even have some of the songs I want… How many people today can say they have 12 days worth of music?! Unless you’re old like me, probably not a whole helluva lot of you… It’s because you listen to what you hear on media, what they want you to hear, whatever conforms to what’s expected of society at that time so they can all be sheeple.

And what about books…? Does anyone really even read physical books anymore (besides my old ass)? And what are they reading…? Well, most of them are reading what’s on some list or what Oprah recommends. But whatever happened to reading books that just sound interesting? Or some classic literature? Have we fallen so far from being critical thinkers that we think “50 Shades Of Shit” is actual literature, actual good reading?! Of course we have… That’s why we have garbage like that to further rot our brains.

But that’s just the beginning of the descent into the rabbit hole…

So social media and corporate jackasses are telling us, in a not so subtle way, what it is we should like, squelching critical thinking and trying turn to the “Dark Side” called collective stupidity. But why…? Who wants this, besides the creators and sponsors who make a fuck ton of money off selling this shit to you? Well…

One such group that benefits from this is the government. I don’t want to sound like one of the crazy, paranoid fucks, but I really believe that. I have a hard time believing that all the people in this country that support the current reich– I mean administration– can still think things are looking up. Prices of pretty much everything are so high that even people who make a good wage are now struggling to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table. There are people being nabbed off the street (sometimes the wrong person is nabbed, a case of mistaken identity), a militia is beginning to form and the person at the heart of all this mess declared (supposedly) that he expected “his people” to behave like those in an enemy country, where he’s worshipped as opposed to being followed… None of these things sound good to critical thinker. But to the collectively stupid who follow what everyone else thinks…? Well…

Look, I’m not saying anyone who doesn’t share my views is wrong… Far from it! I wouldn’t be a critical thinker if I did… I’m open to sharing thoughts and ideas as long as it’s done in an open minded, civil fashion. And as long as the thoughts and ideas are yours and not just the same bullshit rhetoric a million sites on the internet give me. I’m open to discussing any ideas that are original and a person’s own. But you might be thinking that my thoughts written above aren’t mine. And I would agree with you if I didn’t know that I’d called this when the first election speech was given back before his first term. I saw all this coming a mile away… especially when I noticed social media making a huge shift. Suddenly, we were getting hit from all sides by this “in your face” approach of campaigning. People were more than ready to blindly follow someone to the ends of the earth by the loudly expressed promises made. They didn’t read between the lines and look underneath…

But you shouldn’t take anything I’ve said to heart. Well… except for the part where I encourage you to be a critical thinker. Everyone really should have a mind of their own and draw their own conclusions.

There have always been two topics of discussion that I avoid like the plague: politics and religion. People tend to be very opinionated in both and it’s not worth the argument. So if I decided to get on here and talk about a subject that I really don’t like to discuss because I know there’s at least one fucking troll out there who’s going to give me shit about my thoughts, you know I think the discussion, as a whole, is incredibly important. And it was the best example of the critical thinking versus collective stupidity aspect. Social media and other media is really swaying the populous to one side or another. No one should let anyone or anything influence them this much for any reason.

Even cute things are influencing people…

And, of course, there’s the collective stupidity to buy whatever the hot item of the moment is… if you couldn’t guess that from the last three pictures I’ve spammed you with, hahahaa!

These unsettlingly, “so ugly they’re cute” dolls are called Labubu (also known as The Monsters). Apparently, they’re the latest “hot” item people are going crazy to collect. And when I say going crazy, I mean they’ve lost their ever-loving fucking minds. To buy an authentic doll, you need to get them from one website and one website only, if you don’t happen to live near a Pop Mart store. Demand is high and people are going so insane that they’re willing to beat people up in stores to get one and they started limiting how many were sold. Through Pop Mart, you can get one of these authentic dolls for anywhere from $30 to $70 (depending on the series). If you go to eBay looking for authentic ones, it can go over $200…

Now… I liked them because they were really cute. But I had no desire to spend so much money on even one because I thought it was crazy. Most hover around $40 and that’s too much. But, when I found out a certain chain of gas station/convenience stores near me were selling them for $20… Well, you know I said, “TAKE MY FUCKING MONEY!!!” Hahahaa… It pretty much did go like that.. But, to clear things up, this little guy and his cohorts are not authentic Labubu. I don’t care that they’re not… I wanted them solely because I thought they were that ugly kind of cute. I don’t collect things because they’re popular or trendy; I collect things because I like them. They’re just so damn cute! There are seven in this series, in every color of the rainbow and the only one I need yet is the green one… Granted, the fur color isn’t always correct, same with the tooth count. And, supposedly, the fakes are put together poorly. But I’ll tell, all mine are built pretty damn good! And if you want to collect something solely because you think it’s cute or it speaks to you in some way, who gives a fuck if it’s authentic? It still looks pretty much the same, it’s still cute, it still speaks to you… It just doesn’t break the bank…

Eatin’ good in the nay-ba-hood, hahahaa!

Well, dear readers, for better or worse, my tirade about critical thinking and collective stupidity is over… Again, don’t take anything I say to heart. Opinions are like assholes; everyone’s got one…

Now go, my pretties! Spread your wings and develop your critical thinking skills! As for me, I’m going to figure out what sounds good to slap on the Blackstone for dinner tonight… Bon apatite!

Nothing To Say And No One To Say It To…

I was cleaning up some things on my laptop (I’m so disorganized on my laptops), putting files and pictures where they belong, shit like that… and I happened to notice something.

Ever since the beginning of last year, I’ve watched, unhappily, as I began putting on more and more weight, watched as my hair refused to grow back after a haircut, became thiner and had become more curly. All were not changes I wanted, obviously. I’d seen doctors, specialists, had all sorts of tests done… And even though some of my levels were so up and down it was as if they were fucking yo-yos, they all said I was fine (not the ER doctor, he was concerned by this). Never mind that I’ve gained a shit ton of weight, that my hair is falling out and won’t grow, that I’m cold in the middle of a hot, humid summer and that’s not normal for me. I fit inside the “cookie cutter” result levels. And never mind the fact that my calorie intake and activity levels are just as low as they always have been… If my levels were fine by the generic standards, I was fine.

But when you look at this comparison… Well… I had been gaining weight for about four months in the bottom picture. I felt fat… But when you compare it to the top picture, taken last month (a year and three months later), you can see that I gained a lot of weight. I’m currently the heaviest I’ve been in my entire life and still gaining… I’m so disgusted and ashamed of how I look at no one wants to listen to what I’m telling them. This is not just a case of overeating or lack of exercise. If it was, my hair wouldn’t have changed as much as it has. You’d think it would look better because of better nourishment. But what the fuck do I know…

To make things worse, my weight gain has added to my depression…

So I’m currently listening to a really depressing song because that’s what I do… You’d think that I’d listen to things that improve my mood, but I don’t. I actually listen to things that match my current mood to help me get out the things that I’m feeling. This song —-> pretty much sums up how I’ve been feeling lately. Give it a listen, you’ll know what I mean… Not only has this weight gain gotten me down, but I’ve been putting way too much thought lately into exactly how much time I’ve got left. And it’s not just me; I have friends my age that are having the same thoughts. There’s more time behind you than ahead and what have you to show for it? Maybe you have some great accomplishments, maybe you had every intention of doing great things but life happened. You thought it was okay because there was plenty of time to do these things. But then, one day, you wake up and more than half (or less) of your life is gone already and you don’t know when the fuck it happened. Now there’s either no time left to do what you wanted or it’s just counterproductive to try… What do you do…? Well, if you’re me, you sit back, listen to a relevant song and contemplate how badly your life has been fucked up and you don’t exactly see an improvement in your latter years. Wow, that’s depressing…

See this girl, the really skinny one in this grainy ass picture…? Yeah, that’s me, back in 1992.. I was 19…

Let’s forget for a moment that I was incredibly thin with a shape like an old Barbie doll (before someone had a moment about her supposedly unachievable figure). I’m not so delusional that I think I can have this figure again at 52… Age and menopause, psych meds and other medical issues have caused my metabolism to crash. I’d like to be thin again, but I’ll never be this 118 pound girl again and I don’t think I’d want to be. I was 5’9″ at the time and that was too skinny…

But this girl, the one with the Barbie doll figure, nice thick hair and overly large sunglasses… I hardly recognize her anymore. She had the looks, the big dreams and the determination to go after them and make them a reality. She was a happy-go-lucky, free spirit that had everything in front of her. She didn’t give much thought to aging, didn’t have anxieties about the future and saw nothing but promise ahead. She lived her life day by day, knowing the world was hers for the asking. All she had to do was answer that call…

There’s a reason I don’t recognize her anymore… She “died” a long time ago…

Life and circumstances took their toll… All the time in the world seemed to pass in the blink of an eye until now there’s little time left (in the big scheme of things). The face I see in the mirror is old, sad, regretful… That’s the girl I recognize, the one that became an old woman somewhere between when I was this girl and now. When I see old pictures like this or ones from when I was a smiling little girl, I’d say 99% of the time, I can’t recognize myself. Too much has changed and not necessarily for the better. I never got to pursue any of the hopes and dreams that girl had. I feel like I let her down… I can’t honestly say I didn’t… When I look at myself today, I can safely say that this was so not what I wanted for her… Literally nothing is what I wished for that girl when I was her…

I was about 22 here…

Yes, those are 101 Dalmatians sheets gracing that ancient mattress and boxspring, hahahaa… I still have some of the things in this picture. I think I even still have the sheets…

This girl had some lovely dreams of the future… She knew what she wanted and, though she’d been damaged, she was more than willing to grab that brass ring on the merry-go-round of life. She was happy, content (for the time being) and knew what she wanted. I don’t know where things went so wrong… Life just got in the way, I suppose. Back then, I thought there was time for everything…

Now it’s heading into the twilight years…

Maybe I’m overthinking things, one of my worst habits… The older I got, I began looking more into the past and how things went wrong instead of looking forward. At this age, it’s not likely that I have anything terribly spectacular to look forward to, so I suppose it’s normal that I look back… I’m just sad that I feel like I wasted that time I had. Now I’m a fat, old, 18 years post menopausal woman filled with regret. If that girl from long ago, the girl I don’t recognize, knew then that this would be her life, I’m sure she would have gone out of her way to make sure this didn’t happen. I wish I could go back in time and tell her so…

My apologies, dear readers, to any of you who read this all the way through. It was depressing as all fuck… I was just thinking out loud, more for myself than anyone else. And this was how I decided to celebrate now 12 years with WordPress, by depressing the fuck out of myself and all of you reading it. Happy fucking anniversary, right? Yeah well… What can you do…