I'm Not Dead

So.....yeah.....

It's been a while. Sorry for that. My life has settled into a pattern of chaos. Most of which is very personal and involves family and friends, which I said I would never post about here. Because this blog is about me. What I will say is, this year has been treating me pretty well, ups and downs and all that, but on the whole I'd say it's been a good year.

Whatever has been taken away from me has been replaced with something even better. I had to move out of my rental, only to buy a new house (which I OWN, and is MINE all MINE). I was in a car accident, which totalled my almost-paid-off car, but I was able to buy a brand-new-so-amazing car. I still have a job. Two, in fact. Which I'm grateful for.

The one thing that is bothering me is I feel as if some one in my life has recently mis-represented themself. I feel like I have been lied to, and I have a hard time with this. So, Universe, I'm waiting for you to make this one right, too. Either bring some one even more fabulous into my life, or help this person have the courage to be honest with themself, and be able to talk to me honestly about what they did.

The House Becomes A Home

As the dust begins to settle, you can see the amazing work my dad and brother did on my house. Here is just a taste.

This was taken with my cell phone, I promise more pictures when I find my camera in the chaos that is the rest of the house.

This Is Going To Get Interesting

I turned the corner to adulthood. I drank the kool-aid. I bought a house.....

....And This is what I came home to:

That is the floor of my laundry room. Well, it was the floor of my laundry room.

The house is good, but with some help, it can be great. Really, really great. So great that I'll never have to move again ever.

Let's let that sink in shall we; I. Will. Never. Have. To. Move. Again. (unless I want to) Also, I don't have a landlord. I have a Mortgage. Which, believe it or not, is actually sooooo much better.

But back to the hole in the floor. The-hole-in-the-floor-through-which-I-can-see-dirt.

It is the start of something Awesome.

Lay Your Burdens Down

I have a hard time looking back on this year. If you're really interested, look to the right side of this blog and click the little arrow next to 2009. Whoosh, there it is in all its shit-soaked glory.

Please, do me a little favor and click it back before I loose the ability to breathe. Whew, OK. Back to gettin' on with the repressin'....

A friend of mine requested that I put together a Best Albums of the year list, as I've usually got a good sense of what the kids listen to these days. I couldn't do it. Yet ANOTHER problem with '09. It lacked a soundtrack.

But you know what, I'm actually kind of happy about it. Because it turns out to be a somewhat happy accident, as this year will be even easier to forget about, as it doesn't have an accompanying soundtrack.

So, never will I be sitting in traffic with my iPod on shuffle when that song comes on that reminds me of when my heart was ripped out of my chest, burned countless times with cigarette butts, cut to a million pieces, and the pieces flung to the four winds. Because there wasn't a song for that.

Not a single measure or beat will remind me of the countless phone calls that I received from my Landlord (culminating with the threat of eviction. Yes, EVICTION.), asking if I'd found a new roommate yet.

And for all of those deluded people (those people who live their own version of "human") who managed to worm their way into my life; Well, worms don't really make any sound at all, no hint of a song, so you will be soon forgotten as well. (Ha! See what I did there? I was loosing you for a minute, then I brought it back....sort of.)

But I'll tell you what I will remember; Making Pickle laugh. Buckie's total inability to sit completely still, and how damn cute it is. Finding Aunty Spinster's Home for the Wayward, and working to make it a reality (through the astounding commitment of my immediate family).

All the rest of that stuff...I'm leaving it all back in good ol' 2009.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Road To Aunty Spinster's.

So I'm sure I might have mentioned that I'm looking for a roommate? Maybe once, or twice, or eleventy billion times.... Well, you know when you're forced in one way that is totally against the way you want for yourself, forced so forcefully that the pressure builds up until--finally--there is this little internal *plink* and something inside you snaps clean in two? Well, it's happened to me about 4 times in the last two months, but the most recent little snap was caused by what happened last night.

It's a really long and funny story, but you know, really long so I'll cut to the heart of it. My actual Landlord brought people over last night to look at the house. This is a change from my roommate search, as this time it required that all persons in said group would parade themselves through All The Rooms in the house. All. The. Rooms. Including my bedroom, which up till this point had been out of jurisdiction, so to speak.

So yeah, I didn't bother to clean it. It never occurred to me that I would need to. And I'm actually kinda glad I didn't. Because while they were in there opening my closet and doing laps around the room, my unmentionables were strewn across the bed in the exact position that I had left them that morning. And I'm not talkin' 'bout the pretty "for company" unmentionables. I can take the smallest amount of pleasure knowing as uncomfortable as I was for them to BE in my ROOM, I'm sure at least one of them was uncomfortable BEING in there.

As they were discussing the relative smallness of the closet, I can only imagine one of them thinking, "Jesus, well we know why the Bra is on the Queen-sized bed, it wouldn't fit in that tiny closet."

Practice

I never ever ever thought I would think this of you, but there it is: I hate you. You know who you are and you know what you did. I know you don't think that what you did was that bad, but it really was. It was that bad and worse. You made a complete fool out of me.

I knew you could be ambivalent, but now I know that you believe your actions have no consequences. So here's the consequence of what you did: I am not your friend. And you lost any future friendship we might have had. And it's really a shame, because I was your biggest advocate, I had your back, I believed you were a decent human being. Fuck you, for proving me wrong.

Ok, now that I've practiced, I might actually work up the nerve to tell you this in person.

Run Away, Bunny

When I was in 5th grade, two of my best friends and I started planning to run away. And by plan I mean we Planned. I had a notebook completely devoted to the idea. We would call each other every night, making lists.

Oh, the Lists! We were going to start squirreling away supplies, a little at a time so nothing would be missed. We had a route mapped so that we would still be able to go to school. Because school was very important, and our parents would be Very Mad if we missed any school. But it never occurred to us that we might be missed. That anybody would notice that we were gone.

Nearly everyone I know has thought about running away, and it's funny that this idea didn't occur to me until I was 10 rather than 5. And I'm sure it had everything to do with growing up, and not wanting to.

And then Junior High happened. We were all so shell shocked by the transition, and determined to Be More Mature, that we put away all those silly little elementary school ideas. And so The Notebook was put on a shelf in the back of the closet.

And now I'm 30, and that notebook is pulling at me something fierce. Because I have to be an adult, and I really don't want to.

When my roommate told me he needed to move out to help a good friend of his get back on her feet, it stressed me out. But I had No Idea how that stress would turn into Stress, would turn into STRESS, would turn into S-T-R-E-S-S. Would cause my hands to twitch so badly that I had to start a knitting project in order to protect the kitties from being rubbed so much they turned into those weird hairless cats. Or that not being able to say what I really really needed to say to the one person I needed to say it to, caused the exasperation to leave my body with such force, causing the magnetic poles to shift, resulting in the Universe spinning off it's axis, and we all fell over dead.

So yeah, blame me. I'm the reason we have to move to Mars. You know, after we're done being dead.