getting my goat

while i'm waiting for various files to open...and incidentally i love XMLSpy....

today my little goat, aka pearl, decided to get into something she shouldn't have. and by today, i mean at approximately 3am this morning. and by something she shouldn't have, i really can't elaborate because i have no idea what she ate. whatever it was, it didn't agree with her and she promptly sent it back to the bedroom floor, and across our bed.

yes, she was sleeping in our bed. our girl is more than a little spoiled. and as far as we could tell, the bedroom was clear of anything remotely bad for her, and/or items like medications were safely out of her reach.

so about 315 this morning i woke up to what sounded like a whine or whimper. to be honest i wasn't sure if it was pearl, or min talking in her sleep. i nudged min - what's up? she mumbled or something and i heard it again. not min! i started feeling around for pearl on the bed and she was nowhere.

pearl! where are you? i heard her dog tags clanging from across the room, heading towards me. on goes the light. she's drooling like a leaky faucet. good grief. in addition to her shaking and other sharing of fluids, after a few minutes we got dressed and headed to adobe. well, after cleaning her real quick (quite a mess).

and of course, by the time we got there and seen by the doctor, she was totally fine. mouth dry as a bone, no shaking (well, other than a bit of nervousness at first), no fever, heart rate fine, got perky and everything. we watched her another 15 before leaving... with a very cheap bill. doesn't cost much when they don't really do anything. :-p

we got back home around 5 and though tired, i couldn't sleep yet. wanted to watch her a bit longer to make sure she was alright. started laundry for offending bed items. then i got hungry. tried one snack...waited...not enough. ok pearl's alright, but now i need real food. damn this mac&cheese craving!

fine. i'm awake for the day. made my cheesy goodness, min went to bed, and i got ready for the day. and pearl, she got reacquainted with her kennel. and she will stay friends with it every night from now on.

the wandering minstrel

my mind - and body - they have been on such a journey this last week.

thursday night we went to a Career Exploration Workshop at The Women's Building in sf. i instigated this trek because, as i've mentioned before, i'm not really grooving on my current gig. i had hoped that this class would help point me in a new direction.

well, it didn't. it's not really the fault of the class (limited scope due to funding - ah, the joys of nonprofits), BUT it did have some good food for thought, and got me thinking about the things that are important to me in a work environment, as well as some ideas on areas to explore to help me find That Thing That I Want To Do.

so yes, that was good. but what was great was there was another lesbian couple in the class. as class was breaking up, min goes: does anyone know a good place for dinner around here? and i said: oh, i already know a good place. we started downstairs and then one of the dykes - sandy, as it turns out - said: are you sure you want to turn down a good restaurant recommendation? i laughed and said good point! so she and her partner sara told us about two places. neither of them sounded good for then, but it was good to know. we were dropping some paperwork at the car, and the other couple was across the street, and min said: should we ask them to dinner?

so in a nutshell: we went to dinner with them, plus a friend of theirs visiting from australia, and had a GREAT time. so great that we all agreed to go out again sometime. pretty nice result for a class that didn't help much!

friday i had my offsite at lake berryessa/spanish flat resort. i must say, before looking up that link, i had no idea how much it cost to rent a boat. wow. but: what a blast. i posted some pics but naturally there are no pics of me bouncing, hovering, and skidding across the water since it's impossible to take a picture of yourself when both hands are grabbing, with all their might, to straps on a gigantic innertube.

and, i had no idea hanging onto a giant innertube could be so tiring and yield so many bruises. but as AG said (yes, AG. more on that later), "they're bruises of honor." i couldn't agree more. especially since, of all the people who rode that damn innertube, i was the *only* one who did NOT go flying off it! that's right - i did better than all those tall guys with the bulging arm muscles.

of course the flip side is, i rode that innertube to death, and it paid me back with the bruises, a good case of wind/sunburn and a (mild) knock upside the head. had a headache for three days straight...it's almost gone now. even so, i'd do it all again. sooo much fun!

oh and yes i attempted to wakeboard. later i heard that almost no one gets up (on the board) the first time. swallowed a bunch of water, got crabby with myself - but i'd try it another time if i had the chance.

also i got to see charissa that morning (but not at the offsite, wah). other than "hi", the first thing she said to me was "you're so tiny!"

what? ohhh. weight loss. for those of you who haven't seen me for a while, i am far from tiny, believe me. but since the last time she saw me (march?) i had dropped about 40 pounds. plus i had clothes on that *fit*. anyway, she asked me what my secret was and i said: stress, a little exercise, a little eating less, and stress. did i mention stress? so, not really a diet i recommend, but there are worse ways to lose weight, as i saw quite clearly with min. still, it was really nice to get the compliment so if you're out there reading, charissa - thanks! :-)

rest of the weekend was pretty mellow. m's birthday was saturday...all we did was get takeout from buca di beppos, because she has been very ill lately. it's just the usual, but she's been worse the last month or so. i seriously think she may be headed for a hospital stay soon - another obstruction/impaction. without going into details, let's just say all signs point to this, but i hope i'm wrong and she starts feeling a bit better soon.

ok...AG. so, for reasons i will not elaborate on but were TOTALLY innocent and well-intentioned (think: apology), i wrote to AG last week. we ended up having some good dialogue (note: i did not use dialogue as a verb) and, i think, left things in a much better place.

and they were so much better that of course, i found myself thinking about her too much again. however i (think i) did a better job redirecting that than i have in the past, and i started to feel better by sunday. the main trick i have learned, if i may say, is to simply not respond. compelling? absolutely. compulsory? absolutely not. so let's put that energy into something more productive! yeah!

in case you didn't know, i am not a cheerleader. but, sometimes i think everyone needs one, at least a little bit.

ok that pretty much wraps it, and good, because this post is long enough. :-p

incidentally

if you want to see your work in a browser, it really helps if you save your changes.

oh, i am SO tired

but: i had a great day. more later!

loving the light

Originally uploaded by heatherama.

i don't know why, i guess it's the reds, greens, and misty light, but i really love this shot. on saturday i was itching to go oustide, so we went to the thornewood preserve just west of woodside. it was supposed to be a gentle hike...and i guess it mostly was, except for all the areas with slide damage. min didn't make it all the way, but i was determined to make it to the lake. which admittedly was more of a glorified pond. still, i was happy to have made the trek and get a few nice shots.

today we went and saw world trade center which was pretty mediocre overall. loud. it did give a good sense of some people's experience that day, but it was a little slow. went to greek later in mountain view - cafe baklava? - on castro. yum.

and if you've heard about the infamous Pearl Dancing, here is your chance to see the SHORT (but still 5mb) version. on a normal day she probably goes twice as long and is twice as bouncy. :-D

fascination wimmin

Originally uploaded by heatherama.

as we all know, there are some fascinating wimmin out there. so of course, when i saw this tonight, i had to snap a picture. and snap i did, with my snappy new canon! a birthday present which i got to research, pick out and pick up today thanks to a good deal (i was determined to spend under $200) at wolf camera.

after we picked that up, we went out to dinner and then down to the boardwalk to listen to a free concert by john waite. it was pretty packed, and he was good (and loud) so we ambled around, took the sky tram, and otherwise just had a relaxing and wonderful evening.

topped, of course, with a stop at marianne's ice cream on the way out of town. requisite!

ok i think i'm finally off to sleep now. hopefully more adventures this weekend. i am determined to get some video footage (yay! in-camera video!) of pearl doing her famous belly dance. :-D

the haps

since july 29, not even two weeks ago! altho i admit, it's close. let's see...

july 30: we went to wen and tara's engagement party out in the boonies (ripon). before we went though, we took pearl to the house of a Kind Stranger From Bascrappy. m had posted looking for a last-minute place for pearl to get puppysat (i thought she'd be ok at home, but no matter) and a very sweet woman posted saying she had a small chihuahua that would probably looove to play with pearl. we talked on the phone...she offered references but seemed so nice we just went for it.

and that all went just fine, thank you. pearl and the other pup had the Best Time Ever. meantime we also had a very very good time at tara's parents' place. beyoootiful garden/backyard. great food, excellent company, most of which we didn't know, but everyone was super friendly.

on the way home we stopped in pleasanton? amidst an explosion of superstores, anyway, and had a meal and did a bit of shopping. had to buy some new bras because half of my old ones were too big! annoying but of course, good.

july 31: i think we went to the women's group at the defrank. kinda nice. i even talked! a lot! but not as much as this one woman...wow.

aug 2: we tried to go to the PWG meeting but we'd had a fight on the way up, and ended up leaving halfway through for more processing. yay. all i feel like saying about all that is, it had to do with this stupid poly stuff, and theoretically the particular subtopic at hand was all sorted out, but i don't know if i really believe it. i think the next time it comes up will be the true test.

and no i have not resigned myself to anything. i really don't know where she and i will end up eventually, but for now, for sure it's still just her and i.

aug 5/6: i think we just stayed home - cleaned and did more medical paperwork, for which we have an endless amount. a lot of what we're doing now involves scrilla payback! which is a great motivator. and the cleaning, well, that is its own motivator too. looking over and not seeing piles of cwap really *is* nice.

aug 7: women's group again. was fine but i didn't feel chatty for some reason. like that EVER happens! that's ok though, that same woman i mentioned last time reeeally likes to talk. she does have interesting things to say, but wow.

aug 8: took my bad self to target, to try to return some swimming trunks that i had outgrown (undergrown?) before i even had a chance to wear them! but could NOT return because i didn't have the original credit card anymore (bank just switched me from visa to mc). grr. in the meantime target had also decided to sell off 90% of their swimtrunks and i almost didn't find any! but did at the last minute, and in a smaller size than i expected to have fit me. heh. very nice. was determined, too, because we have an offsite to waterski next week! and i've never been! woo!

other than that, it's just been work, eat, sleep. like normal for most people i guess. and really, i suppose most of this entry is boringly normal and relatively calm. i'm ok with that for now. :-)

lunchtime fun

while i'm waiting for the *fastest*bestest* application of all time, clearwaste, here are some lunchtime observations from this week:

• buck rogers is funny. especially when people say things like "But I can't leave Musicworld!"
  
  it is amazing how, even 26 years ago, jerry orbach still looks old. i also never noticed that buck's robot - twiki! - pulls a road runner (bdeep-bdeep-bdeep) sometimes. but i guess that makes sense since mel blanc did both. :-D
  
• that KITT car is a bonafide wiseass. i heart him. also, why is david hasslehoff so adored (by some)? i don't get it.
  
• a luau salad tastes better under a series of shady trees, with your best girl and puppy by your side. as well as some damn good cake to polish things off.

ok clearwaste isn't done, but i am for now. have a good weekend!

a voyage...of bananas

this is brought to you by i heart carol.

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30 second voyage

INT. Bubbles' house - early evening.

Bubbles is scanning teevee options for the evening. She comes across a random movie starring valerie harper.

Bubbles thinks to herself, 'valerie harper. isn't that rhoda? and the one with that show where she got replaced by sandy duncan? yeah...sandy duncan...why does that sound familiar?' There is a pause while Bubbles stares at the screen.

"Oh," Bubbles says, and then snickers, because she remembers that earlier in the day, she'd read this:

Aquarius
This week marks the four-year anniversary of your solemn oath to develop a lifestyle that is in no way influenced by Sandy Duncan.

Min, at the computer, and curious why Bubbles is giggling, asks, "What?"

After she stops giggling, the first thing Bubbles says is, "Thanks again for getting me that onion book."

Bubbles then takes Min on the 30 second voyage, she also tells her about the flaming corn dogs and morality for sextuplets. Because that was some good shit too.

take on me

continuing my trend of interspersing a few light posts with lengthier ones, here's an update of What's Been Going On as opposed to the fascinating world of flickr, heat waves and snorting. since my last mammoth update, i have had even more aha!s:

1. yes i said that my fixation on AG was about more than her, that it was about me wanting a richer existence. but, it was also about *her*. i haven't just been missing the possibility of her (or anyone), i've been flat out missing my friendship with AG, such as it was. maybe if i'm good, and lucky, we can get something back.

2. staying busy - and by that, i mean keeping my inbox on the verge of exploding during daytime hours - really is a good pacifier. beats staring at a cursor.

3. getting to know yourself, and even articulate! your feelings better is really quite startling at times. but good. :-)

4. self-doubt and/or self-loathing is an insanely powerful demon that has tortured both min and i for far too long. it's not the kind of thing you can get rid of overnight, but WonderTherapist, B, gave us some excellent tools for dealing with this. now if we can only remember to implement them...

5. last saturday when we saw B, we went to a very tasty dinner in the marina district and then walked along crissy field...watched the sunset over the golden gate. it was so gorgeous outside. the realization? that i am very lucky to be alive, to be there at that moment, with a woman who loves me (who i love as well), and a puppy who bounces everywhere.

6. an aha! moment that also was a duh!: Other People stick in my head because i'm interacting with them - or in some way, they are with me - more than min does. granted, once i get home, usually she's interacting with me quite a lot...but not necessarily.

why is this worthwhile to note? because it makes me feel less guilty about all this stupid musing i do. it's simple physics. more, better interaction with min = less Others because my mind's full with her. now, there's only so much we can do about that, given the situation, but still... it's in progress.

7. and in conclusion: WonderTherapist B, who we've decided to stick with, helped me come to an amazing realization. we were talking about the time in my life when i was cutting and very suicidal - my senior year in HS. she said, why did you do that then versus some other time? what happened?

my parents liked to think that it was because i was angry/whatever about the abuse i'd experienced when i was little. i never really bought that. i mean sure, that's not GOOD, but it wasn't on my mind, either. no, i'd say that far more pressing on my mind was that in the last year or so, my life had become a variation on running on empty. i am not kidding. for brevity's sake, let's just say that we spent some time on the run from the government, because of my dad, and because of both real and (his) imagined conspiracies and paranoias.

so i told B about all this. and she said: it's natural that you would turn to sexual fantasies (which also started around then) as well as the cutting, because it was an outlet that YOU could control. the rest of your world was about life and death, and that responsibility hanging in the balance. it was about control -- your parents controlling you, and internal messages to control yourself because there's probably someone waiting for you to mess up and then you're all dead.

you're jealous, right? right.

with help, i got the cutting stopped. and i knew - really - i would never do anything worse than that. which meant fantasy became my main outlet. i could control it, it was all mine and no one else's. even when everything was "fine", even when it started to cause me pain, it was still inside and therefore safe.

at least, until the last couple of years. that's when i fell in love with someone else, and became almost completely unglued. and that story, well i've talked about that enough. but that was my mind's turning point from safe to destructive. and i have never really been the same since. i'm hoping the difference now, though, is that i'm talking about these things. there will be no more decades of festering - only fortnights are allowed.

ok time for bed. enough analysis for now.

any day that involves snorting is a good day

that's snorting from laughter, mind you.

i just said that to liz and thought it was worth sharing. i hope you all have snort-worthy days!

i don't know about the rest of you

but right now i would very much like to be in alaska, antartica, or have some chunk of an iceberg in this house. 108 degrees (says wunderground) is a bit much, even with AC that's been going for hours and hours.

ok, back to the bedroom (the only tolerably cool room in the house)!

the benefits of a flickr outage

as some of you may have noticed, yesterday flickr died for a while. in the interim they had posted this great contest page, where the winner with the best artwork gets a flickr pro account. if i still had a digital camera i'd have tried too, but meantime, i bring you the pool of contestants and point out my faves so far (i just started looking!):

doggie flickr

fighting fuzzy ball flickr

enjoy!

yummm

tonight i had one of the best dinners ever. definitely in my top 3 for homemade dinners ever. i had:

- sauteed scallops, shrimp, mushrooms, onions, marinated in some sort of soy-type sauce*
- basmati rice
- asparagus with a bit of paprika
- mango relish: mango, black beans, cucumber, bell pepper, tomato, and probably some other things

*i can't be more specific about the sauce because i didn't cook any of this. well, i started the rice. min made it all and it was deeeelectable. d-eeee-lectable, i tell you!

and for dessert a few hours later i had a teensy slice of the german chocolate cheesecake she made me the other day (a thanks for all the help i gave her - and there was a LOT - with the disability paperwork she had to get done pre-interview).

and for the record this is exactly how i gained 10 billion pounds when i first moved in with her. :-p the only reason i'm not gaining weight now is a) i *am* trying to be more conscious about what, or at least how much, i eat, and b) heat makes me nauseous so my appetite is way down. good thing it's summer! and even if i didn't eat much, it was a wonderful way to forget another drudgesome day at work. well, that, a couple kisses from min AND pearl, and a little teevee.

fireworks, angst and death

yes, that headline is the 1 second version of this entire post. :-p anyway, thanks to clearcase and other technology snafus, in addition to my inability to post more often, I bring you an almost-3 week recap!

6.28 exceeded RDA of Angst and Angst-related Secret Blog Posts.

6.30 had a horrible (too vivid) dream about AG. because i was so upset that morning, ended up admitting to min what a shit-ass time i'd been having fighting with myself the last several weeks. how i'd been thinking, wouldn't she really be better off without me? and i really heard her when she said: no. i love you. ALL of you. to which i said: i'm glad you do because i sure don't.

7.1 saw Lake House which wasn't that bad. romance... with a bit of fantasy. had a fight with min, but ended well.

7.3 battled with myself. victor: me! loser: me!

7.4 played a fun bedroom game in the morning. :-D went to oakland to have dinner with some strangers dykes. VERY yummy food! some good conversation. then we walked down to jack london to see the fireworks/listen to music. got separated from the group...but so what. we had a blast AND i won free tickets to some event this winter. handel's messiah singalong i think? put on by whatever symphony was playing at the fireworks. anyway the BEST part about the fireworks is now they have smiley fireworks!! so cool!!! the worst part was, we're never bringing pearl to fireworks again. soooo scared she was. poor thing.

oh and on the way home we got lost in alameda. all the usual exits were blocked off (thanks) and so we ended up in the webster tube...the only good thing i can say about all that is, now we have an oakland map. :-p

7.5 joined more lists in an attempt to stave off Major Boredom and Angst. since there was no bingo(!), saw The Devil Wears Prada which was kinda dumb. had a fight because i was an idiot... and in the end felt very grateful for min.

7.6 another good night, even though min was horribly sick. pondered my lack of angst (for last few days) briefly but then let it go (enjoy the break!).

7.7 saw my gynocologist who said: great that you've lost so much weight. however that's why your periods MHPs have sucked so much ass the last several months. thanks!! ffs. went with min to kubota for dinner. yum. had a really lovely evening, felt very in love/content.

7.8 had another (annoying) dream about AG, which put me in a weird mood all day. to help distract myself, i started taking career tests to figure out What I Might Want To Do If It Isn't This.

7.9 saw wen and tara dance! and kai and several others. andrea - T's sequined outfit is SO worth taking a picture of, and we would have if we'd remembered the camera (doh). we went to the event to a) enjoy it, which we did, and b) see if it was the kind of thing we'd want to take a class for, since wen is teaching one pretty damn cheap next month! we both agreed it wasn't really our deal (i was pretty iffy on it from the getgo) - sorry wen. but you guys looked great!

7.10 we cheated on our therapist B by seeing a new one, A. it was 60% disaster 40% success. dunno if we will go back yet (have another appt with B this saturday), but A did have some good observations about our communication styles.

7.12 nickelback songs should be removed from my playlist. joined more lists in an attempt to stave off Major Boredom and Angst.

7.13 had the great idea (via an idea from therapist A) to have min and i check in with each other each day - use that time to talk about something we appreciate/love about each other as well as share difficult feelings we're having (instead of keeping them in). i also realized that a lot of my missing AG is about friendship, that i need more deep friendships in my life. more people i can hang out, be silly with. and as much as i would like min to fill most of those needs, because of her illness, she can only fill so much. yeah i know this is old territory, but i never connected that to AG quite so much. it actually was comforting, because it made it not just about *her*. which is really good because i've had no indications of her missing me. hopefully soon i can say the same. but on this date (13th) that SO was not true.

7.14 had a very sweet, loving day. at night, had nightmare about my parents. min was great, telling me a story to lull me to sleep, but my dream had included music so..borrowed min's ipod to listen to norah jones (the only podcast i could find with soothing music on there!).

7.15 intense love for min feels reactivated. wrote her love letter. spent a lot of time on disability paperwork.

7.16 my maternal grandfather died. i hadn't seen him for maybe 15 years, and i was ok with that because of all the horrible things my mom told me he'd done to her (thanks). my own experiences with him were ok if stilted. he had been VERY ill the last few months - pretty out of it mentally, blind, etc..and apparently saturday he took a real nosedive. my mom (who, at least to some degree, had forgiven him) said they had peaceful music and candles going much of that day, and that almost all her sibs got to either be there or talk to him on the phone before he died. amazingly she says my grandmother is doing really well. i'm glad my mom can be there for her right now though.

also spent a lot of time on disability paperwork, running errands related to that. had a fight...and later min apologized for all the times she's been...short with me inappropriately. and over the last few years, with her pain putting her frustration threshold so very high by default, there has been a lot of that, so i really appreciated her a) recognizing that and b) apologizing. it's been hard to talk to her about it because of how much stress she's under.

7.17 min filed for disability today. for real! had an interview down at the SSA office and everything. i am so proud of her for finally getting that done. course now we just have to wait for them to deny her (i'm not kidding) and reapply. apparently we should know within 6 months if she gets approved. it's kind of funny, EVERYTHING we've ever read says, nobody ever gets approved the first time. but apparently they totally act like you might. we'll see! and the woman there also told her that even after she gets approved, it'll be 5 months AFTER that until she ever gets any money. there is a 5 mo backlog. wow.

if you made it this far, congrats! your prize, especially if you enjoy arrested development, is to check this out.

ok bye :-)

a mini-update

mini in terms of just covering today and yesterday. :-p luckily it hasn't been tooo bad today. i'll have SuperAngst and then i'll quickly redirect myself, occupy my time some other way.

incidentally min made me a cd yesterday with love songs. some rock even! so sweet. and gave me a little pic of us from a month or two ago, in a little frame. so i have it right here next to me. i am not super jazzed about how i look of course, but it is a good shot of her. and i like having it right there so i can stay focused. oh and also a very sweet love letter.

went to lunch today with Princess I. was good to visit with her! and since she'd read some of my blog, she wanted to talk about all the relationship fun that's been going on for me. she and i had not gotten together in, i don't know, maybe 2 years? at least a year for sure. so we had a lot of ground to cover.

it was good to have that perspective, to try to cover bad (mostly past) to better (recent) and get reminded that things really are getting better over all. we still have SO far to go, but things are in fact progressing.

note: that does not mean that i no longer struggle with:
- emotional fidelity to min (in general)
- a paralyzing ache for AG
- abundant self-hate for the above

quite the opposite. let's just say that i've cried more this year, i suspect, than in my preceding 33.92 years. and look! the year isn't even over yet! i should start a water reclamation facility.

anyway, i get it - things are doing better, but they're still very difficult, and there is a lot of ground that still needs to be covered. that reminds me, a recent entrant to the Things About Me That Are Really Annoying list is: realizing that my boredom threshold is *insanely* high.

now, i always knew i got bored easy. but for the most part i could handle it if i just had *something* to do. but i'll tell you - here in webdev, the spells of having very little to do are much longer than they were in content. and i don't like that. i do find things to keep myself relatively busy (let's hear a cheer for documentation!)...but i don't enjoy them. i need higher caliber distractions. that means blogs, interesting emails, fun-Knee emails, IMs...whatever i can get.

this is mostly when i'm at work, too. otherwise i can find a variety of activities or places to go to for self-entertainment. at any rate, the problem is: i get bored, and then before long i start musing/obsessing on one of the issues listed above. so - not good.

anyway that's it for now. i'm not up for recapping the last two weeks. i'll have to do that later, maybe this weekend. there really has been a lot to cover. :-D

if you're having a shitty day

Toffee Crack will make you forget your troubles, one sip at a time. not that i would know.

so about the last two weeks...

i'm still not going to tell you. maybe tomorrow. it's getting late and my eyes have windburn from my night out. mostly from racing cars.

i've been to MGP before but i didn't do the racing then. tonight i did both the 'go karts' and the 'grand prix' and let me say, there is a WORLD of difference between the two. go kart = fun. grand prix = adrenaline. it could only have been better if it was an actual race (with a winner) rather than me trying to beat my time (and everyone else's) each lap, which i did. :-D

i went tonight (was going to be min and i but she was too sick) because some dyke on bascrappy set up the event. i did actually meet said dyke, and she was very nice, but because i was about 20 minutes late, i lost track of the rest of them by the time i paid (long line). didn't really matter though because i had the best time.

they are having an awesome special in the evenings this summer. if anyone wants to go, gimme holla!

bubbles is also a perfectionist

we know this because she had to take the typing test again and outperform herself. and she did! 108.41 wpm and 1 error.

for the record i totally made a bunch of errors in an email 5 minutes ago. i guess this is proof i work well under pressure. ;-)

bubbles is on speed

i'll post an update about My Life someday soon. in lieu of that, i give you self-entertainment.

i often have been told that my fingers' propensity to blur across the keyboard is jarring to the ears (no like clickey clackey). to that i say: riiight - you're just jealous!

anyway if you wanna test your typing skills in a fun, quick way, go here. and if you're feeling charitable, report back with your score!

today mine worked out to 97 wpm with 2 errors. and honestly, i used to type faster. i must be getting old. :-p

friday fiver

...on the same friday, no less! i have clearwaste, the best application of ALL TIME, to thank. oh and thanks wen. :-)

Five games you played as a kid.
Hide and seek. You know, you count, close your eyes, and then run around for a half hour chasing each other.

mad libs. have spent oodles of time playing it in the car. i still looooooooove this game. and i am sure it taught me, at least in part, my love of all things wordy. favorite moment is when our family actually made up a star trek mad lib story and a character was ordered to "lower your shields or we'll squat on your sheep".

checkers. because i always won, duh. being the older sister has its advantages.

backwards! man, i just remembered this after thinking, what else did i play? my sister and i, for obvious reasons, called it "sdrawkcab". excellent for budding word nerds.

can't stop. i had so much fun remembering the last one that i thought some more, and remembered this. it looks dumb but for some reason was strangely compelling. i mean, we couldn't. stop.


Five people you know (or knew) and the food you associate with them.
mom. i'll go with coffee cake, but since she's my mom, there are so many potential foods. she makes the best damn coffee cake ever.

min. lasagna. and this is the delectable, 30-cheese lasagna that she made for me during our first year. ain't ever gonna live that one down.

liz. i'm going to pick toffee crack, since she was such a demon for introducing it to me.

my sis. macNcheese, because we shared it so often while watching perry mason and andy griffith

my dad. potato scrambles. he makes super ones with lots of veggies and spices.


Five things you don't own/have on hand that most people probably do.
a real credit card. only got a debit card (and that's enough, thanks).

sleeping bag. want to get one tho. i also want:

a tent. i want to go camping again sometime.

gym membership. i mean, if you're not going to go, why bother?

i don't know, makeup? at least for girls and drag queens this is common i'd imagine.


Five pet peeves.
spelling errors. can i have that count more than once?

grammar errors. but i'm willing to let some things slide because, well, i like to play with words.

inefficiency.

stupidity. too bad i'm good at that. :-p

republican presidents. ok i was running out of peeves, but that's a good one, no?


Five people who taught you important things (you need not know them).
parents. again stealing from wen, but that's too good, especially since it counts for 2.

grandma m.

min.

the instructor of my bible history class at belmont. sorry i don't remember your name, guy, but i remember your dog's name was erasmus! kind of hard to forget that.


And 5 people (or a higher multiple of 5) that you're tagging for this meme:
That assumes I have 5 readers…hmmm…
Monk/Cheddah
Snowflake
Dork/Amberger Hamburger
Princess (and that counts for two)

it's a good thing

i have this ritual of getting up each morning (at least weekdays) and getting on here to ye olde internet. reading my mail, blogs. because i'll tell you what, it gives me perspective. it lets me know i am not alone in my desperation, that there really is more to this world than My Little World, and if nothing else, helps me shake off my dreamtime.

lately the dreamtime has not been so good to me. it has been full of disturbing images both grotesque and lovely.

oh and if i am lucky, i get a few funny emails too, to give me a giggle.

anyway the dreams - so i get up thinking i should blog about the annoying/beautiful/whatever tricks my mind has played on me during the night, and by the end of my Internet browsing, most of that has been pushed aside. and in my judgment, this is all for the best. methinks i muse too much, sometimes.

hello out there

yes i am still alive and breathing. some of the breathing has been a bit labored lately because i've been fighting off a bizarre throat infection/flu, the treatment of which has induced extreme dizziness and (as mentioned previously) occasional difficulty in breathing. woo. but today is the last day for Stupid Medication. has made it really fun trying to finish a complicated work project i've had. what? file doesn't validate with tons of garbage characters in it? the nerve!

in other news things have been really difficult at home the last few weeks. they are a bit better now, but that's as random as anything else. which is to say:

• min has been pretty ill (more than normal) the last month or so
  
• because of that she's taken more meds, including some we agreed she wouldn't take anymore because they made her too wacky
  
• apparently she also took them because she was so depressed about us and just wanted to sleep and not feel as much emotional OR physical pain

in other words it was psuedo-suicide (albeit temporary, and i got to deal with the side effects, which i will not elaborate on here for (hah) brevity). min would probably not like i'm saying all this, but it's the truth and she told me before to be brutally honest in here. this actually is not brutal truth, but it is sharing more than before. anyway, i am very happy to report she is seeing her own therapist today. hopefully that goes well.

but the rest... i don't know what to do about all this. i'm stuck. i'm still pissed that she took these meds, particularly since this was the 4th time to do so (post-promise of never taking them again).

also i hate that she felt things were going so badly that she felt the need to do this. i had been under the impression that things were going alright. we were working on things, communicating a bit better. i don't know if she was just despairing that we would never be able to go back to a "happily" monogamous relationship or if it was more than that. i do know that topic causes her great despair. to which i can only say/have said: maybe we can get there. it's a goal we're working toward, because i love you and you come first in my life.

but apparently that is not enough to keep her from doing stuff like this. if anyone has ideas on how to deal with this situation, lay it on me. i want to be loving and supportive but also not get walked all over. things have been better the last week (she stopped those meds about a week ago) but to be honest i don't trust this won't happen again.

in other drama, sunday i saw AG. i'm going to leave it at that for details but let's just say that it threw me for a loop in a way i did not expect. even now i'm getting teary just thinking about it. sheesh! pathetic. anyway, i didn't think i was over her...god no. but, maybe 75% over? so sunday's intense reaction stunned me.

there was some additional AG heartwrenching a few weeks ago, at which point (several days later) i realized that tho excruiciating, this was good because it was helping me move on. so, la de da, i'm being good and not talking to her, time passes... i'm good, yeah?

yeah no. seeing her sunday completely fucked me up again. i've been blown away by how much she's gotten under my skin. but hopefully a difference this time is: i really REALLY believe we are through, that we are under no circumstances ever going to happen. even if min and i go all kinds of crazy polywhatever, i'm never hooking up with AG. that's just the way it is.

not that she doesn't find me charming in a way, but *we* are just not in the stars. and i hate it. but i'm trying to move on.

oh and meantime be a good wife to the woman who DOES love me dearly. bet you can guess how i'm doing on that.

so much for not whining. wen, you should've never encouraged me. ;-p but you can see why i've needed to take a break for a bit.

it's (almost) all greek to me

i had an unexpected but quite pleasant thing happen this afternoon. i sat down preparing to do some freelance work - writing even! - and got my monthly popup reminder to check my website stats. usually i ignore that but today being a lazy - or if i want to feel writerly, languid - day, i went ahead.

one thing the webstats show is how people got to my site. lo and behold one of the referrer entries was for a greek page on lesbian writers, run by the greek sapphites.

it seems especially trippy because for the most part, i don't think of myself as a Lesbian Writer, or even a writer. in the past, maybe. which i guess is apropos since the actual Lesbian Writing i did was in 1998.

but still...apparently even the lesbian *internet* is small. wow.

the confluence of love

means that you can get a 99% and still not pass the test. because that 1%, when woven in at compilation time, means the difference between bliss and agony.

at least this is how it seems to me.

on a related note: i am going to try to stop whining so much (internally and externally). i don't get to have what i want. so what? most people don't. it sucks but that's just the way it is. i'm hoping that, with work at improving what i can, eventually i can not give a * about the rest, and be content with what i have. the hunger for the impossible is killing me, and there's just no point in that.

and in completely different news: our neighbor penny seems to have gone a smidge bananas. lots of yelling and irrationality yesterday. since we share the same (large) lot, we have to see her all the time and things are tense now...yuck. i hope today she woke up a little saner.

not concentrating & what to do about it

so i can't talk about issue A. maybe someday. technically it has nothing to do with me, but it's still killing me inside.

issue B - turned out for the most part to be a misunderstanding, thankfully. not that that made the actual argument any easier. let's just say that min and i realized that if we're starting to fight on IM, to stop. and wait to finish until we can talk on phone or in person. it's just too easy to misunderstand.

rocket science eh? i know.

issue C is my parents. in short, things are going absolutely horribly for them up in oregon. they are probably going move back to arizona, but that in itself will take a lot of finagling. i can't help them anymore (since we don't have min's disability income), which depending on how you look at it, could be good or bad. i have a history of helping them too much. as do many other peoples. they sure raised me to be a good little codependent.

in any case, all i can do is fret. i am trying not to, but they ARE my parents. so it sucks.

so what to do about A/B/C? the answer is obvious: distract yourself. i already had plans to go roller skating tonight, and the timing couldn't have been better. i skated for almost two hours straight (barring a couple water stops, and 2 falling-down stops). thus, it is only now, 2 hours later, that i'm finally not feeling like jello.

it felt really good to be out there. i hadn't skated since i was oh, 13? but i used to skate like a bandit. it took me a while to feel comfortable enough to do crossovers. and they still sucked, but i was happy i got that far. i was enjoying the music so much that even though i knew i needed to stop, when def leppard came on, i just couldn't leave the floor. 3/4 thru the song tho, i had to give up. pouring tons of sugar on me would not have helped one iota, but it was fun to have the flasback.

i hope that today(!) is better than yesterday, emotionally and learning-wise (class was soooo boring, but taught by this guy's cousin so i was periodically amused). ok, off to sleep.

i can't concentrate

because i'm really just having the best day ever. crying in the bathroom over issue A? arguing over IM about issue B? fretting about issue C?

love. it.

another weekend update

believe it or not, we went out TWO, count 'em, TWO days in a row this weekend. and that second day of adventuring took us once again to san leandro and to another yard sale we heard about on ba-s.

sunday's, i have to say, was incredibly lame compared to saturday. for the record, there were very few cheap deals overall, an embarrasing amount of baseball cards, the "SEALED BUNDLE" of pride parade programs was not sealed (and sitting on the grass), and finally, the "MUCH, MUCH MORE!", i believe, consisted of 2 of the dykes yelling randomly at the top of their lungs.

that said, we did get a billion printer-friendly cd labels (and bonus cassette and 3.5 floppy labels!) and certificates for a good price. also min got a couple pieces of queer jewelry including some adorable earrings. i used to be tempted by cute/cool jewelry but oh, 7 or 8 years ago i realized it was a waste of money. because i just don't remember to put it on! i have a ring, a watch, and i only remember to put on the watch 75% of the time. technically i still have hordes of jewelry, it's just all collecting dust...

anyway, after that we went to lunch to a new (to us) place in berkeley, bette's diner. not being horribly familiar with berkeley, i had no idea it was located in the midst of the yuppie mecca that is the 4th street shopping district. suffice to say it didn't take us long to spend some money on a variety of home goods. but first we ate, and i have to say, even tho i had a simple ham sandwich, it was awfully damn tasty. and the dessert (cheesecake brownie) min ordered was aMAZing. we will definitely be going there again.

most of this week i'm spending in training. today is ClearWaste (for unix, instead of windows) and i have to say, it's living up to its name quite nicely. i wouldn't have bothered with more training but i've come to realize there's some environment setup changes (webdev vs content) that i really need. tho today has been mostly boring, it's nice to get out of a bunch of meetings and be free of potential manager hoverees. which is why i can bring you this post today. ;-)

note to self

sometimes you really do let your mind run away with itself too too much. analyzing everything to death, and with a penchant toward assuming the worst in relation to what people think about you, means that time and time again, you come to the wrong conclusion.

good thing you rarely voice those conclusions. you just fret, then when you realize everything's ok, breathe an internal sigh of relief.

so, note to self: stop assuming the worst. stop overanalyzing every minute detail and rehashing it ten million times in your brain. because i assure you, nobody else cares that much. everybody else is caught up in their own life. that's why things are never as bad as you imagine.

but don't think this means you have license to fuck up. play nice, yo.

hopeful

a couple of days ago min and i saw our therapist, B. i think this is a good time to point out that B is fucking awesome. because for the first time in a LONG time, i feel hopeful. hopeful that min and i really WILL be able to work out some kind of arrangement, whereby i can be with her and other women. hopeful that maybe i really am not a complete and utter fuckup for having these desires, for not being able to rid myself of them. that it means i'm simply someone with a lot of love and high interaction quotient. someone obviously struggling with a way to deal with it, but still. that doesn't make me evil.

and oh, i have felt evil the last few months.

anyway, it was a great session, full of many oh!s and ah!s. afterwards we went to this great pasta place, valencia pizza that we last went to, oh, 2 years ago? anyway the food was still stellar, cheap, and massive in portion size. min and i split some basil cream fettucini with scrumptious shrimp and still took home leftovers.

yesterday we went up to one of the weekend's many dyke yard sales, in san leandro. got a bunch of awesome retro paper (wrapping, but could double as artwork) uber-cheap. then went to our old standby, fat apple's - the el cerrito one - for lunch, and then on to the point isabel dog park. what a great park! it was foggy but so so beautiful, right by the water. and pearl had the best time checking out all the other woofers.

i don't really have a lot else to share right now, except to say, i hope i can be patient. i know it is going to take min and i some time to sort through what kind of a relationship we are going to have in the future. *i've* been waiting so long to change things, i know it makes me feel impatient. but min's only known about this for a little over two months. we've made a lot of progress in the way we interact with each other, and hopefully we'll get even better as we go. whether we're ultimately monogamous or not, it's all still, to me, encouraging.

since i'm getting blogger love

i'll post something i realized, after pirates came up while talking with my sister, that i really must share this with the rest of the world.

so there is a really fabulous magazine called mental floss that is power snack food for your brain. i get min a subscription to it, and several happy issues are sitting in the magazine rack in our powder room. i was in there yesterday (omg!), looked down and saw what looked like tshirt designs. i pick it up…sure nuf, some great punny wear. and now for the pirate wisdom: when life gives you scurvy, make lemonade!

yarrr!

happiness is

toffee crack brought to your door, and its goodness zooming through your veins.

i mean, my god. i forgot how good this was. it may be better than a dq-licious blizzard.

and now, the weekend report

warning: this is really long.

i would like to thank our current implementation of ClearWaste for the time to bring you this update. i hear that soon we will be getting some time-saving enhancements, and i'm glad about that, although i will miss these bonus times.

this was an interesting weekend - mostly good. saturday we got going relatively early for my eye doctor appointment at cupertino family eye care, which i believe liz referred me to a billion years ago. at any rate, they were excellent - incredibly helpful, friendly and had pretty good prices. MUCH better than the place we've been going to at valley fair.

oh and had way too many frames to choose from, which made us almost late for seeing our therapist up in SF, since we had to get lunch first. i'd seen that there was a quiznos near there, but couldn't find it so we went to a bagel place across from one of the Apple buildings. very tasty bagels.

so, up up and away...we're less than a mile from B's place and she calls on the phone. oops, she said, forgot that you bring pearl, and one of my dogs is (better but) still contagious after its hospital stay. ack. so we rescheduled to thursday. but, what to do now?

we'd already talked about maybe going to good vibes, so might as well go now! it'd been years since either of us had been to a shop like that, so we had tons of fun browsing and giggling. finally got around to the book section and i found two books i'd been interested in getting: redefining our relationships and the ethical slut. while min checked out a VERY hot photography book, i tried to pick one of the two relationship ones. i was leaning toward the ethical slut when min said, 'i think our relationship is worth paying for both.' good point.

among other things we also got this game and finally tried it out last night. didn't make it to the end - she got too sleepy after all the massage i had to give her as part of the game - but nonetheless could tell it was a very good investment. :-D

ok back to saturday. after GV we just wandered down valencia enjoying the day, people and little shops. m started to want a snack but we weren't seeing anywhere good to go. we found this place i want to say was called little osmo...cute shirts, notebooks, handmade cards...very cool. we asked for a snack rec and got pointed to tartine a few blocks away. busy but yummmy to me (min wasn't that crazy bout it). and passed the women's building on the way, which has amazing murals.

anyway afterwards we started back towards the car, since min now felt she needed some real food, we'd look for somewhere for dinner. on the way we saw a hat store with entirely too many adorable hats. after much sampling she finally settled on a cute white one with blue/green dots. she's wearing it today, so adorable!

in the interests of not meandering too much for dinner, we wanted to go to eliza's, where we'd been before. very affordable, very tasty, and adorable decor. well all that was true saturday, but they were also extremely rude regarding pearl.

in addition to being adorable, pearl's also an assistance dog now so legally businesses are required to let her come in. most places, even if they have an issue at first, once min explains the law/gives them a handout, they shut up and are very nice. but not this place. i mean, they could have been worse, but they were very snotty the whole time. anyway we went home from there and min was pretty beat so we went to bed shortly after around 10. i was not sleepy so i started reading the ethical slut.

i guess you can't put a good slut down, because i made it 1/3 of the way thru its 270+ pages that night. i highlighted away until i realized my lines were getting too wobbly, so i gave up and went to sleep.

sunday we had no plans. i realized after i woke up that this was a good thing, because i'm learning that if min has a good day with lots of running around, the next day she has to rest. pretty much all day. i read my email, ate breakfast and thought...you know what i really want to do? finish reading that slut.

so that's what i did. read, highlighted, re-read, mused, then kept reading until i finished around 2pm. i have to say, at least for me it was a really good book. and not just about being a slut. i think this book is good for anyone either in a relationship, or who wants to be in one. it makes you think about what kind of things you want - for yourself, for your partner(s) - not only sexually but emotionally. what kind of relationship do you want to have? what things could make your relationship healthier? and my favorite - how to have more constructive fights.

fights, i am coming to realize, are a necessary evil. that doesn't mean i like them one little bit, but i do think that both of us are starting to handle them better.

good thing too because as i finished the book, min woke up. she asked me what i thought of it. i said it was good, but wanted a little more time to let it sink in. she said ok, and that she wanted to read it too - today. i thought that was great and handed it over. i was getting up to get her a different pen for making notes/highlights and she said, 'i want us to get a book about monogamy too. i don't want to think we can just read this book and assume with this we can make everything just fine.'

sure, sounds good to me, i said. let's be balanced about it. but what i thought was, great. where is this going?

sure enough the next several hours involved a lot of crying (both), talking, processing, not talking, and more crying. at one point she gave me this article about gay marriage she'd printed from The Nation. i read it while she was doing something else. later i came back into the living room and she was reading it. as she finished i said, that was a good article, thanks for showing it to me.

she said, 'see, this is what marriage is about. it's about wanting to spend the rest of your life with someone. being with them through everything, growing old together. it's not just about sex.'

i said, that's what i want too. i want to spend the rest of my life with you. i love that when you and i saw that there was a 4400 marathon on today, we both wanted to watch it. i want to be married to you. i think, it's just that you and i have different definitions about what that marriage could look like.

sounds rational eh? yeah whatever. what matters is, emotionally i'm saying that she alone is not enough for me. and - in a different way than she meant - it's not completely about sex. it's about there being different parts of me that don't really go well with her, and i have ALWAYS needed to either suppress or save for my friends.

the example i brought up is my extremely dry, mock-happy, sarcastic sense of humor. she does not appreciate this (she feels it's too harsh, and i get that), but unforunately is a rather critical component to my personality. since early on in our relationship, when we set this boundary, i've either had to keep that to myself or (as i can now thank NUTS for) sometimes share it with like-minded friends.

she said something about that not being the point and i said, actually it is. the point is, i've never been able to get all of my needs met with solely you. it's unrealistic and probably unhealthy to expect that to be the case. and so, thinking that i might need other people in my life, in order to get certain needs met, is reasonable.

there's that word again. reason. emotional well-being does not necessarily have anything to do with reason. just like my feeling like i never should have said anything in the first place (in april), but also realizing i couldn't keep it in anymore. and so, there was more crying. and agreeing to not talk anymore about this until we see B on thursday.

ok fair enough. the rest of the day was pretty quiet, with us both reminding each other that we loved each other and were going to keep working on this. then later, like i said we went to bed early and had fun with our new game.

since min was sleeping, i almost came out afterwards and started blogging the weekend, but crashed since i knew i had to get up early today - presentation at work! by yours truly! and i'm very happy to say it went fine, no problems, i didn't even get horribly nervous (i hate presenting). answered a billion questions and we all went on our merry little way afterwards.

unbelievably, ClearWaste is not done yet. wow! but, i am. get up, give your eyes a rest if you made it this far. thanks for playing.

update: it wasn't little osmo, it's little otsu. their main site led me to some other awesome online shops including some sexy, knotty work at buy olympia. i am SO going to be shopping there soon.

it's not just me

sometimes work is really complicated. i have a spec that involves quite a bit of css changes and was advised to go to the local guru for prototyping. that all went fine and has been very educational. then when i went to insert that into the rest of our code… didn't work quite right.

so being the self-motivated, independent (aka stubborn) person that i am, i tried to fix it myself. and i got it working (yay me!) but not without a lot of changes. so, page 1 down. then i went to page 2. fuck. i could only get 75% of it working. so i called in the guru. and damn if he wasn't just as puzzled as me and has spent several hours with me (over 2 days) trying to make things right.

he got things 95% working but not without removing a lot of the existing code… which i will have to put back. so i'm not done solving this, but at least i know it's not just me being dumb. score one for non-incompetency! a good sentiment for ending a very annoying workweek.

update: i figured out the problem. all. by. myself. GO ME.

another record-breaker

2+ weeks i went without daydreaming about AG. and with as oddly as this jaunt started, i have to wonder if it's all really about her, or me being in love with the idea of being with her. with the idea of being a free agent.

because in the end, i know i don't want to be free. i want to be tethered. to feel that connection to another person...to know the whole of them. and i want them connected to me. sure, i can be hard to get to know (deeply) and anyone reading this blog knows me better than most. but really, i crave that intimacy more than almost anything. my mind, my skin aches for it. and apparently, with more than one person.

which i guess makes it hard when, for various reasons, that deep and abiding, playful and light, utterly rapturous connection to another soul is somehow diminished. diminished by choice, by inaction, by accident...whatever the reason, it's still no small act of torture to witness your emotional states forming a human pretzel. then again i always did love gymnastics.

i could be in a worse way. but today, i'm hating the fact that i'm so easy to push around. i'm hating my need. i'm hating the fact that just thinking about AG has me all a dither. hating that really - and with good reason - i don't think i matter that much to her. why should i? i'm not really in her life.

i'm hating the fact that things are still so difficult with min at times. hating that she's so sick that it takes all her strength to keep it together. hating what that's done and will continue to do to our relationship on so many levels.

and i guess finally, i'm hating that i'm not smart enough to figure all this shit out without fucking up my life. our lives. oh sure, a wise person would say, it's about the journey, growth can only come from struggle. yes that's true. i didn't say i wasn't smart. i'm just not always wise.

good thing we see the therapist on saturday. i need shirley mcclaine, or someone, to help me channel this stupid angst into something more productive. please.

for the record

jukebox hero is not a good song to try to fall asleep to. even if you're only listening to it in your head.

the semi-circle of excellence continues

more cool things, some i forgot to mention last time, some new!

- i got to meet valerie. she was beautiful of course, but amazingly quiet and still, although i'm sure i timed that just right. i DID, however, get to see her bust out with a travolta-esque saturday night fever arm punch, with concordant foot dancing, a few moments before i passed her to min. that totally rocked.

- last week, i witnessed the Power Of All Of Us when threadless reprinted this beauty and it finally arrived in my home, safe, sound and delicious. i got the blue, and i'm very happy to say i successfully dropped a shirt size. woo! thank you stress!

- yesterday we did in fact head out into the Great Beyond for an adventure. the adventure took us to sausalito. the plan was to go to the caledonia street fair for a bit of craftiness and yummy food, then (particularly if the fair sucked), go to the marin headlands on the other side of 101.

well traffic was pretty thick considering the holiday weekend, so we didn't get parked and walking towards the fair until about 2pm. and, since there was no map/info on the internet about precisely where the fair started (plus we hadn't been to sausalito before), we ended up parking a half mile from the goods. but, it was a gorgeous day and we both were doing well so: on, teb!

besides we were both motivated by hunger. i'd read that there was supposed to be an array of international cuisines represented and about 150 booths. oh and music. there was music, i'd say 60-75 booths, and for food: thai, an italian place selling pizza, and two burger/beer joints (one at each end). i wanted something hot, grilled and fresh (who doesn't?) so i voted hot dog and coke and i must say, they were very tasty.

as to the craftwerks: as usual i didn't get anything, but we both enjoyed seeing more diverse crafts than we're used to seeing at events like this. including a guy who did etchings in stone. very beautiful (but naturally, expensive). min got a VERY cute handmade hat - she's gotten into wearing hats lately and some other things, i forget.

so even though there wasn't that much to see, amazingly it took us about 3 hours to meander up and down the fair. by the time we got done and back to the car we were thinking about dinner. we wanted to go to ghirardelli on the way out of town, so trolled around for a place nearby to eat. oh sure, we had our usuals but wanted to explore. so, drive...drive...didn't see anything good.

finally we caved in and just parked at the square. tried first usual - the mandarin - closed for private event! they suggested a thai place downstairs...also closed for private event! walked to tgi friday's down the street...which is now an irish bar and grill. i saw a mexican place at the cannery so we finally landed there and had some moderately good fajitas. walked back to ghirardelli and got our choco fix then headed home.

min just walked by and showed me something i found last night, outside the cannery, that i forgot about. on the sidewalk, i found a little white heart, with a rainbow swooping down across it, and a little faux diamond inside it. a little scuffed but still cute. just now she put it on a chain and says she's going to wear it to remember the great day we had yesterday (and it was a good day).

today we're hoping to go play some goofy golf. i'm so happy that she's up for going out a 2nd day in a row, especially after what (for her) was a pretty active day. and with that i will go have lunch and hope that all of you are having a good holiday weekend. :-)

circle of life

as good a start as any is to say, yesterday i almost blogged this:

my god. sometimes i really am brilliant.

this after only a couple of hours of fidgeting with code, and getting it to do EXACTLY WHAT I WANTED IT TO DO. that, my imaginary friends, is no small feat. especially when lately you've been feeling that you are a dufus. and i assure you, in many ways i am. but right then...so not. it was really quite nice.

do i still want to do something else (besides code) with my semi-charmed life? maybe. but i'll take these small triumphs where i can, and just see where my mind takes me later.

i really try not to blog when i'm in the throes of my Monthly Hormonic Posession (which i think from now i will refer to as MHP), but since i'm on the downside now:

wen, things are alright. it's still pretty much the same as before - there are good times and bad, and i spose that's true for anyone. mostly it's just mellow and i guess in a way that's not too shabby. but it's not particularly blog-worthy either. but some general things from the last week or so:

- i got back in touch with my sister (rather, she with me). it's really been fun chatting with her on IM, and after her saying she was going to start blogging, on a whim i told her about mine. i had decided not to tell my family about it, to keep it separate, but...fuck it. a few days later she told me she and her hubby stayed up all night reading ALL OF IT. sheesh! that's dedication. but in turn i found out this brain-not-turning-off thing is a family trait. whoops.

- so i got good convo and another good blog, yay! and then the other day i found out about cap'n picard's blog and if you like star trek you MUST read it. the first one i read was about doing the laundry and it's fucking hilarious.

- in a blogging first (for me), i am finishing this entry about 12 hours after i started it. i started it around noon, when min was still sleeping. she got up shortly after, and so then we were busy visiting, etc. since the MHP was still bothering me a lot today i wasn't up for going out as planned. so: tv, napping, eating, tv, dishes, talking...

and late tonight we did more talking than i expected. about the usual suspects of late: honesty, the lack thereof, and/or suspicion of the lack of honesty, details about former mental affairees, threats to go talk to affairees, then segueing into general communication problems and our inability to successfully conclude a difficult discussion. well, without putting the convo to an unnatural halt.

but i guess that's the thing right now. we're still learning about healthy ways to communicate about these things and are NOT good at it yet. i have trouble knowing when - and what - information/feelings to volunteer. sometimes i just want to scream at her, but sometimes i want to just scream at me. in the end it's almost always tears (both of us) and pep talks, promising to keep the faith that, with help, we will work things out. i think if nothing else tonight i realized that i really am doing a shitty job of showing her how much i love her... i just hope i wake up and give her her due. i really am lucky to have someone who loves me as much as she does, who loves me when i feel completely unworthy.

- my glorious capper to all that is, the 25th saw our 10 year anniversary. since i was knee deep in MHP hell at that time, we only went out to dinner. but a very lovely dinner at buca di beppo's. are hoping to go somewhere fun/out of town tomorrow, since i should be virtually cramp-free by then. have a rental car (regular's in the shop) with satellite radio! before i had it in my own car i knew it was cool and all but jesus. that shit's more addictive than crack i think.

ok that's more than enough. my cried out little eyes are complaining that they need to go to bed, and i'll obey now. hasta luego.

i don't think so

i just found this:

event.cancelBubble = true;
// don't bubble the event
}

i mean, no bubbles? that's just not right.

bastards!

fighting with my eyelids

my right eye is trying to close shut. the left one is thinking about it but for reasons unknown to me, is much sturdier against the forces of gravity. at least for now.

hey it's been a long time since i posted after midnight. and for once i'm not up for angst-related reasons. no, we went out. after an exceedingly tedious day at work, i was going to go roller skating until i found out tonight was the wrong night for the particular place i was going. bastards! so, what to do instead? so many options but instead of being wild and crazy we went to see da vinnie code. i liked it alright but min didn't - she read the book though.

on the way out of the mall (went to the newish amc eastridge near us - very nice! if a bit like being in vegas because of the looong hallways) we stopped into this lil photo booth and got silly/swoony sticker pics taken like when we first got together. and this was better because you got two sheets for $3! instead of one sheet of 4 shots. like always i didn't like any shot of myself but they were still fun to take, and to have even so.

i'm usually in charge of navigating so i volunteered to figure out how (using public transport) min was going to get to a class she's taking tomorrow in the city. yes i know about this. and thank god for it, but there were other variables and errands for tomorrow, like pearl getting dropped off, picked up for grooming, plus i actually have to work somewhere in there, blah blah blah. this is all very boring but suffice to say it took a little while to figure out what our schedule needs to be tomorrow. of course it does take longer to do that when you're also reading your email, reading other blogs, buying corn, but details.

oh and i guess, for a more emotionally compelling aspect to this post: i'm sorry to be vague but let's just say that this last weekend was not something i want to repeat. i could have broadcast "the inappropriate show" all weekend from my house. but, apologies and promises were made, and hopefully that will be that. even though it's only tuesday - well, wednesday now - things have been much much better already, thank goodness.

ok that's it for my fascinating recap. i'm calling a jihad on my eyelids. nighty night.

working

i feel like i'm working a lot. i'm working on real work, and i'm working on looking busy at work. i hate trying to look busy...especially when my boss is behind me the whole time. so even though i had time to blog, i couldn't. but luckily i just got assigned a spec today so now i'll be busy (for real) for a few weeks. phew!

you could have blogged at home, you say. yes that's true. but i'm also working on doing better at this whole relationship thing. yes, believe it or not, kids, i am not perfect. anyway working on a relationship means not sitting in front of a computer for hours at a time (unless your partner is asleep, like she is right now). good thing this gives me time for freelance projects. but today, or at least right now, i can't generate interest in it.

but this is the thing. i realized today that for some reason, i am getting SO disinterested in being a coder. don't ask me what the hell i want to do instead - i have no idea. all i know is, this ain't floatin my boat so much anymore. that both annoys and scares me, mostly because i don't have strong ideas about replacement work. as another friend of mine would say, i don't know who or where my tribe is.

good thing that when it comes to staying employed, i move wisely. i'll spend some time thinking this over and make my move eventually without missing a beat. that, my friends, is one skill i indeed have -- staying employed. although i would trade it for a higher emotional IQ any day.

speaking of my deficiencies, and the improving of them, we did in fact see our therapist, B, last saturday. not before having a humdinger of a *discussion* on the way up there though. the only good thing i can say about that is, it sure made it easy to have a difficult discussion fresh in my mind. i am the queen of forgetfulness so that's no small issue to me. later m said she learned a lot about me and how i think during that session. i felt like i learned some, but mostly got some tools for how to handle things during a fight, and ways to express feelings in a more constructive manner. like giving each other the space (time) to respond, or negotiating a time to talk. i know it sounds simple but there are some things you just don't learn properly when growing up, and for us, these were left out. not that i'm necessarily being better about expressing my feelings...

after the therapist we went to la honda for a bonafide lesbian comedy show at a bonafide lesbian restaurant. it was pretty disappointing on all counts, actually. let's just say my broccoli was good and that wasn't the main course. and one out of 3 comics - apparently, the non-lesbian comic - was funny. one was mildly funny and the other one was flat out annoying. oh well, at least it was a pretty drive up there and back.

in other adventures, yesterday instead of going to bingo we finally made it to women's game night up in oakland. figured doing that we could actually *talk* to other people instead of spending all our time figuring out if it was B7 or N37 that got called.

and talk we did, because when we walked in (only 5 minutes late) they'd started go goddess. i about lost it when i saw it on the table. rainbows, butterflies, CANDLES...i mean, wow. i was very happy to hear the host, kara, say that it was going to be an experiment (from a friend) and if we didn't like it we'd switch to something else.

well the fact is, cheesy and suprisingly hetero-focussed as it was (good thing us dykes like to bend the rules), it was a really good way to get to know other people. because as a game for womyn (goddesses, sorry), it was all about talking, sharing, journeying. and since i didn't know anyone else there besides min, it was actually very interesting. oh and i think the best part was, the stupid candles wouldn't light. i mean, two of us got them to light, but they took work. like i guess any woman worth her salt does.

ok that's enough from me for now. except to say, congrats again to liz and andrea on their little bundle of joy, valerie. she's so beautiful. :-)

wen...this one's for you

This is for wen, my little commenting cheerleader (thanks wen :-). So what’s new with me since my last semi-whiny post?

Well, what’s new today is my work computer died. kaPUTZkie! The hard drive is getting replaced and re-imaged now, I should have it back tomorrow. Meantime I would like to thank liz for being on maternity leave so I could use her computer.

oh AND! i was not brilliant enough to solve my coding problems at work, but a very smart guy in our group was. with his help, and then additional work based off that (by yours truly), i was able to get everything magically delicious. phew!

In personal drama news (internal or otherwise) I would like to report there has been no real drama to speak of. Although I did unexpectedly stumble into an email convo with AG. I hadn’t talked to her for weeks. And turns out that was intentional on both our sides. Breathers are good. I still feel a bit … crazy … when I think about her. Crazy because I can’t have her, and that reminds me that I wish I didn’t want to have her and was content with monogamy. BUT it does feel good to have a normal (silly and serious) conversation with her, like we’re at least partially restoring normalcy.

Other relationship news…well it’s like I told AG. Things will be fine (calm, happy, sexy, playful) for anywhere from a few hours to a few days. Then they won’t be. There will be angst-ridden discussions aplenty, etc. So, that’s difficult, but all to be expected as I imagine.

We see the therapist again this weekend. Did I start on my homework? Well actually yes. Am I going to get a second revision in before Saturday? Hell no. But at least I did the first draft. :-D

Ok that’s all I have time for today, what with all my puter fun. Wen, get some sleep and vitamin C!

how to screw yourself over

tip #4003 in an ongoing series:

1. go to the blog of The Person Who's Driving You Crazy (the same one that you'd decided to stop visiting).
2. in reading a post, realize that you have yet another thing in common/similarity. so, no *wonder* they're irresistable.

today, that thing happened to be a quiz, and i got the same result as her. and i can't tell you how many times that's happened to me, for her. that in yet another way, we are the same.

sigh.

on a somewhat more upbeat note, a series of miscommunications with min earlier today ended in a better place. i'm sorry that had to happen, but at least we worked it out. i guess that is the other ongoing series -- "learning to communicate". i hope that series has a happy ending.

and now that i've spent 10.25 hours demonstrating my incompetency at work (i'm not kidding. this has been a shit week for work), it's time to go home. and i get to prove my incompetency more tomorrow, too! w.o.o.

i feel *

on tuesday of this week we saw the therapist finally. this was almost two weeks ahead of schedule. why? because the previous week, after i posted this (and yes, if you're playing at home, i really *was* suicidal. and yes, i've felt that way a lot this year), i decided to go home and talk to min.

i'd been crying off and on a lot of the week already. complicating matters was the fact that it was That Time for me, and i kept trying to attribute my extra emotionality to demonic hormones. but several conversations with min were just convincing me that i was fucked up. now mind you, she was not sitting there yelling, 'you're fucked up!'. no, she was just telling me how she felt about things, and i'd say how i felt about things, questions were asked, etc. and the end results were that i kept feeling like i was a complete fucking asshole for wanting what i did, AND that i wished more than anything that i could NOT feel the way i did. i wishedthat i could take this perverse desire for other women, to not be happy with solely min, and eradicate it from my brain.

and at the same time, thank you very much, part of me still wanted what i said in the first place: to have an open relationship with min, because despite everything she is still the woman i love most in this world, and have felt the most connection with. and yeah, then i'd want to be with AG too. wouldn't happen because she's not ok with open relationships, but that doesn't stop me from wanting it. thank god (hah), that she seems to have backed off from me, because it's making it easier to be mad at her. hopefully my being mad, not reading her blog anymore (thank you bloglines), eventually that means i'll stop wanting her, wanting to have any kind of interaction with her, too. it certainly has worked in the past. i hope it works soon.

ok sorry, tangent. anyway, so i went home to min and spilled the beans about how i was feeling. my supreme idiocy, despair, etc. she pushed me (us) to see the therapist sooner because she was (rightly) worried about me and made me promise not to hurt myself. although i didn't want to, i agreed. by saturday, we got an appointment with the therapist for tuesday afternoon. meantime we tried to not get too heavy with the convo, while we waited.

our therapist (i'll call her B) is in SF - a little hike. B was very nice, clear, and gave us a) some good feedback already and b) tips/tricks for trying to communicate difficult feelings/topics. we also got homework for next time (13th) which is to write down a list of a feelings we've had difficulty discussing. i feel * -- and i feel that this will be a difficult list to write.

we also formalized (wrote down and signed) 2 verbal agreement we'd already made, plus a new one. which were 1) to not do anything to harm ourselves without talking to each other and/or B; 2) to be completely honest with each other about everything; and (the new one) 3) to always express our feelings in a physically safe manner. this last one was borne out of the picture frame/glass-smashing incident, which for the record, i did not bring up. but once it came up, B wanted to talk about it for a good few minutes.

and this is why a therapist is great. because i didn't think through my *feelings* about that situation in gory detail, but B made me. and it was good to do that if for no other reason to recognize what they all were, and that they were valid. being unsafe is not ok. thus, the agreement. now, i didn't really think that min (or i) was going to start smashing everything in the house, but that's what agreements are for. so everyone knows the rules.

and now that we've formalized those rules, including that big one about honesty, i would think that even if you have some doubts about whether or not someone's being honest, because of the agreement, you're going to at least *outwardly* presume someone's being honest and proceed as if they are, until proven guilty. sounds reasonable right?

wrong. apparently what's reasonable is to act that way half the time, but spend the rest of the time asking questions in a jealous and/or suspicious manner. questions like, what are you doing on the computer? chatting with other girls? having an affair? or, are you still talking to AG? why not? don't you still want her? how does that affect how you feel about me? have you really told me everything about her? the others?

and of course these questions have to be asked more than once. also, i get that asking about The Other Woman is natural but do i really have to answer the same thing over and over? well duh, apparently i do. ok i'm stopping there because a) this is long enough and b) all those stupid scripts i've been waiting on just finished. anyway, meantime i'll ask my lurkers (and wen) to send some good thoughts over because this process, it feels like it's sucking my soul.

5 for fighting

well i had a very long day at work but for some reason i can't go to sleep yet. so here's my go round, exciting as it is.

5 nicknames you have or had
zoopers
bunny
queen(ie)
shazam
bubbles

5 sweet treats you like to eat
anything ghirardelli
ice cream
sonoma chicken's hockey puck
i'm gonna bend the rules to include "drink" and make my last 2: toffee crack and turtle blasts

5 things people would be surprised you have
- a gift for saying the wrong thing
- a penchant for bubble gum music (is it wrong to know the words to kelly clarkson songs?)
- 9 surgical scars
- 10 active email addresses
- perfect pitch (musical)

5 fabulous celebrations
- my commitment ceremony to min. we had so many friends who came together for us, it really was a celebration. followed by:
- our honeymoon down in socal. disneyland, the beach, and a week of romance.
- maybe 5 years ago, had an extra super fun christmas at my parents (when they still had a house). lots of games, good foods and of course, presents.
- the "funeral" for my paternal grandparents. we took both their ashes to lover's point in pacific grove, talked about them, had a picnic, and just reveled in the day and in memories. so, andrea, i get it. :-)

ok that's only 4 but i don't get out much.

5 things you'd like to have
- an off switch for my brain
- *monogamous contentment (with min) and on a similar note:
- *to be rid of my AG fixation
- min to be healthy (and happy)
- a night where i don't get grilled for things i didn't do (ok, that doesn't happen ALL the time, but it's happening a lot lately)

* and yes, i also spend a lot of time NOT wanting those things (e.g., happy to be poly and with AG)

5 cool presents you've received
- a drawing pad, cool pencils and a calvin&hobbes book (when i used to draw voraciously)
- trips to the ocean (several)
- leather jacket
- $1000 just because i rocked
- love

5 things you've collected
books
medical receipts
rubber stamps (used to)
bug fu awards
dust

no really that's it. i'm not a collector.

5 books you've read in the past 5 years
state of fear, crichton (JUST finished)
the da vinci legacy, perdue
deception point, brown
dancing barefoot, wheaton
manifesta, baumgardner/richards

5 slang terms you use regularly
dude
yo
i'm going to include acronyms because those get MAJOR mileage:
wtf
jas
STFU

A multiple of 5 people you'd like to tap for this
i don't know if all these folks still visit (regularly), but:

min
liz
snowflake
mr. brady
vivo

it has been a rough week or so

and to those of you tagging me for a meme (the lovelies wen, cheddah and (i think) andrea), i will try to reply soon. right now i'm just trying to keep it together. thanks for wanting to hear from me. :-)

a tale told by an idiot

i know i like everyone to think otherwise, but i am an idiot. do not be fooled by my witty dialogue. do not be fooled by my diverse educational background or my beautiful bug fu awards.

because when it comes to what's important in life, i am an idiot. i don't know what i'm doing and should not be trusted with the emotional well being of others, to say nothing of my own. sure, at one point i thought perhaps i knew what i was doing. but i was very, very wrong.

in other words, things are not that great right now. there has been no new drama per se, just conversations crystallizing this fact for me. i hope that someday things will be better, but given my supreme ability to fuck things up, i doubt it. i don't trust myself to make a sound decision, want the right things, or keep my mouth shut about it if i don't want the right things.

i have to leave work early today because it's my last day in this half-assed cube. i'm going to miss this little half-assed cube if for no other reason than it's Not Across From My Boss. and - issues with my current boss aside - it's never low pressure sitting across from your boss. i guess, unless you're sleeping with your boss. or if you're your own boss. but neither of these things are the case today. anyway, i'm hoping that going home, not thinking about work for a while, maybe walking the dog or something, will help me clear my head.

then again all those things are just another venue for my idiocy.

thank you, ClearWaste

for yet another morning where i have to wait to work because of you.

last week was hectic at work, and this week looks to be the same. so it was nice to have a quiet weekend. i had the bright idea to try to get a last-minute hotel room down near monterey, but fate was not on our side. or at least not in our checkbook - despite a couple hours of scouring the internet, i couldn't find a cheap but nice room.

so midday saturday we decided instead to go bowling and have dinner using coupons from the entertainment book. why not try someplace new and save money? but on the way up, min started to get very ill so we had to turn around. at home we cuddled on the couch a bit i think. i definitely remember watching my date with drew which was a LOT funnier than i expected. if you like reality tv/documentaries and watching a dork go for a dream, check it out.

sunday we tried again for bowling. min started to get sick again but forged ahead and felt better a little later. we figured out there was something in the air (we went near a construction site) that was affecting her breathing. very odd! so we went a different way home later. anyway, we finally made it to our coupon-friendly bowling center, which was bigger than i expected. i think it had 60 lanes. we got there around 1pm so it wasn't very busy which was nice.

it had been 10+ years since min or i bowled so our games were pretty uneven. but we didn't care, we had a blast! there were some technical difficulties with the lane and we got comped an extra half hour. everyone there was pretty nice and the food at the little cafe was pretty good! both agreed we want to do that again soon, but probably somewhere closer to home. altho we'll probably go up there again too because hah, we didn't even use the coupon. they had a special on early sundays that beat our coupon price.

anyway afterwards min was hungry and we started looking for somewhere to get her a bite. i don't think we ever got her an actual snack but we did end up shopping at a little asian market and got many noodles, sauces, and fresh veggies for later consumption. we came home, perched with pearl on the couch and watched the rest of bloodwork, which we'd rented on netflix. and yeah, if you haven't seen that, don't bother.

ok clearwaste is done wasting my time for the moment. hope those of you still listening had a good weekend as well. :-)

mmm...beaver!

mmm...beaver!
Originally uploaded by heatherama.

here's the yummy cup i mentioned the other day. posted a few other pics too, mostly of pearl, naturally.

but man i love this cup. as soon as i saw it, i knew it had to be mine.

it is really really nice

to wake up to $ from your little side business in your inbox.

yes it is.

the truth is out there

apparently it's out there, because min and i have been going out a lot the last week or so. and the truth is that i am a lot happier. i think min is too, at least in some ways. in other ways i know she is sadder. i'm sorry that that's the case, but i'm hoping that's just short term as we're making things better.

so, since last monday: we've gone to bingo twice - and i won once! good cheap fun. last night was an anniversary of something so there was free cake. and OMG click on that bingo link and check out the shot of people playing. last night i sat next to the dyke with blonde hair, and the guy next to her in the polo shirt, he was across from me! wow. i mean, the woman looked like a veteran what with her 10 bazillion daubers. the amount in the pic - that has to be half of what she has now.

ok also this last weeked was a blast. saturday we went to el pollo loco for lunch, which i haven't been to in years. pretty good! and then we went to nickel city and won ourselves some candy, erasers, and a cute little clock for only $10 in tickets. also min got a cool tshirt and me two awesome glasses (one is about great tasting beaver, i will have to get a pic soon) at a head shop.

sunday…oh we went to mimi's café for a very late lunch then saw inside man, which was interesting but not stellar. did have the very sleek looking jodie foster in it though, and other good actors as well.

and in between and around all of this there has been an amazing amount of closeness. sure, there's been more processing and crying too. that's natural as we're trying to sort out where we are and where we're going (but also waiting for some things til we get to the therapist in a couple weeks). but meantime….man. let's just say that i have had several very excellent mornings in a row, including today. making me not even care that i'm having to wait on clearwaste (again) before i can do my work. FlagBouncingBubblesEnabled.