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