Pick-me-up sign

I was on an exit ramp this morning (the 1 where 7 joins 70...or 470... can never keep those 2 straight!)  and there was a wooden sign on side of the road that said, "Hey America, hang in there, it will get better, we just need to stick together."  That was all.  No Pepsi logo on the side, no Bible verse and church name at the bottom, no "visit this website to donate to the food bank."  Nothing.  Just a little cheering up message.  I thought that was cool as hell.  I told the girls about it when I got to work, and I think my boss thought it was stupid.  :(  I liked it.

Blah bippity blah

I have nothing to talk about.  But darned if that's gonna stop me.  lol 
Youtube.  Great for music, also great for instructional videos, particularly for crafts.  How to square up a quilt square, how to mark your machine for a true scant 1/4 inch, how to do a slip slip knit decrease stitch for knitting, how to tell when your cold process soap is at trace stage, how to do a french knot embroidery stitch?  Yeah.  It's all there.  So great.

New episodes of Destination Truth on Netflix!  WhooO!  Lots of ghosts though.  They're supposed to go after cryptids.  WTH?  Hey, lookie there, according to the great and powerful spellcheck, cryptids is not a word.  Who's in charge of updating these things?  Seriously.  You know what else isn't a word?  Saponification.  Google knows these are words.  Spellcheck sucks.

Just cut Arron's hair.  He keeps making me do this for him now and then, and it hardly ever goes really "well."  lol  I think usually it's a case of, "it's not great, but it's sure as heck Better!"  I think it came out actually really good this time, except he doesn't wanna comb it the way that I think it looks good.  *shrug*  It's his head and his hair...what'cha gonna do?  He's got brake issues on his car, btw.  He couldn't get to work this morning I guess, and he and Jessy were at each other's throats all day.  Jess complained to me for like 15 minutes.  I'll spare you the details.  lol 

I suck at recognizing people.  Saturday I was wondering why a man at the store was smiling at me from across the store, ......turned out it was my co-worker's son, whom I've met before, and he even gave me a lift to Sears (across the parking lot) to pick up my car when it was raining one day.  I had no clue.  Not the slightest flicker of recognition.  And today Jessy's uncle Tom was over to help Arron look at his car.  I didn't say hi to him cuz I thought it was somebody I'd never seen before.  Then he came back later and knocked on the door, and I told Arron his friend was here.  He said, "Who, Tom?"  Me: "I don't know who Tom is, it's your friend who was helping you with your car."  Like 10 minutes later I was like.... Tom?  Peggy's Tom?  Tom whose house I have been to several times?  Dang it!   Although, in my defense, this may stem from my acquired habit of not looking at men when they come in the store.  Ok, that's gonna take some explanation.  Here goes:
I work at JoAnn Fabrics, for those who don't know.  We sell fabrics, sewing and craft supplies.  I'd say that 85% or higher of our customers are female.  Our store-level workforce is 100% female.  Now.  If a man comes in by himself, I'll look him in the eye for more than a split second and speak directly to him and be friendly.  If he is with a woman, I talk to the woman and avoid all contact with the man. Why?  Well, I guess cuz I don't want the woman to think I am trying to flirt with her man or something.  It's sort of a recognition of her territorial rights I suppose.  Not that I'd be making moves or anything even if the guy (any guy) was completely free, but it seems like it's part of the female social workings to show that you acknowledge a woman's "turf."  And frankly, in the JoAnn's setting, it's almost always the woman that is the shopper, and the man is just the tag-along, so there's generally no point in talking to him anyway because he doesn't even know what they're there for.    Not that I'd ignore if the guy spoke to me or something, I just don't go out of my way to draw him out. 
Sometimes I feel very lucky when I see couples together at the store, because there are some men out there who seem to be all up in the woman's business about what she's doing, even though it's obviously HER project that SHE knows what she needs for it.  The man will ask if she's figured in this measurement, or if she's got enough such & such at home, or does she really need a half yard...wouldn't a quarter yard do if she just moved it like this instead, and what other colors is she thinking of putting in that quilt?  And ok, so most of them are just trying to be helpful, and at least they are showing an interest (which is nice, cuz when I proudly show off a freshly knitted sock to Jessy I get a half-hearted, "That's cool.")  But I just don't think I could stand a man being in my business all the time.  It's like how Arron always needs to know what time I'm working and what I'm doing online and he comes out to the kitchen while I'm cooking and asks me what I'm going to do next and what else is going into the stew and how long I'm going to cook it and don't I need to cut the potatoes a little smaller.  Drives me completely insane!!!  Why does he care!?  Get outta my way!  He thinks I care about every detail of his life too.  He makes millions of little announcements about everything.   When he's going to take a bath, and when he's going to bed, and when he's going to go up to his room, and when he's walking down to Circle K.  Don't care.  I think basically he's just WAY more social than Jessy and I are, and he NEEDS to talk to people and do things with people and stuff like that, in a way that Jessy and I just don't understand. 

Breast Cancer

So, not that I'm opposed to people donating to or buying products that donate to breast cancer awareness, but it kind of bothers me that this is ALL you see anywhere you go any more.  I mean, breast cancer, yes, very serious thing, very sad, deserving of research funds etc.  No argument.  Although I do wonder is "breast cancer awareness" the same thing as research to develop a cure, or are they just pumping more pink ribbon products onto the market, turning it into a business, and it's not a lie because the more stuff they put on the market the more "aware" people are of the whole thing, but is it really helping save anybody's breasts?  I dunno.  Anyway.  My real issue is that they are the only ones out there.  There are other cancers that have their own colored ribbons, like lung cancer, heart disease has one I think, and just, I dunno, I know there are lots more out there, but you never hear about them, because everything is breast cancer breast cancer breast cancer.  Leukemia?  Lymphoma? Colon cancer?  Bone Cancer, Brain Cancer, Prostate Cancer, Skin Cancer, Ovarian Cancer, Pancreatic Cancer, .... and for that matter, what about Diabetes, Chron's Disease, Cerebral Palsy,   etc etc?  Are any of them plastered on everything from sewing baskets to Pepsi cans?  um, no.  Like I said, I'm not arguing that breast cancer is not a legitimate cause, cuz it completely is, but why has it turned into a billion dollar "industry" almost, while other cancers get so much less attention?

Talking behind people's backs

So, during a convo with my dear mother earlier, I have come to the conclusion that: I am annoyed by all my friends on facebook who keep complaining about people talking about them behind their backs.  Firstly, if this really happens all the time and the person obviously doesn't like you then, you know, that sucks but move on and just don't be friends with that person any more.  If they are your enemy anyway then just ignore them or something...I don't know, I'm not sure that I have any real enemies.  But if they are people that you are close to, this thought occurred to us: Sometimes people who love you complain about you to their other friends or family members BECAUSE they care about you so much.  Perhaps you have done something that they find annoying, but not annoying enough to want to make a big stink about it to you or hurt your feelings over it.  They just need to vent a little and then carry on with loving you.  If you have found out about what they said then obviously they have made a poor choice of who it was that they vented to, and it is extremely unfortunate that you are now hurt by something that they said to someone else and not to you for the very purpose of not hurting you. (run-on sentence alert!)  But, I would venture to say that most if not all of us vent to a trusted friend about things like this from time to time, so maybe you should remember that you yourself may have done the very same thing in the past, and I personally don't feel that makes any of us horrible people, just humans. 

mean thoughts

Have you ever seen two people together as a couple and thought, "Woah.  What the heck?  She is WAY too hot for him! What is she doing with him?" or he's too hot for her, you get the idea.  And then ya go, "Wow, self, that was a really mean thought."  But it's too late.  Ya thought it anyway, and there was no stopping it.  It was even worse in high school, cuz there were girls that I didn't think were very attractive and they somehow never were without a date, and sometimes they got really cute guys, and I was like......  ?!?!   Nobody asks me out at all, but meanwhile she's got HIM?  And the generally accepted pronouncement when discussing this obvious injustice of the universe with friends was, "She must be a slut."  lol  How mean is THAT?!  Nobody said, "Maybe she has a really great personality." or even "Maybe her older brother buys them beer."  lol  Nope.  Had to be a slut factor there, that was the only explanation. *sigh*  I am so glad I am not a teenager any more.  They're so cruel.  I barely even liked myself when I was that age.  And my poor mother!  I remember screaming at her in the mornings because I couldn't get my hair the way I wanted it.  She was probably praying every night, "Please God, just help me get through these teen years without killing her!"

Pastimes vs. Pastimes

When Jessy has down time when he doesn't have to be at work, he plays video games and reads.  That's pretty much the extent of it.  Very transient hobbies with nothing to show for them when you finish. 
I play the odd game, read some, draw and play music on occasion, and waste some time on Facebook (although less than some might think, because I am often sitting in front of the computer but doing something else entirely, like knitting, but I'm still watching posts and things like that).  But above all, I am a craft whore. 
I tend to think my way of spending down time as better and more valuable than Jessy's, because I am being productive.  I'm making something.  Plus I'm keeping some old ways alive that if it weren't for hobbyists would be extinct.  But is any of this a valid point really?  Is my time more meaningfully spent just because I end up with a usable product in the end? The things I make are readily available at every mega-mart in America, and sometimes at cheaper prices than what I can make them for.  My hobbies clutter up our home with supplies and tools lying all over and overflowing from plastic storage bins, while Jessy's video games fit nicely in one cupboard and the controllers go in an ottoman that opens up.  And how many socks and washcloths, bracelets, bars of soap, etc. does one person really need?  Of course I can give them as gifts, but nobody gets too excited when they get them.  My crafts are far less expensive in terms of how many hours of activity they provide me vs. how many hours he gets from each video game purchase.   And my crafts (mostly) do not require any electricity, which I reckon might make them a little more environmentally friendly. 
Well, I've kinda tapered out here and don't have a closing statement or anything, so, yeah.... The End.  lol

Domestics

If you'd asked me 5 years ago what I wanted to do with my life, I'd say I wanted to be a housewife.  If you asked me today I'd probably say the same thing, but with less assurance.  lol  I always wanted to be that wife who has all her husband's clothes clean and fresh smelling and hanging up nicely pressed in the closet and folded in the drawers.  We live out of laundry baskets, & I hardly ever get around to folding or hanging.  If something needs ironed it just doesn't get worn.  I wanted to keep my house sparkling clean and scented with candles or potpourri.  Right now there's a ring in the tub, both toilets need scrubbed, there are dishes soaking in the kitchen, the floors haven't been swept in over a month, and there's junk laying all over the living room.  And I can't get the boys to take out the trash promptly, so sometimes our home sports an unpleasant fragrance.  I want to have a wonderful, delicious, healthy dinner ready every night, and bake cookies, cakes, pies, breads, etc.  Often I forget to take meat out to thaw.  Sometimes I just don't feel like it.  Sometimes I have to wash dishes just to gain enough counter space in our small kitchen to prepare anything.  If it involves a rolling pin it's pretty much outta the question, that's just too much work. 
I only work "part time," but often get 30-35 hours in a week.  I work very hard at my job.  It is not a desk job, and it is very demanding (as are the customers!).  If I work two 8-9 hour days in a row, I come home tired, often hurting, and realize that if I'm gonna be in bed in time to get up and do it again tomorrow, I've gotta get dinner started, eat, do dishes, and go to bed, meanwhile the house is a mess everywhere I look.  It's like coming home from one job only to start a second one.  The boys do not understand.  They come home and just chill out, do absolutely nothing.  They have no obligations, they have no chores, except to take out the trash, which they don't do anyway.  I can come home and sit around and PRETEND that I have nothing else to do, but it's always there waiting for me, getting more and more out of hand, becoming a bigger and bigger monster lurking in the corners ready to cause me to have a nervous breakdown. 
I HATE washing dishes with mad, passionate hatred.  I actually love cooking, but there's a big difference between cooking because I want to cook and cooking because I'm expected to, and being expected to every single night.  I'm a messy person.  A lot of the junk lying around the house does belong to me, and yes, I should have tidied it up when I was done.  But the thing is, the boys are messy too, but, I always end up cleaning up my own junk and theirs too, but nobody else EVER cleans up after themselves, let alone clean up after me in return.  If I don't do it, nobody else is going to.  And somehow it's my responsibility.  Somehow I'm expected to.  And if company comes over, nobody is ever gonna thing anything about the guys, there just gonna think, "Geez, she's a really bad housekeeper!" 
I guess I have 2 points here, and I better wrap it up.  1)  I am not a maid, and I am not "Mom."  I should not have to work and do all the housework just because I am a girl.  2) If I did not have to work outside the home, and could devote all my time to keeping the house nice and being Donna Reed, ...would I do it?  Would I suddenly become Holly Housewife and do all that stuff I want to do, or would I still hate it and resent having to do it, and put it off till I can't stand it?

Jill of all trades

Back in the day of apprenticeships, or in the world of the caste system, people learned to do one thing, only one thing, and that was your job, your livelihood, your life. And even today some people do this by choice.  They pick one thing, and say, "This is what I'm going to do, and I'm going to do it as well as I possibly can."  These are the people who rise to the top of their game, becoming experts.  The people that everyone else looks to when they want to know how to do whatever it is they do.  I can't do this.  I want to do EVERYTHING!!  Honestly, everything.  I want to knit, crochet, sew, embroider, quilt, scrapbook, make soap, make jewelry, cook like a pro, grow my own veggies, milk a cow, fly a plane, spin yarn, weave tapestries, work glass, metal work, computer repair and programming, artisan cheese making, bread baking, pastry, candy making, chocolate making, playing every musical instrument ever invented, carpentry, plumbing, book binding, fixing a car, hair cutting and styling, and about a billion other things.  I will never learn to do them all, and I will definitely never be a master/expert at any of them, because I keep shifting from one thing to another.  But I like the idea of having a basic knowledge of how to do anything and everything.  I think it gives an appreciation for things and how they're made or done and the people who make them or do them.  Plus it's just cool to be able to say, "Yeah, I can do that."  :)  Your pipe burst?  Oh, I can fix that.  Wiring lose?  Oh, I'm a trained electrician, let me fix that.  The computer systems of the world fail or some horrible natural disaster affects the entire world and we're all reduced to doing and making everything for ourselves?  Oh, yes, I can grow my own vegetables and make my own soap and turn wool or cotton into clothing and blankets, and I can chop down trees and build a shelter, and I know how to collect water that is safe to drink.  No problem.  Not only that but I can melt down metal to make us tools, and precious metals to make jewelry, and I can make a musical instrument and play it for you in the evenings for entertainment, and I can dye threads pretty colors and stitch little flowers on the clothes I made you from the sheep I sheared and the cotton I picked.  Yup. 

the warning

Quite often you get more appreciation for helping someone when they are already in trouble than for trying to help them keep out of trouble before they are in it.  I've found that warnings, no matter how helpfully intended and no matter how politely or lovingly presented, are often disregarded, or the person may even get angry.  Where-as, heartless as it seems, if you just sit by quietly, and then help if they do end up getting in trouble, they're pleased as punch with you. Of course if you're really close to the person, like family or a best friend, you have to warn them anyway and just deal with it cuz you love them.  But I think for acquaintances or strangers, sometimes it's better to just let them go on their way.

food overload

Sometimes I get to the point where I'm starving, so I head to the kitchen.  There's not anything I can really make quickly... there's bread...Toast!  Ok, what kind of toast?  Peanut butter toast, cinnamon toast, toast with jam, there's blackberry jam and apricot preserves, and then there's good old classic buttered toast.  Those all sound good.  Maybe I'll just make a bunch of them.  Ya know, grilled cheese sounds good too.  And an egg sandwich.  Maybe some popcorn.    ...It's usually around this point that I realize I've just listed off wwwwaaaaayyyy more things than I can possibly eat.  (And all of them involve butter.  mmmm...butter!)

philosophy for one

I'm slightly frustrated right now because I am in a pondering sort of mood, the kind where you wanna discuss philosophy with someone.  It's kinda like somebody tapped a hole in my head and all my thoughts are spilling out uncontrolled.  But nobody seems to wanna go there with me right now.  I think I'm annoying people.  One of my friends said something on facebook that got me thinkin, and I was off and running in a comment, and I don't think she wanted to get all "deep" right then.  Understandable.  There are plenty of times when I just don't have the mental energy to go off running on a topic.  I feel bad for jumping right in without testing the waters of what she was up for.  But nobody seems to be around at the moment who wants to ponder with me.  :(  Where's my mama??  Probably in bed, or at work.  She's always ready to talk. 

Unconditional love

I may or may not have blogged about this before; I can't remember & am not reading through to find out.  Sorry if it's a repeat.  Topic: unconditional love.  Does it exist?  I love my husband, but that doesn't mean that if he cheated on me I wouldn't leave him.  I'd go, and I'd be heart-broken, and I'd still be in love with him for a while, but I'd probably get over it eventually, just like everyone else who has a love that ends or their partner dies or something, even though it seems impossible to me now, I surely would have to stop loving him at some point and move on, yes?  (& by the way, I don't mean for this to sound like I don't love him, because I really do, this is all philosophical discussion)  So.  That would mean that my love for him is conditional upon his being faithful to me.  Does this mean I don't love him unconditionally?  I'd say that it does.  But to be an unconditional love in the truest sense, I'd have to be the kind of person who would take him back after an infidelity, which I would not.  Or be ok with someone abusing you physically or mentally.  And I don't think anyone with real self-respect would.  So I guess to love someone unconditionally you'd have to have so little self-respect that you'd let the person walk all over you and still you'd fawn all over them, right?  Why would I want to be like that?  I know there are people who are like that, so I guess maybe unconditional love does actually exist, but, I don't know, perhaps it is just not something that I am willing to do?  Does that mean that my love for Jessy is any less valid than this "unconditional" love that I, personally, would consider sort of insane?  When people say that they love someone unconditionally, are they thinking on a large scale like these sorts of circumstances, or do they just mean things like, "I'd love you even if you had an accident and became horribly disfigured," or "I'd love you even if we couldn't be together all the time,"  or "I'd love you even if you were going through hard times, or became brain dead, or developed some kind of neurosis or disgusting rash"?  I totally love my husband like that, but I still don't think that truly counts as "unconditional,"  because there are still certain things that could make me stop loving him, as a-fore-mentioned.  Anybody wanna pipe in with an opinion on any of this?

The Heat Is On

I keep finding more and more aches and pains that can be cured or assuaged with heat.  Leg cramps, back aches, menstrual cramps.  So I'm starting to wonder if I'd be pain free if I moved to, say, Florida.  I could live close to Disney World.  Sure there are gators and the odd python, fire ants I think, and I'm betting more mosquitoes,  ....and no snow  :( .  Not that I'm a huge fan of snow now that I'm grown up, cuz it's scary to drive in and scary to walk on icy sidewalks and all, but I think if I never saw snow for years on end I'd really miss it.  And I don't know that I'd be ok with raising a kid somewhere that it doesn't snow.  They'd miss so much!  No snowmen, snowball fights, sledding, snow days, ski jackets and hot chocolate.  So sad.  But is it a fair trade for less pain and being close to Disney?   ...ya know, I bet there'd be lots of air conditioning anyway, and that's why I'm cold today in Ohio, so would it be any better?  Probably not.  Least I don't live in the arctic, or Canada, or Maine.  

Think it through dummy!

So, recently somebody asked me why we have cookouts in the summer.  Why do we want to stand over hot flames in temperatures that are already in the 80's and 90's?  Why not do this in the winter when it will keep you warm?  And I was like, yeah, why is this?  Seems weird.  So now, like a month later, it has dawned on me.  Yes, now, with air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter, it doesn't make sense any more.  BUT back in the day you'd wanna cook outside in the summer so it doesn't heat up your house any more, and in the winter you'd wanna cook inside to help keep it warm.  I are idiot.  I suppose even now in the summer it makes your air conditioning work even harder if you cook inside.  You'd think I'd have figured this out sooner, since I grew up in a house very much devoid of air conditioning. 

*sigh*

I just posted on facebook that I'm not sure sometimes whether I'm more annoyed by an annoying thing happening, or folks endlessly complaining about the annoying thing that happened.  And then I realized I'd just read my friend's blog about things that annoy her, and I in no way meant that her blog was annoying!  I thought it was pretty funny, actually.  So I commented on the post to say it had nothing to do with her, but then everybody else started commenting and now ya can't see my little "Not you!" note unless you click to see all the comments.  :(  And my co-worker commented back about something we were discussing along these lines earlier, which attracted the attention of my boss, who is friends with both of us, and then I was worried that SHE'd be offended cuz she has complained about the same thing I was complaining about some other co-workers complaining about, but I really didn't mean HER either!  I was mostly thinking about 2 women at work who can go on and on and on, and one will often be complaining before she's even gotten out of her car in the morning and not stop until the shift is over.  That and the whole people complaining about stuff on the Bellaire facebook page which I talked about in a previous blog.  So now I'm all worried that my friend and my boss think I'm just trying to placate them by telling them I'm not annoyed by their complaining, but it really is true that I wasn't annoyed by them at all!  I think it has to do with the way a person complains and the volume of complaining.  If all anybody ever has to say is negative stuff then it's not very pleasant to be around them for any length of time.  And I think there has to be a give and take in it too, like, I listen to you complain, then you listen to me for an equal time.  Not one person going on for a straight hour without taking a breath between sentences, and moving from one topic of complaint straight into another.  A few of the girls I work with will even complain in this manner to customers while they are helping them, which I find ridiculous and inappropriate.  But anyway, if any of the people I was referring to were on facebook (in my co-workers' cases) or my friends (in the Bellaire page's case) I never would have said anything about it.  And I hope people believe that when I say, "I didn't mean you,"  I really mean that I didn't mean them, cuz I didn't.  I just didn't have enough common sense to think ahead and think that some unintended targets might think I was aiming at them!

Politics and Ten Foot Poles

I don't know how anybody can be a politician or anything resembling it, or why they would want to be in the first place.  I think folks think that you'd have the power to make big changes and make everything better, but from what I've seen and heard, it's just not that simple.  And even though you start out on a save the world, improve life, etc wave, things just get mucked up because people can't agree on anything and nobody has enough power to change anything without having a thousand other people agree and filling out a book's worth of paperwork in triplicate.  And it seems like most people are not willing to even consider other viewpoints, it's just, "I am right, you are wrong, end of story." 
Our town started a facebook page, run by somebody in the city building.  I thought it was a cool idea, and that they'd have posts about the good things in town, past & present, and up-coming events, opportunities, good news, etc.  But the people that were friended turned it into something else.  It got nasty.  Everybody complaining, pointing fingers, attacking and arguing.  So many people saying, "Somebody should do something about ____" and "Nobody cares about _____."  Eventually the city shut down the page, I'm not sure why, cuz I didn't read the article in the newspaper about it.  Now there's a Bellaire Underground page.  lol  Run by some anonymous person.  And people are still being nasty on his page.  Today he had posts up about spending the day trying to find a solution to the fact that there are so many wild cats in town.  He was talking about no-kill shelters and things like that, and he was offering to trap them himself, drive them to the shelters, and help pay for the shelter to take them.  Then he made a joke about just playing a certain radio station over a PA system and that would kill all the cats.  And people practically crucified him!  I mean, seriously, what is wrong with people?  It was the same people who had commented on his posts about no-kill shelters, so obviously they knew he didn't actually want to kill any cats by radio or any other means, and as if it would even be possible to kill cats by playing a radio station!!!  Come on!  But I think this is just an example of how impossible it is to be in a position of public leadership.  People are falling all over themselves just to attack you over stupid stuff when they should probably be helping you. 

Jessy's Family Values

Jessy's family (Dad, Step-Mom, and Step-brother, plus a half sister who I don't see very often) are extremely nice people.  They'd give ya the shirt off their back if you needed it.  Which I admire, because sadly I am not really like that.  I'm very selfish.  That's another story though.  Anyhoo.  They're the kind of family that's very dependent on each other, they do lots of things for each other and if one of them gets something they share it with everyone else.  Now, this is a very nice way to be.  But...it's not the way I grew up.  And while I have benefited from it on many many many occasions, I have trouble thinking like them, and sometimes get annoyed when they expect things from me.  My family is a family of loners, basically.  We do our own thing, individually.  We're self-sufficient and self-reliant, and I, personally am proud of it.  We don't ask each other to bring us stuff from the other room.  We don't ask each other for money unless it's an absolute necessity, and of course for the times that I have had to ask it was ALWAYS given, but ya don't abuse the fact that you know they'll do whatever you need.  We do things for each other, but it's always offered by the do-er, not asked by the recipient, and the recipient usually politely refuses to trouble the giver until the giver insists.  And in my family it is perfectly acceptable for someone to get something and not share it, like when Joe & I were kids and got allowances, if Joe spent his money on a new toy and then later I decided to spend mine to buy potato chips or Burger King, I was in no way expected to provide the same treat for him.  He had every opportunity to buy the same thing as me, but he chose not to.  Nobody would expect him to have bought me a toy when he bought his.  But in Jessy's family if it's food, you gotta buy for everyone regardless of anything.  Arik used his money on cool new shoes and Jessy wanted to get Dairy Queen?  Jessy's gotta buy Dairy Queen for himself, Arik, and everybody else who will be at the house, or he better not come home with it at all.  At my house my stuff was my stuff, my brother's stuff was his stuff, and we didn't mess with each other's stuff.  If we did, and something ended up broken, either the breaker was expected to buy a new one, or if they couldn't afford it my parents usually helped out to get a new one.  At Jessy's house you HAVE to share everything.  If somebody wants to play your game you gotta let them, if they wanna use some of your hair spray you gotta let em, if they wanna eat your ice cream, you gotta let em.  And if something gets broken, well, sorry bout yer luck.  Which in some ways I guess, made their family less materialistic than I am, since everything was easy come easy go, they never get attached to possessions.  I think there have been some times when his family and I have offended each other because we just don't think alike.  This doesn't seem to transfer into my relationship with Jessy though, cuz we don't have any awkwardness at all between the two of us about whose food is whose and whose stuff is whose, or who asked who to do what for them.  I guess that's all I gots to say, although I wanna make clear that I don't think there's anything wrong with the way Jessy's family works, and in a lot of ways it may be better than the way mine does, it's just that it's not what I'm used to and not the way I work.   

New neighbours

The houses on either side of us have been empty since we moved in (about 3 years ago).  One side is well taken care of, but the other side was let go completely.  We were worried that somebody would torch the place, because we have an arsonist in town who likes to burn abandoned houses.  And our house is only like...eh...15, 20 feet away at most, so if that house burned ours likely would too.  Not that we own ours, it's a rental, but still, life/death, loss of possessions, etc etc.  Anyhoo.  Lots of folks from the block have been going to city council meetings complaining about how horrible the property looks, all grown over and looking like a jungle with the house practically falling down behind it.  Lovely.  So last week a bunch of guys show up and start hacking back the greenery, and I'm thinkin' they're a crew that the city sent to at least clean up if not tear the place down.  I was excited.  But no, turns out it's a guy moving in with his wife and unborn daughter, plus her other 3 kids (whom I have not seen yet, cuz the house is not really fit to live in yet even though the couple is spending nights there).  Now, I like to think I don't judge people on appearances, but in truth I guess I do.  These are heavily tattooed, smoking, saggy pants guys (the man and his friends who are helping clean up), and they all kinda look like they just got outta jail.  Which in fact they've since told me both the man & his wife have both spent time in jail.  They're very friendly, but just kinda....I dunno.  I'm not thrilled.  She's smoking while pregnant, says her husband used to have a drug problem, like, hard drugs, not just weed, she's on meds for insomnia, anxiety, anemia, 2 blood disorders and I don't even know what else.  She says her mom kicked her out @ 12 years old, & she's lived under bridges and eaten rice soaked over night in water from the creeks.  There's tons more that she's told me, cuz she's one of those ya can't get a word in edgewise, how does she not lose her voice from talking so much kinda people.  Anyway, they're borrowers and favor askers too.  Do you have this, do you have that, can we use your this, can you drive me here, can you cash a check for us if my mom writes it out to you cuz we have no checking account, can we run an extension cord under your door for an hour so we can run a vacuum cleaner over at our place since our electric isn't on yet?   Argh!  I like to think I'm very self-reliant and don't like to ask people for things unless I have zero other options available and it's an emergency kind of situation.  I know not every one is like this.  Jessy's family is not, but in a nicer way, which I may talk about in another blog later.  But anyway, it kinda bugs me when people are always wanting shit from me like this.  We're struggling as it is, and not to be mean, but why should we foot the bill for extra electricity so that they can run the sweeper?  Especially when they wanna hook a couple extension cords together, and they've got  cords that are not all the same voltage or wattage or whatever, so something might overload and fry out, possibly causing damage to our house, which could be dangerous plus we'd have to pay our landlord for any damages to his house since we're the idiots who said yeah, sure, in the name of good neighbourliness come plug your crap into our house and cause a fire hazard.  No problem.  So this has been my little rant, which I'm hoping is moot anyway, because yesterday the girl told me they put in a down-payment on a trailer home somewhere else because it's gonna cost too much to fix that house up, plus she doesn't want to live in Bellaire because the caliber of people here is just not high enough.  Really?  Ok, I know it's actually the truth, but who are you to be talking when you've lived with crackheads, smoke while pregnant, and have spent time in jail?  Just sayin. 

Couldn't say no.

So my co-worker just randomly went to another JoAnn's and bought a skein of clearance yarn, and assumed that I would agree to knit her a pair of mittens if she bought a second skein for me.  Now.  #1 I have enough yarn to keep be busy till I die as it is, and I'm always buying more every time we have clearance, and we have seasonal yarns, so that is fairly often.  #2 I have never made mittens before and have no pattern for mittens.  I could not find a pattern for the size yarn she bought.  She found me a book herself, and I get to keep the book when I'm done, which makes it more worth while cuz I know the yarn she bought was only $1.97, and this is sock yarn, which means it takes about a million billion stitches to make anything because it is very thin yarn.  That woulda been a lot of stitches & a lot of work for a $2 skein of yarn.  PLUS, #3 the yarn she bought is a yarn that we used to carry in our own store but clearanced out about a year ago, at which point I bought every single color available EXCEPT this one, because I wasn't crazy about it.  She told me about it before she brought it in, said we'd never had it and that it was pink and primary green with a little bit of lighter green.  No.  No. It is pink and sage green with a little bit of  forest/olive green.  Still sounds like it'd be pretty, but it's just not.  #4 I am not really comfortable making something for someone when I have never attempted to make that particular thing before.  There's usually some figuring out, maybe some misteps.  If I mess it up I'd probably just hurry up and knit another pair out of the skein that should be mine for socks, and give her the second correct pair, keeping the messed up one for myself.  I do not want a pair of mittens at all, let alone in a yarn I'm not crazy about.  So.  Grrrr.  *sigh*  knittedy knit knit knit. 

Eyelashes

I am quite happy right now, because of one thing.  And when I tell you what it is and why, you're gonna think I'm really really really weird.  I have eyelashes!!  lol  Ok, so quite often I feel like there is something in my eye, so I rub it, and it still feels like something is there, so without even thinking about it I tug on my eyelashes, I guess in case there's something caught in them and hanging down into my eye, I dunno.  I also have a theory that I am more likely to do this when I am stressed and/or tired.  Anyway, the upshot is that I end up tugging out most of my eyelashes, and I then have bald eyes.  lol  My lashes are not as plentiful as some people's, like Jessy's, he has tons and tons and they are thick and long.  Mine are individually thicker than his, but there are fewer of them.  I am very jealous of his lashes.  So anyway, I spend a lot of time with makeup trying to cover the fact that I often have extremely few lashes, and when I tell people, even people that I'm with every day, that I have this problem, they look at me like I'm nuts, then lean in and examine, and usually say something like "Holy shit!  I never noticed that!"  LOL.  So at least people aren't looking at me like I'm a freak all the time I guess, but I still desperately wish for long, full, dark lashes.  I even tried wearing fake lashes a few different times, but they always look really unnatural.  But I am happy at the moment, because I've been making a very conscious effort to let them be, and they seem to be growing back in pretty nicely.  They're still sub-par to many of my friends, and my husband (grr!), but they're decent.  It's really hard to keep from yankin' em back out though!  Surprisingly hard.  I guess like breaking a bad habit, like nail biting, or possibly even smoking.  Ok, maybe not smoking.  So, yeah, weirdest bad habit ever!

Unexpected friends

Inventory day today.  The corporation hires a group of people who do inventories every day to come in with their little scanny computers and scales to weigh the fabrics, and we basically just keep an eye on them and try to make sure they don't screw things up too badly.  There are some things that are tricky, where things look alike but aren't, or you have to really dig in to count the stuff and we just don't trust anybody but one of our girls to do it.  So some things we pre-count, and some things we team count.  Team count is one inventory person and one JoAnn girl counting together.  I got put on team counts today.  Normally it's a bit of a battle, the inventory person not really caring, not being all that friendly, kind of annoyed with the whole thing.  Not today!  I got teamed with a guy who actually wanted to help me, who actually paid attention and corrected me if I made a mistake, who offered to hold things for me and put things back.  And not just that, he was friendly too.  He wanted to talk.  He wanted to know about me, and I think he actually cared.  He was smart.  He was kind.  He noticed right away when my arm started to hurt.  He kept telling me he had a bad temper, but other than thinking that most of his co-workers were jerks or idiots, I didn't see it.  He smokes, cuz I could smell it on him.  He stayed up all night last night getting a new tattoo, a giant cross on his forearm.  The other arm sported a tattoo portrait of his son.  He's divorced.  He used to be a truck driver, and for a while owned his own truck.  But then he got a DUI, so now he can't drive freight anymore.  Not for 7 years, he said.  He said he gets to see his son as often as he wants.  He lives in Wellsburg.  We talked about the pros and cons of Jambo, the details of truck driving, and lots of other stuff.  By the end of the day I felt like I'd known him forever, and people were joking that we were gonna be calling each other and sending Christmas cards.  We were laughing and joking and having a good old time.  This is not the general sort of person that I normally get on this well with, but this guy, I dunno, there was just some kind of connection there and I don't even know what it was, but we understood each other and liked each other.  And don't anybody be thinking there was flirting or any such thing going on, cuz there wasn't, and that's actually another reason I like him, he's a guy, but even after he clearly saw my ring and I talked about being married, he became no less interested or friendly, and he clearly respected the bounds of marriage.  He was just a nice guy, and he made this inventory day the best inventory day I've ever had. 

preparation

My housemate once told me that people who had a tough childhood were better prepared for life as adults than people who had a "normal" childhood.  He said if you grew up tough, you'd seen enough disasters by the time you grew up to know how to deal when things fall apart.  When the shit hits the fan "normal" people are standing in front of it freaking out and wondering what to do, while people who had hard childhoods expect this to happen and just calmly take a step to the side, outta the way, wait for it to blow by, and move on while other people are laying on the floor shocked and covered in poo.  *shrug*  I guess he might have a point.  But I don't think I wanna trade my happy, easy childhood for a hard one anyway.

Unexpected Allegory

Things that have deeper or hidden meanings... I usually don't get them.  Probably because I'm not looking for them.  To me a song can be just a song, without being a social commentary or a drug reference.  Same goes for books, plays, art, movies, etc.  I tend to let things be in that regard.  If things don't make sense, I'm good with that, embracing of it even.  I love a good bit of nonsense.  So all this stuff that everybody else sees goes right over my head.  I had to be told that the Narnia books were about religion.  I had to be told that the song Crystal Blue Persuasion is about crystal meth.  Why would I think that?  Is crystal meth actually blue?  I've never seen it.  "Every morning there's a halo hanging from the corner of my girlfriend's 4-post bed."  Apparently the halo is a condom.  Which I think makes the next line: "I know it's not mine but I'll see if I can use it for the weekend or a one-night stand," totally gross. Is he actually re-using condoms?  wtf? There are a slim few that I actually pick up on by myself, but not many, and I tend to second guess myself on them anyway.  Madonna's Like a Prayer, is this about oral sex?  I'm thinkin' so.  Why can't a story just be a story?  Why does it have to really be about the politics of communist Russia?  Why does a story about unicorns have to be an allegory for capitalism?  Why do we have to look for penises in King Triton's castle in The Little Mermaid?  Why are there so many names for our private parts?  Beaver?  Really?  You wanna name a woman's crotch after a water-dwelling rodent with giant teeth?  Why?  Especially since so many women in the US shave down there now, so it's not like the brown fur thing is even relevant in many cases.  Now, I know all this kind of is a 180 from what I said in my Thinking post, about never just accepting things without thinking about them.  I don't know why I'm ok with taking things at face value in entertainment....actually I think that's exactly it, to me there's entertainment and then there's stuff that makes ya think.  I steer toward books and movies for escape, for some fluff and fun, and nonsense is totally fun.  I guess I get annoyed when something is presented as a fun or cute little romp of a story and then it turns out that they're really trying to spread a message about politics or drugs or sex.  It ruins it.  I don't have a problem if things are going to do that, but I think they should present themselves as such from the beginning, and that way I'll know to go into it when I'm in the right mood and have some energy to really examine and contemplate.  They could at least put it on the jacket flap of books, or the description/trailer for movies.  Or if it's just straight out that kind of movie where you know there's something deeper going on, like, maybe Pan's Labyrinth.  That's the kind of movie where you just KNOW to look at the tree and see a uterus.  The Golden Compass, you know you're dealing with heavier crap than a fun adventure story there.  They make it clear.  But if you're gonna act like you're presenting a book like Wind in the Willows, or The Princess Diaries, don't go stuffing in things about religion and philosophy on the sly and expect people to be looking for it, cuz I'm sure as hell not. 

Thinking about thinking

Does everyone think about things all the time like I do?  Is this unusual?  Do other people have moments when there are actually no thoughts going through their heads at all?  I know people who I would wager, judging from outside appearances, don't think about anything that is not absolutely necessary.  When they need to start dinner or pick up the kids, yeah.  Philosophy and how things work?  Probably not.  Is this a false impression?  Are they maybe thinking about this stuff, but they just don't discuss it?  Mean and judgmental as it is, I seriously seriously think some people just do live like that.  I can't imagine.  Is this why people gossip and keep talking on and on about the weather and their doctors and medical issues?  They just don't think about other things?  Do they just accept everything at face value?  I accept nothing.  Completely nothing.  Everything is open to interpretation, to quandary, to being disproved, to being improved.  I'd say most of my heavy thinking happens early in the morning, while I'm showering, getting ready, driving to work.  And sometimes on the drive home.  These are the times when I'm not occupied with doing things, when my mind can disconnect from what I'm doing and go wandering.  This is when I come up with my own stuff.  My mind does go nuts at other times too, but more often because I have been presented with an idea, or something that led to an idea.  A movie, tv show, something somebody said.  So I know I'm not alone in thinking about everything all the time; other people do this to.  But I don't seem to run into these people that often.  Is this because of the area that I live in?  Or because I work in retail with a general population of coworkers who are not college educated?  Not that a college education is a pre-requisite to being a pondering type of person, and not that I think the girls I work with are stupid or anything.  Am I just not social enough to get close enough to people so that they get into these kinds of discussions even if they are thinking things?  Must you be a person with lots of leisure time to ponder things?  If you are super productive, over worked, whatever, does that make you less likely to, or without the luxury of having time to think about things?  Is it a conditioning thing, like you have to be raised this way, constantly exercising your mind?  Is it an actual physical thing that some people are literally born incapable of?  Do some people consider this a waste of time?  I.e., things are what they are, stop wasting your time sitting around thinking about things and just live your life.

Materialism Cont.

Ok, so what if you live a materialistic lifestyle, and then there's a house fire, and everything is gone.  The home, the things you've collected, the things you've made.  Nothing left.  What now?  What do you have to show for your life?  But alternatively, if you live for the moment, for the experiences, then nobody can take those away from you, unless maybe you get cracked in the head and become partially brain dead, or when senility sets in...  but anyway, yeah, you'll probably have those experiences to revisit in your mind forever, but there will be nothing left behind.  Your grandchild won't have anything to remember you by.  Will they know who you were, why you were, what you did, what you felt and learned?  Probably not.  I guess you could keep a journal, but then that's a material thing that could be lost by the airport luggage handlers, or dropped into the Ganges river, or torched in a house fire. 

Materialism

I am materialistic.  I value things.  I love things.  I could not be happy without my stuff.  Or at least this is what I believe.  Sometimes I look at people who don't have all this stuff, who don't have the option or don't want it, and I wonder if they're better off than me really.  It'd probably make life easier, I might be able to find stuff when I need it if there was less to dig through.  ( I was not raised this way, btw, my mother is very minimalistic) Would it be great to not be tied down by it all, to not even have a building to continuously call home from day to day, year to year, so as to be able to pick up and go whenever I wanted?  Is it a better idea to not have a lot of stuff, but spend all your money on travel, on experiencing, on learning about the world in a hands-on kind of way instead of by watching tv and looking things up online.  I think the problem is that in order to travel a lot and still have a home waiting for you (which I feel in my heart is a personal necessity for me) you must have a fairly substantial amount of money.  Which I don't have.  For my life @ present, I can have it one way or the other, but not both.  I have chosen home, security, material possessions.  And I'm good with that decision.   Some times I wonder what it'd be like to let go of everything and run away to ...live, I guess.  This thought both excites and scares the hell outta me.  If ever I become filthy rich, rest assured, I'd keep my home and possessions and also run around the world experiencing everything. 

Simpler or Harder?

Sometimes I feel like I miss a time period during which I wasn't even alive.  lol  I tend to idealize times past, especially the 50's in suburban America.  The I Love Lucy and Dick VanDyke illusion.  When all the women wore figure flattering dresses and spent their days cleaning, cooking, & socializing.  I think taking care of a house, especially if there's a kid, is a full-time job in itself, and now we're (women) expected to do all this PLUS enter into the workforce.  Really?  No wonder our kids are so screwed up!  Nobody has time to raise them properly!  I miss times past, when things like sewing, knitting, embroidery, cooking, these were all valued skills for a woman to have.  And people could spend an evening together just talking, and maybe playing music and singing together.  When women's legs were special.  When's the last time you heard a guy praising a woman's legs?  I've never heard it.  Ever.  Boobs, ass, yes.  But anyway.  Was this time really as great as it seems in retrospect?  It was relatively soon after a major war, so I suspect there were lots of people who had lost someone near and dear.  No air-conditioning I believe.  Frozen foods were a new and novel thing and it was much cheaper to use canned things.  Yuck.  I think some foods were just not available unless you lived in the area where they grew, and I think there just weren't as many recipes to provide variation @ dinner.  And you'd be cooking without air-conditioning.  I think people were more close-minded then.  Less acceptance for differences, whatever they might be, and a less empathetic view.  No internet!  I don't know how this....like.. ok, internet was not an everyday at-home thing when I was a kid.  Not for me, not for anyone.  But NOW...  I can't imagine being without it, really.  How would I LEARN anything?  I think I look at least 1 thing up on Wikipedia every single day.  And whenever I need a recipe for anything, look it up online!  How do I do this knit stitch?  Can I freeze this food?  Which side is the appendix on again (hopefully not the side of me that hurts right now)?  Where is Uruguay?  Who was Amy Winehouse?  When is the next Meg Cabot book coming out?  If I had to look all this stuff up by going to the library and pouring over books for hours...I probably just wouldn't bother, & I'd come to terms with being ignorant.  It'd SUCK!  So what do I really want?  I guess I want the impossible: all the benefits of our crazy, fast, commercial, artificial, computerized lives now, but going back to some of the more simple, innocent ways of the past.  PS: Kindle scares the crap outta me.  I can see a future with no books, everything electronic.  How Terrible!!  I may expand on why later.

Dinner annoyance

My husband and housemate think it's the worst thing ever if they have to eat a meal without meat.  I don't understand this, and I think it's very frustrating.  I like meat, but there are also plenty of great things that don't involve meat. Our housemate also has a really really REALLY long list of things he doesn't like.  Crazy annoying.  Jessy only refuses to eat 2 things: fish & beans.  That's not that bad.  Arron's list is more like 50 things.  I will eat practically anything you'd come across in a normal American kitchen.  Some things I'm not crazy about, but I will eat them.  My avoidance list: raw onion, bell pepper, any cooked fruit except apples, kale. I think that's about it. 

murder & knitting

Totally weird thought, but it all comes of there being so many forensic investigation shows on tv.  So here it is:  If you were going to kill someone, you could never ever dump or bury their body in a blanket that you knitted or crocheted yourself.  Because your DNA would be all over the thing.  Skin cells must be rubbing off your hands all the time while you're handling the yarn, and a few strands of hair get knitted right in.  The skin part just makes sense, and the hair part I know for sheezey myself cuz I'm always pulling strands of my hair out of my knitting while I'm working on it. 

H20 For To Drink

People say not to drink from natural water sources.  Cuz they can have bacteria, toxins, poo, etc etc.  Ok.  But what did people DO for drinking water before all the water cleaning processes that we have in our city water today?  I'm pretty sure they just drank the water available, yes?  And how many people really died from it?  A significant number do ya think?  Like more than die from..I dunno, like, cigarettes, or heart attacks?  I'm guessing not that many.  I'm thinking water is probably more dangerous today than in the past because of us.  Because of our waste and pesticides and chemicals and everything.  But regardless, people around where I live still drink from wells, and from natural springs.  Not me, mind you, cuz I think there is some degree of risk in drinking ground water, even though it is safer than streams and what-not, and also because I think the water tastes super nasty.  (Slated to be the sequel to Super Bad, by the way, Super Nasty lol)  I like city tap water.  No bottled water for me, cuz it tastes like plastic and half of it comes from municipal water sources just the same as tap water anyway.  But anyhoo I never heard of anybody around here dying from drinking well water or from water from Seven Springs or anything.  Would Lewis & Clark have drunk out of the Ohio River?  Would it have actually been safe then?  Would it still have looked dark and muddy/gross like it does now?  I know lots of other countries are still drinking mostly untreated water, and they seem to be ok.  Are we perhaps weakening our immune systems by making our water so pristine?  You know they say that kids who aren't exposed to dirt and germs and stuff are more likely to get sick and have allergies and all that just because their immune systems haven't had a chance to fight and get stronger.  I bet it's the same principle, having water really clean all the time.  Not that I really want to go start drinking out of Indian Run creek or anything.

Social freaking the hell out

I'm going to a bridal shower here in about a half hour for a girl that I used to work with.  She invited I think 4 others girls from the store, but everyone else apparently had scheduling conflicts and can't go.  I want to go and see my friend and all, but I am seriously flipping out at the prospect of being in a room full of women that I have never met and having to try to find something to talk about and somebody to talk about it with.  I do not do well in social groups.  Ever.  I don't really like parties, and tend to avoid them, unless possibly if I have at least one good friend to go with me, because then at least I can cling to her like she's a life raft, keeping me from sitting in a corner by myself.  And even then I get worried if she knows other people there and I don't, cuz she might abandon me and go talk to them while I try to tread water and keep from drowning in a sea of self-imposed social anxiety.  Plus I am worried about stuff like, is my gift nice enough/big enough?  Should I be wearing something nicer than jeans and a t-shirt?  Should I go put on a skirt?  I'm thinking it's probably ok.  We're likely to get wrapped up in toilet paper wedding gowns anyway, right?  Damn it I wish this was over with! 

But I want it too!

Does it cheapen a hand-made gift if you make an identical copy for yourself also?  I am telling myself that it doesn't.  The person I've made it for need not ever know there was a copy made, especially if it's not somebody I really hang out with.  They'll probably never even come to my house again, since this is really more of a lingering friendship from a time in high school when we were besties.  It is still a hand-made gift.  It still took a lot of work.  And I cut way too many squares when I made the original, so if I don't make a duplicate I'll have to throw all of them away, which would be a waste of fabric and of time.  But then the second question is, is it completely nuts to make a baby quilt for a baby that I have not yet had and do not plan to have for a few more years?  And even more, this will be an obviously female quilt, so I'm assuming that this far-off child will be of the right gender.  Which I fervently hope it will be, but it's not like I get to chose.  I suppose even if I never have a girl I can always give it to someone else, or, seeing as I'm crazy anyway, save it in hopes of a female grandchild.  Then I will be making a quilt for a grandbaby before I've even have had a child!  Ridiculous!

Changelings

Ah changelings. What are they?  I guess there are several variations on a theme out there.  Having at several points in my life attempted to seriously research all things Fae and of the magical world(really hard btw, since stories differ everywhere and sometimes obviously different creatures seem to fall under the same name), I think I can explain roughly.  A changeling is what the fairies leave behind when they steal a human baby.  Some say that they leave one of their own, an adult or a baby,  in exchange, and other stories say they'll leave a glamoured branch or something behind, something completely not alive, but they make it appear to us to be our own baby.  Some say that the only way to know for sure if you have been tricked with a changeling is to throw your infant into a fire, at which point it will revert to a piece of wood, or show itself to be a fairy and run away screaming.  Supposedly, especially if it is a fairy, your child will behave absolutely terribly, with tantrums, screaming, crying, being impossible, refusing to eat, etc.  This makes me wonder, has anyone ever actually TESTED this fire theory?  Has anyone in the history of time ever actually had enough nerve and enough faith to throw their baby into a fire?  Yikes.   Anyway.  Why do fairies want our babies?  Some say the fae just love to be tricksters and enjoy causing us trouble.  Some say they are fascinated by our babies and consider them novel play toys.  Some say that they just play with our babies till they die, but the main goal is to get us to shoulder the burden of raising their children until they are old enough to return to the fairy community.  Some say that fairies, being immortal, cannot produce their own babies. However many there are is however many there have been and will be, minus any that die because of violent tragedies (accidents or wars usually).  So some stories say that they want to raise the babies as their own, and some say that they want to breed with us, because it makes them stronger and gives them a way of reproducing even if the offspring is not pure-blood fairy.  This whole sperm and egg idea is a fairly recent revelation, actually, so it probably made more sense back in the day than now.  Cuz I'm thinking, if they do not reproduce on their own, why would they even have the appropriate equipment to be able to reproduce when they get together with a human??

The Changeling by Charlotte Mew

TOLL no bell for me, dear Father, dear Mother,

Waste no sighs;

There are my sisters, there is my little brother

Who plays in the place called Paradise,

Your children all, your children for ever;

But I, so wild,

Your disgrace, with the queer brown face, was never,

Never, I know, but half your child!

 

In the garden at play, all day, last summer,

Far and away I heard

The sweet "tweet-tweet" of a strange new-comer,

The dearest, clearest call of a bird.

It lived down there in the deep green hollow,

My own old home, and the fairies say

The word of a bird is a thing to follow,

So I was away a night and a day.

 

One evening, too, by the nursery fire,

We snuggled close and sat round so still,

When suddenly as the wind blew higher,

Something scratched on the window-sill.

A pinched brown face peered in--I shivered;

No one listened or seemed to see;

The arms of it waved and the wings of it quivered

Whoo--I knew it had come for me!

Some are as bad as bad can be!

All night long they danced in the rain,

Round and round in a dripping chain,

Threw their caps at the window-pane,

Tried to make me scream and shout

And fling the bedclothes all about:

I meant to stay in bed that night,

And if only you had left a light

They would never have got me out!

 

Sometimes I would speak, you see,

Or answer when you spoke to me,

Because in the long, still dusks of Spring

You can hear the whole world whispering;

The shy green grasses making love,

The feathers grow on the dear grey dove,

The tiny heart of the redstart beat,

The patter of the squirrel's feet,

The pebbles pushing in the silver streams,

The rushes talking in their dreams,

The swish-swish of the bat's black wings,

The wild-wood bluebell's sweet ting-tings,

Humming and hammering at your ear,

Everything there is to hear

In the heart of hidden things.

But not in the midst of the nursery riot,

That's why I wanted to be quiet,

Couldn't do my sums, or sing,

Or settle down to anything.

And when, for that, I was sent upstairs

I did kneel down to say my prayers;

But the King who sits on your high Church steeple

Has nothing to do with us fairy people!

 

'Times I pleased you, dear Father, dear Mother,

Learned all my lessons and liked to play,

And dearly I loved the little pale brother

Whom some other bird must have called away.

Why did they bring me here to make me

Not quite bad and not quite good,

Why, unless They're wicked, do They want, in spite, to take me

Back to Their wet, wild wood?

Now, every night I shall see the windows shining,

The gold lamp's glow, and the fire's red gleam,

While the best of us are twining twigs and the rest of us are whining

In the hollow by the stream.

Black and chill are Their nights on the wold

And They live so long and They feel no pain:

I shall grow up, but never grow old,

I shall always, always be very cold,

I shall never come back again!

Fae

I love love love fairy (or faerie) legends.  Nobody seems to truly believe in them anymore.  Well, maybe except how in Ireland they supposedly diverted a road to keep from disturbing a piece of land dedicated as a Leprechaun reserve.  *cough*    But anyway, the old-time fairies, i.e. NOT Tinkerbell, seem to be going extinct in culture.  At least American culture.  They can still be found, certainly, if you know where to look.  The young adult book sections in stores and libraries still have large collections of fairy stories, new and old.  The problem is that people take huge liberties with this stuff.  Fairies become whatever people want them to be.  And even going back to old legends, this stuff is hard to pin down.  How big is a fairy?  Sometimes they're human sized, sometimes insect sized, and everything in between.  The larger fairies, with their Seelie and Unseelie courts, seem to be enjoying a resurgence in books right now.  (if you dig under the books about vampires and child wizards.)  The Tithe series, the Wicked Lovely series, etc.  I think this is a much needed return to the roots of fairy legend.  Fairies that are not necessarily good or evil, but live by their own rules and morals of right and wrong.  To hell with the Victorian age cherub fairies.  What was up with those things anyway?  And the eternally good-intentioned flower fairies and Disney fairies, which are fun and pretty, but not even remotely believable. 

Cryptozoology

I am completely enamored with Cryptozoology.  Not that I'm gonna go try to hunt down Bigfoot in person, but I like shows and books and just the possibilities of it I guess.  I think it's great to have a reminder that we don't know everything yet.  There's still stuff out there to find, to discover, to study.  Maybe things that will totally revolutionize some of the stuff we think we know now. 

Do I believe all of it?  No.  Do I believe even a quarter of it?  No.  But maybe one or two things could be true, and some of the others are good for a laugh, and laughs are much needed.  This morning on the radio it said that a boy shot what he and his family believe to be a Chupacabra.  They're currently doing tests on the dead animal to find out what it was.  I almost died laughing.  I don't mean to insult anyone who believes in the Chupacabra, but as far as I'm concerned this particular cryptid is about as unbelievable as they come. 

I really didn't know there were so many cryptids in the world until I started watching Destination Truth, which is cool and hilarious.  I believe Josh Gates' quote @ the start of the show goes: "In my travels I've seen some unexplainable things, and done some things I can't quite explain."  Great show. 

The problem is, other than the really famous cryptids (Bigfoot, Nessie, etc) there is not much info available for research.  There are encyclopedias of cryptids, which I have been horribly disappointed by, since they just name the creature and then provide 1 sentence to 1 paragraph on them.  And for many of them, this is ALL there is!  Unless you live in the area where the critter is and know the lore about it, apparently you're never gonna find out.  Although, having read the literature on (semi-) local cryptid, the Mothman, perhaps I know why this literature doesn't exist.  It's a lot of words without much actual info, and lots of personal accounts of encounters.  It's hard to read unless you're really interested. I was, and I did.  Do I believe in the Mothman?  No.  It's fun cuz it's close to me, but, yeah, ridiculous.

What cryptids do I tentatively believe could be real?  The Yeti in the Himalayas.  The Orang Pendek. Maltese Tiger.  Moa. 

What cryptids would a love to believe in but can't?  Mermaids.  Nari Pon (plant people of Thailand).  The Grassman of Ohio (our Bigfoot). 

Man v. Refrigerator

Scientists say that if a baby cannot see something, they think it doesn't exist.  If mom is holding the baby and he/she can see, hear, and feel her, she's there.  If she steps away out of baby's line of sight, she's dropped off the face of the earth suddenly. 

Men are like this with refrigerators.  If it's not front and center on the top shelf in a giant see-through container, it doesn't exist and therefore there is no use digging for it.  No way could it possibly be behind the milk jug, or on the second shelf behind the leftover rice. There's nothing behind that milk jug except the back of the fridge, and behind the bread there's actually a big black hole, down which whatever he was looking for has probably been sucked, never to be seen again. 

Ohio IS the Heart of it All!

I have recently been disproportionately annoyed by a song. Namely "Country Must Be Country Wide." The singer says he's country, and he sees a car pull up with Ohio plates and thinks the driver's lost, because apparently people from Ohio can't be country. He finds out different in the next verse, but I am still ticked. Why in the WORLD would he think that people from Ohio can't be country? We're OHIO!! Whatever you want brought, we can BRING it!! We have cities, symphonies, ballet, museums and zoos, and fine dining. We have the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But we also are the hosts for Jamboree In the Hills, a country music festival so big we've hosted practically every big country star in the history of ...ever, and people come clear from Hawaii to see it! We are coal miners and barge workers, steel mill workers, we have glass factories, we grow tomatoes for Campbell's soup, we grow Concord grapes for Welch's grape juice and jelly, we grow tons of corn and soy and lots of other stuff. Farmers, coal miners, fishing and deer hunting? SOUNDS country to me!! My school used to get the first day of deer season off! We go mudding 4-wheeling, fishing, camping. We have lakes, waterfalls, caves, rivers, and even a National Park. We have towns so small there are no traffic lights, and we also have Cleveland, Cincinatti, and Columbus. We have the best public library system in America (not the largest library, though). We have Cedar Point, which unless I'm wrong still has the tallest roller coaster in the world. We are the birthplace of aviation. Presidents Grant, Taft, Hayes, Harding, & Garfield all called Ohio home. Basically we kick ass and can do ANYTHING. We are Ohio, America's heartland, or, as our state slogan says, "The Heart of it ALL"

If I had a billion dollars

My friend just did a blog list of things she'd do with a million dollars. But I fully expect I could dispatch a billion without batting an eyelash. So here's my list.

First, I'd have a house built. A HUGE house built to exactly my specification, which would be less than sane. I'd have a music room with all kinds of instruments to play & masses of sheet music and fakebooks. An art room full of supplies. A sewing room. A knitting room, which must be seperate from the sewing room, because yarn and fabric take up lots of space. A library, something akin to the one in Disney's Beauty & the Beast, I think. A massive kitchen, & a KitchenAid stand mixer. A closet big enough that it requires chairs and possibly a mini-fridge. A full wet bar with every kind of alcohol ever. A vegetable garden, flower gardens, and an orchard with gardeners to take care of it all. A pond. Possibly a man made waterfall. Possibly with a swimming pool at the bottom.

3 brand new, fully paid off, highly insured cars. One of which runs on water.

My own room on 24/7 reserve for me at the Disney Swan or Dolphin hotels, with a pre-paid ticket to Disneyworld for life.

My own plane and pilot to fly me to all the places I would travel to around the world, and an English speaking guide to go with me.

Every video game ever made. some for me, mostly for Jessy.

People to clean my house.

An on call pastry chef.

Someone to style my hair.

Solar energy panels to power my home.

Give money to help save animals, especially elephants, rhinos, manatees, tigers, pandas, and frogs.

Buy the JoAnn Fabrics where I work, which I would turn into a superstore. (Even though Joann's is a corporation, not a franchise, & therefore it does not work this way!) And I would go down and help the girls out setting plan-o-grams and stuff, when I felt like it of course, and I'd have craft and sewing supplies for life.

Houses for my parents & Jessy's parents, or a wing in my house if they want, and a car and driver to take them on fabulous trips. And a house for Paul.

Invisaline braces.

And now I must leave for work. :(

Groceries

Jessy was recently out of work for 8 months, and it was to the point where I was feeding 3 adults on $100-$150 a month. Not an easy task. And Jessy does not like beans, which I would normally have made a central point of a tight budget, do to cheapness and high nutrition. Also the boys both freak if there is not enough meat in a meal. Personally I can go veggie for an extended period of time and not blink twice about it. Anyway, I thought I'd just write down some points that I followed to help me feed a family on the cheap, in case anybody cares. I'm sure nobody will do this stuff unless forced to, cuz some of it is a pain in the butt, but there ya go. And as a side note, I'm not a coupon user. They're usually for brand name products that I can still get cheaper from Kroger brand, and I forget to take them to the store with me after I spend the time cutting them out anyway. Also we don't get the newspaper, so there's not much for me to clip! Here's what I did do:

Buy store brand. (with a few exceptions due to really big quality difference)

Do not buy convenience foods. Nothing prepared for you. Except I do get instant potatoes, $1 a bag, it's worth it to me. You can almost always make from scratch cheaper than you can buy it prepared...except bread and spaghetti sauce.

Learn to read labels. Make sure you're getting the most product for the least amount. You have to look at the unit price on the sales tag, or maybe do a lil' math.

Learn to read nutrition facts. You want things high in vitamins & minerals, and also fiber. The higher the fiber content the more the food is gonna stick with you & you won't be hungry again in 10 minutes. Good: oats, potatoes, whole wheat, veggies Bad: snack cakes, potato chips, many cold cereals, most breads, cheese. Fruit is good, but usually comes with a high price, and it has high natural sugar content (sugar speeds through your system and makes you hungry faster).

Lessen your meat portions. You can make your meat go further by cutting it into bits and putting it in something, like stew, soup, fried rice w/ veggies, casseroles (watch out for casseroles with high fat condensed soups though, they are not very good for you and often involve lots of cheese too), pot pies with homemade pie crust, etc.

Only buy meat when it is on sale. It's usually cheaper to buy in bulk and re-package to freeze at home. Chose your meat types and cuts depending on sales, you can think of something to do with it.

There may be more, but Arron just put a comedy central special on with a girl I like, so I am distracted. And since probably nobody cares about my shopping anyway... yeah. See you all lata!

porch lights

So, I absolutely do not keep up with the news, as I've said before. But apparently there's some lady in...Florida (?) who killed her kid a few years back, and just got off the hook for it or something. (I don't mean to sound flippant about it, btw, it is really very sad) So people are spreading a message of outrage around and pledging to keep their porch lights turned on for a night, I guess in a show of their feelings of injustice and sympathy for the child and...I don't know, I didn't read the whole thing. And I totally understand that people are feeling this way, that our judicial system has failed us and this little kid's murder (or it might be 2 kids, not really sure) is going unpunished when it seemed fairly obvious that the mom did commit the crime. I get it. Without knowing any of the details I would hazard to say that I probably agree. What I don't get is the porch lights. In a show of outrage and sympathy, we the people pledge to needlessly waste electricity that most likely came from non-renewable fossil fuels? Can't we think of a less wasteful venue of expression? Maybe something that would help children, or something to better the environment for the next generation? Just a thought.

And now I'm going to go make tacos and watch Alfie (the one with Jude Law, whom I do not find as attractive as most people of my gender seem to) and hope that he is not going to be a self-absorbed male chauvinist for the entire movie.

Pondering Exoskeletons

Found myself contemplating exoskeletons on the way home from work today. No idea what brought it on. Exoskeletons are weird though, don't you think? How do the joints work? Is it really bone or more like fingernail? Is it alive like our bones with blood and stuff...can't be, right? Are there completely no bones on the inside of the body then? What do the muscles bond to? How do they move? ...There are muscles, right? If you break your exoskeleton do your insides all just come out? Is it pressurized at all in there? How do you get air in to breathe without being able to expand and contract? What happens where joints are...like is there exposed...exposed...I dunno, like is there skin or something under where the joints are or just exposed muscle, or what? If you don't have skin does that mean that you never get an itch? I wouldn't think an exoskeleton could itch. It probably doesn't have any nerve endings. ....how do they know when they're touching something if there are no nerve ending on the outside? Does the pressure from touching it transfer to the inside where there are nerve endings? They must have nerve endings somewhere in the body, right? Maybe not. hmm. Apparently I need a book about this. How can bees be hairy if they have exoskeletons? Does the hair grow right out of the bone or whatever it is?

food & teeth

Well. No clue what to talk about. Can't wait for the 3rd book in my tiger series now. It's not out till November. Could be worse.
Arron's car broke down today. I guess he got it running again but he says it's probably only temporarily fixed. *shrug*
Getting tired of coming up with meal ideas on a shoe-string budget and cooking every night. I wanna go to the store and buy whatever I want and get pizza and Burger King when I don't feel like cooking. Made some pretty good gravy tonight though. Considering it came from bouillon cubes. mashed taters and gravy is the best!
Bought some fluoride mouth wash cuz my teeth have been really sensitive the past few days. My dentist said my enamel is kinda thin and fluoride would help, like Sensodyne (sp?) toothpaste. & it does, but I've had lots of sour candy lately. Not good for enamel. Still cavity free though! Haven't had one since I was a kid, and luckily it was in a baby tooth, so now I have no fillings or anything. Except my front tooth, where half of it's fake...but that's not cuz I didn't take care of my teeth, it's cuz I fell on my face on a bathroom tile floor when I was visiting a college. I think I have good teeth cuz I drink water instead of pop or tea or ..whatever, I hardly ever drink sugary things, and the water is tap water with fluoride in it. I guess fluoride is controversial now, people say it slowly rots your guts or something. I dunno. From what I understand it's not too much worse than anything else, and my mom is always telling me that there's a HUGE difference in people's teeth since fluoride was put in tap water. My mom's a pretty smart lady, so i think I will trust in fluoride. Maybe my teeth have to do with nutrition and/or genetics too though. My nails are always really strong too, and they say the strength of your nails is an indicator of the strength of your bones. All related.
Gross section to follow:
I drove by a cat today that had just been hit by a car and wasn't dead yet, even though it obviously didn't have much longer. Rrrreeaaaallllllyyy disturbing. I won't describe it. The thought crossed my mind that maybe I should try to run over it myself to put it out of its misery, cuz it was really thrashing around in pain. But I definitely don't have the nerve for that. I almost puke when I have to kill a spider. A cat? No way. And what if I just hurt it worse but didn't kill it? That would be terrible.

Just re-watched Three Guys Named Mike...which probably nobody but me and a few grandmas have ever watched. 1951 movie with Jane Wyman and Van Johnson. I like Van Johnson, especially in The Good Old Summertime, with Judy Garland. Anyhoo. 3 guys all named Mike fall in love (supposedly) with this one girl. Van Johnson wins. yay. But she never kisses a single guy the whole movie and the other two guys plead for marriage one minute and the next minute smilingly accept their rejection. Really? I guess that's 1951 for ya! I think marriage should be to somebody you feel like you can't live without, somebody you'd do anything for. Or at least somebody who gets under your skin and into your heart and you know you could never leave them. I get the idea of loving someone enough that you want them to be really happy even if they don't pick you, but these guys didn't even seem phased! "Please marry me! ..No? Hey, you're rejected too Fella? Well, let's go get some coffee. Maybe the cafe's having a special on pie today!" ......... How could this possibly be love? Maybe it just wasn't about passion then. Maybe if it was a good looking girl that you liked talking to and she could cook and clean, she was in! I dunno though, isn't this about the time of Marylin Monroe? (maybe she's a lil' later, I dunno) But passion seems to pop up everywhere through time, clear back to ancient eras. But then people in countries with arranged marriages...well, that's a whole other discussion that I won't attempt to tackle right now. I guess a lot of things happened in the 40's and 50's that I don't understand. Like a woman accepting the fact that her husband continually cheated on her and still pretending like nothing was going on. Not ok by me!

Tiger's Quest

My personal library delivery service (a.k.a.:Dad) brought me the second book in a series I've been reading. It just came out and I'm all excited. But, since it's a series that isn't finished yet I have issues with being left hanging at the end of the book and having to wait months or years for book 3...which the author did to me with the first book. So I turned straight to the end (I know, I know! Bad!) to see what was up. And yes, in fact, I shall be left hanging yet again. I'm sure everything will turn out alright in the end, but it appears that the Persian prince, cursed to take the form of a white tiger, has had his memory erased by the evil villain and does not remember the young American girl whom he has fallen deeply in love with. Bummer. Sounds like a super cheesey plot line when summarized like that...but I love it. So now I find myself doing another bad thing and skimming through the book to find the sappy love scenes and totally ignoring the (I'm sure, based on book 1) very cool adventure scenes with Hindu gods and goddesses and creatures of Indian mythology. It's a big book, and I must know the details of the romance, but I must also do my dishes, make muffins, and pick up Arron, so I can revisit the adventure parts later and fill in the gaps. And the question of the moment is, why on earth am I blogging about this instead of reading the book?!?!?! Peace out peeps, if ya need me, come look me up in handsome romantic shape-shifting white tiger prince land. (make a left once out of Lollipop Land, straight ahead until you cross the bridge of clouds, right turn at Lusting After Fictional Characters Avenue) ;)

Satellites, cars, muffins

Wasted some time today messing around with Google Maps satellite imaging. Kinda fun actually. Jessy showed me his mom's house, and tried to show me where they used to live in Hawaii but couldn't find it. Then we looked at downtown NYC, and the Grand Canyon, and the Mariana Trench and Mt. Rushmore... neither of which I thought was that exciting, but Jessy wanted to see them. Then I showed him where my grandparents lived and promptly started to cry over it once I found it. I knew better than to look at that house. But I never listen to myself.
Hoping to make muffins later today, but it's a big process cuz the dough has yeast in it, so it takes forever. I have to go pick up our housemate from his family get together later, but I don't know when, so I don't know when to start making muffins. Hopefully he doesn't stay too long. I don't want to go get him at all. Better than having him borrow my car though, which he originally wanted. I only have 1 year left to pay on my car, and after that if the car lasts at least another year or two I can start digging myself out of my massive credit card debt since I won't have car payments any more. Practically my whole future depends upon this. I wanna get out of debt before I have a kid. I can't see any other way out of debt if the car dies and I have to get a new one. I have massive debt. Seriously massive. I'm not talking, oh, that's big. No. Seriously. Massive. So having a kid depends on being out of debt, being out of debt depends on my car lasting, and putting unnecessary mileage on the car shortens the car's life. Arron does not understand this apparently. Even though I've told him. He used to hang out with his family all the time and they would come get him, because his car is extremely bad and might not make it. But recently every time he wants to go somewhere he wants me to take him or wants to borrow my car. I'm not sure if he's covered on my insurance, and regardless of that, he's had 2 accidents in his own car within the past year and a half or so. I don't know if he's covered, 2 accidents, I don't want to waste my day driving him around, unnecessary mileage, whole future riding on the car not dying.... I DON"T WANT HIM USING MY CAR FOR FUN!! If he wanted to go see his dad in the hospital or something, yeah, ok, understandable. But I don't even take my car out for fun myself but once in a blue moon, and generally not half an hour away. Why should he feel he's entitled to? He has helped us get through some hard times financially, but we enable him to have a place to live away from his family, he doesn't have to do any chores or cooking here, I make his dinner for him... I figure it's about a fair trade, especially since money doesn't seem to mean much to him. I made it very clear to him that I was not comfortable with him using my car, but he kept giving me a hard time about it. Which makes me mad. Asking for a favor and then continuing to practically demand it even after the person makes it clear they're not really ok with the situation? What is that about? He is really a very nice, generous person, but under these circumstances I am not happy with him at all. I'm sure if I asked to borrow his car, even to take it to Columbus, which would surely kill it, he'd let me. But he doesn't have debt, or a wife, or want kids as far as I know, he pretty much has no commitments financially and if he lost his job he could just go back to his dad's. So yeah...there's my little vent about Arron and my car.. & I promise I will try to make the next post happier and not so angry.

The Blog About Blogging

I had a few diaries when I was younger, which I never kept up with, because it seemed a smidge pointless. And I've had a blog before, with which I bored the world to tears with the details of my not-so-interesting life. I had written myself off as a non-blogger, non-diary keeper, non-writer. Until Facebook. I found that I had a lot more to say than what a status update would allow, and also I've had lots of feedback saying that people love reading my posts, even if they don't comment on them. Friends of my parents were actually bringing my apparent Facebook awesomeness up in casual conversation with them. Yes, I know that sounds big-headed. lol Whatever. And so was born my "Age of Blogging" ...which I'm currently in, and as of yet I'm not sure if this is a golden age or a dark age!

Blogging advantages:
I can dump! All the thoughts running around in my brain can be examined individually, given proper notice, and dumped out onto the screen. I find that getting some of the gunk out of my head makes for a more relaxed, happier me.
I need not impose on anyone to actually listen to me babble. It's GREAT when people do chose to, but there's no one standing in front of me wishing I'd shut up so they can excuse themselves to go do something more interesting. I am not a talker in 'real life', partly because of this, but just cuz I don't talk much doesn't mean nothing's going on upstairs, I just don't like to trouble the world with my random thoughts.
Editing! I can go back over what I've said and add or delete things, or clarify before I post. Fantabulous, as I often find myself wishing after a live conversation that I'd said this or that, or thought of something faster.

Blogging disadvantages:
I'm too worried about what someone reading will be thinking. Is it boring? Is it too long? Is it confusing? Is it stupid? Will anyone comment on it? It's like a constant search for approval....but why do I need someone to approve my thoughts? Does it make it more relaxing or more beneficial if I know for sure people are reading and appreciating? ...I don't even know the answer to that. I guess it makes it more rewarding. Probably it's just a universally human thing, all of us searching for approval and praise from others. Like when you buy a new outfit that you love, but it makes it much better if everyone else thing it's great too, and if they don't it's disappointing.

Must stop & post now since husband wants computer.

Cake, colors, cake, and the beach. And more cake.

Made coq au vin with my extra nasty wine. Sort of. Didn't have mushrooms, or bacon, or pearl onions, so I used regular onion and added carrots. Baked a cake at the same time, too, so I hope the cake doesn't taste like onions and wine!
I was thinking of all kinds of stuff to write here all day, and I was like, I'm gonna have to leave some of this stuff out or it'll be the longest blog ever. Aaaaand now I can't think of ANY of what I was gonna say. Except maybe this whole "what do I want to do with my life" thing...which I really don't feel like tackling now. I'd rather just eat cake. We got the new 2012 Wilton yearbook in today (cake decorating book). The cover is ridiculously cute and I want to make that cake! Except it's all tiers and fondant and blah blah... I don't do that. I don't even like fondant. I don't know why anybody would want it on their cake. Yeah, it looks gorgeous, but it tastes like crap. Why would you want to put something nasty on top of one of the best foods ever invented? Seriously though, look at this thing: mmmmm.... can't get the pic to show down here, it's at the top. Now everyone will be confused that there's a pic of a cake and then I'm talking about chicken first. *shrug*
Things I should know and don't:
The correct order of all the eras..like Jurassic, Paleolithic, Triassic, ...I don't even remember any more than that, let alone where they go.
How to spell restaurant. Thank goodness for spell check. Why is this word so hard for me?
The 9's of the multiplication table. Jessy's told me a trick to it a billion times, but I never remember.
The U.S. presidents.
Lots of other stuff.

Why is Funfetti cake so much better than other cake? (apparently fixated on cake) It's just little colored sprinkles in the batter. I love colors though. Which is why I like knitting. That and the idea that I can take a single string and somehow loop it until it's a piece of fabric....crazy. Anyway, it's weird how visually oriented I am. I'm twice as likely to buy something if it's a color I like. I'll pick something curvy over something angular every time. When I add in my head, I make little dots in my mind, in the shapes that the symbols are in on playing cards. Or at least I think they are. Maybe it's more like domino dots. I dunno. I don't play cards often. Hopefully you get the point though. I see the numbers in shapes... or arrangements of dots... whatever.
I don't quite understand the appeal of the beach. If somebody said to me, "Hey, let's go to the beach on your weekend off and I'll pay for everything," I'd be like, "Well heck yeah!!!" But if I was gonna plan and fund a vacation myself, that's the last place I'd probably go. Scary powerful water that's all murky with fish and weird stuff swimming in it.. yuck. Sometimes the waves are hard to deal with. Sand gets in EVERYthing. The salt water makes my skin feel weird and itch sometimes. And there are screaming children everywhere, running around, throwing balls and frisbees and stuff. I'm not a big fan of children. For reasons I will probably discuss in a later blog. So. What's the appeal? Getting sunburned whilst wearing a piece of spandex/lycra in front of complete strangers while their children leave no moment silent. I'd rather go to a city and swim in the hotel pool after seeing some museums and shopping. Or maybe go hiking. Or visit a cave. Or go to DisneyWorld, or a zoo, or aquarium, or ...oooh, actually I'd go to the ocean if I could go on a boat! I like boats.
Ok, this is getting too long for one post. Nobody will read it all!