What I learned today, or, Why I should go the hell outside sometimes

• Today I learned that I can, in fact, sit on my couch and watch 35 consecutive episodes of Reno 911. The show is THAT. GOOD.
• Today I learned that a three-day old bruise from giving blood makes me look a lot like I have a problem. With injecting things into me. Like, drug things. People look at you funny when they think you have track marks and suck so bad at shooting up that you cause yourself to bruise egregiously.
• Today I learned that my mother’s dog whines and follows me around more than my own problem child dog, and it’s really starting to annoy the shit out of me, 24 hours into dog sitting him. I thought my tolerance was through the roof since I live with a dog who thinks he is my shadow; to the extent that I ALWAYS find him outside of the bathroom door whenever I open it. ::SIDEBAR:: As a habit, I tend not to close doors in my home as I live alone and have ridiculously dependent pets, but when I shower, I like to get all steamy and fog up the mirror and shit, so I shut the door. Never fails – my helper is laying in the hallway in such a way so that he can see my face from the moment the door’s crack is wide enough for recognition.
• Today I learned that I do love that annoying little dog and his habits of being near me at all times, even though he drives me insane and causes me to trip over him on a daily basis. There is something to be said for being that loved by a soul.
• Today I learned that if you own a pick up truck with a lift kit, and you’ve re-routed your exhaust to go up and above the cab of your truck, 18-wheeler style, it’s in your contract to hang out in the Arby’s parking lot. They take their obligations VERY seriously.
• Today I learned that 50 degrees F and no sun makes for a very cold, long day that continuously seems later than it truly is, which causes you to waste the day away while at the same time wondering what happened to the day.
• Today I learned that fountain coke tastes better than fountain Pepsi. But if given the choice between a can or bottle of coke versus a can or bottle of Pepsi, I would choose the Pepsi. This fact was validated today on two separate trips to places that sell fountain sodas.
• Today I learned that evenings in are more fun whilst intoxicated. Tanqueray and limeade is the SHIT, people. You don’t know what awesome is if you’ve never tried T&L.
• Today I learned the most pretentious way possible to google ‘quotes that make me happy’, which is a very popular search and gets me a lot of hits. This is an IRL google search that got someone to my blog: “to make life colourful and happy wordings”

 

I make the earth move, not earthquakes. Pffft.

The other Tuesday, I was in DC during the earthquake that pretty much threw everyone in DC into a tizzy, and I didn’t even realize it had happened. Perhaps it was because I was outside, walking around Arlington National Cemetery, watching the incredible Changing of the Guard, or perhaps it was because I was enjoying the company I was with so much that it rendered me completely oblivious to the ground shaking at a 5.8 magnitude beneath my feet.

I have had this tendency in the past to put myself into relationships almost just for the sake of being in a relationship. You see, I have this irrational fear of dying alone. And yes, I hope and pray that at 30, I’m still a long, LONG way away from dying, but I get down on myself when I am single and my mind goes crazy. That’s what crazy people do, after all – GO CRAZY. Due to this, I jump at any man who expresses interest in me, hoping that after long last, he’ll be the one to make me happy and make it so that I WON’T die alone; however, I tend to reinforce that fear each time another “not right” relationship ends.

Almost a year ago, I joined one of those online dating sites. In fact, over the years, I’ve joined a couple of them but I’ve found the one that claims to match you based upon a whole bunch of dimensions, (and don’t ask, because I don’t know what they are, either), to be the one I prefer the most. I’ve met quite a few men on there and actually dated one of them for a few months. A couple of others resulted in a few dates and free dinners while others still never got farther than the guided communication. And yet, there was this one guy……this one guy that kept popping back up at random, but opportune times, and who always just seemed to say the right things and act the right way and have the right mentality. This one guy, who has more artistic talent in his goatee than I have in my entire body actually finds ME interesting and fun. This one guy who somehow didn’t text me at all during the few months I dated this other guy but he managed to reach out to me days after that relationship ended, just to say hi. This one guy, who intrigued me enough that I went outside of my comfort zone, and worries of ulterior motives, and feelings of potential failure, and planned to meet the dude in DC for some museum touring, Presidential resting place viewing and a National’s game.

It was actually kind of an unusual first encounter, aside from the whole meet up in DC for an overnight deal – but there were none of those awkward feelings when you meet someone for the first time, for me. I was very comfortable, relaxed and just plain happy to be in his vicinity and I’d like to think he felt the same way. We had an absolutely brilliant time, despite the earthquake and a slight misjudgment of distance by foot, and we both agreed that we had a ridiculous amount of fun and that we should do it again. Soon. And this one guy is already making plans with me to come visit so he can show me around his town. This one guy that keeps in touch pretty much daily now, and who actually is opening up to me about these deep thoughts he has, without me even asking. This one guy has got me smitten, me thinks, and I gotta say that I’m enjoying the hell out of it.

 

Feast or famine

It seems that I only feel like blogging when I’m hating on myself via some deep-seated emotional issue that has been triggered by a thought or some outside event. This post shall be no different from the norm.

Failure is a word that triggers a strong emotional and mental response from me. It could be failure to complete a task appropriately or the failure of a relationship – it doesn’t matter, either way, I end up feeling like a fuck up who can’t do anything right or correct in life. This is a feeling that has followed me around longer than I’ve probably even been aware of it, and it’s become a topic of interest over my last few therapy sessions.

Each time I recount the failure of a relationship, or that one time I applied for something and was denied, or when I just allow people to take advantage of me, I end up a bleary eyed mess and full of emotional turmoil. Mistakes are failures, the inability to mesh with a single person for the rest of my life is a failure and you bet your ass that I’ve failed at life because I’ve never accomplished the dreams I had as a stupid child. It’s enough to drive a person into a downward spiral of depressive sludge.

Today, as I was having a moment of incredible weakness to my BFF, I kind of realized that in some deep, dark, psychotherapy place in the recesses of my mind, my parents divorce has warped my perception of relationships and their levels of success or failure. I’m sure it’s much more involved than that and I’m sure it has a lot more to do with the whole inability to deal with or discuss emotions that my entire family possesses, but I’ve never really thought of my parents divorce in a negative way until today. It’s one of those situations where the more you learn about yourself, why you react the way that you do to certain things, and where those feelings of inner turmoil and blackness actually COME from, that you can’t help but start to look at events in your life differently.Some end up being more detrimental while others end up having that silver lining to them. My BFF pointed out that relationships take two people and that I cannot blame myself for the end of every relationship because I AM AWESOME. So, in a moment of clarity, I’ve realized that I AM awesome, and have apparently been setting my sights too low, hence the fizzle of each of my past relationships. Awesome shines brightly and some people just burn faster than others. To truly be happy in life, I need to aim high and find someone who’s awesome matches my own, instead of dialing down my aura to fit others.

 

Lesson #4,624 or Why therapy is a good thing

I had yet another interesting session with my therapist this week. Perhaps it was due to my emotional state as of late, or the phase of the moon, or the status of my menstrual cycle, but she seemed…….short with me. As if she felt I was lacking forward momentum; hung up in some sort of way. And I am, but I just can’t get past it enough to literally GET past it. I try, then I figure I’ll fail, then I quit. Quitting is always easier than failing, I figure. But I feel like my struggle to change is starting to frustrate her, which  makes me feel kinda shitty. I mean, it;s gotta take a special talent to frustrate a therapist, ya know?

I have this one constant complaint and it’s a real roadblock in my emotional development. My therapist is fond of using a metaphor regarding how I view myself through a distorted filter. I see others differently than I see myself, and I often pound on myself like a bully. So she’s started this new thing with me that begins with “If one of your friends was dealing with {whatever issue of the moment}, what would YOU tell THEM?” And I gotta admit, it helps!

This weeks session focused heavily on my biggest issue and she pretty much told me that it was time to shit, or get the hell off the pot. Obviously, she put it much more eloquently, and in some sort of psychotherapy terminology, so it sounded less harsh, but the fact remains – she’s right. I USE this against myself, and stop myself from having to make the changes that I need to make to be HAPPY. Why would a person deny themselves happiness? Why would they purposefully put everyone else ahead of themselves? Why would I want to set myself up for failure? BECAUSE I’M CRAZY. I mean seriously, how long have you known me?

Truthfully though, I realize that she’s absolutely right. It’s hard to be 30 years old and feel like a child being scolded, and I’m sure she never meant for it to come across that way, but it shocked me enough to start making some choices and getting some shit done. I’m hopeful that the momentum lasts, and so far, each time I’ve started to have my doubts, some thing has been happening to bring them back up; but I’m not counting any chickens, yet. Just a few eggs.

 

Some girls really do have all the fun

This weekend was my annual family reunion. My dad’s side of the family is Italian and they make it a point every year to re-une. Every one from my grandmother to my cousin’s one year old was there this year and it actually was very nice. No one got stupid drunk, no one set anything on fire, and no one managed to cuss anyone else out. All in all, I’d consider it a raving success, especially when you take my family into account.

The last couple of years, my one cousin has been hosting the reunion at his home, which happens to have my fathers house between it, and me, so I called my dad to see if he wanted to carpool. I need to preface this with the fact that I did NOT ask my father if he wanted to carpool with any ulterior motive – I just thought it would be nice, and as long as he was OK with leaving when I needed to so that I could get home to care for my dogs, I thought it actually made some sense. Anyway, so when I got to his house, he had the garage door open and his truck out in the driveway, which meant one thing: we were taking the VETTE! Hot Bloody Damn! Here we go, boys and girls. We were taking the 2000, 6 speed, 345 hp black on black convertible to the family reunion. Please understand, my dad does NOT bring the vette out but on the rarest of occasions, and it must not be raining, have rained, or have rain in the forecast, or else she won’t come out from under her car covered, curtained windowed garage prison. But saturday was GORGEOUS and my dad was feeling ire, apparently, so out she came! AND………….wait for it………………….I got to DRIVE!!!!

We arrive in perfect condition, and I will admit to cresting nothing above 80 in that car – I honestly didn’t feel safe as I drive it so seldom, and if ANYTHING were to happen, I think my dad would LITERALLY kill me. Then and there. Seriously. So the rest of the family reunion carries on as expected – drinking, eating, laughing, reminiscing, kids screaming, adults screaming, etc. – until my dad says “Did you tell your sister you drove the vette?” NO, Why would I do that? So that she can give me some whiny crap about how it’s been such and such amount of time since SHE’S driven the vette? No. Thank. You. So, my sister says “No, but you did” back to my dad. Then started: “Ya know, I haven’t driven the vette in YEARS.” Neither have I, sister. “Well, you know, I didn’t even drive it that far last time I drove it.” Well, sister, I didn’t ASK to drive, dad offered. Next time, you can drive and pick him up so that you can drive the vette. Ok?

I must admit that I do find satisfaction in burning my sisters ass. She gets herself so worked up over the dumbest things, it just cracks me up when she gets so upset. She starts in with the Woe-is-me routines and lays it on thick enough that others not savvy to her ways would be sucked into her abyss of negativity. All I heard was Blah Blah Blah as she rambled on about how unfair it was, half in jest, half in stark faced sincerity. Thankfully, this all happened as my dad and I were leaving for the night, so I simply got in the car and did what ANY good sister would do – I hammered that shit down and just about spun into second gear, then third. My hair waved GOODBYE as my left foot pumped the clutch and I jammed it into third and my smile opened up greater than it has in a long time, and stayed that way the entire ride home. She’s so pretty, she’d make just about anyone smile.

You'd be jealous, too

 

Who’s got two thumbs and a serious case of the Mondays? This girl.

I once saw a bumper sticker that read “Mondays are a horrible way to spend 1/7th of your life.” It made me laugh and nod in agreement then, and it still pops up into my head now when I have a day like today.

My job is technically based – I work with computers and in multiple proprietary applications all day long, in and out. When I have a computer problem, it effects my entire day. Today, I had internet issues, then VPN connectivity issues, then Outlook issues – it seemed never ending. I was in the midst of a conversation with my manager via an internal instant messenger service when my internet went out for the first time, cutting the conversation off mid sentence. I did all of the things I knew to do – reboot the router, reboot the comp, try my personal comp, then call my ISP. Turns out it was most definitely an ISP problem and it took them a couple of hours to fix it.

I finally got logged back in around 2:15p this afternoon only to find that the email message I needed for a task was unavailable because my outlook took a shit and didn’t want to open up properly, due to the loss of VPN connection from earlier, when my internet went out. Long story short, technology is aggravating me today as nothing seems to be working properly. In the past, I’ve always relied heavily on technology because most things are a computer program of sorts – and computer programs DO get bugs in them, but are often fixable easily enough, even if you have to revert code to a previously working version. Computer programs make sense to me – tell them to do something and they do it. Most often, if it doesn’t do what you intended, it’s because you made a coding error. So it’s understandable when a technology/computer fail totally screws my day, and my mentality.

I am not in a ‘bad’ mood, or depressed; I’m pretty much just annoyed with everything today. Struggling to WORK is a mood killer and definitely is aggravating and makes me want to punch a baby in the face, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll stew in my annoyance tonight and probably roll into work early tomorrow to try to get my shit together and accessible while I’m connected to the mainframe directly, not through a VPN connection. I’ll have to work a long day to make up my missed time due to my malfunctions, but I do have the hope that tomorrow IS another day, and that my tech bugs will sort themselves out and go bother someone else. I don’t know if I can manage two, completely unproductive days in a row, because of computer issues. If that happens, tomorrow’s post is bound to be much more on the downswing than this one.

So, Mondays. Why do we hate you so? Oh, perhaps it is because you come directly after the most loved days of the week, and signal the return to reality that most of us would rather not see as often as you come around. Perhaps it is because, in a client facing business, clients stew all weekend and then explode phones and emails with pointless issues and merit-less concerns first thing in your morning. Or perhaps it is because we have, as a society, been so indoctrinated to HATE you, that we cannot help it; if you don’t hate Monday’s people think somethings wrong with you. Perhaps you have taken on the embodiment of all things great and evil and you give us a fixed point to direct our disappointment and anger at. Or perhaps it’s just that we hate having to work 5 days, and only getting 2 for play. Whoever came up with this 40 hour work week shit should be drug out into the street and Pink Bellied until they split that shit to 4 days on, 3 days off… Meh. A girl can dream, can’t she?

 

WARNING: Adult Blog Content; If you’ve never dropped the ‘F’ bomb in public, you don’t want to be here.

Ok, so this is a totally true story, with parts that I forgot left out. I do seriously cuss a lot in the real world, but I do try to not FORCE my naughty tongue upon others without their express notification. So if you read this and you’re offended: GOOD. You deserve to be after I TOLD you not to!

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Yesterday I had a session with my therapist, and as usual, I left feeling slightly uneasy emotionally, and relatively confused overall. I was pretty lost in thought and I do get overly sensitive when emotionally heightened. So, I was home later than usual, the dogs were desperate to go pee and I had to pee myself. I remember responding to a test message, then I started dinner for me and the dogs. By the time I realized my phone was not where I left it, I can not tell you how much time had lapsed, as I was so lost in the rumblings in my head that I literally lost track of time.

I spent about 45 minutes back-tracking ever step I took in the hour that I had been home. Please keep in mind that all of this happened while ENTIRELY SOBER. I was under no influence of any kind, other than that of my therapy session. I started to lose my shit after I tore the couch apart for the third time, and for some goddess forsaken reason, I called my mother.

She is best described as being stoic. I mean, at least, that’s the best word that I can come up with. I consider it a damn good description, too. Anyway, she’s got this grounded-ness about her that I need sometimes because my emotions can go so haywire, I have what I would consider a panic attack. Except instead of having trouble breathing, I get PISSED OFF. I think it’s my curse to bear as I am blessed (READ: CURSED) with both Italian, and German heritages, among others. Despite the fact that I’m like, 1/4 or less each, I still find that some of those particular heritage’s stereotypes DO tend to be true. And I am a living example of the ones regarding short fuses and Hiroshima rivaling outbursts of anger. You can see how my mother’s unshakable-ness would come in handy to a person like me?

So, I’m on the phone with my mother screaming IT’S JUST FUCKING GONE. Yes, I said FUCKING on the phone to my mother, several times in fact, and she totally let me get away with it. WITHOUT A SCOLDING! I push the limit with her and how many times i can say FUCK in a sentence, sometimes. She seems to be more accepting of the word if I literally scream it. I think she realizes I’m having one of those insanely ridiculous, uncontrollable, stupid, unreasonable, for no good reason I-hate-the-world attacks. And as long as I stay under, say, 6 as an average. She lets me. Yeah, I know it’s crazy that I play insane games while having a totally unnecessary anger attack, but hey, that’s what crazy people do. So – I’m on the phone with my mother screaming IT’S JUST FUCKING GONE and she says HOW CAN IT BE GONE? and I said IT JUST IS!? I DON’T FUCKING KNOW! HOW THE FUCK DOES A PHONE JUST DISA-FUCKING-PEAR?!  I AM CALLING IT FROM MY HOUSE PHONE, MOTHER! I CAN’T HEAR IT RINGING, MOTHER! And she says, oh calm down. What, do you think the boogey man took it? ::DRAMATIC PAUSE:: Mother, I love you and your typical sarcastic humor, but today is NOT the day for it. So, please, you’re totally not helping.

However, after a few minutes of her suggesting the random places around my house, like the fridge, the oven, the sink in the bathroom, the dining room table, the freezer, the lazy susan, the upper cabinets, the microwave, the mailbox, etc – all of which I had already checked – I WAS feeling calmer and was able to listen to her silly plan of just taking a chill for a minute and then resume the search with a mellower state of mind. She said take a walk around outside a minute, and then look around again, then call me back. So I walked around outside, came inside, got on the floor and looked underneath everything that HAS an underneath and I saw a glint of shiny underneath, of all things, my TV stand! WTF?

Hello?. ::my step father, the math and numbers guy, answers:: HI. Hi. Sooooo. I found my phone. Oh yeah? Where was it? Pffftttthhht. Underneath the tv stand. Well how did it get there? How the hell should I know? Did you kick it, or drop it then trip over it and it shot under there? I don’t know, seriously, if I knew it was there, I wouldn’t have spent an hour looking for the damn thing. Well, did one of the cats play with it and bat it under there. Really? I seriously do not know how it got there. I couldn’t even get my hand under there – so i mean, I didn’t PUT it there. OK, well, I think if you think about it long enough, you’ll remember how it got there.

Yeah, I didn’t have a response then, either. But at least I wasn’t pissed off any more. I’ll take that as a success.

 

Dilate: to describe or develop at length

My therapist asked me today if I felt like I was in any better of a place than I was the last time I saw her. She wasn’t actually referring to my overall well-being at that moment, she was alluding to the issues I’ve been having regarding some unrequited feelings I had for my ex. As I’ve discussed here, he and I were going to try to do the ‘friend’ thing, although never in my history of breakups have I ever maintained a friendship with one of my ex’s. Ex’s are ex’s for a reason, and I’ve never really felt the need to check up on any of them. Most were not good men – one had a serious drug problem, one had a serious liked-to-throw-me-around problem, another was a delinquent, a fourth was emotionally unstable and others had their own issues that I’ve all but repressed. But this one was different – he and I started as friends, developed romantic feelings towards each other and after an arduous road, we got together. The first half of our relationship was the happiest I’ve ever been; the second half was the most depressed.

He moved out about a year after he moved in, and I’ve spent the last 10 months or so wondering what the hell went wrong. How could something so great, turn into something so miserable, in a years time? It’s painful to clean out the old emails and text messages with the words of doom in them and it’s harder still to think of what used to be. But I was a different person then, and he is a different person now. Despite the issues of our relationship, he expressed interest in wanting to try to remain friends and in hindsight, I think I agreed to venture outside of my norm because it was HIM. Any one else and I would have told them to check their own oil and get the hell out of my face. But since it was HIM, I couldn’t say no. Despite the fact that I still cared for him deeply; despite the fact that I KNEW it was going to be excruciatingly difficult for me; despite the fact that I realized I was doing it more for him, than me.

On my way to work today, I was listening to the cd’s that have been in my dashboard since I bought my car, and came across an old favorite. It used to make me tear up out of sadness and remorse, but today, it made me feel….DIFFERENT. Like, instead of being the ‘you’ that the singer sings to, I was the singer, singing to you. I wasn’t crying over the proverbial spilled milk, instead, I was just letting it go…Letting go of the what-if’s and the why’s and the what could I have done differently, and instead, recognizing that sometimes, you just have to walk away.

So this afternoon, when my therapist asked me if I felt like I was in a better place emotionally, I told her that I felt like I was making progress. Not better, per say, but on my way there. The friendship door is still open, but I’m not going to be pushing any issues or following up with HIM, and I expect that if he truly wants to be my friend, he’ll treat me like one and not just want to chat in order to appease his own curiosity. I mean, he can read my blog to do THAT (and I know that you do….), but a real friend goes deeper than the superficial. A real friend would know more of what’s going on in my life than what I choose to broadcast to the masses, and a real friend want to be there for me when I needed them. Anything less just isn’t ‘friendship’, in my eyes.