Bitchy McBitcherson's Blog

Tag: life

  • I’m Living

    Today in the car my daughter and I were discussing an assignment she needs to do, a series of photos based around poem or book, with a theme of “family”.

    I told her, “Oh, you could do that famous children’s book.”

    “I don’t know which book you mean,” she replied.

    I couldn’t respond because I had burst into tears.

    Okay… so THAT was stable.

    I pulled myself together and attempted to continue the conversation and immediately burst into tears again.

    WTF?  Back off emotional breakdown, I don’t have time for this.

    The book I was referring to is Love You Forever, by Robert Munsh.  Clearly the recent events with my father are shoving my parents’ mortality down my throat until I am choking on it.

    Things continue to be emotionally and mentally difficult in my life for a variety of reasons, and the health of my father is just one of those.  The recent heat wave has also been brutal on me, of course.  On the good news front, my frequency and severity of migraines is getting better under control.  Working hard on remembering and appreciating the bits that are going well.

    Deep breaths.

    But all day and into the night, a verse keeps echoing in my mind.

    “I’ll love you forever,
    I’ll like you for always,
    as long as I’m living
    my daddy you’ll be.”

  • Finally Friday

    It’s been a tough week in the dog world. Not my own dogs, they are fine.

    In the rescue world, things have been a bit rough. It is difficult. It is worth it, but difficult. I try to focus on the worth it part, but some days are harder than others.

    What else is up? It has been warm, and almost all the snow is gone. The backyard is a complete and total swamp. I don’t want Indy and Watson to run around back there, because that is a disaster.

    Indy got her bloodwork results back. She is in really good shape for her age. Good enough that she was cleared for dental surgery. So, that is where she is today. I am nervous about it, not so much because I fear something will happen during surgery (although, of course I will be anxiously awaiting the call that says all is well). I am mostly nervous about starting some kind of chain reaction.

    I give Watson things that are meant to be chews that last a while, and he quickly consumes them. Back to the chew shopping. Apparently, I have another power chewer. I’m not surprised in the overall scheme of things, but I am a bit surprised to have this issue at 12 weeks with the items I’ve been offering him.

    This weeks puppy class was again good, but Watson got less play time in because the other pups there were so small, and he was a bit of a bull in a china shop. Still a great learning experience for him, but it burned less physical energy. Luckily, I have a play date scheduled for Saturday with some big dogs.

    My mother is back for another visit, to help me with some things and mostly to help me with Watson while I get stuff checked off my To Do list. The timing for adopting a puppy was less than excellent, so part of how we came to the conclusion we could manage it anyway, came from her willingness to come back to help. Watson clearly recognized her when she walked it the door. It was so adorable. He likes people in general and is always excited to see new people, but he was just beside himself with sheer wiggly waggy puppy happiness to see the woman who bottle fed him so many meals. We didn’t know whether he would recognize her, but he did.

    I might have created a twitter account for Watson. Great. I’m becoming one of THOSE people.

  • Sitting and Thinking

    So, yesterday I teased that I had other news that was too big to just tack on the bottom of that post.

    It wasn’t really a sweeps week “to be continued” type of tease. I just have all this shit on my mind, but my mind hasn’t finished chewing on it yet. I know some of what it means, but I don’t know all of what it means.

    So, here you get a little glimpse into my life, mid thought process.

    I am typing this while sitting at the dining room table. At my feet, Indy is asleep. This is usual. She is asleep at my feet a large portion of the time that I am on my computer.

    Far less usual, and quite unexpectedly, there is a puppy asleep at my feet too.

    Webster.

    Webster is back. For reasons which are totally understandable, and I agree with and support, but are not my reasons to tell. The family who had hoped to adopt Webster, has decided it isn’t what is best for him. He was with them for a week and they all had a wonderful time, but they came to a very difficult decision. They are doing what they think is best for the dog, which I totally respect.

    He left on a Sunday, and came back on the following Sunday. They were willing to foster him, but I wanted him back. I put this much in. I’d like to see it through to all three orphans finding their forever homes.

    It is time to figure out what “I might have wanted to keep him” means, now that it is an option.

    I am certain there are other families out there who would love him just as much as we do. I am certain there are no other families out there who would love him more. I knew both of those things about Bear too. There is more to it than that, as I so difficultly had to stand by when letting Bear leave. I must ask myself, “Is there somebody that is better for him due to practical life circumstances?” and “How exactly does he impact the lives of the pets we are already committed to?” Most of all, I need to make sure that I don’t let the pangs of regret I feel for “having” to let Bear go, allow me to lie to myself about these answers. It would be easy to trick myself, just so that I can avoid a difficult goodbye.

    That is where I am at today, with a puppy curled up at my feet, right next to Indy.

  • Body Acceptance and Lack Thereof

    Part of the reason I wrote the fat post was because I really wanted to write this post, but needed those other thoughts out of the way first. Then my life got in the way and it took me a little bit to get back to this post.

    I don’t like my body. I do not have a warm relationship with it, and I am not very motivated to improve my feelings toward it.

    I get that YOU may believe that loving my body is a SHOULD so strong it is almost a requirement, but frankly, your shoulds hold more annoyance than interest to me. It is me, and my body. From my perspective our relationship should only concern you for the seconds you choose to expose yourself to my words. If it really hurts you to hear about my body hatred, or you feel that you must give me a pep talk. You might want to quit reading.

    The current source of our problem relationship has little to do with appearance. I won’t claim to have always been comfortable looking the way I happen to look. I won’t claim that I will age gracefully, and never even consider a visit to a plastic surgeon for some little bit of something. I certainly won’t claim that I do not have flashes of appearance insecurities, or worse. However, on the majority of days, I am fine with my appearance.

    I like the theory of body acceptance. Especially as the mother of a teenage girl, it is a big part of what I want to impart to her. It is made far more difficult by the fact that in all honesty I am so uncomfortable in my own skin.

    Literally uncomfortable.

    I have been in pain since I was 10 years old. Some days it is less, some days it is more, but I am always in pain. Chronic pain, they call it. Really fucking annoying, I call it.

    Yet, most days it isn’t really all that annoying, because I am so used to it. It is just a part of life for me. So, if it is just background noise, why do I hate my body? Most days I tend to ignore my body. I focus on the billion other things going on in my life and I don’t think much about the aches, except the brief instant it flares sharply as I change position. When the concept of body acceptance comes up though, I think about my body. Once I think about it, it all crashes over me in waves. The significance of our bodies is so much more than how they look to us, and it is sure as hell more than how it looks to others.

    Yes, I get it. I’ve heard it all. “At least you can walk.” “Look at all the things you can do.” “Look at your beautiful family.” “You should be grateful.”

    I can already detail out all the positive aspects of my body, and there are many. Certainly, I appreciate that things are not worse, and I know very well that they could be, but does it go so far as to wipe out the pain and frustration that is still there. No. Not for me. Have whatever opinion you have to have about my attitude, but it is mine, and I am not looking for your help or inspiration to change it.

    Then there are the surgical scars. Occasionally I happen to honestly and casually mention that one bothers me. This is invariable followed by somebody telling me how it doesn’t look bad, or is barely noticeable. The thing is, I do not mind the scars because I think they are ugly, or I am worried what other people see. They bother me because they remind ME of the physical, mental and emotional suffering that surrounded their creation. Also, they still physically bother me. My nerve regeneration is poor. I tend to end up with large patches of numb and tingly with occasional sharp pains. I can have those spots even when the scars are completely hidden from view.

    Now I am sure that many people reading this feel curious about the causes, background and nature of these pains and surgical scars. If you spend enough time with me over the years, you’ll hear about it here and there. The reason I am not detailing it out here, is that it just doesn’t matter where the subject at hand is concerned. What I am talking about is how I feel about my body, not the journey my body has taken to arrive at this status of under-appreciated anatomical structure.

    This week has been a marginal one. I’ve been able to get out of bed every day. I have not had to avoid any of the things I needed to get done. I was able to function physically. It was definitely not a pretty bad, bad, really bad, or seriously fucked up week. It was just one of those weeks where things were a step and a half above the I almost completely block it out I have so much practice level of pain.

    This week I was reminded at every move and twitch about the pain, but I wasn’t reminded with a chainsaw.

    Also, for anyone who would like to believe that any pain is caused by my being overweight, and would be solved if I dropped 50 lbs. You are wrong. No, I don’t need to detail out why. You just are.

  • I am not a social caterpillar.

    I keep trying to write something about my weekend, but I am still too tired to manage. It kept trying to turn into some large thing about introversion, which wasn’t what I actually wanted to say about the weekend.

    I am antisocial. I am an introvert. These two things are not the same. I have always been an introvert and have no reason at all to expect this to change. There have been studies which show differing brain activities between introverts and extroverts. This lends credence to the fact I was simply born this way, and will continue to be this way, short of a serious head trauma.

    Main Entry: an·ti·so·cial
    Function: adjective
    Date: 1797
    1 : averse to the society of others : UNSOCIABLE
    2 : hostile or harmful to organized society; especially : being or marked by behavior deviating sharply from the social norm

    Main Entry: un·so·cia·ble
    Function: adjective
    Date: 1600
    1 : having or showing a disinclination for social activity : SOLITARY, RESERVED

    Main Entry: dis·in·cli·na·tion
    Function: noun
    Date: 1647
    : a preference for avoiding something : slight aversion

    Today I will just look at antisocial in the first definition provided by Merriam-Webster. I am not always unsociable. This is a learned behavior, and is affected by my moods. There have been times in my life when I was not antisocial, there are times when I am less and more social. Being social always drains my energy reserves and I always need time to recuperate. However sometimes I am much more open to that, and sometimes I am even less enamored of social interaction than I am right now. I know many introverts who are much more social than I am, either by choice or simple function of their chosen career or significant other.

    There are many factors that play into my general antisocial nature, but probably the biggest one is that I just don’t tend to like people. Liking somebody is a big deal to me. This is not the same as hating everybody. I am not sitting here feeling intense hatred for everybody I do not actively like. I do not have enough energy to be bothered with that. Most people fall into the vast sea of indifference. If forced to look directly at them I might briefly feel something else toward them, but it is of little consequence.

    Admittedly this likely has ties in to my introversion. I have a friend who is an extrovert. Her assessment of people, if we speak specifically about them, is very similar to mine. She dislikes the same sort of behaviors and is very easily annoyed or disgusted by things. However her overall view of people, while not actually more optimistic than mine, is warmer than mine. I am convinced that this is because being around all those people, who are essentially in her sea of indifference, still gives her an energy boost.

    I know another extrovert who is so much an extrovert I actually believe it is pathological. It is basically impossible for him to not like somebody, no matter how much of a real and true complete asshole they are, because he simply gets such a big ass high from being around people. Literally the more the merrier for him. So much so, that he drives away people that are supposedly closer to him because he invites anybody he can think of to anything, even people that ones close to him have real reasons for disliking. He can sit through a party and do nothing but have a fight with somebody, and he is having fun. It is almost impossible for him to grasp that maybe the person he is fighting with is not enjoying it just as much. He feels like all human interaction is good. This is not a conceptual thing, it is real and physical for him.

    Since being around people drains me, I prefer to do it, either for work, or with people I really like, and I don’t seek out a lot of interaction with the masses. I know introverts who like a lot more people than I do, it is not solely a symptom of introversion, not at all. I also happen to have a very long and detailed memory. I don’t make an effort to hold a grudge, I just can’t help it. I still feel exactly how I felt when whatever happened, happened. I can hear the sounds. I can smell the smells. I probably know exactly what I was wearing. Plus the older I get the less tolerance I have.

    Now I find myself tempted into launching into something about friends, but I am way too tired for that as well. I also happen to be antisocial according the the second definition provided by Merriam-Webster, but that is also a post for another day. Today I am just going to stick with this.

  • Weekend Update

    There is a girl who lives nearby. We met her and her family almost immediately upon moving into this house and her and my daughter began hanging out. There have been times when they have spent more time together and times when they’ve spent less time together. I’ve never actively encouraged the friendship because I do not care for the parenting style of her parents. At the same time I have not discouraged the relationship either. There are certain things I will not allow when I feel their parenting would possibly impact my daughter’s safety, but as far as whether or not the girl makes a good friend, I’ve tried to leave that up to my daughter to sort out on her own.

    I had several reasons behind this. For one, I did not want to hold the girl responsible for what her parents have done, as long as she could more or less manage to behave herself in a way that didn’t irritate the crap out of me, I didn’t mind her being around. Also, I will not be standing beside my daughter throughout her life. She needs to determine for herself how to make judgments about people and exactly how much she is willing to put up with. She needs to learn how to sort out relationship problems on her own. I am more than happy to give her my opinion, even when she doesn’t want it, but I also try to acknowledge all the other points of view and leave the important parts, like whether or not to consider the girl a friend up to her. I will restrict her from taking part in certain activities with a person, but I will not make some ill-conceived attempt to control her feelings for another person. That would just lead to her stubbornly hanging onto horrible relationships just to prove me wrong. Besides, I have disliked more of her playmates than I’ve liked, so if I asserted my influence too strongly she’d just grow up to be a hermit on a hill with a rifle, and dammit I already called dibs.

    Anyhow, last year this girl started middle school (and her period) and she has been a-changin’. She has new friends who have labeled my daughter as “syoopid” because she doesn’t like The Pussy Cat Dolls, doesn’t watch the new whorrific Puddy Cat Dolls reality show, and she freakishly likes showtunes “what r thos?” Recently it has degenerated further. The girl began to make prank phone calls. When my daughter called her on it (between recognizing her voice, and umm… you know, caller ID) she got pissed off. Little neighborhood miss then decided to pass around our daughter’s cell phone number to a few friends. “I didn’t call you. That was my cousin. If you don’t believe me you are a bad friend and I don’t like you anymore.”

    Ah, the joys of being an adolescent.

    Now I am truthfully beyond fucking irritated because A) cell phone minutes cost money, and she is on a very restrictive plan because we mainly got it so we could be in touch with each other, I have no interest in her wandering about with a phone attached to her head all the time and B) I HATE NOISE so the damn thing ringing over and over is pissing me the fuck off.

    My first instinct is to walk over to the girl’s house and just give her a good spanking, followed perhaps by doing something violent with her phone. I really need my daughter to decide for herself how to handle it, and hopefully to put some actual thought into it first and not just jump into something. We’ve discussed various options and possible and likely results. Now I am waiting. Of course to top it all off my daughter is feeling hurt and pissed off. This means I am stuck in the house with a moody creature.

    So, how is your weekend?

  • Random Mutterings

    Still chafing over this DST crap. It has really thrown a wrench into our lives. It shifted our morning schedule because our morning starts with an alarm clock and the clock time changed. We just work an extra hour because our evening schedule is based on the way it feels, and we don’t typically look at ending our work day until it feels late and we are feeling hungry. I don’t necessarily mind putting in an extra hour of work, we are behind on everything. The problem lies in that by the time we are ready to get dinner, our restaurant options have shrunk by 90%. I could cook, but the whole not feeling late and hungry means I haven’t started prepping already, plus since I am behind on everything, managing the grocery shopping becomes an issue too. The past two nights we drove up to the restaurants of choice to find them closed and were stuck with something else. Last night we did manage to grocery shop, so I will cook tonight. I need to set an alarm so that I notice it is getting late and start cooking on time. I think somebody is coming over dinner tonight.

    I used to hardly ever eat breakfast. I didn’t feel hungry in the morning and when I did eat in the mornings, it made me feel sick. Every once in a while I would make an effort to regularly eat breakfast because the common philosophy is that breakfast is “good for you”. Even after I stuck with it, dutifully eating a bowl of cereal or having a bagel each morning for a month, it still made me feel ill. It certainly didn’t feel very “good for me” and I’d give up on it. Then a couple of years ago the husband and the kid began having a regular breakfast routine that often involved cooking bacon. Soon I found myself attracted to the smell of bacon in the morning. I’ve now been eating breakfast regularly for about 2 years and I really do feel much better. The key for me is that mornings really have to be seriously about protein. Many traditional breakfasty things are fairly high carb (cereals, pancakes, pastries) and eating those things in the morning made me feel positively ill. It was especially problematic because I typically only ate breakfast because I was going out with other people, so not only was I have the morning carb load, but I was eating large portions too, since that is what breakfast places were serving. So now I usually have a small high protein meal in the morning and it tends to make me feel better throughout the day than I used to feel with no breakfast, so that’s one improvement in my life, and I really am pleased by any improvement.

    Most mornings I have spinach and an egg, or some egg whites and some bacon if somebody else cooks it for me. The egg whites is a new thing too. A little over a year ago we went out to breakfast and I ordered an omelette based on the ingredients. It sounded good. It arrived and was all white on the outside. I actually said “What the fuck?” I looked back at the menu and it came default as an egg white omelette. I’d never had one before. It always seemed like something people did to be healthy and when it comes to food I really prefer it to be about the food, especially if I am eating out. Still, I had ordered it, so I wasn’t going to send it back. It turned out I actually preferred it. I liked the texture better. I guess I should have beens surprised because if I get eggs cooked to order I go with sunny side up or overeasy, I don’t care for scrambled. So that led to me purchasing and using egg whites at home.

    This morning I still had some spinach left, but it was no longer in an edible condition. The fridge is running too cold right now. I keep tweaking but it isn’t helping. Without my normal spinach I was poking around trying to figure out what else to eat. I ended up making an artichoke heart, cillantro, onions and bleu cheese, egg white omelette. I really liked the combination. I’ll have to toss that into my breakfast rotation more often.

    Today I need to go buy more spinach, and eggs too.

    Maybe I will get dressed and head out of the house now. As I have mentioned before mornings are not my most productive time. So far I have only managed to do random internet time wasters and answer a couple of important meetings, made my daughter mad at me, plus have a brief talk with the writer/director of the short. This is all fine as long as I don’t give in too much to the random internet time wasters later in the day once my energy is up.

  • How Many Fits of Cursing Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?

    I am tired. I have grease smudges on my face. My hands hurt and two nails are broken. Not in that “eek I broke my nails” way, that isn’t really my style, but in that ripped down “fuck THAT hurts” way. However there are now two working headlights on the car. Unfortunately I didn’t finish the work early enough this morning, so my car is gone for the day again. Not a huge deal, but it is in need of an oil change so I’d rather it not make the longer commute. My commute down the hallway in my jammies is much easier on the car.

    The manual said to remove six clips, which I did. This allowed me to remove the “engine cover” some dumbass plastic piece of limited use. This I also did. The instructions up to that point were clear and things were okay. Next it points out that on the “right side” by which they mean the passenger side there are some extra steps. I was working on the driver’s side, so I skipped those steps. I removed the connector. Then came time to move the bulb cover, an annoying rubber thing. I tried and tried, but there was no way that I could. There was not enough room for my hand, and my hands are not huge.

    So I removed the fuse box cover, not a suggested step, but it gave me a little extra room to maneuver and messed with it and messed with it and messed with it until I got the outside ring of bulb cover. Yay? No. The cover refuses to come off. The rubber is still firmly attached to the bulb and it is putting pressure on the bulb and moving it instead of coming off.

    The manual just says to turn the cover counterclockwise and remove it and goes on to the next step. It makes it sound pie easy.

    I turn to the internet and discover other people complaining that the driver’s side is a real PITA. Okay, little manual writing monkeys. Here is an idea. Do not reserve your extra instructions for the side that is easier. While I found plenty of people complaining about it, they were complaining about the step before where they were trying to get the outside ring to detach. I resorted to posting on a forum requesting more details. Nobody responded. I could post a photo of a naked tit and get 100 comments in the first 5 minutes, but getting a useful response to a problem is a whole different story.

    Eventually I go back outside and channel my father and just decide I do not need to be careful about the fragile glass bulb and instead I should go ahead and force it. I force it, and it eventually gives. The rubber has threading on it to help it grip very tight. It is never going to come off breezily. I still have not won because there is a clip shown in the manual, except I cannot see the fucking thing, and it is difficult to feel and they just say to remove it and don’t give any more detail on how. I fiddle and fiddle and finally get it undone. It is at the clip stage that I rip the two nails.

    I replace the burnt out bulb with the new one. I reassemble the headlamp portion and test it out. It works.

    Next it is time to put the engine cover back on. This goes smoothly except for dropping one of the clips. Of course I cannot drop it in an area where it will fall easily through to the ground. I drop it where it is caught in something out of site and out of reach. The cover is now secured by five clips instead of six.

    I hope the neighbors enjoyed all the swearing.

    In other news, the move to the other computer has gone more poorly than I was even expecting and I am very slowed down on all my projects because of it. I am typing this as I try to get some other things copied that I did not expect to need to move in this particular fashion.

    Oh yeah, and the worst thing about doing car crap first thing in the morning, is that I have to put on pants.

  • Is it time for bed?

    Done

    • uploaded website
    • troubleshot wireless network, bought parts and repaired it
    • went to work on HE system, found problems, fixed things as best I could but they may need to get some warranty repair
    • bought a new bulb to replace the burnt out headlight, but cannot replace it in the dark
    • paid bills, many of them ones that made me angry
    • completed computer back up, on new computer, not settled on it yet
    • cleared a stuffed full small recycling bin worth of papers off my desk
    • fixed a problem on a website, even though somebody else made the error
    • drafted a “code of conduct” for a martial arts school
    • carved out some family time
    • carved out some couple time

    Failed

    • cleaning the kitchen
    • picking up fused glass project
    • installing headlamp
    • website design outline
    • getting the HE system done and off the plate
    • getting to bed at a reasonable time

    To Do Tuesday

    I don’t want to think about it right now.

  • Morning Assessment

    Kid – sick, refuses to get out of bed
    Husband – sick, refuses to stay home and rest
    Self – up and working, some sort of sinus unpleasantness which I will not describe in detail (but think gross)

    To Do Today
    Already forced to push several things to later in the week and cancel others completely due to illness annoyances.

    • upload website
    • do website design outline
    • go troubleshoot a wireless network for somebody (then likely go buy new bits and redo setup)
    • go tweak a home entertainment system setup for somebody
    • get new headlamp for car and replace it
    • clean kitchen
    • pay bills
    • complete computer backup and migration
    • try to pick up fused glass project