Nostalgic and homesick.....
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I had a dream about my grandmas about a week ago, and I've missed them ever since. In the dream, one of my grandmas died, and I was rally upset, because I had meant to thank her, to ask her about the Phillipines and her family there, and then bang, just like that, no more chances, all her history lost to me, all her memories not passed through to the next generation. In the dream, she died from blood poisoning following her knee operation, which is exactly how my paternal grandfather died. She is getting knee surgery....I really hope it was only a bad dream and nothing more. I've been trying to call her, but I'm afraid to. Making a phone call is this huge effort for me, and then the people usually don't even want to talk to me much. It's a lot of stress with very little reward most of the time. I need to do it, though....should set a deadline and something pleasant that I can't have until after I make that phone call.

Two of my co-workers have been griping about my perfume, which is natural essential oils of roses. They don't know that I wear it because it reminds me of my Grandma Amy. I wonder if all Catholics wear rose scented stuff, or just Filipino ones, or just the Filipino Catholics that I knew?? To me it is such a warm, loving scent, a scent that says that there is love and safety in the world. I cope a lot better at work when I wear it, because the scent is very reassuring. One of the gals is actually allergic and has asthsma (but she smokes cigarettes?!!!) so I've been abstaining when she's there. The other one simply doesn't like it. Well, I don't like her reek of poison tobacco, or that she crunches ice cubes all day long (and I am pretty damned sure that she does NOT pay for those ice cubes!) and there's not a damned thing I can do about it, so she'll just have to put up with my perfume, too. If it made her physically sick, I would stop wearing it around her, even though I don't like her....it's just wrong to make someone sick on purpose.

Anyway...family stuff. Yeah, I miss them all. They don't seem to like me very much, though, especially my father's family. I am the black sheep, because I moved to be with my mom, and was homeless for a year or two, and because I got divorced. Also, I'm probably the only one of my generation in the family who hasn't gone to college (who's old enough to, anyway). Ouch!

My earliest memories of sound: my dad's pipe organ music- Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. Some of the compositions seem to be hardwired into me. When other people play the same pieces, they don't sound right, not crisp and staccato and defined and intricate like they are under my dad's fingers. I probably heard them before I was even born. I've actually been considering going to church again not for spiritual reasons, but in order to join a choir and sing the hymns. Isn't that twisted and hypocritical? I used to sing a LOT, and I had a good voice then. My dad had us sing right in front of the whole congregation. Now I'd be terrified to do that. I don't even know what my voice sounds like anymore. It's sad.

College: since earliest childhood, I knew, almost as a given, that there were things I wanted out of life: to be a doctor, an artist, have lots of animals, and a family. Now I feel like I've given up on all of that, why live at all? I have not fulfilled my destiny. I just bounce around messing other people's lives up. In my heart, I still want it, I still want to be a doctor, but I don't see how. Also, I don't see how I could be a doctor AND an artist, and maybe I should choose. We come from a long line of doctors, I was supposed to be one, and here I am, producing fast food that I don't even think is fit to eat. I wouldn't care so much if I weren't smart...but I am....and I think too much abotu my job because there is nothing else to focus on, and then I get in trouble for taking it too serously. Obviously I need to go to college, but for what?

I've decided he's probably right. Nobody else is going to want me. Or, rephrased, none of the sort of guys that I would want are going to want me. I'm ugly, and even if I got cosmetic surgery, I still don't have the all-important social graces and poise that it takes to get on in this world where "normal" is so paramount to success.

But, I'm not going to let it bother me. I have a lot of kids, a lot of goats, and a lot of interesting things to do. The world won't end if I don't have a mate or if some time goes by and things eventually do work out between Tim and I.

I have a house to clean. A big yard to landscape and plant flowers in, and to make vegetable beds for. Paintings to paint, books to read, quilts to finish, all sorts of great things to do. There's more to life than romantic love. And while I undeniably would like that, not so much for sex or financial security or sheer romance as much for simple companionship and long term bonding, it might not happen for me anymore, or maybe friendship is what I'll get. I have a life to live. I'm not going to sit around wasting it with wishful thinking.

While at the store paying for my routine morning latte:

Checker: "oh, I like your necklace! Did you get it from the gumball machine? That's where I got mine!"

Hers looks like hematite, but it isn't. It's plastic. I am a bit surprised that such a good imitation of hematite can be produced. I proceed to explain that actually, I made my necklace myself, and it's all real: freshwater pearls, rhodonite beads, and a jasper heart shaped pendant. Her personality is rather reflective. Not much sinks in, but she bounces a lot of enthusiasm and energy around. She goes on to tout the necklaces in the gumball machine.

I wouldn't wear plastic. I like things that are real. So it's a bit ironic and slightly irritating that even when I do wear real pearls and semi-precious gemstones, people assume that it is plastic!

Oh, whatever. I take life too seriously.

::Body::

I am in the bath, in the clear, clean hot water of the freshly scoured tub.
I survey my body:

Feet- feet that have borne my weight, faithful servants ferrying me around at work. The nails are long. I reach up, find the clippers, and trim them. The thin skin over the tops of my feet still retains the impression of the socks I wore today, and the lines of the new boots, the lacing pattern. I study it, thinking about how those boots hurt at first, how it made the feet suffer.

Calves- hairy. Need shaving. I don't want to take a bath in my own hair and soapsuds. Besides, no razors, need to buy some.

Knees- Hill family knees, not well formed. They stick out knobbly like. They aren't set in smoothly, seamlessly like other women's knees. I wonder if those women even appreciate what nice knees they have. I see knees like mine in my uncles, who needed knee surgery, and I see them one of my sons. My grandpa died of an infection following his knee surgery. Hmmm. My left knee has two scars. One is where I cut it open on broken concrete as a fourth grader. I remember the concrete, because it was near where I used to bury any dead birds I found, holding little funerals for them. The other scar is longer and not as old. I don't remember what caused it. The right knee got kicked by a horse once. Luckily for me, his hoofprint circled my patella. Otherwise the kneecap probably would have been broken. As it was, I limped along for a few days, at least, with a big purple bruise. I look at these knees and wonder whether they'll need surgery when I get older.

Thighs- They're still plump with extra fat and flesh retained during the last pregnancy, reserves for breastfeeding the baby. I'm still nursing him, but probably will have to bicycle and exercise to get them firm and toned again.

Hips- Hips that have cradled seven babies and birthed six. Hips that have labored and worked hard, harder than most women here, I think. Hips that have hurt, and I can hardly blame them, after all I've put them through. The pelvis is wide. Wide and motherly, having held all those babies, but not as wide as some. I look at these hips, think about the beautiful butterfly shape of the bones....wonder if they will ever cradle and embrace their complement, heavier, differently shaped, bigger yet seeking shelter. Will these bones touch against another's or will they be alone? I look at them, and think that probably, they will. I like men entirely too much for it to be otherwise. I wonder whose, and I don't know.....

Why is it that I can go all day long and keep up a good front while I'm crumbling away inside, and then cry half the night? I must look like I have a heart of ice to the casual onlooker. I don't....but I just don't know how to show feelings, and even if I did, then they'd just say, "well, take him back then!".

But it isn't that. It's the whole hopelessness of it all. I am so fucking BORED. I really, *really* want an intelligent conversation, or just to go out and do something different for a change. It's not going to happen. It isn't so much that I'm ugly, because I've observed other people who are quite a bit uglier and seem happily mated with plenty of friends. It's that I take things so seriously and don't have any social charm. I'm afraid to flirt (don't want to seem like a slut or to let on that a guy is attractive to me), my sense of humor is not funny to a lot of people, and I can switch from laughing my head off to dead serious in seconds, which really seems to throw others for a loop.

So I just look through them and tune them out. They don't see me anyway...not really.

Sigh.......

Okay, so he's gone now. I'm all alone, just like I wanted to be. But, I feel strange. Everything else is the same, but he's gone. It's surreal. I don't even know what I feel. :-/ And I know he said he didn't mean it when he said that nobody else would want me, but I can't quite shake the feeling that he's probably right. I look into the mirror and I just think, "Blech". Who would want that? Attempts at improvement make it more glaringly ugly. Makeup...I look like a clown or a goth or something horrid, UGH.

Time for the St. John's wort, I guess.....

Oh god. He is strangling me to death with his neediness. All he seems to see or think about is memememememe...what HE needs. It's as though I have some sudden obligation to make him as utterly happy as I can, because, why? Because, in my heart, he says, I know that I want to! AAaaaargh!!!!!!!!!!

I'm trying to be nice and decent and tactful and all that, and it just isn't working. Instead, I feel like I'm on the verge of losing my mind (at which point he pipes up and says, "Yeah, me too!,How do you think I feel?")

Hello! I wasn't the one who got drunk with a baby in my care and who tried to drive off before discovering that I was too danged drunk to go anywhere, and so passed out until I could drive again (hopefully soon enough that the baby's mother would be blissfully ignorant of the whole debacle), except, luckily for the baby, someone called the cops before any driving could be done. That was you, dear, not me. That was my baby, unfed, diaper unchanged, for four whole hours, crying unattended while you and your stupid pickle-brained drinking buddy haw-haw-hawed your way through at least one bottle of vodka and possibly another. I was the one who lost 5 hours ($40 worth) of work that I couldn't afford to lose, so I could rescue my child and keep him from being taken away from me, who stood there trembling with my baby in my arms, so thankful that he was alive and unharmed. If only he could talk and tell me the truth, of all the other things he's had to go through, but he can't. He has to content himself with looking up at me innocently and sweetly and hoping/trusting that I won't hurt him or let anyone else hurt him, either. It's my duty. I'm a mother.

So enough with the damned guilt trips! Shove them down your craw! All my life, as long as I live, I'll not be able to make up what's already happened to the poor kid, and it'll be on my record with CPS, even though I didn't flipping do anything wrong except let you spend a few hours with your kid, when you'd been begging me for weeks. That's what giving in gets me. It's going to take a helluva lot more than guilt trips or begging or emotional manipulation to get anywhere at all with me in the future.

I despise drunks. I've always hated the sound of bars. How in the world did I end up in this disastrous mess? By trusting you, duh.

I keep buying things I don't need. Being a thrifty frugal sort by nature, it doesn't usually put me out a lot of money, but the fact is that in a small one bedroom house with 8 people, there just isn't any room for stuff I don't need, even it it's FREE stuff. What I should do is to make a list of things that I really need to want, and if the item isn't on the list, I won't take it, even if it's given to me. Wait....what to do if I get something cool that I never knew existed or hadn't thoght of, or never had, and I really like it?

First items on the list:

a Louet spinning wheel and wool cards
Flower bulbs
Supplies to make concrete stepping stones
possibly another sturdy sports bra, if I found one cheap.

I am learning how to upload and post images. This is (should be) my oldest son. The other pic was son #2 and only daughter. As you can see, they are all hamming it up!

Early memories and signs that I wasn't quite like the other people:

*I lived in my own little world and was very introspective. In fact, I don't remember speaking anywhere near as much as I *thought*. In addition, it was years before I could easily articulate the things I was thinking about.

*I did not understand boundaries. Oh, I got plenty of spankings....but somehow, I thought rules and boundaries were for people who wanted them, for regular people who wanted to be constrained by them, not for me.

*Other children seemed rather petty, babyish, and uninteresting, as a whole. They seemed to always be agreeing with one another without actually thinking very much about the subject they claimed to agree on.

*I couldn't understand the emphasis on money. If all they wanted was money, why didn't they just pass around an offering plate like they do at church?

*Nor could I understand clothing. I saw some big, lovely fuzzy burdock leaves and asked my babysitter why she couldn't use those for a bathing suit, so we could go swimming. She laughed as though it were absurd. I couldn't see why, they looked nice to me!

*I particularly hated people who talked behind people's backs and then acted all phony nice. I made a point to tell them what others were saying about them and to promote honesty between the two backstabbing parties. It didn't help, and I couldn't understand why not.

*The first thing I remember reading was some kind of a medical book. It belonged to my Grandfather (a doctor) and must have been from his time in the military (WWII). The book listed various injuries and whether the person had a good chance of living or not. I think it must have been discussing triage, a concept I didn't unerstand yet. I walked to school chanting silently to myself, that if a person lost an arm or a leg, they would probably live, but if they lost both legs and arms, they'd die (and all the variations in between). I really liked this book and found it fascinating, but one day my Grandpa discovered me reading it and took it away. He was really upset for some reason and I heard him scolding my teenage uncles. He seemed to think they had left it out...but I think I had found it in the attic. I looked for that book again, week after week, on the shelf where I'd put it, but I never found it again and that made me sad. I'm not sure they knew I could read. I was somewhere between 4 and 6.

*I was talking to my dad abbout numbers. He kept trying to show me about number lines, and my numbers didn't look like that. I told him that my numbers went up, kind of like stairs, into infinity, and that they were transparent and black. He went away mumbling "transparent black numbers....." as though that were an oxymoron. What I wanted to say was that in order for me to do math at all, I had to visually flip through these numbers, they were (were? still are!) like cards overlapping a little bit. When you find the one you want, it lights up. To add, you have to count ahead or skip the desired number of cards. Adding was easy, you just went up the stairs. Subtraction was hard because of the way the cards were layered, it's like falling down the stairs and then looking back up to make sure you fell far enough. You can see the numbers ahead, but not the ones behind. Multiples of ten were a different color or bolder. When I recited numbers (I counted out loud all the time) I emphasized the bold numbers. My uncle teased me for this and asked me why, but I couldn't explain it.

*Spelling was simple. I just pronounced things as irrationally as they were spelled, inside my head. So I had this constant stream going on: Ve-get-ables! Wed-nes-day! pe-op-le! (pee-oh-pull) fri-end! (fry-end) and I would see the words as I said them. I was very good at spelling.

*I daydreamed all the time. My thoughts were so vivid that people could wave hands in front of my face and I would not see them. Teachers complained of my not paying attention. I hardly heard what they said, anyhow.

*I loved art, but it was a little frustrating, because I had exact ideas of what I wanted to draw, and sometimes I even tried to trace it on the paper, but it didn't come out the way I wanted it to. I drew the same subject over and over and over and over again, hundreds of times, trying to get it right. Teachers got sick and tired of seeing the same subject matter.

*Poeple seemed so petty and crabby. They worried abot all sorts of trivial things I didn't care about, and then the things that did interest me, such as small snail shells found behind the hedges, or a matchbox, or an insect, were only bothersome annoyances to them. They expected me to care about what they liked, and yet they routinely destroyed or insulted what meant the most to me. That seemed so wrong.
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If I think of more, I'll add that. In a nutshell, even though I was a child, I felt quite equal to the adults around me and expected to be treated with the same respect. If someone was condescending or abusive to me, I held a grudge against them for years, because I felt that they simply had no right to act that way.

::Work::

Wait. They don't care. They don't care if the food is substandard, if customers get bad service or no service at all, or the cleanliness leaves a lot to be desired. All this time I've been working my little hiney off trying to do my job the very best I can, and not only is my manager not pleased, he's pissed at me for it. Fuck it, then.

I'm always stirring up the shit. I think it's because I'm both terrified and contemptuous of complacency. I'd rather risk a bit of a reputation for constantly bringing up things people want left alone, or pointing out flaws, than to see people fall into ruts and stay there. Plodding along in the same old modes of thought day after day...not because it's the best way, but simply because it's comfortable and they're lazy. They're not going to take a fresh look at what they do or even stop to think about it unless someone goads them into it. That mindset (set? "concrete" might be a better term!) annoys the hell out of me, so I'm willing to risk a little dislike to poke them into seeing another point of view or stopping to question the M.O.

He keeps on saying that he loves me, and I know that he wants me to say the same thing back, but I can't. I mean, I care about him, I'd be awfully upset if anything happened to him, and I feel affection for him...but I know that isn't what he'll be thinking I mean if I apply the label "love" to that, even though I could conceivably be called love in other contexts, such as with a brother or child or friend. This makes me feel sad.

But the kind of love that rips your guts out, that approaches insanity, where you'd do anything at all for someone, where you live and breathe sustained by the sight or mere thought of the one you love....I haven't felt that way in a while, and I don't know if I really want to again. It's too scary, it hurts too much.

The truth of it is that I just feel sort of blank and empty inside. It's like the lines from an Elton John song: "I want love, but it's impossible....a man like me is dead in places, other men feel liberated...I can't love shot full of holes, I don't feel nothing, I just feel cold.." That's how I feel right now. It isn't that I don't love him, it's just that I feel so wrung out and worn down and stressed out that I scarcely feel anything else.

Maybe love is for other people, one of the many pleasant things that are for other people, normal people, not people like me. Still, he loves me, and that means something. My heart can't be much broken right now, but his can. So, I should try to work it out for his sake, and maybe my feeling will return after a while...

I'm having to make my boyfriend move out. I hate to do it, particularly since we have a child together. Breaking up is always excruciatingly unpleasant, and what's hard about this is that I'm not really as angry as I need to be in order to do it quite effectively.

I don't know what's wrong with me, that I can't make relationships work even when I try. I think it's got something to do with boundaries, I have such a hard time enforcing them. I wish I could just have calm and stability and happiness, not in the effusive constantly joyous sense of the word, just....contentedness, peace.

My boots are done!! My boots are done!!

Er, being made by hand, that is. One simple phone call and my brand new, lovingly hand-made White's boots will be in the mail, and hopefully my hips won't hurt as much at work any more. Yes! I am happy!! :-)

Okay, so I never said I wasn't a nerd. :-P

I am beginning to realize that strong emotion of any kind scares me:

• Love: oh, don't get me started... This has got to be the most intimidating thing on earth, after snakes. No, scarier than snakes....love _is_ the most frightening, period.
• Anger: Feeling angry makes me shake; I hate it.
• Happiness/joy: feels...silly, embarrassing.
• Sadness: probably I take this better than the others, but still, too much is pretty unbearable.

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Boring as it may be, I suppose my preferred state of mind is running on an even keel. Sort of a neutral gray or gray-blue.
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People often tell me that I should smile more often. Frankly, I don't like smiling a lot. It hurts my face, yes, with a physical pain, if overdone. It shows my ugly teeth (wish I'd been privileged enough for braces). It feels....extreme and overexuberant. A *little* smiling, OK. But all the time? No! It's uncomposed.
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God, I'm boring.
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I think perhaps people think that I'm unhappy if I'm not smiling. This is not the case at all! I'm at my happiest when calm, composed, thinking about something that tickles my mind. It's just the way I am. I'm happy, really.
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Another thing: smiling just because you're standing there telling me to isn't going to help me at all. I will just plaster the (artficial feeling) smile onto my face until I determine that a reasonable amount of time must have passed, and then allow my face to resume it's natural, neutral expression again. It feels so FAKE!

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And here's something else that's bothering me.
Why do I reject the men that I like the most, not always intentionally but through my actions?
Why do I act cold or pretend like I don't like a guy, even if my insides are swimming with excitement and I can hardly think for the blood pounding in my head?
Why do I ignore them?
Why am I so afraid to look at them?
Why does it *hurt* me to look at an attractive man? Yeah, it does, it hurts. It's almost an electric shock like sensation, but in my eyes, and not quite physical. That's the best way I can describe it.
Why is it so *damned* hard for me to admit that I love or care about a man, and even harder to tell them so?
I mean, why can I tell just about everyone else on the face of the earth that I like a particular man, but then, if it come down to telling him myself...Oh god NO, please no.

These things hurt me. I wish that I could be more expressive, that I didn't have to be afraid. The more I love a guy, the less able I am to communicate it to him, except through actions, such as remembering his preferences.

:-/

I wonder what would happen if the word love were banned from our vocabulary. I sometimes feel that our culture cheapens love by applying it to every and any sort of "like" or "affetion" or even "that is pleasant".Love is everywhere. When you hear the word, your ears don't perk up, you don't turn to look, it isn't even romantic. Hearing it from a person very often means that they're either about to try to talk you into something you'd rather not do or they want to obligate you into something.

If we couldn't say it at all, would we put more effort into *showing* the depth of our feeling for the people who mattered most to us? When we did say it, wouldn't it be because it had sat festering in our breast until finally, against the law, the words had to be uttered because you felt them so strongly?

And wouldn't we expand our vocabulary, not only of speech but of actions, to embrace all the variations and nuances of being pleased with a thing or person?

Well, now that I have an oven, I'm back into the baking mood again. Sadly enough, my knack for baking seemed to have drifted away in the meantime... Actually, the potato onion knishes I made last night were awfully good. Perfect, in fact. It's the apple filled challah I'm making (er, burning) right now that's got me humiliated. I guess it really DOES need to raise 2-3 times in order to turn out well, and substituting cherries for apples is a bad, bad idea. I mean, they're tasty and all, but they leak all over and ooze cherry juice all over the pan and burn and the smell is awful. And it's not as sweet as it should be, either. I have no idea why not...except that the dough wa sa lot stickier than usual (sweet doughs often are) and so I had to use more flour than the recipe called for. (Uh, that might be why it's not sweet enough and feels too dense...duh...) Dang it, I wanted to make something *nice*! Well, maybe next time I'll follow the directions more closely instead of doing it "my way".

I'm feeling a little better about my job. A couple of the people who've been irritating me the most are either gone or leaving soon. Also I realized why I was so stressed out, and even though that element is unlikely to change, being able to recognize it has been helpful. I still find the knowledge that I'm contributing to sending people to their demise (via obesity, heart disease, high cholesterol, and god only knows what else) somewhat disturbing, but it's also true that I can make healthier foods available for people to choose from. The only thing is, if Staci leaves, I honestly don't know if I'll want to stay. It'd be too much like drudgery with her gone, she's such a kick.

Oh, wait- I had a little less than the amount of yeast called for. That might be part of why it's so dense. Yeah. (Note to self: buy more yeast, a lot of it, like half a pound)

I'm so tired. I have to be out the door tomorrow at about 6:00-6:30, to get my car into the shop to be worked on before work, and hope that they get it done in time. Ugh, tomorrow is freight day, and the freezer's going to be packed FULL of boxes of bread dough weighing 40# each, that all have to be sorted and stacked. Groan...thinking about it makes me hips hurt already. I'll bread chicken instead. I did freight tha last two Fridays.

Realized something else disturbing: I tend to find men who project a tragic or melancholic aura attractive. WTF???? WHY haven't I ever examined this screwed up facet of myself before? And then, after I've been with them for a while and tried to nurse them back to happiness, one of two things happens: They're happy, and I'm bored and see someone else sad that I'd like to cheer up (whih isn't saying that I cheat- I don't- it's just that I feel sorry for sad men), or: They remain depressed because that's their normal mode, and I begin to get offended by it (What's the matter with you? Aren't I good enough? I'm TRYING to make you happy!!!). And see, the basic premise here, that I can be responsible for anyone else's happiness, is all wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.....

I guess part of it is that wounded guys look so much like sad little boys. You just sort of want to hold them and kiss the owies and make them all better, because guys are supposed to have that stiff upper lip and it's really hard to take to see them all forlorn. :-/

The funniest thing that's happened to me in a long time:

I was at the airport picking up my son, and I saw an older gentleman reaching to pick off a half-grown praying mantis off the back of another man (who was grateful, for some reason I couldn't figure out!). I immediately said "Oh, I've wanted one of those since I was a kid!", but the men acted like they hadn't heard me, and he stuck it outside. Well, right then my son arrived, and we hurried outdoors to go and get that mantis. I let it climb up me, and then we had to wait inside again for the baggage. Well, pretty soon it started to climb up my neck, and the crawly sensation on my neck was more than I could take, so I encouraged it to sit on my head instead. People kept arriving at the baggage claim area, and I began to notice that I was receiving a lot of stares and glances, but then they'd politely look away! I wasn't too surprised when a sweet older lady came up and said "Excuse me, but did you know that you have a GREAT BIG BUG on your head???" LOL!!! I told her that yeah, I knew, I'd always wanted one and I was going to take it home. :-) She said OK, smiled, and retreated just as nicely. I was beginning to fear that somebody might come up and try to smash it "for me"...but all they did was to stare.

LOL....I am so glad it wasn't a snake or something horrid....

There is a sadness festering in my heart, and I don't know how to explain or justify it.

I guess I could bring up the concept of "beshert" and explain that since my conception was unintended and there were people who wanted me aborted, I've always sort of wondered whether there's a place for me in this world or not, or am I doomed to trying to fill the place of other people who haven't doen what they're supposed to. Sort of like a substitute teacher.

I don't like it. I want to be me, but at the same time, I want there to be that special place, too. It's so nice to feel like that, and for me, rare.

I need to paint when I get home from work.

Well, this is what I was going to write: That my heart is broken, that it's breaking, that my life is falling apart around me and I don't know why, that I'm tearing it apart with my own hands because it doesn't seem right, like a painting that's wrong, I just want to wreck it somehow so I can fix it and make it right this time.

Whiny bullshit.

I never drink, really, but I just downed a bottle of St. Pauli's girl (to give you an idea of how little I drink, I was feeling tipsy 1/3 of the way through the bottle) and now I feel fine, actually. Maybe not 100% coherent....

Did you know that beer has estrogen in it? Yeah, it does. It's why men who drink a lot of it get breasts and beer bellies- it's feminizing them- and why their manly parts also start to have trouble functioning well. Anyway, it's also really good for milk production...the estrogen comes from the hops.....and my production was falling.

Man, my bones, joints, and muscles don't hurt at all anymore, hardly. Still holding out for those boots, though....

You know, I take my work way too seriously. I should either lighten up or get a job where attention to detail means something. I've been trying to purge the house of the excess material items I don't need, but for crying out loud, it seems to me that for every item I get rid of, another gets in somehow. I am definitely getting rid of all the shoes that've been killing my feet and joints. I rediscovered a pair of Skechers that, while far from perfect, is less pain-inducing. Why did I ever quit wearing them? Because (silly me) I wore the laces out, tied them together, wore them out some more, and got disgusted and threw them into a corner of the room. I got new laces today and am feeling, uh....well, ridiculous. Happy, though. :-)

Yeah, I don't know. The idea of spending my life assisting people on their way towards heart failure, strokes, and obesity by cooking mass quantities of deep fried food is just sort of depressing. It's not what I wanted to do with my life, but right now, it's what I can get paid for. I guess there are all sorts of prostitution....

I don't really believe in such things as karma and reincarnation, but every so often, the notion is tempting. I mean, haven't you ever had things happen that seemed too strangely coincidental to be happenstance? A Buddhist friend of mine once told me that she didn't believe in the concept of a hell in an afterlife, she thinks that hell is right now, in this world. At the time, I laughed, because it seemed so funny and yet so true. and soemtimes I just sit and shake my head and wonder what *if* there have been other lives, what in the heck I did, how many hearts did I break, for things to go so badly in this one?

I have a problem at the deli, and I'm pretty sure that it's my problem, because it continues to occur in spite of our astronimical turnover rate. It's usually worst when I open the deli (i.e, I am the first one in the deli to start everything up and fill the cold cases with sliced meats, cheeses, sandwiches, salads, and other various deli food items, and also the first to leave). Here is the general sequence:

I'm scheduled to start at 5:30, but usally I show up at 5:15 or earlier. This is because if I do so, I can get an extra break at 6:45, right before the store opens at 7:00. Otherwise my first break will be at 8:15, and my energy is flagging by then if I haven't eaten sicne the night before.

However, it typically happens that I don't get a break at 6:45 anyway. The bakery opener asks me to babysit her breads in the oven, or I'm running behind, or something. I have no idea why I continue trying to get there by 5:15 or earlier when I could just have 15 more minutes of sleep instead.

The business day begins at 7:00. Customers come in, a few at first. The bakery person is usually baking her breads and off in her corner of the bakery, so unless it's Mel (the gentle and wonderful exception) I usually end up waiting on all the customers, because the counter is right in front of the deli, where I am. That's OK, there are only a few. If the day is going well and I've had my caffeine, I'm making a lot of sandwiches by now or at least preparing to do so by slicing fresh meats and cheese, lettuce and tomato.

8:00, we get another person (the, suprise-surprise, 8:00 person!). This person is vital to me, because if they don't show, I'm screwed. If they're lazy, it's almost as bad as not being there at all, but worse because they're right there aggravating me, too. If the 8:00 is someone helpful, like the two girls on either side of me in terms of seniority, it's probably going to be good. The 8:00 person's job is to prepare entrees and hot sandwiches, change salads and package up small containers of salads, make whole baked chickens, cook food for the hot case, help me wait on customers, and during the school year, cook for the school lunch crowd, which I'm supposed to help with.

If the 8:00 is lousy, what happens is that it takes them an hour to get the chickens into the oven and the entree packaged up, they forget about the hot sandwiches altogether, don't wait on customers, don't cook for the hot case, and are still trying to change the salad bowls when the school crowd is due to arrive in half an hour, having only just thought about cooking enough deep fried food to feed a hungry crowd of teenagers. This produces a panicked frenzy of food flying around through the freezer, into the fryers, out of the fryers, into bags, and hopefully into the hot case.

Either way, a lot depends on whether or not they help wait on the customers. If I have to wait on ALL the people who come to the deli, there's no way at all that I can make enough sandwiches and other stuff for the case. The way I look at it is that of there are 4-5 workers there, I don't mind waiting on half the customers. But if I have to wait on 75% or more of them, pretty soon I'll be ticked.

Sometimes we get two 8:00s, but the second one works in the bakery, bagging breads. The bakery 8:00 is generally worthless about waiting on customers, they just bag bread and that's it.

So here I am, making sandwiches hopefully, and preferably at a pace so as to fill the case full enough to stave off it's being emptied in one fell swoop of mill workers coming through. People come by and want sliced deli meats, and hopefully the slicers working well enough to slice all the meats (today it wasn't). They also want big sub sandwiches made on french bread, and this is OK, good, even, because I just make a whole sandwich, and if they only want half of it, it's that much more food out there in the sandwich case.

See, the cold case (where the sandwiches I make are displayed for sale) has to be FULL. It should be crammed so full that there isn't any room for anything else, and putting just one or two items out is unsatisfactory: people get bored with that. They want variety. When an empty spot develops, I should be filling it up again. If the case gets empty, the boss will get mad at me, whether or not it's my fault. That's the way it goes. He doesn't want to hear whose fault it is, he wants customers buying food, period.

But if the 8:00 doesn't show up or is worthless or we have a lot of special orders (for 100 sandwiches, or a deli tray, or 200 pieces of chicken), then I get behind on the sandwiches, because there's less time.

My first break and lunch come and go. I endeavor to have the case full before I go to lunch, and I check it when I come back and try to refill it.

The 11:30s arrive, usually 2 or 3 of them. One of them always heads to the back to do the dishes and start breading hundreds of pieces of chicken. If it's a delivery day, another one typically starts putting the freight away, which has to be done. The remaining 11:30 should empty cardboard (we amass piles of it from boxes) and the garbage, assess the food in the hot case and assist in cooking what we're short on, help with cutomers, and then start on the breakouts (arranging frozen doughnuts and bread doughs on baking racks to be proofed in the morning).

That's what should happen with the 11:30s.

What happens a lot when I work is that the second and third 11:30s start bagging breads, or they stand around talking, or they do the breakouts right away. At any rate, they don't wait on the customers unless you ask them to, and it's awkward to ask someone else to wait on a customer who is looking directly at you smiling expectantly. They're not supposed to ignore customers, but they do.

Moreover, this is the time of day when the boss walks by the sandwich cases and checks to see that it's full. It's the lunch hour, when we get a lot of people, and when people buy the most sandwiches. That case has got to stay full.

The time for my last break, 12:45, comes. I'm making sandwiches or there's a crowd of customers, and I can't get away. Breaktime comes and goes, because I need to have the case full before I leave at 2:00. If it's empty next morning, my manager will figure I didn't make any sandwiches at all. I have to make enough sandwiches so that there will still be an impressive number left over the next day. Unfortunately, sandwich making isn't going to well, because I'm running around trying to wait on customers. If I ask for help, the other person phlegmatically lumbers over to wait on one or two customers, and then goes back to ignoring them until I holler for help again. My feet and hip joints are *killing* me, and I want to tear my hair out in frustration.....

It continues this way. 2:00, my time to leave, comes, and the table is full of half made sandwiches. I can't abandon my work area and leave it in a mess like this, and without putting the sandwiches out or wrapping up the meats, cleaning the slicer, etc. So I stay and try to finish up and get out of there ASAP.

But we aren't supposed to rack up overtime. If I do, my manager punishes me by cutting my hours the following week or giving me undesirable shifts. She gives me only four days instead of five, to make sure that I absolutely can't get overtime. I'm not trying to get overtime, I know we're not supposed to, but sometimes it happens anyway.

So I work an extra half an hour or so, and I don't change my time to count that extra half hour. Customers keep coming, and they keep getting ignored unless I wait on them, even thoguh I'm supposed to be gone already. I start to get mad. Teh other deli workers who are ignoring customers look at me like I'm a bitch. I finally get out of there and storm off, resenting the fact that my baby and 3 year old sons have waited an extra half hour or more for me at the daycare, and I'm not even getting paid for it, all because the other workers wouldn't make a team effort....

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OK, so that's what happens. Tell me what I'm doing wrong, PLEASE. This is driving me crazy, and it happens almost every time I open.

It hurts me when I *want* to remember what someone looks like, and I can almost, but not quite... Or, it comes in fleetingly, and then flits away just as quickly.

And I wonder, if I took a person like that, and painted their face, if afterwards, I'd have their face mapped clearly in my mind, from the physical+mental connections involved in the drawing process? Would I be able to recognize them right away without any hesitation and to remember their name?

See, there are things that I don't like about being aspie, but I don't think they're the sorts of things that normals would expect. Partying, socializing, I don't even miss these things, not a bit. They mean nothing. Straining in vain, for hours on end, to conjure up the visual memory of a face that means something to you, and coming up with only a head with hair and a blank blurry spot where the face would be??? Man, that bugs me, drives me insane....

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I've been sizing up our little yard and trying to plan the landscaping/garden for it.

Problems include: limited money, limited space, desire for a lot of bulbs and color well into the late summer and fall, with, ideally, some winter color as well, even if it's just a shrub with red twigs.

Ojectives: Food, beauty, workable living/working/playing space, NO LAWN, and something to paint at every time of the year, including winter.

Desired trees: Red Bartlett pear, some kind of a hardy magnolia such as 'Butterflies', filberts/hazelnuts, Methley plums (have seeds and patience), and possibly another apple tree.

Also, Concord grapes, maybe a lilac, and of course, LOTS of roses.

Already existing trees that can stay: some big Ponderosa pines, a black locust (mostly because I think felling it would be a pain in the neck and expensive), a whole bunch of plums trees (some summer plums and some the better Italian prune-plums) a mountain ash, Gravenstein apple and another appple (Red Delicious? If it is, I might replace it with something better, the tree is weak and sickly and I hate Red Delicious, or I could graft onto it), a pear tree, a cherry (I haven't planted it yet), and a maple (looks like your average plain old maple tree).

Our yard is narrow, small, slopes toward the street, and in all honesty, our neighbors across the street aren't the kind I want to look at every day. They have a mobile home and they sit on their porch drinking and cussing and being your average Idaho redneck types. Their flat expanse of lawn is also uninspiring, as is the view of their vehicles. So I think my first priority, since it'll take a while to grow, is to plant a privacy screen/hedge across the front of the yard just off the street. My original plan was just roses (Rosa Rubrifolia, a hardy, unique, and tough rose with tiny, delicate single blooms and red foliage). Now I'm considering incorporating some of the Methley plum seeds into the plan, with the roses providing shelter until the plums get some size to them. I have enough plum trees though, more plums than I can easily process or use. One more tree would be plenty. What about the cherry tree? The roses are tall and shrublike, growing to 7-9 feet tall with gracefully spreading branches and not too many thorns. They're going to need a little bit of support and something to protect them from people walking all over them when they're small, so I'll probably put a rustic fence/trellis along the streetside border there.

We have to wheel the garbage can down to the street, so perhaps a path made of square paving stones. I want stone type ones though, not those ghastly dyed concrete things, yuck. I mean, concrete would be OK as long as it doesn't shout "CHEAP WALMART CONCRETE FOR WHITE TRASH WHO WANNA LOOK MIDDLE-CLASS!!!" I have seen tasteful concrete. The path needs to be wide enough to accomodate the full width of the garbage can plus ample maneuvering room within reason, or a wheelbarrow.

The bulbs- I know that I want species tulips, which need to dry out and stay relatively dry during the summer and fall. Wherever I plant these shouldn't be co-planted with water needy perennials or garden crops.

I also want a few vegetable beds.

Where to put the grapes?? Or the hazelnuts?

The front of the house has a big, big bed of irises, and they're all the same color, a pale lavender. They're OK, but I don't want that many of them I don't know what to do with them. Plant them between the rubrifloia roses and the roadside?

Oh, and I do want other roses besides the rubrifloas. I have a big Chrysler (red, very fragrant, a hybrid- I don't typically like red roses but I'm in love with this particular bush, so I want it where I can smell it several times a day) and will probably get a few more. There are also two yellow/golden climbers started on the front of the house that grow to 10-15' tall. That's probably enough for that area.....

Oriental Lilies, peonies, hellebores, probably asiatic lilies as well, lots of daylilies.....eremurus......digitalis....

And here's the thing, I really, really want a Japanese Maple, too...but have no idea where I could possibly put it....

Oh dear, how greedy I am for plants.... ;-D

I need to start making a conscious effort to be nice, or I'm going to turn into one of those negative disagreeable sorts who go around with frown lines all over their face...the sort you try to avoid if at all possible. When I was younger I was soooo gentle....I remember being unable to give my horse an injection that he really needed because I just couldn't bring myself to jab my friend with that needle. When I was a little older and married, my best friend (an ardent feminist who had no problem at all with incorporating 'bitch' into her self-image) told me rather disgustedly that I needed to grow a spine. She was right, of course....my husband was yelling at me constantly, making nasty humiliating scenes in public, forcing "marital duties" on me.....and I felt like divorcing the jerk would be "mean". It's almost like the instinct for self preservation was entirely lacking (shaking head).

I've learned how to be mean when I need to be. The problem now is that I can't seem to find the gentle girl that I used to be, anymore.

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Yet I still adore gentleness in other people, perhaps more than any other trait.
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It's one of the cardinal traits I breed for in dairy goats, one of those things that I simply will not compromise on. If a doe is mean, she goes, period.
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I don't think there's any faster way for a man to make me fall for him than to save the day and make things right when I'm all upset and I don't know what to do. The more gracefully he does it, the better. :-)
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Just like the fastest way for a man to earn my hatred is to kick me when I'm down or to be cruel when I'm weak. I despise and disrespect lowlifes who make the worst of an already bad or awkward situation.
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A quiet, shy voice, eyes that don't bore into mine.....yeah, that's what I like.
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And see, I've got a double standard going here, because even as I value this SO highly in other people, I'm a hypocrite. I haven't been keeping up on it myself, I've been letting myself slide into the abyss of bitchdom. That has to change.

Sometimes I think that the older we get, the more we become landmines of old sorrows, pains, hot spots, and and just more sensitive all around. I thought things would bother me less, they don't. Old stuff haunts me, old memories twang on my heart and bring tears to my eyes, old injustices make me angrier than I was when they first occurred.

A silly young girl at work (not stupid, just very young and inexperienced with life) was going on about some 13 year old girl being abused and how the little girl was sleeping with a 20 year old man. She was criticizing the girl all over the place...said that the 13 yo claimed her mom was abusive and beating on her, but the kid must've been making it up because she hadn't mentioned it to anyone else, and what a liar the kid must be.

I wanted to throttle her on the spot. Stupid, privileged little snit from a happy well adjusted family!!! What the heck does she know about abuse? Why is she berating this kid when there's a 20 year old guy involved?? How many happy 13 year olds from good healthy families screw around with 20 year old guys? She had the chance to make a difference for this kid, and she's blowing it.

When I finally got free of my family, I tried to tell the cops what was going on, that my step-dad was molesting 3 other kids. They went and asked them. Every single one of my siblings had been molested, and every single one of them categorically denied it- because they were afraid. I was the one who broke the silence, and it took years before I did so. My evil step-dad got off scott-free, because we couldn't prove anything if the others wouldn't admit it was going on. Now he's with some other woman who also has kids (groan). I wonder how many youngsters he's going to ruin before he dies- he'll probbaly never get caught.....

That's just an example. I'm brimming with shit like that. It's making me old. I want happy memories to drown out or at least balance the others.

Man, I'm tired. Sore, too.....can't wait until I get those boots. If they don't help at all, I don't know what I'll do......

But I'm thinking...people tend to whine and gripe if they're not perfectly, absolutely comfortable and 100% pain free. The more I think about it, the more unreasonable this seems. How likely is that to happen to an adult? And since it's so unlikely, at least for extended periods of time, if a person honestly expects that and makes it a factor of personal happiness, I think they're going to go about life slightly dissatisfied most of the time, when in reality, we ought to be glad we're not infested with tapeworms or living on the edge of starvation or in some third world country with no serious medical facilities.

I think about my friend Daniel Haugen (he was my first love and fiance) dying of cancer, of the pain he was in, and the morphine. He was such a religuously health foody, natural sort that I think he must have been in tremendous, unspeakable pain to have submitted to that. That's pain. These aching joints and sore muscles? Eh....normal wear and tear of daily life.

Still.....I'm holding out for those boots. I need to be able to walk around quickly to do my job well.

It used to be, even when I was a kid, that people didn't have as much stuff as they do now. And before my time, it used to be that ordinary, everyday items such as shoes and shirts and dresses and blankets were pretty danged expensive, so people only owned 2-3 changes of clothing or one pair of shoes. Kids had to run around barefoot in the summer so they could save their shoes for school (if they had any at all) and for the winter. They might have only one or two toys in their whole childhood. Socks that developed holes were carefully darned, not thrown away. Blankets as we know them weren't that common; quilts were. And quilts had to made made slowly, lovingly, by hand, most often from little scraps of feed sacks or bits of cloth leftover from making dresses and shirts. Have you ever seen a quilt where even the pieces themselves are made up of little strips joined together until they're big enough to make say, a diamond for the point of a star? People didn't do that because they had more spare time than they knew what to do with (like we do now), they did it because cloth was expensive enough to make it worth their while to save those little, bitty scraps. They didn't have refrigeration or plumbing or central heating or AC or automobiles. I'm certain that if they had had any idea of what sort of a life we have now, it would have seemed soemthing like paradise to them. They probably bemoaned the high prices of things and wished that the commmon, necessary items were more affordable.

Now look what happened: stuff is cheap. I can go to the dollar a bag sale at the thrift store and get a whole shopping bag full of clothes for a buck, less than 15 minutes or work-time even if i'm only making minimum wage. By comparison, Abe Lincoln worked for days splitting fence rails just to get a pair or two of breeches made for him. We throw socks away the moment they wear a little thin- if my coworkers caught me darning socks, I think they'd probably either take up a collection to buy me new ones or start plying me with handfuls of the things. Blankets are so cheap that people take those old quilts granny made by hand and use them for dog beds. Patches aren't often seen on clothing, even for poor children, and the status quo seems to be that you should buy your kid and entire new set of clothes just for school, every year. We are deluged with stuff. We buy all sorts of stuff we don't need, not only for ourselves but for other people. We throw things away that are still perfectly good simply because we're tired of them or because all that stuff is going to accumulate and drown us out of our own homes if we don't!

In a way I can see how this is good. But, look what's happened to the quality of the goods. If a person's only going to wear their jeans for a year, and they have 6-10 pairs of pants total, just how durable do those jeans need to be? How much are they willing to pay? The lowest price is what the consumer seems to want (hello, Wallyworld), and so the workmanship and standards of quality have gone down. Stuff doesn't last anymore the way it used to, and a lot of people don't expect it to. After all, when it gets old or too familiar, they'll just throw it away.

This results in a constant flow of goods through the household. We're assaulted day and night with ads insisting that because it's available and affordable, we should get it, right NOW. We *deserve* it. If we can't afford it, buy it anyway, and work out the details of that messy business later on. This trend is surprisingly pervasive and difficult to resist. The "gatherer" part of the hunter-gatherer is hard wired into us. And if, like me, you loathe throwing things away, it can become a problem, because that's like erecting a dam so that stuff comes in at a steady pace but only trickles out very slowly. Irritatingly enough, much of the stuff is cheap or tiresome or faddish, manufactured with the understanding that it'll be thrown away, soon. In other words, I have a lot of low quality stuff, and I think most of us do.

The solution: to pay more and really invest in long-wearing, high quality item that is truly needed and won't be going out of style or falling apart right off the bat. To buy things that we truly and deeply like and can live with for a long, long time. To purchase consciously, deliberately, and with thought, not spontaneously. And then, of course, to take really good care of those things. They cost more because they're worth more, so unless you're rich, you probably won't have a houseful overflowing from the attic and basement and stairs and under the beds and out of the closets.

Long story short, this is why I'm buying a pair of White's boots. My feet are killing me from wearing cheap shoes at work. Cheap shoes are all I've ever had. I ruin them in an amazingly short span of time. I cleaned house today, and I must have at least 5-6 pairs of cheap shoes, none of which I want to wear to work and all of which are going to cause my feet varying degrees of pain. It seems sort of scandalous for me to buy these expensive, handmade boots, but they should last me for years. If they wear out, the store can rebuild them. And also, I won't need to keep 4-5 backup pairs (held in reserve for when the others wear out) of shoes around the house. I can have just one pair and maybe a pair of sandals or dress shoes (like I'd ever need those anyway, heh!).

I'd like to follow this general principle in buying for most of what we get, ideally.

OH.

It's slowly dawning on me that I'm not ugly at all. We all get teased about our looks in grade school. The problem was, I really believed it. I honestly thought that if a guy really loved me, perhaps he'd be able to love me in spite of my appearance, or maybe because he was too low on the totem pole to get something prettier and more desirable. It had never once crossed my mind that someone might actually like me exactly the way I am.

It's an epiphany.

How much of my life have I wasted tolerating abuse and men who didn't especially cherish me, all because I seriously believed that I was sooooo sub-standard compared to all the other women out there?

It occurred to me today that I don't really have much fun anymore. I don't know why exactly that is, except perhaps that I never have any free time to speak of. But even when I do have time, it's like it just doesn't even occur to me anymore to do something for sheer enjoyment, for its own sake.

And in reality, it's the same thing with my art- I feel guilty if I I'm not working or doing something *necessary* to our survival, and (let's be honest) resentful when other people in the household do do things just for fun, especially if I feel like I'm picking up their slack.

So: Places I'd like to go and things I'd like to see

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• The Pacific coast. I want to go beach combing there. I've never seen the pacific ocean, not even from a distance.
• Upper Priest Lake, another place I haven't been to, even though I'm within an hour of it. Several of my kids have been there, I always got left behind at home. :-( I want to see it, to hike it, to climb...
• Canada, another nearby place I've never been to. I have no idea what to expect, I'd just like to see it.
• If I had the chance and lots of money someday, I wouldn't mind going to Hawaii. On the other hand though, it wouldn't break my heart all to pieces if I couldn't.
• I'd like to visit botanical gardens and art museums in the area.
• Art on the Green in Couer d'Alene; again, this is less than an hour away, I'd love to see it, but I haven't. Why? Mainly because I don't want to go all by myself. I don't think it even costs any money.
• The college in Couer d'Alene, same reason, I'm afraid to go alone. Chicken...
• I wouldn't mind going back down to Colorado, the Taos area, and sightseeing around there. I'd like to see in person the things that Georgia O'Keefe painted, and to see her work in person.
• Chicago- The Art Institute. Of coure, there are a lot of other great msueums I'd also like to visit. I could spend a week or two just going to the museums in Chicago alone and be awfully happy about it.
• I also think it'd be neat to see the MOMA, the Met, and other big art museums in New York, but this isn't likely to happen. That makes me sad.
• Locally again, Gisborn mountain.
  

See, half these places are nearby, and I either don't go to them or never have simply because I'm disinclined to do so all by myself or with a whole crew of kids. I guess I'm waiting until I get old and my hips have crapped out on me entirely? If I don't do something, I'll never see these things at all.

Ok folks, I need opinions. Please, PLEASE, stop by my bio-blog and let me know what you think of it, if I'm leaving anything out that might not seem missing to me but is necessary, needs more detail, that sort of thing? The url is: This is what happened

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I felt all broken up and sad today, like crying, and I couldn't even put my finger on why. I mean, I'm sure that I coudl select somethign sad and heartbreaking from my past to focus on as a source of the pain, but that wouldn't have been it, it was just sort of...like this hazy oppressive thing without defined edges. I think that when I stop nursing the baby and start to take the St. John's wort again, I'll feel happier more of the time.

And God help us all if I don't get my coffee, on time......geez.

I know I am a bitch, and I hate it, but damned if I can help it.

There is this girl at work who is driving me nuts, and I know she's even more depressed than I am, but the annoying thing is that she just drips. She doesn't really make any attempt to pull herself together and start changing things, or to summon some inner strength or initiative. When she's around, I start feeling impatient and bitchy, because I don't want to succumb to the same sort of despair, which is contagious. There are some pretty obvious things that could be done which would dramatically improve her situation, but she doesn't want to hear about them. Instead, she just mopes around feeling envious of how "lucky" the rest of us are(!!!).

That was bad enough, but then she started using it as an excuse for eating the food we're supposed to be selling. Look, I've been hungry before too, but you simply cannot consume the product, and especially not out in the open. The anxiety of worrying over her getting abruptly fired on the spot is eating me alive, and besides, it bugs me to see her going about hand to mouth constantly. I tried to tell her, she wouldn't listen. So today I had had enough, and asked a manager about it, and she got a lot more worked up about it a lot faster than I had ever imagined she would. She wanted me to narc on the girl so we could fire her pronto. Made me everlastingly glad that I don't munch the food (shudder). She marched me straight to the big boss...I don't think they were happy that I declined to ofer the information. The people in the deli are going to hate me that I said anything at all...I had no idea...I mean, I knew it was a no-no, but I did not realize it was a BIG FUCKING DEAL that should be reported pronto. So everyone hates me now....great.

==== Superman Returns ====

I've been an avid Superman fan since early childhood. I was the little girl who pined after superman underwear in vain (it was only available for boys) and who collected just about every other type of Superman parphenalia I could cajole my relatives into buying for me. I wanted desperately to marry Superman when I grew up and viewed Lois Lane with serious dislike.

Now I'm feeling sorry for her. This movie shoud be retitled, "Superman, the Deadbeat Dad".

There are a lot of little (and big) glitches in the logic throughout the movie. First of all, he's aware of everyone calling out for help, but he didn't hear his beloved's dismay at his disapearance, and even with his X ray vision, he was unaware of her pregnancy? Secondly, after getting laid by Superman, she immediately takes up with another guy quickly enough to deceive him into thinking the kid is his? I mean, this is Superman we're talking about here. His stamina and special abilities should be enough that no ordinary man would ever be able to compete with him.....but she forgets him, Bam! just like that. Not only does she forget him, but upon his return, she doesn't ditch the human guy, while almost any woman probably would, regardless of scruples, and frankly, Lois Lane doesn't have many scruples. After all, she cuckolded her mate and lied to him about the kid, walks right into private property and sneaks around, etc.... Honesty and behaving honorably just aren't strong points for her, except, apparently, in this case.

Then there's the kid. Superman can't tell this tyke is his? What happened with all his mind reading and whatnot? The boy has occasional super-human strength, but no mind reading ability whatsoever?

But the biggest disappointment as far as the plot goes is that Superman, with all his assets and abilities, doesn't even try to lend Lois a hand in the raising of his son. He's content to leave it to the poor fool who got suckered and to sneak in once in awhile to peer at his sleeping child, like some kind of a vampire, perching on roofs. Seriously, folks, this is the best that Superman can do? He can't keep his girl or parent his own kid? Or, is he just above it all, preferring to bask in the spotlight of public adoration?

Maybe his name should be Super-ego.

It's been an interesting week. I pried myself away from my workplace for an entire week. I survived; I did not go into withdrawl! Definitely missed the structure and routine, though.

While I was gone:

I met my SO's family. I honestly didn't realize how hungry I was for family (umm, wait, that doesn't sound the way I meant it to!!) until I met all these people. At first I curled up and hid in the room because I was afraid of them, but then his mom found me and coaxed me out. My own clan has more or less turned their backs on me ( I guess I'm too embarrassing for whatever reason), so I'm going to adopt these folks, it looks like. They seem to either like me a lot or do an awfully good job of concealing their dismay.

We saw a movie, in an actual movie theater. More on this later.

And, I made up with my sister. Never mind why we were incommunicado, it's unimportant at this point. The salient thing here is that after quite a few years (possibly 5?), I saw her again, she got to meet my kids, and her husband (shunned by the rest of our clan for snobbish reasons) and my SO seemed to get on well.

This is funny: I've always been insecure that my men would rather have her, and that they'd rather have me act more like her. She's taller, smaller waisted, cuter, daintier, has smaller feet, a higher voice, and all the social poise that I lack. Her husband told us that when they were first married, she woke up crying in the night; he asked her what was wrong. She'd had a dream that he liked *me* instead of her!! Can you imagine? My sister, that I've been so jealous of since early childhood? She's insecure, too! I don't need to view her as a rival anymore.

And, although I didn't get a chance to do any artwork at all on my vacation, I did see a lot of pretty inspiring scenery and color. I purchased an artist's mannekin, some liquin medium, and a wooden palette, all of which I can use, but here is the thing: I keep on purchasing art supplies, and then I delay doing anything with them. I think I'm afraid of failure or something. When I do draw or paint, I feel all uptight, like each drawing or sketch or whatever has to be a masterpiece, and I either can't get started at all, or I can't complete it. It's just horrible....

Screw it. So what if they're mad? If I haven't done something obviously wrong or out of line and someone is still mad at me for whatever reason, that's their problem. Really, life's too short.....

I get mad at people all the time (usually for a very short time- irritated might be a better term) and people hardly ever care. I seriously doubt that other people lie awake at night worrying about whether I'm angry with them.

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OK, well, it was an attempt, at stars and stripes....

It's getting close to the 4th of July, and not only are tempers flaring at work, but my kids are pestering me incessantly for fireworks. Here's the way I look at it:

A. Why should I work for hours under stressful conditions with lazy butts who make me look bad (no, I don't mean you) just to waste it for, at the most, ten minutes of cheap thrills and danger? My money and work going up in smoke!! Sorry kids, I don't have money to burn. Spend your own dough

B. Also, there are plenty of people all around me who apparently do have money to send up in smoke. Watcing their money burn is a lot more satisfyling than if it's mine, to be honest. I have no cost, no mess, no danger of singed fingers or injured children, and there are enough people doing this already that I can enjoy it for a lot longer than ten minutes.

Yeah, I spose that is selfish....but it's my money. I don't feel obligated to blow it on these reminiscences of bombs and gunshots.

I'm so sick and tired of wondering and fearing that people might angry at me. I'm never quite sure. Experience has taught me that when people are angry they can be:

• obviously angry: yelling, scowling, and the like
• Smiling
• Silent, cold, and unresponsive, which, to be honest, is really hard for me to distinguish from solitary-quiet or sad/depressed
• Ignoring me like I don't exist but talking to other people
• and a number or others that are hard for me to read.
  

See, I'm not always sure.

And if I'm not sure, experience has also taught me that it's best to be safe, because angry people can be violent, and unpredictably so. So usually, if I have even the faintest tinge of fear that someone might be upset with me (which is most of the time, since their anger signals are so variable) I either smile in what must be a rather uncertain, hideously half-hearted grimace, or I start to apologize, hoping to quench the thirst of their anger with my pathetic submission before it gets (horrors!) worse.

"I'm sorry"
"I'm so sorry"
"I'm really sorry"
"I didn't mean it that way..."
"Did I do something wrong? I'm sorry"

Or sometimes I just worry silently and brood over it for a long time, getting more and more upset, unsure of what I could possibly have done wrong, whether or not that remark was sarcasm, whether they're angry at me or someone else, and just replaying everything that could possibly pertain to the scenario in an attempt to decipher where I screwed up (again).

Jesus, people!! Just spell it out! I'm so damned tired of being sorry all the time when I don't even know why or what for or whether the person's even justified in the anger towards me, if it exists at all. I'm f*****g sick of groveling and begging people to allow me to please them.

Who the hell do they think they are, anyway? Can't I be angry sometimes, too?

So, I'm planning my garden and getting ready to place the bulb order. They're cheaper if I order before the 31st of this month. I'm thinking that it'd be cool to make a small bed devoted to strange, off the wall plants, including these. Any one of them is only moderately weird by itself, but all together?

Despair is wrapping its quiet, deadly little fingers around me again. I'm beginning to realize that the things that I say and think don't matter, what I fell doesn't matter, that I'm sort of an invisible person who just exists but doesn't make much of an impact. A cipher. I might not be hated, but neither will I be loved. I'm just going to continue existing day in and day out, like an unseen planet that cycles through the sky, watching everyone else...just circling along in some kind a a semi-ghostlike existence.

I wish I could take my St.John's wort, but the doctor said it'll go through my milk, that I have to wait until I'm done nursing. And I wish that I could have more confidence, that I could be a little more outgoing, but I'm entirely too sensitive for my own good...and when I get hurt, I ball up and don't ever want to talk to anyone again.

I think what it is, is that I need to get some sleep, maybe..... :-(

I'm depressed and pissed off. :-/ It's my workplace again.

There is a girl at work who excels at looking cute and innocent while doing the absolute least amount of work she can possibly get away with, as slowly as possible. She smiles serenely as she works at her very leisurely pace, oblivious to the tension and chaos she is creating when we have to pick up her slack. Imagine our irritation when she proudly and smugly announces that she has received a $1.00 raise (unheard of among us) for being such a good worker! WTF?!!!! Then she adds the nice little morsel: she is going to receive another .50 raise at summer's end. We are all gnashing our teeth and agreeing that this is exactly why our boss admonishes us not to discuss our wages. I haven't had a raise in over a year, and it isn't so much the monetary element that bugs me, so much as the idea that they must not be very happy with me. I work so damned hard and consistently try to improve upon my performance, and this is just very hard to take....I would be delighted with something like, "I see that you're doing a good job, thanks", but no such thing is forthcoming. That raise would have been better spent on almost any other worker in our section....it isn't that I think I deserved it, because frankly, I know damned well that I don't deserve that kind of a raise, but neither does she.

Last night I realized that ultimately, it's their own danged business how they spend their money. I have no right to be disgruntled about whether or not she got her raise. I just wish she'd shut up about it. With that in mind, I resolved to go to work with a better attitude about this, and just put her stupid raise out of my head. I tried, I really did.....

Today didn't make it very easy, though.

Have you ever noticed there there are girls who can do half the amount of work and just look cute and innocent and still come out smelling like a rose, while the others take the heat? I have no idea how they pull this off. I sort of wish I knew, but I'd be too proud and stuck up to do it even if I did.... ::sigh::
I just hate it that people (especially guys) fall for this B.S. My sister was exactly that way. I thought I'd be done with this crap when I left home and got away from her......

OK, I did it, and here is the addy for that blog: This is what happened. Comments are welcome.

On a different subject, I'm becoming interested in the Quakers, a pacifist group. At first I had the impression that you have to believe in God in the conventional sense in order to be a Friend, but apparently there are other agnostic Quakers out there. When I look at the beautiful faces of my five little boys, I just can't stomach the thought of their joining the army and killing other people's children.

I sometimes feel as though my past is strangling me. I've tried counseling; it doesn't work very well, primarily because what the (neurotypical) therapists say is unhelpful to me (as a person on the autism spectrum who doesn't relate very well to the neurotypical perspective). The fact that they don't understand my point of view all that well is also problematic, as are their admonitions not to think about certain things (next to impossible for me).

I'm actually beginning to make a few friends (to my surprise) and so from time to time I mention excerpts from my past, but it's really hard for me to put it into perspective for them. When I tell them that my first marriage (total nightmare) was more or less arranged by my very religious parents, they just go, "What?????" They don't have the context. Meanwhile, people who've known me since I was a kid drift through the store and I get lost in the detritus of the past and the attempt to reconcile it with my present life.

I started to write a book about it once, but at the time I was still in serious conflict about some of the religious/spiritual issues. I tried desperately to salvage some of what I believed in, to justify it....and the result was a defensive, convoluted mess. My sister wrote a book (sampling liberally from what I had written), and her spin on it was that we had fallen into a cult and that she had been rescued and returned to true Christianity...not a point of view that I could share.

A LOT of people tell me that I should simply get over it and not think about the past. Move on, they say! That's easier said than done, when the contemporaries I grew up with come through my workplace, and I see the same struggle in them, some of them succumbing to drugs, others going as ultra religious as their parents, and others ....attempting some kind of a compromise? As though that were possible, heh. Some of them won't even speak to me or acknowledge my presence. We flap and struggle through life like wounded birds...some of us relatively unharmed after all, others maimed and crippled up....

So I think what I'm going to do, so as not to clutter this place up, is to create another blog for that purpose. I'll link to it from here.

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And, an aside, while we're sitting here referring to spirtuality and religious issues. I'm considering the Friends, that is to say, Quakers. Pacificism is something I take seriously. The only thing is, I'm not sure there's a god, or that it matters, so probably I don't qualify, I'd think.

People who scare me

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(That is to say, almost everyone).

My manager scares me. I never know what in the heck she's thinking, and I've spent enough time watching her closely (as well as listening) to observe that she is not straightforward about what she is thinking. Most of the time she will not divulge what she truly thinks or feels about someone to their face. This frightens me to no end. I could screw up badly enough that she would be chomping at the bit to get rid of me, and yet she'd smile and speak politely to me? I have seen it happen...to others.... Help!!!!! Please, just *tell* me if I screw up, right when I do it! Then I can fix it, right then, before you all get mad.

Another manager scares me, because I kow that he's a very religious person. HIs life is centered around his faith. I actually admire that, but I'm agnostic. I have this uneasy sensation that if he discovered that, he would find things to dislike about me. :squirm:

Little kids used to scare me, because they're not mine and that made me uncomfortable. I don't know how to relate to other people's kids, just my own. I am, however, gradually becoming acclimated to the offspring of other people and they no longer intimidate me.

Druggies, particularly meth heads, are the human equivialent of a horror movie monster in my mind. These people are very, very unpredictable and about as illogical and disconnected as you can get. Potheads, on the other hand, are just amusing and fairly harmless.

Drunks. They aren't thinking clearly, therefore they might be dangerous.

Extremely well dressed churchy-looking ladies who are very very prim and proper with every hair in place leave me hopping anxiously. Anyone that anal is apt to be hard to please. Jehovah Witnesses are the benign exception. They're always generous with smiles and friendly waves, and they seem less...stiff and starched.

Big dirty looking guys with an unfocused gaze and hair flying every which way: are they dangerous? Perhaps. Definitely scary unless I know them.

Teenage boys full of hormones; I used to be almost phobic of them and young men in general. Now I'm old enough that they don't seem as threatening.

Gals who blab their mouths all the time with lots of silly crap, especially the ones who revel in picking apart the cosmetic flaws of movie stars. Geez Louise, if a movie star can't please them, what do they have to say about me behind my back?

Cheap women: firstly, they make my skin crawl. Secondly, this is a woman who will steal your man in a heartbeat without remorse, given half a chance. You cannot trust her...at all.

People who gossip continuously about anyone and everyone, loudly for all to hear. God help you if someone you know tells them something about you! On the other hand, they're extremely useful if you want to spread news quickly with minimal effort. Just be very, VERY careful what you say and that you word it in such a way as to be quite clear as to your menaing.

Most people who touch me without permission. My reaction is to jump or recoil as if burned. Eeek! You *touched* me!! There are a few people that I don't mind touching or inadvertently bumping me. If you touch me and I don't cringe, it's a compliment.

Groups of people: teenagers, crowds, cliques, etc. It isn't nice to feel reminded of one's outsider status. Besdies, they outnumber me.

But I think what scares me the most are people who act friendly to my face, and then as I walk away, I glance back and catch them looking at me in a not very friendly way. What do they really think? What will they do? The nasty thing about this is that you cannot confront them about it or get it out in the open since they're always nice to your face.

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Now
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One thing I did realize is that I tend to really like people who are direct and outspoken about what they think, even if it isn't what I want to hear. If I need to hear it, tell me. I'll get over the dismay or disappointment soon enough, and then the problem can be dealt with, or we can agree to disagree.

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And
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I like it when people make me feel safe or if they have a reassuring presence. That's very nice when the world is a virtual minefield of potentially frightening sorts.

I, the health minded, formerly vegetarian food snob, the one who buys organic milk and eggs, who munches tofu (organic and locally produced of course) cold and all by itself, the one who disdains to buy or eat the majority of "food" in the store, am sitting here relishing a thick, juicy steak. I can't even defend it on the grounds of it being free range or organic, because it isn't. It's local meat (relatively- I think it's from Washington state) but it could easily be local feedlots for all I know. Frankly, right now I don't care. The words *Premium*Angus*Beef* are singing happily through my iron starved, protein craving brain.

This is the third day that I've been bloodthirsty for red meat. I could blame it on the guy (I'm assuming he was affiliated with beef producers) who cooked a whole prime rib in the deli and then sampled it out for the store's grand opening. At first, when I saw the hunk of meat laying on the cart and entering the oven, my reaction was "piece of beef", and I started visualizing where on the animal that big cut of meat came from. Some time later, when it was about half done, I was surprised to notice a flickering interest asserting itself. "I might try that? Hmmm. OK. I might try that..." By the time they determined that the still-very-bright-pink/red meat was hot enough not to be dangerous any more, I was practically drooling and having to restrain myself from hovering over it longingly. For hours I watched him cut it up into tasty inch sized cubes and pierce them with toothpicks and set them on a plate. Every time I had a chance to get a piece, there were people in the way. Finally, towards the end of the day, when the man seemed truly weary of pitching his product, I was able to snag one. Oh my, was that good! Yes! That hit the spot!

Ever since, I've been hungry for meat, and chicken just won't cut it. STEAK. PINK STEAK. (insert orgasmic sighs of pleasure and contentment.) I think my body is hungry for protein because I'm nursing. Heck, even the fat tastes good. And now I'm thinking that if I get a place of my own, I want to raise a beef calf, so I can have lots of this stuff, and know it was raised well and humanely. A Scottish Highland calf would be good, if I can find it. MMMMMMmmmmm.....

White People with Dreadlocks
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Getting right to the point here, I don't think white people should put their hair in dreads. First of all, it looks nasty. They look great on black people , but I think that the *only* instance where I've ever seen them look attractive on a white has been in the movie "The Fifth Element". That cute redhead looked OK with them, and they weren't the fat ropey kind tied into a ponytail sticking straight out behind, like I've seen on other white people.

Secondly, it smacks of....more than imitation. It almost borders on parody to see white folks with dreads, wearing gangsta type clothes, listening to rap music. It looks just ridiculous, and this is coming from someone who grew up in inner city Chicago. It's particularly out of place in Rednecksville, Idaho, where if a black person comes into view, people gawk and stare and point and whisper: "Did you see??"

I'm not racist, either. This isn't about racism.

It's just that something in me sneers at this sort of thing, sort of like when people make "chinese stir fry" and add potatoes to it, or worse, ketchup. I mean, if they want to lightly saute vegetables and eat them with rice, fine. But don't call that shit Chinese. You put ketchup in it, it's ruined. And while we're at it, taco pizza??

I guess I just can't see emulating another culture in such a way as to make it look stupid or to seem disrespectful. Another example would be Christianized versions of Jewish feasts and holy days. Their spin on it is enough to make one want to scream and rend your clothing! Arrrgh!

I do realize that America's the melting pot and all that. I've probably eaten curry, borscht, challah, and chicken adobo all in the same week and not thought twice about it. It's just this indiscriminate, inaccurate, shamelessly random and halfhearted sampling (and then proudly showing it off as being from that culture) that irks me.

Waxing nostalgic and homesick....

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I could buy and stock bird feeders until the stores ran out of stock...and never see a cardinal...although I might see cedar waxwings, which are almost as nice.

I could drive all day, and I won't see any cornfields..or soybeans, either.

I could search the forests and yards and edges of parking lots in vain- no mulberries.

I've yet to see a Farm and Fleet store here.

I could lay awake all night long outside, all summer long, and not see even a single firefly, ever. Once I thought I did see one, a few years ago, and I got really excited...but it turned out I was mistaken.

And even though milkweed doesn't grow here, I could plant it. It wouldn't matter, though...the monarch butterflies with their cool striped caterpillars wouldn't visit the plants.

Yeah, I'm homesick

After all these years. After busting my butt to get here and to stay here, I miss the midwest. I'm trying to tell myself that if I were there, I'd be missing all the great things that we have here that simply don't exist there. I guess that as we get older, we sort of miss what we grew up with.... :-/

An excerpt from today:

7 year old daughter looking through cake decorating book with brother: Daniel, do you like this cake?

son: No.

daughter: It looks like a circus! Don't you like it?

son: No.

daughter: Why not? Don't you like circuses?

son: No.

daughter: Why not, Daniel?

son (somewhat frustrated): It has clowns on it!!

daughter: Don't you like clowns?

son: No.

daughter: Why not? Why don't you like clowns? Don't you want a cake with clowns on it?

son: No.

daughter: Why not?

Son: I don't like clowns.

daughter: You don't like clowns? Why not? Clowns are nice!

Son (yelling): They're not nice, they're FUNNY!!!
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LOL...I agree with him...I don't like clowns, either. And it is their eerie gaiety that disturbs me the most. The sad clowns don't bother me at all.

Disablity

Let me make something clear from the start here: I have an offical diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome, an autism spectrum disorder that used to be thought of as rare but is increasingly more common than 'they' thought. It does affect my life in both positive and negative ways, and has had a profound impact on the path I've taken- largely due to decisions or actions that seemed rather small at the time, such as not making a phone call because I had a phone aversion/phobia. I'm not sure what it feels like for other people to be normal, but looking on it from the outside, you normal folks seem pretty boring to me, as a whole. So given a choice, I don't think I'd choose to be normal even if it were an option. I don't want a bland, white bread, 2 dimensional life, even if it is easier. Thank for the thought, though...really.

In that context, then, here is what I've been thinking about today: whether I could be called "disabled" or not. I function...with effort. I'm independent, even if it did take a damned long time for me to get that way (for example, I didn't get a driver's license until I was 30). Relationships.....uh, sore subject...but I don't think that's necessarily part of a criteria for being disabled, at least not if we're talking personal relationships. The main thing seems to be----> work.

I had a job about a year ago, working with an agency that provided services to developmentally disabled people. My clients varied from degrees of mental retardation (barely detectable to profound)to autistic (again, degrees) to cerebral palsy to spina bifida to I don't know what else....no mental illness, though...that wasn't our area of expertise. When I applied for the job, I has heard of Asperger's, and a fellow aspie friend had suggested I might want to check into seeing if I had it, too...but I hadn't as yet followed up on it or even given it much thought. I honestly felt that the failure of my life was due to laziness, or other people's actions (which to be fair, was certainly a large factor, too) or just bad luck. I wondered how other people could sustain the effort required just to keep themselves up (clean clothes, make-up, daily shower, clean car, organized life, all that jazz) and do it so easily, when it was such a gargantuan task for me. Again, I figured that I must just be lazy...despite the fact that I did more physical labor in a day than most of them did in a week. I'm getting sidetracked here...... So, anyway, I apply for this job, and I get it. The aplication asks if I'm disabled, and I check "No", because as far as I knew, I was just "not quite with it" and possibly lazy, but otherwise just motivationally challenged. The advertisement for the position mentioned the fact that disabled employees would receive a higher rate of pay, and there was also a poster in the building posting this fact, for all to see. I don't remember how much higher, but the difference was reasonably significant.

Well, after some exposure to autistic people (who I hadn't ever interacted with much before unless you count undiagnosed family memmbers) a nagging sensation got ahold of me, and it became clearer with every interaction: these people made *sense*!!! No offense, but most of you folks don't, to me. Your way of thought doesn't make sense to my mind. I realized that I had a connection, and that there were also behavioral similarities between my client and I. I didn't realize how I looked until I saw her as a reflection...exaggerated, maybe, but a reflection of many of my own traits nevertheless. I began to feel hanuted, and afraid that I would lose my job if my employers found out. I found myself defending my client from the other workers and getting my personal feelings involved...why couldn't they leave her alone except for the things that really mattered? Why should it matter if she doesn't make sense to them? They were constantly telling her to shut up, and that what she said was nonsense...and it wasn't, not to me. Some of it was profound.

Finally I went to a psychologist (actually, he may have been a psychiatrist...not clear on that) and he did in fact diagnose me with Asperger's. I informed my workplaces. They started putting me only with clients who were retarded and pahsing out interactions with other autistics- the only people I could really relate to or, to my way of thinking, really help. I dodn't ask them if they would change my wages to those of a disabled person, because it seemed awkward. That wasn't the reason I got diagnosed; I did it for my own peace of mind and to try to find out what the heck was the matter with me. I didn't want to seem greedy. At any rate, they didn't change my pay. Other disabled workers continued to get what they got, and I got the normal wages.

So my question is, was that fair or right? Should I have gotten the higher wages? Am I disabled in that sense?

I do know that my work was hampered by my AS. They frequently made me do socially awkward things, like spending an entire hour or more alone in a guy's house with him, or meeting clients for the first time by simply driving up to their house and knocking on their door (the thought gives me the shudders!!!) or watching a kid who was particpating in a relay race that involved mass balloon popping and another woman shreiking excitedly at the top of her lungs (instant anxiety attack material). I wound up quitting, because they refused to accomodate me and the stress of feeling more like a client than a worker was becoming intolerable. They seemed pleased.

At my current job, I seem to do OK. I have a good work ethic and now that it's familiar, I love being at work. I feel safe there. The thing is, I very nearly didn't make it there, either. I don't know how many times I almost walked out of that place! It tooks me months and months to learn what most new girls soak up in a matter of weeks. For the first few days, I actually ran away from the customers! ;-) Even now....if my co-workers and employers were decidely intolerant of my idiosyncrisies, they could probably make life bad enough for me that I'd quit.

The irritating thing is that given my I.Q. and actual ability, I'm performing way below what I'd *like* to. I mean, it's basically higher end fast food. Occasionally it is frustrating to feel so subservient in that setting when, had I had an education past 8th grade, my social status could well have been more or less equal to anyone there. I don't particularly care about social status though, which is probably a large part of why I have none. On the other hand, I feel like a peon, a nothing, and I don't like that, either. I was supposed to be an artist, or a doctor, or..something wonderful. And, look at me. Not only am I just a lowly deli worker, I'm a deli worker who has to struggle to perform well at her job almost every day. It's......I don't know....how else can I say it?