Reading through these posts and the books I've begun reading makes me a little depressed. I don't finish half of them. I don't have the time, but it's more than that. I feel like the consant work and interactions with, well...the standard Priest River crowd (i.e. rednecks who get their kicks and thrill out of getting drunk every weekend and spending the rest of the week guffawing about the party and subsequent hangover and the coming weekend's party) is eroding my brain cells. When I'm not working, I'm surrounded and beseiged by children, which isn't much better.

It doesn't help that I have a constant comparison trip running; I compare myself with other people in different situations, or who've had different opportunities, or who have more time or solitude, etc etc (or are these just excuses??). The biggie for me is education- the lack of a solid foundation in some very basic subjects (math, chemistry, etc) makes me feel inferior. It doesn't really help that I know a lot about other subjects since these are frequenbtly discounted as unimportant (either by me or the other party) or I don't really do so well at verbalizing what I know. For me, ideas are not....they're not words. They're pictures. Even abstractions are mapped out in images or...I don't know how to explain it. It's not a picture but not words, either. Putting an image or abstraction into spoken words (written words are slightly better) frustrates me. It comes out bland and half baked. There is none of the vigor or excitement of the idea.

Anyway- I'm thinking that I will go ahead and apply for college- I was starting to question whether I would actually do this- not because I hope to get a better job out of it, though that'd be nice, or to get a degree, though I intend to, but mostly because I'm tired of feeling shorted in the areas that matter to me. The life I'm living now rubs against my grain and highlights all my weaknesses.

Sidenote: In the work with disabled people, I'm struck by the way that they pick out the person's weakest point and place a lot of emphasis on improving that rather than playing up the strong points and talents. Shy people are to go out in the community and interact with strangers. Talkative friendly types are to be quiet in public except when conducting a conversation. Energetic kids are encouraged to sit still, while stolid ones are nudged along to more activity....I'm generalizing of course, but this is the general way it works. Yeah it's good to round a person out a little, but don't they feel it to be an incredible strain? And, the minute you let the pressure off, they tend to revert to the way they'd rather be, anyway. I think there is a difference bewteen a person's natural self and their disability impairing the expression of the natural self, and the focus should be on the latter. Just a wild idea..

What the Bible has to say about women: here and here. Yeah, I'm beating a dead horse. I don't know why I even think about this crap since it's largely irrelevant to me now.

That's one way of looking at it. Another is that our cultural history is based on the bible and Christianity with the result that our society is still riddled with and tainted by these viewpoints. Like it or not, believe in it or not, we will encounter this mentality on a regular basis for some time to come yet. :shrug: For whatever that's worth (I'm not sure it's much).

Ha. Get a good look at the banner ads and the text they're related to here! I can't help being a little tickled by the twistedness of that...yeah, my sense of humor is just a little twisted too, I guess.

umm...let's see here.... I'm in the process of learning how to use command lines. I fear I'm just a little obtuse about these things at times...I sort of learn by trial and error and actually *doing* things though, so it's fairly forgiving. I need to edit my website to reflect the changed status of the herd....and uh....I think I'll actually have time to paint tonight....I've got this nagging sense that I forgot to do something, in town or somewhere. Probably it's in the deli and someone else took it over hours ago... heh. I'm like that.

It looks like I've found an apartment that I can rent, which strikes a compromise between price and size.

Cool- tonight the moon- which is sliver thin- had a weak enough shadow that I could see the non-illuminated part. (Surely there is a more graceful and or scientific way to express this, but it eludes me tonight).

Today I found some beautiful seashells at a store (alas, no I did not gather them from a beach. Soemday, I hope this dream will come true. Not that it's a huge priority right now, but hey, it'd be nice...), some cool art books at the library, and got bit by a dog at the animal shelter.

Pet peeve: no kill animal shelters that rescue mean, biting dogs hoping to find 'good homes' for them. What the hell kind of a 'good home' is going to want to *PAY* to own a biter???? Geez, people, get real! And it really pisses me off that they don't at least have a padlock on the cages of the mean dogs, when children and volunteers, some of them handicapped or retarded, are being encouraged to come on in and walk a dog. That is a HUGE liability. Sure, some of the cages have a 'do not walk, agressive to people' sign, but a good number of developmentally disabled people cannot read; besides which, the one that but me had no such sign and looked quite meek...

Life kinda sucks right now. Maybe someday it'll get better.

Found two Lary Niven books today, and Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. There was a nice selection of LeGuin too, but they were pricer higher than what I could afford. What else: still painting and drawing, trying to learn command lines. I almost fell apart in the library today. Client I was with asked me why I was sad...I just slapped a weak smile on and told him I was OK. It didn't fool him. Mentally disabled people can be surprisingly astute.

Don't know what else to say, except that things are actually getting better. I hate the way loneliness creeps up suddenly; in a store, driving, at work, and it's so paralyzing and overwhelming. Things can be going along routinely, and then, BANG! it grips me so tightly I can't think of anything else.

Reading through the posts here...I sure whine a lot. Ick!!

The typos are also in abundance. Oh well. Live with it!

Take a look at these love poems! LMAO!!! Ha. I've never had the nerve to write anything quite that...direct.... before. Well, close...but hopefully nobody's going to read it while I'm still alive! Somehow, it just isn't deemed appropriate for women to write stuff like that, but it's not too terribly surprising when a guy does.

No, don't sit there holding your breath. I'm not likely to do so and post it here (!)

More Adoration

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Pop idols, movie stars, fairy tales, romance novels, and fairy tales. All non-threatening objects to project adoration and love onto, where the battle-scarred face of reality will not intrude. Of course, whether we're talking about Michael Jackson or Jesus Christ, there also isn't much direct fulfillment or return on this sort of investment, other than what one imagines or conjures up in a fantasy...but that seems to be sufficient and truly preferable to the all too scary prospect of dealing with another live human, giving them your all, and accepting them for what they are.

Aside from the need/desire for a higher meaning, I wonder if the desire for/belief in God is due to an innate need to adore, trust, and love someone. Think about this: if you didn't have God, you'd still want to be close to someone, right? But people are sooo hard to trust completely, and being human, we goof up, so adoring a person has to be in balance with reality and taking someone as they are.

Loving and adoring God fixes all that. He comes first. You cannot love someone 100% or adore them if you love God. He even says so and makes no bones about it. Even your children, your flesh and blood, you have to be willing to sacrifice them as Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac. Principles come first, God comes first. It's pretty hard to argue with someone who believes that.

My point: perhaps loving God is a sort of protection against having to love and trust other people, with all their imperfections, zits, and wrinkles.

I don't have much of anything to say tonight, but the past week or two's posts have been so negative that I sort of feel obligated to balance it out somehow.

I'm still reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. My bosses in their office must wonder why I sit snickering (alone) in the break room... The other book is Life, the Universe, and Everything. Here is something else: the one I'm reading now is a FIRST EDITION. I couldn't believe that. On the other hand, I wanted to read it too badly to keep it mint condition, and it IS a paperback....maybe it is not a true first...

And, The Telling by Ursula Le Guin. I haven't begun it yet. It's a libary book. Also, The Blue Flower, based upon the life of Novalis. I never did get to finish reading Faust or Ecce Homo by Nietzche, and I want to. They were both too heavy to read with a brain already exhausted from working in the deli. By the time I'd get into the flow, it was time to go back to work.

I had some kind of an idea today, but now I can't remember it. The irritating thing about this job is that it is multi-tasking that entails CONSTANT interruptions. You cannot simply begin a task and follow through on it until it's done. Oh no. You begin sweeping the floor, and a customer arrives. You wait on them, they buy up all the chicken, and four or five more people swing through before you can cook more chicken. Someone wants salad, and the salad runs out, so you go to get more. FINALLY, you get a chance to rush to the back room and grab the chicken and pop it in the fryer. If a customer comes while your hands are gooey with raw meat, too bad! Someone else will have to deal with it! The minute you're done with that, more customers. They want meat, and wouldn't you know, it's meat that hasn't been sliced up yet. So, you do that, get the meat to them, and clean off the slicer, and package up the remainder of the presliced meat, all in between cstomers, of course. A crowd of teenagers march in and can't make up their mind. Then the buzzer goes off on the chicken fryer! You dash to the fryer and retrieve the chicken, get what the customers want, and start to put the chicken in the hot case. Oh- a co-worker walks by and asks you to stop doing that and do (whatever) first. So you do. Then you run back and finish putting the chicken in the case. The teens bought up a lot of other deli food, so you have to cook more of that. While it's cooking, you notice the tables are gooey and messy, so you wipe them off, and then get the stuff from the fryer to the hot case. Stand there a little dazed...because it seems like there was a loose end somewhere...ah yes: the sweeping. You resume this. Then, the phone rings: someone wants nearly all the chicken in the hot case....arrgh!!!

My point is that it's sort of remarkable if you can think about anything else at all there. Holding a thought until the end of the day would be...almost miraculous. I'm a focusing sort of person. There are things I care nothing about, and things that I focus on, with very, very little middle ground. The middle ground is merely and temporarily tolerated so that I can get to what I really thrive on: focusing on something. If I seem preoccupied, it's generally because I'm either trying to recover a thought, or trying to hold a thought until I can get some task or interaction over with and get back to the thought or preferred task. This holds true with people, too. If I look bored, don't take it too personally; I'm an introvert. If I'm focused, chances are quite good that I like you. If I'm focused AND missed you, it's exceptional, because you are.

Anyway, the scatterbrained nature of this job drives me nuts. I kind of hate it.

I'm tired of living if this is how it's always going to be. I keep on plodding along and trying various things in the hopes that someday, I'll find the magic combination of factors (that seem to come so easily for other people) and man, it just doesn't look too promising. I keep getting kicked when I'm down, but nobody ever kicks me quite hard enough to finish me off. Now that's cruelty.

Yeah, I guess I'm depressed. Need to get out the Saint John's wort again.

Have you read Animal Farm? Right now I'm playing the role of the horse (what was his name?); the one whose reply to hardships was always: "I will work harder". I've always identified more with the cynical donkey... think his name was Benjamin...

Seems like my mental world has shrunk down to two or three driving, insistent subjects. I'm so tired.

I want to paint. During the breaks and lunch at work, I draw with colored pencils. The pencils are cheap and waxy and the color doesn't build up like I want it to. Irksome!!

The doe who had the C section has been walking around and is actually still producing milk (!) This is good. The baby will have milk to drink. He screams if he sees a carton of cow's milk. I suppose it gives him a stomach ache or something.

Sigh. I want a day off, ideally a day where I don't have to watch the children all day long, too. There isn't such a day anywhere in sight. Last day off was 3/20. What sucks is that for as much as I'm working, I'm not even getting anywhere, but this is due in part to bills and debts being paid off, childcare, and gas. The car sucks down gas like a wino does 20/20.

Teeth hurt, my breath must be bad. Rotting teeth stink, at least my mom's did. Ugh.

Some few of the bulbs are blooming: 'Jumblie' daffodils, only 3-4" high and very cute and tiny, scilla, chinodoxia, as well as standard daffodils which have been here for a long time. Hyacinths will kick in soon. There are places that I planted chock full of bulbs wherre nothing at all is emerging, and sites where the bulbs grew last year but are making a very poor return this time around. Fucking pocket gophers.....grrrrrr.....There are only one or two oriental lilies, and I planted about $50 worth of lilies. But it isn't the money that matters, it's the fact that I've wanted and dreamed about these lilies for years, finally got them, and they failed before I even had a chance to enjoy them.

Is that all my life's ever going to be, a series of failed pipe dreams?

This is depressing: every day, I check my email, and there are 4-7 messages, all spam or INTP mailing list messages. There is never any personal mail I have three pages of mail (mostly old stuff I haven't sorted yet). Today, I check the mail, and there are seven pages, and I think, wow. What in the heck happened? Did the INTPs suddenly have a huge, dramatic increase in verbosity? Did I get a LOT of spam? Maybe I actually got a 'real' email today. I mean, seven pages, that's a lot, the odds are in my favor. Nope. I somehow got resubscribed to a goat mailing list that had dropped me. Nothing else but spam and one that was server related. Life sucks.

My P.O. box is the same way. No mail. Bills, flyers, adverts, religious stuff, an occasional catalog. No real mail. People gripe about my not writing. This is why. They don't write back. Correspondance is not my strong point. I always analyze it to death and wind up writing something that totally lacks color or spontanaiety. Email is better. I send it before I get to that point. But it's still an effort, and then when they don't reply, I go back and read what I wrote, trying to see if it was out of line or offensive or what. Ack!!!
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I went to my supervisor and told her that something has to be done about the gal who's been picking on me. If it dsoesn't change, I'm going to have to quit. Got my second paycheck today, and this also is depressing. I work my ass off there. In that last two weeks I've lost 5 lbs, and I was already lean. The pay for those two weeks is so little that it only covers the checks I've written (and asked people not to cash- yet) and gas and daycare for the next week, if I'm reeeeeally lucky. Basically it pays for me to go to work at the other place, where I typically only put in two days a week, sometimes three. I can't get ahead like this. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Scavenging: Got- milk, bread, yogurt, half and half for the baby (goats aren't milking and we'e out of formula), a bag crammed full of kid's clothing, for free, a pair of tennis shoes that fit me (my other two pairs were falling apart at the seams) for 50 cents, a chenille sweater for 50 cents, free magazines, and two more Douglas Adams books- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and (I think) The Ultimate Hitchhiker's guide...something or other like that, 25 cents each. Also- 75 cents worth of cool little glass or metal beads to make earrings from, (I had to splurge a little) and 3 baby bottles at 10 cents apiece. Let it not be said that I've got extravagant taste!!

Anyway, so now I'm snickering and grinning like a dork over these books. They're just great. :>)