A Swift Kick & A Band-Aid

Workin At The Carwash ...

I think I could have started a carwash in my laundry room tonight ...
or turned it into a super slippery porn set...

A brand new, unopened bottle of concentrated laundry detergent bound from my supra-vibe dyer, onto the floor, spewing its contents everywhere (and even getting some splash distance up on the wall).

It took an entire roll of paper towels to get the mess mopped up.

Who knew laundry was so exciting for the supplies ...

(The Christina version just seemed to have the right level of SLUT to go with the theme of the post, don't you think?)

Look Ma! I Showed The Stalker Right Where I Live!

I was perusing Why I Hate DC (because, after all, there is a piece of me that will always and forever remain bitter that DC is in fact not my precious San Diego) and discovered the Washington Area Metro Transit Store.

Not a store where you buy farecards or something reasonably useful ... no, Metro merchandise. Crappy, retarded ass, tourist trap merchandise.

You have GOT to be kidding me with this. Seriously? Notecards with a picture of a bus or a train on the front? Ladies, they've got jewelry! And gentlemen, you too can own a pair of cuff links for just $92.00! And a flippin' wish list? Gift certificates ... ?

If tourons are really that willing to part with their money and advertise to their friends and family back home that they proudly rode our metro (ugh, I just wrote our metro ... ) I guess they deserve to be an extra $20 lighter.

But wait ... I can pick ANY metro stop I want (even the one I have to take home every night) and personalize a shirt, a coffee mug, or mouse pad with it!! Anyone stupid enough to wear a shirt with their metro stop written across it deserves to be stalked straight from where they stand, directly to their front door.

The stupidity of metro never ceases to amaze me

Traded In & Sexed Up

I have been dreading the time when this day would come. I have broken the law for over two years putting it off ...

I have officially given up my last claim of California citizenship (as pretend as it was at this point) and gotten a new ID. They confiscated my old ID with my magical expiration date (06-06-06) like the damn Nazis that they are. Nazis ...

To make myself feel better, I had sushi for dinner
:::waves to the motherland:::
:::waves to Miss Teacher:::

The upside is, I can go drinking without my passport now (and I have a MUCH cuter photo to show off)

Arctic Winds, Coldest Air of the Winter, and I Wake Up To THIS?

Ok ... random call for help here ...

I woke up this morning to find my thermostat reading 55 degrees, despite being set at 65.

Do I have a busted furnace? A busted thermostat? Something more simple to fix?

Its a gas furnace and I haven't been able to get the cover off to see whatever it is that is behind that stupid slidey door thing.

????

UPDATE:
After messing with my thermostat, I'm pretty sure that it is the faulty piece in the equation here. Whew... much cheaper fix

UPDATE 2:
I have NO idea how, but the thermostat seems to be working again ... the POS ... at least I can put off replacing it if it is going to try working again.

My Fine Is $630.60

And who's surprised about my score?

But I'm just going to leave you guys to guess how it got that high ... ;-)

Here’s how it works: You don’t have to confess your answers, just the amount of your fine. (Not per incident!) Tally up your score and post it on your blog with the title… ”My Fine Is…”

Smoked pot — $10
Did acid — $5
Ever had sex at church — $25
Woke up in the morning and did not know the person who was next to you — $40
Had sex with someone on MySpace — $25
Had sex for money — $100
Vandalized something — $20
Had sex on your parents’ bed — $10
Beat up someone — $20
Been jumped — $10
Crossed dressed — $10
Given money to stripper — $25
Been in love with a stripper — $20
Kissed some one who’s name you didn’t know — $0.10
Hit on some one of the same sex while at work — $15
Ever drive drunk — $20
Ever got drunk at work, or went to work while still drunk — $50
Used toys while having sex — $30
Got drunk, passed out and don’t remember the night before — $20
Went skinny dipping — $5
Had sex in a pool — $20
Kissed someone of the same sex — $10
Had sex with someone of the same sex — $20
Cheated on your significant other — $10
Masturbated — $10
Cheated on your significant other with their relative or close friend — $20
Done oral — $5
Got oral — $5
Done/got oral in a car while it was moving — $25
Stole something — $10
Had sex with someone in jail — $25
Made a nasty home video — $15
Had a threesome — $50
Had sex in the wild — $20
Been in the same room while someone was having sex — $25
Stole something worth over more than a hundred dollars — $20
Had sex with someone 10 years older — $20
Had sex with someone under 21 and you are over 27 — $25
Been in love with two people or more at the same time — $50
Said you love someone but didn’t mean it — $25
Went streaking — $5
Went streaking in broad daylight — $15
Been arrested — $5
Spent time in jail — $15
Peed in the pool — $0.50
Played spin the bottle — $5
Done something you regret — $20
Had sex with your best friend — $20
Had sex with someone you work with at work — $25
Had anal sex — $80
Lied to your mate — $5
Lied to your mate about the sex being good — $25

Sgt Hook Goes to Washington ... If You Help

UPDATE:
The voting closes at NOON CST Jan 23!
PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE get your votes in, your family, your co-workers, your neighbors, the dude next to you at Starbucks, or the kid that annoyingly seems to have WiFi access EVERYWHERE you look.

Vote from home, from work, from your palm ... everywhere you can!!!

We need Hook at this conference - and your vote can get him there.

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The Milblogging Conference had a whole host of great panelists and attendees last year but there was one missing that I think really should have been there...

Sgt. Hook

This year, he's hoping to be there but he needs our help paying the way. So go over to the VA Mortgage Center Blog and vote for Sgt Hook in their Best Milblogger Contest to help him win that prize money!

Flames to Dust...
Why Do All Good Things Come To An End?

I grew up daddy’s little girl – no question about it. I didn’t have to say a word when I’d had a bad day at school, he knew. He knew and we went for a drive to talk until I felt better. When we moved and I thought my life was over, he cried at causing me so much pain. When I went away to college, he walked me to my dorm room like it was the first day of kindergarten.

But things didn’t stay that way…

I remember back in the summer when things had reached a major breaking point with dad. We had reached the first time that he didn’t always take my calls and we found ourselves at the impasse of near constant tension with a dash of argument for good measure. Friends thought I was being dramatic, “it’s just temporary,” they said.

But I knew they were wrong.
My heart doesn't lie.

I cried. I sat on the bed in disbelief.
Our arguments hit me like a ton of bricks.
I sobbed. I stared at the walls and felt lost.
I saw that I was finally losing my dad.

The seeds of disagreement have been there for years. I mean, there’s a reason I have no idea what the multiple remodeling projects at his house look like – I haven’t been there in at least three years, not even a drive by while in town. Hell, it could be longer … I lost count. But back then, the disagreements were small – I started taking the steps to protect myself from his decisions and he quietly let me go, step by step – rarely did it get heated or angry.

Now, I’m lucky to get a screaming match, hang ups, and threats.

I have to say I just don’t understand.

When he decided to marry his current wife, I was absolutely against it – she is a cold, mean, spiteful, selfish, unemployed gold digger that has consistently spent as much of my dad’s money as she could, while sucking the life and happiness out of him – but I was there. More than that, I was IN the wedding. He asked me stand next to him as he married her and as much as it killed me inside to do it, I did it. He said it was important to him, so I did it. Standing in a wedding, as painful as it was, was worth keeping my father.

It wasn’t until Grammy died that the seeds of disagreement really took root, broke ground, and really began to flourish in all their poisonous glory.

But still, he strongly suggested we start looking at houses in May when he was in town for graduation (although my brother promptly inserted himself in the middle of that idea). At that point, I thought I was humoring his fantasy. I didn’t trust him enough to believe it was real.

Obviously it was real … and now I have a house.

In February, I tolerated his wife stepping in front of my mom at the viewing, introducing herself and making sure people knew who she was. I hated every minute I had to spend in the same room with her, but I kept my mouth shut.

In November and January, when I asked for her to be absent from court proceedings so that I could spend time with my immediate family grieving this horrible loss, my dad stood on principle that he “would not tell someone else what to do,” “that if she says she wants to be there, I cannot stop her.” Fight after fight, he now expresses the worst opinions of me that I have ever heard in my life from anyone.

A broken hearted, grieving daughter asks for a reprieve from the interloper and instead, she loses her dad. And in the process, her brother. How … how in the name of everything sacred is that even possible?

So between then and now, I lost the man that bought the house I live in. I lost faith in who he was. I lost the ability to trust him. I lost my respect for him.

How do you reconcile living in a house paid for by someone that you don't even have a cordial relationship with? How do you look yourself in the mirror and accept a gift like that from someone that you can’t look in the eye? How do you get comfortable with the fear that you may be asked to leave on a whim?

First Snow 2007

After all these storms around the country, we're finally getting our first snow of the winter. It's just a light dusting, and I'm sure it won't stick long, but at least winter feels a little bit closer to normal.

No snowball fights or snowmen though ...

Twenty Years, It's Breaking You Down
Now That You Understand There's No One Around

Going to court Thursday and speaking about how much it has hurt to lose my grandmother was probably the single hardest thing I've ever had to do in my life.

I walked to the stand with an 8 x 10 of my family, the notes I had prepared, my memento of grandma, and a handful of tissues. I had already been crying in court so I don't think I got one dry word out. My voice wavered, my face flushed with emotion, and my whole body trembled uncontrollably. Honestly, I have no idea if the judge could understand a word I said.

I stood up there and explained how I was not prepared for a middle of the night phone call that meant my grandmother had instantly disappeared from my life and that we had no more time for all of the things I had been putting off.

I told the judge how an important professional support and "colleague" was now missing with such a savvy world traveler and explorer taken from me.

I showed him the photo and sobbed to him how I had lost not just one of the four relatives pictured, but three ... that my brother won't speak to me or my mother and that my dad and I only speak to fight, despite no one bickering over her estate, and my grandma forever gone.

I asked the judge not to punish but to protect and do whatever it was in his power to do to keep anyone else from feeling the pain that I do now.

I returned to my seat and did my best to calm myself as we sat through the other side telling their story. My father sat in the back of the court room with his wife while my aunt and I sat in the front with the MADD representative. My mother wasn't there because she feared being broken by the pain. My brother I can't account for, but I have my suspicions.

The defendant apologized for this "accident" and told us that he had found Jesus while in jail these last 11 months. He recognized my grandmother as a loving, beautiful person, "accepted her gift" as a turning point in his life, and hoped for our forgiveness. His lawyer asked for treatment and pointed to his client's recent sobriety, his first in 25 yrs.

I don't know if the judge had his mind made up before he walked into the courtroom that day or not, but he handed down two maximum sentences - 15 yrs on one count and 4 yrs on the other, to be served consecutively.

It was a very bittersweet, painful, and hollow "victory". Grammy will never come back to make our family behave again. Many years beyond this last with my father are gone now that our trust is so far broken. And I walked away with more love from the MADD woman than anyone else.

I am glad to be away from my family but my heart is breaking to know we are each becoming individuals, alone in the world. It won't be long before what was once a family is a total shattered mess. I may have been the first to be broken off, but my father is hardly surrounded by love and my brother believes "love" is someone that tells you what to wear and how to spend your money.

I am building a cocoon. I am protecting myself. I am re-building me. Alone.

No You Don't Mean Nothing At All To Me

I'm headed out the door and into the freezing abyss of painful drama (read: Kansas) around noon...

It is the last step for us in the criminal portion of this nightmare ... sentencing. Eleven months to the day that grandma was killed.

Some of the family that I think should be there will be staying home. The satan-spawn patiently waiting for the moment she can really take my dad to the cleaners, however, has demanded her presence be allowed *JOY!* It has been a roller coaster of heart break and hatred I had no idea I had the capacity to feel toward another person, let alone someone my own father would bring into my life.

I am so emotionally drained from the past year that my only prayer at this point is for the strength to address the court and share with the defendant's family my pain as they sit hoping for a light sentence.

Wish me luck (and vote for Hook while I'm gone, if you haven't already)

I Listen To You Talk
But Talk Is Cheap ...

Yep. Things with dad are going just swimmingly ...

You're Not A Superhero,
You're Not a Dragon
Show Yourself

I'm late to the party but that doesn't change that it is De-lurking Week (and I know you lurkers knew it too, so don't act all surprised now that I'm calling you out on it ... in fact I'm ashamed of you for not just volunteering yourselves earlier during your designated recognition week)

So have at it ... Show yourselves in all your blog reading glory

Keeping the Story Alive

I'm not really sure how this came up today ... but my dad and I got on the subject of stories that seem to just disappear once certain people die.

Here's the story he was thinking of:

Backdrop: The sidewalk on the corner across the street from my house as a kid was an odd color and didn't match the slabs surrounding it. One day, my dad struck up a conversation with the old man that lived there (as he typically did over random things) about the discoloration.

It seems that right at the edge of this guy's property used to be where the city maintenance ended and, originally, there was no sidewalk. Things were getting bigger and the city eventually decided to put in sidewalk.

The very same day they were pouring the corner, old Sheriff Sam from up the street was on a drinking binge and wandered down to join the party - paper bag covered wine bottle and all. In his drunken state and jovial spirit, he took the red wine he was drinking and poured it into the batch of cement they were mixing.

They poured the sidewalk anyway and it was a funny color from day one.

Talk about small town character...

Figuring It Out As I Go

While I seem to have discovered how to repair an inefficient furnace, effectively sealing the air leak at the top of my front door seems to continue eluding me.

Being a homeowner is weird...

I Need A Beginning
I Need A Beginning Again

Following 2006, I am against making resolutions. It was perhaps the most disheartening, disillusioning, disappointing year I have lived thus far. I am content with the fact that I survived and I am still moving forward. I was not crushed by what could have destroyed me.

The pain of murder, trial, death after death, and the torn fabric of my family is obvious but 2006 was less than stellar in many other ways ...

Graduating from grad school was quite anticlimactic and a seemingly useless waste of way too much time and money. I uprooted my life for this?

Probably the most disappointing aspect of the year was watching people show their true colors that I had hoped would be a different shade. Some betrayed their potential, some were deceptive, some gave into what was easy when they knew it was wrong, some spoke out of both sides of their mouth and hoped no one would notice, some were self-absorbed, some accidentally lifted the veil over their personality and could not go back, some had affairs and cheated on their spouses, some took advantage of their "friends," some took credit for what wasn't theirs to have, some were maliciously petty, and others were just plain mean.

I gained meaning in some friendships and family that was previously lacking, so I can't say the year was all bad ... but man it sure felt like it most days.

I am not resolving to lose weight or eat better or exercise more or watch less tv or any of those things that people say they are going to do because the calendar changed. I will do those things when I am ready to do them ... when my heart is ready, when my soul is committed, and my head can focus on those goals. When I am ready, I will succeed in those avenues. Until then, I am moving forward ... toward each new day for the opportunity that it is ...

The New and The Old, Still Purple

So the New Year is finally here ... and I happily have kicked the Old Year to the curb (seems to be a trend over the last couple of years, doesn't it?) Although, despite my best attempts to think that something dramatic changed at 00:01 a couple of days ago, I don't really think it did.

BUT.... My New Year's Eve soirée went off quite well. I have a TON of food left though. What's with you people? Don't you ever eat?

So I am back to my current obsession of picking paint chips and trying to nail down a color scheme for the master suite. I found the most fantastic bedding, but they do not make it for the dinky bed I was forced to buy when I moved into that match box I used to live in. I am tempted to buy it "for the future" while it is on sale for nearly half price but the rational me has thought better than to spend currently tight finances like that. But look at how comfy it looks!!

And the idea of suede finish paint in the bedroom just sounds divine ... but then that brings us back to the problem of high ceilings and faux finishes. Dammit!