Spring Break

Today is officially my first day of spring break. Not including today, I still have eight more days to sit on my ass and do nothing though I would prefer to make this a working holiday as I will do my best to write another 10-15k. I post this here because it would be nice to be accountable. I would hope that some of you would like to actually read something I've written some day rather than actually hear my prattle on with it.

Also in other news, I got a pair of boots from Cavenders. They weren't the cheapest I could get but they also weren't the most expensive. I can only hope that I can keep them in good condition and that they don't have to be resoled for a long time. I had been getting all twitchy about not having a good pair of boots that actually fit so when I was driving back home today and I had to stop when I passed by the store. I am so weak, but I haven't ordered custom dresses from www.eshakti.com .... yet. In any case it was a rainy day so I dipped into my fund, but I had fun.

How's the wrting going?

Most people have been asking me this especially my librarian who loves what I've written so far and wants to read more. I hit a space of two weeks last summer where I wrote 30k, but I haven't written much of anything since except a few book starters I know are going to be really good once I get into them. I think my problem is that I'm horribly overscheduled. I work full time as a teacher and then I take classes at night.

What I've been working on and adding more story here and then is a young adult urban fantasy that centers around two young people and the friends they meet along the way. Yes, one is a boy and the other is a girl. Quelle suprise. So what if you discovered that your world wasn't what you thought it was? What if the color of your skin wasn't the true barrier in life so much as what you were. If you were human but more than human all the same, how would your world change?

I usually write IR fiction because it's what appeals to me. I want to write an intelligent story where the heroine is strong but needs other people. I want to write a hero who isn't always the knight in shining armor. Most of all I just want to write.

Escaped but not really.

First, I have my own apartment. I have, as a result become more sane than I have been in a very long time.

It is blissfully quiet here and I don't have cable. It gives me time to read or do my homework mostly. I don't have issues with my mother who made me wonder from time to time if I wasn't wrong about her being a Narcissist with a capital N. Being able to step back gives me perspective I haven't had before. When I don't live with her she is nicer to me and it allows me to be objective about the things she says rather than being subjective about what she says. Let me give a few examples:

1. There is contant "I" talk. People are always doing things to her rather than doing things for themselves. Those things they do just happen to affect her.

2. God has also given her a cross to bear apparently. My brother is suffering from mental illness. I should think the person carrying the biggest cross is him. I don't know what really happened the other night but my brother overheard her make some flippant comment about white women. Yes it was inappropriate, but as much as I hate the stupid nasty things she says about nonblack people, she can say them in her own home. Usually when she says such things I walk away or find something to drown her out to let her know she doesn't have my attention anymore. She says that my brother got angry and in her face and she thought he was going to be violent. Apparently she became so afraid that she ran out of the house and he promptly locked her out. She called me from her phone in tears and I rushed over. By the time I got there, the police had arrived and were talking to my brother who was talking utter nonsense saying he coudn't get anything in life because my mother was racist. They ended up sending him to his room and we took all the knives out of the kitchen and hid them. I put the lock from what was formerly my room on my mother's door and gave her the key. Then I sat down and asked how she was doing and this was what she said, "I don't know if I could deal with it if the police shot my son. I could live with it if I did it, but not if they did it. I should get a gun."

I don't need any evidence of what my mother is anymore. It just makes me sad.

I want this woman to adopt me as her grandchild

http://margaretandhelen.wordpress.com/about/

Life at the moment

There isn't really room to breathe right now. School has started both in terms of working and attending. I'm taking two classes because I'm crazy. I have late evenings monday through thursday and I haven't had time to write at all because my free time involves homework and sleep. Not happy about that, but I do like my classes. I do have to say that Spanish is easy, but that's just me.

On another note, something happened that doesn't happen very often. I was contacted by a guy from a free dating site and we struck up a conversation. He seems nice enough, but my internal warning bells are going off because of my previous experience with guys online. I'm afraid of liking anyone I meet online too much because I had an experience with a cyberpath I will not forget. He did a number on me and then cut and run. I would be down on myself and say that I was a sucker, but I think many people because they believe in the basic goodness of others would have had the same experience I had. Perhaps one day I will go into detail but not today.

So, this guy is nice and we really do click both online and on the phone, but I don't want to think too much of it or him right now. I feel like a kicked dog who sees feet coming. Because we really click, I find myself analyzing whether I think he's trying so hard to say the right things or if he's being himself. Am I trying that hard to draw parallels to the debacle of 2002 or am I making the comparison out of fear?

What I know is that I can't live life constantly thinking about scars from someone who got his jollies from hurting me. I've picked myself up and kept going, but I know that I'm different now. I've thoroughly reasoned this out to some extent. I've been talking to the guy from the site for a couple of weeks and I realize that I don't have the same feelings I had with the person before. I don't feel this sense of being on top of the world like you would with someone with a character disorder, just a feeling of comfort and the warm fuzzies.

Now, how do I turn off this damn alarm?

Ponderings

I've been thinking about several things such as how coworkers can let someone tell racial jokes when they know you're in the next room. The thing thats worse is that it ever happened in the first place. Long before this though I had been pondering something.

What would it be like if I just up and moved to another country? If I moved to the UK getting a job wouldn't be so hard since I am already a teacher and they have just as bad a shortage as the US does. It would involve more work and more schooling so I could obtain QTS (Qualified Teacher Status). As an OTT (Overseas Trained Teacher) I could teach for up to four years without having QTS. I'd have to be working toward it.

Being an expatriate is an appealing idea. It's not just because I think racism isn't everywhere. I don't go around quoting Avenue Q songs all that often but "Everyones a Little Bit Racist" deep down. Even people who think they aren't. If you've clutched your purse because someone of a specified ethnicity is coming toward you because, well, the sidewalk is a nifty place to walk, that's racism. I'm not saying you hate anybody, but you do have that twinge of fear sparking in your gut.

I suppose what I'm saying is that America's pretty bad when it comes to race, but you've probably heard or experienced that already. I know some people don't believe it. they want to believe that this country is a melting pot or cosmic salad bowl or some crap like that. It's not. As far as I can see, most people stay in their own box of candy though sometimes a milk dud does get in with the mints and sometimes some of the skittles get into the red hots.

The candies want to stay in their own package out of fear for the most part. (Here's the part where I could go Yoda on you all but I am really not into repeating snowclones.) I'm not sure why people are so afraid of "otherness", but some seem to think that it's ok to turn that racism, their fear into hate whether it is in thought, word or deed. I find that sad.

One of the reasons I wanted to move was because I've known people who've moved abroad who are very happy with what they're doing. That combined with a huge wanderlust I've come to the conclusion I just need to go. (Have I mentioned that I've never really thought much of living stateside though everyone shoves "the greatest country in the world" down my throat on a regular basis?)

I know all places have their problems such as extreme nationalism issues, and that I may just be trading one problem for another, but I want to try something completely different.

I'm going to go on one of my usual tangents and say that I know of few countries that are as scarred in racial terms as the US is. Most people will tell you that the civil war was fought over states right's issues and not slavery. Slavery was the biggest states rights issue in my opinion.

I think this history has fostered our preoccupation with race and that as a nation the US is more fractured than most would believe.

Worst weekend I ever had

A lot of things have happened since my posting in May. The first was that I ended up in the hospital which was a lot of craziness. I ended up there on a day I was just minding my business at Saltgrass after going to the apartment complex to find that the person I was supposed to sign my lease with wasn't available. I started drinking a lovely frozen magarita which I now have to say was my last... ever... because I felt this curious sensation in my chest. A fluttering started there or to more accurately describe how I felt, I felt as if a fish were flopping around in my chest. Now this had happened before and briefly on occasion. It would last for ten seconds and then it would stop and I would go on my merry way.

This lasted a minute and then longer and then it kept going so I went to the hospital via a fun little vehicle with lights on the top. I was admitted to the hospital and my pulse was in the ridiculously high range. It would jump to 160 and I think I saw 187 and I freaked out. When the doctor told me what was going on (finally) I learned I was in atrial fibrilation. That means the top chambers of my heart were fluttering rather than actually pumping blood properly. As a result, i was put on blood thinners and moved to ICU. I was also started on other medications that were beta blockers. Now, for someone my age, beta blockers are not what you would try first. I know this because I read extensively while I was in the hospital. I love my laptop. I want to marry him. (Yes my macbook is most decidedly a he since he is my knight in shining armor.) Now this all started on a Friday and they kept trying the same drugs until SUNDAY. (Even my stepmother who is a RN said this was stupid.)

Now during this time I had been stuck for IV more times than I could count and they kept blowing out the veins with the loads and loads of liquids (that weren't working) they kept pouring in me. The nurses had such a hard time finding my veins. They had such a ridiculous time finding my veins that my stepmother was ready to say, "Give me some gloves so I can do your job." Later that day, that vein started to get irritated too so they decided to have someone come in and give me a central line. The thought of having someone tunnel up under my collarbone to find a vein scares the shit out of me, but I was hoping that it would be some relief from the burning sensation now in the back of my hand. Unfortunately, the guy was across town and running late and now I was in so much pain that I wanted to punch someone in the face. If I hadn't felt weak as a kitten I might have. (I still have no idea how this childbirth thing is going to work for me.) He gets there at eleven at night and finally I get a central line put in. I couldn't believe I would ever be relieved to have someone insert a tube into my superior vena cava.

The next day, Sunday, the doctor decided to switch things up a little and take me off everything except the blood thinners and saline. He decided to try a pill to get me back on sinus rhythm. I took my medicine and I went to sleep for the five millionth time ever. I think all I did on that weekend was sleep and surf on the net. When I woke up a nurse walked back in the room and looked at the monitor and told me I was back on rhythm. I was never so happy in all my life. That night I was moved out of the ICU and into another room across the hall. Somewhere my inhaler got tossed away. I know this because my mother went back to the room in the ICU to look for it and the room had been cleaned in the fifteen minutes we had been gone. They wouldn't order another one because it hadn't been listed by the doctor after I had been moved. So, I was no longer in afib, but if I had an asthma attack I could just wheeze myself to death because the doctor had neglected to put an inhaler on his orders?

I'm thinking of a finger right now and it's definitely not a thumbs up.

The next day the doctors checked up on me and I was supposed to be released. It took ALL day to get this stuff together and my asthma was starting to kick my ass. Finally, (and I swear to you I am a quiet person around people I don't know, but I turn into another person when I'm completely fed up) I told the nurse who was supposed to be getting my paperwork together that I am having issues with my asthma and that she needed to finish the shit up so I could go home and breathe.

Needless to say, I haven't signed a lease at my apartment so I lost my deposit, but I don't care right now as long as I can take the money I'm not spending on rent to pay medical bills. $600 a month would have taken another $300 out of my budget not including utilities. I had lots of undue stress in May and the summer has done me some good. I just hope I'm ready to go back to school, both teaching and learning.

Dude where's my muse and other ramblings.

I've been trying to write more lately, but it seems that I'm pretty tapped out right now. Someone turned off the light and now I seem to be fumbling in the dark for something.

I love to write and actually it was my second love next to pottery when I was in high school. It firmly comes in first now, but right now I feel very much like the jilted lover. I think my muse has decided to take a hike for a while and she won't come back no matter how many roses or how much candy I offer her. I think she's upset that Mr. Wii is now in my life though I'm trying to convince her that he's just a friend.

And now for something completely different.

For those of you who don't know, I love writing fiction and for the most part, it has usually been IR fiction. Actually, I was writing IR fiction before the masses had access to the webternets. I was a solitary writer trying to do what I loved best. (Also I was tired of the hackdom that was the YA market at the time and as we know, a teenager can always do much better than anyone else.) I wrote IR fiction because then because I was writing the person I wanted to be and also I wrote the kind of people I'm attracted to.

I haven't shown my family my writing because they're crazy. I love them, but they're nutjobtastic. The other reason I haven't shown them much of what I write is because I'm a little self-conscious about it. They already make enough noise about who I date claiming that I hate black men. I hate black men about as much as I hate ice cream, which is to say not at all. I have come to the conclusion, having grown up in suburbia, that you are attracted to those who are attracted to you. I can count on one hand the number of black men remotely close to my age who have asked me out (in a fashion to which I would respond) and that number is two, dos, deux, due, zwei, ni. No I'm not kidding.

So as a result of my lack of dates with black men I get asked, "Why do you hate black men?" My first response is to look at them like they have a giant parallel universe inducing insect on their back. (I watch entirely too much Doctor Who) My second response is to ask, "Why do black men ignore me?" The responses I get are varied and they usually involve phrases like, "You're too nerdy," or, "You need to dumb it down a little," or, which is just as good, "You need to lower your standards." I do it for love, being who I am and I'm not going to bottle it up for anyone.

I guess what I'm getting at is that life is too short to wait for that one person who fits in that tiny little box of everything that I wanted. I'm an amazing person and yes, I'm still looking for an amazing person who may be any color of the rainbow even *gasp* black. My box is a little bigger than it was when I was a teenager with relatively few things that I'm asking for. I want someone who will respect me, someone who likes books and someone who understands my twisted sense of humor, someone who has no girls named Hallie Tosis in his life. Pretty much everything else is on the preferred but not required list so he doesn't have to look like Cillian, Will or Takeshi anymore *sighs dolefully* doesn't have to be at least a six footer (but he still has to be taller than me as long as I'm not wearing heels. Hey, I'm five nine but there's something to be said about feeling small).

Love Notes From Mom

I know that in the black community talking about one's family is taboo. I, for the record, don't give a flying rat's behind because my mother is fucknuts. I don't mean that in the endearing "aw isn't she cute" kind of way. I mean the "fly off the handle at stupid shit kind of way." I used to get angry at her for this. I mean really angry about it, but you know, I really don't care anymore. I just laugh because the only reason I came home was to get my teacher certification so I can at least live decently.

It's time for me to move out and I've been planning to do that, but she keeps asking me not to. I feel sorry for her because she's lonely, but not for the reasons you or I would be lonely. I don't need someone to reflect an image of myself back to me. I could be by myself for days on end and I wouldn't care. This is how I've been scarred in life. I'm scared of people almost to the point where speaking in front of them becomes an ordeal. I just like my small group of close friends who are elsewhere. I miss them dearly because they got me. It's the type of friendship where we talk, but we don't have to at times because just being together is nice. No pretenses involved. I digress though.

Currently, I am living with her and I had been thinking for a while about getting out because the only thing she really wants is a pocket and now that I make decent money she wants to live out of mine. I know this sounds crass, but I'm not the type of person to come to these conclusions. She is the type of person who says things like, "Don't go out spending my money," as if what I make is hers. Granted, she is saying this jokingly, but she owes me $1200 dollars right now and she acts as if I'm evil for asking her to pay me back. She says things like, "I'm your mother and I gave you money whenever you needed it. I remember when you were crying about money and I never asked you to pay me back."

I had to step away from my computer for a second to clear all the expletives out of my head before continuing.

She's my mother and I think as a mother, a real mother, you give without expectation and that you have an unconditional positive regard for your children. In return, when your children grow up they return that, but not to the degree that you gave it. I am an adult and I shouldn't have to raise my parent. I'm trying to build my own life now and I could use the money that she has no intention of returning to me so I can follow her instructions.

She's been meaner than usual lately and I think it's because she found a guy who will just hang out with her though she cares nothing for him. He proposed and she accepted because she figured he was the best she could get. So, needless to say, she doesn't need any of the occupants of this house as a mirror anymore.

Today, she came home and looked in her room and saw her expensive new TV was on. It was probably on because she forgot to turn it off in her haste to get out of the house before me this morning. That doesn't surprise me at all. She swore and then she asked me if I had turned on her TV and then she asked my brother who also said no. She then went through the trouble of putting up this little love note for me, my brother and my uncle.

Makes you all warm and fuzzy inside doesn't it?