Digging Deeper

So I just got back from seeing my counselor. Fifty five minutes of guts spewing around the room was actually not so bad today. Patty has a way of listening and then asking a seemingly insignificant question at a seemingly insignificant time and BAM! - you've figured out yet another little cog in your web of being; your existance. Things that make life so interesting.

Since I have been out of work I have been thinking much more. Remembering my history, looking up old friends and trying to bring my old life back into focus. Mostly for story fodder. I am trying to write stories - or a story, however it works out. I have alot of experiences that I have buried under oodles of years worth of other experiences. I try to keep the easy light hearted fun ones on the top layer, where I can find them easily when I want a good laugh or a gentle smile. The ones that are buried farther down are a bit more on the dramatic side - and usually not very pleasant. My psyche looks kinda like the walls of an archeological dig - the cute veggie eating herd animals with the bugs and bunnies on the top layer and the carnivorous and parasitical loners down in the dangerous deeper layers.

So this whole writing thing I am trying to do - and the therapy thing I do are a really good combination because they feed off of each other. Synergy I think you call it. It feels like a win/win combo. I hope I can make all the effort prove fruitful by producing good stories on paper.

I don't know that I understand the people who want to read all the dramatic crap that I keep down in the dungeon with the ghosts, but... well... even I like to watch Ghosthunters on television sometimes.

I read a couple of books I really liked

They were written by a man named Christopher Morley. "Parnasus on Wheels" was written in 1917 and "The Haunted Bookshop" was written in 1918. Both books contain the same main character. Some of the wording and generational references were unknown to me, so I had to look them up, but most of the language is easy for me to read. The stories are not literary by any means; this simple style makes me feel good.

The main character, Roger Mifflin, is wonderful! I would love to have him as a friend. Small in stature, but large in heart; Roger is a creative, brave, reasonable man. He loves books and many of his friends are found within them. He has built a sort of gypsy cart - like a recreational vehicle that is pulled by Peg, an old mare. He fixed this wagon to sell books from... with flaps on the outside that fold up to expose his library. He buys and sells books in the New England countryside. He calls this van a Parnassus on wheels; a sort of travelling container for the literary muses. He has a terrier dog that travels with him named Boc - and he meets many people and adventure along the way. I wont give away the stories to you, but if you want some feel good reading - these two fill the bill.

Thank you Laura, for giving me "The Haunted Bookshop" for my birthday.

i'm sad about my old pets

abbey got a bath yesterday and we dried her with the blow dryer. she looks like a yellow dandelion. emma did not get a bath. emma will smell bad regardless of how many baths she takes. she is mostly hound - and hounds stink in a special sort of way. abbey is a golden retreiver.

abbey ran away when we were gone over Christmas vacation. She was found about seven miles from home. when we returned from vacation - she did it again. both times a passerby picked her up and brought her home. our phone number is on her collar. i'm very happy they did that, because it can be expensive to get a run away dog out of the pound.

so, why does abbey run away? she will be twelve years old in october. emma will be twelve in february. abbey looks and acts younger than emma. emma is the alpha dog; has bossed abbey around for nearly twelve years. emma owns the world. abbey owns nothing...unless emma says she can own it. i think i might run away too if that were my situation.

so - we decided to see if boyd can live with abbey in the house. boyd's allergies have been getting worse with time, and mine seem not so bad anymore. so far, he does not seem very bothered by her. she is very clean now and she is not panting her breath into the room. she feels quite special being in the house. emma is sad though. when we call abbey into the house, we call them both in through the side door... they march through the living room and emma leaves out the front door. abbey stays inside.

boyd has been taking abbey for walks for about a month. she enjoys them. emma cannot walk very far anymore. emma's dachshund and corgi parts are disabling her more and more as time passes. emma also has tumors on her chest and belly. they dont seem to bother her, but eventually they will. today emma has seemed so tired...i wonder if it is just sadness.

i spent more time outside with emma today while abbey was on her walk. she seemed happy with me, but she did not want to play much...she just laid in the shade. (it was a warm day).

my sixteen year old cat smokey is quite perturbed by the dog being in her domain. she is deaf and slow, but she still bats at abbey if she gets near her food; and yells at her in her annoying old lady voice.

the last gold retriever i had before abbey passed away at 10 years old. when i was younger my family had german shepherds and they lived to about 13 years...but i think that may be because they had to be put down due to their hips failing. german shepherds have weak hips in general.

i dont know why i am posting this. i guess i am just sad about my animal situation. they are all old and will probably die within the next couple of years.

my llama, magnet, is old also. i think he is eighteen years old...but i should check his records; he might be older. llamas can live to thirty, but his stall mate died at twenty years.

New Year, New Resolve, New - Me??

For the last several years I resolved to NOT make any resolutions, because I was always breaking them. Last year I had a goal that was pretty successful. I would not call it a resolution in the beginning, because I didn't want to jinx it - but it was a resolution just the same. I lost 80 pounds. I had 35 more to go when I lost my job mid-October. It is amazing what depression does to my eating habits. I have gained 15 pounds since October 16th - and I resolve to take those off, along with the additional 35 to get to my ultimate goal. So - 50 pounds off this year.

When I lost the original 80 pounds, I did not exercise. I only went to work. My job often involved walking and lifting and sometimes moving very quickly, so there was some exercise, but not much really. This time I will exercise. I want to tone my core and improve my cardio health and breathing capacity. I want to be able to climb Mt Whitney in late July with my husband and kids. It is over 12,000 feet high, so the breathing is an important factor; one which exercise will help significantly.

Another change I am making is with my reading habits. I want to read more books. I read alot as a kid. Since I am not working I will have the time and I love going to the library. I was going to try and read 2 books per week, but that may be a bit harsh. So - my goal is 150 pages per week.

I want to hone my writing skills also. My Grandma always wanted me to write books, so I am officially working at it now. With the help of my daughter's education and literary talents, I will commit to writing at least 100 words five days a week.

I am still pondering the next one. I want to let my hair color grow out. I dye my hair brown. It has been brown most of my life. I experimented with a few variations, but brownish is what I was born with. At 53 years old, my hair is mostly white now. I'd like to let it go white. I've said that many many times...only to cave in and get it colored when an occasion of some sort rears its head. (Like a job interview). We'll see how it goes.

I want to cut back on the caffeine again

I hope that in one year we can all look back and be happy with our decisions and choices of 2010.

Happy New Year!

a dark and stormy night

It actually was a dark and stormy night when Jennifer left the house to walk 9 miles to her boyfriend's home. She'd just had another fight with her parents and needed to clear her head. One of those 'I'm never going home again' moments. She hooked up the family dog; an 80 pound female German Shephard named Kleina Pupschon, (little doll in German), to a lead, and the two of them took off into the night. It was easy to feel fearless at 17 years old with a heart full of anger and a protective dog at your side.

Seventeen year old girls are women. It doesn't matter who has what opinion - the fact is - she is a woman. And when two women try to live in the same house - fireworks go off, trains collide and sometimes words that are best left un-said - are spoken. Jennifer and her Mother had not seen eye to eye on life for a couple of years. Weird thing was, they both wanted the same things...respect, love, acceptance. But family dynamics can be strange things and, sadly, the two women never fully acquired those feelings towards each other. Is it truly fair to expect that though? How can you be a mother and a friend at the same time? Is it possble? Probable? Advisable?

Jennifer and Kleina walked quickly down the wet streets, Jennifer's anger welled up in a tight fist in her chest. She needed understanding, she needed comfort. Kleina understood her job and she did it well. As they passed the closed shops uptown, the guys standing in the alley behind the liquor store looked and whistled, but when they saw the growling dog, no chase ensued. Jennifer walked faster, her heart beating fast and hard. She was appreciative of the police station coming up on the right side of the road. She and Kleina stopped to rest just outside the parking lot; Waited to catch her breath, and - until she felt safe enough to go on.

The farther they walked the more the anger lessened and fear set in. Jennifer had led a sheltered existence and a Friday night on Whittier Blvd was not a venue for her to display her strengths. Kleina would have to do that for her. The hormonal cruisers on the blvd did not bother her as she passed all the regular haunts of the populars. when she finally got to the turning point the muscles in her thighs were twitching. She'd not walked this far since the March of Dimes Fundraiser. Once away from the lights and crowd of the Blvd, the neighborhoods went back to being friendly and normal. The sinisterness faded into rare shadows. The Christmas lights and the well lit home interiors had a cheerly glow, a welcoming feel. By the time she'd reached her boyfriend's family's house, the importance of the fight seemed to have withered into a lame excuse for a long walk in the dark. She wondered if her mom had forgotten too.

Jennifer's essence loved her mother dearly. But the Jennifer that had to live in the world - just could not seem to find the right timing, the right mood, the right things to say. It was like she and her Mother spoke different languages.

Posting stuf on the internet...(Internet)

The whole world can see my typos, my spelling errors, and my life stories. Wow! Kinda scary - and kinda cool and kinda dangerous. I love naivete. Is that how you spell it? I love simplicity and innocence. Unfortunately life keeps showing me that those two qualities are more often hazards or liabilities.

I do like keeping a record of the things I write. A diary ... sort of. But I think from now on I will go private. Totally private. Well, as "Totally" private as Big Brother will let me.

Then again - what is the point? "They" already have all my information. They know what I look like, what I am going through, what I buy, what I dream about, probably. I mean, when I write email - the Google ads next to the text are all about the text of my letters...I think they might keep that info for use somewhere in the future. (insert sarcastic wink here). Sounds like Sci-Fi Fodder...or, maybe it was in 1974. I think we've seen movies about the abuse of this techno power stuff, eh?

Why do I like to write? I'm not good at it. I am not a person who can or will craft an elegant sentence. I appreciate it when I read it, but I have a hard time communicating. I find I am usually too lazy to say complete sentences. Thoughts usually stay in my head...and not even in the conscience area - where words are almost audible...but I rely more on the inner voice - that is not quite a voice. She is smarter than I am and she takes care of me. Sometimes. Writing is a way for me to express myself I guess. Wow - that's profound ( grimace here). I find I have to force my self to come up with the words. Like I used to say to my children when they were crying - "Say the words, use your words if you want me to understand you". But I do not feel like a child. Most of the time I just feel too tired to speak. Too apathetically depressed to think you would want to hear what I say...or too lazy to even form an opinion about situations. Nothing really matters anyway. And what I think of a subject makes no difference to anyone.

Wow I'd really betternot post this. The men in the white coast will lock me away and stuff medicine down my throat.

smile

i cannot help the smile on my face. you see, i have ingested almost an entire bottle of pinot grigio and i am enjoying the beautiful wonders of my mind. i have a wonderful family...husband and children who love me. regardless of the life that continues to go on about me, I WILL enjoy this time that I have on the earth.
i have been destroying the fleas that have been vampirically killing my poor old cat. I use the flea comb on her twice a day and I decided to put the flea posion on her once again. I have been afraid that the poison would hurt her because she is 16 years old. She was dying you see - and we decided that if the poison killed her - it would be better than being slowly eaten by fleas. Poor baby. AND!!! She is so much better now! She is happier - and HUNGRIER than ever! I bought her some Fancy Feast at K-Mart the other day and she is eating and drinking and happy again. No Fleas were found on her today. I am soooo happy about this. I think this makes me the happiest I've been all month! Yay.
I used the flea comb on Emma today for the second time this week. Emma is a 13 year old mixed breed. We thought she was going to be a Lap Dog when we bought her from a neighbor. "She's part Dachshund and part Corgi" they told us as we handed over the $30. They forgot to tell us that her Daddy was a Rottweiller. Emma weighs 60 pounds and has 12" long legs. Emma was not happy about being called to sit for a combing. She saw that small silver comb as an instrument of torture. Even so, she was obedient and slowly approached me on the bench and stayed still for her combing -She is a good girl, after all. The weird thing though - Abbey, my yellow dog who is sort of a golden retreiver, came when I called Emma. Both dogs had that sheepish look on their faces. They did not want to be subjected to THE COMB. But the weird thing is that Abbey waited for her turn! Yup, she laid down and waited for me to finish Emma and then she marched right up and laid down for her toture. Weird little dog! I love my dogs. I think we three share neurosis. God love us all!!