portishead radio on pandora has been a balm on my soul. it goes from rjd2 to bill withers to hybrid to etta james to air and on and on. if they ever design an implant that allows me to have this piped to my head any and everywhere, i shall buy one. one day i’ll be able to trick someone into believing i need a smartphone.

also, i would like an adrien brody (or reasonable facsimile) of my very own. please and thank you.

in the footsteps of my father, i have been diagnosed with obsessive compulsive disorder … which doesn’t change anything for me. yet another line item to add to the litany of words and noise that sometimes serve to define (excuse) ourselves. i feel very indulgent and western by going to a psychiatrist and i continue the trend here. how exciting for you.

it may be that because i am staring down the barrel of age 30 and have yet to do a good godsdamned thing with myself that I am getting even more introspective than usual. (perhaps i should add narcissist to my list of diagnoses.) i feel like such a twit. like there aren’t a million better thoughts than "have i fulfilled my potential as a citizen of this dirt heap in the backwoods of the cosmos?" right. twit status confirmed. i’ve wasted almost all of my 20s…and the snarky nihilist in me shouts back "GOOD," while the myopic 10 year old that still resides inside me, she who read the encyclopedia for fun one summer, rolls her eyes, shoots me a petulant look and then the bird.

although silly and painfully socially awkward, i am a grounded sort who was born 40. i can be calculating and cunning but more importantly i worry every issue from all possible angles. impulse control is only lacking when books or electronics are involved. unlike my brothers who have about as much common sense and guile as 8 week old puppies. my parents have always felt that i’ve got plenty of common sense, that i would always land on my feet and they would never have to worry about me. it mostly felt like disregard on this side of things but it’s nice to be appreciated, i guess. at the very least no one is losing sleep over me, goddess forfend.

i’ve been writing fiction but it’s not what you might imagine. mostly porn and entirely on paper.
i’ve shocked you, haven’t i?
paper??
what the hell???
i know.
it seems the keyboard makes my brain seize. an assortment of pens and a .25 notebook and i have written more in the last month than i have in years. now if i can just learn when to use who/whom i’ll be set, but i suppose that’s what editors are for.

the osama death celebrating really bothered and angered me. the fact that there were people in my immediate personal space doing it bothered and angered me more. remind me again why i know you? how did i get here?

and now a list of things (because really, no entry of mine is complete without a list) that i have under the heading of *smiley face* (to be interpreted however you want)

• fountain pen with ebony green ink
• pocket watch
• waistcoat
• churchill chair
• book strap
• gauged ears
• canada
• safety razor
• bicycle
• leather

obviously, i am turning into a gentleman…a mostly antique and queer one.

Most persons with any style or substance knows that the final match of the World Cup is right around the bend. I’ve been dumbly watching conversations about fútbol, fotbal, le foot, fußball, podosfero, sakka, football, and good old soccer. One of my friends, whose blog I read on a regular basis, is a HUGE fan of the sport. Me? I’m a fan of outcomes. There are three reasons I’ve never watched a sports match, from start to finish. The first my attention span is total crap. If you look away, you’ll miss something (thank goddess for highlight reels and instant replay). The second, I cannot take the stress of the ups and downs of a match. They’re winning! They’re losing! Oh god THEY’RE HURT! Even if my team is obliterating the opposition, I can’t stand it because I feel bad for the other team and can’t bear to watch. Heh. Third…the rivalries. Oh god. They tear families apart and make newborn kittens cry.

Anyway. The US team was knocked out fairly early (but at least they qualified, right canada? ) so I have been without country for the better part of the games. I asked my Dutch friend who she was rooting for, (ORANJE OF COURSE.) which is kind of a dumb question, I suppose. Apparently only Americans cheer on teams outside of their own country for the cup. All my european and american friends understand since the US team kind of sucks, but they held on a little longer this year than normal so… NICE TRY GUYS!

I was complaining that I COULD NOT watch the matches (for the above reasons) but my IRC friends were having *none of that nonsense* and they found me a stream so I could watch the Spain v. Paraguay match. I’ll interject here that the only sports I’ve ever attempted to watch have been basketball and American Football. Two of THE MOST boring sports ever. but this…was exciting. This actually held my attention. If you don’t know anything about american football…they can’t move 2 feet without stopping, resetting the field, and starting the clock again. It seems like a single game takes eleventy hours. but this…when it was over i was left feeling like it hadn’t gone on long enough.

So. All this to say: SOCCER… I LIKE IT! Like it enough to watch it year round…probably not. For starters, I wouldn’t know where to being. I’m only able to watch the world cup matches because AT&T signed an agreement with ESPN so I get to watch it online for free. Anyway, I’m rooting for ORANJE for the cup. We’ll see.

A consult was performed, a procedure was scheduled, a puppy was sedated. Now, a week later, I am finally calm over the situation. We brought her home with stretchy purple thing wrapped around her, a few pieces of gauze, and a bottle of death-inducing pain pills (that we did not administer). The *giant* suture she came home with was bad enough to make me want to cry. The way she was listlessly wandering around the office, as if she were in a very strange dream, made me coo and rub her head, telling her everything was ok and i loved her. She laid on a nest of dog pillows i made for her in the floor of the office and whimpered softly as the anesthesia wore off. Needless to say, I felt pretty bad about putting her through all that.

Then the infection started. I knew it would happen. I mean, she’s a dog. She walks through the grass, she lays on the floor, she licks her own butt and she licks her own wounds. You’ll note that while the vet did send us home with the death pills, he did not send us home with antibiotics, an e collar, or a drainage tube. I thought this was a little strange but what do *I* know. I didn’t go to animal doctor school. At 3am, early Tuesday morning the area under the suture had gotten so filled with fluid that it was starting to resemble a fraying baseball. She was panting pretty heavily and pacing. I woke Hugo up to confirm my diagnosis (“It’s fscked up, right?” … “Yeah. It’s fscked.”) and made a phone call to the animal ER.

This makes my third trip there and I like their team quite a bit. While we were there something finally gave way and the fluid started seeping out of my poor dog, all over the floor. She had a fever which pointed to an infection which means our vet is a retard and I need to learn to speak up. A credit card swipe and 45 minutes later, they wheel Coco out on a metal table with wheels. She now appeared as I had expected her to when I picked her up the first time. Totally stoned with a very well bandaged side (stretchy blue this time!), a drain tube stitched in place, an e collar, and antibiotics. It took 3 of us to get Coco, a 90 pound, dog shaped lump of spaghetti, into the back seat of my 2 door coupe. Coco is a rock star though and she managed to stand up and walk out of my car after a little encouragement. If she hadn’t done that… we’d have probably taken a nap in the car until the sun came up.

I finally got in bed and asleep sometime around 7am. At 1pm I pulled off her dressings and it looked 100x better than the night before. It’s looking even better now, almost 24 hours later. As for me, I’m looking for a new vet. I don’t know why I don’t trust my own instincts more. That’s something I need to work on.

Girl & Cow by KCzarzasty

I have contracted…what feels like…a chest cold…or it could be wicked allergies moved south. Either way, there are cinderblocks where my lungs once were.

the cat has fallen in line with the family (finally). she knows exactly what’s up with all of us now. ignore dogs. act adorable at tall man person, stay out from under feet. bump noses and snuggle with short female person. all activities will result in head scritchies, food, treats, and a warm places to go into kitty comas. i did make the mistake of standing beside the cat tree last night. she took a swipe at me (because she’s kinda retarded) and she knocked my glasses off. she had her claws out because i heard her paw clink when it made contact. I grabbed her by her silly kitty neck scruff and explained to her in very srs bizness tones that was not good kitty behavior. she looked chastised for about 4 seconds and then it was back to crazy maggie hour.

coco

on friday, coco turned 3. she and i snuggled and gave her extra goodies. i was thinking about when we got her and all the things that are different now. i wish sometimes she was a little quicker to warm up to people so they could see how sweet she really is. there are advantages to having a spastic and protective dog though. :3

teh gamez

i’ve been looking for ways to keep the ball rolling with things in life. go to the gym. get reward. do a load of laundry. get reward. sad, maybe but life was getting DULL and i needed a hobby.

over the holidays steam had a sale and I bought quite a few games. This was strange for me because I have always hated on PC gaming while singing the praises of consoles. The Wii, bless it, and the PS2 are still good systems but sometimes a girl wants something different. so i got these games and well… the video card in my PC sucked to the point where it was stealing any potential joy out of all these new games.

apparently the new hobby i wanted is very similar to my old hobby…spending money. bah. i bought a new video card and put it in last week and have been enjoying playing games on a PC. it occurred to me that I never enjoyed PC gaming because all of my computers were mostly built to execute MIGHTY POWERFUL SPREADSHEET CALCULATIONS i don’t know what this world is coming to but as long as my frames/sec doesn’t lag, i’m in.

Corsair H-50 Sealed Liquid CPU Cooling by bekabug

1. I finally moved webhosts. Blue host is win.
2. I joined a gym
3. We got a new roommate

That’s about all the retrospection I can handle for one post. Onward!

I’m giving up dairy for 3 months to see if my breathing improves. I’ve had a low level sinus infection since Thanksgiving. I can’t seem to shake it and mammary secretions seem to make it worse and the internet is backing me up on this so…goodbye gooey goodness. If it doesn’t improve I’ll head to the dr. I’m not wasting good money so someone can tell me what I already know. (You’re fat. Oh…and here, have some antibiotics.) I keep rinsing my sinuses out with a neti pot but some mornings I really feel like I need a pressure washer.

A partially related sidenote: I should start eating more salmon and fewer (no?) chicken nuggets. Mechanically separated chicken parts that have been breaded and deep fried are not food (no matter how delicious and crunchy they are). I need to find a good source of frozen salmon. We’re a bit too far inland for me to trust something being “fresh.”

Last week someone on LJ decided that they had become too big and important to keep me (and many others) on their friends list. I’m conflicted about this. On one hand they have every right. On the other… how pretentious. Not that I don’t have my pretentious moments (and they are filled with some breath taking twattery, admittedly) but if Neil Gaiman can be and OMEGA MEGA EPIC author of the highest caliber and still manage to keep a public blog then I don’t know who this person thinks they are fooling. I know sometimes we have to make grand gestures to keep ourselves on the up and up but ugh. So many blogs I had been reading for years, ended in 2009 leaving my RSS reader with nothing more than a “Dear John, It’s been real and it’s been fun.”

They don’t owe me anything. Even though I’d go to their site, read their stories, click their ads, leave comments, laugh, cry, and be “involved” through their sharing… Maybe I’m too clingy. Maybe I’m too needy. Maybe I feel abandoned a little too easily. I’ve outgrown people and people have outgrown me. Most of the time it is nothing personal but every now and again you can’t help but feel that there is something wrong with you. That you keep flinging yourself into a voyeuristic, one sided relationship where you interact, hoping that someone will interact back.

I’ve thought that maybe the trick is to not expect people to reciprocate and I am at the point now where I fully expect people not to give a fart, let alone a shit, whether I read their mindless drivel or leave a comment. Negative self fulfilling prophecies haven’t been my thing since high school so I’m returning to that good old standby: wide-eyed, hopeful, foolish optimism followed with a well timed “fuck you,” when things go sour.

This isn’t a jab at any of my dear readers. I love you. If you’re reading then that is one person more than i’d ever expected to read this crap.

I mean well, I’m well well, I mean I’m in hell, well I still have my health, at least that’s what they tell me.
If wellness is this, what in hells name is sickness?
But business is business and business runs in the family.

We tend to bruise easily.
Mad in the blood.
I’m telling you cuz I want you to know me – know me & my family.
Amanda Palmer – Runs In The Family

Cobalt SS by bekabug