Happy Samhain

Well, here is the list of all the things I intend to remove from my life (read, my brain) this year.

1- Self doubt
2- Anger
3- Insecurity
4- Isolation
5- Social-ineptitude
6- Loneliness
7- Emptiness
8- Indecision
9- Stagnation
10- Frustration
11- Hopelessness
12- Dependency
13- Inefficacy
14- Confinement
15- Mistrust
16- Inadequacy
17- Bitterness
18- Cynicism
19- Reluctance
20- Resentment

Bitching and New Beginnings

So, tomorrow is Samhain (or Halloween to most of you). I have two points to make about this.

1- Samhain is supposed to be a time for new beginnings and letting go of all the things you no longer want in your life. That is along with honoring the dead, which is sort of the main purpose since the veil between the worlds is at it's thinnest. So I think tomorrow I will make a list of all the things I plan to remove from my life this year.

2- Samhain seems to be the only pagan holiday that most people have ever heard of. So it's the one that gets mentioned on TV most often. Unfortunately, nobody ever bothers to Google the pronouciation of it beore they talk about it. Seriously, how fucking hard is that? Dictionary.com will actually pronounce it for you, so you know you're getting it right. Yet, I have never seen a sinlge show pronouce it correctly. The two that come to mind are Supernatural which pronounced it "sam-hane" (which makes sense because that is what it looks like) and True Blood which pronounced it almost the same but with an extra A in the middle "sam-a-hane" which makes no sense at all. It's "sah-win" by the way.

Also, Supernatural claimed that it was named after a demon, which is total bullshit and kind of pissed me off. 

Are You Kidding Me!?

So, you know how I said that we were going to get Frontier, and that they were going to mail us the stuff that we need, and that it should be here tomorrow? Well, today we got a phone call from Frontier saying that they had cancelled our order because it turns out that we can't get their service at our house after all.....oops. What is the deal with everyone who has anything to do with internet service being a total incompetent asshole?

I'm getting there!

Fuck Hughesnet and Everything They Stand for

I thought I would go ahead and fill you guys in on the whole internet situation at my dad's house. The internet just randomly cut off about two weeks ago. Naturally (since this happens with Hughesnet all the fucking time!) we just assumed it would come back on eventually. It didn't. Then a couple of days later, we receive a letter from Hughesnet warning us that if we didn't upgrade our service they would cut it off. Mind you, we received this letter after it had already been cut off. So, we schedule an appointment for them to come install whatever the fuck it was that they needed to install to update our service. The guy was supposed to show up last Tuesday "in the morning" well he didn't. In fact, he didn't show up at all. So that night my dad called them and told them that the guy hadn't showed up. They apologized and said that someone would be there the following day "between 1 and 4". When we still hadn't seen or heard from them at 3:00, my dad called to ask them what was going on. He was then informed that they wouldn't actually be able to be there until this Wednesday.

Since we were both quite fed up with Hughesnet's bullshit, on top of their already ridiculously unreliable service. My dad looked into it and found out that we can actually get Frontier where we live (I know nothing about it, but it can't possibly be any worse than Hughesnet) and they can just mail us the equipment we need. So, by the end of the week we should have our internet back, and hopefully we will never have to deal with Hughesnet again.

Resurrection

Sorry there was no post yesterday. I stayed at my dad's house the whole day and, I don't think I mentioned this before but, we no longer have internet access at all. There was this whole ridiculous fiasco with Hughesnet, but that is a subject for another time.

Anyway, the reason I stayed home all day is because my dad and I are attempting to bring the Subrusaurus back from the dead. You see, I've been using my mom's car for a long time now, and I finally realized that I am not going to be able to afford to buy myself a new car anytime in the foreseeable future. So yesterday, my dad and I spent the entire day repairing all the holes in the body of my old car. It actually turned out looking a lot nicer than I expected. The next step is working on the transmission to see if we can get her to go in reverse again. It may also require some sort of complex ritual (possibly involving a blood sacrifice).

Does anyone have an Urn of Osiris I can borrow? 

We'll See What Happens

So there was a new girl in class last night, which was good and bad. Good because she seemed pretty cool, and also seemed really into it, which is nice. Plus, I never see any other girls there. I think there are some in the other classes, but I've never met them. It was bad because 1-any time there is more than one person in class, one person ends up standing around for a good portion of class 2-she just started, so I ended up doing a bunch of stuff that I had already done. It worked out okay though because I'm sure I still need plenty of practice with that stuff. Anyway, who knows maybe I'll end up having someone good to spar with.

Probably not like this. 

Angry Nerdy Rant Part 2

This is only vaguely related to the post from yesterday, but I called it the same thing because it's equally angry and equally nerdy. I just finished reading Neverwhere, by Neil Gaiman. The basic story is this guy, Richard, ends up in (almost like) a parallel universe called "London Below." He's still in London, but suddenly he is invisible to all of the people around him and he becomes aware of all of these strange things that no one else can see, and has access to a bunch of hidden places within London. He meets a whole different society who are also invisible to the rest of the world. Anyway, the whole time he's talking about how much he wants to go back to his old life. It seems like stories are always written that way, whoever it is that end ups in a strange situation is always desperate to get back to their normal, boring life. Is it just me, or does everyone else find themselves going "What the fuck is wrong with you!? Why would you want to go back!?" I just can't imagine, no matter how strange or dangerous it might be, choosing to give up something magical and exciting for this stupid shit.

Plus, Richard actually worked in an office building, which is one of the only things that I can imagine that would be even more dull than my life. 

Angry, Nerdy Rant

Every once in a while, I'll read a book or watch a show or movie that just feel incredibly relevant to my life. The new episode of Arrow was on last night and it was one of those. There were several lines that just really resonated with me, along with the whole theme of the episode in general. There was this one scene in which Laurel asks Oliver to train her. She talks about having this fire inside her that she can't get rid of. In another scene, she talks about having anger that she doesn't know what to do with. That's pretty much how I feel all the time. I am constantly pissed off and I just feel like I need to be doing something, and the fact that I don't know what to do just makes me more pissed off.

Also in the episode, Malcolm is training Thea and (even though he might be kind of evil) he has some pretty great advice. He tells her that "pain is inevitable and suffering is optional" and that "the only way to forge steel is to temper it with fire." The thing that bugs me about that though is that I'm totally okay with that. I'm all for learning to endure pain, and facing struggle to become stronger. There is this scene where he has her hold her hand over a bowl of cold water while he pours molten wax over it. The goal being for her to hold it there and let it burn instead of putting it under the water. The whole time I'm thinking "Let me do that! I can do that!" What I can't do is get up every morning knowing that I'm going to have to do the same meaningless bullshit that I did the previous day, and put up with all the same stupid frustrations as the previous day, all the while knowing that it's all going nowhere.

Unfortunately, I'm pretty sure that in the real world you can't just decide to become a superhero because you're sick of your life. 

Last Time, I Swear

Okay this is the last post about my stupid hair, I promise. I just wanted to say that part of the reason I decided to actually change my hair instead of just dealing with the bald-ish patch was because I felt like it was time to make a change anyway. It wasn't really something I had thought about in advance, but the morning of the day that I fucked up my hair I was reading my latest witch book and it made mention of ouroboros, which I had never even heard of until I watched Hemlock Grove and since then has turned up several times. Anyway, after I read that, I thought "Wait, I think I dreamed about a snake last night." I started trying to remember the dream I'd had and realized that not only was it about a snake, it was a snake that suddenly grew legs. Then a couple hours later I cut a big chunk out of my hair. If that's not The Powers' way of telling me to make a change, I don't know what is.

^Ouroboros symbolizes recreating yourself. Snakes in general tend to represent rebirth and transformation (shedding old skin). 

Good Enough

Well, the whole hair bleaching thing didn't go exactly as planned (huge surprise there, since basically nothing I do ever goes as planned) but it worked out okay, for the most part. I went over to the Rite Aid and bought a bleach kit (for anyone interested, Splat! is cruelty-free and available in drug stores. I did my research.), immediately came back, mixed it up, and put it on. I let it process for an hour. I had actually intended to leave it a little longer than that, but it started burning.....a lot. So I washed it out only to find a truly obnoxious yellow color. Like really, really yellow. Fortunately for my pride, and unfortunately for my finances, my massage client didn't show up last night. So no one outside of my immediate family actually saw it. Of course, the wise thing to do would have been to just deal with the yellow for a couple of days and then bleach it again. So, naturally, I got my sister to go back to Rite Aid and buy me another bleach kit, and bleached it again. I only left it on for half an hour the second time, because I became legitimately concerned that I was burning my skin off. Anyway, in the end I got a fairly decent shade of platinum blonde, a very sore scalp, and red patches all over the back of my neck.

 

Mandatory Makeover

It looks like (if things go as I hope they will) I will be blonde again, at least for a little while. This is not a decision I made in advance, it's a necessity. If you're not sure how that's possible, here let me explain. You see, I've been cutting my own hair for years. The idea of paying someone else to do it just seems absurd to me. Since I'm never going to be happy with it anyway, what difference does it really make? Lately, I've been cutting it with one of those straight razor type things that they sometimes use to do texturizing, or whatever. So far, I have liked my hair a lot better this way. However, I hadn't changed the blade in the razor for quite some time and it was starting to get really dull and difficult to use. So today when I decided to cut my hair I thought "I might as well go ahead and change the blade." Unfortunately, I had forgotten how much more efficient the razor is when it has a new blade. I took a big fucking chunk right out of the front of my hair. It looks totally ridiculous. I tried brushing the rest of my hair every which way to cover up the not-quite-bald-but-damn-close-to-it spot, to no avail. So I started wracking my brain for anything I could do to make it a little less obvious. The only thing that came to mind was bleaching my hair back to the white/blonde that I had a few years back. The idea being that if my hair and my scalp are nearly the same color people might not realize that my scalp is plainly visible. The problem is, I'm not sure how well the bleach is going to be able to get out the black dye that I've been using. So, we'll see what happens.

 

Whatever Works, I Guess

I have been in another of those slumps during which I can not seem to make myself get out of bed on time. However, this morning I was up and about at 5:00. Would you like to know how I managed this? Well it appears that the one things that will get me up and fully awake instantaneously is a yellow jacket stinging me in my sleep. Yes, a yellow jacket got in my bed while I was sleeping and stung me on the hand at 5am. Fucking bastards!

Well That Was Productive

Last night when I went to class I noticed immediately that the room I'm usually in was unusually empty. The only person there was some kid I had never seen before who was just sort of hanging around and obviously waiting for someone. This was weird because the kids' boxing class before my class always runs over by at least 5 minutes. I also noticed that there was some sort of large class going on in the back room which usually only has 2 or 3 guys. Also, my instructor was nowhere to be found. I waited around for about fifteen minutes, then I called my sister and asked her to check my email and make sure that class hadn't been cancelled. Nope, no email. So I just kept hanging around, wandering in the hallway, thinking that maybe he would show up. At 7:30 I finally said "fuck it" and went back to pick up my stuff. When I did, the kid (and by kid I mean like 11 years old) came over and asked me if I wanted to go into the class. I told him that I was just waiting for my instructor, but that I didn't think he was coming. The kid asked me what his name was and when I told him, he ran into the back and came out with my instructor. Apparently, they had some sort of seminar going on for all the guys who worked there, and someone was suppose to tell me.....and they didn't. Fan-fucking-tastic.

Why Not?

Every once in a while, I go on these weird semi-manic cleaning sprees. Anyone who knows me can tell you that most of the time I simply cannot tolerate housework. It just seems so fucking futile. You clean something and then the next day it looks like you never cleaned it. However, once in a while I suddenly decide that everything needs to be clean and straightened up. So the past couple of days, I've been cleaning out all of my old shit; throwing things away, packing up stuff to take to Goodwill, etc. Then today I decided to run the vacuum and realized that the carpet on the stairs was just never going to come clean. Since I've had some carpet removal experience recently I just said "Fuck it! I'm taking it up!"

But.......Why......?

The weirdest fucking thing happened to me today. I got a Facebook message from a guy saying that he was told to message me. When I asked him why, he said that some random guy told him that I was a model. Yeah, I know. So I check out the guys profile and it turns out that he is a photographer. So it at least (kind of) makes sense that he would be looking for a model. What I couldn't understand was why anyone would tell him that I was one or, for that matter, who the fuck was telling him anything about me. After six or seven messages, I finally determined that the guy who told him to message me was this guy who had been hitting on me on Facebook for a while. He seemed like an okay guy, so I wrote back and forth with him for quite some time. After a while though, I realized that our conversations simply weren't going anywhere, so I kind of just stopped writing back. I know that's probably not the best approach, but I just didn't really know what to say to him anymore. Anyway, at that point, he apparently decided that the best course of action would be to message a random photographer and tell him that I'm a model. What I still can't quite figure out is, was this him actually trying to help me out in some way that I don't understand? or did he just think it would be funny? or what the fuck was the motivation behind this?

Just a Few Updates

I thought I would fill you guys in on a few things that have been going on, none of which really seem to be worthy of a full post on their own. 

1- The carpet of death is officially gone! I meant to mention this before and just forgot. I think it took me three days to get rid of it because, once I got started, I just wanted it the fuck out! 

2- Beneath the carpet of death was the ugliest, and most absurd floor ever......ever. I had completely forgotten what was under there and it is absolutely ridiculous. It's wood floor painted to look like "tile" the main color being sort of a royal purple, and the "grout lines" being fire engine red. Yeah, that shit is getting painted soon. 

3- Before the floor painting, my next project is going to be attempting to fill in the pig mud with wood chips. My dad got a shit-ton of them from the guys who came through and trimmed the trees up our road. and I am just going to keep dumping them into the mud until it stops being disgusting.  

4- After my latest DVD player fiasco, I have decided that I am (at least for the time being) giving up on workout DVDs. I simply cannot handle something that crucial to my sanity breaking on me. So, I have put together my own workout, using bits and pieces from all of the various ones I have done over the years. I now have a good, solid hour of stuff that I think is really important, with no time-wasting-bullshit in between. 

5- For that matter, I am going to make a sincere attempt to depend as little as possible on anything that has the potential to suddenly stop working. We'll see how that goes. 

6- Remember my No Plan Plan? Well, I have realized that the only way I am ever going to be able to give up my absurd fantasies about the future is if I make the present more bearable. Hence pretty much everything on this list. 

Bonus Update- I just found out yesterday that one of my massage clients has been reading my blog. So, if you're reading this, I just thought I would say........

Every Damn Time

I think I have mentioned before how I tend to have exceptionally bad luck with any and all electronic devices. Well, it's starting to get really fucking ridiculous. Honestly just about every electronic device that I have grown attached to, like the ones that I absolutely use on a daily basis, has broken. Sometimes I have managed to get them working again, but lately that has not been the case.

You all know that I have been having to write this blog from my mom's house because my computer broke. Well now, my DVD player sopped working. That may not seem terribly upsetting or especially weird, but it is. 1- I use it EVERY day, not to watch movies, but for my workouts. Remember how I mention I was doing T25? Well, I had just gotten to the point where I wasn't hating it when my DVD player suddenly decides to stop working. This is a very big deal for me because I simply cannot stand to skip exercising, it completely fucks up my whole day! Also, I just got this DVD player a few months ago, there is really no excuse for it breaking this soon. You see, I was using my computer for my workouts but then, long before it broke completely, it stopped playing DVDs. I tried everything I could think of. I cleaned the disk drive, I downloaded a new player, I tried different DVDs, nothing! Now the same thing happens again with a device whose sole purpose is to do the thing it has stopped doing.

And these are far from the only times I have had this issue. I have never bought a new computer for any reason other than mine becoming entirely ruined, and I don't think I have ever had a cell phone that worked properly for more than a month after I got it, and even cars that I drive end up breaking in the most ridiculous ways.

Basically, this ^ is what happens every time I set foot near anything electronic. 

Better Than I Expected

Sorry there was no post yesterday; I was gone all day, and by the time I got back I just couldn't make myself deal with it. My mom, my sister and I went to Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh. I know it sounds kind of boring, and honestly I didn't particularly want to go, but it was actually pretty great. They had some quite unusual plants there that I had never seen before, and the whole place smelled fucking amazing. The best part though, I think, was just the atmosphere of the place. There were a lot of people there (way more than I expected) but it still just had this pleasant, sort of serene vibe about it. Plus, apparently they're really into sustainability, and energy efficiency, and whatnot, which is really cool. I would actually kind of like to go back sometime and just hang out there. 

Anyway, on the way home the GPS took us some ridiculously long, complicated route that took twice as long and required us to pay four separate tolls, hence the lack of blog post.

Also, one of the rooms at Phipps had a bunch of glass sculptures that my sister and I agreed looked very much like the Slender Man. 

Why Fighters Don't Wear Makeup

Last night at class we worked on clinch, particularly different types of knees you can use. This resulted in me developing giant bruises covering my knees from practicing on the punching bag. So, there's my wound for the week.

Then, my instructor and I sparred at it for a while. Because clinch involves a lot of grabbing the other person's head and crushing it up against your body, and because my instructor was wearing a white shirt, he ended up looking like he had just come out of a coal mine. I think I'm probably the only person ever who wears that much eye makeup to martial arts class.

Interesting Development

You know what I realized yesterday? I only really hate the cold when I don't move around enough. As soon as it starts getting the least bit chilly, I am totally miserable. I feel like my whole skin is being eaten alive by the cold, and I just want to curl into a ball (which I sometimes actually do. It doesn't help much.) What I noticed though is that if I'm moving around enough, I don't even notice the cold. So what I'm thinking is, I need to find some way to stay really active all day. This ends up being a problem because a large part of my day involves sitting around, waiting until I have something to do. By the time I do have something to do, I'm freezing and don't want to do it anymore.  Whereas if I stay busy, I also stay warm and therefore motivated. I think I seriously need to find a job that requires actual physical labor, that would cover a pretty large portion of my day. And I need to do it soon because..........

Better Than Nothing

Today I started ripping up the carpet of death. By "started" I mean I took out about a two foot square right inside the doorway. I realized that, if I have to wait until I have the time and motivation to move all of the stuff out of my room and take the carpet up all at once, it was never going to happen. So I've decided that I'll just do it gradually, whenever I feel like it. I'll cut some pieces off, scoot the furniture a little, cut some more off, and then scoot it back. Sure, my room is going to look utterly absurd for a while but whatever, at least I'll eventually get rid of that fucking carpet.

No Offense

I learned something that I found rather interesting recently, and I just thought I would share it with all of you. You know the word "pussy" used to indicate that someone is weak, cowardly, whiny, etc.?Well, it turns out that, when used in this manner, this word has nothing to do with the word used to refer to a vagina. It is, in fact, a shortened version of the word pusillanimous, which actually means cowardly. I, personally, was pretty excited to find this out because I've always rather enjoyed using "pussy" to express the idea of cowardice. I always felt kind of bad using it though because I know some people are offended by the apparently sexist nature of it (perhaps I should have been too?). Now that I know it actually has nothing to do with implying anything negative about women, I feel like I am totally justified it using it

Although, I suppose it still could be considered to be offensive.......

Who Said That?

The other day I had this funny line stuck in my head, and it was bugging the shit out of me because I couldn't remember where it came from. I kept trying to figure out who said it, or even what show it was from. I knew it was something that I had just heard recently, so I kept running through all of the shows I had watched in the past couple of days waiting for one to click. When that didn't work, I tried thinking about different characters from shows I had watched, trying to determine which of them would have been likely to say it. No luck. Finally, after it had been making me crazy for the better part of a day, I realized that it was something that had actually been said to me in real life. That's how little social interaction I have; I just assume that anything I've ever heard must have been from a fictional character. Rather pathetic.

Speaking of my unhealthy attachment to fictional characters, the season premier of Supernatural is tonight! I am ridiculously fucking excited about it! 

Not Exactly What I Was Going For

On a somewhat related note to yesterday's post, I feel like my workouts almost never actually deliver the results I was hoping for. Instead, the parts of my body that I'm trying to work on take for-fucking-ever to show any change at all, meanwhile I end up gaining more muscle than I necessarily wanted in other areas. The things is though, I still don't want to give up on those parts of my workout because I am at least getting some kind of results.

There is a chance that I may eventually end up looking like them ^

I Really Didn't Need Another Reason to Hate the Cold

I have come to a point in my life where I really can't base my self-worth on my accomplishments in life (you know, because I never actually accomplish anything). So, at this point, pretty much all positive feelings I have about myself come from my physical abilities. If I can do something today that I couldn't do yesterday, then I get to feel good about myself. This is sort of okay actually, because that is something that I feel I have a fair amount of control over, at least compared to other aspects of my life. I work hard, I get better, I feel good. Seems fair. Of course, the inverse is also true. If I happen to get worse at something, I feel like absolute shit about myself and it ruins my whole fucking day.

So here's the problem; one of the things that I've been really working on lately is pull-ups, and I've been making pretty good progress. Unfortunately, I still have no other place to do them but from the rafters in the pig barn. Since the weather has gotten colder the last few days I have realized that my hands are totally fucking useless when they're cold. Yesterday I ended up being able to do about half as many pull-ups as I usually do because I just couldn't get my hand to grip properly. There is really nothing that frustrates me more than not being able to do something that I know I should be able to do.

Dean knows the feeling. 

P.S. My dad is supposed to help me put a bar up in the barn soon, so at least my hands will fit around it and I'll have a better chance. 

 

Every Time

Last night at class, we worked on really getting the technique down on some of the basic moves. It turns out there were quite a few things I was doing wrong, but I feel like I was doing a lot better by the end.

Then, at the end of class, my instructor and I sparred until 20 minutes past time for class to be over, which was pretty cool. Naturally though, I couldn't get by without doing at least a few weird, awkward things. After we had been sparring for a while, he said that it seemed like I wasn't throwing real punches because I was trying to protect my face. I wasn't sure how to explain that I wasn't afraid of getting hit, I was just sort of hiding behind my gloves because my mouth guard gives me monkey face, and it makes me self-conscious. Then, I lost one of my fucking earrings and didn't realize it until he stepped on it. At first we thought it was a thumb tack or something, but then I picked it up and realized it was my earring. I apologized and threw it in my bag, and he said "Shouldn't it have a back or something then." I already felt like an asshole for letting my earring stab him in the foot, so I  said "Yeah, but I that's okay, I really don't care." But he proceeded to look for it anyway, and found it for me. So yeah, yet another failed attempt at social interaction on my part.

Me with my mouth guard in. 

Fear = Power

I started reading a new witch book a couple of days ago, Craft of the Wild Witch by Poppy Palin. It's one that I've had for a long time, I just never bothered to read it. I'm really glad I did though because the author seems like a really cool person. She talks a lot about animal rights type stuff, how all beings are connected, and taking care of the planet and other animals. 

Anyway, there was this one line that I read this morning that I really liked. "Where there is fear there is real power." At first I thought that was kind of strange but, the more I thought about it, I realized it's true. I think everything I've ever done in my life that really mattered was fairly terrifying at the time. I think sometimes it takes being in a situation that scares the shit out of you to make you grow as a person. I know it has worked that way for me. Even if I hate doing it at the time, I end up feeling like a stronger person afterward. 

Plus, everybody knows that the power of fear is even stronger than the power of will. 

Even Stairway to Heaven Sucks After This Many Times

You know what really gets to me? Repetitively annoying things. I can handle some pretty annoying things; what I can't handle is annoying things that keep happening over and over (and over and over and over) again.

Some of you may remember years ago, when I wrote that poetry book, and I was all excited because I found a place that was willing to publish it, and then it turned out to be a big scan where they just kept trying to convince me to buy more and more copies of my own book (if you don't know about that, that's okay, what I just said pretty much covers it.) I am STILL getting emails from those fucking people! I'm talking multiple emails every day, trying to get me to buy my own fucking book, that I wrote several years ago and now thoroughly regret having written in the first place.

Also, there has been some organization taking some kind of poll, calling my dad's house multiple times a day. You see, I don't really get phone calls and I hate talking on the phone anyway, so when I'm home by myself I never answer the phone. I let the machine pick it up and if it happens to be someone I want to talk to, I answer then. These people keep calling and hanging up on the machine over and over again. I counted six times the other day. So it's four rings, the machine picks up, they hang up, two or three minutes go by, four more rings, etc. I finally just answered the other day, that's how I know who it was, but guess what? It was a fucking recording, so I couldn't even tell them to stop calling!

The No Plan Plan

As a follow up to yesterday's post, I have made a decision; I am going to try to stop planning. I have this irresistible compulsion to make all of these plans for my life, and none of them ever work out the way I want them to. That seems to be where nearly all of my aggravation comes from. This is especially stupid since, for the most part, none of my plans are actually even for things that I really want; they're just things that I think will be better than the way things are now. So I am going to make a serious effort to just do what I want, or what I like, or what I feel I should, and stop trying to figure out where it all might go.