All of my old blogs have been moved to my local server, here in the house.

This very blog has moved to a new host.

I’m designing a new site, tumblr-like, in EE 2, just because I can. It (like my real tumblr account) will hold stuff that is important to me, but I don’t want here. I’m hoping that Pinterest (and possibly ravelry) has an API I can use to bring my posts there into the blog. I’m definitely using a new public twitter account that will pull into the new site, too. It’s been so long since I’ve actually worked on a site from the ground up that I’m finding myself less interested in the graphics (which is odd) and more into the programming. It might have something to do with the pain in the ass my MAMP / PHPMyAdmin install was on the localhost… but the sites work, so I did something right. (Pwning Terminal FTW!!!!)

I’ve managed to whittle down a 100+ song Violate fan mix to 36 songs, so I’m feeling pretty good about it. I’ve even got the songs in episode order, more or less. I actually made it for someone, as part of an “YOU NEED TO SEE THIS SHOW!!!!!” care package. I’m bummed I didn’t get to give it to them yet, but I’m glad I have the extra time to really refine the playlist.

I turned in all my homework early today, so I am all about working on the new site… after I drag J to see “The Hunger Games”. I just finished rereading it - for the third time - and want to see if I can find the differences that caused one friend to go on an angry twenty minute cuss fest. (Of course, said friend is looking forward to “Catching Fire”, so they can’t be too pissed off.)

I may take the summer off from classes - my only option is to leave work at noon on Thursdays and take a class in Manchester. It might be worth losing a Saturday or Sunday if I need to make up the hours. My change in meds has made being online after work harder than usual… the eyestrain is ridiculous. If I don’t take the class on Thursdays, I’m stuck until the fall semester. Everything hangs on me taking this stupid prereq, and they never seem to offer it!!!!

Oh well… it is what it is and it will be what it will be. Can’t do anything about it, so I might as well just move on.

I had quite the weekend… one that I’m not sure I’d exactly like to EVER repeat. I mean, parts of it were awesome, and other parts, not so much.

Friday, I headed to CT to watch BMS at Sully’s Pub. Sully’s is a weird place. I don’t know how to describe it any better than that. But it got super duper weird after BMS’ set. The other bands reminded me of this little indie club in CT I’d go to when I was in college. There was the ska sounding band. More of a ska-ish, really, but it was close enough. Then the hardcore NYC group. Then, the group that claimed to be influenced by Fugazi. (If Fugazi meant to sound like Frogboy or BiG MiSTAKE. *ahem*) Seriously, I couldn’t shake the deja-vu the entire night. The vibe of the club, the music, all of it just hit a nerve and suddenly it was the mid-90s again, and I was hanging out with a vegan boy who not only stole my heart, but introduced me to the wonders of the CT indie scene.

Of course, on the trip to my hotel, the iPod had to spit out “Back In The Day” by Blues Traveler.

I close my eyes and feel like it was back in the day.

Indeed.

Saturday, before I hung out with the band, I needed to do a deep spiritual cleansing. That sounds so disgustingly New Agey, but there’s no other way around it.

I started at St. Mike’s cemetery in Glastonbury, which is where the entire Ukie population of Hartford County is buried. Or at least MOST of them, but I’ll get to that in a minute.

Of course, I go to the most obvious place first - the family plot where three out of four slots are filled. Two things struck me immediately, both of which really made me sick. Like physically ill.

1) There were flowers on my mother’s side of the stone, but not Nicholas’. I’m assuming that they were from my aunt and cousins… the fact that they chose to bring the evil bitch flowers, but not the son/brother they lost so tragically just bugs the piss out of me.

2) The ambulance we placed on his headstone is still there. That stupid little matchbox car is still in excellent condition considering it was left there in the 80s. (Even more surprising, I guess, it that it’s still even there… but like I said, the entire Ukie population is buried there, so maybe someone knew/knows of Nicholas and has kept it there? I don’t know…)

I bawled when I saw that damn thing - the memories of how it felt in my hand, playing with it - they all came back. Hard.

Now, this is the part of the story where I prove just how fucked up I really am. I’ve always been able to sense ghosts. Although we didn’t talk, I knew he was there with me. Thirty years. He’s been dead thirty years and I wonder every year what he would have been like had he not died of cancer. Would he be crazy? Cool? Hot? Gay? He didn’t have any answers for me, but knowing he was there with me was insanely comforting… which was good because then I turned to my mother.

She got an earful from me. I vented out loud, and didn’t get a response. I wasn’t expecting one, to be honest. I can never feel her there.  I wonder if she’s ignoring the pain she’s caused me as well as she did when she was alive. She’s been dead for twenty years. A nuclear bomb was dropped on my world twenty years ago, and I STILL struggle to clear up the wreckage and put things back to some semblance of normal. Once I calmed down, I literally felt a little hand pull on my fingers.

Yup. Time for special guest number three.

As I stood there, looking at the disturbed ground and thinking that only a month ago that grave wasn’t there, everything I had felt towards my uncle came spilling out. I finally got the fucking closure I needed. He was a good man for the majority of my life pre-March 1992, and I mourned that. (Not unlike mourning the mother I wanted, the one that was within reach, but determined to spend her days hiding in the bottom of a vodka bottle.) Then, I let him have it. How could he stand by while my aunt stole from me? Hurt me in ways family should never be able to?  It got ugly. REALLY ugly. He deserved every word of it and I feel a thousand times better for it.

I decided to take the long way to my grandparents’ grave - my godfather died in 2009 so I wanted to pay my respects to him. I didn’t find him where I thought he would be, but I stumbled upon the grave of one of my mother’s friends… the one who decided to take a walk into a lake with her pockets full of rocks. I never knew her personally, but as soon as I saw her name, I could hear my mother’s passionate pleas to her that day on the phone. I could feel her as well… tortured. Full of regret. She missed out on watching her kids grow up. I couldn’t offer her any consolation. I didn’t know her, and honestly, truth be told, I think she deserves whatever she gets. I will never understand suicide. Never. It’s bad enough to kill yourself, but to drown yourself? That shit’s just twisted in a way I can’t even begin to try to understand.

No matter how dark I get, no matter how seductively the voices whisper, I can’t go there. I WON’T go there.

At any rate, I left her and looked for my grandparents’ stone. It never fails - no matter how many times I visit them, I can never find the damn stone on the first try. It might be because the English translation is missing and I forget what the surname looks like in Cyrillic. As I wandered, I found myself getting frustrated that I could never remember where they were. I heard my grandmother call my name, clear as day. I turned my head in the direction of the sound, and BOOM! One gravestone, three names - two familiar, one belonging to a person I never knew. Like Nicholas’ grave, there were no flowers there. Nothing that showed their blood had swung by to pay their respects… it made me sick and I had to ask my grandparents what they thought of their daughters. If they were disappointed.

I wish I spoke Ukie because that’s what my grandmother responded in. I wish I could tell you that I was able to infer what she was saying, but she just sounded tired. Like she’d had this conversation before. Like I was a little kid who asked the same question again and again and again. My grandfather waited for me to say my goodbyes before making himself known. I knew exactly what he was saying, even though it too was in Ukie. The stern disciplinarian I remember from my childhood let his displeasure with his children come through in the angry tones and clipped words.

Clarity. Closure. Cookies.

Almost.

I suppose there are weirder things to do than wander around a cemetery yelling “WALTER! WHERE YOU AT, WALTER?”. but nothing comes to mind easily. I covered the entire cemetery while calling for him. Out loud. It was like some warped game of Marco Polo, but Polo decided he wasn’t playing. I looked at every single stone and if it was there, I didn’t see it. I don’t know how I missed it, but it’s possible. I guess.

From there, I headed to the Vets’ Cemetery to see my Dad’s stone. I know he’s cremated. I see his ashes every day, but I needed to see the stone. I needed to contact him somewhere that wasn’t home. I can’t explain it. And he was there… He never leaves my side lately so I wasn’t surprised. In this case, I needed to lean on him more than ever. They were holding a service for a deceased member of the Air Force. In the section where the bodies go which just happened to be close enough to my father’s stone so that every word carried on the wind. (There’s the sections of just stones - the simple white markers in their endless rows - and then there is the graveyard. Dad’s stone overlooks the graveyard.) The casket with the flag on it. The cries. The soothing murmur of the priest. it was too much for me and I broke down like I haven’t in years.

After I pulled myself together, I drove to Wethersfield Cove to calm myself down further. All the random memories that popped up - that crazy night with R where we totally fogged the windows, the days spent throwing bread to the seagulls, the attempts at fishing, that crazy night with R. (Hey! I can’t help where my head went.  Apparently, I needed to relive the happy, crazy, night that should never really ever be mentioned… Ah, memories.)

I posted on Facebook that it was definitely the old HAUNTS tour, and it really was.

It needed to be done, and I did it.

And I can’t even begin to tell you how much better I feel.

Hers in St. Mike’s, Glastonbury. His at the Vet’s in Middletown.

I hear you loud and clear, universe.

Loud and fucking clear.

Moving my websites to a new server, moving domains to a new registrar and updating the software that powers my archived blogs on my local computer…

Was really interesting to find this… My very first ARCHIVED entry. I know there were some from when I was using Blogger, but this is the first entry I can prove.

The last entry on this version of LOW was Sept 2006. If you’ve been on this journey with me, you’ll remember I went to a co.uk domain for a while and then back to LOW. LOW and Good Advices lived together in harmony for a while, and then I put LOW to rest for probably the last time. LOW will always be home and I’ve been missing it a lot lately. It’s not in the plans to bring it back - I’ve actually got something new up my sleeves. Just need to find the time…

Anyhoo - I didn’t really have anything to say other than I can’t believe I’ve been doing this twelve years. Or that most of you have been around for a chunk of that time.

Wow.

I find it funny that Misha Collins’ charity is called The Random Act, because wherever he is, random acts occur.

Take this uh, touching moment at NashCon where he was getting “Essence of Sebastian” on an AMOK t-shirt before giving it away.

——

Sometimes I forget what community is - not the online stuff you can walk away from without a second glance - it’s almost family like. Screw that, it IS family.

Hanging out with L, and my little brother Jeff, drove home the joys of family. Even though Jeff isn’t my biological little brother, I love him like one and he’s one of the few people I can easily say I’d take a bullet for. I don’t “do” kids. I don’t like them. Generally don’t want anything to do with them. It’s very rare that I’ll even tolerate being in the same general vicinity. I don’t have that, that, THING that makes women’s ovaries explode when faced with babies.

Chilling with L, and hearing Jeff keep saying the word “family”, was eye opening. We don’t often get to pick our families… and even when we do, sometimes people can become a part of your family without prior approval. That’s not quite how I meant it, but you get the gist. L and I had a nice long stare off where neither of us were sure what to make of the other. We finally mutually decided the other was harmless and got along pretty well for the rest of my visit.

I think he knew when I was ready to go - he made a point of trying to untie my sneakers, then he handed me my keys, phone, and iPod before being told to kiss me on the cheek. Repeatedly. Because they had to get a picture of this. Seriously. I’m amazed I didn’t need a cootie shot, he kissed me so many times.

After getting home, I had to deal with the harsh reality of life and the cruelty and bravery that it has to offer. I didn’t know Chief Michael Maloney. I know friends of friends of the Chief, but my social distance from the man didn’t keep me from deeply grieving his death. The Chief was eight days from retirement when he was fatally shot in the head… after dragging his fellow officers to safety.

My entire commute to work has been nothing but American flags, red, white and blue ribbons, yellow ribbons, balloons, black and blue bands, and the signs. Oh God, the signs. Just THINKING about them is killing me. So much support, sadness, love, grief and respect on these signs. You couldn’t escape them even if you wanted to. It was bad enough on a good day. Wednesday was easily the worst day of the mourning period. As I was driving home, I could see the cops lined up outside the funeral home, waiting to pay their respects. It was heartbreaking to see them all. I’m glad that I missed the funeral procession on Thursday - again, it was hard enough driving past the funeral home where the cops had already begun to gather.

If anything, watching the seacoast pull together to mourn this man, also drove home the idea of family. Many of us didn’t know him personally, but we pulled together to celebrate his memory, to respect a man who died protecting his fellow officers. That’s some pretty impressive stuff. For a fleeting moment, I felt so connected to my neighbors that it made me feel like I was back in Jeff’s house, watching L try to eat Cherrios by himself and stopping him from spilling milk all over himself.

We find family where we least expect it - in the cheek rubbing kiss of a toddler or even in a community mourning one of their own.

So…

Sometimes, you need a mashed potato, garlic and bacon pizza with the person you thought you’d spend forever with.

Sometimes, you need an afternoon with a person who knew you “before”.

Sometimes, you need to sit in a sports bar and watch the Bruins.

Sometimes, you need to watch an 18 year old movie, and laugh at the jokes that never get old.

Sometimes, you need sloppy kisses from an old friend.

Sometimes, you need a 7AM wake up call from an unexpected source.

Sometimes, you have to let them make you breakfast.

Sometimes, you have to let a boy kiss you.

I told them that it was just a pin. Nothing special.

Which is, of course, total bullshit.

What they want is for me to truly take on the role they designed for me. The symbol of revolution. The Mockingjay… I must now become the actual leader, the face, the voice, the embodiment of the revolution.—Katniss Everdeen, “Mockingjay”

As I’m crawling out of the abyss, I’m looking for things to cheer me on, since the majority of my friends have stayed silent this entire time. I get it - I wouldn’t know what to do, either. I don’t hate them for it. I’m just disappointed.

SPOILER ALERT
I fell in love with Katniss the moment I met her. Her strength. Her naivety. Her ability to inspire others to do great things.

Here’s a girl who lost her father in a mine accident. Whose mother couldn’t handle it and mentally checked out. Who had a young sister who depended on her. Despite the odds, she made sure her family didn’t starve - including the distant mother she grew to hate and the cat she tried to kill.

When her sister’s name is called at the Reaping, she volunteers to take her place, even though it means certain death.

Twice she puts the Capitol in their place - once when Rue dies, and again at the end when she decides a Romeo & Juliet like suicide pact is the way to get both her and Peeta out of the arena.

She faces certain death again, during the Quarter Quell, when she’s forced back into the arena with other winners. The there’s her undying devotion to Peeta - she’ll sacrifice herself before she’ll let him be killed, simply because she cannot lose the boy with the bread.

Yes, there’s certainly a bit of a love story there, but it’s never played out the way you think it would be. It’s a second thought, almost, to the rebellion she’s started. Without meaning to, she’s put every one she loves in grave danger. 

But she survives. Peeta survives. And her children never know they play on a graveyard.

END SPOILER ALERT

It’s her strength, in spite of all she’s faced, that’s been giving me hope. To remind me that it gets better.

When I see that mockingjay pin on my jacket, I remember that I’m stronger than the bipolar. That I’ve survived the worst several times, and that I always find a way out of it.

I have to remember that, while I’m mostly powerless against it, I have learned its tricks. I know how to sidestep the traps it sets for me. I know how to block out the voices in my head when they’re at their loudest.

I know how to survive.

I just need a reminder from time to time.

Of course, they noticed back in December how overloaded I was and they just chose to do something about it now…

Long story short, I’m not longer managing a person. We’ve split the companies I do the books for in half. I get the company I originally started working for and a company that I already have industry experience in. (Was that English? I don’t know. I’m tired.)

I’m thrilled to bits about this change because I really dislike the person we hired.

All four of us loved her during the interviews, but she has not lived up to the hype. She’s weak. I don’t do weak. (She’s every insecure and she’s said somethings that just put me on edge and make me want to rip her to shreds. This is even AFTER we upped my meds to curb the various issues managing her was causing me.)

She also doesn’t fucking listen. I’ve told her repeatedly that one of my biggest pet peeves is when people attach the check stub to the front of the invoice. I don’t need to see the check stub - I can do a search in QB if I need the check number and date. Whelp - she attached a fucking check stub to the front of a bunch of invoices I needed to go through. I wasn’t expecting to find a staple there - SINCE I SPECIFICALLY TOLD HER NOT TO DO THAT. Sliced my finger wide fucking open on the staple. And then I had to deal with the fact that no matter how I creased the stub, the stupid fucking thing was blocking the information I needed. I ended up going through that stack of invoices and putting the check stub where it belongs. (I know it sounds petty - but this is how we do things in this company’s accounting department. Period. It’s not the only thing she’s done wrong either, but I’m still pretty pissed off about my finger.)

I can’t wait to get rid of her.

——
In other news, I’ve kept my addiction to The Hunger Games to a minimum here. It’s for a couple of reasons -
1) I have friends who just aren’t in to certain pop culture things. I totally respect that and I don’t want to turn them off with my incessant babbling about the books.

2) The Twihards have driven me / still drive me nuts. Why celebrate a book where the main character is weak and the disco ball boyfriend is abusive? It’s not “romantic”; it’s upsetting and, on top of that, they’re poorly written. Don’t even get me started on the whole vampire sex, baby birth, imprinting thing. That’s the most disturbing thing I’ve ever read, and I’ve read some sick, twisted shit.

3) If I do have friends who are curious about the books, I want them to read them. With as few spoilers as possible.

4) If you’re checking out the movie before the books - the movie is a fair representation. It’s hard to make a first person narrative into a third person movie. They filled in some of the blanks, which was interesting, but other things strayed from the book and kind of annoyed me. On a scale of Shawshank Redemption (10) to absolute crap (1) I rate this a solid 8 - really good, but not perfect. The Harry Potter’s adaptions are about an 8.5 / 9 for comparison.

I will leave you with this from “Mockingjay” - possibly my favorite book of the trilogy - because I thought I saw a dandelion the other day:
What I need is the dandelion in the spring. The bright yellow that means rebirth instead of destruction. The promise that life can go on, no matter how bad our losses. That it can be good again.

Like most of us old school bloggers, we have a lot of online friends in common and most of us are Facebook friends with each other. Well, Christine is a professional photographer now, and posted on Erika’s (the former Snazzykat) Facebook wall that she was going to be in Boston in May.

I sucked it up, sent Christine a FB message, and BAM!

I have my Red Dress photoshoot with a photographer I don’t know, haven’t yet met, but I feel like I know her pretty well and as a result, I trust her immensely. May is going to take forever to get here.

God bless teh interwebs.

I guess some people would call that multi-tasking.

I’m calling it mania. I have the attention span of a flea right now which is making all of that possible.

The first song BMS played on this radio show is a song of Charlie’s. He doesn’t perform with them a lot, and I’ve only heard him sing a few times, but I love it when he does. “In Your Waking Life” is already my favorite and I’ve only heard it twice, maybe three, times. The title of this entry is a line from it, and it really sums up the mania well.

I’m not selfish - so here’s “In Your Waking Life”, “Cradle” and “Stop Stopping” from the radio show. (Bill wasn’t there, so “Cradle” is missing the kick ass percussion solo. It’s still a great song, tho.)

Don’t be a dick, ya’ll - be sure and right-click.

If you like what you hear, check ‘em out on Facebook or MySpace. Buy their CD on CD Baby. Take in a live show! You won’t be sorry.

I can’t fucking catch a break anywhere.

Now that the accounting department has been vastly restructured at work, a lot of my happy came back. (Not that the bipolar is helping matters.)

Of course, the day after my happy started moving home, we found out one of our coworkers has cancer.

All I can say is that little bossman’s decision to get disability insurance for our employees was the best thing he’s ever done for the company since he took over.

I’m tired of dealing with all this grown up crap.

Seriously, what’s it going to take for 2012 to stop being such a major shitshow?!?!

It’s hard to describe to people what’s going on in there on a good day. On a bad day/week/month/year, it’s beyond impossible.

I dip into deep, deep, dark, scary dark, depressions a lot lately and they’re tinged with anger. Rage, even. The voices in my head are incredibly mean lately, too.

We’re working on fixing this, but it’s not like any other illness, where success is easier to measure. Therapy and pills are the weapons of choice, but they’re sticks and stones. I need higher power weaponry. Ninja level shit.

My body, however, wants to make this even harder to fight. Bad reactions to the slightest change in ingredients that makes a drug a generic, problems with my heart defects (yes, TWO! Two heart defects. Ha ha ha.), problems with insurance (because the pills that work aren’t always covered. yup.), and problems with side effects. (Remind me to tell you the story of how upping one of my meds two months ago made me go blind. Really.)

The wrong combination of pills fucks with my heart. The right combination of pills makes me top 200 pounds. A tolerable, almost perfect, combination of pills has me experiencing extremes lately: extreme stability and extreme bipolar. After all the trial and error, we’re not quite ready to give up on this combination. It’s worked so well for years. YEARS!

We tack on an extra milligram here and there, we change the times the meds are taken, we cross our fingers.

And we hope.

A lot.

——-

I stopped hanging around with other mentally ill people online a while ago. Some of them were faking. Some of them had learned how to work the system and get disability even though they’re not entitled to it. Some are seriously fucked in the head, and probably misdiagnosed. It’s not a world where I can find people I have things in common with anymore. The landscape has changed.

As I’ve gotten older, it’s gotten worse. I’m on my fourth go-round of trying to decide what we would need to cut to be able to live on J’s salary. I am getting to the point where I can, unquestionably, undeniably, qualify for SSDI. I’ve been subtle about it, but I’m exercising my rights under the ADA* that my employer make reasonable accommodations for me. And yet, I refuse to give up. Even though the writing is on the wall.

I grab my helmet, and my gun, and I head into the battle.

I refuse to give up this fight until I’ve won.

Or I die.

——-

*Thank you, Teddy Kennedy. I will always love you forever for that.

“No. She’s clumsy.”

——-

I’d almost apologize to the good Doctor, but we’re writing our own dirty version of “Green Eggs and Ham” over here and it’s all kinds of awesome.

——-

Possibly related: HOLY FUCK. We are loving The Big Bang Theory. Why did it take us so long to find it and why isn’t it on Netflix?!?!?!

My uncle’s brother left a voice mail telling me Uncle John had died. He was young-ish.

My first reaction was that I didn’t care.

Seriously.

He wasn’t a part of my life, and he hadn’t been for such a long time, that it’s hard to feel anything. It’s sad, but it’s like when a stranger dies. “Oh, yeah. John. I heard he was a nice guy.”

Upon further reflection, I started to feel a little bad.

I mean, I’m not COMPLETELY cold hearted… he left two daughters, a wife, and a granddaughter, in addition to his mother, brother, and sister. (We’ll have to revisit the topic of Makayla Rose later. Seriously, Melanie, WTF?!?)

My relationship with him was really good. Honestly, my aunt was the one that fucked things up between us but I never held anything against him or the girls. I have these great memories of him dressing up as Santa at my grandparents’ house… and some others that I’m not sharing with the interwebs.

I got the call today… a little earlier and I would have been able to make the trip to CT for the funeral. I wouldn’t have been welcome there, but that was a risk I would have taken. For him. NOT for them.

I did suck it up and messaged my aunt on Facebook. It’s as close to her as I want to get. I didn’t message either of the girls. I’m not quite sure what to say to them—“Hey, guys, sorry your dad croaked. LOL Remember when your mom told me she was glad MY father was dead? Yeah. Good times. Skype me, bby. <3”—I know what they’re going through, but I can’t be there for them. I don’t want to be there for them. Not any more. (See imaginary conversation.)

So, I thought by writing this, I’d figure out how I felt about all this… I’m still kind of eh about the whole thing.

It’s sad he died, but in these last 10-ish years, he’d been a stranger to me. It’s hard to feel anything…

And that’s all there is to it.

Gah.

I (naively) never expected to see the headline 1 dead, 4 hurt in high school shooting and have it affect me so… violently.

I know I’m not the most pro-family, huggy, kissy, love-my-relatives type person, but my brother-in-law teaches in a suburb of Cleveland.

Thankfully, he’s on the other side of Cleveland and safe and sound.

But I definitely didn’t need the reminder that this could happen anywhere, anytime, and sadly, sometimes, too close to home.