I am the Mockingjay…

Someone (who has obviously living under a rock for the past few months) asked me about the mockingjay pin I have on my jacket.

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.

Freedom and dandelions

The fact that I’d been working seven days a week for the past few weeks did not go unnoticed.

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.

How long have I been blogging?

I’ve read Christine’s blog on and off since she’s been online. Hell, I remember when she chose the name Big Pink Cookie!

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.

When your sanity is bouncing off the roof and walls…

I’m spending this afternoon alternating between uploading Black Mountain Symphony videos from my phone to YouTube (It’s y-o-u tube, not u-tube), listening to a thing BMS did on an Albany area radio station and splitting it into mp3s, installing the Sims 3 onto the iMac since my laptop hates it, working on my story and reading “The Principles of Knitting”.

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.

Kiss my ass, 2012

It’s March 14th and I’m already finished with 2012.

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?!?!