[.l.o.s.t././.i.n././.t.r.a.n.s.l.a.t.i.o.n.]

Since I’m terribly bad at updating here – and elsewhere, for that matter, I’m giving those of you who care yet another way to peek into some of the corners of my dark life. Hopefully, I’ll get back into the regular routine of updating Plurk on a semi-daily basis. However, given the enormous tidal wave of . . . stuff . . . that’s hit my life of late even that may turn out to be a feat in and of itself. Things have been so chaotic and topsy-turvey that even my much beloved Bipolar World Cafe has gone by the wayside where my regular participation is concerned. Some things occupying my time are good, whereas others I’d ask that this cup be taken from my lips, to get Biblical for a minute. Anyhow, below is a mini-timeline of my Plurk posts. Enjoy!

A friend of mine, Rob, pointed out in a recent e-mail that I actually hadn’t updated this thing with any real news in some time. So, here I shall make an attempt to do so, although with everything that’s happened in the last few months it’s not going to be an easy undertaking.

Business is dead slow right now, so I’m looking for another full-time gig. Right now, I kind of don’t care what I end up with as a full-time gig as long as it’s not boring because I’m heading back to school this fall at least part-time (if I can’t find a way to finance a full-time run of it). I still plan on keeping the business going while in school, though. And maybe that’s crazy, but I am a master at insane undertakings.

Halloween made five years sober. Yay. I made it into 2009 not in the hospital – which I wasn’t sure if I would be or not because I was fighting off a pretty nasty MRSA infection. In other medical news, I was diagnosed with RA after months of testing and re-testing and wondering what was going on with me. It’s painful, yes, when it flares. I’m trying to find a manner of pain management for the flare-ups that isn’t as crazy as what was first tried: methadone. I withdrew from that just before the MRSA attack – and probably picked up the MRSA in the hospital, as irony would have it.

I’m taking care of a friend of mine who is terminally ill with bullous pemphigoid, which is a rare disease. Very rare. She was taken to the Mayo Clinic when she was first diagnosed so that they could study her. Anyhow, that aside, I’m taking care of her because there’s nobody else to do it. Some days are good, some are bad. But that’s the way these things go. 

I got into a huge fight with Kevin. Meh. I’d explain part of it but right now if I did, I think my head would explode from frustration over the situation. Speaking of frustration, I’m still trying to help Leon out, but that’s not going so well. I hope that changes soon enough, though.

We’re moving soon and looking for a new place. Suggestions are welcome, although I think we’ve already settled on a place. We haven’t filled out the apartment applications or anything yet, so it’s not set in stone. If we go with the place I’m thinking we’ll go with, then we won’t need to get the gym memberships that we were thinking about because this place has a GREAT in-house gym, a sauna, a theraputic hot tub, tanning beds, a HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGE pool (part of which is heated!! T3h y4y!!), and more.

Life’s pretty quiet. All’s well between Steve and I. B’s moving to St. Louis (that’s the sad part) to get married (that’s the good part). I’ll miss him. He’s become more like a brother and less like a roommate.

I’d written a rant a few weeks ago which I still have saved in my "Drafts" folder, but somehow it seems irrelevant now. Meh.

So, as of a few hours ago – around lunchtime, Central Standard Time – I completed twenty-nine reolutions around this bright star of ours known as the sun.

This year has been rather interesting. I got married in this last turn around our celestial star, which I of all people didn’t expect, but at the same time I’m the last person complaining. And, to make it even better, my Dad loves him! My Dad has never liked anyone that I’ve dated, but he’s given this one his full approval, love, acceptance, and respect. He even calls him "son" – which is a major sign of just how much Dad’s come to bring Steve, my husband, into our family – fucked up though it may be.

And Steve’s family has fully accepted me, too. I have more family! It’s strange. They’re great people, too, and I’ve liked every single one of them that I’ve met. I really love his Mom and Dad. They’re so awesome.

I’ve also had a few old, but very close friends randomly appear back into my life. One was my best friend – and the most unexpected of all, Mr. Mason. Another was Miss Nicky. S. John was definitely the coolest by far. Erin was awesome to hear from again. Ken rocked because he’s just so damn awesome and I’ve missed him soooooo very, very much. There were others, but these by far stand out the most. I’m so glad to have you guys – and gals – back in my life again!

During this year with the stellar movements of the sky and earth in balance, there was Misery Journey, of which I am not sure that I have spoken of. Shortly after getting married I got to take a now former friend back home to Tacoma from Austin when she lost her job at Apple – with the promise that her or her parents would give me enough gas money to make it back. Well, her parents did, but she having Borderline Personality Disorder and being a kleptomaniac stole about half the money they gave me to get home on and thus left me in a major bind. I made it to California, because before I’d left I’d already planned to make a side trip there to visit with my ex-roommate and close friend, Jason. He cleaned me up, got some Starbucks in me, took me to the best sushi I’ve ever had in my whole, entire life (and I’ve had A LOT of sushi), and got me good for the road back home. Because of him, I made it back with under twenty bucks to my name. I didn’t eat or stop to rest on the way back, either. He saved my ass, though. And during that twenty-four hour respite, he showed me some beautiful things. California IS beautiful. I must give it that.

In this last year, this past tour in the sunshine, there have been some really bad things that have happened, namely two – and both have been in the past two months, funny enough: Steve and I lost our daughter; I nearly died last week from an accidentally medically-induced medicine overdose that sent me into grand mal seizures for a few days. One day longer, said the neurologist at the hospital to me after reviewing my EEGs, and I probably would’ve been toast.

My sponsor and I decided after much talk that since my last ‘relapse’ was what I thought it was and what she’d spent the last few years trying to convince me that it was – a suicide attempt driven by my ex. I used a lethal dose and it didn’t kill me, so now March first is my pseudo-sobriety birthday and October thirty-first of 2003 is my actual sobriety birthday, meaning that soon – very soon – I’ll be coming up on five years. Hella cool. So in my previous revolution, instead of making just one year, I actually hit my four. This is going to make things interesting come Birthday Night. LOL.

(ephemeral) 

Okay, I’m going to take a slightly more serious tact to this question. There DEFINITELY needs to be SOMETHING done to improve the "experience" – if you can term that in any positive light – of being at Cheshire Academy. I’m sorry, but ‘sponsored’ trips to shopping malls in the area and weekend passes and the like DO NOT constitute enough relief from what I consider the stress and pressure of being a live-in student there. The whole thing – the whole live-in students’ culture could use a severe overhaul, from the bottom up. Let’s just tear it out and revamp it, starting with the slop they call ‘food’ they try to feed you in the cafeteria – which is in part why I went anorexic – and then go from there.

The course load may be too hard for some, but back in Houston where I was in a specialized magnet school and had certain academic measures expected of me, the load was too easy and I felt like I was slacking off. I felt under-challenged and under-stimulated. So, let’s add mutlti-tracking of course levels to the list, things like AP and IB courses and the option to take college courses off campus, whether at a university or a community college, to juniors and seniors. Or work-study programs like they have at regular scools. I mean, these things didn’t truly exist except as rare exceptions to the rule.

Living arrangements: Oh . . . let’s go there! When you got stuck with a horrible roommate who shouldn’t be living with anyone because they had NO social skills WHATSOEVER, you were STUCK. This should NEVER be the case. From my own experience, I was lucky, har har, enough to be selected to be rooming with someone NOBODY wanted to room with again from the year before because she was known as a sociopath, a kleptomaniac, a liar, and just an all around bad person. And no matter how much I clammored and begged and whatever, it didn’t matter. I couldn’t change rooms even when they became available, even when other people had space available and WANTED me there. Unfair? Unjust? Just a LITTLE, don’t you think?

And expanding the area of available activities for students to engage in would be nice, too, as well as extending some of their freedom a little further with the understanding that as long as they stick to campus that these liberties would be ensured as long as they don’t abuse them. Sudents, especially if they’re supposedly mature enough to be sent off to a boarding school, should then be mature enough to extend such rights as staying up later than ten o’clock at night . . . in other words, monitoring their own bedtimes, being responsible for their own schedules, and respecting the boundaries and such of the people around them. They should be able to take care of themselves in these basic ways. If not, they PROBABLY shouldn’t be in a boarding school environ, where you’re expected to be more independent and free-standing than your traditional student.

There’s more, but let’s just start there . . .

(ephemeral)