nothing more than feelings...06:22 Sep 25 2007
Times Read: 629
So I'm feeling a bit crappy now. There is so much going on that it is just difficult to keep up. Business is still only trickling in... still not enough to cover the monthly rent yet - let alone the electric, insurance and all the other crap. I know that it will take some time for the business to grow, and I know that I may have to return to a computer job for a while to support it. I was hoping to be able to hold out until 2008 without returning to my former life as a dyslexic code monkey, but it looks like (due to the funds used up in the cost of getting our house up to code and legal to live in) my slaveatude might have to commence sooner than I had expected.
So I'm feeling crappy about running out of money sooner than I expected. I'm feeling crappy about the inevitable idea that if my free ads for the store don't work, I may have to return to computers for a bit. And then there's the most emotional part.
Part of it has to do with self-realizations brought forth in my last post. I realized that those words and those feelings were spawned out of fear. Fear that someone might have the power to spend so much time talking and meeting up with my brother (whereas I am 2000 miles away) that this person might have a chance of "turning my brother against me" so to speak. Now I know it sounds silly, but alas, I can be a silly little insecure girl sometimes (can't we all?)
Now that I've had a few days to think rationally, I know that it is only my own insecurities that create this possibility in my mind in the first place. Rationally, my brother is my brother. He has to love me no matter what is said about me, no matter the duration, or the number of jellybeans involved. But that doesn't mean he has to LIKE me, does it?
*sigh*
Silly little girl. Sometimes I wish that I could get it through my thick green skull that I am a neat person and some people actually *do* like me.
*shakes head*
When will I learn?
A whole to be filled.08:17 Sep 16 2007
Times Read: 636
There are those of us who are raised, trained, and molded to live not for ourselves, but for others. We are the supporters, the encouragers, and quite frequently, the abused. We play out our roles sometimes out of pure habit, and sometimes because it gives us the greatest pleasure to be there for our friends. To lift others up. To help and encourage everyone we meet.
There is us... and there is them. The needy, the takers, and the abusers. The lines they cross against us they cross so casualy, so subtley, and so silently that we frequently don't realize how far we have been ridden until we are stranded forty miles in the middle of the desert with nary a drop of food nor water in sight. We wake up and realize that suddenly, by giving all that we have, our very basic needs are in jeopardy.
Then we scream. We cry. We pitch a fit. We wonder how could this have happened? How could we have been so blind, again?
Much to the chagrin of those that are used to us giving all that we have, we suddenly turn into a terrible green horde. We have not a stitch of time for anyone else. We keep to ourselves, we isolate ourselves, and we shun all of our friends who want to help us through.
We cut all ties with those who are hanging on us for their every need. And we expect them to either learn to stand on their own two feet and support themselves or fall flat on their face.
But they don't, do they? No. They don't. What happens? The very worst. They simply find an immediate replacement for us.
It is the highest insult that those who have taken every advantage of us have quickly found someone else to fill their needs and keep on doing what they are doing, oblivious to their patterns of abusing their friends.
It's all because there are far too many people out there like me. Too many people that are willing to give others the shirt off of their back and expect nothing in return. Those that take and take can find a dozen more people willing to offer their used, soggy sweaty shirts and it means nothing to the abusers to just keep on wringing out their spoils and throwing them away when they are through.
It is truly heart wrenching to watch someone who has abused you turn around and find someone else to keep them afloat as soon as you cut them off. You feel that every stitch of effort you exherted was for absolutely nothing. It was all in vain.
Or was it?
Did you learn something?
If you weren't there to help them, they would surely find another sucker to do it, or they would have to learn to do it themselves.
You've learned to limit what you freely give. Always work tit for tat. Always expect a return on your gift. After two gifts with no return, write off the bad debt. The credit limit has been exceeded.
End of story.
Broken tooth and legal living.07:07 Sep 15 2007
Times Read: 640
Got a head cold again; and a broken tooth. Left a message for the dentist. Hope I can get in and get it fixed before there is too much pain...
We did the menus for the corner pizza shop, they are awesome! The owner loved them and we got paid. Hazzah!
I ordered samples of my cafepress mug, stein, poster, calendar and journal. They came in the mail today as well. They look absolutely amazing! They are a great gift idea! *hint, hint!*
The b/f wants to lay down an 8' sq chessboard in the middle of the dining room floor with ceramic tile. It was a really cool idea until I SAW it laid out, and then it just seems... well... I like it, but I don't know if I want to live with it for 10 years. But I guess that's just me. I can't even committ to a tatoo. go figure.
I'm thinking about getting the AUM first, before I get my turtle. Yes, I have decided. My first tattoo will be the AUM. The only question is WHERE?
Final Electrical Inspection will be next week. Final Plumbing inspection will be Monday the 24th. It looks like we could be legally moved into the house with occupancy permit before October 1.
These are exciting times!
mmm.... Dr. Pepper and Chambord. That's a good enough drink to come up with a name for it. Let me think.... "Cherry Pepper Love?"
Enrichment or Insanity Awaits:10:08 Sep 13 2007
Times Read: 641
It is fall. There is nothing in the world like the smell of October in PA. If you could bottle that smell, you could make millions!
Our house is a flea's hair away from complete. We are within weeks of being completely finished with a real kitchen, real electric, real heat, good windows, ceramic tile, et al.
We are also over 2/3 through all of the money we have saved up in the whole wide world... every penny, and that is scary.
The comfort level at the house is rapidly increasing... We might be able to hold a decent ITLAP after party at the house! (It will certainly be a little more comfortable that Jim's wake, I'm sure.)
Two final things:
1. I can see my breath
2. I am reading "the Garden of eden"/"Inna gadda da vida"/"the bahagadava gita" ...again. Somehow I think it will mean more to me now than it did five years ago.
Pookah-out.
Thatโs a lightswitch? No. Youโre kidding me, right?
05:48 Sep 11 2007
Times Read: 649
For the last two years we have been working on the house. We bought a little house in East PGH for $4000, we cleaned it out, we gutted it, we (well, mostly our friend's father) rebuilt it. Either way, we busted our butts, broke our bodies, and bled over this thing, and made many sacrifices to be where we are today.
Surviving the last winter without adequate electricity or heat was rough. So rough in fact that we only had a 2/3 survival rate. Our room-mate killed himself in February. He wrote a note specifying a single reason... but there is never just one reason, is there?
As the electric is finally turned on, I do kind of feel that he is here, a bit, just in spirit. Or perhaps I'm superstitious about energy and electricity seeing as how I'm one of those freaky people that can heal but also tend to drain batteries and knock out lights.
Today I saw that his hat was upstairs on top of the oven. Believe it or not, it's not the first time I noticed it. And not the first time I thought of moving it, but I never did. Today when I went upstairs I saw that it had been moved to the counter... but honestly, I just can't bear to get rid of it. My eyes well up as I write this, knowing full well that he had complete control of his destiny. He was not trapped in any way. He lived with us, and yes, we were asking him to move out, but the thickly packed white envelope he left on our floor (which we turned over to his family to pay for his funeral expenses) proved that he had the finanaces to rent himself his own place for a whole year. And the question that will never be answered still haunts us. WHY?
Somehow even though the note he left indicated a single reason that he took his own life I never did believe it, not for a second. I think that part of him was happiest while he was here and somehow I feel that perhaps he felt that he was lost. That for whatever reason whatever troubles he had before he even met us, he had no family to return to. I guess the only reason he didn't call out to his family for help in his time of need is because he felt that they could not help him. Perhaps he had tasted a bit of his own life, and did not want to go back.
Again, all speculation. Just my overactive neurosis, I suppose. And so it seems as the electric is turned on upstairs, he remins with us, if only in micro-particles weighing less than 1/8 of an ounce.
OK, this was supposed to be about the coolness that we have lightswitches now. Holy crap, did I diverge from my intended topic or what?
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BACK ON TRACK
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OK, after a year and a half of running around with shop lights and tripping over extention cords, we have these newfangled things called lightswitches. It's totally amazing. We flip these switches and we have lights that DAWN in the room. No more finding a plug, shuffling with extention cords in the dark, finding an outlet, and wondering why the power drill doesn't work the next time we use it... "Oh that!" (we unplugged it to plug in something else.)
Enter the days when we can watch TV... AND cook something at the same time. (As opposed to last winter when we had to turn off all heat and everything else in order to heat up any food at all. *BRRR!*)
No really, what is that thing on the wall. It's a what? A lightswitch?
You just flip it and you have light. No need to unplug anything else and fumble around with wires in the dark?
A "LIE-Yeet-Suu-Whitch."
Dude!
I'm glad I'm missing...08:46 Sep 04 2007
Times Read: 657
I used to hop on here and stay for hours at a time...
Now I pretty much check in, see if I have any messages, maybe post a quick blog. If I see someone online that I used to chat with, I might say hi... but usually not. I'm so far out of the loop, so far removed from their present VR concerns most times I wouldn't know what to say.
Today I spent about 20 minutes to catch up on a couple of people's blogs, and I'm happy to say, I'm pretty glad I've been absent and missing out on a lot of the VR current events.
Maybe I just have so little free time and so much to do with finishing my house and running my brand new store, Turtle Islandor maybe I've just matured.
I just can't feel that any drama created in pixels on a computer screen is something to raise your heart rate over.
More and more often, in my own mind and with my friends I find myself taking the devil's advocate position to purposely diffuse any budding anger and at the same time creatively offer other options, point out another side - any "other side" will do, really.
Like for example, There's a fat guy crossing the street right in front of my car. I slow down. The other people in the car are amazed that I patiently wait for him to cross and I don't honk at them and shout out my window like they say, "anyone else" would do.
Why? 10 or 15 more seconds of my time isn't going to hurt me... Why should I raise my already genetically high blood pressure over it? Why should I yell at someone to hurry up and cause even more aggrivation in the world?
Enter the devil's advocate argument. I ask my friends if they have ever thought that maybe this fat person might have knee and ankle problems and can't move very fast without a great deal of pain?
See. Like that.
There's always another side to every story... and I'll tell you what, even if I have to fabricate some logic to placate the masses. I feel it's better to expand the mind to search for other possibilities than be too quick to slam the door in intolerance.
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