VIOLATED

It’s been a tough couple of days. Yesterday, I noticed a handmade barrette and a hairbrush missing from where I’d put them. I followed my instincts and went into my “roommate”s room. I found the barrette in her top dresser drawer. I guess roommate is the wrong term. Roommate would indicate one who shares in the expenses, wouldn’t it? Yeah, she’s not done that. Since she arrived in August, she’s bought perhaps $200 worth of groceries, mostly either bread, Dr Pepper, green tea, cereal, and the soy milk she likes. Not one penny toward the rent, the (almost doubled) utilities, or anything else to maintain the household. She still owes me a little over a hundred bucks on stuff I paid for that she specifically said she would pay back. She still owes a friend of mine $50 from TRF in October. This afternoon, when I got home, I got to wondering about some other things I hadn’t seen in awhile, and went in there again. This time I found 2 pairs of distinctive earrings, a distinctive pendant, a whole bunch of change, and a few other random pieces of costume jewelry, in the place where I had found the barrette yesterday. In another drawer I found another distinctive hair accessory. Now, I’m not the most organized person in the world, and frankly, I have so much stuff that never got unpacked completely, that I couldn’t begin to tell you where these things were prior to her appropriating them, however just because I wasn’t using them, and hadn’t for sometime, does not mean that she has a right to steal them. This is not the first time I’ve been stolen from. Back in ’91, my apartment in Dallas was broken into. Nothing was ever recovered. I thought I felt violated then. Yeah, that was NOTHING compared to the violation I feel this time. I suspect that it has to do with the fact that not just my space was violated this time, but also my trust in someone I considered a friend. Someone I did everything in my power to help. Someone I was naïve enough to believe when they told me their hard luck story. This week I will work on recovering my stuff that she’s hidden away amongst her things, and documenting photographically what I find, before I secure it safely away from her sticky fingers. I will also be talking with the local PD about the best way to get her out, with only her things, without a scene or retaliation. Her job requires her to have a firearm, and my friend who lives in Oregon has told me he wants me to have someone here with me when I tell her to get out. I honestly don’t think she’ll try anything, because 1. She knows she’s wrong, and 2. If I have to call the police on her, it may cost her job, as it requires her to be bondable, and with an arrest on her record, she’s no longer bondable. I don’t want to get her fired, I just want her out of my house. Once she’s gone, perhaps I can really get on track with the changes that I’ve been working on in my life.

EEEEVILLLL

It has occurred to me that I might owe my niece-in-law a bit of a warning. It’s possible that her husband might pass on some of the teasing he endured as a child. If he does, and the child turns out kinda warped, well, it’s probably largely my fault. I am, after all, EVIL. Last spring, I was at Scarborough, before cannon, talking and giggling with one of my friends. One of the cast members came over and made a crack about my laugh being evil. S & I looked at him, and I said “who, me?” I, of course, gave him my best “why, I can’t imagine why you would think such a thing” look, which was promptly lost when I laughed my usual laugh, which does sort of come out as a cackle. His face lit up and he said “Yes, that’s the one!” We talked with him for a few more minutes before he wandered off to see who else he might find. That, however, was NOT the end of our encounter that morning. Every few minutes, he would come back and talk some more. The last time he came over, he said to me “That’s it, I am ALWAYS drawn to the most evil in any location, and I keep being drawn over here, therefore, YOU are the Center of All Evil.” I accepted the title with more than a little glee! I’m pretty sure that my nephew would tell you that my evilness goes back at least 15 years. Now, I have always been the one who would tell him just about anything, mostly because he would believe it. God bless him, it took him awhile to not be quite so naïve. Eventually, he figured out that my sister, his mother, generally didn’t give me up, but that his grandmother, my mom, usually would. Something about her telling him at one point “I will never lie to you”. For what I think was his 12th birthday, I got him a gift card to somewhere, I don’t remember the shop, but it was a shop I knew he liked. I took that gift card and put it in the bottom of a box, probably 6x6x6. I filled the box with rocks from the yard. I am not talking about pebbles or pea gravel, I’m talking about random rocks. I should insert here that Mom knew that there was a gift card in there somewhere, but all she saw me doing was filling the box with rocks. Once it was full enough to not let the card get exposed too early, but still empty enough to rattle loudly when shaken, I closed it and wrapped it. We got to my sister’s house, and time came to open packages. The box got picked up and shaken. Nephew: What is it? Me: A box of rocks. Nephew: Nuh uh Me: Yep Nephew (to his mother): Really, Mom, what is it? My sister: She told me it was a box of rocks Nephew (to my mom): Melissa, what is in it? Mom: All I saw her put in it was a bunch of rocks. He’s beginning to look a bit concerned, simply because he knows that while Aunt R and his mom might try to pull one over on him, he’s POSITIVE that his grandmother would never do so, thus the box MUST contain rocks. AND there were NO MORE PACKAGES that could possibly contain a real gift from Aunt R. He still had this utterly incredulous look on his face when he opened the box and there were indeed rocks in it. As he started pulling rocks out, Mom piped up and told him that I’d stolen them from her yard, and she wanted them back. He eventually got to the bottom of the box and found the gift card, which of course lit his face up. I’m still not sure if it was joy or relief. He did put all the rocks back in the box and hand them over to Mom and they were returned to the yard. Yeah, I’ve been evil for a long time! Yeah, I probably should give my niece-in-law some sort of warning. Or not.

A New Dawning

It’s a momentous day in the United States. I’m not sure that it’s the one that I will never forget, since there are things like the Challenger explosion, 9-11, and the Columbia explosion that are burned into my memory, however it is certainly to be included on the list of the most memorable days of my life. I am a child of Texas. I am a military brat. I have no memory of being particularly aware of skin color when I was young. I can remember my younger brother describing other kids as that light brown, or dark brown, boy or girl. Honestly, I don’t remember who they were, nor do I have any idea of their ethnicity, other than they were probably darker skinned than we were. I was 3 when we moved overseas, to Athens, Greece. We went to school at Ursuline Academy, the only American school in our area. As we were all military or diplomatic children, we were an eclectic mix, as best I recall. When I was almost 8, we moved back to the States, to a major Army base in the Midwest. We all went to school together, on the base, again, an eclectic mix. When we left the military a couple of years later, we returned to Texas. Our home was in a relatively average, middle class neighborhood in a suburb of Dallas. By the time that I graduated from high school, I had attended 4 elementary schools, middle school, and 3 high schools in 4 cities. That’s a LOT of kids that I encountered. If you went down a list of names from all of those schools, aside from names that are clearly ethnic, whether first or surnames, I could probably identify as definitely black or African-American, ummm 5 people. I didn’t grow up seeing skin color as a means of identification. As a 5th generation Texan, it might be presumed that I might have been taught differently. Racial differences were truly irrelevant in our house. Racial slurs or jokes were not tolerated. Nonetheless, I was truly not sure that a minority of my generation would become president. I never doubted that I would see a minority President in my lifetime, I simply didn’t dream that it would be a man (or woman) of my generation. It makes me wonder what my mother and grandmother would have thought. I have no doubt that they would have been proud of the selection, whether they particularly agreed with it. We have an incredible opportunity to see a new dawning in America. We are now led by a common man, who has achieved uncommon things. I believe he is in a unique position to truly understand and empathize with a much broader cross-section of the US population than most of his predecessors, certainly most of those in my memory. He has gotten to where he is through hard work and honesty, rather than through the accident of birth into a wealthy, politically active family. I think, perhaps, I identify more strongly with him than I would have identified with a woman in the same position. Throughout the election process, I have been pretty quiet about which direction I was leaning, largely because I abhor conflict and just didn’t want to engage in arguments about who is right and who is wrong. This is America, we each are allowed to have an opinion, and express it, without fear of retribution. I have my opinion, which may or may not agree with yours, and I may not like yours, but I will respect it. All I ask is that you respect mine. You don’t have to like President Obama, but you do owe him the respect that is due our legally elected and sworn leader. I, for one, am looking forward to the coming weeks and months. I have no idea how well he will adhere to campaign promises or how closely he will follow the ideals he set forth in an eloquent and inspiring inaugural address. I hope that he will be able to follow through as much as possible, and I believe that he will do so to the best of his abilities. I pray that he will receive the guidance he needs to be successful, and to unify our amazing country, and work toward the most beneficial resolution to the conflicts that he has inherited with his inauguration, and move us forward into this new era of responsibility.

QUACK QUACK

This is a bit of a rant about my temp roomie's new doctor. My comments are in purple For several weeks now, she's been having some pain and swelling in one of her small toes, and yesterday had an appointment with a doctor to see about that and to try to get a new script for the 3 allergy meds she's been unable to get since the script ran out several months ago. The doctor told her that: 1. the toe is probably a muscular/tendon thing that's relatively common in people who have worn poorly fitting shoes for any period of time (she did as a child), and the only cure is to have surgery, and take ibuprofen or tylenol for pain. I think a podiatrist is probably better able to accurately diagnose a foot/toe thing, I also think that telling her to not wear shoes if she can avoid it, but not offering any real relief from the problem is a crock of shit 2. her sinus problems/headaches (which respond to meds like Claritin-D and Advil Cold & sinus) are allergies, but rather migraines and gave her a prescription for Matax, which the pharmacy dispensed 4 instead of the 10 that the doctor prescribed, probably due to limitations on her plan, hell, my plan would only allow me 9 a month, and I'm not sure I could get them all at once. umm, yeah, responds to sinus medications, history of severe allergies that require not 1 but 3 medications to control, sound like a migraine to me! 3. she has all the symptoms of her hypoglycemia turning into diabetes, so in a couple of weeks, on a Saturday morning, she has a fasting bloodtest scheduled.I lived with a diabetic mother from the onset of her diabetes until her death, she is NOT exhibiting symptoms of high blood sugar. I told her that she has symptoms of depression, fibromyalgia, and possibly a sleep disorder, all of which I do or have lived with for about 10 years. Her response was "the doctor said yes, I have those, AND those are all signs of diabetes." WTF????? I think tonite I'm going to get her to let me check the trigger points for fibro and see what happens.

HOUSE CONCERT

OK folks, I'm hosting a house concert for my friend Marc, formerly of the Brobdingnagian Bards. He's recently moved to New Orleans, and is beginning to travel nationwide solo. He's got a gig in Dallas at the Tipperary Inn on the 5th of February, and of course I jumped at the opportunity to have another show at my house that weekend. And I SWEAR it's not for purely selfish reasons because I miss seeing him live. I will have snacks/hors d'oeuvres and non-alcoholic beverages, as well as birthday cake as it's just a few days before my friend Lissa's birthday. Saturday, February 7, 2008 @ 7PM Watauga, TX Suggested donation $15. BYOB. RSVP to raevyn3450-iwg@yahoo.com Marc Gunn is Celtic American Musician and Podcaster. Good food, good drink and good company. Folk ballads, Irish drinking songs, fantasy, Sci Fi, and cats on the autoharp (I wish they'd get it off it already). Embrace independent Celtic music!

Clearing

I really need to learn to have more down time! And when I say down time, I mean time when I’ve turned off the tv, and frankly, probably the laptop, which, incidentally has recently been named Wendell. Don’t ask me why his name is Wendell, it just is. One of those things, I guess. I suppose it would probably be fine to have Wendell on, for things like journaling, but I need to really focus on not hiding behind the forums, myspace, facebook, and other random sites that seem to fascinate me and monopolize my time and energy. . I’ve been conditioned to ALWAYS have noise. When I was a kid, I always had the radio on or the tv going while I did my homework. I simply can’t concentrate when it’s quiet. Of course, I was a fairly unremarkable student, which might not have been the case, had I been a little better able to focus on my studies. I can’t sleep when it’s quiet. I have the tv on for awhile until the timer turns it off, and the Ipod is already running though I can’t hear it over the tv. I have list after list of things that I need to get done, yet I allow myself to get sucked into the internet, or a video game, or the tv, probably largely as a means of avoiding what really needs to be done. That being said, my goal for the next couple of weeks until my House Concert on February 5th, is to get what is supposed to be a study/sewing room/garb closet but is currently piled, literally, with junk, cleared out and organized. Tomorrow, when I get home from work, I am going to start pulling stuff out and stacking it in the living room so it can be sorted into categories: 1. Keep and display or have where I can use it easily 2. Keep and store in a proper and organized manner 3. Keep and photograph to post on Craig’s List or Ebay 4. Donate to Mission Arlington because while I don’t need or want it, it’s still usable, but not worth the trouble of Ebay or Craig’s List 5. TRASH I don’t get enough sleep most nights, and I am not entirely sure that part of the problem is not all the clutter and junk in my house. I need to clear the clutter and perhaps my brain will be a little clearer, so I can focus on things that I want to work on. It’s time for Wendell to go to sleep, and me too, actually, so I’m off to watch a little more Cosby til I fall asleep with the cats.

SURPRISE!

Several months ago, I had to make a really hard decision to eliminate someone who had once been a close friend from my world. I just couldn’t bear to watch her continue to make choices that I believed then, and actually, still do believe, would lead to her demise. We’d been friends for, oh, somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 years by that time. We’d been through multiple major events, including an accident that could have claimed her life or left her paralyzed or crippled, and several years later, the deaths of our mothers within a year of each other. The last time I actually spoke to her was in October of 2007, and at that time I learned that she’d lied to me, and possibly to the courts. She was, I suspect, intoxicated at the time of our conversation. I knew then that I would have to put some distance between us, because despite the warnings that I am certain were sent by whatever higher power anyone chooses to believe in, she continued to engage in self destructive behaviors, as well as maintain a relationship with a passive-aggressive jerk. I reached a point that I was just plain tired of watching people I love die. Periodically, I would get some silly email forward from her, but rarely did I get anything substantial from her, until June of 2008, when she emailed to say she was going to marry the jerk. I couldn’t even answer that email, because I’d told her until I was tired of repeating myself that I don’t like him, I don’t want to be around him, and I believe that they are bad for each other. And how do you tell someone you once considered one of your best friends that, well, you want her to be happy but you won’t be celebrating the marriage. At some point after that, she lost her job. I don’t know the story there, other than the company didn’t want her to leave when she moved to Austin, and was eager to hire her back when she moved back from Austin. In the ensuing months, I grieved over the loss of the friendship, and I grieved for the fact that I might never know what happened to her. It broke my heart, and it still pains me, though I know that I’m not the person that she knew the last time we saw each other (September ’07). I am stronger, more self assured, and in general, in a better place. Imagine my surprise this afternoon when I opened my email and found a message from her. It was a bit of a nutshell sort of thing, with no real answers or explanations. Sure, it started with “sorry I couldn’t get in touch with you sooner.” And ended with “if you life isn’t too hectic I’d love to hear from you.” In between there was also an “I wish I could talk to you” in the middle somewhere. I’m torn, between shooting her an email telling her exactly what I think about the way she treated me, ignoring her, and coming up with something in between. I will probably wind up emailing her, but telling her that there is just too much water under the bridge to pick up where we left off. I just don’t trust her anymore. I’d like to have my friend back, but not if it’s the friend that got lost. The one I want back is the one that I had, oh, 7 years or so back, not the one that came back to FW from Austin. *sigh* I just can’t make those sorts of decisions quickly. My health and well-being are paramount to me, and emotionally, that has meant not having her in my world for awhile. I don’t know if I’m quite ready to have her back in it. I’m going to sleep on it for a few days and maybe make a decision over the weekend.