TsOTD

This one will be long, because I've not blogged in a while and have
had some time to think and ponder.

First off, I need to listen to more music. I've been living in
silence lately. I don't know why. Music tends to vamp up my ability
to write actively - not just write, but write with /soul/. That's
probably because music provides so much feeling to my otherwise happy
but mundane days. All I know is, I miss writing. Not hard,
considering I used to write so damned MUCH and now I scarcely get a
fix through the gazillion unchallenging emails I wade through on a
regular basis (esp. work).

Second, I love my happy but mundane days. I'm in love! With a
husband of just over a year, no less. I've been watching him sleep
lately (although most recently I've been too exhausted to wake up
first). He talks in his sleep now and then and says weird things
like "it's already been counted." He has no recollection of the
dreams which may have inspired such phrases, so I'm left to wonder
what's going beneath those serene eyelids of his as he breaths
steadily and deeply, each exhalation a sparkling paintbrush full of
his happy spirit.

In addition to the wondrous thumpity thump that resonates in my chest
and threatens to break out at any given moment, I've rediscovered my
beads. This was in part due to the FAILURE OF TACO BELL to open on
time. (We'll get to that in a second.) Stopped into Michael's and
spent more than I'd intended on beading materials. To be fair, I
also bought a pack of rechargeable batteries, so it wasn't all
superfluous madness. But within this purchase, I learned how to use
crimp beads. Now, /these/ make life SO much easier. Not to mention
the fact they make things look so much more professional.

Back to Taco Bell for a moment. They were due to open yesterday and
when I drove all the way into town to wait for the hour of opening, I
noticed a new sign announcing that the date was moved to WEDNESDAY.
That's TOMORROW. Bas****s!!!!

Third... what else is going on... oh! Took a vacation. I'm still
kind of high on that, too. A whole week without work, I got to see
Mum, and Dale's mom even came along this time. WHOO! Then I worked
for one day and had a LAN party the next and now I've got the usual
three days off. 'sall good really because in August I'll be working
a crapload of oddball days and will likely need another vacation
after it's all said and done. OMG, I had a dream last night about
Stan... I dreamt that I was on some oddball mountaintop that was
whitish and kind of dry-spongelike, you remember that astronaut ice
cream? Like that. Anywho, I'm walking up and down the funky
hillside and there's this girl who's literally flipping out, as in,
she's moving weird and doing airborne somersaults and such. Stan's
wandering around, too, with a clipboard in his hands and a really
really stressed look on his face (more so than usual, even!) and I go
up to him to see what he's doing. He's like, "I had to reapply for
my job and it turns out I'm overqualified." At first I was aghast,
thinking, omg, does that mean he was fired? Then I realized he was
hired as a contractor instead, and as such, he was putting even more
pressure on himself because he was getting paid more as a contractor
than he was as an employee. Debbie R. nodded at me as if expressing
empathy for the guy. The flipping out girl and I were at some point
together in some dark corner of a building with guns as if we were
cowboys in a Western. Everything was Adobe coloured, too, you know,
that orangey red stuff the buildings out there are in abundance of.
What's with the funky colours? I don't think I saw one green thing
in any of my dreams last night. Highly unusual to be seeing moon-
coloured astronaut ice cream ground and red-earth-toned earth
towering above me. At least I still dreamt in colour. The black and
white ones are weirder albeit more familiar. But in those, there's
usually at least ONE colour, which probably indicates an area of
focus I need to explore. How do I explore terracotta? Further,
what's with the texture sensations? This was more about physical
sensation than any dream I've ever had.

LAN PARTY went really well. Had five of the seven expected folks
show up. I think it was actually a perfect number of people. Dale
was here at either end of the thing, because he had to leave for a
race (which he did very well in, btw). Oh, and I must mention Age of
Mythology. I'd heard of this but hadn't seen it until the LAN
party. Now I'm a bit of an addict. Oh!! Maybe that's where the
colour thing for the dream is coming from. OMG yes that's it. The
whitish ground in that game is a perfect match to what I saw in my
dream last night. I didn't know it felt like freezedried ice cream
to walk on it, though. My poor cavalry!

I'm gonna give up on numbering these thoughts. They're all
intermingled anyway. Better to just fingerblab and get it all down.
Shortly before vacay, I contracted a cold to invade my body. I don't
recall giving myself permission to do this, but I did it anyway so I
suffered a sore throat, headache, bodyache, drippy nose, and am still
coughing a bit. Dale had to swipe the keys from me while on vacay
because I was high on Halls. Didn't know you could get high on those
things, but then, I also didn't know there's a limit on how many you
can suck into your system, either. Whups... Then we got back, and
the next morning I woke up with an itchy rash all down my left side.
Doctor swears I slept on that side and had a reaction to something I
was laying on. Possible, since I did fall asleep on the floor rather
than in the bed, but I'm not sure what it could have been... for one
thing, it started on my hip which was covered by pants (I fell asleep
in my clothes). Second, I was wearing shorts, so if it was in my
clothes, how did it (later!) spread down the rest of my leg? And why
was it on my upper arm, when I was wearing a sleeveless tank? Yet,
it was definitely limited to the left side of my body, so... had to
have been something. At any rate, it's faded now.

Onto more serious things, I was pleased to hear Mum say that she's
glad I've got Dale. It felt like progress to me, i.e., she still
wants me to live there but is more easily accepting me for who I am
and the life I've chosen to live for myself. She still had to
interject her psychological opinions and state that I've transferred
my Mum-dependence onto Dale, but that's Mum for you. I didn't
respond because there are so many things one could respond /with/ and
I didn't feel like expending energy on such minute detail at that
time. I was just happy to be enjoying her company so much. It still
amazes me, though, that she's still so focused on my "problems" when
she's still got so much to work on herself. I mean, she moved away
and I was on my own for several months before Dale came along. She
left home to live with some dude and then focused either on a dude or
her kids and is still trying to live through her kid (me) even now.
Who's dependent on whom here? I had to tell her why it is that it
bothers her so much to have me around when there are some sort of
expectations tied with it. I mean, she still hasn't figured out some
things about herself that I figure would be pretty basic. Mum and I
both suffer from selfish tendencies which branch from a basic [human-
like even!] social need to be with people despite a brutally strong
solitary nature. In my case, I would be quite comfortable having my
person of choice sit somewhere nearby at all times occupying
themselves silently with some quiet gadget of their choice, idly
wasting time until such a time as I felt like speaking to them or
sending them away so I could be totally alone with just my own
thoughts. That would be company to me; I would feel reassured and
content. I know this, because I've always been this way and when I
was less aware of others' feelings, I tried to insist that this was
how those closest to me should behave. (Mum included.) It's like a
security blanket of sorts - I want the social interaction so bad, but
I'm so sickingly enamoured by my own thought processes that any type
of communication exhausts the living daylights out of me unless I'm
picking up some suddenly desired piece of information to fit into one
of many puzzles within my own thick heid.

Well, after years of Mum complaining about my wanting her to be
around but to remain silent whilst being around, I had to figure this
out. I spoke with a friend about it and explained that I knew
something was screwy in me because I love Dale and I love him being
here and such, but sometimes I wanted to scream because he was here,
even if he wasn't making any noise whatsoever. It made no sense to
me. She said she's the same way, she simply likes being alone and
sometimes even the mere presence of someone can get annoying. But I
thought about it further and realized that it's more than that.
Sometimes I do want to be completely alone, yes. That would probably
cause the desire to scream, you know, when someone's here all the
time and I get into one of those modes (which of course come on with
no apparent warning). But deeper than that - sometimes I fear that
my thoughts will be interrupted, no matter how quiet he's being on
the other side of the stairway. He can be completely engrossed, and
I'm happy for the longest time, until all of a sudden I realize that
he's been quiet over there way too long and is likely going to want
to involve me soon. And then, sure enough, I hurry to finish a
thought process and there he is, completely unaware of the internal
terror I've just been subjected to over losing a piece of my mind.
And so I then dive into my social memory banks and quickly retrieve
the instructions on how to become interested when someone starts
speaking, rather than striking up a conversation due to interest. I
move all my attention to figuring out how to stop focusing on my now-
losing thoughts, and try to focus on Dale's words, facial
expressions, and gestures. Eventually I remember to watch his eyes,
which finally engages me enough to interpret the sounds coming out of
his mouth if for no other reason than respect for this wondrous soul
whom I love. And therein was my problem. If I find this person so
lovable, so interesting, so humourous and kind, then why is it that I
frequently want him to simply shut up and go away? At one time I'd
have believed my mother - that I really don't feel this way about
this person and I'm lying to myself. But it's too effortless to know
my feelings, and it's not a blind thing. I know when I feel hurt,
and I know when I'm being a bitch. I've never been more sure of any
feeling because it's so different from any other human relationship
I've ever had. It's simple, too, even though it seems it should be
quite complex because it's so overwhelmingly wonderful. I know this
simplicity to be the key; it's an innately strong intuition that
simply makes sense on a very basic level no matter how
overcomplicated my mind tries to make it. Without fail, I cannot
explain it further than the one word: Love.

Thus was borne my theory and acceptance of my nature. Unwilling to
live without the kind of love I've found, I've learned to compromise
with myself, to learn about myself, and find ways to manipulate
myself in order to hold onto my other half. And by that I don't mean
Dale - I mean the half of myself that is social and that loves and
feels good. Dale is the blessing that allows this half to express
itself so openly. This only dawned on me a month or so ago, but
then, I'm 31 and still exploring this relatively new feeling called
"Love." Some people never find that. I'm damned lucky and only wish
there was a better word, one with fewer meanings.

So I'm sitting there with Mum and she goes into this half-
intelligent, zealously self-loathing rant on how she feels whenever I
come up to visit. I'm truly touched by this, because I've known for
some time that she does love me and that all the distasteful words
she has ever uttered to me are simply her own coping mechanisms,
maybe even her inability to express her deepest feelings out of fear
for what they are. And then I looked her right in the eye and told
her all I just learned about myself by stating it as simply as I
could: "I know what you mean, because I'm like that, too. You want
to be in control." It isn't that we don't feel. It's not that we
don't respect others. We're just fearful that we're not good enough
to be human so we pretend we're not and sometimes we even get away
with it.

The funny thing about all this is that we are so afraid of losing
control that we often do exactly that. After all, our companions are
not robots, they're human, and thus very prone to doing what they're
going to do. We want to control a cornered rattlesnake. Ha! No
wonder Mum is constantly feeling poisoned. It's taking her twice as
long as it has me to figure these things out and learn to work around
that snake. She must have been bitten an awful lot all these years.
I can only hope that the problems I've got that she doesn't have are
just as obvious to me before I turn 60. And above all, I hope I've
told her correctly. After all, I may be beyond my years at times,
but I'm still human, aren't I?

~nv