Unmentionables and skeletons

Let's see if you can follow this trail:

I spent three years just after college teaching at a private school in NY. I ended up there for a few reasons--I needed a job, my boyfriend had attended the school before so I had a connection, and I couldn't imagine being prepared for any career other than teaching Spanish. I got the job, so voila. This was very much a reactive situation rather than proactive.

SO. Enter Facebook, again. The same boyfriend from that era had a close group of friends up there, and I plugged into the posse somewhat. I spent time with one woman in particular, really. She's not on Facebook, but another of the group is. He and I met maybe 3-5 times back then, and have talked more on Facebook than we ever did in real life.

He contacted me this weekend and asked if I'd been in a community theater show in 1995.

No. Not that I remember, anyway.

He wrote back and said, well, there are some pictures up here that I'd swear are you. They look like you and are even captioned with your name. He tagged me in one of them so I could have a look-see myself.

Sure enough, it was me. Three pictures, in fact. I tagged myself in the rest of them and messaged the poster, who'd been the director, I think. Haven't heard back yet, but I really wonder how he knew it was me. Shit, I didn't even remember until I saw the pictures. I'm looking forward to his response.

My time up in NY was one of the lower points in my life. I had few friends and less money. I lived on campus at this swank and very traditional boarding school, and was muddling through a long-distance relationship that really had ended some time before. Or should have, anyway. Teaching took a great toll on me--so much grading. So little time. Absolutely no training. Barely three years difference between me and my oldest students.

I'd be in the cafeteria at 5 a.m. and asleep by 8 or 9. I lived with two roommates and three cats. That's when my allergies really developed.

Signs of depression I wish I'd noticed:

Driving myself to the ER in the middle of the night because I didn't want to bother my roommates.
Extreme exhaustion.
Considering therapy for the first time ever, but rejecting it because of stigma.
Hanging desperately on to an unhealthy relationship.
Retail therapy.
Isolation.
So many painful and negative opinions about myself and my abilities.
Overreaction.
Personalizing situations that weren't personal.

Looking back, I don't know how I did it. I was a real mess, and this wasn't the first time. I'd seen the same behaviors and thoughts through most of my life, but they'd come and go in stages.

Over many years, with experience and much therapy, I've conquered or at least improved the ways I handle my life's challenges. I stand up for myself, I believe I am a good person, I can identify my own unhealthy reactions. I ask for help when I need it. I recognize that I've had some pretty rough times and survived them.

However, old habits die hard. I'm still isolated. I still feel unworthy. I feel like I've failed myself in many ways. I don't feel any of these ways all the time. But in my heart, deep down, I'm still not mended.

I cry for the young woman below who looks so happy but was so sad. I wonder if she'll ever really recover.





p.s. What's that SACK of a dress, anyway??

What a great deal!

I'd say I'm frugal-minded but not too financially savvy. Can't see the forest for the trees, as they say. I'm not at all prepared for Old Age, and the very fact that I'm thinking about it makes me feel old.

Which I know makes no sense, as far as financial planning goes. But there you have it.

Part of this situation is due to the fact that my chosen career path is hardly lucrative, to say the least. Add in an expensive education and copious medical expenses, and I'm usually pretty broke.

However, I recently had an epiphany and made a financial move that I'm finally comfortable to make, and which will save me approximately $4100 a year in taxes, while adding almost that much again into long-term savings.

Pretty sweet, no?

Wherz mah bukkit?

Argh. Drip Drip Drip woke me up. It could be a lot lot worse, but my bathroom ceiling has leaked a few times now. I'm guessing it's the roof?

Since I'm up, I think I'm gonna have some waffles.

Nom nom nom.

Sometimes I'm a really good bargain shopper.

Shipping Method:	FREE Super Saver Shipping
Shipping Preference:	Group my items into as few shipments as possible
Subtotal of Items:	$54.47
Shipping & Handling:	$12.66
Super Saver Discount	-$12.66
Promotion Applied	-$29.96
	------
Total for this Order:	$24.51
Shipping estimate for these items: September 10, 2008 "Carnation Malted Milk, Original, 13-Ounce Jars (Pack of 4)" Grocery; $12.48 "Carnation Instant Breakfast, Variety Pack, 1.26-Ounce Units (Pack of 3)" Grocery; $13.82 "Millstone Foglifter Ground Coffee, 11-Ounce Packages (Pack of 2)" Grocery; $14.42 "Lyons Country Snapjacks, 10.6-Ounce Packages (Pack of 6)" Grocery; $13.75

VCL. Oh. MY!

Yesterday I got back from Georgia, where as per usual I visited Jamie and Nemoid. Georgia is my default road trip. I have people I love there, it's relatively close by, and I always enjoy myself.

In that respect, this trip wasn't any different. So many things are the same from visit to visit, only changing a bit in the details. Jamie got a new freezer since I last saw her. The garden's bigger. Karen has a new car, and her children have reached new developmental milestones. Jamie, the s.o. and I trade stories about plants, wildlife, food and soil. Karen and I laugh about old times and catch up on the new ones.

It was just as perfect as it always is.

BUT! The overarching theme this weekend was not one of calm and expected happenings. Nope. It was a weekend of firsts. First time I've been stuck in traffic so bad that we turned the cars off entirely, going only two-ish miles over 1.5 hours. First time I've ever dropped my binoculars 8 feet onto a hardwood floor and knocked the optics out of alignment. First time I stepped with sandaled feet into a fire ant nest.

Sounds pretty sucky, that part. But it really wasn't that bad. I used the downtime in the car to clean it out, and the delay inspired me to let down my hair and buy cheap beer in cans in order to crack one open upon arrival, before I'd even opened the trunk. The binoculars miraculously fixed themselves over the course of two days. Right after the crash I had double vision through the eyepieces, but when I looked through them as I was leaving, the images had become one. I felt a certain pride at finally having succumbed to and survived fire ants.

Fire ant bites are rite of passage for southerners, don't you think? I only ended up with about 20 bites, thanks to multiple factors--not least being Jamie's s.o.'s quick reaction as I ran into the house shrieking "FIRE ANTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Thanks for that, s.o.!

Welp, I'm making a short story long, again. Ah well.

The biggest first of all was on Saturday. See, when I asked my Georgia friends if they were going to be in town, Jamie encouraged me to come on down, with the caveat that she had plans in Atlanta for part of the weekend that I was more than welcome to tag along to.

That's how I found myself at a multigenre convention. Oh yes. Not *just* Trekkies. Not just comic-book collectors. Not just Dungeons and Dragons LARPs . Furries. Anime. Fairies. Wizards. You name it.


Fandoms of every sort wended their way around and through the three adjacent hotels that hosted DragonCon this weekend.

Here are my reactions, in brief:

• Wow.
  
• Everyone's either naked or overdressed.
• Hm. There are a lot of good-looking people here. That doesn't fit into my head.
  
• Am I supposed to recognize the characters people have dressed up as?
  
• Why would anyone go for a full-body plush or rubber suit in Atlanta in the summer?
• You know, that guy's creepy. So's that girl.
• Who has this kind of *money* to spend?
  
• The health department needs to have a table here with condoms.
  
• I wonder what all those Clemson and Alabama fans are thinking right about now?
• Does not compute
• A lot of people seem to be either fainting or puking in here right now. Not me! Cookies please!
• Most women's costumes rely on a corset, it looks like.
  
• Bad corsetry signals: breasts pushed so high they fold over on themselves. VCL under spandex.
• The Utilikilt to corset ratio is 1:1 (Holy CRAP that Utilikilt video's wrong!)
• I lack the background to understand any of the concurrent sessions here.
  
• Zombies.
• Poor kids in their strollers.

Check out the photos I took. Some of the costumes are obvious, but others left me entirely clueless.

BTW? Definitely worth the $50 entrance fee.



**************
Edited to add:

I forgot another first!

DURIAN! DURIAN!

I survived it! Basically imagine sweet taste combined with burnt hair/emerging BO. Unfortunately, I also ended up with Durian burps, which hold none of the sweet and all of the stench.

Window into the soul

Somewhere along the line my library practically did away with limits on audio materials. You can check out up to 50 (!!) CDs and books on tape. I was a bit floored. I used to get around the limits by picking out a few biographies or nonfiction works on CD for road trips. No more!

Yay!

Another thing that's changed over the past few years is that all the books on tape* are unabridged. (*Yes, I'll continue saying it that way even if I get them in CD format. Kind of like "album.")

Yay!

Wait. Yay?

Gotta say, I'm a bit self-conscious admitting this, but I prefer the abridged versions on tape. Cause, see, it takes a really long time to read a book out loud. (Aside--I just tried to look up how many hours the audio version of The World According to Garp was. I swear there's no easy way to find the answer to that sort of trivia.) Anyhoo, a 354 page book takes over 11 hours to listen to. No, that's not how long Garp is. Silly reader! Didn't you at least do a hover over the link to see?

Rambly Rambly.

My point. A longish weekend road trip (like say, to Georgia) is about 12 hours round trip. The first hour or so you want to listen to NPR. See how the convention is going, maybe do a little Mandalit del Barco name mimicking--that sort of thing. Same with the last hour. Then you need to factor in the "I really should pay attention" times. Traffic. Construction. Rain. Phone calls. Detours. And sometimes you just want music. So really, chances are good you won't finish a 12-hour audiobook on this sort of trip. The abridged versions, however, last only about 4-6 hours. You can get one of those done. Sometimes two.

But maybe a better argument is that I don't like every single book. So if you begin the 12 hour one and don't like it, then you have to switch to one of your backup books. Repeat that a couple of times, and again--you won't finish.

Of course the reason why I'm embarrassed about this is that abridgement is inherently bad, to literature purists. It tastes of censorship. And smells of bowdlerlization. Enough of my identity is tied up in the insecurity of not being smart enough that I get twinges about this. See? I used the world bowdlerize, fercrissake.

I know I'm overthinking a plate of beans. At least maybe that tendency of mine will help stave off dementia.

These are the books and CDs I checked out today (see blog post title).

Books:
A Spot of Bother
Lost and Found
Conception
Dinner with a Perfect Stranger
and
The Boyfriend List
The last two are short. Four and six hours, respectively. We've got a book about religion and Young Adult Fiction. Rawk.

CDs
The B-52s Funplex
The Smiths The Queen is Dead
The Cure The Cure
Johnny Cash Love, God, Murder

What do you think all of this says about me?

Accomplishments

The small project yesterday ended up being my bedroom. I didn't finish it entirely, but I did make the bed, put away the laundry and pick things up off the floor. That was nice.

You know how sometimes certain problems seem like such a pain in the ass that they're not really worth dealing with? Until the annoyance/inconvenience overtakes the difficulty of the problem, well, I often put things off that are hard. Many times the hard thing *is* really hard. Other times, though, it's less difficult than it may have appeared at first.

Since I got back from MI, I've been without audio for my commute. Somewhere along the line of charging me $1200 for various maintenance work, the mechanics must have pulled the battery, which made my stereo decide it had been stolen. I made a couple of half-hearted inquiries about how to fix it. The manual said you need a code. I looked for the code. I didn't find the code. I must not have inherited it from the former owners. I called the shop, and they said you could get the code by calling the company's customer service line if you had the serial number of the stereo. I had no idea where that might be. I figured I'd have to take the stereo out. I didn't relish being on hold, either. No NPR during the hour a day (at minimum) that I'm in the car has been Ugh, but not Ugh enough, apparently. I needed more motivation.

I'd been tossing around the idea of running down to GA for the long weekend, and my recent thoughts have been very UGH at the idea of a 12 hour trip with no distractions. I was leaning towards just not going. But then Jamie emailed, and bingo I had the motivation. I've missed her! I've missed Nemoid! I've missed Bhanu! All those GA folks would be SO FUN to hang out with.

I turned to the internets for help, and for once it was easy. The code was on a sticker inside my glove compartment. Nice.

Friday morning it's off to GA I go!