Day Six & Seven

Well, it would seem that I skipped a day, though I didn't mean to. I had an entry all written up, and I made the mistake of going to bed without posting it, and apparently Windows did an automatic update overnight. Yay!

So it's been an interesting couple of days. Google+ is getting pretty interesting, the more people/groups I add to my circles. There's a political one that I'm a member of (well, as much as one can be a member of a G+ circle) that sort of floods my feed with articles and things about the antics of various republicans. Thanks to G+, I've learned a lot more about politics in the last month than I ever have in my life. And it's so very disappointing. Pretty much every politician out there has totally forgotten what separation of church and state means, almost all of them base their campaigns on one religious viewpoint or another. While they're busy bitching about this imaginary war on god, they're waging war on education, health, and personal freedom.

Sigh.

Been thinking about what I want to do with this blog; I've mostly been using it as a journal, which is fine, but I think eventually I'll want to start going more seriously into self-improvement/life-hacking stuff.

I left behind a lot of Bad Shit™ in Massachusetts. It kind of irritates me that I'm still carrying a lot of that baggage with me after a year. I try not to "shrink to fit" anymore, but sometimes I still catch myself doing it. Need to internalize the fact that being different does not mean being inferior. That it's okay to be who I am and not stress about what other people think of me, because you can't please everyone. My logical brain knows these things, it's getting my emotional brain to agree and STFU that's the hard part.

Making forward strides, though. Starting to reach out to people - friends I haven't spoken to in years, strangers that I look up to or like how they think. Actually commenting on articles and blog posts and places where others might *gasp!* see what I have to say. So far it's been pretty good for me, even made a couple friends through disagreements with them. Isn't it great when you start off arguing with someone and then end by finding that they're really interesting?

So on today's To Do list is, finishing a couple more commissioned paintings, starting another, listing a couple more prints on my Etsy store, and cleaning house.

Sounds like fun to me :P

Day Five : Damage Control

If I ever get time to work on original stuff again, this is first on the list.

House is trashed.

After Joel's four-day weekend, I'm a ready to have the house to myself again. Problem is, I'm having a lot of trouble finding the energy to do all the crap that needs done. Yesterday was a bummer that ended up getting better towards the end, made some great beef & vegetable soup and watched Nia play peekaboo around the couch with daddy.

Now I'm in damage control mode.

Yesterday's dishes are all over the kitchen.
Laundry is strewn across the bedroom floor in need of sorting.
There are cheerios and raisins scattered around the livingroom and under my desk chair.
Crayon drawings all over the kitchen and livingroom cabinets/drawers (luckily they're all washable)
And don't even get me started on the state of the refrigerator.

On top of all this, my body is once again reminding me that I am, in fact, female.

Damnit.

What I need now is some Doctor Steel and a Housewench Utility Belt.

Wish me luck!

Day Four : Death and Taxes

For half my life I've been plagued by the consequences of my own choices.

I'm almost 30, and I feel like I'm starting way too late on the road to "doing it right". My best friend pointed out that while I don't bitch about my problems, I do deflect/blame. Which is true.

I'm having one of those awkward, unpleasant times where you realize that you've made a very uncomfortable bed, and now you have to lay in it. So far my way of coping with this is being angry at myself. This does me no good whatsoever.

I could have done a better job of being responsible this year.
And honestly, trying to explain why I didn't just boils down to making excuses.

So, today my mood is pretty foul. Nobody likes to be wrong. This is me, shoving my nose in artwork until I get over it. Well, not before I make a post, because if I don't do it now I'll forget.

Self-improvement is something of a Holy Grail for me right now. I made a few New Years resolutions to that effect, and I think the hardest thing for me will be to stop beating myself up over bad decisions and instead focus on going forward.

That is so much more difficult than it sounds >_<

Would help if I wasn't so emotionally broken.
I let myself fall into a relationship where I was essentially turned into a clone. When I was with Robyn, I always had a side to take, and an opinion to have. It was us against the world. In the name of "progressive thinking", I was isolated from my friends, and eventually my family, over the course of about ten years. My willingness to love regardless of gender identity and religious beliefs was horribly abused, and used as a weapon against normality. I let myself become convinced that being normal was bad, that all forms of religion were bad, that being a fucntional member of society in any way was bad, because society was evil. There was always a reason why my way of thinking about these issues was flawed and in need of correcting. And my open mindedness was traded in for blind foolishness. I left the relationship being almost totally unable to function alone in society. Things most people can do without even thinking about it were terrifying to me, like talking to bank tellers or getting my drivers license renewed. Every stranger was a potential enemy. Even friends and family were enemies if they didn't agree with our lifestyle.

A decade of living like that is a lot to have to un-do.

Don't get me wrong. I've made a lot of progress in the year since I left - or so my friends tell me. Sometimes it really doesn't feel like it.
And I often feel like I should be able to fix myself overnight. I feel like a year is way too long. But from what everyone tells me, it can take much, much longer.

Really starting to understand why.

Day Three : Heavy Skillet

Mmm, seafood/chicken stir fry. What a great way to get rid of stuff that needs to be used :P

The more people I add to my Facebook / Google+, the more disappointed I become with general humanity. In my efforts to reach out and be a less socially awkward human being, I'm continually taken aback by the lack of compassion and empathy for one's fellow man, and by how so many people are caught up in stupid little problems like it's the end of the world.

That, and I should really stop reading WhiteWhine.com - I only found the site today, and after only two pages of quotes, I'm really starting to wonder if euthanasia is such a bad idea. Especially when you consider that those whiners are RICH ("My mom bought me a new iPhone 4S for christmas. Nevermind that I hate apple products and touchscreen phones, wish she'd stop being such a bitch and learn my tech preferences already").

It also makes me worry about the kind of people / kids Nia will be associating with when she gets older. After reading about a mom that bitched out a daycare center for buying generic cookies instead of name brand ones (We pay good money for our child's daycare and we expect OREOS dammit, not Kroger Kid-O's!) for a picnic. I wonder what that uppity mom had to say when she found out pizza is now officially a vegetable?

I have no doubt in my mind that one day, my daughter will be forbidden to play with one of her friends because their uptight republican yuppie mother hates my liberal hippie ass for serving up Peter Pan instead of Jif (or some shit like that). And then I'll get to explain a very hard part of human social dynamic to a sweet-natured kid: People will hate you for stupid reasons, and there's absolutely nothing you can do about it.

Given the state of education in this country, homeschool is sounding more and more like a good idea. If Nia ends up being anything like her mom and dad, she'll be way ahead of the material provided at her grade/age level, resulting in boredom and lack of concentration. Which in my case, led to poor grades. Teachers these days like to call those kinds of kids mentally disabled, because obviously, poor grades mean stupid kid, right Einstein?

I guess I'll just have to burn that bridge when I come to it.

Day Two : Pick of the Day

We must defend ourselves from the nose goblins. Nia's helping.

Picked up a copy of Orcs Must Die for Joel and I on Steam tonight, 'cause it was only $3.74 and I heard it was pretty good. Having played a couple levels, I agree! There's just something inherently satisfying about lining a hallway with wall arrow and tar traps and watching the hordes be mowed down, unable to do anything to stop it. Or maybe I'm a little bit twisted.

At the moment, the tiny one is napping in her pack n play, the bed of choice in the cold months because her room has no heating vent. But she's getting to a point where she may be ready for a toddler bed. Her room is mostly used for storing her clothes, and changing her diaper now that it's gotten all wintery, plus she's getting pretty good at falling asleep on her own, without being crankyfaced about it and wanting sleepytime snuggles. There have been several times now where she's just grabbed Rolly Frog, snuggled him on the livingroom floor, and went to sleep peaceful as could be.  Once she even climbed up on our bed (we don't have a frame, just boxsprings/mattress on the floor) for her afternoon nap, with no prompting.

For now, coffee is brewing, and I'm still full from the scramby eggs and crescent rolls I made for lunch/dinner (linner? dunch?). Mmm, scramby eggs. Have I mentioned I've gotten a newfound love of cooking? I still don't really get the "starting at 4 o'clock to make dinner" thing, but I guess it depends on what you're making. I've found I can make a great variety of meals with the same several ingredients, none of which taking all that long to prepare. Perhaps at some point I'll post some recipes of my "Science" (which is what I call my cooking experiments - 'cause usually that's all it is, experimenting).

Oh hey, coffee's done.  Guess this entry's done too.

So here's Day Two of the dailies.
*accomplishment*