down here in the pit

So, I'm down here in the pit. It's pretty deep, and I've been here for a lot longer than I would have ever thought to be. I tried walking out. I tried staying in. Nothing I tried worked very well or for very long, and I am having trouble recognizing the face I see in the mirror.

So, today the person I have known the longest in my life, she who bore me, asked me to look for my ways out. She asked me to trust her. She suggested that perhaps the rescue would come in a form I might not recognize.

I'm going to begin today to look for release, in forms that I may not easily recognize. Not very long after I made the decision to look, I had a message from my sister, the first in a long time. I will read it, I will listen. I will document. Wish me well, gentle reader. Maybe---just maybe---

safe

It's late, but it almost always is. I don't think I'm a vampire, but sleep eludes me. It used to be my one luxury, I could stay up until any o'clock if I could sleep until 9. Not no more. After the latest almost year-long bout with insomnia, it seems that I don't have to sleep as much. Maybe I just got used to running on empty. I'm vigilant for signs of depression, I'm constantly on guard against the anger, I try to remember to eat right, I try not to carry things around in my head, but let them out, let them breathe, let them air---oh, that's what I'm doing wrong.

I thought I was safe. I fled, not once but twice, but I felt safe back here. I vowed to my husband I'd never leave him again. And then every fight for a while, he told me to leave. He begged me to leave. He was afraid that I would leave. I guess once he got the concept down, once he understood that there were some things I wouldn't stand for, now he knows I would leave. But now I won't, despite the knowledge now that there are some things that are simply not available here.

I don't know what it was about him that I fell so hard for. Looking back, it seems like the man I fell for could not possibly be this man, he doesn't even really look the same. And his gentle humor, and his consideration of me, and his clear intelligence have been burned away by all the strife and stress and poverty, it's a wonder how money can change a man. or lack thereof. It was pain that changed my first husband, chronic, unaddressed, unmedicated pain that turned him into a careless drunk, left me alone and the kids at risk because of his inattention. this one changed like that too, drink and drugs and the society of post-teenagers, the abdicating of his parental role. he sat in the room or outside with all these kids, friends of our kids, and they drank and, and----well, then he lost his job over a drug test. and I feel like I tried to drag him back to me, kicking and screaming, tried to loose their grasp on him. he is so easily led. astray, anyway. I'm banking my future on that my man is still in there somewhere, that when the chaos and kids are gone, the money too tight for beer or pot, he will still be in there somewhere. and that I can find him.

It will never be the same. We got off on the wrong foot after all, having our first bad sex on our wedding night. we never managed to live alone after the first 5 months. my youngest son felt that I had abandoned him, and in retrospect, he was correct. but somebody loved me. I mattered to him. He wanted me. just for me. and it had been too long since someone had looked at me like that, I just fell. Hard, on my ass. and all the signs were there, no diamond, no wedding, the loss of all my worldly goods in the storage unit fiasco, his abuse of cars, how incredibly weird he gets when he doesn't eat, all of the warnings that this was not the stable relationship I needed.

Ahh, what good does this do now? do I feel any better? not yet. will I continue to complain? probably. will I stay? I think so. I have to keep at least one promise I made.

There's more room in a broken heart

It's not that I mind the broken heart, after all I am a mother of grown children, and even the best behaved break your heart a few times. It's just that I loved the level best that I knew how and it wasn't enough.

There were angry words, and there was blame. There were statements that hurt on both sides, but there was no lashing out at least. At least there was no tearing of old wounds, no bleeding, none of the hurtful things that he had said before, the more painful because there was some truth in them. I don't know what I could have done differently without changing who I am. But I wish this had never happened.

It happened because of lies, of blame, and ultimately because neither one of us was honest about our feelings from the beginning. I know I am not his mother. But his mother is an angry drunk, and was passed out on the couch every single night when he needed her most. I'm the one who held his head when he puked, following her example. I'm the one that wiped his face, and one time, his ass. I'm the one who loved him, always believed in him. And it wasn't enough.

and we move on

today, I became an adult. despite my chronological age, I have simply never grown up. I have on occasion wondered why that should be, how can I look in the mirror and see the wrinkles and gray hairs and saggy chin and all the other things that indicate gravity exists, and still not have the mental and emotional maturity that would let me identify myself as a woman. Why the label "girl" is the only one to ever pass my lips even if I was thinking the other. I think I know what happened, and I think at last I know the why.

My parents are aged, but not old. They are timeless to me. And that's weird, because everything grows and changes and life effects change in all things. Well, they have some aches and pains and some troubles with vision, hearing, and orientation to time and place, but they are essentially unchanged from my childhood. Not just my perception either, checked with my brother to see if this is his experience with them as well, and yep. No change. No development. Nothing. All is as it has ever been.

The problem with this is that all is changed around them. I spent a month with them, running away from my own life, scared, traumatized, angry at what my family had become, hopeless, doubting myself-- I tried to be cooperative, I tried to fit in, I tried to be a member of the family. I actually sought to find out what they wanted me to do and then do it. Quiet. Non-argumentative. Totally not the careless rebel I had always been. But all for nothing, all for no avail, because I can not be judged on my current actions, but on the 52 years that have come before.

I can't please them. I don't know what they want. I ask, they tell me stuff, but somehow, either we are using different versions of English, or there is no way to actually communicate. I was anguished. I knew, just simply knew that I was wrong somehow. How can you not make your parents proud? How can you cause them so much pain, cost them so much money, embarrass them in front of their friends, what kind of piece of shit must you be to be so awful to these nice people? And they are nice, God knows they are nice. until you shut the door.

Went back today to collect the things I left behind when I fled, yet again, on the edge of my mother's tongue. suddenly I was in high school again, I was in college again, I was a young wife again, and nothing I did was right. Why can't you just behave, she asks. Why can't you just--- why can't I just what, Mom? what is it that I'm doing wrong this time? I won't cut my hair. I won't wear polyester pantsuits. I won't sit on my ass and eat fast food until I look like a whale like all my friends did. I don't raise my kids like you raised me, hitting and ridiculing, never explaining, never teaching the things I desperately needed to know. How do you choose a mate? What do you do when love fades? Who do you turn to when everything turns to worms? You, Mom? You, and hear you tell me that I'm sick, that I'm damaged, broken,--and now you have some proof that there may actually be something wrong, beat me up with it over and over. You will never amount to anything if you don't get fixed.

I picked up my boxes and put them in the truck. I closed the door to my old room in my mind. I said to my father, I'm moving out dad. I'm gonna get married and have some kids. he says, well, it's about time. It's about time you grew up.

I grew up today. I have finally, finally accepted that I don't know how to please my parents, I don't know how to make them proud of me. Their approval matters, but it is no longer the be-all and end-all of my life.
I drove to where my husband works, and I parked the truck. I went to the bookstore, then I came back and climbed up on the hood and sat there and read a book until he came out. Not ladylike, not the least bit. But it's my truck. And I'll sit on it if I want to. And I don't care what anybody thinks about that. or my hair. or my jeans. or my husband, for that matter.
I'm ready to take responsibility for myself. It's never too late.

the New Old World

this is sort of what the star will look like. all I have here is crappy plastic beads and sewing thread. hope you can get the idea at least.

these are some illustrations of where the beads go in the basic star, and how to make it different. the method is still the same.

Daddy's computer won't let me upload a formatted document, so I'm just going to re-type it. trust me, it was pretty. bulletted lists and so forth.

materials needed:

small amount of beads in 2 colors

beading thread

beading needle

Thread Heaven or beeswax, what ever you have on hand is fine

Scissors

Something to put the beads in while you're working with them. trust me, they will try to escape.

step 1. cut a manageable length of beading thread and prepare it by stretching and conditioning it.

step 2. pick up 5 beads in color 1. tie the working thread and the tail thread together so you have a circle of beads.

step 3. pick up 3 beads on your needle. the last bead you put on your needle is the point of the star. pass the thread over the top of that bead and back through the same direction you went through the first time. pull it up tight against the circle. pick up two more beads on your needle and go into the next bead in the circle.

step 4. repeat 4 more times.

this completes the star portion. If you want a bigger star, just use more beads in each leg of the points. if you want a more elaborate star, go around again. the possibilities are infinite!

step 5. to make your star into a pentacle, it is necessary to put a circle around it. make sure your active thread is coming out of one of the point beads of the star you just made. string enough beads to reach to the next star tip without distorting. Lay it down on the table if you need to. There is not a set amount of beads for this step. make this step with color #2 beads.

step 6. continue around the circle in this manner. how you finish will depend on what your finished item is intended to be for.

After your circle is in place, you can use the method you used to make the star points to make your item bigger. I have used this pattern to produce a sort of netted basket to hold a tiny flask of scented oil. You can use big beads, or wooden beads to make a trivet for your kitchen.

Just leave it alone!

Last night at 12:30 I was watching sort of a show on SciFi. I was listening, anyway, not sitting in front of the tv. Suddenly, it was a cop show. Where did my Sarah Jane go? Comcast! In its infinite wisdom decided that would be a good time to re-assort its channels. Why? There were plenty of numbers not in use, why throw them all up in the air and just leave them where they fall? And could I find a list somewhere to print? Or an apology from comcast, gee, sorry to screw up your show and all, but we need to do this right now. here's a new list of channels for you. sorry. That would have been nice. It was bad enough when NBC and CBS swapped. I know, that was a really long time ago, but I still have to stop and think what channel Days of our Lives was on, and which CSI goes where. USA took Criminal Intent, my favorite because of the smart cop. Bobby Goren. He can frisk me anytime. But it will have to wait, because I still haven't found USA. maybe tomorrow.

Walkin' out

This is my house. Well, my half of the house. My front door is around the right side, through a really disreputable gate, past a flower bed that's seen better days. The Christmas lights are still in that tree and around the windows, which are between living room and dining area inside the house. There's a dog leash wrapped around the base of the tree for hooking up Jager while anybody is working out front. he will jump the fence if you are in earshot but he can't see you. I think he's actually digging a tunnel in that aforementioned flower bed. So to get out of my neighborhood, I go across the lawn and turn right into the first field. Well, I did until like yesterday when the people who own the other half of the house put up a rustic rail fence with plastic screen nailed to it. I think they're trying to keep people from walking across the lawn. It would have been funny last winter if they had been here then, because when husby parked behind me in the driveway, I would scoot out across the lawn, between the tree and the house was just enough room for my little VW to get by. Bet they would have just loved that.
They have called the cops on us around 4 times already, once for the bonfire in the back yard when we burned the old fence, again after the cop who they sent sat by the fire with us for a while and didn't make us put it out. (this happens at least once a year. we have an above the ground firepit which is totally legal in our development. it's just that they see kids and assume we're going to burn down the neighborhood) Once when they saw Jager pulling a kid on a skateboard for about 9 feet in the street, the animal control guy came out to see if we were abusing our (gasp) ENORMOUS pit bull. And at least one other time because they saw me "dragging" said dog by his huge spiked collar. I had gone to the mailbox, he jumped the fence, and I was guiding him gently, no really , I was, back into the yard. Chris, the animal control guy said that she said I was holding him up in the air by his collar. he weighs 65 pounds.

This is the first field. You're looking at a court here, I veer right into that court and then up into the next field. For a big development with a lot of courts and streets with similar names, there are a lot of open field spaces that aren't part of anybody's property. They are full of trash and junk, and this one is full of dog shit. There's a sign, you know, about picking up said dog shit, but you know, there are so many Canadian geese, and their shit is the size of small dog shit, I think it's pointless. Seeing that sign just means watch where you walk.

Our development is called Birches West. No birches. might be west of something or other. All of the names of streets and so forth are astronomy terms. I don't get what sense that makes, but I like the street names. Regulus, Altair, Fomalhaut, Cirius, Ursina, Procyon. it does mean that you always have to spell your address.

My Feet

This is where it starts. My own 2 feet in my cool blue sketchers. No more car, no more driving, anywhere I have to go, I have to walk or take a bus or ask someone to take me. I hate it. I didn't drive until I was 24, I was afraid. I couldn't see through the winshield and I couldn't tell where the perimeters of my car were. I took the bus a lot back then, and walked. And rode my skateboard. I'm a lot older now, and I don't think I'd ride a skateboard if I had one, fear of falling. I might be able to ride a bike, but I don't have one. I want my car back. It's been 30 years since I have been without a car, and I hate asking people to do stuff for me, but I don't have any choice about it right now.

And so it goes

It's the middle of the night and I'm sitting here unable to breathe through my nose. Yes, in actuality right now all it's doing is holding up my glasses. My computer glasses. I don't know what compels me to blog now after an entire day of opportunity, but so it goes.

Today, I submitted my very first design to a magazine. I made a hat for Vlad the Impaler. It was a genius idea, I have lots of those, but this time I brought it out of the realm of speculation and into the real world. Does it look like I thought it would? No. But I think that's because I lack the ability to actually picture in my mind a thing that has not existed yet. That little personal design flaw is what makes me bad at chess and other strategy games, and utterly fearless when it comes to making it up as I go along. I know it's a wildly original idea and nobody on earth would have ever even thought of it but me, but it's not perfectly constructed. The pictures, however, are excellent, trust me. I can't share them, that wouldn't be fair, but oh how I hope that my brand of lunacy is just what the Zabet ordered. It requires multiple techniques, all of them really basic though. The first skill needed is drinking beer. Always a good start.

#2 son is about to turn 23, and that's a huge milestone in his life. It's the first birthday he's had in a while that he may face sober, for one thing. His birthday last year brought on my desire to throw him a little kid party, since I didn't actually know him when he was a little kid. He invited all his friends for a barbecue, and I did a Spiderman theme in plates, masks, blowing horn things, cake design and a number of other crazy things. It was the greatest party, I was still awake around 4 supervising the extinguishing of the bonfire while the last die-hards were playing beer pong. the ensuing disaster didn't happen until the next morning, but by noon #2 son was out of here in handcuffs. long story. It took a year to get everything straightened out, and the last year in our lives has been more or less hell for all concerned. Now it's over, but we are all drowning financially. Seriously, hunger is right around the corner. Thought we might move, but we can't afford it, even to move to a smaller place, maybe with utilities included. we'd lose the yard and the garden and maybe even our pets, and maybe we couldn't all live together anymore, but I did not know what else to do. But now we know we can't do that. So now it all falls on me. And, truthfully, I don't know if I can stand up under this.

I've been coughing and sniffling for a couple of days now. I punched the kid for giving me this cold. At my age, I've had most of the rhinoviruses (rhinoviri?) in the world and hadn't been sick for a number of years, but this one got me good. Couldn't have come at a worse time. Well, maybe it could have, the way things have been going, worse is just an unanticipated event that comes next.

okay, that's my quota of whine, whine, whine---

On a lighter note, my friends over at Anticraft keep me laughing with our new mutual fetish of men in kilts. It seems like every topic in every category dissolves into lusty remarks and graphic speculation about hot men in kilts and what they might or might not wear underneath. And whether or not it is blue ribbon worthy:http://theanticraft.com/forum/index.php?topic=458.15
All of this lunacy was inadvertantly started with this:http://beckybooblogs.blogspot.com/2008/03/pattern-for-beholder.html
my apologies to Becky and whoever that guy is if they happen to see this and not like being drooled on by women from their teens to their fifties. verbally. ad nauseum. And apologies also to the moderators of the various boards who finally had to sort out all this drivel and put it in a board of it's own called y'all're naughty. And then somebody mentioned lumberjacks----

everybody's got a blog but my butt

Today, I found out that God has a blog. Yes, that God. The Almighty. His userpic is awesome. Michaelangelo painted it, after all. He has awesome pictures. He apparently sees himself as CEO of some global or maybe universal corporation, He has memos. He has administrators. Sin is an acronym, as is love. I'm not telling you, you have to go see for yourself. Lo, it boggleth the mind.

http://thelordgodalmighty.wordpress.com/



And now, tonight, I find that even elder gods have blogs. Made a silly remark over at http://loltheist.com/, and I got a line about Cthulhu sneezed at me. Unable to instantly translate what ever the fuck his language is, seeking answers I found guess what?http://lolthulhu.com/
and discovered there that I'm safe for the moment, his notsnuggly greatevilness is still asleep.


It wasn't me that said everybody has a blog but my butt, I cheerfully stole the concept from my friend Spinningginny who claimed there was a website about everything but her butt. I think she could remedy that without too much trouble, actually. She's terribly creative, she made a giant vagina one time. claimed it was for a play or something.

well whaddya know

I thought I'd start off my new experience of blogging with a lot of whining just to get it out of the way. Now I go back and read it, and it's some serious whining. Not like me at all. Or is it? that's the issue, that's the problem, there's the confusion. What is me like?

I had an epiphany, right around Epiphany oddly enough. I realized that finally, there was absolutely no reason not to be who I wanted to be and live the life I wanted to live. All would have much more satisfactory if I had realize this, oh, say, in my 20's, but it's better late than never. I don't have to seem compentent at things I am not competent at. It's okay to admit that I don't know everything. Well, that's a little pointless, seeing as I do actually know everything. Or nearly everything. And what I don't know I can look up. Like Her Highness the Bagel of Everything says, I don't have to know things. The Internet knows things for me. I lurve me the internets. I lurve the strange language that has me looking up things in the Dictionary of Urban Slang. I love kitty pidgin and pictures of cats with snarky sayings on them. I love, love, love finding other people who say fuck way too much. I love smart people. although that is not the only type encountered on the internet, and today I even ran across a blog that does nothing else but celebrate the stupid. Case in point, at one time I spent a lot of time on tribes.net, mostly lurking, but I joined the Laughing Smiling tribe so I could comment on their hilarious posts and writing stories one random insane line at a time. I don't remember anymore what we were talking about in retail, but I remarked that my life at my old job would have been far better if
someone would just have put an IQ meter at the front door. I got a few laughs from other people, and one memorable post from someone who had to have been a Valley Girl, there is no other explanation possible. "Wow!" she gushed "Where did you get one of those? Post a pic when you get a chance!" I was totally nonplussed. I had nothing. I had to just walk away from the keyboard.

I have met some people who seem to have a slightly dark turn of mind in the craft world of the internets. It was all Marilyn Manson's fault, actually. One day I got to wondering what kind of towels he had in his kitchen. I couldn't really believe that he had the stupid kitchen/floral/chickens towels from Wal-Mart, there had to be towels for the Goth. Didn't there? I'd never seen any. Skulls on terrycloth. Bloodstained dishrags. canisters with spiders for your sugar, flour and rice. Nope. So I started searching, thinking maybe I had something there. Maybe it could make me some money. And then I found the Anticraft.http://www.theanticraft.com/go there. now. you'll thank me later.

Anticraft is an online magazine, with projects, articles, and many other things for the slightly sinister. Now, there is a book. And a very, very lively forum where I've met people from I don't even know how many wheres, some of them aren't even on this continent. Awesome! And reading the blog of the Anticraft founders, Zabet Stewart and Renee' Rigdon, I found the cult of the LOLTheists.http://loltheist.com/
go there, immediately if not sooner.
oh, you want to know about the towels and Marilyn Manson? That, my friends, is a tale for another day.

Today I played the Treasure of ElDorado. I played this game a long time ago, it was one of the first games I tried, and boy did I suck! I've honed skills since then. I don't sleep, so what else do I have to do at night? But I still suck. It's one of those brick-busting games where you have to click repeatedly, and this one has a little bomb that looks like the fish in the go fish game, only with a mouth full of serrated teeth. Level 3 is all about aiming those damn bombs, but there's not really enough time to work it out, you just have to guess. I don't like to guess. Maybe that's why I still suck.

Husby had the day off today, and he also had yesterday off. I get scared when he's going to be around too much, the potential for stupid grows proportionately to the time he has off. Uncommitted time is a real problem for a brain injury patient, his thoughts go bouncing all over the place and if he decides to or accidentally acts on one of the totally random one, you get things like 5 bags of Chex cereal in your kitchen cupboards for months. Or some kind of dollar store food you have never heard of that he bought instead of the mayonnaise you sent him out for. We have been trying to find our way back to each other, he wants to have sex in the middle of the night, but I will settle for most of a day without bitching at him. And then telling him I'm sorry, but if he would stop being stupid, I would stop bitching. He's trying, I can tell. He came home with mostly the right food. I'll tell you some other time why I don't go with him.

I rescued my knitting from the place where I had flung it last night. The sad thing is, it was no worse for wear when I picked it up, the error and tangled yarn had not changed at all. See, I got frustrated because there was one stitch with some split threads and I tried to fix it. All I had to do was drop it the rest of the way, capture the errant loop and put it back. Nothing is ever that simple for me, and the stupid stitch began to ladder, the one next to it thought it'd follow, and the next thing I knew, all of the stitches on the left hand needle had just slid right the hell off that damn metal needle. I tried picking them back up, failed, and that's when it took a dive. And the notions bag and the magazine pattern followed. Knitting is too light to be a satisfactory temper hurled object, that's why the bag and mag had to go too.
So anyway, I got a 2 sizes smaller circ needle, pulled the damn bastard needle out the rest of the way, ripped back a few rows and knit it all back together. Then I had to figure out which row I was on and how many inches I had to go before the next change and then I had to adjust my row counter/pattern counter thingy. then I put it down and picked up the beads.

Beads. How I love the beads. I haven't made a lighter cover in about 10 years, and the last ones I made, I still have. because the workmanship was shoddy. like all my left over crafts.
That Hat Attack binary hat was the very first thing that I ever made in any medium that I corrected every single error or flaw in. Because I was sending it to someone I didn't know, and because if it wasn't perfect, my victim wouldn't die. It was awful. It took me 2 entire days to knit that hat, but when it was done and on its way, it was the most incredible feeling.
Anyway, the beads. It took me 2 hours to figure out how to start peyote stitch in the round on a slippery item like a lighter, and every bead that was the wrong size or mis-placed got removed, the thread was waxed, the pattern was AWESOME, but now I'm at the bottom. that't the hardest part, to decrease smoothly and close the bottom. It's all about tactile sensation, it has to feel smooth like water. Tomorrow. After a certain time of night, all the holes disappear out of the beads, and that happened a couple of hours ago.

bloggity blog blog blog

So, blog. write about what is important, write about what I'm doing. okay.

I play games online. Not group games, just silly games. amusing games. from a game site. I search for hidden items, I free fairies from ogres and I line up 3 things in a row. I learn, and I get better. It gives me the illusion that I'm in control of something in my life. Exercizes my brain, I hear that it's important to do that.

Today I was playing Cradle of Rome. I play Cradle of Rome every day. It's so rewarding to match up 3 things, clear the board, and build little things. If you're good, you can get little people too, although it doesn't tell you what is required to get little people, they just pop up here and there if you do things like complete a level in 3 minutes or make 15 drops of 5 or more matches, I don't know how to get the fisherman. And there's somebody hiding behind the haystack in the field next to the windmill. At the end of each level, there's a triumphant fanfare of trumpets. When you get to the end of that era, there are fireworks. I wish I could live there.

I have also been beading. I had a little go at my knitted sweater, but the threads split, a stitch dropped and I flung the entire mess across the room. I won't look at it, and I won't let anyone else pick it up either. That'll show that evil bitch. I walk around muttering about a knitting bonfire. This is not the first time, it's not even the tenth time that I've flung the knitting. Sometimes I fling other things after it. That's how I lost the last set of stitch markers. and the big yarn needle.

I'm good at crafty stuff. But right now, when I really need to be creative, the inside of my head feels like glue. The yellow kind that smells bad. Trying to think thoughts with a head full of glue is really terrible. I need to be creative. I need to bare my soul in my work. I need, really need, to make a damn buck. I need to stop procrastinating. My life has become a joke like the for want of a nail joke. Oh, the joke goes like this: for the want of a nail, a shoe was lost. for the want of a shoe, the horse was lost, for the want of the horse, the soldier was lost, for want of the soldier-- the battle, the kingdom, the life, etc. all for the want of a nail. all for the want of a little attention to a traffic related ticket that I got in the mail, for an offense that I was not even PRESENT to commit, for lack of attention to that matter, my car, my job, my freedom was lost. So I need to be creative and I can't. Now, funny, that I can do.

A new day

time to get out into the world. time to get the world in here with me. either way, it's a brand new day