I keep sweepin' this floor
washin' clothes, dishes, babies
trying to clean up this mess
you made of me, my family.
Cry on that rebel
chocolate cake we got
because why the hell not
we're broke anyway
four dollars
same as four million
Selling eggs, sperm, smiles
Noodles and tomato sauce
to stop feeling hungry
even though I'm sick from it
spending the night
flushing undigested noodles,
expensive water
and all of my crazy pills
Stabbing myself in the ear
hoping I won't hear myself think

Since this is a personal blog and all, I feel the need to update all of my one readers.

Finally, finally! I've gotten a new job. I feel really great about it. I'm working for a company called JPI (Java Productions, Inc. www.jpidev.com), and I'm a technical analyst. I love it so far.

I moved!! I'm out of the world of isolation and long commutes! We live in Blacksburg, Virginia now. Sure, Hokie stuff is at a constant level of barrage, but the nearness and variety and diversity of the town are completely worth the large university and sports obsessed folks. I have a 2-3 minute commute from home to work. I live in a house that is near everythign but still secluded and surrounded by trees. We have one neighbor within shouting distance, an elementary school teacher in his twenties who lives in the basement apartment of the house. We're leasing from a real estate company and not a woman too old to turn a key much less accomplish fixing a hole in the door (or paying to have it done). Amelia has a room instead of a hallway living space. She has a door, so we don't bug her while she's sleeping. The bathroom, as compared to the last place, is enormous. It is BLUE! I didn't even like blue until I saw this bathroom. Now, I love it. I got the most gorgeous shower curtain ever and it looks perfect in the bathroom. We have TONS of vanity space and enough room to dry my hair in the bathroom so I don't wake Luke up. The tub is also blue, and the shower head works AND is way up high. All of the electricity works in every room, and all of the electrical outlets have the capability of supporting a 3-prong plug. The yard outside is suitable for sledding - adventurous sledding even. We have an outdoor storage area and a gorgeous porch! The porch will be perfect for a glider and crocheting in the spring and summer. I will have flower pots. Our unit is A, the downstairs guy is B, and the maintenence guy put a C on a birdhouse out back. The back even has a swingset for next summer. Everything is on one level inside, and it has three bedrooms. The laundry is right next to the kitchen, so I will never bee too sleepy to wash clothes. We also have...a dishwasher! I don't know how to use one, but we have one! The kitchen has a lot of cabinet space and a raised oven with a countertop stove. I could go on and on raving about this house,...and I might. Skip it if you don't care. The floors in the bedrooms are carpeted while the rest of the house has wood floors, tile, or linoleum. The WINDOWS are gorgeous and enormous. I have what I consider pretty close to a window wall. I have great space to light my plants without taking up food prep space.

Nearby, we have tons of restaurants - all kinds that you can imagine: Indian, Thai, Burger, BBQ, Italian, MACADOS, PANERA BREAD! We have Target and the BIG bookstores like Books A Million and Barnes and Noble. We have Pier 1. Everything. We have a COLD STONE CREAMERY for the love of God. I am just fascinated with everything there is to do and see here. It isn't too busy so far, but it is winter and I've not been here for any Hokie games. I'm sure it will be busy then.

I'm slowly learning my way around. So far, I can find home, work, Target, a Panera, and daycare without the GPS. This is big news because I have lived here for a week, worked here for two, and I already know some places! I assumed I'd rely on the GPS for the rest of my life here.

I guess I don't realy have to tell you anymore. Can you tell that I love it here? I LOVE IT HERE!

I love my job. I know that I don't have all of my responsibilities yet, and it will probably get more stressful when I get more familiar with the work, but that's okay. It's a small office and I like everyone that I work with. I get to run the web site! I really get treated like a professional here. I sometimes have to remind myself that I'm an adult but not while I'm here. I am given responsibility because they have faith that I can be responsible for that. And I can. When someone believes in you, you start to believe in yourself. I like the respect that I get here even though I'm the new person and have yet to prove myself to anyone.

I could really go on and on about great things that are happening. I hope that this luck continues because Luke lost his job (his position was terminated and they wouldn't even let him transfer to another call center and be on the phone instead of in management...don't work for Dish Network. They steal your livelihood and cheat you out of promotions, raises, and even demotions), and he is on the hunt now. He's taking it pretty hard. He's been unemployed for probably almost 3 weeks and is already discouraged. He really wants to work. We really need him to work too. Last year was so hard on us that we have a lot of catching up to do this year. We sold our stock in Dish Network and are awaiting the check so we can get caught up on immediately important bills and get some groceries so we can stop living off of what is available at Target (I got a Target card because they have food and we definitely couldn't get any food anywhere else). It is really hard, but I am staying very positive because I really think this year is going to set us straight. I am hoping that the next month or two will get us back on our feet. There is a lawsuit out against Dish Network that we've been asked to join in on, so maybe we'll benefit a little bit out of that too.

The snOMG storm of 2010 is heavily upon us. If Comcast would stop rescheduling on us, I'd probably be spending a few days working at home. I was stuck for the weekend and yesterday until some angels named Amanda and Jeremy helped get my car out of the snow. Luke had a flat and had to get a new tire (*wince*).

What is the snow's equivilent to rain's "pouring?"

What can we do?

A little over a week ago, Haiti's capitol was reduced to ashes. Now, its people fight disease and hunger even harder than they fought before. I spent a mere eight days on the island that Haiti is half of. Sure, my immediate thoughts zoomed to the little girl who gave me viral conjunctivitis in an orphanage on the other side of the island. Then, my heart tugged in the direction of the sugar cane village where the 15-year-old boy asked me in careful English if I would take him with me so he could learn more English and then clung to our bus until the rock laden road shook him and his friends off. These people fight hunger and disease every day. I wondered if they were okay. My hair has grown and been cut since the orphan girl braided it after walking me around her dirt yard by the hand. Now, I have a little girl to walk around by the hand. I will braid her hair one day. She sleeps under blankets in her bedroom in a house far from this disaster while Haitians sleep - some forever - under rubble and Dominicans sleep under garbage that lines their streets.

It, life, is hard. It just keeps catching up with this little family of mine. I lose my job. I get a crappy job. I get a better job - a break in the horrible pattern. Luke loses his job. Here we are. I wonder why this chain of bad events has to come down on us. I feel so selfish for complaining about BOTH of us not having good and stable, well-paying jobs. I will be able to feed, shelter, and insure my daughter. I might not be as comfortable as I'd like to be while doing it. I might be in debt for a lot longer than I'd anticipated when I learned I got a new job. I don't have to steal and run from guns and police and other hungry people to do these things though.

God has a way of humbling us. This disaster happened over a week ago, but I am just now getting down to thinking about it and applying lessons to my own life. I prefer to drift through days getting to the next exciting thing. I don't often consider people who are not close to me. I sometimes donate to the March of Dimes and St. Jude's, but that is the extent of my involvement. I don't know if I just don't do well with emotional situations because I'm a Vulcan-like Aspergian, or if I know that as soon as I look into the pained eyes in those photos on Google Images, I'm going to regret not pursuing that tug toward the sugar cane village, the orphanage, those schools, that kid I would have adopted after becoming a Dominican citizen, the people I would have fed to the best of my ability.

What can we do? We can donate. All of the money in the world will somehow find a way to get used incorrectly. Do our prayers do any good? Does it do anything for THEM if we keep praying or just appease our guilty hearts while we chow down on Chinese buffet? What can we do?

Someone silently left a flyer in the handle of my broken storm door today. I just wish I'd been able to greet them when they offered their invitation of ignorance.

The flyer is supposed to inform community residents of the threat of Industrial Wind coming to Tazewell County, Virginia. January 12, 2010 at 6:15 p.m., Tazewell Middle School will host a Public Hearing so residents' voices can be heard as they raise up to "Protect the Ridgelines of Tazewell County!"

The front of the flyer outlines the threat. The first (apparently the most important) point made is that the property value of your homes will decrease dramatically if they have a view of these monstrosities. Say nothing about the majority of the homes in this area running off of off road Someone silently left a flyer in the handle of my broken storm door today. I just wish I'd been able to greet them when they offered their invitation of ignorance.

The flyer is supposed to inform community residents of the threat of Industrial Wind coming to Tazewell County, Virginia. January 12, 2010 at 6:15 p.m., Tazewell Middle School will host a Public Hearing so residents' voices can be heard as they raise up to "Protect the Ridgelines of Tazewell County.!"

The front of the flyer outlines the threat. The first (apparently the most important) point made is that the property value of your homes will decrease dramatically if they have a view of these monstrosities. Say nothing about the majority of the homes in this area running on off-road diesel fuel and electricity to heat. Where does that oil come from again? Oh yeah.

Mountaintop Destruction is the second point argued. BD/Dominion will have to "demolish a large portion of the East River Mountain and any other considered ridges" by "blasting dynamite, leveling with heavy machinery, and the pouring of massive concrete foundations" which can "ruin the water tables, contaminate wells, and cause flooding." Apparently, these big companies don't take safety into consideration? If our under-educated community knows that these water tables and contaminate wells are here, how do we think that people that buy the property don't know about them? Because if someone is doing something that we don't like, they must be monsters without brains mindlessly jabbing our mountains. I've not heard any protests against the rock quarry not three miles down the road from my house. They use dynamite, huff heavy clouds of gravel dust into our lungs, and use huge machines and trucks to break and haul the rocks. They're breaking the skulls of our mountains too, but that's okay. They're not trying to make the world last a little longer so keep on keepin' on.

Hazards to Wildlife. Apparently birds and bats are too stupid to use their eyes and sonar to get out of the way of the whooshing blades. But ripping off the heads of the mountains and sucking dry the veins of coal running through our state destroying habitats and allowing toxic sludge to seep down our mountains and into our water supplies and ravage disease on our PEOPLE...HUMANS doesn't matter.

The ridiculous flyer then goes on to explain that few jobs will be created so no locals will benefit. Isn't a few more jobs better than a fewer jobs? So it isn't creating hundreds of jobs. At least a few more people will get to heat their homes, feed their kids, fix their cars without draining their parents' credit cards for help.

Our tourism is doomed because no one wants to look at mountains with wind turbines on them. It's just fine to look at radio, television, and electric towers though, which are just as high. East River Mountain area just does not have enough to offer for tourism to outweigh the benefits of wind turbines. It doesn't. There is just not that much to come here for. And there is NOTHING in Tazewell county that is drawing money from tourism.

Lastly, the flyer declares that "Turbines are dangerous and disruptive." It suggests that the turbines cause severe health problems to people living within two miles of the site (which is why it is UP ON A MOUNTAIN MILES AWAY FROM HOMES) and strobe lights (to protect the birds and bats) mounted on the housings will "permenently ruin our night sky." Southern X's spotlights be damned? Oh no. As long as naked skinnies are parading, lights are welcomed.

I'm not even going to get into the fact that this flyer is poorly put together. That is just the English major in me expecting professionalism from an organization creeping up to my door to slip a flyer in without knocking.

Holiday Wrap Up

This year, I was a Grinch. I started off kind of wary of the Christmas/New Year season. Then, I decided it was all about making it happen. So, I got myself psyched up about putting up the huge tree from my Grandmother (which we'll never ever use again because it is ENORMOUS), wrapping the one present I had to give, and dressing the little S family up in Red and Black because "That's our style, yo."

So, the day came and went. I was not without medication so we all came out without bloodshed. I was glad to see it go though. For the first time ever, I took my tree down before time for New Year ball-dropping. It was down as soon as we came home from our visiting. I was even so grinchy to decide that from now on, we'll have a table-top tree because we do so much traveling anyway. Ok, maybe that's just practical instead of grinchy.

But today is January 1, 2010. I decided that this year, "Twenty-Ten" because it sounds more Science Fictiony than Two Thousand Ten according to my father-in-law (to whom I owe a lot of my happiness--SHOUTOUT! That takes too much time and uncharacteristic sentimentality to explain; just accept it.), would be the best year of my life yet. After that, I decided I'd declare that every year until I'm dead and maybe even them some more. I'm not THINKING negative thoughts.

I am going to work hard and play harder. I am going to show up for work early. I am going to scoop the litter box every day. I am going to fold the laundry the same day that it comes out of the dryer unless some playing needs to be done first. I am going to kiss my daughter even when she pouts when I try. I am going to squeeze as much EVERYTHING (good and bad because fruit has seeds) out of every day. And that's it.

Now. The holidays? I am not going to remember them with exhaustion and debt. I am going to remember what made them special.

My daughter opened presents. Sure, she liked her kitty and purple afro doll better than any of the neat things that made noise and taught her ABCs, but she enjoyed herself. So many people said "Amelia just makes Christmas for me." Other people enjoyed themselves. Lastly, I have people in my life that love me so much that they know really special and thoughtful gifts to give me. My mom got me three different sets of post-it notes (and matching magnets!). I don't know anyone but my mom that has an appreciation for office supplies that matches mine. Luke's parents got me a snowflake obsidian earrings and necklace set. They know my favorite stone. Yes, I have a favorite stone. Yes, it is a flash hardened magma. Yes, I'm specific enough that it is snowflake obsidian. It became my favorite stone when Mrs. Dillon took us to Luray Caverns and I fell in love with the beautiful black-and-white shiny, tiny stone. My favorite Uncle (yeah, I even discriminate uncles. Not aunts though. They're all my favorites.) got me an iPod touch. He consistently spoils me rotton, and I've had to charge that thing every day since because I'm getting so much use out of it. I'm basically obsessed. Sure, these are all material things, but they are also representative of the attention paid and love shown to me by the people that matter the most.

And even though we're flat broke and have a subscription to Netflix, Luke got me the new Harry Potter dvd because he knows how badly I wanted to see it and add it to my complete collection. All of this while he thinks Harry Potter is ridiculous. (Well...thought. He finally figured out that the story is very similar to the Star Wars story.)

So, the holidays are over and I'm feeling much better. I guess that is why so many people love the holidays so much. It has this way of sneaking a little bit of happiness in on you.

I've broken my trend of doing a neat little fragmented blog post at the end of the year summarizing my past 365 days in ambiguous phrases. That's over along with the O-something decade. I am really glad to see it go. I had a lot of really awesome things happen during that ten years, but the next ten are going to be awesome. I'll make sure of that. I'll forget the bad (bad rhymes with Chad...haha) and write the good in stone.

Amelia will have her first real steps. (STOP JUDGING HER! SHE IS CAUTIOUS!) She might tell me stories like her daddy and go on and on forever and never really find the point and I will love it because I will love watching her get excited over anything at all. Or she will tell me stories like her Papaw and awe me with her cleverness. Maybe she will tell me stories like her Papa and make everything tear-worthy. She will attack me with kisses, learn to read, chase the cat, drive me nuts, and probably eat a few more crayons (Hey. I get it. They really do have an awesome texture AND smell. I wanted Sharpie, Febreze, and hand sanitizer when I was pregnant with her.)

So, no holiday letter this year. No Christmas cards either. You all know how to get to my pictures of my glorious daughter. I'll give you prints if you want some. If I could erase the whole year and start over, I wouldn't. That's way too freaking scary. Plus, 2010 will harvest some experiences and goals and opportunities that would never have come around had all of the bad parts of 2009 not happened. I like the sound of 2010 better anyway. I'm not goint to say "thousand" in the year name. It sounds snooty. We all need a little more sci-fi in our lives anyway, right?

So, I love you. I know you love me. I really appreciate it. I can't express my feelings very well, so knowing that you love me anyway really means a lot. :)

Happy New Year. Good Luck. Godspeed.

(Oh! And if you remember, please say a little prayer for me or send some good thoughts my way on January 5.)

Learn and learn and learn and learn and die

Maybe my new favorite month is December. Or maybe my life is finally coming back together from being in a thousand pieces for the better part of 2009.

My husband and I have been up-and-down, up-and-down for the past few weeks. We've been mostly down, though. He's been absent; when he was around, he was irritable and disrespectful and inconsiderate. I've been grouchy, disrespectful, and unforgiving. We've talked for hours and hours, going back and forth trying to solve these problems. It turns out that the answer is just---do it. It is as easy as wishing. I wished he'd act like he loved me. He wished I'd act like I love him. We love each other, so why not just do it? I don't know why it took us so long to come to this conclusion, but we finally made it to where we are now. He said he'd want to be around me more if I was just happier. I'd be happier if he would want to be around me more. Ok, cycles are never ending. So, we just need to try to make each other happy from now on. Duh, isn't that what marriage is? Wow. Sometimes we can be really slow.

Anyway, I've been trying to decide what makes me happy. I always find myself wandering over to the crafting aisle in stores. So, I made a stop at JoAnne's Fabrics. I bought some silly wood fill ornaments for 49 cents each, some vanilla paint, and some glitter paint. No, I guess I don't have to be creating a beautiful piece of literature to be "creating" and happy. It felt so good just to sit and paint those wooden stars (and a bone for my dog-brother). I wonder why doing something like that makes me feel so much better. I sat at my desk all day today drawing. I never really had an interest in drawing because it took too much patience. I think I look for an end result instead of enjoying things a lot of the time.

That is another thing that I am learning - to enjoy the process. Life is not about getting through it. I might be letting you all in on a little secret here, but that's okay. In Star Trek: The Next Generation Elementary, Dear Data, Data learns that the fun of the holodeck program of Sherlock Holmes mysteries is not about getting the mystery solved but about solving the mystery. I don't have to make something perfect and get to the end just to get to the end. That would make doing the activity pointless. Drawing a picture, painting an ornament, crocheting a blanket--all pointless if you don't enjoy the process. I didn't have a daughter so that she could move out and have her own kids. I had a daughter so that I could be with her every day, teach her to talk and walk and stop hitting, and love and be.

I know that this all sounds very...elementary (pardon), but this is an enormous step for me. Maybe I am old to be asking myself "why?" instead of "to what end?" At least I got here though. At least I AM here for now. I'm learning a lot these days.

I said it at the beginning of this year and several times since then, and I know that I will say it before the year ends and then for the rest of my life. This year, 2009, will be/is/has been/was the hardest but best year yet. Now, maybe I'll have better years; I surely hope and believe that each year gets better. All of the pain and fear and frustration that made up 2009 will be worth the lessons I am finally learning in month 12.

Now, I'm going to make these ornaments a little more gaudy and read one of the books in my never-ending library.

I am happy.
I love.
I keep going.
I am even peaceful.

Don't open an umbrella in the house.

Seeing out of a hole that you're stuck in is pretty difficult. Sometimes, you just have to wait for someone to come along and point out some foot holds. While, I'm a bit to heavy and have too much baggage for anyone to pull me out, I appreciate the heads up every now and then. An e-friend of mine, Julie, is doing a photo-a-day project and posted a photo along with a quote (she always finds such fitting quotes) by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "The best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain."

I started to think about what we do when the literal rain comes. We dress appropriately, grab an umbrella, and go about our days. It really shouldn't be any different with proverbial rain. We should prepare with what we have and just let it rain and keep going. There really isn't much else we can do.

I really can't beat myself up for suffering and having a hard time lately. It doesn't help. I will do everything I can to protect myself from getting my head wet, but I really can't do a lot to keep from getting my pants wet up to the calves. It happens. I didn't cause it to rain, so I can't make it stop.