I have been working on this for a long time. Here is a list of Things I must do before I die:

1. Go to Japan and get drunk on Saki.
2. Own a pinball machine
3. Get a federal grant to have a library built in my home town Fenwick
4. Pay my bill at the video store down the road
5. Sell my Iguana (hopefully before it dies)
6. Make a better peanut butter (if that's possible)
7. Quit smoking (that's a big one)
8. Learn to play piano
9. Finish college and get my master's degree in digital audio recording
10. Achieve success in the recording industry
11. Stop drinking kool-aid
12. Go to a wine tasting party
13. Take my girlfriend to New York
14. Go scuba diving
15. Figure out how to cook a bad ass apple pie

There you have it, I do all of that and I will consider my life complete... for the most part.

Well, it's been awhile since I daylogged anything, and people have been asking me what's been going on, so here goes...

For much of the summer, life sucked. Then I got over it.

In October, I went to Wiccanpiper's nodermeet, where I got to meet Apatrix, LaggedyAnne, Vandewal, and amib. It was absolutely awesome!

In November, I started dating my sweetie. It was exciting and scary - mostly scary (sorry, baby...). I had resolved that I wasn't going to let myself depend on anyone anymore, that I wasn't going to let anyone get close enough to need them anymore, except my kids. So much for that plan...

In December, Social Services finally closed my case, despite all that my ex-husband tried to do.

He picked the kids up December 11th, Friday, at 7 pm. December 12th at 1100 they walked back through my front door, sobbing. My daughter told me that she had had an archery meet that morning, and that Daddy had taken them. They were charged $1.- to get in, and my ex threw a FIT. Apparently it was pretty bad, since her archery coach called me Monday to ask if Rowan was ok. He started yelling that he wasn't gonna pay no buck to watch his daughter shoot archery, packed the kids back in the car, and drove them back to my house, yelling that I use him for cheap day care, that he hates Trigg County and will move as soon as he can, and that he'll probably get deployed soon anyway. He dumped the kids off at the end of the driveway without checking if we were home and drove off. That was the last time he picked the kids up for visitation. He didn't send gifts or cards, or even phone the kids for Christmas. Christmas Eve I had to work, and my babysitter couldn't make it, so my sweetie drove 6 hours through a blizzard to watch the kids. I think he had fun watching my monkeys get all excited over their presents.

In January, we found him a job in Hopkinsville, KY... amazing, since you wouldn't expect to find an IT job here in the boonies rather than in a big city. He moved in with us and started work the end of January.

In March, the monkeys and I went to Florida and did the Disney experience, something I'd been promising them for several years. We had a chance to have lunch with CzarKhan, too - awesome burritos with several different types of hot sauce, ranging from wimpy to atomic. I tried several, and regretted at least one.

In April, his mom came to visit - twice. I really like her, and I think she approved of me. She and Rowan became fast friends, and she's coming back in June.

Also in April, I found out from a friend that my ex-husband has been riding around my neighborhood on his 4-wheeler, telling anyone who'll listen how his horrible ex-wife betrayed him while he was gone in the Army, and how she won't let him see his kids, and how he sits in the woods on his 4-wheeler and watches us through the windows with binoculars... just a little scary. I got an EPO against him, which I have since changed to an agreed restraining order so that he can stay in the military (since with an EPO he wouldn't be allowed to carry a firearm). He has to attend domestic violence classes and get a psychiatric evaluation before having visitation with the kids again.

Right now, I'm interviewing for jobs in West Lafayette, IN, and we're planning on moving there end of June. I've got a friend who works for the Purdue University IT department, and he thinks my sweetie shouldn't have a problem getting hired there.

Things are going so well right now that I'm a little scared. I keep thinking this can't last. He and I complement each other so perfectly that it can't possibly be true. We're planning on going to the July reunion, so we may see some of you there. We'll be the ones acting disgustingly smoochy ;D.

I am officially a HARDASS now! I just recently got told by my doctor than because of a previous medical problem I will never cry again, no matter what happens to me! Funerals...weddings...enter title of intensely sad movie...relationship break-ups...getting punched in the face... I'll just be a hard-ass, and won't shed a tear. No matter how crushed I am on the inside I'll just never cry again. How cool am I going to seem? Ice cold, that's what! So don't none of you guys go messing with me. Maybe I should learn kung-fu now, just so I can kick ass like a proper ninjagirl too?

Though one of the other, more well known, side effects of stroke is that it can cause a survivor to break into intense giggling fits for hours on end. Which, has been immensely fun on a lot of occasions; but sometimes also very inappropriate. Think... funeral, with girl who can't cry, but can burst into uncontrollable laughter at any moment. Well, would you bring me to your grandmother's funeral?

Apparently this inability to cry is one of the little-known side-effects of having a stroke, though no doctor has been able to adequately explain to me how this works. I think some connection in my brain that controls crying has been killed by the stroke, but I have no knowledge of physiology or medicine, if YOU do, answers on a postcard please to Cool Beans.

I have been unhappy for a good while now. Maybe 4 months, possibly since New Years. I don't know when, but just a general sensation of dissatisfaction and frustration. Not depression, I'm not depressed. It just seems like the mechanism has a loose belt somewhere.

I am a ridiculously introspective person. Introspective to the point that I sit around and introspect about introspection. For instance, this morning I was trying to decide whether or not introspection is selfish -- wasting all that thought power on trying to understand myself. What's so mysterious about me anyway, that I have to sit around and try to figure me out?

Part of my daily routine is laying on the bed every morning for 20 or 30 minutes and just thinking about my life, and how I could or should change it. Why do I act the way I do? What do I dislike about myself?

But for all my pontification and navel gazing, I can't find a source of this frustration. I'm thinking it is like some sort of metaphysical soap scum buildup on the shower wall of my soul. With no particular source, but from a collection of sources.

Time

Time is a major source of frustration. I feel very aggravated that once I get home from work, and deal with The Dinner Situation, I'm looking at maybe 4 hours of time before I should be going to bed.

Up until maybe 2 or 3 years ago, it wasn't an issue. I would regularly go to work with 3 or 4 hours of sleep. I could stay up as late as I wanted, but I'm 27 now, and maybe because I am approaching the big 3-0, my body is starting to object to such neglect.

I also constantly feel like I'm wasting time. No matter what I am doing. I despise television. If I watch more than 30 minutes of it I start feeling like I'm going insane. My fiancé loves TV, and watches multiple shows a night. She's perfectly happy to come home from work and spend the rest of the evening watching what I consider to be absolute drivel. She also naps, which drives me nuts. It's like being a starving man, and watching someone throw food away. Time is so precious, how can you nap? You have 4 hours until bed time, how can you spend 25% of that time asleep?

I feel guilty because I have a shelf of video games I never play, several of which have never been played once, never even opened. But if I spend more than 30 minutes playing a game, I start feeling like I'm wasting valuable time.

I have a dozen DVDs at least I've never watched. But same deal there, after an hour, I start thinking about the fact that the tub needs to be cleaned or something, and I'm just completely wasting my time.

I also would like to consider myself a musician, but I don't. More on this later, but it relates to time because time spent practicing or experimenting with music, although fun, is also a distraction from this idea of the "something else" that I should be doing. But I just don't know what the hell it is. It causes anxiety.

I wasn't always like this.

Music

As I said above, more than anything, I would like to be a musician. I have an entire bedroom full of musical instruments. 4 guitars, a bass guitar, a lap steel guitar, several amps, probably 20 effects modules, synthesizers, keyboards, an entire computer dedicated to musical endeavors, recording gear, mixers, studio monitors. Not top of the line gear by any stretch, but nobody has ever walked in to that room without saying "wow". And I feel embarrassed by it, because for all the shit in that room, I've never written a single song. Never recorded anything that I consider to be above absolute amateur work. Does it count as making music if you're just using factory presets?

I've been a musician in the past, part of bands and collaborations. And I've done things I felt proud of, but that was years ago. Doing it alone is very difficult. Is this a two-year creative block? Or do I simply lack creativity? Is the music I made in the past just a result of me latching on to more creative and talented people than myself?

My Health

I've gained 20 pounds in the past 2 years. Ten since Christmas. The first time I've gained weight not attributable to a growth spurt. Yet, for the sake of convenience, I still visit a fast food joint once or twice a week for lunch. I have cleared the perfect workout spot in my garage, placed a weight bench in there, we have an elliptical machine. There are dozens of hiking trails near my house, and I love hiking. But I just don't do any of it. I have nobody to blame but myself.

I had a kidney stone last year, my first ever. The doctor gave me dietary guidelines to help avoid the situation again. I followed them for several months, nowadays I drink sweet tea every chance I get. I feel like my kidney is a time bomb.

I am also losing my hearing. This is very upsetting for me. At age 27, I should not be asking people to repeat themselves all the time. My new boss is very soft-spoken, and the last meeting I had with him, I only caught about half of what he said. He was sitting there moving his lips and I heard only a few words. There's a Romanian lady at work, who has a very deep voice, and a very thick accent and also speaks very quietly. I have never understood a word she has said to me without asking her to repeat herself at least three times. Conversations with her are extremely difficult, and she refuses to just email me her questions. The hearing loss is probably attributable to the bands mentioned above. Stupid kids playing stupid music at stupid volume levels. Ten years later, I can't even hear my alarm clock if I lay on my right side.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Spirituality

I don't know what to say about this.

I am not a Christian. I can't be, I don't believe the things Christians believe. Though I was raised being told I was Baptist, I only went to church maybe a dozen times by the time I was 18. I went to Sunday school for a year or two, so I learned the Bible stories. I find them to be very good fables, but I do not believe they are all actually true.

At times, I feel very sad that I basically have no religion. I'm not opposed to religion, I just don't particularly see a reason to believe in it. During a trip to Japan, I briefly considered shintoism, until I realized that I didn't really believe it either, I just found it interesting and novel and quaint. The idea of believing in something for the sake of belief is beyond my ability to rationalize. I can't resolve my logical side and my spiritual side. I am not an atheist, I don't disbelieve in the possibility of a God or gods or creator or higher authority. I just don't have a particularly clear idea of what such a being would be like, and I don't trust anyone to interpret that for me.

My parents go to church now that the kids are gone. More for the sense of community than anything else. And that's not really interesting to me. I'm so private and closed off about these things, I can't imagine trying to come to terms with my creator while surrounded by dozens or hundreds of strangers. I don't trust people enough. A hundred people getting together can create an emotional current, similar to mob mentality. This does not mean God is speaking to them, it just means they are all agreeing to act like they feel God's presence. I know this because I have sat in a church with people praising and swearing they feel God touching them, and felt nothing. Thus, either God was not there, or he was simply not talking to me. That is a very lonely feeling.

The concept of a human proxy for God is unacceptable to me. But I don't really know where to turn to figure things out for myself. The Bible? That's a little biased toward Christianity. But all religious texts are biased. Studying collective world religions provides insight to human behavior and culture, but no insight beyond that.

Again, frustration.

Money

Everyone is frustrated by money, I know.

I make a fairly good salary. More than both of my parents combined, up until dad's promotion a few months ago.

My salary plus my fiancé's salary is 6 figures. But yet, I live by the same 200-dollar-a-week budget I did when I was making half my current salary. My savings account balance is less than a thousand dollars. After 4 years of making this money, if I were laid off tomorrow, I would be utterly screwed.

I just keep getting pummeled by things. Which is only part of the problem. Yeah, remember that room full of music equipment? That's is also part of the problem. How about restaurants for dinner 4 or 5 nights a week? Yeah, that too.

But still, there are external things that add to my problems. Like that kidney stone thing. I had a surgery to remove it and only found out later that it was not "medically necessary", thus my insurance only covered 20% of it. So that was a very large chunk of savings down the drain.

A few months later, my car was broken in to. Had to replace a window, dash, stereo, center console. More savings zapped.

We bought a house after we got engaged. Our old landlord blatantly lied to us about a thousand dollars they owed us, admitted they lied and literally dared us to do anything about it, pointing out that they had a very good and expensive attorney who would be more than happy to listen to our complaints and explain about the difficulty of proving the existence of a verbal contract which contradicts a written one.

A house is obviously expensive, but to add to the cost, I discovered the baseboard in the music room was water logged one day. Foundation leak, Two thousand dollars.

Chimney needs fixing, another thousand dollars.

We needed a truck so we could transport materials to the house instead of paying Home Depot to deliver every time I needed an 8 foot 2 by 4 or a large garbage can. I budgeted three thousand dollars for the task. Wound up financing 4300, because of different house-related things eating up the truck budget. We needed the truck sooner than I could find one for $3000. So I fudged the budget a little.

I know I do it to myself, but I also believe I do a decent job of taking care of things. I do not live lavishly. I do not spend extreme amounts of money foolishly. I just keep thinking I can put aside money next month.

I recently picked the truck up from the transmission shop, costing another 1200. They told me I need a sensor replaced, and that's going to cost me another 550 from a different mechanic. And if I don't get it replaced, it will burn up some solenoid in the transmission, which will essentially undo everything I just paid to have done.

See? Stuff like that, snowballing. What was supposed to be a transmission fluid change turned in to a rebuild, which turned in to a sensor replacement. Now I'm $1700 in and waiting to see what else the next mechanic finds.

Despite all of that, I'm still able to handle the costs without too much discomfort, there is just no room for saving. And I keep telling myself it will subside eventually, but it keeps on keeping on.

Marriage

I am very conflicted about this wedding. I mean, I definitely want to be married to my fiancé. I love her, I just don't particularly want to go through with the wedding she is planning. All the ceremony and the stress and the organization, I hate it. I would be perfectly fine with a small ceremony. Jeans and sandwiches and good friends and family on a warm day. Thats perfect, to me.

She wanted to get married this September. But I said no way we'd have the money by then. And I was right, since that is just a few months away. So she chose September 2006. It has to be September for some reason. So '06 it is. She was upset that we had to put it off that far, like she thought I didn't really want to marry her. I explained it was simply to give us enough time to save up instead of going in to debt.

Now adding salt to the wound, three of her friends have gotten engaged and married in the time since we've been engaged. One of my friends got engaged, and they'll be married before we are. But then again, they're all going with quick, easy, cheap weddings.

Even worse, she scheduled it on the same weekend as Dragon Con, 2006. Which doesn't really bother me personally, I'm over the whole Sci Fi convention thing, and personally find them a little bit tedious. I'd much rather get married over Labor Day weekend than go watch Storm Troopers pose for ridiculous pictures with the 84 different guys who all dress as Agent Smith. But a large chunk of our friends attend yearly, almost religiously. They look forward to it all year. So I fully expect some degree of drama as many of the people we consider friends choose to attend the con over our wedding.

It is frustrating.

Lots of things are frustrating.

Thanks for listening.

I've been polishing my stand-up act, because I have decided to become a stand-up comedian. I like the idea of standing up, because I am so good at it; I have had a lot of practice, because I do not own a car, and when I am waiting for the bus I am standing up, and so far no-one has mocked my ability to stand up, no one has harrassed me for that. I would never sit down whilst queuing for the bus, firstly because I do not like to sit down in the presence of other people, and secondly because I would be worried that I would not be the first person to see the bus. I once harassed a man for standing up, but that was not simply because he was standing; it was because he was looking at me. He told me to fuck off, but I could tell that he was nervous. London does that to you. The only way to win is to strike first.

Anyway, I've been working on some jokes. I've been listening to a comedian called Neil Hamburger, who is a concept comedian, in that he pretends to be unfunny - to such an extent that he is not only 'so bad he's good', he's not only 'so bad he's bad', he actually spins around and around with that kind of thing for eternity, because he's so bad he's bad, and funny-bad because he's bad, and deliberately so. Also, I have been listening to an Icelandic band called 'Mum', who are apparently pronounced 'Moum', because they have an accent over the u. You see, just because I disagree with your politics, it doesn't necessarily follow that I have poor taste in music. Mum are not funny at all, indeed they belong to a genre of art which prides itself on being deadly earnest and serious in a way that only teenage boys can be. The album is called 'Finally We Are No One' and the song which takes my fancy is called 'Don't Be Afraid, You Have Just Got Your Eyes Closed', and all their song titles are like that. Stupidly, the first track on the album does not have any drums.

My first joke is this, which is topical; I'm just getting to the first joke. It is topical because Woody Allen is in the news, because he has a film out. And it is also topical because society is nowadays much less squeamish about insulting Jews. The state of Israel has squandered any goodwill it built up during the first three decades after the second world war, and it has nothing much to offer the non-US western powers; there will come a day when the leader of France or Britain or Germany or Spain or Italy or any number of countries, that man or woman will be asked to voice general support for Israel - not for a specific act, but for the state itself - and he or she will hesitate or fudge, or qualify this support, and that will be the beginning of the end for the UN's boldest, earliest and cruellest experiment. A state which was set up to save a race from extermination will become the ashen graveyard of that race, and that is irony. I do not have an opinion either way. I merely report things as I see them through eyes which are clouded by external forces.

The joke is this:

What would you get if you took Woody Allen, and you strapped him to a table, and you forced him to have an orgasm against his will - by rubbing his cock against a pig?

You'd get a "Jew-jaculation".

That's the first joke. I need to write some more before I have an act. Then you will see what we can do.

I sat down to work on my Great Gatsby paper, I'm not even sure you could call it a paper, it's more like select words that refer to the novel every now and then. Once I sat down I wasn't sure what to write about, I couldn't write a conclusion because it wasn't exactly going anywhere. Instead I figured I would write my journal entry for this week. I wasn't sure how I would do that either, when I read the thing it seemed like I was to just write of some account. Not sure how well I could do that without in some way degrading myself or making me sound like some type of loser. To resist any urge to preach or moralize about it; how? Is that possible? So I played some solitaire as I thought about how I would go about this.
I'm not procrastinating, I'm just not sure anymore. I don't know, after looking for a job and not finding one my brain's function of work has been all imbalanced.
Can I think of a similar moment in my life when I have been incapable or unwilling to do the right thing? Sure, there's plenty of them, this could be a book. But which one to write about? I only need one account for this. Wait- now. I'm not doing my work. I'm incapable, I'm just not willing. Or am I willing and just not capable? Oh fuck, I'm moralizing aren't I? I'll play some more solitaire.

I'll have to rush two more pages to my paper during the weekend, It's unlikely I'll get to them today. It wont be good, but it will be five pages. Don't take this as me taking advantage of the extended time, I appreciate it greatly, I'm just.. maybe I am procrastinating. I play solitaire.
I look back and am hesitant, should delete that last paragraph or keep it there? I decide I'll keep it there because now I could write about doing something wrong. This makes it much easier. Yes, there is a difference in not doing the right thing from doing the wrong thing. When you don't do the right thing you could be doing nothing, but when doing the wrong thing you generally believe you're doing the right thing. You don't just do something because you know it's wrong, that makes you incapable, that makes you mentally instable. It's okay to do something only to regret it later, much better than not doing anything at all. Wouldn't that be the worst thing, not doing anything?
But while you're in the process of doing something and you realize then that you're doing it horribly wrong do you stop? No. First off, because if anyone else is around, they may not know you are doing it wrong, and assume you know what you are doing. The second reason is because I need to hand something in. I'm not just going to hand in a blank piece of paper (or nothing at all). That would result in my grade plummeting, these journal entry things add up.
I begin to pull on my nipple ring; which has become a recreational activity for myself. The music stops so I put on some more. I consider this finished and play some more games of solitaire.