OK For Real Though, Earthquakes? And More Reasons Why I Hate Everyone.

It's been a hot minute since I made an entry in this blog.  Not because I don't love you, bloggy-wog, but partly because there have been a SERIES OF NATURAL DISASTERS that hit my area within a five-day span.  President Obama even declared a "state of emergency" in Maryland not 2 days ago!

It all started on a perfect, sunny afternoon.  I was sitting right in this very spot, reading Cracked.com and listening to reggae.  (I wish I were kidding, but that happens to be what I was doing at the time.)  Anyway, the whole house and all the furniture began to, well, WIGGLE.  I was in a pretty good mood and not expecting a freakish nature-related incident, so my brain interpreted the motion as a passing freight train going right by the house.  "Silly old freight trains!" I thought, completely forgetting that I live in the middle of nowhere and we do NOT, in fact, have freight trains running through our back yard on a daily basis.  But suddenly the house wasn't just wiggling, it was starting to shake ::violently::.  The deck looked like it was trying to wrench itself off the side of the house, and the table in front of me was doing a sort of hula at the joints.  Then my cat came skittering into the room, claws trying desperately to gain purchase on the hardwood, but the floor was rolling and pitching like the deck of a ship in a stormy sea, so he kept getting knocked off course and wound up running into a few things before making it under the futon behind me.  As the shaking reached its zenith and the floors, ceiling, and walls all tried to run in different directions, it dawned on me that this was a fucking EARTHQUAKE. 

 The weird thing they never stress to you about earthquakes is that absolutely NOTHING holds still.  There's nothing to grab on to that isn't flailing around wildly, and that's a very disconcerting feeling.  It never actually occurred to me that i was hallucinating, but the sight was very psychedelic.  Over the last few years, there have been a couple of tremors so tiny that I didn't feel them at all, but they were reported in the news, and friends said they noticed them, but THIS was like...  A REAL, ACTUAL, HONEST-TO-GOD- EARTHQUAKE.  The quake here lasted about 45 LONG-ASS seconds, and then it was over.  It so wasn't like on TV when they shake the camera to simulate an earthquake.  Everything seemed to be... rolling, not shaking.

I think the scariest part was not knowing what it meant.  Did it mean DC had been ripped into a new Grand Canyon like I'd been told it would by a once-in-700-years megaquake?  Or was it bombed right off the map by a nuke?  Did it mean the rapture was upon us?  Or was the quake confined just to my town/locale?  In my area, one does not expect an earthquake.  Floods?  Yes.  Big old mean storms?  Sure.  But to be caught in an earthquake in this little waterside village shook more than just the dishes in the sink. 

Within seconds I was finding out about it, because I happened to be at the computer when the darn thing hit.  I was shocked to find out that everybody and their momma had felt it, from South Carolina to Toronto.  (WTF did THAT mean?)  Then I found out that the epicenter of this 5.8 quake was in Virginia, which, in case you did not know, is Maryland's next door neighbor.  The epicenter itself was about 150 driving miles from my house, but because I'm on the water, the condition of the soil really made the movement dramatic to say the least.  S was about an hour away, inland, and he barely felt it at all, but hoo boy, out here it shook my socks off!  My poor cat was still cowering under the futon 45 minutes later and when I retrieved him I discovered he had wet himself, and I couldn't blame him.

But damned if it wasn't 5 minutes before the West-coasters among us were making fun of our shock and hysteria.  "5.8?  HA HA HA HA HA!  You call that an earthquake?  I eat 5.8 earthquakes for breakfast, you pansies!"  It didn't seem like a very sporting thing to do, and it made me want to punch those suckers in the no-no zone.  For one thing, the quake originated very close to the surface, only 3 miles down, and that causes a lot of movement.  Besides, what if there was a quake in so-cal that could be felt from there to bloody Vancouver?  Wouldn't that be something?!  Not to mention, we folks out here don't have buildings that are made to withstand earthquakes!  It seemed rather insensitive to poop on our fear parade so quickly, especially when *someone* was still mopping up fear pee.  I know it's no Haiti or Japan, but it still was scary and certainly unexpected.

Then, almost immediately, we had another natural disaster to prepare for.  A gigantic category 3 Hurricane named "Irene" looked set to rip its way up the East Coast in a few days, and not just land down in Florida the way hurricanes are supposed to.   Sure, Maryland has had a few very destructive encounters with hurricanes in the past, but this was supposedly going to be one of the worst ones to hit us in a good 40-50 years.  EVERYBODY PANIC!!!!  QUICK!!!  And we did.  Fueled by hysterical news anchors and governmental agencies, who were declaring a state of emergency left and right, and calling for mandatory evacuations (like of my area).  S and I spent 3 days scrambling to get the entire property and my grandparents' house ready for the mother of all fucking hurricanes, set to hit on Saturday.  We had 9 flashlights, 3 gallon buckets of water, enough food to see us through a decade in a nuclear bunker, 6 radios (crank, battery, solar, etc) Kerosene lamps, toilet paper, and we had crammed everything from the crawl space under the house and anything outside into our living room.  All the gas stations ran out of gas, walmart and target and all the grocery stores were cleaned OUT.  We, as I said, are on the water, not 20 feet from the shore, and so there was potential for some bad things to happen.  We're also in the woods, and in 75-100mph winds it didn't seem unlikely that a tree could uproot and smash our house/cars.

The storm was eventually downgraded to a level 1, but they said it was still gonna mess our shit UP!  They said there were signs that tornadoes would develop here, too!  "GREAT!  Earthquake, Hurricane, Tornadoes, all in one week!" I thought.  We waited all day for the fury of Irene to unleash itself upon us.  I eventually went to bed exhausted from 3 days of battening down the hatches, and woke up 5am on SUNDAY only to find that absolutely nothing had happened during Irene.  It just rained a lot and there were some leaves on the ground.  I was pretty pissed.  Not that I longed for destruction, but the authorities and media blew this thing WAAAAY out of proportion, and scared a lot of folks.  Next time they say there's a deadly storm headed our way, literally no one is going to take it seriously.  Irene was a joke.  We regularly get much more terrifying and destructive T-storms around here.  Again, total fucking joke.  We didn't even lose power (though I heard a lot of others on the shore did) and we normally lose power when it drizzles.   BUT STILL - I didn't get any obnoxious emails or tweets from gulf-coast states saying "Category 1?  HA HA HA HA HA I eat category 1 hurricanes for breakfast, you pansies!"  Nor did I get any emails from the Midwestern states saying "You call that a twister?  I use tornadoes like that to stir my coffee in the morning, you pansies!"  WHY?  Because THEY AREN'T IMMATURE FUCKING ASSHOLES like people on the West Coast!!  Yeah that's right, I said it.  You got a problem with that?  I don't give a toss.  I have no plans to run for president, unite this great nation and celebrate our commonality as Americans!  Hell no.  Y'all can suck it.  And you do, you narcissistic bastards!  (East Coasters hold a grudge, bitches!)

So that's why I've been too busy to write, dear bloggy-wog.  I hope you'll forgive me. 

Aaaand turning the page...

Well it's been an amazingly stupid week.  An ex of mine popped his ugly little head out of the hole from whence he came and whipped me up into a hurricane of intense emotions.  Said he longed for me, wanted to marry me.  He speaks French so he even pulled out all that Mon Amour bullshit.   Then he just left me hanging for more than a week.  Teasing me and stringing me along, toying with me.  Dangling resolution before my eyes, only to snatch it away before I could grasp it.  By 3am today I had had enough.  I spent the day getting used to the idea, and then I sent him my "final" missive.  Bombs away! 

It's the closest thing I will likely get to "closure" on this incident.  I'm pretty pissed at myself for falling for his bullshit yet again.  And as much as I wish it were not the case... I'm a little bit broken in the heart parts.  He's the only person who's ever been able to do that to me.  And he so obviously doesn't deserve to be.  I am all ate up inside, and though I am trying to work up the will to get back to the mundane tasks that make up my daily life, I am already finding it difficult.  I would so much rather sulk, and smoke, and wallow, as is my way when I go and get my heart smashed badly in the gears of love.

I can't believe how amazingly awesome S. has been to me through all this.  I did not deserve it.  Or maybe I did.  I don't know. 

I am a cup full of sorrow today.  I'm still being buffeted by gusts of frustration.  I could try to take pictures of the things I've made for my shop, but I don't know if I could hold the camera steady.  I have emotional palsy.  I feel like I've had my insides ripped out, like William Wallace in the hands of the English.  I feel like I've been given a severe beating.  I wonder what in the hell can help me now.  I can't think of a single thing.  And right now I really hate being a woman.  I hate my stupid female brain and all of my stupid female hormones.  As a matter of fact -  fuck being a mammal.  I hate it.

I am going to try my very best to move on.  I really have to try.  I can't go on wondering if he's going to write to me or say "No, don't go."  The only thing I can think of is that I need to spend the day in deep meditation.  Not naval-gazing or wallowing, but exercising the mental and emotional discipline I have learned in my meditative practices through the years.  I need to get my shit straight.

Otherwise all these intense emotions will suffocate me.  I am having trouble consciously sorting them out right now, and meditation and centering should see me through.  I'm too old and experienced now to handle things the way I used to (i.e. massive self-destruction).  It doesn't help, it just swirls me further and further down the toilet bowl.  No, the only thing to do is try to pick up the pieces and heal myself, nurture myself, enrich myself.  Wade into the pain, and grow from it.

I think I will start with a compassion exercise.  First I will extend my compassion to myself, feel it encapsulate me.  When I am fully vibrating on that level of compassion, I will then extend it to him, and visualize it encapsulating him.  Then I will move on to clearing my mind and heart, and allowing emotions and thoughts to pass over the surface of my mind like clouds passing across the sky.  Not holding on to any of them, simply observing their shapes, textures, and colors.  Yes, I need some serious rehab today.  Time to begin.

Bench Marks

What I wouldn't give for another few hours of solitude today.  I think I finally slept off my 3 day long spell of fatigue.  But now it's 4pm on a Friday... so...  That kind of sucks.  The house will be crazy soon, and I'm just rebooting.  And now my solemn vows.

I will make another clutch this weekend.  I will make a clutch every weekend until I have fifty of them in stock.

I will take pictures of stuff to sell on ebay, including Granny's boxed sets of cassette tapes.

I will take pictures of stuff to sell in my Artfire shop, and write descriptions of them to the best of my ability. 

I will clean the litter box.

I will obtain a large bottle of bleach.

I will check my mail box for incoming goods and be pissed off on Sunday that there is no mail service.

I will call Gaulke on the phone and have a conversation that leaves me feeling less alone and misunderstood in the world.

Best get started.

Why America Sucks

So much for a day off!  6:50AM S woke me only somewhat inadvertently as he searched frantically for the car keys.  I was enlisted to help and another half hour passed.  When he found them and left, I got back in bed, but my mother followed me and got all clingy and whiny like a little kid.  Then the phone rang.  It was S.  He wanted to tell me the oh so hilarious crude joke his boss made about his forgetfulness.  By this time I knew I was not going to be able to go back to sleep for some time.  So here I am, groggy, tired, only a few sips of coffee in my system, and SO MUCH TO DO.  So much I want to do.  So much I have to do, quite contrary to my desires.

Two interesting things happened yesterday.  I ran into a friend I've been meaning to get together with for a long time.  I almost never run into people I know because I never leave my bloody house.  The other interesting thing that happened was that I got a letter from my new pen friend, C.  I thought I had frightened her off with my overtly forthright nature.  Apparently it only made her more interested in being my friend!  I take that as a good sign.  She's a fellow artist and craft enthusiast and we have other things in common, too.  Its so nice to find someone I can relate to, someone who has similar neuroses and struggles.  Sometimes I think I am a freak and all alone, but come on, there are 7 billion people in the world... how unique can I possibly be?  The universe has arranged for me to encounter this kindred soul at this time.  It's so nice.  She's about 7 years younger than I am so I feel a strange mentor-ship is forming.  Reading about her life reminds me of that painful period in my early 20s, one I would not want to revisit if given the chance, unless perhaps with the knowledge and experience I now have, I could do things differently.  But I wouldn't have amassed such knowledge and experience without going through all I did. 

Meanwhile, the United States is falling apart.  The empire is contracting and collapsing in on itself.  It's hard being young here right now.  The future is uncertain, aside from the ominous signs of decline and deterioration of the American Way.  Things just keep on getting worse and worse... and worse even than you thought possible.  My generation will not experience even a fraction of the kind of freedom and prosperity our parents did.  Life has always been a struggle, but I think our way of life will be so dissimilar to that of our parents that it's almost like being born into a totally different world.  The diminished opportunities, the worthlessness of our public education system, serfdom to our corporate overlords, a changing global climate, dwindling natural resources, and, seemingly, a decrease in the general sanity and good will of our fellow human beings, all paint a frightening picture of our future here and in this era. 

Global collapse.  Fun times were had by all.  We will make it if we are resourceful and imaginative and stick together.  When clean water, gasoline, and food shortages strike, and wars break out over resources, how many people will manage to hold on to their humanity and integrity?  I would venture a hope that compassion and goodness would endure, but I've been so disappointed in my fellow man over the last decade or so, that I know better.  There will be very few, like me, who will cling mercilessly to such romantic ideals, who value the sanctity of the spirit above all else, including survival.  Maybe we will die out quickly, or, if we can find one another, perhaps our spirit of camaraderie will help us thrive.  All I know is, based on my experience and observation, most people will resort to brutality and the law of the jungle as soon as the veneer of civilization so much as cracks.  It wont be long now.  And it's painful to watch.

The problem with Democracy is that when the population is uninformed, say by corporate media, and uneducated, say by a sham of an educational system, including the corporate-owned University / higher education in this country, and deceived, as they are by so many interests these days, they aren't fit to govern themselves.  Take the so-called Tea Party for example.  Most of the people who consider themselves members don't appear to know the first thing about government and how it really works.  They have all sorts of really damaging ideas about how the country should be run, and they are, of course, being manipulated by some very shady, very wealthy, very powerful interests who have co-opted their ignorance and wield it as a weapon against progress and recovery.  It's sickening to watch, and it's going to be one of the last gasps of the American Empire, all this flailing and frothing at the mouth.  A zombie army.

Over the last 20 years, the Pentagon and Military Industrial Complex have had a fucking field day.  Like a gigantic tick, bloated, glutting itself on the life-blood of our tax dollars.  The Bush administration was so unskilled at politics that they had to resort to the laziest and nastiest of tricks... fear-mongering.  That, they did thoroughly, and well.  But people are growing inured to the constant jolts of terror they are being force-fed.  We've been at war for more than 10 years, two grotesquely costly and useless wars, while the nation continues to thrash blindly around trying to squash a bee that stung it in a tender spot, our society, culture, and prosperity rotting out from under us.  Pretty soon there wont be much to protect from so-called "evil-doers" anymore.  For God's sake, the country is virtually bankrupt. 

Unemployment is over 9 percent AT LEAST.  People are being thrown out of their homes.  Property owners have seen the value of their assets decrease by more than 30 percent.  Crashing stocks have wiped out nest eggs and retirement funds, and as I write this, the safety-nets of state and federal services are being dismantled.  With no national health care system or national insurance coverage, people are going without medical care, without prescription medications, and dying as a result of corporate greed.  The wealth of our nation is in the hands of the top 1 percent, with the other 99 percent of us left to divvy up the remaining spoils, essentially slaves and serfs at this point.  The income inequality in this country is so top-heavy right now that there is no doubt that it will completely implode soon.  And what is going to stop this madness?  The idiotic and short-sighted policies espoused by the Tea Party?  I think not.  Will a reasonably competent media step in to ask the tough questions, investigate the problems, and communicate them to the masses before it's too late?  not bloody likely.  Are the corporations who are designed only to produce profit at any cost to the basic moral tenets of  human life, who own and run our government, going to wake up one day and stop being shark-like, greed-driven, money-eating, people-eating machines?  Highly doubtful. 

No, now all that is left to do is watch and wait for the inevitable.  But it is still painful.  Even if you choose to avert your eyes.  And that is especially true for the young, who look at all this and despair for their futures, for the lives they might have had, for the unrealized potential they know they will never bring to fruition in such an environment, for the confusion stemming from trying to reconcile everything they've been brought up to believe about America, and the sickening reality of it.  We also have to deal with the dismemberment of traditional communities and social groupings.  We are more isolated from one another than any generation has ever been.  The enormity of the land and population of the United States lends itself naturally to a pervasive sense of anonymity.  Destruction of our traditional agrarian way of life has people scattered to the winds, living in homes that are a world unto themselves, separated and cut off from neighbors and the community by a combination of fear, secular values, and the lack of any unifying national culture and heritage, (aside from Star Wars) which is in part due simply to the diversity and youth of the nation.  see, America isn't so much a melting pot as it is a heterogeneous combination.  It's more like a ball pit than a melting pot.  One way to avoid exacerbating the social cleavages in such a diverse nation is to simply avoid your neighbors.  We don't tend to have overt clashes between different religious, ethnic, and cultural groups in this country, not because we are "enlightened" or "tolerant" as a society, but because we lead lives of isolation from one another.  It's not as if we acknowledge and accept each others' differences, which would lead to a more cohesive community, we just tend to erect enough space around ourselves to comfortably ignore them.
That's how it's done.

That particular state of affairs keeps us from fighting one another but it also keeps us from cooperating effectively to take care of the needs of our community and our nation at large. 

Basically what I'm trying to say is, we're all fucked.  The End.

"Wednesday, Wednesday"

There's so much to put in this post.

First I will tell you the sad part.  A few days ago an old friend reported his wife missing.  Day before last she was finally found.  She was dead.  She took her own life in a Walmart parking lot.  It's a horror story.  My heart aches for her husband and family, and I have said many prayers for them.

The happy part is I found this COMPLETELY AWESOME TUMBLR.

The mediocre part is that I've been really busy.  I swear the universe will leave me bored, lonely, and idle for months at a time, and then one day I wake up and life tries to CRAM all of the missed opportunities and chores and experiences into one frigging day.  Too much happening at once.

So today I am chillin.  I slept till 11 and I have just been staring at the computer tying up a few loose ends and plucking hanging chads.  There are about 500 bazillion things I want to do today that are fun and require little or no physical activity on my part.

I've also acquired a new physical ailment to add to my growing collection.  I have developed what appears to be Plantar Fasciitis.  (My heels are fascists, apparently.)  Actually its inflammation of the connective tissue that wraps under and up my heels caused by microscopic tears in the tissues.  It's probably because I'm carrying around extra weight, but that's a little disturbing since I've lost 20 pounds over the last several months.  In any case, it hurts like the dickens when I walk.  I am supposed to stay off my feet for a week and do stretches and take ibuprofen until it (hopefully) goes away.  I've had foot and ankle problems for a long time.  I injured my heel several years ago and it caused extreme chronic pain until I started using a special heating pad on it.  I also have "trick ankles" inherited from my dad which occasionally buckle for no reason and cause severe sprains, and when I was in Seattle I fell down some stairs and broke a bone in my foot that still aches when it rains.  But I have very pretty feet, at least in shape.  They have extremely high arches and finely sculpted bones that any ballerina would envy.  But I'm thinking of binding them up permanently in bandages to avert future injuries.

I've also discovered something about myself...  I'm a hippie.  It's something that has happened over time, gradually.  The seeds were always there but now my flower child is in full bloom.  Exhibit A: My crafts business.  Exhibit B:  My dislike of constrictive clothing.  Exhibit C:  My lack of appropriate personal hygiene.   Exhibit D:  My liberal politics.  Exhibit E:  My inexplicable feeling of brotherly love and generosity toward my fellow humans.  Exhibit F:  My lack of a job.  The only thing I don't have?  A drug habit and a VW.

Monday "Morning"

Well I just woke up, I'm on my first life-giving cup of coffee, and I'm already mentally hurtling through all the things I have to do today and tomorrow. 

Despite mutual efforts by S and me to keep the kitchen in order over the weekend, the kitchen now shows signs of a vicious rampage on the part of my mother preparing her breakfast and lunch.   I'm not sure how she does it.  It looks like someone would have had to have spent a long time in there wreaking havoc to do that kind of damage.  There is also a congealed splatter of something on the computer screen, like someone was reading something funny and drinking coffee at the same time and they sprayed the monitor down in a fit of hysterics.  Since I usually sleep well past the morning, I am often left to sort through these mysterious signs like a mess detective in a whodunnit.  "Based on the pattern of spray I would say the assailant had to have been reading Funny or Die at the time of the incident..."

I'm not sure how long it will take me to clean up the kitchen, but there is also the matter of the turds one of my kitties left in the bedroom.  A message of some sort?  Time to clean the litter box?

In addition to at least 3 hours of the usual nasty chores I'm left with during the weekdays, I need to apply for Maryland PAC special assistance for my medications. I also have a lot of stuff to do involving my crafts business, like listing, taking photos, and of course, making awesome stuff.  But I have to be careful.  I have to plan my time wisely.  I can't stay up all night tonight because I have agreed to give granddad his lunch while Granny goes out, and then I will be preparing dinner for them as well.  It will be an all-day thing, so tomorrow I wont get jack nor shit done here at the house, and I have to plan for that as well.  If you let anything slip for a couple of hours, you'll get buried in a tidal wave of chores, and aint nobody gonna help you then.  Le Sigh.

At least I will be getting goodies in the mail today, theoretically.  I might even get a letter from my new pen pal who seems really super cool.  Ok, so now the question comes down to this:  Where do I start today?    I think I will start on the turd situation.  Then move on to the kitchen.  Then to the PAC paperwork.  Then to the craft stuff.  Turds, kitchen, PAC, crafts, and a general tidy, including the ashtray I just knocked onto the floor. :(