A short history in links.

I have had other blogs in the past.  I treat blogs, in general, as places to purge.  I’m not trying to out news someone, or outwit or outsarcast (if sarcast was a word…and it should be.)  I have always just needed to write things down as I processed moments and stored away their bits in synaptic boxes and closets.  There isn’t much of my story stored here on WordPress, so I’m adding some links here to some old entries on another blog…and then I can move on from there.

My Baby Sister This I wrote soon after my youngest sister overdosed on meth.  She lived through it…all the way through it. Written in April 03

Tom is Broke A little back story on my relationship with my stepfather.  Written Sept 03

Home for the Holidays How it was for our family that holiday year. Written Dec 04

An Email from Mom An entry of when I finally decided to tell Mom I had been sexually abused as a child, by my Grandfather…her Dad.  Written Feb 04

Mom Wants Cancer Nov 07

The Skins of Cocoons When we thought Grandpa was dying… Jan 2008

The Strength of Mom I Hope is Genetic Jan 2008

Feel free once you have linked over to my old blog to read older entries if you feel inclined.   I tend to be pretty transparent, and I’m sure once people read some of my entries they will wonder why I bother.  Why would I put so many of my skeletons out for display? I’ve thought about this quite a bit over the years, and honestly writing is very therapeutic for me.  My psyche is rather fractured from years of sexual and physical abuse as a child, and funneling these parts of myself; trying to understand their roots, forming them into stories helps me to comprehend them, myself, better.  And hopefully someone will read what I have to write, find a connection, and have their own moment of clarity.  Most likely, my words will ride out onto the a network web and get lost in google searches, and fade into digital horizon; not unlike the words on the pages of a forgotten diary decomposing in  a landfill.

The Piano

I saw this video tonight while I was stumbling. It made me think of Auld Hat.

The Piano –

Sorry I can’t get the video to embed…so you’ll have to click the link the old fashioned way.

Easy to Forget How Hard it can be…

…Raising a puppy.

We got a new lil puppy yesterday; another long haired miniature dachshund. Our dog now, Brody, is super laid back and very easy to live with. And I’m sure one day Isobel (that’s her name) will be, too. But right now we pretty much just have to keep an eye on her all the time…make sure she isn’t going to electrocute herself by eating an cord, make sure she doesn’t destroy (eat) a shoe, or the carpet, or ensure she doesn’t pick a fight with Charlie the Battlecat, because…because well, he’ll kill her. (not really?) Also, potty training a puppy is a very proactive deal-e-o. You have to be there as it’s happening to correct them, or else it doesn’t really work.

We probably should have waited to get a new puppy until after we moved into our house. Moving is such an ordeal on it’s own, now we have thrown the care of an infant who chews into the mix.

All the bitching aside about how difficult my life is… Isobel is very very cute. Here are some pictures to prove it!

Just…a Flood. A Big Crazy Horrible Flood.

I haven’t posted about the flood because I’ve been immersed, flooded even, in flood coverage for a couple of weeks now. In the beginning it was all quite riveting and horrible. I live in Iowa City, and even though there was extensive flooding here, and in our “sister city” of sorts, Coralville (It may not be a sister city, but they are connected…) but up north in Cedar Rapids, Iowa the flooding in the city was insane. Huge urban structures submerged in water up passed their second story in some parts. Crazy town. I’m sure you’ve seen the coverage, so I won’t go into it.

Even though I wasn’t directly affected…well it made getting to work quite a traffic nightmare (not as bad as it would’ve been if i worked in Cedar Rapids. Since the interstate was flooded the detour route for what would be a 30 minute drive turned into a 2 hour drive.) I’m safe, D is safe, the pets are safe, all of our loverly things are safe. It’s still been an amazing thing to witness. Amazingly sad, to witness the loss. Amazing in how powerful nature can be. Amazing how people pulled together to fill bags of stand and stack them high. I am curious to see how things will change from here on out when it truly becomes about stuff and money.

Anyhoo…I took some photos of the flooding early on. Here they are. (We went to Ft. Madison when the waters were at their highest…the Mississippi was just beginning to flood then. It’s kickin’ the FM residents in the ass now, I think) Some of the photos I too while looking at the waters rising. I have OCD…okay? I can’t focus on one thing for very long; Even natural disasters.

Spore!

Well I bought the Spore Creature Creator yesterday. It’s nice to mess around with ideas for the creatures I’ll be making when Spore hits the shelves in September. Here is a video of one of the creatures I made. This is a Tree Hugger and it protects the forest. (I get 50 nerd points for that sentence.)

Me Meme?

Not usually. But because Auld Hat said I probably wouldn’t repost the meme that she had memely borrowed I was forced, FORCED darlings, to do my version. So…Here we go!

What Was I Doing Ten Years Ago:
Oh boy. Mostly, I do not know. I do know I started working at my present place of employment in October of 98, and I think I was living with my ex-Boifriend Bob and our friend…oh my god I can’t remember her name. And actually I’m not one billion percent sure I even lived with them then. I may have already “broke up” with him then… I dunno. I am horrible HORRIBLE at remembering stuff. Let’s just say I was not as self-aware then. I think.

Five Things On My To Do List For Today:
1 – Redo All of My Training Binders. (got three of 40 done!)
2 – 5S The Sample Prep area. (Look up 5s or SIPOC and you will understand why my job is giving me OCD)
3 – Finishing reviewing my charts of “reactive donors” (One’s whom tested positive for not so good stuff..the HIV and whatnot)
4 – Write a blog entry (ta da!)
5 – Remember to not think about work when I get home (fail!)

Snacks I enjoy:
Not a snacker, in general. I forget to eat sometimes; I’ll remember when the light headedness kicks in. However if I must choose…I’ll say grapes are a favorite, or an avacado. I enjoys giant bowls of cereal for late night snacks. Fruit rollups rock.

Things I Would Do If I Were A Billionaire:
A Billionaire? Whew. I don’t know. All of my family would be set, for sure. I would not go crazy town with the money. I would buy a house with a few acres and I would have a ‘hobby farm.’ I would invest a good portion (because I think I’m supposed to or something.) I, of course, would donate a lot to charities… mostly charities involving planting trees, smart farms (not necessarily organic), the rest of the charities I would research the shit out of and make sure something good truly came from them. Then I think I would randomly give out large sums of money to people; probably waitresses…sometimes the vibe from a waitress can just break my heart.

Places I Have Lived:

Iowa. The end. I have traveled a lot, but since that’s not the question asked I’ll just appear very sheltered.

Blogs I enjoy:

The Voluptuary

The Anatomist

Boing Boing

Lots of StumbleUpon Blogs

Just Fraud.

Fraud.

A deception made for personal gain.

I suppose a Bi-weekly paycheck could be viewed as “personal gain;” I mean, I gain from this check, personally. This is a bit how I view my life. Not day, to day, perhaps. I don’t everyday think, “What I’m doing is personal fraud,” but at times when I’m being contemplative, I do.

When I say I feel as if my life is fraudulent; I mean I just don’t know if how I earn my paycheck is necessarily how I was ‘meant’ to live my life. This is assuming first, of course, that I was meant to do anything with my life. If Any of us are. But, you know people have dreams, or something, right? I think I did. I think I imagined greatness on some scale. A great one, probably, the scale. But, I think we all did. We all imagined we would do something great: Astronaut, King of the world, Queen of the lands, unicorn wrangler, smurf collector, magician, space pirate, curer of the world.

It boils down to… “I thought I would do something that mattered.” AND “People would remember me after I died.”

When I was a kid, I loved to put ‘treasure’ in mason jars and bury them in my backyard. When I say ‘treasure’ I mean: buttons, drawings, shiny things, snail shells, rocks. Real treasure. And then I would draw a treasure map so that one day someone could find what I had buried and be happy with their find. I really was burying someone else’s little Eureka!

It’s a cute story, sure. Kids burying treasure…adorable. But I don’t want this to be my legacy, you know? I don’t want a dug up mason jar, just several feet from a hamster skeleton in a shoebox, to be how I’m remembered. And I, personally won’t be the one remembered. It’ll just be in the thought of, “Gee I wonder who buried a jar of 3 buckeyes, an agate, a geode, and a pearl* button punched shell.” And then I’m gone for good. Just a great great great uncle. A twig on a tree. The saga of the gay man who will most likely choose not to adopt or turkey baste.

And that’s fine. I’m sure this rant isn’t about the egotistical sadness involved in “not seeing may face in the eyes of a child’s.” Is it? No, I don’t think so. I think it’s in the egotistical sadness of ending; living and then just dying. The End. And there will be some nice stuff along the way, of course. I have a wonderful partner to share life with now, and hopefully till the end…so the the nice stuff will be there. Pleasant stuff, and perhaps some exciting stuff…but will I look back and say, “I’m pleased with what I’m leaving behind. I changed the world.”

And then there’s the question, “Does everyone need to change the world?” And just how wonderful the world would be if everyone tried…instead of bloggin’ about it into the neterscape like an echo in a cup. And I would be guilty of that. I tend to think of myself as one of those ‘support’ kind of people. You know? Can help anyone out with their problems, an innate ability to read people, and interpret human nature…but has no idea what they truly want.

I have no idea what I want. But what I’m pretty sure is I’m not quite getting it right. Or maybe just thinks there’s supposed to be more. By now. If not now, when? When I’m 40? When I’m 50? At my deathbed will I say under my breath with a grin… “Ahhhh. Now I see. There truly is nothing to be left behind.”

*While I was writing this I remembered when I was about 10 or so, the kids in the neighborhood used to play by the “woods” in the alley.  We would sift through the gravel in the alley for ‘shiny’ rocks, and we would a lot of times find clam shells with many holes punched in them.  Someone told be they were the shells left over from buttons made from them.  The insides of the shells were pearlescent like oil floating on water.  The clams were harvested from the Mississippi.  I wonder if I’ll ever realize just how much I appreciated growing up in along the Mississippi river.  “M-I_Crooked Letter- Crooked letter I, Crooked Letter- Crooked letter I, Humpback-Humpback-I.” That’s how a grade school teacher taught me how to remember how to spell Mississippi.  O.M.G. I sound really…really…OLD.

Golden Star Show Choir

So, my friend Angie showed me this website that will allow me to grab you tube videos and edit them. Finally! I’ve been wanting to do this for awhile.

Video editing is not something I’m necessarily good at, by any means, but I enjoy playing around with Windows Movie Maker. I’ve never really had any video files to mess around with, mostly because I’m too lazy to grab the camera and make my own. Now I can rip other people’s videos and mash em all up. It’s like a collage, really. But with videos.

So here it is. A mash up I made today using a My Brightest Diamond song, “Golden Star,” and videos of show choirs on the You Tube.

Sorry the files weren’t the greatest to start with and then a couple of conversions later they’re down right pixelated. Meh. It works.

Nick. Elodeon.

I’ve had this song in my head for a couple days now, ever since I rediscovered the show Chapi Chapo on the YouTube. Here is the opening:

When I was a kid I love love loved the Nickelodeon channel. It was so freaking odd back in the 80s. I was freaking odd in the 80s so it was the perfect match.

One of my most favorite shows on Nick was You Can’t Do That on Television. I’m realizing my friend Auld Hat’s most famous saying, “Leave a tender moment alone,” it oh so very true as I re watch episodes from the show. But when I was a kid, I got the humor, you know? It was funny then, before I discovered sarcasm and let the beast eat away at my heart over the years. Getting slimed was tot. hilar. I thought Moose was the coolest, felt a little bad for Lisa, and sort of had a ‘secret crush’ on Alisdair. (All my true crushes growing up were secret…like the one I had for Bo AND Luke Duke.)

Here’s a clip from the show followed by a clip of Moose talking about her audition for You Can’t Do That On Television while at reunion show.

Nick also had a lot of really scary stuff. One of my favorites was a series called Children of the Stones. I, of course, have a clip: Listen to the soundtrack…friggin’ spine chilling, huh? Pretty Phantasmagorical. This show was one of several in a very eerie series call “The Third Eye.”

What were some of your favorite odd children shows or movies? I want to know!

Here are a couple more to jostle your memory, perhaps.

“The Rats of Nimh.”

“Light Years”

“Watership Down.”

Cartoons from Pinwheel, such as Chapi Chapo which started this whole thought tangent.

I will end this a Bowie video for the title song from the animated movie “When The WInd Blows,” with music by David Bowie.

Just in a Lightbox

Today D. and I made a makeshift light box, using a box from a table lamp, printer paper, 3 plant lights, tape, and hope the whole thing didn’t burst into flames. The hope being the most important here probably.

So, the box didn’t turn out perfectly, but with the right amount of tweeks on the next model (i.e. better fibrous paper, brighter lights, better tri-pod) I think it could come in handy.

Here’s what I got.

This scary lil mo fo was a gift from little sister L. She bought a curio cabinet from a lady friend of hers, and the lady friend included tons of clown curios. I picked this one from the lot.

-Bonsai In Training

This is a Fukien Tea Tree and is one of the first trees I bought. I have had it for about 5 years. She’s pretty. However I find the ‘light box’ doesn’t work as well with larger items.

Mystery Plant.

I’m not sure what this plant is. It has read leaves, and dark barkish stems, and occasionally blooms with tiny yellow flowers. It must be cut back at times to get a flourish of growth. The pot I picked up at Houseworks (a ‘junk’ (and when I say junk I mean treasure) store) in Iowa City.

A Big Purple Rock.

Purple quartz. I’m Six Sigma sure. This I bought at one of those cheesy rock shops in South Dakota. OMG I love cheesy rock shops so very very much. I believe this one was from Wall Drug.

.

Photoshop Much?

This is the mystery plant shoved haphazardly through Photshop, like hamburger through a hand crank grinder. But still…”neat.”

Well, that’s it. Those photos are the end result of the project. It was fun, but not perfect. Ahhh, just like my life.

Um, what? …. sigh.