Oh to be in my shoes ...

Now I have a problem. It seems I have a liking for chocolate. This is a well-documented fact. Not just any chocolate, oh no. I only like the good stuff. My current brand is green and blacks. Well, being a school teacher leads to gifts. Being a person with friends and having things like birthdays, this also leads to gifts. Over the past year, I have received a lot of chocolate. Like maybe a cupboard full. So, I have been eating it and then some this past week or so, trying to get through it seasonally. I got through the Halloween and was well on my way through Christmas when I started checking out expiration dates. It seems I have a bit that will expire at the end of July.



Better get to that. Can't see myself throwing that away.

25 Days

It seems that the magical number of "25" is the number of days one needs to recuperate from a manical year of ups and downs, teeth grindings, so tense in the morning might vomit, shoulders up to your ears, fingers on chalkboard teaching.

4 of those days have to include sitting by a lake doing nothing more demanding than making a s'mores and sleeping 10 hours a day, plus having afternoon naps. It is better if one chooses not to camp in the near proximity of a swamp, but all that can be okay if you have indoor plumbing.

Yesterday I felt human again. I felt like I wanted to do things, not just sit in a ball or sleep. I wondered what it was I usually did. I honestly can't remember. So tonight, to inspire me, I am going to the library to get books to sit around in a little ball while I read to put myself to sleep.

I hate to shower

Well! Isn't that a surprise. After all, I smell nice enough. I appear clean. I even AM clean. There must be something going on. And there is, trust me. I don't hate washing. I definitely don't hate being clean. I just hate showering.

How can one hate being enveloped in a warm spray of water, steam filling up the room, cascading around, making the mirror all foggy?

Like this: I hate the amount of time it takes. I can either shower in the morning or take my dogs for a half hour walk. I pick the invogorating 6:15 am walk. My hair is too long! It takes too much time! And all those girl rituals to perform, forget it. Takes forever and a freaking day. I hate how dry a shower makes my skin. Who knew the $50 - $100 I was spending a month on lotions, super organic nothing in them lotions for superbly sensitive and reactive skin (do you know how HARD it is to find a lotion that doesn't have aloe in it, yeah, you just go and try) was for NAUGHT. My skin continued to be dry, flaky, and painfully tight, that is, until I stopped showering. Now, I don't have to use lotions on my skin at all and it looks better than it has in years! I can spend that money (and the additional time it took at the end of the shower to apply it) on cute little outfits for my dog. Or new bags. Or cute shoes. I mean, whatever you stupid lotions. I hate showers because no matter how nice and warm you are and get to be while in there, there is a moment when you have to go out in the cold again. I hate that moment. That cold, hard, cruel moment. I hate showers ... I think that is about all the reasons I have to hate showers. I guess three reasons is enough to rarely ever have them anymore.

Freaky shite

You know what movie scared the hell out of me when I was young? You know, so I couldn't sleep in my room by myself for a year, crawled into my brother's room who was still in a crib and convinced him to come sleep in his big boy bed with me, until my parents, trying to get me back in my own room, told me I couldn't sleep in his bed with him anymore so I moved onto the floor beside his bed and would push aside the toys and sleep with a blanket from my bed until they relented and let me bring a sleeping bag in there? Yeah, that was fun times, the nightmares, night sweats, waking up screaming and all.

ET

Saviour the Sirloin Burger

I drove by that the other day. I noticed it about 3/4 to 1/2 a block away and wondered if they did that on purpose, as if the sirloin burger was a saviour, or perhaps they were trying to be ironic. Or, lastly, did they just not know how to spell?

I drove by later in the day and it was changed, so I guess it was just poor spelling or a poorly received attempt to be ironic.

Bad day

Hopefully comic, but maybe too soon for it to be.

Go to work at jail, find out all the rules of senority have changed and I don't have to stay teaching Grade 6 to be able to apply for my jail job next year. However, someone, again, just took my jail job and I will have to wait until spring to apply for it. Also, anyway can apply for it, I won't have the senority edge. So, I have been torturing myself for naught!

Check messages after work. Essential piece of equipment has broken beyond repair at store. Go down to see. Find out the next better piece is 4 times the price. While trying to decide what to do, smell burning rubber. Another essential piece of equipment is on fire. Damn electrical system.

Find out from lawyer that insurance is low-balling me and refusing to move. Have offered 1/4 of what my lawyer suggested and are refusing to budge and will push us to trial. Fun! And not stressful. Oh, and everyday I hesitate on the decision will take more money off.

Cats knock compost bucket all over counter and floor.

Yell at other half for no reason, except he didn't listen to everything I said and asked me a question for which I had just told him the answer. Finished conversation by telling him, "You don't want to talk to me right now."

Tried to figure out how dogs, cats and other dogs are all going to get taken care of after I leave on Wednesday.

Don't have any lesson plans set up for sub for when you are gone.

I think that is enough. Time for bed.

Love

When I was younger and more of an idealist, of course, I thought I knew it all. And maybe I did, but I didn't know how to make it into a practical application. As I lay awake last night, and for the many nights that my insomnia has come back, I was thinking about love, as objectively as I could.

I have loved, I know. Each of the people I was with long-term, I loved, in a different way. I thought I did. I know I did. But there I was 23 and did not have much experience in the way of long term love behind me. I think I fell in love with somebody then. I didn't really think it was any different from my other long term people, except they were over and this was now. But now I think it was different. I think I loved that person completely with all of myself, but that isn't really right either. I love other people with all of my being too. It was more than that somehow. He loved me too, I know he did. And it went on for four years, then I had enough. He loved me, but not in the same way I loved him. He loved me in the way I had loved my previous long term lovers. In that way we were different, he was able to look at the relationship more objectionally, take steps back from it to look at it, at himself and who he was in it. He also could look at outside influences too. I could not. But I guess I could, because as I said I had to leave after 4 years. Not because he was cruel. Not because he used me and took advantage of that. But because I wasn't his everything, like he was to me. Except he wasn't, that makes me sound weak. I was never weak. I have never needed someone to be my other half or make me whole.

After I left him for real, for certain, forever and he knew it, he broke.

Well, for 2 years anyway, then he wasn't broken anymore and now is either engaged still or married. Not the point.

I moved on when I thought I was ready and the opportunity presented itself. I wasn't ready and it didn't work out too well. But I loved him. I tried to have it work.

I took a bigger break after that, I put myself into exile, literally, so no new thing could start and when I was truly truly done and over it all, someone found me.

I do love him.

But he loves me in the way I loved the boy I fell for at 23. He loves me so much. I can see myself mirrored in it, the way I loved that boy.

I love him but not in the way he loves me. I love him in the way I have loved all my long term partners, a true love, a real love, but still not with the same intensity.

Is this fair to him? Will one day I have to leave him because I am not his everything, like I am to him. He will not leave me over it.

He is a whole person. He was fine without me. He was happy. He isn't clingy. It isn't like that.

Because of my past experience with the boy, I know that this love doesn't exist between two people just because one has it. But are we to keep looking until that big love is found from both partners? Is loving someone enough?

So so very tired

I have had a post in my head for a while, but finding the time to write it down has been difficult. Now I have the time but I am so tired. I am sleeping at least 9 and more likely 1o hours a night, which is a huge strange thing for me, what with the chronic insomnia and all. I do wake up at about 2 because my bladder hurts, but hey, I am back to sleep in no time. Why am I so tired?

I am also, again and still, so sick of Christmas. Everyday it gets closer and everyday I get more disgusted. I don't care about your rationalizations for celebrating this abhorrent holiday. You aren't going to convince me. I don't want your sympathizing, your saying yes, you agree, but "it's for the children!" or, "I don't give many gifts ..." I don't give a crap. I don't want to hear it and get out of my way. I hate how it is interferring with my life. I hate how it is interferring with my class. I hate how big and repulsive it is. Hate. With the passion I contain for nothing else. Oh, and go ahead and call me Scrooge, because God, that makes me love you just that much more.