What Now

RANDOM ACTS OF BLOGGING

1) Looking back, I think I've been kind of hard on the idea of Valentine's Day. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not going soft in my old age. I still think it's silly and nothing more than a money machine for card and chocolate businesses. However, I'm sure for people into that kind of thing, it's kind of fun. I had time to reflect on V-Day yesterday as I perused the local Ghetto Kroger for milk and tea, and I realize that what originally turned me off of the "holiday" were reasons of the sour-grape variety. I suppose that from the time I was old enough to care about boys and boyfriends, I always wanted someone to "make a fuss." However, by some weird kink in the universe, I have notoriously dated and ultimately married a series of the least romantic men in the universe. (Sorry Steve, but you know it's true.) If I dated someone who had a romantic streak, for some reason I never knew they had one until I saw what they were like when they were with other girls. I used to be bitter about this, but not so much any more. At any rate, the beginning of my issues with the day all stemmed from the fact that none of them ever made a fuss. I realize how selfish and silly this sounds now, but at the time it was important. Now, please don't think that this is a cry for anyone to tell Steve to go overboard on a day he KNOWS I refuse to celebrate! Seriously, if he did anything like that for me now, I think I'd probably not enjoy whatever it was because I'd be wondering what was going on. Like, is he dying, am I dying, did he buy a life size Millennium Falcon and sold our house and cars to pay for it? I suppose I just never thought about it before, at least not academically, and the core of the matter kind of surprised me. Oh well, it's never plesant to find out you have a petty streak, but when you DO know you have one, it's easier to get rid of it. : )

2) Last night I removed my dad from my e-mail address book. Afterwards, I cried so hard I thought I was going to throw up. I'm glad Steve wasn't home, because I think seeing me like that would have scared him. But then again, I try not to cry in front of him or anyone else if I can help it. I didn't know that picking the stitches out of life would be so hard. I tend to walk into these "pockets of sad" when I least expect it and they are usually painful and violent. However, they are mercifully short in duration. I'm not sorry about them, though. I know enough now to realize that everytime I do burst out crying, it's like a distillation process inside of myself. When I cry, I get rid of the part that hurts and keep the parts that are good to remember. Eventually I know it will be OK. I think that what scares me the most about all of this, is that unless I die before everyone else I love, I'm going to have to feel like this all over again someday. Yuck.

3) Yesterday I received my very last Christmas gift and so far I've enjoyed it a great deal! My Aunt Brenda had pre-ordered Stephen King's latest novel, Duma Key, for me and I have been eating it up in chunks. So far, it's not very much like any of his other books, but it's still been very good. I won't tell you what it's about, in case you decide to read it, but I am already about a third of the way through it and seriously considered calling in sick today so I could keep reading. I didn't, sadly, but I wanted to. I hope it continues to be as good as it has been so far! I love it when a book grabs on to me like that! Unfortunately for me, I tend to read the good ones so fast that they are over before I'm ready. Oh, well, it's worth it.

4) If you look to the right of my blog, you'll see the Flickr badge that shows you all of the pictures I've taken so far for Photogamer. I actually take much better pictures than the ones that are on that site, but since I have to take a new one every day, sometimes style has to suffer for substance. Yesterday the photo subject was shoes. Shoes. Heh... Anyways, I took a picture of the cowboy boots I was wearing (shut up) and posted them, and the admin of another photo pool asked if they could add it to their site. That kind of thing probably happens to everyone else a lot, but it was the first time for me and it gave me a warm fuzzy. :) Oh, and sometimes I cheat and send pictures that I took a long time ago, but don't tell anyone!