December 20, 2001
9:45am
:)
Joe sent me a picture of himself.
This is my sweet Joe. He turns 24 in January and is my dear buddy. We've been through a lot together, he and I, and he has always been there for me over the years, thick and thin, never failing once to boost me up and make me feel better during the darkest times. He is just as much fun as he looks in this picture, which was taken in the past couple of weeks. He is one of the few people who can really, really make me laugh until my sides hurt and challenge me intellectually on so many levels. I was 15 when I got pregnant with Joe and scared to death. There were a lot of choices I could have made in 1978, but I was determined to have my baby and I am grateful every single day that I made that choice because he has been one of the greatest blessings in my life. I know that there have been many times that his best interest has been compromised because he was working so hard to take care of me in my "dark times" and I can never give those years back to him. Saying thank you or I'm sorry just doesn't cut it and one day, some way, I will find a way to show and tell him how very much he means to me. He is truly one of the finest men I know. His talents are endless. He is an incredible artist. He is a talented musician. He is a fantastic writer. He is a fabulous web page designer. He is easily the most creative person I have ever, ever met. One of the finest gifts he ever gave me was to marry a wonderful woman. The only bad part about that is that she moved him to Canada, so I almost never get to see him, but thanks to AT&T international (I'm only pissed at AT&T Broadband) and AIM, we get to talk every day. OK, I'm going to go cry now because I miss him so much and I'm so grateful that he is my son. I love you, JoeBug. Thanks for picking me to be your mommy. I've gotten more than I can ever give back and it has been such an incredible joy, which makes me look forward to all the coming years.
December 17, 2001
11pm
I’ve been mulling and that’s always dangerous.
I waver back and forth on the “all things happen for a purpose”
philosophy, usually, say 99% of the time, believing it to be true, although 80%
of the time filling in the blanks with “but not everything that happens for a
purpose is of interest or pertains directly to you.”
I have long agreed with the saying that “analysis is paralysis” and
that to sit and dissect a situation at the expense of forward motion is not a
very wise move. If you are going to
evaluate, I feel it’s usually best to do it on the fly.
If one is in pain, pain is (as I mused in a recent entry) motivation to
get away from what is paining.
The instance where I think analysis is crucial is when you find yourself involved in a repeating cycle of undesired results or circumstances. I truly do believe that what is going on around us mirrors what is going on within us. I believe, for instance, that if we perceive ourselves to be victims, we will be forever victimized. Unlike other aspects of nature, in circumstance, like seems to attract like rather than opposites attracting. Birds of a feather hang out together for a reason.
(I am going somewhere with this, but let me ramble to
get my thoughts in order or at least spewed out there)
I was reading somewhere, can’t place it at the moment,
that you should always hang out with people who are the way you want to be.
If you choose to hang out with losers, you will be a loser.
We, as humans, tend to osmosify what is around us.
If you hang out with people who you want to emulate, you will begin to
act more like them. I thought about
that for a long time after I read it and wondered about the poor folk who were
the ones being emulated and what they were doing hanging out with the loser who
wanted to be like them (maybe they didn’t read the book).
I also read once (I read a lot) that you should have one friend who is
older than you, one who is younger than you, one who is prettier than you, one
who is uglier than you, one who is richer than you, one who is poorer than you,
one who is dumber than you and one who is smarter than you.
My first thought was that I didn’t want to hang out with that many
people. As you can see, I pick
apart every word of wisdom that pretty much comes my way.
So given that whole “like attracts like” thing and
the outside of your life reflecting the inside of your life (or more like what
you draw to yourself is what you are actually telling yourself on the inside), I
had to consider closely my most recent run of frustration.
First, let me qualify this by saying that I am a person
who has complete faith, no, make that Faith, in The Process. For whatever reason
and to serve whatever unseen purpose, as I reflect on my life, I can clearly see
that I have been constantly directed toward my greatest good, despite my every
effort to get in my own way. The
challenges through which I had to be dragged, kicking, screaming, bitching,
griping and resisting through by life, have all always worked out to be exactly
what I needed to do at the time. In
retrospect, the circumstances that
brought me to the most critical, life-altering, wonderful changes in my life
were all ones I resisted vehemently. That
has instilled in me the belief that no matter how much I screw something up, I
will ultimately end up exactly where I need to be.
My past month has been all about extreme disappointment
in people not following through with what they say they are going to do or what
they promise will happen. I have no
problem with Murphy’s Law. I know
things go wrong and not everything is going to revolve around me and how I want
them to be. People are strangely
resistant to my molding process and I accepted this (ok, for the most part, I
accepted this) a long time ago. I
do understand that there is a huge margin for error in most of what we do in
life. Unfortunately, I seem to have
been experiencing a tremendously huge margin of error as of late.
In fact, things screwing up and people/companies not delivering has been
the rule rather than the exception. This
upsets me.
Case in point: AT&T. I’ve been public about my disdain for how AT&T treated its @home customers, of which I was one. Wake up one morning, no cable modem. Dead as a doornail. No mass e-mail saying, ‘hey, we’re gonna shutcha off.’ Just no more service. Gotta call them up and wait on hold forever to be told what happened and that they have no idea when we’ll be back up again, probably in a week to ten days. Meanwhile, we will be compensated double days (does NOT pay for decent dial up). E-mail address is just gone. Doesn’t exist any more. No redirects, no forwards, just the whole world getting their e-mails to you returned to them. You cease to exist. A week later, I’m on the AT&T home page reading about how they have successfully transferred over all of their @home clients. I still have no service. Can’t call them; their phone service hangs up on you. Can’t chat with them. Over 1000 in queue most of the time and you get cut off halfway through the wait. When you do get through, the tech tells you there is something wrong with YOUR computer. Did you unplug your modem, wait and replug? (Only FIVE THOUSAND times because I thought the FIVE THOUSANDTH time might be the magic time it worked!) Transfer you to tier two support, get cut off. Then a nice lady named Terri at AT&T tells me that a lot of people got dropped from the system and they are trying to get them back up again. This would have been easy to handle in a decent way. All they had to do was announce on their website that not everyone was up and running. Just post a little blurb that says, “If you don’t have service, call ***-****” or “We know some of you aren’t getting service yet. It’s not you, it’s us.” Maybe even a little asterisk after “everyone’s been transferred successfully” that says, “*OK, not everyone, some of you may not have service. Just be cool and you’ll be up in no time.” But no. It’s not good PR to make it look like you didn’t do the whole job. So we sit here with our collective thumbs up our collective butts and wonder what’s going on.
So I dropped AT&T and got Earthlink DSL.
I was told when I signed up that it would take 1-3 weeks to get my line
activated and that I would have my hardware/software package all set to install
when it was activated. No problem.
It was turned on Thursday. I
went to the “check order status” page and got “Congratulations!
Your DSL line has been activated. We
hope you are enjoying your new high speed DSL service!”
I am not. I never got my
hardware/software installation package on which I paid $20 to get next day
delivery. Contact the company.
“Oh, we don’t send those out until the line has been activated.”
“Why does it ask if I’m enjoying the service?”
“Guess we need to change that.”
“When will I get my package?” “In
2-3 days.” “But I paid for next
day service!” “That is for the
shipping costs, not in plant handling. That
can take 7-10 working days.” “They
didn’t tell me that when I signed up.”
“Oh. They should have. Next day service doesn’t cover in plant handling.
That can take 7-10 working days after activation.”
Grrr. My service was
activated 4 days ago. I have no DSL. My
cable modem went out 2.5 weeks ago. I
was told it would be on in 7-10 days. It’s been 17 days and I have no cable
modem service. I am on crappy AOL
dialup that drops carrier every 20 minutes and eats up my phone line and causes
browsers to stop functioning after about 4-5 links and tries to sell me
something every time I sign on and has waaaaay crappier IM service than,
ironically, AIM.
My husband applied for a VA pension when he separated
from the Air Force for a leg injury he sustained and a GERD problem he developed
from drinking the water in Korea. He
is also partially tone deaf due to the work he did in the communications field.
He completed all the required paperwork and physical exams, got all the
physicians’ statements needed and turned in the package in February. Word is,
it takes 6-12 months to receive an answer.
That’s fine. He called the middle of November for a status check and was
told that his package was before the medical board and had been since August 24th.
The regulations say it cannot be before the board for longer than 90 days
without a decision being handed down. Once
the decision of the per cent of disability pension is determined, a check is cut
for back pay from your date of separation, which in our case was November 2000. That means that it leaves the board by November 24, roughly,
at the latest. He called last week
to see if there was any news and was told that they had ordered more info from
his medical records and had received it on December 10th.
So what of the idea of no more than 90 days?
Since we are still recovering (barely) from his recent 2 month lay off,
we were hoping to get the back pay to buy a good Christmas for the kids this
year; emphasis on “were.” One
more thing that we were told conclusively would go one way that went another,
NOT in my favor.
A couple of months ago, my web host company upgraded
their Front Page extensions from1998 to 2000 version.
I have Front Page 2000 and since I started using it for the site in July
of 2000, it has worked great. Microsoft
Front Page is very forgiving and very convenient.
While my web host company was changing over their Front Page extensions
that let my site be updated using Front Page, my Front Page ceased to work.
I called them up and they didn’t tell me anything about their upgrade
that was going on. Basically, they
said they didn’t have a clue why my Front Page wasn’t working and that I
should reinstall it in case the program had become corrupted.
Five calls and three days later, my Front Page still wasn’t working and
updates were behind on the site. The
tech at the web host company suggested I use an FTP program to upload info to my
site. I remembered something I’d
read when I first got the site and asked him if it wouldn’t corrupt my Front
Page extensions if I used an FTP program. He
assured me that of course, it wouldn’t and that was a commonly held
misconception. OK.
I hate FTP because it’s slow, cumbersome and totally mercenary (none of
that pesky, “are you SURE you want to screw up your site by overwriting this
file?” prompting). So I’ve been
using FTP for 2-3 months now. The first week of December, not long after the AT&T
fracas, my site just goes away. Finally,
after three different calls over two days, someone figures out that the site had
exceeded it’s bandwidth allowance. No
big deal. Throw them some more
money and the site is back up again. While
I was on the phone with the brainchild who FINALLY knew why my site was down
(the previous two hadn’t a clue), I asked why my Front Page had stopped
working. Oh, my Front Page
extensions were corrupted because I used an FTP program while Front Page was
disabled during the extension upgrade.
In fact, the guy said, “You haven’t been uploading with an FTP
program, have you?” in the same tone as one would say, “You haven’t been
looking at those porn sites in the children’s library again, have you?”
Grrr. So now I have to have
the Front Page extensions re-re-installed.
The real kicker was that when my site went over bandwidth, they sent the
notice where? To my @home address
that no longer existed DESPITE the fact that I changed my e-mail address with
them two days before their notice was sent.
Went to Target (a department store) to drop off four
rolls of film for their one hour photo developing this week.
We took a pile of pics to send to grandparents and such for Christmas.
Handed the rolls to the clerk who said, “You can pick them up tomorrow
after twelve noon.” “??!!”
“But it’s 3pm.” “Yes.” “It
says ‘one hour photo.’” “We’re
booked up until noon tomorrow.” “Do
I still have to pay the full amount.” “Well,
yes.” (duh, am I ever stupid?) “So
I have to pay the same amount as the people who are getting theirs in an
hour?” “Yes.” “…and
you’re good with that?” “Do
you want to leave them or not?”
I could go on. Believe
me, I could go on. These are just
some of the examples of inconsistency and in competency (not to mention
disinterest in the fact that they are incompetent and inconsistent) I’ve dealt
with in the past 2 weeks or so. It’s
infuriating. There have been many,
many others, but you’ve heard me bitching more than enough.
There have been a few times things have gone well, but that was, again,
the exception rather than the rule. I’m
in a rut of people not following through or letting me down.
Harumph.
So Saturday night, I determined to get to the bottom of
this. I do take my own advice,
believe it or not, and try not to hyper-evaluate everything that goes on, which
is hell for a Virgo. We worry.
We analyze. It’s our job.
I gave up worry a few entries back and I limit my analyzing for the
serious cases like this.
Since I didn’t have a clue where to begin, I decided
to do a Tarot card reading to try and find a starting point. I’ve been a Tarot reader for about 15 years and even wrote
a book on it. I’m really, really
good. The first message that came
across kind of pissed me off because it’s one I’ve been getting since before
Eric was laid off. “Focus on the
spiritual rather than the material.” Boy, had we!
During his layoff, we had to NOT think about money or material needs
because doing so would have made us nuts. It
was really tough, but when we put down a foot, a stone was there to step onto.
We were truly fed by the ravens during that time and we were blessed with
a lot of miracles. Were we still not getting it?
How could we EVEN MORE forsake the material for the spiritual?
Pull the kids out of school, move into our ’69 VW bus and roam the
earth like Cain? As I looked at the
card, I realized that I might have been misinterpreting the card.
Maybe it meant look in (the spirit) instead of without (the material
world). OK, that’s a start.
The next card showed a person holding a number of swords with several
others around their feet. I took
this to mean not being able to hold things up.
Letting things fall. As the
reading progressed, I realized that the way I was being treated by the world was
reflecting my own unwillingness to, inability to or disinterest in following
through on the things I say I will do. Overall,
I’m fairly reliable, but I have promised myself and others things on a daily
basis without following through. I
can’t tell you how many diets I’ve attempted, promising myself that this
time would be it. I say I’m going
to do the laundry that day and put it off (again).
I tell the kids I’ll “be there in a minute” then finish a whole
column before I get there. I tell
my kids we’ll go x, y or z and then tell them we just didn’t have time.
In some way, shape or form, it happens every day.
It’s definitely true that we criticize in others what we despise in
ourselves.
I mulled this over for a long, long time and decided
that I had to be a more follow through person or I could not expect the world to
give that back to me. I started my
new diet today and by God, this is going to be it.
I said I would take Delena to get new shoes today and I did it.
I said I would get the photos (those damned not one hour Target photos)
mailed out and I did. I said I would make my son, David, fried tacos for dinner and
I did it. I said I’d do my body
flexing today and I did that too. Today,
I followed through on absolutely everything I said I would do. It’s probably
the first time in years.
In working on this, I also found that I tend to overbook myself and that’s my biggest problem in following through. I have so many things that I want to get done in a day that I promise I will do them all and don’t take a realistic view of the task to time ratio, then I go to bed feeling like a failure because I didn’t get everything done that I planned to do. Sometimes, I was trying so hard to get everything done that I ended up actually completing nothing I set out to do. I’ve considerably pared down what I expect to accomplish around the task of taking care of two very busy little boys. This lets me have some kind of chance at completing the tasks I set out to do and allows me some bit of self-esteem at the end of the day. I’m going to start cleaning up my act and maybe I’ll see some improvement in what I get in return. I know that feeling successful is important, regardless of what you do in your day and I just haven’t felt that in a very long time. Today is the first day of the rest of my life in that respect. I also understand that it won't happen overnight. When you are trying to turn a train around to go in a different direction, it has to slow down first, then turn. It's a process.
Now, it’s 11pm and I’m going to bed. I told Karen I’d get this NonSoapy done today and dammit, I did!
Marney, if you read this, I lost your e-mail
address! If anyone has lost me due to @home going bust, write to me at katrina@eyeonsoaps.com.
That will always get to me no matter what.
Good night, all,
December 10, 2001
3:30pm
Ear Massages
I have purged myself over AT&T and its brutal
treatment of me, so I felt compelled
to write about something nice for a while.
The nicest thing I can think of right now is ear massages.
“Ear massages?” you might ask. “Definitely,” I would reply with a knowing smile.
Ear massages for the Rasbolds came into being a month or two after we
first got married. We were talking about reflexology and acupressure and how the
pressure points in the feet, hands and ears worked as conduits to very nearly
the entire rest of the body. I told
Eric, who as not in the position to know such things, that when a good manicurist
gives you a manicure, they thoroughly massage your hands, which feels marvelous.
Every living soul knows how great a foot massage feels (when well done)
and that the effects relax your whole body and make you believe that it’s
entirely possible that walking is merely the secondary function of the feet, the
first being to promote ecstasy and well being to the whole bod.
This led us to wonder that if the feet and hands are such points of bliss, would the ears not be as well, given that they are a major acupressure and acupuncture site? Tentatively, I gave him an ear massage, worried that it was going to feel squirrelly or wet-willyish. Au contraire. Quite by accident of speculation, we stumbled upon yet another garden of ecstasy, one that you must try (unfortunately, like tickling, you can’t do it to yourself). Using your thumb and forefinger, begin by massaging the lobe and working your way up the arch of the ear, being sure to get well into the curves and crevices of the ear. Follow the bend of the ear all the way up into the top folds. Massage the head, directly around all area where the ear connects. Massage into the ear holes as well. Do this for no less than 3 minutes on each side and you will have a friend for life. Give them a foot and hand massage as well and they’ll never leave your side.
December 10, 2001
10:30am
BeDamned the Corporate Giants!
I am so angry. I’m
angry at an entity and it is AT&T Broadband. As many know, Excite@home
went bankrupt and all of the @home customers who were grandfathered in when
AT&T picked up the ball were unceremoniously dumped on their asses with no
cable modem service and no e-mail on Black Saturday, December 1st.
They deeply regret any inconvenience this might cause.
I have been reduced to *gulp* AOL dial-up.
Sacramento was supposed to be converted over to true AT&T Broadband
cable modem service on Thursday. We
were to get a phone call with pre-recorded info telling us we were good to go. Our modems would light up like little Christmas and there
would be great rejoicing throughout the land that we were back in the land of
constant connection and speedy uploads and downloads.
My modem still looks like a rock with a power light on
it. I can’t tell you what the
recorded message says because I never got it.
I also don’t remember what a cable modem that is FUNCTIONING looks like
because mine is still not working. I
hate wasting valuable pissed off energy on a corporate piece of crap like
AT&T Broadband, but this one is pretty much out of my hands.
The piss off is there and it’s like trying to pull the fire power back
into a bazooka to not be pissed off at this point.
So I did the obvious on Friday. Since service was supposed to be restored in Sacramento on
Thursday, on Friday, I attempted to contact AT&T, the operative word here
being “attempted.” I am still
“attempting.” Friday, I tried
to call their customer service line and got, “We are experiencing a high
volume of calls. Please piss off
and call us later.” Click.
I tried the on-line chat and was number 1,452 in queue.
I gave up and called the side of AT&T that handles the cable TV
service and the lady was most kindly and said that AT&T was still
transitioning accounts and to not worry unless I still had no service on Monday,
then to call back to the cable TV side of AT&T and they’d make sure I got
all hooked up. Fine, I can deal with that.
Lemme look at my calendar. Oh,
look! Today is MONDAY.
So I tried to call them again and got the, “We are experiencing a high
volume of calls, please piss off and call later” message again.
Tried to call the cable TV company again like on Friday and got, “Are
you mad? We only handle cable TV.
Why are you calling us?” OK,
got online with the chat for customer support and SCORE!
I’m only #478 in queue!!! I
got down to #134 and stupid AOL DROPPED CARRIER ON ME and left me stranded,
forever at #134. Tried again, go
from #576 to #342 before AOL dumped me off again.
So this is where it is:
I have no cable modem and I have no hope of having cable
modem service until I can get through to these people.
They have published, on their website, a glowing, excited letter about
how all @home customers have been transitioned without difficulty and that they
are most proud of themselves for the smooth transfer.
This means that they have no clue that I have no service.
This means that until I call and let them know I have no service, I will
continue to have no service. This
means that since they are under the full impression that my service was restored
on Thursday, they will be charging me for the past four no service days UNTIL I
CAN SPEAK TO SOMEONE THERE. Eric is
under the impression that the reason they are flooded with calls is that others
are in the same boat, which is no doubt true; however, I also know that people
are having a terrible time getting the configurator that you have to download to
work and that most of the calls are probably about that or asking dumbass
questions like, “How’sacome mah @home address don’ work no more, huh?”
followed by lengthy dialogue including, “But why?
I don’t understand.”
Am I bitter? Yes
I am. Am I angry? Yes I am.
Is it useless to do and be so, I imagine it is.
This brings me to the most common responses to such
things that I get from people that I love and respect very much.
Overall, I despise these responses and find them to be contrite:
“The delay is no doubt in your best interest” or “You’re just
wasting precious energy being angry” or “Maybe you should look for the
lesson in what is happening” or “The anger you feel with AT&T’s
incompetence is merely a reflection of your anger at your own incompetence on
some level (wha?) or worse, “You have to work to overcome such negative
emotions.”
Grrr.
I am one of the very few Pagans who believes that so
called “negative” emotions are present in our little human existence for a
reason. I feel that anger,
jealousy, fear, doubt, frustration and all of the little cousins along the way
must serve some purpose or we would not have them.
I think that working to overcome such “useless” emotions is like
working to overcome having skin. They
come with the package and the trick is to use your powers for good instead of
evil. Overall, I feel that all
painful experiences, including emotions, are there to motivate one into action.
If you burn your hand on the stove, you take it away.
That is your action precipitated by the pain to remove you from further
damage. If your back hurts, you are
motivated to learn what stressors are causing the pain and what to do about it.
I don’t think that emotional or mental “pain” is any different.
If we are angry, it is to spur us into action to change something in our
lives. If we are angry with a
person, it is to motivate us to an interchange that on some level is going to
bring a resolution. We can talk it
out, we can beat it out of one another or we can remove ourselves from the
situation entirely. Regardless,
most of the time, anger precipitates action.
I think that most other emotions also motivate us to some kind of
corrective action, or at least should. What
really sucks is when the only action you can take requires the cooperation of
some other entity (LIKE AT&T) that refuses to cooperate.
I have, however, been motivated into a different action,
which while it does not bring the immediate results I would prefer, does correct
the situation a bit. I have decided
to take Earthlink DSL up on its most generous offer to not only switch the poor,
displaced @home customers to their DSL, waiving installation fees and giving us
the equipment free, but also is granting us two free months of service after we
pay for the first month. Since that
save me a whopping $100 overall and since I was a VERY happy Earthlink customer
before getting into @home cable a year ago (Earthlink did not yet offer DSL or
cable modem in my area), I have already signed up for their services.
The nice lady I spoke to (who answered after a mere two rings, I might
add), said it would take up to three weeks to get my service going, but I
received notice today that it will be ready Thursday, only five days after my
initial order. I pay for the
postage on the hardware, which come to just under $20 if you go the next day
mail route that I took. So screw
you, AT&T. I’ll take my
credit for nonservice and demand that they credit me up until the day my
Earthlink service is going strong (if I can ever get through to them).
Anger definitely precipitated action in this case.
So now that I’ve whined about that for a while with
little results other than a good purge, I shall move on to some other nonsoapy
talk in the post above, which you have possibly already read provided I got it
posted before you got here. Otherwise,
chaio and much love. (Boycott
AT&T because their customer service totally sucks).
So I’m only partially worked through this theory.
It could be that we all do really need to rise above those perfectly
human responses and shame them away into more enlightened introspection.
It could be that the human psyche is just so innately flawed that these
emotions plague us and have no purpose. Somehow,
I don’t think so.
Regardless, I feel better having purged this out to you poor guys. Definitely boycott AT&T Broadband if you have the opportunity to do so because their customer service is nonexistent. I, so far, fully encourage you to fly to Earthlink.net who has in no way every done me wrong and I have found to be a wonderful company. To AT&T, I say, “Pfffft. I curse thee to the lowest depths of corporate hell." But wait. I actually do NOT curse AT&T WIRELESS (an entirely different ball of wax) because that is the company that employs my husband, so feel free to hurry and get all of your cell phone needs through them. That side of the company, from what I can tell, have wonderful service.
Now I'm off to do a nonAT&T nonsoapy post, which you have probably already read unless you got to the site before I got it posted. Oh. Wait. I can't post this yet. Why? Because JOSH is on the DAMNED PHONE and OF COURSE since I don't have my CABLE MODEM, I have to wait until the PHONE LINE is free and then connect to AOL and WADE THROUGH THE ADS that pop up when I sign on IF I can get signed on and IF I can stay online long enough for the 5 MINUTES or so it takes for me to upload anything to the site OVER DIAL UP. AT&T, I doubly curse you for reducing me to this. (Standing on one foot, squinting most viciously, pointing my finger at AT&T and zapping them with my ire).
Mood:
You don’t want to know
Music: None, I think it all stopped
Last week, I got a giant urge to contact my friend from high school, Ava Thomas. Ava was very gentle and sweet and kind and I loved hanging out with her. When she got married around 1980 and moved to Bowling Green, Ky, I lost track of her. I knew she married a guy whose last name was Anderson and had a little girl. I hadn’t talked to her in over 20 years. I got busy on Yahoo and found her mother’s home address and phone number and gave her a call. There was no answer, so I tried again today. It turns out that they buried Ava last week and her mother thought I was calling because I knew she had died. I just wanted her phone number. The mom started telling me about how Ava had been severely diabetic and hadn’t been able to afford insulin or the right foods. Her daughter (she had two now, 18 and 20) found her in her kitchen floor, already dead. The mother is very hard of hearing so she was screaming and I was screaming and it was horrible.
I don’t know how to process this. I have a pretty generous view toward death, but I wasn’t ready for this. I hate sad stuff.
December 4, 2001
10:35am
I have also put together a collection of some of the smart, yet fruity thoughts that came up with during 1992-1993, easily my darkest hour. I hope maybe one of them will ring a bell for you on some level. I've gone back to them many times since then and usually one will stand out for me as being what I needed to read and a lesson I had someone forgotten along the way.
December 4, 2001
10:30am
Mood: Introspective
Music: "Looking For a City" - Vestal Goodman
One of the things that we do in our Witchy group is work
hard to understand human nature. Since
we attempt to achieve maximum in-tune-age with all of nature, human nature is
part of the package. We feel that
by becoming more in touch with why humans do the things that they do, we can not
only be more tolerant of others, define our own boundaries more clearly and
strengthen our weaker areas, but also evolve the species itself a notch or
two by assigning greater clarity to our actions and intents.
(Wasn’t that a great sentence?) For
instance, an understanding of child psychology is what has taken us from an era
only 40 years ago where children were to be seen and not heard and beaten when
they sneeze. An understanding of
male and female archetypes and dynamics has led to relationships that are,
overall, more equitable and satisfying to everyone involved, raising women up
out of the dregs of little more than a servant (OK, so do as I say, not as I do)
and men from the stresses of being sole provider.
Understand our human motivations and you master your own world.
One of the ways that we explore human dynamics is through storytelling and I thought I’d share with you a few of our favorites:
Oh Look! there's more!
Katrina's
NonSoapy Archives
(Nov 2001)
Katrina's
NonSoapy Archives
(Oct 2001)
Katrina's
NonSoapy Archives
(Aug-Sept 2001)
Katrina's NonSoapy Archives
(May-July 2001)
Katrina's
NonSoapy Archives
(Feb-May 2001)
