Archive for November, 2011

Today marks my eleventh smoke-free day, and I feel pretty good. I notice that I’m not as short of breath, particularly on the treadmill.

Go figure.

In other news, I am having the sort of ridiculous romantic feelings that make my brain want to implode. I’m really kind of reticent and stoic and have a stick really far up my butt when it comes to any sort of emotion, so this has me pretty spun.

I can’t get enough of B. I really can’t. I feel like I’m eighteen again, when I literally wanted to crawl inside of his body, I wanted to be so close to him. We sit on the couch and hold each other so tightly that I lose my breath, and for once, I know that it isn’t the cigarettes.

I am on the phone all the time, talking, texting. We see each other at least three times per week. I can’t stop looking into his eyes, for the love of God, what is going on with me? There is all this emotion and passion and bullshit, and it’s really just too damned much. I can hardly sleep.

I love it, though. I fucking love it, God help me.

Obviously aliens have taken over my body. Please excuse me.

Ahem.

In other news, the big news here in northwest Indianny is that a local teen who was being bullied for quite some time had the living crap kicked out of him by star football and baseball players. This happened at the high school the J-Man is to attend next year.

Apparently the students involved were not disciplined in the slightest, except for the victim – a kid of middle Eastern descent, hence the bullying – who was suspended for ten days for throwing one punch in order to try to defend himself.

The kid has actual brain damage from the beating. He is suffering visual disturbances and balance problems.

This enrages me.

The victim’s family is suing, and I hope they win, but I’m sure it will be of little comfort to the boy.

This is the sort of stuff that scares me shitless, particularly since my son is bullied on a regular basis. I just don’t have the words.

I don’t understand kids today. I don’t understand whether they act this way because they are being raised in a culture of violence, because they’re mentally ill, because their parents are complete and utter douchebags, or a combination of all those factors.

I wish I knew the answers, and I wish children could feel safe in school.

I wish I didn’t feel that I’m going to have to send my kid to high school with pepper spray and a bulletproof vest.

In still other news, if I got time to lean, I got time to clean. Sigh.

Happy Tuesday.

I am actually breathing today, which is a good sign, and I haven’t smoked yet, despite my rather insane stress level.

Good times.

I have, however, eaten my weight in M&Ms. In fact, I would like to personally thank the Mars/M&M company for getting me through this difficult time. Your addictive little candy-coated choco-pellets have been my saving grace and have prevented me from both smoking and choking the crap out of people who desperately deserve it.

I’m the Human Zit, but oh, well. Sacrifices must be made.

Yes, my stepdad is a douche, and yes, this situation sucketh mightily, and yes, I need to move; but realistically, I can’t right now. I don’t have the cash flow yet, I don’t have transportation, and I can’t pull J. out of school again. I just can’t. The kid, as much as he is not down with my stepdad, honestly likes his friends here and would be freaking traumatized if we had to move again. And I just can’t afford this area on my own.

It’s unspeakably lame, it sucks, and it’s going to be a bitch, but I’m going to have to suck it up and deal with it for the time being.

I don’t really have much of a choice.

My mother did speak to him about everything he said and he apparently retracted ninety percent of it under duress, claiming that B. is always welcome here and that so are the J-Man’s friends (ha). He’s also being extremely and uncharacteristically nice to me, so m mother must have guilt-tripped him pretty badly.

I don’t care, really. The damage was done.

Chalk this up to more emotional bullshit I can stuff deep down inside and repress only to bring up later through some sort of self-destructive behavior.

Heh.

In other news, it’s the weekend, which means I can escape to the movies (Rum Diary is looking great) or to dinner for B.’s birthday or shopping or wherever.

Anywhere but here.

Happy Friday, and happy Veteran’s Day to those who served, are serving, and will serve.

My living situation is starting to come to an ugly head, much like a particularly noxious pimple.

My stepdad, a notorious control freak, doesn’t really allow people in the house. This is just one of his many rules, along with “no dirty dish must ever touch the sink”, “vacuuming must be performed on a daily basis”, and other such OCD-inspired gems. The J-Man doesn’t have friends over, except for the hard-won sleepovers in the basement that are fought for once in a blue moon. No friends are allowed upstairs in his room, ever.

However, since I’ve been dating B. I have flown in the face of this rule and have had him over a couple of nights per week – not to spend the night, mind you, for that would surely get me shot, but simply to hang out and talk and watch movies.

My stepdad has previously voiced concern over my dating B. due to the fact that he also has neurological disabilities, which is something that left me reeling with anger and also disbelief. Should no one date me, either, for that reason? Are we both to be left in the broken toy bin so that we can be thrown out with the trash?

Fuck that weak shit.

Anyway, I’ve politely ignored his impolite nosings into my doings and have gone on about the business of wantonly daring to be with someone who isn’t your Average Joe’s idea of perfect.

Yesterday, though, my stepdad cornered me in the basement – my own fucking turf, mind you – and started to berate me, and the bon mots just began to fly from his lips.

Now before you read any further, keep in mind that A) I am a grown-ass, 37-year-old woman, B) I pay rent, and C) my IQ is over 35 (really!).

“Jennifer, I just think that either you are going to get really hurt, or this guy is, because you know you’re just NOT SMART when it comes to relationships.” (I can’t deny this, really, but for the love of Jesus, cut me a fucking BREAK. WHO IS? Are you, bitter divorcee with six kids? Are you??)

“You can do so much better than this.” (wildly intelligent, educated, funny, incredibly good-looking man)

“I mean, he’s not even a good-looking guy.” (Oops! I was wrong! HAAAAA) (This merits more discussion. B., probably easily the most handsome man I’ve ever dated, has a shaved head. Is this bald prejudice? I wonder. Could it just be that he’s not my stepdad’s particular type? MAYBE.)

That was all funny, but he then went on to tell me that if I was going to have B. over to the house that I needed to talk to my father about getting an apartment (one of my father’s many hats is local slumlord), because he couldn’t stand for People In The House.

Then he actually told me that I should move out and leave the J-Man with my mother, because I wouldn’t be able to care for him properly myself. You know, like I fucking do now. All because I don’t drive.

I was floored. I mean, did he actually think I would leave my own child?? The FUCK?

He then went on to tell me what a burden it was having me in the house because apparently my living in the fucking basement and barely ever, ever coming up for air really puts a crimp in his fucking lifestyle. “Your mother and I have no privacy.”

I find that odd, because the J-Man is always either in his room or downstairs with me due to his pure hatred of the asshole, and I’m ALWAYS downstairs, so I’m not sure what exactly I’m preventing them from doing. They sleep in separate bedrooms, they never kiss or touch or even sit next to each other on the goddamned couch, so it can’t possibly be physical. When they do have conversations, half the time they erupt into arguments, so he can’t possibly be talking about that. I remain mystified.

I’m also a fucking burden because I have unannounced seizures and take “too many pills”, though, so I already was aware of my Burden Status. I’m not too worried about it.

But to tell me I’m responsible for your shitty, stagnant relationship? Oh, no, buddy. Oh, HELL, no.

He berated me for a full half hour and I stood there and took it like a little bitch because I am in fact living under his Godforsaken roof, and then he had the gall to look at me and say, “I hope nothing I said offended you.”

Are you fucking kidding me?

I immediately e-mailed my mom and told her what had happened and I basically said, “Look, I can’t do this shit anymore.”

I can’t. I’m tired of living at home. I’m tired of living like I’m twelve. I need to move somewhere with some sort of public transportation or find some sort of transportation resources available to people on Medicare, and get the hell out of here.

The only rub is that the J-Man wants to go to high school with his friends, and this is sort of an expensive area. So I’m going to try to find some sort of part-time online work that could supplement my disability so that I could find a way to swing it.

I have to get the hell out of here. This isn’t the first time my stepdad and I have had blowouts like this, but I can guarantee you it’s going to be one of the last. I mean, it’s the next goddamned day and I’m still seething.

Ridiculous.

Anyway. What I should have done was told him to shove it up his ass, and I’m pretty upset with myself that I didn’t, but what can I do?

I don’t know why he wanted us to move in here. He has called J. a “fairy” and flat out told me he “doesn’t like the kid”, and he’s given me nothing but shit since day one.

At one point yesterday, he said, “This is not how I envisioned my retirement.”

To be sure, to be sure.

But you know what? I didn’t envision my life being cooped up in your fucking basement, either, buddy.

Asshole.

Yeah, it’s time to go.

Happy Thursday.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this manic in my whole life.

Would I have historically been this hyperactive a person had I never been a smoker? I wonder. Would I have been this irritating? God, I hope not.

I certainly hope my irritating factor is going to begin to wane soon, because I can only imagine just how annoying I must be. I am a pacer, a constant texter, a gum-chewer (GOD I hate gum and the chewers of gum), and a babbler. I don’t know what to do with myself and cannot sit down for more than eight seconds at a time.

Last night I finally had it with the insomnia and dosed myself with three two hundred-milligram Trazodones in order to finally knock myself the hell out. I slept for nine hours, waking up at two-hour intervals, but falling pretty quickly back asleep. Finally the bags under my eyes are looking less like large, ominous, garment bags and more like small makeup bags.

I don’t know what to do with all this unaccustomed energy. I would bake, but then I would undoubtedly eat everything I made.

I would run more, but my muscles are screaming.

I would write, but my mind is absolutely scattered.

I hope this starts to abate soon and that I’m not going to be a freaking hype for the rest of my non-smoking career.

I was under the mistaken impression that cigarettes were a stimulant and actually raised one’s blood pressure, when it appears that the opposite is true.

I had no clue.

I have absolutely nothing of consequence to say today, and I can’t sit down any longer.

Happy Wednesday.

Today is day three sans cigarettes, and during the first day and a half I had absolutely no nicotine whatsoever. I was like a hype, people. I was like a crack-craving, alley-skittering, likka-sto’-haunting hype.

I think that this was predominantly because I didn’t cut down on my admittedly exorbitant consumption of caffeine. You just can’t mainline caffeine when you’re not smoking, or at least I can’t. It just doesn’t fly. I need nicotine to balance it all out.

I was literally pacing around the house like a freak – walking up and down the stairs and driving everyone crazy.

Last night B. and I went to a freaking four-hour high school production of A Streetcar Named Desire, and so annoying was the actress portraying Blanche DuBois and so long was the performance that by the time we were out I was fiending like crazy. Thankfully B. had brought me his extra e-cigarette, probably due to the fact that he was sick to death of my manic phone calls and generally crazy state. It helped a great deal, and I’ve been hitting it sporadically ever since.

Afterwards we went out for coffee, and I had my first-ever cup of decaf.

I mean, decaf. What’s the freaking point? Still, I was trying to avoid snapping off and leaving a large, Jen-shaped hole in the restaurant wall.

Afterwards I spent the night at B.’s. Now historically, I don’t do well with sleepovers. I’m an insomniac who has to dose herself with tons of sleep meds even to successfully sleep at home, and sleeping outside of the house is damned near impossible. I was willing to give it the old college try, though, so I brought my pills along and my iPod (which I cannot sleep without) and hoped for the best.

Of course I forgot the extra sleeping pill that I usually take on sleepovers, because I’m an idiot. I probably could have taken one of B.’s (he is probably an even more chronic insomniac than I am), but I didn’t want to get into the nasty habit of sharing or trading meds. That involves a rather slippery slope.

I haven’t stayed overnight with B. since I was about 20 years old, so I neglected to remember that he: A) sleeps like a corpse, B) talks creepily in his sleep, and C) snores like a Mack truck.

Yes, I hit the trifecta.

At some point during the night he opened his eyes, looked right at me and intoned, “Bill (his stepdad), the clocks change tonight.”

Creepy, right?

And the snoring. The snoring was ridiculous. It wasn’t little cute “Snzzzzzz…” snoring. It was like “SNZAAAAAA!!!!!!!” snoring. I couldn’t even roll him over, because due to his leg issues he can only sleep on his damned back.

Then this morning, after a scant three hours of sleep, I woke up and looked to my left to see him lying perfectly still with his arms crossed and perfectly angled over his chest like fucking Dracula.

It was highly unnerving. I kept waiting for the morning sun peering through the curtains to cause his pale skin to burst into flame.

All in all, not a great night of sleep. It was nice to share a bed, though, if you don’t count the snoring and the talking and the creepy Dracula poses.

Plus, there was good strong coffee in the morning, which is not allowed at my house, where we make coffee with an entire pot of water and one damned tablespoon of coffee grounds.

I’m so not kidding. This is the House of No – everything is quiet, repressed, sterile, bland, and weak – even the coffee.

If you visited us, you would agree. It’s very oppressive. B. is afraid to talk here because he’s a loud talker and he’s actually been chastised for being too mouthy.

We started laughing one night in the basement and my stepdad was down here like a shot. “You’re going to wake up your mother!”

For the record, my mother sleeps like the dead.

Still, NO LAUGHING.

It’s no wonder I’m a little nervous. I am entirely too much person for this house.

In other news, I am still waiting to hear back from Purdue about re-entry into school. I’m really kind of excited. I’m even more excited about being about to default on my student loans again.

That will be a load off of my mind.

Happy Sunday from a very recent and very sleepless non-smoker.

I must be high, kids, because I have chosen this week to go on a protein shake diet and quit smoking.

I gained ten pounds during the last few weeks, which has spawned this sudden diet freak-out. I’m sure that this had absolutely nothing to do with the copious shoveling of Halloween candy into my fat face. The cessation of said chocolate would surely solve said problem, but I’d like to lose a few extra pounds on top of the ten anyway, so to the vitamin-laden protein shakes I go.

During this particular diet, I eat a normal breakfast and drink the shakes for lunch and dinner. It’s actually healthier than it sounds, since I’m doubling up on vitamins and water, and I actually do feel and function better on less solid food for some reason. Something about it gives me more energy.

The quitting of cigarettes is something B. and I decided to do, perhaps ill-advisedly at a time in which we are both stressed to the gills; B. with school and me with the fun task of figuring out how to start school again and also looking for new part-time work.

I need to quit, though. Lately I find myself both short of breath while running and unreasonably broke (120.00 a month on cigarettes, which is ludicrous), so I think it’s time.

I know I’ve attempted to quit a thousand times before, so I’m not making any massive promises, but I am going to give it the old college try. I’m going to use the patch for a few weeks and see how it goes. I’m currently on my last pack.

B. is using the e-cigarette, a device which I find interesting. It has no tar or chemical additives and emits water vapor instead of smoke. He initially bought some sort of strawberry-flavored nicotine solution for the thing by accident, and upon trying it, I dubbed it, “Strawberry Ass”. This stuff was seriously nasty. I’ve since tried the menthol flavor, which isn’t too bad, but I don’t plan to use it with the patch because I don’t really want to OD on nicotine.

That’s essentially what I’m doing now, after all.

So here’s hoping I don’t completely lose my shit this week and become a raging alcoholic, a complete and total shrew, a child-beater, or one of those crazy white people who goes up onto a bell tower with an AK-47.

Here’s hoping.

In other news, am I a relationship? I don’t know. We don’t talk about it. We talk on the phone multiple times per day. We see each other multiple times per week. We frequently talk about the future in tentative terms. Neither of us are sleeping with anyone else or seeing anyone else. There is use of terms of endearments.

We had a state of the union talk several weeks ago and decided that we were not going to approach the R word due to the fact that it was too soon, too intense, too much, too fast; but it certainly feels as if I am entrenched in something, here.

Perhaps I am over-analyzing and should simply go with the flow. However, it is in my nature to analyze the shit out of everything. It maddens me. When I bother to let on this charming little character trait it probably maddens everyone around me, too.

I could use a little Zen.

In still other news, my hard drive is full. Full. I have so much music that I have completely filled the laptop’s entire fucking hard drive.

Oh, do I long for terabytes of space. Every time I log on to this damned thing now, it warns me: You Have Low Disk Space.

Danger, Will Robinson.

I don’t even know whether I can obtain a new hard drive for this thing. I don’t know whether it even has the capacity for a new one.

I know virtually nothing about this machine. I just bought it on a whim, like I do everything. Smart.

I could probably store some of my music on a flash drive, but then iTunes is going to erase everything off of my iPod, and my world will be a dark, desolate place.

Help.

In still other news, we had a few guys here yesterday putting up new gutters, and may I say that they did indeed have gutter mouths.

I have never heard so many f-bombs in my whole life.

Now I am certainly prone to drop a fuck or three on this page, and maybe one or two in real life if provoked or intoxicated. (Or animated.) However, the Eff Word isn’t really a part of my daily lexicon. Once you have a kid, it’s sort of drilled out of you.

I was in the garage having a smoke when I heard an onslaught of motherfucking fuck fucking fuckers.

I mean, gosh. I’m a delicate flower!

Heh.

Happy Thursday.

Jesus.