Cranky Randomness

• My insomnia is back.  Then, last night when I was actually sleeping pretty well it started thundering which woke me from my slumber.
• It’s raining and miserable and cold outside.
• I’ve spent too much money this week between buying gifts for people and buying books for myself.
• I have to work tonight and I’m tired (which I’m hoping to remedy by napping after I finish this).
• I bought a Mother’s Day card for my Mother and didn’t look at it properly until I got home and now I’m not sure I want to give it to her.  But I REALLY don’t want to or have the time to go back to the mall to exchange it.
• I’ve been feeling kind of anti social this week and I can’t put my finger on why.  So instead I’ve been locking myself in my room and reading and playing on the computer.
• Did I mention that I have NO motivation to go to work tonight?
• I’ve gone from cautiously optimistic to cynically pessimistic in about a week.

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The Cheater

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I used to have an old high school friend.  Over the years we knew each other, we had this unofficial on and off relationship.  Our friendship ventured into our adulthood and the on again seemed to be more frequent than the off again.  Marriage talk was thrown about-though, nothing for the immediate future.  More along the lines of if we were both single at X age, perhaps that’s a sign that we should finally get serious.  Despite the fact that we never made anything official, I had strong feelings for him.

Then he devastated me by announcing his engagement to a girl he had only just met.  A few months before the wedding we ended our friendship quite suddenly and have not spoken to each other sense.

It’s been several years but evidently I’m not quite-accepting of the way things went.  The other night I found myself in the middle of a very vivid dream about my former friend.  A mutual friend called me one day to inform me that our friend was having marital problems and it seemed as though a divorce was in the midst.  I called the former friend, with the intentions of offering my condolences and to once again offer my friendship.

We made plans to get together.  Our meeting didn’t go quite as expected and instead of a friendly conversation at a restaurant we found ourselves along together (if you catch my drift).  We both knew it was wrong, as my friend was still married.

I’m not sure what to make of the dream.  Normally I’m not one to read into my dreams and they normally fade away within a few hours, but this one has stuck with me very vividly for days.  I thought about contacting one of our old mutual friends, to see if there was any validity to my dream regarding his marriage, but I felt weird about it.  Aside from feeling weird, the dream goes against the morals I have for myself.

Guess it’s just one more thing to ponder.

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Heads or Tails: Mother

This week’s topic at the Heads or Tails meme is “Mother”.  Considering this Sunday is Mother’s Day in the United States (and possibly some other countries), it’s a very apt subject.

I could probably write a book about my own mother and our relationship.  Unfortunately, due to the nasty tetanus shot I aquired recently, my arm is quite sore (much worse than my face actually), so in order to keep the pain level down a bit, I will instead post a video.

“Mother Mother” by Tracy Bonham

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Knee meets face

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Pretty soon I’m going to start racking up frequent flyer miles at the local ER.   In the past six weeks I have taken two trips there-which as far as I’m concerned is two too many.

The first time I was not the patient.  I was with one of the kids at work, who turned out to be one really sick child (who is doing much better, btw, he truly is a fighter).  For the second visit however, I was the patient.

The only word to describe work this past weekend would be hell.  We had a full house (five kids) and while normally our staffing census per shift would be adequate enough to deal with the amount of kids-it just wasn’t the case this time around.  At the shift change, you could just feel the frustration and stress from the leaving staff.  I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that not a single smile was flashed, nor a laugh was uttered.  It was that sort of bad.

I went into work for my Sunday double shift.  I knew that it would be a bad day even before I showed up, but nonetheless, I was in a pretty good mood.  The end of the work week was in sight and I knew that the craziness would most likely end soon.  I was trying to be optomistic.  That lasted…oh, about half  of one shift.

Not long before bedtime one of the kids began acting up…I, very stupidly attempted to calm him down.  For my trouble  I found myself getting hit in the face, full force, by the kids knee.  Needless to say, it hurt like hell and the only thing I could do was rush into the kitchen to grab an ice pack and have a good cry.

I had gotten hit in the side of the nose and the eye area.  My nose wasn’t bleeding or anything so I didn’t think I broke anything but as the area started swelling up pretty quickly I decided (with the supervisor’s prompting) I should go to the hospital to get it checked out, have X-Rays taken…etc.  Being that the injury was close to my eye I didn’t want to drive home and so I called home to see if someone could come pick me up and about twenty minutes later my mother showed up, fresh out of work (at the hospital nonetheless) and after a quick examination of my face agreed that I should go to the ER to be on the safe side.

A few hours of sitting in the waiting room, I was finally called to the back.  I laid on a bed for another long while as insurance information and paperwork was filled out and signed.  Finally, at long last a doctor showed up.  He determined that I needed a tetanus shot as there was a small abrasion and ordered X-Rays.  The X-Rays were taken and once I returned back to the bed a nurse came in to give me the needle (which truly was the worse part of the entire ordeal).  The X-Rays came back negative so I was finally allowed to leave.  By the time I got home and settled down enough to sleep it was 3am.  I slept until about 10:30am and have spent a good portion of the day on the phone or waiting for phone calls setting up a follow up doctor’s appointment and getting information from my job about workman’s comp.

My nose hurts a bit, but Advil seems to be helping to alleviate the worst of it.  My arm is a little sore from the tetanus shot but not nearly as bad as I was expecting.  More than anything I’m just bored and restless from not having much to do until work tonight (yes, I’m torturing myself by going back to work right away) and being too tired to do much of anything.

Hopefully the guy from work calls me back soon with the info that I need so that I can go take a bit of a nap.

Losing My Religion

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I was not raised in a conventional “Christian” family. My mother was raised in one Church, and my father considered himself another-yet-wasn’t what you would consider an active part of the Church. When my parents married, and began a family they made the decision to raise their family in the Church of my father’s choosing-the Catholic Church. I can’t help but wonder whether that particular Church was chosen because of any strong feelings on my father’s part, or if it was mostly a decision of convenience as the church was less than two blocks from our home.

For the first nine years or so of my life my religious education was almost completely non existent. I had attended church a few times-my parents did make an attempt on several occasions to begin going and a few times I would tag along with my cousin (my best friend at the time) and her family. But on a regular basis, God’s presence wasn’t exactly felt in our household. At least to me. Eventually I started a formal religious education, but alas, I never took to it. I would go to the religion classes or Church and attempt to make some type of connection between myself and the big Guy upstairs…and it just never happened.

As I got older, I felt myself drifting even further away from Church. I kind of believed in God, or at least a Higher Being but as far as religion or the Catholic Church went…forget it. I didn’t believe all of what I was taught, when I went to Church…it was the same thing week after week, to the point where the “ceremony” lost all meaning. It felt as though I was participating in some over done theatrical act; and not a very good one at that. The interest or connection just was not there…then, to make matters work-the sex scandals started coming to light. That was pretty much it. I felt myself disgusted by the stories and upset that the Church that I was taught to put my trust in faith in could harm people in that way. I didn’t completely stop going to Church, I would attend with my family in order to appease my parents but once there I would just go through the motions with no thought to what I was doing.

Today I don’t consider myself religious. I don’t attend church or even follow a particular religion nor creed. I believe that there is a Higher Being, and I know that my relationship with that Being could be better-but I feel no need to ascribe to a certain Church in order to make a connection. I have morals which I uphold. I enjoy learning about other’s religions and I will freely discuss or debate my own beliefs. I do not enjoy having someone attempt to “sell” me their religion, but I understand why they do it. I know that there are people who honestly do not believe that a person can be content with not having religion in their lives…that’s fine. Religion, Faith and Belief are personal matters and I truly feel that everyone is entitled to their own personal opinions.

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Social Networks, Terms of Services and You

Social networking websites-such as Myspace, Facebook and Twitter are steadily gaining popularity.  It seems that everyone nowadays uses some type of social networking service to keep in touch with friends, family and even making business connections.  For most, social networking websites are a lot of fun and convenient.   It’s nice to be able to log onto a website and instantly connect to a wide range of people, and for those who might not get a chance to meet a lot of people in their daily life, social networking websites are a fairly easy way to meet new people to befriend, whether they live in your own back yard, or thousands of miles away.

Like so many things however, social networking sites do have some negative issues surrounding them.   When you sign up to use a social networking site, you are possibly opening yourself up to vulnerabilities.  Those vulnerabilities can be in the form of malicious codes and viruses that may infect your computer and they can also come in the form of other users.  We have all heard the horror stories of pedophiles using websites like MySpace to lure little kids into harms way-however, pedophiles only make up a tiny little percentage of “bad guys” you or your children might encounter.  Instead, there is a greater chance of encountering an individual or group who use the anonymous nature of the world wide web to well, behave badly.  Cyberbullying and cyberharrassment are increasingly becoming a threat to both children and adults alike.  One of the most monumental cases of cyber bullying is the story of Megan Meier, a teenage girl who committed suicide after falling victim to a cruel hoax.

Before a person is allowed to begin using a social networking website, he or she is required to read and agree to a Terms of Service (a TOS).  An example of the Twitter’s TOS agreement can be found here.  One of the TOS states: “You must not abuse, harass, threaten, impersonate or intimidate other Twitter users.” This rule is not just in place on Twitter, it is in place for any type of social website, whether it be Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, or even a message board.  It’s a good rule to have; however, it will only work if it’s enforced.

Recently a fellow blogger and founder of eMailOurMilitary.com was subjected to harassment while using Twitter.  She summed up the situation on her blog by the following:

“To make a long story short, someone sought me out on twitter and made it their mission to post harassing, abusive and libelous statements about me and my company. I’m all about freedom of speech. I’m all for discussion, discourse and debate but when someone creates 20 or so accounts for the sole purpose of stalking me or posting libelous statements about my company that’s where I draw the line.”

Being a conscientious and savvy web user, she immediately blocked the harasser and his various Twitter accounts and contacted Twitters administration about the breach of TOS.  Instead of Twitter taking action and investigating the matter, they informed her that she should block him and protect her posts.  Instead of protecting her and holding to the TOS agreements, it seemed as it they blamed HER for getting harassed and complaining about it-kind of like blaming a rape victim for getting raped because she was wearing a short skirt.

Like any other business, Twitter offers a service to consumers.  As with any business, they have a responsibility to their consumers to make sure that they are safe-not only from viruses and trojans, but also from those individuals who believe that the world wide web gives them free rein to make other people’s lives difficult.

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Heads or Tails: Memory

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This week’s theme at Heads or Tails is “Share a Special Memory”.

Yesterday I threatened to write another post about one of the Silverchair concerts I went to last year, but this morning I was inspired by Jeff Buckley-primarily his song “The Last Goodbye“. I kind of suspect that we were suppose to write a “good” memory-but I like to be a bit different from anyone else.

One Thursday in October I was sitting in my dining room, playing on my new laptop.  I had had prior plans that day to see “The Departed” at the movie theater with The Bookworm, but for reasons unknown I had called and canceled.  There was no reason to cancel, I just didn’t feel right leaving the house for some reason.

I was ripping my cd collection into the laptop when the phone rang.  I thought it was probably one of my parents calling so I was surprised to hear an unfamiliar voice at the end of the line.  The man introduced himself as a doctor at the hospital that my “Mommom” was at.  He asked if I had any way of getting in touch with the rest of the family as Mommom was not doing well.

I hung up the phone in shock and quickly called my mother to relay in the information.  She assured me that she would take care of everything, and so not knowing what else to do…I returned to the computer.  I was still in shock, and not totally processing the information.

The enormity of what was happening hit me a few minutes later.  The song “In a Little While” by U2 came on and I as I was listening to the lyrics, everything just hit me.  I understood then that there was a good possibility that my Mommom had passed away, or was very close to death.

My Dad came home from work and we talked for a few minutes and I told him what was going on.  He got on the phone and I went outside with the dogs.  When I was outside I looked over at Mommom’s house, standing just across the street.  I knew for sure then that she was gone and when I went back inside my Dad confirmed my fear.  We hugged for a minute or two, and he warned me not to tell my sisters and brother as he wanted to tell them.  I went up to my room then, in order to grieve in the privacy of my room-away from my sister who had just returned home from school.  Through my tears I went online and posted a message on a message board I posted on, telling the people on there what had happened.  It seemed like an odd thing to do, but I had posted on there after the first phone call.  Not long after I posted that message I got a phone call from a member on that board who I chatted with a lot both on and off the board.  She knew I would be taking the news hard, as she knew how close I had been to Mommom.  I can’t remember what was said during that conversation, but I was calmed somewhat-and deeply touched that she would take the time to find my phone number and check up on me.

While it was a pretty hard time in my life, it really was amazing to have someone who was virtually a “stranger” reach out like that.  To this day I am still close to that woman, we exchange frequent emails and I am determined that soon we’ll get together as we only live about an hour from one another.

It’s raining, it’s pouring…

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Yesterday was  a long day at work.  Sundays are always long-I work 16 hours on Sundays, but yesterday felt even longer.  While it wasn’t necessarily a bad day, there was a lot going on.  For the first 8 hours of the shift, I barely gave myself five minutes to sit and relax.  I had a unexpected discharge to deal with, we were told the discharge would be on Monday-so when the family showed up yesterday things got really confusing and stressful.  I felt unprofessional and even though the family was understanding and extremely nice, I still felt really bad about the situation.  I felt bad for having to call the supervisor on her day off to come in, even though it was just for a few minutes.

From that situation alone, I was pretty tired.  But then there was so many different things that had to be taken care of.  Dinner to serve and clean up.  Dessert to be gotten.  Vacuuming, sweeping…mopping.  Having the mop break.  Having the heater act up.  Paperwork to be filed away properly.  When I finally had a chance to sit back and relax, I just couldn’t.  I felt restless the rest of the night.

Today it has been pouring down rain all day, the type of rain where the only thing you really want to do is curl up and sleep all day.  I slept a few hours, but didn’t feel rested enough.  I forced myself up, in hopes that I would get some things done-but that didn’t happen.  I spent the day in front of the computer.  Reading blogs.  Writing out my life story for a message board.  Trying to think of a good memory to share for tomorrow’s Heads or Tails, and thinking that perhaps I’ll just pull up an old post.  Perhaps revisit one of the Silverchair shows I went to.

Hopefully tomorrow will be a more inspiring day.

(I chose to include this picture because it made me smile-not because it has anything do do with the post)

Don’t Panic

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Once upon a time I suffered from insomnia.  While I used to complain about it, I kind of secretly liked it.  If anything-it gave me ample time to be creative.  On my days off, when the rest of the house was asleep I could unleash my creativity a bit without the annoyance of being uninterrupted.

Since returning home from my vacation I no longer seem to have a problem with insomnia.  I have been tired at normal hours, and even on my days off, when my body would normally be out of sync-there’s no issues with sleeping.  This should be a good thing.

However, with sleeping normal hours (and the recommended amount) comes a new issue.  Dreaming.

I’ve been dreaming a lot.  Often times when I wake up, I feel as though I hadn’t really slept.  I had been too busy acting out my dreams (not really-I don’t sleep walk or anything).

I can’t remember a good part of my dreams.  When I awake, I just have this vague sense that I had been in the middle of a dream or something.  I like to remember my dreams, so this is kind of annoying.  When I can remember my dream though…they have been bad.  Not terrible.  Just…stuff that I’d rather not dream about.   In one dream I remembered-I was driving in the car with my mother and we got pulled over by the cops.  Then, today I had a dream that my brother and sister were in a minor bus accident on the way to watch a track and field event in Philadelphia (which they did, earlier this week).  I remember being on the phone with a nurse from a hospital assuring me that it was okay.  Strangely, in my dream I knew the nurse.

The dreams are nothing to be worried about, but I just wish I knew why I seem to be dreaming more than normal.

One Small Favor

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Hey guys, I have a small favor to ask of you…as you recall recently I have shifted my reviews over to a brand new home (The Quarter-Life Reviews) in order to be a little…uh, organization into my life.  So far I have close to 60 reviews-both past and present-and very few visitors.  And, if I can believe WordPress-not one of those visitors came from a Google search.

In the past, when I would host the reviews right here on this blog I would get a good number of hits for books, music, movies, etc. that I reviewed.  I’m not getting that at the other site, and I’m led to believe that that’s due to the small amount of links leading to The Quarter-Life Reviews.

So, if you would be kind enough to include my new blog into your blogroll I would greatly appreciate it and will be quick to reciprocate the favor.  Also, if anyone has any suggestions for me as to how I might increase my readership on my other blog I would love to hear them.

Thanks!