Sunday, November 27, 2011

Cheap and Cheerful.

You may have noticed that I've changed some things. The old layout was exactly that - an old, tired layout recycled from a long dead blog from five years ago. The tone was wrong. I still love the caption "Everything fun is wrong", but... again, the graphic is dated and the tone is wrong for me. The new layout is rather brash. I absolutely love this graphic. Wish I could remember where I found it so I could credit it. Oh well, I'm sure everyone involved is famous enough already as it is without me having to pay lip service. Speaking of which, I hope to one day be such a big deal that I am provided with my own cigarette bitch to hold my smokes for me and ash when necessary. This would be a great thing to have on a cold, windy day. I could keep my hands in my pocket to stay warm and I wouldn't be bothered with trying to shield my face long enough to light up. I dream big, I know.

I've been aggravated lately by the people I know and their romantic lives. I shouldn't talk about the specifics or the whos and whats of it, so nevermind all that. Just know I'm aggravated and that's why. I'm further annoyed by the fact that I'm not just hashing it out here. I don't think it would actually help, though. I would if I thought it would be somehow beneficial to me. It's not so whatever. It's none of my business anyway. I should delete this paragraph. Nevermind. Anyway...

Seeing my grandfather during Thanksgiving was depressing. He's in a rapid state of decline. Actually, I don't want to talk about this either. He looked hollow and demented. It was sobering which is saying a lot since I don't really drink anymore and I was quite buzzed off what little vodka I consumed before arriving that night in anticipation of an awkward, hostile holiday event with the family. Fuck. Nevermind. Anyway...

Since I'm still recovering from nearly a year of unemployment with incredibly brief and sparatic periods of orientation/training periods featuring minimal pay, no one should expect anything for Christmas this year from me. Seriously. That's just not happening. Hopefully by the end of this year I'll at least be financially stable again and ahead of the curve on bills again. It's been fun picking and choosing which bills get paid which month, but I'm over that. It can stop and it will. Very excited for that to happen. I might even have my credit cards paid back off shortly. That's the easy bit. Then I just have some loans to clear up - that'll take considerably longer, naturally. Back to the point, I'm not in a position to worry about anyone else but me right now - and that's an overwhelming task as it is sometimes. Seriously. You can laugh. It's funny because it's true. Although, I've become so damn thrift it's ridiculous. The smoking thing is helping tremendously. I believe my last carton lasted just over three weeks. That's shocking. I'm used to smoking at least a pack every day, if not 1.5 packs. So, for a pack of cigarettes to last 2-3 days... It's insanity. It blows my mind, because it's not even a conscious decision. It's not like I woke up one day hacking my lungs out and decided I better chill out for awhile. It's not like I sit around all day jonesing for it, either. It's just weird. I have no idea what happened that altered my habits, but they've definitely changed. I think someone planted hypnotic suggestions in my brain while I was sleeping or something. Either that or Nurse Egg has been crushing up Chantix and mixing it into the food. I don't know. That seems more likely than me just suddenly having this drastic reduction in nicotine usage. I should really just not look a gift horse in the mouth and stop obsessing about it. Yeah, maybe I'll do that. Who cares, anyway? I do, obviously, but I'm going to pretend like I don't from now on.

Speaking of pretending, there's something I've been meaning to address for some time now and haven't yet got around to. I have a feeling that's going to get very in depth and involved so it might warrant its own post. I know it will, in fact, so that's what I'll do. Forget I brought it up here. Nevermind. Anyway...

My asshole friend is engaged after dating for two whole weeks. I said I wasn't going to talk about this, but apparently I lied about that. This will make marriage number three for him. We were out of touch for his first marriage, so I couldn't be expected to attend the ceremony. I was in Alaska at the time, dealing with my own universe of bullshit - probably during the two months when I was basically homeless and living in my car. That's a story for another time, maybe. Probably not. I was around for the second wedding, but didn't attend. I spent the night before getting incredibly drunk and spent the day of the ceremony sleeping it off. That's a real dick move, by the way. It's worse than that, actually, because I didn't regret it or apologize. I won't get into it in very much detail, but it was a shotgun wedding to the woman directly responsible for his first divorce. Can't believe that didn't work out considering how it started. Anyway, whatever. I didn't go to the wedding. So, here we are. He's engaged to a woman he's been dating for two whole weeks now. I really shouldn't be surprised by this, but I am. I think it's incredibly sad. I also think it's a terrible idea - it's a terrible idea for anyone to rush things like this, but even more for someone with an established and unfortunate history of rushing things along like this - that will certainly end in disaster. Again. I don't even try not to say those things to him anymore. It doesn't matter. He's still going to do whatever and make the same ridiculous decisions/mistakes hoping for a different outcome. That's the definition of insanity, reader. I don't think desperation is a valid reason to do anything. I don't know. It's aggravating. I wasn't always aware of how dependent he was/is on other people. I didn't notice how emotionally fragile he was/is. I didn't think he was/is so weak, desperate, lonely, and sad. He seriously can not be alone for any amount of time - an hour, a day, a week. He's never been alone longer than that and you'd have thought that was the end of the world from how he was acting during it. His neediness is entirely overwhelming and I don't handle that well. It's repelling to me. It makes me want to escape it as quickly as possible and then simply avoid it forever. Which is where I'm at right now with him - avoiding him forever. I don't know if he's always been this way and I simply didn't pick up on it or it wasn't as abundantly obvious or if he became this way at some point possibly while we were out of contact. I don't know. It's just not something I can tolerate well or be empathetic about. It's funny because he says that I'm the one who's broken. That my coldness and distance and detachment and independence and self-reliance and wanderlust are all characteristic of my total emptiness. I disagree. These attributes of mine were born out of necessity and survival. They are learned behaviors. I adapted to overcome and now that's part of who I am. I think it's a far worse thing to be so dependent on other people that you simply can not ever be alone. I mean, it seems to me that you'd have to hate yourself to a fairly significant degree to not be comfortable just being alone with yourself. I'm fairly comfortable with myself. There's a lot of things about myself that I hate, but I've come to terms with them and have reconciled these parts of my person. I don't know - maybe we're both right and wrong in our own way. In any case, I'd much rather be me than him. This has become increasingly clear throughout the last few years. I wouldn't have said that when we first met or through the years that directly followed. Of course I've changed a great deal since then as well, so that's as much a reflection of who I've become as it is of who he's become. I can't believe I'm talking about this. It doesn't matter. It's not going to end well for either of us. In a way, it's been over for a long time. I guess I just don't have the heart to make it official - our origins are so magnificent and powerful that it's difficult to not be so blinded by that amazing past that I can't clearly and objectively see the future that our present is leading us to and intervene on my own behalf. See that? I'm human afterall. I'm flawed and biased. He'd be so proud. Although, I'd get over the dissolution of our relationship quickly if not immediately. I don't think he ever would. That's the difference. It shouldn't be the case and it's tragic that it is, but a one way relationship still feels a lot like hosting parasites.

Ok, enough of that. It's depressing. It's bullshit and I'll deal with it eventually. Discussing it may have helped somewhat, so hurray for that.

My natural sarcastic demeanor finally proved useful for something other than a defense or coping mechanism. We play a lot of games in my tech support training class and on Friday we were given a worksheet of riddles to solve. It was meant to keep us busy and quiet while everyone finished up the weekly skills test. We have a lot of smart cookies in the room and most of us got most of the answers figured out. There was only one that no one got correct... except for me, naturally. Being naturally sarcastic, I'm very adept at logic puzzles. I can take things entirely too literally, which is usually a bad or humorous thing, but proves very useful in this instance. Anyway, I thought I'd allow the folks at home a crack at it. I'll reveal the answer in a future post.

"If I were in Hawaii and dropped a bowling ball in a bucket of water which is at 45 degrees F, and dropped another ball of the same weight, mass, and size in a bucket at 30 degrees F, both of them at the same time, which ball would hit the bottom of the bucket first? Same question but the location is now in Canada?"

Good luck.

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