I said on the last post that the next one would be about overeating. Well, the reason I'm going through all of these different topics is because they're all kind of close to home when it comes to personal problems that I have. So... they say "write what you know" and that's exactly what I'm doing.
We start this discussion on overeating with a word of advice. Don't. Don't start. Keep yourself from going to buffets because all you're going to do is convince yourself you need to eat enough to pay for the cost. Don't go out to eat. Don't go out to fast food joints. Do learn to cook at home. Do grow your own vegetables and herbs. Do eat small portions and do so 4-6 times a day, every few hours an apple here, a protein shake there, or a small salad here. Do eat dessert when you're in the mood for it, but get one of those 100 calorie things and don't eat more than that. Wait for a few hours before you eat anything more. Wait until you feel a bit empty or your tummy starts to rumble. Keep your metabolism high, whatever you do, you need to go number 2 at least once a day if not more. If you start to get to the point where you don't, then there's something wrong with your body and you need to re-adjust something.
Okay... I'll climb off my soapbox for a moment and tell you what I've learned over the years. It's EASY to be fat. Especially when you have no idea that you're getting there until people start making fun of you and your friends feel sorry for you because you're the chubby one. Maybe, like me, you don't even realize you're getting fat, or maybe you already are, because it seems like a completely acceptable way to be, because the people around you are fat as well. Maybe you have a lot of skinny friends and you feel bad for them because they're mighty skinny, and don't they get enough to eat?
The reason I'm mentioning all of this, is because that is how I grew up. My Dad loved to eat. His days off consisted of going to restaurants. I kid you not, that was his hobby, or at least the only other one besides the Bible study that he held at work. I don't remember much else about my Dad but that he loved to eat, loved to travel to new places and see new things, and he loved to spoil his kids. My brother wasn't really affected by this tendency to overeat until he got past his teenage growth spurt. I'm not entirely sure what he looks like now (haven't seen him in a year) but he had to do a drastic eating change to be skinny and get fit before he moved to California.
Anyway, (sorry, I do tend to ramble, I think I've mentioned that before) I grew up thinking it was perfectly acceptable to be big. My Mom was big (bless her heart she's working on losing weight now too) and my Dad had a large belly (and I'm sorry to say, died of a heart attack in '99, 50 years of age) and so when I started going up in adult sizes, I thought I was growing. Why didn't anyone tell me that being a size 14 at 14 years old was a bad thing? My Mom wore a 20 at the time (she's down to a 14 now) and so I just thought I was growing to be like her. It's funny how easy it is for a fat kid to be picked on. But I always thought it was just because they didn't like me, not because I was fat. Later I thought it was just because I wore glasses (that was short lived, I got contacts soon after) and here I was, always thinking that these skinny people just didn't know what it was like to eat really good food, and that's why they were so skinny.
I think by the time I got to high school, the weight thing finally started to kick in. Of course, by that time I was also wearing a size 20, and if it weren't for a late growth spurt putting me at about 5'6" (rather than the 5' 3" I'd been through most of Junior and High School) I would have looked rather like a watermelon. And it showed on my face in photographs and my clothing options (which were surprisingly few, this was before the obesity thing really hit the USA, just before "Supersize me" became popular), and I vowed that I'd lose weight in college.
You have to understand that I was a kid that was dragged to every kind of buffet known to man. We were a "eat meat and then vegetables" kind of family. Pick your protein, maybe fried chicken for example, or what about a slab of roast beef? Throw on two or three rolls (I love bread) and add to it some mashed potatoes, oh and that slice of cake, and oh, I guess I feel bad, maybe I should have a small salad to top it off? Side that with Coke, two or three glasses at least, keep those refills coming! Go back for one last dessert, because, I was good enough to eat a salad and that will cover the bad of the sugar, right? Each meal was similar to this, go to a "Standard American Buffet" and then maybe a Chinese buffet later, or maybe we'll find somewhere that's having an all-you-can-eat deal (like Olive Garden, which is the one that I still do, but feel miserable afterwards) and in between all of those buffets there were plenty of fast food joints to have a 'small' meal. Little did I know many of those were probably even more calorie packed than the buffet I'd just eaten at.
So, when in college my Dad died and I lost about 10 pounds (I was over 200lbs at my weightiest), I thought I was doing pretty good climbing all the stairs at college, and look at me, I was only eating a couple times a day, and that's gotta be pretty good, right? But eating so rarely and such large portions basically kept me at the same weight for years to come, and it would be another 10 years before I'd fall even below 180lbs. All of those diet fads, reading about things that I should and should not eat, and yet none of it really sank in. Overeating is just a habit, just like smoking or drinking or anything that you do in excess. If at any point just don't see yourself doing wrong, it just becomes a part of you, a bad part of you, but a part, nonetheless.
Maybe I should have titled these blogs the Seven Deadly Sins or something.... Today's topic was brought to you by the letter "G" for Gluttony. Next time... *shrugs* I'll come up with something interesting, I hope, and perhaps add pictures. See you then!
Tuesday, August 2, 2011
Tuesday, July 12, 2011
On Hoarding
Just finished watching the upteenth Hoarders show. Can't even tell you which one it was, Hoarders, Hoarders: Buried Alive, Hoarding... I think there's more than that, animal hoarders too as I mentioned in my previous post. It's something of an interesting thing to me, because out of all of these strange "reality" shows that are out there, I don't like the ones that are game shows, or the ones that show glamorous people, or the ones where people are constantly bickering or doing unsavory things. I like the shows where people are just doing what they've always done, working, hoarding, or just trying to get by, and maybe it's a bit messy and maybe they fight a bit, but most of the time something gets resolved by the end. Most of the time.
I grew up in a pretty messy house. The pictures when I was a baby say otherwise, and I don't really have any photographic evidence of the piles and piles of mail on the counters and kitchen table, or on my mom's desk or on every single flat surface in the house. I remember paper, and lots of it, everywhere. I also remember the piles of toys in my brother's room at one point where my mom actually hid a Christmas present for him and he never knew it was there. I think at that point I realized I had to become organized or something would just snap and stay like that forever.
My dad hated the clutter, but he was probably just as guilty as my mom was when dealing with the mess. Have company coming over? Dump it all into a paper bag, shove it into a closet, or into the basement, and there it would stay. When I got older my brother had a friend who lived in a REAL hoard.
Most of my neighbors were just messy. We didn't live in slums, but we did live around a lot of people who could be considered white trash for one reason or another. Mainly because of the trash part. The house around the corner was constantly filthy. I remember my first impression of the place from the chicken bones in a corner, spilled out of a garbage bag and when I asked if we should clean it up my neighbor said, "No, someone else will get it." Another neighbor had a laundry room but just threw the laundry onto the floor, and maybe it would be cleaned, and if it was, it usually went right back onto the floor. And then there was the hoard.
If you've watched the shows like I have, there's something very curious about why anyone would let floors get dirty or kitchens get so piled up that they couldn't be used. But it's another thing to actually see it first hand. To take a step into someone's house and have a tiny little, grimy pathway though old metal box springs, TVs piled on one another, a computer over there you had to climb over stuff to get to, a kitchen that had two of the four chairs available to use, but only if you wanted to share it with the cockroaches that ran everywhere. There were people living in this place, not one, not two, but a whole family including a little baby who grew up in that mess. There was a fire at one point, and a lot of that garbage disappeared, only to reappear as soon as the insurance covered the rebuild.
I vowed after that I'd never let myself become a hoarder. But, it's hard, and I'll tell you why.
Where ever you are sitting right now, be it a computer room, bedroom, living room, maybe you're at a school or somewhere else, look around. What do you have that's personal to you nearby? Think about the most important thing that you have on you or around you right now. Is it your wallet? A ring? A favorite knicknack? A pet? A family member? Whatever it is, think about how much it means to you and imagine at that same instant someone has come to take it away from you. And you can't stop it from happening. I mean CAN'T. It's gone. Right now that object, person, or pet is now gone and you can't get it back ever again.
Imagine that you feel that way with EVERYTHING that you own. Now you have just a tiny little idea of what these hoarders go through every time they think about throwing something away, donating something, selling something, or even at the mere mention that something like that might happen. Every day they feel that way, with every new item they feel that same emotional attachment. Maybe they haven't seen it in awhile, but as soon as they see it again that item will become the most important thing to them. Then the next thing and the next thing.
I used to feel a pain in my chest when it came to throwing things away. I still go through moments where, even though I haven't used something in a long time I think, "should I keep this for awhile longer? Maybe I could use it someday." Yeah, I think everyone has had those types of feelings once in awhile, and it gets harder the more times you listen to that little voice. I have a drawer of rocks that are still at my mom's house. I haven't been able to stand to go there and just dump them into her rock garden, no, because they are precious and they hold memories. It's especially bad for me sometimes because I have a really good memory and sentiments can get dragged up from just a short peek at something again.
So... why am I not a hoarder? Some people probably would say I am. You should see the huge book collection that I have. But I do get rid of them. I'm intelligent enough to know that I will probably never read that book again, so maybe I'll donate it. I also have something many hoarders don't have going for them, and that's a certain knack at organization due to an uncanny ability at spacial recognition. I can look at something and know right away whether it'll fit somewhere or not. You should have seen the stuff I managed to get into our two room little apartment. It took two big ol' moving trucks and various other vehicles to get it all in. And our house might not be filled with furniture, but it is filled with stuff.
Do I consider myself a hoarder? No. I collect things. But I know that's just one little step away from hoarding. I can jump from one collection to another in no time flat. I collected marbles for awhile. I collected bouncy balls (I seem to be attracted to round objects) and I collect cat figures now, well, I've tried to stop adding to my Jim Shore collection, but I still have a few more holiday cats I'd like to get. (See?) I collected knives and swords for awhile. I still have a collection of My Little Ponies (which I'm happy to say are back in style, that amuses me to no end) and I have, of course, my books. Could all of this push me over the edge one day? Maybe. I can see what depression does to me, and I could see myself just not caring anymore, and that scares me.
I think that's what makes me different from a true hoarder, and that's the fact that I'm afraid of going over to that side. I think a true way to get a hoarder to stop hoarding would be to find that point in them where they go "Holy crap what am I doing to myself?" And you get that fear in them that if the rest of their life is reduced to nothing but hoarding, they might start realizing they need to break the cycle before it's too late.
I'm sure people have talked about this kind of thing before, but it's something that hits home to me. After watching that show I really want to clean again. But then again, maybe it's because even after I've gotten the kitchen perfectly clean like I did last night, my husband managed to go in and completely destroy it in a day. I know there ARE people who have NO IDEA what the meaning of clean really is. My husband is one of those "it's mostly there, must be good enough" kind of cleaners. What that kind of cleaner does is clean it just enough, and then they're done. If they went the whole nine yards though, they'd know that if you just went a bit further you wouldn't have to clean as often. Now, there's the ticket. This is coming from someone who got the entire deposit back on our apartment when we had the pickiest landlords known to man... (although sometimes I think we lucked out we had a hoarder living next door so they forgave a few little spots here and there!)
As this blog now hits a dead end for me, I want to leave you with this parting thought: Don't let your stuff own you. I think I just got that from a Buddhist quote on Warehouse 13, but it's quite true. You own your stuff, and if doesn't make you happy, get rid of it - throw it out, recycle it, donate it, regift it, something, anything, but replace it with something that makes you happy. If you ever think "oh, shoot, another thing to dust..." Then it's probably not as dear to you as you think. And if you're not really sure when you got something or what it's for - get rid of it too!
Next blog: Overeating.
I grew up in a pretty messy house. The pictures when I was a baby say otherwise, and I don't really have any photographic evidence of the piles and piles of mail on the counters and kitchen table, or on my mom's desk or on every single flat surface in the house. I remember paper, and lots of it, everywhere. I also remember the piles of toys in my brother's room at one point where my mom actually hid a Christmas present for him and he never knew it was there. I think at that point I realized I had to become organized or something would just snap and stay like that forever.
My dad hated the clutter, but he was probably just as guilty as my mom was when dealing with the mess. Have company coming over? Dump it all into a paper bag, shove it into a closet, or into the basement, and there it would stay. When I got older my brother had a friend who lived in a REAL hoard.
Most of my neighbors were just messy. We didn't live in slums, but we did live around a lot of people who could be considered white trash for one reason or another. Mainly because of the trash part. The house around the corner was constantly filthy. I remember my first impression of the place from the chicken bones in a corner, spilled out of a garbage bag and when I asked if we should clean it up my neighbor said, "No, someone else will get it." Another neighbor had a laundry room but just threw the laundry onto the floor, and maybe it would be cleaned, and if it was, it usually went right back onto the floor. And then there was the hoard.
If you've watched the shows like I have, there's something very curious about why anyone would let floors get dirty or kitchens get so piled up that they couldn't be used. But it's another thing to actually see it first hand. To take a step into someone's house and have a tiny little, grimy pathway though old metal box springs, TVs piled on one another, a computer over there you had to climb over stuff to get to, a kitchen that had two of the four chairs available to use, but only if you wanted to share it with the cockroaches that ran everywhere. There were people living in this place, not one, not two, but a whole family including a little baby who grew up in that mess. There was a fire at one point, and a lot of that garbage disappeared, only to reappear as soon as the insurance covered the rebuild.
I vowed after that I'd never let myself become a hoarder. But, it's hard, and I'll tell you why.
Where ever you are sitting right now, be it a computer room, bedroom, living room, maybe you're at a school or somewhere else, look around. What do you have that's personal to you nearby? Think about the most important thing that you have on you or around you right now. Is it your wallet? A ring? A favorite knicknack? A pet? A family member? Whatever it is, think about how much it means to you and imagine at that same instant someone has come to take it away from you. And you can't stop it from happening. I mean CAN'T. It's gone. Right now that object, person, or pet is now gone and you can't get it back ever again.
Imagine that you feel that way with EVERYTHING that you own. Now you have just a tiny little idea of what these hoarders go through every time they think about throwing something away, donating something, selling something, or even at the mere mention that something like that might happen. Every day they feel that way, with every new item they feel that same emotional attachment. Maybe they haven't seen it in awhile, but as soon as they see it again that item will become the most important thing to them. Then the next thing and the next thing.
I used to feel a pain in my chest when it came to throwing things away. I still go through moments where, even though I haven't used something in a long time I think, "should I keep this for awhile longer? Maybe I could use it someday." Yeah, I think everyone has had those types of feelings once in awhile, and it gets harder the more times you listen to that little voice. I have a drawer of rocks that are still at my mom's house. I haven't been able to stand to go there and just dump them into her rock garden, no, because they are precious and they hold memories. It's especially bad for me sometimes because I have a really good memory and sentiments can get dragged up from just a short peek at something again.
So... why am I not a hoarder? Some people probably would say I am. You should see the huge book collection that I have. But I do get rid of them. I'm intelligent enough to know that I will probably never read that book again, so maybe I'll donate it. I also have something many hoarders don't have going for them, and that's a certain knack at organization due to an uncanny ability at spacial recognition. I can look at something and know right away whether it'll fit somewhere or not. You should have seen the stuff I managed to get into our two room little apartment. It took two big ol' moving trucks and various other vehicles to get it all in. And our house might not be filled with furniture, but it is filled with stuff.
Do I consider myself a hoarder? No. I collect things. But I know that's just one little step away from hoarding. I can jump from one collection to another in no time flat. I collected marbles for awhile. I collected bouncy balls (I seem to be attracted to round objects) and I collect cat figures now, well, I've tried to stop adding to my Jim Shore collection, but I still have a few more holiday cats I'd like to get. (See?) I collected knives and swords for awhile. I still have a collection of My Little Ponies (which I'm happy to say are back in style, that amuses me to no end) and I have, of course, my books. Could all of this push me over the edge one day? Maybe. I can see what depression does to me, and I could see myself just not caring anymore, and that scares me.
I think that's what makes me different from a true hoarder, and that's the fact that I'm afraid of going over to that side. I think a true way to get a hoarder to stop hoarding would be to find that point in them where they go "Holy crap what am I doing to myself?" And you get that fear in them that if the rest of their life is reduced to nothing but hoarding, they might start realizing they need to break the cycle before it's too late.
I'm sure people have talked about this kind of thing before, but it's something that hits home to me. After watching that show I really want to clean again. But then again, maybe it's because even after I've gotten the kitchen perfectly clean like I did last night, my husband managed to go in and completely destroy it in a day. I know there ARE people who have NO IDEA what the meaning of clean really is. My husband is one of those "it's mostly there, must be good enough" kind of cleaners. What that kind of cleaner does is clean it just enough, and then they're done. If they went the whole nine yards though, they'd know that if you just went a bit further you wouldn't have to clean as often. Now, there's the ticket. This is coming from someone who got the entire deposit back on our apartment when we had the pickiest landlords known to man... (although sometimes I think we lucked out we had a hoarder living next door so they forgave a few little spots here and there!)
As this blog now hits a dead end for me, I want to leave you with this parting thought: Don't let your stuff own you. I think I just got that from a Buddhist quote on Warehouse 13, but it's quite true. You own your stuff, and if doesn't make you happy, get rid of it - throw it out, recycle it, donate it, regift it, something, anything, but replace it with something that makes you happy. If you ever think "oh, shoot, another thing to dust..." Then it's probably not as dear to you as you think. And if you're not really sure when you got something or what it's for - get rid of it too!
Next blog: Overeating.
Tuesday, July 5, 2011
On (Not) Being a Cat Lady
As I mentioned in my previous post, a good topic for me lately is the decision I made not to become a cat lady. At one point in my life when I was single with no hope of finding the 'one', I thought to myself that I'd become a crazy cat lady. I LOVE cats (but not as much as the girl on the eHarmony video) and when I don't have a cat I'm kind of weird and collect anything I can find that has anything to do with cats. That includes, pictures, cups, bowls, figures, websites, apps, calendars, decorations, fabric...well, you get the idea. And growing up at home with my Mom and brother at the time, after my dad passed I obsessed over getting a cat until Mom finally caved, and eventually we got a second one as well.
Second cat was named Neo and he was THE BEST CAT EVER. Okay, no cat is perfect, but for me he was the best, not to say my darling little Olivia isn't a good cat, but I still love Neo dearly and his life was cut short by some disease that destroyed his kidneys. He went downhill for a good year before he finally passed away sleeping at my Mom's house. Luckily I didn't have to be there when it happened (she lives a state over from me) and I got to say my goodbyes a few weeks before. Anyway, he wasn't the reason I decided never to be a cat lady, it was actually the show Animal Hoarders that nailed me on the fact.
Now that I have Olivia I realize just how much work goes into owning an animal. I didn't have to pay all the bills (some of them with Neo, but not all) and didn't have to do all the cleanup and playing because my Mom and brother were around. Now it's just me and my husband and it's a LOT of work. Just knowing how much work one cat takes, we've kind of decided not to bother with looking for another cat right away, if ever. Olivia's enough for the two of us to handle right now.
Skip into the world of animal hoarding and you'll see a whole new world to the 'crazy cat ladies' out there. As I said, even if my husband were to die, I'd never hoard cats. NEVER. In fact, I wouldn't get cats to replace the emptiness in my life, because you know what? It's not worth the time and money and anguish, and I'd never want to do that to a cat. So... I'll never be a 'crazy cat lady' with a dozen or more cats. I might still be cat-crazy and buy a bunch of cat related things to the point where people buy me things that have cats in them and when people come over they think my decorating style is 'cats' - which it isn't really, it's more anime, but that's a whole other topic for another day!
I think I might like to stay on the topic of hoarding for a bit though, so in the next post I might delve into what it's like to be on that brink between "collecting" and "hoarding" and how easy it can be to slip over that edge if you aren't careful.
Second cat was named Neo and he was THE BEST CAT EVER. Okay, no cat is perfect, but for me he was the best, not to say my darling little Olivia isn't a good cat, but I still love Neo dearly and his life was cut short by some disease that destroyed his kidneys. He went downhill for a good year before he finally passed away sleeping at my Mom's house. Luckily I didn't have to be there when it happened (she lives a state over from me) and I got to say my goodbyes a few weeks before. Anyway, he wasn't the reason I decided never to be a cat lady, it was actually the show Animal Hoarders that nailed me on the fact.
Now that I have Olivia I realize just how much work goes into owning an animal. I didn't have to pay all the bills (some of them with Neo, but not all) and didn't have to do all the cleanup and playing because my Mom and brother were around. Now it's just me and my husband and it's a LOT of work. Just knowing how much work one cat takes, we've kind of decided not to bother with looking for another cat right away, if ever. Olivia's enough for the two of us to handle right now.
Skip into the world of animal hoarding and you'll see a whole new world to the 'crazy cat ladies' out there. As I said, even if my husband were to die, I'd never hoard cats. NEVER. In fact, I wouldn't get cats to replace the emptiness in my life, because you know what? It's not worth the time and money and anguish, and I'd never want to do that to a cat. So... I'll never be a 'crazy cat lady' with a dozen or more cats. I might still be cat-crazy and buy a bunch of cat related things to the point where people buy me things that have cats in them and when people come over they think my decorating style is 'cats' - which it isn't really, it's more anime, but that's a whole other topic for another day!
I think I might like to stay on the topic of hoarding for a bit though, so in the next post I might delve into what it's like to be on that brink between "collecting" and "hoarding" and how easy it can be to slip over that edge if you aren't careful.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Married Without Kids
When you're first married, living in an apartment with your husband for those first years, it's pretty simple. No one judges you for not having kids, they don't care. Really, most apartment living, except for in some circumstances, people pretty much leave you alone. I don't think anyone wants to get into long-term friendships with apartment people because it's a transitory lifestyle and who knows when you or they will move out in another month? Not to say that I didn't try to make friends with the people around our apartment complex at the time, but the fellows to our right and left were both old and kept to themselves (or senile enough not to remember that we introduced ourselves five times before), and the young punks above us were at college most of the time and when they weren't, they were constantly bickering or getting drunk and having loud parties.
Eventually it was the drunken screaming matches above us (sometimes I wondered if I should call the police but I wasn't sure it wasn't the girl beating on the guy or the other way around) that finally convinced us to start looking for a house (that, and the fact our apartment didn't allow cats). After all, it is a good time to buy a house, the market hasn't yet recouped from its downward spiral of a few years ago, and there's still lots of foreclosures and bank owned properties out there for cheap.
So, we house hunted, found a good one at one point but upon further inspection it was obviously flipped, and even though the outside details were pretty, there were mold problems and odd smells and the neighborhood looked a bit sketchy. It's weird to talk about the first house we called the "Switchback" house (it was on a drive of the same name) because as I look across the street to the neighbor's, it's exactly the same house, same colors, everything, just on a different street. That's what you get when you move into a Dominion Home I guess - there's only just so many "little boxes" you can move into. But, we got a good deal on our eventual home, and the neighborhood seemed tidy enough, quiet enough, and enough people were walking around even in winter that it felt comfortable.
Here's where moving into a neighborhood in winter is not necessarily a good thing. You don't see the kids. Sure, maybe when it snows they'll pop out and make snowmen, but most of the time they're bundled up or at school. Summer hits and there's a million kids everywhere.
So, if you didn't guess already from the title of this blog, I'm married, but I don't have kids. I don't want kids and unless it happens by mistake (and we've already talked that if it does we won't stop it) we're not planning to ever have kids. Why did we bother to move into a family-friendly neighborhood with three bedrooms? I'm not sure. Maybe because it was the biggest place we could find that was nearest to the area we wanted to live in for the best price we could find, and it was relatively new, a bit of a fixer-upper, near to my work and I fell in love with it over all of the other houses that we'd looked at over the course of a few months. It has enough room to store our DVD/BD and book collections, and a fenced in backyard safe from the oodles of children running around out there.
But we don't have kids. Not to say the neighbors came over to ask if we did or anything, one directly to our right doesn't, the ones across the street are elderly, but the rest... I guess we'd know them by now if we did have kids. But through all this rambling I wanted to talk about how it's like to be married without kids and how friendships are really complicated when you don't 'fit' a norm.
I'm 30ish. My friends have two-three kids each, been married for years longer than I, and most of them have gone their separate ways. I haven't talked to most of my high school and college friends except for a quick "hello" on Facebook in years. I don't have anything in common with them and they aren't interested in following a friendship like that. My single friends split the moment I got married. I think they were irritated that I'd found someone, and even though I was perfectly willing to spend time on them on my own, they found other single friends and moved on. My dearest friends are the ones who a.) are past all the bullsh*t with the kids/no kids thing or b.) don't plan on ever having kids either or c.) don't plan on getting married ever.
Unfortunately that kind of narrows it down to one really good friend and a couple of acquaintances. It's a pretty lonely life. I'm kind of wondering how many others out there are just like me in this respect. Lost all the friends that I had, made a couple here and there, tried to cling to new friendships but couldn't make any that stuck, and now just sort of drifting along wondering what purpose my life has outside of working, hanging out with my husband, trying to do creative stuff like drawing or writing, and feeding my cat.
(Future topic, on becoming a cat lady)
I work a full time job, as does my husband. He's made friends at work, I haven't. I'm not saying that I don't have acquaintances at work, because I do. I try my hardest to get along with everyone there and from what I can tell everyone likes me. But I'm afraid because at some point in the past I was labeled "manager" (even though I don't have a salaried position) anyone who is underneath me thinks we can't be friends or someone would find a way to point fingers and say I'm playing favorites. I don't control anyone at work, and when I have tried to point out that this person isn't following code or that one, they conveniently remember that I'm not a full manager and ignore what I told them. Doesn't matter, I don't want to be a bully, so I turned down further responsibilities awhile ago. Maybe that makes me an underachiever, but heaven knows I have enough trouble as it is finding friends, I don't want to make any enemies.
I'm not really sure why it's so difficult to make a couple friends where I live. I shouldn't have a problem, there's got to be a few people around here who just want to get out 'with the girls' but those I've asked... nothing. I don't want to push the issue, but it feels like even those that I have something in common with don't want to pursue anything and so I back off and give up. Maybe I shouldn't wuss out, but I do. I'm comfortable being a childless housewife, but it feels like there's something more to my life that I'm missing.
So, this is where I'm going to begin. This blog, I hope, will help me discover something about myself that people will want to get to know and maybe make me a bit more happy with myself along the way. Maybe I'll find myself a reason.
Eventually it was the drunken screaming matches above us (sometimes I wondered if I should call the police but I wasn't sure it wasn't the girl beating on the guy or the other way around) that finally convinced us to start looking for a house (that, and the fact our apartment didn't allow cats). After all, it is a good time to buy a house, the market hasn't yet recouped from its downward spiral of a few years ago, and there's still lots of foreclosures and bank owned properties out there for cheap.
So, we house hunted, found a good one at one point but upon further inspection it was obviously flipped, and even though the outside details were pretty, there were mold problems and odd smells and the neighborhood looked a bit sketchy. It's weird to talk about the first house we called the "Switchback" house (it was on a drive of the same name) because as I look across the street to the neighbor's, it's exactly the same house, same colors, everything, just on a different street. That's what you get when you move into a Dominion Home I guess - there's only just so many "little boxes" you can move into. But, we got a good deal on our eventual home, and the neighborhood seemed tidy enough, quiet enough, and enough people were walking around even in winter that it felt comfortable.
Here's where moving into a neighborhood in winter is not necessarily a good thing. You don't see the kids. Sure, maybe when it snows they'll pop out and make snowmen, but most of the time they're bundled up or at school. Summer hits and there's a million kids everywhere.
So, if you didn't guess already from the title of this blog, I'm married, but I don't have kids. I don't want kids and unless it happens by mistake (and we've already talked that if it does we won't stop it) we're not planning to ever have kids. Why did we bother to move into a family-friendly neighborhood with three bedrooms? I'm not sure. Maybe because it was the biggest place we could find that was nearest to the area we wanted to live in for the best price we could find, and it was relatively new, a bit of a fixer-upper, near to my work and I fell in love with it over all of the other houses that we'd looked at over the course of a few months. It has enough room to store our DVD/BD and book collections, and a fenced in backyard safe from the oodles of children running around out there.
But we don't have kids. Not to say the neighbors came over to ask if we did or anything, one directly to our right doesn't, the ones across the street are elderly, but the rest... I guess we'd know them by now if we did have kids. But through all this rambling I wanted to talk about how it's like to be married without kids and how friendships are really complicated when you don't 'fit' a norm.
I'm 30ish. My friends have two-three kids each, been married for years longer than I, and most of them have gone their separate ways. I haven't talked to most of my high school and college friends except for a quick "hello" on Facebook in years. I don't have anything in common with them and they aren't interested in following a friendship like that. My single friends split the moment I got married. I think they were irritated that I'd found someone, and even though I was perfectly willing to spend time on them on my own, they found other single friends and moved on. My dearest friends are the ones who a.) are past all the bullsh*t with the kids/no kids thing or b.) don't plan on ever having kids either or c.) don't plan on getting married ever.
Unfortunately that kind of narrows it down to one really good friend and a couple of acquaintances. It's a pretty lonely life. I'm kind of wondering how many others out there are just like me in this respect. Lost all the friends that I had, made a couple here and there, tried to cling to new friendships but couldn't make any that stuck, and now just sort of drifting along wondering what purpose my life has outside of working, hanging out with my husband, trying to do creative stuff like drawing or writing, and feeding my cat.
(Future topic, on becoming a cat lady)
I work a full time job, as does my husband. He's made friends at work, I haven't. I'm not saying that I don't have acquaintances at work, because I do. I try my hardest to get along with everyone there and from what I can tell everyone likes me. But I'm afraid because at some point in the past I was labeled "manager" (even though I don't have a salaried position) anyone who is underneath me thinks we can't be friends or someone would find a way to point fingers and say I'm playing favorites. I don't control anyone at work, and when I have tried to point out that this person isn't following code or that one, they conveniently remember that I'm not a full manager and ignore what I told them. Doesn't matter, I don't want to be a bully, so I turned down further responsibilities awhile ago. Maybe that makes me an underachiever, but heaven knows I have enough trouble as it is finding friends, I don't want to make any enemies.
I'm not really sure why it's so difficult to make a couple friends where I live. I shouldn't have a problem, there's got to be a few people around here who just want to get out 'with the girls' but those I've asked... nothing. I don't want to push the issue, but it feels like even those that I have something in common with don't want to pursue anything and so I back off and give up. Maybe I shouldn't wuss out, but I do. I'm comfortable being a childless housewife, but it feels like there's something more to my life that I'm missing.
So, this is where I'm going to begin. This blog, I hope, will help me discover something about myself that people will want to get to know and maybe make me a bit more happy with myself along the way. Maybe I'll find myself a reason.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
A Little About Whatcher Studios
Welcome to my blog/studio website. I bought this domain over a year ago and had about one good afternoon of inspiration pouring over new ways to post things and trying to come up with a good way to post my writing and artwork, thinking "I'll make my site into a blog since I already write a lot on Facebook and DeviantART" but at the time I failed to come up with a good way to post a proper blog. Okay, I didn't try that hard, and a year went by before I decided to try fiddling with this again.
Now you're seeing what a bit of help from Blogger can do and I don't mind admitting that I'm glad I have something pre-assembled to work with for the time being. Eventually I'll edit this site up, because I've been writing my own HTML since 1998, and I like to know how websites work. But, for now this is easy; when I want to type, I can just type, and I don't have to put a bunch of extra work into adding the italics and bolds and paragraphs that I'm so fond of using.
Onto where the name "WhatcherStudios" came from. The creature that tops this blog is a "whatcher" and it's spelled that way because at the time of its creation there were "Watchers" in both Highlander: The Series and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, and these critters weren't people watching immortals or slayers, they were creatures meant to watch over people. They spied on people. In the original novel I wrote between the ages of 13 and 17 (never published, mind you) they were mouse-sized, could spy on your enemy and report back to you via psychic relay. Pretty cool. Whatchers evolved, however, into more of a cat-sized creature that still watched, but now was more of a pet and helper, but still psychic to their one master.
What's with the "-Studios" add on? I needed a name for my art table at anime conventions and thus was born "WhatcherStudios". It fit. The critters have been on my 'plate' for drawing since I was 13 (and I'm MUCH older than that now, so they're pretty much a part of my every day life, even if they don't actually exist.... however, you'll soon get to 'see' them exist on this site if all goes well.
I have a LOT of hobbies, a few of which being drawing, taking photographs, writing about random stuff (ahem), gardening, reading, watching TV, cooking, playing video games... well, you get the point. A few of my hobbies meld from time to time, and drawing and transposing those drawings onto photographs is one of my favorites, so you'll probably be seeing some 'real' whatchers in photographs I've taken from time to time.
If you want to see some of my artwork now, head over to MillyT@Deviantart and check out my galleries.
I'd like to share my life with you, and if you're willing to read through massive quantities of drivel from time to time, give me a comment once in awhile, then welcome to WhatcherStudios!
Now you're seeing what a bit of help from Blogger can do and I don't mind admitting that I'm glad I have something pre-assembled to work with for the time being. Eventually I'll edit this site up, because I've been writing my own HTML since 1998, and I like to know how websites work. But, for now this is easy; when I want to type, I can just type, and I don't have to put a bunch of extra work into adding the italics and bolds and paragraphs that I'm so fond of using.
Onto where the name "WhatcherStudios" came from. The creature that tops this blog is a "whatcher" and it's spelled that way because at the time of its creation there were "Watchers" in both Highlander: The Series and Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, and these critters weren't people watching immortals or slayers, they were creatures meant to watch over people. They spied on people. In the original novel I wrote between the ages of 13 and 17 (never published, mind you) they were mouse-sized, could spy on your enemy and report back to you via psychic relay. Pretty cool. Whatchers evolved, however, into more of a cat-sized creature that still watched, but now was more of a pet and helper, but still psychic to their one master.
What's with the "-Studios" add on? I needed a name for my art table at anime conventions and thus was born "WhatcherStudios". It fit. The critters have been on my 'plate' for drawing since I was 13 (and I'm MUCH older than that now, so they're pretty much a part of my every day life, even if they don't actually exist.... however, you'll soon get to 'see' them exist on this site if all goes well.
I have a LOT of hobbies, a few of which being drawing, taking photographs, writing about random stuff (ahem), gardening, reading, watching TV, cooking, playing video games... well, you get the point. A few of my hobbies meld from time to time, and drawing and transposing those drawings onto photographs is one of my favorites, so you'll probably be seeing some 'real' whatchers in photographs I've taken from time to time.
If you want to see some of my artwork now, head over to MillyT@Deviantart and check out my galleries.
I'd like to share my life with you, and if you're willing to read through massive quantities of drivel from time to time, give me a comment once in awhile, then welcome to WhatcherStudios!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)