Mind Vomit by the ikss ~ a journal
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�Once in his life, every man is entitled to fall madly in love with a gorgeous redhead�
-Lucille Ball
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."
--Theodore Roosevelt, 1918
REGISTER TO VOTE
"The time is always right to do what is right"
- Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The "seven social sins": Knowledge without character,
Science without humanity,
Wealth without work,
Commerce without morality,
Politics without principles,
Pleasure without conscience,
Worship without self-sacrifice."
--Gandhi
"We have not inherited the world from our forfathers -
We have borrowed it from our children."
--Kashmiri, proverb
California authorities have confirmed a total of 14 people dead from recent mud slides. Five more bodies have been pulled from Old Waterman Canyon near San Bernardino over the weekend bringing the toll from that area to 12. Two people are still missing. Two other people have also died in a slide near Devore. Authorities are warning residents in mountain areas of the forecast for more heavy rain that could trigger additional mudslides.
OK, this all just begs the question: What the fuck were these people doing camping in an area that just burned to a crisp only weeks ago and on a weekend during which rain was forecasted?
I may not know much, but even I would have known better. Not a single year goes by that we in Southern California do not suffer through mud slides of varying degrees of horribleness, based on how much of the hillside(s) burned that year. You don�t go camping in the rain, in an area whose foliage completely burned away only weeks ago! Some stupid adult made some very bad decisions and all of these kids (and yes, almost all of the missing/dead are children, from the age of two months to twelve years. They were camped at a youth camp) paid for it.
Heartbreaking disasters such as these are especially hard to stomach when they are the result of someone�s idiotic decision-making.
On a more epic and less man-made scale, at least 20,000 people died this weekend, during an earthquake in Iran which measured 6.7 on the Richter scale.
Horrible. I can�t even imagine.
When I heard about this quake, I was immediately struck by the fact that while a 6.7 earthquake is major, it is only slightly higher in scale than the quake suffered in central California last week. The one which killed two people.
Two.
Twenty thousand.
And why?
Yes, Tehran is a lot more populated than the area hit in California last week. The real reason, though, is because we have the money to retrofit our buildings so that they can withstand such large earthquakes. Even historical areas can be earthquake retrofitted.
These things often trouble me. They have large quakes of this size in Mexico quite often and the devastation is always so horrible, when only a few miles north we are generally safe as houses�in our houses, which are built to withstand the quakes.
We are very lucky.
~~~
Misc. Baloney About My Life
Christmas Eve was a lovely one, spent at my parents home. While we generally leave work early the day before a holiday, we left even earlier than I had anticipated, which gave me a serious break in the traffic arena. This is always appreciated.
As opposed to Christmas Eve, 2002, which essentially turned in to The Night of Stress and Horror, Sondra wisely gave out her presents (and opened hers) early and while only a few of us were there. This way, once Jeremy started acting up they could leave. He did, about an hour after most everyone had arrived. They left, post-haste.
Mark had my name in the family-name-exchange and he bought me�bath towels!
Now, to those who do not know me, this may sound like a terribly boring present. However, I really needed bath towels and am very happy to have them...even if they are blue whereas my bathroom is decorated in shades of green.
My family gets together on Christmas Eve, leaving everyone to fend for themselves (or attend to other, extended family holiday duties) on Christmas Day. Since I have no extended family and John drove down on Christmas morning, I had nothing to do most of the day, except eat leftover ham and chocolates and watch A Christmas Story.
Do you hear me complaining?
One thing I did on Christmas Day was talk to my brother in law, Lou. He wanted me to sing with his cover band on Friday and/or Saturday night because they were going to be short-handed. Initially, he asked me to sing three songs; then it turned in to five...by the end of the conversation, he was asking me to sing an entire set with them.
Now, normally I would have done this eagerly, especially since Lou was in a bind. Had I had more than one day�s notice, I might have done it last week. However, the lack of notice, coupled with the fact that we would have had to quickly get a set list together � a list of songs I would inevitably not know the lyrics to and thus have to sing while reading from a cheat sheet � AND my much-publicized vocal dilemmas of late...well, it all added up to my not singing with his band on either night.
So John arrived on Christmas Day and I gave him his presents (a radio-controlled airplane, which he loves; some candy and, in true �Metrosexual� style, a travel/grooming kit). We also had some rockin� sex this weekend, kids. The muscles in my butt are sore -that�s all I�m sayin�.
John spent Friday making tamales with his family. I went to lunch with the female members of mine, including Peggy and Abby. It was very nice.
Peggy gave us all our Family Memories book. It is really cool. My family is great. Neither Linda nor Mark completed their questionnaires and Amy and Sarah are practically the only niece/nephew who did them (some, like Carla and Katie, wrote only about their parent), but I really loved reading what the others and my parents had written. It�s really a fabulous idea and I think future generations will be glad to have the books.
On Christmas, we were hit with a storm...a storm which proceeded to come in to my bedroom, through a series of leaks around the jam of one of my windows. Of course, it was Christmas and even had my apartment manager or her little sidekick, Darla, been home there wasn�t a lot they could do about the problem. Therefore, I left a note on Darla�s door, explaining the problem and asking them to have someone at least come out to cover the area with a tarp until the weather cleared.
I really didn�t expect that I wouldn�t hear from anyone all weekend.
So I left another note on both of their doors this morning. Darla just called and is having someone look at the leak today. Good thing, as another storm is set to hit tonight. Again, I don�t expect them to do much today. I think there is a lot of damage to the wall (it is apparent that the wall was repaired before I moved in) and it may take some extensive work to repair it. I just don�t want water streaming in to my apartment (and causing further water damage, for that matter) for the next week, as it is supposed to rain off and on for at least that long.
I must admit to being a tad concerned about Darla and whomever being in my apartment today, in my absence. Admittedly, I am slightly anal-retentive when it comes to these things, but my pad is not very presentable right now. Over the weekend, I took down all of my Christmas decorations and they are just sitting on the coffee table in my living room, right next to my now-naked Christmas tree. Plus, there are still dirty dishes in my kitchen sink. I don�t like the prospect of strangers seeing that mess, ya know?
More importantly, this is the first time anyone �official� has been inside the Rad Pad since I painted it.
Darla is the property owner�s sister and daughter (the building is owned by a father and son). Neither she nor the actual manager (old woman, in her eighties) have been inside my apartment since I assumed residence. Actually, none of my neighbors have. As I really have no long-time readers of this journal, I�ll let ya�ll know: when I moved in to this place over two years ago, it was filthy. Not only was it filthy, it had not been painted in apparently years and there were several things which were in disrepair. I gave the owners the option of having the place painted or allowing me to do the job and reimbursing my expenses. They had me do it.
While I love the fact that I got to paint the Rad Pad whatever colors I wanted, it was a HUGE pain in the ass doing so and I would recommend this course of action to no one.
Anyway, so I picked the colors and, with a lot of help, I painted. While the Pad indeed looks very Rad and certainly much better than before I moved in, I am afraid the owner might not appreciate the fact that two walls in my living room are a brick-red color (it�s actually a color called �Savage� by the incredibly-un-PC Behr paint people. The other two walls are the color of sand, by the way). Don�t get me wrong, it looks gorgeous and I have quite an eye for color, if I do say so myself, but, you know�apartments are where boring colors go to die. You don�t usually find apartments painted such extreme colors, because colors such as these are a distinct taste. The next tenants might not appreciate looking at big red walls. I just don�t want the owner to get mad and try to keep my deposit money or something.
Of course, were I really worried about it, I never would have painted my living room �Savage� now would I?
The colors throughout the rest of the pad are pretty harmless. I have plum-colored crown molding in my dining room and my bedroom and bathroom are both a celery color, but those aren�t so risky as are huge brick-red walls.
John spent Saturday with his kids and grandkids. I spent the rest of the weekend piddling around the house, mainly, although I did squeeze in a couple of long walks while the sun was out.
I found out something rather interesting this weekend and that is that Mark�s three girls were all lied to by their mother.
Mark got married for the first time very shortly after high school and mainly because he had gotten his still-in-high-school girlfriend pregnant. His wife�s name was Diane. They were married for like 8-10 years before she started having an affair. She eventually left him and married the man with whom she was having the affair. Shortly thereafter, she became a raging drunk and horrible mother. Several years later she finally got in to a program, is now married for the fourth time and seems to be doing well.
Except that�s not the version her kids heard. Apparently, they were all told that Mark is the one who left his family. The thing is, they�ve been pissed off at him about this for years. Mark only heard this version at my party.
Of course, had Mark been bothering to actually communicate with his daughters on a regular basis, he may have discovered this root of their anger a long time ago, but that�s another topic for another time.
As Larry and his family arrived on Christmas day and are here through New Years Eve, my family got together again yesterday. I did not go. I just wasn�t up to it. I am, however, going to visit with them tomorrow night.
I am still in a huge funk. I am even considering talking to my doctor about going on anti-depressants. I hate even to admit this, but I am.
I know that anti-depressants work wonders for a lot of people, don�t get me wrong - people who have chemical-based reasons for their depression. I just think that they are prescribed WAAAAAAY too often and are usually used not as a way of correcting a chemical imbalance, but in an effort to avoid real problems. You know, it�s a hell of a lot easier to pop a pill than to spend the sometimes years of looking at oneself it may take to actually deal with whatever issue you are popping the pill in an effort to get through.
Plus, I really don�t want to take anything which has sexual side-effects. Or which might make me gain weight, for that matter.
But this depression just sucks and I don�t think I can deal with it anymore.
I think the thing to do is wait until after I move and get back on track financially. If that doesn�t get me on the right track, mental health-wise, I will talk to my doctor.
I may or may not be going up to see John this weekend. I have Friday off, so am faced with another four-day weekend. He is not coming down here. Initially, I thought it would be a great idea to go up to Santa Cruz, but John�s attitude in the face of my self-invitation to do so was not as excited as I may have liked...not at all, frankly. I�ll keep ya�ll posted.
~~~
By the way - Random Acts of Journaling is back. My latest entry is housed on my other page. It was really kind of a fun write, even if it was a little weird...
~~~
Word of the Day for Monday December 29, 2003:
dissimulate dih-SIM-yuh-layt, transitive verb: To conceal under a false appearance.
intransitive verb: To hide one's feelings or intentions; to put on a false appearance; to feign; to pretend.
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~~~~~~~~~~~peace, love and smooches~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Copyright 2002-2005, Howl-at-the-Moon Words
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