E! Channel’s been playing The Craft for the last few weeks, and I gotta say, I really dig that movie. To me, it’s a smarter, better version of Heathers, and I’m sure my angsty-cool card has been revoked for saying that, but seriously! Fairuza Balk BURIES Christian Slater in terms of over-the-top nutjobs. Just LOOK at her. Anyone who can have cockroaches crawling out her jacket arms? Is badass. Plus, she was hot in it, and all the other performances were nicely low-key for such a campy flick.

Those of you who still blog, do y’all still get spammed in your comments every so often? For as long as I can remember, I’ve been closing out my comments after 48 hours or so, but somehow they figure out how to get through and leave their droppings, or else the comment expire I put on expires or something, I don’t know. But anyway, I got a shit-ton of spam last week on entries I hadn’t thought about in forever, so I took a peek down Memory Lane as I zapped the spam. And as I was doing this, a particular entry grabbed my attention pdq:

That particular entry was about the e-mail the one guy sent me after Cat and I showed up at a party to which we were all invited; problem was, since the party was thrown by HIS friends (and God forbid I have anything to do with HIS friends because, well, they were HIS friends first), he was unhappy, and that was his response when I called him out on it (read: asked him nicely, like a sucker, why he was so rude to me at the party, because he not only didn’t talk to me the whole night, but he stayed directly across from me AT ALL TIMES, as if I smelled). Now normally, TOG doesn’t exist in any meaningful way for me anymore, but seeing that hed made my blood run cold.

But what REALLY kicked in the flop sweat was I wrote after it: I said I admired that he was able to protect his widdle feelings from my harshness (!) and that I would rather he be an asshole to me than ignore me, more or less. Just so I’m crystal here, let me break that down: I said in so many words that I was Ok with this guy treating me like shit—well, maybe not OK ok, but clearly Ok enough to not kick his stupid ass to the curb.

For all my bravada, that right there was—and still is in many ways—me. That scares me.

My issues with anxiety and depression aren’t exactly a secret to y’all, so it was about two weeks after my birthday that I fell into a sinkhole I haven’t experienced since after Dad died. Not sure if my meds stopped working or other external factors played into it, but it was bad enough that my peeps were begging me to get thy flat ass to the brain garage for a tune-up. The episode lasted a good month, month and a half, but for the moment I’m stable, in no small part because I’ve consciously started paying attention to and embracing the nurturing relationships I have and eschewing the ones that aren’t. The endeavor has and hasn’t been easy, but it is what it is, and I’m all right—horrified by what I’ve allowed myself to endure, but getting better.

In other news, Mother turned 75 this week. Do you believe that shit?

Went to the eye doc today—first time in, oh, four years, because if my eyes aren’t bothering me, I just don’t give it much thought. The bad news: My frames aren’t made anymore and haven’t been for two years, which sucks because I LOVE my frames deeply and flipped at the idea of having to find new ones as cool as these. The good news, however, is that my eyes haven’t changed significantly, so new glasses aren’t necessary. But I bought some anyway, because I’m a girl who’s easily excited by the idea of having TWO pairs of glasses.

So Mother and I are sitting at dinner last week when out of the blue, she hits me with this:

Uh, wut!??

God knows Mother nags me about myriad things—MYRIAD things—but the one thing for which I always gave her credit was that she never harped on me about me being single and without spawn. So, after I looked at her like she’d suddenly sprouted three freakin’ heads, I showed her my received call log, which consists of Girlie, Poppy, my sister, the paper and, well, that’s really kind of it on any given day. She seemed satisfied, but I of course was kinda squicked out by the whole exchange.

No, there hasn’t been a regular male cast member in my merry band of idiots for going on three years, and save for a certain delicious interlude, I haven’t really necessarily been in the market for one. Things like the following remind me of why: Today a friend of mine got some pretty exciting news and naturally wanted to share it with her boyfriend, even though they’re pretending they’re casual. She gets him on the line, and he proceeds to tell her all about how he’s at HIS EX-GIRLFRIEND’S helping her with some sort of disaster, poor, poor pitiful him. And do you know that HIS crap all of a sudden became more important to her than her really good news!?? Yeah, I had something like that happen once. The night before Dad’s wake, the one guy (remember that asshole?), after not hearing from him the whole time Mer was in town, called and as we were talking, he started on some tangent about all the times he’s been kicked when he’s down (and there are many). Something about the conversation told me he’d just gotten fucked over by someone he was dating (yeeeeessssssss, besides me, y’all, no need to dwell), so I asked him if he’d gotten his heart broken. To his credit, at least he said “No” and wouldn’t elaborate, and he did show up at the wake the next day, which I completely didn’t expect (he never met Dad, so it’s not something I would’ve asked of him).

Anyway, I did think to myself, “Um, hi? My dad just died, and even though I’m probably not going to talk to you about it, can we at least focus on me me ME, you know, because MY DAD DIED!???” but that bit of righteous selfishness somehow turned into “Oh, he’s telling me in so many words about his failed relationship because he’s trying to take my mind off MY stuff! Wow! That’s really considerate!” (Yeah, wish I could blame that one on grief, but no. That would be me using my acute rationalization skillz.)

Yeah, I suppose I didn’t need to go into all that, but after two almost-in-a-row major relationships with possibly the two most joyless human beings outside of Tara’s ex, I’m perfectly happy with what little peace I have. I mean, if someone normal wants to come and hang, I could be down with that, sure; I’m not SO jaded that I’ve sworn off men or anything. It’s just something I really don’t think about on a daily basis. But yeah, so now I guess Mother wants me married off or some shit.

"Sittin' (something something), eatin' soup/(something something something)/Now I don't got my soup no more/Now my soup is on the floor ..." Can I just tell you how awesome that is? Target rocks.

So, excitement for the last day or so? Well, Dell Financial pissed up my rope yesterday when I tried to purchase 512 of ram by telling me that they closed my account in April because of "payment history" (hey, I'm a free-lancer -- blow me), even though I've been paying double payments since then. Yeah, Ok, maybe that's how credit works, but what the hell am I going to do if my computer craps out for real, and I need a new one? Are they going to give me a new account? I doubt it. Fuckers. I don't remember credit always being so draconian.

Speaking of draconian, I can't decide how I feel about the Andrea Yates decision. I mean, I understand and appreciate she was sick and everything, and I don't doubt that living with the truth that she killed her kids is hell on earth enough. But what exactly did they change the sentence to? Does she get x amount of years in a brain garage and then let out? Is she in the brain garage for life? Because even if she was/is sick, she still has to be held accountable for killing her kids. Now, before anyone gets up in my grill about how heartless I am, I saw only that the verdict was changed, so if you want to tell me nicely what it was changed to, I'll appreciate your helping me make an informed decision.

In other events, Cousin Gary's memorial is this evening, and Mother is already calling me to ask me if the sweater she's wearing is a cowl neck or not. Because that matters.

From the DoD's Web site:


I spent the majority of my evening doing some back-up for JB [UPDATE: John Grant Emeigh, aka JG EEEEEE-MAAAAAAY in Broad lingo, was the lead for the story, and JB and I were backup, just giving props where they're due] on this, mostly trying to come up with a yearbook picture of the kid. When I located the last one on file of him, I said to the guy from whom I got it, "Wow, he looks so young." And the guy says, "These are young kids fighting over there." And I was like, "Yup. Sigh." I mean, what the hell do you say, right?

Mother always tells the story of when she was a kid during WWII, Navy officers came to her parents' home to let them know that Mother's oldest brother was taken captive (by the Japanese, if I'm not mistaken). She was about 10 or 11 when it happened, and my uncle came out of it all right and everything. But when my folks went to adopt, Mother swore on all that was right and holy to her that she would NOT adopt a boy, because she didn't want to have those soldiers coming to her door like that.

My sincere sympathies to the Stahl/Nightingale families. God bless you for giving us your son, and God bless him for trying to keep our freedom.