Discoveries

Cleaning the chaise, I found:
- 1 vacuum bag full of cat hair
- 1 pecan
- various crumbs
- 1 wrapper for Sky Blue Alpaca's organic cotton yarn

Then I covered it with a nice, purple jersey-knit sheet, so that when company is here on the weekend I can just whisk it off to reveal cleanness beneath. Loki is not particularly happy with this turn of events. He sniffed the whole thing very suspiciously before grudgingly curling himself up into a very tiny ball in one corner.

Funny story about that chaise. It is maybe not a good idea to take casual dating partners furniture shopping with you, particularly if you are indecisive or a pleaser-type personality. P made one such mistake, and I certainly never would have TOLD him to buy a chaise lounge - it is, after all, not very masculine, no? - but when he asked me if I LIKED it, well, I wasn't going to LIE about it. He bought the chaise. We dated for a while, then stopped. 6 months later, he called and asked if I wanted first refusal on the chaise - it really was just too big for his living space, and unless you're VERY friendly, only one person at a time can sit on it, making it not so great for entertaining.

Which is how I acquired this very loungy, cat-attractive piece of furniture. Which I never would have bought first hand, because it was too impractical. But used for half the price.... well, okay then.

***

Side note: I will mention that since my regular internet connection is dead, I am STANDING OUT IN THE YARD stealing my neighbor's wireless to post this. I've been using their connection for weeks, but for the last 2 days, it just won't work from inside my house anymore. Le sigh.

Happy Valentine's Day

I love what Kevin wrote in the Ficlets blog today.

I know it may seem easy for me to say that Valentine's Day doesn't have to be all about Hallmark and being in a romantic relationship (though I wouldn't claim chocolate shouldn't enter the picture in some form or another), since, well, I am in one.

But when I was growing up, we celebrated VD at home as a family. Not in a big way, but we made each other cards, and gave one another sugary treats. Love doesn't have to mean just romantic love. We love our families. We love our friends. A day to recognize and celebrate love shouldn't be dismissed based on romantic relationship status.

I love my family. And I love my friends. And I love my Bucket. And I am happy about all those things today. Tell the people you love that you love them! And have some chocolate. Because, hey, any excuse to have some chocolate is a good one.

I am thankful for beer.

I am thinking I really need to start a gratitude journal. I need to find some way to focus on the positive things, and remind myself how good I do have it, since so much of the time I am feeling ground down by all the things that aren't going well.

Today, though, I'm mostly just thankful for beer.

And for my Bucket, who has taken time and energy out of his own drama to be supportive, which is pretty awesome. I would miss mah bucket if someone were to steal him.

I Got There First, G- Dammit

I have another handle that I use sometimes, for non-JessaJune related stuff (computer game sites, mostly). When Gmail first betaed and I had invites to spare, I grabbed myself an account under that name, as well as this one. I don't check the actual mail very often, because I don't use it for any real correspondence - just for account creation and as a spam repository.

Well, the web teeneyboppers are catching up to me. In the last week, I've had THREE attempts of people trying to sign up for things like MySpace with MY EMAIL ADDRESS. (In the case of MySpace, I also saw 2 follow up emails of the aforementioned person trying to then change the email on their account. Which they can't because the confirmations go to ME.)

I was there first, bitches. Add some freakin' numbers or something and leave my email alone.

I do have to say, that is the beauty of the JessaJune handle, and why I will keep it forever. It's clearly me, and for whatever reason, no one else seems to think of it. Yay! Viva la JessaJune!

Freedom to Choose?

I'm procrastinating online, hanging out in one of my online communities, wallowing in other people's relationship-driven unhappiness.

First of all, I have to wonder why I'm wallowing this way. I'm sure it's related to the fact that I'm still feeling very unsettled in my life right now. I've quit the big bad thing that was driving my misery, but I have to replace it with something and I don't know what with, and meanwhile the clock is ticking. It's always reassuring to hear that no one else knows what they're doing, either.

But mostly, I'm thinking about relationships and how hard they seem to be for so many people. I'm including myself in that. It used to be, I guess, that you got married, young, because it was expected, and you stayed together because it was expected. In the last couple of decades, people stopped staying together when they were unhappy simply because they were "supposed to." Now, it seems that people hold off on getting married because it feels like there isn't any point to marriage if you're just going to split up. We're afraid, and we all go through a long, careful process of trying to be very very sure about our partners.

It isn't just in my life, and it isn't just the Glitter girls. It's my friends and acquaintances, and heck, even my exes are struggling with it. I had a conversation with one ex recently who is in the process of ending a long term relationship, and getting a lot of pressure from his family. "Are you sure? Is it so bad that if you were married, you would need a divorce?" To which he can only respond that the issues they have are the reasons he couldn't marry her in the first place. That he doesn't want to be in a situation where he has to make that choice.

And I worry that in all this carefulness, we pile too many expectations and put too much pressure on one another. That we expect our potential partners to be more than they can reasonably be. And that for fear of making the wrong decisions, we'll make no decisions at all.

I don't have an answer. But I am sometimes extremely frustrated by the dilemma. Maybe we should all just give up and let go of the search, choosing to live in little cottages with our cats and our vibrators and focus our effort on other things. But we don't - something (hi evolution!) keeps pushing us to make those connections, find that person, give him or her long test runs, try to craft our relationships into something lasting, to indulge the possibilities. What if we find that perfect person, that perfect relationship? We won't know if we don't look.

We have so much freedom to choose... that it's hard to make a choice.