lesson learned. again.

you know, i've heard the saying "no good deed goes unpunished" and yeppers, there is some truth to that particular adage. does this mean i will ever give up doing good things for those i care about - because some of them can't, don't or won't appreciate my gestures? not a chance.

i give what i have and i do it out of love. i don't do it for reciprocation and i don't do it for recognition...i do it because it is asked of me and i'm able.

will i allow myself to get screwed by the same person more than once?  probably so, dammit...but more than three times? not a fucking chance.  i'm kind, but i'm not stupid.

ok, i'm a little bit stupid.  about some things.  but not in general.

you know, treating people the way you want to be treated doesn't always pay off and i think the key here is to understand that going in and doing it, regardless.  we shouldn't do nice things in order to receive nice things. we should be kind because that is who we are and that is how we want to affect the world.  fuck all y'all that take and don't give back. you will not change me at my core.  you will make me wary and cautious, but you will not make me bitter and resentful.

ok, you might make me bitter and resentful towards YOU.  but not in life, not towards those that haven't earned it.

you, who fabricates this idyllic, wonderful life so everyone can think they know who you are.  you do fool a lot of the people, a lot of the time and that's cool. but you have also managed to fool yourself.  big mistake. you are a taker. a manipulator and a user.  you are a cheater, a liar and a fraud

and i don't like you anymore.

i treasure honesty and loyalty and trust.  i treasure those who give their word and keep it. i treasure those who tell me a necessary truth even if it's something i don't want to hear.  i treasure love and i treasure friendship.

i treasured who i thought you were. 

those are the people that i live for, love for and fight for.  those are my people and those are the ones that i choose to surround myself with.  all you other fuckstains - get out of my head, get out of my heart and get out of my life.

you don't get to be a part of my life any longer.  you are poison and you are gone.

peace out, bitches

(illegal) conversations while driving...

i was talking on the phone with a friend today who has been having some trouble with her teenagers.  (she says as if this is headline news in ANY dimension).  she was very upset at a pretty serious turn of events of late regarding her kids. very upset.  lots of guilt and embarrassment and feelings of failure. again, typical - i think - for the average mother of teenagers to experience. the little bastards suck the life right out of you.  there is a reason God made us love them so fucking much...but, i digress.

so, back to HER story...she was crying and i was trying to put a positive, if not bright, spin on the situation, asking a few questions and getting a few answers in return.  between us we had established that this new situation was probably, ultimately a pretty good thing to have happened.  timing, location...all of it - seemed really shitty on the surface, but when we broke it down we both realized that it was not as horrible as it had at first seemed.  still not an ideal situation, but far from as bad as it could have been in the grand scheme of things. in fact, parts of it were actually going to work out rather awesomely.

having made her giggle at something stupid - yet visually hysterical, i might add - we were wrapping up our conversation and i said to her "i am such a firm believer that things really do happen for a reason - we don't always get it, but that doesn't mean that we won't some day" and she says to me in her soft, tear-hitchy voice, "i've been praying for answers lately, anything to help me help my kids before it's too late."

this may not seem huge, or revelational (is that a word?) or anything out of the ordinary to you, but i experienced a DUH moment that instant...this situation we had been discussing - this PROBLEM - was the answer to those prayers she had just mentioned as an afterthought.  not how she had imagined they would be answered, to be sure...but damn, i pert-near heard the tabernacle choir belting out a hallelujah right then. i literally got goosebumps.

now, you may or may not believe in a higher power.  maybe you believe instead in the power of positive thinking or maybe you think that faith is simply misguided desperation.  whatever, for me this was powerful shit.  so powerful that i'm still thinking about it 7 and a half hours later and it fills me with this...this...hope.  it leads me to think that perhaps my life isn't just a badly written soap opera...that maybe there is a path for me and that i just have to pay better attention to where i am being guided.  maybe i need to allow myself to BE guided.  maybe i need to toss aside my preconceived notions of where i think i should be going and what i think i should be doing, and what i think the answers are, effectively ending the constant struggle i have within myself to direct everything towards my idea of the endgame.  what if i just continue to do what i know to be the right things, but allow other things - things i really have no clue about - to just...........happen?
whoa.
is that lame? is that giving up? bending over? CAPITULATION?
i don't know.
i will tell you that it gave me the first ray of hope that i have had in a long while.  i even experienced a split second of clarity.  so that must be a god thing, right?
that was a total typo.  i swear i typed "so that must be a good thing"

so anyway - there's this

and, on that note...i think it's time for mr nyquil to tuck me into bed   :)

all kindsa fucked up.

i was told last week that i was to not blog about what's been going on in my life.  it's private, shawna...keep it that way.  know what?  this is me...giving a shit about what you think.  i communicate, it's what i do...i realize that's a foreign concept to you.  oh, and you know what else?  ...fuck you.  just because you continue to hide everything away so no one will ever discover the truth about you, doesn't mean i have to.  not any longer. you aren't my real dad.  my real dad digs me.


<3 i love you, real dad <3

i am in turmoil.  like i haven't been in a really long time...things keep hitting me from all sides and i'm buckling.  seriously.  i truly am a weak person.  sure, i can be strong on the outside and around people i don't love. i will protect and shield those i do love, when they need it.  but, get me inside, surrounded by my heart and i am a complete mess.  i cry, i question everything i've ever done.  it blows balls.  i am all kindsa fucked up.

out of respect for those involved, i won't go into details, as much as i feel the desire to...i will say that i have hit a wall in one respect - i'm out of ideas. i've beat my head against this for about 3 years now over the same thing.  even when it appears to be, it's not better, just smoke and mirrors.
{hahahahaaaa, omg i just made a joke and you have no clue.  seriously, i think i'm finally going bat-shit crazy.  ok...back to the surface i go.}
the truth is, nothing has really changed in this situation...all of the talking and rationalizing and deal-making.  none of it seems to have made any difference...it's still going downhill.  or at the very least, plateaued at a not-so-great-actually-rather-shitty-when-you-really-look-at-it level.  i went to my final at-bat with regards to this last week and i'm pretty sure i have still failed.  time will tell, but it's not looking good.  does there comes a point in certain relationships where it's better if we say "fuck it, i really truly gave it my all and i don't know what else to do" and let the chips fall where they fall?  is there really is a point in which you can do no more to help someone see a positive path?  this will come back to bite me in the ass, i have no doubt.  somehow, it will fall back on me - but i really truly have no other aces up my sleeve right now.  it's quite possibly time to let what will be, be.

on another front, i have been fucked over by my personal sense of trust and judgement.  it is really messing with my head.  someone i trusted with all of me turned out to be nothing but a manipulative piece of judgmental, psychotic shit.  don't really want to talk about that.  it is very nerve-wracking.  but, i find myself questioning every thing and worse, every ONE right now. good on you, you piece of shit...you have infiltrated the inner sanctum.  you have fun with that...you fucked up mother-fucker.

lastly - i don't mean to be cryptic, but stick with me here, i do have to protect the "innocent" - someone close to me is echoing someone else who used to be close to me.  in a very painful way and, therefore...it really fucking hurts. bad.  like a knife directly into my gut and then twisted over and over again, bad.  back to the questioning everything.  this has me rethinking everything i've spent the last 25 years doing.  everything.  think about it.   go back 25 years and question the direction you set off in back then.  maybe you shouldn't have taken that particular path, eh?  maybe, just maybe, you should have done something COMPLETELY different.   like, oh...i dunno...become an astronaut, a hobo, a fucking nun*, for that matter...ANYthing other than what you chose.  you were clearly not cut out for this shit. in fact, you are definitely sucking at it.  you are sucking at your chosen way of being a contributing member of life right now.


(*hahahhaaaaa...i said "a fucking nun").


these things have me seriously wondering if i may really, honestly be a certifiable head-case. (all together now..."nooooo, really?")  it would maybe not explain everything, but would at least give a reasonable platform for all that is fucked up.  normally, i would think that possibility was totally cool and bask in it, but i still have to be a responsible person for some people in my life.  ball-blowing, i say.

it's a shitty place to be and i'm really trying to find happy-shawna - she is still in there, just squashed a bit by feelings of inadequacy and worthlessness.  usually this passes, but i've never actually been up against what i am facing now.  i'm a little bit scared, and that just doesn't happen that often. i'm not sure what to do with it.

hold on loosely, bisshes....don't let go.

should be sleepin'...

waiting for my friend mr nyquil to kick my ass.  sitting here thinking about disappointment and i've come to the conclusion, it blows balls.  i despise disappointment; i despise causing it and i despise feeling it...and i've done too much of both.

what's the answer, though - quit depending on people? quit allowing them to depend up on me?  who lives like that...bitter, resentful, lonely people is all i can think of.

it's not a huge stretch to expect honesty, to be expected to give honesty.  i sat back and dug into my brain's ass 6 years ago and made two lists:  one list of the things i absolutely would never live again without, and the other of the things i could never again live with.  honesty and dishonesty were at the top of those lists, hands down...no hesitation.  second on those lists were loyalty and disloyalty. third was probably something silly like bacon and bad breath; but i digress.

where i'm headed with this is that i am a pleaser and have found that the most effective way to please is to be a (an?) honest, loyal friend who tells it like it is, but in a way that isn't brutally painful.  oftentimes easier said than done...my greatest strength?  my empathy for others; my strongest weakness?  my empathy for others.  a double edged muther-fuckin sword, it is.

while i am who i am and have tried to accept that not everyone is like me - can i get a "THANK YOU OH MY GOD" for that - what i have trouble with is reconciling the fact that there are those that give and take and then there are those that just give OR take.  i take a lot, actually - i give more, but i do have the take-shit part down, with the trophy in my sights...it's fairly new to me so i expect that my grades will improve with time.

i give - dale and i have a joke about "givers" that we know and unfortunately, it is almost always referring to a slut of sorts...as in "she is SUCH a giver", meaning head, ass, what have you.  yea, anyway what was i saying?  oh yea - i give.  the people that i love have access to anything i am able to give to them, 24/7/364 (ha! actually chuckled at that)... i love it when i have what they need, really i do - it makes me happy.  maybe it's the cementing of some of my worth to them.  i dunno but probably, as being worthy seems to be something more valuable to me than gold (notice i did not say the b-a-c-o-n word).  but that, my friends, is a whole 'nuva therapy session.

moving on - someone mentioned to me the possibility of not expecting anything from others and thus, not being disappointed in them.  another person suggested i stop giving to certain people, that perhaps that would trigger something in the takers and make them change their evil ways.  neither one is an option for me.  i DO expect things from other people in my life.  i DO expect honesty and loyalty and a shoulder should i need it, from them.  further more, i cannot stop giving for a manipulative reason.  don't get me wrong,  i might-maybe be able to manipulate adolf-effing-hitler under the table if the mood strikes...but when it happens, i choose to do it unencumbered.  yet another session ;)

so what is the answer?  well hell...i guess it's to just keep on keepin' on.  i'll keep giving and maybe when all is said and done, i'll march my ass up to the Pearly Gates, drier than a dead dingo's donger, and Saint Jim-Bob will say "dayum gurrrrrrrl, let's have some wine!" and off we'll go talkin' about all the asswipes we passed something off to along the way.

ok...wow.  that made almost no sense at all.  i surely do love you my nyquilly boy...loves.

more sweet, than bitter...

the holidays are here again, the sky above is (still) clear (again)...shall we sing a song of cheer again, holidays are here again...

bittersweet.  word for the season...december 22, 2010 marks the 20th anniversary of my daughter morgan's death. whoa. 20 freakin years since my girl died at 10 months of meningitis.  which means she would be 21 on february 15, 2011. jeebus, how old AM i?  my grams died last month.  another huge void in my life.  i was raised with her 50 yards away until my mid-teens - she has been a huge part of me for as long as i can remember.  the girl and i made a trip up to see her in early october - and i will be forever thankful that we did.

feeling a bit blue and can't quite place my hand upon why.  i imagine it's a combination of things...but i generally love this time of year and i need to get my shit in gear, lol.  this is also the time of year i start to see a change in my kids.  energy level (read: obnoxiousness rating) goes up, boredom prevails and nerves get frayed.  my girl has been watching Christmas classics and listening to Christmas songs for weeks already.  she's hitting me up to decorate the Christmas tree this weekend.  i NEVER have my tree up this early.  i know this is what old people say, but it seems like i just took the damn thing down.

i think what is contributing to my funk is the fact that i am starting to realize that love leads to pain ---damn, raise your hand if you saw that coming--- what i mean is i'm getting to a point in my life when i am beginning to realize that life doesn't go on forever.  that we WILL have to say goodbye to those we love. the harder and the deeper we love, the harder and deeper the pain will run.  it WILL be devastating and there is no dodging it.  unless, of course, it is our life that ends first.  and so i find myself worrying.  morbid, yes; futile, yes; depressing, yes; but pointless, no.  i am learning - finally - that i should be living my life one moment at a time.  i need to appreciate all of the good that surrounds me.  i need to be a better, kinder, more thoughtful person.  i should be less judgmental (pffftt, yea, like that is ever gonna happen.)   my point is, it's never too late to change the way we affect other people.

seriously, when i look around at the people i truly love and i do mean L-O-V-E with all of my heart, and i try to imagine losing them...well, it's simple, i can't do it.  i know, very well, the pain of loss.  i know how devastating it is, how paralyzing it is, how it sucks the very breath out of your entire body leaving you frantically searching for a place where you can just crumble and fall, because you are sure you will never see the light of another day.  you pray to God to spare you from ever seeing the light of another day - anything, yes even death, is preferable to the pain.  how does one survive the knowledge that such loss lies on their life's horizon?

(cue JT)  you shower the people you love with love...you show them the way that you feel.  you don't dwell on the knowledge of the inevitable goodbye, but you must understand and accept it and then you prepare for it the only way you really can.  you love deeper, you hug tighter, you kiss longer, you squeeze harder.  you truly allow yourself to experience love.  bittersweet, absolutely...but i cannot imagine my life without it.  better to have loved and lost...?  no question.

group hug time. <3

oh, that tangled web...

been a slightly effed up week...my guy has a wildfire close to his home and has been sitting in ready-to-fly mode for a couple of days now.  he feels particularly stressed, as he has previously watched a home - and all of his belongings - burn to the ground.  it appears that his home is safe, but he is still under evacuation orders...if he leaves to go to work, he will not be allowed back in.  so he sits.

one of my close friends from jr high/high school had surgery yesterday - rather emergency, she found out about it a week ago - all is well as of now and she is supposed to be able to go home this afternoon.  i worried for her for a few different reasons, mainly though because she was petrified that something bad would happen to her.  she has a son that has just started kindergarten two weeks ago...that wasn't going well, and leaving him to stay in the hospital was weighing heavily upon her.  as i said, that appeared to have gone as planned and i think i can rest easier as far as she is concerned.  whew.

got a phone call from my mom yesterday about my gram's...last summer they discovered she has fluid building in her lungs.  she went to the hospital a couple of times to have them drained and discovered a weak valve or some such crap and needed surgery.  well, the bird is 89ish and a bit frail nowadays so they decided last summer that they would not operate on her and just monitor her recurring pneumonia as best they could.  she's been quite good for about a year, but just went back into the hospital last week.  they drained the fluid and released her.  two days later, they will filling up again.  they have now decided that the hospital trips are too hard on her and have agreed that they will monitor from the home, but not readmit her to the hospital.  so...gram's isn't well.  i called her today and i'm not sure she knew who i was for a bit.  she sounded very weak and pretty out of it.  talked to my mom who explained that she has been pretty drugged up this week.  problem is my grams is 5 hours away from here...i'm not sure what to do.  whether or not i should pull the kids out of school and drive up there to see her or wait for more news from my mom.  ugh.  my grams has been such a HUGE part of my life for as long as i can remember - it's some sad shit to say the least.

one of my kids has been having problems that i will not go into here...they involve "friends", school and people of a shitty ilk.  the kind of people you do not want your children to know - ever.  we're dealing with that on a day-to-day basis and i'm trying to not have nightmares involving worst case scenarios. have i mentioned in the last 20 minutes how badly i want my fat, innocent little babies back?

smaller, less significant issues include phone/house alarm/tiVo problems; car needs work done; yard work is - once again - out of control; girl's soccer season has started, and halloween is coming back.  cripes why do i have to deal with this STOOPIT "holiday" every. single. year? ugh.

the good news is that i have food in the pantry, my man loves the shit out of my guts - regardless of the ridiculousness that is my life - and everyone is healthy.  well, the kids are anyway - that is crucial and for that, i am grateful.

holy shit - did i get through that post without one f-bomb?  wow...i am off my game.

there once was this guy...

that i didn't know. something happened to him and suddenly he was gone. just...gone. i see the reaction of people that did know him and i am touched. so deeply. i hope he had a sense of how treasured he was while he was here. i do doubt it, though...

we all want to believe that we have made a difference in at least ONE other person's life, don't we? i mean yes, mom's know that they have spawned other little human beings - some definitely questionable on exactly what percentage of them are really human, but i digress. so, in the area of reproduction some of us have made a difference, but what i mean is within other people's hearts and souls. people we may have never met, people we may have met but not recognized that we have connected in some way. people we have known but not understood. people that we assume we have made no difference in them whatsoever.

do you ever wonder what people will say/think/believe about you if you were suddenly just...gone? it freaks me out, lol...don't you imagine that your friends would certainly miss something - if only the droning of your voice as you ramble on and on and on about things that no one in their right mind, or otherwise, could possibly find interesting? would they miss something as cool as listening to you describe your dog dragging his ass on the concrete patio as you stand there and try to have a serious conversation with your stripper/bug guy? would they miss listening to you actually cry about stupid things? something as stupid as, oh i don't know...the fact that you went to the freezer jonsing for some strawberry toaster strudels only to find that your little savage bastard hoover-vacuum children have eaten all of them once again, left the empty box in the freezer and you HAVE. JUST. HAD. IT with their little mooching ruinous asses? would they miss hearing you laugh about even stupider things? something like the fact that you actually managed to make yourself look even lower than the white trash that you are by getting busted "stealing" a broken toilet seat from a pile of discarded stuff that sits in the street waiting for the trash man because you think you can use part of it for a nifty redneck planter? what about missing you bitch about really intelligent things? things like OMGGGGG how pissed off you get when you gesture to your significant other to grab a line at costco that is suddenly shorter than the one you are standing in, and the person behind you hears you and darts to the short line before your guy even begins to process that you are asking him to do something? holy SHIT that makes my balls boil...but wait, this isn't about me, lol.

my point is i am sitting here wondering if everyone who has touched my life knows that they have and to what extent? i'm talking about the ones that have touched it in a positive way - believe you me...those other bastards definitely know they have fucked up. you can't let that shit slide. again, digression. sorry. stop and think about it...do you know? (where you're going to, do you like the things that life is showing you, do you know?) do your people know it from you? maybe you should tell them, show them, make sure they do know...but be careful, people tend to get freaked out if you just pop into their life and say "hey, you know i dig you right? no matter what? ok cool, just checking" and dart off again. maybe ease into it a with a little more subtlety. something a little more personal, like, "hey remember that rash you were complaining about that just showed up that one time we got shitfaced and woke up naked on the homeless docks? good times - everything clear up ok? cool, keep on keepin' on and know i dig you baby". see class really does make all the difference.

serially - know that i dig you baby

i am the sole master of my domain...

i was checking in on someone yesterday, someone who is a somewhat visible person in my life, but hadn't really surfaced much in the last couple of weeks.  my intent was not to yell "POPCORN!" in a crowded room thus making this person think that i was whining about being neglected, although i suspected my inquiry might do just that...this person is, let's call it, "stretched pretty thin" in their life and probably feels kinda like a hamster on a wheel.  i could be wrong, but i'm pretty sure i'm not.

anyway, the point to my rambling is that i wanted to show this person that i was missing them, cared and therefore, sought to find out if there was anything wrong or anything i could help with.  my dilemma was in making sure they didn't misunderstand my intentions and feel pressured to contact me for a quick stroke or two.  really i just wanted to let them know i was thinking of them.  i made a pretty simple statement to them, but as i reread it i realized that it pretty much summed up something that is relatively new to me.  i am learning to group, accept and deal with things as they relate to my control over them.

what i said to this person was, "just making sure everything (read: in your life) that i can control was ok and everything i can't wasn't swallowing you alive. i'm here if you need me."  i know, nothing earth-shattering really.  a pretty straightforward approach and really no big deal. but it made me stop and think about this particular person's life and my concerns for them regarding it.  this person gives just about everything of themselves to other people in their life.  i would say it's a fairly content person, but maybe not an incredibly happy person.  don't get me wrong, content is nice...but i think happy takes content an imperative step further when dealing with your own...destiny, for lack of a better word.

stick with me while i compare the two:  content feels like coming home from work and seeing your family is safe and sound; happy feels like coming home to a safe and sound family that is excited to see you and asks you how your day was, showing genuine care - not trying to just get you out of the way so they can talk about themselves.

content feels like having someone ask your opinion of something and being allowed to give it - not really expecting that it will be considered, but hoping and glad to be asked; happy feels like being asked your opinion and giving it, knowing that your opinion truly matters and will actually carry some weight in the decision-making process.

content feels like thinking you matter in a way that is important to a bigger picture; happy feels like knowing it and seeing the positive changes you have made in the world by just being you.

try and look at contentment as being hungry and having access to a well balanced, well cooked meal - and happiness as being hungry and having access to a well balanced, well cooked meal that you know was prepared with your likes and dislikes in mind.

basically, i think we are content in believing our contributions in life are necessary to someone-something-somewhere; but aren't we truly happy when we know it, when we feel it, when we live it?

we've all heard that other people can't make you happy - only you can make you happy and i totally agree. i realize that all the things i've mentioned that contrast being content with being happy make it seem that you need to depend upon other people for your happiness...but go back a step further, who do you choose to spend your life surrounded by?   because our lives are so constantly intertwined with other people, it's nearly impossible to not look to others, in some capacity, for happiness.  do you choose people that help you to feel content within yourself?  do you choose to surround yourself with people who bring out your capacity for happiness just by being near them, thinking of them or knowing that they are in your life?  i really believe that we shouldn't have to toil for happiness itself, i think if we live our lives the best we can, being the best kind of person we can and showing others our appreciation for them, happiness should just happen.

if you have someone in your life that creates happiness for you, enables you to be happy in some way that you wouldn't be without them, someone without whom your life would be a darker place - tell them, show them, make sure they feel it from you.  i think we forget that love should be alive; a growing, living, continuing thing, not something you feel, mention and then put into your back pocket until next time.

finally, back to one of my original thoughts - i do realize i'm a bit all over the map here, but it's how my brain seems to function - be sure to tend to your own knitting before instructing someone else on how to do it.  make sure that everything that you control is ok.  then see to the people you love, make sure they aren't being swallowed up by all of those other things you cannot control.  we all have things beyond us...all we can do is accept that fact, learn to identify what they are, do our best to deal with them in ourselves and then cushion and support those we care about that might be in the process of being swallowed up by them.

directed toward this one particular person i mentioned earlier, but meant to everyone that considers your friendship with me something other than ordinary...know that you are a special person, regardless of how those around you sometimes act - towards you or towards whoever else happens to be in their line of fire.  know that i appreciate you and understand so much about you because we are alike in so many ways.  know that i am here to cushion you and support you when dealing with all the bullshit life tends to throw. (whoa. was that my first curse word?)  know that i am your friend and you can count on me.  know that i love who you are.

omg i'm so pms'ing right now

i must be.

for different reasons that i won't go into right now ("jeebus", you say, "you mean there are actually some things she doesn't tell the world?") i have been sitting here with tears rolling down my cheeks for 20 minutes thinking of how fucking blessed i am to have some of the most amazing people in the world care for me.  there is such a range of people that i love with absolutely all of my heart.  they come from all over, some i have personally hugged 'til they couldn't breathe and some i have only dreamed of hugging that hard.  i wish i could find the words to describe how completely full my heart is right now.  i canna esplain...i can only let it spill over and flood me with warmth and happiness and love. omg, i just fucking love you guys...

ok, ok crap and jeesbus-rice, aunt flo - show up already, this nancy shit is for chicks.

i am thankful...no, really i am.

ok, i bitch...alot.  which does not mean i am ungrateful for or blind to my many blessings.

just taking a minute out of my rantings to say that.  i really do know that i am blessed...i have an amazing and supportive family - immediate, extended, in-lawed, out-lawed...all of them.  i have an incredible assortment of friends - close, far away, real, imagined, whatever.  i have my health ( i know blahddy blah blah...but it's true).  i have had and continue to have love, encouragement, acceptance and support at every turn of my life.  i am one of the lucky ones, in so many ways and i want to thank God for the life i have been given...it's had it's trials, it's had it's tribulations (does anybody really even know what a tribulation is?) and it's had it's joys and successes.

really truly i could not ask for more. probably i will, of course, but my point is that i don't have to - i could die today and have lived, loved and experienced more than enough than one silly redneck girl could ever hope for.

peace and relaxation to you and all that you love, enjoy your day of thanks and hey...go packers, raiders, broncos and brett favre (sorry fleck, no can vikqueens do - MUAH)!

a little todo about not much.

been working on a couple of projects for a friend and i'm running out the clock - but that's what i do.  better under pressure i suppose. one more week to get them sent out.  gogogogogoooo shawna!

hallowanker is ALMOST over, thank you GOD.  i despise halloween, don't know why...just one of my least favorite holidays. sorry spange-cake.  and NO, i did not buy any candy for the little bastards.

weather has turned absolutely beautiful - low 70's during the day, clear skies, good (ok, relatively speaking) air out there.  always lots to be done outside and this is the time of year to get it done.  maybe tomorrow.

the Thanksgiving holiday is shaping up - my family members are complete nerdburgers and probably we won't see them until Christmas.  dale's family will be here though.  yay i get to cook Thanksgiving dinner for a chef.   yes, i am petrified.

they came upon a midnight bleary...

ok...so i'm sitting here looking at that stupid picture of some drunk girl (hee) down there and i'm thinking to myself that i really need to make another entry, if only to bump that silly picture.  as i'm looking at it i realize that i never told the story of that night, and it's one of my favorite stories to tell at parties (eyeroll). so here ya go:

i have great neighbors - i am very lucky that way...we have a tight-knit group that not only looks out for each other, but also probably peeps in each others' windows late at night.  i say probably only because i haven't completely convinced myself that i'm the only one that does that. we are very close with one set of neighbors and we often spend evenings of wine and song with them; we also have some fairly new neighbors that i still haven't quite figured out yet...she is very sweet and quiet but kicks it up a notch with a bit of wine.  he...let's just say, is rather chauvinistic at best.  nice enough guy, just haven't really figured him out yet.

i do have other neighbors i like to hang out with, but on this particular night it was the 6 of us with a shitload of kids in tow.  my house, Christmastime of last year, fire blazing, holiday music on, a veritable plethora of delicious nosh items, spiced cider and hot chocolate for the kids...got the picture?  ok...oops, forgot to add approximately 9 chilled bottles of chardonnay.  yea, 9 - hey other people may show up, i may drop a bottle or 5, you just never know and really, can you have too many bottles of white wine on ice?  work with me here...

i had, i thought, very appropriately appointed myself lead wine pourer and maker-surer that no one ever had an empty glass.

*raise your hands if you think you know where this story is going..aaaand now moving on.*

everyone is eating and drinking and having a fabulous time.  at some point the chauvinist (for reasons still completely unknown to me or anyone else that was sober at that point) manages to slip into the conversation that i was "just a woman with issues". what the fuck does that even mean? and excuse me...new neighbor - you, probably (but maybe not) the most unissued person on the block - me.  whatever dude, drink my wine,  eat my food, try really hard not to insult me in the next 3 minutes and we'll be golden. sweetly, to take the heat off of me i'm sure, he told the other neighbor that he's pretty sure she has an eating disorder and she really should eat a cheeseburger sometime.  (ok, i may have embellished that a bit - those may not have been his exact words, but hey...i'm a woman with issues - it's what i think i thought i heard). yea...a real gem. but in his defense, he was on the money - she really does look like she should introduce something disgustingly unhealthy to her diet, say once a month...the way i see it, a burger would be a good a place to start as any.

at this point we'll have to fast forward as i must have been "dropping" bottles left and right because i had to keep opening more. and of course my glass couldn't be empty - what the hell kind of pourer/maker-surer would i be if it was?  now, a non-woman with issues might have just carried around a full glass and not drained it so she could fill her glass everytime she filled someone else's, but hey.  there are bit and pieces of the night's entertainment that i can fill in - one neighbor (remaining nameless but she was notably NOT holding a cheeseburger) showed off her cheerleading skills from days gone...shall we say, WAY by.  she was very intent on explaining exactly what cheer she was going to do when her husband pipes in with "ok, but try not to fart like last time".  this may have been where i "dropped" a few bottles of wine because this was quite possibly the funniest thing i have ever heard in my life.

from here on out i rely upon dale's version of what happened, yea...evidently somebody felt that the wine pourer needed to be poured into bed. i'm told it had something to do with me making the dog almost bite me and falling asleep on the couch - whatever killjoy. so he excuses me - because he is truly sweet like that - and herds me off to bed.  he drops my drawers and tucks a giggling me into bed - not sure what was so funny but i get the impression that even though he tried really hard, he was unable to find the humor in it. a short time later, cheeseburger is missing me and climbs in bed with me, she lays there in the dark for a minute telling me how much she truly loves me and wants to give me a hug.  she pats around the bed trying to find me and quickly becomes convinced that either i had been abducted by gang of suicidal, yet sex-crazed, dread locked, transvestite goth/emo kids (it could happen, none of us can completely rule it out) or dale hadn't secured me to the bed properly and i had wandered off.

upon rallying dale's help, the two of them went on a shawna-hunt only to find that i had left my bedroom, apparently of my own free will (false alarm, you goth kids settle down now), and walked down the hall to the most vile and disgusting place on the face of the planet, my kids' bathroom. apparently i was looking for something in there that required me to lock the door and sit on the floor next to the toilet.  now, i'm fairly certain that in real life i wouldn't sit on the floor next to that toilet for all the free-fresh-off-the-rack krispy kreme glazed doughnuts in the kingdom of Heaven, but evidently it was there that my quest dictated i go, so i really had no choice.

apparently, having refused to cut my "search" short, i was momentarily left alone while dale tended to our guests as they readied themselves for the dangerous drunken walk home.  because the entry way of my house has a straight shot line of vision to the nasty place which is the kids' bathroom, i will forever consider it an immense show of mercy on God's part for putting the coveted cloak of invisibility upon my drunken - clad in absolutely nothing but a black (victoria's-secret-seamless-100%cotton-comes-in-a-variety-of-colors-i-just-happen-to-like-black-and-wow-is-it-ever-so-comfortable) thong - ass allowing me to wobble back to the haven that is my bed undetected, sans scarring any children for life or giving the neighbors yet another "issue" to unjustifiably heap upon me - this one being my penchant for doing a pathetically choreographed striptease in front of Christmas guests simply because i'm such an attention-whore.

far as i can tell, it was a great party and everyone had a great time...we did, in fact, manage to drink 9 bottles of wine between the 6 of us.  one neighbor came home from work the next day at lunchtime to puke and take a nap, another two neighbors personally thanked me for being such a great hostess (pfffttt - what the hell kinda parties did these people usually attend?), my man took me to get the obligatory weinerschnitzel chili-cheese dog - only the best hang over food known to man, while the fourth, and still nameless, guest nursed her hangover with two carrots sticks and a glass of water with a mona-vie back.

i love...

my friends.

old and new, young and old, buoys and gulls. if you are here and we are old friends - thank you loving me in spite of myself; if you are here as a new friend - thank you for taking the time to get to know me, i hope to get to know the real you; if you are here and i haven't met you yet - don't keep me waiting...catch up and let's get going!

you make me happy and keep me smiling even those times that i just don't feel like it. you fill me with a warmth that makes me feel giddy inside. you make me laugh, sometimes you make me cry - but it's only out of love. i love the conversations, long and short, spoken or written, deep or silly. i love the things whispered in confidence or shouted to the rooftops. i love the unspoken things that pass between us. i love that i can count on you whether i'm happy or bitchy. i love that you know that you are special to me. i love that you trust and love me back.

you see who i really am.
you love me anyway.
you are forever.

sign on and say hey...anytime.

quote of the day:

"The old fucker played great last night. There. I said it."



~anonymous
(but obviously referring to my boy brett in his first game against the packers as a viqueen.)

trashed and hanged...

concert was awesome - and i don't just throw that stupid word around lightly. braden loved it, as did everyone else, and we remained the loud family all the way through monday - ears still ringing, i'm pretty sure we all yelled at each other a bit more than normal.

saturday's yard day kicked ass. my kids can work when they are pushed...a bit of whining, yes, but they did a pretty good job getting the yard in shape. one minor "shawna" happened when i was trying to move the green waste bin across the lawn and somehow, inexplicably, tripped on the lid and kinda fell in, yet kinda had it fall on my head. braden had just dumped the mower bag into it and it rained cut grass and thorny rose cuttings all over me. i laid on the ground laughing my ass off, and then the look on braden's face as his brain tried to decipher what it had just seen kept me giggling all day. wow, how lucky are my kids to have me for entertainment, eh?

dinner at the neighbor's sunday was a blast - the weather was PERFECT, the food was DELICIOUS, the wine was ABUNDANT, and the friends were THE BEST! ended up heading to another neighbor's house for a mini concert with drums and vocals provided by karl and the kids. we ended with a fashion show and dance off of sorts - ok, that was all stacy. all of us had so much fun, but damn was i hung monday. which is weird, cause generally, i can put away the wine...but i woke up with a monster headache that refused to leave me all day. my baby waited on his drunken lush girlfriend hand and foot while she recovered. he's so totally my favorite one.

back to the grind boners.

back in black...

AC/DC in concert tonight - taking all the kids and even THEEX, cause i'm cool like that. bennett = very excited...like hard-to-sleep-last-night excited; braden = nonchalant...never been to a concert before, not sure what to expect, my fingers are crossed that he'll love it; the girl = excited, but she's not sure why...looking forward to having her chest pound and buying a t-shirt; dale = pretty damn excited, cause he's a rockah...; THEEX = eh, says he's looking forward to it, but too cool to show his excitement? me = pretty damn excited, but nervous that braden might not enjoy it. i'm not big on rowdy crowds, so not really looking forward to that - but hey, it's AC/DC and we are on the highway to hell.

family yardwork gathering tomorrow morning - not really looking forward to whiney, tired and sweaty kids, but need to get our yard in shape - it looks like crap...you'd never believe mexi's live here, hahahaaa! hey they're my kids, i can say that.

sunday, we are having a bbq next door - good friends, good food, good booze, good weather (should be cooler the next couple of days - THANKYOUGOD!)

monday will just be another relaxing day, nowhere to be, nothing to do...kids are out of school.
life really is swell. really really.

pics from the coast...

baby, baby don't get hooked on me...

where has the time gone anyway? ok, so it's been awhile since i blogged and instead of wasting space giving a buncha bs reasons why, i'll just move forward with a quick little story that i call: "some of my friends are shitheads..."

background check: i have cockatiels that lay eggs every once in awhile - well, one of them does for certain (she's hot for me - what can i say?), not sure about the other one - i'm assuming that they are both females, as i've never actually seen them have bird-sex and the eggs have always been sterile. anyway, she lays them and then stresses out over them for weeks, so for shits and giggles, i usually put a nesting box in there when someone starts to lay and whoever's laid it goes a bit bonkers for the next couple of weeks continuing to lay eggs, rolling them around with her beak to get them in the perfect spot and then sitting on them and puffing up whenever anyone comes near her nest. eventually i take out the nesting box, fry up the eggs and feed them to the dogs, then all in our little bird-world is right again.

really wanting to raise baby cockatiels, i borrowed Al, a cantankerous male cockatiel, for a couple of weeks in the hopes that his presence would get my girls going and we could have some babies. Al was just spitting mean. had to wear leather gloves to rescue him whenever he jumped his dumb ass off of the cage because he bites - asswipe. anyway, the girls didn't seem to care much about Al one way or another...towards the end of his stay, one of them started sticking her hoo-ha into the air and most definitely begging for some lovin'. unfortunately we had at least one or ten of many possible roadblocks: maybe there are gay cockatiels out there and i found at least one; maybe the girls just weren't sexy enough for Al; maybe Al was a typical male-creature and couldn't read the oh-so-obvious "give me babies, please" signs and thought she was just bitching at him; maybe she was just bitching at him and that rendered him a limp noodle as he just couldn't be expected to actually perform under those stressful conditions; or maybe...just maybe my girls didn't care for Al's big i'm-a-bad-ass attitude. as i said, could have been many things. regardless, i reluctantly took Al back to his real home in isabella and resigned myself to no baby birds.

upon returning from the weekend, i found an egg very ungracefully plopped at the bottom of the birdcage. GASP! could it be? could Al have been the stud i had hoped for? i need to get busy and get her nesting box ready! yay, i may have babies after all! whoo-hoo!

long story short, i had trouble creating my usual nesting box, as i have given them a new cage recently...so off to petsmart to get a "real" nesting box. still excited! bring it home, stress everybody out setting it up and then sit back to watch what happens. mama bird gets in the box and i can hear her pushing around the egg - back and forth, back and forth it rolls until she gets it where she wants it and sits on it, all puffy and protective. waiting, waiting - should have more eggs soon - tap, tap, tap. nothing. week goes by. shit, should have more eggs. mama is sitting plenty, but not laying more eggs. hmmm, egg does look a bit bigger than usual, maybe that's all she could do this time...maybe she put all her eggs in one basket, heh heh heh. well, guess there's just the one this time. that's cool, better than none - now let's wait to see if it's fertile.

every couple of days i check the egg with a flashlight in the pantry. should soon be able to see activity in there...you know veins and such. getting kinda impatient. nothing. tap, tap, tap. hmmm...been about 10 days - should definitely be seeing something by now. sigh. guess i just wasn't destined to have a baby Al after all. brynn still wants to bring in her friends to look at the cute little (kinda big) egg, no problem - hurry cause i'm gonna toss it. kiki from next door comes in all oohing and awwing over the egg and says, "huh, it looks a lot like that mourning dove egg my mom found laying out in the street and put in here a couple of weeks ago when you were gone - weird huh? i guess they all look the same..."

bitch.

restless nights and busy days

CRAP! i have been sleeping like shit lately. i get these lovely night sweats that can be controlled with my clothing and bedding choices, but figuring out what the formula is taking the weather into account is a real bitch. i wake up freezing me arse off and then have a hard time getting back to sleep afterwards. ok enough whining about that.

moving on...

had a ton o' company for about 7 days last week and i think i'm still recuperating, LOL! my house hasn't fully recovered either. but whatever. i had a blast and got to do some quality visiting with my homegrill leaf and a couple of other humboldt honeys along with all of their kids. loads of beer and margis, good food, late nights and side-splitting laughter. my gut still aches and i'm a laugher, just imagine.

my sub took it's second dump since the first of the year. crap-cicles on a stick, this bill was $2200 and i STILL don't have permission to unload it. Disney says he cannot afford another car payment on top of his dumbass BMW payment of almost $700/month. what a douche. i'm driving around in my gas-guzzler (spending well over $100/week in gas), 132K mile suburban that costs easily $3000/year in repairs and maintenance, while he cruises in his, completely impractical, manliness-compensating $60,000 luxury car. this is an ongoing argument with us. the sub is paid off with very little resale value left. he says drive it until it dies (hopefully this doesn't occur in the #3 lane of I-5 at a speed of 80 mph hauling not only my kids, but loads of others as well.). i say unload it in while it is running well (because it will definitely NOT run well again soon) and still holds some trade-in value. but, being that i'm "not good at school", it's understandable that my view is completely stupid and rather womanish, and therefore begs to be discarded without any thought. damn chodesmoker.

what else you ask? let's see - trying to build a fucking website that i have absolutely no clue about. godaddy's custie service rocks...i've made mistake after mistake and they just plod me along telling me what to do rather than where to go, LOL! i see the light at the end of the tunnel after being down for a couple of weeks now. hopefully i can get my traffic back. ah well, it's all good.

been working on a project for fleck using one of her RoundMaps. it must be perfect so it's got me a bit jumpy - but i'm liking how it's shaping up. i have to keep walking out and then back in again for fresh perspectives. one thing i can always count on fleck for (aside from the constant flow of her 'queen's bullshit) is never-failing inspiration with her sketches as well as her artwork. she now has her new book, PageMaps for Scrapbooking, out there.  i know a few peeps still waiting for the bookstores to get more in stock. you go, grillfriend! check her awesomeness at www.pagemaps.com.

gotta run, brats need me. sigh. i keep telling them that food is way overrated

over the river and through the woods: section C

the motel we stayed in in eureka was another 2-star-er in my old AAA book, again with the "free continental breakfast" for which we weren't holding out any high hopes. it was downtown - which is a nice way of saying that there was sure to be sleeping transients within 20 feet in any direction, not to mention the, ahem...ladies of the night. (a humboldt hooker should definitely be at the top of your list of Things to Do Before I Die [eek! i mean SEE...should definitely be at the top of your list of Things to SEE Before I Die. if you still want to DO then go for it, but it may very well be the last thing you manage to cross off, so personally, i'd put it towards the bottom of the list.] there is just nothing quite like it anywhere else. it's a very natural [read: totally granola] area where the bathing and the shaving of one's body are ritualistic pressures laid upon us by the man and sometimes actually scoffed upon. oh, and evidently teeth are not necessarily necessary either). the chick behind the motel counter tells me to be sure and park in the lighted, covered parking area...not that, you know, it's not a safe neighborhood or anything. it's just that SHE wouldn't park out on the street, and neither should i. ok, good enough...i can take a hint.

keeping in mind that i am basically an honest person, i lied like a rug about how many people we had staying in our room. i am not about to pay an extra $10 per person, per night or shell out another benjamin for another room so a couple of kids can actually sleep on beds. i figure they are lucky i even like them enough to allow them to sleep on the floor and breathe my motel room air...they certainly aren't getting their own room. this place was much nicer than the previous night's motel, lots of body-sprawling floor space and a tv that was actually bigger than my purse. everyone slept well and we awoke fresh and ready for a day of FOOTBALL with the mcbirdie clan. we had wanted to go out to the beach first, but gee...oddly enough, it was raining. huh, who knew?

[side note: humboldt county is an absolutely gorgeous place of huge redwoods and beautiful exotic-looking plants...lush greenery almost everywhere you look. as with most everything, there is a reason for this - they get something insane like 7 feet of rain per year. oh yea, it's pretty, but dang do you pay the price]

i sent the kids down to the "free continental breakfast" in twos with instructions to not talk to the other pair, so you know, no one would know they were together and therefore here illegally. deportation at this point would have put a serious kink in our plans...turns out that this place actually had a nice breakfast. waffle maker with pre-measured little cups of batter, biscuits and a crock-pot full of yummy country sausage, cereals, oatmeal, breads, muffins, fruit, juices, again with the lukewarm coffee, but hey who's keeping track? everyone had a bit of something (even little-miss-picky-pants brynn) and with a warning phone call, we were off to la casa de mcbride.

playoffs weekend...those damn undefeated patriots were playing in the first game of the day, my beloved packers in the second. leaf and her family were kind enough to allow us to invade her lovely, clean, quiet home for the day. the kids all paired - or tripled - off and stayed outta our hair for the most part. braden had to be threatened a couple of times as he was, on occasion, being particularly braden and making people want to throw him off a bridge. or hit him - whatever. the girls went for walks and got muddy, the boys pretty much stayed upstairs in front of the ps2 all day. we ate yummy whore's-derves and just vegged with my leaf and her man. oh and leaf got sick to her stomach - well that's what she said anyway. it did happen right about dinner time, so she may have just wanted us OUT. heh heh heh...i did manage to forget a kid at her house that night. score one me.