Briannah

Thank you, it was last April that she went, but we only found out about the issue behind the filing cabinet and the bookshelve when we just moved them as part of the prepping to sell.  She was a great cat though.    And ​normally didn't pee all over the place, I swear.  She did live a long life of 14 years though.  Her brother is still going strong, and trying to kick Nikki out.  Hes' a bit of a terrirorial cat about me. 

I don't know.  I don't think anyone will ever know if those two groups are the same or not, and so much of it would matter on what is the definition of same in this case.  But I'm not really sure it matters all that much anyway.  Every person is made up of both their inherent nature and the effect their life experiences have on the brain.  We all share common traits and wildly different traits no matter how you define a group of humans.  I think social's obsession with grouping people in the first place is the bigger problem than if any people with radically different life experiences are the same or not.  Society insists on grouping us and then extending certain behaviors to people in those groups.  Religious groups, gender groups, age groups, ethnic groups, racial groups, political groups.  Being in a group of shared experience/belief isn't bad, where it becomes bad is the mass social treatment (either on the good or poor end of the spectrum) based on belonging to a group, and individual merit, worth, and (I don't know the word I want here, deserved treatment?) gets supplanted by the groups.  We see ONLY the forest, and not the trees.  I don't think of other women as automatically the same as me either, a lot of them are dangerous or unpleasant in a variety of ways and I"m always highly aware of that and looking for individual traits rather than 'oh, she's a woman like me, soidarity!'

I'm not sure if it's curable.  Misandry is a real thing too, and I run into it every day, but it's not talked about, I had to research hard to find out what the formal term was (Never once had to look up misogyny).  And it could be argued that it's not as big of a problem as misogyny, but that doesn't erase the fact that it something changed in the shift of power it would be.  These unkind feelings to the opposing gender exist in both, it's not a flaw of just one.  It's possible it's a leftover survival tactic, something we don't need anymore but haven't quite shed in our dna yet.  Or it's something we bred into our pscyhe after thousands of years of behavior.  I'm not sure we can talk about curing one side without the other realistically.  And it's just as ugly in the women as it is in the men. 

Oh my god it came out great!  Longer than I am ultimately looking for, but I wanted to cut it longer in case it didn't come out right.  I love it!  The layers are great and soft, and it took me literally four minutes to do (other than the three minutes of mirror silliness where I was flipping the pony tail you make on the forehead going "I'm a unicorn! UNICORN!" and possibly badly singling some music from teh Last Unicorn before I got down to business like an adult). 

And not only do I really like how it came out, but it occurs to me that three minutes is a really simple, fast process to keep it constantly touched up and keep that fresh new haircut feel whenever I want to.  Not only free, but it put's me really back in control of my own hair.  Nikki liked the final look too.  Cleanup was easy too, I did the actual cutting over the toilet so just flushed the snips away.  No mess.  I was super nervous but the results have calmed my fears. Sent photos to a couple freinds to make sure nothing looked funny, got the all important girlfriend approvals. 

What are you looking to do with your hair?

It's a deal breaker in my friendships too, I back away from any serious racism, religionism, sexism, whateverism because I think what matters is how individuals behave.  I don't care who anyone else sleeps with as long as proper consent is contained (I do care if people are being molested or raped!), I don't care what religion anyone practices so long as it doesn't harm anyone (don't get me started on the weird religions need to punsih people who don't share the same one), I don't care where people came from, I don't care what they wear, eat, like, whatever.  None of that has anything to do with me.  What has to do with me is can we converse nicely, do they treat me and others around us well, are they likeable, what do we have in common, things like that. 

I have a everyone welcome whose not a jerk sign hanging over my friendzone!    Before Nikki and I decided to switch from Polyarmory to Monogamy, my dating sign was "everyone welcome whose not a jerk, but I make no promises til we see how it goes" sign over my datingzone.   Even when I ran into things dates were into that I could not personally handle participating, I never had a need to make them feel bad or weird about it, I just said I'm sorry, this isn't my thing, but I wish you luck finding someone who enjoys this too. 

People say I'm weird that I"m still friends with several people I'd had romantic/sexual relationships with in the past.  I think I'm fairly normal, if you like a person for being that person, not just their looks, it doesn't seem that strange to stay friendly as long as there was no reason not to, like cheating or abuse or something harmful.  Nikki is friends with them and genuinely likes them.  Not my ex husband of course, that falls under the abuse clause, but others.  People tell us that's unnatural too, and I wonder where this "if we can't be in a romantic relationship we can't be anything' comes from.  Or where the 'you must erase all traces of exes to prove you love the person you currently choose to be with' idealogy comes from either.  Are we as a culture in America that insecure?

I will never understand why anyone would choose to attack you for choosing to have relationships with whomever you are attracted to.  They are not in the relationship, they are not harmed by the relationship, and it has nothing to do with their reltaionship with you, they are forcing it into a place it doesnt' belong.  People make me sad more and more these days.

Aww thank you!   As a let live and like everyone liberal girl trapped in conservative hell, it's always nice when someone actually likes me.   Sometimes I wonder how makes people so happy to be mean to other people, and then I flee to the internet and am all like "Oh yeah, there are still nice people in the world who want to be nice to other people!  YAY!"  LOL

I'm mulling over an epiphany I had today on some of it, from an article about where the safe space hatred comes from in the so-called 'alt-right', and it's one of those enlightening moments.  I"m just not sure what to do with it.

I do mean the human race.  We is everyone who would use it for normal purposes both social and news/information spreading, but abandoned it to what it is now.  It didn't used to be like this at the start, I'm told from people back in the day who used things like Chatroullette and Omegle that i used to just be conversations, people reaching out trade news of the regions, or just bored people who wanted to meet ohters, but we as a global community let it fall to the wayside.  People who don't use a thing for good things, who just say "it's full of garbage, I'm not going there!" and leave it to be exactly that.  And yes, it is tough to filter them out, but we are supposed to be a world that doesn't shy away from things because they are hard.  And at the end of the day, that next button makes them vanish.  No, I don't mean anyone in particular on this site, I mean the whole internet population.  We as a whole.  All the normal people who don't get on it and have normal conversations.  I'm still scrolling through things I can't mention here becuase I'm not ready to give up on meeting even just ONE person out there who I can have a conversation with (That Turkish dude's body language seemed normal, so while I admit he could have been saying extremely kinky things in Turkish, I would be sorta surprised).  B

ut I picked mysefl back up and slogged through some crazy again, and almost had a conversation.  Some man in Micronesia and I were doing really good (or horribly gone wrong) pantomimes.  It was weirdly fun.  He was trying to explain how to prepare a fish I believe, as he kept turning his camera to the food he was working on while he was talking, and I was showing him pictures of my area.  Language barrier again, but ti was still...cool. 

I think what makes me really sad is that we COULD reclaim it, if the army of people across the world with webcams got on, just nexted the gross and ignored them, without reinforcement and with just ordinary chatter boring them it could be reclaimed.  And I think with so many governments going crazy, it's probably important that it we do take it back and start talking to people beyond our normal daily run ins.  *shrugs*  but I"m just one turtle, I'm not really the revolutionary type no matter how hard I Try to be.

Not surprisingly, I don't really remember thing.    I was only 20 when we left it, and engineering sadly was not on my radar.  I do remember Johnson's Park, and the village on the end of it with the Really Old houses they preserved.  There was a racetrack for horses too, but I'd never even once managed to see it used for actual racing, just one or two horses getting excercises.  The mall used to be great (now it's kinda gutted and weird) and we all hung out there a lot, eating Bavarian Pretzels, browsing the record store (how excited we all where when it flipped from a small store front to a huge one across the way!), movies, and this neat little nautical theme gift shop called Poopdeck Galley that weirdly also sold plush puppets and is where I got my two gorgeous dragon puppets!  They had a great bookstore too, I spent hours in B. Daltons back in the day.  LOL  We also hung out at the library a lot, there were to, but we mostly hung out at the JFK one way out by the school, until they moved the New Market one from this TINY store front to a big building actually built to be a library.  It was right near the Carvel, so we used to get ice cream then go hang at the library, no parents!  LOL And there was this little park called Columbus Park near my freind Lisas, they had handball courts we used to spend a lot of time just practicing with tennis balls.  We never really did learn the rules of that game, only tennis. 

I miss home. 

Maybe I really should start stocking up on this creepy food in the basement once we decide where we're going to be living.  Cheeto has me really worried, not just on what he can do to the social fabric of our country, but he says of lot of dangerous things to dangerous world leaders. 

1. I'm starting to really read the prepper websites, and I can't tell if I've joined the tinfoil hat brigade or if that Cheeto is goinna wreck it all and turn into a giant mess of we're all gonna die.  I"ve been consdiering gun lessons.  I don't like guns.  But so many people around me have them, and if it gets really bad, might need to have and undersatnd them.    That man has been in office less than a month and he's done so many illegal and dangerous things that I'm really starting to fear for my long term safety.

I grew up in Piscataway, then lived for a couple of years in Plainsboro after graduation and a brief time in Heightstown before I moved to Ohio to get away from crazy ex.   I really miss it, there was this little mom and pop pizza place across from Quakerbridge Mall that had the BEST CHEESESTEAK EVER!  It's called Red Moon Pizza if it's still there and you're in the area.  We spent a lot of time at Sandy Hook beach, but then changed to Island Beach State Park.  I know everyone loves Seaside Heights, but I liked a somewhat quieter beach.   

Ah, I grew up in NJ.  I miss it hugely, but not the cost of living.  I would go back in a heartbeat if it wasn't so crazy expensive! 

Thank you very much Emma!  We're enjoying a week of putting things in order to move forward with our plans and hopefully end up in a nicer future.

I"m sorry, I didn't meant to make anyone thing I was leaving Nikki!  We have issues, like every couple, but we are pretty successful in working through them I think.  There were a few times it came close over the years, but we stuck it out.  At least we've held it together a long time.  We may be doing the separate cities thing for a while though, depending on how prepping/selling the house and his jobhunt drop into place.  But the days when you could wait for everything to align perfectly are long gone, and we gotta make it work in any order we can. 

It is a shared office of six therapists, so we're going to call the receptionist to see about the future.  It feels gross though.  It feels gross to call these people who just lost a coworker to sort out our business.  I know they understand and are still looking to help patients, just my emotional brain feels really gross about it. 

And we literlaly know ZERO transgender people in the area.  If they're here, they're not talking.  There are no local support or social groups at all here, no one whose popped up on any of my searches.  I know Nikki can't be the only person, but they're in deep hiding or something. 

And there is the this sucks, i LIKED her.  She was a really nice person, sweet, and very good at what she does.  She had small children and a husband, and I hate seeing life cut short like that.  I know it happens, no guarantees for any of us, but it really breaks my heart. 

And you are seeing the world while you do it!  So many people never go beyond a 50 mile radius of their home, even for vacation, it's kinda sad.  Especially since the modern era gives us the physical ability to see it all like never before, an 8 hour plane jaunt to Britain vs. months on a ship.  So many people just...don't.  Explore your insides through exploring your world my Emma!

Hugs!  I'm so glad you're starting to love on our adventure!  When you get home you have got to find a time we can chat and tell me about all the things you saw and did!  Are you going to hit up the Grand Canyon while you're exploring the great south west?  I've never been myself, but I hear it's amazing! 

First times can be scary, there doesn't need to be a reason beyond the brain being in a situation it's not prepared for and freaking out about it.  I nearly had a meltdown the first time I ever had to ride a bus (not a school bus, the kind with schedules and exact change) by myself.  I did at least end up where I meant to be, there's that.  But it FELT completely alien and scary to be there alone, especially being born in 72 and growing up with the constant reinforcement as a child every adult I didn't know wanted to cut me into pieces and as a teen that every dude would throw me in an alley and have at it.  Although those dangers were fare more present than quicksand, which tv of the time had us all believing was lurking in wait all over and it was rather surprising to realize it's not. 

I think the only 'first times' that don't scare me are things I'm already somewhat proficient in.  For example, the first time snorkeling.  There was tension about the mask, the feel was really strange, and breathing through the 'giant straw', but I've been swimming since I was around three, and unlike scuba could simple lift my head out of the water and right whatever had gone wrong, so it was mildly frustrating until I got the hang of mask and snorkel seals, but not scary.  Very very salty though, I drank a lotta seawater that first time.  Saw a turtle too, so it all balances out. 

I think it's easy to forget that we rationally think about the world in modern terms, but our brains do not.  Our unconscious and subconscious minds are still doing what they did thousands of years ago, they don't care about computers and safety drills and 911, they are still working out continued survival and utilizing the emotional responses to force our behavior in response to the world around us.  It's what they do.  A good example is the adrenaline rush when my avatar is in a video game and I fall off something (often, I'm always falling).  The visual abrupt downward motion triggers a reflex even though my body is sitting safely in a chair, because my brain perceives the motion and doesn't care the cognitive part is yelling "WE ARE IN A CHAIR".  And the best way to overcome that instinct response is to study it, examine it, and learn to recognize the difference between cognition and reaction (so not as simple as it sounds) so that we can choose vs. react.  Don't fall outta the chair by jumping in the above example, and then having to explain to Nikki why I'm on the floor.  Again.  As much as we can, there are hard limits to certain things such as imminent death that the brain is going to do what it wants to do.  It's all rather fascinating.  And wrinkly.  Brains are very very wrinkly, or something has gone horribly wrong.  And phobias.  Phobias are also scientifcally interesting, research supports the idea that they are hardwired survival instincts gone wrong.  It's why there are certain common phobias that we hear about a lot.  Once upon a time they were useful.  My personal phobia is one of the Big Five of ancient survival, snakes.  The other four being fire, water, heights, and bugs.  Those killed a lot of our ancestors. 

I'm done rambling now, I have to go save Nikki from behind the dryer.  He trapped himself fixing it.  *amused*

​Thank you!  One of my personal beliefs in life is that you HAVE to go outside your comfort zone, it's the only way to expand it.    I grew up coastal in New Jersey, and clearly my decor convo here gives it away.   Nikki is less comfortable with the ocean, he grew up lakeside and far inland in western NY, but he takes me to an ocean once a year anyway either cruising, camping, or visiting my friends back in Jersey.  I will master this!

He even went to the stingray encounter with me, even though they freaked him out the first time.  That commercial for Carnival I think it was where the guy is saying how they are sorta like giant portabello mushrooms?  That's not inaccurate, they do have that look and structural feel, but it leaves out the sheer smooth softness of them to touch.  And if you follow the rules you can interact safely with them.  Let THEM do the touching.  In the Caribbean they have been fed by humans (their natural food, the people down there did it smart and didn't alter their food source to create any sort of dependency) in certain areas so long they will come to you and rub against you hoping you'll give them a shrimp tidbit.  They're amazing.  One of the females (you can tell by size, females of the common brown stingray species there are six to eight feet across, males are one to two) draped herself across my back like a cloak and just hung out there, it was an incredible moment. 

So since moving back to the beach is financially improbably at this time, I'm going to bring the beach to me me as much as I can in my home.   And the overlarge collection of turtles I have will look right in place!

Maybe!  It's our shift to guard the group right now!  *winks* I'm always sorta obsessed with figuring out how I (and others) work, and I pick up the weirdest bits of information.  Nikki's in the same schedule,  But Nikki seems more soft-set, it's a natural preference, but he can adjust fairly easily as opposed to my ridiculous insomnia and I actually get ill when I travel more than an hour or so out of my time zone. 

Nikki was all we should do Hawaii someday, and I"m all SERIOUSLY?  Alaska at four hours nearly killed me (and my son, we were so sick, and neither of us is prone to seasickness, and we were ill for three to four weeks after coming back, which is why the doctor explained all this to me)!  Hawaii is six!  And not having been there, I can't say for fully certain, but I'm fairly sure that they would prefer i NOT invade their space to spend a week or two praying to the porcelain god instead of Pele.  Sometimes Nikki knows me really well, sometimes I have to ask if my spouse has ever in fact actually met me.  LOL  Hawaii. 

Nikki can go and bring me back pictures and some of that white ginger perfume my aunt brings me back, that stuff smells good.  But only the good perfumes, the cheap white ginger smells weird.  May favorite perfume (and I think it was a knock off maybe of something else ) was called Muesli or something like htat.  It was close to the breakfast food but spelled slightly different, and it smelled exactly of lily of the valley flowers.  My aunt was constantly on me that it was an old ladies perfume, but my childhood is drenched in the smell of honeysuckle and lily of the valley, so I didn't care.  Let people think I smell old, I was wearing my childhood dang it!  I need to find some of that stuff, I'd forgotten about it.

Sorry, add.  I ramble in a path that doesn't even always make sense to me. 

Thank you, but definitely not anytime soon, our next few cruises are all planned with other people where it would be awkward.    Nikki still wants to chill out in the closet, but I will bookmark that for future use just in case.  

Edited cuz I hit the wrong button and sent too soon.  I'm not surprised that everyone was pretty respectful, cruises have their own sort of culture where everyone is super happy, super distracted by all the sights, sounds, tastes, and activities, and it's almost like everyone is your new best friend.  This will be our 8th time, and only twice did I meet people I would actively prefer not to have.  One was the drunk guy who fell on me in the elevater and was just going to stay there until teh guys from Oklahoma hauled him off me and rescued me (this guy was beyond three sheets to the wind, I'm surprised he wasn't dead from alcohol poisoning, I kept running into him all week and he was drinking ALL THE TIME, early morning to latenight) and the weird couple who pretended we weren't at the table with them at dinner one evening, which was weirdly awkward because it was a table for four and despite the fact that they chose not to be involved, it still FELT weird to try to carry on a conversation with each other that didn't include the two people across from us.  Most awkward cruise meal ever, and that includes the time my cousin K winged someone in the had with a flying escargot. 

I just get so unreasonably mad at the time I have to spend PLANNING a thing, ya know?  Whether it's a grocery meal plan or a complicated mmo raid.  There is this niggling 'why can't i just do it and figure it out as I go?' thought in the back of my mind.  One of the best thing Nikki ever gave me was my smartphone, the day I discovered the gps and realized I would never have to sit with a bunch of maps trying to figure out a route again was amazing(auto-correct less so, for a tool that is supposed to be helpful it sure has resulted in a LOT of embarrassment over the years!  And a quick aid when I get lost driving around my town.  Yeah, I do that.  Sometimes.  And you can even use it for walking directions, which was really helpful when we were in Central Park in NYC and had no idea how the paths work to get from museum to train.  

I don't know why my brain gets so mad about planning, it's obviously effective and I'm slowly learning skills for it.  But I guess as long as I learn that the behavior is useful, and it's okay to be mad about it while I'm working on a project and do it anyway, I'll have won some kinda prize, right?  Maybe I should tell Nikki to buy me a rubber duckie or something as my prize.  They're cute.  I wish I understood WHY I feel like that, where the emotional connections even come from, it's so randomly irrational. 

As for Nikki, tried explaining the intention vs. reception, and he tells me he hears and understands, then does it again that very day.  I think I may just have to bite the bullet on this one, its not going anywhere good and Ill just have to learn to not hear anything at all instead of 'I just don't want to be bothered with you" when he says that I guess.  Not sure how healthy that is, but it's can't be worse than the current dynamic right?

We're arguing right now about presents actually, he wants to know what i want for my birthday.  And really, the only things I want in general right now is to have this vacation settled and for my neighbors to stop being crazy, neither of which Nikki can put in a box and wrap.   And I think Nikki has already purchased just about EVERY turtle available in town for me over the years.  Hm...maybe I'll ask him to make one of the pinterest projects I liked.  Not the big three piece painting I linked earlier, that one is in multiple layers requiring a lot of space to do an drying time, but the smaller plank beach one.  That's doable in the time allotted, and I"ve seen Nikki's work, definitely has the skill for it.

I hope you have a great deal, and good luck finding that balance!  IT's the most simple and most complex thing in the world, learning to balance ourselves within and with the outside world in my personal opinion! 

As for 2017, I have no idea.  I learned a hard lesson in 2011, which was the year I thought it was all going to be fixed.  Nikki had just gotten the job back after a 2 year layoff of job hunting, take jobs with those 90 days before hirein where they know they are going to lay people off after 89, and scrabbling around to make ends meet.  So when he got his regular job with the good pay and the benefits back at the end of 2010, we thought 2011 was going to be the year we put it all back together.  Then maternal grandma announced lung cancer.  Paternal grandma had an accident in the care home, and we had to decide if we were going to use lifesaving measures or not (I was on the side of letting nature take it's course, her alzhiemers was so advanced she didn't know who she or anyone else was anymore or what was going on most of the day, she wouldnt' have understood post surgical care).  Then the aunt called after she passed, da stopped the burial and required an autopsy, which was inconclusive if she had been the victim of a legitimate accident or abuse.  Then a college friend of Nikki's died out of the blue, 34 years old I think he was at the time.  Then I fell down the stairs and broke my knee.  Then we got robbed.  Finally 2011 gave us a break we thought, and maternal grandma beat the lung cancer!  Yay!  Only to find out two months later it had mestatized to her liver and kidneys and she passed a week before the big surprise birthday we'd planned for her that turned into her memorial. 

Ever since, I have decided the year will be whatever it's going to be, and I don't pin any hopes on it.  LOL

I'm not sleeping with Nikki tonight, last night I had such an awful time trying to sleep waking up from the coughing, which is dramatically lessened by sitting up, that I think i"m hitting up ye olde recliner soon with my cozy microfiber snuggle blankets.  And probably the dog, I don't feel like dragging my lazy butt upstairs to crate her, look at my bed, and slink back down.  And he's geting up for work in a half hour.  LOL  The wind has finally died down and I didn't hear any really worrisome noises other than my cat jumping headfirst into the wall for some inexplicable reason known only to him, and possibly the wall.  Honest Bree, I do NOT have the laser pointer in my hand, I"m not even sure what I did with it and did not encourage that moment of feline misadventure.  I'll check the roof tomorrow to make sure though, my aunt assures me that is what you do in Ohio after every storm, gotta check that roof! 

My native sleep pattern is working out nicely though, most of the time I'm still up to say hi to him when he gets up, then I sleep during the day while he's at work, and am awake and happy to do whatever during the hometime, then the boring houseework while Nikki sleeps.  It's a good system.

At least I'm coherent and not on that weird Nyquil thing like last night, that's a plus.

I think it's way to easy to forget that those label's are the start of a conversation, not the end.  They're a way to indicate a common ground, I'm a nerd, I'm an animal lover, I'm a mother, but then the individuality needs to be explored after. 

Examples of what I mean: I'm a nerd, as in I like a lot of the nerdy entertainments and science, but I can't hack or program a computer.  I'm an animal lover, but I like to eat meat and believe in the cycles of life, including death(for the record I am againts eating endangered species though, they need to be preserved until they have a healthy enough population again, other animals are eating them they don't need to feed us too until a healthy balance can happen).  I'm a mother, but I don't fit in with a lot of of the other mothers who want to shield the children from everything, I believe just talk about topics to the kids and adjust them to the real world they'll have to enter when they are grown anyway in small steps as you encounter it.

Everyone has labels, mass mass plural.  No one has just one label.  Reven in ALL of them my friend!

I have never framed art, full confession I'm taking our photo to Hobby Lobby to get them to do it.    We have a really ridiculously expensive but ridiculously lovely black and white photo printed on photo board instead of paper that I need to get framed. 

This is htat art piece I fell hard for fyi.  https://www.etsy.com/listing/69376478/blue-beach-starfish-original-seascape?utm_source=Pinterest&utm_medium=PageTools&utm_campaign=Share