Ghosts of High School past...

Ah, the cruel joys of Facebook.

My old friend Michelle has been posting old photos from Back in the Day.


Here we have Michelle, Vernon, and myself in Michelle's bedroom in lovely Yuba City. This is so 80's I can't fucking stand it. This must've been around 1988.














Oversized clothes and zorro hats. We're STYLIN'.


And here we have some 1987 action featuring me with my Robert Smith/Siouxsie Sioux hair. You know what looks really horrible on redheads? Black hair. But I was so goth I was dead back then, and obviously didn't know any better. And actually, this was back before Goth was Goth in the US. We were "deathrock" once upon a time.




















What the hell is going on in this picture, anyway? Well, we have Ben, our main chauffeur Back in the Day(his car constantly burned oil and was named Big Jesus Trashcan after the Birthday Party song) sitting in the middle and foolishly allowing me and the lovely lady Felice to cut his hair. Which was an INSANE idea. Our version of a haircut involved Felice and I saying to each other, "OK, you start on that side, I'll start on this side, and we'll figure out the length later."

FOR REALS. And Ben STILL let us cut his hair.

The real scary part was that it turned out great.

Better Behaved

I've let myself become undisciplined in too many ways for the past two months.

Eating, drinking, drawing, training...I'm a slob. Apparently I should at least bother trying to adhere to a New Year's resolution...I just have to start now. I don't really know why I'm so weak right now, but I gotta stop before I hit an internal brick wall where things would become much worse. Ugh. D-I-S-C-I-P-L-I-N-E...I needs it.




















I may have a job in June. It seems like a long ways away, but it really isn't. But having that sitting in the back of my mind makes the current freelance I'm working on almost tolerable. I'm working for crap pay and it's almost worth it to have stayed on unemployment insurance. Grrrrr.

I'm hoping that some of my undisciplined ways is due to work or lack thereof...maybe a little bit of stability will get my mind back in the right place for me to be in control of myself again.




















I'm trying to change my routine hair-wise...I'm now shampooing my hair every other day, instead of every single day. It's quite a battle, which I didn't expect. Apparently most people don't shampoo every day, but I always have. My hair is oily at the roots but it's Splitendsville at the tips, so I began experimenting with the "no 'poo" routine a few month ago on and off.

SO totally not working for me.

The only way I can stand my hair the days I don't shampoo it is if I put some type of hair product such as mousse in it. But I can still smell my hair, and I disgust myself.

I've read about how other people just power through the greasy backlash stage hair apparently usually goes through when one goes without shampoo. I...just...CAN'T. Especially since I feel the heaviness of my hair and the skin on my face is getting even more oily because of my greasy unshampoo'd hair flopping in my face.

How the hell do people live like this?!



Garden update: my garden is being attacked by bugs. It sucks. Am looking into non-pesticide ways of deterring said bugs.


I'm now more hip than ever to be growing the garden since seeing Food, Inc. on PBS last week. OK, I like eating meat. It's delicious. However, I now truly realize the grotesqueness and downright evil that is factory farming. Factories are great for making cars, but not for making food. Especially meat. It's horrific. And...slaughterhouses wash meat in ammonia to kill e coli bacteria, instead of improving conditions within the slaughterhouses to cut down on e coli. The fuck?!

To be truthful, there wasn't a whole lot in the documentary that shocked me, other than the subsidies that keep corn crops growing, which is fed to cows, chickens and pigs, which are slaughtered horribly, and then sold to fast food chains to keep the food cheap. It's more expensive to eat a non-fast food diet in most of the US because of this setup. And anyone with half a brain wonders why health problems and insurance costs are skyrocketing?

So, in short...less corn subsidies, less eating of fast food factory meat, more eating of green leafy vegetables and one's health will improve. Got it.

But I'll never totally quit going to Johnnie's Pastrami for chili cheese fries after doing my taxes. A fat girl's gotta eat, y'know.

Back to the Random...

I'm still stuck in "one day at a time" land. It's beginning to feel more like, "Holy shit I'm in a helluva rut and I have to figure out what I'm going to do with myself"-ville.

I could sit here and bitch about what's wrong, but that really wouldn't accomplish much. So I'll try to come up with something to talk about that's at least mildly interesting while we're all procrastinating.














A second or third cousin of my mom's got in contact with me recently. He seems like a nice enough person and he occasionally talks to me via Facebook. He's big on geneology and is apparently tracking down my maternal grandfather's family.

This kinda-sorta opens up old treasure chests of thoughts that I put away years ago because I'm adopted. It's not a Big Deal that I'm adopted. It usually means that I joke with my non-adopted sister about how she's turning into our parents more than I am(and it's fucking hilarious...at least to me). My parents are good people and I don't think I would've been better off had I not been adopted.

The one thing about being adopted and not having any contact/real information regarding my biological parents is that I feel like I don't look like anyone. There's no family resemblance in the world for me. For whatever reason, that's kinda a Big Deal for me. I think it comes from how pervasive it is in society when people meet siblings/parents/whatever family combo they'll say, "Ah, I can see the family resemblance!" I still get that with my sister and my dad, especially. On the surface it goes back to being funny as hell, because really? I don't look like either of them. But then...I don't look like anyone else, either. I'm alone. And that's a little overwhelming at times.

Again, that's no reflection(pun semi-intended) on my parents. I can't help my feelings, and there's nothing that can be done about them, nor is there anything to do about them.

Would I be happy if I knew what my biological parents look like? I don't know if I'd be happy, but I'd know. You know?
















As long as we're reminiscing about Stuff That Won't Be Solved, I got all weirded out over this blog entry that I found about bullies.

I was ignored by bullies through most of grade school, but all of the sudden, I became a huge target for some people starting in sixth grade. It kept up through jr. high, where it's hell for just about everyone, but some choose to take it out on others in some very unpleasant ways, which makes that hell even more unbearable. I was yelled at, slapped, humiliated, had insults scrawled onto my locker in permanent marker, and was generally avoided at all costs. Good times! What's sad is that I remember a girl who had it worse...much worse than me. I wonder whatever happened to her...


Luckily in high school, I found friends who were as weird as I was, and (much to my parents' dismay) I shaved my head and had a place to hide from the assholes at my school. I don't know if my parents know what a real survival tactic that was for me.

Also, one of the original instigators of the Let's Make Sandra's Life So Ugly She Should Crawl Under a Rock and Die club dropped out in tenth grade to go work at the local Burger King. I wonder whatever happened to her, too.

I've had a couple of people from my Woodland days contact me through Facebook. They weren't my tormentors, so I've friended them. No biggie.

The paragraph from the Lessons my Bullies Taught Me blog that really, really got to me was this:

Since I'm eviscerating myself in public here, I'll tell you the truth: it's still my dominant feeling. When I am with people, no matter where I go (even online), I expect to be rejected. I assume that you will hate me, that you will seek to avoid me, that you hope I won't bother you by trying to talk to you. Every expression of acceptance is a surprise to me. I want people to be nice to me, but I never expect it. I expect people to reject me; I hope they will leave me alone. Niceness doesn't really factor into any of that.

I hate that I feel that way still, even with derby in my life, at my advanced age. How does one get over that? I don't know.

It makes me glad I don't have kids, because despite my own experiences being bullied, I wouldn't know how to help my kids if they got bullied. I don't have to worry about my cat being bullied...he kinda likes it.

Anyway, that's my time-wasting blog entry of the week for me. Back to "work"...

Warriors...come out and playyyyyyyyyy...

Last Saturday I did something non-derby related with a bunch of derby girls. We ran the Warrior Dash, which is a stupidly-fun 3.08 mile obstacle course involving going over hay bales, old cars, tunnels, cargo nets, crawling over logs, jumping over fire, and slogging through a mud pit.

Here we are at the start line:














Real athletes would've prepared for the races they run in. Not this girl. I didn't do anything...anything to prepare for this, even though I went to the website and got a semi-gander at the course. Because of all the cross-training and skating I do, I thought I had it in the bag, to be honest. Did I? Well...for the most part. Except for one thing.

Running.

Now, I jog a couple times a week, sometimes through my neighborhood and sometimes at the beach. But it ain't the same as running marathon-style. When I jog, it's at a slow pace and I alternate between walking and jogging often. That ain't the same as running almost a mile non-stop in the middle of a sunny, windy day in the dirt.

Oh, and my knee was bugging me. Confession time: Despite doing Tarametrics, I've been having knee issues for the past month. Some days it's not noticeable, other days I'm limping like an old lady. Because the Warrior Dash didn't have any place to sit down other than in the dirt, I ended up standing around like a moron for over two hours, and so I was limping even before the race.

Dumb!

In the end me and fellow Doll V. Lee came in around #8 and 9 out of our Derby Dolls group...it took us about 40 minutes to complete the course. Not too shabby, but I intend to improve for next year. For the record, it took me 36 minutes, 55 seconds to run the course. I came in #44 out of 265 in my age bracket.

Things I learned:

• Get an early start time.

• Bring my own chair to lounge in to save the knee.

• Actually train by running for reals.

• Come up with a fun costume idea that doesn't involve capes.

Here's a shot of me and V. Lee running in the distance, taken by Gori Spelling, Laguna Beyatch and Raven Seaward, who were right behind us:















Right after the race(I hope to post the muddy aftermath pix soon)we hopped in the car(after I washed off in Lake Elsinore...yick!)and drove to Valencia to a party. There's nothing like showing up to someone's nice house dressed in a semi-muddy shirt, wearing a Warrior Dash medal, stinking like a lake, and babbling almost incoherently about how much fun it is to crawl through rank, smelly mud. It's a good thing my friends are apparently a very tolerant bunch!

I'M GONNA BE FANCY

A few weeks ago an old friend caught up with me through this-here blog. Her husband is an even older friend of mine from "back in the day" when I still lived up in NoCal. She's really cute, really fun, and the both of them love Disneyland to an insane degree. Whenever we can, we try to meet up when they come out for their yearly week-long Disneyland Funfest. Anyway, I followed the link at her blog to her Ebay store.

Oh, what a delightful mistake that was.

She sells vintage clothes. Lots of beautiful vintage clothes. Eye candy for dayyyyyyys. And then I found Something. Something I MUST HAVE. Unfortunately I didn't have the presence of mind to save a large photo of it while the link was still active, but you can kinda see here. Yes, I won the bidding:














I know, I know. You're thinking, "Wow, that's a beautiful dress. WTF do YOU want with it?"

I WANT TO LOOK FANCY, THAT'S WHAT I WANT WITH IT.

I may not be able to fit in the damn thing, but that's what girdles are for. I don't know where or when I'll be able to wear it, but damned if I don't find a way to look fancy for some reason.

Just you wait.

Barbarians in the Backyard

For the past year I've been trying to avoid buying produce from supermarkets. Instead, I frequent the ten bajillion famers markets that abound here on the Westside. The food tends to last longer, be fresher, and is cheaper than the store-bought stuff. I'm not big on organic as I am on just being local. As in, buying garlic from California as opposed to China...yeah, I found Chinese garlic at a local supermarket when it was in season here. I was digusted.

ANYWAYYYYYY...

I guess the Dear Husband got influenced in the "fresh food" department by planting hot peppers, basil and oregano last year in the backyard. As in, dug in the dirt and everything. He'd gotten little boxes to plant basil and peppers a few years back, but nothing serious.

This year a garden has been planted in earnest. Yeah, that scares me, too.

We have the aforementioned stuff along with red peppers, spinach and zucchini. Which meant we had to expand our little dirt plot in the backyard. Where I did the majority of work when it came to digging, breaking up dirt clods, and throwing patches of lawn across the yard into the bushes. The DH didn't sit idly by...he made the parameters of said dirt plot.

While I was attacking the earth with various sharp instruments, the outdoor cats would wander by and stop to gaze upon my activity as if to say, "Why the hell are you digging around in our litter box? Are you going to start using it, too? If so, bring more sand!" Yeah, our garden is near where the cats shit. Charming.

Speaking of cats and boxes, here's Blue relaxing in one of the boxes that was used to bring in our little plantlings. His ear infection seems to be clearing up a bit, and I think he's beginning to gain a little bit of weight. Isn't he cute?
















Wide view of our Very Serious Garden.

OK, it's not very serious. We basically just decided on a whim to plant stuff again this year, so we disregarded when we were actually supposed to plant stuff and just started hacking at the dirt willy-nilly. I now call this area Barbarian Gardens:
















Closer, lower view of Epic Barbarian Garden:
















Close up on the spinach and last year's oregano. Apparently the oregano was supposed to die off since its an annual-type of plant. But they forgot to tell the oregano, so here it is:
















And in further cat news...

I took the old collars off of Blue and Kitty. They're in my yard more than anyone else's, and the collars were superfluous. Poor Kitty had a blue collar covered in white and yellow flowers. That's hardly the collar a Rugged Individualist such as Kitty would wear. And the magnet on it kept collecting rusty screws and nails, which was so close to Kitty's throat it made me nervous.

I'm going to get Blue a new collar, since I spent almost $500 on the little furry bastard for his ears. Poor thing hates getting medication from me, but he likes not puking. So do I, so we all win on this.

And...the Kitty Korpse Kount for 2010 has started.

This afternoon I was getting the bicycle out to run errands when I noticed Kitty standing the middle of the back lawn, looking intently at the ground. Suddenly, he snatches something out of the grass and jovially trots to the patio and drops it on the cement and starts chewing on it. I run over and identify the chew toy as:
















A very baby bird.

I don't know if Kitty actually killed it or if he found it on the grass, dropped perhaps by a crow or some other predator. I searched around the lawn where Kitty picked up the birdie, and found no other birdies. Thankfully.

Of course Kitty was very proud of himself. Even though I called him a carnivorous bastard, his response was to happily purr at me.