Pete, the male diamond dove, has gone into mating season.  Apparently someone forgot to tell him that it’s fucking cold outside and birds should be hunting for seed not looking to score!  It must be nice to be young and horny.

If you’ve never heard a diamond dove mating call, then you’re in luck!  There’s this totally awesome youtube video of it.  I played it a few times this morning and Pete finally shut the fuck up.  Put it on loop at max volume and you’ll know what the last 48 hours have been like in my house.

…and to make it all the more fun, I’m finally getting over the plague and I’m coughing up all the mucus that has accumulated in my body.  Marbles of lime green slime.

Being a mom cured me of a lot of my sensitive stomach but lime green snot marbles still make me want to ralph.  So I did the smart thing – I took some Mucinex.  What they neglect to tell you is that the mucus has to come out SOMEWHERE.  Which means your poo will be extra greasy about 2 hours after your first dose.

So, fun stuff.  I’m a giant virus so I’ve been working on photoshopping for a bit.  If you look to your left, you’ll see some of the new pictures I’m getting on Flickr.  Or you could click this link.

I totally got some new clothes I need to blog about.  Lots of cutie t-shirts, an A.B.S. coat, and some new tights.  Pictures soon!

Looking back over my blog, I’m realizing how helpful it is to have the ability to tell when certain things happened.  I’m having to document my medical history again (this time for a rheumatologist) and I can actually give dates.  Otherwise it would look like “a little while back I hurt very badly and it lasted for a… while.”

Reading back, I get reminded about stuff like “wow, that was THIS year?  I don’t remember that at all!”

One thing that has really stood out is that I’ve forgotten my personal policy of looking at the blessings instead of the wishes.  Wishing doesn’t make anything worse but my own mindset – I’m a happier person when I focus on the end result and the blessings that come from getting there.  I don’t do so well with goals.  It seems like setting a goal is the quickest way for me to either instantly succeed (so I don’t have to pay attention to it anymore) or to rebel against doing it (so I don’t have to pay attention to it.  )

I know my personality and I’ve always been this way.  I’m better at doing than trying.  (Thank you, Yoda.)  I have yet to find a motivational idea that works more than once for me.  A paper chain where I tore off a link every 1k words worked for NaNo in 2006.  It never worked again.  Writing prompts work for about a week – I can’t make it through an entire month of prompts.  Book lists work until I encounter a book that I’d have to consume massive amounts of alcohol to read.  365 days to a goal books never work to make me read the Bible in a year, clean up clutter, stay inspired, make art, etc… By January 5th, I’ve read the whole book and thought “what if I think July 12th is a good idea but March 2nd is crap.”

So, I’m blessed to know my own personality.  I’m blessed to have a blog that lasted for more than a few weeks.  I’m blessed to have access to medical care and I’m blessed to be able to bitch about it when I get mad and then am able to find DIFFERENT medical care if I need to.

Today I have a lot of sewing to do, so I’m thinking it’s going to be a watch TV on that computer monitor while watching the internet on this monitor and leaning back with my sewing stuff.  I have a ton of pictures to download and edit but I can do that later.  Today, I need to accomplish something.  Trying doesn’t make my brain happy – accomplishment does.

This page right here is a good one.  It has tons of valuable information in a well laid out and stated manner.

One thing I’ve found is that whether you’re a service professional of any kind (including the dirty kind) or a consumer, is that both people need to be treated like humans.  Sometimes we forget the other person is a human and at times we act like we are super-human.  We can neither elevate or demote a person from the simple fact that they’re a person.

Both people are professionals at something.  Both need to walk out of a meeting with their shoulders squared and with their appearance of respect intact.

_______

One of the things that has eaten at me lately is this comment:  Given your state of mind…

My what?  My state of mind because I’m hurting? Or the one where I’m overwhelmed and stressed out even when I’m doing a small fraction of what I did 3 years ago.

It’s normally followed by this comment:  have you tried x thing?  You won’t know unless you try it and follow the directions precisely.

Oh yeah?  How about that whole infertility thing.  People actually told me “you just need to do it more often.”  This feels just like that time.  Why should I give up the small things that give me pleasure just because it MIGHT make everything better.  I MIGHT be wrong about Jesus but that doesn’t mean I’m going to convert to another religion just in case I may come back as a june bug.  I’ve tried enough “mights” and enough “it worked for people I know.”

How about a clinical trial where it worked?  How about something more than anecdotal evidence?  Ya know a few years ago I was so willing to try anything that may or may not work that I was using egg white as a lubricant.  Turns out my uterus was too fucked up to carry a baby – so how about we do some tests and maybe look at the results before you tell me that my diet is unbalanced and I need to give up cookies or chocolate or some other nonsense?

I’m just a human who has human emotions and lives a human life.  And I’ve got to live it!  What happens if I’ve given up everything that could be bad for me by the time I’m 40 and moved to a warm, humid climate and STILL hurt all the damn time?  What then?  Then I’m 40 years old, going out to rediscover the joys of Americanized Chinese food and slaw dogs at Dairy Queen.  By 45, I’ll be fat and diabetic just because I’ve been catching up at all the fun stuff.

My three life goals are to never be old, fat or ugly – so I guess that option is out.  You can put some slaw on that hamburger for me and yes, I’d like a super-sized soda.  Thanks.

Have you ever said that to someone?

You know what I mean – you’re watching someone get frustrated with a computer and they slam their hand down on the keyboard or randomly start pressing keys.  You know they aren’t going to magically make it better and THEY know they aren’t going to somehow fix things, but dammit, they’re putting the smack-down on it anyways.

If anything, it’s going to make the computer problem worse and it’s going to make things harder and now there’s a bruised hand in the deal.

People are much the same way as computers.  They have buttons.  When pressed correctly, functions that are useful but may take a bit of processing to run but the outcome is favorable.  Certain buttons cause a self-check.   Some let you look closer at the files and drivers, and some show you programming that’s running in the background.

Profound, isn’t it?

It’s also very true that if you push a person’s buttons all at once (or overplay your hand, if you like poker terminology) then not only are you going to end up with the same ole malfunction, but you’re going to have a bruised hand… and if you hit it too hard, it’s not going to work anymore.

I have a few buttons.  Quite a few.  I don’t react well to having someone slam my buttons because they’re frustrated.  For example…

1.  Call me a drug addict

This one will create instant and intense feedback.  You can accuse me of damn near anything and I’ll laugh it off.  Truth is, I’ve never done an illegal drug in my life and neither has Shaun.  Ever.  I don’t mix meds, I don’t get high, and I absolutely don’t put anything in my body that will endanger the people around me.

Now, I don’t care if you smoke dope or do whatever.  I’m not pushing my beliefs on anyone.  However, I do have children who were exposed to meth production and I’ve counseled many teens with drug problems.  I’ve seen some really shitty stuff while growing up.  One of my friends who lived near me had a step-dad who smoked and grew a lot of dope.  One day she comes home from school to find the front of his face blown off – I heard the scream from my house.  He was still alive, even after wedging a deer rifle up under his chin. I don’t feel too sorry for him – I feel really bad for HER.

This is not to say if you say “bitch, you must be high” in jest that I’m going to knock you down.  I won’t.  However, if you honestly accuse me of doing drugs, I will have some feedback for you.

2.  Tell me I make things up or that it’s all in my head

I can tell the difference between fiction and reality.  Promise.

I once had an entire set of people believing I was a boy, even though I had my gender in my profile and photos of myself online.  I can tell stories but they’re mostly see-through and hardly ever serious.

In my other life (my not a fiction author persona) I’m a good analyst and give you the data without any massaging or glossing.  Do you need a graph?  OK.  A diagram?  Got it.  Those facts aren’t changing just because they’re prettier.

And you better believe that if I’m paying YOU anything, I’m not telling you a lie.  It just makes the job harder and makes it take longer.  When I’M the client, I’m not looking for attention, for money, for fodder for my comedy act, or for whatever deal that we have to last any longer than it absolutely has to.  I want it fixed, I want it over.  I come prepared and I expect service and quality.

3.  Assume that I’m an idiot and/or assume I assume you’re an idiot

Most of the terribly smart people I know could pass as hare-brained, stupid-ass derelicts.  They do this on purpose so people won’t fuck with them like “quick, what’s 182 x 397?”  Bitch, I don’t know.  Go the fuck away – I’m trying to drink this latte and pretend I’m not trying to figure it out in my head.

This just means that I assume every random idiot I meet may just be the second coming of Albert Einstein.  That dude looked a little crazy, too.  If you’re an average, all-American stereotypical person, then good for you.  I’m going to assume you do a good job at your chosen profession because you CHOOSE to.  Doing a good job has not much to do with your IQ.  It has a lot to do with your attitude and your dedication.

In return, I like for people to assume that I’m good at what I do and that I’m not an idiot (even if they can’t tell by looking.)  I believe that I can know a little something about someone else’s profession and still not show disrespect to their skill or judgment.  It’s like I can tell when the wheel on my car is a little wobbly and I can tell you “it seems like a problem with the front driver-side wheel.”

That doesn’t mean I’m saying “I know everything about front driver-side wheel problems and I think you should take a look at the bearings, because this doesn’t sound like a brake problem.”  It also doesn’t mean that I expect you to just take my word for it and just disassemble it without driving it first.  I’m not saying “I just need a grunt to do the dirty work.”  I’m giving you my experience that I think is relevant, now it’s your turn to ask questions to discover information that you KNOW is relevant.

It furthermore doesn’t mean that because my profession line of your profile says “web related stuff” that I went to some Chevy-hater website and learned all I could about common fuck-ups.  I didn’t just look this up on the internet – if I did research its so I can get a feel for what information to present to you from MY experience in a less than idiotic manner.

Why?  Because I heard my dad say all the time I was growing up “and then she said it sounds like GRRRrrrrrRrrrSCRREEEEEAAAACH and then it felt like when the carnival ride is about to time out – you know how it gets real slow and exaggerated before it stops… then later it turned out she had a windshield wiper that didn’t work and a blown taillight.”  I don’t want to be dinner-time conversation and I don’t need everyone in the general area to look at me like I’ve grown a green spike out of my ass.

4.  Tell me that my facial expression is somehow disrespectful

Ok, you self-absorbed little shit, who are you to think my face has anything to do with YOU?  Most of the time this happens, I’ve got a migraine and I’m making the “do you smell that?  I think one of our kids just shat themselves” face.  I don’t know it because my face feels like it’s full of sand and I’m attempting to be part of normal society.

I’m not wrinkling my nose up because you walked by and I hate people who <insert characteristic you’re overly sensitive about.>  I don’t think you smell funny or that you have on stupid looking clothes or that you should rub some conditioner on your kids’ head.  Actually, I would probably think those things if I had it in me to NOTICE you. If you were walking by and you happened to be 700 lbs in hot pink spandex, I may notice you out of the group of people in the area.  I absolutely did not notice your ass who was 15 feet away from the 700 lb hot pink person but in the general line of site.  I don’t care if you were dressed in head to toe Coach patterned anything and had bright yellow cabbage patch hair done up in pig-tails – I swear I didn’t see you.

When in pain, here’s the way things are noticed:

1.  Anything in the epicenter of the pain.  If I have pain in between my shoulders, I’m not wearing a bra because it would damn near kill me.

2.  Anything that aggravates the pain.  If I have a migraine and you walk by smelling like you just bathed in a vat of peach candle scent, then I will notice you and I will vacate the area and leave you to clean up the vomit.

3.  Anything that is shoved into my face so that I’ll notice it.  That’s because people who know me know that when I get the “do you smell that?” face on know that they need to dress up in bright orange and do the chicken dance to get me to pay attention to them.

… and they have to be yelling “CYNDI, did you see that cabbage-patch headed bitch back there?”  Um, no, I didn’t.  What?  You want to take Alyssa to Babyland?  Ok.  Sounds good.  “No, I don’t mean I want to drive to Clermont – I mean did you see that girl with the yellow pig-tails?”  No… what?  Someone did that?

So, for your holiday season, just remember to be nice to your keyboard.  It doesn’t need your frustrated ass banging on it like cops on a screen door.

mantle with stockings

Originally uploaded by cyndollins

Normally, on our mantle we have our CD books that house the discography collection. (Remember the Circa that has where each CD is housed documented? It refers to those books.) On either side of the books were hurricane lamps that I picked up at Wal-Mart on clearance. Over them were photos of our trip to the aquarium in etched glass frames from Ikea.

Well… apparently faux leather and paint stick to each other. The first set of books I pulled down had to be pried off and in the accomplishment of that, I knocked over not only the hurricane lamp but the photos over it. The lamp shattered, the frame separated from the hanger on the back, and all that was left was a steel circle from the rim of the lamp.

After we cleaned everything up, I told Shaun that I was not removing the others. Either I was too short to get the proper leverage or my “don’t touch fragile things” karma was still in effect. He took off the ones in the middle and then had to pry off the one on the left.

It stuck.

It came loose.

It knocked down the other lamp.

The lamp took the photos with it.

All that remains is a stainless steel circle.

So, our living room was involuntarily redecorated. At least the clock wasn’t harmed in the hanging of Christmas stockings!

One of the hardest things for me to do is to tell the difference between behaviors that the children have because of the abuse they went through and just their natural personality and age based behaviors.  There are some things that are pretty obvious.

Climbing the counters to steal candy off the top of the fridge – age related behavior.

Grabbing a kid’s crotch at school – abuse related behavior.

Breaking toys when mad – age related.

Smearing poo on the walls – abuse related.

But what about the other stuff?  Things like acting out for attention, being a know-it-all, and competing with siblings and other family members for attention.  It could be related to an attachment or anxiety disorder or it could just be that’s how they are naturally.  (I know plenty of grown-ups who are know-it-all attention whores and I’m sure they were born that way.)

It’s hardest with Alyssa because she is so much like me but also so much unlike me.  She considers herself a small grown-up who has what it takes to take care of other people and who believes that grown-ups need to earn her respect.  That’s all just like I was as a child.

Then she also refuses to do her work at school or learn things just for the fun of it.  She’d rather make friends and play at school than do her part.  That is so unlike me – I always wanted to please adults and impress them with my mad knowledge skills.  I took control by exceeding all expectations.  She takes control by manipulation then acts out when people don’t comply.  I’m a perfectionist and hardest on myself.  She seems to believe that people should just give her stuff because she’s adorable and smart.  If I wanted something, I would figure out how to get it.  If she wants something, she just takes it.

So how do you tell?

If you want to see pretty Christmas lights this year, go to Stone Mountain or Rabbittown.  Seriously.  I think I live in the best place on earth, but I’ll tell you – I’m moving to FL for the winter from now on.  I’ll see y’all in March sometime.

Do not come to Lake Lanier.  (a quick note about privacy – if you read more than one blog post or look at my Flickr page or even my Etsy page, you know my name.  I’ve been in the phone book since I moved into this house 10 years ago.  I’ve lived in Hall County since I was 3.  It’s not like you have to do detective work to find this bitch right here.)

Here’s what they are selling you.  Here’s what you’re getting, in part 1 and part 2. Not only that, the prices are RIDICULOUS.  For the amount of money you just spent to drive through the biggest electric bill in the South, you could have raided the package (liquor for you yankees) store, gotten shit-faced with your entire family, and watched the YouTube video of the house that has lights synced with the Trans-Siberian Orchestra 500 times.

Otherwise, your now broke ass got this:

Here’s why I’m personally interested.

To get to Lake Lanier Islands, you have to take I-985 to Exit 8, which is Friendship Road.  When we moved there, it was called Exit 2 because it’s the 2nd exit from the beginning of the interstate.  Exit 4, which is now the Mall of Georgia area, was Exit 1 and the only shit on it was a Wal-Mart and an Ace Hardware.

Here’s what it looks like now:

When I was 12, we moved to Countryside Village.  If you read booshy’s posts (and hopefully you did) she talks about the McDonalds.  Directly across the street from that McD’s is Countryside Village.  It existed way back before Friendship Road had shit like grocery stores and fast food restaurants.

Can’t tell what Countryside Village is from the website?  That’s because they don’t want to tell you.  It’s a trailer park with about 700 homes in it. The only entrance or exit is the one that you can see from McDonald’s. Now it has a security gate on it to keep out people like me who are going to see my parents, my grandmother, my siblings, and my auntie who ALL live in the trailer park.  Every time we drive up to that gate and I have to call my mom on their little buzzer phone I need a xanax.

Why?  Because it’s a 700 unit fucking trailer park with a security gate.  Consider that every home has an average of 2 cars (6 in my family alone) AND a classic car AND a motorcycle or three, this is a lot of petroleum fueled product moving in and out of this place.

Here’s a fun game – how to find a drug dealer.  Drive through the trailer park and find the blacked out Escalade parked in front of a mobile home that cost $15,000 brand new.  Odds are that’s a drug dealer.  That drug dealer gets a key card to get in the trailer park and so do the folks that stay with him.  I’m a suburban housewife whose family – the ENTIRE thing – lives inside and I can’t get a key card?

There’s a term for this in city planning:  clusterfuck.  It is a traffic NIGHTMARE 24/7 every day starting at Thanksgiving until the end of the year.

When I was in school, Hall County only had 5 high schools.  I went to West Hall.  Here’s how you get there.  You go all the fucking way up Friendship Road (the nights of lights route, y’all) and take a right onto McEver.  Well, it used to be McEver.  Now it’s Peachtree-Industrial Road.  This is about a 15 minute trip in regular, every day traffic.

7:00 – go crank the Malibu and let it warm up while you finish your hair and makeup.   7:15 – leave the house.  7:30 – get to school, see what your crew is up to, bitch about homeroom.  7:45 – school starts.

The Friday after the Friday after Thanksgiving, here’s how it goes.  7:00 – crank the Malibu and let it warm up.  7:15 – leave the house.  8:45 – arrive at school because the line to the Nights of Lights is ALREADY backed up to the interstate.  The alternative to getting to school late was to ride Bus 712.  You could buy both a crack rock and a crack whore under the age of 13 on that bus.  (Here is the reason I have never even tried an illegal drug – you grow up seeing THAT, you’re not going to want any either.)

Friends, buy some Captain Morgan and put this on repeat.  Enjoy!

This nap is kid tested and Collie approved

Originally uploaded by cyndollins

I may not have mentioned it before, but Chickpea’s psych eval says – and I quote – “this kid is too smart for her own good and if she’s not constantly challenged, she’ll create disaster and chaos every day of her life.”

So we signed her up for a dual-immersion charter school that teaches in 90% Spanish, 10% English and has a few hours of Mandarin Chinese a week. They do 9 hour days with no naptime in Kindergarten.

…and this, dear friends, is my beautiful angel not creating disaster and chaos.

After the afternoon nap, though, her reset button is hit and disaster and chaos reign once more.

*edited to add: her IQ is almost 30 points lower than mine. I was a TERRIBLE child even while learning Latin and Greek in elementary school. I could tell you with clinical accuracy how I was going to fuck shit up.

*also edited to add:  I really should reread my psych eval.  It was very entertaining to read the first time.  Our team at work had all our evals done and then we got team-building based on our psychological needs as a group…  yes, that went well.  Totally.

Yes, this is another post about my damn external hard drives.

One in particular – the one that has only 26G of info on it but is going to take me a lifetime to clean up the file structure.  This is what happens when you use a portable hard drive to bail you out in situations of inevitable computer fuckwaddery.  In business terms this is called a “clusterfuck.”  It’s not a good place because someone always ends up with a big toe up their butt.

When you know a computer is about to die – say it sounds like a Toyota with a bad belt (which sounds a lot like a sewing machine) – you should absolutely get all your valuable info onto a backup drive as quickly as possible.

You should however, not name it “shit to file” and then forget about it.  Because… then… years down the road you will have something that looks like:

shit to file 1

shit to file 2

mobile uploads

photos off the old computer 1

photos off the old computer 2

image backup from 2006

Q3 2007 Projects

aa – wallpapers

aa – anime

aa – anime 2

(Yes, I know it’s not alphabetical.  I don’t organize by file name in my head unless you tell me to.)

Here is the part where I whine about naming conventions and how if you don’t use them you end up with duplicate files and lost files.  This new keyboard squeaks though, so every time I hit the space bar it chirps.  So you just fill in the whining.  Deal?

This is the part where I say “if you follow my Flickr page, you’re going to see a ton of old and/or odd shit pop up while I work this drive out.”  Because, yes, it is my photo drive.  If it were my music drive you so totally wouldn’t get to benefit from that.

Music drives are EASY to form a file structure.  It goes BAND -> ALBUM -> TRACKS where ALBUM = Title of the CD [year].  I even have a music drive bibliography in Circa format that references where the CD is stored and which albums I don’t have yet.  (Shaun and I have an extensive collection of underground/independent Christian rock and metal.)  I also have notations of which ones still need to be converted to MP3s and backed up.

So, photo drive, why aren’t you cool like that?  Why do you have no obvious file structure?

The first rule of tech support:  is it plugged in?  Start at the wall and work your way out.

(Shouldn’t the first rule of tech support be not to talk about tech support?)

I should have remembered this.  It’s been forever since one of us makes this hair-brained move but it does happen.  See, it doesn’t matter how l33t you are, you’re going to eventually leave something unplugged.

This time, I was mad at the MyBooks for days because they wouldn’t connect to the old computer.  (The new one had a female adapter problem – none of the firewire or USB ports would work so we traded it for another new one that’s not set up yet.)  They always connected to the old one before!  They worked perfectly!  WTF?

Today I got out my favorite little LED flashlight and started at the wall, muttering about the first rule of tech support.

The power strip is plugged in to the wall.  Check.

The power cable is plugged in to both the power strip and the computer.  Check.

The switch on the back is turned on (our gamer system has a separate on/off switch on the back that overrides the front power button.)  Check.

The firewire is plugged into the MyBook. Check.

The firewire is plugged into the computer.  Check.  Wait – why is it wiggling?  The entire port is wiggling.

I took off the side and realized the problem.

The firewire card was not plugged in… at all.  It was in its little space just hanging around with no screw to anchor it, not even touching the slot its supposed to plug into.

Word for the wise:  If you’re going to take the side off your computer while it’s turned on AND it has a fan in the side panel, keep your hair out of the way.  Not only did I get my hair sucked into the fan while it was running, but it hit my thumb and THAT FUCKING HURT!  It’s just a bit of plastic running at a moderate RPM but it bruised the crap out of my thumb.

So everything is plugged back in and working now.  I can’t find the screw that’s supposed to anchor it, so it’s still a little floppy but at least it’s making contact.

Contact is good.  Now, I just need to find a screw!