Campfyre Stories

Nope, it’s not a typo, it’s a phrase/word I’m coining.

It all comes down to the obligations you wind up feeling in relation to your blog.  I think that, for the most part, people start off writing for themselves, but at some point (sometimes at several points) we become all wrapped up in our "audience" and what they must think of us.

• I need to blog every day or people will stop reading.
• All my posts have to be public so anyone can read what I have to say.
• I have to reply to each and every comment so my readers know I care about them.
• I must apologize for a lack of time/things to say/[insert reason for not blogging] and explain myself.
• I must announce "breaks" from blogging so my readers don’t feel abandoned.

You know what?  (And understand that I say this as much to myself as anyone else).  GET OVER IT ALREADY.  The world does not revolve around us or around our blogs.  Life goes on, whether you go on vacation or become really busy or just need a break from the internet.  Maybe you lose readers, but let’s me honest here, few of your readers are or will become your friends.  Those who are/do will be there when you come back.  It’s true.

I’m reminding myself.

Finish Reading »

"Never stick your hands into fighting animals."

Good advice, surely, but not advice I ever thought I’d wind up giving.

On Friday, flowers were delivered to my door, in my name.  The card read: With deepest sympathy from The O P S.

Oooookay.  I have no idea what "The O P S" is.  The best I could come up with was Out Patient Services, but I would assume that there would be maybe a hospital name if that were the case.  My mother decided on Old People Society.  So, yeah.

I brought them to the memorial and a whole lot of people asked what the O P S stood for, but I couldn’t help them, since I didn’t know myself.  You could see lips moving while folks tried to figure it out - to no avail.  This lasted the weekend.  We all spent various amounts of time trying to figure out what The O P S might be and it became a bit of a running joke.  One of my brothers suggested I google it.  Heh.

Yesterday, back at work, one of my co-workers came up to me and asked if I got the flowers.  oooooohhhhhhhhh! I said.  I explained about the O P S to learn that it should have come from (initials rhyming with "the") Ops (as in operations).

Heh.  It was a fun mystery, while it lasted.

This has been a most incredible week.  I don’t even really know where to start.

Obviously, there has been a flurry of activity just in trying to get things settled.  The memorial for my father was on Saturday and there was a benefit concert to help with all the expenses he incurred on Sunday.  Both were amazing.  The sheer outpouring of love and the people who came to remember him…  well, I just don’t know what to say.  My dad had a LOT of friends.

It was amazing to reconnect with a whole lot of people, not the least of whom were my cousins who I hadn’t seen in 21 years, when I was 10 and they were 5, 3, 1, and -1.  I only got to meet two of them, but there was a certain measure of relief that came with finding out that there are more of us…  that it’s not just the immediate family that’s "weird" (in our way), but that it actually does run through the blood lines…  we’re all over the place and there are more of us.  More on that in another post, I think.  But other people as well - people who are ALSO my family, who watched me grow up, who knew me "back in the day".  It was hard, really hard, but it was also really nice to see these people, to remember them…  and to see the connections that my father helped to make and/or to foster.

The local newspaper, according to the funeral home, has recently raised their obituary rates so that they are taking extreme advantage of grieving families.  In a moment of protest, I decided to put his "real" obit online, which I’m really glad I did, if for no other reason than it has given people an opportunity to share memories of my dad and see some of the pictures.  I have been uploading pictures to my site and will probably try to put something together…  probably I should be using photobucket or something, but I’m not thinking nearly as clearly as I should/could/would like to…

I missed a week of work because last week THAT was my job.  Helping to put things together, slapping up a website, scanning picture after picture after picture, spending time with family, visiting the funeral home, helping to put the memorial together…  and grieving.  That was my job and, it sucks to say it, but I more enjoyed that than this pretending to be an accountant that I’ve been doing.  But, you know, life goes on, even in the midst of death and I furthered some connection and got some irons in the fire even during the mourning process.  My dad would have been proud of me for that, but, then, it didn’t take much to make him proud.

What are the other important things to say right now?  I think the most important one is just realizing how amazing my friends are.  The outpouring of support has been incredible and heartening.  Those who came to each remembrance were welcome and needed and came to where they best fit.  I needed emotional support at the memorial and I got it; I needed fun, conversation and a drink at the benefit and I got that, too.  I’m a really lucky person.

There’s so much more I have to say, but I’m too scattered, still, to try to piece them together.  So I’m gonna call that a recap of sorts and delve into the other things later after I come down a bit.

11: 11am this morning my father passed peacefully in his sleep.

He was 51 years old.

http://www.fyregoddess.com/paul

In addition to all the fucked up shit that’s going on behind the password, I’m sick.  And I hurt my back sometime over the weekend and I don’t know how.  It was pretty bad, to the point where I left work early on Tuesday and went to see a damned doctor.

When I got to the nurse, I explained to her what was going on and why I was there, and also told her about my history of back problems.  She was sympathetic, but there wasn’t really anything that she, the nurse, could do, so she sent in the doctor. 

Who walked in the room, looked me in the eye and said, "Just so you know, I don’t prescribe narcotics."

What the fuck?  I mean, seriously, here I am in excessive back pain and she thinks I’m a junkie?  All I want is for the pain to stop - for real, not for an hour.  I explained this to her and that I didn’t want any opiates anyway, because the risk of addiction is too great for (someone like) me.

As I explained my symptoms (oh yes, this story is in chronological order), she listened with a fully skeptical look on her face.  There was some sudden dawning when she determined that I have sciatica and explained that she wanted to put me on prednisone.  [insert confused WTF here]  So, being a smart person and one who does her research I asked "What are the side effects?"  She looked at me like "How DARE you question my methods and determination", sighed heavily and explained that it could have mood swings.  This, I explained, was unacceptable.  The things going on in my life (which I explained to her) do NOT allow for mood swings and I can’t have that.

She rolled her eyes at me and snotted "Well it’s only about 10% of the population that has mood swings.  Do you think you’re going to be one of them?"  Again I explained the situation to her, that I couldn’t have mood swings and if she thought it was a real possibility then we needed to find another solution.  After some huffing and puffing she decided that wasn’t what I really needed to worry about.

"One of the side effects is an increased appetite.  YOU, especially, need to be careful about that."  Now, see, here’s the thing.  I recognize that I’m a fat chick.  Not to the extreme of not fitting through doorways or taking up more than one seat on a bus, plane or in a movie theater, but I’m a BIG girl.  However, it’s not because I eat constantly.  It’s not even because I have a poor diet.  I’m not going to justify myself on my blog, but you know what?  This doctor has absolutely NO RIGHT to judge me (and it was superficial judgement) when she supposed to be taking care of my back problem.  At this point, an increased appetite would likely be a good thing, since I’m not ever hungry anymore and have to mostly force myself to eat.  However, I have not had an increased appetite, and even taking the infernal pills with food is hard to force myself to do.

Anyway, after all of that I’m on the damned prednisone and my back still hurts.  Not nearly as much, but still hurts.  And I’m sick.  And what I read about prednisone is that if you have any kind of infection, it will feed the infection, so I’m seriously thinking that that bitch of a doctor prescribed me something knowing I had a chest cold that actually made me sicker, and then told me not to take ANYTHING else - including Advil and Tylenol.  Thanks…  so when I cough until I literally puke and wind up with a screaming headache and my back hurting from the force of the cough, I should just…  nothing.  Great.  Thanks.

I fucking hate doctors.  I really do.  I can’t even count how many shitty doctors I’ve had who have lied to me or giving me misinformation or, whatever you want to classify what this doctor did/is.

You may not believe me when I say this, but I am trying desperately to find the good.  Maybe early next week I will have some, but it is awfully elusive at the moment.

… is that you have to live up to it all the time or you’ll lose it.

I have this fabulous story that I want to tell you.  It’s incredibly funny and rather disturbing, but I was asked "Don’t tell [someone who reads this blog]" and I promised I wouldn’t.  Which sucks.  Because I really want to tell this story and not have to wait (probably) 6 months before the "secret" (such as it is) gets out and I am free to talk about it.

I have a lot of those.  I have some blackmail-worthy information on one of my friends, which I would never actually use against her, but it’s fun to threaten.  I have shared experiences that would lose some measure of sweetness in being shared with others, or at least shared en mass, such as by blogging.  I have stories that don’t belong to me and don’t relate to me, so I don’t feel comfortable telling them…  at least yet, but more on that some other time.

I suppose that’s part of the problem with blogging.  When you can’t actually tell stories because you’ll betray a trust.  There are a large number of people who would never see this blog, or at least not before whatever "don’t tell" information did actually get to them.  There are many stories where one can change the names and details in order to grant that anonymity to the subject of the story…  this is not one of those cases.

What can I tell you instead?  All other events either pale in comparison or fall into the category of "not for public consumption".  I’m trying to make a point to write public entries at least as often as I write the private ones, because I know there are people who read my blog and haven’t asked for the password.

Shall I tell you about the near-constant parade of people through my apartment that has resulted in me finding some very interesting things left behind?  "What do you want me to do with your bra?" is a strange question for one straight woman to ask another and it’s not the least of the questions I’ve had to ask or answers I’ve gotten.  Shall I complain of physical ailments and how I never get sick, except when I do, and then it’s with a vengeance?  Shall I tell stories that don’t belong to me, of Spawn or the Child of Chaos?  Probably not, since the last time I told one of Spawn’s stories (not on the blog, but on the phone) he said to me, "You weren’t there, Mom.  You don’t really know."  Ouch.

I have a couple of posts that are in the works.  By that I mean they’re in my head and I’m still trying to figure out the phrasing.  I have a couple that have been scrapped after the events of the last month (oh my gods, has it really been a MONTH?), because my outlook is different.  What’s important now is not the same as what was important then.

I suppose instead of telling tales I’m not supposed to share, I’ll just talk about nothing really for a while and then wrap it up.  The promises I make to myself of what I’m going to write are starting to nag at me, so I really should start on that.  In the meantime, at least I’ve written something.

I was about 8 blocks from home, shut off from the world, immersed in some mind-wasting, time-numbing game on Daisy when it started.  I was having a bad day anyway; I overslept and had to walk a half mile (ish, I haven’t measured) to get into work (after spending an hour on the bus), I stayed late and walked another half mile to the bus stop.  The bus was late, the people were annoying and now the infernal bus was just stopped - not at a red light, not at a bus stop, just in the street.

Some idiot college student was standing in front of the bus.  In the street. 

The driver was shouting at him to wait at the bus stop and he would pick him up (drivers can be ticketed for stopping anywhere other than a designated bus stop), and motioning to the bus stop not 20 feet away.  The kid, meanwhile, was screaming "LET ME IN!  OPEN THE DOOR!" and threatening to call the supervisor, then pulling out his cell phone and attempting to call.  Standing in front of the bus.

The driver called in on the radio to explain the situation to the supervisor.  At some point in this 10-15 minute drama, the kid finally got on the damned sidewalk and (lo and behold!) the driver pulled up to the sidewalk and (wait for it!) opened the door to let the kid on.  Now you’d think that this would be the point where the bus started moving again, but noooooooo.

The kid and the driver are at the front of the bus SCREAMING at each other about what was actually said and who was right and who was wrong.  This stupid kid claimed that the driver told him to get on another bus and was making obscene gestures, which was not at all the case.  Almost the entire rest of the bus (except me and one other highly exasperated person) shouted their agreement with the driver, but the kid KEEPS SCREAMING and we are still not moving.

Finally the kid sits down, but he keeps muttering and seems to be picking a fight with random woman on the bus.  He rides for (I wish I were making this up) 6 blocks and gets off the bus.  In the time he wasted screaming and being an entitled asshole, he could have walked there and I would have been home a good 15 minutes earlier.

Today is Friday, but it happened yesterday, so FOAD Entitled College Idiot.

I sometimes hate living in a college town.