Holy Crap It's Clean?!

Ruby has been in Mendocino this week visiting her family, and when she left the cleaning bugs crawled out from under the couch and bit me in the ass. I always clean when no one is around to see my "process"... what a funny habit.

The FRIDGE is clean... as well as that space above the fridge. It's weird looking over there and seeing it. I accidentally destroyed one of Ruby's naruto pictures doing so - luckily I was able to find the exact same one online and print it out in color to replace it. I used the highest quality my printer can handle and, honestly, I think the new one is nicer.

I will post pictures of the clean apartment later, as the image belongs in a museum somewhere.

Apartments + No Solicitation - Posted Rules = Fail

Something is not right here...

My multiple run ins with the local Jehovas Witnesses and Latter Day Saints had lead me to put up a "No Solicitors" sign, despite the fact that our apartment complex has banned solicitation, because there are no signs posted to that effect and so they keep doing it anyway.

The other day, the apartment manager stopped by to fix a light fixture and informed me that we're not allowed to post signs, as there are rules to prevent us from needing them. That's nice, Alex, but how are they supposed to know unless there's a sign? There's no sign in the office window, there's no sign on the front of the complex, there's no sign out by the address post, nor are then signs on the fences, stairs, lawns, or anywhere else. How are they supposed to know that solicitation has been banned? Really, I want to know.

The way this system is set up, the only way they can possibly know, is if they solicit, and someone answers the door and tries to plow through their pitch to inform them of the rules. It defeats the point.

Why can't I avoid the whole thing by putting up a little sign? The complex having rules that only tennants and repeat offenders know about is almost as bad as not having those rules at all. If we don't communicate, how do we expect people to cooperate?


As for the sales people that visit me, if they look like normal people I tend to answer - for all I know it could be a neighbor needing help with something or a friend of my room mates, right?

And so just now someone knocked, and when I looked through the peephole it was this cute guy in casual clothes, so I assumed it was a neighbor and I answered. He introduced himself, made jokes, said he just wanted to get to know all the nighbors, then asked me if I'd vote for him... I'm thinking he's running for student councel (college town) or city councle, so I agree to listen.

Turns out he's just in a contest where he has to sell $45 magazine subscriptions and get calls from his customers praising him to win $1000 and some stupid cruise...

The cherry on top is that as part of his sales pitch he told me there's 50 other people in the contest who will likely drop by after him and if I bought a subscription I'd get a magnet to put on my door to let them know he'd already got me and they aren't allowed to bother me. Since I didn't buy one, every god damn one of them is gonna try to pull this song and dance, apparently.

It's almost like a war tactic...

How Would You Describe Me?

OMGz, Identity Crisis!!

Just for fun, as an exercise in self exploration through the perspective of others...

How would you describe me in two-five short paragraphs?

• Can you sum me up as a person?
• What characteristics stand out (or even sometimes glair)?
• What do you find most valuable as a friend, or just in general?
• What do you think my best/worst features are?
• What are my biggest setbacks/redemptions?
• What movie/folklore archetype would you label me as?*
• In D&D what class, race, and alignment would you use to RP as me in a fantasy setting?**

* ** Oh, Pleaaaaaase... I really want to know! <3

This is NOT some silly survey I got from MySpace or chain mail. I’m doing this myself just for fun, because with all the changes in my life right now I’m wondering how everyone else sees me as a person. I really, really appreciate everyone’s heartfelt and thoughtful responses. Thanks so much!

Vata, Minvashi...

When someone becomes lost, it is rare that they have choices as safe as the ones Zy and I are currently facing. Because my own perspective on the issues at hand are too close to the issue to allow me to face them rationally, I've been turning to the wisdom of others lately.

I have a favorite author; Morgan Howell (aka William Hubbell). He wrote Queen of the Orcs and A Girl Worth Ten Coppers - books I was unable to put down until they were done, and as much of a book worm and fiction lover as I am that's still saying something. Quite a lot of something, actually.

If you haven't read Royal Destany (Queen of the Orcs Book 3) this is going to be a spoiler, so back away from the blog...

Dar, or Dargu, the human woman who is adopted into Orcish society despite being a member of the filthy, vicious, dishonest human race, is able to do so because one orc, Koovak-mah, decides to give her a chance.

Through the first book, they build a bond. By the second book, they fall deeply in love despite their racial differences. In the third book, they are forbidden to be together although the chance that Koovak's mother may change her mind if Dar prooves herself worthy is part of the force the drives her to truely learn to be an orc. However, by learning to be an orc Dar learns to accept orcish tradition, and so in the end, when she has to become "thwada" to save the entire clan, she truely accepts what that means and honors it's consequences.

Thwada means "untouchable" and the kind of thwada Dar must become means that she is dead to the orcs, despite being very much still alive. Because of what she did for them all, being thwada makes her a "beloved memory" and an "honored ghost"... but it also means that no member of her clan may ever speak to her, acknowledge her presense, or even look her in the eye and so, she can never be with Koovak-mah.

Koovak-mah, however, is willing to defy tradition and run away with her, but Dar was Muth Mauk of her clan (One Mother/Queen) by the will of Muth La (Mother of All / God) and so she heartbreakingly tells him no, and to leave her because one should not speak to the dead.

At the advice of her adoptive orcish cousen, Zna Yat, she turns to a human man who loved her since the first book, but who's affection she had not returned because she was in love with Koovak, and it is indicated in the epilogue that they buy the farm he always wanted together and have daughters.

I emailed the writer, who I'd conversed with before, to ask him if Dar had settled for support instead of love, as women in midevil times sometimes had to do. He assured me in his own words that she did NOT; that she and Sevren did, in fact, end up truely loving eachother and finding happiness.

What he told me, that really struck me, and I think applies now to my personal life is this:

"I'm also convinced that Dar achieved happiness with Sevren. Kovok-mah was her first love, but it seems to me that often a first love's "job" is the teach you how to love. I believe that was Kovak-mah's lasting gift to Dar. Needless to say, she didn't end up as a Haus Frau. " - William Hubbell, Apr 29, 2009

With the trouble that Zyphre and I are currently facing, I remembered that email and realized that Zy was my first real everything. He was my first kiss, my first "time", the first boyfriend I lived together with, the longest standing relationship I've ever had (7 years this summer) and absolutely my first love.

Now that he's telling me we were too young, and that he feels like there's something he's missing out on that he won't ever be able to be happy without attempting to find on his own, my heart is breaking, but I wonder if it's right for us to just let each other go like that.

I don't want it to be, I love him so much, but thinking of it like that; him being my first love and his job being to prepare me for true love, it makes things sting a little less. I don't know. I really don't know how to feel.

Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a harsh phycotherapist who many say is much too tough on her listeners and patents. When defending this meathod of tough-love, she quoted Dr. Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University: “…when we get bad news, we weep for a while, and then get busy making the best of it. We change our behavior; we change our attitudes. We raise our consciousness and lower our standards. We find our bootstraps and tug. But we can’t come to terms with circumstances whose terms we don’t yet know.”