You know, sometimes it’s something little that makes your day. I sit and read my feeds and see something that’s either really sweet, or slap-knee funny, and just puts you in a good mood. Here are a couple examples of such that I ran across today:

“Portnoy’s Picnic…” by Sad Old Goth and “Honey, I’m Home” by SondraK.

Of course, I had meant to try out the Cuss-o-meter (courtesy of Rachel Lucas) on my site, but won’t have time to do so until after I get home.

So, until then … Go. Play. Wander.

We had an absolutely FULL weekend this weekend. Our furniture delivery took a bit longer than I had anticipated. Apparently the setup of the bed wasn’t quite as easy as the salespeople had us believe (it never is!), but what aggravated me was that they forgetting to deliver some accessories to the bed. Oh well, it’ll be here later this week, and it wasn’t essential … but still …

Jim and I popped by OmegaCon for a bit Saturday. (at the time of this post, the OC site is down) We saw TONS of cool stuff, met lots of interesting people, and came home with a few goodies, cool swag, t-shirts and other geeky goodness, an Asian version of a Swiss Army knife, and my (early) birthday gift from Jim: a black on red Victorian/goth dress and corset set (courtesy of Lady Heather, who was fabulous dealing with all my questions and helping me with my dress and corset!).

Complete Photoset:

Among the many we met were: Dixie Hallows, 501st Legion (Alabama Garrison), Southeastern Browncoats, Fiona’s Fancies, Iron Age Remains, Lady Heather’s Fashions, Legendary Leatherworks, Pegasus Publishing (t-shirts), Renaissance Fashions, Brain-On (he and his girlfriend were very sweet!), Mark Helwig, Mitch Foust (artist of that lovely Dark Phoenix print I bought!), Capt. Comics (who sold me the Bleeding Edge Goth doll).

We had a great time, and I will DEFINITELY be looking forward to going back next year!

I’m pleased to say that things with Soldiers’ Angels are going well. I’ve been busy mailing out donation requests to a few local businesses who’ve expressed interest in the organization and/or donating, so hopefully I’ll be getting some help in that area. I will say this: Intuit’s (the makers of TurboTax) It’s Deductible online site has been a great way to keep track of out of pocket costs that can be deducted from next year’s return.

Hooray for helpful tools!

And last but certainly not least: got a bit of an “Aww…” moment, courtesy of BlackFive.

I’m finally starting to catch up with my feeds and wanted to comment on a few here…

First and foremost, there was a bag featured on fellow Cotillion member RightWingSparkle earlier today that I would *love* to have! Nothing says, “Hands off, creep!” like this … don’t you agree?

And via my Funny Pages, here’s a little insight as to why I don’t trust “men’s intuition,” hehehe…

In the “You have GOT to be fscking kidding me!” category, there were several gems courtesy of Rachel Lucas that I wanted to highlight, but my absolute favorite has to be this one:

That’s a picture of a padded lightpost in London. Apparently there are a lot of people practicing “unsafe texts” (walking and texting) and are harming themselves by walking into things and people. I say screw the padding, that’s natural selection — if they are stupid enough not to watch where the hell they are going, that’s their tough nookie isn’t it?

In the “Ewwwww, that’s so wrong!” category, we have this via Sad Old Goth:

The jokes pretty much write themselves here, and that’s just disturbing on so many levels.

On the personal front, Jessie is still sick but has finally shaken free of her fever. Getting her to actually TAKE her meds and keep them down however, has been another issue altogether. She’s over at her mother’s tonight and over the next 3-4 days. I can’t help but worry about her taking her meds as prescribed by our doctor.

Her mother is notorious for not enforcing discipline and actually MAKING Jessie take her medicine as instructed.

I tried to impress upon her the importance of taking the meds and told Jessie that if she wasn’t well by this weekend she was going back to the doctor Monday. (per doctor’s request) That pissed her off and once she saw her mother, she wanted nothing to do with me — which is usually par for the course most days.

I’m the “evil stepmom” don’tchaknow.

Oh well, I can only do what I can do and hope like mad that her mother will actually GROW UP one day and take responsibility for her child’s health and well-being for a change … but I may be asking for too much there. ;P

I have job news — well, sort of. I was told Wednesday by <prospective hopeful> that I was being hired on, and that they would get in touch with me as to when to come in to do pre-employment and the pee test and that they were hoping to get me in (working?) as soon as Monday. But, I’m assuming that there must be a hold up, because I haven’t heard from them since. So, I can’t share anything yet … in the meantime I have an interview Monday with another company that seems really interested. At this point I can’t sit around and wait any longer.

Jessie’s mother is in Talladega this weekend, so Jess has stayed with us. She and I went yesterday over to see my folks. I saw Dad for just a few minutes, but he didn’t say much. Mom tells me that his results from last week’s biopsies came back as skin cancer, but they haven’t spread, so they’re going to take a place off his face and off his chest. She also told me that they finally sold their house and will be closing on it soon. I think Jessie was more upset about that than anything, LOL. There’s no pool at their new house.

We had a good time though, and it was good to just sit and visit with Mom like I used to. It was such a pretty day out, not very hot, very breezy, great for relaxing … and getting the crap burned out of you. ;P I had slathered Jessie down pretty good with sunscreen and had done so on myself for my face and neck, but forgot to do my arms. I thought “No biggie, we’re not staying long.”

Well, this is what happens to me after an hour out with no sunscreen — my dumb ass won’t be forgetting that shit again!

Ow, it hurts!

And so I’m spending today wincing in pain when I move my arms, or if they touch something (LOL!), catching up on the past 2 days worth of news feeds and other fun email stuff. I had a friend email me with an offer of Jimmy Buffett tickets for one of his shows this summer. I wish! Too bad he’s not playing anywhere down here any time soon. I’d love to see him in concert.

Today is also “cleaning day.” Jessie’s pouted and moped all morning, mad because I’m making her do her chores (that she didn’t do Friday or yesterday) today and that we’re “not going anywhere fun” today. LOL!

Oh well, hate it for her.

She made the comment, “I feel like I’m cleaning every DAY and it all just keeps getting dirty again!” I chuckled and said, “Welcome to my world.”

Jessie asked me recently if I believed in ghosts. I thought about it for a while and answered that anything is possible; that I believed that some people either leave such an impression or leave “before their time” that sometimes the spirit hangs around a little while longer than the physical body. I was replaying the conversation in my head earlier last week and started thinking about other types of ghosts — not necessarily those of the departed, but things that continue to haunt you or affect you even if they’re no longer around you or are a part of your life.

i.e. regrets

A friend commented about how I skipped over a very painful part of my life here in my blog: my fsckhead ex. As much as I hate to admit it, Willem (or “Vil” as we called him) was a significant part of my life for a long time. We were very good friends once. We’d go out, have a good time, go clubbing together. He was one of my goth buddies, but also a techie, a geek, someone to whom I could relate outside the clubs. He was a programmer, like me. We “hooked up” in late 2000 — a mistake, I admit it — but I’d always been sweet on him. Before Jim, I was the happiest with Vil than I had ever been with any other guy. However, Vil had his own ghosts that haunted him … various problems that he had hidden from me, his dearest friends, even his own family, for years. I tried to help him. Hell, at one point I tried to force him into a drug rehab. He refused to acknowledge his problems, he refused any help or treatment of any kind, he lied, he cheated, he stole, and in a short time destroyed everything around him.

In the end, when I had nothing more to give him, and nothing more could he steal, he fled the country. I have not seen him since. I had received an email a couple of years ago from him. Last I heard he was in prison somewhere in South America. I asked him not to contact me anymore. I made it clear that there was nothing he could ever say that I had any interest of hearing. I’ve since changed my number and he doesn’t know where I work, where I live, or even that I’m getting married. He had the gall of suggesting we see each other, I told him that if he valued his life he’d stay away from me, and my friends and family.

You could say he was a ghost that haunted me for a very long time. He stole a lot of things from me — the most important being my pride and sense of self-worth. It took me a long time to get them back, to exercise that ghost.

Yes, Jessie, I believe in ghosts … and still “see” a few of them from time to time …