I want to do a little photography. I really like it for a little hobby. I don't ever see it developing into anything but I do enjoy taking nice pics and having friends and relatives enjoy them. I took a couple cool shots of the kidlet that I'm rather proud of so I might do some more and make a little feature wall. Need some frames though.

I think this blog will pretty much just be trains of thought as my mind wanders. Saw 'The Pianist' last night. My god what a disturbing movie. Good... but disturbing. I never should have watched that Hitler movie on CBS. It seems to have reignited my fascination with the Holocaust. I've never been interested much in the militaristic aspect of WWII, more the human side of it. Jewish Survivor stories fascinate and horrify me. I don't know why. My old pub boss in England thinks I'm a reincarnated survivor, but I think he's full of shite. Speaking of shite, I wonder how his pub is doing. It's been a long time since I visited the website I made for him. Last time I checked he hadn't done a damn thing to it. I remember that not long after I'd returned to the states, he actually emailed me and asked me to continue updating his site - for free. HAHAHAHAHA that made me laugh.

Anyway, I have a lot of things to do today so I'd better get to it.

Today is mom's birthday. Ironic eh? She would have been 53.

Ruben won. Feck. Bah. Eight bloody months of watching this show and rooting for Clay, and Ruben won. I am not watching next series. It's too draining. Tuesday and Wednesdays - ugh! And the filler shows! Awful! *sigh*

But now that I have my Tuesday and Wednesday nights back, I can devote more time to blogging :D Oh and Thursdays too. Survivor's over now as well. Those are my only indulgences into the reality genre. I dabbled briefly with Surreal Life but Corey Feldman was a letdown.

I don't really have anything profound to say this evening. I'm tired and feeling that anticlimactic feeling after the Idol finale. Think I'll go finish my book. Nighty :)

I'm trying to decide if my thumb is green enough to handle a small trellis with some Jasmine entwined on it. I think it would be really lovely to have some on my balcony. I was actually thinking of buying some trellis slats and fixing them to the sides of the balcony to give us a bit more privacy. Not sure if the landlord will allow that though. What I really want to do is paint. I *really* don't think the landlord would allow that though. In fact after a quick call to her I've discovered I'm not allowed to paint, put border up or put a trellis on the balcony :( I hate that. Why could I not paint at the least? Especially if I said I would paint it back to the blah white it is now when I leave. How depressing.

I hate apartment life. It's fine if you're young and footloose and fancy-free, but man, I'm sick of hearing neighbours fighting, neighbours screwing, neighbours screaming across the courtyard, neighbours smoking weed while I try to explain to my child what that funky smell is. I'm also tired of hauling groceries up three flights of stairs, and climbing four flights to do laundry. I want a garage. I never want to scrape ice off of my car again. I want a lawn that I can pay someone to mow. I want to run around the house without fear of disturbing the neighbours. I want a little garden. I want a place where I can DIY to my heart's content.

Well why don't I go find a house to live in? Hmmm.. There are two major 'pros' to where I'm living now: 1. Rent is cheap, but place is nice enough and 2. My landlord is incredibly cool about working with me when I'm struggling to get rent paid on time. Which *knock on wood* I haven't had trouble with so far this year, but then it's only May.

I need to come up with some sort of plan. I think the key to me getting away from here with little fuss from the family is if I was offered a job somewhere that paid incredibly well - well enough that I just couldn't turn it down. I often have people ask me why I stay here in Nebraska if I hate it so much and the answer is not easy to make them understand. Here's the short version: When I left my ex-husband, I had nowhere to go, no money, no clothes, nothing. I moved back in with my family in California and began a struggle to get back on my feet. Six months later they decide they can't afford California anymore and I have no choice but to come back to Nebraska with them. If they couldn't afford it, how could I, a single parent with a baby? So Nebby beckoned. My father died right after we arrived here, moved a few times and ended up where I am now, got my act together and put myself through college and still hated the lack of anything to do here so I upped sticks and moved to England for a year and loved every minute of it. Unfortunately, I had a tyrant boss, and I was working illegally. After coming back, my mother died. Followed soon after by my Aunt and aside from my grandparents, that's pretty much my entire family. My sister lived 3 hours away while she was at university, then she moved back to Cali, and now she's living in London.

Did I say short version? Hehe. You should see the long version :D

Anyway, my grandparents are wonderful people, but they are also what ties me down here and I know that's awful to say. I love them dearly. I want my daughter to be around what little family she has left as much as she can, so the sacrifice on my part is that I work in a great job for shit pay, live in an OK apartment with shitty neighbours and continue to struggle with no opportunity to improve the situation short of winning the lottery. So I need a plan of attack. And I need time to think up a good one. I need to stop waiting for opportunity to come to me and go out and make it happen. *cheesy slogan alert*

So I'll write if I come up with a good one.

I had a strange dream this morning. I dreamt I had my little black car in the UK and I was going to the Bournemouth meet. So I drove around Bomo, which looked really weird and almost Roman. I found a parking spot but I didn't realise it was near a small train track. Anyway I go off to the Bomo meet and see some people I know there but I get really really bored (sorry Matt, if you read this :) ). Since I'm only in England for 3 or 4 days, I decide I'd rather drive to London to visit my sister. As I walk back to my car, There's a funky weird train car almost encasing it, so somehow I get on board and sit down. The train car is crowded with people. I have it in my head that my car is in the front of the car that's closed off. Meanwhile the train is making a circuit of Bournemouth and along the way there are beggars hanging over into the car (we were going very slow) and being really aggressive asking for money.

Then the fecking train drops us off seemingly in the middle of a large urban jungle type area - I say urban jungle because we were obviously still in the city, but there was a sort of forest with a couple of paths you could follow where the grass was beaten down. I distinctly remember knowing that if i was on the wrong path, I'd be in trouble. I heard people talking on the other path so i delved into some trees and found myself on that other path which ended up being very near the spot where my car was still parked. But I passed a bar that had no walls or roof. It was a typical pub-type place but the bar itself was actually on the sidewalk. And I remember asking if I could use the phone to call my sister and tell her I was coming. Then I couldn't remember her number and smacking my forhead as I realised it was on my Palm Pilot which was in my desk all the way back in Nebraska. I could remember the first couple of digits, and the last 4 and Information was not very helpful as she wasn't listed yet.

And that's it. Bizarre eh? I don't quite know what to make of it.

So, I haven't written in here for a few days. It's hell keeping up with all of these blogs you know :) but I wouldn't have it any other way. I can't get over how much they motivate me to write stuff down. Well, apart from my story over on Evolve, but well, I'm think that story wasn't going anywhere anyway. I dunno if I can write horror.

Anyway, yes the big 3-2 today and what am I doing? I'm at work, writing a brochure, tweaking some webpages and I don't have any plans to go out this evening. It's Monday for goodness sake. Not that I'd have plans if it were Friday but well you know. There's nothing in this town I wanna do anyway. Not even anyONE I wanna do *cheeky grin*.

My cousin has said he will be bottling and shipping my 12th of Maibock beer he brewed for me. Said it was "sweet and roasty". Okiedokie. I'm getting six bottles of it and I have a feeling that there will be five and a half bottles of it still in my fridge a year from now. I'm not a beer drinker by any means. I never developed a taste for it. At parties when I was a teenie, I used to dump out my can of Bud and fill it with Coke and pretend I was getting drunk. I feel bad though because Rick went through a lot of trouble to brew this for me (and I basically whined that I wanted a beer named after me anyway) but ah well, I will definitely try to get it doon ma neck.

Had a lovely weekend that started with dinner and ice cream with Biodad that went very well. I enjoyed it a lot, as did my daughter. He's a pretty neat guy. Look forward to meeting up with him again soon. Saturday the kidlet spent the night with the grandparents so had the house to myself and I veg'd to my heart's content. Sunday we had a nice family dinner that was a combo Mum's Day and my bday. I found out that my beautiful, gorgeous, sweet and wonderful daughter spent her own money on the presents she picked for me (a gorgeous cherrywood jewelry box and a perfect rose encased in glass). She is truly a wonderful kid *sniffle*.

What else... oh chatted with Meechie a bit last night. The boy always seems to call me when he's in the loo. I don't know how to take that :) Kelly rang me at 6am this morning and it was great to talk ot her. I've caught her online once or twice but she's busy jobhunting etc and really, it's always nice to talk "live".

Today, as I said, I'm working and then tonight I think I will play Zelda :) I'm so exciting :)

What a weird week. Meeting yesterday with advertising firm we use. Was supposed to be "fun" according to my boss, was really just okay. The food was shite (mental note: don't eatat the Garden Cafe in Hastings) and all I really did at the meeting was say "Why isn't the website on that ad?" over and over. Fuck sake, what is the point of me busting my ass to put together a decent website when they don't even bother to help me drive traffic to it? I mean, I could understand if I were doing this for, I dunno, one of my freelance jobs where they don't have the budget for advertising, but I work for a hospital that has millions of dollars in the coffers, you'd think they could spare some change to put the fucking URL on print ads. Argh. No wonder the forums I added aren't getting any use.

Right now I'm watching the 200th episode of ER. It's pretty good but I could really do without all the vomit. I don't handle vomit well. Not even my own child's. You know how they say (who THEY are, I have no idea) when you have your own child you can deal with their body functions and odors with no problems, but with me, vomit is a different story. I don't know if it's the actual goops that hurls itself out of the body, or the involuntary wretching and *ugh* I'm making myself ill just writing about it. I think I'll move on to the next topic.

Which is ummmm... Heheh, I don't know. Oh, dinner withbiodad tomorrow night. Should be fun, I'm looking forward to it. We're going for Chinese and who knows what. Depends on the weather. It rained most of the day today and again I regretted that I had to spend the day cooped up in my windowless office. There is something about the rain that I just love. I love turbulent weather more than sunny days. I really am only happy when it rains. Such beautiful weather. I remember this one time, on a hillside... Well I'll keep that to myself. Thunderstorms. Thunderstorms are just... ohhh.. They thrill me. Anyway, if it's not rainy tomorrow night, we might take my daughter to the new park the city built, or just let her ride her bike around or something.

Right ER's over, I'm freezing (after being out in the rain to plant some flowers, I'm a bit nippy.) so my nice warm bed calls. night.

Hurray I heard from the bellydancer. Can I just say *phew*? I had all sorts of awful thoughts about that job. First I worried that I was pestering her with my emails and that she'd probably had a family emergency or something and the last thing on her mind was me, then I worried that she hated what I did and skipped out on me, then I decided not to analyse it to death and just keep sending emails periodically. Turns out she's just taken possession of her new dance studio and has been busy getting it set up for a May 15th opening and she's only just now getting to her emails.

Which is a relief but now I've just sent the first bill and I am now stuck worrying whether she will faint at the price. I can't get used to charging the fee I came up with. I come from a long track record of working for minimum wage on up to where I am now (which is waaaaay low end of the scale compared to what I'm charging for the same services freelance). So it's a bizarre feeling charging someone $60 bucks an hour. I feel like I don't deserve to be charging that much, and I also feel like she'll see the bill and balk. But, she knew my fee going into it and even said that it was reasonable so we'll see how quickly I get a check. I stipulated that payment is due within 5 days of receipt of the bill so I'll keep my lovely reader posted :)

In other news, looks like I get to hook up with biodad on Friday which will be nice. Still don't know what we're going to do, but we'll figure something out. He mentioned something about seeing if there are any concerts going on and doing that rather than having dinner (we can eat anytime he says). I reminded him that this is not exactly a mecca of culture here and all I could find to do was see a movie or get our blood/glucose levels checked. Exciting eh? Maybe we'll just hang out at a park. The thing is that he's very athletic and outdoorsy, and I'm just not. Ah well, we'll see how it goes.

Still no word from the bellydancer. I'm starting to get a little mad. This may be quite stupid of me but I'm rather new to this freelance gig, but I didn't have either of my two jobs sign a contract. If I end up with a third job, there will be a notarized, written contract so I don't have to sit and stress about the fact that I have $600 bucks owed to me and no way to prove it. I also need to work out how to pay tax on it so I don't get fucked by Uncle Sam (ooer missus!).

Saw X-Men 2 last night and it rocked quite a lot. I remember back in high school, or maybe it was a little after, I had a friend who was a huge fan and I might have had a thing for this guy, so I began reading the comics. And I remember liking Wolverine and his sexy Adamantium claws, but I thought Storm was the coolest. Sadly, that phase was short-lived and I remember very little about the storylines. So I wanted to see X2 when it came out but I figured I'd better rent the first movie beforehand. When I did, everything came back to me. "Oh right they are *mutants*, not superheroes!" "Hey I remember Jean Grey!" and so forth. I'm glad I saw that first because I wouldn't have enjoyed part 2 nearly as much otherwise.

So needless to say I really liked X2, as did my daughter. That was probably the highlight of my week. I did go to my little cousin's 3rd bday party but you know, it's a room full of people I don't know and a little boy wired on candy. He's an absolute doll, but frankly, seeing my uncle all cosied up to his new gf still isn't sitting well with me and I couldn't wait to get out of there. Then Wednesday I had a bitch of a headache so stayed home from work, felt 100% better Thursday, and Friday I felt like I had a cold coming on (you know, skin is sore to the touch, just standing up is an effort etc.) But I guess I'm not because I feel fine now. So it's been a bit of an odd week.
So, signing off for now.