Ridiculous Thoughts

Ending a convo on IM with my sis:

Steph says: Ok off to watch some Torchwood.
Steph says: Time for hot omnisexual time agents
Kelly says: okie
Kelly says: nice
Kelly says: when isn’t it that time?
Steph says: That’s what I’m saying 🙂

🙂

Shannon seems unaffected by last night’s events with the neighbours. Good. Maybe they’ll stick to the truce or whatever. But if the noise becomes an issue again, I’ll just make our landlord or cops deal with it. No more going over there.

I’d kill to have my own house.

Anyway, today my Gran turns 82. Happy Birthday even though you’ll never read this 🙂 called you so it’s all good. And tomorrow you get my yummy lasagne.

Just got off the phone with Kelly. I talk to her all the time online but it’s nicer to hear the voice you know? Always fun to talk to her and Matty. I tried helping them walk through setting up a wireless network, but I’m not THAT kind of a geek, you know? I do software, not hardware. I’ll make your sites look pretty but messing with WANs and WEPs is beyond my ken. I kept telling them to just buy a Linksys router because it’s bingbangboom to set those up. But they have a perfectly good router that works, was cheap but they lost the instructions and so they decided to just wing it on setting it up. Good luck with that.

I whined to Kelly about my confrontation issues. Got some good advice an now I’m back to feeling better. I’ll talk to Shannon about it later as well to make sure she’s all right with having a wimp for a mum.

Today’s gonna be pretty dull. Some house tidying, a trip to the store during the Husker game (best time to shop) and I’ve got a contest to set up on my 24 site. I’m starting to get solicitations from publishing houses wanting me to review their books about the show they have coming out and one of them wants me to give away 5 copies of the book on the site. Sweet, eh? I love swag. Swag is of the good.

Off now.

And just like that I can go from feeling pretty good, to pretty shitty over the course of an evening.

Just spent about 20 minutes in the bathroom having an imaginary conversation with our bloody neighbours who sort of scared Shannon a little earlier. It was an imaginary, confrontational rant because I am too much of a coward to actually go over there and confront them.

What does that say about me as a mother, that I can’t stand up for her?

We came home and found that the harem next door had their music up loud again. Loud enough to where we could sing along. Not really conducive to doing one’s homework. So Shannon went over there to politely ask them to turn it down.

The hag who answered the door – a leathery old tart – went off on Shannon. “You guys and your fucking cupboards and fucking slamming the fucking things all the fucking time. We’re fucking sick of it.”

I think Shannon was a little shocked that the woman kept swearing at her for one thing and for another, we had no idea that opening and closing our cupboard in the kitchen (on which we share a wall with them) was such an issue to them. Shan tried to explain that we’re not over here maliciously slamming the cupboard doors just to piss them off but the woman was having none of it. Somehow they worked out a truce or whatever when the guy who lives there told the old bitch to leave Shan alone. She told Shannon they’d turn down the music if we stopped slamming out cupboards. They shook on it etc. and she came home and told me what happened.

I was angry that anyone would speak to my daughter that way and I was fearful that it could have gotten worse. What I should have done was march over there and demand an apology from the trailer ho. I should have told her that no one speaks that way to my daughter. I should have shown Shannon that I love her enough to face my own fears of confrontation to defend her. Granted this wasn’t ‘showdown at the OK Corral, gang fight in the alley’ or anything, but surely it would have meant something to her if she’d known I would do that for her.. I was angry enough. Why couldn’t I do anything about it?

Because I was too scared. I don’t know how to confront people and speak coherently. All thought processes leave my head and I trip and stumble over my words and I babble like an idiot, which doesn’t exactly come across as ‘Yikes, I’d better back off.’

So instead, I imagine everything I should have gone and said to them. I play it out in my head over and over until I get my Angry Speech just right. And then I feel guilty because the moment has passed and it would be weird to go do it now, when I should have done it right after it happened. And I berate myself publicly in this blog for being too paralysed with indecision and fear to stand up for my own daughter.

I like to think that, if Shannon was in true danger, I wouldn’t think twice about a confrontation. And this occurrence tonight was fairly minor really. But I think I need to try and figure out how to get past this crappy shyness thing that plagues me and has plagued me for most of my life. No confidence. No desire to actually BE a bitch if I need to. I’ve never wanted anyone to think badly of me, even my shitty neighbours. I’d rather resolve our noise issues with them peaceably rather than through confrontation. But I don’t know if that can happen as long as the aging bitch lives there and acts the way she acts. There was no call for her rant at Shannon and I regret that I let her go over and ask them to turn it down. Usually one of the younger girls (and really, we’ve never been able to suss out just WHO lives there. people come and go) says they’ll turn it down but maybe whinge a little that it really isn’t very loud and that’s it.

That’s why I think the kid and I were a bit shocked by leatherface.

Anyway, I probably shouldn’t have blogged about this. Just felt the need to see what a chicken I am in print I guess.

My friend Kat has tagged me so I suppose I must carry on with this particular meme. It’s weird though, but ah well. All in fun 🙂

I guess what you have to do is name a fact about yourself for every letter of your middle name: Players, you must list one fact that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your middle name. If you don’t have a middle name, use the middle name you would have liked to have had. When you are tagged you need to write your own blog post containing your own middle name game facts.

You’re also supposed to ‘tag’ other people, one for each letter of your middle name etc. But I don’t know enough bloggers for each letter of my middle name. So if anyone stumbling across this matches a letter in my name, feel free to consider yourself tagged. Mike or Meechie and that’s about it. Though Meechie’s middle name is Demetrius which would be a bugger to do facts for, hehe. Lucky Kat, her middle name is Ann. How easy is that? I think she should do her full name.

Anyway, my middle name is, funnily enough, Melia. So here goes:

M – Many weird phobias. Such as a bizarre fear of Space. The thought of sort of being abandoned or lost and alone in the vastness of space makes me queasy. Closer to home, I have an irrational, impossible … *thing* about.. this is hard to describe. Ok, I have some of my DVD collection in my room. The boxes have pix of my fave celebs. I have to either turn the boxes so they don’t face me or are covered up because I don’t want them to see me naked or something. Isn’t that freaky? Yeah I think so too. Maybe I shouldn’t have admitted that one 🙂 The rational part of my brain laughs at the irrational side quite often. Please still love me 🙂

E – Easy to talk to. Well, I think I am anyway. I tend to be shy which many people mistake for snobbery but I can assure you I’m probably just too petrified to think of something to say that doesn’t make me sound like an asshat. But once I get past the initial hurdle and you know me better, you can’t shut me up.

L – Love to talk with an accent. I would so totally speak with several British accents if it didn’t make me seem pretentious around here. But I will do it when I’m out and about the town. In the shops or at Starbucks. It cracks me up to be renting a vid at Hastings, talking to Shan with my London accent (luckily, she likes to do it as well) and have the clerk make a fuss. Mean? Nah, just a bit of fun really. Have I ever been caught out? Nope. I’ve done this since I was in junior high and I delivered newspapers to a retirement community who thought I was an adorable exchange student. Maybe it’s just a bid to make myself seem more interesting than I really am. Who knows. Or maybe, just maybe, I simply love doing accents 🙂

I – I spend far too much time online. That one really needs no further explanation.

A – Am a total grammar nazi. Living in Nebby sometimes does my head in because of the rampant awful grammar. “I seen that movie the other day.” “Oh yeah, them are real cute.” *shudder* I want to curl up and go to my happy place when I hear stuff like that.

So there you go. Five useless and frankly, bizarre facts about myself. Oh and one more just for fun, ‘Melia’ is an anagram of ‘Email.’ It’s like the Internet is my destiny. 🙂

🙂

The title of this post is completely random and mostly meant to tease Tonga who cannot seem to purchase the correct lightbulbs for her chandelier. No matter how many times she goes back to return them for the right ones 🙂

Shannon has a new job. Yes, she no longer works for the DQ. She was a victim of her age and being the low one on the totem pole. They couldn’t give her enough hours so they – very nicely I should add – let her go with a good recommendation. She wasn’t having much luck finding something else, despite not being limited to a five block radius of our place now that she can drive. But she wanted to turn in an app at a fabric store near here and she found out last night they’re going to hire her 🙂 She starts next week. Woot! She’s very excited.

School’s going well for her so far. She seems to be more diligent about her homework and everything so far. I’m keeping tabs on her through the parent portal and so far, A’s all around 🙂 She loves her English teacher this year and that makes me very happy. She says he’s just like Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society. Oh Captain, my Captain 🙂 As long as she doesn’t develop an affinity for Walt Whitman.

Looking forward to the three-day weekend though it will be busy. Saturday is my Gran’s 82nd bday. The G’s are going to Red Lobster (gag) for dinner so we’ll be taking over my famous lasagne on Sunday for dinner. My Aunty Jo’s coming to town Sunday as well, I think, so I’ll have to work out the timing. It will be loverly to see her again.

Monday is free and clear so I might take a stab at some proper writing. I’m happy to say I’ve got a couple of ideas kicking around that I want to muck with, so yay!

Think I’ll try to go to bed early tonight. I’m knackered. I don’t sleep well and 2am phone calls from work that require me to troubleshoot while still sort of dreaming isn’t helping.

Nothing broke today. Phew 🙂

I think the dealership washed my car though – or at least they rinsed the dust off. You’d think if someone is spending $845 bucks there they’d at least hoover out the floors, but no. Instead, a couple strips of plastic that runs around the sides of my car came loose and were hanging off and my Placebo sticker was ruined. Luckily, I had a backup.

Anyway, enough whinging about the car. I feel somewhat better today. Netflix sent me ‘Placebo, Once More with Feeling’ the videos from 1996 – 2004 and I’ve been reveling in them. I’ve been a ‘cebo fan since 2001 and to this day I’d never actually seen any of their videos except on crappy dubbed VHS tapes my European friends sent me. SO it was sort of heavenly to see them properly. AND the DVD includes commentary for them all from the band which was awesome.

I discovered Placebo not long after my mother died and something in their music really struck a chord with me. I’ve talked about this before I think so I won’t rehash. But suffice to say Placebo will always be near and dear to my heart and all that mushy stuff. I hope I get to see them in concert again.

So once again, Placebo has picked me up and since today has been so gorgeous weather-wise, we’re going to go for a walk when it gets a bit darker. I like walking in the evening, just after the sun has set. I don’t know why. It just feels nice. Til then, I’m gonna read a bit. Ta ra 🙂