Regina Noctis

I can finally write about this now without bursting into tears or going on a homicidal rampage now, I think.

Monday night, my psychotic cousin tried to kill my mom.

She’s okay, physically. She just has a few bruises. Mentally, well, she’s having symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder. It was making her think she was crazy. I talked her through some of it tonight. I think I got her to see that it will go away with time, and that it’s human to be feeling terror about the incident, and that it will take some time before she feels stable again. She was starting to think that there was something really wrong with the way she spends any moment she’s not trying to wear a stoic mask in crying and shaking and feeling fear. She wants someone to take care of her right now, and she has never felt that way since she was a kid. To her, it was wrong to feel the need for someone to take care of her for once in her life.

My uncle John, who normally does nothing more than say, “Oh, that’s awful” when my cousin has done some new atrocity, is giving Mom support. He has finally realized exactly how irrational my grandmother is where my cousin is concerned. He and she are taking legal steps so my grandmother can’t ever bring my cousin back here to live.

The psycho is now in Salinas with his uncle and aunt. He stole my grandmother’s van and fled Delano right after he tried to drown my mother.

He called here the next day, and my grandmother was already doing her, “Poor baby, you’re so hurt and misunderstood” thing for him when he called. The police, when they’d been here the night before, had said that since my mother didn’t suffer any physical damage beyond some bruises, that it’s just a little misdemeanor. My grandmother was telling John this, and that since it was such a little nothing, that maybe she could convince my mom to drop the charges by the end of the week.

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I was so shocked, I couldn’t even begin to say anything to her. I just stared at her for a moment, and the only thing I could force out was, “You BITCH!”

This latest action of my grandmother’s now has mom convinced that she is absolutely and completely worthless. I’ve heard many times in the last few days that she thought that she was worth something, but apparently not.

Since we didn’t know that John came back after the police left, stole the van, and ran for Salinas, I spent Monday night sitting up while mom and grandma slept, with weapons and phone within reach. I was the one who found the van gone the next morning. My grandmother refused to turn him in for grand theft auto when she was told about it.

It’s now very early Friday. John is supposed to be back sometime today to pick up his final check from Domino’s and leave the van. Mom is debating whether or not to have the cops here to meet him and take him away when he shows up. I’m urging her to do so. I have, at long last, finally gotten her to agree to get a restraining order, and if Grandma tries to bring John back in spite of it, I will be making damn sure he gets arrested for violation of it. All thee of us will be named. I am actually in the least danger from him, since I scare him still. That could change any time, of course. But the biggest reason that I got her to agree to put all three of us on it is so if John shows up sometime when Mom’s not here, such as when she goes to the grocery store, I have the recourse to call the cops and get John taken out of here even if my grandmother won’t.

I’ve hardly slept, until I crash and burn from the stress, and then the cycle starts again.

Psycho cousin’s children witnessed the incident. I wish I’d known it was going on. I was in my room, and didn’t know about it until almost an hour later. Grandma said wasn’t there to see it either. The psycho had pulled his car from the driveway into the back yard, and then started a fire a couple feet away from the house. My grandmother told him to put the fire out, and he refused. My mom went out there and started spraying it with the hose to put it out, and John grabbed the hose away from her. He grabbed her by the back of the neck, and shoved the hose going full stream in her face, so the water covered her mouth and nose, and he held it and her like that to try and kill her. When she finally managed to jerk her head away far enough to get a little bit of a breath, he threw her down on the concrete.

At some point, he also took all the trash out of the trash cans and threw it all over the carport.

And my grandmother keeps singing her usual song about how she doesn’t think he’d ever actually go through on any of his threats to harm any of us. Un-frigging-believable.

Thank Goddess he’s gone. And that my constant harping on getting him out of here for good, and that my grandmother’s irrationality where he is concerned puts us all in danger. Thank Goddess she finally agrees that obeying my grandmother’s wishes when we’re living under my grandmother’s roof does not extend to allowing her to put all our lives in danger. I’ve been saying that since before I moved down here. It’s finally sinking in.

And I told her that if she doesn’t do this, then I will. She tells me that there is enough bad feeling between my grandmother and me, and that she doesn’t want to put this on me. I told her that it won’t be a matter of putting it on me, I will take it if she doesn’t. I will not allow the combination of my psychotic cousin and my crazy bitch of a grandmother to put her in danger any longer. I said that I have reached the end of my tether on that, and even if Grandma or even Mom herself tries to stop it by kicking me out, my last visit before I get out of town will still be the police station. No matter what, it is done and he won’t be back. This is not a what-if, this is not a maybe, this is not asking permission. This is what will happen if she doesn’t do it herself. I have talked about doing it before, and I let a combination of things back me down. Mostly her. Somewhat that none of the threats have been uttered in my presence since the last time I decided I had enough and called the cops. Psycho realized that I wasn’t weak and going to back down if he gave me any cause whatsoever to get him arrested, so he has confined himself for months to atrocities committed while I was in class or asleep. I didn’t even usually find out about these things until weeks or months later. Since Mom backed down from that one night when she told me to do whatever I needed to do in order to get him out of here, I didn’t have many options. She was the one who was there for those things, she was the one who witnessed them, and she was the target of most of the threats. Once she backed down again, even a restraining order became something out of my reach. Even the sexual stuff lately, the way he’s been aggressively trying to hit on her. I’ve seen this before. He did it to me when I was his victim for four and a half years during the last part of junior high and all of high school. He and his friend tried to force me three times, especially egged on by the fact that my grandmother was convinced I was making up a lie about it to get them in trouble. I got beaten for it, so from then on my choices were to try and fight them off alone, or to go get accused of lying and get another beating. Lately, he has begun the sexual innuendo and hitting on my mother that would eventually have led to the same kind of rape attempts, but it’s all been done when I’m nowhere around.

I told her that the only other alternative to keeping him out legally is to back down again, and allow Grandma to bring the psycho back yet again. And then either he will be dead and I will be in jail, or he’ll kill me when I attempt to off him. Because he hasn’t pushed me to the breaking point yet, but I have felt it very near. And one of these nights, I will no longer be able to fight the blind psychotic rage back down when it threatens to get out. He has pushed me to that point twice before in my life, both times when I lived here during high school. I don’t remember much, because I quite literally snapped, but stories have been told to me about how I chased him through the house with a knife in my hand, trying to stab him. And about the time that I had him down on the ground and was strangling him. I have almost gotten to that point a couple times in the last month or so.

Hopefully, she will understand, and if she won’t do it in order to save herself from his psychosis, she will do it to keep me from going to jail. She still feels like she has to protect me, after all. I’m her daughter. And she’s not the kind of mother that her own mother has become. I just wish that it had never gotten to this point, and that he could have been kicked out and stayed out a long time ago. It breaks my heart to see my mom going through all the emotional pain that I know too well.

Witch dress at Goth Auctions. Says it’s 3x, but is very stretchy and laces up, so will fit someone either larger or smaller than the size. I could very clearly see either of you in it, and you would look lovely.

Only YOU can prevent Drama Llamas.

Occasionally, a recipe will present itself, full-blown, in my head. Some of them have gone bye bye before I get the chance to do anything about them.

So, ingredients for a dessert:

honey
sliced or slivered almonds
cinnamon
nutmeg
coffee crystals
bittersweet chocolate
amaretto
gyoza wrappers, phyllo dough, or potsticker skins
powdered sugar
heavy cream
vegetable oil for deep frying

That should be enough to remind me.

I’m home, at last.

Friday, I was hit with horrible pain in my stomach and back, nausea, vomiting, flashes of being too hot and too chilled. It was loads of fun. At first, I figured it was just a bad flu, and I’d ride it out. It started at one in the morning. At six in the morning, the pain was so bad I was nearly in tears. Those who know me well know I’m resistant to the idea of getting medical help, but even I have a breaking point. Of all the stubborn women in my family, I’m actually the most reasonable about getting medical attention. So, at six I woke Mom up and away we went to the ER.

At first they thought that it was an obstruction in the intestines, and that would require surgery. Two sets of x-rays and an ultrasound couldn’t find any such problem, so I wound up getting admitted Finally, they came to the conclusion that it was a combination of bad stomach virus and an infection. Gastroenteritis.

So I spent several days on a clear liquid diet and on a constant saline IV drip. There were also bouts of antibiotic IV drips. And I had to drink a certain number of pitchers of water a day. I swear, I thought I was going to float out of there by the end of Saturday. Then blood tests showed that my potassium levels had dropped too low, and I had the added pleasure of potassium IV drips and potassium pills at every meal. I was seen by five different doctors, and have been scheduled for further testing on an outpatient basis, as well as appointments for dealing with the PCOS. Ultrasound showed that I do, indeed, have mutliple cysts on my ovaries, but they’re follicle cysts, so there will be no surgery to remove them. It just reconfirms that I’m sterile. The good news out of the whole thing. Though I was amused by the idea of the whole group of us who never want to have children taking over a hospital for a “neuter and spay, it’s the kindest way” party. We used to talk about that sometimes.

I’ve also begun the paperwork to get on MediCal. And if I’m not found eligible for that, there is a county indigent adult program that I will pretty definitely qualify for once I’ve been turned down. The indigent program will cover all hospital and medication costs. It won’t cover ambulance rides (which I didn’t take anyway) or the specific fees of the doctors that attended me. Payment to the hospital is deferred until I find out eligibility for either MediCal or the MIA program. That’s really good, since I had no idea how we were going to afford to pay for my multiple days and way too many tests.

So I’m home, and I’m tired. I shared a room with a woman who had some degree of senile dementia. She was a sundowner, too. She was reasonably lucid during the day, when I was being kept awake by tests and such. But at night, the confusion set in, and she’d start yelling for her husband because she was convinced that she was in her own home and there were all these strangers in it. She also decided that I was a little girl, and I was going to go home with her and she was going to give me lots of warm milk and Christmas cookies. Several times, she tried to convince me to crawl into bed with her so she could comfort me with lullabies. So while it was somewhat amusing, it was also exhausting. I’m looking forward to getting lots of sleep, without sudden bursts of “George! GEORGE!!!” and without someone coming in every couple of hours to test my blood pressure, temperature, and blood sugar levels.

I’ll catch up with everyone after I’ve caught up with the sandman.

The final grades for the semester are finally up on the BC website. It could have been worse, really. I am pretty disappointed that I didn’t pull the A I was expecting in web design. Two Bs and an A this semester, instead of the two As and a B I was expecting. Sucks that I was one day too late on that final project. I shouldn’t complain, really. It’s not like two Bs and an A are a disaster by any manner of means. But I’ve been pretty manic about the idea of getting all As, so it was hard enough swallowing a B in photography.

I’ll just have to keep reminding myself that it could have been much worse, since the final project in web development counted for most of the grade in the class, and I got a B even without it.

This time around, it’s not because of sleep disorders, either.  I was tired when I finished my final project, and more than ready to sleep. I’d been pushing to stay awake in order to finish it up.

No, this time it’s because of my ears. I’ve had bouts of tinnitus for a very long time. Too many ear infections (usually three or four a year) when I was a kid. Too many concerts spent too close to the Marshall stack when I was a teenager. I’ve suffered some hearing loss, and almost permanently have at least a small degree of tinnitus going on. I’ve become accustomed to it, and don’t notice the constant high-pitched ringing unless something specific calls attention to it. Or unless it’s particularly bad.

Tonight seems to be a particularly bad night. The sound is driving me nuts, and has been going on for hours. It began shortly after I crawled into bed, and has just not quit since. It’s so loud I can’t just tune it out, and I can’t get to sleep. It’s drilling a spike into my head at this point, so I have the added bonus of a headache.

My alarm goes off in less than five hours now. I’m supposed to head into Bakersfield with Mom to get some Christmas shopping for the family done. Since I often get growly about crowds on a good day, this does not bode well for my temper. Lack of sleep plus headache plus loud ringing in the ears plus Christmas shopping crowds equals Christophine in a vaguely homicidal mood, most likely. Maybe I should wear the boots that make me significantly taller and the various punk-ish accouterments. At an inch shy of six feet, I tower over most people around here anyway. With boots that put me well over six feet, spiked leather gloves, etc, people usually clear out of my path. That might be a good idea today.

I’ve been working frantically to catch up on all the work I missed during the roughly six weeks my ISP and I were hollering at each other. It was just so much fun trying to convince them that the problem was not at my end, but at theirs. Eventually, they referred it to their engineers, and I heard nothing more. I finally contacted my ISP again, and they said that the ticket had been resolved. I checked for connection, and still no dice. So I talked to my ISP again, and they said, “Oh, you were supposed to reconfigure your router or you won’t see any change from the fix.” Well, gee, thanks so much for telling me that in the first place!

So I reconfigured the router (which is becoming an every-other-month chore at this rate) and lo and behold, I could again access my class website.

I’ve spent the last couple of weeks frantically working to make up the six weeks’ worth of assignments I missed. I sent email to my instructor explaining the situation, and that I planned to burn a lot of midnight oil to get caught up, unless what was past was past and I should just skip it all and move directly to the final project. His only reply was “go for it.” Not terribly informative, but I took that as a green light to get caught up. He did not mention any kind of how late is too late date.

I finished my final project tonight. I had to take Aqua Aces Swim Team website and redesign it, since it is currently a badly designed site. I just finished tonight. Fairly proud of the end result, too. When I got to my class site to post the URL for grading, however, I saw that my instructor had left a message. All final grades have been turned in and should be viewable by tomorrow morning. And this final project counts for most of the grade.

I’ve spent something like 10 to 15 hours a day every day for more than a week just working on getting everything together for the final project and getting the site designed. It involved a lot of correlating information, since different pages had contradictory information. And it’s all for frelling nothing.

I got an A on every assignment. Max points every time. But the A I was expecting is now right out the window.

Bloody hell.

A – Act your age – 36

B – Breast size – Umm… does “in need of their own zip code” count as answering the question?

C – Chore you hate – Sweeping or mopping. My arthritis has a field day.

D – Dad’s name – Otto

E – Essential make up item – Eye liner and lipstick, if I bother with makeup at all.

F – Favorite singer – Waaaay too many to name. I currently seem to be especially taken with Dokaka, but this is one of those things that changes on a semi-regular basis.

G – Gold or silver – Depends on what I’m wearing. Mostly, silver.

H – Hometown – Delano. Or Hellano, as I prefer to call it.

I – Instruments you play – Round about none of ‘em. I don’t consider a couple months of lessons as equalling ability to play.

J – Job title – Bum. Student. Same thing.

K – Kids – NEVAH!!!

L – Living arrangements – The detached, converted garage at my grandmother’s house.

M – Mom’s name – Patricia

N – Number of people you’ve fallen in love with – Three. Crushes, on the other hand, well, at least two metric buttloads.

O – Overnight hospital stays – Twice: A week of testing and observations to try and track down a childhood problem, issue never solved. One night of recovery after surgery in my 20s.

P – Phobia – Heights and losing my eyesight/something happening to the eyes.

Q – Quote you like – Many. “A closed mouth gathers no feet.” – Anonymous. “One learns in life to keep silent and draw one’s own confusions.” – Cornelia Otis Skinner. Just for a couple off the top of my head.

R – Religious affiliation – Hail Discordia! All hail Eris! Hail hail! Hail yes!

S – Siblings – None. Mutually adopted “sisters” and “brothers,” dozens.

T – Time you wake up – Varies. Was 8:30 during the last semester. Left to my own devices, somewhere between noon and four in the afternoon. If I sleep at all.

U – Underwear of choice – Not picky. All I care about is fit and comfort.

V – Vegetable you refuse to eat – Lima beans and beets. Usually eggplant or anything from the squash family, but once in a while I’ll discover a recipe for those that I like…

W – Worst habit – Procrastination and falling in love with fuckwits (with a couple exceptions, anyway.)

X – X-rays you’ve had – Hmmm… can’t count the number of dental x-rays over the years. Also x-rays of a broken ankle, and during my week of tests when I was a kid.

Y – Yummy foods you make – Everything. Really. I’m one amazing cook. Ask anyone who’s eaten my food.

Z – Zodiac Sign – Libra-Scorpio cusp.

But other people might like this, too. One of my absolute favorites. I just finished making the marinade for the pork, and remembered that I’d promised to email the recipe, or post it on LJ, or something. So, here we go:

Chinese-style roast pork tenderloin with chutney-garlic sauce

1 1/2 pounds pork tenderloin
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons medium-dry Sherry
2 tablespoons ketchup
1 tablespoon light brown sugar
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons minced peeled fresh gingerroot
For the sauce
3 garlic cloves, minced
6 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons red wine vinegar
1/2 cup bottled mango chutney, such as Cross and Blackwell Major Grey’s
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon Oriental (toasted) sesame oil

steamed rice as an accompaniment

In a small, deep dish just large enough to hold the pork, combine the soy sauce, the Sherry, the ketchup, the brown sugar, the lemon juice, the garlic, the gingerroot, and pepper to taste. Add the pork, turning to coat it thoroughly, and let it marinate, covered and chilled, three hours to overnight.

Make the sauce just before cooking the pork: In a small saucepan, combine the garlic, the soy sauce, and the vinegar, and bring the mixture to a boil. Simmer for 3 minutes. Stir in the chutney, the honey, the oil, and 1/4 cup water and bring the mixture to a boil, stirring. Cover and set aside.

Arrange the pork on a rack in a roasting pan, reserving the marinade in a small bowl. Add 1/2 inch hot water to the pan, and roast the pork in a preheated 350 degree F. oven, basting it occasionally only during the first hour wiht the reserved marinade, for 1 hour and 15 minutes, or until a meat thermometer registers 155 degrees F. for meat that is just cooked through but still juicy. Transfer the pork to a cutting board and let it stand for 5 minutes.

Carve the pork diagonally into thin slices. Arrange the slices on a heated platter and spoon the sauce over. Serve with steamed rice. Serves about four to six.

The essay I linked in my last post has caused quite a bit of thinking about weight, attitude, the preoccupation in the US with impossible standards of beauty, and much more.

I remembered a BayCon a few years back. I was speaking with a friend out by the pool, and the friend called my attention to a woman who was walking up the steps from the pool to the promenade deck. The woman in question was overweight, and was wearing a rather tiny tinsel bikini-like outfit and a bright wig. And, in spite of my size-positive activism, my first reaction then was to snicker at her. I thought, “Was your mirror broken today, lady? Why do you think anyone wants to see that?” How does this make me any different from the people I get angry about, the ones who react with snickering, insults, and rudeness toward someone because they’re not some impossibly underweight, fashion-modelesque Barbie doll? I’m no better than they are when push comes to shove. I’ve struggled all my life with weight, with accepting myself for who and what I am, and learning some self-confidence and self-appreciation. I’ve railed against those who’ve made reaching any of that such an uphill battle by their constant barrage of cutting remarks and disdain. I’ve ranted about the lack of size-positive role models, about the preoccupation with how someone looks rather than who they are, about the lack of attractive clothing for anyone who’s not a size 6, about why it is that something that would look perfectly gorgeous on someone full-figured is only made for someone much more petite. And there I was, not so very long ago, falling in line with the very attitudes that I grumble about.

This was even after I’d learned that I have PCOS, and about the effect it has on weight. Very few women with PCOS ever achieve the shape that US society would like to present as the standard of female beauty. Losing any weight at all is more difficult for a woman with PCOS, especially if they haven’t been diagnosed and so do not know the dietary recommendations that go with it. Even with the dietary recommendations, there comes a point when the weight stops dropping. I am at that point now. The only time I lose weight now is when extremes of stress take away any appetite at all, and I have no desire to go on a starvation diet in order to lose more weight. I have dropped about 200 pounds, but have bottomed out about 100 pounds over where I’d like to be. And even at 100 pounds less then where I am now, I would still be considered overweight by the standards of this society. So, yes, I’m even aware of circumstances that make it nearly impossible to get down to what so many want to claim is the norm. And still, I reacted that way.

I am a hypocrite.

I need to learn tolerance in my own attitudes, not just demand it of others. There’s this quote, you see, about motes and beams. Good advice whether you are Christian or not. Up until now, I have self-righteously gone about my life without even recognizing my hypocrisy. That’s a reason, over and above the obvious ones, why this essay was good for me to read. And why these moments of self-examination with the blinders removed are good. I ran head-on into a different round of this, over my attitudes toward tolerance, religion, and Christianity, a couple years ago. These things keep me humble. My feeling now is the same as then. If I’m going to demand tolerance, I need to change my own attitudes and show tolerance first. How can I help work toward effecting a change if my own so-called tolerance is superficial at best? Change has to start with me.

And that even, to some degree, has to include tolerance of those who react negatively, whether that’s directed at me or to someone I know, toward carrying extra pounds. Despite my fighting to learn acceptance of myself and actually beginning to achieve that, despite trying to do something about societal and cultural standards and concepts of weight and beauty, I still have some of those standards ingrained in me. Just because I only thought those negative things about that woman at BayCon rather than said them to her doesn’t make it any less true. It only makes me a little more polite about my attitude than someone who sets out to be hurtful. And if I’ve taken on those attitudes from a lifetime of being barraged with what is the supposed ideal in spite of fighting against it, why do I think I have the right to feel oh-so-superior, more tolerant, and a generally better person than those who have not only never fought against the societal pressure about weight, but have never been given a reason to do so because they themselves have never been overweight? I would probably think the same as they do, were I not one of those who’s been full-figured all her life. I don’t know that I would necessarily actively try to hurt someone because of their weight, since I also have had politeness drilled into me all my life. But I do think that without the impetus to throw off the bias even as much as I have, I’d have many more thoughts like I did that afternoon at BayCon.

I accept who I am and how I look. I’m comfortable with it. I even enjoy it (at least most of the time. There are still sometimes bad days.) You, whoever you are out there, need to accept me for who I am and how I look, too. But even more than that, help me learn to accept you in return. Obviously, I still have some learning to do on that score.

I followed a link from over to ’s LJ. She posted an essay from Fatima Mernissi’s book, Scheherazade Goes West. Mernissi is from Morocco, and is a feminist and professor at Mohammed V University. She grew up in an enclosed harem.

The essay is called Size 6: The Western Women’s Harem (link is to the essay as presented in sibylla’s journal). I found it an interesting perspective on women, weight, and beauty in the US as seen by someone who grew up with different values than the ones so prevalent here.

It seems like every year, I feel cold less and do less well in any kind of heat. At one point, when temperatures here in Hellano were down into the 30s and 40s and the heater in my room wasn’t working, I was hanging out in my room just fine, and walking around barefoot outside. It wasn’t until the cold snap got colder and started dropping into the 20s that I began to feel chilled. Even now that my heater is working again, I generally keep it somewhere in the 60s (usually the low end) and I’m perfectly happy with it there.

Except for my feet. My feet are constant blocks of ice. Even when I’m buried under thick velvet blankets and velvet duvet, my feet are frozen.

I wondered if there was a temperature that would be warm enough that my feet were comfortable, but not too hot for the rest of me. So, I started turning my heater up. What I’ve discovered is that my feet finally got comfortable while under the covers when the temperature in my room went above 80. They were still cold when not under the covers. But that was enough experiment. I otherwise felt like I was broiling at 80, without the covers.

When I was put together, I must have been given feet that were originally destined for someone like or . They are not in sync with the rest of me.

Damn shoddy construction, if you ask me.

The heater is back down to 63-ish, where it belongs. My feet will just have to suffer, or get up to speed.

I think and should send in their recipe for the chicken with the – umm – special sauce. Maybe they could get it in before th cookbook is published.