Regina Noctis

My brain is melting and dripping out my ears.

That was tough for a first assignment. Hopefully I’ll manage to get into the groove and not have as much difficulty with the next one in Integration of Web Technologies.

At least I got the damn thing DONE. I was starting to have my doubts.

I turned off the viewer in the History Tower. The record I’d been watching had been fragmentary, but was more intact than many from the Age of Uncertainty. I didn’t understand most of what I’d viewed. So many of the customs of the time were long since vanished. What, anyway, was a “cousin”?

Outside, it was another of those blue-crystal-sky, golden-drops-of-sunlight days. In other words, just like every other day under the Dome. Depressingly identical. At least a refreshing note of zaradannity was added by the large rabbit on the walkway outside the Tower.

“Gathering dust along with all the other antiques?” he asked as I walked past.

I stopped. The only one who knew me well enough to call me an antique did not look like a giant anthropomorphic rabbit. At least, not last time I’d seen him. “Kill yourself again, ooma? What was it this time? Hanging from one of the jade trees in Ilex Park? Or just overdose your meal injections again?”

“Does it matter? It was time for a new body. What do you think?”

“Rather drumdik.”

“Let me change your mind. Marry me for the afternoon, ooma.”

I resumed walking. “I would have thought you’d know better than to ask after our little dalika the other day. I’m not interested in an Essential Experience with one of you Fur People. Didn’t I already cut you out of my Circle, anyway?”

“How about just for an hour, then?”

“I’d be completely droad. How about getting yourself a reasonable body? We might make a unit of it then.”

“Ooma…”

“No.” I picked up speed, trying to leave him behind.

“Well, at least the Circle will still have at least one freak. You’re still in it. When are you going to apply for Age and Status change? Get over your eternal Janghood.”

“As soon as you stop hiding behind fur, ooma” I called back over my shoulder, not stopping. And, finally, he let me go.

Today’s the day. Rabbit Hole Day. After I’ve gotten some sleep, I might even do something about it.

has a Rabbit Hole kind of day every day. Is this the one time of the year we get to hear mundane life details there? Probably not, but you never know.

My mother, even thought she has said several times that the recognizes the importance of doing so, has been resisting the idea of getting a restraining order to make sure that John doesn’t come back to live here. He already has moved back to Delano from Salinas, and is living with his mother. He’s proven before that he wears out his welcome with her in a few short days, and that my grandmother will then take him back, so the “poor baby won’t have to live on the street because he’s too helpless to make it on his own.” Mom has told my grandmother over and over that she will not accept John moving back, and will have him arrested if he does so. She won’t have John arrested on the warrant. Since the cops are treating it as a misdemeanor in spite of the fact that John tried to kill her, they’ve told her that even though there’s a warrant, they can’t actually arrest him. SHE has to make a citizen’s arrest and then they can take him away. How stupid is that? And on a misdemeanor, that warrant will be short-lived. So we need that restraining order, or my grandmother will take him back. After all, as far as she’s concerned, he wasn’t “seriously” trying to kill my mother, so we should all just forget it ever happened. She also completely ignores the way the violence and insanity keep escalating.

My mother hates the idea of inviting the beauracracy into her life. And she’s afraid that he’s going to tell some story to the police if it comes down to it that will get her in trouble. His claim is that she’s been terrorizing him for the last five years, and anything he’s done he’s done out of self-defense. I’ve pointed out to her that he’s the one with the record. Drugs, elder abuse, domestic violence. Plus the complaints I’ve called in on his thievery of our stuff and his threats. Who’re they going to believe, the psycho they’ve arrested repeatedly, or my mom, who doesn’t even have a speeding ticket? I also pointed out that I’ve lived here for the last couple years, and can corroborate that she hasn’t laid a hand on him. But she still worries and keeps balking on getting the restraining order.

While I was getting ready for class on Monday, she finally made some calls to find out how to go about getting the restraining order. She then told me that it would be over $200 to get a civil restraining order. I could tell from the way she told me and the body language that she was hoping to appeal to my inner miser, the person inside me who feels that spending more than $20 on anything is spending way too much. And my reply to her was to ask her how much more expensive it would be to bail me out of jail after I attempt to murder the asshole. When I lived here as a teenager, his abuse pushed me to the snapping point twice. While I’m normally a pacifist, I’ve also got a lot of rage still remaining from that abuse, and there comes a point under abuse when I snap. I don’t remember a whole lot of what I did, but I’m told that I chased him through the house, trying to stab him with a knife. And the other time, I tried to strangle him. I’ve learned to recognize the approach of loss of control, and I told her that those last few months were pushing me toward that edge. It was no longer a question of if I’d snap and go after him, it was when. So, what was cheaper, a bit over $200 now, or bailing me out after attempted murder?

She claims she’s going to go get the paperwork for the restraining order today. I suspect I’ll have to do more prodding before she actually does.

This reminds me of when she was going to get a divorce from my dad. She dragged her feet and dragged her feet on it forever. She can be so practical about so many things, but when it comes to doing something to stop someone from damaging her, she balks. It’s incredibly frustrating for someone like me who’s trying to get her to do what she needs to do in order to live a safer, healthier life.

I wonder if this is related to the way she refuses to go to the doctor. She almost got to spend the rest of her life with partial paralysis because of that. It took Aaron and me pushing her, Aaron making the appointment, and me practically kidnapping her and driving her to the doctor before she’d do anything about it. In spite of the huge and obvious differences between getting a slipped disk and partial paralysis dealt with, going through a divorce, and getting a restraining order, I think that there’s an underlying thread, a refusal to do the big things that are necessary to ensure health and safety for herself, that connects them. Self-destructive behaviour. Just like her alcoholism.

No wonder I learned how to self-destruct so effectively, and have had a long, hard road unlearning it. I’ve had a prime example of it all my life. I just never really recognized that on a conscious level until these last few days.

All I can do is keep trying to herd her in the right direction, I guess. I don’t see how much difference I can make otherwise. At my self-destructive worst, I know that someone else telling me I needed to find help would have either been a huge fight that got nowhere, or a “Yeah, sure, whatever you say,” with no attempt to actually follow through on it. And I know that she’s going to be just as bad, or worse. I think all I can really do is try to herd and direct, and hope that she realizes that there is this problem. I don’t think that she will, but I hope that she does.

errr… birthday. ;)

And, since I haven’t yet subjected to it (this being the first birthday he’s had since I joined MonkeyFilter and met him) I think it’s time for the dirge.

Happy birthday, happy birthday
Death, destruction, and despair
People dying everywhere
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Now that you’re the age you are
Your demise cannot be far
Happy birthday, happy birthday
May the candles on your cake
Burn like cities in your wake
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Let the people on the street
Be your barbequing meat
Happy birthday, happy birthday
We like children, yes we do
Baked or broiled or in a stew
Happy birthday, happy birthday
Let the women wail and weep
Kill them all but SAVE THE SHEEP!
Happy birthday, happy birthday

Always much more fun with a bunch of people to actually sing it, grunting barbarically and slamming mugs on the table, but you do what you can.

If they only knew I have only one breast, and part it down the middle…

Which long-standing joke makes me miss Brian Covell all over again.

Seems like almost everyone I know is getting sick. Why should I be the exception?

As of tonight, I’m no longer the exception, dammit. Though it’s not the cold or flu, which is what everyone else is dealing with. I had to be different somehow, and it seems that I’ve developed an ear infection. Starting about an hour ago, my ear closed up and began hurting.

There’s something else that I’m sure no one wants to hear about in great detail. I wish I wasn’t experiencing it in great detail. For those who have heard my stories about the first time I was being medicated for PCOS a few years ago, it’s something like that. I got put back don medication for it when I went into the hospital in December, after having been off of it for a few years. No insurance will do that to ya. So now I get to sleep for only short naps for a few days. Joy.

There are times I hate being female. This would be one of them.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go be exhausted and hormonally insane elsewhere. Probably all over a video game. They don’t really mind if I start yelling at them for no reason.

*glares in the general direction of *

This demonloop is your fault! Someday, SOMEDAY, you will PAY!

*wanders away, singing* Is it really Butte, Montana…

Trying to comment on your last post on the 2143 project, but it tells me permission is denied. I thought I’d let you know, so you can figure out if it’s just me that the site has decided it doesn’t like, or if it has taken a dislike to everyone.

What a rotten night.

Mo, sorry I wasn’t there to answer. At the time you called, I was in the middle of one of the multiple familial explosions that went down tonight. I know you wanted to talk before this weekend’s meeting. Sorry it didn’t work out.

That is all.

Acquired from , who found it elsewhere herself:

Take the first sentence of the first post you made each month during the past year. Paste them all together. Wonder if it makes any sense at all…

Hello, 2004. Who let him in? I don’t often bother to post quiz results anymore, but considering how much I loved the movie, I just had to this time. Today was really psychotic. I’m a member of several communities, and other than a couple recipes, haven’t bothered to post or even comment in any of them. So, I had planned to write a few memories of BayCon next time I got a shot at the computer with an internet connection for longer than it takes me to read email and LJ. Meme, stolen from , who found it here. I’ve got this thing stuck in my head, jostling for space along in the “wants to be animated and not likely to ever happen” section with the “Three Suns” one from a couple years ago. Tonight, they’re interfering with getting to my night class. Yeah, you. It’s looking more and more like my mantra of lo these many months, “Anyone but Bush!” will need to change. I think and should send in their recipe for the chicken with the – umm – special sauce.

Or, my own variation, done out of curiosity, to see if the first sentence of the last post of each month of the past year makes any more sense:

So far, despite the number of my friends who’ve taken this test, this is the only time I’ve seen this result. I’m heading out to get an oil change on the car and then I hit the road for the Bay Area. And I didn’t even try to stack the answers for once! Not individuals. I’ll be leaving to head up to the Bay Area sometime tomorrow afternoon. Castle Magic castle builders. Some friend of Mom’s sent her an invite to Gmail. But I thought this one was kinda cool. My left eyelid and eyebrow have both decided to twitch tonight. So much shit has happened today, I don’t even know where to begin. I can finally write about this now without bursting into tears or going on a homicidal rampage now, I think.

It’s official. I make no sense, coming or going. :D

And yes, I realize that comes as no surprise whatsoever. ;p

I may  have just fired the shot that ended a friendship, or I may have succeeded in getting someone to understand my side and why I’m angry. We’ll see.

*crosses fingers*

Okay, folks, here’s the thing. It particularly applies to Monkeys, but I’ll also give the choice to everyone else.

There are posts, locked down to friends only. There will probably be more. While I generally prefer to be quite open about the insanity when it happens, I am respecting someone else’s wishes not to have this spread about completely publically.

We have lived through some very bad familial explosions lately, up to and including psychosis, violence, and attempted murder. This journal, first and foremost, is the place I go to rant and rave when the alternative is to start losing my mind. There are often things here that people might be much happier never having known. There’s also the added complication of my mom (path on MonkeyFilter) who would prefer that people not talk to her about what’s going on. Online has become her escape from the bad stuff. She likes having someplace she can go where people are not going to know about the bad stuff, and she can pretend for a while that it’s not going on.

So, here’s the thing… I can friend you, and you’ll have access to these posts as well as the public face of this journal. Or we can leave things as they are. Consider carefully, because it would be best not to be on the friends list if you don’t think you can continue with business as usual, particularly around path. We’ve already had one encounter with someone who is on my friends list calling here and talking to her about it, which made her far more unhappy than she’d been and got her angry at me for venting in my journal. This was in spite of a previous announcement about path’s preferences where this is concerned, when I took all of the public posts and locked them down. This will be the one and only public announcement about this. I don’t want to come across as one of the “friends-only drama queen” types of LJ. That’s not what this announcement is about, nor is my journal about this. Just be aware that there has been a lot of not-good mixed in with the good, and that it needs to stay here, not become public fodder or a spur toward a conversation that could wreck path’s escape from the bad stuff.

So, comment and let me know if you think you can deal with this stuff on those terms, and I will friend you. Conversely, if you are on the friends list and don’t want to deal with this stuff, then let me know and I’ll remove you, no hard feelings.

, you once offered to be removed, and there was so much going on I never asked… would you prefer to be removed, or are you okay with things as they stand? Whichever you are more comfortable with.

Our home network is currently down, since the router is about to be sent back to Linksys for replacement. The ballsed-up, badly made piece of garbage managed to have the reset button break off within two months of getting the router. It has completely ceased communicating with the computer now, and I can’t reset to factory standards and reconfigure, which has been necessary every other time this has happened. So, since I’m still well within the warranty period, off it goes.

As soon as the new one arrives and I get the network set up again, I intend to scan several of the pictures that I took for my photography class. Particularly the best ones I took of , , and . I’ll post links to ‘em here when everything’s in place.

Still about two and a half weeks until the semester starts. I hope that the router gets here by then. Otherwise, it’s going to be a pain in the ass trying to work with three of the classes I’m taking. They’re all three online courses through BC’s distance learning program. As things currently stand, I have access to the net on one machine, software for the courses on a second that has no access to the net or any other computer, and the printer hooked up to my mom’s machine, which does have at least a dial-up connection to the internet, but no network connection. Fun, fun, fun.

I am looking forward to getting pictures up, though. Soon as I can make it happen. Particularly the two that the instructor liked enough to put on display for several weeks at BC. One picture of my Goth Goddess, the other one of Angel. He considered one of Dreamy also, but in the end it was decided that the picture looked too posed to be a good example of the assignment. He otherwise liked it, though, so that was good.

Well, off to attempt to sleep once more. I was tired when I headed to my room (early for me, at that. Like, ten last night.) But after I got into bed, I was awake. And have been all night. Ahhhh, the joys of learned insomnia.

… could call, drunk from celebrating, to wish me a happy New Year, and my entire bit of grumbling about drunkeness could go right out the window when he reminds me that he can be absolutely the sweetest, most adorable, witty, and funny pet fag in the world, whether he’s drunk or sober.

Damn you for ruining my grumbling and my blue funk, Sylvan. I’ve been grinning ever since you called. :p

All day today, I kept forgetting it was New Year’s Eve. I kept saying things about stuff that we should get done tomorrow, to be reminded time and time again that the things I was talking about wouldn’t be available. They’d all be closed for the holiday.

I got another reminder at midnight, when folks went out and set off the fireworks that they’d been saving since July, or fired guns into the air. And I still forgot yet again, until I logged on to catch up on journals, and saw folks talking about NYE.

New Year’s Eve has always been pretty much a non-event as far as I’m concerned. I have gone to a few parties thrown by friends, but I didn’t drink much even before I learned about the way I have to watch what I eat and drink thanks to the PCOS. Everyone else would be stumbling around drunk, and I was just bored. Time was that I’d take note of the stupid things that people did when drunk, and then drive them nuts about it forever. Even that minor enjoyment of being around a bunch of drunks is gone these days. I love my friends, but I am less and less able to like anyone once they’ve gotten drunk. I can’t even find them comical anymore.

And then I’d always be designated driver when all I really wanted to do was go home and recover from too much togetherness with a bunch of drunks. I couldn’t say no, since these were my friends and I didn’t want them crawling into a car with someone who shouldn’t be driving. Often that would have been the only other choice. And since there were times when I was the only one sober and with a vehicle, there were times that I’d ferry one group home, return to the party and pick up another segment, and so on.

So, since I’ve never been particularly fond of New Year’s Eve, why in the hell am I sitting here feeling blue about being here alone? Mom and Grandma were asleep hours ago. Just me and a cat were still up when midnight arrived. And I’m feeling a little down about that. Very strange, since NYE has never held much attraction for me.

Oh, the hell with it. I’m going to go play The Sims 2. I want to find out what the sim ’s baby is like, since she was kidnapped by aliens and impregnated by them. Besides, sim keeps hitting on sim ’s husband, and maybe I’ll get lucky and have my husband leave me for my best friend, and take the two “oops” children sim me had with him. :p

This game has been like a trainwreck since I got it for my birthday. Once I began adding friends, it got to be the kind of thing where I just couldn’t look away.