Regina Noctis

Psycho cousin just called this afternoon. Grandma told us that they’re letting him out early. He’ll be out on the 7th.

So much for a chance to complete the semester and get BayCon out of the way before I have to do something that will get me thrown out of here.

At least I can’t get ejected the same day Grandma learns about the restraining order. By law, she has to give me thirty days. That will at least see me through the end of the semester and BayCon. I can pack around those things.

I want to go get the restraining order now. This minute. I even started to grab the keys to the van. Then I was reminded that it’s Saturday. I’ll have to wait until the courthouse is open on Monday.

Dammit dammit dammit.

After I got my twist falls, I had a few requests to have a picture taken while wearing them. I hate having my picture taken, and always have, so I avoided it for quite some time. However, we needed a picture to work from while making our self-portraits in digital arts, so I put in the falls and away I went. My attitude about having my picture taken is pretty obvious in the image. This picture is also proof positive that I am out of practice at drawing on my spider web. But at least there’s a general idea about the falls, and I don’t completely hate the picture, even if I look annoyed in it.

Mom has made it quite plain that she has backed off completely from the idea of getting a restraining order. She keeps talking about when John gets out of jail in July and comes back here to live. I reminded her of the restraining order, and she told me how she just can’t do it. She will let me do it on my own, and take my grandmother’s wrath, and lose my place to live and my shot at getting my degree. Once I’ve gotten kicked out of here for getting the restraining order, she has also made it clear that she will not call the police when Grandma moves that psychotic back in here in violation of the order. So, I will just have to hope that she mentions him to me, or that I hear him in the background if we talk on the phone.

I don’t want to abandon her to the emotional abuses of my grandmother, or give up the dual degrees I’m working toward, but she’s leaving me no choice. I can’t just sit by and let him attack my mom. He might succeed in killing her this time. He came close enough in December. I have to do something about this, no matter the consequences to me. Once I wind up where ever I wind up and get myself a job, I can start attending a course or two and still get my degrees eventually. It won’t be as quickly as I’m doing now, since I don’t do very well working and taking a large load of classes. But I’ll get there, eventually. I have to keep telling myself that, because otherwise the temptation to be depressed over this is too great.

Mom has told me several times how much it hurts her, and how I can’t understand her feelings, when my grandmother makes it clear that she loves my psychotic cousin so much more than her own daughter that Grandma’s willing to risk her daugher’s life and health by bringing that psycho back here. I haven’t pointed out to her that I can understand it very well. After all, to protect my grandmother’s free will in all things, including her freedom to put everyone’s lives in jeopardy, she is making it quite clear that my life, my health, and my education matter less to her than a crazy, abusive old woman. That is the feeling I have much of the time. I do have one advantage that my mother doesn’t. I came out the other side of battered woman syndrome. I recognize the traits and the way that it makes the victim protect their abusers out of “love,” even at the expense of others that they do care about. So, my grandmother goes out of her way to protect her abuser, thinking that this is love, at the expense of my mom and me. And my mother protects her abuser, my grandmother, at the expense of her daughter. Reminding myself of this doesn’t always make the hurt go away, but it often helps.

I’m giving myself until this semester and BayCon are over, and then I’m starting the restraining order process. I should have obeyed my first instincts and done it when I first talked to the police about what my options were, and never told my mother about the possibility. I let her delay and delay it, claiming that she wanted to do it and protect my chance to get my degrees. I should have known where this would lead. After thinking I had a reprieve on getting kicked out of here, it’s much harder now to decide to throw it all away. We’ve also been without John’s influence while he’s been in jail, so I have had a vacation from it all, and the rage that was helping sustain me through this decision is less than it was. Before, I was just determined. There wasn’t so much fear of the consequences and a feeling of mourning in advance over the things that I’m destroying by the restraining order. It’s so much harder now, and I find myself in tears often when there’s no one to see.

This stuff is so good. It was my introduction to tagines. Coucous is the perfect accompaniment. I’m lazy about the couscous, however. I don’t make an elaborate Moroccan couscous from scratch. I pick up a box of roasted garlic and olive oil couscous at the store. I don’t know about other flavors of couscous, or one made from scratch, but the roasted garlic and olive oil one is a perfect compliment to kefta tagine.

The Kefta (meatballs)

1 pound ground lamb or beef
2 tablespoons chopped parsley
1 tablespoon chopped fresh coriander
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 cup onion, peeled and finely chopped
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
Salt to taste
2 tablespoons olive oil for pan-frying

The Sauce
2 cloves garlic, peeled and chopped
2 medium onions, peeled and finely chopped
1 green bell pepper, cored, seeded, and chopped
1 small bunch parsley, chopped
2 pounds tomatoes, chopped
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons salt or to taste

Garnish (optional)
6 eggs

Combine the ingredients for the kefta an dform into 1-inch balls with wet hands. Heat a 6- to 8-quart stove-to casserole and add the olive oil. Brown the meatballs in the oil, then remove, leaving the oil in the pot. Set the meatballs aside, covered.

Add the garlic, onion, and bell pepper to the reserved oil and saute until the onion is clear. Add the remaining ingredients for the sauce and simmer, covered, 30 minutes until the sauce has cooked down to a thick gravy.

Return the meatballs to the sauce and simmer uncovered 10 minutes more. Carefully break the eggs into the sauce and poach for a few minutes (don’t overcook the eggs.) Serve at once directly from the pan. Serves 6.

This morning, we got the email notification that my new computer had shipped. I figured I’d have a day or two once the thing shipped, so I hadn’t started work on transferring files from the computer that’s going away to make room for the new one. So imagine my surprise when the computer showed up this afternoon.

Since it arrived, I’ve spent quite some time transferring files, deleting things, uninstalling things, etc, so I could clear the old computer out of the way and put the new one in. I finally finished all of that around 10:30pm, and then began setting up the new machine.

My original plan was to continue using the computer that was my most recent acquisition as well as the new one. I have the switch box and the wifi equipment all sitting here ready. But I ran into a hitch. Both the mouse and keyboard have USB connectors, which my switch box doesn’t have. And the newest computer does not have the right ports for me to use anything but USB mouse and keyboard. So, before I can access anything on my old machine, some solution (probably involving adapters) must be reached.

At least I didn’t have much trouble convincing the new computer and the cranky router to get along. So I’m writing this from the new machine.

The new machine is tiny. I mean miniscule. I’m getting rid of a computer that had been designed to be small, but even it is significantly larger than this new machine. And I can see that I’m going to take some getting used to the CD/DVD drive. I’m accustomed to the tray being horizontal, not vertical.

And there’s now so much room on my desk! There wasn’t room for much of anything other than computers before, but this slimline case and flat-panel monitor have made quite a difference. I can actually do homework at my desk now, instead of hunched over on the bed, or in the dining room with my grandmother interrupting me every five minutes. Very difficult to study for a test when someone insists on asking questions and picking fights ten or twelve times per study session.

I had planned to get some work done with Illustrator tonight, in preparation for class tomorrow. However, after I got things set up as well as I could considering my connector problem, I had a bazillion updates to do on my ISP’s software and on XP. At this point, I’m too brain fried and tired to deal with installing the software and being creative.

Besides, my work isn’t entirely done. If I want to sleep, I have to clear boxes, styrofoam, plastic, and bubblewrap off of my bed. The fun part will be figuring out where to put it. It’s impossible to get into the storage room right now, because it’s filled with tools left behind by the men who are repairing my termite-eaten door frame and installing a new door. With a cat door, so my insane Manx will stop waking me up in the middle of the night by knocking on my door.

That’s what I’ve been for the last couple days. I caught one of those bugs that makes me feel exhausted all the time, and my eyes hurt when I’m awake. I’ve been mostly sleeping the days away.

I’d be asleep right now, but we had another PD three-ring circus complete with helicopter tonight. It started at about 1AM and woke me up. It just ended, so maybe I can get back to sleep.

Fortunately, a couple good things have happened to balance out the (admittedly fairly minor) negatives.

I picked up Adobe Illustrator CS. Normally a $500 program, but I got it for $91 with shipping thanks to a huge student discount. I think I love Studica.

Now, both of my rather cranky elderly computers run Win98. Illustrator requires either Win ME or XP. I’d use it on Mom’s machine, since it’s only a few short months old and is an XP machine. However, Mom wanted me to be able to use it on my own time, not only after she’s gone to bed. So she bought me a brand new computer. $1500 worth of computer. A Dell Dimension 4700C. Slimline case and a 17″ flat panel monitor so I’ll actually have some room on my desk for something other than computers. 2.80 GHz, 1 gig RAM, 80 gig hard drive, CD/DVD burner, upgraded the video card to the best they had listed (on the theory that if I don’t need it now, I will when I start doing the 3D rendering courses with Lightwave and the other programs they’ll be teaching us at school), lots of other bells and whistles that I’m not awake enough to bring to mind at the moment.

Of course, me being me, and having the inner miser I have, I wasn’t even going to get Illustrator. And I tried to talk her out of the computer. I have a hard time spending money. Anything more than $20 is too bloody expensive. And that’s the case not just with my own money, but with anyone else’s if they’re planning to buy something for me. Accepting gifts gracefully is not something I do well, particularly if I know how much it cost.

She eventually manage to shut me up about how expensive it was by pointing out over and over that this is not just some toy, it’s a necessary tool while I’m studying for the career I want. And it’s not like she’s paying a huge tuition for me to attend Berserkely or something. Tuition at a community college is vastly lower. So I should consider this as part of my tuition for school.

I was so conflicted, between happiness/excitement over the new machine, and the howling of my inner miser at the expense, that I wound up crying off and on for something like an hour.

There have been many lean times when my inner miser was not only useful, it was vital to survival. That’s how it developed in the first place, and why it has become so strong. But there are moments I wish I could beat it into unconsciousness. It feels rude to not show gratitude for the gifts people have given or wanted to give me in the past, but I always wind up arguing about the expense instead. My inner miser is often stronger than my ability to express my thanks. It’s been worse since I lost my job, because I know I can’t reciprocate by buying someone else a gift when their birthday or Christmas rolls around, or for no reason in particular.

I’ve also spent so much time more concerned about the happiness of those I care about than (sometimes) even my own basic survival. I’ve been trying to unlearn that habit, at least to the point that it’s no longer an unhealthy thing, and just returns to being a joy to do something that makes someone I care for happy when I have the excess means, rather than a self-sacrificing martyrdom. It’s part of why I try to cut the deal around gift-givings. Take the money you were planning to spend on me, and go buy something for yourself with it, something that you’d otherwise have done without that makes you happy. Especially if you know me well enough to know it’s the kind of thing I’d have bought for you, if I had any income to do it with. Knowing you did something good for yourself makes me happy in ways a gift given to me won’t.

Not that anyone ever listens. Well, hardly anyone. There’s been one exception. One year, finally listened to me. He bought himself Harry Potter books. I was very happy.

Hmmm… This really was just going to be about the new program and the new computer originally.

Note to self: Stay away from LJ when police helicopters circling overhead wake you up. You get too rambling and introspective.

I can’t believe how much work I’ve done in the last days. Starting late Friday night, I began really pounding out the assignments for my e-commerce class. I just submitted the last one. 8 modules, 16 forum topic posts, and a test, all done by early Monday morning. Which means that I’m officially done with that class, and can concentrate on the other three until the end of the semester in a month and a half. And I know that I’m doing well, that my work hasn’t suffered for being compressed into a weekend. I’ve gotten full points on all the assignments he’s graded so far, the test, and the class participation. As soon as he grades these last three assigments I turned in tonight, I should have an A. Maybe I should do these self-paced classes more often, considering I did all the work for the entire class in a matter of days.