-Visit Indy at least 5 times
-Go back to physical therapy
-Start going to regular therapy
-Make at least 5 books
-Take a glass blowing class
-Make hard decisions
-For every negative thing I say about myself I have to say 1 positive thing
-See my W.MI family more
-Send more letters/keep in better touch with those I love who are far away
-Let go of what happened in 2000 
-Hang out with work peeps for drinks at least once a month
-Stop feeling guilty for wanting “me” time
-Smile more
-Hate less
-Read more comics
-Take more pics with my real camera and less with my phone camera
-Finish Jude’s “5 years” book before he’s 6
-Stop apologizing so much
-Be more like Joan Jett (minus the lesbianism and vegetarianism)
-Embrace who I am, not who I think I’m expected to be

If I ever get a tattoo of just plain text it will be:
Go, then. There are other worlds than these.

I’m tired of caring anymore.

For the entire month, i’m posting things I’m thankful for and why. I need to remember why a) i’m awesome and b) things are awesome. So. Because Facebook is being an a-hole. Here are the first 6. The following 24 will have their own posts. Woot.

I’m thankful for:

1 -Jude - But not for the reasons you think. It’s not because he’s my kid or because I’m kind of required to be thankful for him. I’m thankful for him because he’s wicked smart and looks at the world through crazy Jude eyes. He has taught me so much about stopping, slowing down and noticing the small things in life. He’s taught me how to get out of my head and decide if what I’m down about is really worth it. Once, I was in a particularly dark place and I was talking to him about bad moods and not feeling well. He told me that we had to take a walk and look for rocks and that would help me feel better. He decided that we were only going to pick up rocks that looked like heads or faces and had to be small enough to fit in our pockets. So off we went, walking slowly through Royal Oak, scanning every bit of path, park and sidewalk for small rock-heads. That day was more cathartic for me than any amount of therapy i’ve ever endured. He’s precious and thoughtful, and I have so much to learn from him.

2 - Sloth and Crow in a boat with a piece of Swiss cheese for a sail  - it doesn’t need explaining why this is awesome.

3 - My imagination - It often gets me into trouble. It often confuses me and gets me trapped in my brain. It often gets stuck, like a scratch in a record and the skip,skip,skip of a repeated idea/fear/misconception/anxiety can turn into a tornado of problems in my brain. It often pushes me kicking and screaming into very dark places. But more often than any of those things,  it  gives me things like #3. It lets me have dreams about rabbits operating hot air balloons. It helps take me out of bad situations and gives me hope and strength to make it to a better one. I may not be the most creative, most beautiful, most talented, most whatever… but I like the things I think of and the unlimited possibilities it gives me for my future. 

4- Def Leppard videos - When I was 12, I fell madly in love with Def Leppard. So much that when Joe Elliott had a birthday, one of my best friends in all the world, Jennifer Shields, and I threw him a birthday party. We made a British flag cake and everything. (but, in lieu of sugar, we used powdered sugar and the cake turned out completely gross.) We used to stay up all night on Saturday nights watching headbangers ball just to hopefully catch one of their videos. We would watch their tapes over and over, rewinding and pausing our favorite moments. And this was on vhs, so it wasn’t like the pause/rewind/play button was very precise. We imagined that one day we would invent a machine that would allow us to “peel” the image we had paused and print it out as a picture. Eventually we moved on to better music (*cough* Morrissey *cough) but seeing those videos today still reminds me of those times, best friends, laughing until it hurts, where staying up past midnight on a Saturday was a special event, and all that mattered was friends and music.  

5 - Being Stubborn - Just like my imagination, my stubborn side often gets me into a lot of trouble. It’s  just a different kind of trouble. I do things just because you tell me not to. I do things just because I shouldn’t. I do things because I’m tired of waiting around for them to get done. You could see how that can pose a problem in normal life situations. But, I’m as stubborn as the day is long. I don’t give in. I don’t give up. I don’t surrender. I may stop talking during an argument or I may acquiesce during a debate without much of a fight, yet my brain is my driving force and it doesn’t forget. Oh no, my friend, just like rock and roll am’s brain never forgets. BUT as much as my stubbornness sounds like it’s a really bad trait to have, it’s not.  It keeps me alive and strong during times when everyone else would quit, give up, check out. I plow through the challenges of life because I refuse to let something (other than my own brain) keep me down. I may fall down and collapse in terrible pain & agony but you can bet your ass that when that happens, I’ll be dragging my sad, broken body across the ground just so i can keep moving forward.

6 - Fate, signs, messages from the ether - Whatever you want to call it, I’m grateful for them. They don’t happen consistently or constantly, but they always happen when I “need” them the most. they can be as simple as me saying out loud: “The next song that plays will give me a sign about (whatever I need a sign about).” Or they can be as strange as dreaming about something that happened to someone but i didn’t know about it. For example, dreaming about someone riding in a boat and then telling them I dreamed about them riding in a boat. They’d say “no shit, i totally rode in a boat this afternoon!” and I’d say “was the boat red?” and they’d say “it totally was!!”)

I don’t believe in God as the great big white beard puppet master in the sky hanging out with his kid on a big golden throne, getting all pissed off when he thinks about the Devil, doing mean things to babies and stuff just because he’s spiteful, and so on. But I sure do believe in signs and messages and things that are greater than our puny little human minds can handle.

I will never look at the city the same.

I never had a car in high school, so I either relied on the mercy of friends who did or I rode the almighty bus. A lot of people get that “oh, poor thing” look when I tell them I was a Senior in high school riding the bus. I didn’t care about riding the bus, really. I was the first one picked up, the only one at my stop which was basically 500 feet from my driveway, and I could sleep for 45 min before school started.

The only thing that sucked was walking that 500 feet in the morning down the dirt road to wait for the bus to show up. It wasn’t the walk. It was the fact that where I grew up was country. my parents and my 4 neighbors all owned 10+ acres of woodsy property. Across the street was the ski hill. It was dark, quiet and spooky at 6:30am. One morning, I was walking to the bus stop when up ahead I noticed a figure in the dark. I couldn’t make it out really, and assumed it was my neighbor Jamie. I thought it was weird cos he had already graduated the year prior but thought maybe he was taking the garbage out or some such.

I kept walking towards it, squinting in the dark to see who it was when suddenly the figure grew taller, and its silhouette was very much not a person’s. It was shaped like a man animal hybrid. Imagine the transformation scene from American Werewolf in London, and stop his transformation mid way. It was like a deer man without antlers, but all fuzzy like a wolf, but muscley, but not MAN muscley. This half human thing stood there all crooked legs and bent hunch back, long straight arms hanging at its side, and it screamed at me. Not just a yell or a holler, but a bona fide scream. It was a yodely anguished scream that was also kind of angry at the same time.

I stopped walking, stood completely still for what seemed like 15 seconds and then bolted home. I ran faster than I ever have or ever will. I told my mom what I saw and of course she’s used to me and how I am so she wound up driving me to school, but still. I  don’t know what the hell that thing was, and even to this day I am afraid of walking outside at night because I think the screaming wolf deer man is going to jump out at me.

THIS IS A LEGITIMATE FEAR OF MINE.

PS: edited to add picture for reference -

So I’ve gone crazy and have assigned personalities to the sauce packets at Taco Bell.

The Hot Sauce is the cocky one of the original three. “I would have chosen me too” - don’t we all know that guy? The only one at the party wearing a bow tie. Fire’s the one with the pretty face but spends more on hair gel than rent yet is always broke. That’s not surprising since he just leeches off the girls he picks up at bars. If a sauce could be a douchebag, it’d be Hot Sauce.

Then you have emotionally needy Fire Sauce. “Promise me you’ll text me in the morning.” You can smell the desperation before you even rip open the packet. This pitiful little sauce just wants to be loved, is that so wrong? She’s overwhelming and intense just like her spicy namesake. Poor little Fire Sauce, one day your prince will come.

And last but not least, sad pre-teen Mild Sauce. I know Mild is pre-teen because really that’s the only time in your life when you’re allowed to be THIS emo. “Free Me” is his mantra and the name of the poem he wrote in 4th hour history class. Free young Mild from his oppressive chains of suburban upper middle class boredom! Free him from the luxuries he’s grown accustomed to but refuses to appreciate!! No one understands your pain and suffering, do they young Mild?

This is why google voice still has a ways to go:

Hey i think your mission is red and then i want to go to okay no and probably so i’m gonna summer mayans and then chase taxis into the sunset i love grover sandwiches.

What?

The only person to really accept and appreciate my love is also responsible for destroying it. And me.

Which begs the question, is that what I deserve?