Going with Praga Khan for the title of this one (yeah I like to name things after songs and/or movies).
So you know, there's just not enough mindfuckery going on in my life what with my manipulating husband and all.. now my mom's gotta get in on the deal. This isn't really unusual, esp. in cases where my mom & dad are fighting they tend to "bend the truth" to win me over to thier side of things on occasion. But she's aware of the situation with Steve & I and how hard of a time I am having and so you think the motherly thing to do would be to be supportive and give advice (perferable unbiased advice, but it is my mom so I understand it comes out one-sided some of the time). But instead this is a conversation she just had with me, because she wants me to come to Nantucket.
I like Nantucket, but only for short periods, because I get kind of bored after a while of just going to the beach day in and day out.. I don't know why. The beach is nice and its quiet, and I like quiet but too much quiet makes me antsy after a week or so (the same reason I get bored in Lancaster NH). It's like the city girl and me just feels the call of (Cthulu?) civilization after a period of time. Also there's just the fact that my mom, while meaning well tends to baby me like I'm helpless or have conversations with me like I'm her best buddy, which sometimes is okay and othertimes I just don't want to talk about shit and be left alone. I don't think it's a lot to ask, and I try to subtley hint it to her, and sometimes she doesn't get it and it makes me feel intruded on and uncomfortable, which is probably just part of my stupid Asberger's or whatever, but yeah after about 5 days with her I'm about ready to kill her. So normally I try to limit my Nantucket vacations to no more than a week. For some reason she got it in her head that because Steve and I are having issues and that she said I was welcome to do so if I wanted, that I was going to stay there for like a month. Except well I never said I was going to do that, nor would I want to.
So instead of just accepting that, she pulls out one of her over-dramatacized mind fucks:
"Well you know, Meaghan said she wants to stay with me"
"What do you mean?"
"She said it's "too noisy" at home. She says all you guys do is yell"
Ok now while I admit Megahan has quite the little vocabulary for a Two and a Half year old.. I highly doubt she actually said this. If she even came close to saying something of this nature, it is because she was lead there. For example she often repeats the last thing you said. Like if you ask her to choose between say an apple, grapes or an orange, 7 out of 10 times she will choose the orange not because it's what she actually wants, but because it was the last thing you said and her memory isn't always retaining the former two choices. So when you tell her say " Meaghan go clean your room" she will respond "Ok I go clean Meaghans room now"but will instead go off and play with toys and not clean her room even thought that's what she has just said. So in other words I can imagine this conversation starting out yes, as Meaghan telling my mom she wants to "stay with Nonna" because she likes my mom and it's someone different than me and Steve who she sees all the time. And somehow from there my mom trying to find out what the reason is for this and putting words into her mouth. Something like "why do you want to stay with me?" "I don't know.. it's too loud".
And yes our house is loud what with being on a semi-busy residential street people use to cut over from Somerville to Medford Center, not to mention our frat-party Tufts student neighbors, the guy across the street who constantly seems to be doing construction and putting up and down ladders and running saws and electric drills all day long, and ambulances which you can hear driving up and down Mystic Valley parkway ta couple blocks away, and yes Steve is loud just in general when he talks (and yeah he does yell a bit too). And my mom's house, while on Tremont Street in Boston is relatively quiet as it's well built and often the neighbors are at work or away and she usually doesn't have the windows open because she has central A/C (while we have open windows and ceiling fans which tends to bring in the noise as well).
Anyways from there I'm sure my mother lead her with the reat "why is it loud? are mommy and daddy fighting?" and meaghan being a parrot would say "yes mommy and daddy are fighting". That sort of thing.
And no I'm not denying fighting. I don't really fight except really rare occasions when I am fed up. Steve does raise his voice, pretty much daily... but no fighting and considering I tell this blog about eveything else there's no reason for me to lie about that. I sometimes do raise my voice if I've already asked Meaghan to do something a few times, and she hasn't, to get her attention and make sure she knows I am serious, but I don't think that's unusual. I mean the alternative is to let her get away with murder, and that ain't gonna happen, I can't sand spoiled brat children whose parents ignore them. My mom is just messing with me for lack of a better word. or at least making a mountain out of a molehill...
and people wonder why the fuck I can't always trust people and/or am always trying to read the "real story" behind what they are actually saying. I'm just so used to everyone in my life trying to use me for thier own purposes...
GRR ARG!

I have no idea why I was thinking about his. One too many hours of "Assassins' Creed" combined with one too many commercials for "Wanted" maybe. Oh also Eddie had a whole bit on the Hashshasin in the new show...
Either way the point of an Assassin is the targeted (and stealthy) killing of a prominent political figure whose ideals threaten a certain way of life. Often these assisinations are politically or religiously motived, as the doctrines of one form of government or religion don't mesh with the doctrines of the other. The basic tenant (as mentioned in the trailer for "Wanted") is "kill one to save one thousand". Good examples of people this would have proved useful for, Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot, Osama Bin Laden; someone like that who could you get to them before they really garned enough support to kill the amount of people that they did, would be a prime example (unfortunately for history the Assasins must have had way too much Hashish those days).
Well anyways if you could somehow combine this with say time travel or somesuch sort of thing; I got to thinking (because you know how you're just say blogging to Steggy about King Tut's Tomb one minute and then posturing about time-travelling extrajudical assassination the next) wouldn't it be kind of cool if somehow one could go back in time and somehow prevent (through assassination if necessary) the loss of important historical artifacts and documents?
I guess I thought this because I've been big time into King Tut since I was like 5 and his stuff went round on tour (c. 1978). and I was watching the National Geographic movie spotlighted today on MySpace Video. And well at some point they mentioned how they didn't really know much about him because the important historical documents regarding his life had been lost or destroyed. And it then got me thinking about how many times visiting museums and whatnot that I've heard that. "Well we would know more about this except the record was destroyed"... that sort of thing.
I think the Catholic Church is especially guilty of this, but in King Tut's case I belive it was a succeeding Pharoah or Client King, as Tut's Family was more or less trying to introduce a new god (Amun... go educate yourself if you like I don't feel like explaining it at the moment) . And well it was pretty controversial at the time from what I gather and it wouldn't shock me as later when either trying to convert to Greek/Roman rule and to those sets of dieties his historical information was wiped to cover up the existance of that religious movement (you know kind of how we turned Samhain into Halloween/All Saints Day or Yule into Christmas or Ostara into Easter).
Anyway pointless little over-active imagination moment of the day.
Oh and P.S. (though this is mostly for Lee/Turf) Do you ever just walk by a church with a really big steeple or something and have a random urge to climb it to get Viewpoint credits? Yeah I play way too much of this game...

Found this stumbling to: http://www.inspiredmoneymaker.com/2008/05/23/101-tips-to-help-you-make-money-doing-what-you-love/
Although my ultimate goal isn't necessarily to make money, just to do something I love, I guess it wouldn't hurt to be able to do both. I found "most" of these pretty true, and likely useful (except maybe reading the books, which sound boring to me), for lots of issues in basic everyday life, not JUST making money. Now I just have to force myself to implement some of them.
101 Tips to Help You Make Money Doing What You Love
Posted by : Paul Piotrowski
Cut Out TV Time – Instead of watching other people doing what they love (actors, athletes, etc.) while you sit on the couch, why not invest the time into becoming an Inspired Money Maker. The average US home has the TV on for over 3,000 hours per year. A 40 hour/week job is only 2,000 hours per year.
Read "Think and Grow Rich"
Have a Sense of Humor
Be Yourself
Don't Hide Yourself – Be Accessible
Visualize Your Goals Daily
Have an Opinion
Compliment People
Stop Letting Fancy Sounding Coffee Steal Your Dreams – $5.50 coffee and snacks each day cost you $2,000/year. That could be invested into your Inspired Money Maker dreams instead. Use the money to start a business, purchase equipment, take courses, go to a seminars, etc.
Learn to Listen
Be a Simplifier, Not a Complicator
Learn From Your Mistakes, But Don't Be Afraid to Make Them
Be Humble
Read "The Science of Getting Rich" by Wallace Wattles
Get Excited
Be Original. Be Grateful. Be courageous.
Be Unreasonable
Stop Being Negative – Stop justifying that you're just being realistic. See things as they really are, not worse than they are. Then, take it a step further and see things better than they are.
Take Action
Be Nice to People
Create Your Own Luck
Stop Pretending to be a Victim
Don't Worry What Others Think, That's Their Business
Learn to Master Your Habits
Do Something New
Use Affirmations Daily
Beat the Odds – When you encounter an obstacle, realize that each obstacle you get through with your determination also eliminates 80% of your competition. Keep going, don't give up and your odds will improve every step of the way.
Just Do It
Believe in Yourself – Nobody else is going to do it for you. Start now, in this moment.
Don't be Good, Don't be Great, Be Outstanding
Never Stop Growing
Give to Get
Plant Your Flag, Commit to the Inspired Money Maker Path
Connect With Your Spirit Guides
Don't Talk Small About Yourself
Avoid Bureaucracy
Focus Your Energy
Read Books
Invest in the Tools You'll Need – Stop being cheap and invest in the tools you may need to succeed.
Have Integrity
Always Be Creating Your Story
Start an Idea Journal, Capture Everything
Pay Attention to Your Dreams
Assume You Won't Live Forever, The Time To Do This is NOW
Don't Gossip, Network – Cut out wasted time gossiping on the phone with your friends. Instead, get your friends into making money doing what they love and then each hour you spend on the phone will be networking towards both of you growing your Inspired Money Maker ventures.
Aim to Improve the Universe. Think Big
Don't Give Up
Get a Psychic Reading
Make it Fun
Trust Your Gut – When it comes to logic vs intuition. Go with your gut, then justify it with logic later.
Believe in Others
Skip the Party, Work on Your Dreams Instead
Challenge the Status Quo
Learn a Positive Word Every Day
Get Help Where Needed – Don't try doing everything yourself. If you need web-design, hire a web designer. If you need logo design, hire a logo designer. If you need accounting done, hire an accountant. Try not to do too much yourself. Focus on what you love doing and find a way to monetize it.
Instill Confidence in Others
Email a Stranger, Propose a Win / Win Relationship
Take Time to Relax
Start a Blog and Document Your Journey
Digg, Stumble, Bookmark this Post and Get 9,639 Universal Karma Points
Model Successful People – Read biographies, books, Blogs. Study successful people. Find someone who's already accomplished what you want to accomplish and model their beliefs, their behaviors etc.
Replace Your Bathroom Reader with a Self-Help Book
Take Two Weeks Off Work, Stay Home and Work on Your Inspired Money Maker Plans. Tell Everyone Else You're Out of the Country.
Repeat Your Affirmations In Your Head Until You Fall Asleep at Night
Choose Financial Abundance, Stop Believing that Money is a Dirty Word
Compete With Yourself, Not Others
Smile and Make People Laugh
Make and Carry Your Personal Business Cards
Be Polite, But Don't Be Afraid to Express Yourself Either
Don't Waste Time on Stupid Crap – Does your desk really need to be cleaned again this week? Do your books really need to be alphabetically arranged?
Watch What People Do, Not What they Say They Do
Help Someone Out
Think "How Do I Increase My Income by $10,000" not "How Do I Cut Expenses by $100"
Be Nice to Yourself
Get Rid of Stinkin Thinkin – Stop the endless negative chatter in your mind. Re-focus your internal questions on the positive.
Enjoy the Journey
Network with People You Feel Comfortable With
Don't Use Your Kids as an Excuse
Learn to Forgive – Stop wasting energy holding grudges. Forgiving someone is not the same as condoning whatever they did. It is simply letting go of the pent up negative energy inside you because it doesn't serve you anymore. Let it go.
Try Immersion Learning
Find a Mentor / Coach, Don't Let Lack of Money Be Your Excuse
Give Referrals, Ask for Referrals
Don't Complain. Put the Violin Away. Nobody Wants to Hear It
Stop Looking for Shortcuts. Steady Wins the Race.
Share Your Success with Others
Don't Hang Around Negative People. Hang Out With Other Inspired Money Makers
Buy Wrinkle Free Dress Pants – Saves you time on having to iron them
Don't Believe Your Excuses
Write in a Journal
Don't Underestimate the Fear of Success
Be Decisive
Meditate
Convert Your Car Into a Personal Development University – Turn off the Radio and Listen to Audio Courses and Seminars in the Car
Hire Someone to Mow the Lawn, Work On Your Dreams Instead
Sleep When You're Dead – Stop sleeping 8-12 hours a day. Try 6 hours / night for 30 days and see how you feel. Most people sleep so much because they're depressed about their life. Work on being an Inspired Money Maker and you won't want to sleep.
Use Law of Attraction
Send Gifts to People
Ask for What You Want – Erase the fantasy from your head that others should know what you want. Ask for what you want, always. Stop talking about what you didn't get, and focus on what you want.
Work on Your Communications Skills
Have Patience – Everything won't come all at once. Have the patience to trust that everything will come at it's perfect time.
Seek Answers Within

For real this seemed almost laughable. I almost just kept on stumbling, when I came across it... until I read it. And again I am probably just falling into that realm of "vague generalizations can hold meaning when you let them" thing, but it was intriguing nonetheless.
http://www.wowzone.com/whattree.htm
I am the Poplar Tree:
POPLAR TREE (the Uncertainty) - looks very decorative, not very self-confident, only courageous if necessary, needs goodwill and pleasant surroundings, very choosy, often lonely, great animosity, artistic nature, good organizer, tends to lean toward philosophy, reliable in any situation, takes partnership seriously.

While, no this day so far has not topped the oddity of the other day. So far I saw:
A kind of creepy-looking old man driving an old 1970's woodpaneled sation wagon with the license plate "MGOOD". I dunno, but it gave me huge heebie jeebies...
A guy that no word of a lie looked like the Real Life embodiment of the character Lucky (Luanne's husband) on King of the Hill. And no I don't mean he looked like Tom Petty (since the character really only sounds like Petty {because it is} and only vaguely resembles him in any way).
Other than that I was miffed once again by societies inability to understand that I like "Coke" and not "Diet Coke". I hate that people automatically assume that because I am a woman, that I am ordering a "Diet Coke" I mean it isn't even the same number of syllables for one.
I can't tell you how many times I have ordered a "Coke" and then got my glass, gone to take a sip and "Ptooie!" evil aspartame taste of death. For real that shit will do more damamge to you than the caffiene and sugar! And then you know I politely try to ask the waitperson for a new one and they always look indignant for whatever reason and say something borderline rude like "oh well I just assumed you meant 'diet". What's that supposed to mean?! Like what I need/want "diet" because I'm a little over weight, because I'm a chick and I'm supposed to be all self-conscious of myself, what?!
I mean why the hell do people even drink "diet" in the first place. They're certainly not doing it for the taste, so I can only assume they are fooled by it's claim of "diet". This arguement also goes for "caffiene free", "zero" "free" and "plus" versions of softdrinks. If you want a soda, drink a soda, a real hi-test soda with all the shit in it the way nature didn't intend at all in any way whatsoever. If you want something healthy with no calories, sugar or caffiene: drink some fucking water!

For giggles I added that "What Are you Worth" application. I notice that to "buy" friends it's obviously more expensive the larger friendslists they have. So all my normal peeps are only like $560, but bands, entertainers and others start going up from there. So The Lost Boys are worth about $9700, Paolo is worth $6000, Weird Al is worth a whopping $360,000!
However one slightly expensive, but I'd so spend it if it meant he had to come over to my house and personally entertain me (get your mind out of the gutter I didn't mean it THAT way!) is Eddie Izzard at $169,000.
That's a fucking deal, man!

Yep, I realize it's only four days into June, and I am already dubbing yesterday the "Most Bizzare Day Ever". Let's just say it'd take quite a bit of work to top it, and if it happens I'll be lucky to be alive, so lets hope it doesn't, eh?
The day started off, I awoke from a pretty odd dream (which I will post later in a Dream Journal post, as it doesn't have much relavence to this particular story). It was a school day for Meaghan, so she poked around for a bit eating breakfast and getting dressed. Normally I like to get here there by nine, but I also had to get gas on top of the fact that she was pretty insistant that she pick out her outfit for the day, so it was more like ten when we got there. I dropped her off, so far a typical morning.
The next thing on my list was to go to Johnson's Veterinary in Lawrence. This was to get some Iams Veterinary Formula low-pH cat food for my mom's cat, Nino. Nino has some sort of kidney problem, I don't really know, but he needs special food and my mom is away in Nantucket and someone is cat-sitting Nino so she wanted to make sure there was plenty of food in case they needed it, and hey I was going to be in Lawrence anyways, could I do it? So I get over there, the place is jam packed with three dogs (a Boston Terrier, A Golden Retriever, and a Wiemaraner), two cats (one of which also had a boxful of kittens) and all thier owners. One of the kittens, poor thing, had gotten stuck during birth and his paw had broken in two places. They had put him on antibiotics for a few days to see if he would mend, but he didn't and they had to amputate the foot. He was still a cute little ball of fluff, more like a hamster than a cat at that age, despite being a bit gimpy. Meanwhile I noticed one of the vets had an eyebrow ring. My friend Jackie (Dr. Steggy) is a vet, and often she writes "my day at the clinic" type stories on her blog. Reading a few of those I can tell you, I certainly wouldn't want to have anything hanging off of me, a necklace or bracelet, nevermind something attatched through my skin, on a day where a 750 pound dog who really doesn't want to be at the vet shows up! So yeah, a bit strange.
Next on the list was a trip to "The Fabric Place" and I know what you're thinking, "wait didn't you just go there on Sunday" and the answer to that is yes, but also no. We got there just before 11AM on Snday, but Woburn Mall's Sunday hours are 12PM, so instead I tried Michael's in Everett. I actually had the stuff I needed, in my hands, and then second guessed myself and asked the 18 year old clerk if it was what I was looking for. She didn't think so, and didn't think she'd ever in fact heard of anything that they carried that sounded like what I was asking about. So I put it back, only to look it up when I got home and realize that I had it all along. How irritating! So yeah decided just to go to Fabric Place where they would know what the hell I was talking about.
I hadn't had breakfast that morning, and it was about 11AM, so I stopped into the McDonald's in the mall for a bite. I know, McDonald's is horribly evil for you, and yeah I watched Morgan Spurlock's "Super-Size Me" and it totally icked me out, but apparently not so much so that I can overcome my french fry addiction. IMHO McDonald's has the best damn french fries, ever. Well at least in America, I don't travel much, but I've heard the Belgians make a mean french fry. My other favorite McDonald's past-time, is trying out whatever the newest menu item is, in this case it was the "Southern Style Crispy Chicken Sandwich". The SSCCS (because I'm not typing all that again) was not nearly as excellent as my foray into the "Sausage McSkillet Burrito" from a few months ago. All I can really describe it as, is like the equivalent of eating a stick of Land O' Lakes Butter. Yeah it's sickeningly buttery tasting. On top of that it's advertised as havig pickles, so I'm thinking you know a Quarter Pounder sized quantity of pickles (appx. 8) not a hamburger sized portion of pickles (2), but alas it was the latter. My sandwich had a lowly regular sized pickle slice and a even lowlier baby mini pickle slice all pushed over to one side of the sandwich, so I had to eat much of this buttery atrocity without the aid of the beloved pickle goodness.
To make matters worse, I forgot all about the new McDonald's Sweet Iced Tea, which would have been the perfect compliment to my Southern Fried Butter Sandwich, so I had already ordered a Coke. This particular McDonald's only has one ice machine and one soda fountain (boy that must suck at high-volume lunch hours). I was in line for ice, behind another guy, when some guy comes flying in from the sidelines of the restaurant and cuts me off. He was getting a refill, so I guess he just assumed that since he had already waited in line for his initial drink filling, he was entitled to just muscle his way into line the second time round. Honestly if he would have just asked, I porbably wouldn't care, like maybe he was in a hurry to go back to work or something and I would have let him cut in. It was the fact that he just decided social conventioons weren't really his style. So he moves onto the soda machine and I finally get my ice and now I am am waiting for him to finish filling his drink, hes taking up pretty much the whole machine so no one else can get in. And then, he drinks out of the cup, while still standing there, so he can refill it some more! What an asshat! I should've told him so, but of course I didn't.
So after all that adventure, I go to Fabric Place, buy what I need and get back in my car to head to Boston to drop off my mom's catfood with her concierge. When entering the tunnel, some sort of funeral procession was going on, except none of the other drivers understood what was going on. A truck was stuck at a standstill waiting to enter the right hand lane behind the procession, and thus blocking up the middle lanes, cop cars were escorting the procession so all you could see is the blue flashing lighting up the whole tunnel. People were swerving all over the place thinking it was an accident and trying to avoid it. It was a freaking mess. But eventually I manuvered past all that and got to my mom's condo.
My original plan was to park out front in the drop-off area so I wouldn't have to find parking. This plan was foiled by the fact that there were no less than ten eighteen-wheeler trucks full of cable and other equipment going up and down both sides of Tremont street, because they were filming a movie! This is actually the second time in the last two months I have inadvertantly run into a movie set. The previous occasion being at Burlington Mall where they are currently filming the Adam Sandler produced Kevin James film "Paul Blart: Mall Cop". Unfortunately I have no idea what film they were filming yesterday, I'll have to see if my mom knows.
So I ended up using my parking pass and parking in her garage after all, and then going up to the lobby to drop off the bag of catfood with the front desk so they could put it in her unit (since I didn't have a key).
Now here's the weirdest bit of the story. My dining room table, for lack of a better word, is/was buried in bills, theatre bills, personal bills, all kinds of bills. I spent much of the better part of last week and this weekend, getting rid of those bills. On Monday I had discovered a notice of cancellation for my car insurance, dated May 13th. Monday was June 2, as you know. I had been driving around for the last few weeks uninsured. I panicked, called my agent, she said I would have to pay $1259 in full to get re-insured (apparently when you're cancelled due to non-payment the new company wants the cash up front, can't say I blame them). My other option I found out, since I was already a driver on Steve's policy, was to just add my vehicle to his policy, thus avoiding the pre-payment issue, since he was already an active customer in good standing (also this way we would only recieve the one bill). So I did that, but I didn't really know exatly when this coverage was going to be effective, so I spent much of Tuesday drivign around CAREFULLY to avoid potential accidents, until I could see the paperwork that proved that I was in fact insured (turned out I was but I didn't know this yet when I was driving). So I am trying to get onto 93N to go home. This is the South Boston exit, which kind of loops off of Herald Street under the highway and you can go three different directions to the left to get to either Mass Pike, 93N, or some other place (Chinatown/South Station maybe?) or you can go straight over the bridge into South Boston. I wait for my light to change green, I look (as I always do) to make sure no last minute stragglers are speeding through the light, looks clear, I slowly make my turn towards the on-ramp when a huge Dodge Ram 3500 Pickup Truck comes whizzing past me missing me only by inches. It's a good thing I hadn't been in a hurry or I would have been creamed on my passengers side by appx. 6 tons of force (most likely driven by a Hemi V8 engine). I'm driving a Mitsubishi Outlander, which I'm pretty sure is made out of like Play-Doh or similar man made material... let's just say it wouldn't have been pretty.
I made it home in one piece after that adventurous day, with every intent on working on the craft for which I bought the items earlier that day. But after all that I just had no motivation, and decided to play "Portal" until the laws of physics made my brain bleed, instead. ;-)

Oh I know what you're thinking. It's a WAFD post, and it's not even about my husband! While this is technically true, this story may be used at a later time to facilitate a Steve WAFD story. So I guess you could say, even though it's not about him, it is. Actually I think he'd like it that way ("it's all about meeee...") ;-)
Victor E. was an aquaintance of my ex-boyfriend and still good friend Hideki. I met him sometime in January or so 1996. I was out at ManRay with Hideki, his girlfriend at that time Jen, and probably some other peeps Hideki knew, and I think some people I had invited from my work, like this kid Mark, Cybele Dupuis (who I also knew from H.S.) and possibly Fernando Melo. He seemed pretty good natured when we met, a tad immature maybe but he was younger than me and a guy, so that didn't really phase me. I thought he was quite good looking (he was Peruvian, so he has Spanish and Inca blood) as well so I kind of coaxed Hideki into maybe setting us up. That was my first mistake, Victor from the start always had a bit of a superiority complex about the fact that I had chosen to persue him, rather than the other way around, allthough it took me a little while to realize this.
Anyways we went out and the first couple of times went really well. Eventually I felt close enough about him to start talking about my past. It was something I never had tried before, I wanted to get all my emotional baggage out on the table from the start, so there were no surprises. So we talked about our various exes, thier good qualities thier bad qualities, what we learned from those experiences. It seemed, at the time, like one of the best conversations I had ever had with someone I had dated, because he seemed like he understood where I was coming from, and wasn't threatened by the fact that I had dated people before him. Those of you who have read some of my self-reflective posts, know my dream guy is someone who I can talk about pretty much anything with, and they won't judge me, but instead interact in constructive dialogue. I thought, "wow, finally someone who get's it", I couldn't have been more wrong.
Soon after that day, Victor started behavign oddly. He had a lot of credit card debt at the time, due to having gone swipe crazy his first year of college. He had also dropped out of school, while his sister was still going, and I believe also gettting pretty good grades. So he kind of felt like a disappointment to his family. Because of the credit card debt, we couldn't really continue having traditional dates, unless I paid all the time, and his male pride didn't really want to allow that. So often we would just hang out at his apartment (which was upstairs from his mother's in a three-decker between Harvard and Central square Cambridge). Didn't really bother me any, since as I've said before I don't really need to constantly be out and about, I appreciate good company and good conversation.
Sometimes I would come right over from work. We'd be hungry for some dinner, but again we couldn't order takeout due to the money issue, and Victor didn't seem to keep food in his house. One time I swung by the supermarket on the way there and brought some pasta or something. He got so angry, because he was the man and he was the one that should be taking care of me! I should have realized at this first sign, to run like hell, but as someone who always tries to give people the benefit of the doubt, and especially because he apologized because it was his frustration with himself, and he shouldn't have taken it out on me, I forgave him. I didn't dare ever bring or even mention bringing/ordering food at my expense ever again after that point, so often times despite being hungry we would skip dinner altogether. Also some of our conversations would go on until the wee hours of the night (midnight or later) and I woudl still have to drive home to North Andover (appx. 30-45 min) and work at 4:30AM (this is twhen I was the opening Manager for my dads' Dunkin' Donuts). At first this was my choosing, but eventually as I started getting less and less sleep I would try to break away early (like 10PM) and then he'd get upset with me, accuse me of not caring about talking to him, and then it would take me another couple of hours to calm him down and would inevitably be 12AM or 1AM still no matter what I tried (this behavior rings a bell doesn't it.. yes I am referrring to Steve). It didn't initially occur to me, that this pattern would become unhealthy, or as I later surmised, might have been planned.
Things went on and on like this for a while. Nights with no food and only about 3 hours sleep, for about three months, and then things really started to hit the fan. For whatever reason, Victor's mother didn't like me. I don't really know why, but she decided I was a bad influence on her son. She was a strict Mormon, and was deluded enough to believe Victor was as well (she thought he was following all the tenants, like no drinking or sex, but he wasn't even long before I met him, plus he was going to clubs much to her chagrin, which she blamed on me, even though if you are reading it's obvious he was already doing that also, well before I came along). She quite literally acted like I was the devil incarnate, and Victor being a bit of a momma's-boy was torn between us. It didn't help that she would always compare me to one of Victor's sister's friends, whom Victor once had a crush on, and say things like "why don't you go out with a nice girl like so-and-so?", right in front of my face. I tried going to services with them, to see if I could appease her. But I think she saw right through me, so it didn't really help.
One time, because she had a key to his apartment, she just barged in and started yelling at me to get out of her house. Victor yelled back, and they started going on a bit back and forth in Spanish. This is something I can never abide. I guess it's a little ethnocentric, but I hate when people who know you can't speak a certain language, blatantly start having a conversation in that language right in front of you. It doesn't bother me as much in say other countries, becuase hey it's thier native language, and really I have no right in that case to complain being the one visiting thier country without first familiarizing myself with that language. But in America, I kind of still think people should try to speak the language that is known by the majority of people in the room, in this case 2 out of 3 people knew Spanish and 3 out of 3 people knew English, therefore they should speak in English (and yes if the situation was reversed and 2 out of 3 people knew English and 3 out of 3 people knew Spanish, I would find it perfectly acceptable in that scenario that Spanish be spoken so all parties could understand the conversation). Any other way IMHO seems like you are intentionally excluding people, it's like the equivalent to whispering something in someone else's ear while another person is sitting right there. Anyways the point is he got so mad at whatever she had said to him, that he literally started ransacking his room. Throwing things, ripping apart his bed.... I just stood there in shock and awe, not knowing how to fix it and also being too petrified to get my ass out of there. When I finally got out of there, I should have never looked back... I should have cut off contact with him... shoulda, coulda, woulda: as they say.
I think after that point the survival instinct kicked in. After that blatant display of what Victor was capable of, I was afraid NOT to keep seeing him. So we would still hang out, but instead of his apartment now we were confined to walking around Cambridge or chilling out in my car. Things started to get back to normal, and I started feeling comfortable again. We got a couple of different rounds of concert tickets. Each time Victor would have a major drama moment, and we would either be late to the show or not end up getting there at all (If you've been reading my Steve blogs, some of this is starting to sound vaguely familiar I imagine). Terri herself can personally attest to an episode which occured before a Halloween party on Friday Oct. 18th that year, maybe she'll be nice enough to comment about it. Despite all this I still couldn't seem to break away.
Victor at one point did get a job at Pix Posters, which made him a bit more bareable, because he was now able to pay some of the bills that were bothering him. Plus he'd randomly surprise me with cool posters and such. Now I'm not a jealous person, I realize in any retail job, that he was going to have to wait on females, and that in fact said females might even flirt with him. I don't have a problem with that, I was up to that poitn comfortable enough with my standing in his life to asumme that other women were a passing threat at best. What I did have a problem with is he started coming home from work and tell me about his day and how he met this really cool girl who was smart and funny and really good looking (as if I were somehow some piece of dogshit he wanted to scrape off his shoe) and that he'd taken her phone number. This wasn't just one time, there was a whole slew of them, one he met pretty much every day he was scheduled, and then would come home and tell me about.... and then when I would get mad he would claim he couldn't understand why. He would play all innocent with the doe eyes like, "what they just want to hang out, like friends".
So now you may be noticing the timeline here, I have gone about 6 months at this point, not eating dinner and not getting more than three hours of sleep a night. Those of you who have ever read up on Nazi Concentration Camp techniques probably know that a similar method is used in order to break the wills of the prisoners there. Your body chemistry gets all off, etc. I still have no idea if the whole thing was coincidental or planned, but either way I had no willpower at all with which to even argue with him anymore. I just spent most of my days like the walking dead, my own father almost fired me from my job, because I couldn't function. I had one final fight with Victor on October 20th, in which he got so pissed at me he threw an excercise bicycle at me. I somehow, despite being in an almost dreamlike state, managed to avoid getting hit by it. However it did hit a glass table, the table shattered and a huge chunk of glass went flying into my right arm (I still have a scar).
Did you ever see the Family Guy episode (actually it was on TBS last night) where Stewie is pretending he's in the Olympics. Well that was pretty much me at that particular moment (only it's much funnier when it's a cartoon and not you personally). I opted for "take it out". It bled, a lot, but for some reason I never felt compelled to go to the hospital. What I did feel compelled to do instead was get the frig out of there. I tried, but Victor ran after me... I got about four blocks towars my car (parking in Cambridge sucks sometimes, especially at night) when he finally caught up with me. No word of a lie I thought for sure he was going to kill me or something. It was a dark area where the streetlights didn't work. But all he did (thankfully) was beg and plead with me to forgive him. I just wanted to get out of there.. so I did something I don't normally do (because I'm so bad at it, and because I don't like to) I lied my ass off and told him everything was fine, until he calmed down enough to finally believe me and let me go home.
At this point it was about 3AM. I had exactly an hour and a half to get home, change and go to work. Some of you Bostonians probably remember the weather on October 20th, 1996. That was the year we had torrential downpours overnight, so much so the Green Line of the MBTA flooded and some areas were put out of comission until late November. On top of this I was sleep deprived, food deprived, and in a hurry to get home. Also I was driving a 1984 Chevy Camaro (which was my moms). At some point I nodded off, I woke up in a panic to see myself quickly accelerating toward the minivan taillights in front of me, and tried to hit the breaks. Well you know how well slamming on the breaks of a 1984 Camaro in a torrential downpour works? Not fucking well at all, I went spinning towards the right hand guardrail from the left hand lane of I-93 North in perfect 360 degree circles, narrowly avoiding an oncoming 18-wheeler (at which point I really did see my life flash before my eyes, let me tell you it's not all it's cracked up to be). I was unscathed, mostly because I was wearing my seatbelt, and somewhat because weirdly all that spinning slowed me down a bit and only minor damage occured to the rear of the car (enough to bend the frame, but considering I was probably doing about 95 mph because I fell asleep and my foot weighed down the gas... not nearly as catastrophic as it could have been). I managed to get the car to function long enough to pull it off the highway and into the Stoneham Bickford's parking lot, where I proceeded to call my dad on thier payphone and hang out in a booth talking to some guy who played guitar for Peter Wolf (and no I wasn't hallucinting, this actually happened) until my dad could get there and pick me up.
The next day, I called Victor, told him what happened, and told him I never wanted to see him again. Hung up called the phone company, changed my phone number and had them make sure it was unlisted. I stopped going to ManRay for a couple of weeks, but Victor was persistant, he asked around until someone I knew who didn't know what had transpired gave him my new number. He called me, I coudln't get him to stop. When he wasn't calling there he was calling my work every five minutes and disrupting everyone and their work, and almost got me fired a second time! I didn't know how to get rid of him, until I remembered that way back he mentioned that the one thing I could do he would never forgive was cheat on him. So I asked my friend Douglas to construct a bit of a white lie with me (wow, what a low point, two lies in one month). He was more than happy to do it, I told Victor I had slept with Douglas while we were still dating. Knowing Victor would confront Douglas (this is why he had to be in on it with me) Douglas and I had already come up with the answers to the questions we knew Victor would ask. A lot of them were actually ture answers, like how we had met, just the details of the affair were false, because it hadn't actually happened. My plan worked, he never bothered me again after that, even the few times I ran into him face to face (which I try to avoid whenever possible as the mere sight of him makes me want to vomit about three times sideways) he just avoided me.
I swore I would never stay with anyone who abused me like that ever again. And I was doing a pretty good job too.. until Steve
To Be Continued (of course!) ;-)

Yeah how creative is that title? Not at all.
Just a mini-rant that I kind of just had to get out for no reason other than getting it out will make me feel better.
An example of two things this week Steve did that annoyed me.
1. Last weekend at Chris' BBQ, he was actually on realatively good behavior. He made an attempt to start conversations with people, he didn't say anything to make me want to break out in tears or kick him in the kidney (or both), so overall a pretty good day (despite earlier that day trying to start an argument with me on about ten separate occasions, you know probably so we would have to have a "discussion" and then convienently miss the party, but hey I wasn't falling for that trick again). The only thing he really did came right at the end of the night, almost like he said "fuck it, I was nice to your friends all day, I have to get one episode of asshattery in". Terri had given me a painting she had done which she appropriately named "Pinhead was Here" because it's essentially chalkboard black with blood colored drips running all down it (you can see it here). Anyway I had commented on her blog sometime before my birthday how I liked it, so she gave it to me as my birthday present when we arrived at the cookout. So pick it up (Steve hadn't seen it yet) with the rest of my stuff and Steve's all like "what's that?" and I told him it was my present which Terri had made, mind you all my firends including Terri are standing in the room, and he's says something along the lines of how it's either not getting hung up, or maybe even ruder like we'd hang it in a closet where no one could see it... but OMFG, could you be more rude?! You know you don't have to like it, not all art is for everyone, I mean I've certainly made fun of certian pieces in my lifetime, but do you have to do it right in front of the artist? Fortunately, unlike me, Terri doesn't let negative criticism phase her. She's still doing cool drip art whereas I would have gone home and thrown all my canvases on a bonfire.
2. Yesterday: Steve's bank had gotten graffitied sometime overnight. So he has to go over and "take a look at it" and then after that we were going to head over to Fabric Place to get some stuff I need to finish one of my projects. So me and Meaghan are mostly dressed, except shoes and all of a sudden he's out of the shower and like dressed and at the bottom of the stairs and hes yelling at me because we're not ready to go . Except well you didn't tell us we were leaving like seconds after you got out of the shower, not to mention we are ready except shoes which take like a minute to put on. It's not like the fucking graffiti is going anywhere! So I throw shoes on me and Meaghan and get halfway out the door (mind you hes like already started the car at this point, another habit I hate because instead of asking me if he can carry anything or help me with Meaghan in any way hes like practically driving off without us half the time). He yells at me "where's the camera?" and I'm all like wha? huh? "Why would we need the camera?" "To take pictures, I told you that". Um no you never said anything about taking pictures you said you were going to "take a look at it" that does not in anyway imply or translate to me "go charge the camera and take it with us". So then we get there and he looks at the graffiti, goes inside to call his boss and then we pull away and drive off to our next destination. After all that, he didn't even use the GODDAMN CAMERA!!!!!!!!!!!! WTF?
The worse part is I know this sounds like I make this shit up, or that maybe it's just a once and a while thing, but this is pretty much my life every single day. I swear I totally need an intervention or something, because I must be absolutely fucked in the head to still be putting up with this, and yet I can't seem to just pack my shit and send the divorce papers.