Ladies and Kenneth, it’s time to update your RSS feeds.  I’ve got a brand new blog!

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Blogging for Sanity

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Your RSS readers won’t update themselves so click on the link above and find that little pink RSS feed button on the right sidebar, or put your email address in the box beneath it and click ‘Subscribe’ to get my new blogs sent straight to your email.  (Personally I prefer RSS feeds, but I suppose there are some people out there who don’t use iGoogle as their home page.)

I finally took the dive into the mysterious world of self-hosted blogging.  The site isn’t perfect yet, but I’m learning pretty fast how to make it just the way I want it.  Thesis is actually pretty cool once you get over the initial headache of it.

So I’ll see you all over there!!!  (I hope.)

September 25th, 2011 | Category: Jaime 2.0, Whats Going On | Comments Off

Guys, I’m going to be MIA in Blogland for a few days while I finish getting my new blog page set up.  I’ll update you with a new RSS feed and URL soon!

September 22nd, 2011 | Category: Jaime 2.0, Whats Going On | Comments Off

(For the official Ten on Tuesday topics and archives, go here.)
Questions for Tuesday, September 20, 2011!
Provided by Christine at Being Brinkman who stole them from some traveling meme.

Not actually 10 questions, this will be the only time we break the 10 question format. This is a good All About You questionnaire.
A. Age:  28
B. Bed Size:  Queen
C. Chore that you hate:  DISHES
D. Dogs:  ew, no thanks
E. Essential start to your day:  more sleep
F. Favorite Color:  depends on the day, usually green (but sometimes pink)
G. Gold or Silver:  white gold
H. Height:  5′ 2¾”
I. Instruments you play:  vocal chords
J. Job Title:  Best Wife Ever
K. Kids:  not so much
L. Live:  every day
M. Mother’s Name:  Kathy (I don’t know what this has to do with me)
N. Nicknames:  Quin, James, Ho (that last one is reserved for my younger sister only, thank you)
O. Overnight hospital stays:  that time I had mono
P. Pet peeve:  1. people standing/getting in my way, 2. being tickled, 3. someone touching their teeth in front of me (yes, even on TV), 4. losing/misplacing something, 5. crumpled monies, 6. absolutely anyone telling me what to do (i.e. “You need to get over…” and “You have to learn how to…”)
Q. Quote from a movie:  “Now, pour the tea.” (not my favorite, but definitely the most quoted)
R. Right or left handed:  right
S. Siblings:  2 sisters, 1 brother
T. Time you wake up:  whenever The Destroyer starts moving around
U. Underwear:  have to match my shirt
V. Vegetable you hate:  onions
W. What makes you run late:  what doesn’t make me run late?
X. X-Rays you’ve had:  1. that time I broke my toe and it was practically separated from my foot and everyone but my mom thought it was an April Fools joke, 2. that time I got into a car accident and had glass in my underwear and they wouldn’t let me get it out until after said x-ray was taken
Y. Yummy food that you make:  everything I make is delicious
Z. Zoo Animal:  ALLIGATORS

September 20th, 2011 | Tags: surveys | Category: Blog Fun, Ten on Tuesday | Comments Off

It is Wednesday, right?  I never really know what day it is anymore.

I find myself sometimes wanting to buy a Kindle.  I love books; the feel of them in my hand, the smell of new pages and well worn pages fills me with a familiar, warm fuzziness.  I love to flip the pages.  I love to be IN a bookstore.  Maybe I don’t love all the painful red creases and lines I get when I’m walking around the bookstore with an armful of books I can’t put down because they’re The Chosen Ones for this particular trip to pseudo-heaven, but when I leave a bookstore with a bag that weighs more than my left leg I feel like the world is a brighter place.  And yet…  I still find myself wanting a Kindle.  Does this make me a traitor?  Does this make me ridiculous, that I would want to have both?  Can I be allowed to want both?

Today I’m making a vegetable soup in a homemade beef and vegetable broth.  It’s something new that I’m trying out, something I’ve seen my mother do in the kitchen but have never thought to do myself.  Last night my mother-in-law made beef ribs for dinner, and instead of throwing the bones out to the cats and dogs I put them in a baggie in the fridge for today.  They’re now simmering in a pot on the stove with two stalks of celery and some beef bullion.  I’m pretty excited to try the stock when it’s finished.  I figure I’ll let it simmer for 30 minutes or so before I taste it.  If I had some fresh carrots I would have thrown a couple in there for extra flavor, but alas! I have none.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.

I feel so resourceful.  (<–is dork)

Yesterday I got my hair cut, and I LOVE it.  It isn’t short, still just past my shoulders, but it’s about 4 inches shorter than it was.  People, my hair had gotten long.  Too long.  I grew so frustrated with pulling my own hair at night every time I rolled over in bed because it kept waking me up, so yesterday I asked The Destroyer to set up an appointment for me with his cousin at her salon (because I can’t do that kind of thing myself) and he brought me over there.  Can I just say that I love having my hair washed at a salon?  It feels so amazing every time, I love it.  It’s the best part, you know – aside from the end result.  So tomorrow I’ll (hopefully) do my hair and put on makeup and take some pictures to update my Facebook and all my social websites and such.  I’ve needed to do that for about two years now, and now that my hair is all cut and cute and I’m satisfied enough with my appearance I’ll take some pictures.

I’ve been working on getting my new website up and running.  Get ready to update your subscriptions, your Google Readers, or however you access my blog.  There will be a new Facebook page as well, and I’m super excited about doing my own web hosting.  All I need to do now is try and figure out Thesis.  I tend to make things a lot more difficult than they should be, and Thesis looks like a titanic scary code that I’ll just end up muddling up.  I want a simple, clean theme that I can customize in a moment if I need to, and I hear Thesis is the way to do it.  We’ll see.  If you have experience with Thesis and want to help me figure out the basics, I will probably love you forever and ever.  And ever.  I can’t afford to pay the awesome girls at Shatterboxx (*drool*) or Freckled Nest Design (*swoon*) for a web design, at least not in the near/foreseeable future, so I’ll have to work on doing things myself.  The hard way.

What have you been up to lately?

September 14th, 2011 | Tags: books, me me me, reading | Category: Jaime 2.0, Whats Going On | Comments (4)

That’s the ‘slogan’, isn’t it?  Over the past few years I’ve seen it asked over and over, “Do you remember what you were doing when 9/11 happened?”  Yes.  Of course I do.  I usually answer “yes” and leave it at that.  Today, and today only, I’m going to answer with a little more than that “yes”.

Ten years ago today I was a teenager on the brink of adulthood: eighteen years old, about to start a brand new full time job.  My parents bought me my very first car that summer.  I was in a new stage of my life, a new chapter.  Doors were closing and opening for me.  I’d graduated in June and I was single for the first time in almost two years since my high school sweetheart – the one I was positive I was going to marry in my teenage delusions – had broken up with me earlier in the month.  There was no one home but me, and the sensation of the empty house was something I was rapidly learning to enjoy.  I had the run of the house.  I could eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted it, watch whatever I wanted on TV, stay in bed and cry without anyone interrupting me, hang out in my pajamas all day if I wanted to.  And that was my intention.  I was in depression mode and reveling in the quiet around me, content in my little world where my problems were all-consuming and all I had to worry about.  Ten years ago today my younger brother and sister were at school.  My grandparents both left for work volunteering at the Senior Center after getting my brother and sister on their busses.  My mother had gone to work at URI shortly after my grandparents left, and I was left with just me.

Free to do whatever I wanted, I followed the same schedule I’d followed the day before (and the entire week before): I ate my breakfast of Frosted Mini-Wheats at the kitchen counter and then sat down on my sister’s side of the room for two hours of Beverly Hills 90210 reruns on FX.  (I wasn’t allowed to watch the show when it initially aired.  My mother wasn’t too strict when it came to what we watched on TV, but 90210 and MTV were on the DO NOT WATCH list.  I don’t blame her, I was seven when it came out.  But being the adult I was, I wasn’t hindered by my mother’s television restrictions anymore.  Especially because she wasn’t home.)

I even remember the episode I was watching.  It was the one where Brenda gets held up at the Peach Pit by some dude with a gun and she ends up being all traumatized by the experience (I can sort of relate there).  But about halfway through the episode the show suddenly changed to the news out of nowhere.  At first I was pissed off.  I mean, seriously!  I was in the middle of a show and some seriously dramatic things were going on!  FX doesn’t show THE NEWS!  But when I realized what it was showing, that it was real, that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center, I was confused and alarmed.  A second plane?  There was a first?  What was going on?

A few minutes later I heard something at the other end of the house, and I was terrified at hearing someone come in the front door since no one was supposed to be home for at least 2 more hours.  I was already on edge (you know me, I always assume the worst).  Terrorists were attacking my country, and someone was coming in my front door!  My house suddenly wasn’t safe from terrorists and Oh yeah! I had that bow and arrow in my closet.  I peeked out of my bedroom (which I shared with my younger sister), bow and arrow held ready pointed at the floor, and saw that it was just my uncle.  I came out and confessed that he scared me and that I was scared of everything happening on TV.  He told me that it was okay to be scared, that he was scared too.  The look on his face was something I still can’t describe.  I mean, this man I’d known all my life was scared.  This man who proudly served in the Vietnam War, this gruff man that I’d never seen wear any emotion other than ‘smiling’ or ‘frowning’ (shut up, those are emotions), was afraid.  That scared me more than anything that day.  He asked me when my grandparents were coming home, and I told him my grandfather wouldn’t be home until noon.  He stayed with me at the house for a little while.  He told me everything was changing, but that everything was going to be okay because nobody attacks the United States of America and gets away with it.  He called my grandmother at work and then he went home or back to work.  I don’t remember everything after that aside from waiting for everyone to just come home already.  I remember my mother calling, frantic.  I remember my grandfather coming home first as usual.  I remember Alli talking about the whole school being abuzz with the news of the tragedy and how all her classes were interrupted by the day’s events.  I remember wishing I could just keep on watching 90210 like nothing had happened and feeling for the first time in my life that my problems were insignificant.  The rest of the day is complete fuzz in my brain.  I may have gone to work or I may have had the day off.  I may have picked my brother up at the bus stop as usual and hugged my sister when she came in from school, but it’s all so fuzzy after the initial shock.

So yes, I remember where I was and exactly what I was doing when the planes hit the World Trade Center on Tuesday, September 11, 2001.  I’m sure every American old enough to understand what was happening when it happened remembers what they were doing and they will Never Forget.

September 11th, 2011 | Category: Jaime 2.0, Stories | Comments Off

My friend posted a blog today about the power of letter writing.  In it, she explains that it can be empowering to purge ourselves of the negative emotions we keep bottled up inside.  The letters don’t necessarily have to be delivered or shared with their intended, but simply getting the words out can be therapeutic and freeing.  She reflects on a letter she recently wrote in an email to a friend that isn’t much of a friend anymore, and how she needed to clear the air for herself.

I have written 3 such undelivered letters (four, if you count the one that isn’t to a person so much as a thing) on very separate occasions.  I wrote them all as journal entries.  It was a sort of cleansing feeling to get all the emotion out, and I know that if I need to read them again (which I haven’t yet had to do) I always have access to them.  If I don’t need to read them again, I can burn them or dispose of them at a time of my choosing.

It is unfortunate, losing friendship, but it does happen.  I can’t say I’m not guilty of dissolving friendships slowly over time due to lack of attention.  I can’t say I blame it on Life, because it’s usually my own fault.  The sad fact is that it happens all the time to every person in the world.  I can’t tell you how many best friends I’ve had that drifted away from me, making me feel like there was something wrong with me and our friendship wasn’t worth keeping.

I like to think of it like this:  People come in and out of my life on a regular basis.  I choose to learn something – however small – from each and every one of them, and if I’m lucky I create memories with them to take with me through out the rest of my life.  Maybe the memories aren’t always positive ones, and maybe someone walking out of my life is painful, but the memories I’m left with can usually teach me something about myself if I so choose to delve that deep into the why’s and the what-for’s.  I’m not a fan of the phrase ‘Everything happens for a reason’ (actually, I detest that phrase more than any other).  I don’t think there’s some great list in the heavens keeping tabs on the good and the bad that Life owes to every person in the world.  Things happen because something else caused them to happen, and not to serve some higher sense of purpose.  We can’t always understand every single thing that happens to us, and karma¹ is humanity’s made up excuse to place blame when we don’t want to take responsibility ourselves or take the time to see what really happened.

If tomorrow you stub your toe and hit your head and spill your coffee and break your computer and then get into a car accident all before noontime, that doesn’t mean the Universe is getting revenge on you for some prior wrong doing or that you deserve it.  It just means you’re having a bad day.  Everyone has bad days, and they always seem like the end-all-be-all mother-load of bad days when they happen, like nobody else in the world could possibly have our bad luck and we should just end it all because we’re no good to ourselves or anyone else.  Newsflash, people: EVERYONE HAS DAYS LIKE THIS.  You aren’t the only one.  If you stub your toe, it’s likely because something was in the way of your foot as you were moving.  If you hit your head, it’s probably because you weren’t watching where you were going.  If you spill your coffee it’s because you were momentarily clumsy (or you just stubbed your toe and hit your head).  If you break your computer (or all three of your computers, ALLI) it’s because you clicked the wrong thing or knocked it off your desk.  If you get into a car accident, it might be because you’re preoccupied with your anger over your bonked noggin and stubbed toe and broken computer and spilled coffee and you weren’t paying 100% attention, or it might be because someone else was preoccupied and wasn’t paying attention to the rules of the road.  Forget shouting “great, just great!” at nothing and no one in particular because the car accident was just the ugly icing on the painfully grotesque cake that is your day today.  It isn’t because you’re getting what you deserve, it’s because of the reality of cause and effect.  You’re having a bad day.

I digress.  This is not the point I started out wanting to get across, but it’s certainly part of trying to explain it.  If you lose a friend, if they begin to fade from your life, it is indeed happening for a reason, but don’t chalk it up to the Universe getting back at you for some past misdeed.  It’s because people change and grow, and though it is often painful, they change and grow apart.  Your friends and loved ones, if you so choose, will remain in your heart.  You won’t lose the memories of all they meant to you, and your life is so much richer for having had that experience of their friendship and love as well as the painful sorrow of their absence.  Life is made up of highs and lows, and every experience – even the painful ones – make your life a rich tapestry of events.  The good wouldn’t feel as good as it does without the bad we’ve had to endure.

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[1]  Not referring to Karma as it exists in specific religious beliefs, I’m referring to karma the way it is popularly thought of and used as a scapegoat in American society.  “He’ll get what he deserves.  Karma is a b*tch.” / “What goes around comes around.” / “I can’t say you don’t deserve it, that’s Karma for you.” / “I must have done something terrible in a past life to deserve this.”

September 8th, 2011 | Tags: friendship, Life, the real world, things I've learned | Category: Grownup Stuff, Introspection, Jaime 2.0 | Comments (2)

Is it just a little bit weird that I’m 28 years old and I have no ambitions for my life?  I can admit that I have no goals; I have nothing to aspire to aside from being healthy and happy and living a long life.  I have no dreams of doing or being anything other than what I already am.  I want to exist.  I want to be.

Sometimes I’ll come across a blog that should, in every respect, be inspiring, but instead it just makes me feel like I’m less.  Sometimes a blog post about someone achieving their goals or reaching for what they want and taking a leap of faith makes me wonder if I’m less than them because I don’t have any such goals.  I don’t do anything inspiring, I don’t make anything worth while, I don’t contribute to something ‘greater’ than myself.  I just exist, and most of the time that’s okay with me until I come across something (usually a blog post) that makes me feel otherwise.

I realize that I can be a complete and utter mess.  Nothing in my life is physically messy, nothing that I can control anyway.  My desk is nice and neat, our bed is always made, my shirts are hung up in the closet by style – and sub-categorically by color and how often I wear them.  But me, inside, my emotions and my everything mental is a complete mess.  I’m one thing, and then I’m another.  I’m happy, and in a blink I’m upset and there’s no way to go in reverse so I spend hours being upset to the point where I can’t even remember what made me upset in the first place.  It’s dizzying being me sometimes.  Most days I just want to exist and do the things I enjoy without having to always have something to strive for, but I have days every now and then (like when I read a blog post that makes me feel insufficient as a human being, but is probably just meant to inspire me) when I want to want to be more.  I don’t always know what I want to want to be and do when this mood hits, but it happens occasionally and it irritates me that I’m made to feel that way.  It irritates me until I remember that I’m happy being nothing.

“I like being a mess.  It’s who I am.”  – Ally McBeal (S1E16)

Maybe today I’m happy.  Maybe tomorrow I’m bored or too anxious to breathe.  Maybe the next day I feel insignificant and it bothers me, but maybe the day after that I feel insignificant and I’m thankful for it.  Maybe I make problems for myself and wallow in my self-pity and self-imposed misery at least one day a week, but I’m probably enjoying myself because I’m being me.  So what if I’m an emotional mess?  Who cares?  (Don’t let him fool you, The Destroyer knew exactly what he was signing up for when we signed the official marriage document.)  So what if I don’t have any dreams of making something of myself?  So what if I don’t aspire to anything other than being regular and getting through each day as it comes?

What I want, what I really want out of life, is to be happy and free to write in some form or another (blog, journal, etc.).  I want to play computer games and cook for friends and family.  I want to read a billion books and own a library with a comfy chair that I don’t have to get out of for days on end.  I want to watch movies and color in coloring books and knit scarves for nobody.  I want to doodle dorky pictures in a sketchbook even if they’re just funny to me and no one else.  I want to watch all the episodes of Stargate with my husband more times than any human being should ever want to watch them.  I want to change my mind a million times because what I want keeps changing.  I want to be a mess and feel like it’s acceptable.

September 5th, 2011 | Tags: goals, Life, long-term goals, me me me, my neurotic brain, The Destroyer | Category: Introspection, Jaime 2.0 | Comments (10)

The Destroyer is sleeping and I am not tired enough to go to bed yet.  I don’t know what to do and I kind of want to read read, but that’s out of the question.  Reading never puts me to sleep, it only ever keeps me awake.  Maybe I can find something to watch on Netflix that won’t make me stay awake, something boring that would put me to sleep.  I sort of want to watch Wuthering Heights again, but that certainly wouldn’t put me to sleep.

Does anyone else get scared the zombies are going to come?  I mean like for real.  I blame my husband for my new-found somewhat irrational fear.  I never thought about zombies as an actual possibility.  In fact for my entire life I’ve made a point of avoiding scary movies (I can admit that Beauty and the Beast: The Enchanted Christmas scares me) and I strictly keep away from all things that look like they might keep me awake at night, so zombies didn’t even occur to me.  Ever.  I’ve always thought of zombies as these unrealistic, flesh-eating, brainless human-gobblers straight out of badly made horror movies you might catch a glimpse of in a movie about a couple of teenagers in the 1960′s watching some ‘horror movie’ at a drive-in on a date.  Now the possibility seems very frightening (obviously not in an appendages-falling-off-IWILLEATYOURBRAINS sort of way) that some kind of virus or sickness could overtake the human population and turn us all into (more or less) zombies.

Maybe it isn’t just The Destroyer (although he is always planning for the Zombie Apocalypse – always), because I’ve been playing a lot of Fallout 3 in the past month or so and there are these zombie ghoul things that eat people and you have to kill them in the subways of DC.  That could have something to do with it, too.

That’s it.  I’m totally not sleeping tonight.  Maybe I will just go ahead and read a book.

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EDIT:

Speaking of zombies, this is my cute little friend Braaaaains.  He is my pick-up pet on FlyFF.  He runs around picking up all the loot the monsters drop, and when he runs after me he lifts his arms forward like, well, a zombie.  It’s actually kind of creepy now that I think about it, but he’s still cute.  I’m sure real life zombies won’t be this adorable, and I’m sure they won’t pick up my things either.

September 2nd, 2011 | Tags: Fallout 3, FlyFF, my neurotic brain, The Destroyer, zombies | Category: A Whole Lotta Nothing, Jaime 2.0 | Comments (11)

Life sucks when you can’t find your birth control pills.  You’d THINK that someone as excited to be going back on the pill as I’ve been would know where those FIFTY DOLLAR SUCKERS are at all times.  I’ve literally been watching my calendar, marking off the days, and I don’t know where the dang things are.  I’m irritated.  It irritates me to no end that I bought them two weeks ago and now I can’t find them.  I remember thinking “I don’t want to lose these!” – so it just figures that now they’re M.I.A.

I’ve looked everywhere I can think to look at least five times over, all the conceivable places and the not so conceivable places it might be.  I’ve looked in the medicine cabinet, every drawer in my room, my jewelry box, the glove compartment and center console in my car.  I’ve looked in my make-up drawer, the pantry, my ‘arts and crafts’ bin.  I’m so irritated I can almost smell smoke and I think it’s coming from my ears.

I can’t stand it when I lose something.  I can’t stand it, I hardly ever lose things.  I rarely ever misplace anything¹.  It isn’t like me.  Losing things makes me anxious.  Everything has a place, and everything goes in its particular place all the time forever.

I’m not going to sleep good tonight.

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[1]  Anything except my glasses.  I misplace them all the time, but only because when I can’t find them it’s because I can’t see.

August 29th, 2011 | Tags: I'm an idiot, my neurotic brain, things I hate | Category: Jaime 2.0, Rants | Comments (8)