This is gonna' hurt

Bless me universe for I have sinned and this is my confession....

Well...I am not sure it's a sin but it feels bad anyway. And it is a confession...so here goes....

I am having a difficult time with the loss of my sweet baboo Fiona. I can't talk about...or write evidently...about her without bursting into tears.  It's been two months and my life seems a bit barren. There is a huge hole in my life. Fiona was not just my dog. She was my heart and soul. Despite our battles for supremacy and our "come to Jesus" meetings she was so much a part of my life that I am having trouble functioning as a reasonably normal human being.

We were together for 13 years and she was such an integral part of my being that I am having trouble with this huge hole in my life. And sadly it is having a bad effect on my relationship with the "boys". This is so hard to say but there are times when I just don't want them around. I don't have the patience for their normal behaviors. I have spoken harshly to them and I feel horrible about it. Today...when I took them outside to potty and they refused to do anything because they wanted to eat I said bad words. When they then proceeded to poop in the house (this is not unusual) I told them both that they were two steps from me taking them both to the Humane Society because I had had it with them.

This is not me. This is not normal behavior. I can't even say in all honesty right now that I love them because it seems all that left with Fiona. I feel numb where they are concerned. I am a vacant mother. I suck!!  I have post-Corgi depression I do believe. I am not sure what to do about this other than just hanging in there with the boys until I regain some sense of equilibrium. It's like my inner child is having a tantrum and it doesn't want any dog if it's not Fiona. If I can't hold her and kiss her until she growls and if I can't hear her howl and talk to me then I don't want any other dog around. It's not fair to the boys and I know that but it's how I feel. And if Baker chases Kitten Face ONE more time and if I have to chase Owen around the house ONE more time to pick him up and take him outside I am going to scream. I am losing it here people.

I am not sure why I am sharing my horrible thoughts with you other than they need to leave the dark recesses of my mind and enter the light. I would never hurt the boys and they are my responsibility so they will stay here with me. I just don't know how to reassemble our life without Fiona. I am just not up for it right now and I feel like shit about it. So please keep the boys in your thoughts and hearts as mother tries to find her feet and stops being such a shithead.

Cautionary Tales from the sauna

I have been debating with myself this evening about whether hell could possibly be this unpleasant? I mean...torturing of miscreant souls aside...is it a dry heat in hell or do your eyeballs fog over when you step in?  We here in the Garden of Gauld have been experiencing an unpleasant few weeks of ridiculous humidity. Heat is one thing but for the love of God this humidity is bad even for the seasoned folk around here. The effort required to keep those important spots on one's body dry so as to avoid the aforementioned skin unpleasantness is reaching def con 10 proportions. I mean you cannot change your bra 3 times in one day...no one has the time to do that much laundry. Not to mention the powder and the showering and more powdering. It's exhausting quite frankly.

While we are on the subject of skin irritation let me tell you about an creature so evil that we don't even try to mention its name for fear it and all its kin will come and feast on our unwary ankles and feet. Yes...I am talking about the dreaded chigger. I spent a lovely weekend with my cousin in Arkansas and his yard was mowed nicely and it was fairly dry but I tell you what...they got a whiff of untapped Missouri flesh and they went to town on my legs. If you have never had the joy of experiencing the piranha-like effect these minuscule insects have on the human flesh you are one lucky bastard! Nothing...and I mean NOTHING itches like chigger bites! Not even the worst poison ivy can compare with the dreaded grass monsters. You can't sleep because you wake up in middle of the night feeling like amputation might be a good option for you. You slather ANYTHING you can find on your bites trying to find relief. You contemplate whether slicing off a few layers of skin could be such a bad thing. At one point at the party I realized I was using the flat side of a steak knife to relieved the itching. I have NO IDEA how that did not end badly.

Tonight I stopped in at the Neighborhood Market to get some cat and dog food because I did not want Kitten Face to kill me in my sleep. I swung by the pharmacy because the Benadryl just was not doing the trick. And there...in the aisle was my savior...the pharmacist...and he actually asked me if he could help me. I just looked at him with my sad pitiful eyes and said CHIGGERS!! He said to hang on a sec. He disappeared behind his magic counter and reappeared with...could it be...sweet mother of Jesus..it is...Chiggerid!!!!! Chiggerid is a hard to find product these days but it the only thing I have ever found to give me relief. He special orders it for folks. OMG!!! God BLESS you pharmacist man. I have shellacked my legs to kingdom come and the itch has finally abated. Now I will not have to kill anyone because I am so miserably focused on the insanity raging on my legs.

So...if you find yourself pondering a trip to this region anytime soon I have some advice for you. Pack LOTS of bras and underwear. Buy the extra large bottle of baby powder. Buy the biggest can of OFF you can find and drench yourself in it before you approach any green, leafy surface and beg your pharmacist to order you some Chiggerid too! Check to see if you insurance will cover self-amputations while you are at it...just in case.  OR...maybe change your plans to somewhere a little less moist. I mean I love to see all of you but really...save yourselves!!

Aw...hell...I was in such a good mood

I am well educated. I am articulate. I have lived outside of the "ya'll" zone. But I am fixin' to get all Southern pissed off so hold onto your shorts.

I just spent the most enjoyable weekend in Searcy Arkansas with my cousin Tom (Sorry...I just can't do the George thing) and his family and friends. When people find out that I lived in Fayetteville for several years while in college they always ask me if I enjoyed it and I brag about it because I did enjoy living there. I really LIKE Arkansas. It is a beautiful state filled with kind, funny and hard working people. It's a nice place.

So...imagine my chagrin when driving home today and just outside Harrison and in Bellefontaine I see a billboard that says " Diversity is a code word for white genocide". WTF??? This set every one of my teeth on edge. I did see a rebuttal billboard a little ways down the road but they had already done pissed me off. The NERVE. Well...I guess at least we white folks are qualified to recognize genocide because we have been committing it for thousands of years now!! The hypocrisy is mind melting!

I have news for ya'll...it wasn't people of color who displaced and murdered thousands of Native Americans in this country so they could steal their land. It wasn't people of color who sent six million innocent people to death in Hitler's concentration camps. Do I really need to go on with more examples of atrocious and evil behavior by white folks?

I am sick and tired of the fear mongering and the cowardice and the misrepresentation and the lies. I have news for ya'll...white people are not disappearing into the mist never to be seen again...have you been to a Wal-Mart lately?? You are not being displaced. You are still in control of this country. You still get the best jobs that make the most money so you all just need to shut it and stop with the oh...poor...persecuted me bullshit. White people are the MOST privileged folks in the world.

I was just calming down from this first onslaught to my liberal sensibilities when up pops another one. "It's not racist to your love your own kind." SERIOSULY!! That is some ignorant bull shit right there. Your "kind". For the love of God...when is it ever going to sink in that we are ALL human beings...that is our "kind". This separating of one another by skin color, or religion, or sexuality, or nationality etc...is the worst kind of wrong. Do we really need to feel so important that we have to marginalize others so that we can feel special?

Last but not least I saw a display out in a front yard with the Confederate flag and a sign that said "Heritage...not hate". That is such a load of misinformed crap. That flag represents hate. You can not now claim it as a benign sign of you being a rebel and hating the government. The Klan wrapped themselves in it as they gleefully murdered innocent people. They waved it and still wave it at rallies. It is soaked in the blood and bile of hate. It is a dishonor to the men who fought with honor for a cause they believed in. Their battle flag was stolen from them and drug through the mud of hatred and violence. It cannot be made clean.

This may seem like an inappropriate time to go on my rant. It is the birthday of this country after all. I tried to just ignore my anger and roll my eyes and just let it roll away but I cannot in good conscience let a small-minded group of folks disparage an entire state that does not deserve the backwoods reputation it has with some folks outside the "zone". I have faith that the majority of the people that I know and love in Arkansas do not feel this way. I know they are good people. They do not deserve to be lumped in with folks who spew this kind of rubbish. This is not the Arkansas I know. Ya'll are far better than this so take that shit down and celebrate the true meaning of being a human being who also happens to be an American.

Careless

So many things have been going on this week that have tried my soul. My heart still aches for my "family" who lost their lives in Orlando. I am still sitting with that pain and it has made me short tempered, frustrated, weepy and judgmental of others. Even my poor dog Owen has felt the brunt of my pain as I try to find a way to sanity in an insane situation.

In the midst of all this personal angst there have been a couple of other story lines in the news that grabbed my attention and they have brought home to me the very depth of human arrogance. We are such self-involved, self-congratulatory, arrogant, oblivious and careless creatures. Human beings are 100% convinced that they are the top of the food chain and that, combined with opposable thumbs and egos have made us the masters of this planet and all show bow before us.

The storylines that have brought this carelessness home to roost for me are the horrible tragedy at Disney World and an incident in India where 18 Asiatic lions were "arrested" and put "on trial" for attacking and killing folks who live near their reserve. What happened to that little boy was horrifying and tragic and so very sad. And how do we as a society react to that? We look for someone, anyone, to blame. Why do we have to BLAME anyone? It was not the parents fault. It was not Disney's fault. And it certainly was not the alligators' fault. It was a horrific accident of nature. And the alligators paid the price for this misfortune. The knee jerk reaction was to kill all the alligators they could find nearby because we have to make it safe for the HUMANS. Because our lives have far more value than a stupid alligator.

All that alligator saw was prey at the edge of his domain. He did not stop to decide if it was a human being or not. He was following his nature in order to survive. I am quite sure it would have been more than happy to not find itself at Disney World where it was much more likely to be spotted and killed. He did not think to himself...I think I shall pop over to Disney World and snatch me a toddler for supper. But because our lives are so much more important than any other creature all the gators in the area must die. It MUST be safe for us to do whatever the hell we want wherever the hell we want because we are kings of the jungle.

The same can be said for the lions in India. They "arrested" 18 of them and studied their paw prints and feces to determine which lion, or lions, hand been attacking and killing local villagers who lived near a lion sanctuary. They were searching for the "maneater". Evidently they have determined the culprirts who will now be locked away in cages for the rest of their lives so they will not eat anyone else. Because clearly it is more important to maintain our personal security even if it means taking away the freedom of another living being. Was it a good thing that the lions were attacking folks? Of course not...but again...the lion was doing what lions do in order to survive. Something was clearly causing stress to them within the sanctuary for them to roam outside where they were much more likely to encounter humans and possible death.

Where am I going with all this you ask? Well...I would like to ask my fellow homospaiens to stop and think about what we are doing to this planet. Speicies of flora and fauna everywhere are disappearing daily to service OUR needs and wants. We treat other living creatures carelessly and have little respect for their needs and their habitats that we have destroyed for our gain. We place great stress upon their populations and then get upset when deaths occur. We no longer seek to live side by side with nature and give it the respect it is due. We simply keep trying to subvert it our will and insure that our silly lives are the ones that matter most. I think ALL life has value. And I think that if we do not stop our insanity and put our egos aside we are going to find ourselves in deep, deep ecological doo doo and quite frankly, if there are any animals left they will have the last laugh.

Welcome to Weimar America

If you are a sensitive soul and don't want to be offended I suggest you skip this blog because this girl is angry and she is about to spew.

I have had it up to HERE with Donald Trump and any other ignorant, narcissistic douche bag who thinks it's okay to marginalize and kill people because we don't like them. So...I am going to pass on some of the knowledge that I acquired while spending all that money on my history degree. This is really oversimplified so bear with me. I did not want to have to do footnotes.

Once upon a time in Weimar Germany there were folks living their lives and trying to recover from the devastation of WWI. (Which by the way was nothing compared to the suffering of conservatives under our current president...riiigghhhttt. Please insert sarcasm sign here!) Some folks in Germany were a little embarrassed and angry that they had lost WWI and were now having to face the consequences of their governments actions. Sound familiar?

Along came a man with a really awkward moustache who realized his particular brand of insanity was just what the country needed. So countless "good" people looked the other way as he ramped up the hatred and the violence and the rhetoric. They remained complacent in their homes as he and his minions began consolidating power. They thought this little Bavarian corporal was no threat to them so why rock the boat. Then they sat back and watched and some even voted him into power. I am sure they went to sleep at night thinking...oh he's really not all that bad and he will make Germany great again.

Then they sat on their complacency and watched as, shockingly enough, he put all his violent rhetoric into action. I am sure some of them were genuinely horrified but not horrified enough to try and stop what they had helped put into motion. After all...so he arrests some Jews, and some Gypsies, and some gays, and some communists, and some Catholic activists and many others I am forgetting to mention here...he says they are a threat to our way of life...and we are not any of these things so we will look the other way as people just vanish into "work camps". It will be good for them and we shall be safe and Germany will be great again.

Now...let's zoom forward to 2016 and talk about people who really should know better but apparently have lost their collective minds. Today we have a man with really awkward hair pandering to the same kind of hatred and violence that we thought had left our landscape. Silly us...we thought we had learned something from the Holocaust but evidently not. I am sure there are folks who thought that funny little rich guy is no threat and he says he will make America great again! He's just bombastic and he doesn't really mean all the hateful, racist, misogynistic things he says. He's just saying all that because he's different from those awful politicians in power now and he says he will make America great again!

So...here we are America at a major crossroads in our collective history. Are we going to sit on our asses and let Trump and his minions spread their ignorant, racist and violent rhetoric all way to the White House and then be shocked when he starts arresting our friends and neighbors and sending them to special "relocation facilities"? Are we going to continue to cling to every last automatic rifle we can own so we can "protect" ourselves from all those awful people out there who just might be different than "us?" Are we going to continue to marginalize the value of human life? This is the time for everyone to choose. Not November...NOW. We have to say no to hate and to the de-humanizing whack jobs trying to make America great again. We need to look in mirror and put aside our fear and our complacency and stand up against the violence and hatred in this country right now. If we do not we are doomed to repeat the unspeakable atrocities that we thought were behind us. What makes America great is not macho, racist, rhetoric...it's the fact that even though we are all different we find a way to live together and thrive.

Yes...I am angry...and I should be promoting more love and tolerance and less anger...but I am tired of watching innocent people die in this country while we sit on our asses and feel bad but do nothing about it. I will not be quiet about this anymore and if you feel the need to unfriend me or whatever you need to do I will understand. But I will not be afraid or complacent or quiet anymore. We are better than this America and we can stop the tide of hate. We just have to try. (yes...I have watched Zootopia like 3 times this weekend trying to calm down...so sue me.)

Namaste.

Well hello there!

Well hello there world!! After the angst-ridden mess of that last blog I thought I would share with you what has happened since that awful night.

First and foremost I would like to apologize to all my family and friends for any future idiocy that might occur. This is a direct result of me going OFF my meds. Now...at first this seems like a really bad idea right? She is in denial. She will wreck herself and we will have to listen to more mindless sobbing on the phone. I am not a fool. I know that this was a risk and I am well aware that my depression has not disappeared and that I will have bad days and weeks and be a mess. However...just look at that smile...that has not been seen in some time. That twinkle that tells you this person is not quite sane was gone. My light and my life were gone.

When I started the anti-depressants around 6 or so years ago it was for a good reason. I needed them. I was not able to deal with my grief on my own. So they were necessary to keep me on this planet and they did their job. They kept me alive until I could crawl back out of my hole. But somewhere along the way I got complacent and my nurse practitioners gave up on me. Everyone...including me...thought I would have to be on the meds for the rest of my life. After all...I have had issues with depression my whole life. And if some day I find myself back in the darkness I know I will recognize it and do what I need to do.

But for now...I feel ALIVE again!! I have been so anesthetized that I had forgotten what it felt like to feel really happy. These drugs are the pharmaceutical equivalent of a Dementor. (See Harry Potter) I could not FEEL happy. I noticed right away that they would not let me cry, even when there was darn good reason to do so. They allowed me to feel depressed...which I find quite ironic...but they did not allow me to feel really happy. They kept me on an artificial even keel. A surface happy sure...but not that euphoric, goofy, free feeling of just being happy. The joy of just being silly for no good reason. I have not felt "free" in years.

In the past week or so I have been more active and productive than I have in months. I do not want to sleep all the time. I want to be outside. I want to be silly. I want to soak up the world again. Now...all this being said...I am NOT advocating that everyone run right out and go off their meds. For some people they work and they help them and that is a good thing. I am just in a different place than I was when I needed them and I am willing to work on other techniques the next time the sadness arrives. I am willing now to work with it and not fight it.

So again...I wish to apologize in advance. I am back to having a weaker social filter. I am laughing loudly. I am probably going to be really hyper at times. I am going to be loud at times. I am going to annoy the shit out of you at times. I will probably offend someone really soon but understand that is not my intention. I just tend to blurt before thinking too deeply about the subject. My ADHD will be worse. I will be silly. I will be feisty. I will be sarcastic. I will be mishchevious. I will give you a hard time. (Amber) I will be inappropriate at times. What I will NOT be is sitting here writing that mess I wrote the other day. I will NOT be withdrawing into myself. I will not give up on my fellow man. I will not retreat to sitting in the lawn chair by myself brooding like my dad. I will be free and I will continue on my adventure. Wish me luck!!

"Do you know which clothes even fit me?."- The Clash

Believe it or not this is me...probably about 3 or 4 years old. The salad days so to speak.

The days before the PCOS took over and built the large, semi-manly bear you see today. The days before my dad convinced me I was worthless. The days before the sexual abuse. The days before I realized people were making fun of me for my size. The days before I lost me.

Today I have been doing a lot of pondering. Probably not such a good idea some would say. You see I have been trying to make a decision about the anti-depressants I have been taking for the last 7 or so years. I think I have decided to get off the pharmaceutical roller coaster and try to find other ways to deal with my depressive episodes. Since none of them are of the self-harming variety I think it's worth the risk. Therefore...my brain has been messing with me. Again...this is not new. "Everyone" says I cannot stop them cold turkey. But even 1/4 of a Lexapro makes me feel like crap for 2 days. I have been trying to find a happy balance for a couple of weeks now. Sometimes I feel like I am succeeding and other times failing.

Today I have been wondering who I am supposed to be. You would think I would have a better grasp of this at my age and in some ways I do. In some ways I know exactly who I am. I am kind, I am shy, I am loud, I am quiet, I can be hyper and annoying, I am intelligent, I wear my emotions in my eyes and I do not hide them, I can be cranky and moody, I love to laugh, I am sarcastic, I love irony and absurdity, my energy can be supportive or suffocating, I love too easily, I get hurt too easily, I try too hard to be perfect and do not handle criticism well. All of these things I know about myself. I am generally lovable...a big, warm fuzzy bear. Inside though...deep inside...in those places I don't like to think about I know there is a very fragile bear who is very, very angry and impulsive and erratic.

Lately I have been noticing that people have a lot of ideas of which Karen I should appear as most often. I have asked a trusted friend for feedback but she struggles with how to tell me things because she is afraid of hurting me or of poking the bear. Another friend has made it quite known that she does not like the "me" who comes to work on the Lexapro. I am too quiet! She wants me to be chatty, and funny and I don't know what all else. My size makes people uncomfortable, my non-obvious gender makes them uncomfortable, my booming voice bothers them, my social discomfort bothers them...let's face it...I just bother people. Do you know what it feels like to have someone you love shush you because you are too excited and loud? When you don't even realize you are being loud? So it bothers people to see my pain and it bothers them to see my hyper-ass self. What am I supposed to do with that shit? Do I walk around half-stoned and feeling like crap because it makes others more comfortable?

So...what is a bear to do with this mess? Do I continue to ride the pharma fun wagon because the drugged up Karen appeals to some folks? Do I continue to wean myself off of them because that Karen appeals to others? How do I find who I want to be again? How do I get un lost? How do I find a way to be comfortable in my own skin without becoming a hermit? Because you see I a withdrawing into myself more and more because I feel like I cannot possibly be the person others want me to be. How do I get back to that little care-free girl in the photo?