Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Feeling lazy ...

I started writing a little fanfic story last week (back when I was bitten by the writing bug) and so far it's been going pretty good. I've actually put a lot of thought into it, working out kinks and the such, so I know exactly where I'm going. The problem? I just don't feel like bothering right now. The funny thing is, I really do want to write this thing out ... but when I sit down in front of the computer I just don't feel like typing anything out. It's not the typing itself, because I type extremely well (I average 100 words per minute), I just don't know. Just can't be bothered, I guess. I'm hoping this will pass soon because it's going to turn into a cute little story. :)

Monday, June 25, 2012

Tragedy

A friend of a couple of my friends was murdered last week. I don't know the victim personally but she was a pretty good friend to my friends. Whatever you believe in, whether it be prayers, good thoughts, good vibes, etc., please send them their way. It would be much appreciated.


Thank you.

Friday, June 22, 2012

I am going to die


Spiders are going to be the death of me. I’ve now had two very close encounters with them in the past two days. It’s like I’ve been marked or something.

First instance: yesterday. I was rushing to get ready for school, as I apparently have no concept of showering ahead of time. I dunno what it is about pajamas but I would be content to live in them for the rest of my life, so I like to spend as much time in them as possible. I suppose I could shower and then change back into them, but I think that’s just silly. Also, I’m a procrastinator and lazy, hence the showering an hour before I have to leave (I can actually get ready for school – shower, dress, makeup, hair – in 30 minutes or less depending on how coordinated I am that day, but I like to leave extra time to pack up my backpack, double and triple check that I have everything, and then just lollygag around). I’m a little later than usual getting in the shower, too, because I forgot that while my class starts at a certain time, my ride’s class starts half an hour earlier than mine. Why I have trouble grasping this in the middle of the term, I don’t know.

So I hurriedly jump in the shower, wet my hair, apply shampoo and am about to start rinsing when I look up and happen to see a HUMUNGOUS FUCKING SPIDER ON THE INSIDE OF THE SHOWER CURTAIN. I am frozen in fear as I scream, “OH MY GAWWWWWD!”

Of course, Jason has run out for a quick errand, so he isn’t available to take care of this problem. I swear, I am never showering without him in the house again.

In case you can’t tell by this point, I HATE spiders. I know they kill insects and stuff and so they are generally good but WHY do they have to LOOK LIKE THAT?!? Why can’t they look like tiny little puppies or kittens? Or a Pygmy Puff, like from Harry Potter? Or like Tribbles, from Star Trek? I would love spiders, then! I’d collect the little buggers and let them all live in my house. But they look like some seriously scary shit and there’s just something about that spider form that scares the ever-living fuck out of me.

So there I am, petrified, staring at this spider, trying to figure out what to do, AND IT STARTS CRAWLING TOWARDS ME.

I squash down my panic and bat at it. Not hard enough to knock it off the curtain, just enough so that it knows to not go any further in the direction that it is currently going. Fortunately, my crude communication attempt was successful, so it started crawling in the other direction. Deep breath, here. I quickly rinse the shampoo out of the my hair and, seeing that the spider is continuing in the opposite direction, I decide it would be safe to condition as well. So I quickly do that while the spider continues onward on the inside of the shower curtain. At that point, it has crawled up as well, so he crawls over the top of the shower curtain and starts crawling down the other side.

At this point, I decide it is no longer safe for me in the shower now that I can’t see where the spider is and whether or not it is coming toward me. I had washed my body the previous day and I hadn’t sweated or gotten dirty or anything, so I decide to forgo that part of my routine. If anyone wants to judge me for not washing my body for one day, you have two options: (1) you can go sodomize yourself repeatedly with a sharp stick, or (2) try and take a shower with one of your biggest fears in the shower with you and tell me how that works out for you. Something tells me you’d omit a step or two in your routine.

Thank God I didn’t have to shave my legs. I might have just ended up a hairy-legged woman shouting at people, “Don’t you judge my leg hair! There was a SPIDER in my shower.” And, I’m sorry, but avoiding certain death from Ebola AIDS* trumps having shaven legs every time.

I shut off the water and carefully pull aside the shower curtain, to avoid knocking the spider off, and quickly step out. Fortunately, the spider is in plain sight, so I fling the shower curtain so that the spider will fall into the tub. Now, my bathtub has some sort of drain problem. It does drain, but very, very, very slowly. So slowly that literally within seconds of entering the shower, you are standing in water. So the spider is now flailing about in the water that is slowly going down the drain and I’m keeping a careful eye on it to make sure it doesn’t cling to something and crawl out (I’ve taken the shower curtain out of the tub so it can’t crawl up it) and I go to dry off my face and my contact decides to come out with the slightest pressure.

FUCK.

So now I’m half-blind, trying to watch for a spider and dry off and get dressed and get ready for school all at the same time.

(It turns out, my contact didn’t fall out, it just decided to go for a little trip elsewhere in my eye. I put in another contact, went on my way to school, took a midterm, and came home, and about 11:30 or so that night it decided to make a reappearance. Let me tell you, having two contacts competing for dominance in one eye is not very comfortable)

Good news: so far, no sign of the bathroom spider.

Fast forward to today. I’m removing the last of the files that I want from my old computer. I’m operating on about three hours of sleep because I got bitten by the writing bug last night and decided to stay up all night writing (hey, no school until Monday, otherwise I would have told my inner muse to STFU, taken a Trazodone, and gone to bed). So there I am, transferring files to my jump drive when I feel a little tickle on my wrist. I look down and OMG THERE IS A FUCKING SPIDER ON MY HAND.

It was one of those white/clear tiny little fuckers, but size does not matter to me; spiders are spiders.

So I guess I might as well say goodbye now, as I will undoubtedly die of Ebola AIDS* because of the direct arachnoid contact.



*I should note that I did not come up with the term “Ebola AIDS”, I read it once or twice on Allie’s blog (I can't remember exactly where, or even if the post it was in was even related to spiders) and thought it had a nice ring to it and was also probably something that spiders would carry and infect you with, so there you go.

Wednesday, June 20, 2012

Ugh

My College Math midterm is tonight. I am stressing out about this one so hard. Maybe it's because in math, there's no concrete answers to study, it's all up in the air. And with me having Dyscalculia, it just makes it that much harder to do math the right way.


Again, a huge thank you to Dr. G for not giving me anything to help with my stress. /sarcasm

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

Discrimination


While I find discrimination of any kind to be offensive, I must say I’ve been fortunate to not experience much of it. But recently on Pinterest I was kind of put down because of something that I think is ridiculous and is just the result of someone spouting off at the mouth and not thinking and just being ignorant in general and refusing to listen to reason.

The picture was one of those ecards that said something along the lines of being on food stamps and having an iPhone, the joke obviously being that if you can afford to get an iPhone then you shouldn’t be on food stamps.

Now, I know that there are people that abuse the system; I do not deny that. However, since I’ve had the experience of being very poor I know that there are ways to procure certain things for dirt-cheap that are otherwise expensive. I mean, honestly, who wants to look poor?  The first time I went into the welfare office, I felt embarrassed, even though I had every right to obtain assistance. So you learn things, like the best thrift store to go to that has designer clothing or that sells used electronics.

When I got my iPhone, yes, I was on food stamps. The reason I got it wasn’t just because I wanted an iPhone, I actually did need a new phone. The old phone that I had – one of those crappy free phones – was getting majorly buggy. It would randomly shut off, cut off calls in the middle of the call, and when I would call someone it was about a 50/50 shot that when they answered they would be able to hear me. It was then that I heard that because the iPhone 4S was coming out soon that AT&T was dropping the cost of the iPhone 3GS to free with an upgrade. Hmm, let’s see, another crappy quality free phone, or an iPhone 3GS for the same price? Uh, no brainer there! You bet your ass I snatched that shit up. We didn’t have a home phone so I had to have a way to communicate with people, like my family, my friends, my doctors, my caseworker, etc. And hey, iPhone, right? For free, no less. Several months later when Jason needed a new phone, he got an iPhone 3GS, too, though he did have to pay for his. A whole $1.99.

So, anyway, I pointed this out in so many words. I didn’t mean to sound uppity or rude, I just wanted to try to educate someone on something that they obviously didn’t really put much thought into and was probably just following the crowd. Honestly, when I do this, most people are appreciative, usually because I offer a point of view that they haven’t even considered. But the reply that I got? Something along the lines of I’m on food stamps and have an iPhone but I rationalize it because it was cheap, followed by an “interesting…” Okay, whatever, I haven’t really given up yet, so I replied again and stated my reason for getting it (the fact that I actually needed a new phone and since it was free, I jumped at it). The response to that? Basically this person is glad that they pay their taxes so I can get on food stamps and get an iPhone, it “totally makes sense now.”

At this point I know I’m getting nowhere with this person, they are obviously willingly ignorant, so I simply replied with, “Yeah, because I used money I could have used on food and got an iPhone instead … except it was free. So, yeah.” Needless to say, I don’t expect an intelligent reply.

I know the whole thing about arguing on the internet, that nobody really wins, but I honestly didn’t start out to argue, simply to offer a different point of view that they obviously hadn’t considered. I like to hear other people’s point of view, I find it to be interesting. Sometimes just listening to someone else’s point of view has changed my mind on things. Maybe it’s a little presumptuous of me to assume that other people like to let others educate them – even if it’s just a change in perspective – but it’s something that I can’t really help sometimes.

Anyway, getting to my actual point of discrimination … while I haven’t experienced a lot of discrimination in my life, I have been discriminated against because of poverty. That I shouldn’t wear certain clothes or look so nice or have certain things. Because I’m poor I don’t deserve anything, apparently. That I obviously spent money that I could have used to support myself better to get other, miscellaneous things. What they don’t understand is that I am a very thrifty person. Like I said before, most people don’t like to look poor even if they are poor, and most – like me – have discovered the wonder of thrift stores and garage sales. I have seriously found the best stuff there, designer labels, top-of-the-line stuff, all for dirt-cheap. During my extreme poverty phase, if I needed clothes, I never paid more than $3 for an item. I’ve actually always been pretty thrifty, even when I worked and had a steady income I preferred thrift shops or discount stores. Now, the kind of thinking that I shouldn't have these things because I’m poor, that I obviously paid top dollar for something, just disgusts me. Have they not heard of places like thrift stores? Discount outlets? While not every store has such a great selection, there are certainly places out there to get nice things at for a very low price.

Now, this is just me thinking – or, rather, typing – out loud here, but does it have something to do with social status? That because a person has an iPhone or designer-type clothes that they have to have good money, and that anyone below a certain income level can’t possibly obtain these things because, well, they’re poor? And if a poor person has managed to obtain something like that because of an extremely good deal they found … what then? If someone managed to find such a great deal and take advantage of it – like a free iPhone – why does their income matter? Shouldn’t you be glad that they were able to find such a great deal? Or are they possibly, subconsciously jealous that they didn’t see that deal first?

I don’t know you guys, all I know is I’m sick of being discriminated against because I’m poor. Like I said before, I know that there are people that abuse the system. But the majority of people that I personally know that are on assistance don’t want to be on assistance! If they had their druthers, if they were able to secure a stable job with a steady income, they’d drop their food stamps, cash assistance, Medicaid, and subsidized housing in a heartbeat. I know I would have. And you know what else I know? That I am not unique. There are other people out there that are in the same position I was/am in and they feel the same way I do. And let me tell you, we are sick of being called lazy-ass leeches that just sit on our ass and bleed the system. We know that those people exist and trust me we hate them just as much as the average person. In fact, we hate them more, because they give people like us a bad rap. We get lumped into the same category. And that is frustrating beyond belief.

So next time you want to make fun of someone on assistance, someone that you don’t really know, just stop for a minute and consider the fact that you don’t know everything, you can’t possibly know someone’s situation, and you therefore have no right to judge them as if you do. You know that old saying, sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me? Yeah, whoever said that was a fucking liar.

My New Addiction

Pocket Planes.

That is all.

Monday, June 11, 2012

Not quite what I'd planned, but ...

So I had this other post idea in my head, but when I went to write it yesterday my internet connection started getting buggy so I gave up. But right now I don't feel like talking about what I'd planned to, I want to talk about something else. Namely, how my psych doctor appointment went today.

To be as brief as possible regarding my mental health history, I've been diagnosed with several things. Bipolar disorder, Schizophrenia, ADHD and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I also have some OCD issues as well, one facet of which is particularly amusing and I may address later.

Since I have moved to Ohio I've been to two (now three) different doctors. The first two doctors were awful and, in my opinion, highly unethical. I need a doctor who is going to help me, not one who is going to keep pissing me off and making things worse, so I saw the third doctor today. I'll call her Dr. G. She was very nice throughout the whole process today, asked lots and lots of good questions and near the end I thought this whole thing was going very well.

Now, since my dad is retiring this year, I'm going to be losing my insurance. This will happen next month. I'm not going to be able to afford to keep going to a doctor though I may be able to get into a program of some sort to get my prescriptions. He had initially said he would retire next year, which was going to be good because I will be turning 26 next year, which means I won't be able to stay on his insurance, but I would be finishing school two months before my birthday, so I would have had the time to seek out a job with health benefits before then. We had talked about this and agreed that this would good, I believe he even remarked something about how "God's timing is always good" or something to that effect. However, a few months after I got on his insurance, he suddenly announced that he was retiring this year, which means that he goes on Medicare, which I can't be put on under him because the health care law mandate doesn't apply to Medicare, only private insurance. Now, this pissed me off greatly because he knows I need insurance. I need to see doctors, I need medications, not just because I want them but because I need to function from day-to-day!

So, okay, while I know that he will be retiring in next month, I figured I could at least milk this insurance for all it's worth. So when I went to a family doctor, I brought up every single issue and concern I had so I could get them addressed. I went to a psych doctor to at least continue the medicine I'd been taking from when I was in Pennsylvania (which, I had those issues with those two doctors, like I had mentioned before). I figured that even though I would be going off of insurance and I may or may not be able to keep taking medicine or keep seeing a doctor I could at least have it now and be all good for the time being and just enjoy the hell out of it. Of course, that didn't quite work out.

Which brings me to today. The whole process had been going well until we got to the finish. She wants me to go for ADHD testing. I had last been tested when I was 14 and while I had tried to get in touch with the doctor who had diagnosed me - with no success - I could not confirm that they still had my records after all this time. Okay, no problem, I'm thinking probably next week, right? Nope, the first opening they have is in the beginning of August. Which, if you've been following along, is after I lose my insurance. I thought, well that's okay, I can still probably at least have something for my anxiety for a month, right? Nope, she doesn't want to treat my anxiety or my ADHD until she can confirm that they are actually two separate things that I have or that possibly I have one or the other and the other is misdiagnosed.

FUCK.

So, I've been without any meds at all to help with my anxiety. If anyone out there has moderate anxiety you understand that coping skills will only go so far. So, basically, my dream of having at least a "good month" for my last month of being on insurance has gone bye-bye. Now I have to wait until at least March of next year to get any help with it. Which means that all the worry I deal with on a constant basis, the anxiety attacks that I suffer from, none of that is going to be treated at all until next year. This really does devastate me. I mean, I knew that I was going to probably have to go without from July until at least March, you're probably thinking, "C'mon, Rue, it's only a month" but you don't understand. I want to have a normal month. I had clung to that hope desperately that I could have one last normal month before I had to go back to all the bullshit firestorm that I normally deal with. It's like if your employer told you on Friday that it was a three-day weekend and then they call you on Sunday and tell you that you have to come in on Monday after all.

That's actually an excellent analogy that I just now came up with off the top of my head. My flashes of brilliant may be brief but, damn, they sure are brilliant.

Anyway, that's what I've been dealing with today. I don't think today could get much worse, really. Fuck. I mean, honestly, this is bullshit. I was always told that if I need help to just ask and help will be given. Well, I'm fucking asking for help and I ain't gettin' shit! That makes me think things like, "Why do people not want to help me? I know I'm asking the right people, it's not that. Is there something wrong with me that makes them not want to help me?" And then the feelings of rejection come on and I get super depressed. Which is what I feel now. Yay.

Sorry you guys, I didn't mean to make this so long. There was just a lot that needed to be said to fully explain the situation and where I'm coming from and it kinda got outta hand. I am kinda glad that I do have this blog as kind of an outlet, though, it always feels good to express yourself and your feelings and just kinda get it out of there.

And now it's time for a quick study for tonight's quiz. Bye, y'all.

Saturday, June 9, 2012

Oh My Lord!

I didn't know that a sinus infection could take so much out of you. I mean, I have horrible allergies and I usually get at least one sinus infection a year due to that, but this one has really knocked me on my ass. Besides the sneezing and coughing and alternating runny/stuffed up nose, I've been having dizzy spells. One time, coming home from school, the dizziness was so strong I couldn't even look out the window of the car because the sensation was overwhelming. I'm on the tail end of my antibiotics, I'm hoping it works.

So, because of that, I haven't been able to really post. Between spells of having to lay down because I am so dizzy and out-right exhausted, I've also had to worry about school and homework. I really wish I wasn't so anal about having perfect attendance for yet another term sometimes because then I end up sitting in class in a zombie-like state, trying so hard to pay attention to what's going on and to not drool on myself at the same time. It's a lot harder than one would think.

I have been weeding through some ideas for posts, though, and I think I know what the next one will be and I will hopefully have it up by the end of the weekend.

In other news, I got my stipend check from the school yesterday and went out and got myself a "new" macbook for $434. I am so happy with it, you really don't even know what a piece of shit my other computer was. It was eight years old and so fucking slow it was almost impossible to work with. I babied it, too, had it set up to scan every night, manually scanned it a couple of times a week with another scanner, I ran disk cleanup and defragged it several times a month and made sure that I didn't run more than a couple of programs at once. And yet, still, it was so slow it would lose in a race against molasses, a snail and a glacier. The repair shop that I bought the macbook from still said they would be interested in buying it, though, so even though I would barely get anything for it I think I'll still sell it. I was going to smash it with a sledgehammer just to make up for all the times it royally pissed me the fuck off but if I could get a few dollars out of it, I suppose that would be better.

I'm off to lay down again for a little bit before I start transferring files. Look for another post this weekend and have a good one.

Friday, June 1, 2012

Addendum

So, I posted my first post, and I realized that while I am basically anonymous, any readers might be interested in a little demographic information about me.


I am a 25 year-old of the female persuasion. I am engaged to someone who I will refer to as Jason. We've been together for five years now, through thick and thin. Honestly, if we can't make it, I wouldn't hold out hope for anybody. I currently reside in Ohio, where I go to a small college, but I have actually lived in several states. I'm a little hesitant to say what my associate degree is called, as it may pinpoint where I'm going, and therefore me, but let's just say that when I graduate, I'll be able to do anything in a medical office or hospital short of clinical work (like taking vitals, giving injections, etc.). Basically, anything office-related, I can do it. I really want to do medical coding, but since I've had my ass handed to me by the economy and have been completely without a job since late 2008 (which will undoubtedly be the subject of a blog post sometime) I'm a little hesitant to invest time and money into a limited field. I want options, should something not pan out the way I want it to.


I'm a creative person at heart, really. I've been a writer for about 13 years now. My early stuff was horrible, as it usually is when a normal person starts out in writing, and most especially when they start out writing at a young age. There are exceptions, of course, but writing is something you really have to practice and work at to get better at. I started out in fanfiction. I can hear people sighing already, so hear me out: the concept of fanfiction is not bad. Fanfiction can be a wonderful place to start out writing because you don't have to worry about every single little thing a story involves, like creating a believable setting or characters that people will like and are able to identify with. Those things are already there, so writers can flex their writing muscles with other important things like plotting, dialogue, pacing, proper characterization and researching. I know that the majority of fanfiction out there is bad. Trust me, I know. I've been on fanfiction.net. I've seen the horrors. But if you take the time to weed through the junk, you can find the prettiest gems.


I will give a couple of more warnings here, nothing bad just things I think readers will need to be aware of so they can either more fully appreciate this blog or disregard it entirely. While I am hesitant to identify with a political party, I am definitely liberal. I support Gay Rights, or, as I like to call them, Human Rights. I also support Gay Marriage, or, as I like to call it, Marriage Equality or just plain ol' Marriage. I identify as Pansexual and my brother is Gay, and I am very, very proud of him for reasons I may go into later. If you don't agree with any of this, then I suggest you GTFO right now. I realize it's your right to comment and say whatever the hell you want to say, just realize that it's also my right to blog about whatever the hell I want to. It's my blog, not yours, and if this ain't your tune, feel free to leave. If you accidentally stumble onto this blog and you realize you don't like what I'm laying down, just bow out and leave. I realize that there are people who think differently than me, so I promise that there will be no hard feelings.


Oh, another thing ... I swear. Quite proficiently at times. I'm am fluent in both sarcasm and profanity and I use it. I promise I will try to curb it as much as possible on this blog but sometimes I just gotta say "fuck" or "shit" or "motherfucker" and, seeing as this is my blog and all, I reserve the right to go off on a profanity-laden diatribe if I feel like it. If I do choose to off on a profanity-laden diatribe, I will post a warning in the title so you can skip it, but realize again that this is my blog and my main reason of creating this blog is to just get all of this out of me (just to clarify: I consider "profanity-laden" to be practically every other word being a swear word; a few swear words in one post is not "profanity-laden" and I will therefore not mark those posts because they will probably be the majority of them).


If anyone's still reading, thank you for understanding and I hope that you will enjoy the future blog posts that I have planned. :)

Obligatory Introduction Post

Hi all. Let me just start off and say, I'm not here to get famous blogging. If people actually want to read my weird ramblings and thoughts on just about every subject under the sun, that's fine, and it will make me happy. But if you read my blog and don't comment, that's fine, too. I'm a little comment shy myself, sometimes. I have yet to even comment on Hyperbole and a Half despite the fact that I absolutely adore Allie and think she's possibly the funniest, most awesome individual alive.


Anyway, let me sorta introduce myself. I say sorta, because to protect the identities - and dignity - of people I'll be talking about sometimes, I'm choosing to be anonymous and go with a pseudonym. I mean, it's one thing to think these things in my head, but to actually get these things out of me, to publish them on the internet, I'll choose to be a little more discreet with specifics.


So, for all intents and purposes, my name is Rue.


Why Rue? Rue McClanahan is one awesome lady, may she rest in peace. Also, Rue from the Hunger Games is my favorite character from the Suzanne Collins trilogy. Both of those people embody a kind of confidence that I wish I had. I guess it just sort of fit for my purposes, here.


Now, to get one more thing out of the way ... I realize that by being anonymous, some people are going to doubt me. I mean, really, when I look back at some things, I find it kinda out there, too. And with no way to back it up without revealing myself, I fully understand that by not doing so will make some people doubt me and cry foul. What I want to say is while I cannot prove every little thing I say, I want to promise any readers out there this: everything I say, everything I tell you, really did happen, and it happened to me. I will never lie to you. Lying, to me, is a disgraceful, shameful act that I refuse to partake in. If you choose to not believe me, then that's on you. I don't care. Because even if you don't believe me, the truth is the truth, and if you don't choose to believe the truth, then whatever, I can't make you. What's that saying? You can lead a horse to water but you can't force it to drink? Yeah, that one.


Sorry if I sounded a little harsh, but I think it was necessary. So, with all that out of the way, welcome to my blog. :) Sometimes I'll be serious, sometimes I'll be funny (or, at least, my weird definition of funny). But whatever I'll choose to be from blog post to blog post, I can guarantee you it'll be one crazy ride.