So, um, you might have noticed that I’ve been, like … gone.

Yeah.

It started with an almost 2000 mile round trip cross-country drive just to shut off the water in my old house.  (Well, and to catch up with the fam.)  But then came things like the holidays, my birthday, numerous doctor visits for my wife because her health was just getting worse and worse thanks to a bad reaction to drugs, and before I knew it, I just didn’t give a shit about the blog.  Sorry folks, but it’s true.  Real life takes presedence over the internet, and I’ve had some waaaaay bigger things to worry about than whether or not I want to lob off my dick one day.

You know?

Anyway, so, honestly, I don’t know if the blog will ever come back or not.  My wife is getting better now that we’ve gotten her off of the evil nasty drug, Pristiq.  And maybe at some point I’m even going to drag myself out of the emergency state I’ve been living in for the past couple of months where just surviving the day (both me and my wife) is all that I actually care about.  And maybe the doctors will finally find something they can fix when they give her a heart cath in a couple of days.  And maybe they won’t kill her in the process.

Meanwhile, honestly, if I start doing any real posting here again, it’s still probably gonna be a while.  Sorry.  Real life and all that.

But if anyone (god knows why) is still reading this blog, I wish you all well.  I hope your lives are going way better than mine and my wife’s.

Love to you all!

It’s Black Friday.

No, we don’t call it that because Obama got elected president. 

Today is a day when countless people shrug off their turkey-induced lethargy and get up phenomenally early to beat each other to the stores for the last doorbuster.  It’s a day when (hopefully) the retail market actually manages to turn a good profit.

Me, I’m not going to run out shopping.  No.  For me, the day after Thanksgiving is about one thing: leftovers.  And here’s a fun little tip for what to do with that same-old same-old turkey other than just a sandwich.

Thanksgiving Leftover Pizza

Yes, that’s right.  It’s a fun new way to use your leftovers that I picked up a few years back.  And it’s quite simple!  Start with a nice can of croissant roll dough.  (Okay, you can make the real thing from scratch if you want, but it’s really not necessary these days since we do have companies like Pillsbury willing to do the work for you.)  Lay the dough out flat, like a pizza dough.  Only if you got it in a can, lay it out square.  You really don’t need to cut it into a circle.

On a cookie sheet of course!

Then smear on a nice (but relatively thin) layer of gravy.  Think of it as the pizza’s sauce.

Then take those leftover mashed potatoes and add some instant mashed potatoes.  You want to thicken the potatoes up nicely.  Because these thickened potatoes are going to be your pizza’s cheese.  And nobody likes squishy cheese that runs everywhere when you try to pick up your slice.  So thicken it until you feel safe handling it balanced precariously on a thin bit of bread.

And then smear it on your Thanksgiving Leftover Pizza of course.

By now you have the base all done.  Next comes the fun part.  Chop up some turkey.  Sprinkle it on like a pizza topping.  Do the same with some stuffing.  Add some veggies.  Or whatever bits are left from your big Thanksgiving dinner that you think would go well with it all.

Then pop it in the oven, basically following the croissant cooking directions, because that’s the only uncooked part that needs cooking.  Watch carefully.  You don’t want to burn the pizza crust.

And now you’ve got something waaaaaay better than any old turkey sandwich.   You’ve got Thanksgiving Leftover Pizza!

It’s Turkey Day!

To all those about to cook, I salute you!

But before you get to basting your bird, remember, keep the juices!  Don’t just toss them away!

Because days later, after the carcass has been stripped “clean”, there’s still more!

Yes, that’s right.  You’d be amazed at how much good meat goes unnoticed.  Maybe not good for some things, but certainly good for soup.  Yep!  That’s right!

So keep your drippings, because one of the best Thanksgiving leftover treats that you’ll ever enjoy is simple home-made soup.  The drippings combined with chicken broth do wonders!  And there will be plenty of meat to make some turkey noodle soup.  Yum!

Gobble!  Gobble!  Gobble!

I dunno.

In a lot of ways I’ve gone through this all before.

And by that I don’t mean coming out of the closet, or even my transition.  I mean the drama of being in a persecuted group.

Frankly, I’m rather tired of the drama.

So along comes “Transgender Day of Remembrance”.  Honestly, I didn’t even know it existed until I started becoming more of a part of the transgender community.  Which I only started doing as I more accepted myself.  And it shouldn’t come as a surprise.  If there’s one thing that humans do, it’s drama.

But really, I’m fairly well past that.  Been there.  Done that.  Got sick of it.  After all, I’m a witch.  So I’ve had my share of “Don’t forget the burning times.“

Honestly, does anyone really think that holding on to hate is a good idea?

Because, ultimately, that’s all that it’s really about.

You can claim that it’s about sorrow, about honoring people’s suffering, and so on.  It’s not.  It’s about not letting go of the hate.  The hatred that drove people to do awful things.  The hatred that we feel for people who do awful things.

If we really want to make the world a better place, shouldn’t we focus our efforts on better emotions, like love?  Like peace?  Like joy?

Doesn’t someone have to “be the bigger (wo)man” at some point if we really want things to get better?

So I say it’s time for a Day of Forgetfulness.  It’s time to let things go.  It’s time to let go of the hate.

Every day countless people are injured and killed in all sorts of same-on-same violence.  But we don’t look at that, because we can’t call that a “hate crime”.  And so for our own self-justification we play up the hatred, because persecution is something we can understand.  Often we don’t even bother asking why someone did something.  We just draw our own conclusions from the victim.  The general evilness of mankind is the elephant in the room that we try so hard to put a sheet over.  And the ridiculousness of it all is in its own way an insult to us all.

Violence is not about the victim.  Anyone who wants to hurt someone can find a victim that meets their needs.  Violence is about the aggressor.  Violence is about someone who doesn’t have their shit together, who was probably hurt in some way themselves.  Violence is about someone who choose a poor way to handle releasing their own emotional problems.  Violence is a disease.  The victims are merely symptoms.

If we truly wanted to make the world a better place, we’d concentrate on that.  We’d work on curing the disease, not on “remembrance” of the symptoms.  Because without the disease, there’d be no more symptoms to remember.

What the world needs more of, are people who can love.  People who you can talk to.  People who will listen.  People who help.

Instead of spending so much time being a victim, spend some time being a helper.  Put the same amount of energy that you would into the drama into reaching out, to family, to friends, to your community.  If you feel a need to do something to make the world a better place, donate your time or money or old clothes or a beat up old car or whatever you can afford to a charity.  Help real live people.  With a little more love and caring in the world, maybe, just maybe, you’ll somehow through this great collective work we call society, make it possible to help the next rapist or murderer get in touch with their own feelings and problems before (s)he becomes a rapist or murderer.

I know it’s not as gratifying to work torward theoretically preventing something horrible from happening.  We like to focus on the things that we’re sure of, like helping a victim.  And certainly, help victims.  But help everyone else too.  The person that you might have unknowingly saved in your good works of love will never know your name, but their life and the lives of everyone who loves them are going to be much better for it than anything you can ever do for the family and friends of someone who was already victimized.  An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.  If you help someone, and they help someone else, and so on, what good you do can be a catalyst to improve the lives of many people you’ll never even meet.  Without knowing it you could be the very spark that starts a chain reaction to help cure the man who was going to kill you, but now has found a safe release for his own problems.

So I say let’s work on forgetting the hatred of the past, and letting go of the negativity.  And for goodness sake, let’s stop being drama queens.  Instead of focussing on the bad, let’s focus on the good we can do.  Let’s make our world a better place, one where if we all try hard enough, we can cure any need for remembering, because we’ll have helped cure people’s harms before they grow into evils.

Let’s stop being “us”.  Let’s stop worrying about “them”.  Let go of the segregation that your own good intentions perpetuate.  And embrace simple love for your fellow human being.  We’re all part of the same society.  We’re all stuck on this planet together.  Every day we encounter more people than we’ll ever remember, and just like you, they also need someone to listen to their problems, to help in many countless ways.  Just that little bit can go a long way.

That’s what I do.  And I invite you to do it too.  Stop being a victim, and start being a cure.

Snow!

It’s the first snow of the season here!  Yay! (If you couldn’t tell, I like snow.) It’s so pretty! Well, okay, so the photography sure isn’t.  But I’m not gonna go outside and freeze my tootsies off just for a pic without the windows screen in the way. My poor little Prius is freezing!  Which reminds me, I’ve really got to get some tires on my baby one of these days.  She’s still got the factory treads, and what pieces of crap they are.  Low “rolling resistance” can also be said as low “traction”.  Winter is a bad time for a Prius, what with the crappy tires and the tiny brake pads.  (Those tiny brake pads are the only brakes you have when your traction control kicks in, because the “regenerative braking” is taken offline to protect itself in the event of a skid.  And what sudden stop on snow or ice isn’t a skid?)  If you own a Toyota Prius and drive in a bad weather environment, I strongly suggest upgrading your tires and your brakes to much better performance replacements.  Safety first is definitely not a motto at Toyota. But so public service announcement over…  Yay!  Snow! Oh, and for those following my very-delayed Target online order, the items all arrived.  Before December!  Yay!  I guess Target’s online information is just severely wrong.  The delivery came way sooner than the delivery date they gave me.  That’s something.  Maybe I’ll consider shopping there again then.  Still, not exactly a flawless smooth experience there. I’d wear something for you today (I’m so excited, even if it is mostly summer clothes) but, honestly, I feel like crap today.  Let me just say that with a system as sensitive as mine, eating half of a package of bacon for dinner (instead of the three slices I should have limited myself to) because of a sudden wild craving is not really conducive to a good night sleep.  Too much grease.  Too much intestinal dialog.  Not fun.  I am not feeling pretty right now. But I am happy.  It’s snowing!  Yay! If I felt better I’d be outside making a snowwoman right now! Hopefully I’ll be up to it later.

I just got thing in the mail “for my birthday” from Adam & Eve, purveyors of sex toys and cheezy porn DVDs.  They’re a cute enough place to pick up some toys from.  I’ve always found that sex is more fun when you play.  But A&E has this thing about sending you free movies every time you order.  If you enjoy a random collection of bad porno, it’s not such a bad thing.  But their free movies are pretty much always just random clips, straight sex scenes.  No real warm up.  No plot.  Just five minute “best of” clips from folks doing the nasty.  Meh.

The real beauty is the look on the woman’s face at the end of every scene.  She sticks her tongue out and closes her eyes while the guy squirts her up the nose.  And you can just feel the aura of disgust rolling off of her.  But then she realizes she’s on camera and puts on this big fake smile.  Sometimes she’ll even pretend to enjoy licking the jizz off of his cock.  And you can almost hear the suppressed gags.  Because that’s what I want to cum to!

The real full-length porno isn’t really much better though.  If you’ve ever needed a good laugh, try one out.  If you thought actors couldn’t act, try porn stars.  They really can’t act.  The only thing worse than their acting is the writing.  “Oh thank you Mr. Really Hung Fireman for saving my cat.  Can you come in and help me clean up my pussy?“  They call that a plot?  Bah!  Every production I’ve bothered with is a joke.

The funny thing is, it seems like the best actors are the ones that don’t actually have sex.  Which I guess kind of makes sense.  But then really, how far is it from pretending to have sex for a camera to actually having sex?  What, it makes you superior because you fake your orgasms?  (Well, fake more than the porn stars do.  You know those women don’t really enjoy it as much as they pretend to.)  I think Californication has got to be one of the best examples, even if they don’t really fake the sex that often.  But it’s great acting, good writing, and an all around wonderful show with no pretense that this is in any way for kids to watch.  Just good adult humor.

And it makes me ask the ultimate question:  Why the hell can’t anyone get a porno movie of that caliber?  Oh, sure, because it’s a porno you’d have to make the sex scenes take up a little more of the movie.  But honestly, not all that much.  Just make them real.  I don’t want to accidentally see the shadow of some guy’s schlong while they pretend to go at it but in reality he’s no where near her.  I want it to be real sex, with real orgasms.  And the rest to be real plot with good acting, great writing, and a real attempt to make believable sets.

Is that really too much to ask?

I mean sex isn’t just the sex.  It’s the games we play.  It’s the whole art of seduction.  I don’t just want Joe The Plumber coming in to “lay some pipe”.  I want John Q. Pubic and Betty Will playing coy at the bar, dancing, and going from here.  With characters that have depth.  And a point other than a purple helmet.

Or even better, to actually just streamline in a number of good sex scenes into an epic fantasy adventure.  Like turn a Meredith Gentry novel into a movie, with good film making.  I find it hard to believe that there’s no such thing as a halfway good actor willing to have sex in a movie.  Or that a writer can’t combine both a good storyline, character development, and sex scenes.

Or maybe it’s more about the budget?

I dunno.  All I know is I’m tired of the same old lame old, and the cum-a-minute collage.  I want a real movie … with real sex.  Is that too much to ask?

Also, some of you lately might have noticed my new profile icon in my comments on your blogs and such.  I’ve been experimenting with so many pictues as I’ve worked on my blog.  Maybe this one will last.  Or maybe it won’t.  But I decided to sit down and paint a symbol of me. I know, it’s not a picture of me. It’s a painting of how I feel. Set against a backdrop of a blue sky and rainbow, and lush green fields, is a symbol of my transition.  At least I hope it’s obvious enough to pick out.

A symbol of my transition.

Wow!

So yesterday my wife had a day off.  It’s getting hard to tell when she does and doesn’t have off as she’s a manager in retail and this would be the retail season.  I know most people think it really starts the day after Thanksgiving, but that’s for shoppers.  The stores have to have everything ordered, delivered, and decoratively placed out for the customers by then.  So for them it starts a lot earlier.

Anywho, so we had a day off together.  And instead of just spending it in “lay on couch” snuggle mode where we try to recharge her batteries, I pressed for us to get something done.  We worked more on the healing room.

The healing room is a simple enough project.  We rearranged some of the basement so that we could create, basically, an area just large enough for a massage table and room to (barely) walk around it.  Surrounding that are all of the bookshelves … and a nice old top-piece of a hutch that is now basically a display case.  The idea will be to string up some purple Christmas tree lights on the ceiling and hang material across the ceiling and down to create “walls”.  And thus turn it into a room.  A room for doing healing energy work, Reiki, massage, and such.  That’s the idea.

Unfortunately it got a bit derailed.  It’s a small basement.  There’s really not much room.  That makes it tough.  But also the idea was to put a lot of my wife’s pretty black glass collection in the display case and such, to create a nice pretty atmosphere.

Only, well, the storage room is where that’s all at.  The storage room that holds two people’s lifetimes crammed together when we moved in together.  And we came to realize that her glass is separated into two areas, both of which are at least three layers deep in stuff.  We’d basically have to reorganize the entire storage room to get her black glass out.  Hmm…

We fought it.  It really wasn’t quite worth it.

So instead, yesterday we chose to skip the black glass, and work on digging up some of my old altar stuff.  It’d been in a box forever.  Some of it I kind of missed.  But, honestly, the energy around this city is so disconnected that I just haven’t gotten that much back into my magick.  And the house so small that there’d just never been a place to put up an altar anyway.  So I’d just skipped it.  Until now.  So that’s what we did.

It was fun just bringing all of it out again.  Of what I had from my primary altar, it isn’t nearly enough to fill the shelves.  But at least it’s one less box of stuff sitting around now.  Now it’s functional again.  And it was a step in the right direction that the wife and I took together.  We did something positive.

Inspired by that positive step, I decided that I really wanted to do something for my wife.  I wanted to give her an oil massage with healing-charged oil.  And maybe see if we could take anything from there.  It took her a little convincing, but not too much in the end.  Soon we were set up in the bedroom.  We put on a spare sheet to collect any oil spills.  I put together and charged a hemp oil base with a touch of orange and clove oils and a few grains of some sage-smoked sea salt that I’d made earlier for doing major cleansings.  I got some Native American instrumental music going.  We had candles and incense and even an oil warmer also filled with the same orange and clove oil.  It was a nice relaxing atmosphere.

I asked my guides to help with the healing, did some energy work to prepare, and then began.

And so, slowly, I rubbed the warmed oil into her skin.  Bit by bit.  First down one arm, then down the other.  Over her face, and then down her neck.  Down her chest and around her breasts.  Down her stomach, her hips, her mound.  Down one leg, ending in a short foot massage.  Then down the other to do the same.  Eventually all of her front, every inch of skin, I had worked healing cleansing oil into.

Then I placed myself between her legs so that I could run my hands from her feet up to her chest and back down, channeling energy as I did so repeatedly, back and forth and back and forth, trying to clear her energy pathways, open her chakras, and reawaken her kundalini.

And then I had her roll over so that I could do the same for her back.

I didn’t use too much oil.  Just enough.  She uses hemp oil as a moisturizer so at the very least I was doing her skin some good.  But I was hoping that the oil was doing more than that, as was my continued Reiki as I applied it.

And of course I was driving myself crazy.  She was naked, of course.  And I was constantly touching her.  And beause of the amount of oil involved, I was naked too, since I didn’t want oil all over any of my clothes.  So … yeah … I was certainly stimulating myself in the process.

So when I had finished the actual healing, I decided to press my luck and hope.  I slowly slid my oil-covered hand down along her labia.  Mmmm.  She was hot.  There’s nothing like a nice hot box to let you know you’re on the right track.

Unfortunately the real problem to that was the antidepressants that she’s been on lately.  The body may respond, but the antidepressants seem to turn off the switch at the brain.  So you can play all you like and get the simple bodily responses, but no matter how much you try, the actual climax never comes.  You can rub raw before the brain gets the message.

Still, nothing ventured…

So after a brief consult, we decided to give it a try.  She rolled back over, and I slid my oil slick fingers inside of her, teasing her softly, then harder, then harder.  It was the first time that I’d ever gotten three fingers in.  That was kind of fun, but I accidentally hurt her a couple of times when she’d rock and the next thing I knew I’d hit the pubic bone the wrong way.  Oops.  Still, it was working.  As was playing with her clit while I did this.  Not that she ever has a clitoral orgasm before a vaginal one.  She’s a very vaginal-driven woman.  But it’s still fun to play.

Well, it was fun playing, but I could tell it wasn’t going to get her there.  Not with my fingers.  So there was one last thing to try, which was the real thing.  Unfortunately I’d been holding off on that a bit because it’d definitely put me over the edge, and it’s an edge that’s really disappointing to jump over all by yourself.  At least to me.

So I moved up and slid myself inside her, and instantly she started to really respond.  She loves a good fuck.  I think her idea of foreplay before I came along and started teaching her to slow down was just to fuck slowly.  Her idea of sex is generally just a lot of hard deep thrusting.  Sometimes I’m never sure which of us is more the woman and which of us is more the man.  Still, at least she’s easy to please.  And I’ve learned a few ways to move to pound her that does wonders for her without making me cum instantly.  So I gave her her ballad, and she sang for me.  And sang.  And sang.  Holy shit!

I mean on any normal day, she’s multi-orgasmic.  I always envy that.  Sometimes I’m not sure if she has multiple orgasms, or just some very prolonged climaxes that keep going higher and higher.  Probably a bit of both.  So any normal day I’d expect it.  But, again, the antidepressants have been making the sex, well, depressing.  She’s lucky if she even gets one orgasm while on them.

So to have her in her normal throws, was just fucking awesome!

And maybe it was the over stimulation earlier, or maybe it was the grace of god, but damned I managed to hold off on my own climax for a good while, as I gave her more and more.

Unfortunately nothing lasts forever.  Especially not me when I’m not getting a fairly regular amount of sex.  (Not getting sex often makes me climax a lot quicker I’ve found, which is also a bit disappointing, since I’m not like my wife.  I can’t just keep cumming repeatedly.  Well, at least not normally.)  So I finally felt myself getting there.

Usually I’m so lost in giving her orgasm after orgasm that I just plum forget to keep a thread of attention on myself, so I just cum with her in a so-so climax.  Her idea of a lot of hard and deep thrusts is okay.  Don’t get me wrong.  But it’s not exactly savoring the buildup to the edge.  It’s more like running flat out over it.  Extreme, but short-lived.  Not my ideal way to plunge, but certainly not a bad way to go.

But this time I was so sluggish to respond that I could feel it starting to build, and I’d given her so much that I felt I was well deserved in taking a little time for me.  So I slowed the grind and at the right time brought it to a stop.  I don’t know if all men are like this, or just me, or what, but there’s a certain point where you can get excited enough to feel it coming.  You could pull out and maybe it might stop.  If you just stopped everything, maybe you won’t cum just yet.  But if you go any bit too far, you definitely will, no matter what.  And I was getting right up to that very edge, savoring the slowness of it.  I just stayed inside of her and let her tease my nipples a bit, and felt that molasses slow build, pushed just by the energy and emotional rush of our love.  And let the tidal wave crash over me.

Ye gods it was good!

And then as the spasming started triggering her, I began pumping again to give her another orgasm.

Then I rested lightly upon her (well, lightly for her … my arms were taking the brunt of my weight) and we kissed and smiled and kissed again.  And just enjoyed that afterglow together.  And I laughed with her at how well that went.  And when I teased her by sliding slowly in and out again (because usually I stay hard for an awfully long time after climaxing) she shuddered in the start of another orgasm.  So I pleased her once more.

And as we rested after that one, I teased her again.  And I’ll be damned if she didn’t respond yet again.  So I brought her to climax yet again.  Only this time I could feel myself growing soft, and at one point almost darn near slipped out because of it.  So, unfortunately, it was the one last orgasm my penis would give her.

But we weren’t over yet.

Having so thoroughly ravaged her, it’d caused a build up.  Back before me, when she rarely if ever squirted, she didn’t know what that was.  It was just an uncomfortableness that she’d sometimes carry for days.  But because we’d explored so much together, now she knew what it was and how to relieve that.  So she grabbed our favorite squirting toy (a glass curved line with a small ball on one end and a large ball on the other) and slid the large end in.  I scooted back to watch, and with my face almost close enough to lick her, I played with her while she toyed.  And it wasn’t long before the flood gates opened and her female ejaculation gushed out while she climaxed.  Mmmm.  There’s not much sexier in my opinion.

But now she had another need.  She’d had all sorts of vaginal and g-spot orgasms, but no clitoral orgasm yet.  So we got out her favorite clit teaser vibe and I rubbed the shaft of her clit while she teased the head.  And sure enough, she came screaming.  She came so hard that she clenched up into a sort of fetal position (except she was laying on her back) with her legs clenched together.  I’m too vicious to just let her go at that.  I kept my fingers on the shaft of her clit.  Not rubbing or moving in any way, because I know it’d be too much to her at that point and she’d push my hand away in defense from the assault to her nerves.  No.  I’m an energy worker.  I have sneakier ways.  So I just kept my fingers there, and sent her energy through them.  I have to admit, maybe it’s when I’m with her, or maybe it’s just me (I don’t really know which because I haven’t done energy work with many people to compare) but I can have a really sexually charged energy some times.  And so I just channeled that through her clit and kept her just on that very edge for an almost torturous amount of time.  After all, who knows when the antidepressants are going to let her have this much fun again?  I couldn’t not make the most of it.

It was … awesome.  I couldn’t have imagined a better love making.  Even before the antidepressants this one would have been up there in the top 20.  It was an amazing gift from the universe, at a time when we really needed something.

I’m a firm believer that good sex is a healing force.  There’s a build up of energy as two people please one another, especially in love.  Not that it has to be the romantic love of songs, but at least some love of one another.  I’m sure that a wiser witch than I could use that raw energy to cast magick.  I’m sure because I’ve read about it a bit.  But I’m too … natural … for that.  There was a time once, when I was at the top of my game, when I channeled Quan Yin.  Well, channeled might not quite be the word for it.  More she just came to me in a meditation, gracing me with her presence.  There was a lot learned there, in that brief time together.  But one of the hardest lessons I had to learn then (long story that I don’t want to go into now) was that sex can be used for healing.  And goddess knows, yesterday, my wife and I were both touched by that healing as we came together.  It was more than I ever could have asked for.

I don’t know how long the effects will last.  Unfortunately, so often, healing energy work doesn’t last forever.  You have to keep working at it, or it fades away.  And in this place, with such a lost connection to the universe around me, I just haven’t been the healer I was.  But I hope this gift somehow lasts.

Then we ordered Chinese for dinner.  I don’t know why, but there’s something special about Chinese food.  Maybe it’s that the spices have medicinal properties.  Maybe it’s just the right combination of vegetables, starches, and proteins.  Maybe it’s that so many places are family affairs, filled with togetherness and love.  I don’t know.  But in my opinion, there’s nothing better for a day of healing than Chinese food.  She had a vegetable egg roll and pork lo mein.  I had a vegetable egg roll, bbq pork ribs, and beef lo mein.  And we each had a fortune cookie.  The cookies were good … albeit with rather unimpressive fortunes.

It was a good day.

I know one thing.  It made so much of an impression that today my wife is calling in sick.  I call them “mental health days”.  Because really, mind and spirit can be sick just like the body can.  You have to take care of all of you, or the other parts will grow ill too.  My wife works herself so hard sometimes that it’s been a real challenge teaching her that she has to also take care of herself.  And with her health in a slump, it’s even more important now to make time for herself instead of burning the candle at both ends … and the middle.  She’s got to learn to at least reserve one end of that candle for her own well being.  I keep telling her, “You can’t save the world if you put yourself into a hospital.”  There’s really only so much one person can do.  I think she’s finally learning that!

And it’s funny.  I woke up at 9 because I’d snuggled so much through the night that my shoulder was sore from being on one side so much.  But my wife, she’s still sleeping.  It’s just shy of noon and she’s still sleeping.  She’s sleeping the sleep of healing.  She’s recharging.  She’s healing.  If I didn’t know better I’d have woken her.  But I do know better, so I’m not concerned.  It’s a good sign.  It means that she really has pushed out some of the negative energy.  She really is refilling that gap with something good.

And probably, she’s going to spend today “cleansing”.  Which is what I call it when the spirit heals and the body pushes out so much bad, every way it can, but usually through the usual places where disgusting dirty things come out.  It’s a nasty process, but the spirit cannot elate while the body is swamped in negativity.  And we humans with our readily available junk for food are so good at filling ourselves with things that hold us down.  There’s a balance that needs to be upheld in order to keep on the path of healing.  She’s going to need to drink a lot of water today.  And need more good food.  Time to put a scented candle in the bathroom…

Buzz!  Buzz!  Buzz!

What is it about coffee?  In general, I hate it.  I mean just the roasted bean.  Oh, the smell is absolutely divine.  But the brew, black, is horridly bitter.  Fortunately we have things like natural sugar to sweeten it, and vanilla flavored cream to balance that bitterness out.  And then coffee goes from evil to yum!

But I only partake on rare occasions.

There was a time when I would go through several cans of Dr Pepper just to wake up in the morning.  Maybe grab some coffee from a coworker.  Maybe brew that coffee with caffeinated water from Barnes and Noble.  Maybe.    And then, of course, drink some more Dr Pepper or Mountain Dew before bed, to help me get to sleep.  Basically, I was so  hopped up on caffiene constantly that it no longer had an effect on me.

One day I thought about it, and decided that just wasn’t right.  If for no other reason than my acclimation to high levels of caffiene kept me from getting that lovely buzz that got me addicted in the first place.  I’d gone from user to abuser.  I suppose just like any other adict.  Fortunately my drug of choice was perfectly legal and not nearly so harmful.  One could even say to be addicted to caffiene is commonplace.  Still, what’s the fun if you’re not getting anything out of it anymore?  And what was it doing long-term to my health?

So I quit.  Cold turkey.  Which doesn’t sound like much, being “only” caffeine.  But if you’re addicted, try it some time.  It’s still no picnic.

So about a decade later now, I can really enjoy my buzz.  All it takes is a simple small cup to start to feel it.  It makes me wacky.  It makes me funny.  It makes me zany.  And it gets me going when I actually need a pick-me-up.  So now I can enjoy a nice french-press french-vanilla cup sweetened with natural sugar crystals that have that nice hint of molasses.  Mmmm.  It’s sex in a cup.  Add a nice donut for dunking and a strawberry cream cheese bagel on the side to keep my stomach from going sour, and it’s a great start to a (hopefully) wonderful day.

Of course a better start would be waking up to sex.  Sex always is a great way to start any day.  There’s nothing like the smell of sex in the morning and a good orgasm to open those eyes!  But unfortunately today I have to settle for coffee.

Oh well.  There are always other opportunities.

Grrrr.

Today I finally got over a stomach flu that’s been grinding on me for a couple of days.  It was, unfortunately, one of those on-off ones where you think you’re getting better, and then you’re suddenly not.  Yuck.  I think I’m finally actually better though.  I hope.

And, okay, so way back when, I spent a hundred bucks shopping online at Target.  I only just days ago received notice that they’re shipping my stuff.  Yay!

Except, wait.  Checking their online delivery date, they’re expecting it to be delivered by December 2nd!  That’s a month to ship?!

Two fucking months from when I ordered?!

Target has a nice online store, but with a delivery of two months, I don’t think that I’m ever going to shop there again.

Then, to add insult to injury, I got a letter from the company I recently interviewed for.  They, of course, found someone else.  Likely someone less qualified than I.  I was really rather over-qualified.  But still…  There are like no decent programmer jobs around here.  Not even within an hour of driving.  (Each way.)  I really don’t get it!  It’s not like I live in rural suburbia.  I live in a relatively large city!  Not New York or Chicago large, but not Bum-Fuck small!

I mean even today I go to backup my hard drive.  My new external drive is in and ready.  But the software that comes with it isn’t designed to do something as simple as image a hard drive?  It wants to protect everything file-by-file using the existing OS?  I don’t think so!  So I go to grab my good ol’ copy of Norton Ghost.  Umm … Ghost?  Where are you?  I can’t find it.  Anywhere.  I know it has to be somewhere.  Hell if I can find it though.  It’s … vanished … like a ghost!  So I spend another thirty bucks ordering another copy of Norton Ghost.  Oh, sure, I could find freeware to do it.  I know I could.  But thirty bucks for the second-latest version of Ghost is worth it in my opinion.  I’ve always liked Norton Ghost.  But still, why does that have to get so much more complicated than it needed to be?

So, yeah, I’m getting really fed up.  It’s hard to keep a positive attitude when everything, little and big, keep going wrong lately.  That’s kind of why I’m posting as much lately.  I’m trying to stay positive, and it’s not exactly working.  The things that go right are being badly snowed over by the things going wrong.

And not just for me, but for my wife as well.  She’s being just as screwed lately as I am.

I think it’s this city.  I think this land is cursed.