Several months ago, I applied to be recognized as a Heartless Bitch. Lo and behold, they acknowledged my heartlessness (*smirk*) and signed me up. I was so gratified, I even bought the t-shirt.

There are some great articles in the rants section of the site. A few of my favorites:

The article on the over-medication of America, where I can only agree with the declaration: “Today, as I recover my Self, I am elated (Manic), shy, introverted and reflective (Social Phobia), irritable and frustrated (PMS), whelmed and stressed (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder), sad and melancholic (Depression), passionate, joyful, extroverted (Mania) and fearful (Anxiety Disorder). All of these feelings and others are now so precious to me. I want these feelings. I want them all. It’s the ‘messiness’ of my humanity and of being alive that I choose and cherish, rather than the half-life offered by brain-, mind- and heart- numbing legal drugs.”

The difference between Nice Girls and Heartless Bitches. I’ve caught myself using a few too many Nice Girl phrases in the past; lately this hasn’t been as much of a problem.

The fabulous classic “Poly People I Can Do Without”…oh yeah. Just the section on personal responsibility is priceless, and should be required reading for everyone, polyamorous or not.

I subscribe to the T-Shirt Hell newsletter. It’s damned amusing. The newsletter features the new shirts the site brings out every few weeks, and letters from irate websurfers who have been offended by something on the site (plus the Editor’s reply to the offended). The most recent one was priceless, and I can only cheer the response!

From Anonymous Parent:
“I can’t believe that you have picture of naked women on your site but you do not have any kind of adults only warning on your site. You should make your site available only to people 18 and older so that children can’t go to it.”

Editor’s Note:
“Do you know how you keep your kids off of our site? Watch your fucking kids. I don’t want to fill in every swimming pool and blunt every steak knife just because you don’t want to be a responsible parent. Or buy some of that web filtering software if you’re too fucking lazy. Besides, the human body is beautiful, although I admit there are a couple pigs in the Second Rate Whore section.”

Last weekend I had a handful of nifty new first experiences! It was my first visit to Las Vegas – and that was pretty mind-blowing itself! Words are really insufficient to describe the gloriously neon & electric light and sound sensory overload that is a busy casino in Vegas.

It was my first live Cirque du Soleil show. As I mentioned in my journal entry from while I was in Vegas, it was quite a spectacle! A definite visual overload, as there was something interesting & sensual to watch on at least 3 different sections of the stage at any given time!

I had my first limosine ride – splitting the fare with a group of people who were also going to the airport, as I was leaving Vegas, since it was (slightly) cheaper than a taxi! Of all the firsts, I must say that the limo ride was the least interesting. But now I can say I’ve been a passenger in a limo.

It wasn’t the first time that I travelled long distances to meet, in person, someone I’d met online (that happened when I went to the Re-Lease party in January) and it wasn’t the first time that I’ve pounced someone I met online (that was my Number One Internet Fanboy). It was the first time I’d pounced someone I met on pool, though.

As I also mentioned in my journal entry from while I was in Vegas, I had my first roller coaster ride at night! The Manhattan Express was quite a ride, with a top speed of 67 mph and 2 loop-de-loops (one of which twisted as it inverted!). For a coaster, it was also a decent length of ride, at 2 minutes 40 seconds. It was a bit rough, but definitely a blast! I love roller coasters!

I hate heights. I’m seriously acrophobic, and I’ve been known in the past to have anxiety attacks just crossing raised pedestrian bridges across streets if they had open sides (like a chain-link fence with nothing to hang onto while you walk). I had to be moved from my original desk seating at work because my office building has floor-to-ceiling windows and, seated too close to the window on the 6th floor, I constantly had vertigo. So what in the name of little green apples possessed me to jump off of the 171-foot-tall highest bungee platform in North America. I have no freaking clue, but it was gloriously, insanely intense and someday I will do it again! (I even bought the video of my jump, because I just know there are people who wouldn’t otherwise believe I did it. *grin*) And how did I manage to repress my fear of heights, in order to do it? It was simply a matter of, “Don’t look down, and definitely don’t think – just do it!”

All in all – while there were quiet, laid-back moments – it was one hell of an intense, sensory-overload weekend. I’m quite glad I went.

Like about 8 zillion other idiot Americans, I waited until the last minute to finish up the taxes. Well, partly I got caught up in the excitement of other things going on in my life.

Oh, we filed our federal taxes many, many weeks ago. But Geoffrey & I both spaced on the state taxes until the 14th – finally getting that paperwork in order and ready to be mailed.

Then we forgot about the stupid Multnomah County extra tax until the 15th. Finally got those forms printed & filled out, discovering that the county is screwing us to the tune of a couple hundred.

And I misplaced my W-2’s, not finding them until 10 pm on the 15th – after over an hour of frantic searching through several rooms of the house, growing more panicky all the while.

Then, with all the paperwork and payment checks properly tucked into the stamped envelopes, I didn’t realize that not every post office in town is post-marking mail until midnight.

It took driving about 15 miles round-trip, stopping at 3 different post offices, until I found one that had the magic sign, “All mail deposited in this collection box prior to midnight on April 15, 2004 will be postmarked April 15th.”

I had one hour and seven minutes to spare when I finally located that sign.

After finally dropping the envelopes into the box, I called Geoffrey (who was at work). We solemnly vowed to beat each other with large sticks if we ever neglected our taxes past March 1st again!!!

I had been writing this in an email, but I decided it wasn’t entirely appropriate for that email – and I realized it was pretty appropriate for my blog. So here it is…

Ten years ago, I was a mousy, boring, miserable housewife with two small kids and no life. I had no friends, but for one person I knew from high school. I literally went nowhere but grocery shopping, to the library, to the kids’ pediatrician appointments, and to get-togethers with relatives. I lived with a boyfriend who didn’t treat me all that well, whose life revolved around his hobbies & his habits…and I was just the convenient housemaid & concubine. Oh, he cared about me – but ONLY as “his girlfriend.” If I tried to do, or be, anything that didn’t directly benefit or please HIM, then I was being “selfish” and “foolish.” I wasn’t appreciated as an individual in my own right.

After having had that sort of life for nearly a decade, I finally figured out that it was largely my own fears – of failure, of looking foolish, of taking risks – that kept me stuck in the rut I’d allowed myself to be in. I really didn’t know what to do about it, but figured at that point that doing anything was better than existing with the status quo. The day that Jerry asked me what that look on my face was for, and I told him I’d just had the coolest thought – “I don’t know what the future holds in store, but it’s gonna be crazy and it’s gonna be good” – and he told me that I think scary things, I decided it was about time to do a few scary things. Like get a fucking life.

So I made changes – some small, some rather drastic – striving to improve myself, from the inside out, into the sort of person I admired and dreamed of being. I made friends (although at first people found me either “creepily quiet” or “desperately intense”…before I got comfortable with being social), I went places, I developed an identity other than “Annie & Jordan’s mom” and “Jerry’s girlfriend” and “that quiet girl in apt 53 who gets a lot of mail” (I had pen pals aplenty – that was pretty much my only hobby). I went to a scifi convention with only my best friend from high school, to see my favorite author, 200 miles from home, leaving the kids at home – and that was a huge step of independence, trust me.

Jerry hated it all, because it meant I could have fun and be fulfilled without him. I delved into my spirituality, which became a focal point of my life – and Jerry hated that, too, because it was so different from his family’s religion. I started standing up for myself, and NOBODY in my life liked that one little bit. I started going to SCA events shortly after Jerry & I broke up, and I developed several terrific friendships. I made the decision that monogamy was a very bad idea for me, and committed myself to living an honest polyamorous life (not without a few slips and some truly impressive fuckups along the way, admittedly). Eventually I even got myself straight about self-accountability and a decent work ethic, without falling into the trap of being overly materialistic or forgetting that family & friends are always worth more to me than money or things.

And now, I remember a mousy little housewife who dreamed of what she thought was impossible to ever have: a busy, exciting life full of incredible friends, fabulous lovers, a healthy & happy relationship with a man who loved me for myself, sassy & terrific children, a job she actually liked even if it wasn’t a career, a house that people found welcoming & fun to hang out at, a snuggly kitty, interesting hobbies, great conversation with a huge range of fascinating people, and a generally happy outlook. I had none of that 10 years ago. I have it all now…my dreams came true – and NONE of it was given to me. I earned it all.

It didn’t turn out exactly as I’d dreamed…but that would have been boring as hell, and I can’t stand boredom. It turned out better in most ways; it’s been such a tumultuous journey, and overall I’ve loved it. I can’t regret any of it, even the poor choices I made at times, because it brought me to who and where I am today – and I believe that’s a pretty nifty person and place to be.

Geoffrey said another one of those sweet, deranged, romantic things to me tonight. (Coming from anyone else, it would rather alarm me…but from him, it’s just darling. Ah, love.)

We were saying the sort of sweet little ritualistic things that lovers find themselves repeating to one another on a regular basis, as something of a verbal touchstone, when he said, “I’m keeping you forever. In fact, I demand to keep you – and I’m holding you hostage until my demands are met!”

It was nearly as romantic as when, early in our relationship, he solemnly declared, “If you ever break up with me, I promise to stalk you.”

(He also says just plain sweet things to me, too. He’s a sick fuck, but he’s a sick fuck with a romantic side. I think my favorite “just plain sweet” thing that he’s ever said to me was, “When you look at me like that, it turns my brain to pudding!”)

The Onion horoscope for Libra this week is absolutely perfect for all the Libras I know…

“Next to its sheer beauty, the best thing about your throne of skulls is that every little skull represents a different memory.”

Yes, yes indeed.

Before Molly the Magnificent moved in a couple months ago, we had a nice pokey-but-reliable dial-up connection to the Internet that cost me a measley $17 a month. My ISP knew me by name and loved me lots because I was a loyal customer of over 4 years, who recommended them to everyone. But Molly was used to cable modem high-speed Internet, and the idea of zooming down the Infobahn rather appealed. So we got that instead.

But our high-speed often came to a screeching halt, and for the longest time we couldn’t figure out why. It was suggested that it might be the router, so we swapped that out. It was suggested that it might be the line, so a technician came out to check everything. It was suggested it might be the computer configuration, so all of that was checked & re-checked. Nothing panned out as the reason, until we had really only one thing left to check: the cable modem itself.

We were renting some crappy little RCA box from Comcast, and today we replaced it with a shiny new Motorola box that we bought at Circuit City. After Molly fought with the Comcast tech support for a brief while, it not only works beautifully, it zooms along the way that a high-speed connection is supposed to!

Tomorrow Molly will be taking back the rental box and demanding a big fat credit for our inconvenience, considering we’ve not had Internet connection for at least a few hours a day – and we have the tech support call logs to prove it – every fuq’ing day since they set up the connection after Molly moved in. Grrr!

My eldest demonspawn showed me this little thing that Google has, an automatic translator…it’s just simply wrong, what you can do with it! Out of curiosity as to how good their translation is, I threw one of my recent entries into their “English-to-French” translator, and then back again. I was not prepared for the fit of giggling it caused me! Here’s what it produced:

As a child of the 80s, I could not help but to believe in Fernando when he said, it is to better seem good that to smell itself good! Thus there was another voyage to the detail of therapy today, with Geoffrey and Karel length for the comic relief and the company while I scoured the sides of beauty of local Freddy’s. Bless their hearts, and their vigorous confidence in their masculinity, to accompany me in bottom by the sides by make-up for good 20 minutes! I obtained all the new make-up – will mascara, covering of eye, the shade of eye (in the new colors of spring recommended by Cosmo!), lipstick, bases, and concealer – as few declining treatments of foot of thermal spa of got2be (the foot soak, rub, and cream), and a flask different of salt body beseeching of got2be rub (since my current flask is gone finished half – gods of the OH, it makes my skin so much decadently, without jolt gently!). All the substance of got2be was on sale – yay! Lastly, a new hair-curler of lash and the biore anti-damage solvent of make-up. Since independently what a kind of form my heart is inside, the remainder of me will – as Fernando said – look at marvellous! And delicious odor, too.

My vanity license plates came today! Yay!!!

After Geoffrey so kindly put them on the car for me, we went shopping to get a new cordless phone (since Amy requires too much percussive maintenance) and a new fan for my ‘puter, Tinhead. Now it doesn’t make those nasty noises anymore.

I’m updating from work (Death Star Int’l) because I had errands to run before work & I got here early. It was so much fun running around with my custom plates. It may be pure silliness, but I get such a kick out of them!

I’m sure they can be interpreted a few different ways…they say: PMS ESP *grin*