A vacation dream

I'm sure lots of people know by now that I'd planned to go on a cruise last October. It didn't happen. Seems like I was the only person who really wanted to go, in the group. It would have been my first vacation since 2002. Actually, I don't get to go many places, being single. (I got to go on a vacation sometime around 1995 before that... and didn't get a choice in where I went or what I did. Matter of fact, I got treated like a child - someone expected me to ask her permission to go places by myself, and said nasty, mean things to me when I tried to find some way to entertain myself that didn't fall under her scheme.)

And no matter what anybody may think, the thought of going off someplace all by myself and having to spend all that time alone just isn't appealing. Sure, it sounds wonderful to the married people I know, but for someone who's always alone already... I might as well be stuck at home with nobody to talk to than spending a few thousand dollars being lonely too.

Hey, if going off on a vacation by myself actually worked, I'd go. I really would. But I've done it before, and I know how it works out. Always by myself, the whole time.

Anyway, I've given up on the thought of a cruise. They're really a reward for families and people who've actually been able to find someone to care for them. :) I don't fall into that category, as you can guess. There's really no such thing as a "singles" cruise unless you don't mind actually being part of the crew on one of those Windjammer cruises, and I can just see myself trying to fit in with the crowd there. It would be like an episode of Survivor, but instead of them voting me off the island, they'd just push me overboard in the middle of nowhere. Either that or I'd be so bothered that, because I wasn't one of the 20-something "hotties" on the boat that nobody would even talk to me, I'd wind up spending all of my waking hours literally working on the boat, just wishing it was over.

I would like to go to Atlantis sometime though. Whenever I went swimming as a little girl, I liked sitting down on the bottom of the pool and looking up at the sky through that weird light diffusion that the water surface does. It was nice and quiet -- the only problem was that there was nothing to look at unless other people were in the pool, and then you could look at.... their legs. Some actual scenery would be nice, you know? All those shades of blue and green... nice and peaceful. :) I even wear them sometimes, though they only look good when I have a tan, since my un-tanned skin tone is kind of olive.

I'm not sure if my interest in all of that underwater stuff started because I liked reading the original "The Little Mermaid" (Disney's version is unforgivable!) in third grade, or because I saw "Warlords of Atlantis" on HBO at about the same time. All right, stop laughing... I thought it was a seriously cool movie, except for that giant octopus that pulled the ship down. Put that together with "Jaws" and you've created a serious lifelong distrust of dark ocean water for this girl. If I can see through the water, I'm fine with it. It's what I can't see that scares me. LOL

And when we went to Florida in 1978, I didn't yet know how to swim (though my sister did), but my stepmother forced us to get out into the Atlantic in water to my shoulders, with an undertow. I was thinking "sharks". In the pool, I was thinking "sharks in the deep end". Quite an active imagination, but now that I think about it, maybe my stepmother was trying to see if she could drown me? Hmm..

Well, now I can swim and I don't care if I die or not, but I think I'd like to go to Atlantis. :) I'd take tons of pictures, and I'd do my darnedest to take some on my way down the water slides through the shark tank, too. Snorkeling, scuba diving, parasailing... all of it sounds like fun to me.

Anybody out there want to take a trip with me? They've got some packages that are REALLY reasonable in price....

New Berry Sorbet Kit at Digitals

This is the newest kit that I've made at Digitals. I called it Berry Sorbet because of some of the frosty tones, and especially that berry pink that you see in it. :) I wish that the fibers in the background would show up better, though, because they're pretty different from anything I've seen or done before - they're made up of multicolored fern fronds.

I think I'm going to add in some close-up detail pictures so that people can see just what neat textures are really in this kit. Being kept to a seriously low size restriction on the picture sizes keeps the resolution pretty low, and none of the details show up effectively. But I understand why it's necessary.

After staying up till 2:30 last night, I overslept until 2:30 today. Darn it! I didn't mean to sleep that long! I've lost literally half of the day, and I had a ton of things I needed to do! I guess I finally got the sleep I've been missing out on the past few weeks, but I'll wind up having to stay up late tonight to get anything done, and start the whole ugly process all over again. I'm surprised that Terra didn't wake me up wanting to go outside. Maybe sleeping with the window open made her sleep too deeply too. All that fresh air we're not used to.

Hehehehe... new T-shirt!

I just came back from visiting my Dad (and yes, it IS 2 am....) and he gave me a T-shirt that came with his new computer....

It's a black one that says "Geek Squad". LOL I can't believe nobody else in my family wanted it. I'm loving it!!!

My sister has been calling me a geek ever since she first heard the word. It used to hurt my feelings, but now I kinda like it. I think it means that they think I'm smart. hehehe

After all, I'm the geek that she taught to wallpaper a couple of weeks ago... and wound up outpacing her immediately, 2 sheets to her one. LOL

I'm also the geek that painted a significant part of her new house instead of resting during my spring break. I got ONE day to rest, while the rest of the world got 2 weeks. Is it any wonder I'm so worn out lately? I didn't have time to do the stuff I really needed to do - get my hair cut and colored (I'm 35 and my hair is 50% silver, naturally), get the oil changed in my car, organize things in my own house, buy a new washer, wash my backlog of laundry, get my eyes checked (only a year overdue for the last exam, and I'm still wearing the same pair of disposable contacts that I've had in for the last 4 months... you're only supposed to wear them for a week!), paint in MY house....

Deadlines I can't meet, end of the school year approaching, state tests in 2 weeks, family crisis, students getting some serious 8th-grade-itis and bad attitudes of "school's almost out and I'm not going to behave" (oh yes they are!), parents screaming at me that I should leave all discipline of their kid to THEM at home - when their kid is a monster at school and wrecking most of our (not just my) classes.

Sorry, I'm NOT going to let whatever he does just sliiiiiide until he gets home and then see if his parents will do something to help me with running my class. It isn't their business to decide whether or not I am allowed to control my classroom environment, and my boss DID tell me I was NEVER to put up with any kid talking back to me, and ESPECIALLY not yelling back at me. They've never offered to help me before, so why do these parents think I'm going to let them tell me how to do my job now? Especially when they don't even know what they are talking about. Here's something said, as if I was supposed to be intimidated, "Well, I have a bachelor's degree in engineering...." blah blah blah... What would he have done if I'd come right back at him with "WELL, *I* have a MASTER'S degree in education , and nearly 15 years of practical experience with children this age..."

Oooh. I guess I'm getting angry about this again.

But tell me, who's more qualified to know how to do my job? Him or me? These people were angry that they couldn't get me alone in a room and threaten me, and that their kid's other teachers and the assistant principal were there as well to confirm that the kid acted just as badly around them. In fact, they kept saying that they wanted to talk to me alone, and they didn't really want the other people there. If they'd tried to get me alone and been anything but very nice and polite, I would have walked off and not put up with it.

Sorry, we don't allow that sort of intimidation attempt to go on. We like to keep things on the level. Besides, these people don't understand that the nice, quiet, calm me that didn't say much after they started screaming unfounded insults at me, isn't the true angry me that lurks under the surface and might come out some day if I feel cornered or threatened. I think that some people honestly believe that teachers are somehow required to put up with abuse from children and their parents. I don't think they would accept it if I started to harass *them*, so it wouldn't be a good idea for them to try it with me.

I never say anything to indicate how angry I am about anything when I'm at work. I'm very quiet. I wouldn't want to say hurtful things to another person, which of course, other people have no qualms about doing to me. (The guilt would eat me alive.) I feel that I'm a pretty well-controlled person, even though I actually have a lot more of a burden on my soul than your average person does, only a couple of other people know about it, and they don't know all of the bad stuff that's happened to me. (Even family doesn't need to know everything in your life that's hurt you, right?) Most likely, I'll keep the whole story to myself until the day I die, and this ulcer will keep getting worse.

I suspect that guy that I like is pretty relieved that I've stopped telling him everything that's on my mind. LOL I've figured out by now that though yes, I love him, I'm positive he doesn't feel the same about me. I expected that; it's the usual response. And I haven't exactly had a reason to think that he really does have any feelings for me.... obviously it was just a case of wishful thinking (and at least I wasn't under some goofy illusion). I would hate to tell him and have him confirm it verbally, though. But I know it would take too much effort to have a real relationship with me.

Anyway, I have a kitchen to start getting ready for painting. The entire thing is varnished knotty pine. Ick. It's going to take me the rest of my natural life, but at least it will be something to do while I'm home alone. :)

And I do have that cool new T-Shirt. :D That has to be the absolute high point of my weekend.

More tornado deaths in Tennessee... :(

It was just on Sunday that my county (Dyer County) and several other west Tennessee counties, along with several areas of southeastern Missouri and northeastern Arkansas, got hit with several tornadoes. I think the last body count in my town was 16. It was really bad. Entire families died all over the area, and even brick homes were destroyed.

You hear about people dying because they stayed in their mobile homes, and then people shake their heads, saying that they should have been in a sturdier structure. Well... this series of tornadoes (3 here in Dyer County, they think, all F3s) definitely made me change my mind about that. Like I said, several people died who were in "safe" "sturdy" brick and mortar structures. I guess that just goes to show all of us that nothing is really a safe shelter.

Whenever a storm approaches now, I start worrying about what I should do - go into my bathroom, which is supposed to be the safest room in the house? It's right between a gas water heater and a gas heating unit. I have a feeling I might be flambeed. Oh, and there's the 50 year old pecan tree leaning over that end of my house too. What do I do? Sometimes I think I'm better off staying in the living room, watching the weather alerts on the tv.

Today I seriously considered driving to the school where I work, and going into our teachers' bathroom in my team area. I'd be surrounded by cinderblock walls and plumbing that goes probably farther into the ground than what's in my house. Somehow I'd feel safer in that room at the school than at my own house. The school, at least, was built with earthquake standards in mind (we're due for a catastrophic earthquake any day now). No, I don't see any point in sitting around worrying about this stuff, because fear just makes you unable to respond appropriately in an emergency. But let me get back to the point.

We knew there were more storms coming today, and were glad when we heard they'd miss us, and go to the south. I just saw a news bulletin that said at least 10 people died in the central part of the state this evening because of those storms and the tornadoes that they spawned. I feel terrible. What is it that's causing Tennessee to get slammed with tornadoes all over the state this week? The only part that hasn't been hit has been the eastern third.

Well, I came across this article, and I think it's worth reading. I've been putting together some emergency kits at home and at work, just to ease my paranoia, for about the past year and a half, but this one discusses some points I hadn't thought about.

Don’t Freak Out
Top 10 Tips for Surviving a Disaster in Your Vehicle

Update on the change...

Previously, my blog was hosted at www.digitalscrapbookpages.com, where I am a designer. I was happy with how that worked, except for one HUGE problem... a lot of pornographic spam started hitting our blogs there, and the site owners really didn't have the time and resources to sit and clean our blogs for us on a daily basis.

And let me tell you, some of the stuff that was on there was just sickening. Yuck.

As a matter of fact, I sat in front of the computer one evening just to clean out some backtrack links, and it took me over an hour! Since my purpose in having a blog is not to discuss things of that nature, I had no problem understanding when Digitals decided to take the blogs section offline. However, they are keeping a list of links to the designers' blogs up, which we really appreciate. Thanks Stacey and Rick! You guys are great!

I'll be importing my old blog entries later when I get a chance, so if by some strange twist of fate you were entertained by something I said in the past, you might have a chance to see it again here. And if not... well, nyah nyah! hehehe Okay, I guess you can tell I'm feeling a tiny little bit better today, despite all of the crud that's been going on with my personal life and my professional life.

It's all pretty overwhelming; I'll just leave it at that. I think I have an ulcer, and if I really do, I guess I've had it for years because it's been hurting off and on in the same place whenever things get too stressful. Well, as Scarlett says, "I'll think about that tomorrow." The really ironic thing about is that it probably comes from holding in a lot of stuff that I should probably express and talk about, and I'm sure it seems to the few people that I talk to openly about things that bother me, that I just won't shut up and stop whining.

LOL They have noooooo idea just how much I really bottle up. What I tell is never more than the tip of a big, hidden iceberg like the one Titanic hit. Maybe that's why I have migraines... all those demons trying to get out of my head. ;)

Wasabi Funyuns, the Rematch!

When I get my previous blog posts transferred over, I'm sure that this will make more sense, but I'll say that since I tried Wasabi Funyuns in Texas in October, I've developed a serious love for anything Wasabi.

My cousin Paul (dear soul that he is!) sent me a bunch of rice crackers because I can't find them around here (WAAAHHHHH!!!!!), and he can get them where he lives. Oh, I really enjoyed them!!! Heaven, I was definitely in Heaven. :D

He had to take a trip to Texas this week, and being intrigued by my previous blog about Wasabi Funyuns (which aren't available ANYWHERE east of the Mississippi River that I know of!), found some and tried them out. And he's sending me some bags of them. Yay! My hero all over again!!!

Only one problem though... How will I keep a tight reign on the temptation to eat them all at once??? I've heard a horrible rumor that Frito-Lay has stopped making them - and they didn't even give the whole country a chance to try them! WAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!! Not fair!!!!