Just Kristin

We have a heck of a night of chores lined up for us! We will be tak­ing Momma Comma home tomor­row, so tonight will be filled with the following:

• In the car, mak­ing our house list of rules to present a con­sis­tent and united front to make the tran­si­tion eas­ier for her and for us
• Stop­ping at a pet store to pur­chase dishes, toys, a col­lar, a leash, a head har­ness, a crate, a brush, sham­poo, peanut but­ter, car­rots, beef broth, dog food…a plethora of doggy goodness
• mov­ing the birds about a bit, and mak­ing sure they all have “safety mats” (office run­ners turned upside-down) around the cages to pre­vent “curiosity“
• mak­ing sure the back yard is cleaned up and escape-route-free
• final­iz­ing the name (Smoo and I have grav­i­tated towards Comma, tho Mana is sec­ond runner-up)
• Get­ting some sleep

The last one will be the hard­est, or the eas­i­est, depend­ing on how worn I end up, both men­tally and phys­i­cally. I am already feel­ing men­tally worn from the excite­ment, though.

I can feel myself nod­ding off men­tally as I write this, and my eye­lids are get­ting heavy. I have to write a bit more before I go to bed, though, or I will let myself slack off of this jour­nal­ing exer­cise completely…again. :(

Today was an inter­est­ing, won­der­ful, scary day for me, and all for the same rea­son. I have been want­ing a dog for a long time now, but actu­ally allow­ing this desire to occupy the front part of my brain for few months. Today D and I made a visit to the San Diego Humane Soci­ety, and it very may well be that we have adopted a dog. This adop­tion still hinges on whether or not Momma Dog passes her aggre­sive­ness test­ing, and whether or not I let my wor­ries get the best of me. How­ever, she is a cute, mild bor­der terrier/border col­lie mix, and she did well with D, Smoo and I. At the very worst she seemed dis­in­ter­ested — or, to put it more cor­rectly, was still more inter­ested in the SDHS work­ers than in us, as they have been her fam­ily for so long now. She was taken there before the birth of her pups and was allowed to nurse and wean them; they were only com­pletely taken from her a week ago. She did like to be pet by us, and was lib­eral with kisses.

I am so filled with anx­i­ety over this. I do not want a dog any less than I did, but now that it is close to becom­ing real, my wor­ries have mul­ti­plied. Here they are:

1. D, not a dog per­son, will some­how come to regret or resent this adop­tion. I have brought this up with him and he promises me it will not be so. I believe him, way down into the depths of my heart, but I am not used to things going so well… to peo­ple want­ing to stay through thick and thin. I am afraid that this will cause the other shoe, that I am so afraid of, to drop.
2. I am of course wor­ried about the dog’s inter­ac­tion with the birds. I know that, after the ini­tial loss of Affrika, we were super-vigilant; I know that other peo­ple do it, and that it shouldn’t be insur­mount­able. I will, tho, blame myself if any­thing ever does hap­pen *knock­ing on wood* and here, too, I see a poten­tial rea­son for D to resent me or the dog or any­thing related to this choice.
3. I am also wor­ried about the dog learn­ing to like us. This, how­ever, is the least of my wor­ries. I would worry about this even if the dog had been a play­ful lab. I always worry about “peo­ple” get­ting along. Can’t help this one. :) This worry is one of those which dis­solves in a glass of ratio­nal thought.

So, any­way, I am scared. I love the thought of a dog, but I seem to be pet­ri­fied of mak­ing any large move for my own ben­e­fit in case it would cause me to lose the things most dear to me. Again, all of this, really, dis­solves in ratio­nal thought. D is not my past, I am not who I used to be, and none of these wor­ries are based on any­thing huge. D assures me that none of this would make any change in our rela­tion­ahip. I just don’t trust my own lov­able­ness, I guess. All my fear stems from my dis­trust of my abil­ity to keep some­one around. I am work­ing on it.

My head is pound­ing. I have to go to bed and stop think­ing. This is an incred­i­bly whiny post any­way. Sorry about that.

Last bit: the dog has been “Momma Dog” so long at the shel­ter now that they told us, if we were to change the name, to change it to some­thing close to Momma. We had a larger list, but short­ened it to these three for now:

• Pajama
• Comma
• Mana

If any­one has any other ideas, or a pref­er­ence for one of the three, please vote here. :)

D, sorry about the pub­lic dec­la­ra­tion, but I love you with my whole heart and soul. I would do any­thing for you. Please think as much as you need and give me one last “yea” or “nay”. I am good with either. I just want you to be ok with what you choose. You are my home. :)

Just read a post in one of the blogs that came up near mine on the movabletype.org list. The author was mak­ing quite black-and-white state­ment about what a good blog should be. What both­ered me about this was the lack of any kind of “In my opin­ion,” leader or dis­claimer. Who is this author to judge what is or isn’t a “good” blog trait?

Then again, I could be look­ing at this dif­fer­ently than oth­ers who blog. I see a blog as a tool. To me, a blog is the soft­ware (or, at its most basic, the script­ing lan­guage and lay­out plan) that allows peo­ple to share per­sonal or pub­lic infor­ma­tion and opin­ion with oth­ers who like to be shared with. Whether it con­tains a mix of all these things, or even none of them, is irrel­e­vant. If some­one out there is read­ing and enjoy­ing it, fine. Or, as in my case, if the author is using the blog as a spur to write in gen­eral, whether any­one reads it or not, but per­haps with a mod­icum of hope that per­haps some kin­dred spirit may read it and share their views via com­ment, that should be fine, too.
If a blog is claim­ing to offer some­thing that it does not, or gives false infor­ma­tion, then I can maybe see being both­ered by it, but…

Peo­ple who think that all things must serve not someone’s but their pur­pose piss me off.

I feel tons bet­ter than I did yes­ter­day. TMI per­haps, but these “copper-T” peri­ods wear me out. Not at all insur­mount­able, but tir­ing (drain­ing?) nonethe­less. It was nice to have an after­noon and evening full of noth­ing but relax­ation. I know the hot tub helped. D is sweet about it, too, always get­ting me things and micro­ing my pil­low and not get­ting mad if I am weepy or ditzier than usual.

Boy, Fri­day and yes­ter­day were treats in the ditzi­ness depart­ment. I spoke with a co-worker for 15 min­utes about his dog, who he called by name, looked at a pic­ture of the sweet thing with a file­name of alex.jpg, and still I ask him the dog’s name. He typed on AIM, “ummm.…alex.” I knew at that point that it was going to be a hel­luva week­end. Yes­ter­day I for­got D’s wal­let the sec­ond after he asked me if I had it and I answered, “yes.” I had the score­book for Smoo’s game in front of me, as I was keep­ing score, and I gave three dif­fer­ent scores to peo­ple who asked for them over the course of per­haps 2 min­utes… *sheesh*

Waga­hai bought a new game yes­ter­day, as well as some poker chips and 2 decks of cards. The game looked very inter­est­ing, and I will def­i­nitely give a review later, but after not­ing the three large sheets of instruc­tions that it came with, I sug­gested poker as the game of the evening. After the last hand, I promptly retired to the loveseat and fell asleep, leav­ing D and Lax­ity to prod me awake to get home. Didn’t even take my vit­a­mins last night. For me, that’s say­ing something.

Now, I am aching to go get some break­fast. Off to see if D is done on the com­puter. More later!

Smoo’s team had games both last night and this morn­ing. They lost both, but they played well. I hope they don’t become too demor­al­ized. I love watch­ing them play. D took pix with the new dig­i­tal. They also had their team pic­tures today, after the game. Run run run. :)

Now D, Lax­ity and I are off to buy a new game or two and then to Wagahai’s house, where, hope­fully, I will be able to stew until pruney in the hot tub. I can think of noth­ing more reliev­ing when I am men-stroo-ating. More later.

Sorry about the amount of rant­ing today. This one will be short, I promise.

I just read in a news report that Bush told the UN con­fer­ence on devel­op­ment financ­ing that poor nations need to rid their admin­is­tra­tions of cor­rup­tion before there will be more finan­cial aid offered. Inter­est­ing. How about if we require all the huge cor­po­ra­tions who ben­e­fit from tax breaks and sub­si­dies in the states to rid them­selves of cor­rup­tion — with solid proof to back their claims of purity — before they can have any more aid, finan­cial or legislative.

How about that, Shrub? See? Some­times you do have good ideas. Make sure you point that half-cocked BB-gun of a brain at all deserv­ing tar­gets, ok? If trickle-down didn’t work in cor­rupt third-world coun­tries, it will not work here, either!

I think we will have to start a reg­u­lar poker night here at the house. D, Smoo, Waga­hai, Lax­ity and I played last night and had a blast.

Damn. Can’t even come up with any­thing to say. I am so blood­less and tired.

Night, all. I love you. Sleep well.

Ashcroft *gag* com­mits per­fect exam­ple after per­fect exam­ple of all that is hyp­o­crit­i­cal about the Repub­li­can Party. The main Repub­li­can plat­form is that of “less power for the Fed­eral, more power to the states,” or at least that is where the credo is cut when given to the pub­lic. It should read,“less power for the Fed­eral, more power to the states, unless the law the state is try­ing to pass irks our right-wing, puri­tan­i­cal, pseudo-Christian sen­si­bil­i­ties, in which case we will send the Fed­eral gov­ern­ment after you so fast your col­lec­tive heads will spin.” First med­ical mar­i­juana (not even a fourth as harm­ful or addic­tive as half the shit handed out by doctors/dentists/shrinks, let alone the booze and tobaco that greases polit­i­cal palms), then free­dom of expres­sion (the pRes­i­dent is a moron! a boob! If it weren’t for fam­ily money and a whole lot of intim­i­da­tion, as well as the sadly large num­ber of American’s who find it bet­ter to be ruled by some­one who reminds them of their frat-boy days rather than some­one who as an IQ higher than the stan­dard UHF chan­nel, he would still be mak­ing deals with com­pa­nies like Enron and peo­ple like Bin Laden’s brother, his old busi­ness part­ner, in fee­ble attempts to keep his many buisi­nesses afloat! He is a loon! There, Ashcroft! I’ve said it! Now come get me, you trav­esty of a “pub­lic ser­vant”!), and now, Oregon’s physician-prescribed lethal drugs for ter­mi­nal patients (Godde for­bid a per­son actu­ally be able to legally decide when and where and how to die! How pos­si­bly can you believe that mak­ing it ille­gal will stop it? Because it worked so well with drugs and pros­ti­tu­tion? Don’t waste our money any more!). I am sure there have been and will be more of these fine exam­ples of Repub­li­can logic.

The basis behind this flawed logic is that, in a major­ity of the cases, the issues that the Right Reps have with the laws they fight stem from reli­gious belief. They are impos­ing laws on us that they either build on top of reli­gion or for which they use reli­gion as an argue­ment. And not even straight reli­gion, but their flawed ver­sion of it. Let a per­fect Chris­t­ian come forth and maybe I’ll listen…but there was only one per­fect Chris­t­ian and he is dead.

Do none of you real­ize that free­dom of reli­gion requires…requires free­dom from reli­gion? There must be a sep­a­ra­tion of church and state.…completely! Or, to put it in a more mer­ce­nary way, a way the Reps will bet­ter under­stand, what if, one day, Chris­tians are not the pre­dom­i­nant reli­gious group in the US? (Yes, hard tho it may be for you to com­pre­hend, Chris­tian­ity does not equal reli­gion.) What if the Bud­dhists start mak­ing the laws? Wait, that was a bad exam­ple. The Bud­dhists wouldn’t care what reli­gion any­one else was. They wouldn’t force Bud­dhist prin­ci­ples into the law of the land. They are far more “Chris­t­ian” than most (not all) Chris­tians I ever met. Instead, how about if the Mus­lims became the most pop­u­lous? or the Jews? or, bet­ter still, all the ex-Christian, ultra-feminist god­dess wor­ship­pers? How would you like those tables turned on you? Then you’d all be join­ing your voices in rous­ing cho­ruses of “Sep­a­ra­tion of church and state, pleeez!” So, why not now? I doubt if there is a reli­gious group out there that would be as intolerant…some may come close, but still. Will it take a 2x4 of this mag­ni­tude upside the head for the prin­ci­ple to sink in? I guess so. Lordessa for­bid you actu­ally prac­tice what you preach. You want to know what Jesus would do? He would be sad.

I got my first issue of Bust Mag­a­zine in about a half a year! Huz­zah! They said they’d be back, and they are! I am so happy. It is hard enough to find women’s mag­a­zines that are both fun and feisty and not based on fash­ion. Now, a copy of Bitch and my week will be complete.

Huz­zah! The info site for the Beltane shindig has finally been updated!

Some­what unfor­tu­nately, it is to be held this year on Sat­ur­day, April 27th. Smoo has a ball game at 3pm, which will allow us to be there as far as a bit of May­pole danc­ing, but we will end up leav­ing around 2pm. Still, the fes­tiv­i­ties start at 11am, so we do plan to be there with bells on.

I fig­ure if we each pack our own pic­nic lunches, and bring blan­kets and beach­tow­els and snack­ies to share, it should be a good time. Then, when we leave, those that would like to see a ball game can come with us, and those who are still unable to stop fol­low­ing the fairies and satyrs around can stay and party on. :)

Lemme know if you want to come, if only so I know who to look for when I get there. [more info]

    “Tra la, it’s May, the lusty month of May
    That lovely month when every­one goes bliss­fully astray
    Tra la, it’s here, that shock­ing time of year
    When tons of lit­tle wicked thoughts mer­rily appear
    It’s May, it’s May, that gor­geous hol­i­day
    When every maiden prays that her lad
    Will be a cad
    It’s mad, it’s gay, a libelous dis­play
    Those dreary vows that every­one takes every­one breaks
    Every­one makes divine mis­takes
    The lusty month of May
        <snip>
    It’s May, It’s May, the lusty month of May
    That dar­ling month when every­one throws self-control away
    It’s time to do a wretched thing or two
    And try to make each pre­cious day one you’ll always rue
    It’s May, it’s May, the month of “yes, you may“
    The time for every friv­o­lous whim, proper or im–
    It’s wild, it’s gay, a blot in every way
    The birds and bees with all of their vast amorous past
    Gaze at the human race aghast
    The lusty month of May
          - From “The Lusty Month of May”, the musi­cal, Camelot