"Because you were home."

...It's eerie, isn't it? That line. Hi, we're not terrorizing you because you wronged us, or because someone paid us, or because we want to steal from you...it's just because you were home. And that is the exact reason I was so excited for tonight's movie:

Yes, The Strangers. Most of you (ok, all of you) know how incredibly twisted and sick I am, and how my favorite movies are those of the horror genre. I'd say this one is more of a thriller/slasher, but still...it was supposed to be scary.

I love previews, and the one for this movie was well done...it revealed just enough to suck me in and make me think that this would truly be the film to scare and disturb me for weeks (like when I first saw The Ring). What little the trailer revealed looked horrifying, at least in my opinion it did (I mean...masked psychos wandering around your house? That's CREEPY! I think masks are incredibly terrifying...my favorite "bad guys" wear them: Michael Meyers from Halloween, Thomas from The Orphanage...yeah).

So tonight we went, me especially with very high hopes. I was positive I was going to love this film. Love it I did not, despite how much I wanted to. Instead of the delightfully horrifying adventure I had anticipated, I was left with yet another movie acting as if the horror genre doesn't exist and it's doing something new that no one has ever seen before. It had pretty much all the horror cliches: the "I don't have to be careful, bad things don't happen to me" attitude, the part when the audience screams, "DON'T GO IN THERE" but the main character ignores them, the part where they open the drapes and the bad guy is standing there, the part where they go into what they think is an unoccupied room only to see that someone has been there, unbeknownst to them, and has written eerie things on the walls and windows...etc. And then there's my personal pet peeve...what I feel is horror rule NUMERO UNO...which was repeatedly broken throughout the course of this movie: when there's more than one of you, never...I repeat, NEVER separate. You are stronger together than you are individually. I mean...DUH, right? And yet...for the bulk of the film, the two main characters are alone, not because they are forced to be, but because they choose to be.

The one good thing about this film, Jacob and I agreed, was that it was pretty patient. It didn't immediately slap a bunch of horror and gore right in your face (in fact, there really wasn't that much blood at all...at least, in comparison to other slasher films). It took its time, and the build up was actually pretty decent.

But then I think the director had a brain aneurysm or something, because after all that patient, intense build up...he ruined it. And if anyone plans to see it, I'd stop reading right now...cuz I'm gonna give away the ending...

So there they are...our poor protagonists...they've finally been rounded up by their tormentors, and they know they're gonna die...as a matter of fact, the blonde chick has already told them that..."You're gonna die here" she says. The audience knows it too...these people are not James Bond, and they are out of tricks. The couple exchanges their final "I love yous" as their perpatrators remove their masks (not that we ever get to see their faces, cuz we don't...grrr) and prepare to carry out their evil deed. And carry it out they do. 5 seconds later, the scene is over.

NOT that I want to see a lengthy, drawn out murder scene...that's not my thing, and too many movies have made that mistake. But 5 seconds? The entire film builds up to a climax of 5 freaking seconds???? They made us sit through the entire movie for that??? Um...thanks but no thanks.

It gets worse...the true "horror film crime" comes about 10 minutes after the murders, as two "Mormon Boys" (the credits name them as such...which is funny because they're like, 12 years old...dressed as missionaries and handing out pamphlets called Christian Living...they even have their bikes with them...yeah, they got that one a wee bit wrong) enter the house. Why? Because the door is open I guess. Upon seeing the dead bodies on the floor...they don't run away, they don't call for help, they barely even react...until one of them walks up to Kristen (Liv Tyler's character)'s body. And what does he do? He kneels down and reaches out to touch her...and at the precise moment he reaches out, Kristen's eyes fly open and she screams bloody murder. Roll credits.

SIGH. Come on, people! I think I just need to stop having any type of expectations for horror films. It's such an easy genre to totally butcher (pardon the pun), there are only a handful of horror films I actually like (The Orphanage is a good one, if you're looking for recommendations...you gotta be willing to read subtitles though). Maybe one of these days someone will get it right...or maybe I just need to start liking romantic comedies.

Hmmmmmm...

I'm Singin' in the Rain...

Ok, I didn't sing. I ran.

When I woke up this morning, I asked my wonderful husband what the weather was like, since he was by the window. He looked and replied that it was a really nice day, which to me meant that it was sunny. So I said I wanted to go for a run, since running is good for me and I've been trying to do it on a regular basis. If Jacob is around when I go, he puts on his roller blades and goes with me...and today was no exception.

After I had put on my running clothes (shorts and a tank top) and he had put on his roller blades, off we went. Once we got outside, I looked at the very cloudy sky and asked, "Really nice day??" Mental note to self: what my husband thinks is a nice day is definitely not what I think is a nice day. I commented that it looked like it was going to rain at any second, but it was the perfect temperature for a run so I was going to go anyway.

20 minutes passed and it started to sprinkle...then another 10 minutes passed and it began to actually rain. I didn't mind...in fact, I said to Jacob, "Well if it's gonna rain, it might as well pour." And after another few minutes, pour it did.

At this point, I decided it was probably time to go home as I was getting pretty wet and Jacob was getting not only wet but cold as well. We started to head home and when we were about halfway there, the rain poured down even harder and then...it hailed. Only for a minute or so, but I was surprised and amused how much it actually hurt...probably because both my arms and legs were exposed. I ran the rest of the way home muttering, "Ow, ow, ow, ow..." with every step I took. It was good times. This is what we looked like by the time we got home:

Admit it, we look badass. Especially my super sexy tan line. Um, yeah. The end.

Cuz it's a Bittersweet...Symphony

So...I haven't really been "in the mood" for blogging lately (I mean, how am I supposed to top my ant story?) but I'm going to give it a go, because I did start this blog as an outlet for my craziness (see my title...) so I'm going to see if it works. Yes.

Anyway, now that I've written that lovely introduction...down to business. Here I am at work...finally finished all my supervisor stuff (listening in on calls, scoring people, coaching, etc.) and checked my e-mail and phone for the first time since I got here. Nothing in my e-mail, but I had a new voicemail on my phone. Turns out it was my new doctor, reminding me of my appointment this Tuesday. His message said he doesn't normally call, but his receptionist had left for the day and had forgotten to give me my reminder call so he was doing it. Weird. I've never known doctors to be willing to do the mundane, clinical work.

This is significant to me because it seems like a positive sign. You see...deep breath, try not to cry...this doctor is an infertility specialist. Um, yeah. I've never met him, I don't know anything about him. All I know is that last Thursday I called my OB/GYN to refill my prescription for fertility drugs because yes, my reproductive system is broken and yes, we've been trying to have a successful pregnancy for over a year now (see my previous posts) and have been...well, unsuccessful (my word choice is astounding, huh?). Anyway, instead of asking me which pharmacy I'd like them to call my prescription into, they gave me the news that my gyno has decided to send me to an infertility specialist because after repeated blood tests and careful monitoring of my cycle, he has concluded that the fertility drugs were doing what they were supposed to and I should be pregnant by now....and I quite obviously am not. So they gave me the number for this new doctor and cheerfully hung up the phone, saying they hoped to see me soon...

...and that pretty much devastated my life for a minute....well, it's more like a few days. Logically (I'm a girl, we can think logically but how we feel is something totally different), I know I shouldn't be super upset about this. I don't know what to expect from this initial appointment, but I figure if a guy can make his entire living out of helping couples have children, then seeing him is going to be the best thing for me. And the closer my appointment gets, the more excited I get...right now I'm going absolutely CRAZY because I'm always the girl with a plan, and right now I have no plan...I NEED to talk to him so I can have some friggin expectations already. But still...I wish I didn't have the need to see him.

So yeah, it made me cry for hours and still has me feeling blue. I'm trying to suck it up, I am. But I am really, really baffled...because I was pregnant before. I got pregnant on the fertility drugs last fall, and I have no idea why it didn't happen this time. I did EVERYTHING I was supposed to...I will spare you the details, but believe me, I did it ALL. Every month I was so hopeful, and every month I was disappointed.

And now I'm just mad about it. I was mad when I lost the baby the first time...then I got over it (well, as much as one can get over that...I don't think I will ever truly heal from it). And now I'm pissed off again. I went to my husband's little sister's wedding last week, and in the ceremony they instruct you to "go multiply and replenish the earth." And I just sat there SCREAMING inside my head, "I AM TRYING!!!" So what gives??? I mean...REALLY. I am so tired of hearing that the Lord is just trying me and I need to endure it, that I need to learn something from this, that I need to pray harder, have faith, go to the temple more, etc. I HAVE DONE IT ALL...and here I am...

Sigh. I could go on and on and on about that one. But I'm too tired tonight. It's coming though...if I'm going to be honest and use this blog for the purpose I created it...then I'm going to write about it. I'd be being totally dishonest to myself if I didn't. So there's your heads up.

Ultimately though, I think hearing from the doctor is a good thing. Like I said, what kind of doctor picks up the phone and calls a patient to remind them of their appointment? I've never, EVER seen it...and it brings me hope, because if he isn't too high and mighty to do the mundane clinical work that his receptionist forgot...then he hasn't forgotten what it's like to be a person (some doctors think they're God...admit it, you've all met one...or several), and that's the kind of doctor I want treating me.
Here's to hoping...

An Army of Thousands

Ok, so I love how I say I won't be sharing any funny stories about my life and then the first thing I do is share one. But for those of you who received my "Hi I started a blog" e-mail yesterday, I did kind of promise to share this one so here we go...

It was supposed to be a fun way to spend a Saturday evening...that was my expectation when I agreed to go. I had no idea I was about to be assaulted. Anyway, so we put leashes on the cats (yes, they have leashes and yes they totally hate them), threw them in a box (we should really invest in a cat carrier) and loaded up the car with the necessary picnic items: blanket, frisbee, football, etc. After a quick stop at Costa Vida for dinner (have you ever had their sweet pork burritos? WOW, that is some good stuff...), we drove to Rocky Mountain Park.

I had Jacob pick a spot on the grass he thought would be good, and after spreading out the blanket we plopped down and proceded to get out the food. That's when we noticed that one corner of the blanket was now covered in black ants. In the meantime, Michael (my cat) was playing in the bushes by said corner. I insisted that we move because the ants were growing in number and I didn't want to share my dinner with them. So, we grabbed our things and moved to a picnic table nearby. What I did not know is that while Michael had been playing in the bushes, he had managed to get COMPLETELY COVERED in ants. When I picked him up as we were moving locations, the ants went into full attack mode and had at it on my arm. Feeling a lot of pricking and then intense burning sensations, I dropped Michael (don't worry, he was only a couple feet from the ground and besides, cats always land on their feet, right?) and proceded to de-ant myself, and then him (which he did NOT appreciate...he glared at me the whole time I brushed them off his coat). But by then it was too late. They mostly got my arm, but a couple made it to my shoulder and one even managed to get my toe.

Little jerks. You can't see very well in the picture, but this is the central location of the ant bites. Gross, huh? People at work were joking it looks like heroin tracks. But yeah, all in all I counted 18 bites, and MAN do they itch!

So I guess the moral of the story is don't put your blanket on top of an ant's house...they have lots of friends.

Well, that sucked (12/4/07)

So...here I am again. And you are all soooooo excited...don't deny it. Anyhoo, I will spare you all a novel of Julie-babble tonight, but I did want to post a poem the nurse gave me in the hospital the day of my surgery. It is by no means eloquent, but somehow it describes EXACTLY how I feel about this whole miscarriage fiasco, particularly in dealing with the responses of various people I've encountered along the ride.

It Was Only A Miscarriage
No matter what they said...

"It was only a miscarriage."
That's what they all said.
"Why are you all depressed and upset?"
"There will be others...
Besides it was an early one, at that."
"It's not as if you felt life."
"It was only a miscarriage--
pull yourself together."

Yes, it was early.
I'd known for a few weeks;
But Life--No, I didn't feel it
kicking inside me from that other person.
I felt it leaping inside my own spirit!
Life - a new Life; God working
wonders within me!
It was awesome.

We waited so long.
We had such hopes and dreams
of kicks and getting fat
and wearing maternity clothes.
Expectations of joy and love and
happy moments together.

But it was all over too soon,
much too soon...
And they all said, "It was only
a miscarriage,
You can have others.
You can try again,
you weren't that far;
It's not as if you lost a baby."

Well, what did I lose then?
I lost the potential of the full
becoming of a person.
I lost the spirit of a child,
an adolescent, an adult,
My child.

What became of it?
Is it washed away forever, never to count?
Does God count it?
Should I count it?
Or should I listen to them?

It was only a miscarraige,
early at that.
Pull myself together.
Somehow it was precious to me,
No matter what they said.

That honestly helped me not feel like I was nuts for feeling the way I did, and still do. So I liked it.

Shattered Dreams (11/28/07)

Warning: this is gonna be long, whiny and basically written for my own selfish theraputic purposes.

Yesterday I encountered a new kind of pain...new for me, anyway. On October 15th, after months of wondering if it was phsycially possible for me and 3 months on fertility drugs (yup, my reproductive system is totally broken), I got a positive pregnancy test, which was confirmed by a blood test at the doctor's. I'm sure you can already guess where this is going. Anyhoo, needless to say I was absolutely elated. By my calculations I was about 5 weeks along. So, I did what any woman in that situation would do...I scheduled my first doctor's appointment, stopped drinking Diet Coke and eating sushi, and signed up for a pregnancy website my sister recommended so I could start absorbing everything I needed to know about having a healthy pregnancy. While I didn't let the fact that I was pregnant consume my entire life, it became ever-present in my thoughts and I allowed myself to daydream about what it would be like to finally have a child (being a mother is something I have always really, really wanted) and all the wonderful things Jacob and I would do to be the best parents ever.

As the weeks slowly passed, I grew more excited for my first appointment, scheduled at 10 weeks, because I knew there'd be an ultrasound for me to see our baby and that I'd get to hear the heartbeat. When the day of the appointment finally arrived (yesterday), I raced to school to pick up Jacob from class and the 2 of us happily walked into the doctor's office.

I did the routine stuff with the nurse...medical history, vitals and so on. Then Jacob and I were called back for the ultrasound. I knew something was wrong as soon as she put the thing on my stomach. I was planning on going into the medical field in high school and took a bunch of classes, and actually got my CNA license, so I do have some medical knowledge. Once she started the ultrasound and I saw the image, I knew that Jacob and I are not going to be parents in June. Without going into huge amounts of detail, basically I was measuring about 7 weeks but definitely no living baby in there. They walked us down the hall into a different room while my doctor looked at the ultrasound, and then he came in and gently told us what I already knew...the pregnancy had terminated itself. So, for the bulk of the time I was walking around thinking I was going to have a baby, reality was there wasn't even a living thing in there. My doctor then told me that he was going to have to surgically go in and clean everything out...it is by no means a complicated procedure (there's not even an incision) and I'll only be at the hospital for a couple hours (and the bulk of that will be waking up from the anesthesia), but for some reason hearing that made it impossible for me to keep it together any more and I broke down.

I came home and e-mailed the very few people I'd actually told (our families don't even know) and my boss because I'll need the day off once they schedule the surgery...basically to let them know that yes, this happened and no, I'm not ready to talk about it. Then I spent the rest of the night trying not to think about it but failing miserably. Poor Jacob didn't know what to do with me, though I don't really think there was anything he could do at that point...he has been so supportive and caring and I'm so glad he was at the doctor's with me so I didn't have to find all this out alone.

So that brings us to right about now. Me, after a night with hardly any sleep, sitting at my computer blogging at 6am because I'm sick of laying in bed and because I am hoping that writing all of this out will help me better process what has happened so this horrible pain I feel will start to subside and I can start moving on. I feel foolish because I know that what happened to me is really minimal compared to what other women have been forced to go through. A close friend of mine just had a miscarraige at 12 weeks, and she not only has to deal with the emotional pain but she had to feel the physical pain of actually going through labor as it was happening. And I know more than one person who has had a stillborn and had to bury their child...I cannot even begin to imagine what that feels like. So frankly, I feel somewhat stupid for being this upset and now, angry about what has happened to me. I'm not saying that it's not appropriate for me to grieve...I know it's natural and healthy. I just genuinely hate crying this much (or at all) and feeling sorry for myself (and feeling vulnerable). I wish I could simply have an attitude of "well, that sucks, but there's nothing I can do about it" and move on. That's pretty much Jacob's take on the whole thing. He argues that it's different for him as he wasn't the pregnant one feeling pregnancy symptoms for a pregnancy that wasn't there...and he says that he had a hard time even believing I was pregnant since I wasn't showing, so finding out that I'm not isn't as devastating for him. To Jacob, this is only a setback, it will be fine...because the doctor said he doesn't see any reason why I can't go back on the fertility drugs 4-6 weeks after surgery. And I know Jacob is right, but for some reason I can't feel that way yet despite my intense desire to.
I know it hasn't even been 24 hours yet, and logically I know it could take a day or two before I can verbally talk about this without crying (I hate that)...and I know that it's ok. The problem lies in reconciling my logical thoughts with my emotions. Perhaps it will be an easier task after I actually have surgery (which should be tomorrow or Monday, I'm still waiting to hear). Maybe I'm not giving myself enough time...hell, maybe blogging this soon after I found out is a bad idea. I don't know. I just can't remember any time in my life where I have felt anything like this. Even though all my suicidal times...it didn't feel like this, and I'm kind of flailing around looking for something, anything to feel better (good thing I don't drink, huh? ). And you know, I probably do need to just give it time (and talk to my shrink about it...) because there's no quick fix. But I wish there was.

Oy...I'm going to be done now. If you made it through all this, kudos to you. I will say thanks for reading, and thanks for your friendship and love. I know I'm not always the best at staying in close contact, but I hope you all know I think highly of my friends and am grateful for you.

Ditched for the Enemy (7/28/07)

So here's what happened...I had 2 wedding receptions to attend last night, and my little sister had promised to go with me because my husband was working (that and she knew my friends who were getting married, and told one of them she'd go to his reception). I asked my sister via IM earlier in the day if she was still planning on going, to which she responded she was extremely sorry, but she'd forgotten about going with me and agreed to have dinner with my older sister and her husband. I told her that was fine, no worries, etc. Good thing it was on IM, because had I been talking to her on the phone she would have been able to sense how upset I was.

The thing about my older sister (let's call her Karin, because...that's her name) is that she hasn't spoken to me in almost 4 years...the last time she talked to me was my wedding day. What I did to offend her...I'm still not clear. My little sister has assured me that the bulk of Karin's reasons for hating my guts have absolutely NOTHING to do with me, and she blames me for a bunch of things for which I am completely not responsible, nor was I even involved in. I think there's a chemical imbalance there...it runs in my family. But anyway, I have tried apologizing for the one thing I know I did (which happened the day before my wedding...Karin had all the decorations for the reception and showed up 2 hours late...we were all waiting around for her and she wouldn't answer her phone when we tried to call...so I was a little grumpy with her when she finally did arrive. But I did apologize and thank her for her help that same night and geez, cut me some slack, I was about to get married and I was stressed!) multiple times, and every time have received nothing but stony silence in response. Fine, ok. And to continue the fun, Karin has since cut herself off from every single person in my family except my little sister. I guess she thinks we're all bad influences in her life or something, I don't know. I should probably add that there's a difference in religious beliefs...Karin left the church a few months after she was married, as did her husband, so she might feel unwelcome around us. However, I made it quite clear to her (before she stopped talking to me) that I don't care if she worships God, Buddha or a pair of jeans, it doesn't matter to me...so I would hope that for my part, religion doesn't have anything to do with it.

At first her not talking to me REALLY bugged me...it hurt a LOT, I didn't understand what I'd done, and part of me was incredibly angry at her for being such a selfish bitch and for not giving me the chance to make up for whatever it is I did to her...and for not even telling me what that was. However, over time and after many prayers and a few blessings, I was able to let it go for the most part. It doesn't bug me so much any more, and I thought I'd forgiven her. Ultimately, I still know that she will always be my sister and if she ever needs me, I will be there as soon as humanly possible.

So, getting back to yesterday...I was surprised at how upset I was about getting diched. The thing that threw me, though, is that I wasn't mad at my little sister...I was pissed at Karin. I suppose there are still going to be days when the whole situation bothers me, but I couldn't believe how mad I was about such a stupid little thing...it's not like going by myself to the receptions was a big deal....I went and I was fine. But I spent a good chunk of the afternoon trying to distract myself from the anger I felt toward Karin, and I'm still surprised by it. The thing that kept popping into my head was that sometimes I wish there was an all or nothing rule that dictates if you're not talking to one member of the family, you're not talking to any of them. I guess I felt that if you're going to cut yourself off from your family, fine...that's a choice you make...but you shouldn't get to pick and choose which family members you're still going to be best friends with and then force them into the awkward position of being stuck in the middle. I mean, this can't last forever. What's Karin gonna do when my little sister gets married (which is not too far off...she's got a serious boyfriend and I think they'll end up engaged in the next year or so)? Will she come to the reception and refuse to talk to anyone? Will she miss one of the most important days of her sister's life? What about when my little sister has children...will Karin have to call and ask when the rest of us are coming over to see the baby so that she can be sure to come when we're not there? I just think that eventually, either my little sister is going to have to pick a side or Karin will have to get over herself...or at least tell us how we can make it better so we can re-establish our relationships with her.

And again, I really do think she has a chemical imbalance, because most everything my little sister tells me about Karin's reasoning (which isn't much...I try not to ask because I don't want her to feel stuck in the middle, even though she is...) is completely devoid of logic. I just wish it hadn't bugged me the way it did yesterday. I'm feeling much better today...still not thrilled about it, but the sting is gone. UGH I guess that since I can't do anything to make it better with her, I just need to focus on making myself better and continuing to get over the situation myself...

Who We REALLY Are (7/4/07)

Tonight's topic is my personal identity (that sounds so selfish, but stick with me here). I've been thinking about it ever since I got in a fight with my family this afternoon at our 4th of July BBQ. My family is pretty jacked up (whose isn't, really...), but you could say that those of us who are still on speaking terms with each other make a typical Mormon family. Kind of. Anyway, we get along pretty well and we were having a good time until the subject of homosexuality came up. And don't ask me how it did, I don't remember. This is a touchy one for me as one of my best friends is gay, and my husband and I like to hang out with him and his boyfriend and consider them good friends of ours. That aside, I also consider myself a pretty open-minded person when it comes to life philosophies and lifestyles, and while I once harbored the sheltered and judgemental view of homosexuality that the majority of Mormons have...well, let's just say I've repented of my judgemental ways and no longer feel that way. I haven't done any research or any of that on homosexuality, all I know is what I've seen and what I feel in my heart.

So the argument was basically my family saying that nobody is born gay and being gay is a choice made based on rebellion, temptation or confusion or WHATEVER, I'm not sure. My argument was that of course people are born gay, and being gay IS a choice, but so is being heterosexual. STRAIGHT PEOPLE CHOOSE TO ACT ON THEIR ATTRACTIONS & GAY PEOPLE CHOOSE TO ACT ON THEIRS. For me, it's that simple. Homosexual attraction is just as real as heterosexual attraction...it's not something people have created in their mind...it's real, and they really feel it. To say otherwise is, to me, absolutely ridiculous. This did not make my family happy. The argument basically peaked when I said that if one of my kids ever tells me he/she is gay, I'm planning to say "Ok, I love you just the same as I always have, thank you for feeling comfortable enough to tell me." This, of course, led to an onslaught of comments such as "No you wouldn't say that! You'll feel differently when you have your own kids!" and "You'd actually ENCOURAGE that???" I was left to defend myself, which is fine...I can handle myself very well...but I get really tired of how judgemental my family is towards gay people and towards me for defending them. And I REALLY hate how they act like I don't know what I'm talking about...like THEY know what they're talking about, puh-LEASE! I ended by telling my mom that I'd much rather have a gay child than a child who does drugs or sleeps around with anyone like a cheap hooker...or worst of all, a VIOLENT and EVIL child like my own brother who used to beat the living SHIT out of us on a regular basis. She just looked at me for a moment...then said she couldn't blame me for feeling that way. Damn right she can't.

Awkward silence, then change of subject. Fine. I should learn that I can't even begin to get them to even reconsider their views. They don't know any gay people (that they're aware of...I'm sure they know SOMEONE who is gay), they don't spend any real time around gay people, and they are bigoted by a religion that promotes judgement. And I am a Mormon, I'm an active Mormon...I love my religion. However, I am learning that there is a huge difference between what we learn at church and what the gospel teaches us. I have realized that I'm going to spend the rest of my life reminding myself that Mormon culture is NOT what the gospel is. I think my mom gets freaked out that I might leave the church like a couple of my siblings have. I have no desire to do that...I know that the gospel is true. Mormon culture is not true doctrine...it is something created by people not by God. And that's fine...I will work on my personal relationship with God and let the others "do their thing"...it's what I feel Christians should do anyway. I will not blindly follow my bishop, my relief society teachers, or even the general authorities like my family does. We are always being told that we need to find out what things are true for ourselves, so we have to do the legwork. I do believe that there is not always an explanation and that faith is most DEFINITELY required, but I still maintain that following ANYONE blindly is a very poor choice. If my bishop ever told me that gay people are evil and I shouldn't spend time with them, I'd tell him that's a load of bullshit because Jesus said love everyone, treat them kindly too.

So the conclusion of all this is that I cannot tell my family...my mother in particular...who I really am. And it's not that I won't tell them, it's that they don't want to know. They already look down on me for my views on homosexuality, the fact that I love South Park and that sometimes my husband and I like to skip sacrament meeting and show up at church right when primary starts so we can teach the sunbeams (ok, that probably sounds a bit wacked to anyone unfamiliar with Mormons...). They'd REALLY freak if they knew that curse words are part of my every day vocabulary, I watch R rated movies, I am way more liberal in my political views than they can even imagine, I hate my ward, I refuse to do my visiting teaching and I support gay marriage. And it's not just my family that I hide my views from...it's my in-laws, a lot of my friends, of course my ward, my husband's friends...etc. None of these people want to know who I really am, and I won't tell them. Does that make me a coward? Maybe. I look at it more as me respecting the fact that they are uncomfortable with my life philosophies, so I won't express them while in their presence. If I am directly asked, I try to be as honest as possible so that's the best I can do for now. I'm not going to lie about what I think and how I feel, I'm just not going to offer it or worse, try to shove it down someone else's throat.

People who get pissed (6/25/07)

So I've given myself a couple days to relax about this so it doesn't turn into one big bitchfest...

Friday at work, I did NOTHING but try to defend myself and my company from irate real estate agents throughout the US and Canada. Reader's Digest version, our broker sent out an audio-blast to every single realtor in our corporation (about 35,000 people) to market his own products, none of which are offered by or affiliated with our brokerage...and this whole thing was down without the permission of management and completely without our knowledge. To make matters even more fun, when he programmed the auto-dialer, he programmed it with our office number (even though he sent it from his home) and he programmed it to begin making calls at 9:00PM instead of 9:00AM. Hence, people on the East Coast began receiving calls at 11:00pm and people as far as Nova Scotia started receiving them at midnight. I say STARTED because 35,000 phone numbers...well, it takes a while to call all of them, so some people were receiving calls at 2:00, 3:00 and 4:00am. Needless to say, this pissed off most of them...and understandably so. Many called back immediately and left nasty messages (which, I admit, were amusing to listen to), but most waited until business hours, at which time they called back our office to bitch, threaten to sue, and basically blame it all on me personally because I was the one answering the phone. I know I took at least 500 calls.SO...here's my question...what good does it do to call and cuss out someone who you know damn well didn't have anything to do with it? A lot of them calmed down as soon as the situation was explained to them...but for quite a few of them, such an explanation only fueled their anger (why, I don't know...because typically I am damn good at de-escalating situations like this and I was sincerely apologetic despite the fact that I was a victim of this man's carelessness as well).

I realize that it is incredibly unnerving and scary to receive a phone call at that time of the night...your initial reaction is "OH NO WHO DIED???" Especially for those people who have sons and daughters in Iraq (many of whom called me). But once you learn that your family and kin are fine and it was honestly a careless mistake...while it is annoying and stupid...SHOULDN'T YOU BE GRATEFUL THAT'S ALL IT WAS INSTEAD OF SOMETHING REALLY AWFUL??? What good does it do to call and make a complete ass of yourself by screaming at someone who had absolutely nothing to do with it? You may as well save your cell phone minutes, people.

So I have concluded that there are far too many people in the world who are looking for something to be mad about. Or maybe they just hate their lives and themselves and when an opportunity presents itself to take it out on someone, they jump at the chance. I don't know. But I think it's really, really sad. There are so many awesome things to do and be happy about...it baffles me that people expend so much energy trying to make others just as miserable as they are. Get a hobby. Go out and do something nice for someone. Plant a tree. I don't care, just do something productive already!

I'd be a hypocrite if this was my life philosophy 100% of the time. And maybe it's why it bugs me so much...maybe it's because this is something that I personally need to work on. But I can tell you that this experience will certainly help me work on it a lot harder.

Blast from the Past...

So my sister thinks I should give blogging a try as an outlet for my insanity. Ok, she didn't put it that way (she's much nicer than that), but that's how I'm looking at it. A note to all my friends: this is NOT a cutesy blog where I post pictures of my kids and tell funny little stories about my life...although I'd like it to evolve into that (and I might have to post pictures of my cats...they are, after all, very cute...) sometime. I'm just at a weird point in my life where I'm pretty much evaluating/questioning everything I've ever been taught and believed in, so a large chunk of my posts will be about that.
I did kind of keep a blog on myspace...but since myspace totally sucks, I haven't been that great about being consistent about blogging. I don't want to lose the posts I did write, though, so I'm going to copy and paste them into this blog. That said, the next few entries will all be old ones. Feel free to skip them. Although for the record, I think they're great (LOL).