Level 70 that is. I know no one will care but my newest MapleStory character is really leveling quickly. It almost makes me angry, how easy the game is compared to when I started playing. Still, it makes it fun and this is the only character that I could realistically get to level 70 to make a job advancement and it’s exciting for me.
Wish me luck.
This is a meme that hits the blogging world around this time. Feel free to repost this on your own blog and leave me a link here so that I can see your desires and maybe help out as well. So here’s the cut and paste:
Step One
Make a post to your blog, tumblr, facebook, myspace, what have you. The important thing is to make sure these wishes are things you really want and that people can see the post. If you wish for real possible things, make sure you include some sort of contact info in your post, whether it’s your address or just an email address at which you can be contacted by potential wish-grantors.
Also, make sure you post some version of these guidelines in your post, so that the holiday joy will spread.
Step Two
Surf around your friends list/blogroll/RSS feeds (or friends friends, or just random places ) to see who has posted their list. If you have a list be sure to leave it in my comments section so I can view your wishes! If you see a wish you can grant, and it’s in your heart to do so, make someone’s wish come true. Sometimes someone’s trash is another’s treasure, and if you have a leather jacket you don’t want or a gift certificate you won’t use–or even know where you could get someone’s dream purebred Basset Hound for free–do it.
Wishlist
If you happen to want to send me any of this gifts, please comment here. Thanks in advance!
- A new iPod Touch.
- Mine was a hand-me-down squared to begin with and it’s nearing its end of days. The volume button broke a while back and it takes days to charge it. Skipping songs lags and I frequently wind up accidentally skipping multiple songs by accident. If nothing else, my friends are sick of hearing me complain about the charging issue. Sadly, Apple is bent on selling 8-gigabyte and 32-gigabyte capacities when I need a 16-gigabyte. Boo. I will, realistically, wind up purchasing one that is used or a Sony Walkman.
- ThinkGeek’s Circuit Sweetheart Necklace.
- I meant to but this for myself for my birthday but I didn’t and then money got tighter than I expected. It’s on sale, guys. Hint hint.
- Stuffies.
- I know this is kind of a cop out but it’s almost impossible for me to say that I want one stuffed animal and not another. In no particular order, here are the ones I want thee most:
- Anything Awesome.
- I’ve only seen The Book of Awesome in stores once. Since then, the Book of Even More Awesome and even a calendar have been printed. I think it would be such a sweet gift from anyone who knows me.
- Gift cards.
- When people ask what I want, I tell them gift cards. Walmart, Target, Best Buy, Think Geek, Bath and Body Works, etc. I usually say I will use it to get something awesome and then I wind up buying groceries or hand soap. The truth is, I really appreciate having a little extra money around the holidays and I would much rather have a gift card and be able to buy something functional than receive some crazy, useless gift..
- Gift Cards
- Amazon, JcPenney and Target are at the top of my list.
- PayPal donations
- cole[at]7and1.net is my address.
Other Bloggers Wishlists
*Yea, this is a rip off from the review blog.
The last page on our 2011 calendar features a kitty in a Santa hat. All the other pages feature other types of cats, too. This means that November is over and while I did not sign up for NaBloPoMo, I tried to make an effort to post more, across all my blogs. I was pretty successful and even though I didn’t post nearly close to every day on Her Realm, I posted a lot more. It felt good.
I’ve been mulling over this post in my head for a while because.. I don’t know if anyone will read it and I don’t know if it will leave an impression on those who do. But it’s important to me and I still rely on the validation of others just enough that the idea that it will go un-noticed and that’s kind of precisely what this post is about.
You see, I started this blog as a cry for help. I was angry and hurting and frustrated and confused and I was never taught how to express that and I had a hard time reaching out to those who cared about me the most, when they were even around. I desperately wanted someone to see that. I needed someone to understand that I was not okay and I wished that my blog would make someone force through my walls, break them down to get to me. And, as much as I wanted someone to reach out, I still strangely veiled my feelings. I was passive aggressive, vague and cryptic about my feelings. I put up another wall even as I tried to reach out.
I purposefully sent my friends and family to my blog and when people would ask how I was, I would send them here. When I look back at some of my archives, I am so sad that anyone could ever feel that way. Reading those words brings up the feelings and I hate that they ever exist. No one should ever feel that way but I did.
If I read long enough, though, I will see a change. I will see happiness emerge here and there. I see the struggles of a long term relationship but I see the happiness I felt at having found my one. I’ll see the frustration at growing up, moving away from the people I love. I’ll see the emergence of maturity and understanding. Skip ahead a couple years and I see the acceptance of my divorce and the sheer will power it took to finally change some of those awful habits and attitudes that made me unhappy for so long. There’s a period of time where I feel like I only tried to express positivity and there’s a lot of talk about the progress I made. There’s pride. And hope.
It has been difficult to keep up that positivity this year. There’s been new stresses, many of which related to finances, work and sharing a home with another person. There’s also been a lot of things I’ve crossed off the bucket list I didn’t even know I had and I think the more recent entries express the things I’ve gotten to do and the people I’ve been able to spend time with. I’ve unlearned bad habits and tried to connect more fully with those I care about, without a crutch. I’ve become more open about myself, some might argue too open about some things. I’m not constantly looking over my shoulder, afraid that people will discover something unseemly about me.
The more recent entries have been more balanced, I think. There’s been some serious, personal topics but there’s been humor and pictures of cats and I’ve felt comfortable enough to be more opinionated than I have been (although, not as opinionated as I once was).
So this blog did not do what I expected it to. In the end, I’ve had to be far more direct to connect with those around me and, sadly, I spent far too long in a dark place. But this blog has helped, slowly. It connected me with other people, new people. It helped me to feel not quite so alone and it gave me a place to vent, to joke, to think and to express myself where one otherwise did not exist. Finally, it has come to a place that I will not be ashamed or sad or frustrated to look back upon in the future.
It’s funny how life gives us what we need when we’re too busy working about what we think we want.
I decided to take a day off. One day per week is all I allot myself when I do decide that it’s okay to take a day off. I was successful, at first. I changed from PJs into roommate-appropriate PJs. I crawled out of bed, onto the sofa. I flipped on the TV. I tried to watch Ratotouille but.. something happened.
I stopped watching TV to do dishes, put my laundry in the washer, clean the floor around the garbage can, tidy and clean the kitchen counters and top of the stove. I almost successfully returned to doing nothing when I sat back down to play some MapleStory but after being disconnected, I hopped in the shower, which then prompted another series of things that looking nothing at all like relaxing: shaving my legs, cleaning the sink (so I can put shower stuff in it to clean the shower), wiping down the toilet, cleaning the shower, switching out the towels, refolding all the towels in my bathroom cabinet and Febreezing the living room furniture.
I swear I’m done now but that’s only because vacuuming is rude at midnight and I’m out of Lysol wipes.
Now that I have DirecTV back, I can tune into reruns and trashy reality TV. Actually, I don’t watch a whole lot of reality television and there’s so much of it that you really need to pick one and stick with it to make sure you don’t miss what happens.. but I missed stumbled out of bed and crawling onto the couch to watch a little bit of mind-numbing TV before actually getting up. It helps me to relax. Today, when I woke up, I did that and turned into Sister Wives. This show is definitely one of my guilty pleasures when it comes to TV. You’ve probably heard of it but, in case you haven’t, Kody Brown is an immature douchebag who also happens to be a Mormon and polygamist and has four wives and 16 kids. 16. 1 more on the way, too.
I missed a lot of the happenings but it appears that the family has moved from a triplex in Utah to four separate homes in Nevada because the authorities were starting to investigate them. Season three is almost at its end but the episodes I watched seemed to indicate that it focused on kids: how they felt about moving, some of them getting ready for college and the struggles of having so many teenagers. I wouldn’t want to live in any of those houses, I must confess.
But other than the simply synergistic stresses of having a family so large, I kind of feel like the Browns are doing okay at it. If you’re going to try your hand at it, going their route is probably the most sane way to do it. The wives help each other out and, for the most part, seem happy with their plans. Other seasons really stressed jealousy and the frustrations over Kody courting Robyn and adding her as the fourth wife but this season seems to have settled down and it seems as though things are working out okay. It makes me wonder if the focus on the jealousy and such was just for TV. As a viewer, I don’t know because I don’t have an inside look.
There’s still a few things that bug me, though. Kody acts like a teenager much of the time and the wives definitely have better relationships with the children — all of them — than he does. He seems a little disconnected. This is perfectly evidenced by the fact that he drives a sports car and it’s up to any of the wives to be the soccer mom. Dude, get a fucking minivan and help those women out, will ya?
Plus, I just can’t help but wonder who’s paying for everything. After moving, everyone was out of a job, at least temporarily. TLC is really tight-lipped about how much Kody and crew make, too. It boggles me. I can’t understand how they can afford 16 kids and four adults. It’s hard enough being a single person but I can’t imagine how much money they have to pay just to get by.. and they all seem to be doing fairly well. Taxes must be a bitch, too. Three of the wives have to claim single and I can’t help but wonder why the authorities aren’t all up in Kody’s grill regarding child support. Hell, even before Mom and Tim got married, the state made him pay it while they were living together.
I’m probably going to finish this season because that’s how I roll.
A while ago, I made a practice of deleting a person a day from my Facebook account. I have a lot of “Friends” there but how many of them are really my friends? Facebook is great because you can look up anyone, everyone that you’ve ever met but that’s sort of its downfall. With MySpace, my friends list was full of bands and people I didn’t know but, hey, at least I could pretend I was using the site because I wanted to get to know them. I make no such claims with Facebook. My Facebook friends list is full of people to whom I never speak, with whom I will never have a conversation again.
Perhaps it started because I simply wanted to have no pending friend requests. Maybe I felt guilty when I didn’t add people but now my friends list is full of people who were my friend eight years ago but one or both of us have changed so much — or stayed so exactly the same — that we could never have a friendship now, if we hadn’t already been friends. And that’s the better of the non-friend Facebook friends. I’ve got a ton of people who went to the same school as me but with whom I never had a single conversation who have tried to add me. I have people who have tried to add me who I’ve felt nothing but disgust for. I have people of whom I have absolutely no recollection.
Sure, people change and, yes, friendships can arise from surprising sources but Facebook isn’t one of those. I don’t talk to these people because of Facebook. It hasn’t facilitated much in the way of connections. It hasn’t rekindled a single friendship that I can think of. In fact, Facebook only connects me to people with whom I’d already be connecting outside of Facebook. It only keeps me up to date with people I’d remember even if there were no Facebook.
So when I say that a friendship a decade ago is not enough to keep you on my friends list. I’m not lying. It’s not. But it’s not unkind, either. We’re not meant to keep in contact with every person we ever met. Trying to do so will only weigh us down, perhaps more-so for those of us with anxiety. The value of our connections is that they are fleeting. They all cannot possibly last forever and, if we’re smart, that motivates us to make the best of that time and to be grateful for it.
