The Hubcap Massacre

Yesterday was a scary driving day. 

I still didn't do any of the things I assumed I was going to do by now…

Like hit a bird,

or get smashed by a deer,



or destroy a mailbox,



and I haven't even knocked a side-view mirror off yet! 
 

YAY!

However, it IS Winter,
and the roads look like a giant infant took a hammer to them.
 

My father had trouble with a few potholes recently, so you'd think I would have seen this coming.

NOPE. 

Mom, after the fact, said she saw it… but we're going to ignore how that would have been nice to mention BEFORE I hit it.  Mom. 

*ahem*

So, I whacked a giant hole in the ground and while it sounded scary, most of the road had sounded scary, so I didn't think much of it. 

There were also so many potholes, some of which stretched across the whole area, so it was difficult to avoid them. 

Usually I'm the only one making horrible noises while I drive, but this time Mom chimed in.
 

You know that noise Lucile Ball makes on I Love Lucy? 
It was like that.  

Every.  Time. 

Still, not nearly as bad as the noises my father makes as soon as I get behind the wheel at all.  

Seriously, I could be parked and he'll still hit the imaginary brake on his side.

Anyway, I didn't know anything was horribly wrong until I went into a "lane" over on the side, thinking a car in front of me was in a turning lane, rather than, you know, parked.

Then another car came up next to me in the correct lane. 

I figured I was trapped and Mom and I would have to eat parts of the car to survive until we were rescued from my stupidity.

The man in the other car honked, which I assumed was an angry honk. 

It was not. 
I rolled down the window and he mentioned that our hubcap (read: Mom's hubcap that I slammed off of her poor car) was by the town hall, in a snow bank. 

Thank you, Stranger-Man. 

I had this weird swell of embarrassment from having been driving around with only three hubcaps. 

I pictured getting laughed at by more fashionable drivers.

Because Mom mentioned that I need to be careful with the next potholes so as not to damage the tire, my severe lack of car-knowledge showed.  

I was under the assumption that the hubcap was usually bolted on, keeping the tire in place. 
 

I imagined the tire now flying off without it's metal seat belt, and me going to some kind of car-jail for committing tire manslaughter. 

Anyway, Mom found the hubcap after wandering around a bit. 
 



This brings up a few questions. 

Did it fly off of the car into the snowbank? 

Did the kindly neighbors take the time to get out of their car to pick it off of the road and leave it where we could find it? 

Did they follow us that whole way to tell us, or was it by chance that they happened to see a car missing a hubcap later on and fill in the blanks? 

Either way, Mom and I weren't entirely positive we could put it back on right then and there, so she just plopped it in the car. 

I was still a little shaken by "OH MY FUCK I BROKE YOUR CAR I'M SO SORRY" so I asked her to do the driving until our next errand was done. 

I've been calling that my first accident just because I want that part of my life to be over with and it didn't involve anyone else being damaged.

Let me think this. 

Shhh...

Wednesdays and Driving Like an Adult

I should start this off by mentioning that I wrote this on a Wednesday, yet I'm posting it a day later at around eleven something PM.  
That should give you an idea of how Wednesdays go for me. 
 
I'm becoming like a syndicated cartoon strip, with how much I hate Wednesdays. 

I still have to take the road test to get my license (and get a car) and Wednesdays are the day everyone seems to be most busy. 
This year, I've had class every Wednesday. 
This means, every Wednesday has been me totally alone…
 

and then suddenly off to school.
 

This wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't had the anxiety issues and all that.
I wound up just kind of doing nothing all day every day last semester, unless I had somewhere to be.  

I was fine once people were home… but yeah.  It was a pretty bad semester. 
 
Of course, next week will be awful, even though Rob is home all day, but that is for the opposite reason.
 
Bored is awful.

Busy is awful. 

Next week, we have a meeting together, then I have an interview in another town, and then I have class. 

Why does everything have to happen on Wednesdays?
 

Either way, I am aware that I need to start driving.  

This need does not change the fact that I don't want to and have never really wanted to.
Owning a car sounds awesome, without the insurance costs and all that. 
I just don't wanna drive it. 

To alleviate my automatic fear, I tend to make Mario Kart-like noises, especially on turns.
 

…

They can't fail me for that on the road test, right? 

I will say, I'm not an awful driver, despite my fear.  

I even avoided an accident yesterday when a woman came peeling out of a side street without looking.
 

I'm not afraid of dying in a car, by the way.
I'm afraid of being maimed.  Losing a limb… 

Hurting the car someone else owns is also on that list of fears. 
 

*sigh*
…
I hate Wednesdays. 

Time Travel As Therapy

I'm not talking in the hitch a ride on the Tardis or a hop in a Delorean and zoom off way, but in a reviewing, analyzing, and actually participating in my own life way.

I do a lot of analyzing with no purpose.  I run circles around and around to no end.  Hell, most of this blog is just that.

I never come to any new conclusion, nor do I find a new possibility for letting it all go.

Clearly, that shit ain't working.

So instead, I'm rewriting my history.

I noticed I was doing this by accident, subconsciously. 

I was proud of myself for reconnecting with people I had pushed away, but there was more to it than what I'd thought.  Beyond a sense of "Oh good, they are still here," there was a comfort that I hadn't expected.

A man I knew mostly in high school, a man I knew mostly at the art school, and a man I dated after my life was over the first time should not instantly make me more comfortable that some of my new very close friends, but they were.

I understand that my new friends are still the people to go to, but I needed to understand why talking to these old friends had the effect on me that it did.  I think I get it now.

 EDIT: On why I draw my problems as little blobs with staring eyes and sometimes tiny mouths...  It's because that is exactly what they are.  My problems just sit there and stare.  They just sit and make me feel uncomfortable with looks that say they want me to do something for them, but they never open their stupid little mouths to tell me what they want.  They just gawk and criticize silently.  They wobble slightly and are at times even silly enough to be funny... but they bother me just the same.  And in large amounts?  When they gather up and become a crowd?  There is hardly room to breathe. 

I looked around recently and noticed that I'm most comfortable sitting where the computer is in the dining room of my parent's house, rather than eating in the kitchen.  It dawned on me…
The kitchen has been completely redone in recent years.  It is no longer the kitchen from the last time I lived here…
Which was six or seven years ago, after art school.

It was a time before my Psychology courses, which I have yet to pick up again.

It was a time when I felt my life was ending and that I was helpless… 

Which I've picked up again.

I'm searching for nostalgia and comfort to be sure, but also a sense of going back in time to fix what can still be fixed.  Not everything has been an issue, and already I've fixed some of the bigger problems.

For example, my fingers and my wrists have haunted me since art school.  I've been afraid to really do the work I'm capable of because I'm afraid of the pain and the failure I may have to endure yet again.

But now, I have these fancy new braces on my ring fingers that look like Elvish jewelry and actually help minimize the discomfort.  I also know how to pace myself more than I did back then, and I've been to a doctor who could confirm what I thought about my bones.  They probably aren't going to get any worse.  They just are what they are.
More than that, it could have been MUCH worse, but it isn't.

And now, that burden is lifted.  Now I can relax enough to apply for art jobs and feel like I'm going somewhere.  I still plan on finishing the MA in Psychology, but for now, I need more things like this.

I need to weed out the ones I can take care of, and then I can accept and let go of the things I can't change.  This seems entirely logical in theory.  

...In theory.

Obviously, some things are just plain done and over.  
Some things can not ever find a proper ending, and so I'll never really have my closure.

So for the first time, it is actually convenient that I've lumped all my problems together. 

It makes things overlap and count as other things from before.

I can't get my year at art school back.  I can't make my medical leave matter or feel like I achieved anything from it. 

But I left on medical leave from my most recent graduate school, and it was going about the same way.  No one cared.  The fact that I had a doctor give a note and everything didn't matter at all. 

But it's supposed to.

And it will.

My parents and I wanted to just forget the whole thing, but that won't help.  I'll just go the rest of my life adding this to the list of shit where I had no control and my life was meaningless, terrified that it will happen a third time because I'm too disabled to live a normal life, but not disabled enough to get any real help.  Only pity.

No.

I'm going to fight.

I'm going to write letters and make phone calls, and this time, my parents will help me do that.

I'm going to make someone listen to me, even if it doesn't change anything.  The point will be that this time I actually TRIED instead of just crying and walking away. 

This will be my closure for both schools, knowing I did wind up getting that art degree. 
Maybe now, that art degree can mean something to me. 

If my brain is going to decide that they are the same school and the same situation, I may as well make use of that.  I'll trick myself into finally letting them both go at once.  
Let them drift off on the wind.

They won't matter anymore because I will say they don't matter, not because anyone else says so.

For other things, I need to go backwards before I can go forwards.

For the eating issue, I need to remember what I ate and how I enjoyed it and who I ate these things with, and I need to just do it as though I am that person still.  I need to make it habit and a want again.  I need to become who I was in my mind, until I can act and feel like that person again.

THEN I can grow and move forward and be even stronger and better than I ever was.

This time, I'll fix my past and grow up to be a person who wants to drive.

I'll change my perception and how I reacted to things.

"I got into a terrible car accident!  I could have died," will become "I survived even this terrible car accident!  I'm invincible." 

Instead of thinking of how many times I was accidentally "poisoned" by people who didn't care or realize how scary an allergy is, I'll acknowledge that I ate walnuts accidentally, took some Benadryl and YES it was scary, but NO I didn't die or even need to go to the hospital.  I was fine.
Same thing happened years before with hazelnuts. 
And, yes, I did get in trouble and swelled up with hives and vomit and shitting myself for three days because of a small bite of a macadamia nut cookie when a "friend" said there were no nuts in it...  I even asked twice.

Okay, I always ask twice.  Now I know to ask three times.

And I could have used my fucking epi-pen.  I didn't.  I could have, but I didn't.  I don't know if I'm afraid of it, or what...  But either way, the fact that I still freaking SURVIVED WITHOUT using it and I didn't go to the hospital EVEN THEN should say something.  I should feel like I'm a fucking superhero.

Moving on, my throat got hurt, but obviously it then got better.  If it happens again, I know to go to a doctor who isn't an idiot. If I get told it's acid reflux, I'll know that person is wrong, and I'll move on. 

Looking at the posts I wrote at the time, I didn't have any idea what the Hell was going on anyway, and I'm sure that was a big component of it all.  It's weird, but you can actually watch my transition from all the Fishbone bullshits all the way to Of Strength, Luck, and Crashing Down.  It's an interesting change. 

My faith in the world got rocked so far that I couldn't even fathom living in it anymore. 
Yes.  
I get that.  
So, maybe I'll be more cynical than before.  
Maybe I won't be such a pushover.

This doesn't mean I have to be mean or a quiet ball of anger like I was as a kid, but I should take everything with a grain of salt and regrow my instincts.


I used to have very good instincts, as I recall.


Guh.

I'm freaking awesome, damn it.  Time that I remembered and understood that. 

I never believed it, but if I can convince myself that somewhere in my mind, deep down, I knew it, then I can assume that it was always there.  I can "remember" it.

My memories are so muddled anyway, and I have such trouble remembering the good things, I may as well start making shit up.

I won't lie or completely fabricate nonsense, but I can pretend that I felt differently about certain situations.  
I can pretend that I let things go and simply learned from them in order to better myself.  
Maybe I can teach others and I can avoid the same mistakes again.

Fear solves nothing.

Fear will kill me and I would much rather live.

I have a lot left to do if I'm going to make this stupid world any smarter.

I can notice different parts of the scenes playing before me as I go back in time, and I can choose to pick out different parts to keep with me.  
I'll find the most helpful parts this time. 

Simply...

It is time for a rewrite. 

I have friends who can help me edit.  I'm not in this alone.

I'll look at this post and this Winter is Coming to remind me of that. 

And already, I have rekindled some friendships I had missed.  
It may have been for odd reasons, but they were people I valued and people I felt I wasn't good enough to keep. 

I am good enough.

I am fucking awesome,
and I WILL survive this.

This is my life.

This is MY story.

I will decide how the next chapter goes.

Bees, and General Bullshittery

 So, first of all...

There is this:

 

The man was riding along in his convertible with the top down, and had on a visor instead of a full cap.  His top had no top while he rode in a car that was topless.  I... can't.  I just can't.

...

My parents and I went off to an IHOP.  This is kind of a big deal because while I wasn't a huge fan of such places to begin with, IHOP and Denny's are pretty much the worst kinds of places for me to be these days.  They are crowded and loud, they don't look terribly sanitary to me, and they serve a lot of things I'm allergic to.  BUT, I went and sat and had a good time, even if I couldn't gather the courage to eat a freaking piece of bacon.  

Guh.  

My life and what it has become.

So I drew stuff.  Below is the page I doodled upon and below that are close ups of things:

The one confused by paper might be the best one.


I also tried to draw the pancakes that had blueberries and whipped cream, but it came out kinda poopish:

Also, a man with a baby face on the side:

...


Let's end with bees.

Cat-astrophe

As you may know from Laundry Day is a Very Dangerous Day, our cat has been shitting all the goddamn where.

She had already been to the vet and been dubbed healthy.  We've tried new cat toys, litter, litter boxes, no litter boxes, too many litter boxes...

Finally it was decided to clip off the hair from her butt and see if that would help.

The cat is trolling us, so we decided to humiliate her.  No, not really.  Really, it was supposed to make her more comfortable.  She was also going to get another check up just to be sure.

Getting her into the crate was an adventure.  My mother told me to secretly get the crate while she tricked the cat enough to pick the cat up, facing her away from said crate.

Then, we had to pour the cat into the crate, with the crate facing upward.

 

 I shit you not.  The cat was most displeased.


The car ride was horrible, if only for the amazing amount of sad, SAD cat whining coming from the back seat.


 

Made worse by my mother's amazing ability to say horrible things as though they are not horrible.



 Once there, she was equally difficult to dump out of the crate.

 

 When taken away to have her butt hair clipped, I drew this at the office:

 

 Accurate.

Getting her back in to go home was easy, and she was very quiet on the ride home.

Since then, she's just been vomiting instead.

...On my purse.