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Web Log for March, 2003
Mar 4 - Tuesday ~ Mar 5 - Wednesday
Mar 16 - Sunday
Mar 24 - Monday ~ Mar 25 - Tuesday ~ Mar 26 - Wednesday ~ Mar 26 - Wednesday (repeat performance) ~ Mar 27 - Thursday ~ Mar 28 - Friday
Friday, March 28, 2003
Well, probably my last post for a bit over a week. I'm going to be in Detroit, so I don't know if I'll be able to post. But I might write some posts while I'm out and put them up when I get back. We'll see how ambitious (and stressed out) I am. I'm tired right now. I might still try to run to the store, but I don't know if I'm awake enough for that. I might just make a list and go sometime tomorrow.
     Anyhow, Tom got me hooked on "Lemmings" today. Fun game. Hard, but fun. Oh, and that reminds me of the good news: Tom's going to be a dad! Boo-yah!
Thursday, March 27, 2003
Well, sounds like I probably won't have to go to court. I volunteered to do a video statement, but they thought it'd be too much trouble to go through for a PPO violation, so I guess they won't mind if their a witness short. Darn, looks like I'm driving to Detroit after all! I guess I don't mind it that much; I just am nervous about the drive.
     Anyhow, the best news of the day is something I'm not allowed to tell anyone, so I'm just going to sit here and be excited all by myself for a while. Then I'm going to spontaneously combust from the built-up pressure.
     I'm not going to be running my game tonight; I'm too stressed out to deal kindly with people, and I don't think it's fair to kill off two characters because I'm having a bad day. I don't know what I'm going to do instead. I'm really tired, still. Maybe I'll post again later...
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
THIS JUST IN:
Now it looks like I'll have to take a day off of my training next week -- I just found out that I might get subpeona'ed to testify against my mom's friend's insane husband. *sigh* I believe he is literally insane. I wish they would just certify him and get it over with. Anyhow, he violated the PPO by approaching her, and I saw it... Funny how they didn't prosecute when he called my mom and talked about how he was going to "blow her [mom's friend] away"...
Wednesday, March 26, 2003
...so...depressed...and...don't...know...why...

     Could have something to do with the training class I have to go to next week. I'm supposed to drive to the Detroit area to take Veritas Cluster Server training. I'm looking forward to the class. I'm NOT looking forward to the drive. It was almost exactly a year ago (within a few days, at least), that I drove to Chicago for Sun's SunFire x800 training and got lost and ended up in Chinatown. Don't get me wrong, Chinatown looks like a fun place. But it's not the right place for a young white girl who doesn't know a lick of Chinese by herself in a mid-Sunday afternoon. Ya know what gets me about Chinatown? The street signs are in Chinese. Only. I couldn't have gotten onto the right street if I'd tried. Not only that, but cars double or triple park all over the place, and, wherever there aren't cars, there are masses of milling people. I thought I was going to die. I know, it's irrational, and probably rude, but that's how I felt. I ended up getting onto what looked like a "main road" (it had more than one traffic signal on it) and just drove until the signs turned English again. It turned out to be Michigan street, which, thankfully, was just on the bottom of the tiny map I had. I found my way okay after that, but I was very shook up and swore that I would never drive to such an unfamiliar place alone again. Now, here I am, a year later, driving to Detroit. What's up with that?!?
     What didn't help was the Yahoo map I tried to download. The directions I got from the training place said to take I96 to I696. I wanted to get a better idea of what the junction would look like, so I looked it up. Here's what I got. Rather disconcerting, don't you think? Anyhow, when you zoom in, you get a better picture, so it turned out all right.
     But, the point is, I think it's stressing me out and frustrating me and making it hard for me to sleep (to the point of me not wanting to go to bed) and stuff like that. I'll have to do lots of Yoga tonight. I can bring my Yoga videos to Detroit with me...
Tuesday, March 25, 2003
Boo-yah! Not only am I posting TWO DAYS IN A ROW, but I am also posting this via my NEW CABLE MODEM ACCESS!!! I'm happy, in case you were wondering. Of course, the whole day wasn't that great. I'm not feeling real well, and I don't really know why. But at least I have this super-fast internet connection (and a router/firewall to boot) to comfort me...
     Anyhow, time for Yoga...
Monday, March 24, 2003
Ack, over a week since my last post! My apologies. I need to be a little more sane in my posts for a while -- I scared off some of my friends with the description of the flu... My apologies again.
     I've put together a couple of picture pages, including one with *gasp* pictures of me! I'm working on the Computer section, as well as a Bible section. We'll see how that works out -- I'm trying to read through the Bible, but I keep getting hung up on parts and re-reading a bunch of times. Not that that's bad, it's just going to take me a long time.
     Anyway, new pictures of the twins. It's exactly a month until their one-year birthday! I told my mom I have to get married in the next few years so that Gabe and Trenton can be my ring bearers. They'd be so cute! All I'm missing, of course, is a man, but that's just a cosmetic problem for a wedding, right?
Sunday, March 16, 2003
Well, I'm finally starting to feel like myself again, after being sick. It helps that the weather has finally started being spring-like. It's warm and everything's melting and it's sunny. Who could ask for more?
     I got to see Amy and the twins yesterday -- after 3 weeks of withdrawal!! The twins are absolutely darling (still), and Amy gave me the sweetest birthday present.
     This morning was also exciting: I got to help get someone arrested. Actually, I just lent my mom's friend my cellphone so she could call 911. She has a Personal Protection Order against her husband, and he showed up at church and kept trying to get at her (several of us formed a protective circle around her, however). She called the police, he left, and then the police chased him down and arrested him. He's in jail for the night.
     I also instituted some new rules for my mom:
  1. Always have a Fire Extinguisher handy.
  2. Keep your hair cut short.
  3. Keep the toaster near the sink.
Let's just say my mom is probably the only person in the world who is able to set corn tortillas on fire using any kind of heated appliance. She's probably also the only person in the world who tries to toast her corn tortillas, but I'm sure that fact is irrelevant.
     And, last but not least, the breaking news: I'm thinking of going to Grad school for an MSW. I don't know for sure what I'll do with it, but, as my psychologist tells me, I'm psycho enough that I don't need a B.S. -- I'm safe going straight for the Master's degree... Okay, so that's a paraphrase of what she said. But, seriously, after this whole business with the insane, demon-possessed, soon-to-be-ex-husband, jail-bird guy, I'm thinking of writing a paper on insanity. If I do so, I will post it (lucky you). Anyhow, off to ... do whatever it is I do ...
Wednesday, March 5, 2003
Day 10 of a 10-day flu. Maybe I'll be miraculously healed tomorrow. Maybe not.
     There was a snow-storm in the night. From what I can see, it wasn't as bad here as predicted. Of course, that's from the back window of the second floor of an already-snowing apartment building, so I really could be wrong on this one.

     I started reading The Pressure's Off by Larry Crabb again last night. At about 1 in the morning, actually, since I was coughing too much and couldn't sleep. It's a good book, and I highly recommend it. It makes me want to throw away a lot of the other books I've got in my collection now, but not my C.S. Lewis, so I guess it's okay.
     It's one of those books that's true and really needs to be read by as many people as possible, but it contains a difficult truth and people may be afraid to read it. I guess my take on the situation is: "It's too painful not to read."

     Maybe I'll feel better tomorrow.
Tuesday, March 4, 2003
Well, February has come and gone, but the flu has only come. It's been nine days of suffering. One would think, with all the sicknesses and chronic disease I have been through (and am still going through), that a simple flu would hardly be noteworthy. However, this flu has been for me as the plagues sent upon Job, stripping me of my defenses, my strength, and finally my hope. There were days when I did not recognize myself in the mirror; when my mind would step outside of my body and speak to me, providing a running monologue of the activities of that estranged body that struggled futility against the pain and the heat. I remember my mind chattering at me for hours, telling stories, sometimes about me, sometimes just whatever came to it to pass the time while the body lay aching and abandoned. I forgot for a while who "I" was, and wondered if she really existed, whether she ever really had, and what would become of her now that she had been torn apart. Her body was a "thing" that her mind had once inhabited but could no longer feel. I died. Sometime last week, I think, although it seems such a long time ago.
     Then, finally, the fever broke and the pain began to lessen. It drained away, leaving my body devoid of all strength, heavy and wooden as a corpse. The congestion had begun, and then began the struggle to breath and to sleep. Neither came easily, though both were so wanted. Eating and drinking were difficult, as suffocation threatened me every time I closed my mouth.

     There was a point where nearly I broke. If not for the grace of God, if not for the intervention, I may have lain down and never gotten up again. Fear paralyzed me; fear that I would always be hurting, fear that there was no end either to the sickness or too my life, fear that I really was just a thing that might break apart at any moment and set adrift in an endless sea of agony. I told my mom I was afraid I would stop breathing in the night, but I think I was more afraid that I wouldn't.
     But, through all the fear, through all the pain, something else was there, too. Some spark of light that would not die and would not let me forget. Somehow, no matter how bad this was, no matter how endless, there was something I was holding on to -- if it was not, in fact, holding on to me -- and I (or it) did not let go so easily as I wanted to. Sometimes I knew what it was I clung to -- moreso than I know now -- and sometimes it was just an elusive image teasing my imagination. I saw myself somewhere, sitting very still; maybe still hurting, maybe not. I knew it was myself "afterward", when the sickness had finally gone away. I knew it was myself, and that "myself" was different -- maybe two separate parts that coexists, maybe a more unified whole. I don't remember now what it is I was seeing. I know I am different, and that, by the time this sickness is finally over, I will be more different still. I do not now know what I will be. This has made me afraid in the past, and it does so a little bit now, but I am also desperate -- desperate to be well and desperate to be changed.

     I pray for the end of the world. I pray for a new body, and a new Heaven and a new Earth. I pray for all the chains that weigh me down to be lifted away. Maybe I am praying for the thing that has happened to me -- sometimes I think prayers uttered after the fact are the true impetus that set an event in motion. Maybe it is just part of the change, and I am more in love now with the thing I have always been longing for. What I know is that I am changed and my world is changed, and I do not want to go back, nor do I want to stop going forward, despite the fear that fills me.
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