As far as I know I'm not pregnant. I really don't know how I would handle that right now. There's so much emotional instability within me...I'm simply not committed enough to become a mother at this time.

My friends are in for New Years. We played games all evening and exchanged gifts. It's nice to see Chris, Shawn, Ken, and Leslie again. I only wish that Pat could have made it. :( Perhaps we will see him sometime this summer? I hope so. :)

Thoughts right now....I'm not really feeling up to entering grad school this semester. I'm still emotionally drained from all of the shit Ben and I have been through. I wonder how long it takes for such an exhaustion to heal? Hopefully not long. I suppose my loans will have to be in forebearance until I'm able to start paying something on them or until I go back to school. Ben's not having a job right now makes my financial situation very stressful and very ify. (If that's even a word.) But that's probably not something I should post on here because he'll get pissed at me. I'll probably get a talking to about posting as much as I have.

I just need him to be my equal in all matters. Nothing more, nothing less. But I feel that I've been getting less for a long time and I'm tired of picking up the slack. I'm so fucking tired. He hates it when I use the word fuck.

I suppose it's just the alcohol talking....4 beer type beverages and two glasses of wine later.... :) Or maybe I really am hurting and I want him to understand.

There's nothing quite like waking up in the morning and praying to the porcelin goddess. Yes friends, as faithful and devoted as I am, I was down on my knees at 3:30 this morning paying homage to the goddess. I left her an offering. :)

You know, it's not really the act of vomiting that is so horrible really. It's the anticipation of it that's so maddening! The sickness, the hot flashes and chills, the unwillingness to have your stomach's contents come rushing back out...that's the bad part.

I don't know what the hell is wrong with me! I'm still nauseous!

The girls at work kept teasing me about the possibility of pregnancy. This thought terrifies me. Ben and I are not in the position at this time to be parents. One of the girls that I work with, Kristina, and her husband have been trying to have a child for the past 5 years and have continuously met with failure. She got excited at the thought that I might be pregnant and then asked if she could have it if I was. :)

As silly as her suggestion was, it started me thinking. I know I'm not ready to be a mother at this point in time. I could not provide a stable and secure home environment and I do not want to bring a child into my world...yet. But if I did become preganant at this time adoption would be something that I would consider. There are thousands of good people out there who just want a child to love and who have been unlucky enough to be unable to conceive.

I realized from Kristina's response to my situation that her life would be complete if she were able to adopt or give birth to a child. But how hard would it be to give up the child once it is born and you've seen the little life that you've created?

Well...I'm going to bed. Hopefully this is just some funky virus or something.

If you used protection could you get some for my heart?
Now it's raging and bleeding and tearing apart.

Well, friends, it's that time of year again. Yup, that time. Christmas time. When people (supposedly) put aside ther differences and wish for peace on earth. I really wonder if they all realize what they're wishing for. Because it's obvious to me that peace will only occur on this planet when all life has been destroyed. Happy Frickin' Christmas! :)

Eeek, but isn't that depressing? Let's see if I can turn my frown upside down. Or at least sideways.

I am excited that my friends will all be converging here just after Christmas! Ben and I have been cleaning and reorganizing rooms in anticipation of our guests arrival. Today I'm washing up all the blankets and such. Is it a little crazy to wash ALL of the blankets? Maybe. But there are some that have been sitting in the hall closet for a year...and they collected a wee bit of dust. You can't give company dusty blankets!!! Now I will give them blankets that smell like Rain Clean Tide. :)

More later. I must cook meat to feed the sentient creature that my stomach is becoming from swallowing too much sperm. It's actually started growling at me! How cute! :) Is mommy's little freak of nature hungry?

I was reading an old post on True Porn Clerk stories in which the author mentions how some porno films are parodies of mainstream films. David Cop-a-Feel is an example of one of these fine skin flicks. :)

Anyway, I started thinking that porn makers really should start making pornographic movie parodies of computer and video games. Think about it: a large percentage of people who play video and computer games tend to be physically unattractive people and, therefore, people who are most likely not having sex on a regular basis. Those people who are not having sex regularly tend to be fans of pornography. If the porn indstry cashes in on this market they could pull in millions more than they already do now!

What avid EverQuest player would pass up the opportunity to watch a porn called EverQuim in which a high elven princess is saved from an orc and then wildly fucked? What fan of Dark Age of Camelot would pass up the chance to watch Dark Age of Cumalot?

Well...it was just a thought. :)

It's been a crazy weekend.

I worked yesterday, drove down to Huntington with Ben to pay his tuition, and then drove my mother back to Beckley. It was 9 PM when we arrived at my parent's home and I was thouroughly exhausted. I was asleep last night before my head ever hit the pillow, I think.

I woke this morning to the sound of my mother vomiting in the bathroom. I jumped out of bed, startled awake, and ran to her aid. The poor thing had finally caught the stomach virus that little Megan had. Wayne and Cheryl have already had it. And now Mom. So only Dad and I are left to be knocked on our asses. We'll see.
I'll let you all know if I'm up in the middle of the night puking my guts out. I'll even inform you of the consistency and color. :) You'd like that, wouldn't you? :) (sick bastards)

And my brother took Megan back to the hospital this morning. He said that her stomach swelled to the point of actually forming stretch marks on the little belly. :( The doctors found that she had a pocket of gas blocking her intestines. They gave her enimas and that seems to have taken care of things. I stopped by my brother's home to check on her this evening and he excitedly informed me that she shit on her own. :) Yay! Isn't it amazing how you can get excited about even the littlest thing when it comes to the health of one you love? :) But she should be fine now. I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

When Munchkin was in the hospital the first time, her little lips got so terribly cracked and dry. Aunt Chris noticed and decided to put some lip gloss on them. The lip gloss was, of course, Bonne Bell flavored lip gloss. Anyway, now she has a taste for it. She ended up eating a little bit of the tube that I left with her and her parents. Now whenever she sees me she grabs my hand and starts pointing at her lips, wanting me to giver her more lip gloss. :) What a beautiful little creature she is.

A sad note to my weekend: I learned that my second cousin, Rex Farmer, Jr., was killed in a car wreck the night before last. I went to high school with him. He was a quiet boy, but very witty and intelligent when he actually opened his mouth. I didn't know him very well being my second cousin and all...and our families didn't associate all that much. But his death still saddens me. He was only 22 and he had gotten married only a month before. So young and his life still full of possibility. It's just a reminded that any of us could go at any moment. Life is too short and too precious for us to waste. Life is too short and too precious for us to leave things unsaid.

I love all of you very much. If I die tomorrow, at least you will all know how I feel about you. :)

And if I find you, will you still remember playing at trains,
Or does this little blue ball just fade away?
Over Silbury hill and through the solar field.
You know that I will follow you.
I'm aware what the rules are, but you know that I will run.
You know that I will follow you.

~ Tori Amos from 1000 Oceans on the To Venus and Back CD

Apparently my niece is doing much better. According to my father, she was running around naked last night after her bath, as she likes to do, and she discovered how to moon people. So she ran around to everyone showing them her tiny bottom and giggling madly.

Yes, friends, here is proof that she is of my bloodline. :)

I’m missing you
And what it was
A deadly force mowing us over
We never even had time to close our eyes

Bats flying now
With their high cries
A streaming out of their darkness
Hunting for something alive on which to feed

I wait for you
And what is not
Rooms that need to crumble into dust
Feeding the earth one more time with mournful lies

Rain falling now
With her soft sighs
A flooding out of the heavens
Drowning on every word or caress or seed

I’m losing you
And what can be
A shade once already devoured
Fading yet harming all that can see inside

Breath failing now
With only a sigh
A burning out of life’s passion
Decaying as I sit here waiting for peace

Just a quick update....

My little Munchkin was released from the hospital this evening. :) She's gonna be oooo'tay! Hurray!!!

My niece is in the hospital. :(

She had a stomach flu last week and spent a couple of days vomiting and dry heaving. She recovered from that, but still wasn't quite herself. She simply didn't want to drink anything at all and she became dehydrated. And now she has some sort of intestinal blockage...

I went up to the hospital to visit with her and Wayne and Cheryl this evening. Poor little Megan has an IV in her little right arm. The nurses had to wrap it up with gauze and a styrafoam board to keep her from ripping it out.

They had to catheterize her last night...Wayne had to hold her down. :( The ER staff also took blood via finger prick. Sounds less nasty than using a needle, right? Not for a 15 month old baby. The pricked her finger and keep squeezing blood out until they had two full tubes. She kept squirming and screaming so her blood got everywhere.

But she was doing much better this evening. Actually, playing a bit. I even got her to giggle at me a couple of times. :)

As I was driving home, I my mind kept wandering to the possibility that she could become very ill and die. I...I want her to know the beauty of life. I want her to be okay. And I don't want to lose this special little life that the Creator brought into mine.

But she'll be fine...she's got quite a forceful personality, that one...but I would really appreciate it if anyone who cares would send out a prayer or a wish of health for my little girl. Thank you!:)

~ a worried aunt

I'm grasping for anything tonight, as alone as I am
and hungering for a communion that's not to be had
at least not by me

snow is spread over the earth outside my door
like a blanket made to keep the cold in
and it's working

my little heater near the desk glows with a faint orange light
hoping to burn down the house, the trees, and the snow
if I would only let her

I am reminded of a winter not too long ago
when I was l lying naked in bed, wishing for another's skin
to keep away the chill

but there was no other flesh, no other skin
there was only cotton and wool and a space
where your body should have been

I have a sneaking suspicion that my job is going to turn me into a much harder person in some ways.

I have always considered myself to be a compassionate person. I want to shelter and aid those who are having a hard time in life because I know what it's like to feel that there's no farther down you can go. Or I thought I knew what it was like to be there anyway. I've come to realize that the lows of my life were much easier to bear than the lows of a typical patient's life. (Hmmm...but I shouldn't belittle my own lows because it was my perception that I was at the bottom, so that was reality for me.) At any rate, I have been overful with compassion for each and every person that came across my path at work. I have been willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

And now I guess I'm getting jaded, but with reason. One individual tried to take advantage of my compassion and openmindedness and several have disappointed me. :) I'm a newbie. Bushy tailed, bright-eyed, and hoping to save each and every person that crosses her path. Hoping to make a difference. In this short time that I've officially been a counselor, I've discovered that if I hope too hard I'm going to get hurt...I'm going to be frequently disappointed.

Most of the other counselors are a bit withdrawn. They care, but they don't care too much. But sometimes it seems to me that they don't care enough! :) Many of them have not developed a rapport with their patients and it seems that they don't really intend to even try. Some are only concerned that the proper paperwork is filled out and filed... fuck actually asking, "How are you doing?" and actually caring to listen to the reply.

The counselor that I inheirited most of my charts from seems to have been one of these cold souls. When reviewing absences with a patient today, I discovered that she had just written "pt. was not in attendance due to lack of transportation" after several absences and had never actually asked the patient why he had missed. To some this may seem like no big deal. So she fudged a few things in the chart...what's the problem? The problem in this case is that whenever a patient misses a day of treatment, they are more likely to relapse into drug use than those who attend every day. If a patient is allowed to be absent and no one cares to ask why they were gone, where they were, or what they were doing, the patient will feel that no one is really concerned about them and/or they will feel that they are able to be absent with no consequences. I found myself worridly wondering how much more of the information in the progress notes was fudged to cover the former counselor's ass?

No matter. The real issue at hand here is this: Do I continue to care as much as I have been and do I continue to be as open and trusting? Yeah...I guess I have to be ...because I'd be really disappointed with myself if I behaved otherwise. And that's more hurtful than any disappointment my patients fling at me. I don't want to become cynical, judgemental, and harsh-minded with these people. It's my job to be supportive, caring, yet athoritative when necessary. And I'll do my job to the best of my abilities.

"So then I thought I'd make some plans,
But Fire thought she'd really rather be Water instead."

Cooling ~ Tori Amos

All the fear has left me now
I'm not frightened anymore

It's my heart that pounds beneath my flesh
It's my mouth that pushes out this breath

And if I shed a tear I won't cage it
I won't fear love

And if I feel a rage I won't deny it
I won't fear love

Fumbling toward Ecstacy ~ Sarah McLachlan