As Seen On The Bathroom Wall

So my husband and I had a discussion the other day about public restrooms. He wanted to know why women took so long in there? What was the deal, he wanted to know.

So I explained it to him - broke it down if you will.

Women are planners. Even the spontaneous, unpredictable ones plan their bathroom trips. Even if they don't realize they're doing it, they do. There are several different types of planners, as well as their respective plans that, if you pay close attention (hello guys) will follow a pattern that you can almost always predict.

Whatever the plan, however, the formula always tends to involve three main steps:

• Find cleanest stall the furthest away from the door.
• Make as little noise as possible while inside the stall.
• Re-apply cosmetic.

Now, as simple as these steps may seem, there is a lot involved in them, for each step contains within them countless sub-steps that can often times cause delays that end up creating a backlog of problems that every other woman now standing in line must contend with.

Let's start with step number one. A woman likes to be clean. This is why she wants the cleanest stall in the bathroom. However, let's face it women, we're pigs. We're sows in the pig pen of humanity when it comes to our public restrooms. We would never leave drips or floaties in the toilet at home, so why do we do it at public restrooms? It's disgusting!

This being said, when there are no other alternatives, when you cannot find a single stall that is floatie or drop free, you're stuck having to take one of those sub-steps I spoke about: cleaning the seat and flushing. Now, the former can be done with mild disgust, followed by a moment of air drying, a double layer of toilet seat cover-pseudo protection, and then...release. However, the latter of the two is a whole other story. If there's something in there that needs flushing, chances are when you flush that toilet, it's going to spray some heavily noxious liquid up into the air and...yep, you guessed it. ONTO THE SEAT. So then we repeat the entire seat wiping, drying, covering process before the eventual release. By then, you're probably well on your way to a nice, fully invested urinary tract infection. Add another strike against that whole female cleanliness thing while you're at it.

This, of course, brings us to the next step. "Make as little noise as possible while in the stall." Sounds pretty easy, right? Wrong. See, for some strange reason, women don't like knowing that other women are hearing them do their business. It doesn't really matter what it is, but there is a hierarchy when it comes to absolute embarrassment on the bodily function scale. At the bottom of the rung is urinating. Well, women don't "urinate". This is a feminine process, so it's "peeing" or "tinkling". It's definitely not "pissing" because that would imply we're masculine and, unless you're perfectly okay with that, no woman wants her down-there-area associated with anything that you can write with.

Women are mildly accepting of urinating because it's unavoidable and, for most, impossible to keep at bay. Women will often take a friend with them into the restroom and, as though it had been agreed on beforehand - silently - the friend will begin washing her hands while the other does her thing. The sound of the water helps mask the...event, thereby easing the woman's embarrassment.

Second on that totem pole of embarrassment, and something that most women between the age of 13 and 56 can relate to, is the removal of the sanitary napkin. Oh that wonderful sound of adhesive being yanked off of a cotton panty and a new one being torn out of its unmistakable packaging. All women recognize the sound immediately, and it cannot be masked by running water. Thus enters the hot air hand dryer. That ever present friend, after washing her hands queues up to the dryer and, through some unspoken signal, refuses the paper towel and instead slams her hand against that large, silver button that sends that rush of loud, hot air blasting onto her hands, essentially baking in that lovely hard water she just sacrificed her hands to.

Most women have unnaturally speedy hands during this brief, thirty second moment of distraction, and can remove, wrap, unwrap, and place a sanitary napkin with enough time leftover to flush and leave a soaking wet seat behind her. It defies the laws of physics if you think about it, but most of us don't, so let's move on.

The third, and highest place on that totem pole is the king of all things embarrassing. It makes women stutter, turns their faces a magnificent shade of vermilion, and can render even the most intelligent of women absolutely speechless. It is: crapping. Women use euphemisms for defecating as well; pooing, doing number two, having a "BM". It's basically taking a shit with lace and flowers and sparkly moon dust. Only, we women know there is no lace and the only thing that smells like flowers is the automatic air freshener that just sprayed overhead, as though it knew what was coming. Let's also not forget that the only thing sparkling are the stars in our eyes when we realized that the woman in the stall next to us can smell it, too.

For some reason, women just do not like to take a dump in public. It's the absolute holy grail of things we won't do. We'll wear jeans that bare our ass crack to everyone and their grandchildren. We'll give birth in the middle of the freeway. Hell, we'll even have sex in elevators. But take a shit in a public bathroom? Now you've gone too far!

And so, as women, when we have no other alternative, when our sphincters are simply incapable of staving off any longer the brown recluse that threatens to poison not only our underwear and outer clothing, but also our social life, we sacrifice a little bit of our dignity and take the plunge. While I cannot guarantee much about the where, when, or why, I can guarantee that this will be the fasted bowel movement that each woman ever had. She will push that bad boy out so fast she'll create dents, and time might actually begin to move backwards just a bit to accomodate such a feat. And all of this is done so for one reason and one reason only: WE DO NOT WANT ANYONE ELSE TO KNOW WE'RE THE ONE FUNKING UP THE PLACE.

We will get this part over as quickly as possible because logic dictates that if a woman is spending more time in the stall than the other, then SHE must be the ones causing that foul odor. We forget, however, that if we're thinking out this strategy, then the other woman has thought that as well, and might have even pulled something like that off herself. The plots are ever thickening in a restroom, people. Even if no one is talking.

Hey, I forgot to mention one important piece of information that is extremely vital to the entire process and also helps to explain why some of us take longer than others. Many stalls do not come with locks on the doors, and for some reason, women can't function without that door being closed. This is where the foot-lock method comes into play. We raise one foot and press it firmly against the door, holding it shut against intrusion from any other clean-stall-searching woman who passed over the drippy, floater-having stall we did moments earlier. And yes, we women do bend down to see if a stall that is locked is occupied, and being women, we know when we see a one-legged woman sitting down without a cane nearby that she's probably got the one with the broken lock and so we say a silent prayer of thanks that, if we have to flush and wipe before we sit, at least we can do so with both feet on the ground.

Now, these two things usually proceed without much in the way of interruption, but should one occur, it usually - okay ALWAYS - comes in the form of the most annoying and absolutely inexcusable offense in bathroom etiquette: THERE'S NO TOILET PAPER.

We women are greedy when it comes to toilet paper, so we use a lot of that stuff. Women could wipe out an entire forest with just toilet paper alone because let's face it - we gotta wipe! So you can imagine what happens when we reach for that ubiquitous little square of white and find that there is none. A prepared woman won't panic, of course. She'll simply reach into her purse and pull out her trusty little pack of facial tissue. On the opposite end of the spectrum are the industrious women who MacGuyver themselves a couple of usable pieces of paper from the leftover cardboard roll. (That's where those callouses come from, by the way.) And then there are those in the middle. The ones who come neither prepared nor capable of jury-rigging themselves a square or two of emergency vag-wipes. These women take bathroom personal space to a whole new level, taking it upon themselves to ASK the woman in the next stall if she has any toilet paper that she could use.

Now, many of you might remember the scene in Seinfeld where Elaine went into the restroom and discovered that there was no toilet paper available, and when she asked if she could have a square, the response that met her was "I have no square to spare." We didn't know if she did or not. Well, the men didn't, anyway. But we women, we knew. We knew that by saying "I have no square to spare", the woman was really saying "Ew, I'm not sharing my toilet paper with you!"

Toilet paper is a commodity. You don't give it away for free - not when you have yet to wipe yourself. It's a matter of restroom survival - it's every woman's sanitation for herself. Granted, most of us WILL pass over a wad because we've been in that position ourselves before - it's why we started carrying around that purse-sized pack of kleenex - but some will refuse because, yet again, we've been in that position before and we were burned. We were burned - hard. And those scars haven't healed yet. And never will. But oh, do they feel better when we're the ones doing the burning...

Moving on, after our business has been concluded, toilets flushed, packages dumped, lingering funk trapped between stalls for the next occupant to expire from, we arrive to our last step. The reapplication of the cosmetics. Now granted, not every woman wears makeup, but don't let the name fool you. Cosmetic merely applies to the outward appearance. Hair, lips, eyes, clothes - whatever is outside is part of the reapplication process. We wash our hands and we dry them, then we return to the mirror to make sure that we look okay, because the last thing we want is to leave the restroom and face our impatient and upset significant others looking like we'd just taken a warp speed dump with one leg up in the air.

I have an eight year-old daughter who is a beautiful, funny, smart, quick-witted child. She's friendly - almost to a fault - and she loves to read. She is, quite simply, a fantastic child. So, you can imagine how difficult it was for me to hear her say to me one day in a distressed voice, "Mommy, can I start shaving my legs?"

"Why?" I asked, knowing that her legs are quite hairy but never seeing that as being a problem since she is, after all, only eight.

"Because two of my friends at school tease me about it," came her reply.

Initially I thought to tell her to ignore the teasing since it is par for the course when you're a child: you get teased, you tease others, you laugh, share milk, and run around on the playground.

But then I thought to ask another question. "What do they say?"

"They said that I need to shave my legs, and if I don't shave my legs then I'm 'butchy'."

Well, this changes things. Eight year-olds using the term "butchy" is quite unnerving, especially since they're the ones who explained to my eight year-old what that term meant (to them). That, of course, wasn't the worst of it. No. See, I then led my questioning down its natural path and wound up with this final one: "Do they shave their legs?"

"Yes."

Call me floored. Call me shell-shocked, dumbfounded, flustered, and quite simply dismayed. Eight year-old little girls...shaving their legs?

WHY?

I quickly went into damage control mode then, because let's face it, being a girl is one of the toughest things one can be. There are so many outside influences that alter and mutate our own self-perception. My daughter, who's cared little to nothing about how she looked on the outside, has suddenly become self-conscious of parts of her body that are inconsequential to who she is as a person. Immediately, I told her that eight is far too young to be shaving one's legs, regardless of how much hair is on there, or what their so-called friends might have to say about it.

I also told her, in no uncertain terms, that not shaving one's legs doesn't make one "butchy", and that term isn't to be used again by her because it's insulting. I then lifted the leg of my pants and showed her my own hairy gams and asked her if she thought that what her friends had described fit me in any way. She shook her head and laughed, then asked why I didn't shave.

"Because I don't care what other people think about what I look like. Mommy doesn't need someone else to tell me that my legs are hairy to know that they are, just like Mommy doesn't need someone else to tell me that my legs are nice to know that they are. What other people say isn't as important as how you feel about yourself. Shaving your legs won't make you a better person. Those girls shave their legs but it hasn't made them any nicer, now has it?"

She shook her head and gave me a somber "No." It broke my heart then because I was witnessing the realization within her that these girls she thought were her friends were exactly the type of people she did not want to be around. It was a heartbreaking thing to witness, especially after seeing the hurt in her eyes just moments earlier, but it was one that she needed to experience. At eight, you're so optimistic about everything, and you want to believe that everyone is nice, or that everyone can be, and so when it turns out that that's not the case, it can be a tragedy of sorts and all I wanted to do was take my little girl into my arms and hug her and tell her that if shaving her legs would make her happy then she could do it until the cows came home.

Instead, I took her into the bathroom, handed her my Venus razor and shaving cream and stuck out my hairy leg. She looked at it like it was some kind of scary science experiment, one that would be messy, dangerous, and fraught with complications. Which, if you're an eight year-old girl, is exactly the kind of science experiment you want to do. So she went to work, and after three cuts to my ankle, a muffled g-rated curse from me, a sasquatchy-looking blob of foam attacking her hand, and a rather long four minutes of tongue - and nail - biting concentration and suspense filled silence, she's come to the conclusion that shaving is simply too complicated to get into right now.

"I think I'll wait until I'm Hannah Montana's age to start shaving," she announced emphatically, her foamy, hairy hands waving in defeat at the remaining acreage of hair left remaining on my legs.

"That's my girl," I said, smiling. "Now go get Mommy the first-aid kit."

I haven't written a blog in months and for that I apologize. It's been a hectic time and I'm just tired...

But enough of the pity party. This is a list of things that have come to my attention that makes me question what exactly is depleting our common sense supply. Where has it gone? Has it developed cancer, like compassion has? Did it commit suicide like reason did? Or has it been kidnapped, like logic was? Whatever the case, please bear with me in this slightly organized, somewhat chaotic rant that may or may not piss you off, but it's doing wonders for me right now.

• Why do people who are against Health Care Reform(HCR) say "Well, my health plan is just fine." as though they expect it to be exactly the same with everyone? Don't they see that that's the problem, that it's not the same?



• why do people who are against HCR say "maybe you should have taken better care of yourself" or "maybe you shouldn't have gotten sick" when they hear stories of individuals whose insurance companies dropped them from their rolls because they were diagnosed with an illness? I'm sure Dana Reeves was doing everything in her power to NOT develop lung cancer, and yet she was diagnosed with it and died a year later from it. Her, a non-smoker, a healthy eater, a woman who was very conscientious about bacteria and the overall health of herself considering that her husband was a quadriplegic and she was the mother of a young son died cancer. Saying that she "should have taken better care of herself" is not only insensitive lacking in compassion, it's also ignorant.



• Why do people who are against HRC think that everything will be solved if people "just got better jobs"? Let's face it, society is built on a tier system, and some people will do far more menial jobs than others, and as a society, we expected that someone will do these things, like pick up our trash, serve us our food, fix our hotel bed and change our sheets, pick our fruits and vegetables, and slaughter our meat. There's nothing demeaning about those positions, and every single one of the people who do those jobs works very hard for little pay and obviously far less gratitude and respect than those who work white collar, professional and skilled careers, so why is it that they don't deserve good, affordable health care too, without having to somehow climb to the standards that someone else looking from above them socially has set?



• Why is it that those whom oppose HRC are screaming and shouting at town hall meetings, posting up pictures of Obama dressed as Hitler, calling him a Nazi, saying that he's going to kill Down Syndrome babies and grandmothers, and then claim that he's being uncivilized and rude and taking away their freedoms? Hasn't he been calm and rational throughout this entire debacle, despite the insults, the threats, the rude and childish acts perpetrated upon him by those who are the first to shout "socialism" and the last to explain it? Whether you agree with his policies or not, doesn't an accusation of lack of civility first require that one was civil to them first?



• Why is the media writing about the anti-choice activist who was killed in Michigan as though he was the only one who mattered in those killings? Why does the media do that? Two men were killed today, both shot by the same man, and the only one who's getting any focus is the one whose views happened to be "pro-life". Is the other victim's life simply not as important because he wasn't as vocal about his beliefs? I don't care what your opinion on abortion is - no one deserves to be killed for it - so why is it that the media seems to think that one is more notable simply because he happened to be anti-choice? I'm sure the opposite would ring just as true, and it would still be unacceptable. Two lives were snuffed out and both were important to those who loved them.



• Why are the politicians most rabid about protecting the "Sanctity of Marriage" the ones who can't seem to keep their penises in their pants? They espouse biblical teachings as their reasoning, and yet, were the government to mete out the biblical punishments for violating said teachings, they'd cry foul! Why are they so intent on foisting these laws upon others that they themselves are unable to respect via their own actions?



• Why is Sarah Palin still relevant?



• Why are people complaining about companies pulling sponsorship from Glenn Beck's television show? He's the very one who screamed about free markets; shouldn't he be the prime example of how free markets work? Wouldn't he be glad to be an example of the very policy he supports? I'm not bashing a free market system here, merely wondering why what's good for the goose is not good for the gander.



• Why did so many parents not want their children to listen to the President speak about the importance of staying in school and focusing on their education? The cries of "indoctrination" were just ridiculously parroted by parents who knew nothing other than what talking heads on the radio and televisions were telling them they should be afraid of. Yes, because the worst thing we can do for our children is to encourage them to succeed in life. Of course, that begs the question if it's not a good thing to encourage our children to succeed, then why complain when others endorse mediocrity? Perhaps it's because of whom the message was coming from, and not the message itself, but even that seems a bit trite, don't you think? The argument that probably takes the cake when used to explain away the "opting out" of many schools was that the speech was using "tax payer money" to promote Obama's "socialistic ideology". If telling children to do well in school is socialistic, sign me up for my first meeting of the Obama Socialist Party because I've been doing that from day one, as have my kids' teachers, police officers, fire fighters, representatives, etc..., the latter five of which are all paid with tax dollars.



• Why do people say that Obama hasn't fixed the country's problems yet so he's a failure yet, in the very same breath say that there's no way Bush could have prevented 9/11 from happening because he had only been in office less than a year? Can they not see just how absurd that is? A man is expected to pull this country out of a recession, faltering economy, two wars, crashing real estate market, jobless tailspin, and foreign policy nightmare in less than an eight month span, but Bush couldn't possibly have been able to appropriate additional funding for the FBI and CIA as had been requisitioned months prior? Someone please explain to me the logic in that. You know what, never mind - I know where that'll lead me, which brings me to my next confounding question:



• Why do people use circular reasoning to try and get out of having to actually explain things using facts? Shouting "it's a lie, it's a lie" over and over again doesn't make it any more or less true. This is the apparent tactic that some people have taken when arguing that Obama is a "muslin commie terrorist" who's also a Nazi. "WHY is he all of those things?" gets asked, and the explanation received is "because he is" which would be received with either the question as to why being asked again, or this:
  
  I'm pretty sure you see where this is going.



• What is so wrong with admitting that America as a country could be better? Why do those who not only claim, but also insist that America is a "Christian Nation" cannot find a little bit of humility like Jesus told us we should have? We're not perfect - no one in this world is perfect - so there can be no perfect country. We exist on a body of laws based on a document that many in the legal and political community believe to be a "living" one, so why, if it can evolve and improve, can we not admit that its improvement also means that we improve? Is it that difficult to say that we were wrong? We encourage our children to take responsibility for their actions, but when it comes to our government, we refuse to acknowledge even the most minutiae of flaws - unless, of course, it's in regard to the opposing party, then it's aaaaaaaaall G - and that only sabotages our future because this is the message we're sending to our children. Either we teach them the values through our own actions or we continue on with this "Do as I say, not as I do" attitude that's obviously done wonders for politics in general, right?



• Why can't they make Throwback Pepsi cost the same amount as regular Pepsi?



• Why are not utilizing solar and wind technology like Europe is to help lower our fossil fuel dependency? Hawai'i is surrounded by the Pacific, have the world's most active volcano, and yet we'll never be self-sufficient when it comes to energy because NIMBYs keep complaining. We said goodbye to the SuperFerry, costing 300 people their jobs because of NIMBYs. We're even more dependent upon the mainland for fuel because wind turbines and solar farms are "eyesores", yet walking around in orange leathery skin while wearing a pareo (or less) and shouting at people and calling them environmental terrorists is somehow "attractive"? Really? Protect the environment, huh? With that "Move over, bitch, my Hummer's taking both stalls at the nail salon so I can get my nails did, and don't look at me like that just because I threw my cigarette butt on the ground" attitude while having the audacity to have a "Malama da 'Aina" sticker on your bumper? REALLY?



• Why do parents dress their children up like miniature versions of themselves? I'm not talking about cute little matching family outfits - I live in the land of family portraits where all three hundred children wear the same freaking Palaka fabric - but the moms whose daughters wear the short skirts, the midriff bearing tops, and the makeup, or the fathers whose sons sport diamond earrings, atrocious dye jobs, and clothing with not only suggestive words and images on them, but downright inappropriate for them to view in the theater alone, much less on their bodies. Prostitots and mini-pimps aren't cute. There is nothing redeeming about them and instilling in them a sense of vain materialism and shallow sense of self does nothing to boost their self-esteem. Instead, it makes them dependent upon it, and there will come a time when they won't have it, and what will they have to fall back on? You?

I know this was long. I know this droned on, but after all this time did you expect something short and sweet? I'm neither short, and I haven't been called sweet in a long time, so putting those two words in conjunction with a description of me is SO not happening! But, I do thank you if you've stuck around this long. If you just skipped to the bottom, I've got only one thing to say to you.

Why do people think that you always have an ulterior motive when you want someone to do well, or do things for other people? Can't a person genuinely want things to go well for someone? Can't a person genuinely want to help someone succeed for nothing else other than see that person happy?

Sorry to disappoint certain someones but I have nothing to gain from the success of others except knowing that they've accomplished something they've wanted for a while. I'm not looking for accolades or prize ribbons. This isn't a beauty pageant and I'm not looking for the fucking tiara at the end of the runway.

When they give you a baby in the hospital after gestating for nine months and however many weeks, days, minutes, hours and seconds, they never tell you that any semblance of privacy and personal space you may have possessed are now nonexistent. They send you home with diapers, formula, and enough vaseline to keep a porn company in production for weeks, but never any advice on how to deal with never being able to pee alone, bathe alone, eat alone, or BE alone.

When you sign onto this whole baby business, forget what a hot meal tastes like. Forget what it feels like to have clean hair. Oh sure, you can wash it. Wash it twice a day, even. But forget it being clean. In less time than it takes oxygen to enter your blood cells, your child is going to have schmutz in your hair that'll make you wonder what exactly it is that you've been feeding it.

Bathroom moments will turn into sprint training. Want to go alone? Well...How fast can you pee? Wipe? Forget flushing - that'll alert the kid to your absence and then you'll have to deal with the guilt you'll feel when they flash that "you left me...ALONE" look at you through red-rimmed, tear laden eyes. Forget even going number two; you don't have time for that. No. Seriously. You don't.

But in the end it's all worth it when they look up at you with such sweet smiles and say their first word, that precious word that you never knew you waited a lifetime to hear, but when you do, you feel your heart stop.

"Dada".

Sometimes, you get a boost of drama from the sources you don't expect, and the solutions seem far away and fairly unreachable. I suppose that's normal; everyone has these moments at least once or twice in a year. I guess the fundamental lessons that we're supposed to learn from them is to one, never give up, and two, if you do give up, don't expect anyone to be sincere when they say that they understand because even if they'd have done it themselves, they truly don't understand.

You're going to have to deal with the ups and downs of life. That's a given. The real problem is how exactly you deal with it. Are you going to go into denial and let the world fall around around you, let yourself steep in your misery? Will you face your demons head on and charge forth like a rabid, colorblind bull in the middle of Forks, Washington?

I suppose when it all comes down to it, we end up falling somewhere in the middle.

It's been raining something fierce these past couple of days, and though it's supposed to ease off by Monday, come Wednesday we'll be seeing more rain. I have mixed feelings about this, because though we need the rain, it's put damn kinks in my plans.

I was supposed to go to a play this evening with my family, but the rains caused our road to be closed - yay - and we had fifteen cars parked in front of our gate because the intersection just a few feet away from said gate had been overtaken by a fast flowing river that had overflowed its banks. Lovely, no? In the opposite direction was debris, more fast flowing water - though not as much - and a line of cars, a fire truck, and onlookers.

Had we left this evening, I would have been able to meet up with a dear friend of mine whom I haven't been able to see for years. Of course, had we left this evening, we wouldn't have been able to return. The way home has been closed off due to flooding. Fun.

Our neighbor's yard is completely decimated, our yard feels like a soaked sponge, and I feel like such a schmuck for telling my friends that I'd be at the play, and then didn't show up. There's not much I could have done about it, I know, but I still feel poorly about the whole thing. So, hopefully I'll be able to meet up with my friend tomorrow if the weather abates enough.

Oh, and why should you call me Noah? Because I'd be toting my two boys and two girls across the flood. Duh.

The following link takes you to a story of one of the families that lives on our street whose home was flooded just the other day because of all this rain.

http://www.khon2.com/news/local/36035159.html

This one is about the rain on my side of the island.

http://www.khon2.com/news/local/36028394.html

...People are living with AIDS in this world today.

Mothers, Fathers, Sons, Daughters, Brothers, Sisters, Friends, Lovers.

Today we stop to take a moment to remember everyone who has come into our lives and brought with them the painful, yet important lesson that AIDS is.

AIDS isn't a disease that affects just the victim. It affects us all. The butterfly effect has fluttered her wings on society, and unless we stop, think, and educate each other, we will continue to ride the rippling waves that AIDS is in this world.

Cracked
My skin is falling off
Where you touched it last
Bleeding
My heart is on the floor
not beating
Crying
Drown in my tears caused
by your lying
Hurt
Like nothing else before
came your cruel cruel words

And the ache
in my soul
makes me feel like I am falling
into darkness
into night
with no wings to help me fly
away from
sorrow and from pain
the whispers from the memory
of life before you
before this
before the aching
of my life

Torn
From my fingers was
my hope once reborn
Gone
my ability to find reason
to move on
Missing
The heat between our lips
when we were kissing
Sweet
The taste nothing else holds
in this world for me

And the ache
in my mind
feels like all the stars have fallen
from the heavens
from the sky
and the world around me crumbles like the dry
eyes you now hold
and the smile
you never give me anymore
because the ache
you never felt
was always mine
and mine alone

With friends coming into town this week and next, with a self-imposed deadline, site updates, other site updates, OTHER site updates, and orders to go out, 4 kids to raise, husband to make feel macho, and friends to fellowship with, I think I'm about to explode.

And, as psychotic and self-prophesying as this may sound, I cannot wait until it gets even more crazy. I look forward to the chaos if everything goes right. I'll be living my dream, and I'll be thanking God for the blessing of it all. I won't complain, I won't whine, I'll take it all in and relish it with every ounce, every fiber of my being, because this is something that I have wanted for such a long time, beyond anything else in my meager existence, and to know that all my hard work towards this just might pay off...well, it's inspiring, invigorating, and motivating.

Having the ability to reach through the screen and slap a bitch right now would be fantastic. You know you've felt that exact same desire at least ONCE while reading something online. I don't care how patient you are, how religious you think you are, how much of a humanitarian you believe yourself to be. It's not a bad thing, being honest with yourself about your inner desires, so why hide it?

I'm slowly losing my patience with those who consider themselves to be internet warriors. Strong online, but weak in every other regard elsewhere. In the chatroom, they're the ones who say they'll kick your ass for saying something they didn't like. On forum boards, they're the ones who blackmail you with information you've shared in confidence because they "don't like you anymore". It's pretty petty and juvenile, and ranks right up there with the whole "will you be my girlfriend, check yes or no" crap from our time as tweens.

There's a growing need for people to act out online, like toddlers throwing tantrums about not getting their way. They act as violently in text as possible. With as much hate, rancor, and ire as humanly possible. It's one thing to vent your frustrations. I vent all the time. However, I'm not threatening to destroy lives as a result of my frustration or anger. There is a line that you draw in the sand when you choose to take a stand. What most of us never seem to fully comprehend, however, is where we're standing when that line has been drawn.

Which side have we chosen to stand on? Are we standing on the side that we'd want those we care for to be standing on? Or are we standing on the side that would choose against us? Do we become the hero or the villain? And what happens once we've made that choice? Are we bound to the rules that dictate just what exactly makes each one what it is? The definition of good and evil are clear. But as the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

So here I am standing, looking at this line, so distinct, so clear, and the sides are also just as clear. However, they both appear to be leading directly to my own personal Hell, and while I have no fear of it, I also have no real desire to get there any quicker. Either path will lead to hurting someone, something, and while I can probably live with the consequences, my conscience will keep on knocking on that door in my head that refuses to be opened. And it's that knocking that I'm not sure I can live with.

But, here I go, stepping across that line. I have made my choice. It was obvious a while ago as to which side I would take. Not straddling this line, albeit subtly, anymore.

The radio is going, featuring Michael Reagan, the husband is snoring, the kids are all sighing, Lotte has stopped coughing, the dogs are all barking, the wind has stopped blowing, the fridge is still humming, the cars are still driving, the fan is still blowing, the curtain is still moving, and I am still awake.

Some of you know that I've had heart problems since forever. I recently had a procedure done that was supposed to fix things, but it didn't work out as we all had hoped, so I'm going to have to have another one done soon. What I didn't expect was the difficulties I'd experience as a result of how my heart has reacted to the previous procedure.

While before, it would merely kick start into high gear, and being racing like it was in a rave dance off, now, it jump starts itself like a rocket, thumping in my chest something fierce, and I feel as though someone has punched me right above my breastbone. It's a very unnerving feeling, to say the least, but very shocking, and often times, can bring be to a standstill, shocking me into immobilization until the thumpa-thumpa-thumpa of my heart racing to catch up to some invisible white rabbit knocks some sense into me.

Well, yesterday morning, that immobilizing jump start occurred while driving home from dropping the kids off at school. While normally, it wouldn't be a problem, today, my body decided to go into blind, deaf, and paralyzed mode for exactly 4 seconds. (it's amazing how you're able to tick away seconds when you cannot see, hear, or feel anything other than the blood flowing in your veins) In that scant 4 seconds of complete and total vulnerability, I did the unthinkable. I ran a red light. With my 2 youngest children in the car.

I started crying as soon as I realized what had happened, and I couldn't believe the lives I had put in danger, especially those of my babies, and felt so hopeless and so pitiful. I rarely feel sorry for myself, so this bout of "woe is me" instead of "fucking doctor and his screw up" that I've had since I realized my surgery wasn't a success has really taken its toll on me. Now that I know that it's also causing me to endanger the lives of others, I'm feeling even more..."woe".

I don't like feeling helpless. I don't like feeling like an invalid. I know that as soon as the husband finds out (which he hasn't yet), he'll tell me I can't drive anymore. Oh Em Gee. That's going to kill me. My mobility...gone, too? WTF?

I guess until things get fixed in the ticker, it's for the best, but how much more complicated can this get? Will I need to wear that damn pacemaker like it was hinted? Ugh!

I have decided to kill off Plurk. I simply do not have the time to keep up with the karma points deemed necessary for status merit, or what have you. I have enjoyed my few weeks there, to say the least, but all in all, I simply cannot balance time between work, my family, and my new project. I'm already stretched thin as it is, and focusing any energy on yet another social networking site seems redundant and just a tad bit silly. I already have the facebook I don't pay attention to, and my high school's little member board that I haven't visited in a while, and the big MS to worry about.

Plurking is a great idea, if you live in areas where people spend a great deal of time online. My state doesn't really have as many individuals sitting at home, cruising the net as larger, more populated states. Also, with one of the lowest unemployment rates in the nation, people really don't have time to waste online plurking when they could be doing something else...like shopping!

Or blogging, as the case may be.

I will be sending my plurk to its final resting place after a farewell letter. Not many of my friends signed up to the plurk because I didn't invite many people to begin with. I know my friends, and what their limitations are. Asking some of them to take time out of their lives to get online and "plurk" would rank right up there with telling them to come over and unlace and relace all of the sneakers in my possession. You just don't do it.

So aloha to Plurk. I hope you take off, a la twitter.