i love you, dan!!!

i'd say that's a tad strange.  it feels like april outside. 
APRIL.  we arent even past the winter solstice, and it feels like
spring.  but you are well aware of this, already, dear... arent
you?  (you are the only person who will read this, probably. )  my little avatar weather girl on the left side of the screen
is wearing a short skirt, short sleeved shirt, standing next to a
christmas tree.

maybe the universe forgot that it's supposed to be 25, not 52.

how does this make sense?

... nooooo... there's no such thing as global warming!

remind me to download al gore's "inconvenient truth" film.

actually, i'll search for it RIGHT NOW!  WOOT

anyways i can't believe that i have not eaten anything yet, it's 2:30
and i just made some ramen.  usually i am starving about 5 minutes
after i wake up.

your present came in the mail today

can i open it and play with it?
i have to make sure it's all in working order and you won't be disappointed when you receive it, right!!:)

i will fix my chatterbox so you can write there... on your breaks?

lovelove love.  txt love!

makes for some interesting dreams... violent, morbid ones, for
me.  i don't know why, but i'm thinking i need something more
subtle or need to try again with less lavender oil or SOMETHING because
this is getting fucked up.

here's some snippits i can still remember.

dan and i were together for the most part in all of these, and there
was one point where we were celebrating at someone's new house... i
dont know if it was ours or someone elses... but it had a huge back
yard, and there were tons of people hanging out all cookout-style. what
was particularly fascinating about his back yard was that since it was
right next to an amusement park, there was part of a rollercoaster
coming over the fence, or we could just see it over the fence or
something.  apparently some people from the party decided to be
funny and go ride the rollercoaster over to our party, since the ride
stopped at the point it was turning right where it met the fence, and i
remember it turned into like a corkscrew or a barrel roll or something
right after it turned like 180 degrees.
so the ride stopped and somehow these guys all got out of their seats
and jumped off the ride to the ground, which was only like 5
feet.  everyone was laughing at them until someone started
screaming.  one of the guys had gotten stuck, dangling by his
foot, upside down, from the track.  the ride, being at the
opposite end of where the controller was, started going forward again,
right over this guys foot.  screaming and screaming and people
started running towards the fence, and then the ride stopped, backed
up, went over his foot again and again like 3 or 4 times, i don't know
why, because my brain is sick and morbid and this guys foot getting cut
off once was apparently not gross enough for this dream.  so it
runs him over a few more times before going away.  people who went
to go get him come back and they are like rushing him to a car
somewhere in the front, and all he has for a foot is a bloody
stump.  i remember trying not to look, in my dream, and like
hiding in dan's shirt.

so that's one.

another one.
i was in a basement somewhere, and i'm pretty sure i was black. 
ok.  weird.  i know.  whatever.  i think it may
have been our old house in champaign but we didnt have a basement, so
it was a weird conglomeration of places.  i remember there was a
man and i think another woman there with me, and the man was definitely
a bad guy, the woman, it was not so clear.  she went away before i
could figure that out.  but i was hiding behind a box or inside
something, under something, i dont know, but i didnt know if i was
hidden well enough, but i was not about to move to find out.  i
was terrified.  this guy was definitely  going to hurt me if
he saw me.  then he started pouring gasoline on everything,
including me.  i was  too scared to run at this point, so i
had a plan, as soon as he like turned around to light the match or
something, i was going to bolt for it, and hope that the sound of fire
and his paying more attention to the fire than anything else would make
for an unnoticed escape.  it did.  but i caught on
fire.  i was running up the stairs, putting out my arm
(successfully) and made a dash for the back door (of my champaign
house)... but the house was already catching on fire, and there was a
wall of fire out the back door.  i didnt know where the guy was at
this point, or the chick for that matter, so i said, ok i'm gonna jump
thru, even though i am covered in gasoline, but as soon as i hit the
ground i will just start rolling and i will be ok.  so i
did.  and i was ok, but apparently my dream decided that was not
scary enough so a big scary dog monster thing, i think it may have been
a cereberus(?), a dog with 3 heads, really big... appaeared out of
nowhere.  so i started climbing this big pine tree that was in our
back yard, up and up and up but it kept getting bigger or climbing with
me or something because i was never quite out of its reach far enough
for comfort.  i dont remember what happened after that really, but
there was definitely me flying through the air at some point, and some
scary ghosty girl thing like from the ring or the little kid from the
grudge was there, flying with me, being annoying.  lol.  i'm
pretty sure i told my brain to stfu at that point and made whatever
that was go away.

another one i remember parts of was in a school building, a huuuuuuuuge
old college building.  it was like an entire campus in one
building, gi-normous.   i dont think i ever saw the outside
but judging from all of the space i covered inside, it was huge. 
i was waking up from like, a party, in a video store?  i dunno
what that was all about but i remember the party the night before, and
it was like a big video store, with an arcade and shit.  i
remember the first thing i thought was "what the hell happened to dan?"
so i started looking for him... drunk passed out people everywhere... i
started heading up this  long hallway and i was opening up doors
into classrooms, and eventually i found craig.  i asked craig if
he knew where dan was, and he didnt, but he said something like "did
you try calling him?" so i tried calling... no answer.  i remember
talking to someone on my phone at some point, saying i thought they
were calling to tell me "yeah.... we found a body... we need you to
identify it?" but luckily it was something totally unrelated.  so
we kept looking, craig and i together, and all of the doors to these
rooms had names.... i don't remember any of them except for one, which
i thoght was particularly amusing in my dream.  "Sex with the
Dead" (or something that insinuated people having sex with
ghosts.  not corpses.)  was the name of the class held in
this room.  so i opened the door, laughed a little, and then
moaned into the room like a weirdo.  at this point i was just
having fun.  eventually we got into a dormitory sort of area, with
bedrooms and lots of bathrooms.  there was a right hand turn
coming up in the hallway, and there was an old wooden bench on the left
side.  i guess at this point my search for dan had turned into a
search for my cat, because there, sitting on the bench, were katsumoto
and onyx, just chillin, sleepin, whatev.  haha

and i picked katsumoto up like OOOOHHHH MY BABY THERE YOU ARE.... OH
MOMMY WAS SO WORRIED SHE WAS LOOKING EVERYWHERE FOR YOU.... how did you
get so faR?  i didn't know you guys came ALL the way up
here!  lol

weird.

anyways i know i had like 589735 dreams more last night but those were the only ones i remember.  vaguely.

figured you needed something amusing to read at work

and it isnt.

raining.  that is.

i am jsut extremely bored.  waiting for my love to get off work so
he can take me out to dinner.  lol.  i want me a MARGARITA.

and i shall have it.

precious.

so what's new in my life?  um.  here's he fast version.

moved out of west side place.  lived at home in stoughton for 2
weeks.  driving sucked.  moved in here.  first few weeks
were frustrating because my roommates have psychotic passive-aggressive
tendencies (fuck you jack for calling me passive-aggressive.  now
that i've seen what it really looks like, i know what an insult it was
that you thought that about me.  you have no idea how lucky you
are you've never actually met a passive-aggressive person before!!!!
let alone lived with 1 or 2 of them at once.) ahem.  things
settled down, dan got furniture, my internet is still broken, dan's mom
is crazy most of the time, aaaaannndddd my boss hates me.

that pretty much sums it up.

i am hungry, tired, i have a cold, my body hates me again, the weather
is turning ucky, and i have to park 8 miles away every night because
parking downtown sucks big hairy salty sweaty nasty donkey balls. 
that's my complaining section.

going to circle tomorrow for the first time in probably a year, maybe more, and it's dan's first time! hooray!

but, (more complaining)  it's supposed to rain.

fuckity fuck fuck.

wow dan needs to hurry up.

something about rainy days just makes me blog, i guess.

the moving process has begun at the jack + mer residence.  jacks dad is here right now, and they are going to be moving all of the big shit out.  entertainment center, coffee table, one of the couches, dining room table, bookcase thingers, big tv, yikes.  it's going to be very empty here.  kind of sad to say goodbye to my nice luxury apartment, but i dont mind so much, since the place i am moving into is actually pretty sweet, and my roomates are going to be great.  even if it won't have a pool, a jacuzzi tub, a fireplace, and a sweet kitchen... i think it'll be a good trade.  i still feel bad about separating the kitties, though.

at least it started raining and cooled things down so i can get some serious packing done.

ok dan, i am writing a blog.  even though i have nothing really to write about.  but i am good at randomly spewing forth useless conversation.

i am glad the mexican woman working at the bank today was nice... ( i managed to find probably the only predominantly spanish-speaking bank in madison.  it was interesting.  everyong was mexican.  everyone.) and i liked her because she knew wtf she was talking about.  i sat down at her little desk and i told her i was there because of some issues with my account.  "first of all, i wanted to say that i was with this bank when it was first federal, and i've been banking here for around 9 years.  and i've never had a problem, until the last week.  when i had two problems"  i told her about the first one--a check that the teller forgot to enter, but it got fixed in their little backup system where everything gets double checked.  so that was fine.  but this time, my account got overdrawn for some reason.  after i gave her my spiel about what happened in the drive through on thursday afternoon, she looked at my account and saw that my account was overdrawn because the teller, who told me i couldnt take out $10 because i only had .41 (yes, i am this broke.) in my account, had withdrawn the $10 anyways, and didnt go back to fix it after i had left.  if this hadn't happened, my account wouldnt have overdrawn.  i'm glad that she could figure that out because it's way over my head, i had no idea why my account had overdrawn.  so the lady was nice and said she would talk to the manager, who would be in tomorrow, and give me a call.  since it was a teller error i would certainly be refunded for the $60 of overdraft fees.  hooray.  if i get a call tomorrow saying that the $10 that this chick's drawer was supposed to be over was not there, and essentially saying "too bad, we fucked up, but you're gonna pay for it" i am going to blow something up.  probably that bank.

after i steal all the money from the vault.  and am safely in mexico.  then i will blow it up.

on another note, which is related, if you connect the dots, i am starting a commune.  maybe in hawaii, with dan.  maybe here.  who knows what the future may hold.  but this is a good idea, this one that i have.  i hate money so much, and i have talked to several people who hate money just as much and would LOVE to live in a commune and live off the land, grow our own food, deal with corrupt society as little as possible... sigh!  how lovely it would be.  so i am in the market for a large farmhouse with lots of land for people to build their own little houses on, so that we can all live together like happy pagan hippies with kitties and doggies and a goat named francis.  and maybe, someday, when we get used to it, we will switch to solar power and dig a well and be completely self-sufficient.  maybe.

i am mildly handy, i have a highly handy boyfriend/future husband, i can cook when i want to, i clean like a motherfucker when i want to (and i'm fast about it, too.  people have been amazed.) i am crafty and i have a college degree in art and design, so i can probably decorate like a motherfucker, too, when i want to.   or i could build a website, or something.  yeah.  that would be useful for a commune.  a website.

anyways my point is, i could do it.  and i want to.  so someday, children.  you will have to knock on my door, miles from civilization, to reach me.  scary.

upside--when world war 3 happens, we will have a lovely bunker.  then we can repopulate the planet.  no more stupid people! hooray!

in other news,  i love my boyfriend, he is perfect, things at home are good, life is grand, i'm moving into my new awesome apartment with my new awesome roommates in less than a month, and i dont have to go back to school in september.  YIPPIE!

it's that time of year again, children.  the time of year when i am in "perky-mode" and i must write the obligitory post-psg-post.

in my ripe old age of 23, just on the brink between wisdom and senility, i have come to learn to never ignore my instincts.  so i went on my week-long pagan festival camping trip with dan... prepared for rain.  and boy did it rain!  it wasnt like the year they dubbed "pagans in the mud" but it was pretty soggy.  and i am apparently awesome at keeping everything, for the most part, dry.  except for things in the cooler inside ziplock bags that do not do such a great job of keeping water out, afterall.  including, but not limited to, my coffee for the fae.  but i am an idiot for putting it in there in the first place.  so.  i can accept that.  and the chaos faeries did not punish me for being a bad perky.  so i am still awesome for knowing it was going to be a wet week.  it rained just about every day, sometimes torrential, sometimes just a sprinkle in the morning, but i was prepared, damnit!  prepared!

also, a tip for people going on loooong drives, bring a book.  and read it. out loud.  it makes everybody happy, and the flatlands of illinois and indiana seem somewhat less dull.  thanks to pam for the idea.

deadly spiders are bad.  especially brown recluses and black widows.  when they are on your leg or arm, respectively.

my week in general can be summed up in about a thousand words but i can narrow it down to one.  fire!  most of our time was spent practicing spinning poi, taking poi workshops, and finally, on saturday night, me getting up the courage to actually spin with fire.  it was amazing.  not only did i have a crowd of supporters, who cheered for me as i stepped out in the fire spinning zone and lit my poi, but also cheered for me when i lit my ass on fire (take a moment to read that again for clarity, if you are just skimming.)... and also cheered for me again when i finally extinguished my poi... and then about 6 people ran up to me and gave me big hugs.  benji, whos advice and compliments on fire spinning i take the most seriously, even said that it was one of the best virgin burns he's seen.    i will have pictures soon to post on here.  man.  talk about a rush.  terrifying, liberating, and empowering... one of the scariest things i've ever done.  people say when you light up your poi one day and you are NOT scared... it's time to stop.  so that's encouraging.  because it scared the shit out of me.

anyways it was wonderful to see all of my favorite pagans... pan, river and bearle, steve, nataraj, crow, shelly... and as usual, i made a ton of new friends as well as strengthening the friendships i had already made.  next year, river invited dan and i to camp in chaos camp, which to me is an honor and will make next year even more exciting.  i won't forget the sacrificial peeps!

there are so many other things to write about... but i think they will have to come at a later time.  right now i am consumed with laundry and cleaning, and being at "home."

the 51-week supply run is under way again, and next year will be better than the last, and i hope it will always be that way.

yeah so it's funny that i can remind myself to not close this window while i open a new tab to look up the number for chinese food, and then go right ahead and close it anyways, and when it asks me if i want to close the window i have two options: yes, and cancel.  so i click cancel.  it closed it anyways... and i lost about an hours worth of writing.  mother.  fucker.  i am like in tears.

god i am so mad at myself i don't even want to write again even though i remember the gist of it and can probably rewrite it better anyways.  i hate it when i do that.

i will, however, rewrite it, because it's for dan.

i remember the subject was "fake tans are in."  completely random.

anyways, it started out, me saying:  it's really depressing how clueless i used to be.  i just read through as much of my blog backposts as i could handle, which is until about november of '04.  if you've read my backposts you will not have read anything about jack after our relationship started to fail and after it had failed, because i deleted them.  this was because his students were stalking him online and there is personal shit that 13 year olds really don't need to know about their computer teacher.  see, i really am a nice person.  the posts that remain about jack are really old, from when we were first dating and apparently i had the idea in my head that we were perfect for eachother, when in actuality, we were completely incompatible from the start and i was just fooling myself.  it sounds a little harsh i guess, and there were a lot of things that led to the ultimate destruction of jack and i, but i am glad that we are able to remain friends and roommates without much conflict and we know each other well enough now that we can have arguments and be perfectly fine with each other the next day.  it's nice to have a friend at home.  i am not necessarily happy that things did not work out between jack and i, but i am happy that things ended up the way they did, because they have landed me in the situation that i am currently in.

anyways that was a tangent from the original post.  the point is that it's weird to think that i've come this far and i can look back and see with clarity and realize how much i have changed since last summer and before.  i remember the healing process and it was not so long ago but things are just so completely different now, it's ridiculous.  it's ridiculous because now i know that i am genuinely happy in a relationship and i am not just tricking myself into some kind of false happiness.  i've tried to think about it, think to myself, what is making me unhappy in this new relationship, and there really just isnt anything.  it's amazing.  amazing i tell you!  i've never been in this position before!

i feel like i am being spoiled, because i am not used to such kindness, such affection.  i am not used to my boyfriend being so nice to me.  i'm not used to people going out of their way to make me happier, more comfortable, more satisfied.  it makes me want to spoil him back, even if sometimes i don't know what to do or say to make him feel that way, but i try.  and i think it might be working.   it feels like we are perfectly matched, a true yinyang, and i read in a post from last spring when cougar gave me a lot of advice and he asked me what i really want out of a relationship, and after a lot of thinking i came up with "to feel the exact same about the other person as they feel about me."  and i really feel that i may have found this.  can i get a hallelujah.

now don't go thinking that this is a negative statement, because it isn't, but i am terrfied.  terrified of losing this feeling.  terrified of not being sublimely happy with dan forever.  it's so precious to me that i am so afraid it's going to slip away.  i texted him this today, and i think it should be our relationship motto "I can't wait to be happy with you forever."   it doesnt make a lot of sense but i feel like it makes perfect sense for me right now.  i guess i am just scared that as time progresses the same-feeling-ness that we have right now will start to tip in one direction or the other, and maybe one of us will start to hold a grudge for tipping the balance and i really just can't even stand the thought of that right now.  it makes me nervous.  and i know being nervous about it only makes it worse and more present and more dangerous but i can't help it.  i can't stand the thought of feeling any differently about dan.  i only want it to keep getting better.  yes please. 

it might sound like i am being insecure again and maybe i am just a little, but it doesnt really bug me.  i'm too happy to care.  i'm too happy for it to get to me.  and what else is there to do besides wait and see and enjoy myself and my boyfriend.  afterall, i am sublime.

so if i were going to sum up this whole idea i had in my head in a sentence or two, it would be: it's depressing how deprived and blind to it i used to be.  i am truely happy right now.  thank you, dan.  i really appreciate it. <3

nobody reads this anymore, but i really don't care.

i guess i am in the mindset that if i keep writing, maybe someone will notice.

my cousin BJ got married on saturday, again.  (this is his second.)  it was fun, even though i had to spend time with the side of my family i generally tend to avoid.  i was able to put on my happy shiny face and at least convince myself that i was not miserable.   the wedding was gorgeous.  it was in a greenhouse/botanical gardens place with a pretty gazebo and trees and flowers and pretty.  my mom did all the flowers.  she was stressed out about it for a long time, of course, but it all turned out perfect and everyone thought they were beautiful.  it was a wild flower theme... very pretty.  the reception was fun, dinner was good, open bar, mer got drunk and danced her little happy ass off, and then decided she was going to catch the bouquet.  she had her little heart set on it.  and anything mer wants badly enough, mer gets.   i leapt into the air higher than i think i've ever jumped before, got a hand on it, and i think laurel got a hand on it too, but i yanked it pretty hard before it was even within either one of us's complete control, i felt a flower break, too, i think, but i didnt care!  it was almost mine!  my feet hit the floor again and i went into an instinctive protective hunch, wondering if any of the other rabid women were going to try to rip it from my possession!  but instead anne (bjs new wife) came running up to me and gave me a huge hug and kiss, and i was victorious!   after all that smack talking, telling everyone i was going to catch it, i caught it!  i really did it! hooray!   the funny thing about this is that this is the first bouquet i really fought for.  the first bouquet i ever caught was at bj's first wedding, ironic.  i was probably 14.  i didnt even jump, i just stood there because someone made me, and it was like women jumping in front of me in slow motion, missing, missing, missing, and plop, it landed in my hands.  i was like huh?  i dont want it!  don't look at me! aah! attention! no! the second bouquet i tried to catch was last summer at jack's friends' wedding, and it totally went in a different direction than me, there was no hope of catching that one.  (but jack caught the garter belt and switched with the girl who caught the bouquet, so i ended up with the bouquet anyways. lol.)  i've only been to one other wedding that i remember, and i dont know if we even stuck around for long enough for her to throw the bouquet. (friends/coworkers from years before, nikki and scott)

so anyways, in honor of my growing love and happiness with lalaboy, who i guess i should probably call by his real name, dan, and in light of my good omen of bouquet catching, and nearly dying from not seeing him for 3 days (god it's so lame i know, but i love it) we are now official.  yes, it's true kids, mer has a boyfriend again.  and she is sublimely happy.  it's sick!

i've got a good feeling about this...

so i realized today that most people generally don't post personal stuff about themselves online (excluding the teenage girls on myspace who post their phone numbers, addresses, and life stories in their profiles and blogs and then proceed to obtain sexual offender stalkers who kidnap them and... well the rest is up to your sick imagination, you sick fuck!)  but i'm talking about stuff people generally don't want other people to know.  and this led me to the conclusion that maybe when people do post personal things about themselves, including, but not limited to, their love lives, they are probably just looking for attention.  what's sad about that is i totally just described myself.  there are more than a couple people who probably read this (if they didn't remove me from their lists because i didnt post for a long time) who i probably DON'T want to know all of this shit.  and that makes me a little attention-starved whore who is just looking for someone to sym/empathize, or looking for some kind of validation.

admitting there is a problem is the first step to recovery.

onward to more of the personal things that people should probably not know about:

stalking people on the internet is something i have recently become pretty good at.  finding and reading people's blogs, and then going on and reading their ex-girlfriends blogs, reading anybody who makes comments on blogs/profiles that sound flirtatious' blogs, and generally doing things that are not good for ones mental health.  i seriously doubt that this is a rare occurance in womens' lives... maybe it's part of my newfound courting ritual... if i stalk them for long enough and find only a few minute things that bug me, maybe they are good enough for me.  (in retrospect, finding 80,000 porn sites and links to myspace whores' booby profiles in your already-boyfriends' browser history should have been a good indicator that said boyfriend was not good for me.) 

it started out with an ex boyfriend, right around the time i started my OWN secret blog, when i found out he had a new girlfriend.  now, my jealousy was completely unjustified, because i was the one who broke up with the psycho in the first place (no offense, will, if you read this, but you WERE psycho back then. )  then i decided that just stalking him and his new gf was not good enough, and i started leaving "anonymous" messages on her lj saying that he was cheating on her, etc.  eventually i was caught and confessed and realized i was a sick fuck, just like the rest of you.  i got over it, and moved on with my life.  good, great, grand.  all better. 

apparently not.  i'm not going to go into detail about my last relationship, because there is a possibility that there are people reading this who know him and things from my perspective planted into their little heads could damage his reputation and job.  i've dealt with this shit, and i'm pretty far along the road of recovery.  i dont feel the need to discuss it any further, but lets just say my "stalking" crossed lines of privacy, and ultimately the entire scenario was what brought our relationship to a crashing end.  leaving my already damaged trust capabilities in a pile of rubble, with me standing in the middle, and the only thing left to do was try to build some sort of a shaky shelter out of the smashed bits.  i think i did pretty good.  i'm a crafty person, afterall.  thank goddess.

i like to think that i am already over blaming people (person) for damaging my trust and thereby ruining many of my relationships since, but it all really goes back to that one person.  sure, i've told myself a million times that i can't give him that power, that he hurt me, and that i let him do it and in the future it might happen again, that he doesnt deserve to have that over me.  but that doesnt stop me from noticing that i was perfectly fine before that shit happened.  i used to be secure!

anyways the whole point of why this matters to me right now is because i really like the afforementioned-in-the-last-post lalaboy, and in my digging today i found a couple of things that i want to talk to him about, and even though they are important to me, i know that talking to him about them will make it all better, and maybe rest my prying soul to ease.  sure, he's got skeletons in his closet, but i think i like his skeletons. <3

sweet my clothes are dry i can put on something besides pj pants...

which means i can also stop whining.