This Blog Has A.D.D.

Last Blog Post........On Blogger And I'm Moving

2018-08-22T04:56:00.000-04:00

No I am not giving up on blogging, I have just made my own site on Wix and have moved to another place, so this is my last post on blogger. This site will still remain up as long as blogger allows it though. I might reference an older post or I might do a throw back Thursday type thing every now and then on the newer blog with old stories I've written that I have wanted to rewrite or edit. Because I love nothing more than procrastinating and putting in the least amount of effort with the most amount of recognition or praise. It's so fetch.

I've been having mixed feelings about being on blogger for years. I have had trouble trying to mess with my layout without massively messing up how things were.....laid out. I've been aggravated with the fact that for some reason I kept having issues putting up pictures on my blog to the point where I had to download the blogger app onto my phone and put up pics on there in the order I want them, then either write the blog through the app, or going onto the site itself on a computer and then editing and writing the post there. But that's all old hat now. I'm on Wix from now on. I really like how everything is so customizable and easy to do so. It's amazing and quick. No this is not an ad, but someone can pass it on to Wix that I am willing to accept money for the glowing review.

Please follow me on Twitter: @AdorablyDead1 where I tweet and pin new posts to make sure you don't miss me!

On to other news:

When I was younger I was surprised to learn that there were Native American people indigenous to Maryland because I disliked living here so much I honestly never thought anyone else would willingly choose to live here no matter what time period.

True story.

Whenever my Mom would ask me what I was going to do when I grew up it was always the little kid equivalent of "getting the hell out of here." Then I grew up and realized that mental health, money issues, and familial ties were a thing...and a bitch. But now my siblings are all grown up and I have Facebook to stay in touch with family and friends and the ties that keep me here in Maryland are growing weaker and weaker.

Oddly enough I don't hate Maryland. I have weird state and city pride for someone that wants to get the hell out of dodge so much. I just think that it's a nice place to visit but not to live. I have way too many bad memories that keep getting in the way and I can't seem to better myself while I live here. Not for long anyway. Something always gets messed up. However, I promised myself at 18 I'd leave and I'm 32 now. This state and city has just run its course.

I have a friend who lives in Erie which is where I'm going to move in December. I'll actually be able to live on my own without a house full of people, or a house where people are always yelling at each other. I can actually make a fresh and new start since she will be the only person that will know me there and the cost of living is much lower than Baltimore. I'll have my own room again and it will be completely furnished so all I have to do is cull all the material possessions owning me and bring what I need to bring. And I'll have an 8 hour buffer zone between me and Maryland....I really need that buffer zone.

My postings will probably be even more sporadic than usual as I try and work my ass off to save up money for the move, find a job, and pack and prepare.

Here's to hoping for brighter days though and I will catch you on the flip side come December. Smooches pooches y'all.

Missed Connections

2018-06-11T16:42:00.002-04:00

Pendulum is the only name I can recall him by and I can barely remember his face now. His memory is a blur of facial features significant to him and stereotypical early 2000’s mall goth garb. Pendulum is also the name of his drink he made up that fifteen year old me is currently getting drunk on. Some sort of trashcan party drink he makes from all the booze at a party and in which Goldschlager is definitely a part of. It’s always different but somehow specific to him, and never tastes like your typical trashcan party drink. Or so I’m told. This is the first time I’ve met him. This is the first time I’ve drank his particular drink. My taste buds are at least confirming that it’s truth I’m hearing.

We’re at one of the many infamous parties currently being held in the apartment of my also underage friend who is living with her over-aged girlfriend. Pendulum is old enough to actually buy the alcohol so he is too old for me, besides he has a girlfriend, but he’s super nice. And I am getting super drunk… and super friendly and philosophical. So we can at least be friends. Everyone at this party is now my friend or potential friend in fact.

Besides three other instances that stick out, the rest of this night is a blur of drinking, laughing, dancing, and just shooting the shit. Soon the party begins to wind down. My friend and her girlfriend retire to their room for the night. Some people leave with their designated drivers. Otherwise since a lot of us are drunk, underage, or both, we’re all staying the night finding whatever place we can to rest or lay down. My friend Sara who I came with and I have both told her grandmother and my mother that we would be at the other’s house, so I really have no place to go at this point. Which is OK with me, because I’m still up, and I’m still talkative and so is Pendulum. I vaguely remember holding a cup of water as we both decide to head to the balcony since people are still trying to sleep.

Drinking always makes me hot and it’s so nice and cool out here. I can barely remember what we talked about while we looked up at the stars. Some vague conversation about paganism, different types of drunken people, and life in general floats through my mind but sadly there is nothing concrete that I can pin down and say, ‘Yes! That’s exactly what we talked about! This deep, profound thing that made me think for a week after! This is what was said!’

As I stare off into the distance at the complex around me, we realize that somehow it became 6 am and the sun is rising. I’m finally tired and we both retreat inside after saying goodnight to each other. I don’t remember saying goodbye though. I think he slipped past my radar and was either gone or sleeping by the time I left. I did, however, see him about a week later.

My friend Penny and I had popped into the local Hot Topic. As we headed to the clearance rack, there was Pendulum with his girlfriend. I was taken by surprise. First by seeing him and second by the big, warm hug that he gave me. After asking how I was, I was given a short introduction to his girlfriend. We were able to catch up a little with each other and then they had to leave. I wound up having to explain to my friend who he was since random twenty somethings didn’t usually come up to hug my awkward teenage ass back then. It was then I realized that I had forgotten, once more, to get any contact info for my new potential friend. I rushed out to the front of the store but they were long gone by then and our peer groups never crossed paths ever again.

Not all missed connections stick out in my mind like Pendulum’s. Honestly if it wasn’t for the hours of long discussion out on the balcony it probably would never have and his memory would be even more blurred to me than it already is. But we did and so now a fond memory is stuck there with the lingering wonderment, am I stuck in his somewhere? Are the same missed connections also missing their connection with me? Is there a part of Pendulum that sometimes stands on the balcony and discusses philosophy he can’t remember with fifteen year old me at night?

***

I'm working on a book called The Exquisite Agony Of Things. It's just a bunch of essays on the moment of exquisite agony of various topics. Just, exactly what it says on the tin. Many things can be labeled as agonizing, nostalgia, pain, pleasure, so it's not just depressing things. One of my thought pieces was on missed connections when I realized that the thing I was trying to get across was not very well represented by this particular writing. I even tried writing another paragraph at the end to explain it more but then I realized that if I couldn't explain it within the thought piece itself and I absolutely had to write an addendum to explain it, I would probably be better off writing a different one with a different missed connection.

This memory was too distant, and too nice and just something fond that I recall from time to time. Like sometimes I still wonder what he's up to and how he's doing. However, considering how messed up a lot of people's lives I know became, part of me is OK just sticking him to memory and being done with it that way. Kind of like a 'don't meet your heroes' type of deal.

What are some of your missed connections that stick out in your mind?

The Calamity Of SESTA/FOSTA

2018-06-02T20:39:00.001-04:00

About a month or so ago I came out on my vanilla twitter as a sex worker. Usually I keep the two very distant from each other, but I felt the need to get the word out even more about the travesty that is SESTA/FOSTA, otherwise known as HR1865. I promised to write a blog not just educating people on the bill but detailing the ways in which other sex workers could protect themselves and ways to get around it. That fell through because I have a habit of putting my foot in my mouth and biting off more than I can chew. I began to question the legality of what I was about to do around the time that a rumor was going around that Twitter was banning and shadowbanning people for using SESTA or FOSTA as a hashtag. I got in contact with a lawyer I follow on my sex work twitter who specializes in this type of stuff and he confirmed that writing about how to get around the bill could definitely put me in legal trouble...but I could write about the bill and ramifications of it and educate people on it.

I didn’t know what to write and I was captivated by my own anxiety as I kept getting bombarded with update after update on the bill and all the trouble it was causing. At the same time I was working hard, not just to pay the bills and get by, but to learn about the repercussions this bill would have on me as a phone sex/cam operator and clipsite model and how I could keep my head above water.

It seemed we were all running around with our heads cut off, so I focused instead on tweeting, retweeting, and sharing information directly with my online community on the other twitter. I shared numbers of politicians and representatives to call and Whitehouse petitions on my secret Facebook to my friends, pleading them to sign it and pass it around. I shared links and information and twitter threads.

By now you’re probably saying, ok Addy, what exactly is this bill and why is it so horrible? Glad you’re interested.

SESTA/FOSTA is a bill that was purported to have been made to help sex trafficking victims. However, it was turned into a frankenbill and had things slipped into it under the radar of the politicians that were to sign it.

Many advocacy groups for human trafficking and sex trafficking victims have come out against this bill as well as the Department of Justice. Part of what this bill does now that is so detrimental to not just sex workers and human trafficking, but to the internet and net neutrality itself, is that it holds websites personally responsible for the stuff on their site.

You might be thinking that’s actually a good thing but it’s not. Take this hypothetical scenario as an example: We know each other on Facebook. I start spouting off some crazy shit about how you’re a bad parent or how you work the street corner, or something. Before you could either block me or report me to Facebook as some of your options. Maybe if it was bad enough you could take me to court to take legal action against me. Now, instead of that, you can personally hold Facebook accountable for allowing me to write those things to begin with and take them to court instead.

Let’s move away from the hypothetical into the reality of it. Backpage was a website where sex workers, specifically escorts, were able to advertise their services. Craigslist personal ads were also taken advantage of in this way. Sex traffickers were also hiding in those advertisements though and taking advantage of the purpose of those sites. One created a safer haven where consensual sex workers were able to more easily filter through clients and mitigate the risks involved with their jobs. The other was for hookups.

Backpage was also used by police and advocacy groups that tried to help trafficking victims get out of the circumstances they were under. You see, even though it provides an avenue for traffickers to begin with it also keeps things in sight for the people that are out there trying to keep that from happening. It makes things easier. Backpage was sometimes also the only way that those groups or lawyers could get in touch with their clients if their phone numbers and whereabouts kept changing.

Now because of SESTA/FOSTA those sites have either been shut down completely or have shut down those parts of their site in order to stay current with the law. What this means is that consensual sex workers have been pushed out onto the streets where they can be picked up by pimps instead of clients and are unable to effectively screen people like before. It has put them at risk even more so of being raped, or murdered. The longer this bill is in effect the more at risk they are of being made sex trafficking victims themselves. In fact after the bill was passed one sex worker was picked up by a pimp pretending to be a normal client. When she refused to work for him he held her hostage and beat her for two hours. There are reports that since this bill passed 13 sex workers have gone missing with 2-3 of them reported dead. This bill is literally killing sex workers.

Even if you for some reason don’t care about sex workers, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that the trafficking victims on those sites don’t just go away because the sites are not there.Now they have been pushed underground where it is harder for them to be caught, harder for them to be rescued, easier for them to be trafficked. (

Police Realize FOSTA has made their jobs harder)

Even sites and groups designed to not advertise but to be a safe place for sex workers to help screen clients and discuss ways to stay safe and get help if needed are being shut down due to the bill. Professional Femdom sites that are located overseas are banning American users so they are not accused of trafficking or helping traffickers because this bill, and sex trafficking statistics, count consensual work in with their numbers.

It goes even further than that. Google Drive has been locking people out of their accounts and deleting any type of porn or risqué media inside. Sex worker or not, it doesn’t matter. What effects us will eventually effect you and that’s why it is so important to stand up for sex worker rights and for net neutrality.

And because they do not allow workers access to those files to copy them to their computer, assuming that they have a computer and aren’t using some sort of app, those clips are forever lost to some of them. Not only can you not send a naughty video to your significant other, but workers who rely on clips for money are finding that their entire catalogue of work is inaccessible. They are being shut out of their only job. Every e mail to a client is a risk. I’ve even had to change my e mail and cloud providers, even though I’m on clipsites, a good portion of that money is made through direct sales and my clips are done by directly delivering via e mail.

I know that this blog post seems almost rambling but I really wanted to get this out quickly, not just because it is massively overdue, but because today is National Sex Worker Day.

On behalf of sex workers, I urge you to please sign this Whitehouse petition against SESTA/FOSTA I created. The last one only got half the signatures and I am hoping we can get even more this time. We must not stop until this bill is abolished.

Repeal SESTA/FOSTA

In the meantime, other ways you can support sex workers is by sharing this petition after its has been signed. Talk to your friends about it. Start a discussion about whorephobia and bodily autonomy. Remember that we are humans, sisters, mothers, even brothers as sex work is not just women. We could be your neighbor...or the blogger you like. Since sex work covers everything from escorts who hide their identities online until you are face to face with them to strippers, chances are you know a sex worker even if you don’t think you do.

For even more information please visit

FOSTA Updates to read about things that have happened and are happening because of this heinous bill.

30 Day Letter Challenge: Your Favorite Internet Friend

2017-05-07T02:08:00.001-04:00

Dear Chris,

I haven't heard from you in so long. But then again we really only communicated through comments left on each other's blogs so I guess that makes sense. Especially if I haven't updated in so long.

I really hope that you are doing well. I hope that you started blogging again, I really liked reading about your life and your progress and process you went through in writing your book. I wonder if you ever finished it. I can't remember what your blog was called. I kept it in my reading list but if you changed the name or anything like that, I wouldn't know. I also don't know if it would pop up in my reading list again if you started it back up under the same name (which I've forgotten as I am wont to do) since you deleted it.

If you read this feel free to say Hi. I really hope that you continued writing, even if that meant moving on to another story in the meantime if you were stumped with the original one.

Bye,
Addy
****

You ever wonder about people? I do all the time.

30 Day Letter Challenge: A Stranger And Your Ex Lover or Crush

2017-05-05T05:18:00.000-04:00

Dear Woman In Ollie's,

Do your eyes work? Better yet, does your mouth work?

Ok, so I know that I was a bit distracted but in my defense those peeps plushies were huge, cute, and on sale....and I was walking at a snail's pace. It's not like I cut you off dashing like a madman to the check out line. Also in my defense, you totally saw my cart and me coming. I know because when my paranoia senses were kicking in and I turned, you were inches from crashing into me and my cart. When I looked over I was met with the smile of the clueless and the dead eyes of a bargain shopper staring directly into my soul.

I'm just saying you could have said excuse me or something to warn me.

Dear Maryland Drivers As A Collective,

I'm not sure if you've noticed lately, but did you know that your blinkers aren't working? I'm sure the fact that you all keep cutting me off is just a big coincidence and a huge misunderstanding. There's no way you're all this moronic and a trip to your local mechanic is sure to get this problem fixed. Also, when the light is red, it means stop. Not gun it. Just a little driving fact you didn't know.

Oh, and when you're at a four way stop, you're supposed to take turns in a clockwise manner and usually the person who gets there first is the first to go. Another driving tip you don't seem to know either.

Dear Theresa,

I should have listened to you when you told me you were too broken. I should have listened to you when you warned me that your ex called you a demon.

I just thought your ex was a bitch. I thought two broken people could make one whole person, not one shattered individual left behind. I didn't know. I was in love.

Even still, there are no words or excuses for the hell you put me through. One flash in the pan relationship and it took almost ten years away from my life to recover from it. I can hardly remember my twenties because I spent so much of them crying in my room, cutting and self harming, and sleeping my life away. It was the closest I had ever been to truly being ok with dying. I lost my religion, I lost my path, I lost myself. I'm still finding odd pieces of myself here and there even though I have largely gained everything back.

Sometimes I wish there was an Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind type company out there so I could wipe my memories of you away. But then I would be erasing the strength and resolve I found at the end of my fall. I would be erasing the clarity and the wisdom. So I'll have to live with the fact that you are in the recesses of my memories and sometimes you'll resurface.

I wish that I was one of those people who wished well on the people that wronged them or abused them. Sometimes I can be.

Not with you though.

I forgive you, but I can't wish you well. I had to pretend that you were dead in order for me to truly begin getting over my anger and sadness. Sometimes I still do. I no longer feel much of anything towards you. I forgive you but I hope you got your karma. I really do.

Goodbye,

Addy

*********

I didn't mean to skip another day, but I got so stumped on the stranger one. I was going to write five small open letters to various people, but I thought two was enough. No need to make this post longer than it should be.

30 Day Letter Challenge: Your Dreams And Your Siblings

2017-05-03T00:59:00.000-04:00

Dear Dreams,

Look, I haven't given up on you yet. You've always stayed constant through out my life and you always will. I may have added to you, but I haven't thrown you into the trash yet. Just stick with me, don't go away and attach yourself to someone else to achieve, I'm still working towards you. We'll be together soon.

I'm coming for you,

Addy

Dear Siblings,

I just want to thank you for sticking by me through absolutely everything and always being there for me. You were part of my reason for living and going on through my depression. You've always treated me like family even when nobody else did.

We've had our ups and downs but I'm so happy it's always been more ups. I do wish that I was closer with two of you, but you and I are still young and there's time thank the Gods. Although to be honest you'd never know I didn't spend every waking minute by you by the way that we act together.

Sis, I love watching you and my nephew grow together. You are such a good mom and your boyfriend is a great father. I'm so proud of both of you and I can't stop smiling whenever I look at or think of that sweet little boy of yours. I know that motherhood can be hard especially for someone so young, but you are so great at it and you should know that you are one of the best first moms I've ever seen.

Baby Brother, please do better in school. Bring that homework in, I know that's where most of your bad grades are coming from. You are way too smart to be failing. And don't quit. You're only in 11th right now. As it stands I'm actually afraid that you may have to repeat your grade, but aside from that you only have a year or two more to go. You can do this! Trust me, a good and completed education is so worth it.

Little Brother, I am so goddamn glad you do not take after your father. Your new girlfriend is awesome and you're both really super cute together. Please keep being awesome. You always wow me with how kind and giving you are, and adventurous as well. I love seeing pics from all the crazy things you do and places you see. Don't ever lose that sense of adventure and keep doing great in college.

Love,

Addy

*****

Somehow I skipped a day in there. I did not realize that. Probably my fault for posting at around 3am every single time.

I wasn't going to write a letter to each one of my siblings, so I tried to just write to them all together but apparently that's hard to do. Meh. Three little asides for each of them then.

What's something you'd write to your sibling?

30 Day Letter Challenge: Your Parents

2017-04-30T16:32:00.000-04:00

Mom and Dad,

I just wish that you both were better.

I've spent so many, too many, years and moments thinking about all the ways you've let me down and hurt me. I just want to move on, truly move on from the past. It's just so hard sometimes. There will be times when I am having a good conversation with you and then a well of anger will surface and I have to fight with myself to not let it show. My past permeates my very being, it is not a case of just forgetting and forgiving but of living with and forgiving for.

I do love you both, greatly. And I'm glad that, especially now that I'm older, our relationship is getting repaired and is doing better. I just wish sometimes that there wasn't anything to repair.

Also, Mom, you can do so much better than my step dad. Seriously.

And Dad, you gotta stop killing yourself with that shit. Seriously. I don't recognize you sometimes.

*****

This was super short, but I like it that way. The things I wanted to say have been boiled down to their main components and are said. I also don't want to delve too much into other things I wanted to say, not on here and not right now anyway. I wish I could have made this funny. Oh well.

30 Day Letter Challenge: Your Crush

2017-04-29T04:28:00.000-04:00

Hey you,

Yeah, you know who you are. Or at least you do now, I guess. I know it would never happen between us, and that's not some pessimistic outlook taking over. You are way too gay and not in the slightest bisexual...and you're married. But I have a huge crush on you and it feels so weird because I only have a crush on you when you're in drag. The ass, hips, and tits. I know they're not real but damn do they look good. Especially on you.

I'm going to be honest, I blame the Rocky Horror Picture Show. I saw Tim Curry in what I can only call goth whore quasi-drag and I've never been straight since in so many more ways than one.

There's more to it than your looks, of course. You're kind and sweet. You treat me like family and have ever since the first time we met. You're hilarious and talented. You are one of the most loving and giving people I have ever met, and I am glad to call you friend....while I admire your drag figure when I think that no one is looking.

I'm so sorry I have the 'male gaze' hardcore when you're dancing around (or is it the lesbian gaze since I'm a girl and you're dressed as one? What is it called when the bisexuals do it?). It's odd, I know it is. And if you ever actually found out about this you'd probably laugh at me and slightly roast me for it before giving me a hug. That's just another reason why I adore you. You have the greatest attitude about everything.

You're great and amazing and I adore you,
Addy
***********

I'm going to be honest, I have way too many crushes. This was actually hard to pick. I fall head over heels every time I look around. There's just so many glorious people that surround me and I find something great in so many people that I meet.

I picked this one because I just came back from a drag show and was reminded of my crush so this person was foremost on my mind. I told you, I only have a crush when they're in girl mode.

Who's your crush?

30 Day Letter Challenge: Best Friend

2017-04-28T03:42:00.002-04:00

Dear Penny,

Wouldn't it be weird if you came across this letter somehow? I know that at one point, when I first started this blog years ago, I showed it to you in the vain (both meanings) hopes that you would be one of the followers. I don't know why. I usually don't like it when friends or family see my writings, especially since some of this would be sensitive stuff. I'm pretty sure that if I actually make it as an author I wouldn't tell my family until my name was in a paper somewhere.

I miss you so much.

Let me rephrase that in a sense throughout this letter, because I don't think that sentence does much justice to the meaning that is bursting at the seams of the phrase.

Sometimes when I think of you, of how close we used to be, my chest gets a dull ache that throbs with every heartbeat. I once called you sister and I once called your child my nephew. I don't know why you won't return texts or calls. I thought it was just the stresses of motherhood and your nursing job but I think it reaches deeper than that somehow because after all this time there's no excuse. Communication is a two way street. There's no reason you can't text a simple 'sorry, been really busy lately.' while pretending to go bathroom at work or before going to bed. I know because sometimes when I used to text you I did exactly that. It saddens me to think that I am somehow not worth that after all these years. When we were younger I told you I wanted to name my first born daughter after you. I loved your name almost as much as I loved you. I still intend to keep that claim.

Sometimes when I think of you I get angry. Not cursing your name to the sky, throwing things around the room angry. My anger is like the soft crashing of waves from a distant shore as the storm rolls in behind me. This anger is a thing I scoff and toss out of my mind because when I think of the reasons why too much my anxiety acts up. Because after all this time I still have your phone number in my phone under 'Sister From Another Mister' where it will stay. I'm not sure I will ever take that number out. It might even be the wrong number (something inside me doubts this though because it's been the same number every time I lost your number and got it back from you for years) but since it's the only one I know of and it's 'yours' I will keep it.

Sometimes when I think of you I get scared. A slow, steady, creeping feeling that slithers its way into my veins and takes root, pulsing through my body like a living essence taking over. I'm afraid that you don't talk to me anymore because of something I did. Or perhaps something I didn't do, something I didn't have the strength to do. Ten years. Almost ten years is how long it took me to recover and get some semblance of who I used to be after I left my ex. You were there for the beginning and middle of my depression but not the end of it. Was it hard to see your friend fight through a riptide that threatened to drown her everyday? I guess it probably was. Maybe too hard to stay and watch, not sure if I would reach the shore.

I don't blame you. I've never wanted to be anyone's beast of burden.

Maybe it really was the new life you built with your husband. Maybe our friendship, as strong as it was, was just destined to fizzle for some reason with me holding these memories in my heart.

I'll always miss and love you,
Addy

JessJess,

Thank you for being the psychologist that I don't pay. The sister I never shared a womb with. The buyer of my dinners at our diner. And so much more. Your friendship is worth more than its weight in gold.

And you kick ass.

See you at Scouts,
Addy
************
I had to put that last letter in there. What can I say? Humor is my defense mechanism. When things are too serious, lighten the fuck up.

I never did my 'ketchup' blog post like I was supposed to....Oh well. Que sera, sera. It will come again another time. This first letter for this challenge took a little too much out of me.

Have any of you readers ever lost a friend you felt for sure you were destined to have forever?

It's Just A Prank, Brah!

2017-04-20T00:57:00.002-04:00

When you start getting notifications from Blogger about new comments that all turn out to be bots taking advantage of your comments section on years old blog posts....you know it's been way too long since you last blogged.

I was going to do what I normally do after a hiatus and post a 'ketchup' blog detailing what has been happening and what has changed, talking about some events with the dubious promise to regularly update (thank you for anyone that is still subscribed and or paying attention to this blog). But there have been a bunch of videos I was introduced to in a Facebook group I'm a part of that was talking about the awfulness of these parents. I have been following this for the past couple of days since it exploded and it has been absolutely consuming my attention. If you already know anything about it, the title of this post should indicate that it is about the DaddyOFive controversy that has been hitting the mainstream media in part thanks to Phil DeFranco calling attention to it on his channel.

I had to think long and hard about even writing anything about it longer than a passing opinionated paragraph to call attention to the heinous acts done by these so called parents and a rant about the failings of what my state calls Child Protective Services, because while this post is probably mostly going to be just a log of Youtube videos done by other people talking about the facts of the controversy since so much has already been said, I also am going to be talking about my own past of abuse. Since I like my privacy and I'm trying to repair relationships with one of my relatives who was my abuser, please forgive me when I remain slightly vague and do not name names or even relationship titles for the most part. I also kind of want to write this just to get it out of my head space where I have been stuck thinking about it. Like it's just stuck in there now.

I absolutely commend Phil for remaining, or trying to remain, impartial in the way he presented the facts of the situation with DaddyO. I try to be that type of person but I am not usually and being impartial is something I have to sometimes fight to be. I have been filled with so much anger and sadness reading about this that I do not have the motivation in me to be impartial. So if you want to read this, read it. Or wait until I post something that is funnier and more light hearted because this is going to be a long post I can already tell.

I was first introduced to DaddyO's channel through the related videos that popped up under Phil's video about them:

After watching this video I had to check out DaddyO's channel myself because the clips I saw were very alarming. They are not in the spirit of a simple prank at all. I also wanted to know more especially because of the clip of the 'Blocking All The Haters' video the parents made where they ask the children if they are being abused and the reactions from the children is very, very suspect to me. If you have been abused, especially as a child, there are red flags that just pop up in certain situations and smack you right in the face. That clip has a few that made me want to head over to their channel.

Most of their 'pranks' do seem to be geared more toward Cody, who is the youngest and smallest of the children besides his sister Emma. When asked if the children are all right it is Cody who does not meet the 'eye' of the camera and is looking off to the sides, he is also the last of them to respond yes. One of their children chimes in, 'At least you're not beating us like most parents'.

Let me just say that when I was little I got the belt among other things. I would get hit to the point where I did that pathetic hiccup cry where you feel like you can't breath. Then I was told that if I didn't stop crying I would get hit more and harder which is a special kind of asshole move because you cannot control that in an instance like that when you are a child and to me it is just an excuse to continue the abuse. It is a sick game to give an excuse to continue hitting. Throughout my childhood I was constantly told, especially if I was watching a video or reading a book with my abuser present that had instances of child abuse, that I didn't know how good I had it. That what I got was nothing compared to how some children are treated. I didn't know what abuse was. I was reading a Child Called It when it first came out and was told, 'And you think I abuse you. Now that is abuse. At least you don't get what that boy got.'

These would sometimes come out of seemingly nowhere with no provocation and to me is more of an admission of guilt. I also hate, and I mean hate, when people say shit like that. Abuse is not a contest of who had it worse. My experiences do not negate someone else's experiences just because I had it worse than them nor are my experiences negated because someone had it worse than I. It does not take away the anger and fear they felt at the time or the emotions and the impact it had on them that followed them into adulthood, if it followed them at all. My abuser did not hold my hand over a burning stove but when I was around 6 or 7 I was smacked in the face so hard I got a bloody nose. I was not starved to the brink of death like some children, but when I was around 11 or 13 my abuser tried to help me with homework in my worst subject, math. I was forced to sit right next to them on the couch with my homework and every time I got a question wrong I was smacked and yelled at. I was so scared and nervous and crying so much that by the end of it I legitimately could not tell you what 2 plus 2 equaled. I know this is not an exaggeration because my abuser yelled and asked if I was a retard before hitting me while asking me this exact question as I was walked through a long division problem.

I would never in my life say that someone didn't know what abuse was or try to negate their experience and turn abuse into a pissing contest just because someone did not go through my experiences. Hearing a child say that makes me think that it's the parents that told them that to assuage any guilt or consequences from treating their children like shit. Because after being told that so many times for a while, as a kid, it's exactly what I would tell myself when I got angry about my abuse. It wasn't until I was in my preteens and teen years that my friends, some of who were also abused, helped me out of that thinking by telling me it still was abuse and just because it 'wasn't as bad' it still didn't make it right. DaddyO and his wife may not do to their kids what happened to me, but it doesn't make what they're doing right in any way, shape, or form. What they are doing is still abuse. Abuse does not just fall into the physical. There is emotional as well, which sometimes I think can leave the worst scars. Screaming and yelling at your child until they are having huge tantrums and breakdowns and not leaving them alone because you think it's funny, is absolutely abuse. It's also fucking disgusting.

As I looked through their catalog of videos I was horrified to find out that most videos seemed to be at least 15-30 minutes long. To prolong a 'prank' like that for that long while your child's anxiety and stress levels get cranked up and up with no pause is so reprehensible. I have almost no words for it. And traveling back to the 'at least you don't beat us' point, maybe they don't but I absolutely find that hard to believe. Perhaps the children do not get beat by the parents until they are black and blue to the point where even the children would identify what was happening to them as abuse, but they are absolutely pitted against each other for the parent's enjoyment. And the kid's, especially Cody in some instances on his channel that the camera caught, is hit.

Now DaddyO has been taking down and deleting his videos, especially some of his videos that I am going to talk about. But there are clips still within Phil's and Grumpkin's videos that I will be putting up on this blog for you to see, that will show these instances. Also, because nothing can escape the internet, people have been saving these videos in case they do get deleted. One of the first videos I saw after I left Phil's channel was about some slapping game the father invented. The children were set on opposite sides of a small table and given a water bottle half filled with water. They had to flip the bottle and if it landed right side up they were safe. If not the other had to smack them in the face. This culminated with his daughter Emma getting slapped so hard she was sitting in a corner crying and holding her face while the father screamed at the kid for doing exactly what he told him to do. Now in the father's 'defense', as if he should deserve any, he did tell the brother not to hit her that hard. Yet before that he also told him, 'You don't hit girls! But that's your sister and she doesn't count.' The children are also allowed to hit and beat on each other with seemingly no true repercussions to their actions. Never once does the father put down the camera to correct the situation. There are instances where Cody is punched in the head by his brothers, or face slammed onto the ground and yet is still being filmed. Screaming is all that is done it seems. There are also videos and clips of Cody being pushed by his father so hard that he falls into a bookshelf and gets a bloody nose, and of his dad punching him in the arm for trying to mess with the camera while they were at the computer together.

The father says in an interview with Keemstar that Cody tried to run on him and that's why he pushed him away and he didn't mean for it to happen. But when I watched the clip all I see is Cody trying to run out of the room to get away from everyone only to be pushed back in for the abuse to continue. Once it starts there are never chances for it to stop until it seems that his emotions are at their peak and he is exhausted. He also says that the blood on the pillow is ink, but there is no way in hell that you are going to get me to believe that at all.

To allow your children to go through this and even take part in doing this to each other is absolutely despicable. It also helps the cycle of abuse to continue. In one of the videos I watched two of the brothers were chasing Emma around and hitting her with a belt to get back at her for 'snitching' on them. At first it just looked like they were lightly hitting her and only doing it to annoy her. But it ended on a smack that sent her to her room crying with the brothers jeering at her and laughing telling her she deserved it. This accompanied with the instance of one of them face planting Cody only makes me wonder what they will be like and what their romantic relationships and relationships with any future children will be like since they are basically encouraged to do this. Will they grow up to be abusers themselves?

I have three siblings, all of whom are younger than I am. Because hitting and lashing out in anger was normalized in my household and I was the oldest, when they would act up I would hit them much like how I was hit. It was always with my hand and never with a belt. I'm very ashamed to admit this and my siblings were so young that when I told them about it since it came up in conversation once, they were surprised because they didn't remember it. They don't hold any hard feelings against me at all and for that I am grateful. It greatly eased the guilt I had carried for so long whenever I thought of it. I would get mad at them for doing something bad or for angering me and I would spank them, and then get in trouble for it because I was not the parent. I was angry at myself for hitting them and angry at seeing them get hit. I learned extremely early on that the cycle of abuse has to stop at myself and I stopped myself from hitting them until it became normal for me to not do so. That's not to say that we didn't still get into fights like siblings do, or rough house, or push each other around. But at 12 years old I had to make a conscious decision to not treat them how I was treated and instead to fight back so that they weren't treated like how I was treated. They did not have it as bad as I had it. I made sure of that even if it meant that anger was directed at me instead. As long as they were forgotten about in that instance that was all I cared about. I was constantly confrontational in my house hold.

For so long I was afraid of the concept of having children because I was afraid that I would treat my kids like I was treated. I do not have children yet but I am no longer afraid. As survivors of abuse we have to take it upon ourselves to realize that the cycle of abuse stops with us because it most likely won't ever stop with our abusers. It would be so easy to make excuses like, 'well this is how I was treated. This is what discipline is.' which is also something I heard growing up. There has to be a conscious decision to not go that route and to recognize how horrible it is to inflict that abuse upon another person.

I love my siblings so much and I was so guilty for spanking them that I can not even fathom how I would feel if I had hurt them even more by punching them in the head or slamming them to the ground. I do not know how I would be able to live with myself. Children should not be pitted against each other and children that are much older than their siblings should not be allowed to freely hurt them like that. I really hope that the children of that household wise up and instead of fighting with each other, fight for each other and protect each other like how siblings and family should protect each other.

I have almost no faith in Child Protective Services, especially in Maryland (yes I share a state with these people). The fact that CPS investigated the house and cleared them due to people calling about the channel does not at all surprise me. I have seen and heard so many stories of children falling through the cracks in our system. A friend growing up was abused more than I was. When I went to spend the night once her sheets were stained with blood from her dad punching her in the face. The neighbors heard the screaming, and probably the screaming from times before, but when CPS came over, because she had no obvious bruising they cleared her parents of wrong doing. They also announce when they are coming over, which gives abusive parents time to prepare. Since this story is blowing up so much, I believe that this is most likely why the videos are getting taken down as well. They're probably preparing for if something happens again.

I also saw in another Youtube video from someone, and bear with me because I have watched so many at this point I don't know who said it, that CPS was not aware of the videos. Yet the mother said that they were called because of the channel. To me that's just not doing your job. How can you be called because of abuse allegations on a Youtube channel and only base things on what you see at the house instead of looking at the videos as well. You announce when you're coming over so of course people will be on their best behavior.

As an adult, I now work with kids in Scouts. Some of who have been abused and who have emotional problems and disorders stemming from that abuse. I am still friends with people from my childhood who have gone through abuse. I know what I went through just to get to where I am now in life. I legitimately worry for these children and how this will impact their lives when they get older and how it is impacting them now. In one of the videos there is evidence that the youngest self harms. I have no clue how much or anything like that, but he gets yelled at because he scratched his own arm at school.

If you don't know how to react to a child that is self harming, yelling at them is not something you should do. Let's clear that up right now. Yelling at them and making them feel guilty does not solve anything and in some instances it makes it worse. I started self harming when I was around 12 years old, maybe a twinge younger. I started cutting when I was at the end of age 12 to the beginning of age 13. I had a relapse a couple of months ago at age 30 in 2016. Thankfully I did not cut. I just bit myself until I had bruises and swelling that I had to hide at my job. I work hard to find constructive ways to release my sadness, anxiety, and anger. I do this through meditation, artwork, writing, driving, sometimes going for a walk, or listening to music. These are things that child should be learning, and if it's from their parents that is even better because that just solidifies that parent is the rock and support that they need. If that child does self harm, if any child self harms, it is imperative they get help and support early on. If it's allowed to continue it can get worse and worse until it can become a full blown addiction where you have to actively take steps to not fall back into harmful behaviors.

I'm going to end with this paragraph and then I'm going to put up the rest of the videos that I watched, sans DaddyO's videos because I don't want to give him any ad revenue or anymore traffic than what he's already getting. I know some people are saying that these children are not being abused. I myself can not say that. What I am seeing is abuse to me and I can't understand how someone could defend this at all. I recognize some things in those videos that have either happened to me or to others who were abused. Physicality is not the end all of abuse categories or ways to abuse people. Manipulative tactics, screwing with some one's head repeatedly, egging them on to show anger and then admonishing them for that anger that you caused, emotional abuse such as cussing and screaming at someone, humiliating them. All of these are absolutely forms of abuse. I really hope that this family gets help. I do believe that people can change, and while I personally find those parents deplorable, I hope they get their shit together if only for their children's sake. I don't really care about the parents at this point. I don't really have pity for them when they say they are receiving death threats. I mean, I wouldn't send one and I don't condone the threats either, but I completely understand why they are getting them. The only reason why I would even care if it stopped or continued is because of the possible adverse affects it would have on the children. I applaud Phil and everyone else that has covered this for bringing attention to it. Much like Boogie2988 said in his video, no one stood up for me. I even out right tried to tell members of my family some of what was happening and nothing was ever done and no one ever acted like they cared that much to the point where I stopped reaching out for help and I stopped telling people what was happening unless it was friends of mine that I went to for support. I still sometimes fall into this behavior of staying quiet even as an adult.

Here are the rest of the videos I watched so you can come to your own conclusions. I know that there are saved videos of DaddyOFive that he has tried to take down out there on the web if you want to find them and see them for yourself beyond the clips presented in the videos. I promise the next blog post will not be this heavy, nor will it be this long. If you were abused as a child I feel for you and I hope you got help of some kind. If you are a kid or teen that has somehow stumbled upon this page, know that things do get better. They really do but sometimes you have to fight to make it better and it feels like hell while it's happening, but in the end things will get better. Don't stop fighting, don't stop reaching out or seeking help. Do what you have to do to survive as long as it does not hurt yourself. Above all, try to forgive when you are able to. I know that sounds crazy to say that but forgiveness is not for your abuser, it is for you. While you are in torment they sleep easy. You might never get them to see the light, but you can find peace for yourself. It is very hard and I have no easy way to tell you how to go about doing that. What worked for me may not work for someone else. But you have to find a way to give yourself peace because you do not deserve to be walking around in torment with hell following behind at your heels after all you did to get out of there in the first place. You deserve better than that!

Incognito Altars

2016-12-19T15:35:00.002-05:00

Now that spring has sprung and my spring cleaning is done and I finally have a space clear on my dresser, I thought I'd put up a permanent altar. Usually I've had to rely on a little hideaway altar that's easy to put away due to spacing and tolerance issues.

I still have to kind of deal with those tolerance issues and I know that many pagans in un-ideal living situations do as well, so here's some tips on how to make altars look a little less like altars.

Here is my basic set up. First thing is first, your language. People are odd about language I find. You call something an entirely different word and they're completely okay with it. This is not your altar. It's your 'centerpiece', a 'decoration', it 'ties the room together'. You like to burn candles and incense for the ambiance and because it makes everything smell nice.

The plates I got at Michael's Craft Store on sale, they keep wax from getting everywhere on the wood.

Another great thing to have is an altar cloth that has two sides. One side of my cloth is decorative crosses, the other is plain purple with an embroidered dragon. If you know a lot of people are going to be around flip it to the other side, or just use a plain scarf or table runner; something that takes up the whole dresser or table so it looks more inconspicuous.

Altar cloths are great tools for hiding things. Hide crystals at the corners of your cloth. I have rose quartz, amethyst, unpolished ruby, and sandstone. The plate also hides written spells and flat things like that.

Not everything is always going to be able to stay static on your altar. I have a steel pentacle the size of my palm that gets brought out on special rituals and put away afterwards. Likewise, jar spells might have to get packed up afterwards and reset again the next time they are used if they take more than one day.

Another thing you can do is take the go big or go home route. Make your whole room your altar and just spread everything out. Your room is where you should be able to go at the end of the day and find solace from the outside world anyway. It makes sense that the whole place should be sacred space.

Have candles somewhere to the south of your room to represent fire, or hang a dragon picture on the wall. Keep a pet rock or a worry stone to the north of your room to represent Earth, or just have a small plant like a cactus.

Or instead of a bigger altar make it smaller. Take an Altoids tin and stick a tea candle, matchbook, and a crystal or flower, or something that reminds you of a particular God or Goddess you are close to. Now you have an altar you can take anywhere with you.

Here is an article on creating a portable altar. They don't sound like they'd be as small as an Altoids tin but you could still create one that is carryable. Here is another article/blog post about traveling altars. I really like how this writer made hers look. The one with the pink Goddess symbol look so pretty.

******

So I started writing this in March and I have just finished it. I can't believe I've been gone almost a whole year and then again I can't believe I haven't been gone from the blogging world for even longer. Once I started getting bots or ad messages showing up in my e mail as comments I figured I should probably find a way to post.

I have had the most hectic year so far, it's been really hard to blog. I've had a family member die due to another family member, I've moved twice and switched jobs to a less emotionally stressful but just as busy job at a nursing home.

There have been so, so many changes.

Part of the reason I haven't been posting is I've been sussing out this new job and seeing how much work I will actually have to do and what I can and can not get away with in terms of being online. As long as I do my job and look busy to visitors I don't truly think they care. I get caught on Reddit quite a few times without them saying anything. It's the cellphone that really bothers them.

Another thing I've noticed is that the Blogger app no longer works. I have typed out at least a quarter of this post on that stupid thing only for it to blank out and crash. But it's the best way I have of getting pictures because that seems to be the biggest problem I've been having with Blogger. Hopefully I can quickly post them and edit online like I did with this one. Otherwise I'll have to find another way that is not as big of a pain in the ass as past ways to get pictures on here.

Here are current pictures of my altar that I wanted to show off since I'm in a place where I can just fully be me and have things like this out in the open. Or really I should say pictures of my altar when I was in our old house before my roommates and I moved. I'll get pictures of the new one soon.

I'm so happy, or at least happier than I've been in a long, long time. And I have so many things planned for the next year that I want to get done.

I might not post again until January or at least after Christmas. I may be a Christian Godless heathen but the family unit isn't so I will be spending all of Christmas at my Mom's house with my siblings.

Happy Holidays to everyone and a Happy New Year as well!

Valentine's Day The Witch's Way

2016-02-14T19:43:00.000-05:00

For quick energy, harmony, and love being brought your way, fill a bowl partially with water. Sprinkle hibiscus flowers or petals and float some tea lights. Let them burn in your room on a desk, preferably close to your bed.

I don't know about fresh flowers but I used dried hibiscus and after an hour or so the water turned red. It was so pretty! You can kind of see some little whisps of red floating around the petals in the picture below.

To bring love and attention your way all day.

Take two slips of paper and draw a yellow crocus on one and a yellow rose on the other. On the back draw this symbol.

Put one in each shoe. Eat a piece of chocolate to sweeten your breath and rub cinnamon into your skin. Before leaving the house say this three times, "Freya, the lover's friend, I ask these flowers my love to send."

I originally got this from a different website of a woman named Cassandra Eason after a Google search and I switched some stuff up to cater it more to my beliefs. I would like to point out that if you are allergic to anything listed above like cinnamon or chocolate you can absolutely substitute it with something else that would fit. Maybe there is a specific perfume that makes you feel pretty or whatever. Or you can just use the original site's spell that I got this from which has no embellishments.

Another warning, be careful just slathering things into your skin if you don't know how they are going to react. I take no responsibility. All I know is I've been rubbing cinnamon into my skin when I didn't want to use perfume or oil since I was a preteen and it's worked fine for me.

I hope everyone had at least a mediocre Valentine's Day if it couldn't be great or even good.

Making Christmas For Charity

2016-02-11T13:49:00.000-05:00

I absolutely love the Festival of Trees. Not always super fine with the Christian holiday of Christmas. I feel slightly territorial with Santa. I just don't like it when he encroaches into my Halloween decorations. But I really do like decorations. And Christmas decorations are just some of the prettiest.

Last year I decided that it was time for me to do a tree on my own. Here is what I learned about decorating a tree for the festival.

1. Start very early

Especially if you are making the ornaments by hand in anyway. Last minute running around is just not helpful. When my scouts do this charity, we usually have them start making ornaments around mid October. Honestly though the earlier the better. It's just less stress.

2. Garland is not an afterthought

I chose a 4 foot tree for my first time because it would obviously be easier to decorate then a full 7 foot tree. I also was decorating this all by myself, so 4 foot was definitely the way to go. I was doing a Star Trek tree. I bought this cheap gold wire garland with little stars on it. I didn't really think about it at the time, I just know it looked cute and fit with the theme of my tree. However, I soon learned that no matter how much you fluff this fake tree they give you, it kind of doesn't matter because 4 foot trees always look a little bit on the scrawny side. The best trees that I saw had fuller garland, or garland that was made out of thick ribbon to hide all of that.

3. If you think you have enough ornaments make more

It takes a surprising amount of ornaments to fill a 4 foot tree. You'd think it would take way less than it does, but no. From glittery foam badges to little pom-pom tribbles, and last-minute store bought glittery star ornaments, I think I had about 60 ornaments altogether. Maybe a little bit more. But even with everything on the tree it was still sparse as fuck. I learned too little too late that there are websites like Santa's Quarters which do help with this. Which brings me to my next point.

4. Just because the tree is small doesn't mean all the ornaments should be

I made the mistake of thinking 'oh small tree, small ornaments', but 4 feet is a lot bigger than you think it is. Even with the very few bigger ornaments that I had for the tree, it just wasn't enough to save it from looking like a kindergartner had decorated it.

5. Make sure the tree topper is big enough as well

I had a super cute idea for the tree topper. I had one of those metal works that was in the shape of the enterprise. But 4 inches is way too small, no matter what popular magazines trying to tell you. If you think your topper is too big, it probably isn't.

6. Secure everything last

Because the trees get bought for charity they get moved around, obviously. Everything has to be secured to the tree. I used green florist wire to secure the lights, garland, and the everything to the tree. I also got it to hide the wire in the tree so it wasn't obvious that it was there. Being as that this was my first time decorating, and putting everything together, by myself I didn't think things through and made the mistake of securing the lights and the garland with wire as I put them on the tree.

Now if I would not have misjudged how much light I actually had and put them on the correct way the first time this would not have been a problem. But the lights were longer than I thought they were. I found myself with lights secured to the tree by wire that was so well hidden I could no longer tell exactly where it was and about 2 feet (maybe more) of extra light. I probably could have just gone and worked my way back up the tree very slowly finding all the wire and dismantling it, but I had twisted the wire really well and it was the last day of decorating so I panicked. I took all the remaining Christmas lights and wrapped it around the base of the tree and hoped that people thought it was intentional. Which bring something else to mind.

7. Everyone loves a skirt

My family doesn't usually use a tree skirt so this is something that I completely forgot about that really does help with the overall look of the tree. A tree skirt really helps the tree look more put together. It has the added benefit of hiding any lights that you may or may not have wrapped around the base of the tree in a panicked state of mind. And it doesn't have to be a traditional green one. You can get one to match the theme of your tree. Or you can make one out of fabric from a craft store. I saw an X-Men tree that had a really cute homemade X-Men pattern skirt around the base of it.

8. You really will need 2 to 4 hours to decorate

Between my ornaments and the misjudged size of my tree, I heartily scoffed at the website when it said take 2 to 4 hours out of your time to decorate. I came in around 11 PM and I didn't leave until around 3:30 PM. Even with a smaller size it really is quite a bit of work because you have to set up the fake tree and fluff it up and everything that goes along with that. Make sure that you give yourself ample time to do everything.

Even though it seems like a pain in the butt, it really is a worthwhile thing to do. Not only does it raise money for the Kennedy Krieger Institute, the trees that don't get sold are then used to decorate around the grounds of the Institute and just brighten up the place for the people that go there.

I absolutely love this charity and I will, yes, be doing it again this year. This time I will be massively more prepared. No more sparsely decorated trees for me. And in case you're wondering what it looks like, below is my little Star Trek tree that couldn't.

Please forgive the photo and I'm really sorry that I didn't have a picture of the completed topper that actually did look really good, just small. As I mentioned in my last blog post I got a new phone and when the store put everything from my old phone into my new phone not everything went exactly correct. I think that one or two pictures got left behind somehow. I also learned that if you edit any pictures from the 4S the 6S will not always keep the exact edit that you did when it comes to cropping, neither will it let you return that picture to the original picture.

The link for the festival of trees pictures is at the bottom of the blog post after my favorite pictures I took. I spent almost 2 hours trying to rearrange them and make sure that everything was OK but some things fell through the cracks. Some of the pictures got a little bit jumbled as well when I uploaded them onto the imgur app so it was very hard to match up the tree to the sign that I had taken a picture of, therefore none of the trees have any information on who did them. I'm very sorry for that.

This is a Kylo Ren tree. I didn't know that they were doing another Star Wars film until after the festival. At first I thought this was Darth Vader. ....I don't watch a lot of TV anymore....There was an actual Darth Vader tree which is in the link.

This was awesome. It looks pretty blank right now but it filled up as the festival went along. It had a bucket of markers by it you could color it with.

Of course one of my favorites had to be a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles tree, of course.

I really have a fondness for ocean themed the trees and I just loved the topper for this one as well.

Here is the imgur link for the rest and for some pictures of the gingerbread houses as well. I can't wait for this year's festival especially because the resolution on my new phone camera is much better.

Also, raise of hands, who is surprised that I actually stuck to a promise to post on as self imposed schedule?

The Return Of Shit My Girl Scouts Say

2016-02-09T02:51:00.000-05:00

The life of a Girl Scout leader is one filled with love, inspiration, tons of volunteer work, and weird, funny, sarcastic teenagers and preteens. These are just some of the highlights of shit I got to hear from my scouts at camp this weekend.

"Party at my house! Bring food and then leave! Alright!"

Leader: When you wash your dishes you have to wash an extra dish and it can't be a fork.

Scout: Can it be a spoon?

Leader: ....no.

Scout: Can we walk to the stone? I saw a stone outside and I want to walk to it.

Leader: Stay inside we're all going to go outside shortly.

Scout: But we're not going to go to the stone I can guarantee it!

(I honestly have no clue what their fascination was with this stone, but apparently it was very important.)

"I need a post nap time nap."

"Hey Addy! We had a fat girl revelation! Pie iron tacos!"

(Apparently it never occurred to them that you can make quesadillas or soft tacos in a pie iron. Fun fact, if you don't have a fireplace or fire pit, or a grill, and you really want an actual pie iron pie, you can just use the stove top.)

Me: You know, for 20 cents Taco Bell will put sriracha on anything.

Scout: *gives me an intense stare* Talk dirty to me.

My scouts found a random dead blue jay on the side of our cabin and decided to hold a funeral for it, so I got to witness this from out the window.

"Should we say a prayer?"

"Let's say the pledge of allegiance!"

This was after they sang/screeched the national anthem as the funeral dirge. It was the most patriotic bird funeral we ever saw.

One of our younger scouts of the group saw a sign that said some workers would be pruning trees in a few weeks.

Scout: Where's the prune tree?

Leader: There is no prune tree.

Scout: But that sign says they're going to be taking the prunes off the trees.

Scout 1: *shows a picture of her "friend" to another scout* He's my boo.

Scout 2: Ew! Don't call that ugly your boo!

Scout 2: Why are you licking your pants?

Scout 1: Because they have toothpaste on them.

(Yes these are the same two 'boo' scouts.)

We were teaching the kids new verses of the Wish Song to see which ones they liked so we could teach the Daisies and they could help them.

Leader: I wish I was a little race car, I'd go speedy, speedy over every body's feety.

Scout: Same.

A bunch of our scouts were in a corner talking about how a leader's snoring kept them awake. All of a sudden we hear a loud clapping and our kids started to chant:

"I didn't get no sleep because of ya'll! Now ya'll can't get no sleep because of me!"

The 'boo' scout had this cute Hello Kitty footie pajama type sleeping wear that had a butt flap that buttoned closed and was rough housing with her friend Scout 2 from above. I then got to add this to the list of things I thought I'd never hear myself say until I became a Scout Leader:

Me: Can we please stop punching each other? And please stop trying to pull her butt flap down!

Before bed our kids were singing songs in a corner by themselves. They started to sing let it go which quickly morphed into the national anthem and what little they knew of God Bless America (I still have no clue why they were so patriotic this weekend).

Me: How did it turn from Frozen to that?

Scout: Because 'Murica!

Leader: Alright, JessJess said quiet time in half an hour, is that good with you guys?

Scout: What? No! *looks at us defiantly and starts to chant* I didn't get no sleep because of ya'll! Now ya'll can't get no sleep because of me!

Leader: Go put your clothes on and get dressed.

Me: Go get all packed up too.

Leader: One direction at a time here.

Scout: *giggles* You said one direction.

****

This post was supposed to be my delayed Festival of Trees post, but things got kind of screwed up with imgur so it will have to wait for either tomorrow or Thursday. I finally got a new phone. I went from the 4s to the 6s and it's like a completely different world. Although I wish I would have known that not absolutely everything gets sent over when they switch your information from one phone to another. The notes app where I had about 12 different story ideas, from one shots and short stories like I do on the blog to actual novels, and whole scenes and passages for those stories are now all gone and I have to try and remember everything all over again. I mean, it's a good thing I can remember practically everything but then there's always that worry that you've forgotten like half of it.

Also, some of my apps are not working like they used to, specifically my blogger app. It was so easy to post pictures directly from my phone but now I found out it didn't save my specifications on photo resolution and doesn't give me options for changing it. I'm glad that's basically the only thing wrong though.

So I have been pre-occupied, obviously and I'm sorry about that. I was going to blog earlier but my phone was so out of date that it wouldn't even let me use my wifi anymore for the last month I had it. It's also why I never got to do the last installment of Hindsight on Hindsight. Then my sister gave birth to this beautiful little guy and I've been focusing all my energy on trying to get baby time in as much as possible.

He makes the cutest baby burrito I've ever seen, I am absolutely in love.

Halloween Inspired Drawing

2015-10-09T01:00:00.000-04:00

My friend and I went to the monastery ruins at old St.Mary's College. The ruins are also known as Hell House and there are tons of rumors I've heard growing up about the old altar and remains of the swimming pool. Mostly about Satan and cult worship, although the swimming pool was rumored to be filled with blood. I can't remember why, and I'm too lazy to Google it right now, but it probably has something to do with Satan and cult worship. I'm doing a small zine for a swap partner about the strange things in Maryland and wanted to get some photos. Sadly the remains of the altar with the black cross is gone and the pool is filled up, but I did get pictures of some of the neat and cute graffiti that surrounds the area.

***

I got these anti-stress coloring books (This book in particular is called Art Nouveau: Coloring for Everyone) and this page is by far my favorite. I wanted to see if I could make one like it. Then I decided to add ghosts and shit because October and because I was having a hard time coming up with something abstract. So here's a small art tutorial for the hell of it.

I started by folding the page "hot dog style" and drawing half of my design. I tried to leave just enough spacing between objects and shapes for when I had to ink it in later.

Then I drew a border on the right half and folded it. I rubbed very hard all over with the bottom of the inking marker I was using. I probably should have used some sort of craft popsicle stick or something but fuck that noise all I had was a marker.

Some of the pencil lines showed up on the other side and I could ink in some drawings with just those alone. Other shapes I had to either ink little by little and keep folding the page, or just make sure I did it quickly before the ink dried if it was small enough. Some of it didn't quite match up like I wanted it to, mostly because I drew a little too close to the center and it overlapped. Next time I'll probably leave a bit of space because it seems like it would be better to have to extrapolate lines.

After inking in everything and erasing all the pencil lines (may I just say that Pigma Sensei inking pens are great but the eraser it comes with is almost complete shit), I decided to color in the background with a black colored pencil. I wanted to use some of the larger markers but I didn't want to dry them out as I still need to use them and don't want to have to rebuy them just yet. I was also afraid of the ink bleeding on the paper and screwing up some of the lines that are close to each other. It's the same reason I didn't use any watercolor paint. Even my smallest brush is a little too big.

While I don't think it came out too bad, I think next time I'll either try to ink or paint it regardless of how much of a pain in the ass that seems. Or I'll wait until coloring everything in before blacking out the background. Since the coloring pencil is a ...well, a pencil, the broadness of the tip differs depending on when you last sharpened it. That means that some of the lines and shapes got a bit distorted and crowded regardless. Not too horribly though. Also, coloring with it left dust that grayed and smudged into the white spaces. I had the brilliant idea to try and use the eraser on it and it kind of worked, but if it accidentally went outside of any of the blank spaces it left a halo effect around them. Just minor annoyances all around.

The background did smear into some of the coloring though, which sucked ass. Hopefully you can't see it with the size of the picture and the potato I took the picture with. I tried enlarging some of these but then the resolution is shit. I'm sorry.

So there you have it. My first art tutorial for a drawing style that I have no clue what it is called. Coloring book style? I don't know, whatever. Maybe you learned something. Specifically to leave space when doing something like this and that colored pencils can be assholes.

Creepy Bucket List

2015-10-08T00:27:00.000-04:00

I cannot believe that October is a quarter over. Why do months have to only be four weeks? October should be three months worth of weeks long with at least two Halloween's and Samhain's. According to the uptick in my blogging it would at least be good for this blog anyways. I don't know, October just makes me feel alive like no other month does sometimes.

Since I can't figure out what I want to actually do for Halloween, much less what or where I want to go for my road trip coming up in about three days, my mind has been scrambling for ideas. Throw in creepypasta that I have been reading and media I have been taking in, as well as my own boredom, and you get my creepy bucket list. Things that I want to do that are either creepy, related to October and Halloween, or occult in nature. I wasn't sure if I wanted to do a silly fictional one, much like my fictional world bucket list, or a non fictional one so I split my list of ten into two fives.

Fictonal Creepy Bucket List:

1. Introduce Winifred Sanderson to a dental plan. - Hocus Pocus

2. Do the dirty at Camp Crystal Lake. Get at me Jason... punk. - Friday the 13th

3. Bring Mulciber back from the dead. - Nightbreed comic circa '90-'93 (I think I could literally make a blog post about this in itself, I was so annoyed)

4. Get rid of "all the damn vampires" in Santa Carla with the Frog brothers. - Lost Boys

5. Marry into the Addams family. - The Addams family

Actual Creepy Bucket List:

1. Hold a séance, or some other ritual, in the catacombs of Paris. Ever since I saw that cult singer scene in As Above, So Below I've wanted to do it so badly.

2. Another Hocus Pocus one. I want to do a group costume so badly. Have two other people be Sanderson sisters with me and three other people be the kids, find someplace with Halloween karaoke, and reenact the musical scene from mahvelous introduction, to mahvelous ending.

3. Do a shadowcasting of either Rocky Horror or Repo! The Genetic Opera. But let's be honest, top pick is Rocky.

4. Visit the Mutter Museum.

5. Buy some weird ass thing from Obscura Antiques and Oddities. I've always wanted a curio cabinet.

As some of these are more easily done and feasible than others, I hope to at least get the last five done one day.

Interviewing Your Tarot Cards

2015-10-03T19:41:00.000-04:00

I was bored while doing a super slow overnight at work and was desperately trying to read the tarot for someone while using the Gothic Tarot of Vampires. This was the first time I had tried to use the deck in a serious manner and I was finding out that sometimes it can be tricky to read. There are symbols on the top of the cards that denote if it is a pentacle, cup, sword, or wand. The pentacle symbol doesn't actually look like a pentacle or coin symbol. It looks like a small vampire face (actually I think it looks like Boone's face from Nightbreed) inside a circle. There are also die type numbers (as in dice, not as in you will die) at the top that tell you if a card is a King or whatever. Maybe I'm just tarot illiterate if it's not Rider Waite inspired but this deck does take some getting used to, and playing around with, so you're not abysmally clumsy with it. I've found that it's also a stubborn deck. When it doesn't want to be used no amount of reshuffling will help that. It is a very beautiful deck though. I love the drawings on it. It was illustrated by Emiliano Mammucari who also draws comics, so it does have a graphic novel sort of feel to the drawings, which as a comic book reader is part of what drew me to that particular deck in the first place.

In my effort to understand my deck better and figure out if I was looking at a coin or an angry face, I went to the internet and came upon this Youtube video by Lea Evangelista.

When it comes to reading the tarot I've never thought of doing anything remotely like this. Usually I cleanse the cards, then I have to go through the deck and look at every one and appreciate the art, then I usually just jump right in with reading them. I figure I'll get used to them quicker. However, certain decks are more suited for certain questions and queries and this could help you discern what to do with which deck.

I set aside the very stubborn Vampire tarot and picked up my oracle cards by Lucy Cavendish, Oracle of Shadows & Light. I've been using these for a while and I love them. The art is by Jasmine Becket-Griffith who is amazing, I would really love to own a painting or piece of her art one day. This particular deck was gifted to me on my birthday by a friend who went and had Jasmine sign the guidebook, so it's very special to me. Using Lea's video, here's what my layout came out to be and the meaning behind them (Note: the picture I took of the layout at work was oddly angled so I recreated it at home).

Bottom Middle: Tell me about yourself, what is your most important characteristic?

Nautilus Princess: Powerful Personal Growth

This card is all about growing as a person, taking yourself seriously, and generally stepping up to the challenges that life throws at you. I find this to be very true because I do generally use these oracle cards as more of a personal tool. An almost meditational tool on myself and my current state in life. Very rarely do I use them on other people.

Bottom Right: what are your strengths as a deck?

Strangely Lonely: Holding On Way Too Tight

The guidebook for strangely lonely says this about the card: "This sweet and defined being holds fast to her Celtic Cross, clutching her belief system, because without it she is not sure who she truly is. Perhaps it was given to her by a beloved, perhaps it represents her family, a loved one, or aspects of her soul. But the reason she holds on so tight that she is so lonely and has yet to connect with her soul family on a day today basis. There are times in your life when you, too, may be surrounded by people, even those who you call friends, but you still feel extremely lonely amid it all, as she does. You may feel like you need a barrier between yourself and the world-as she does. There is a sense that you feel too strongly your individuality, and that you are lonely – as she is, too."

I take this to mean that the deck is very good at showing you what your barriers are that you put up. What are your fears and what is keeping you from growing as a person, which relates back to the most important characteristic of the cards itself as one of personal growth.

Bottom Left: what are your limits as a deck?

Ghosts Of The Past: The Past Returns For A Time...

This is all about confronting the past, basically. This card also represents that you can't go back after all of your life experiences. They have made you who you are and you must move on from all of that. In regards to the interview question I took this to mean that this deck is not always the best for trying to foretell anything from the future, but is better used by looking backwards and in present happenings to help you better prepare for the future. Not saying that you can never tell any future events, it's just harder. It is in my experience that this deck really will bring up shit from years ago that you have never thought about, much like a nagging girlfriend.

Top middle: What are you here to teach me?

Voodoo In Blue: Back Off!

The message behind this card is knowing when it is best to back away from the situation, also when it is best to be very, very blunt with people and tell them the same. It is about extreme honesty and dropping the façade of niceness from the way you interact with people. The deck wants you to grow a backbone. I know that a couple of times when I asked a question of the deck and it came up with an answer that I did not like I didn't want to be honest with myself and just accept that answer, so I kept trying to ask the same question and reshuffle and reread them. Every single time the deck came up with either the same card or cards that are extremely similar in meaning. So yes, it can be very blunt.

Top left: how can I best learn from and collaborate with you?

Sewer Mermaid: Your Sensuality Is Beautiful

I love the Sewer Mermaid. I think it is a very cute card. Both in the art and in the name. Despite being in the sewer this card is about self love. Loving who you are as a person, loving your body, things like that. I take this to mean that it is not just about physical self love but also mental and emotional. Accepting who you are enough to not doubt yourself when it comes to interpreting the cards. I do tend to have a bunch of self-doubt. Because of that when I read for other people sometimes I get very, extremely anxious about it and it messes with my readings. So the best way to collaborate with these cards will be to trust the cards and, most of all, trust myself.

Top right: what is the potential outcome of our working relationship?

Autumn Is My Last Chance: Please Don't Lose Hope!

This card is about self reliance as well as self-love. It is about knowing that when all hope seems lost that you yourself have what you need to get you through life, and you do not need to rely on other people for acceptance or help. So I think that is pretty much self-explanatory. It seems to tie in with all of the messages that we've been getting throughout this entire reading.

There you have it, a neat way to get to know your cards. Hopefully it worked for you as well as it work for me and for the YouTuber. I would suggest subscribing to Lea's channel as I myself have done. She has more videos on there than just about Tarot cards and oracle cards. She also has videos about make up among other things. I have not gotten around to watching any of her other videos that are not about the cards, but they seem interesting. I also just like her fashion sense and the way she talks. It is no surprise to me that she does have some ASMR videos up because she has a very nice and calming way of speaking. I honestly think that I could listen to her talk all day long. Screw Morgan Freeman I want her to narrate my life.

Protection Ritual For Ghost Hunters

2015-10-02T16:07:00.000-04:00

October is upon us and it's almost Halloween time. Hush, hush, it's always almost Halloween time.

Not mine, sadly. Taken from Photobucket.

After boredom had set itself into our bones, my friends and I decided to go on a midnight trip to Todd's Inheritance, also known as Todd's Farm.

It is a farm near Fort Howard and reported to be haunted. Rumor says that the figure of the woman holding a candle in the top window of the farm can be seen. They say that she is waiting for her soldier to return from the war. There also are supposed to be the apparitions of slaves hanging from the trees around the farm. I was also told by friends I used to hang out with that the house used to have some eagle mount or statue above the door. If you were driving towards Fort Howard park it would be right side up but when you drove back the other way it would mysteriously flip and be upside down. There were also stories of it changing color from black to white or vice verse depending on what way it was facing. I've tried looking online for any story like that but to no avail. That rumor may have been truly local and particular to that circle of friends.

As you can see we found nothing that night. My pictures may or may not have been taken with a smartpotatophone, so there's also that. The only thing strange that we encountered were malfunctions to our GPS. It has been my experience that Todd's Inheritance always seems to mess with my GPS. Never anywhere else on that road but there. Usually when driving by it the road disappears off the map and everything goes either green or blue as if you were driving over water or land. This time our car icon kept jumping ahead on the map to past Todd's farm then going back to it's original location on the GPS. Some of our phones also rapidly lost about 30% charge power. Take from that what you will.

We didn't actually go on the property but respectfully stayed beyond the gates. Although it does seem that it is open as a museum to the public. At least according to their Facebook page that is. Regardless of whether you believe in the stories of ghosts or not, the house does have a lot of interesting history behind it that is definitely worth a Google search at the very least.

That being said, being the cautious pagan that I am, before we went I decided to do a blessing over our car and the car's inhabitants which I will now share with you.

First consecrate some water to make it holy. There are many ways to do this. Here is a link with ways to consecrate water.

The way I did it was to have some water in a bowl and have some sea salt from a grinder, or table salt, in a different bowl. Hold each bowl above your head and ask the Gods to cleanse the element of water or earth, depending on which bowl you're holding up at the time, while visualizing a white light coming down from the sky and running into, over, and surrounding the bowl you're holding.

Then add the salt to the water. After that I took a knife and hold it above my head and visualized the same thing. Just pure white light running down into the knife, from the knife to my hands, and into my body, filling it with a cleansing glow. Then I said,

"As above, so below."

After that I plunged the knife into the bowl, visualizing all that power and energy flowing from the knife into the water.

It's not really necessary to do the last part I just thought it gave it a bit of an extra oomph. And obviously you can change some of the words and the deity to suit your own if you want. This is just how I personally do this.

After that I took the bowl outside. I began to circle the car. As I did this I dipped my fingers in the water and sprinkled and flung it on the car while I chanted,

"Earth, air, fire, and water,

Protect us and stay with us.

Earth bind the spirits,

Air blow them away,

Fire burn them away,

Water wash them away.

Earth, air, fire, and water,

Stay with us."

You can also say earth bind the evil and so on, and so on, which I also did.

After that I just walked up while continuing the chant to each of the people that were going with us, sprinkling it about their feet and on them. I also sprinkled some on myself as well.

So there you have it. Just a simple protection ritual to protect your car and people in it from having anything stick to them after ghost hunting. I don't know about you but I don't like stragglers. You could probably use this in a banishment ritual as well.

So who is excited for Halloween/Samhain, and how do some of you ghost hunters protect yourself? If you do at all, of course. Perhaps you are more secular and less pussy than I.

Blue Smoke

2015-08-26T19:23:00.001-04:00

I breath out a cloud of blue,
So thick.

Fog so thick,
I cannot see,
I cannot feel.

I am the abstract dragon of the universe,
I breath in fire and breathe out ice...

I climb the mountain in front of me,
Once,
Twice,
Three times,
And I arrive home to relieve my heavy extremities.

***
This sounds so pretty and deep, but really I got super drunk on Absinthe last Saturday and went outside to smoke a cigarette then had to climb up three flights of steps to my friend's apartment.

But I like this so much better. We can pretend there is true meaning.

Random Thoughts 10

2015-07-15T04:06:00.000-04:00

Only in the goosebumps universe would the thought process, "Is that a kitty? Oh wait no, it's just an ugly sponge." Totally logical.

***

Do you think fireflies view the Fourth of July as one big, confusing mating signal?
***

Does anyone else find it incredibly hard to get motivated as an adult? Especially where cleaning my room is concerned, or things like that. I will go the whole Pipi Longstockings route and try to 'ground' myself by telling myself I can't go out to wherever until I get my room clean and either one of two things happen:

A. I instantly rebel against myself and think, "Well I guess we'll just stay inside away from society and read."

Or B. I laugh at myself and think, "I'm a smegging adult. I'll go out if I want to." and do it anyway.

I guess because my room is almost never actually dirty it's just cluttered, is the reason I don't care. I just annoy myself sometimes is all.

***

I'm watching the original Fly movie for the first time. It is an odd combination of overacting, underacting, and some continuity problems (a man gets smushed under a press but apparently the blood won't get on the coroners blanket?). Vincent Price's facial expressions are wonderous though.

I love that a quite thrilling and creepy story can be told with minimal use of the gore, violence, and special effects that we've come to expect in modern horror movies. And I'll never grow tired of old school special effects. I think after 60 or so years it still stands firm.

There were some bits that I found dragged a little, but that may also be because it's a really old movie and we all basically know the premise. Especially if you've seen the updated version with Jeff Goldblum. Sometimes when watching or reading anything that's been around for so long that everyone knows the story even without having ever watched it, I find myself getting slightly over eager to get to the 'good parts' that the set up feels like you're slogging through mud. I was not, however, prepared for the ending. I thought I knew the whole of the ending but apparently I didn't. It is more than just a fly screaming, 'Help me!' and that's all I will say.

Going Down

2015-07-15T04:04:00.001-04:00

In my dream I was in an elevator. I was going down and my sister's pretty head came tumbling down with me, pooling blood around my feet. Her hair lay curled around her face, blood drenched gold. Just when she opened her mouth to scream I woke up, alone in my hotel room, sweating all over. My breath came in sharp, short gasps. I grabbed for my phone in the dark with one hand and fumbled for the lamp switch with the other. While the phone rang I slid my feet into my sneakers and my room key into my pocket. My sister's bemused voice sounded in my ear and I smiled inwardly, stepping out into the hallway.

"It's almost midnight, why are you calling so late?"

"Where are you?"

"I'm taking the elevator to the lobby's vending machines, do you want me to get you anything?"

My heart skipped a beat. I turned left and bolted down the staircase that led down the two floors to the hotel lobby.

"Why are you breathing so hard?"

"I'm running down the steps to meet you in the lobby, stay on the elevator."

"What's going on?"

The last part of her sentence was in stereo as the doors to the elevator slid open. She smiled at me, her nose wrinkling like it always did when she thought I was being particularly silly, and put her phone away. She stepped a foot outside the doors and I marched forward across the lobby floor, putting my hand up like I was the crossing guard of the elevators. The motion felt a little too dramatic at the time, even to me.

"Don't get off the elevator!" I shouted, surprising the man who had been waiting patiently to the side and was about to step on.

"Susan, seriously?"

"Am I allowed to get on?" asked the man, completely confused by now.

"There's something wrong with the elevator. Just stay there and let me get a maintenance worker to look at it, ok? I just have a bad feeling about...all of this." I said ending my warning lamely, my hand tracing the space in front of her in a big circle.

"I was just on it, it's working fine and you're being weird." She accused me.

Nevertheless her foot had returned to just in front of the doors. Whether she thought this was a prank or not, she was at least heeding my advice for the time being. For that I was grateful. The man to the side of the door however had enough and rolled his eyes at me.

"Well I need to get to my room." He said.

Or had started to say I guess. He got halfway through his sentence and took a step over the threshold when the elevator started a descent to the street level. My sister, eyes wide, gasped and took several steps back. She looked at me in surprise. The man, however, lost his footing and fell to the floor, half in and half out. I grabbed hold of his legs and tried to pull him away. Him and I had just got most of his body out but either we were too slow or the elevator was too fast. I'll never be able to get the sound he made when the top of the door met the back of his neck and kept descending, out of my head. Or the sounds his hands made. Hard thumps against metal and carpet turning into wet slaps that kept going even after my sister's high pitched shrieks faded away to the floor below. And I don't think my sister will ever be able to get the look of his face out of hers.
***

I was originally going to have a maintenance man be the hapless person who got decapitated by an elevator, then I realized that I have no clue how elevators are checked or fixed. A quick Google search told me that some hotels apparently have a street/ground floor and then a lobby above that so here we are.

Shut Up And Taste The Ice Cream

2015-07-07T04:58:00.001-04:00

A week or two ago my sister flopped down on the couch next to me and proclaimed her boredom. I agreed to take her out for a fuck-it drive, but warned her ahead of time I had no destination in mind. While we were discussing plans to get the hell out of dodge, at least for an hour or two anyway, my Mom asked if we could take my younger brother to Wendy's to get an application. I said yes and after we got his application, and made him chase the car around the parking lot, I asked my sister if she wanted to go to Prigle's Creamery. It's a good drive from Dundalk (about 20-30 minutes) and she's never been there before. She was good to go especially because it was on my dime. After yelling my brother's name over the music he was listening to on his headphones, he confirmed that he would like to go too.

In retrospect, I believe the next 30 or so minutes of complaining was my fault. My brother is an impatient person and I don't think I clarified how far away this creamery was for him. I think about every eight or so minutes he took his ear buds out to thrust his face up to where the GPS was and ask where we were. Then he would sink back into the shadows of the back seat to listen to his music. It was actually quite funny beyond being annoying.

While driving I occasionally wondered if he even took time to take in the scenery at all back there. I kind of doubt it. He wanted to get there and back as quick as possible. His impatience was understandable, he's young first off. Secondly, he wanted to go running before a certain time. I didn't know about that beforehand, I just wanted to spend time with my siblings. I tried to tell him that we weren't getting home any faster so he might as well enjoy the ride he's on while he's on it. No use complaining this far into the trip.

On our way there I accidentally took a wrong turn. I was going to turn around but it only took us a mile out of our way so I didn't see a reason to do so. Our new route took us down a one lane road covered by a canopy of trees. While we were driving my sister and I noticed a small stream to the left side. The formation of the land and rocks created a small waterfall fed by a little green pool of water. Just as quick as it came by it went. If it was just me and my sister we would have gone back to take pictures but my brother was having none of it, and I couldn't stand his bitching.

Three minutes later we finally ended up at the creamery. I let them both get a quart to take home and share with the family. This sounds like I'm being a most excellent sister but the two quarts were for purely selfish reasons. If they bring home quarts to share my ice cream gets left alone longer than expected and I get to actually eat some before everyone eats it all. My brother got an ice cream sandwich which was absolutely huge. Even he had to admit that it was worth the drive. Possibly not the bitching, but definitely the drive. When we got home he didn't even go for his run even though he had plenty of time. Instead he opted to have a friend sleep over and play video games. I felt like flicking his ears.

The whole trip made me think about how impatient and unaware we all can be, at least some of the time. Especially when certain types of social media come into play like Vine or Twitter. Sure I could have whipped out my phone and Vine'd or taken pictures of the waterfall since we did slow down slightly for it, but it has been my experience that doing so sometimes takes you out of the moment. Some things, I feel, create such an intimate moment that they can't be fully enjoyed while scrambling for your camera or to open apps. Sometimes you really just have to shut up and taste the ice cream, or shut up and enjoy the car ride since you can't turn back right at that very moment. I know we live in a 'pics/vids or it never happened' world, still there's something nice sometimes about having a memory that only you experienced unadulterated by any outside influences clamoring for your attention. A lot can be missed in those few precious seconds taken trying to capture the moment. Not to mention all the time spent directly afterwards sharing with everyone around you, something I feel that takes away from the afterglow of the moment. More often than not these days I find myself saying 'Fuck it' when my hand strays to my phone, or taking a few moments longer to privately enjoy whatever is happening before me before I take a snapshot, even if that means missing the snapshot, and moving along my way.

Case in point, a couple of hours later I had to leave for work. I had just passed my block and was going down the next block over when I had to stop suddenly for some guy darting away across the road. About a second later a box of fireworks sitting on the right side went off. I briefly toyed with the idea of putting it on Vine then decided against it. I knew that in the time it would have taken to set everything up this impromptu show would have expired. Instead, laughing at the spontaneity of it all, I carefully drove my car under an archway of multi-colored lights.

It was such a quick and magical moment in an otherwise mundane setting that I still regret nothing about not capturing that scene anywhere other than in my own head.
***

I think I wrote this about a year or two ago. I re found a book of mine with tons of plots, story lines, prompts, and blog entries that I had written in it. I had a stay at home type of day on the Fourth of July full of these little moments (mostly the mundane and peaceful type, not the magical) that kind of reminded me of this entry I had written up, and true to form it took me three days after remembering to actually put it online. Well at least it wasn't a month.

I hope everyone that celebrates American holidays had a great Fourth. I spent mine getting slightly high and eating burritos while watching Netflix and reading American Psycho, than watching neighbors set off fireworks from my couch while my dog went crazy. I'm glad I stayed at home. I got to catch up on sleep and no one was there all day. It was so relaxing. I think the Fourth may be my favorite holiday after Halloween. I love closing my eyes after watching fireworks and watching the imprints of the lights dance across the inside of my lids. It's almost like a meditation and instant replay all in one. When I was younger I used to feel super lucky because no one I knew did this and I got to see fireworks twice.

I've ditched Vine these days for Instagram but I still dawdle when capturing moments before I've had time to enjoy them for what they are.

Section: 9 Article: Random Thoughts

2015-06-09T03:21:00.000-04:00

I've been rewatching the Star Trek shows in sequential order and they have episodes every so often that deals with the mirror universe, basically bizarro clones of everyone. Everyone's evil, usually. Or just assholes. But I'm kind of a dick in this universe, mostly good with just some chaotic evil influences. Every time I watch one of those episodes, or any TV show with an evil clone episode, all I can think is how embarrassing would it be to find out you were your own evil clone?

I mean you and your crew bump into all these mirror people and they're all assholes, then you meet yourself and everyone is ready for another showdown and they're the most laid back, nicest person you can meet. The most awkward of silence and cricket noises ensues as everyone tries so hard not to meet your eyes.

Even more awkward, what if they tried to trade you out for your clone? Oh that would suck.
***

I'm bored at work and I was just thinking, I kind of want to be the asshole who snapchats a whole movie to their friends.

And this is why I'll be left in an evil mirror universe.
***

You ever have those total 'it can only happen to me' moments? Some things in my life I think the universe just sets up for its own slapstick amusement. There are definitely moments in my life that lend credence to the belief that I am on some Addy version of The Truman Show.

Case in point:

I'm walking to the entrance of the church my Scouts meet in for their Fly Up ceremony and I'm walking next to mother of one of my Scouts just talking. My foot must have gotten caught on a tree root or a fucked up piece of sidewalk and I completely eat dirt. Well technically I eat bush because I fall, nay dive face first into a freaking bush. There also happened to be a dead bird under the bush that I slap with my hand as I try to save myself. Not only that, I fall so hard my bra comes unhooked. I didn't even know that could happen. I didn't notice at first until I was back in the kitchen area with a hand full of Neosporin and I had to ask one of the other leaders to help me get my tits under control.
***

So I think I'm going to be forever alone. I just had this realization that my first instinct is to be mean to people. Mainly potential suitors. I don't know why, but I just push people away sometimes. Not all the time, usually I can stave off that instinct but it's still there.

Like, I got bored at work so I started day dreaming and it turned kind of sexual, as my day dreams are wont to do. Whatever celebrity I was thinking about at the time walks up to me in my mind's eye and says, 'Well Miss Addy, what are we going to do with you.'

My first instinct in my own sexual fantasy is to fix him with a dead eyed stare and say in my best Wednesday Addams voice, 'Hopefully die in front of me.'

Never mind that the comeback did not fit the question at all (or maybe it did? I don't know. It's 6:09am right now and I've been up all night answering phones) but this is why I'll die alone with twenty cats who will be fighting over each other to be the first to eat my face. They do that you know. They always go for the face, I don't know why and I'm too lazy to look it up.

Or maybe I just need someone who will sling zingers back at me in the same monotone voice?

***
My sister is totally pregnant. This has nothing to do with anything other than I'm excited and wanted to brag that I'll be an Aunt and a Godmother come January.

Can't wait to see that moon belly!

Hindsight On Hindsight 109

2015-05-30T02:31:00.000-04:00

I have been a naughty monkey lately, and have subsequently neglected this blog. I also have no concept of time, which I understand is actually quite fitting for a blog post about time travel, but apparently it's been almost 2 months (I guess) or a month since I've done a blog post, and specifically about Hindsight on Hindsight but I could have sworn that it was shorter. What I'm trying to say guys is mea culpa.

Never mind that now .....onto the post!

This episode of Hindsight opens with our Becca doing the I-Went-To-A-Rave-Last-Night-AndAll-I-Got-Was-This-Lousy-Glowstick zombie walk to the kitchen with some oddly mournful music in the background. Then again this was the 90's, you either had pop, rap, mournful pop, or anti establishment pop. Those were our only choices and we were grateful!

Kevin comes out of what I assume is Lolly's room and confirms that he had a great time last night. But honestly, his usage of the phrase 'How many guys get to say that they went out with the two prettiest girls in New York?' combined with Becca's unhistory-history with him makes me slightly wary of any relationship he gets into with Lolly.

***

If I had a dollar for everytime I woke up like that I could actually do this blogging without having to worry about work.

***

New Headcanon that Lolly created pogs and someone stole the idea. I completely believe it.

***

Careful Lolly, the man slept on your floor and is acting way to brusque about running those errands.

***

Bitch has a point about your work Sean. She does run a gallery. Or she at least attended one....or whatever.

***

I just...wanted more of this on the blog. *ahem*

***

'Use your mouth, not your tongue.'

Point made but you are one to smegging talk Becca.

***

I want to say that I am amazed that Lolly knows what the hell that motor mouthed singer is saying. I mean yes we had the internet in the 90's but it wasn't like the internet now. Lyric websites dedicated to decoding a singer's words and sometimes the meaning weren't nearly as prevalent as they are now. You had to either listen really closely to the music or song over and over again, talk with other fans in chat rooms and newsgroups, or you had to read the CD/Cassette booklet. And Gods help you if that CD had one of those booklets that only had artwork or only told you about the credits of who did what for the album. That always upset me.

***

'You're like a sister to me.'

That son of a bitch!

In other news, I'm here for you Lolly. Come into my arms. Come to Butthead.

***

'No, Jamie Lee Curtis will ruin the movie for you.'

This dude is my favorite in so many ways.

***

Listen to the man Becca, he is a love and breakup guru.

***

Invite him to the party Becca! Invite the love guru!

I hope he crashes the party.

***

Becca's viral marketing worked, too well. I say, if you can't stand the heat get out of the sauna zine dude.

Same thinking and motto applies to Becca. If you can't stand a Lolly Party, don't have Lolly invite the people and plan the party.

I'm just saying.

***

This episode we have usage of the word glitterati. Last episode it was friend zone. I cannot remember if these words were in use in that time era. They just kind of stand out as anachronisms.

***

You have to love Sean's confused look at the end of that scene with Paige.

'I only started a relationship with someone you don't like and didn't want me to have a relationship with. Why are you so upset?'

***

Crazy hours, a company? Snazzy dressing?

Jamie almost died doing coke things with his coke friend and decided to turn his life around, I guarantee it. Hopefully.

***

Jamie: Invasion of the Bodysnatchers edition, obviously.

***

'When I apologize to a girl I usually just get her flowers.'

HA! Hahahaaha! Hahahahaaaaaa!

I remember the drunken ride with coke friend to hold a boombox to Lolly's balcony. Then again he did say usually.

***

Sean and his new beau go to a schmoozy, snooty looking art party so he can try to be schmoozy and snooty and network. Right off the bat the whole affair kind of reeks of pretension. Then again this dude is making more money than Sean who is more...ahh, low rent then some of the party goers.

I think his beau is going to try and fail to Pretty Woman Sean.

***

This cereal Christmas tree is absolutely better than flowers.

***

Woohoo! Our girls are back together. We need more Paige hanging out with Lolly and Becca in this show. I love them.

***

Snooty bitches everywhere, Sean, and not enough hands to smack them.

I am quite worried for Sean after the male snoot's 'he likes them young' remark. That chick looks almost thirty though.

***

Yes, Sebastian!

***

'I'm nobody's sister.'

That's my Lolly. Get it girl, just don't get upset when it don't work is all I'm going to say.

***

It is almost irresponsible how hard I'm still willing to ship Lolly and Jamie.

***

That possible teenager is such a bitch.

***

What the hell Sebastian. This is a colonoscopy video, not some avant garde artistic vision someone had. Then again, sometimes it's really hard to tell.

***

Yes Paige, that look. The tables in this show turn quick as hell.

***

'You should always assume there's a fight going on and you should always assume it's your fault.'

I'm going to be honest, that's my default for if anyone even so much as smiles at me. It's just best to be prepared.

***

I absolutely love how Jamie is trying to be wingman for Lolly, but I really hope she kisses him instead at the end of this show.

***

Ooooooh, forehead blocked. Sorry Lolly.

***

The Gods are real, they love us and this is proof.

***

Damn fine magazine sale kiss.

But seriously, thirty minute sell out at midnight for what is essentially a no name startup zine is amazing.

***

And this is why I'm still going to hold out hope for a Lolly/Jamie ship, because this type of relationship and interaction is tons more healthier than what they started out as.

***

Oh I should have known. Damn it Jamie.

***

So apparently the man she was arguing with was her actual father. I'm going to be honest, completely thought that maybe she was going to be a prostitot of some sort after the young remark.

***

I wonder when Sean will tell her about Paige. This better be a completely professional relationship.

Although if she drops him because he won't date her it would be pretty stupid on her part seeing as because of his level of skill in art she finally got Daddy's attention and approval.

***

Oh crap

***

I still want to know what the hell is going on with poor man's Darius Rucker. We haven't seen the Buddha quoter in a while and I'm starting to wonder if the writers of this show even know what to do with his character. Maybe he'll make an end of season appearance in the next, and last (oh gosh! I'm so behind on what happens.), episode.

Whorehound

2015-04-04T04:49:00.001-04:00

You said 'hi',
and I put your potential for kindness on a pedestal.
Fantasies of hope
to fill up the hopeless.

Staring past you,
my heart is in a haze,
our future life is just a dream.

I never loved you,
I only loved the idea of you.
***
No rhyme poetry, yay! Because screw your rhyming schemes! I also wanted to write something to break up all the Hindsight on Hindsight posts I've been doing. Another one will be up sometime before Easter though. Second to last, oy.

Years back I was flipping through the channels and I happened across a movie. In the scene the actress says something along the lines of, "You don't love me, you only love the idea of me."

I never understood what that meant until now. It always confused me. If you love someone of course you love the idea of them, right?

I am glad that I have moved on in my life to the point where I am OK with dating and am able to do so. Outwardly and consciously I am wary still. I know that I am still somewhat vulnerable to people like my past exes. People that will only manipulate me. People that will run through me rather than with me. So I know the red flags and the warning signs of abusive and bad relationships and keep them at the fore front when dating and meeting people. Inwardly and unconsciously I am too eager. I want too much too soon. Sometimes I feel like my hormones are in hyper drive, I'm too much of a cutie chaser.

Outwardly I am a slightly morose Clementine, inwardly I am Joel.

I'm just realizing this, but at least I am aware of it...right?