Okay, so I’m thinking I might eventually move back here to this blog, perhaps even sooner rather than later, but for now, I’m having fun blogging at my new location (I’m past the initial pangs of withdrawal and abandonment that I felt when I left here), so I think I might stick it out there, too.

Meanwhile, the coolest thing happened to me this morning, and I couldn’t blog about it on my new blog, and I couldn’t tell anyone because they’d all think I was nuts, so I am going to post it here, since this is where it all began anyway.

Are you ready for it?

I actually saw both of the Priuses today. 

Yes, I know, I have no life.  Tell me something I don’t know.

And I guess I might as well just turn this into my Prius-sighting blog, since that’s all I ever talk about anymore. 

So onto the story.

I had to make a stop on the way to work, so I took a slightly different route.  And when I made a left turn onto the road that was going to take me to my destination, I saw one of the Priuses (the one I don’t normally see, since it was coming from the opposite direction) sitting there at the light as I turned.  I totally stared at the guy, and he saw me, and must have thought I was a complete loon.  I’d made eye-contact with the other, more familiar, Prius driver on Friday when I was on my way home.  I passed him and we both had our windows down and I looked across at him and he looked back at me.  So I like to think that, at some point today, they’ll manage to be having a conversation and the crazy girl driving a blue car who always stares at them whenever she sees them will just magically come up.  And then they’d search the net and find out I’d been blogging about them.  And then they’d call the police to come and arrest me for stalking or something.

A girl can dream, can’t she?  Well, all except that last part.  That would kind of suck.

Anyway, after I made my stop, I continued on my way, and figured I wouldn’t see the other one because I had altered my normal route.  But then I saw him, happening to catch him in an later part of my drive than I normally do (since I was actually on time for work instead of running a little late, like I usually am), and thus the two-for-two company Prius sighting was attained. 

Speaking of Priuses (or is it Prii?), this is kind of an interesting read.

Okay, so I swear I’m not going to update this thing every day, so that it’s like I never left.  Even if I were so inclined, I don’t think I could handle two blogs at the moment…and nothing’s changed on the reasons I don’t want to blog here anymore. 

But still, driving to work today, I saw the Prius, and the side of it is no longer dented and injured.  I wanted to blog about it, but realized that no one on my new blog would know what I was talking about, and I couldn’t well link to this blog because that would defeat the whole purpose, now wouldn’t it.

So, here I am.

I hadn’t seen the Prius in a while.  I was running a little late this morning, and there it was.  I suppose it could have been the other one (that business has two that I’ve seen), but since it was on the same route as usual, and I didn’t see it for a while, I’m guessing it was in the shop and now it is fixed. 

Just thought you’d like to know…

It also struck me as kind of funny.  Over at Charming, but single, she gives all the men she talks about names, usually starting with “the” but sometimes not.  She does it with men; I do it with cars. 

What exactly that says about me, I’m not sure. 

So here’s the thing.  I’m starting to feel the pain a little bit.  The pain of abandoning this blog and leaving to start another one.  I know it must sound silly, but this blog has sort of been my home.  And now I’ve had to let it go for strange and stupid reasons of my own.

This is not a post saying that I’m returning.  I’m not.  And maybe I never will.  But I think, eventually, I’d like to, if I can.  So that  is the plan, for now.  To continue to blog in my new location until such time as I feel as if I’m able to return to blogging here.

I only post this here to keep anyone who might still be checking in apprised of the situation.  It may or may not mean anything to you.  That is fine; I do not expect it to matter all that much.  It matters to me, though.  If you wish to continue to follow my neurotic self, then drop me a line and I will be happy to provide you with my new address.  If you wish to continue checking in here to see when I return, then by all means do that as well.  I may even update from time to time.  Or I may return to full time blogging here in a flash, so that I barely even need have announced that I was leaving (except I wanted it to be clear that I made a decision to stop blogging rather than just stopping without any conscious intent to do so, which I’ve done many times before - this is different, and it was important to me to convey it as such). 

I must go now, but I am nearly done with the retrospective reading through old posts.  I need only go through the ones I’ve done since joining WordPress and then my journey will be complete.  Look for the last page to be up in the next couple of days.  And then, silence, until such time as I feel fit to return. 

Until then…

Okay, so the title of this post is a lie.  I wasn’t just joshin’ (which always makes me think of when I went to see Tuck Everlasting with my friend and her cousin, and one of the characters says that and my friend’s cousin, who was quite a bit younger than us, thought it was the funniest thing ever and kept quoting it the rest of the night) when I said I wasn’t going to be blogging here anymore.  I really did mean it.  Honest, I did. 

No, this post is merely because I can never just let things lie and let the last word be the actual last word.  Rest assured, I will soon be out of your hair though…unless you wish to follow me to my new domain, in which case drop me a line or a comment or send up smoke signals or whatever. 

I just wanted to alert those of you who care that I am indeed setting up pages that link to some of my favorite posts from the time I blogged as Yankee from Mississippi.  The first of these, my posts from the Blogger years, is already available for your consumption.  I will do another for my Typepad posts, and a third for those since joining WordPress.  I broke them down that way not for any thematic reason, but just because I thought it might be too much for one page.  I may or may not update this particular post with links to those new pages as they are completed, but if I don’t, well, just look at the top where the page links are and you should see it.  I also never finished my 100 Things.  Guess that just makes me an incomplete person. 

I can hardly say “the rest is silence” again (though, I am pretty proud of myself for managing to quote the Doors and the Bard in the same post), so I think I’ll “borrow” from favorite poet, T.S. Eliot (with my sincerest apologies to Tom for the hackery - it’s really a very good poem):

This is the way the blog ends
This is the way the blog ends
This is the way the blog ends
Not with a bang but a wimper.

I don’t quite know how to say what I’m going to say, so I think I’m just going to say it, right here at the outset, and then attempt some sort of explanation.

After today, I will cease blogging here. This will, in all likelihood, be my very last post on this blog.

You should all know that I really love blogging. And I’ve really appreciated those of you who have become daily readers and commenters (as well as those of you who read often and have never revealed yourselves to me). I feel almost as if I know some of you, like you are friends of mine. You have offered words of comfort and encouragement and support for this entire endeavor, and I really appreciate that. Much more than I could ever say.

So it is with a heavy heart that I say goodbye to this blog. Unfortunately, for reasons I’m not going to entirely go into here because they are immensely private and not entirely personal, it has become entirely necessary for me to do so. Know that I would not be doing this unless I were completely convinced of that. Part of the reason I haven’t blogged much since last week is that I’ve been kicking back and forth on this, mulling it in my mind, trying to see if there was another option, something I could do instead that would permit me to remain blogging. It’s had my stomach in knots, and kind of put a damper on my creativity.

In truth, I owe every single person reading this an apology. Lately, this blog has become something it was never intended to be, and it is for this reason that I must stop. I owe one person in particular an apology. If you are reading this, and you think I might be talking about you, then you are probably right. So just know that I am sorry, very truly sorry for absolutely everything.

I am going to resume blogging elsewhere, more anonymously. Maybe it is the wrong thing to do. Maybe it is just me running away from my problems rather than standing and fighting bravely on. You have no way of knowing, because I’m not going to elaborate on my reasons for leaving. Just know that I truly feel I have no other option.

Maybe I am making too big a deal out of it. It’s just a blog, after all. And not a very good one at that.

For reasons which are my own, I am not going to post the location of my new blog here on this site. It would sort of put a damper on the whole anonymity thing, for starters. Some of you have been following my blog here, and anyone who wishes to have the new address need only email me at the address to the left and I will send you the new address. I would ask that you respect my wishes to remain anonymous, and to sever all connection between this blog and the new one. You may link to the new blog, of course, if you have one of your own, but just refrain from making any connection between the new and the old or mentioning me by name if ever referencing the new blog.

Of course, this blog will remain here. I’m proud of some of what I’ve written here, as well as on my first blog site. I am going to set up a separate page here linking to some of my favorite posts of mine. I may not get this done by the close of business today (though I very much hope to), so if there are to be changes to this blog after today, that will be it. Maybe it’s unnecessary, but it’s something I want to do, for my own benefit, if for no one else’s. I am selfish to the bitter end.

I guess that just about covers it. The new blog is set up, and the first post is already there. I feel like there’s more I want to say, but there are just no more words.

The rest is silence…

I’m going to get to my big announcement/update post later, but before I do that, I did want to post some links to things I’ve found worthwhile out there in the land of internet reading.

• I’ve been especially enjoying Slate’s conversation about the end of term cases from the Supreme Court between Dahlia Lithwick and Walter Dellinger.  I’m a little behind on reading all the posts, not because it’s incredibly dense, because it isn’t, but because I’ve been a little busy and preoccupied.  It’s definitely worth a look, though.
• Charming, but single has a post I really relate to about writing.  It’s a great little significant story, and she tells it so well. 
• Gail writes beautifully and passionately about knowing she’s right and yet enduring the ridicule and scorn of those who can’t see it and think she’s wrong.  My response to such open criticism is usually to run and hide or find something else to talk about, but Gail bravely fights on. 
• Jeff Ellis has so many interesting and informative posts that it’s hard to keep track or pick just one, but I particularly enjoyed his observations about being out of touch with the latest youthful slang.  I was never all that much in touch with the slang to begin with, and I’m not quite as old as Jeff, but I still relate.  I’ve had other moments like that, when it finally hits you that you’re getting older, or that you’re older than you think of yourself as being.  Especially here lately. 
• Litwit has written a tongue-in-cheek singles ad that I really got a kick out of. 
• The Times has a review of the iPhone.  The hype was big, but the phone (they say) mostly meets it, though of course, there are flaws and quirks.  I must admit that I really didn’t get all the fuss at first, but now that I keep seeing ads for it on T.V., I’ve started to want one.  Only no way I’m shelling out all that money to buy one, and I really don’t need it or wouldn’t really get all that much use out of it anyway.  It’s just cool and so that part of me that loves new gadgets and fun technology wants it. 

Oh, and last but not least, it’s Wednesday One-Liners at Overheard in New York, so click on over and keep on scrolling down.  Some of it is not for the faint of heart the weak of stomach or the easily offended, so be warned…This one had me in stitches, though.  Poor New Jersey:

Pilot: For those of you on the right side of the aircraft, there will be a great view of Manhattan. We’ll be coming up the Hudson and making a turn over Central Park heading into the Southwest. For those of you on the left side of the aircraft, well… you get Newark, sorry.

–Flight 3188 into LaGuardia

Overheard by: Wendy to the right

As most of you reading this already know, from this post and the dearth of blogging following it, last week was not a particularly good week for me. This week is not shaping up to be too much better. It seems that no matter how much I try to get away from certain things, they continue to pop up, usually just when I start to feel to fog lift and see the sunlight beyond the dreariness of my current situation and mood.

The thing that happened last week was particularly upsetting, and just sort of kept piling on as well, so it brought all of the old stuff back up again, the stuff I thought I’d gotten past already. So that’s what made it especially bad. I think perhaps I as just in denial about being over some of it, in an out-of-sight, out-of-mind kind of way, or possibly in a self-delusional way as well. I mean, if I were over things the way I thought I was and the way I should you, the happenings of last week wouldn’t have hit me nearly as hard as they did.

I’ve never been one to get over things easily or quickly. So these feelings have lingered a bit longer than they should have. I’m still in something of a funk over it. But that’s the way it goes.

My mother was talking to me the other day, and she said that she’s heard that it’s harder to get over being left by someone you love rather than the death of someone you love. I’m not sure I believe that’s true. She was saying it to try and comfort me over my lingering sadness and issues surrounding the end of my relationship. I appreciated it, but I didn’t honestly believe it was true. She said that people say it’s harder because with death, at least there is finality. It may be harder or more difficult initially, but it’s over and done with all at once, whereas with a break-up there are lingering concerns that flare up from time to time that mean it is never really over.

I’ve thought about it a little bit since then, and then I was reading something the other day that made me think of something else that might make it easier, though even now I’m still skeptical. When someone you love dies, you can sometimes be comforted by the fact that, if they were alive, they would still love you and still be proud of you and still want to be with you and know you and share with you and all the rest. When someone leaves you though, the exact opposite is true. That person obviously doesn’t love you anymore, and doesn’t want to be around you anymore, and that makes it harder to move on because it makes it harder to feel good about yourself. When someone you love dies, you can imagine them looking in on you from beyond, or imagine how happy or proud or whatever they would be of you if they were only there. It might be sad that they aren’t, and bring about a little pang of sorrow or whatever. But it doesn’t actually make you feel worse about yourself. It doesn’t make you feel rejected.

It’s hard to deal with rejection, especially if, like me, you are already prone to being down on yourself.

I still don’t think I buy that it’s harder, though. It shouldn’t be at any rate. Though it did make me think for a brief moment if I’d prefer it if my ex had died rather than dumped me and started seeing someone else. It didn’t take me too long to conclude that I wouldn’t prefer that at all. Not only would I be in as much, if not more, pain, but it would hurt too many other people that I care about and would cut his life short, which I wouldn’t wish at all, even if it meant I would experience significantly less pain than I have over the past few months.

I have, more than once, and not without sadness, wished that I could go back to the moment I first met him and that I could hold onto that initial impression I had of him, rather than getting to know him and growing to like him and then to love him. I would lose a lot of pleasant memories, ones that still make me smile despite myself, but I would also lose a whole lot of pain, and when I thought of him, if I did at all, it would be as someone inconsequential and insignificant to me. Still, even this is unsatisfactory.

Don’t know what made me go off on that tangent. It’s not that it’s not relevant, but it’s not what I wanted to say. The past week has taught me some things. I need to make some changes, some of which you’ll be hearing about, because they will involve this blog.

But I’ll save that for another post. Look for it tomorrow.

A Secret.

They’ve also added comments over there at PostSecret. I’ve never noticed it before, so I assume it’s new. Not sure how I feel about that. Sometimes, I’ve read one that I might want to respond to, but opening it up for comment seems to go against the whole spirit of the endeavor, which is to offer a place for people to disclose secrets, not a place for people to discuss or debate those secrets.

Then again, you can just skip the comments if you don’t want to read them…which is what I think I’ll do, even if curiousity over what’s being said might take over at some point.

I’m really worried about my cat.

She’s always been a little off, I guess. She was a stray, as almost all of the cats adopted by my family have been. She was just a little kitten when my mom and I found her in the parking lot of my mom’s dance studio. At the time, that area of town wasn’t really well developed, and there were a lot of empty lots. My mom’s studio was one of the few businesses open there, then. It seems that empty or abandoned lots are great places to dump unwanted pets. I remember when my sister and I were young, we were playing in the wooded lot across the street from our house and we found these two incredibly young kittens. Their eyes weren’t even open yet, and they weren’t weaned from their mother yet. Still, someone had dumped them off in the woods and my sister and I happened upon them. We went and got our mom and she brought them home. We took them to the vet to try and figure out how the help them survive. He gave us bottles to feed them with and formula to mix up for them, but a week later both of them were dead. It was absolutely horrible.

But I was talking about my cat. My current cat. When my mom and I found her outside the studio that night, we took her home. She was so small and cute. When we’d decided to keep her, Mom said that she could be mine. My sister already had a couple of the cats that belonged to her (one had been a Christmas present, and another a present from a boyfriend), so this one got to be mine. I named her Jazz, because I was totally obsessed with John Stockton and the Utah Jazz at the time.

I don’t remember her being skittish at first. There are even pictures (well, one picture - our family isn’t too big on them, I guess) of me holding her, which would never happen now that she’s so easily frightened. I’m not sure when she developed such nervousness. I think it might have been around the time we had her spayed. She didn’t like that at all. It traumatized her so much, she hid under the bed for a couple of days and wouldn’t come out.

Then, the rest of her fearful behavior followed. She would run and hide from people she didn’t know, and even sometimes from those she did. She seemed to prefer women to men, I suspect because the men she’d mostly come in contact with, living in our house, had been a little on the loud side and she didn’t seem to like loud too much.

She also got extremely fat. Probably even unhealthily so. Only she never seemed to eat very much, because she was such a scaredy cat that she wouldn’t come when the food got put out, and would hang back and let all the other cats eat first, so she wouldn’t get very much food. But seriously, she was fat. Picking her up was like lifting a small child, which didn’t matter much because she was very hard to catch, and also very strong, so that if you did manage to catch her and pick her up, she would push very hard to get away, making it almost impossible to actually hold her for any length of time.

All of these things are still true, by the way. It’s not like she’s dead or anything. Well, except the part about her being fat. She’s not fat anymore, but I’m getting to that.

When the storm hit, the cats stayed in the house alone. The flood water came in, and luckily, none of the cats died. They all managed to get away from it safely, though a couple of them must have been in it at some point because when we got back to the house, they were wet.

That day was so scary and sad. To walk into your home and realize that it had been filled with nearly five feet of water was really something. All the furniture had floated around, making it very hard to navigate once we actually got inside. We checked to make sure we could find all of the cats. Jazz, poor thing, she got frightened by my grandfather coming in and she ran into the basement, which had been one of her favorite hiding places before. Only this was just after the storm, so the basement was still full of water. Not completely full, but definitely had a couple of feet of water still sitting in it.

So we could hear her splashing and thrashing around in it, and then we could hear her scuffle up onto some piece of furniture and then she started moaning, a horrible sound, like she was dying or something. But we couldn’t do anything about it. The basement still had all that water in it, and it was getting dark outside so we needed to get back to my grandfather’s where we were staying (because all the power was out and the roads impassible), and there was so much funiture turned over and floating around down there and the water was icky bayou water and thus not at all clear, so there was no way to even see where she was, let only not get hurt going in after her. It was too dangerous.

I was so upset, though. We had to leave the house, and I was bawling all the way back up the street to the car. We’d had to park so far away because of all the trees in the road. We made it back the next day when it was light once again, and after doing a thorough search of the house, we found her. Under the bed in my room. She wouldn’t come out for days. Just like the time we’d had her spayed. She had been traumatized once again.

Really, it’s been since then. She hasn’t been the same. She’s lost so much weight, she’s really thin now. And she’s stopped taking care of herself. She also developed this really bad allergic reaction to something and lost a whole bunch of her hair. She’s been back to the doctor several times, yet it doesn’t seem to be getting better. She just lays around now. She doesn’t even run like she’s scared anymore.

It’s almost like she’s depressed.

I remember reading somewhere once that pets will often take on the traits of their owners. Or maybe I never actually read it anywhere, and it just seems like one of those things that should be true. I’ve been a little depressed of late, it’s true. Not cripplingly so, mind you, for the most part. I’ve just been under a cloud or in a funk. The past couple of days have been pretty bad, though, and just now, when I was walking by Jazz, the thought occurred to me that it might be my fault. I might be making her sick by being so down myself.

I dismissed the thought, though. After all, she’s been like this pretty much since the storm, and my mood hasn’t been that way for nearly that long. So maybe it really is that pets can get depressed and traumatized, and she was by the storm, and it’s just taking her a while to get over it. Probably, she never will, unless something else big happens. But that’ll just end up sending her to an early grave or something.

Still, I can’t get the thought out of my head that the two of us, pet and owner, seem to be in something of the same boat at the moment. I found myself looking at her and thinking, I know how she feels. Silly, yes, but true.

I am still worried about her, though. And I just wanted to tell someone, so here it is. Perhaps one more trip to the vet, just to see if there’s anything else he can do for her, wouldn’t be a complete waste of time.

Well, folks, today isn’t much better than yesterday. I’m still not feeling particularly chatty, or really very well at all. I am no longer angry, but I am feeling hurt and upset and confused and bewildered and a whole other host of things all that the same time, which isn’t particularly pleasant. It makes it very difficult to cut through of all that to try and find something interesting to say. (I would blog about what I’m upset about, but I assure you you’d all find it dreadfully boring, and you’d all wonder just why I found it so upsetting in the first place.)

However, I shall endeavor to find something that I might be interested in blogging about, because, right now, the topics really aren’t coming. Last night was pretty rough, again, as far as sleep and emotional wear and tear goes, so my brain is far from its full functioning capacity.

In the meantime, check out some of the fabulous blogs and links to the right.

This is just to let you know that tomorrow there will likely be no blogging tomorrow. As of right this moment, I am extremely pissed off, and I’m afraid if I start to post anything, I’ll just end up going off on that which I am pissed about, and this would not be good for you or for me.

I did want to post something by way of explanation, though, since I’ve been really good about updating most days, in case anyone stopped by for their daily dose of Shannon only to discover absolutely nothing. I wouldn’t want you all to worry. So here we are.

Seriously, the humor is a mask for darker forces. If by some miracle, I happen to be over the thing I’m upset about now (which, if you know me at all, you know is highly unlikely), then blogging as normal will resume tomorrow. Otherwise, I should be relatively back to normal by Thursday.

Just another warning: it’s also highly unlikely that I will get any sleep tonight, so if by some chance I do blog tomorrow, it’s likely to be incoherent anyway, so perhaps it’s just better if you all stay away. For your own protection. My incoherent ramblings are particularly dangerous when brought on by exhaustion.

A happy Wednesday to you all!

I thoroughly enjoyed this post by Alex Massie which discusses the “controversy” regarding the politics of abortion and the film Knocked Up.  I’ve blogged about this before, and find it to be a fascinating topic, and this post covers it all.  Really, it’s so well-written and thought out that I wish I’d written it myself. 

He discusses some of the reactions from various bloggers and pundits, manages to work in an interesting discussion of The 40 Year Old Virgin (which is one of the more thought-provoking responses to that film I’ve ever read), and even extrapolates it out to some larger point about politics in film generally. 

Link via Ross Douthat. 

It’s quite long, but well worth the read, so check it out. 

So here are some updates on my life and the crazy things I like to blog about from time to time.

I did indeed take dance class again last night. I didn’t take the whole class. Think it’s best to ease my way in.  For those familiar with ballet, I just took the barre portion of the class.  I’m not nearly as sore this morning as I was the last time, so either it did get a little easier, or else not staying for the whole class helped.  Either way, it’ll make me better able to make it to the rest of the classes this week and hopefully get some momentum going.  Now all I need to do is lose some weight (especially considering one of my fellow bloggers, both much taller and male, reports weighing less than I do), but as that involves the dreaded “D” word, I think I’ll just switch to another topic now. 

I completely forgot to mention before, but I saw the Prius again on Friday. It was strange, too, because I’d been taking my regular route all week and hadn’t seen it. But then on Friday, I took a completely different route, because I was going out that night rather than home, and there it was. The banged up, white Prius with the familiar company info on the side. The saga continues, curiouser and curiouser.

The Macbook continues to work for me.  He and I (I haven’t named him yet…I’m open to suggestions) had a little stress the other day because I let his battery run low and it wouldn’t recharge at first.  But all is well once again, and we’ll be very happy together, I’m sure. 

I’m also currently mulling a decision that could greatly impact the course of my life.  Even more so than buying a Mac.  So stay tuned.  You’ll be the first to know.  Okay, so maybe not the first, but still.  I promise to keep you apprised of anything really important. 

I wish I had more time to look at this right now, but I don’t.  Still, thought someone happening here might find it of interest.  Plus linking it here will make it easier for me to find it later. 

I will say that, in reading through the first couple of slides, I find it very interesting that the exhibit in question juxtaposed early cinema with paintings.  I am unconvinced, like the author of the slides, that 19th century art played much of a role in the development of cinema.  Especially right at the start.  It cannot be doubted that film is an art form today, nor can it really be denied that many early filmmakers were artists in their own right, but I don’t think that, at the time, they were considered such, nor do I think that they drew much inspiration from the more highbrow art world of the time. 

I could be wrong, I suppose.  But I just don’t seem much of a relationship there. 

Despite the fact that it kicked my ass two weeks ago today, I’m going to attempt another ballet class this evening.

The summer is a bad time to choose to get back into any semblance of ballet shape. In a way, it’s better, because the class combines several different levels, which means it’s easier than a normal class would be. However, the schedule is sporadic in the summer months. There are three classes a week, but not ever two weeks in a row. Since it knocks me out so much and makes it nearly impossible for me to get to another class in the same week, I end up having to wait a couple of weeks for another opportunity, at which point my body has delved back into stubborn laziness.

A part of me really doesn’t want to go. I don’t like pain. I don’t like it when it’s hard. I don’t like how fat I am, in a room surrounded by amazingly skinny little girls.

However, I was mulling over whether or not I should go this evening on my drive home from work, when a thought popped into my head that almost made me cry. Despite everything, the difficulty, the pain, the fact that I don’t look anywhere near my best, I still feel beautiful when I dance. I even felt it two weeks ago when I took that class, as painfully out of shape as I am in my current state. When I got in that room and started to move, I felt beautiful. In fact, it’s probably the first time in a long time that I’ve felt that way.

So, yeah, I’m going to go. I’ll let you know later whether an hour and a half of beauty is worth three days of pain. I’m thinking that, even for an old pessimist like me, the answer will be yes.