When I lived in England, Orlando was on of the prime “go to” places that everyone would envy you for being able to go to. It had Disney and Universal Studios, and while it still does, they’ve lost a lot of their luster now.

A better “deal” for me would be to win a vacation to New York or Pennsylvania there are different things in that area that I would be interested to see; but we’re going to continue to get the fantastic Orlando vacation spam and use it to light our fires.

If we go up this year it’ll be in October or November I would imagine, when it will be cooler, but there are hopefully going to be less crowds up there for the light shows in December.

Despite certain things which went on I have a lot of fond memories of my time in St. Augustine. A group of us would gather in the gazebos on the campus and play music and chat about all kinds of things. Several of our friends knew how to play the guitar and we would sing and dance with each other. Or we would take midnight walks down to Vilano Beach and hang out there looking at the stars and watching drunk people trying to skinny dip. I can’t stand to go to Vilano in the day now it’s just so strange to me.

He’s been so vexing and so deliberate in his disobedience that he at one point fell into our friend’s pool which could have been so much more dangerous if there hadn’t been other people in the pool at the time to scoop him right out. I froze in shock at the time. He also tried to get out of his car seat while I was driving on a very busy highway going to the airport to pick up my father-in-law. I couldn’t very well pull over and he was shouting at me that I should turn the car around because he wanted to go home.

I’m at a loss. The past couple of days haven’t been quite as bad. Yesterday morning he was positively helpful, however some friends of ours had asked if they could have the munchkin stay over night with their children to give us a break and I wonder if he was afraid that we wouldn’t let him go if he wasn’t behaving. Tonight he’s been testing boundaries but hasn’t been as malignant.

I’ve been wondering if some of his behavioral issues are related to food intake. My husband doesn’t think that food additives would have any affect on behavior that this is just a three-year old testing us and acting out because we weren’t being as strict in our discipline and he felt that he could get away with things.

However I’ve heard from several sources that certain food colorings or other things can cause problems with behavior in people who are susceptible. So, I’m going to monitor him after certain things that he eats to see if there are patterns. The tantrum in the car was so sudden, right before we’d been playing I-Spy and he’d been messing around with his dinosaurs and then suddenly he was freaking out. He hadn’t asked for anything that I had denied him. He wasn’t losing the game, it wasn’t as if I was keeping track of anything like score anyway it was I-Spy.

I know that if we find that something in the food is causing the problem it’s not going to fix all his behavior. He’s still going to test boundaries, and act out and various other things like that, but the screaming fits and the personal attacks and just strange outbursts with no apparent cause, those we can definitely do without.

It’s silly of me, but at the same time I can’t help but want something like that because it would be very handy, but it IS absolutely unnecessary. We don’t need a laptop. It’s a want.

I remember being told several times to not let my wants become my needs. It’s a strong desire, because it’s something that would be cool, and I have a soft spot for technology, and I think the way that we as a society are tend towards fulfilling our wants. It’s why we have such a problem with credit card debt, and the way that the economy is going right now…

Anyway, besides I don’t need a laptop. This computer works right now and we were able to get it fixed, and since then I’m taking very good care of it

This year we actually get to go to a big celebration that our friends put on every year. They’re going to have a cook out and they have a pool party and can set off fireworks because they have a large property right by a lake and all the neighbors come out on their docks and watch the displays.

We’ve gone there several times in years past and had a blast, even when the munchkin was much smaller.

I could really tell there was a holiday coming up with how busy it was at work today. Normally Friday’s are fairly constant but this was just non-stop. I got in at ten and we had a slightly slow period about 11:30 so I ran over and made myself a sub for lunch and I got about halfway through it (it was a six inch) before I had to stop and wait on customers and then I didn’t get to eat any more for about 45 minutes. I got two bites thanks to a customer seeing that I was halfway through lunch and telling me to eat a bit because they weren’t in a rush, and then I wound up having to throw the rest away because it sat out way too long to be safe any more.

It didn’t slow down again until after three when thunder broke and we had a huge rainstorm. Then I was barely able to count down the second register before we were swarmed again. The register locks up any time you’re $75 over $75 and makes you drop money, between 3:30 and 4 p.m. I had to drop SEVEN times that’s how busy we were!

Anyway, I hope that everyone state-side has a safe and happy 4th of July!

While he probably won’t ever care that it used to take about twenty minutes for nail polish to dry on your fingers instead of barely thirty seconds I imagine that he will be incredulous of the fact that phones used to be chained to not only the house but the walls and had rotary dials rather than push screens or the ability to call someone just because you ask them too.

I imagine also that he will not understand about records. In this age of ipods and phones that play mp3s it’s going to be really hard for him to imagine a large disc the size of your head with grooves that ran on a needle and not lasers, or that when his mother was a child they didn’t even have walkmans until she was almost eight and they used cassette tapes not digital information.

I see the way he asks to immediately see the pictures on the digital camera when we take them so the idea of film completely alien. I remember when we used to have to wait FOUR days to see the pictures we had taken and be so SO very careful with the camera so that the film wasn’t exposed otherwise the pictures were GONE. He found some negatives the other day that had wound up in a box in his room and, of course, there was no hope of explaining what they were and why he shouldn’t touch them or eat them.

I remember also my first computer. It was just a monitor, and not a flat screen monitor, a BIG HULKING monstrosity of a monitor that my mother and I could barely lift, and it had a keyboard, but no tower or hard drive box. The keyboard was almost two inches thick because the computer’s memory system was inside it and it also had to have space to hold the cassette tapes which ran the games. The games would take about ten minutes to load and were all in 64-bit pixels. There was no Windows on the computer not even 3.1 it had no GUI at all when it booted up the screen was just blue and yellow and all the commands ran in DOS. I used to sit for hours typing in strings of commands to make the computer play guessing games with me like “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral” or make it run fireworks shows on it’s screen. Now those sort of screen savers are common place if not tame.

As I left the bedroom I asked him to come back out too. He’s not allowed to stay in our bedroom by himself for a variety of reasons. I’m crossing the dining room when I hear the door slam shut but not the distinctive clomp-clomp of him following after me.

I turn back around and open the door. I find a wall plaque of an eagle that is my husbands is on the bed, and the wing on the left side is broken.

“What happened to this?” I ask.
“I don know,” he answers.
“Did you do this?”
“Emmitt did it,” he says pointing to Kore’s cat who is curled up on one of the file boxes in our room looking rather sleepy and perplexed.
“Emmitt did this?” I hold up the broken eagle.
“Yes, and Nim did it,” he says, meaning my cat who has been upstairs all morning, “and BF too,” Kore’s other cat who is outside.
“Hm,” I say, “Are you sure you don’t want to tell me the truth?”
“Nim did it and BF did it,” he nods and folds his arms.
“I think you need to go to your room until you’re ready to tell me the truth.”
“No, I think not.”

Guess who won?

I’ve been having quite a few issues lately with motivation. However a lot of that comes from the fact that I’ve been having a depressed episode. I dislike writing that because it feels so…contrived, but it’s the truth. I have to acknowledge that I have depression. In fact I apparently have a depressive disorder — according to my medical diagnosis sheet, which really shouldn’t be surprising there are a lot of people with depression in my family, and have been for several generations.

However, up until recently I was not taking medication. I weaned myself off meds last August when I ran out of insurance covered psychiatric visits figuring that I was doing better and therefore didn’t need medication any more. However slowly but surely it’s been whittling away at me and I haven’t realized. Depression is sneaky, especially when you have other things going on both physically and mentally. It’s easy to figure that it’s all in your head because it IS all in your head, but if it’s chemical — well, then it’s difficult to psych yourself out of it. I’ve been trying but it can only go so far, especially when the balance is out of whack.

It saps creativity, energy, drive, desire to do ANYTHING, and generally makes you a bear to live with and there’s nothing that can be done, except actually take pills. Which I have been doing, although admittedly sporadically, it’s hard to get things into routine, especially when the meds have to be taken with food and I have a tendency to forget to eat in the mornings.

I’ve been prescribed Celexa. It’s the first time I’ve been on that medication. Previously I’ve been on Lexapro, Trazodone and Wellbutrin.

We’ll see how things go. So far I can feel that my mood is getting better, but it’s slow. However I’ve definitely been getting more energy gradual as it may be, which is a good thing.

I keep saying I’m not going to replace the collar this time when she loses it, but then I find myself going through the pet supplies at our local store getting her a new collar and a replacement tag.

Maybe I’m the one who has a problem, but we do a lot for our kitty family members, I think it’s just the nature of me. It’s important to me that she has the collar so that if she gets separated from us there’s a chance someone will be able to return her, and animal control certainly should be able to.

I don’t know what I’d do if she ever got hurt. I’d be devastated that’s for sure, but I try to remind myself that I would be practical and if it was the case I would look at what was fiscally feasible let alone what would be best for her. However I know that if push came to shove I’d try everything I could to save her, despite claiming that she’s “just a cat”, because deep down she’s more than just a cat.

I also feel for friends when their pets are not doing well. Two friends of mine, one of their kitty-baby’s swallowed a sewing needle and has had to have surgery. They’re asking if anyone is so inclined that they give donations to help them cover the costs of this surgery: you can read more about it here. I’ve never met their cats, but I know the couple very well and they’ve always helped us out when they can, so I pass along the information if there are other cat loves out there who are able to help it would be appreciated.

As part of the background check process the town officials require their job applicants to list any websites, email and social media sites they are members of, including MySpace and Facebook and give their passwords. Their reasoning appears to be that because they have people applying for jobs with police, fire and various other things that it’s important to see the integrity of these people and that would be a way to do it.

Although to give out passwords is a violation of personal safety and in some cases site policy (as in the case of Facebook).

When I see this article though it reminds me of the case a few years ago where a police officer in Lexington, Kentucky was fired over the content of his MySpace page. There have been other similar cases involving other police officers, school teachers and public officials.

I’m also reminded of the fact that my husband, who is a police officer, made it a point to not create a MySpace page, or a Facebook profile. His online presence is very minimal. Any of his social activity occurs in the non-virtual plane, because he considers his job and social status more important than having an online profile. He often tells me that the internet should just be for looking up movie times and reading news, and if he ever wants to play a game he just uses his XBox or the Wii.

When he first explained this to me I was confused. I’m very active online, while I no longer really update MySpace I do have Facebook. I have livejournal. I have dreamwidth. I’m on MyBlogLog and yahoo. I have IM and skype (though I don’t use it very much). Though I do not give out a lot of personal information online and I keep hubbie very anonymous, at his request, I am still pretty “out there”. It’s another example of how opposite we are. Except that I’m careful what I put up on the sites. It’s not anything and everything. It’s just things that are either fluff or updates for relatives on how the munchkin is doing or things that are going on with our household.

I could understand a job wanting to know how many of these sites a person participated in because it might be an indicator of how much time they would spend at the job trying to use the internet for personal things which should be kept outside the workspace, but asking for passwords is a clear violation of privacy, and I hope that the legal recourse sides against the town in this.