photo credit: Lida Rose

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine.

– A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare

What to say? The summer is going by so fast, I can hardly reach out and grab onto any of it.

After being sick all of fall and half of winter, and then shut in by the blizzard, I’ve been living a hedonistic life — other than the essentials, doing nothing that doesn’t bring pleasure. If the weather permits, I walk two miles to the metro, walk a mile and a half at lunchtime on the treadmill, or walk two miles home from the metro. I’m getting addicted to endorphins. Patricia, I had no idea the amount of effort you were talking about when you said you walked five miles a day!

In two weeks, I get a week’s vacation. My various plans to get to the beach have all fallen through, so I’m planning to camp out at the condo pool, read lots of good books, plus walk every day, of course, and visit the tastiest restaurants I can find locally. The farmer’s market has opened on weekends, so I can get super-fresh fruits and vegetables.

So, I’m living a very physical life. It would be even more physical if I could find myself a boyfriend, but that will come. eHarmony has sent me 28 “matches” so far, but I’m not ready to meet anyone yet. First I need to get a medical checkup and also to get my condo into a bit better shape so that I’m not ashamed to invite anyone to my home.

As you may have guessed by now, I’m not sure I’m going to continue blogging. I told my story in bits and pieces, now consolidated in the My Story category, and said a lot of other things along the way. I’m not sure I have much more to say and don’t want to keep repeating the same things in different ways.

I’ve been studying philosophy, which is probably what I should have studied in the first place instead of linguistics. Specifically, I’ve been reading about the history of ideas, which is a method of tracing a given idea from the first philosophers down to the present, noting how it changes and twists and turns. I find it very interesting, but it’s not for everyone.

Life is good!

photo credit: geraldbrazell

Dear Readers, a brief greeting from my blog-cation. Thanks for your messages sent in the meantime.

I’ve managed to defeat the massive fibromyalgia flare-up that ruined spring. I’ve maintained the eight-pound weight loss from the gastritis and managed to lose 7 more.

I think my series on spouse abuse really helped exorcise some demons. The whole thing seems a lot less with me these days.

I’m trying to arrange a trip to a beach on the Outer Banks in North Carolina, combining it with a visit to my friend Gregory. The problem is, travel is so damn difficult when you don’t drive.

I’ve always loved to travel alone, but it seems I can’t any more. I can get myself there via bus, subway and plane, but getting from the airport to a place to stay, and from a place to stay to the beach and back, is another issue. Still working on it.

Meanwhile, there’s always the pool and walking. After being trapped indoors last fall and winter, I forgot how much I love to be outside. I stopped to admire a delicate clematis, breathed the fleeting sweet scent of heritage pansies.

I’m walking, walking, walking. One to three miles a day. Every muscle aches, but I feel great! It’s helping to combat some of the cruelties of aging.

“Rage, rage against the dying of the light!” – Dylan Thomas

Take care, Dear Readers.

photo credit: Neil Boothman

I’ve decided to take the summer off from blogging. After being immobilized by so much illness and then by the blizzard, I’ve been suffering a massive fibromyalgia flare-up.

Despite using up all my annual leave in the first two months of the year, I’m dying to take a trip somewhere. Since I can’t, I’m going to take a vacation from my non-obligatory obligations, such as blogging.

I’ll still be reading blogs and commenting, on a modified schedule. So, I’ll be back in September. Meanwhile, here’s my take on the current privacy wars.

Not too long ago I did some extensive searching for a very customizable Ikea art supply cabinet that has been discontinued. Then I searched for something else equally obscure. I noticed that even after I had stopped doing the Ikea search, I was still getting served ads for art supply cabinets.

Shortly after that, I logged into Verizon (formerly Yahoo) email and was still getting art supply cabinet ads there. Big Brother was watching me. It turns out Google and Verizon have become partners in some kind of venture which apparently includes cookie-sharing.

Google had already infuriated me with its apparent belief that everything in print is public domain. And now this.

As a result, I had already stopped using Google when I read this morning’s news.  Msnbc.com quotes a Germany’s Consumer Protection Office statement that, “According to the information available to us so far, Google has for years penetrated private networks, apparently illegally.”

First I switched to Scroogle Scraper (note that it’s scroogle.org, not .com), which removes all the targeted ads but still uses Google’s search engine.

After Google took some steps (apparently now reversed) that blocked Scroogle, I switched to Ixquick, a Dutch search engine that has a few ads.

From what I’ve been hearing about Facebook, I would have left there too, except it’s my only way to stay in touch with a few people. Facebook’s head guru Mark Zuckerberg was quoted as saying that if you have such a strong need for privacy that you don’t want Facebook to have or share your information, maybe you have something to hide.

Yeah, right. I have to hide my identity from identity thieves and my address and phone number from other criminals.

Facebooked

Zuckerberg, who at 19 offered his friends access to any information in Facebook’s then-database of Harvard students, also recently stated about people’s data, “People just submitted it. I don’t know why. They ‘trust me.’ Dumb f**ks.”

“What do you have to hide?” bothers me. One woman reported that her boyfriend was automatically informed by Facebook of her gift purchases, so that he knew what she bought him for Christmas.

From little annoyances to major breaches, that’s not why people signed up. Would it be so hard to ask users whether they’d like this or that feature before implementing them?

What’s your take on it?

photo credit: HikingArtist.com

It seemed like my dream job, Assistant to the President at a small graphics and printing company in Manhattan. No more secretarial work, plus exposure to the graphic arts world.

I’ll call the president Howard. He was a very personable guy, excited to have me there and happy that I had some print and art background. We got along great.

The first hint that all was not ducky was when staff members told me I was the fifth Assistant to the President in recent years. All the others had been fired.

I heard stories of how the business had been through troubled times when they couldn’t make the payroll. The staff went weeks without a paycheck several times.

I also knew Howard owed people money from coast to coast and in Canada, because they were all calling me. However, when the accountant told me that there wasn’t enough money in the payroll account THIS WEEK, I was quite alarmed.

I went to Howard and found out that he had taken several thousand dollars out of the payroll account to buy himself an expensive telescope. I managed to talk him into returning his toy and putting the money back. After all, didn’t he hire me to help fix the problems around here? And wasn’t this problem easily fixable?

Then Howard, a married man, decided he might like to date my secretary. He made her his secretary, and she stopped listening to me.

photo credit: Wyscan

I was invited to a meeting of department heads, plus Howard’s wife. I had no idea why she was going to be there, but I was looking forward to finally meeting her. Howard encouraged me to join in the discussion and not feel held back by my newness. So, when he asked for suggestions about how to make the business better, I had a few ideas.

When I finished, his wife screamed at me. She called me several foul names, demanded to know what the #&@#* made me think I had any $*@#& right to say anything, and asked Howard where he had found me. I sat there in shock.

Later I learned her real estate license was allegedly license revoked. Allegedly, she had workmen go to a brownstone she had just sold and remove all the decorative wrought iron work on the windows, which they then installed onto her townhouse. Allegedly.

I guess she had time on her hands and was using it to co-run Howard’s business.

One day after about nine months, Howard told me I was the cause of all the problems in the company and fired me. “Get out immediately and don’t take those classical music tapes I gave you,” he said.

I was out on the sidewalk at ten a.m., wondering where I was supposed to go. A few days later, one of the managers sneaked me in while Howard was out, so I could reclaim my belongings. I did not take the odious tapes. So much for a dream job.

What was the worst job you ever had?

Kindle 2

half.com

The Kindle is an amazing device – because it uses electronic ink instead of a video screen or LED, it’s just as readable as a book. PC World offers some good information on how Kindle’s electronic ink works.

The latest Kindle ($259, previous version Kindle 2 used is $195-$220 on eBay) is the thickness of a magazine, lighter than a paperback, holds up to 1500 books and lets you download a book in sixty seconds. It’s wireless, so no computer necessary. This might be enough to make you buy one, as it was for Patricia, who’s delighted with her Kindle 2.

Amazon says there are 1.8 million public domain books which you can obtain for your Kindle in various places on the Internet, which is true, but you can also just download them in PDF or TXT format and read them on your existing devices. If you’re frugal like me, you might want to skip the Kindle.

In their article on how to justify a Kindle 2 to your spouse, maximumpc.com calculated a year ago, when the Kindle 2 was $360, that

If you tend to go for the pricey, hot-off-the-presses hardbacks and you don’t mind giving up that new-book smell, you can pretty easily justify buying a Kindle on money-saving grounds alone. If you tend to wait for books to hit trade paperback, a Kindle will only pay itself off if you’re a prolific reader [of trade paperbacks]. Sadly, if the centerpiece of your bookshelf is your collection of Dragonlance books, or you just really love that pulpy, bought-at-a-Walgreens feel, you’re not going to be able to get much of a discount with the Kindle.

If you buy used books, the Kindle will never pay for itself. An argument for Kindle is that you have no books cluttering up the place. An argument for used books is that I can resell them (for a profit of only 75 cents, hardly worth it but it gets them out of the house) or swap them on bookmooch.com — one free book for the cost of mailing one book to someone else.

On the down side, Bookmooch takes far longer than half.com to offer new, popular books – as long as 2-3 years. Also, with the economic slump, a lot of Bookmoochers have stopped offering books, so fewer books are available. I wasn’t able to find any of the books I wanted on Bookmooch.

Last week I bought 12 books, used and in good condition, for $50, or $4.55 each, on half.com. Plus, there’s a discount on postage for orders of more than one book. (Amazon has similar used book prices.) Since my selections were such an eclectic mix, I thought they might make a good test of Amazon’s inventory and prices for Kindle versions. Here are the results in no particular order.

Even omitting the 5 books Amazon didn’t have for the Kindle, but still including them in the half.com total, the Kindle versions cost $13.13 more. And that’s not even counting the cost of the Kindle itself. The Kindle is clearly not a frugal choice. So what’s your poison, frugality or convenience?

Spring arrived, then fast-forwarded into summer last week. We had summer heat that set a record, and it forced spring flowers into bloom. This week, we’re back to spring.

Monday

In The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold, a character who has been raped tells her story to other women who experienced the same thing. It reminded me of my writing on spouse abuse.

Our heartache poured into one another like water from cup to cup. Each time I told my story, I lost a bit, the smallest drop of pain. It was that day that I knew I wanted to tell the story of my family. Because horror on Earth is real, and it is every day. It is like a flower or like the sun; it cannot be contained.

Tuesday

When a life, like mine, has been so full of difficulty, loss, horror and grief, it’s difficult to cultivate a sense of hope. With the help of my fantastic therapist, over the years I’ve been able to do that.

Wednesday

However, the pain and suffering of so many illnesses has made me angry and bitter. I’m working on letting out some of the anger and sadness privately, so I let out less of it publicly.

Thursday

The beauty of spring has been marred by the fact that I’ve been forced to stay indoors to avoid the pollen. I still have episodes of the sinus infection or whatever it is — it’s not gone yet, and I don’t understand why not.

Friday

We all work through our issues in the ways that make sense to us, and I try to respect each one’s way. The way that I’ve chosen has worked well in the past, and I’m hoping it will work well again.

Happy Spring, dear readers!

photo credit: krossbow

First, if you haven’t heard, it’s a girl for the Momisodes family! Babisodes 2.0 arrived on March 21st. Blogging has taken a back seat to family time. Babisodes 2.0 and the family are doing fine.

And so am I, at last.

Tuesday morning on the subway I was sitting near three young ladies. The one sitting next to me, Fidget Constantly, could not keep her hands still. Her arms and purse and other belongings kept gently bumping me as I read the paper. Super annoying.

Across from me sat Deep Hangover, wearing dark shades and a definitely sick expression on her face. Though she held a large coffee, she didn’t partake. Probably couldn’t stomach it yet.

Next to her was Hafta Babble, also in dark glasses, one arm akimbo as she pressed a cell phone to her face. She wore dark glasses too, and talked in a super-fast, nonstop stream of words. Just wrong, socially wrong.

I’ve noticed that, when my irritability and griping increase, such as on Tuesday, it’s usually because my fibromyalgia pain is bad enough to really irritate me.

Have you ever found your limbs akimbo? I know I have. I also enjoy skipping to my lou (with a nod to Dat Phan).

photo credit: Shaylor

Over the last four weeks, here’s my attendance at work:

Week 1: 2 days
Week 2: 2 days
Week 3: 1 day
Week 4: 3 days

I’m about to begin Week 5, and I’m still sick. I’ve been gradually getting better, I think.

My internist put me on another ten days of the same antibiotic that was barely working, because I’ve had so many antibiotics lately.

Tuesday I’ll be having a CT scan of my sinuses, which may show a new problem, but the others I’ve had have always been negative.

Why is this sinus infection hanging on so long? Why can’t they cure allergies?

All this started when the maples bloomed. Maple is the pollen I’m most allergic to, but I’ve never had this kind of illness. Usually it’s just sniffllng, coughing and sneezing.

Here’s a laugh. Last week I was talking to one of my fellow bus riders about writing. She told me she was working on a novel, and I told her that I wrote a blog. She said, “For what company?”

photo credit: dbgg1979

Sorry to just disappear like that, but I got really sick. It started as a sinus infection and then went into bronchitis or something. I had to take most of last week off and stay in bed, this despite two antibiotics. We’ll see what the doctor says today….

As you may have noticed, someone left a comment impersonating Jannie Funster. It was up for a week because I was down for a week. I tracked down “Steve’s” real IP address, because he left a fake one, and I complained to his web host, but they said that since he didn’t do it on his own website, there wasn’t much they could do.

I’m thinking of requiring passwords, because I hate the idea that someone could impersonate one of you. Do you have any better ideas? Since up till now I haven’t required any login at all, I can’t block him because he didn’t log in.

The series on spouse abuse may have seemed out of the blue, but it was actually the logical results of DI reader Betsy Wuebker and Lori Hoeck’s ebook on how to cope with a narcissist, which stirred up a lot of old fears, and by DI reader Jay Schryer’s posts on his falling in love and moving to California to live with his new love.

The spouse abuse posts may have been “too much information” for some of you, especially if you’re a more private person. They also may have made you uncomfortable. If so, I’m sorry. I needed to document what happened, finally, in some sort of public way. I know I lost a bunch of subscribers during that period. Hopefully they’ll return.

I needed to stop hiding those experiences, to accept that they happened and not to be ashamed of them, because I was psychologically forced to do things I wouldn’t have voluntarily done. I’d like to take out a billboard on every corner of his town, but there’s no point in stirring up his rage that way.

It’s ancient history, but why was I unable to talk about it until now? I hadn’t accepted that it wasn’t my fault. For so long, everything was my fault, both as a child and as a wife. Now, I’m not responsible for other people’s craziness, though I’m still wary of 50% of the population.

photo credit: CarbonNYC

My ex-husband’s enrollment in college, using my credit without ever discussing it with me, was one of many times he spent a lot of money without regard to our finances.

After we’d been dating for two months, he had confessed to me that he had “credit problems.” After listening to his tearful story about how he had gotten in over his head financially, I wanted to help him rebuild his credit – after all, I was in love. Together we would work on drawing up a budget and living within our means.

Apparently I’m a sucker for false sincerity. We drew up many budgets, he stuck to none of them, and I denied myself many things to pay for the stuff he spent money on – liquor, bar bills, parking tickets, old debts, gas, etc.

I later learned he was a compulsive debtor, but by the time I knew this, it was far too late. He owed money to people wherever he had gone, and as recently as two weeks ago I received a call from one of his creditors hoping to get money from me.

When I objected to one of his many overspending events, such as when he bought a round for everybody in a bar, he would say, “But we have two incomes now.” That was his mantra. Never mind that it didn’t make any sense.

When we met, I had no debts and $2,000 in the bank. Not a big nest egg, but at least a positive number. Within a year, we owed more than $5,000, and by the time I left him, we owed $11,000 in credit card debt. In 1988, $11,000 at 18.99% was a huge amount to pay off on the salaries of a junior legal secretary and a security guard.

The only time this was even remotely funny to me was the time that he subscribed to the seven magazines. He explained that he had checked our balance at the ATM, and we had enough money in checking to cover it.

I was always trying to juggle the bills, paying one, holding off on another, forcing ends to meet. I lay awake at night wondering how we were ever going to get out of debt, unaware that overspending and staying in debt were normal for him.

Creditors called every few months, some nice, some coarse and nasty. In one case, my tax refund was seized to pay back tuition he owed to a state university because our accountant accidentally switched our social security numbers. It took six months to get my money.

I helped him pay off or pay down so many debts, I can’t remember them all. Then, thinking we were done, I was stunned by another call out of the blue saying George owed $5,000 on items in storage. No way I was paying it. He tried every manipulation he could, mostly guilt and rage, but I finally stood firm.

As we drove to our first couples counseling session, he told me he planned to buy a motorcycle, even though we hadn’t managed to lower our debts. He used my negative reaction as evidence to persuade the therapist that I was irrationally worried about money.

By denying myself everything from clothing to doctor visits to recreation, I was able to keep my credit rating up.

He was so used to thinking that what was mine was his that, when I left, he thought the towels he’d been using had been his before the marriage. Not so.

When we separated, he was take on “his share” of our debts, which I had calculated very generously in his favor. Instead, he stuck me with the entire debt.

I consulted a lawyer and learned it would cost me about as much to take George to court, and I’d get nothing because he had nothing, unless they garnished his meager salary. In that case, I’d wait years and years for pennies.

I chose to free myself from any further contact with him by paying off the debts myself, which I eventually did. Little did I know that freedom from the effects of the marriage would take much longer.

When I left him, George was shocked and called me a bitch, despite the fact that I’d told him over and over that I would leave if he didn’t get his finances under control.

*     *      *

This ends my four-part series on spousal abuse as I experienced it. I would advise anyone in any kind of relationship to familiarize yourself with the laws governing relationships, particularly the community property laws in your state, and take steps to protect yourself. People are not always what they seem at first.