i am feeling all 80s. i spent a couple of hours this afternoon reading old diaries. i wasn’t very consistent in writing, but i did write a few entries a year until the computer became so much easier and my typing so much faster. my first entry is in March 1983. i hadn’t read these passages in years, but i had read them over and over again when i first started therapy in my early twenties. nothing really shocked me anymore. i was just reminded by how sad and anxious and painfully lonely i felt until i was almost in my mid-twenties. it is almost like reading things another person has written. i want to hug my poor young self and tell her it is ok, and she is ok, and everything will get better. i wish i could have medicated myself when i was 13 and started getting panic attacks. anxiety paralyzed me for most of my adolescence. i had stopped going to sleep overs with my friends for fear of night time panic, which is when my attacks always occurred. school danced terrified me because they happened at “night”, when all bad things happened (in my mind). i used to try and only watch television shows that had lots of daytime scenes to keep the anxiety at bay. i watched Dallas religiously (go ahead, ask me who shot J.R.) because it was always sunny and they sat by the pool a lot. my plan had become to go to university and become a teacher and live with my parents forever. i was so scared of life “outside” my bedroom.
things got really bad when i was 18 and i became an outpatient at the university hospital. four hours a day for 16 weeks, if i recall that correctly. ultimately i needed medication and the freudian school, group approach did not work for me. very rigid and not appropriate for someone my age with my disorder. they would tell me that i didn’t like the main psychiatrist because he reminded me of my dad and i would counter that i would love the guy if he was anything like my dad and not a detached asshole. transference MY ASS. i also learned some excellent eating disorder tricks, huzzah! anyhow, here are a few excerpts from my early 80s diary. the late 80s and early 90s where there was more nakedness and liquor involved may come later.
thanks to the lovely sarah brown who made me think of cringing at myself. and i would be remiss not to mention melissa for inspiring me with her revealing post about body image last week.
please forgive the handwriting, spelling, grammar, and drama. oh, and a lot of my diaries have to do with my weight, food, how gross my body is, etc. so, um, there you have it. i also added soe alt tags to some of the more difficult to read passages, just hover your pointer over them if you can’t dicipher it. i hope i don’t regret embarassing the fuck out of myself in the morning.












p.s. thanks for the emails. i have been a crappy friend, both in real life and in real bloggy life. actually, i have been crappy in general to people, i have been a subpar wife, a barely adequate mom, sometimes i just am not all i can be. you know? continues apologies to those i owe things to. but alas, at least i am not longer full of hate and waiting for people to like me (at least not all the time). and i have a good thing going with the whole husband, baby, friends thing.
xoxoxo
jennifer

i love him, i need him, here he is folks, my beloved husband and bringer of the bacon:
Imagine this:� You�ve been at work for 12 hours the day before, and missed Charlotte going to bed.� You play some video games to blow off some steam.� You finally get to bed that evening after watching the only news that matters The Daily Show, wake up the next morning (after about 6 hours of sleep, generally all you�ve been getting all week), and it�s raining.� Again.� 40 degrees
Fahrenheit / 6 degrees Celsius.� You slog to the bus stop, and your bus is late.� Again.� You miss your connection and trudge across the parking lot of the shopping mall where you saw your connecting bus pulling away, and trudge the rest of the way to the office.� You think about your Friday lunch poker game at the office, and think about how much work you have to do; how you don�t really have time to play let alone organize a game.
Lo and behold:� There�s a $5 bill sitting in the parking lot.� That�s the exact fee for the Friday poker tournament.�
As a devout Pastafarian would ask, what would the Flying Spaghetti Monster do?
I look around, make sure there is no one nearby walking away from the cash that I can scream to and say �Hey, is this yours?�� I look for identifying marks on the bill � nothing.� It�s just a rain-soaked $5 bill sitting in a parking lot.� No car parked within 50 meters of the bill; it�s a long way away from the mall doors.� So, I pick it up.� And I think, �well, isn�t this providential?�� I dub it my magical $5 bill and continue on my merry way to the office.�
Lunch time rolls around and the usual victims are assembled in the lunch room for a game.� We start with a 1000 chip bankroll, and blinds at 50/100; it has to end in an hour and blinds double every 15 minutes.�
[Apologies in advance, I�m going into Texas Hold�em speak for a little while here.� Jen usually fuzzes out when I mention this stuff to her � but she watches Celebrity Poker Showdown, so she�s slowly learning the lingo.� Just like Jen surprised me one day as I was doing my graduate research and Jennifer pretty much described my thesis to her mother in terms that even Jen�s mother understood!� And I thought Jen was just nodding and pretending to understand!� Skip through the next bit to get back to the story if you�ve never played Texas Hold�Em.]
* * *
First hand: AJ. Okay, a pretty good starting hand. Bet 300, I have two callers. Flop of rags (865). A quick check around after the flop. A black queen hits on the turn. I still have nothing, but I�m first to act. I bet 400 and everyone folds to me. Nice little pot to start a 7-player game of no limit hold�em.
Next hand: AQ suited. Raised pre-flop, won without a fight.
Next hand: A9. Finally someone has the nuts to call me (with a pair of 4s) and pushes all-in. The board sails straight past me, and I double him up, but I�m still at 750 chips. Maybe my $5 wasn�t magical �
� oh, but it was. Every hand I touched or folded after that was golden.
With three players left, both of them severely pot-committed and all-in preflop, I decided not to chase them both down with KQ suited � and made the right call when the 65 and the A4 went at it � and both paired up!
Then, just as the victor of the all-in battle and I were settling in to a nice heads-up battle that had already run about 15 hands, my opponent says �All-in� pre-flop and the door opens. They want the room for an interview candidate (even though we have it booked for the next 30 minutes). �Give us two minutes.� The door closes. �Call�, I say, and promptly pair up the Q6 that I had and win the game.
* * *
[Let�s invite the non-poker players back to the entry � start reading here again and stop staring at Jen's Flickr pictures and wondering if this story ever has an end �]
To make a long story about Texas Hold�Em short, I retained the magical $5 and won a companion $20 bill.
I walked through the same parking lot on the way home this evening, paused where I found the bill, and wondered if this was some sort of pay-it-forward cosmic event.� Should I drop the bill in the parking lot and leave it for the next person?� Maybe someone can use it to buy a lottery ticket and win � or it�s the $5 donation that enables someone to cure ALS.
Remember when I said that I had only been getting six hours of sleep earlier?� I shook the cobwebs out of my head, said �fuck that!� and bought a Grande Starbucks hot chocolate with whole milk and whipped cream at the shopping mall.
No, I didn�t use the magical $5.� However, the Bacon Bringer humbly opens the floor to your suggestions as to what to do with it.
—
editor note: tee hee, Mark said “nuts”

it has looked bad on here in the last day or two, i will admit. no posting and then a suspended site! firstly, i have lots to post about, i am bursting with posts. or perhaps it always feels that way when i do not have time to write. my BioMom is here until Saturday (post!) and i want to be with her and we stay up late and then i saw my chiropractor for the third time (post!) and i have worked a shift with a less remora like child (post!) and BioMom and i went to the big ass chinese market today (post!) and there was a woman colouring with crayons in a colouring book at my psychiatrist’s office today (post!) and i made some awesome cookies (ok, not really a post!) and truthfully, the hurricane really did make me profoundly sad and, well, silent. i think you get it. although now i have either ruined it because these things sound lame or you already heard all you care to. oh oh! and the suspended site today happened because my host emailed my invoice to the wrong email. there was a typo in the email address, so it did not come to me, i did not pay the bill, voila! my site was suspended. all fixed now.
i wish i would have had the balls to take a picture of the eels at the chinese market today. mmmm eeeeels.

briefly, as i am off to “bed”. notice i didn’t say sleep. i feel like weeping today for some reason. i know it gets better, it always does. med changes, therapy, family support, positive self talk, etc. it works, IT IS JUST FUCKING HARD. and sad that it is on-going, but sort of a relief to know it is on-going forever. if that makes sense. i am been feeling ok mostly lately. i decreased two drugs i am taking significantly and am managing with a soup�on of a little something else. like a lovely stew.
i feel kind of tiny kitten tonight (or tiny poodle in some worlds). vulnerable, sleepy, kinda scared because my mommy is gone (for a long time) and i am not sure who is going to take care of me or how i can take care of myself or others. thankfully, i know my inner cat will come out eventually, lick my ass, pick my spawn up by the scruff and get on with things. your water and kibble are over there child! momma needs a nap! pappa will be playing poker.
more soon i promise.
i have flickrd though, i can pretend everything is OK over there.
***
i owe emails and thank-yous and posts about certain things all over the freakin’ place. soon my lovelies.

sleepy girl and her daddy.