Light on the posts I've been light on the posts the last couple days. Things have just been hectic and taking time to turn on my pc and make an entry hasn't been high on the list of things to do. Wednesday, migraine. Continued hassles with the apartment complex over the mold issue. (From the water leak back in July) Thursday, an inspection of the area by the manager and bleaching of the walls. Another migraine. That put me in bed at a little past 10pm. This morning, thunderstorms which meant risky power and leaving the computer off for the time being.
This weekend we're going to look for a new apartment. They know they fucked up in this situation and everytime we talk to them, they offer us more. First it was we'll let you break your lease without penalty. Then it was break your lease and pay your utility fees for transfer. Then break lease, utility transfer fees, free month rent. Then yesterday it was break lease, utility transfer fees, free month rent AND we'll throw in movers! Sold! Rock on. So, we're going to look for a new place to live and hopefully without having to front the expense of transfer fees (like if we move where we're under the other power company in the area, it'd be a new $200 deposit and the phone is like $50 and the cable would be a new installation cost), and with being able to use the lack of paying September rent towards security and stuff AND not only not have to rent a U-Haul, but instead have people move us (one of those wonderous things I've heard talk about in movies but never thought I'd get to experience), it's a deal too good to be true. And hopefully enough to allow us to do it. We don't like it here anyway and we were trapped in our lease. This mold situation, though very frustrating and infuriating, has provided us a great escape. So, at least it seems for once that something good can come out of something shitty. Now we just need to find an apartment! (*crosses fingers*)
These migraines this week have been hell. I'm sure the stress of all the back-and-forth with the apartment management hasn't helped, but I'm also sure that the mold itself hasn't helped. I'm frustratingly sensitive to things - chemical, environmental and such - so it's not that huge of a stretch to see where the increased sinus issues I've been having, the headaches and even the migraines are, at the core, due to the toxicity of my environment. Just another reason I'll be happy to get out of here.
Oh yeah, and the complex has been sold. New owners. New name. And no new leases. They have apparently 60 empty apartments right now. With the most likely outcome being that they want to convert the buildings into condos. (Why in the world someone would pay to OWN this dump is beyond me, but real estate is at a premuim in this area so who knows?) Of course, they've announced the new name and such, but have not yet publically informed residents that they won't be renewing anybody's lease. Nice, hu? It will mean people will have 60 day notice at the end of their lease that they need to find a new place to live. Damn that's cold. They should announce it now so people have time to plan. Moving's a big deal and most people are loathe to do it, let alone on short notice.
So anyway, I was mad last night over getting another migraine. My mom apparently stopped by my journal the other day (*gasp! how embarassing! she's learning how to use her computer!*) and called me after reading the post about my last migraine. She can't understand how no one will help out in this situation. All the local health clinics and county medical centers and stuff don't have anything to do with something as "trivial" as migraines. Of course, if they took it seriously, they'd realize that migraines are both random and debilitating and that people who suffer them suffer horribly and are unable to function during attacks. They don't take seriously the lost work, lost jobs and lost potential that migraineurs deal with on a daily basis. The various medical facilities around here won't see you for that kind of thing. Or if they will, at best, they'll just write you a prescription. But at hundreds of dollars per Rx, that little script doesn't do any good. Unlike being able to get my Pill for example for free (a wonderous blessing to be sure), no one will give any medication for conditions like migraines. She didn't believe it and was frustrated at reading my entry over it. It's a sad state of affairs though that it's just the way it is.
Love and I have been watching the Olympics each night together. And beyond the pain of the migraine and the forced retirement at like 10pm last night, I was mad that I had to miss the women's gymnastics finals. Darnit. I know there's so many people who bitch about the commericalism of the Games and all but fuck that. It's still amazing to see these people reach for their dream. I have nothing but respect for these athletes and I enjoy the heck out of watching them go for it. It's amazing, sad, exciting and thrilling all at the same time. And I enjoy going along with the drama of it all and seeing their accomplishments.
Well, I think I've rambled out the last couple days worth of event highlights. I'm still working on my Summer layout for the journal. (ha) I'm not entirely happy with it, but maybe I'll toss it up anyway just because dammit, I want something new and at least it can be a change. This is a lovely layout and all but it was for Spring and we're well into Summer now. I want to advance it and bring it more into the place and state of mind that Summer gives, not that which Spring offers. I don't know. I am deeply moved by the changing of the seasons - it's spiritual to me - and as such, I would like this to better reflect that. So if it changes suddenly, you'll know why.
By the way I have a fucking migraine from hell. It's been this way all fucking night. This is like the third day in a row that my head's been seriously fucked up. I want to stab myself in the head in hopes of making the pain go away it's so bad. I fucking need migraine medication and I fucking hate this fucking country and it's fucked up health insurance bullshit and that I've had to fucking be debilitated and in fucking pain for the last eleven years of my life because in the country with the best doctors in the world, I can't fucking see any of them nor gain access to medications that mean the difference between me living my life and literally wanting to die it hurts so much.
I can't fucking take these headaches. And while my depression gets so bad I may sometimes want to die, the only thing that ever makes me want to actually kill myself is the unending pain of these migraines. Yeah, they are that bad.
If dying seems preferable to enduring another migraine attack and yet there's medication that can stop you from getting them that you simply can't afford, there's something seriously fucked up about the world you live in.
Delayed reaction So, everyone knows that last week the California Supreme Court annuled 4,000 gay marriages. And my first reaction was that of a stream of vile curses against those people for being so fucking backwater and it being so bullshit that this is even an issue. With Liberty and Justice for All... (unless you're gay, or the wrong religion, or we don't like what country you're from, or the color of your skin, etc. etc. etc....)
Anyway, so I'm reading people's responses to the decision and many say that they agree with the ruling on a legal standpoint because the mayor overstepped his authority. Still though, this really ate at me. Tonight I realized exactly what it is that pisses me off about it. It's who paid the price.
As I posted elsewhere:
You know, it just came to me why I'm so mad about this....
Ok, so they overturned it because the mayor overstepped his authority. On a legal basis, I can understand this part of the decision.
But what gets me in all of this is that they should not have nullified the marriages of those 4,000 people. Punish the mayor. Prevent him from abusing his level of power in the future. But what they did was, in essence, PUNISH those who got their marriage license. THAT is the part I find so offensive in all of this and THAT is the part that boils my blood.
Those couples did not deserve that harsh judgment against them.
It's not fair to make them pay for the mayor's actions. In the end, THAT is the real injustice in this in my eyes. And such a pathetic ending to what could have been a beautiful start of forward-thinking change in this country.
See the thing that gets me is why it's ok to legislate hate and bigotry. Why are we allowing such bullshit to even be spoken, let alone passed as law? Why are we not only tolerent of hatred and discrimination as a nation who prides itself on freedom and liberty, but we push for that hatred? Why is it now ok to be a bigot? When did we revert back to that slaveowner mentality that all people are not created equal? When did it become acceptable to loathe our own citizens and make not only judgment but law against their freedom of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?
Just because we were once ignorant as a nation and permitted slavery doesn't mean we didn't learn from that error and change it. Just because we were once discriminatory and thought women inferior and unable to vote doesn't mean it was ever true or that it would always be that way. Just because we once couldn't get over our stupid bigotry over skin color doesn't mean that people of mixed race can't now marry and live and happy share their lives together. So why can't we see how idiotic we're being over gender? Aren't there much larger things to worry about then people who simply want what everyone else takes for granted? Can't we be happy for people who find love and a commited relationship? Can't we just let them live their life as we live ours?
This entire situation infuriates me. And things like the punishment to the 4,000 couples in California does so even more. Our bullshit president goes on tv and says how we're fighting a war to bring freedom to the oppressed Iraq. What about the oppression of our own citizens right here? He says that terrorists hate our liberty and yet he himself spews hatred and flat-out evil bigotry and denies that self-same liberty to those here in the US. He claims that America needs to move forward and secure its rights in the world, yet his backwater policies are the embarassment of the world and archaic in nature. When did this all become ok? When did words only apply to those we like, those who fit our mold, those who fall in a line? Doesn't this seem familier to anyone else? Anyone remember that little fellow named Hitler? The one who saw people in black and white terms of either acceptable or not? Isn't this exactly what we're doing as a country right now? Drawing the line between who is right and who is not?
It's sick. And there's a word for people who have such disgusting, narrow and limited views; it's Nazi. And sad to say, the state of America today is one that not only embraces, but pushes forward those very ideals and hatreds.
Sidhe Shots - Fire The second in our Element series! For the next few weeks we will explore air, fire, water, and earth. Represent the idea of Fire in your photograph. You may use anything you wish to convey your interpretation.
I've missed the last few weeks of this for one reason or another. Either an inability to find something around my apartment which would fit the theme (being as I don't have access or ability to ever leave my apartment during the week at all), or, my stiffling depression which says fuck photography, we want to wallow. Ya know, that sort of thing.
Anyway....I took a bunch of pictures and in the end I liked two, so I'm going to post them both.
Jane, stop this crazy thing! Ugh my head today is hell. It keeps swimming and my ears fog over so that all I can hear is a ringing. Other times it's a weird rushing noise - but not the normal blood-in-your-ears noise, something oddly different. I'm dizzy. And my eyes hurt at the bridge of my nose. I feel shaky and sick to my stomach. I felt this way last night too, but once I was finally able to sleep (which took forever and I even started to cry at how bad I felt and how I just wanted to sleep), it went away. And when I woke up, I had forgotten it was there. But then suddenly, it hit me right before I went into the shower, so hard that I honestly thought I was going to pass out. Keep in mind, I've literally never passed out in my life so it was a terrifiying feeling. Something just does not feel right with my head.
Witches Weekly - Sound I've been putting the last couple over on my livejournal but this week I thought I'd bring it back over here. Something lighter then all the morbid talk of depression, unhappiness and hurricanes. Enjoy.
Do you enjoy having any type of music or sound during a ritual? If so, what? I'm not much for ritual honestly. I simply conduct myself as seems befitting for whatever it is that I wish to accomplish. Mostly the answer is no though I find music to be sacred. Music was the first communication between the Divine and creation. So while I may not use it much in any "ritual," I do deeply respect and revere it.
Do you have a favorite chant? No, though often when I am either out at the beach, or even alone and pondering life, I hum and sing wordless tunes that flow from me.
What sound tends to move you spiritually the most? Tribal drums are very powerful; wooden flutes; high, pure and open notes sung with or without words.
The Intersection of Logic and Emotion While, yes, of course logically I know that it's in no way my fault that we did not feel the wrath of Hurricane Charley and that there is nothing I could do to have spared those who did feel it, emotionally, I still feel the pain of it. Up until no more then a handful of hours before it struck, the world knew it was hitting us. Directly and without mercy. We had stood and waited and watched knowing it was coming for us. We expected it because that's what seemed meant to happen. The last minute turn; the destruction of those areas unready, unprepared and unexpected hurts me. It hurts me that they suffered so that we here did not. Does this make sense? I know it is illogical and I know that it is a thing in which I did not have say, and yet still, I can't help but feel that they sacrificed and even died so that we here would be saved.
Sometimes I think that despite of - or perhaps because of - all that I've been through, that above all else, I am meant to endure. I am meant to survive no matter how hard and how painful it becomes. So, that part of me sees the destruction that was wrought and now I know how hard it would have been in this place - even in an area which was no scheduled to evacuate - to survive it. How terrible our apartment building is and how easily reduced it could be. And so I wonder with that tiny little part of me, if this was not a price paid for my continued existence. So it feels in some way a guilt and a debt.
I know it's nonsense. I do. And I know it sounds pure ego. But it weighs on me. I see these images and I cry for them. I feel for all they have lost and all they will never get back. How damaged they are both in home and spirit. I wish I could make it better for them and I wish I could have saved them from it; that no one need have suffered from this fury.
I don't know. I know how relieved I am that it missed us but how that relief comes with the nagging voice of guilt that someone else was not missed.
A rainy weekend. No storms on Friday, and yet Saturday and Sunday it rained on-and-off all day. Heavy downpours at times; thunder, lightning. It's been a slow and quite weekend here. Made obvious all the more by the constant news reports of the disaster to our neighboring counties. Loss of water, power, property, food, shelter, home, life. And I sit watching tv and the Opening Ceremony, snacking on a cake I made and dozing off for a bit in the afternoon. Such a juxtaposition of fates.
