leah interrupted

this is a rare moment so pay attention.

i am having a grateful moment, and i need to write it down. this post has everything to do with me, and nothing to do with you. if you see yourself or think i am writing about you, that is your problem. not mine.

the life situations that have been smothering my existence are losing their vice grip, if only for today. the perimeters are clear and the guards are resting peacefully.

perhaps i am learning, ever so gently to make peace with the ugly, the uncomfortable, and the dark during this phase of my life. one good way to find peace in a true storm is the BE in the storm. knowing this in theory is great, but to actually demonstrate it is another thing. harder to make happen in your life when your pain is fresh, and the experience new.

it’s too easy for big shots out there to say they’ve conquered their demons and “THEY WILL NOW HELP YOU FIND YOUR WAY”! i laugh at this, knowing all too well that this person who thinks they’ve “RESOLVED” all their own issues are not even close to where you aspire to be spiritually.

spiritual people do not BOAST to others their progress the people that have what i want are humble people, they are gentle people, they do not need to always advertise their GREATNESS caught up in the vestibule of stepford lives.

stop running away from the things that hurt you. don’t go shopping, don’t get drunk, don’t hurt yourself. just sit there in the spot. maybe in the shower, or just getting out of the shower when you are alone and be you in the moment for 10 minutes tops.

we’re trained to dash off here and dash off there, turn on the tv, fire up the ipod and tune out. next time you reach for that outside of yourself option, think for a minute. what if you just sat in the quiet all by yourself, not where another can see.

we are taught at very young ages to run away from the pain, the doubt, the uncertainty, and the unknown.

times of quiet do not need to be filled with sound, or background noise.

i believe for myself, that i have phases of life that i go through and the phases contain many obstacles. we never actually ARRIVE anywhere, we are only guests along the way and to find something in the moments as we pass through.

hope is on our horizon, love is in our hearts, and in this very moment i am grateful to be alive and to have so many amazing and awesome people/family/kids/animals in my life.

you are loved.

by me.

always.

i have really, really awesome friends and this is just ONE of them

this is something really cool that i completely forgot about, i meant to post this three weeks ago.

something probably caught on fire which is always distracting. or it could have been one of the dogs or cats throwing up or one of the dogs getting loose, or that great dane that showed up on election day that both the husband and the boy wanted to keep but this time it was I who put my foot down.  i draw the line at animals that are taller than our kitchen counters.

i have rejoined many real life friends (through the power of facebook) from a previous life in which i wore grown up clothes and makeup on a regular basis. one of these friends, shelby is a ray of sunshine, and in her presence you are guaranteed to smile.

she has a very distinct voice and many have asked her about it. she usually responds by telling you that one of her life’s dreams is to do voice over work for cartoons or kids movies. i mean, why wouldn’t you select someone who’s NATURAL voice sounds like hers? why wouldn’t you?! only a crazy person wouldn’t.

she’s not only a very kind soul, but she has an effervescent personality AND good looks that all add to her repertoire of awesomeness.

without further adieu, i present to you my friend shelby auditioning for the voice of alvin for an alvin and the chipmunks part.

not sure if that person in your life is a narcissist? i did some research for you. and, me.

**this has nothing to do with my own mother, the second part of this post references key parts from the writer of narcissists suck blog i’ve only included excerpts from a few of her posts.**

for as long as i can remember, i’ve been fascinated with certain personality disorders and serial killers.   after becoming a parent to the girl and pregnant with the boy i became much less interested in these things.  more than likely b/c it was just too close to home and my one and only fear in this world is for someone to hurt either of my children.

i’ve been able to get back to  my “hobby” of learning about personality disorders and found this site the other day.  the site is very extensive with a lot of personal experience from growing up with a narcissist parent.

recently i found a few sites that give you a BUNCH of information about narcissists.

one site, titled narcissistic abuse has a lot of good information like the characteristics of a these fun people.  i’ll list a few here but the full link can be found here.  (keep in mind that some of these can apply to the whole world, including me but those with disorders like these tend to tip the scale pretty heavily.)

this was written using a “male” example but the website notes that it’s equally a female problem too.

• Self-centered. His needs are paramount.

• No remorse for mistakes or misdeeds.

• Does not care about the consequences of his actions.

• Projects faults on to others. High blaming behavior; never his fault.

• Has a good front (persona) to impress and exploit others.

• Pathological lying.

• Tremendous need to control situations, conversations, others.

• No real values.  Mostly situational.

• Often perceived as caring and understanding and uses this to manipulate.

• Uses sex to control

• Secret life. Hides money, friends, activities.

• Grandiose.  Convinced he knows more than others and is correct in all he does.

• Sabotages partner. Wants her to be happy only through him and to have few or no outside interests and acquaintances.

• You feel miserable with this person. He drains you.

and a tip:

TIP: Don’t enrage the narcissist in your life. He or she will make you pay.  Stay calm and plan your exit.  Don’t give in to ‘letting it all out’.  Narcissists don’t forget and they like revenge.

the second site that i mentioned above if very helpful, based on personal experience from growing up with a parent that is a narcissist.

from the “family tyrant” post:

Narcissists aspire to perfection. In their sphere of influence they pursue perfection at every moment in every circumstance. Because of this transcendent need to keep up the illusion of perfection, the children of narcissists are taught early on to hide the family’s skeletons. The sermon is oft preached that there will be no exposure of the internal workings of the family to those outside the walls of the house. This imperative is enforced ruthlessly using behavior modification techniques which can include derision and mockery right up to physical abuse. There are grave penalties for talking to “outsiders” for the narcissist-ruled family.

This is one way that a narcissist’s family resembles a cult. Family members are cut off from the outside. Outsiders can, and usually do, include extended family. Children are taught that it is a mortal sin to violate the “no talk” rule. These rules are even more stringent when there is physical and sexual abuse in the home. In this way, the family becomes an appendage to the narcissist’s illusion of perfection. They are forced to share and support his delusions. A House of Insanity which presents as the House of Perfection to those on the outside looking in.

Secretiveness and false reality built his kingdom. The converse will destroy it. Talking to each other, or a sympathetic outsider, and a rejection of the lies and falsity of the narcissist spell doom for his fascist rule. He will have a very hard time reconstructing his false reality if a defector lives outside his control. The mirror will be broken or, at least, very cracked. The psychosis is no longer shared therefore the narcissist has a much harder time maintaining his false reality in his own head.

You want to shake up the world of the narcissist? Live outside his control; live outside his false reality.

The absolutely most devastating behavior (to the narcissist) to develop in his subjects is if they start comparing notes. Narcissists instinctively use “divide and conquer” to gain the upper hand in their fiefdom whether that is the home or the work place or the non-profit organization. He uses lies and gossip to develop animosity and jealousy between people.

from the post titled, “a force of nature“:

If you’ve withheld forgiveness from the narcissists in your life then I am sure you have experienced some particular accusations. These come from the narcissist and their sympathizers. They accuse you of “refusing to forget the past”, “holding a grudge”, “being resentful”, “not letting go”. One of my and my family’s favs is “a heart full of hate”. We erupt in gales of laughter when we conjure up that particular memory of my father’s accusation in defense of my mother.

Narcissists have a very limited range of emotions. While being able to fake having a wider range of emotions, they really operate on an emotional level of an animal with the two primary motivating emotions of fear and anger (jealousy is a close third, but is really a combination of the other two). This is one reason they impute one of these two emotions to you when you are not behaving properly. They project their own emotional state or reactions to you. Which is why, when you calmly and firmly withhold absolution for their misdeeds, they immediately assume a negative.

Emotionally healthy people are realists. They are people who want to see reality, accept reality and live in reality. The realist has seen that the narcissist is not wanting a real gift of forgiveness, therefore the realist has accepted that truth and proceeded to live their life based on that truth. The realist doesn’t have to be upset or angry about this reality because it never does any good to get pissed and stay pissed at reality for any length of time. Reality is. If you refuse to accept what is, you end up fighting truth. Not a good situation since, in the end, truth wins. The person I’m describing is able to depersonalize the behaviors and accusations of the narcissist because they’ve come to understand that the narcissist is not truth-based. Because an emotionally healthy person is only interested in truth-based reality, they don’t take a lying narcissist at their word. When the narcissist starts hurling accusations the realist doesn’t take them to heart once they’ve figured out that the narcissist is an inveterate liar.

from the post titled, disproportional responses or when the “crime” doesn’t fit the punishment:

One of the oft used tools in the narcissist’s manipulation toolbox is disproportional response. This technique is highly effective on adults; it is devastatingly effective on children.

Any abusive tactic is targeted at one goal: control. The narcissist is consumed with controlling his version of reality which means he must control you in order to maintain a sense of the world as he has defined it. The narcissist attempts to maintain “order” and internal cohesion in himself by shaking up your world. By confusing you, he gets to feel sane. By fragmenting your reality he gains a sense of wholeness. Yeah, it’s twisted.

If you have children with a narcissistic spouse, you owe it to those children to get them away from the narcissist parent. This type of abuse is extremely destructive to the hearts, minds and souls of children who have no power to get away from it. The capricious and disproportional reactions are corrosive to the child’s sense of security which will undermine a child’s psychosocial development

from the post titled, “narcissists can’t be rehabilitated“:

The logic is that the malignant narcissist is a case of arrested development. They have never progressed on to emotional, spiritual and mental maturity. So you get a constant view of the child they were at six when watching the operation of the grown narcissist.

Let’s go from the thought above to this thought: The narcissist is a malicious child cloaked in an adult body. Because the malignant narcissist has always been what they are it is impossible to “rehabilitate” them.

from the post titled, “an accurate measure of mental health ISN’T lack of anger“:

With narcissists, what suffices as knowledge of you is that they have learned a few of your buttons. With a little trial and error they have divined how to get you to jump when they say jump. This is what they use to pretend to themselves, and to you, that they know you better than you know yourself. They have summarily decided that because they can manipulate you with a few of your fears, or with your decency, they know who you are as a person. Unless you are simply a construct of a few base fears…this can’t possibly be true.

Humans tend toward considerable complexity. Well, at least, normal humans do. Narcissists are different in this regard. In case you haven’t already noticed it, narcissists are very predictable and basic. Nevertheless, each narcissist believes they are supremely unique and, therefore, just supreme.

It is terribly annoying to me when someone pretends to know my mind better than I do. Likely, the level of annoyance I feel when that happens is due to a heightened sensitivity borne of years of enduring this very thing. I took it uncomplainingly for much of my life.

Part of what makes them ’supreme’ in their opinion is that they reject the feeling side of themselves. Feelings are ‘weak’. Thus begins the process of pretending away their feelings. Denying their existence. To reject the feeling side of one’s humanity is going to render you a two-dimensional being. We see this in narcissists. No depth. No humanity. Any complexity they have achieved is simply due to all the lies they construct around themselves.

What is a much more accurate measurement of your emotional health than whether or not the outrageous acts of a narcissist can cause you to feel appropriate outrage? Ready?

Acceptance.

How do you know if you have come to a place of acceptance?

Acceptance means you have stopped fighting a situation. You have stopped holding to any other alternatives as options.

nonsense that may bore you completely to death more than the after thanksgiving dinner conversations

ok, the moment NOT A ONE OF YOU has waited for.

my laptop condition update.

it all started one night when i booted my laptop and it wouldn’t go past the first toshiba boot screen (feel free to begin laughing here).

one of the first things i did was to take the hard drive out and look around.  it appeared that a piece was actually bent and i showed it to the husband and he couldn’t see it b/c he’s old and blind.  (not really, it’s b/c he’s worked no less than 20 hours that day all on his laptop and can’t see b/c of that.)

one thing i’ve noticed about this notebook (as i should be calling it b/c it’s not considered a laptop anymore.  WTF?) is that it gets pretty dang hot.  i got a cooling thing to go underneath it hoping that would help.

i became pretty obsessive about it for about 24 hours and then i had to let it go.  this meant that i would be sequestered to the home pc which is really, really slow.  i recorded myself typing and then i sat back and watched the words fill in.  that was a fun time indeed.

no matter the defrags, memory dumps, and rearranging of data it’s SLOW.  i have one more solution in my back pocket that involves reinstalling windows xp.  so, off and on over the past two weeks i’ve been trying to figure out what the hell with the laptop.

i discovered that the hard drive was intact, which was most pleasing to me.  i picked up a hard drive enclosure for my type of laptop (a rocketfish SATA).

i moved all my files from the laptop hard drive to my back up drive via the husband’s laptop one evening.  this made me very happy that all my pictures and writing stuff would be safe.

as of today after much research and testing, i’ve determined that the hard drive *area* is wonky and perhaps my original diagnosis of “something appearing to be bent” is in fact correct.

i think of this as the final step in my surgery of the laptop, i plan to completely dismantle it again and see if i can correct the bent piece inside of the casing.  taking it apart again is a long process and i’m not looking forward to it.

in fact, i’ve seriously considered buying another machine entirely based on the information i’ve found out about toshiba notebooks in my research.

you know one of those cute little ones that dell has?  i have external drives for backups so it’s ok that it’s just a wee notebook.  i suspect it would make the girl very happy if she were to have her very own laptop, which she would get if i get the wee dell one.

if you wonder why i haven’t called toshiba, i have to tell you that i have called them but sometimes the help people can mess you up. more than anything, i’ve called them to “pick their brains” without their knowledge to see if i could gain any extra information that i didn’t already know.  not to brag but usually when i call a help desk they automatically refer me to their advanced technical people.  don’t be impressed tho, b/c i know just enough to be dangerous.

i go ahead and do the dance with the help desk b/c i know those entry level folks need training (being a former tech person, i am thankful to all of those innocent victims that allowed me to torture them for hours while i was learning.)

as well, i contacted the outside vendor that repairs toshiba machines in my area.  after explaining to him that i wasn’t in a hurry to have someone who doesn’t know much working on my machine, he rattled off all his knowledge and the years he’s been in business with toshiba.  i was very impressed and asked him if he was hiring.  he said no.

since all of this, i haven’t been able to do much online reading (bad crt monitor on the home pc-once i get the machine up to speed-i’m getting a flat screen) which is my favorite thing to do almost in the world.  that and  thinking up questions getting immediate answers on the internet.

last night, i got caught up on most of my favorite blogs and it took HOURS on the slow pc machine.  that’s dedication folks, and proof of how much i love every single one of you unless love makes you uncomfortable, than i should say that i admire you from a distance.

so, there you have it.  information you don’t care about, don’t want to read about or even dream about.

i am now considering opening my own consulting business b/c i have actually impressed myself with my vast knowledge of all things pc and NOTEBOOK related.

WITHOUT the help of my almost dead from working so many hours husband that some members of my family seem to think i rely on for my computer knowledge b/c they CAN’T handle the truth that i am actually smart and gifted in my own right.  these are the people that said i’d be living out in a tin shack in the woods one day.  as well, they refer to me as “the weird one”.

that should explain it all.

sex, sex, sex, and don’t let the dogs go hungry this thanksgiving!

this year is very close to wrapping up, and you’ll be needing a calendar soon.  RIGHT?  BUT OF COURSE YOU WILL!

maybe you’ve never been much of a calendar person, and frankly that’s your business.  may i suggest though, that you get out of your no-calendar-having RUT and get yourself an extra special AWESOME CALENDAR?

you deserve it; you’ve worked hard, you’ve put up with lots of crazy, having your credit card information stolen over a wireless internet connection, kidnapped children that are being held against their will, and cars that catch on fire.

order this calendar and ward off the evil for 2009 and get yourself a HOT BLOGGER CALENDAR.

if you missed out on this phenomenon that happened a few months back, i’ll tell you that these crazy kids put on a hot blogger calendar contest and bloggers had to campaign for the most votes so they could appear in the published version of the HOT BLOGGER CALENDAR!

there are two very special people that i adore immensely that are in this calendar.  these two crazy kids met on the internet, they blogged their courtship, will blogged his marriage proposal and then folks they actually let weirdos like me watch them exchange their vows live from a chapel in las vegas.

oh, and they have a weekly show on saturday nights called “be the marriage”,

i’ll promise that you’ll come away a more educated person after watching just one show.  you’ll learn that mr. justin timberlake HISSELF is every bit as awesome and polite that you imagine him to be (and that’s in an environment that he didn’t even *have* to be nice in).  or, did you know there are categories of porn?  they are:  home porn, work porn and ROAD porn.

back to the calendar, don’t just do it b/c will and nina are awesome, DO IT FOR THE BITCHES!  and by bitches i mean the dogs!

that’s right, they are giving the proceeds from the calendars to the dogs.

*****go ahead and click on either this link, OR this link so the dogs will get a nice thanksgiving dinner this year.  don’t let the dogs go hungry, all you gotta do is click either of the those two links .*****

this whole post very well could be a ruse to brag about my actual nomination into this hot blogger calendar (with about 6 votes) so you’ll think i’m special too, or is it really for the bitches?  you’ll never know.