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Be GONE Year of Upheaval! v.2.0

So, I’m cooing over snowflakes while on the food run for lunch today and I realized that there is something more out there for me. I have no idea what the hell it could be, but I KNOW there is some sort of occupation out there for me. One where I could make decent money and have control over my time and my life. And despite the horrible year it’s been, I still feel that a web based business is the thing for me. But what products? I’m thinking that maybe herbs and other supplements may be the way to go, but I’ve not done any homework to see what’s out there now. I will, though. I will. Because…

I hate the freaky, spastic, neurotic bunch of people that run this health food store where I work. To be surrounded by herbs and supplements that make you feel groovy, these people are the most wound up bunch I’ve had to deal with in a while. Talk about bullshit! If I wanted to work with overwrought divas I’d still be in the newspaper industry!!! [edited to protect the guilty]

So, that brings me back to my thoughts today of what kind of web business can I set up? Judging from the number of people who come in saying that they found info on the web, I’d say that the health food industry is going strong online. If any of you have any info about this or any links for me, please let me know.

I know I’d wanted to go for the Naturopathic Doctor degree, but I cannot afford it, so I enrolled in the Herbalist I section instead. There are 3 tiers to Herbalist: Family, Consulting and Master. I don’t know whether I’ll get any more than this one, but I’ve already paid the deposit, so ‘I’m in for a pound’ as they say. I have to tell you though, that these unsavoury people at the store have dampened my enthusiasm for the industry quite a bit. Damn them. I still find myself drawn back toward the tech sector. I find that dealing with luddites makes me miss the geeky world of the web and I really don’t think I can leave it for good. I’ve been thinking about soliciting all the various holistic centers around here for web work. I’ll just bet that many of them have no site at all and have no idea of how to get started. Deana (of centerforholistichealth.com fame) has been getting more and more hits and clients from the website, and she is giving me an advertising budget for the site, so maybe I can spin that into more work…

I know brochureware sucks, but dammit, I think that having a brochure site is better than no site at all!! When I do a site, I try to impress upon the client that I can’t be expected to create content for them, THEY have to do that, but you know, they still sort of expect me to fabricate content anyway. It’s the nature of the luddite beast, I’m afraid. Nonetheless, I don’t think I can give up my web stuff and I don’t think I can give up my current Mac clients, either. I like my clients and they like me and I sure do love the money I make doing support! I think I’m gonna cut loose the clients that are too far away and only accept any new ones if they are close and I like them. The rest can go to my friend who also does support.

I really did not intend for this to be a job related rant, but despite the post-posting editing it still is. Oh, well. In a vain attempt to rescue this Rant from the boring doldrums of work related crap, I’m going to add a little about my thoughts on authenticity. I think what ulitmately bugs me about people like the ones at the health food store and elsewhere is the lack of honesty and the duplicity that people seem to think is necessary in everyday life. Why can’t people just be honest? Why can’t people just live what they preach? I dunno, it just seems that being friendly to a client is one thing, but changing your speech patterns to seem more ethnic smacks of fakeness that I find hard to swallow. Running a store that is viewed as ‘alternative’ and ‘healthy’ but doesn’t even recycle the DUMPSTER FULL of corrugated cardboard it uses every week also seems, um, FAKE to me. And having two brand new cars that cost more than $100,000 (for both) seems a bit too consumer oriented, too. Doesn’t it? Is it just me that sees this? Am I the only person that is bothered by this??? [AND the asshole who owned the shop paid his employees in cash so he didn’t pay any payroll taxes. He probably didn’t pay taxes at all. NICE. -A Mar 2015]

I know I’m too hard on people, but you know what? I don’t feel one little bit guilty about that. I truly believe that if everyone lived life authentically and had higher expectations of the rest of society then society would rise to the occasion. The reason that there is no service in retail or anywhere else is because society has allowed it. We’ve allowed service to go by the wayside in the name of Political Correctness and it’s a cop out. It’s not OUR fault that we pay $45 a month for crappy cable and then get Shaniqua who is paid $7/hr to answer the phone and tell us that there’s nothing to be done about it, oh, NO. We know good and well that it’s us, the CONSUMERS who acquiesce and put up with it. If you don’t like something SPEAK UP. If you want honesty, demand it and DO IT in your own life. Am I going to take it in the ass from cable? NO. I’m looking for alternatives. I’m demanding better service.

Goddess knows, my friends have put up with my blabbing the truth at them and pissing them off enough through the years! I know it pisses people off, and I usually don’t mean for it to, but I can take it as well as dish it out. Just the other day I had someone comment on a statement I’d made and point out that it was too negative – and they did so in a very blunt fashion. I could have gotten pissy about it, but I listened to what the actual words were and I immediately gave that person credit for pointing out my shortcoming. I know my shortcomings, believe me, but I can take it if someone wants to call me to the carpet.

It’s too bad that most people are not that self aware and they are unable to take the slightest bit of honest commentary. It’s the pervasive influx of Political Correctness that has made our society one of wimpy little whiners who are afraid to say anything the least bit negative for fear of being seen as NOT P.C.. What this country needs is more honesty and authenticity and less P.C. bullshit.

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The Joy of Misanthropy

It’s my b-b-b-birthday! Yes, hooray for me! It’s been an all round good one, spent with good friends (except Andy, of course, and that SUCKS). I’ve got a new job, a new career path and a reeeaaally sore neck for my efforts, but the sore neck is worth it. :->

On to the meat of this entry, which is all about misanthropy and my joyful, nay, gleeful dispensation of it to those who sorely deserve it. First, I feel that a textbook definition is required:

misanthrope (miz’•an•throp [long O]); noun, “a hater of mankind”. Courtesy of the Random House Dictionary.

Hence, misanthropy is the act of hating mankind and a misanthropist is one who hates mankind. Got it? Good.

Now, about my misanthropy and how it manages to ooze out no matter how hard I attempt to keep it sealed in. I have never, ever denied being a people hater. I detest the unwashed masses and I endeavor to avoid them as much as possible. Anyone who has read any of my Rants *should* know this. Stupid, clueless people are my favourite subjects.

My misanthropy was fostered at a young age, typically directed at my parents or my classmates. I’ve always hated huggybears (people who are always so nice, no matter what, and their fakeness is nauseating) and malkins (people – usually women – who do their best to conform and not rock the boat of social mores). As a child I distinctly remember thinking that my parents were such asses for fighting like schoolyard punks right in front of us. My brother would always get scared, but it made me angry at them for being so self indulgent and grossly inappropriate. I’ve always been a questioner and I’ve never, ever followed directions unless they made sense to me. I’m a misanthropist much to my parents’ dismay and disbelief. Nevermind that they reek of antiintellectualism and their own brand of misanthropy, they just don’t understand why I have such a “bad attitude”. Hmmm, what a mystery.

Add cynicism to my general distaste for people and you would think that you’d end up with someone unable to carry on a conversation or be near people without some sort of rage, but that’s not so. I can be just as charming as the next malkin, er, person. I have the gift of gab and I am a great salesperson. I can talk to anybody, anywhere. No problem with that. The problem is when I have to uphold this social façade for long periods of time or when I am presented with behaviour that pisses me off and I don’t feel obligated to pretend that I don’t get it. Anyone who knows me knows that I’ll only keep my mouth shut for a short time before the smartassed remarks slip out or my true disdain begins to shine through the mask like the sun through the trees. I’ll say I told you so. Just “get to know” me and you’ll hear it at some point. Promise.

Anyone who knows me knows that I do NOT like huggybear behaviour in the least. Hugging people I don’t know is just not natural to me, nor do I think it’s appropriate for people I don’t know to pry into my personal affairs or engage me in debates then get angry when I trounce them. There is a group of people that is doing these things to me at the moment and I’m having a very hard time trying to be neutral in the face of such an all out attack of huggybearness. This group of people has been snarky to me and when they got a whiff of my disdain for such silly psychodrama, they began their assault on my character with religious zeal. They claim I’ve done something wrong by not joining in their group dynamics. They claim I’ve done something wrong by defending myself when I was verbally attacked by one in their group. They have a long list of grievances. All I want is to be left OUT of the psychodrama, dammit!

It is the trademark of a malkin or a huggybear to force conformity, because anything less makes them nervous. Needless to say, I make this group VERY nervous because I refuse to play their game of ‘name that dysfunction’. Sorry, folks, I’ve been there and done that with my own family and I really don’t need a refresher course. But thanks for playing, and have a nice day.

I refuse to apologize for being me nor will I apologize for defending myself. I will not apologize for noncompliance with rules that I do not agree with. I do not understand why I must play the conformity game to placate people that I wouldn’t care to hang out with in the first place. And why do they care so much about getting into my business? It’s not like I’ve encouraged them, but then again, that’s probably the very reason that they want to “know me” better. Huh, yeah, they want ammunition, that’s what they want. If I know one thing, I know how people work. Especially groups. They will draw you in and then happily knife you in the name of conformity. It’s called socialization folks and it just doesn’t work on people like me. (Andy can identify with this statement fer sure!)

That’s why I work for myself. My clients love me because I fix things fast and typically permanently. I do not bullshit them and I do not coddle them. I’m in, I’m out, no painful social interactions that last more than a few hours. That’s why they like me! Now take those same qualities and put them in a 40hr a week cubicle and it’s absolute chaos. It’s the same with groups of any stripe. Like families. I am fine with my family for a few days, but beyond that it may get tense. We have a working arrangement that is very equitable and keeps us all sane: don’t ask, don’t tell. They don’t pry into my bidness and I don’t blab about my bidness unless the subject is to be made public. It goes both ways and as long as we all comply with those simple rules of engagement, we get along famously. That is all I expect from anyone, really. Don’t try to force me to play. It won’t work, baby. I’m a Scorpio. Force is a bad thing to use with a Scorp.

It’s a shame that people have such a hard time with this concept of individuality. It’s a shame that they just can’t comprehend the notion that what they think or say may or may not matter to me and I may or may not react in a given fashion. Why can’t they stop taking every little thing personally? Just because I don’t play the drama game does not mean that I don’t like the people involved. It means that I don’t want to be involved in family or any other drama, that’s all. I’ve wasted a lot of time with malkin and/or family drama and I don’t want to go there anymore.

One of my favourite authors is Florence King, who wrote With Charity Toward None: A Fond Look at Misanthropy. Her book Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady made me realize that I am not a malkin, nor a huggybear. I am a misanthropist and damn proud of it.

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9/11 redux

It’s been a month since we watched the World Trade Center fall. I’ve struggled so much with what to say about it , that now it seems redundant to do a whole essay on it. So I won’t. I have a couple of things to say, but I’ll just use that as a preface to some other stuff that I’ve been working on.

As the Constant Readers know, I’ve been in the middle of some life changes since before the attacks. When I got the call from my mother on Tuesday morning and I saw the towers crumble to dust with all those people inside, I felt a shift in my mind, my body and my spirit. Right then I knew that I was no longer going to be an apathetic American nor was I going to let my life continue on its undirected path.

After a week of crying and feeling totally helpless, I finally got on an even keel again and I started reading about the things going on in the government in relation to the terrorists attacks and I got severely addicted to Metafilter.com. Lots of different people log on to mefi and it gave me some perspectives that I otherwise wouldn’t have had. For instance, a guy who goes by JISH did a really documentation of images [that no longer is up, sadly – ed.] and quotes from Tuesday, September 11 and I wouldn’t have seen it if not for a random mefi link. I also had CNN and ABCnews on all the time. I tried a couple of other news sources, but I felt they were too preachy (hello, FOX!). That part of it has calmed somewhat, but now that we are finally bombing Afghanistan, the news is on most of the time in my home. So, I am now an involved American and I will definitely use my votes and my pull as a voter to keep politicians in check. I hope everyone else will do the same.

I am still not pursuing any Mac work or web work, but I’m not turning it down, either. I have put out about a dozen retail applications and I hope to have a retail job by the end of the week. It’s not what I want to do forever, but it’s something that I have 10 years experience doing and it will help pay the bills that are pushing our finances to the edge. I accepted a new Mac client today. It’s a very small gig, and I need the money, so I’m gonna do it. But I won’t like it.

I’ve let the California dream go for now. When it’s time, I’ll know. It is not productive for me to pine about moving when it’s obviously not going to happen soon. I suppose I still have stuff to accomplish here. I think it could be that I need to get into herbalist activities, and the American Herbalist Guild is located here in GA, so perhaps that’s why I’m still here. In that vein of thought, I found out that the AHG is having a seminar next month in Helen, GA and I plan to attend the one day intensive. We’ll see where that leads.

In addition to the herbalist and aromatherapy stuff that I can do, I also got a hint that perhaps I should revive my online store. I guy called me about Cedant, my host to whom I gave a testimonial, and he is a web marketer. He was asking about raw logs for sites at Cedant and in the course of me looking that up for him, we started talking about online commerce. He said that using GoTo.com’s (now Overture.com – A) pay per click program is the best way to drive hits to your site besides having specific META tags on every page. That rang a huge bell with me, since a friend of mine who has an online store (The Blessed Bee) was telling me just a couple of months ago about how great GoTo has been for her business. So, I have been looking up various stores that would be my competition as well as using GoTo’s tools to look up how things are listed and I think I really could have a chance with a specialty shop. Do you think that yet another shop that sells pagan, witchy, Indian, jewelry, oils, incense, decor, henna and maybe astrological charts would be successful? Email me your thoughts.

I’ve also been drawn to various inspirational books and ideas lately that have helped me along my path. I’ve read Deepak Chopra’s Seven Spiritual Laws of Success and The Life You Were Born To Live by Dan Millman. Both books been very helpful to me. I also read Disobedience by Jane Hamilton and I really enjoyed it.

So, that’s the State of Angela for now. Later!

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Message in the Tree Branches

There I was, just mindin’ my own bidness, right?, when this HUGE TREE crashed down on my house and a 6 foot limb came through the back door…

Yessiree, Friday afternoon turned out to be quite an ugly sight here at Casa Misangela. You see, there was a pecan tree behind my house that has been worrisome since last year when its companion fell over in the other direction and the arborist said that this one remaining tree needed to come down, but the slumlord didn’t do it. Ever since then, I’ve been worried every time a breeze comes up that the tree will keel right over on top of my porch and kitchen.

The tree had inadequate roots holding it up due to its growing in a cluster of 3 trees that all shared the same roots. They should have been thinned decades ago, but they weren’t. In addition to this, the tree was very stressed due to the drought we’ve had here in the South for the last 3 years. The first tree fell about 5 years ago, missing the building and landing in the yard. The second tree fell last year, going sideways into the brush and slightly into the backyard of my neighbor behind me. The last of the cluster, with no roots left, fell on my porch and kitchen on Friday afternoon at 2:10pm. I think this is a (nother) message from the Universe telling me to get the FRELL out of Georgia.

I’ve never been in any sort of big emergency situation before. This incident scared the living SHIT out of me! I had a full blown panic attack while the whole thing was going on. This is how it happened:

2pm: I was at my new neighbor’s apt, talking about the neighborhood and discussing the TREE situation. I pointed out the leaning pecan tree and said that I was sure it would fall one day, and I hoped I didn’t live here when it did. It was a very large tree, about 2.5 feet in diameter. I look to the west and see a huge black storm cloud coming our way, so I scampered home to let the kitties in.

2:02pm: I am standing at the back door, trying to get Bernadette to come in, when she does a curious thing. She jumps off the porch, hunkers down in the yard and looks up at the pecan tree. About 2 seconds after that, I hear the first CCCCRACK. Terrified, I slammed the door shut and ran into the front room to call somebody, anybody to help. The tree held on — for now.

2:03 – 2:08: I am running around the apt in a panic, trying to find my phonebook so I can call the leasing office. I called the maintenance guy that lives down the street and he’s not home, natch. I finally find the book and I call the office, only to get the goddamned voicemail, which is all you ever get there. I leave a message that the tree is going to fall and someone needs to get over here. I then call the slumlord’s office and get the VM there, where I leave another message about the impending doom. By now I’m almost in tears.

2:08 – 2:09:50: I am pacing around the apt, wondering what the blue FUCK I’m supposed to do when the tree falls… I run into the kitchen and peek out at the tree, which is tilted about 10 degrees more than it was, but it’s still standing. I’m hoping the frelling thing will just make it one more day until I can cut it down myself. I go back and forth a couple of times, then I look out again.

2:10: As I’m standing there, I hear the horrible sound: C-C-C — and I ran into the front room/hallway, shooing cats as I go, seconds before the tree crashed into the kitchen. It was all CRACKING and thrashing and thumping and breaking glass as the tree flopped over in its death throes and lanced the kitchen with a six foot, 5 inch diameter branch.

2:10:30: I’m standing in the door arch of the hallway, shaking like the proverbial LEAF, gasping for air as the panic constricts my throat. It’s over.

2:11: I peek around the wall, into the kitchen. There is the 6 foot branch, through the back door, only inches from the cabinet and stove. Glass is everywhere. Tree bark is everywhere.

2:11:30: I pick up the phone and make the same calls as the first time, but now leaving messages that there IS a frelling TREE in my kitchen and someone better show up, like, NOW or there’ll be hell to pay. When I get to the slumlord’s call, his secretary picks up and I proceed to yell at her that she’d better find Chuck and he’d better get over here NOW.

2:15: I look out the kitchen window through the tree and to my amusement, I see my charcoal grill (with its brand new cover) is unscathed, as is my birdbath. This makes me grin with the absurdity of it all. I realize that I’d best document this clusterfuck, so I get the camera and manage to get it loaded with my shaky hands. I begin to shoot the damage. (I’ll have it all up as soon as I develop and scan)

2:20: I’m out in the pouring rain, shooting the damage when Chuck the Slumlord pulls up. I yell at him and tell him that he is in SO much trouble and this is SO his fault for not doing what the arborist told him to do last year. I stomp off, my panic given way to anger at this point. Chuck follows me into the house to see the kitchen and porch damage and apologizes and says he’s glad I’m OK. I inform him that he should be glad, because if I’d had so much as a broken fingernail, I’d OWN him for his negligence and endangerment of his tenants. I reminded him that I’d called his office just three weeks ago and left him a VM about this very tree and the even bigger one out front that desperately needs attention, but again, he did nothing.

So, he calls the weekend maintenance guy to get the branch out of my kitchen and repair the door until it can be replaced and he calls the tree guys to come and remove the tree. By some miracle, the tree guys were there by 5pm and the mess was gone by 8pm. In the meantime, Nick came home and I went to work to get away from the noise and the mess.

The morals of the story, kids, are 1) be the thorn in your slumlord’s ass if you know that something should be done, but doesn’t get done and 2) listen to your kitties who can tell when a tree is falling. I’d been mentioning the trees since last year, but I didn’t make enough stink about it, so I got the pleasure of being a natural disaster victim. And I’m frelling lucky that I ran from the back door, or I’d have been a frelling shishkabob.

My porch roof was taken out, the back screen door, the back door, the clothesline and my wrought iron porch rail is bent. By some miracle, the kitchen, the 2 windows on the back and the rest of the roof were undamaged. Chuck got off easy. Unfortunately, none of my stuff was damaged, so I have no reason to take him to court for that, but if he doesn’t want to pay me for my silence, then I think a few well placed phone calls should be enough to get him in hot water as a negligent slumlord. He knows this. He also knows that I’ve lived here for almost 10 years and I’ll not be intimidated. He’ll pay me for damages and lost wages (which is not much) and he’ll have the other trees serviced or I’ll be filing complaints right and left.

And now the question remains: how many more karmic messages will I have to endure before I take the hint and make the changes that need to be made? It’s time to do something. It’s time to move.

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Inner Earthquakes and Other Oddities

Andy is in California now, but he’s coming in this weekend to do the graduation ceremony on Monday. It’s hard to do this, you know. It’s hard to say goodbye again and to let go of one of my kids [Hobbes the cat, for those of you who are clueless and think that I’d ever have a snot nosed brat], but I’ve got to do it. And with some semblance of dignity.

I filled space and wrote all about the wonders of Network last time, and while every word is definitely true, I must admit it *was* filler. Just me, living in the Land of DeNial. Call me Cleo.

I don’t feel that I need to necessarily spill my guts here, but I do feel that I should at least give up a little of what I am thinking about and feeling. I’ve been through a lot in the past month, and rather than try to elaborate on one thing or another, I think I’ll just give a list of the things that have at least hit the radar since we last chatted. OK, here goes:

* Painting is fun. And a cheap way to make a semi-shitty room look very nice.
* Does anyone (or two) really need 4 corkboards?
* I really love my newly pink (rosey mauve, actually) bathroom. I happen to have a pink bathroom fetish, thank you.
* Having only one sofa sucks.
* I have my doubts that I should do web design as a career. I’m not good enough with scripts.
* I have no career at all at the moment. My Mac support biz has tanked along with the other tech stuff. Thanks Geedubya, ya fucking little FUCK!
* I’ve decided that Geedubya is an evil little big money corporation ass kisser who has a Ronnie Reagan shrine in one of the rooms in the White House. It’s locked up so the Media can’t find it, but it’s there, trust me.
* The Center for Holistic Health is a death sentence for any hardware sent there.
* I’m such a newbie user when it comes to sewing machines. I’m thinking of getting one, since June [Mommie Dearest] has graciously [and disturbingly] offered to buy me one. I was in info overload and asked the sales guy to just stop with his incessant listing of every model and the 400 things it does. ACK.
* I’m not sure that having our Special Friends living next door will be without its downside. Like, too much of a good thing, ya know?
* Why are 20 year olds SO into drama? And so loud and obnoxious? Heh, could it be that I’m OLD???
* When will I ever get out of this money Karma?
* Why can’t I just sell everything and move to the fucking Aussie outback? Or the hills of New Zealand? Or Hawai’i? Cats. That’s why.
* Why do these inner earthquakes come upon me so quickly?
* My Honda will never recover from the Firestone escapade. Perhaps I should call the personal injury lawyer guy and see if he’d care to take on Bridgestone/Firestone…
* Perhaps all the money I need to get through the next 2 weeks will magically fall from the big Pin Oak tree outside. That’s the only way I’ll get anything paid, I’ll bet.
* I wonder if Andy will find some cool people to hang with soon. His lab is full of boring, classical music listening, Rule Nazis and they suck. Hang with it, And. The cool people will appear.
* I wonder if Hobbes will miss me? I wonder if he’ll miss his house and yard? Prolly not.
* Having to go on a special diet to cleanse my body of candida sucks. The upside is that hopefully I’ll ditch a few pounds in the process.
* I feel overwhelmed these days, but nothing is going on. Maybe it’s just general stress.
* I can’t get the IndigoDragon front page to work with the double rollovers. No one else can, either, but that doesn’t reduce my frustration with it, or my deep sense of inadequacy about it. FEH!
* Being Egyptian (Living in the Land of DeNial) is really not that bad. You should try it. And call me Cleo, won’t you?