Friday

I love Fridays. It's the last day of the work week for Jake so I know I get two uninterrupted days with him. We actually have some plans for this weekend, nothing too exciting but it feels good to have plans that don't consist of getting all the chores done so we can play MMOs all weekend. We bought the game Wipeout for Wii that we're planning on trying. It's Jake's favorite TV show so I figured it was worth getting! We have a bunch of yard work to do, if we can squeeze it in in between the rain. And maybe a walk or two!

Last Sunday there was a pretty intense thunderstorm here. We lost electricity for a few hours, and we were able to watch the electric company mess with some of the wires from our bedroom wire. A few cars went down that way, stopped, then eventually turned around. We checked the day after and there was a huge tree that fell over in a neighbor's yard. It knocked down a pole, which was blocking the road, which explains why no one could get through that way! The tree is massive though, and the guy is lucky that it didn't land on his house. I wonder if you have to pay for replacing the line if a tree in your yard falls over? I'd hope not, you can't really control it! I should have taken pictures of it but it didn't really occur to me until I started typing about it! Plus I wouldn't really want people taking pictures of my house and posting them online haha.

I've been taking Reeses on a short walk every other day. I think I might start doing every day soon though, and increasing the distance slowly. I'm trying to increase his mobility in his back leg. When we were too busy playing WoW I liked to pretend that we were great pet owners. But although we made sure they were fed and such we didn't give them the attention they deserved. One of my biggest regrets is that we didn't do enough to help with Reeses' leg problem. I should have been walking him every day since we found out about it. Instead, I just played WoW and ignored the problem. That's not fair to him, nor is it fair to our other pets to be ignored most of the time. It just makes me sad to think it came to that, I love our pets and they deserved better. I intend to do my best to make sure they get it from now on.

I made lasagna today. I used fresh onion and garlic, which I usually don't. In fact, I've never chopped an onion before today. I used to think it was silly when people talk about how onions make you cry. Yeah, it's definitely not silly. It's so not very fun, and I think I've discovered that I wasn't meant to be a chef! I did a pretty terrible job of chopping the onions, but the lasagna tastes amazing. A tip I learned from looking up how to modify my recipes to include fresh onions and garlic instead of minced: while cooking the sauce for the last 1/2 hr stick the uncooked noodles in a pan of very hot water. It's much easier to work with the noodles like that than cooked ones, and they finish cooking in the oven. Plus boiling lasagna noodles is always a headache, they're huge and you have to be careful not to break them.

I bought a paint by number kit the other day. Sounds silly, but my sister used to do them all the time when we were younger. I never really tried them, and I was hoping doing so would spark my passion for painting again. I was never really that great at painting, but there's something so amazing about the feel of a brush across canvas. I used to use oil paints, but now I kind of want to try acrylic as well. Either way I'm definitely going to buy some canvas at some point and hope I come up with something half way decent! I also kind of want to try my hand at a mosaic again. When I was in HS I made a faux glass window type mosaic, using those colored pebbles used for fake plants on a large sheet of Plexiglas. It didn't turn out as good as I wanted it to, but it was really fun designing it and working on it. I feel a lot more creative now that I've quit MMOs. Sort of like the old me coming back to life again.

Thinking is hard

Since getting MMOs out of my system again, I've been doing some thinking. I'm turning 26 in two months, which may not seem that old. But I feel old, I look at people of the younger generation and I just don't understand them. My birthdays are never a good thing, I didn't have many friends growing up so my birthdays meant a stressful day of wondering if anyone was going to show up to my party. I remember one birthday, no one did show up (besides family). My mom felt so bad for me that she took me out to the movies that night, and although it hurt knowing I wasn't important enough for any of my "friends" to show up, that was probably one of my best birthdays. It also made me realize that you can't count on most people, and those that you can count on should be cherished.

But I'm getting older every year, and I wasted 6 years on WoW so it feels like I missed a huge part of my adult life already. When I was younger I didn't know if I wanted to have children. My father was abusive to my mother before he died when I was 5 or so. My mother worked evenings and nights all the time (a nurse) so I didn't get to see her much. My step-father spent most of his time with his own kids, so we didn't really have a great environment growing up. It's hard to blame my mom, because she had to work to pay for all of us (3 of her own kids, 3 step kids and later on 2 more children with the step-father). I think growing up I felt sort of expendable. But with that background I wasn't sure if I'd be a good mother or if I even wanted to bring a child into the world. As I get older though, I know I probably do. It scares the crap out of me, but I think I'd be missing something if I don't. I don't know if I'll be a good mother, and we have so many pets right now it will be a struggle and a half to keep them away from the child, but I do want to have one at some point. Preferably before I turn 30!

I've been doing some thinking about where my life is and where I want it to go. When we moved into our house almost four years ago I was too addicted to WoW to do much else. I had quit my job when we moved because it was part time and the hours wouldn't make up the cost of gas for the hour drive there. I also was fired from my other job at the same time, because my boss was always trying to get me to fill in for him and I couldn't do it for a month or two because of finalizing house stuff and moving. That was the only job I've ever been fired from, and although I know I didn't really do anything wrong it still made me feel terrible, like I failed. So when we moved I just lost myself in WoW, I didn't look for a new job. Well I did but there wasn't really anything out there. So I stopped trying. I don't really want to work, but I need to. I want to find a part time job and work for a few years before we try for a baby. I want to have as much debt as we can paid off so I can stay home then. I need to stop moping around thinking about MMOs and get back to living. I don't want to be in my 30s or 40s when I have a child if at all possible. So right now my goal is to job hunt, and spend a lot of my free time working on a book. Maybe by the time I do decide to try for a child I'll be able to have something published! It may not happen, but it feels good to have a plan anyway.

Rift

Well, I tried to play it. I really did. In the course of about two weeks I played on about four different shards (servers), most of them just to check out the population and such. I got a rogue character to 24, and a cleric to 19. It's not a bad game, and people who loved WoW would probably love it. Not because it's a clone or copy cat, but because it does a lot of the same things right. It reminded me a bit of vanilla WoW, which was my favorite time period in WoW. But that said, the people who play MMOs are still the same. Yes, there seems to be less 12 year olds in Rift. But I think it's hard not to beat WoW at that :-P But they're still the same self-centered, out of touch with reality people. People in MMOs actually encourage others to spend more and more time in game, and less time in the real world. People who haven't ever played one don't understand just how much it sucks you in. The more time and effort you put in, the "cooler" you are in game. And the more stuff you have going on in game, the more time you WANT to spend sitting on your ass in front of your computer. So you spend more time in game to get more done which in turn leads to more things you're able to do and therefore spend even more time in game. They do this for one simple reason: to keep people playing and spending money. Who can blame them really...

All of that said, I can't do it anymore. I just can't put a fantasy world above my real life anymore. For someone like me who struggles with addiction to MMOs, you can't play an MMO casually. Sure, I can put limits on my time and make sure I do everything else I need to before I sit down and start playing. But when I do that, I end up rushing through everything else in order to start playing that much quicker. It sucks me in and before I know it I've been playing for 10 hours and it's almost bed time. Everything becomes about the game, and even when I'm not playing, I'm thinking about my characters or what I need to do in game. It's hard to enjoy anything else when that's all you focus on. I know that's not really normal, and some people can play these games without a problem. I'm just not one of them.

Rift didn't really suck me in though. I played way too much for the first day and a half, then after that I was just meh about it. Not because it's a bad game, but because that's how I feel about all MMOs anymore. I guess I've just grown up enough to know that there's nothing in those games for me anymore. The MMORPG worlds can be beautiful and amazing, but I know that they will never be real. And only a fool spends his time chasing something that can never be.

I slept too long!

Yesterday was an interesting day (well today technically, it's still Saturday here). Jake and I usually go to bed around 6 AM and get up around 2 AM. After he got out of work around 5:30, we decided to go run to Lowes to pick out our new washer before it got crowded out. We drove about a mile down the road when we heard the back tire making a thudding noise. We got out and looked and sure enough there was a huge nail sticking in the tire. I'm happy it was the back tires though, and that it was us instead of someone else because our back tires needed to be replaced anyway. We limped the truck home and put on the spare, and looked up what hours the tire shop was open. It opened at 8, and Lowes opened at 7 so it was perfect timing. We stopped at McDonalds to get Jake some breakfast, I got a small shamrock shake which was actually pretty good.

We spent a good half an hour looking at the different washers, and I ended up picking up a HE top loader, hopefully it runs okay. I looked at a bunch of different washers online and knew a few to avoid. People have mixed feelings about HE washers in general, but I've never had one personally. Since it was cheaper than some of the other ones, we decided to get a new dryer as well. So tomorrow Lowes is delivering and installing them for us, free. :D I hope they know what they're doing, the people who work there seem to be pretty clueless. When we were picking up our new shed half of them didn't know where anything was! But either way Jake knows how to install them, so as long as they can manage to get them here it will be fine. I'm pretty excited though, I usually only get used appliances, so it will be nice to have something that hopefully cuts our electricity and water bill a bit. Oh, and Jake's parents are getting a new fridge so they're giving us their old one. I say old one, but it's still a good 10 years newer than our current one. Now we just need to get a newer stove and water heater and our appliances will be all modernized!

Jake dropped me off at Walmart while he went to go get new tires. They have a book bin with two dollar books in it this week, which are probably terrible books but I'm a sucker for cheap books so it kept me occupied. Our tire shop didn't have them in stock though, so he gets to go back on Monday. By the time all that was done it was 9 AM, so we were pretty beat. Add that to the cold I've been fighting off lately and I slept until about 10 PM. Well there goes any hope I had of having a normal sleep schedule :-P

Drama Llamas

I really like the phrase "drama llama." Llamas in general are amusing, and the word just rolls off your tongue. However, drama llamas are not cool when they're going on in your life. Going by doesn't sound like the correct phrase for drama llamas. Passing by? Spitting in your face? Drama llamas would definitely spit in your face. Incoming long, drama filled story. If you don't like drama, pretend this post doesn't exist.

We made many friends in WoW when we played, most of which we don't talk to anymore. There was one friend in particular that we became really close to. I'm going to call him Ned, but that isn't his real name. We played with Ned for years, and we even paid for his account for a few months when he was having a hard time. We sent him some money and a walmart gift card for food too. We normally don't help people out like this, but we became really close with Ned. He was basically like a brother to me. We had each other's phone numbers in case we needed to call each other to get on WoW for something. Sounds strange, but a lot of people do it in WoW. I gave my number out to a few select people that I really trusted in game. So one night I called him and asked if he'd be on later for a raid or something. He told me that he was getting evicted from his place so probably not. I was a little shocked, I didn't know it was quite that bad. I knew Ned was having a rough time, his mother had just died and he had taken some time off work and I guess it just all piled up. My husband and I have a tendency to adopt lost strays (which is why we have 9 pets!) so we couldn't just let a good friend of ours go homeless. We offered to send him money for gas so he could drive down here through western union or some such place. We couldn't afford to pay for him to get a new place, but we could swing a few hundred for gas. He packed his stuff up and was getting ready to leave in the morning after we sent off the money when his car died (it had been having problems lately, so not a big shock either). So Jake and I stepped up to the plate and drove through three states (I think it was three, never was good at geography) to pick Ned up and drive him here.

It was a little strange, being in the car with someone you've never met before but have talked to for hours on vent. But we knew it was just temporary, Ned was getting some life insurance money from his mother's death and then he was going to find his own place. A day or two after he moved in with us, we got a big shock. Apparently, Ned's mother called Jake at work. Ned had left his cell phone at his old apartment, and we had called him from Jake's cell phone on the way. We asked if it was Ned's step-mother, but no it was his real mother. Who apparently is either a zombie or not so dead after all. This curve ball set the stage for the rest of the time Ned stayed with us. He lied to us about so many things, his old jobs, his school history, his non-existent two sisters. Jake also got him a job at his work, where Ned spent 99% of his workday looking at WoW forums. Ned never contributed much for staying with us and using our car; some months he'd give us 200 dollars (what we asked him to contribute) others he wouldn't. We didn't press it too much because we wanted him to save up money to get his own place. Still, despite all the drama Ned was part of the family. He adopted one of our cats, or she adopted him. She'd sit in the window waiting for him to come home every day, and she slept on him every single night. When he got his own place, he was going to take her with him. Which was OK with us, we know how it is when someone bonds with a pet. But eventually Ned got fired and he wasn't putting much effort into finding a new job. After having been with us for a year and one fight too many, Ned opted to move back to his home state and stay with his mother and step-father. They wouldn't let him take his cat, so we agreed to watch her for him until he could get back on his feet.

I was glad to be rid of the drama, but I still wanted to keep in touch. I tried to call and check up on him, but he was never home and never returned my calls. Six months after leaving, he e-mailed us. He didn't even wish us congratulations on our wedding, which took place a few months after he left. I gave up on him at that point. About a year and a half later, this January, we started communicating again. We aren't the type to hold grudges, we know that people make mistakes. Ned claimed to have changed, and that he had a decent job and his own apartment now. We talked for a few months, and he mentioned coming to visit us this summer. I asked him about his cat, even though we had pretty much given up on him ever getting her. He responded that he just wasn't ready to have a cat yet. This "man" is almost 30 and can't be responsible enough to take care of his cat? After all the stuff we did for him, he couldn't even come get his cat. I told him that it was terrible to get a pet attached to you then just leave them. He said that people do it all the time, they take them to the pound. At this point I didn't even want him to have her, for all I know he would of taken her to the pound. I blew up on him and told him to not contact me again.

It's not even really about the cat. I mean it would be nice to have a few less pets to take care of, but we love all our pets and they aren't going anywhere. But I know that she misses him. People say that animals don't remember people or feel things like we do, but she sat in the window for months after he left, waiting for him to come home. It broke my heart. She's better now, but I know she'd be happier with him. She's kind an independent cat and she prefers to keep to herself, which is hard to do in a house with 8 other pets! But the bottom line is we did so much for Ned. We tried to help him in every way that we could. And he just used us and never once did anything unselfish. I guess in a way it was a test to see if he could be unselfish and do something for us for once. He failed miserably. I don't plan on ever talking to Ned again. But it still hurts losing someone who was like a brother to me. I'll miss him, but I know our life is better off without someone like that in it. Most of all I'm disappointed. I guess some people never do change, no matter how much you want them to.

Almost another new month!

Well, it's been a bit since I posted. Nothing too exciting has happened, I'm over WoW completely at this point. A friend of mine did talk me into trying Rift though, but after less than a week playing I figured out that it's just the same thing. I'm trying to adjust to having a free life, where I don't have to wake up every day and log onto xyz video game at some point. Since I don't work, MMOs were what gave me structure and it's hard to figure out what to do with my life when that's gone, as sad as that sounds. The rational person would be like well go get a job! I probably should, but for many reasons I probably won't. Reason 1: I have a phobia of driving. I think a lot of this developed when my grandfather helped teach me to drive and would yell at me every time I made a mistake. I can get through it when I absolutely have to, but it scares the crap out of me. Reason 2: I hate working. Not because I'm lazy or don't want to do something with my life, but it makes me feel trapped. Reason 3: My husband doesn't want me to. We want to have a child in a few years, and we both want me to be a stay at home mother (we both were raised by rather absent parents). Those may not sound like good reasons to some people, but... It's not like I haven't worked before, for a short while I was the one working while my husband was struggling to find work. That's part of the reason I want to become a writer, because it's something I could do mainly at home. Having a crazy love of books and not being the worst writer in the world doesn't hurt either :-P

When I was younger (12 or so) I had so many ideas for stories, some of them were so strong that to this day I still remember them in vivid detail. I've started so many books only to stop working on them. I think my problem is that I'm afraid I'll finish one and it won't be any good. Typing that makes me feel silly though, because if I don't even finish one I lose by default. A nonexistent book can never be good! I've always been a perfectionist though, failing at something is one of the worst things for me! I really need to just buckle down and work on it, good or bad. I can always fix it and improve it with time!

It's been a busy month on top of all of that going on inside my head. Jake's parents came to visit for a weekend, and ended up putting up a new shed for us. Our old one was pretty much junk when we moved in. This was at the beginning of the month, and we still haven't been able to paint or caulk the darn thing! It's been raining and snowing almost nonstop since. This week our washing machine finally died, so tomorrow we get to go pick out a new one. I bought an exercise bike to use indoors when I can't go outside and I've been trying to get back in shape. My goal is to use it everyday for at least a mile, and work up from there. It's embarrassing but I gained a bunch of weight when I started playing WoW. Sitting at your computer and not moving tends to do that to you :-P I've already lost 40 lbs before even quitting though, so it's just time to keep going and lose the rest! I'm going to write the other reason I've been MIA in another blog as it's a super long story. But I'm still alive!

New month

Well it's a new month offically now! I picked a good time to have a new beginning :) My nap this morning consisted of me dozing for maybe an hour on and off. Strangly I'm full of energy right now though, I'm running on not very much sleep but I feel like I could outrun Twix right now (our great dane, or deer!). I know I probably really couldn't, WoW doesn't exactly help with being in shape. But it's so nice just being up at a decent time and seeing the sun rise. I used to think it was cool when I was younger to claim to be a night person, but in reality I'm more of a hmm mid-morning person. I don't really need to be up at 6 AM every day, but around 8 or 9 is perfect for me. Here's a picture of our deer, on her couch. She spends 90% of her time on that thing, and usually she's in the middle of it so no one else could possibly sit on it :-P

The last member of our dog family is Snickers, our german shepard. He's probably our smartest dog, and as is typical of the breed he's kind of high strung. That box he's laying next to is full of his dog toys, he's the only one that really plays with them. He carries one around in his mouth most of the day. I have no idea why! Some mornings I'll wake up and there's ten toys outside his box. I guess he gets bored of just carrying one around all night :-P I'm trying to train him to put them back in the box now! I need to spend more time working with him, he's very easy to train. I trained him to drop toys on command in about 10 minutes. His neck looks all gross because Reeses loves to chew on him when they go outside. Poor Snickers will be running around and Reeses is like I R GET YOU and glomps on him. He doesn't hurt Snickers, but apparently it's the most fun game ever because no matter how I've tried to break him of the habit he still does it! He just loves annoying Snickers for some reason. He'll grab a toy once in a while and just start squeaking it, poor Snickers has a heart attack. It doesn't matter if he already has his own toy, he must have the one Reeses is chewing on! I don't feel so bad about it though because Snickers was the last dog we got fixed and he used to always hump Reeses. I think he's gay, he never went after Twix :-P
See, here's a picture I took after a snow storm a few weeks ago where Reeses was munching on Snickers. Bad dog! Ha, I just noticed after I posted this that you can see Twix running in the top right corner, or at least her head :-P