But I have something difficult to say, and it needs to be said. I think our relationship is dwindling. The bloom is off the rose, and what began as a fun and exciting adventure in social exploration has become a dull and stale series of endless advertisements and false profiles. Bitter and harsh words have been exchanged that can't be taken back, threats of "don't click here if you're easily scared" and sarcastic jibes about my weight. I feel that neither of us is growing in this relationship, which is why I think we should start seeing other people.

Don't take it too hard. I'm sure you'll meet many more members out there willing to pimp out their pages and indulge your flashing banners, but it just doesn't feel right for me anymore. There is so much more for you out there with people who don't mind making obviously unrealistic profiles to get as many friends as possible added. And while that's fine and I don't hold it against you, I feel we hold each other back by our expectations. I want simple and updating, you want flashy decor. I should confess, I have been seeing someone already. We're a better fit together and I think it's unfair of me to continue maintaining a page here while pursuing a relationship with them as well. I hope you won't be angry, but I feel I should be the one to tell you who it is. It's FaceBook.

I know what you're thinking. "I knew it! You're seeing that Live Feeding tramp!" Well, yes, but you have to understand that FaceBook sees me for me, and doesn't try to make me into someone I'm not. It's much more relaxed and family-oriented than your "wild party" atmosphere. And, I hate to say this, but my mother likes FaceBook more than you.

So I suppose this is goodbye. I'll be getting my things over the next few weeks and transferring all my blog stuffs over to somewhere else I can store them so you don't have to harbor any painful reminders in your archives. Maybe LiveJournal or somewhere I can customize my blog a little better. So don't wait up for my status updates, and don't send me anymore emails. Let's cut our losses and pursue other things.

What we had was real, but it's time to move on. It's not you, it's me. I just need more space.

 - CuriousFoxkitty

The idea is touted that rich is better because you can buy anything you want. Fancier stuff, bigger house, nicer vacations, faster cars... but the truth is being rich doesn't get EVERYTHING you want because there are some things money simply has no effect on.

The Beatles proclaimed that money can't buy me love. I thought long and hard about that as a teenager, determined to prove them wrong. To an extent, money CAN buy you love. It can certainly get you sex, but that's not necessarily love. It can buy you a marriage councilor, and than can save your relationship, but it doesn't buy it at the beginning. That would be like saying that money can buy you a car simply because you can afford a mechanic. It can buy a wedding ring, and proposals are often what create marriages, but as any divorced person can tell you, marriages can sometimes be loveless.

But what other things can money not buy?

It can't buy back the life of a deceased loved one... or trust once it's been broken. It can't buy a sunny day for a baseball game, or snow on the eve of a wedding night, or calm waters for a boat race. It can't buy air if you're drowning in the ocean, it can't buy ease watching a spouse succumb to cancer, it can't buy a good night's sleep. It can't buy a thunderstorm over the ridgeline or a moment more time in the day. It can't buy the smell of an August rain on the asphalt or a rainbow against the receding black clouds. It can't buy new knees once they've been damaged, or a new spine once your back's been tweaked. It can't buy perfect health or immortality. It can't buy real friends.

I've heard "I've been rich and I've been poor... rich is better" an awful lot. but maybe... just maybe "rich" doesn't mean money.

So I followed myself around and a number of former classmates. I got separated from them when my now-ex-boyfriend came down the hallway, cause everyone to bolt for a hidingplace. I jumped down a laundry-chute, and ended up lost, trying to make amends for things I had done without actually undoing them.

I could theorize that my brain wishes to revisit things in my past and make some sort of atonement for mistakes. But what could I change? What WOULD I change? Everything I have done has led me to where I am now. And if I had done even the slightest thing differently... would I be living where I am, with my wonderful boyfriend, two mice, two fish and a cat? Would I have my new car and my good job, would I be going back to school to gain skills to take me to a career I will love? Would I have already gotten there, would I be worse off... or would it be any different?

In retrospect... I think I would do what I have done.

I got a new car last week. A 2005 Honda Accord Hybrid with leather seats and a steel-grey-blue exterior. A six-CD changer keeps the music going, the power-windows and locks make adjustments much simpler, and I even have the little remote to pop the trunk from a distance when my hands are full. It's smooth, quiet, gas efficient, and I've only had to refill the tank once in the week I've had it. And "had to" was more "felt like".

One's named Mocha. She's a dark coffee-bean sepia with a frothy-cream espresso-foam brown belly and throat. Her companion is Silver, named for the Alpha female of the wolfpack in the series "Julie of the Wolves". She looks silver anyway, a shimmery sort of speckled grey shot with white to give a metallic seeming. She has a little black patch just above her right eye, like a pirate who's shoved her eyepatch up on her head to get a better look.

They're adjusting well. Curious but shy, unused to being handled much and still afraid of me. They'll get used to it, but it'll take time.

I am reminded sometimes of how much I adore living things. From the largess and grace of the wild tiger and the majesty of the solemn elephant to the squeakiest of scrawny kittens and the scraggliest frightened mouse, I love them all equally. They are my family, the ram tiger my father, the matriarch elephant my mother, the needy kitten my brother, the delicate mouse my sister. We share a bond that is life, merely (yet astoundingly) simple and mysterious existence. As much as I breathe, sleep, eat, dream, and desire to keep living, so too does the smallest to the largest of the earth's creatures. They are no less to me than a human being may be, save that they will not lie and deceive as mankind alone has perfected into an art form. I laugh and take joy in their well-being, I mourn their loss, I comfort them in times of need. I would do no less for my own species.

I wondered, the other day, at the strange relationships man and animals can create. Some people treat their animals as they would human infants. Some barely acknowledge they exist. Some hate and loathe certain kinds and will gleefully do harm upon them. Some are dedicated to a specific breed of a species to the exclusion of all else. 

I found myself asking the question: if dogs are man's best friend, why do we as a collective race hate, fear, and exterminate members of their wild brethren? We do not fault the hawk for killing a kitten, but we fault the coyote for killing a housecat. We permit bears to roam our national parks with impunity, but the mere mention of a wolf is cause for alarm. Wild dogs are shot on sight upon their trespass, but a wild cat may stalk our grounds with only the watcher's preference (or deference) to the feline community to cross the mind. A crow in our garden, or a skunk or a badger, is nuisance, but a fox is a danger. Raccoons carry more instances of rabies, but a fox is an immediate suspect. A raccoon is as likely to kill hens and chicks as a fox, but it is the "fox in the henhouse". A bear is as likely to sniff around the cabin when it smells food, but it's the "wolf at the door". 

I don't understand the fear. Respect is deserved, and wariness, perhaps. A grizzly or a kodiak is not to be trifled with. But fear?

Fear breeds hate, and hate breeds mobs. Mobs are capable of mass destruction. So why not just stop at the fear?

I don't understand. I love my wild cousins and respect them as free beings. Only mankind seeks to dominate and control the wild. We have forgotten how to live in harmony *with* it.

The television series The West Wing did an interesting segment on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder once. The guy had been shot, and nearly bled to death. Quite a while later after healing and returning to work, he started becoming hostile and unpredictably angry at small things, like music in the halls of the White House. Eventually, through much coaxing from a therapist, he discovers that his anger and frustrations are channeled fear, memories of the trauma seeping into every day events, triggering his brain into action with the slightest provocation. He discovers that music reminds him of the sirens of the emergency vehicles.

Who would have known?

My mother was in a terrible accident fifteen years ago. For years after the accident, she would continue to have the scene of the accident replay in her dreams. Over and over, she said. My sister-in-law was in a similarly terrible accident, though (fortunately) not as badly hurt. She has trouble even being in a moving vehicle.

Why does the brain remember these things? What neurons are connected to what cells, stimulating what memories for what reasons? The learned process is what allowed our species to adapt and survive. But this goes beyond learned process and into debilitating mental and emotional scars. How is this evolutionarily beneficial? To what end do we suffer the constant reminders of whatever terrible event proceeded us?

... I bring this up because today I was at a simple ceremony. Simple. A ribbon-cutting for our new building. There were a lot of people there and cameras and the like... musical accompaniment, bigwigs rubbing elbows and making speeches. One welcomed us to Building One.

I happened to look up... and see an airplane in the reflection of the glass-walled and concrete tower that was my place of work.

What if...?

I do not know how far some scars run.

I cannot tell a therapist or friend how badly shaken I was to learn that a former classmate of mine was a multiple murderer. I cannot even begin to describe the reaction I had when I was told that the family of kids I knew by name and herded under the hot sun at the county fair had all been shot dead. I do not have words for the sound of the crypt being shut behind the coffin of a boy I knew as a friend and star-schoolmate, or to detail the way another boy's face was obviously that of a dead and drowned child and not the living flesh I knew before. And I do not know how hard it hit me when I watched the news footage of people jumping to their deaths to escape the flames that day eight years ago.

But I know it affected me, and I know I can't forget these things. Even if I tried, I wouldn't be able to forget the sound that the falling bodies made as they collided with the glass rooftop. I won't ever forget a mother's stumble, supported by two people, as she followed her son's coffin out the door of the church. And I will never, ever forget the sound earth makes when it is poured onto a coffin.

I know I won't forget these things. That isn't my question.

My question is how many times will I be forced to remember...?

A year ago I had a different job, terribly under-appreciated and doing menial work that had no direct impact on really anyone. I sat in a shared cube with two other people, one of whom was lazy and tended to lie about how much time she spent feffing off, one of whom was generally pretty cool. I had an absent boss who didn't care about the San Diego branch of the company, and a manager who had yet to physically strike me at work.

A year ago I earned less. I spent less, too. I was getting closer to being out of my debts. I still banked with my now old and defunct bank, getting occasionally screwed because they didn't think processing a paycheck over the weekend was all that important. I still had not gotten a new mouse, since the last of my very ancient pair had finally passed away.I only had my cat, in fact, since my fish had died too.

I wasn't seeking professional help a year ago. I wasn't talking to a therapist, getting some of the darker parts of my youth sorted out, all the deaths and murders and accidents and terrible tragedies. I hadn't yet broken my arm, and was still running myself fairly hard into the ground doing half a dozen things any given day such as riding horses and going to regular Mary Kay meetings. I wasn't into Pr- Paid Legal yet, and I hadn't really made any sales with Mary Kay yet.

Many things can change in a year. The fires are over, the rain has washed away the ash and laid bare the burnt and broken boughs. New green things emerge where once a holocaust of flame and smoke laid waste. Deer have returned. Rabbits, lizards, birds. Life renews itself. So too does the human spirit. Seasons change, and the cycle continues... but not the same as the year before. Irreparable damage remains: a broken trunk, a washed out gully, the rubble from a landslide. But so too does the change become the new form: the broken tree becomes home to squirrels and beetles, the washed out gully a holding place for water reserves, the landslide grows over with grass and wildflowers in the spring. Change comes, inevitably, as change always must. Stasis does not permit growth. But the changes themselves will change in time.

Some choose the New Year to reflect upon their past year, and decide how to move forward into the newly forming future. I am choosing more and more often to begin the process in the fall and early winter, before the hubbub of holidays and the nights are so cold as to invite sickness. I judge neither as better than another. It is simply the way I have chosen.

The changes, though difficult, have been worthwhile. I emerge soon from my Saturn Return, and I believe I have passed the test. The questioning of where I am, who I am, what I am, what I have done, and what I plan to do has run its course. It is now time to walk the path before me.

But - and I say this with all sincerity - normal people scare the crap out of me.

I just spent a weekend hanging around a couple of folk who are relatively normal. Married couple, slightly older than I am, with a nine-month-old baby girl who just broke her second tooth. They both work, they both have to, they both live from paycheck to paycheck. They both swear and drink and smoke, they both have big families and siblings and like television. They both like to gamble a bit here and there, they both like to hang out with friends, they both like to gab.

So how is this terribly different from me? I mean, I'm dating the same guy now after almost four years, we've talked about having kids someday, we both work, we both make ends meet but not as easily as we'd like, we both swear and enjoy our cups, we both have rather extensive families and watch movies and like to talk with our friends. Sounds similar, right?

Not quite. I've been dating the same guy for four years, and I'm not certain this married couple has been together quite that long. They already have a child, rather unplanned, and have a difficult time making ends meet as a result. They recently had a scare because they thought she was pregnant again and they can't afford it... whereas I am VERY careful not to become an unexpected mother. Boyfriend and I earn almost three times as much as they do, but we seem to be more frugal about our spending. We don't gamble. We try to save up. Our families are very different, for all their size and comparative fractioning: sure, boyfriend has three sets of parents, but he is still on speaking terms with all of them; my folks are still together, and I'm fairly certain I'm always welcome at their house. Neither of these is exactly the case for their families.

But the part that bugs me the most is that they are so... bitter? Angry? Sneaky? No, and yes. We went to a restaurant for dinner. The service was pretty spectacularly awful, the food was wrong, the drinks were weak. The guys settled it well and civilly. But it was more on boyfriend's part that the civil happened. Afterwards, our friend was vetching and complaining and talking about how he tends to get a lot of stuff free because of the scenes he makes in restaurants. I'm not opposed to getting stuff compensated if it's wrong or bad, but to deliberately cause a ruckus to have stuff taken off the bill? Isn't that, y'know, wrong? Frequently they gossip and talk behind various backs about people they were just speaking to on overtly friendly terms. They occasionally will go on for hours about how screwed they're getting. The negativity and pessimism becomes almost a burden, something I have to actively shield against... which gets physically and mentally exhausting.

And yet, when I look at the average person, this is normal.

It's normal to be pissy about everything and assume everyone's out to screw you over. It's normal to want to get something for free even if it's bending the rules a little beyond reasonably, and it's normal to go through life letting life happen TO you instead of doing something about it to make it happen the way you want.

Don't get me wrong, I like these folk well enough. They're nice to me, even if they tend to be kind of jerks to other people, and they've had some real scrapes that they've managed to overcome. They're not BAD people. They're just... normal. And I'm not used to that anymore. I haven't really lived among normal people since I left my hometown, where the guy I once had a crush on told me to use smaller words. I've since surrounded myself with people who are either as smart or smarter than I am, with goals and dreams and a sense of personal responsibility. It's strange to me now to associate with someone who thinks the world is out to screw them over, that they cannot possibly earn more than they do now, and things such as these.

I don't really know how to handle it, or whether or not I should, or what exactly. Again, it's not that they're bad people. But perhaps they are a poor influence. Personally, I don't agree with feeding one's child Pepsi before they've even grown out teeth, much less smoking around an infant, or trying to convince one's friends that Henry Ford was actually born Mexican (Enrique Ford?) and the Ford insignia actually contains an "E" in the cursive "F". With absolute seriousness.

Perhaps I need some time away to think. 

Oh sure, my mornings are hyper-productive. I get up extra early to make the bed, fold laundry, rotate the wash, empty the dishawasher and put away what's dry, feed the cats and fish, clean the cat box, water the plants, pick up clutter, make Boyfriend breakfast, pack myself a lunch, refill all the water bottles, and half a dozen other things in addition to showering, getting dressed, groomed, fed, and ready to face the day. Then it's a half-hour to work and an 8-hour workday, to come home after another half-hour commute whereupon the cats need feeding again.

The last thing I feel like doing is getting down to the gym, cooking dinner, or cleaning. All things that need to be done.

I'm trying to stay healthy. This means in the mornings I make sure I eat breakfast, pack a healthy lunch and a big bottle of water, and take my vitamins. But does it last? No. By the end of the work day I've indulged in at least one piece of chocolate, usually more, probably a couple cookies and potentially a soda. It's terrible. And, because of my lack of desire to cook or clean up, I opt for eating out rather too frequently, and don't attend the gym. So much for a healthy regimin.

The house is messier than I'd like. Granted, I've come to recognize that my version of what's acceptably clean is beyond the normally accepted levels, so I shouldn't let it bother me too much. But it's getting worse, and I still don't want to get off my tush and do anything about it. I'd rather finish that series I'm reading, or knit one of my many projects I'm in process of doing, or spin some of that laceweight I'm working on, or play WoW with my friends, or...

So I want to be healthy, but I'm not doing the things it takes, and I want my house to be nice, but I'm doing what it takes to have that either. but at what point am I asking too much? Once upon the not-so-distant past, I was frequently told by other people that I was doing too much, taking on too many things, trying to do everything at once and burning myself out. And I don't want to do that. But at what point does not wanting to burn one's self out become laziness, and at what point does desire to be efficient become too taxing?

There must be a balance somewhere...

I got frustrated on Sunday because the yarn shop was closed and my first inclination was to go have sugar. The frozen yogurt place was closed too, and my self-control went to hell. I walked out of Vons with two Kit Kats and a box of Chips Ahoy. This is the kind of thing that happens: I get irritated, grumpy, or bored, and I get a craving for terrible food. I recognize that it's not good for me, in fact detrimental, and I feel guilty as I eat it... which fuels my irritation and disappointment, leading me to the vending machine more often.

I'm trying to be healthier, dangit! I take the stairs in the morning when I get to work, nine full flights. I have a goal to stretch for ten minutes a day and another to drink 64 ounces of water. Where did my self control go?