I'm not going to be posting for a couple days, and just wanted to post a quick note. I did a mass email a little while ago explaining why - if you didn't get it and you think you should have, please let me know; for some reason gMail has been a little sketchy in sending and retrieving mail for me.
I'll post again towards the end of the week!
#1. Only a few things in life are better than having your wet hair meticulously brushed by the love of your life.
#2. As much as it's tiring (and it is) I absolutely love apartment hunting.
#3. I cannot WAIT until we have somewhere permenant to live.
#4. I cannot wait until I can DECORATE said permenant place to live.
#5. Blade Trinity was very, very, VERY disappointing and boring.
One must remember to apply sunscreen to one's shoulders and back area before one goes swimming lest one ends up looking like a lobster.
Translation: I was careless, went swimming without sunblock and got burned.
D and Al were laughing at me today. I wish I could say it was WITH me, but alas, it was AT me. It started out all innocently enough, as most things do, really.
You see, it was mid morning, and D and I decided to go for a swim. Our pre-swim routine is to take the long handled garbage-collecting-net-thing and skim it around the surface of the water, collecting debris: flower petals, flies, wasps, etc.
It was my turn this morning, since after a hearty breakfast of pancakes and orange juice, he took out the garbage and I figured it was the least I could do. Well, as I was skimming the garbage-collecting-net-thing along the surface of the water, I spied a spider a-float. And as I neared him, he leapt (yes LEAPT) onto the side of the pool wall.
Being the spider-fearing fanatic that I am, I jumped backward and nearly lost my footing which would have seen me fall ass-backward into the pool had I not regained my balance. It was smallish, probably the size of a quarter, and instantly I thought: you are probably poisonous and thus, I must kill you.
O, wouldn't that have been brave of me?
But no... You see, I couldn't kill it, try how I might. I kept trying to flick it back in the water, and as soon as the spider hit the water, he would LEAP right back out and onto the side of the pool. I even called D over to see my lame attempt at assassinating this vile creature, and he watched in amusement as the spider continued to leap to safety, despite my vainest efforts at drowning it.
Eventually I got it far enough into the pool that it could not longer leap to the safe edge of the pool, but then...THEN it swam! Yes it swam! All the way to the other side of the pool!
Given the size of the spider in comparison to the length of the pool, I'm sure it's the equivalent of swimming the english channel. Except the spider showed no signs of slowing down - ever.
D started to tell me to leave it alone, even using a pleading voice as though that might actually stop me from my task. I was nonplussed however, and declared that since we're in Arizona, this spider might very well be poisonous if not deadly and we certainly didn't want it alive incase it ate the dog, or the child of the friends we are staying with.
And I then shouted: "Kill it! Kill it!"
"You want me to kill it?" he asks.
"Yes."
"You want me to take life?"
"Yes!"
He heaves a great sigh, and grabs the garbage-collecting-net-thingy and proceeds to place it ontop of the arachnid, submerging it. We assumed it wouldn't be very long before it died.
We were very, very wrong.
The spider, having previously swam the entire length of the pool, now proceeded to swim UNDER WATER and away from the net. After trying to keep it on the underside of the net for about 5 minutes, D grabbed the phone and called Al at work to find out what kind of demon spawn we were actually dealing with.
I was convinced, much like the freak-creation of hummingbird moths, this creature too was biologically altered and perfectly equipped with gills of some kind.
Al told D who told me to "Smush it."
Well I would do no such thing, of course! And besides, it was in the water, sitting on the bottom of the pool, bum in the air and Al promptly wanted to know if it had a "fiddle" mark on it's head.
"How the hell would I know?" I asked, aghast that he would think I would even get so close. "I'm not getting close to it!"
This, naturally, caused much laughter from the boys.
Let me assure you, this spider is not the spiders of yore - this spider WOULD NOT DROWN. It sat on the bottom of the pool for FIFTEEN minutes (and I am so not exaggerating) before I deduced that it had to be dead by now since it was no longer moving.
"Well scoop it out," says D, still chuckling in amusement and talking with Al on the phone. "See if it has a fiddle on its head."
Grumbling, I gingerly flipped the spider in the pool enough so I could scoop it out. I was elated! The spider was rather deflated by this time and not moving at all.
"It's dead!" I proclaim and all but do an irish jig.
I place the garbage-collecting-net-thing on the ground, and grab my trusty camera, confident the spider was now deceased. I was peering ever so closely at it, but not being able to see any type of "fiddle" mark on its head or body. It's body had white stripes on it though, and very fuzzy.
Having the sort of luck I have, I inched ever closer, my camera on a very tight zoom for a close-up shot, and it TWITCHED with life. Yelping, I jumped back, careful in keeping a tight grip on my camera so as not to drop it.
"It's alive?!" D asks, his voice incredulous.
"YES IT'S ALIVE!" I shriek, watching it slowly come to life before my very eyes. I scream his name as the spider wobbles up on it's 8 legs and I spring backward onto the nearest chair. "KILL IT! KILL IT! SMUSH IT!"
And so, my hero rises from his cushiony throne, takes the nearest object which happens to be the child's tiny basketball, and drops it on the spider. We both watch as the spider is flattened in less than a second, entrails spilling everywhere. We are both content it's dead, though we are both a little chagrined by the whole ordeal.
"I can't believe you're from Australia, where you have some of the deadliest spiders in the world, and you're afraid of that little one," says D, sitting back in his cushiony throne, wiggling his feet for me to massage them.
I slide across from him, taking his foot in my lap and shrug. "I don't like spiders, regardless of where I'm from."
True story.
So you might recall a few months ago, I suggested that in the goal of trying to shed some unwanted pounds, I had taken up walking to help with cardio and all that. It was going very well for a few weeks up until the Big Move to where I am now, so in all the hustle and bustle, I hadn't been able to.
Since being here though, I've taken to nightly walks which have been really nice, albeit a little scarey with the mosquitos and their nefarious West Nile. It's like dodging little tiny virus bombs and makes for a very interesting walk. And because I like to err on the side of danger, I haven't bothered with repellant.
But, I digress.
So while walking last night, we discovered an interesting creature! It's big like a moth, but sucks out the pollen of a flower, like a hummingbird. It was suggested that perhaps these were biologically created beasts, taunting us to get a close enough look at them before they turned on us, unleashing their fury. This was, of course, negated as we saw the babies of the species and deduced that babies cannot possibly dangerous, and I vowed to get pictures of them on our next walk.
Upon getting home last night, we did some research, and came to find out these little creatures are actually called Hummingbird Moths. We were slightly disappointed in this, quite happy to believe they were actual Nocturnal Hummingbirds. I will still attempt to get pictures of them tonight, however.
Now after all that, I get to the point I had originally wanted to make: weight loss. I'm already doing the walking thing, and usually it's a brisk walk to get my heart-rate up, but after seeing my body-fat percent on the nifty scale yesterday (it's at a shocking 36%!) I have decided that I needed to do something drastic. This is where the famous eDiets comes in. Have any of you used this service? I'm not skeptical so much as I am wondering how well it works - I tend not to believe testimonials from complete strangers.
I'm most likely going to sign up for a plan and do it, figuring that it shouldn't take me too long to lose the 20lbs I want to lose, but I'd just like some feedback if anyone's done it. I'm also thinking about setting up yet another blog to monitor my progress.
Thoughts?
I'm rather askew today and I feel like no matter what I do, I'm always going to be looking over my shoulder, waiting. After yesterday, I now know this to be true - at least for the length of time I have my online presence.
It seems I'm alot more easily found regardless of how careful I think I'm being. In the beginning I had to hide what I wrote because my Ex always came off badly in it, and he hated the fact that I kept a blog at all - including the times when I didn't even mention him.
When I broke up with him, and moved out and away from him, I thought I no longer needed to hide because this is MY life now and he was no longer apart of it. I kept to my word and rarely (if ever) mentioned him. I finally felt a sense of freedom with my writing and thought that now since we were no longer together, I could write whatever I wanted.
I was wrong.
So, I had some conversations with various people, and it was decided that I should just create a new blog and not tell anyone from my "old life" lest they accidentally say something to the Ex, thus giving him information about either my blog or my "new life" and I didn't want that. That's when the decision to snuff my old site, came into play. And snuff it I did, without word to anyone from my "old life" since it was just better (and safer for me) that I just disappear.
Evidently I can't just disappear.
Some of you know what the Ex had said about me. For the rest of you, he was threatening violence against me, should he ever see me again. Violence that would end up turning deadly. Knowing him the way I know him, meant I needed to leave behind all contacts with my old life - including mutual friends and my friends who know him - and start fresh. In a way, I felt like one of those battered women who have to go to a shelter to escape.
I was told, essentially, that I was blowing his remark way out of proportion and that he was just blowing off steam. Whether that is true or not, is irrelevant. My life was threatened and I felt justified in severing all ties with my past (and believe me, that hurt a great deal) and moving on into my new life. For days I was absolutely terrified that he was going to find me, that he was going to track me down and physically do harm to me. I was toying with the notion of alerting authorities in the area where I was staying, just in case.
I didn't have to do that - I moved away instead. I voiced the fears and frustrations I had; when I was with him I always felt like I was running away (internally) to do what I had to do to remain sane. Now that I'm no longer with him, I still feel like I'm running away. Now that I've been found I feel like I need to run away AGAIN.
It's like a nightmare where you're running and running and everytime you look over your shoulder, he's still there chasing you, almost touching you but not quite. It's like no matter how much ground you cover, you're not getting away fast enough.
When someone makes the threat of slitting your throat should he ever see you again, you tend to take that seriously enough that you go into hiding. Whether he's psycho enough to ever do it, is another story altogether, and while you think he probably wouldn't, you don't really know for SURE.
So, that's where I'm at right now. A little scared, a little confused and a lot upset. I no longer feel as safe as I did two days ago. I also feel like no matter where I am or how old I am, I'm never going to stop running, always watching over my shoulder to see how fast he's gaining on me.
So I see you found me. Congratulations. You should have just let sleeping dogs lie.
