Honey & Rain

Oh, what a beautiful day.
I got a beautiful feelin’
Ev’rything’s goin’ my way.

I don’t know what’s gotten into me the past few days, but I just generally feel GOOD. This is a wonderful change of pace. As of late, I’ve been so busy and so frustrated and so turned around that it’s left me feeling downright depressed and angry at everything. This wave of good, no- GREAT moods has really helped my state of mind.

I’m almost through with my Introduction to Information Technology course and I’m still maintaining my A average. That makes me particularly happy. I’ve had a couple of lateness mistakes, but I got back on track quickly. I still feel quite confident about school. Next is my General Psychology class. Now we’re gettin’ somewhere!

I miss my dogs terribly. We occasionally get pictures from Emma’s new mom and it looks like she’s a really happy girl still. It makes me smile and want to cry all at once. As for our kitties, Liam’s been a total cling-on lately and Chardonnay is starting to worry me. She’s gotten terribly thin and refuses to eat more than a small spoonful of food no matter what kind she’s offered. We feed all the cats in their crates now so that she doesn’t have to defend her food, in her mind, and it seemed to be going well, but now she’s back to not wanting to eat much again. We’re scheduling her for a vet trip a.s.a.p. since nothing we’ve tried has worked. Keep a healing thought out for her.

I finally got my voter registration card, so I can go get my license here in Iowa, now I just need the money. I figure later this week I’ll have it. That will be especially nice because it means I can actually get work because they won’t have to turn me down for insufficient identification.

I went to check out the church I mentioned a while back and it was fun. I met a really nice group of friendly and welcoming people and I felt like I connected with something greater again for just a moment. I want to go back again. I didn’t go this week, but next week is guaranteed, “gods willin’ and the creek don’t rise”.

That’s about all that’s been going on in the life of this honeybear.

Keep on dreaming big and thinking positive!

Family doesn’t only refer to blood relations whom you have no choice but to be related to. It hasn’t meant only that for a long time for me.

Family is the people who love you. They may not like you all the time. They may not even want you around at times, like when you’re in a really bad mood and being a butthead. They may get distracted sometimes with their own life and forget to call or miss a birthday. Still, you know they love you. You know this because they tell you. You know because they are the ones who come running to your side when things go wrong or you need a little backup. You know because when you just need to cry, they’re the ones who wrap their arms around you and just hug and hold you until the tears are done. You know because when times are good and they need someone to laugh with, they come to you and share their joys and you laugh together. You know because when they need comfort, support, or just a little added strength, you’re the one they call.

Family is a funny thing. Sometimes you don’t realize you have it until it smacks you over the head. Sometimes, you subconsciously fight accepting it because you’re afraid of getting hurt or hurting someone else. Every time, though, you will know for sure that you have it because it will be there when you most need it to be.

Someone in my family hugged me today. She hugged me because I was crying. I was scared and upset and unsure what would happen next. I had reached a breaking point. I cried hard and long. She came in, gave me a hug, told me it would all be okay and helped me to calm down. For the first time in years, that someone was not my wife…. because someone else got to me first. Someone other than my wife that exists in my immediate area saw me and sought to comfort me before even my wife could get to me.

It may seem a simple little thing, a hug, but this one has changed my future. Since I arrived in Iowa, I’ve been fighting against accepting these people as ‘family’ tooth and nail. Not consciously, of course, but subconsciously. I have been burned so many times either by people I’ve loved as family hurting me or vice versa. I didn’t want to go through that pain again. Truth is, though, that pain is simply a part of living. Risk is what makes life interesting and shapes us for all that we still have yet to experience. Maybe, just maybe this is the risk I’ve been in need of for a long time. Maybe.

Isn’t it amazing what a hug can do?

I love all my family, blood and extended alike. We’ve had our ups and downs and I’ve learned who the real ones are. Some are my blood, some are not. All of them are dear to me. Thanks guys, for putting up with me. I love you.

First off, I give my apologies to those loyal few that read this blog regularly. I have been slacking terribly these days, what with everything that’s been going on.

A glimpse into life as of late:

I finished up my Composition class (with a 93% no less!) and moved immediately into Foundations of Information Technology. There is much to read and plenty to write and respond to. I do not like it. I know enough about computers to get by just fine as an advanced user. Ah well, though. Apparently it’s a requirement for just about any degree out there anymore. At least it’s not programming (thanks, Mom, for that uplifting thought!).

I have also been spending a good deal of time with the new roommates and with my friends in the virtual world lately. Azeroth keeps me sane. I’m still doing well in school, so I allow myself the simple pleasures of playing World of Warcraft in my downtime.

I sent for my voter registration card a couple days ago now, so hopefully that will come in soon so I can get my driver’s license replaced and updated to Iowa. Once that happens, I’ll be able to look for work. If I am really lucky I can get in with a psych office or somewhere where I can actually learn about my field while In work. Here’s to hoping.

The cats are doing alright. The locals don’t care for them still, but they mostly leave Chardonnay alone and Liam can defend himself. No major injuries. In fact, the only damage so far has been one tiny scratch on the back of an ear on one of the locals. They’ll adjust better once there is a larger space for them to share. Chardonnay is scheduled to be fixed next Friday. Oh the blessed silence I look forward to with no more heat cycles!

I need a new tire. Apparently we had 2 different size tires on our car for some reason. No wonder our smart track system has been messing up! I have finally found a mechanic that seems as sincere and trustworthy as my grandfather, so I think we can finally start getting the car TRULY fixed without getting totally ripped off. This is great timing, considering our service engine light and ABS lights have been on for weeks now. *sigh*

Overall, life is good. Iowa’s nice. The weather is perfect. Friends are awesome. Life is moving along nicely.

Keep dreaming big and thinking positive!

In my composition class, we were asked to respond to one final discussion question. It involved quoting a favorite book, author, poem, story, etc and explaining why it had meaning to us. I felt like it would be a good share here, so here it is.

There is an ecstasy that marks the summit of life, and beyond which life cannot rise. And such is the paradox of living, this ecstasy comes when one is most alive, and it comes as a complete forgetfulness that one is alive.

Jack London, The Call of the Wild
US adventurer, author, & sailor (1876 – 1916)

I chose to quote the first author that really touched me. When I was in the 6th grade, I picked up ‘The Call of the Wild’ and read it for the first time. I would read it some 8 more times that year. This quote in particular is a beautiful summary of what this book actually speaks of.

Man naturally limits himself by what he believes is the way things are, and yet, when man is truly alive and one with himself and his environment, for that moment, he forgets his limits, his fears, his expectations…. He forgets all that it is to be ‘living’ by common definition. I reach for that summit. I know, as Buck did, that I can be something greater than I am at this very moment and that is what I seek to be. I work toward that moment where I forget being alive; forget my limits and boundaries and hurdles to all that I want to be.

I try my best to live every day in search of that ‘summit of life’, the moment in which one truly feels at peace with oneself and and their accomplishments and life as they’ve made it. I hope to find that moment again and again before I leave this life. Part of that search is to make something of myself that I can respect and be proud of. This is all just part of the journey; the search for the summit.

This little guy is too cute!

I didn’t get to visit the UU church I planned on visiting this week on account of circumstance beyond my control. Yes, Mr. Flat Tire, I’m talking about you. Grrrr. What’s worse than a flat tire? Finding out that the old tire that was still good enough to be a spare got disposed of by the tire shop despite you asking them to leave it for a temporary spare. We have no spare. Some tire goop in the emergency kit that I haven’t tried yet. No money to replace the tire after the extremely temporary tire goop wears off if it works at all. Yeah, it is frustrating.

Here’s the awesome part:

I DON’T CARE!

Yep. It’s official. I really am not that upset about the tire being flat and the car being out of commission until I can afford a new tire. I’m content to wait for my stipend from school and replace all four tires then. I’m actually that comfortable in the state of my life right now that being without transportation of my own (which to me is like unto losing my very freedom) isn’t all that upsetting.

That makes me a happy bear.

In other news, I’ve been working my brain out trying to prepare my final paper for my composition class. It was driving me nuts. As usual, however, once I sat down and started writing, I wound up with a decent product. The only problem with it is that I’m too neutral. Apparently, I provided such stimulating arguments for both sides in an attempt to provide both views so I could better argue/persuade my readers that I left my readers feeling that they weren’t sure which side of the debate I stood on. Ain’t that a kick to the tail?

Well, my revision is due today, so I’ll see what I can do about fixing it up. Maybe if I wind up with a nice final product, I’ll post it here. It’s a piece on free speech. Not my favorite topic because it’s too complex to really cover in a 1200-1500 word essay, but it was the only one of the two topics I really had any insight on, so what could I do?

I’m a little disappointed right now, but I’m hoping my week 5 grades will make my frown turn upside down. My current grade is an 89.78% which, while excellent compared to my grade history, is not what I had hoped for from a composition class. I am a good writer. This is not me being cocky or egotistical, it’s just a fact that I’ve gleaned from years of teacher, parent, and peer input since I was very young. If I had allowed myself the motivation and not lost my muse to atrophy, I might have been a decent author. I did not expect less than an A in a composition class.

Fortunately I know why my grade dropped and I have no regrets. My point was made and I would not have changed my actions at all, even knowing how much they’d affect my grade. If my calculations are correct, I may still pull an A out of this course, though. If I ace my final paper, then once my quizzes and the final paper and discussion get tallied into my final grade, I should pull out of this with a 93.81%. Again, this assumes perfect scores on all of my remaining items, but I feel confident I can pull that off based on what’s left for the grading.

Only one more class session before I get to start on the meat of my degree courses, General Psychology. I’m excited about it.

Just another day of thinking big and dreaming positive!

[edit]

Umm, I think I meant dreaming big and thinking positive…

Oh well! Just as awesome!

Yesterday I had the joy of picking up some new Bath & Body Works treats for Dev and myself. I love Bath & Body Works because of the variety of goodies they have there and the fact that even with my crummy sense of smell, I can enjoy the fragrances they make. Walking in to a bath and body works makes me smile and picking out my favorite scents is just plain fun.

I used to love this one scent my Aunt E used to get. I don’t remember what they called it but it was a hazelnut base. Sadly, they no longer carry it, though the lady in the store said that if they did bring it back it’d probably be a winter scent. Surprise surprise, I leave you to guess what my favorite season of the year is.

Now, until recently, B&BW has always been a girly thing to me. The whole store seems built for women, which makes perfect sense. However, this left me always wondering (and I’ve heard other guys say the same) ‘What about men? What if we want to smell nice too?” Well, B&BW has answered the call!

Welcome the Men’s Signature Collection!

Four flavors of lady pleasing goodness!

I checked all four out and decided that my personal favorites are Ocean and Oak. In the body wash and deodorizing spray I prefer the Ocean scent, but I prefer the Oak cologne. So my personal signature collection actually  turned out looking like this:

So this is step one in my new “Smell good, look good, feel good” plan. I’m back in a place where I can take care of myself properly, in the way I want to. I can live as myself and be accepted for it even outside my house. I always feel better when I am clean and can enjoy a scent that is pleasing not only to me, but to my wife as well. Simple though it may seem, I feel it’s a great step toward feeling like a better, happier, healthier, more confident man. The only thing I didn’t get that I want was the “Stress Relief” aromatherapy lotion. I’d love to have a bottle of that because eucalyptus is just one of those scents that both relaxes me and makes me smile. It reminds me of my great grandmother, always ready for the cough with some mentholyptus cough drops in her purse and that mentholatum rub that could make the whole house smell like that wonderful (mildly eye watering cause it’s so strong) goop. I want some!

Step two is to start caring more about my personal appearance. I’ve got a good start to a wardrobe, especially after picking up a number of pants and shirts more appropriate to my manliness at a 1/2 of 1/2 store back in Missouri. Looking good is coming along. Another part of the Look Good step is to lose some of this excess weight. I want and need to lose about 160 lbs to be in a healthy range. That’s a long way to go. For now, I’ll just focus on the first 20 lbs as that alone would put me under 300. Yes, I’m a fat man, but I’m okay with that. I probably wouldn’t care at all if it weren’t for the health risks involved with being grossly obese. I’m not really a vain person. I don’t much care whether other people like my look. If being fat weren’t so unhealthy and unsafe, I’d probably stay this way. It lends to my ‘papa kota’ personality that so many people love about me. I want to live past 40, though, and seeing as my body is trying to degenerate far faster than I can repair it, that won’t happen if I don’t get on top of my weight problem soon. Wish me luck!

Feel Good is the third part of this plan. The first two parts will lend toward this third part, but there’s more to it than that. In order to get myself feeling better, I need to get my confidence up. I’ve been getting better as of late, with my wife and friends helping to boost my confidence and general self-esteem.

I also feel the need to reconnect with my spirituality. For this, I have a plan, but first a little history. Having grown up in a southern baptist home, I got very used to having a church community. I was in sunday school when I was little, youth group when I got older, and at church as often as possible all the while. I vaguely recall short periods of time when we were not in a church, but it never meant mom stopped believing as far as I know, it only meant that life was a bit too hectic and crazy to be going to a church building. A church, however, can be one man praying on a hill. When I reached my rebellious phase I went to the opposite extreme from my southern baptist upbringing and explored Wicca. From that point forward I explored any number of ‘pagan’ paths. I’ve finally reached the age of reason, I think, and am beginning to mellow out. My views of what truth is are starting to solidify within me and I’m realizing what beliefs I never really discarded and which I really did embrace. What am I now? Good question. I don’t think there’s a name for my belief system.

The point of this story is that over the past few years I’ve felt increasingly detached from my spiritual self. I do not feel that I belong in any exclusive denominational church, but I do feel the need for a community and church-like environment to enjoy and eventually raise children in. To that end, I have been researching and looking for such a community. I may have found the church for me, too. I intend to visit them for Sunday morning service this weekend. It is a Unitarian Universalist church and I have known about it for quite some time, I simply haven’t given it a second thought. I attended one of these churches once and found it quite nice. I hope to enjoy the same results this time. I have been reading through the information on the UUA website and I feel that their principles and belief ideals will create a good environment for me and my family, now and in the future. What’s more is that it’s LGBT friendly! Now I just have to test that theory by visiting the church and seeing how it resonates with me.

I’m excited about it. The B&BW goodies, the lookin’ good, the church…. I think this will all be great for me.

Greatest news yet: I’ve been a non-smoker for over a week now! Having all non-smoking roommates is working wonders on my ability to stay cool while quitting.

As always, I’m thinkin’ positive and dreamin’ big! TTFN!

Living in a communal  house is taking some serious getting used to for antisocial me. I am quiet enjoying being near friends and being able to be online for my guild on my favorite MMO. I actually enjoyed laundry day for a change. I am enjoying playing tabletop RPGs with them when we do play. I enjoyed a game of Three Dragon Ante last week. We eat together some of the time. We share just about everything. When my back was in terrible pain to the point where I was balled up on the couch in tears, I didn’t have to just suffer through it on account of being too broke to buy pain meds because I was offered pain medication (yes, the totally legal over the counter kind) from one of the roommates.

In general, it’s been nice. It’s strange, though. I’m just not used to truly communal living situations. When they say ‘if it’s here, it’s household’, I hear ‘if we tell you it’s for everyone, it is, but if we don’t say anything, prepare to die if you look at it funny’. I know this is irrational. It’s kind of like a phobia of sharing. It comes from many previous households where roommates said one thing and meant another. I will recover. I think this is the sort of roommate situation we were looking for in the first place. We’ll see how it goes. I have a good feeling about it.

Finances are still weird. Soon, though, we’ll be back on track and no longer living on borrowed money.

I really miss our puppies. I keep hoping something will go miraculously right and we can at least get Emma back. She’s living with the lady we bought her from now and she says if we ever can take her back she’s ours again. I’m not getting my hopes too high, but I would be ecstatic if we could make it happen.

Overall, things are good.

OH YEAH! Great news! It’s not been a week since we have had no cigarettes and I’ve only been mildly snippy instead of blatantly homicidal!

The kitties are settling in nicely, though Chardonnay still doesn’t know what to think of Spence & Mikky, the two kitties who lived here when we moved in. I figure in a couple more weeks they’ll all be just fine together, at this rate, and maybe even playing together. Liam’s doing well, though he’s the biggest kitty in the house and knows it, so he’s a little bossy.

Why the pink tank cozy? Well, I was looking for a picture that really embodied the wacky little communal household I find myself immersed in and I found this picture. Apparently, during the Iraq war, this was made and the tank with it’s cozy was placed in a public place as a protest against the war. It was something of a community project as people walking down the street helped to sew the patches together, from what I’ve gathered. I thought it was neat and besides…. It’s a PINK TANK COZY! How much more awesome can you get?

So, today began with a brain-melting headache, complete with a tap dancing heffalump and trumpet playing woozle to top the whole ensemble off. It wasn’t so upsetting because it hurt, but because it kept me from joining my friend on her trip to the courthouse to complete her name change process. The name change is such an important part of the transition process for a tranny that it really upset me when I woke up and had to cover my head to block out the eye-popping light that sent lightsabers through my skull.

However, everything else about today has been great. She took the whole big household to breakfast when she got back, by which point my headache had faded enough that I could come out from under my snuggie hideout. I still have a dull ache behind my eyes and at the very back of my skull, but it’s survivable.

When we got home, I did my school assignment for today. I didn’t want to, but I buckled down and did it. I don’t think I did great, but I do feel that I did my best at the time. Given a few more days I could probably put out a better piece of work, but I only had today to work on it. I currently have a good average and I’m not too worried for my final score in this class. I have confidence I’ll do well.

Iowa is looking good for me. Even on the ‘hot days’ it’s still cooler than Missouri and I’m still comfortable and normally headache-free. We just might wind up settling here for a while (i.e. indefinitely). Now if I could just get my ID (or at least response from the DMV saying that it’s on its way), I’d be really happy.

Despite being in a better, safer, more sociable place, I still have nothing really to say.

Nothing really to update.

Class is going smoothly. 93 avg. Only 2.5 weeks left.

I feel like crap. We should have waited to come here. Our financial situation makes me feel like a hobo that just happens to have a nice friend with a space in the living room for him. It will get better soon.

Two short fuses in the house (me being one of them). So far so good. I’m proud of me, thus far.

Things are good. I just don’t feel good about them. I’m probably in a chemical downswing. I really hate being bipolar. Where’s my manic when I need it?