Jack's my dad.

He reminds me of the old guy on Community.

Also, his name is John.

My grandmother's dying. Her kidneys are failing, and the doctors think that she's going to have heart failure before the end of the night. I haven't seen her in close to five years; she lives less than two hours away. I don't stay in contact with her because she's batshit crazy and because the fucked up things she did to my mom are what caused my mom to do fucked up things to me -- but I have a lot of good memories too, and I'm more upset about it than I want to be.

I may be heading out to Colorado for the funeral. It'll be the first time that Sheryl and I have spent time apart in the last three years. I don't like the idea of going alone, because my mom has never accepted that I stopped talking to her, so it's going to be awkward. I'm trying not to put much thought into it, because there's a possibility that she won't die, and that we can put this whole thing aside for a few more years.

Anyway, I'm pretty sad.

I also feel like one of the managers at work was giving me some disapproving looks for staying after my shift to have some drinks and joke around with friends -- and I understand why she would. One minute I'm crying and Sheryl's asking if I can have the next day off (which I'm not taking, since I'm already anticipating at least three days for the funeral since it's out of state), and the next I'm acting like nothing's happened. I don't know, maybe I'm being too sensitive and reading into things. I'm not really good at letting people know that I'm upset, so there's that.

And the dishwasher just recently had to leave early because her grandmother's in the hospital, and Sheryl had to take a day off when her stepmom was sick, so the timing is horrible.

Also -- it was totally awkward to sit there having a conversation about what happens when people die when I already felt like shit. Sometimes I think that Jaime is a lot more socially awkward than she realizes.

LOLOL @ Sarah Palin complaining that Newsweek is sexist.

Because beauty pageants are totally all about empowering women. And because she says the only difference between herself and a bulldog is lipstick -- definitely doing her part to ensure equality between the sexes.

LULZ.

BONUS POINTS for her then pointing out that Newsweek is notorious for depicting liberal women in a positive light and conservatives like morons. Having any sort of political agenda = sexism. Duh.

I feel things in dreams that I would never experience while awake.

It's where pieces of some of my favorite characters come from. I've been a woman in love with a murderer: I felt a devotion so deep and absolute that I was willing to drag bodies into the woods, willing to help him bury my closest friends after a dinner party went awry. I've been a psychic taking advice from a dead man: I've felt the chilling certainty of knowing that we were standing on an unmarked grave, and that I needed to learn what I was doing quickly because he wouldn't always be around to keep me safe. I woke with the sound of his voice in my ears, but I couldn't remember anything he said.

Last night I had one hell of a dream. It was a fragment of a larger, reoccurring chunk of imagery -- I'm usually in a building. Somewhere that I shouldn't be, somewhere that people rarely go. It used to start with curiosity, with the desire to explore. Now, when I have those dreams, I have the vague sense that I'm searching for something. Something that isn't mine, and I don't really know if it's a secret that needs uncovering or if it's just an object that ought to be dear to me; I've thought more than once that it's a body, or a monster that I need to look in the eye.

Yeah, so I totally haven't ever lived long enough to find it. Those dreams usually leave me feeling scared shitless, and a little pissed off. Like failing a video game. They give me great ideas for scenes in horror books, but I don't write enough to use any of them.

This time around, I was sharing an apartment with strangers. There was a man boarded up in one of the rooms -- he was sealed away so thoroughly that it took us weeks to discover we weren't alone, and when one of my new-found friends broke down the door, I was so certain that we'd finally found what we were looking for.

Except he was afraid, and he'd boarded himself in that house to hide from ghosts or monsters, or whatever else was lurking in the house, in the town itself. Something was coming. That was the impression we had, even before he told us. He had two dogs, and they were afraid of me.

We decided to leave. To pack up our shit and just get the hell out, go to another city and forget the whole thing ever happened. It wasn't our problem. We were neither responsible nor knowledgeable enough to set things right, and we were smart enough to accept that or we were immoral enough to shove the problem on someone else.

Either way, we tried to leave. I don't remember how everyone died, but I do recall the moment when I was standing there with a teenage girl and a man around my age, and the three of us decided to turn around and run back to the house. We thought we had more of a chance facing it there.

We'd taken a secret passage that led us underground. It started with a crawl space in the house itself, and when we retraced our steps and I emerged through that small door, I was alone. I didn't know what happened to the people who were with me, and the moment when I realized they were gone was the moment when I knew that I'd reached the end of the road.

There was an elderly woman standing there. She was the landlord, and I startled her, but she recovered quickly and asked me to follow her. She had something to show me.

We climbed the stairs to a loft of some kind -- I don't know if we were in a barn or what, 'cos dreams are strange like that. But there were cobwebs, and it was shadowed and drafty. She turned to me and said, "You're dead and your body's still warm. What kind of a woman would I be if I left you like that," and I turned to look back at the door to the crawl space.

I believed her. And in that instant, I was terrified that I was dead. I mean, I knew that I was, but I had this overwhelming sense that I didn't want to hear those words spoken aloud. It was quickly followed by the feeling that, if I had just a little more time, then I'd want to see my body. I'd want to know how I died. She didn't really give me the chance, though. Before I had time to turn back to her, she shoved a pitchfork through my chest.

Totally a shit dream -- but hell, how many people get the chance to feel something like that?

Whatever character I end up applying those emotions to, I know I'm going to dig her a lot. I don't know if she'll be a ghost yet -- most of the characters I steal from bad dreams end up drastically changed from the initial person. I mostly want to keep that sense of fight.

'cos prior to that dream, I don't think I ever really grasped the mentality of someone who'd stick around to haunt a place. It sort of makes sense now, and I want to take advantage of that.

This year, my gardening plans are going to be much smoother. Instead of trying to precariously balance boxes of plants on any flat surface I can find, I'm going to use a cheap shelving unit and stick it in the basement where the animals can't go. The only challenge there is remembering to check the plants.

Also, I'm not going to undertake removing all of that gravel. There's a lot of it. The soil underneath is probably in bad condition -- I know it's seen no small amount of weed killer, and when I initially planned on clearing it out I hadn't stopped to consider exactly how much square footage needed filled back in . . . and a project of that size is a little intense for me.

We need to remodel the bathroom in the next couple of months. My adorable little puppy found a loose bit of linoleum and ripped it back, then dug at the subfloor. While this could've been an epic disaster, the previous owners were idiots when it came to diy repairs. They did a shit job of sealing the bathtub/shower (and used off-white caulking on the white panels and white caulking on the off-white panels -- THAT LOOKS GREAT MORONS), and the plywood underneath is so rotten it comes apart in your hands. So it needed fixed, puppy or not.

Right now we just laid the linoleum back down and the dogs are leaving it alone. Evie's stuck in her kennel while we're at work now, but she doesn't seem to mind it much. Housebreaking finally clicked in her head, and now she stands up against the back door and whines to go outside. She's quickly turning into a perfect dog. When I take her for walks, she tags right along side me and shoves her head under my hand for attention. Sometimes she takes my hand in her mouth to walk me, and while I know I should discourage it, it's really cute. Like the doggie equivalent of holding hands.

She's finally gotten on Sheryl's good side. Evie loves music, I've known that since we first took her on a car ride and she got all quiet and interested when we started singing. A couple of nights ago, she realized that she can sing along too, and she howled her way through Hallelujah. Definitely a breed I'd recommend to anyone -- lulz, after having a pointer and a terrier, she's like a little furry saint. Sheryl frequently points out how bad she is, but I think she's forgotten about how Gypsy destroyed my car. See, Sheryl used to want to bring her everywhere with us when she was a puppy, and she was a v.bad puppy who ate seatbelts and took dumps when she was unhappy. And everything made her unhappy. Oh, you're going to go inside to pick up dinner? GUESS I'D BETTER SHIT NOW. Oh, I have to come inside after an hour of playing? FINE BUT I'M SHITTING ON YOUR FLOOR.

But anyway, now that everyone knows that the house is not their own personal toilet, we can finally put new tiles in the kitchen and bathroom (why they carpeted the kitchen and half the bathroom is beyond me), and we get to tear up the carpet and clean up the hardwood floors underneath. This house is actually gorgeous, it's just a little small and the kitchen/bathroom needed updated. Oh, and the basement could stand to be finished properly -- the ceiling tiles need replaced and we have most of the carpet gutted from down there too.

So much work ahead of us. Our car is so close to being paid off, and when that's out of the way, we're going to save up to buy a new sofa and chair, and move what we have down to the basement. Actually, we're refinishing the bathroom first. Then we're fixing up the basement and moving the furniture down there, and taking advantage of the open space to get the upstairs repainted and the floors refinished. Since we have to rent a damn machine for it, and there'll be dust everywhere, it'll be much easier if we can just drag the bed into the kitchen and knock it all out in a day or two, right?

And I'm one of those people who doesn't think a television belongs in the living room, lulz, so having that space in the basement will be awesome.

Anyway, I'm going to kill time today trying to pick out exactly what plants I'm going to grow. I'm leaning towards raised bed gardening so I just don't have to deal with moving all those rocks -- and so I don't have to figure out how to rip out the insanely large (and ugly, imo) bushes in the front yard.

By the time we're done with this house, it'll be absolutely gorgeous . . . and I think I'm going to be a picky little bitch about moving, because I don't want to have to ever go through this much work again.

I recently read an LJ post about how the owners of roleplay chatrooms are afraid that users mentioning drugs could get them in srs trouble with the law.

Well, shit.

For the record, when my mutant sex kitten character was trolling around for eightballs and dirty sex, that was all totally IC.

DON'T TASE ME BRO DON'T BAN ME, ROO!

Also, I'm v.sad that you deleted the Livejournal community for IB. I really miss commenting there. :( :( :( :( :(

WHAT THE FUCK, WHO PUTS A SCREAMER IN THE MIDDLE OF A COMPILATION VIDEO OF FAILED PRANKS?



Man. It wasn't even that scary. But going from laughing to startled in .2 seconds is, like, instant heart failure.

Oh. Remember how I threatened to post a bunch of random pictures I found on the internet?

Yeah, it was a long time ago. I forgot too.

Found this gem on the internets: Uhm, Why the hell should grammer be a must on the internet?
We deal enough with it in everydaylife
Get the fuck over it
People will type how ever the fuck they want to type
Kay thanks

. . .

I thought to myself, "How often do we deal with grammar in every day life?"

1). Hardly ever.
2). If it's your goddamn native language, it shouldn't be that hard.

. . .

There's a note at work reminding us to clean the window shudders & merry the ketchup. When I read notes like that I feel vaguely like the universe is broken or something, and I want to start shaking the ketchup around like maracas.

Tried to call in sick: work said no, too many people called out. So I went in, I didn't complain about it -- I even yelled at Sheryl for telling too many coworkers that I was sick 'cos it's a restaurant and working sick comes with the job.

So one of my coworkers, whose daughter was in ICU that night with a respitory infection she picked up at Ruby Tuesday, came up to me and asked if I was sick. When I said yes, she asked what the hell I was doing out of the house, and I told her that Chris said I couldn't have the night off. She went and yelled at Chris for it.

Anyway, I was hoarse and smelled like Vicks, and a couple of my tables complained about it. I tried to be polite -- offered to find them another server, etc, but none of them took me up on it. One of them asked for the number for corporate, and I tried to get her to talk to a manager. Anyway, she filled out a survey on the RT website -- I'm assuming it was her, anyway, but it could've been any of the other tables since most of them had surveys -- and they're accusing me of doing it.

Seriously lame.

Anyway, then they accused Sheryl of doing it, and said that we forced our coworker to go yell at Chris. Because despite being twenty-something and not remotely intimidating, I was somehow able to get a tough career waitress to pick a fight with her boss. It had nothing to do with her daughter being in the hospital.

So the manager yelled and swore at Sheryl, and she walked out -- which is totally what I'd expect from her. And I'm glad she was the one there, because I have a short temper and I already tried to slam the kitchen door through the wall a few months back, and if he started yelling at me I probably would have tried to take his head off with a serving tray, consequences be damned, because I'm so tired of working for a corporate place that has no regard for the law whatsoever. Seriously, last night one of the managers was handing around doctor's notes because he thought they were badly worded and wanted to have a laugh about it.

I called him and asked if I was fired or not, and he said that he was going to try to prove that I'm the one who wrote the note and he's going to decide in the morning. So I was a snotface and told him that he needs to call me tomorrow if he expects me to show up.

What makes all of this epically funny, and potentially v.bad for the managers: human resources is already investigating them. Which, if nothing else, shows that when I do something I put my own freakin' name on it.

Anyway, I'm thinking about pursuing a wrongful termination case under false claims -- or potentially retaliation for whistleblowing, but I'm not sure if contacting corporate is acceptable in this state, or if I would have needed to report to a federal agency. At the very least, I hope they have some serious headaches coming their way, 'cos at the very least I'm filing a report with HIPAA and mailing a copy of their letter (which I photographed) where they threatened to change the hours that employees work.

The absurdity of restaurants will never fail to amaze me. I'm going up to Paradiso to try and get my job back there, which should be easy since I worked there for almost two years without any drama ensuing, and they're also short staffed at the moment. I'm also applying for the CNA training program at Trinity Hospitals -- Trinity Nursing Homes had some serious abuse of the elderly going on, so I'm hoping the hospital is better, or at the very least that my sense of giving a shit isn't there anymore, because I kinda don't think it is.