Confessions of an Internet Junkie

V.P. Elect Joe Biden's wife, Jill, promised him a puppy if he won the election. She had plastered puppy pictures all around his seat in his campaign plane to act as a motivator. I think he had other, stronger motivators, but I still think it was a sweet thing to do. So he won, and he got his puppy.

And I was going to post the picture of the little guy here, but LJ is being all assy about my photo gallery. Fuck 'em. Anyway, he's a gorgeous little German Shepherd. Well, as little as German Shepherd puppies get. I reloaded the picture and it worked this time.



Long day, and it's only 9PM. I'm ready for bed. I did a lot of chores and running around today, and now I'm just kind of bleh. Burny hands and legs. Stuffy nose. My plump, pretty Chloe Kitty asleep at the foot of the bed. See? It's not all complaining :) Now to lure her off the bed so I can get some sleep.

Tomorrow should be interesting. The temps are supposed to be above freezing (for the first time in over a week), and we're expecting rain. I'm hoping it will get rid of all of the ice in the driveway, because I am known for my optimism, eh. Stop laughing, you.

Night all.

I was on the road almost all day. I haven't checked LJ or my political blogs since 7AM, and I didn't get to turn on the news until 7PM. I've been in election limbo all day but still encompassed by a miasma of anxiety. I had a doctor appointment this afternoon to go over my meds and to check my blood pressure. While the nurse was strapping on the pressure cuff, I told her it was going to be high. She wanted to know why, and I reminded her that I was American. She burst out laughing.

I had to turn CNN off about 10 minutes after I started watching because the early, early returns were so bad. I. Couldn't. Deal. Who am I kidding? I still can't.

I'm rambling. I am so very, very, very tired, too. Not much sleep again last night, and as I said, I was on the go with only three 20 minute breaks all day. My whole body is thrumming, but there is no way I'm getting any sleep until much later.

Now excuse me while I scream into my pillow for a bit.

1. It seems too cruel that Obama's grandmother died the day before the election. I can only imagine how hard she must have fought to live just one more day.

2. I'm nervous as hell about the election. Watching Maddow did nothing to calm me as she ticked off the many things that could go wrong because so many states are not prepared to deal with the expected crush of voters. As the Republican activist pointed out, they don't want a high turnout. A high turnout only benefits the Democrats. Anything that slows down the process, that locks people out will benefit McCain. If he wins on that technicality . . . well, if nothing else, maybe it would lead to some election reform.

3. I haven't been sleeping well. Dar blames it on the election :) I'm not sure what it is, but I know that I wake up literally at least a dozen times during the course of the night. It's probably the prednisone. OK, maybe some of it is the election.

4. I bought some Bailey's today. Take that, #3!

5. Does anyone have a spare Obama08 button they can spare? It just occurred to me that I have no memorabilia from this historic election. I'm not a collector, but this should be an exception. Maybe sparky77 can bring one back with her, please? I promise not to tease you for 12 hours if you would :)

Well, I haven't had this intense a spot of insomnia in a hell of a long time. That's the good news, I guess. The bad news is that it's well past the time that I can take something to knock me out. I'd sleep until 11 or so, and that would just put me in more trouble tonight. Unless I really drug myself tonight. Huh. Excuse me while I talk to myself, OK?

I suppose I can feed the cats. I got out of bed about an hour ago to go the bathroom, and when I came out I had six of the eight cats all clumped together around the door. Heh. Poor disappointed kitties when I threaded my way through them and went back to my room.

I watched Obama's infomercial tonight. Impressive. I'll tell you one thing: I really wish I were back in the States so I could volunteer for his campaign during this last week. I swore after going door-to-door for Eugene McCarthy way back when that I would never do that again. But I think I'd do it for this election.

I mailed my absentee ballot in last week, but I'm still keeping an eye out for my official ballot. If that comes in, I have to mail it back because it takes precedence over the one I downloaded. So, in the natural course of events in my life lately, I expect that I'll receive my official ballot on Nov. 3, and the fact that I won't be able to get it back to MA in time will cancel out the vote I did send in. Hopefully I'm just being paranoid. (Who me?)

Yeah. I think I'll go feed the cats.

I miss my Bailey's. Where are the good old days of those Bailey's/Ambien cocktails and the concomitant arrival of the little blue men dancing around my computer screen? My life is absolutely no fun anymore. (Of course I'm no longer slipping into a semi-comatose state as a result of said B/A cocktail, but hey . . . the cocktail giveth, the cocktail taketh away.)

Here kitty, kitty!

1. I voted today. My absentee ballot never arrived, so I went to the Overseas Voter Foundation and downloaded a ballot for my precinct in Acton, MA. God bless the interwebs. It's flying on it's way back to my old home town, and now I get to say that I voted in one of our nation's most historic elections. I need a button or something.

2. Pixel followed me out to the paddocks. I left, she stayed, and according to Dar Pix got into a scuffle with Cinnamon Girl - who is one big alpaca. I didn't see it, but I did look up in time to see Pixel rocketing out of the paddock and off into the woods. I was worried that she'd been kicked, so I tracked her down in the woods, meowing pitifully. (Pixel was meowing, not me. Although I was close.) She was fine, just scared to go back past the alpacas again. Poor kitty.

3. I have a head cold. Sucks. Hopefully it's going to be weak and of short duration. I was going to put off getting my monthly blood work done tomorrow morning, by the nephrologist really wants to see my potassium level at this point, so off I trudge. I hope I don't sneeze while she's inserting the needle :)

4. Dar and her son Oliver fixed the barn door today. Yay! Really - both sparky77 and sffan will attest to the horrors of trying to manhandle that door into place every night during the winter.

5. Pushing Daisies delighted me not. I haven't seen Mad Men in weeks. I'm barely keeping up with Dexter. I'm becoming a dud when it comes to TV. Rachel Maddow, however, still holds my heart.

6. I'm still very angsty, jumpy, verge of tears-y. I blame Bush. Or at least the general election. I think I just need to get drunk and have a good cry. And maybe a scream.

7. Instead I'll go to bed so I can wake up nice and early to get my vein deblooded.

Just while I wait for the meds to kick in. Which should be soon, so you're all nearly safe.

I saw bits and pieces of the debate. I tuned in to CNN to watch the people-meter do it's thing, but I had the sound off. Mostly it was men liking McCain and women liking Obama. They were supposed to be undecideds, but I think the men were mostly disaffected Republicans who weren't sure they could vote for McCain. Looks like most of them will - at least in that group. The men all loved Palin, too. On that discussion of her as a possible president, the mens line got a fucking erection. Clearly thinking and voting with the little head on that issue.

I have no respect for McCain at all. He lost his vaunted honor in his obsession for winning the election. Bald faced lies as truth. Terrible, hateful innuendo about not just Obama but all liberals. There are some truly vile and frightening sites out there on the Repug's side calling for rounding us up and charging us all with treason, for taking us out and shooting us or hanging. Cuz nothin' says good ol' boy like a done-right lynchin'.

I've seen the most racist, hateful, demeaning pictures out there of Obama. One has his photo with a noose hanging next it with the words: The Only Solution. Another photoshopped a picture so that he's a shoe-shine man giving a shine to Palin's shoes. Text? "The job he's really suited for." I haven't seen overt racism like this since I was a kid and the Civil Rights movement was in full swing. It's as sickening now as it was then.

I'm not convinced that Obama is going to win. The polls show him with a double-digit lead, but we all know that people will tell a pollster what makes them look good. In this case, if they didn't want to vote for Obama, they wouldn't want to be taken for a racist. I heard an interesting new take on it from another pollster who said that that might work in reverse. That some people are saying that they're voting for McCain because they don't want their buddies/family/co-workers to know that they're voting for a black man. It sounds reasonable, and it adds more fuel to my thought that these poll numbers don't amount to much reassurance right now. It's still a wild card election.

It's funny: I was not an Obama supporter. I still don't like his stance on abortion and health care. But he's the best alternative to what we have now, and what the opposition is offering. Obama has put up with a huge amount of crap, more than any other candidate has had to deal with, and I include the SwiftBoating of Kerry. He's handled it beautifully, though, and his grace under pressure has done much to sway me more comfortably to his side.

It's going to be a rough three weeks until the election. Anything can happen. The rubes are going to be even more fired up, and I'm paranoid enough to be concerned that one of those yahoos - say in Ohio - is going to be "so "scared to raise [his] children in an Obama world" that he might decide to do something deadly to ease his fears. Because the base is really fired up, kidlets. And nothing is as scary in my book as a true believer with a "righteous" mission.

I haven't seen our country this divided since the Viet Nam War. Fist fights would break out, family members wouldn't speak with each other, random acts of violence would take place against "hippies" - who really were anyone with long hair and/or a peace symbol on them somewhere. The only difference now is that the liberals aren't that easy to pick out of a crowd, really. Oh wait, we'd be the ones talking in cultured accents while waiting in line at Starbucks. The elites, I believe they call us. Fuck that. Fuck them.

We're so strongly divided that I don't know what can bring us together again. There is such distrust on both sides of the political divide, that whoever gets in is going to have one half of the country hoping for his failure. At the very least. And with the current global economic, environmental, and political crises assaulting us all, we need a unity of purpose. We need to come together again. And I just can't see that happening for quite some time.

McCain is so full of shit that he should be covered six feet deep in flies.

By the numbers.

1. The financial mess in the States has me in a depressing tizzy. There's no good way out of it, but at least both sides of the aisle are slowing down and not just rubber-stamping that jaw-dropping fiat by Paulson that he be handed handed 700 billion dollars with no questions asked - ever! - and absolutely no oversight. That's not just handing the keys to the hen house to the fox, it's providing him with the butcher and an executive chef. I have no idea how this is going to pan out specifically, but it seems as if the American Century was just that. The 21st is going to see us going the way of the British Empire, I fear. And I don't fear our lack of global influence as much as the economic consequences for the average citizen.

I don't know how much y'all have been reading about this, but I'd highly recommend the transcript of last week's Bill Moyer's Journal. If you can't or don't wish to read it all, please just scroll about halfway down and read the segment where he interviews Kevin Phillips. The guy is completely non-partisan in that he thinks both parties are irresponsible, and he has prescient insights into what led to this and what the future most probably holds.

2.I haven't received my absentee ballot for the general election yet, and I'm starting to get worried. I think I need to call the registrars office back in lovely Acton, MA.

3.In non-political news, I switched to the basic plus account on LJ just so I could get 15 icons instead of six. I feel so trashy :( I'm finally getting used to the ads, probably mostly because they're becoming more targeted to my interests, which means I don't get the tacky flashing ads anymore. Along with the 15 icons I also get to use the photo storage and the ability to make polls. Not that I use either of those options all that much, but now I'm inspired to make a pictorial poll. Heh.

4. I started physical rehab today to try to get my muscles back in shape in a way that isn't going to aggravate my lupus. I have a series of 12 stretches and 4 strengthening routines, and let me tell you - it was rough going for a couple of them. I am completely out of shape after almost a year of being knocked off my feet by the combo of illness and draconian meds. How out of shape am I? I pulled a muscle rolling over. How freakin' embarrassing is that? Hurts like hell, too. It's on the right side of my chest, just under the breastbone. Dar said it was my "laying down muscle," which made me laugh, but apparently that's actually the layperson's term for it. I've spent so long just laying about that the muscle deteriorated. Here's to getting back in shape . . . very slowly.

5. Still no crias. I was out in the paddock last evening, and as I approached the barn I heard this ear-shattering screaming from inside. Anyone who didn't know alpacas would 1) be scared to enter the barn, and 2) expect to see a bloodbath when they finally got up the nerve to go inside. But I, being wise to the ways of the freaky little camelids, knew what it was. And sure enough, there were the two preggos - Gertie and Conchita - standing right up against each other but facing in opposite directions, screaming at the top of their lungs at each other. They really need to have those crias asap before they drive everyone around them absolutely insane.

6. I watched the first hour of Heroes, and I probably won't be back. It's not like I was a devoted fan to begin with, but there's just nothing in it that really catches me. Even the Hiro storyline is looking pretty repetitive. And unlike many of you, I find no hotness factor anywhere, not even with Adrian Pasdar. (Sorry, Q!)

7. On the other hand, I'm glad that I decided to stick with True Blood. Last night's ep was a vast improvement over the first week. I still don't like the main character, Sookie, but I'm starting to like Bill the Vampire and I absolutely love, love, love Tara and Lafayette. I'm rooting for Sookie's brother to be killed as soon as possible; I can't stand that character. Overall, though, there's more to like than not, and I can hope that the series continues to improve.

8. I had a bad night last night. Not a lot of sleep and painful joints. Combined with the pulled muscle today and the fact that I'm overtired, I know I need to take a half a sleeping pill to fall asleep and stay asleep. I was just wondering why it hadn't taken effect yet - over an hour since I took it, I thought - when I just looked over on my bureau, and there's the pill just sitting there, still waiting for me to take it. Sigh. I need a keeper. Off I go.

No, really. Could you lend me your ears? Mine are all frakked up. I've been having a problem for going on two months now with my ears getting progressively more blocked and painful, lots of pressure, especially in the right ear. At first I thought it was a bad reaction to some meds, so I let it slide. Then I thought it might be part of a sinus infection since my sinuses were acting up, too. I took some decongestants steadily for a while, and the sinus part cleared up but the ears only got marginally better, and then got worse. Finally I figured that I had a big ol' wax dam in there because . . . I'd started using Qtips again. ::hangs head in shame and looks dutifully chastened:: I spent a couple days of Dar putting olive oil in my ear (really, it's the same as using mineral oil) to soften things up, and then Dar spent a bunch of time yesterday trying to flush it all out with water. Lots and lots and lots and lots of water. Nothing really seemed to be helping. Today we went out and - among other errands - bought a pen light so she could use an otoscope to check it out. And ::drum roll:: no wax at all in there, but a lot of goop is trapped behind the ear drum. In other words, an ear infection. On the plus side, I have the cleanest ear canal in all of North America. And Dar also confirmed what I have suspected for many years: my ear canals are wackily made - they're all bendy and curvy and whatnot. So, some high dose antibiotics, and I should have my normal hearing back pretty soon. Yay! Cuz seriously, this has been like walking around with a sea shell pressed painfully up against your ear 24/7 - all wooshy noise and disorienting.

Meanwhile back at the alpacas - absolutely nothing has happened. How do they do that?!!?? How do they get all bulgey and pushing and labory and then just decide, "Nah, I think I'll bag the giving birth thing for a while." They are sweet and adorable and funny and absolutely crazy making.

And speaking of crazy making: it's less than 60 days until the general election. I'm not going to make it, I swear. I actually believe that those brain dead idiots who gave the world Bush's second term are going to put McCain and Palin in the White House. Because she's so cuuuute and feisty and OMG a hockey mom! And then McCain's going to drop dead from a heart attack or apoplexy when someone pisses him off, and she's going to end up president. And then really kiss the USA good-bye. Meanwhile Canada is getting ready to elect Bush Lite Harper and a majority Conservative government. What the fuck is going on? I'm gonna take my fam and my cats and my alpacas and moving to a heretofore undiscovered island. Sovereign territory. Bite me, conservatives!

Ahem.

My cat photos are starting to get some reactions over on Flickr. I've been asked to post some at invitation-only sites, and I've been getting positive feedback. Always a mood lightener, that. I'd be very happy just taking cat photos for the rest of my days. All animals, really. I'm imagining what I could accomplish if 1) I had a couple of different lenses, and 2) I actually knew what I was doing :) The world would be my oyster! And then I would take a picture of it.

True Blood starts tomorrow night. Eh, I'll give it a try, although I'm not all that excited about it. Vampires have been done to death and back again. (Heh. Get it?) And this one sounds as if it could be pretty heavy-handed with the gay/AIDS symbolism. I'll just have to see. ANTM is promising to be a good season. Yay, Isis! I'm really rooting for her to make it through to the final three anyway. Project Runway finally started in Canada last week, but I missed the first episode. I hear tell that they design gowns for drag queens this season, and that I have got to see.

But for now, me and my goopy ears need a nap.