Who Has Time For Heartbreak Anyway? ❤️👩‍👧👨‍👧‍👦🫀

 

I’m impressed with my boyfriend and me- after 27 years of on again/off again, we managed a record reconciliation after only two days of being broken up. And we did so fully joking about giving each other the New Super Gonorrhea. We aren’t, obviously- it’s a joke. But why on earth are people over using antibiotics because of a pandemic caused by a damn virus?  If that’s you, then you’re an idiot, and you deserve Super Gonorrhea. 

Today I checked back into Extended Stay America for the next 10 days, because I have Evita for two weekends in a row now, and I can’t bring myself to have those weekends with her at my mother’s house. In fact, I’d actually rather have Super Gonorrhea. The studio is super cute and once I get all my crap put away, I’ll post pictures. The above cover of The New Yorker reminds me of me in this studio. 

One of my friends adopted a one-eyed cat. Here it is: 

Another friend (rather, a person in one of my Facebook groups) did this to their cat: 

And the other day I parked under the wrong damn tree:

 

Pixel Art by Evita

 

Evita has been doing pixel art and made this, of her and our three cats. Tiger is in heaven. 

My boyfriend and I made up after only two days being broken up. I think that’s a record. Here’s more pixel art by Evita: 

Updates for the 21st

 My boyfriend sent me screenshots of his covid positive results as well as his kids’. I didn’t want it to have to come to that, and I did not ask for them. He just sent them. I made sure that I told my mother to tell the Top Bitch in our life (at least her) that I saw them, and she did. All my mom said was that she was pissed about being wrong about him lying and called me a vile creature. 

My boyfriend and I are still being cold towards one another. I’m also at a point where I completely want to block many toxic people out of my life. I want to get another Facebook account with the name Akasha in it so no one can tell it’s me unless I tell them. I want all of my old social media to be deleted. 

I have also decided (kind of) where I want to live. I have been working in Beaumont, and I went to Port Arthur the other day. I kind of developed an affinity for Port Arthur, even though it’s extremely east. I looked up rentals there, and they’re very inexpensive. 

Tomorrow I’m checking in to Extended Stay America again for 10 days, which will cover both upcoming weekends with my daughter. It should be nice. That’s one reason why I came to Beaumont this week. I want to spend next week working locally in Houston since I’ll be paying for the studio. 

I’ll figure shit out eventually. 

A Possibly Permanent Break

 

This morning, I broke up with my boyfriend. It’s a really long story as to why. It has a lot to do with the accusations that my mom had of him that I mentioned a couple of posts down. She claimed that he lied about his whole family having Covid in order to stop me from going to stay with him for a few weeks. I had no logical reason to believe that, but within days I did start to believe it. I started feeling pissed at him, and as a result, he started feeling pissed at me. 

It’s more than just the Covid situation tho. It’s a lot of things that some family members and close friends hold me to, that I devote too much of myself to a man and his two kids and how much I need to “focus on me” instead. I’ve never quite been 100% sure what’s meant by that. I always dismissed those accusations, because it often implies that all I want to be in life is a homemaker- and I’ve worked literally non-stop for 26 years, so they can’t possibly be right. But are they?  Maybe I don’t live for myself enough. Maybe I am too vested in them sometimes, and that needs to change, idk. I’ve been called names like “wannabe stepmom” and other names containing the R word for the fact that I’m with him. 

In the midst of our argument, he told me that his mother is in the hospital now because of her Covid. Now there’s a lot of guilt, and there’s fear of even more guilt if she (god forbid) dies.

It’s pointless to try to explain how I feel, because it’s so very complicated. It’s like a very old tree with a ton of branches representing related issues. 

I might need to call the therapist. 

One YouTube video totally helped me a ton with the emotions that accompany heartbreak and the inevitable sobbing. Here’s that video. It’s such an extremely beautiful video. Heartbreak is just part of being human. Sometimes it feels like the most normal, most primal parts of being alive as a human being are things I find myself having to apologize for. 

He and I have been in and out of each other’s lives since we were 15 years old in 1993. If my life was a movie, he’d be that recurring character that shows up in every other scene, a little different each time. Like Jenny from Forrest Gump. 

One year since my dad died

 Literally the day my dad passed away, I thought “The one year anniversary of his death will be Inauguration Day.” But of course we didn’t know then if it’d be a new president or not. (I’m glad it is). Although my dad always called Biden a “Doofus”. I’m definitely sure my dad would have preferred Doofus Biden over Trump tho. 

I think it’s time now to stop seeing my dad’s death as like, something that “just happened.”  It’s been a year, so it’s the distant past now.  I guess?

I found a white tea light candle in the junk drawer and lit it for my dad. I don’t have a picture of him laying around, but his Sam’s Club membership card with his picture on it is in my wallet. So I laid it down by the tea light candle. That’s my rogue witchcraft for the one year anniversary of dad’s death. RIP dad. 

My Updates

 My Covid retest also came back negative, so I unquarantined  myself. I actually went to a clinic where the nurse administered the test- I didn’t want to administer it myself anymore. And damn, did she really screw the hell out of my nostrils. I think my brain was also scraped. If that test came back negative, then I know I’m negative. 

I had a really hard time with my boyfriend’s entire family having Covid. Both of his parents are mildly ill, but his mom says she feels a little worse today. They’re in their own house quarantined, and my boyfriend and his kids are quarantined in their house. My boyfriend and his son were both sick enough to need to stay in bed, but his daughter was bouncing off the damn walls. I wondered if she’d had any cough syrup that made her act that way, but he said she didn’t. I had a very hard time with the fact that I could not be there with them, at least to tell her to calm down and knock it off so my boyfriend could stay in bed. I FaceTimed with her for about a half hour, and my boyfriend said my telling her to stop so he could rest really helped for a while. Not sure if it was Covid that made her so hyper or just the emotional impact of her whole family testing positive. 

I left the motel and returned to my mom’s house just to gather my things before going to extended stay. But I did notice a lot of good paying audits in Beaumont and the Louisiana state line again. I may head east before coming back for my weekend with Evita in an extended stay here in Houston. Because I have weekends following the “2nd, 4th and 5th Friday”, I have two weekends in a row now with her, at the end of January. So if I do go east, I need to be in an extended stay by this Friday morning, work all week locally and then stay through the next weekend. If my boyfriend and his family are well I may go be with them on February 1st. Things are up in the air. 

I’m looking for a permanent place to live, but I have no idea what I want. I’ll make a separate post on why I’m so extremely undecided and confused. I just know that I’m not coming back here. Ever. 

 I don’t know what to title this post. A ton is going on. Right before I was going to go stay with my boyfriend for a while, he said that he and both his kids and both his parents were sick. They got tested for Covid, and all five of them tested positive. I was tested at the same time. Initially I came back negative, but then they came back and said it was inconclusive. My mom is definitely negative. Wherever they got it from, I was not exposed, because I haven’t seen them for over a month, or almost a month. 

His parents are only mildly ill. My boyfriend and his son are very sick in bed, and his daughter is bouncing off the walls. Does Covid do that to kids?  

My mom kind of suggested that maybe my boyfriend just made the whole thing up in order to keep me from coming over there and staying a while. My mother says things like that. Someone will tell her some information, and she’ll dream up an alternative scenario about “what’s really going on.”  Combine this with the fact that my relationships have always been controversial, and of course she thinks he’s lying. 

It was a combination of her saying this to me and the fact that my boyfriend and his family are positive that put me into a breaking point spiral. I left my mother’s house for good. I cannot go back, and at this point I will not. Right now I’m at Extended Stay America. It’s really nice here. I have a cute little studio with a bed and a couch. My daughter can have a cot when she comes. This is temporary until I decide what I want in a place. There are so many different locations and options that would work for me, that I need to be in peace and solitude while I figure it out. I don’t feel like writing it all out right now all the things I have to consider, but it’s a ton more than I’ve had to consider any other time in my life that I’ve moved. I’m also quarantining because of my inconclusive Covid test. I’m in a very strange place right now mentally and emotionally and don’t know how to put the pieces of my scattered brain together. 

Got a Lot Done 🏃🏻‍♀️🔧 🧵

 

That’s my stepson doing school on his dad’s receiving desk at the family business. Yes, they often have to go to work with him, even when he’s there by himself. This is exactly why I wish some teachers would get off their high horses when complaining about parents during the pandemic. Enough said. Luckily, and I haven’t said much about this, but I’m going to be staying there from this Sunday evening after I drop off Evita until Saturday the 23rd when I get her again. It will be nice for everyone. By “everyone”, I mean me, him, and his kids including the son of my friend that he took in. I’m scared absolutely shitless about what literally everyone else will say if they know I’m taking these steps to move in. Before you say, “Don’t worry what other people will say”, you gotta understand that this is the exact thing that was the exact OPPOSITE of all expectations of me. And even though my boyfriend and I have literally known each other for going on 28 years (long story), it’s almost a given that someone will say we’re moving “too fast”. 

So today I got a tune up on my car. While it was being serviced, I went to the gym across the street and updated my membership. I was only able to go to that location with the membership I had, but I needed to be able to access all locations in the country because of how much I travel. My monthly payment went from $10 to $24, but that’s ok because having access to all locations helps with showers when I’m on the road. I can visit the gym unlimited times per month and technically take a shower each time without an increase in fee, but at the truck stops, a shower costs $12- each time. 

The gym is more cost effective, but the showers there are only closed off by a curtain in the locker rooms. The truck stop showers are extremely secure with a PIN number that opens the door and changes with each customer. 

I also spent 30 minutes on the elliptical machine. Now my gluts feel extremely good!  I then went to the grocery store adjacent to the gym. I got a box of BC powder so I don’t keep spending 99cents for a two-pack at the gas stations. Fuzzy socks were on sale for 75 cents a pair, so I got some of those. 

Then, I saw that they had an eyebrow business inside the store. They did waxing and threading. 

I decided on threading. I haven’t had that done in a while, and my eyebrows are horrible due to my Mediterranean Greek and Italian DNA. She made me pull my own forehead and eyelid skin taut while she threaded. I could feel the hairs falling on to my wrist as she did it. Then when I paid, she gave me a punch card that gives me a free threading after nine sessions. Nice! Because I love punch cards. An older woman who worked at that kiosk also told me that they do lashes for $25. I told her I never really get lashes done. I wouldn’t ever even bother with eyebrows if they didn’t naturally look like Bert from Sesame Street. I knew one girl that went insane with fake lashes. They looked like hairy caterpillars. Another time recently, I saw a woman who had such horrendous fake eyelashes that when she looked down, the tips of the lashes touched the top of her face mask. 

That’s too much. 

I then went to the veterinarian and got the cats their flea prevention. I gave Alex his with no problem, but Chu isn’t cooperating and so Evita will need to help me give it to him. Since his previous owner had him declawed, he has learned to defend himself with his back feet, which have thicker claws and can really tear you up. 

I also printed my driving record and defense driving diploma and brought it to the court cashier to get a ticket dismissed. I also made out a money order for 12 months of my health insurance premiums for 2021 and mailed it. 

I feel like I got so much done today. For some reason it feels like I have a ton more to do, and I don’t even know where to start. 

What’s a Coup? What is it?

 

This was my Facebook post from yesterday evening. The popcorn emoji means it’s entertaining, and then there’s an emoji that kind of looks like Kirk Cameron. 

I was confused yesterday while it was happening. I thought the protestors were anti-Trumpers protesting his shenanigans. Then I found out that it was pro-Trumpers protesting that he lost the election.  Lol, what?  

I hear a lot of people saying this was a coup, or Coup de etát. I’m just confused how it is that. The official definition says that a coup is an actual overturn of power in the government. As far as I’m aware, nothing was overturned. Our government is still intact, no?  I’m afraid to ask anyone for fear of them thinking I’m a right winger. I’m not. I’m not a left winger, either. I think they’re both insane, and I think someone watched too much of season one of the Handmaid’s Tale and didn’t look up the official definition of coup de etát. 

(Because there’s a real coup in the beginning of Handmaid’s Tale.  That’s why I’m the story, parts of the USA become “Gilead”.  The government gets taken out, which did not actually happen yesterday.) 

Someone help me out, nicely. I’m confused on what really happened. Thanks. 

Frazzled 😓😖

 

Alex does his therapy cat duties while I suffer at home with anxiety. 

Today I’m having a rough time. Maybe I’m developing a little bit of a tolerance to my anxiety medication, but I don’t know. I could leave a message for the doctor, but the voicemail greeting has this semi-threatening aura. It tells you in the greeting that if your call is deemed non-emergent, then you will be billed $65, to you, NOT to your insurance company. 

Well I’ll be damned. The only non-emergent options are to leave a message for either the receptionist or the nurse, and their voicemails are full. 

I got ingredients for some favorite recipes of mine. I’m taking up the kitchen today, and mom already knows that she needs to stay out of my bubble space while I’m trying to cook.  It will be worth it when this food is done. A couple weeks ago when I tried to make food, she was hovering around me, trying to do the cooking herself. 

I found some new channels on TikTok that I love. One is a Greek guy named Emmanuel Manolakis. He teaches Greek and English, and a lot of his TikTok videos are teaching you how to say swear words and other dirty phrases. He scoffs at bad pronunciations of things, so when this guy butchered the word Tzadziki sauce, his reaction was hilarious. For the record, it’s pronounced “Jajiki” sauce, not “Tiz Eye Tiz Ay Kay.” I cracked up. He didn’t even try lol. And he kind of made it into two words. He also makes fun of overbearing Greek mothers here, and this multiple choice is accurate. “Why isn’t he eating the food I made?” And one of the options is “He’s doing drugs.”  My parents we’re never accusatory about “doing drugs”, but a lot of parents who were born in Greece tend to think “drugs” is the reason for literally everything concerning their kid is doing. 

Lol, in my case, my mom wouldn’t want to know why I’m not eating the food she makes. She’d want to know why I’m not letting her help me make my own recipes. Although I admit, if my mom and/or Evita didn’t eat the food I made, I might get as offended as the theoretical Greek mother being talked about in that video. 

Animals on the Internet

 My cousin, daughter and I are having a blast sharing funny animals on TikTok. The best ones are Exorcist Cat and Demon Dog Senna. Senna obviously is obeying when he does the “bad” stuff. It’s a gimmick of his owner. 

I do not believe, however, when dog owners claim their dogs can “talk” by pressing buttons on a board that say a word. The dogs just aren’t talking. It’s too random. The most famous of these “talking dogs” is Bunny, who is actually a part of a study on this. Bunny is adorable, but I’m not convinced. 

22 years ago today 👱🏻‍♀️🌺🌈

 

On January 2nd, 1999, 11 year old Mikelle Biggs was abducted from in front of her house in Mesa, AZ while waiting for an ice cream truck that didn’t exist. (It was likely her abductor with a device to mimic an ice cream truck in order to lure children). 

I was 20 years old at the time, and I was in Mesa. The search for her was huge. Roads were even barricaded with cops stopping every car to ask drivers if they’d seen anything. It was all over the news. She disappeared after being left alone for 90 seconds. 

Mikelle would be 33 now, and I believe she is still alive. Jaycee Dugard was missing for 18 years before being found alive. She had barely remembered who she was, and had to write out the name “Jaycee” when being detained and questioned, because she was unable to speak it out loud. It’s for this reason that I think it’s possible that a cryptic message from Mikelle on a dollar bill could have been legit, even though her name was spelled wrong. 

The three young women who were held in the “Cleveland house of horrors” were missing for 9,10, and 11 years. They were also assumed dead. Shawn Hornbeck was missing for over four years, and Elizabeth Smart for 9 months. I’m probably forgetting someone. There was also a case when I was a little kid that was the subject of a movie called “I Know My First Name is Steven.”

There are probably so many more out there that have not been found yet, that are alive. There is no evidence that Mikelle is gone, but her parents believe so. I guess I’m hopeful because all the news stories of the people I listed above really captivated me, and also because I was not far from Mikelle’s home the day it happened. 

Not only is human trafficking real in official, black market rings, but everyday people keep people as sex slaves all the time. Most of the people listed above who were found alive were missing for that reason. (Also, I forgot Jayme Closs). 

I do not believe that we should write people off as dead until we find a body, a large amount of their blood, or if three or more cadaver dogs pick up scent in a reasonable area where that person would have been. 

What if God forbid it was your child?  Would you give up without evidence? What if it was you? Would you want people assuming you were deceased? 

Never give up. 

Happy New Years 🎆2️⃣0️⃣2️⃣1️⃣🎆

The weather all over Texas was horrible on New Year’s Eve. As a result, I decided to just go home. No liquor store employee was going to believe that I came out in that weather to just look at liquor bottles and not buy anything. Combined with the fact that they’d all be closed on New Year’s Day and on the third of January because it’s a Sunday, I just didn’t want to stay in Austin anymore. I had done about half of the liquor store locations on the map of Austin. I figured if it still was all there on Monday the fourth, I’d go back. However, they went away from the map this morning , probably for the first of the year. It’s ok though, because there are some new, easier jobs here in Houston and everywhere else  

On the way home, I saw four cars that were stuck in ditches.  I saw a cop pull onto the interstate from his hiding place and put his flashers on  I pulled over with my heart pounding, but he went past me and later up the road I saw him parked by a car in a ditch.  

I was glad to get home safely  

I fell asleep at like 9:00 and woke up to a ton of fireworks at midnight.  My cat Alex was both extremely glad I was home and scared of the fireworks, and he was poking his claws into my face all night long.  

This morning, I did some jobs close by, and I purchased this kitchen gadget for when I move out and get my own place.  It’s made out of island bamboo and has a teaspoon on one side and a tablespoon on the other side: