Writing Successes: Wrote several posts for Themiscyra, but not today. Did some Angel Asrial PSP things I enjoyed, sort of today since it was 1am at the time. But today was "run around like a chicken and do errands that go nowhere and solve nothing" day. It was pretty thrilling.

Music Playing: New one for this blog, it's the Classical station. I listen to it so infrequently, I don't even know the station ID. It's between KMHD and KGON, however. Yap. Jazz - Classical - Classic Rock. It's a good end of the dial.

Breast Reduction Update: Got a consultation appointment coming on May 9. Eagerly awaiting it.

Exerpt from "...And You Think You've Got It Bad"

Etiquette and Courtesies - If You Walk In the Moonlight - Do not let your sweet-heart kiss you when-ever he wishes, a kiss from you should be an event, and then he will be certain that nobody else is getting your treasures. You don't kiss everyone you take a fancy to. How much more valuable that which a man cannot get, than what is given to him as if it were of no worth. Too much freedom is a speck on the perfect fruit of love, and it is one which is in the power of the girl to prevent it. (New Paragraph) It is not very nice to sit on a hammock with a man friend.

Well, that's what I did wrong. I kissed everyone! I should have known those boys all figured I had no worth. That I had too much freedom and would be hated for it. I just never understood. My favorite part of this is the next paragraph which says I shouldn't sit in a hammock with a man friend. Gee, I was just thinking that, too. Good warnings for any generation! (By the way, the blockquote thing there won't allow me paragraphs, so I just typed it in.)

Sorry for not writing in here for a solid week. It wasn't intentional. I've been, rather stupidly, turning on AIM before I blog. This results in a large number of people all talking to me at once and preventing me from doing the things I really should be doing. You know, like ranting about life in the blog here. The important things.

I had an appointment down at the Multnomah County free clinic today. As a stay-at-home writer/mom, I don't have insurance. My husband does, and my kids qualify for the free Oregon insurance, but not me. The sicknesses and troubles have been just stacking up. Well, I finally decide I've had enough and so I go down for a "financial review" appointment today.

The Clinic can't take me in. Due to all the horrible Oregon money woes and troubles, they've been forced to accept only pregnant women and small children. As neither, they couldn't accept me. I never even lifted an ink pen. Why not call and tell me this before I go down there? Whatever. She had a couple of other ideas. One was a small urgent care booth inside Fred Meyer. (For those not in the Northwest, this is a chain of "one-stop" shopping stores. They carry electronics and gardening stuff, groceries and clothing. Around here, if you can't find it in Target, you can find it at Freddies. (TM))

We (Kou drove) went down to the closest Freddies and dropped in and asked them to see me. What I have is lower intenstinal cramping, not like a bunch, but ...and this is gross...imagine feeling like you have diahrrea all the time, but without actually HAVING it. You know, the rumblings and grumblings that come with that? It's not painful but it is painful? You're afraid to be too far from a bathroom? Anyhow, they can't see me for this. This will require x-rays and tests and bloodwork, and they don't do that. This is where you come to get a bandaid on a boo-boo or have your ear infection checked and medicated. I sigh heavily, and they give me the name of another place, but I have to call for an appointment.

Mind, I waited two weeks for the FIRST appointment there. But we come home and I call. This place, ironically named after my first real "crush" when I was a child (read that as: I was insane stalker), does the same kinds of things Freddies does and is generally no help either.

I have another week's wait until I hear if I qualify for a new program the state is doing to offset costs, which is helping people who have really high insurance rates pay the rates. They pay a percentage of the rate and you pay the rest. This would be great. If that doesn't pan out, it's the ER and bankruptcy in order to get medical attention. Okay, or asking your dad to please extend just a little more of his fabulous handout to you. Either way, not really a ton of fun and good for only short-term solutions.

Rant about medical trouble over. Start what will hopefully be a short story about being an insane stalker, cause I know Sal wants to know.

I saw him out the window. He was playing a game called "Four-Square" (you have a red rubber ball and a square cut four ways...you bounce the ball and return it back without going out of bounds but trying to get the other person to miss the ball or go out of bounds) and he was just perfect. I was in the sixth grade, in a new school (Mooberry had grown too small for the population) and had wandered to the window to see what all the noise was about. Turns out, he was in my class.

Randy. Man, the 'sing' his name still sends through me. But he was brillant. I didn't talk to him the entire year. I did watch him, write about him, write my name with his last name...all the typical lame things you do when you're in the sixth grade and have ... breasts. *sigh*

In the seventh grade, I was sent away to live with my cousins on a ranch in far away Buell. (read as : HELL) Having no friends, and having just turned my father and an uncle and a family friend into the police as being child molesters, I was more than happy to tell everyone I DID meet that Randy was my boyfriend. He was there for me that year, bigger than reality but no more than a dream. He helped me stay sane that year and he didn't even know I existed.

In the eighth grade, his locker was just down from mine. I watched him and I wrote stories about him. But I had gone insane and didn't know that I had. I was home again, in a dysfunctional family I barely knew or understood anymore. I lived outside their realms now, and couldn't get near my working mother or my distant father, and I wanted little to do with my brothers who were now so much younger than I had ever been. I went to therapy, which only reinforced the smoking habit I'd picked up the year before. I was now a "bad girl" and an "outsider". People I had been friends with in the fifth grade, or since kindergarten, didn't seem to know who I was. And I realized why.

I had been invisible. I never spoke. I was shy and I read. I didn't have any friends, although I did know who everyone else was. Nobody had been to my house, and I'd never been to theirs. There were two other Lisa's on my street alone, and they'd never seen me outside of class. And even if any of that had happened, they wouldn't have known me. I didn't know me.

So I became the opposite of all that I had been. I was brash, outlandish, loud and overly cheerful. I held tea parties in the middle of crowded hallways. I screamed out Randy's name for no other reason than I could and I wanted him to SEE me someday. (He never did, by the way.) I formed a "gang" and held them together through sheer will and force, by love and laughter, with vows and pinky-swears. Together we were less than geeks, less than freaks, but more than losers. I still have the core group of these friends as friends, by the way. That's how well we stick together.

Sometime between the eighth grade and the eleventh grade, I became a stalker. A psycho stalker, even. I worked in the office at one point, my only goal to get Randy's personal information. I wrote a SERIES of stories called, "Super Stud", badly written parodies with him as "Randy Kent" (ironically, his middle name) by day and "Super Stud" at night. The thing I remember? The motto, of course. "He fights for truth and he fights for the American Way, but most of all, he fights for Justice." (Which is hysterical if you know that JUSTICE is my maiden name.) He also was the star of my very first 'romance' novelette. Boy, do I wish I still had that sucker. It was GOOD. LOL

I had his locker number and combination, his phone number, his address, the name of his father and mother and what they did. Then I used them. I called this guy, who had NO idea who I was, and we talked for an hour about donuts. That was Randy. He talked to me for an hour. He didn't have a clue who I was, and he probably still doesn't. But he humored me and spoke to me like I was one of his friends.

I drove past his house sometimes, just looking at it. It was vastly different from mine. I lived in a ranch-style house painted purple on the front and blue on the sides (my father never finished the job, or my mother, I dunno). Then in an apartment, finally in an odd 2-story white house next to a church. He lived in one of those "modern" 2 story jobs in the new area of town. Everything was gold wood and shining clean.

One time, my friends had him sign a piece of paper with a very simple, "Happy Birthday Lisa Luv Randy" on it. I still HAVE it. I have added to the paper with a blue "warm fuzzy" creature (man, how 80's is that?) and a picture of him that I cut from the newspaper. I'm sure he had no idea who they were talking about, but it took guts for them to get that and I thank them for it. I still treasure it.

See, Randy was a football player and a track runner. He was insanely smart, too, and was generally on the honor roll. I mean, this guy was the package. And, as I mentioned, darn freaking nice, too. But he seemed somehow "above" us all. Like he lived in another realm of reality from us. It seemed that talking to him was like....climbing a mountain in Tibet to speak to the Dali Lama. Unapproachable, but when you got there, more than you bargained for.

My parents moved me to the coast my senior year, so the stalking DID end. However, about three years into my marriage I discovered the BBS (this is a kind of forerunner to the internet, a chat group). One of the people on this BBS was Randy's brother. Irony. Oh, not good enough? His brother told me that Randy had gone to college and had become a doctor. Not just any doctor, but one specializing in Child Abuse cases. I'm not sure how, I doubt his brother knew. But irony....I'd have to go with that, yeah.

So that's how a lonely little girl with a crush became an insane stalker. Hope you enjoyed. I was also going to rant about the credit card company....but talking about Randy was just too nice and I'm now in a good mood.