Our very first wedding anniversary!

It seems strange to say that today, August 31st, 2009, is Hubs' and my first anniversary, namely because it's not strictly true for several reasons:

1. We've been together (dating, that is) since late August, 2000--that's a total of nine years for those whose math skills are even worse than mine, and nine years are just one shy of a decade, which is...my god, a DECADE. We've been together over a third of my lifetime! Heck, we've been dating longer than many people stay married!

2. Speaking of dating, we don't actually know what day it was we started. We know it was late August, because I have nine-year-old e-mails to prove exactly what day Hubs first confessed his undying love and professed offers of lifelong worship and flowers to me--I kid. However, no clue, electronic or otherwise, what day we even went on our first official date. It's silly. I mean, we went to a Jayhawks concert (and made out the whole time and pretty much didn't hear any of the show but that's entirely beside the point) so you'd think we'd have ticket stubs, but NO. For all we know, it was August 28th. Or August 30th. So our anniversary date is a FRAUD ANYHOW. Ahem.

3. While it was true that our wedding was a year ago on this date, we actually got the marriage license completed at the county jail (don't ask) on August 5th. Our witnesses were a cop and a cafeteria worker, and my ring was the engagement ring I'd been wearing for over a year already at that point. So by that route it's been several weeks OVER a year.

You see how it's all confusing. But it doesn't really matter anyway.

What matters is that all this time we've been together.

We've endured eight moves and a break-up, lived in four different cities, dealt with numerous job changes and career crises, started a million and a half projects together, taught each other how to cook, focused on raising a cantankerous and obnoxiously playful cat together, done homework together, cried and shouted and cheered and laughed together, chopped wood and planted flowers and bought a house together, visited Europe and the Caribbean and the beach and Baltimore together, laid in the grass and watched the stars and sunsets together, planned a wedding and been to two funerals and baked birthday cakes together, and gone through a metric ton of anime and video games together.

The past year has been...eventful, to say the least. But we've done it all together.

Happy anniversary, Hubs. I hope we continue doing things together for the rest of our lives.

My manifesto

In the interest of saving the money I do not have, reducing my ecological footprint, and in general being an awesome human being worthy of a cookie and a gold star, I will/will not do the following:

I will not personally use my own money to purchase full-price clothing at retail clothing stores anymore (notice how I said "my own money"-- if my mother feels like spending a little on me, I will let her, but it will only be good-quality stuff, I swear).
I will purchase them only at thrift stores and for a damn skippy discount at the regular stores. Hell, the discount better be damn skippy because half the $15 t-shirts I bought at Kohl's are falling apart, whereas the t-shirt I got in high school only got thrown away because my upper arms got too fat to fit in the cute elasticized sleeves.

I will not buy any new art supplies anymore but will instead use up what I have right now.
Once I eventually run out of my mounds and mounds of unused art supplies, I will investigate the use of items called "coupons." I hear they're useful. I will also get them at thrift stores, yard sales, and the like, and learn the art of re-purposing material from items that are not art supplies but can still be used as such.

I will learn skills that will be useful should the world crumble to pieces in a horrible electricity-less apocalyptic meltdown. This includes but is not limited to: learning how to light a fire without matches or a lighter, learning how to sew my own clothing from re-purposed fabric, learning how to cook on an open fire, yadda yadda yadda. Pretty much everything in the US Army Survival Manual, which is pretty damn thick, let me tell you.

I will not engage in impulse buying, waste my money on things I can do/make/prepare myself when all it takes is a little elbow grease and/or legwork, or let the devil on my shoulder trick me into getting one delectable pumpkin chocolate chip muffin for $1.69 when that $1.69 could be saved and put into something a little less ephemeral maybe, like, oh, I don't know, my car payment.

I will stay away from refined sugars (which pretty much cuts all pumpkin chocolate chip muffins out of my life forever) that are purchased with my own money. Yeah, you see? There's a qualifier there or rather a cheap way to get out of it. Who ever buys me sweets anyway? My mother and my mother-in-law. My mother is 360 miles away, and my mother-in-law usually prefers to stuff me with chicken wings and fresh garden vegetables. And I personally believe that most things in moderation are okay, including sugar. Just...more moderate that I usually am. Which is not at all.

I will examine my spending habits and see where I can cut costs. Currently I don't actually spend very much because, well, I don't have shit to spend, but in examining every purchase I make, surely I can figure out a way to cut back a little bit, even if it's just a very little bit.

I will take care of my body. It is the only one I have. It will be better for a little exercise more often than I get it, and no, 80 push-ups a day hardly count. The heart is a muscle too and it ain't gettin' shit. I will do this by, at the very least, walking to the mailbox and back every day. And before you say that doesn't seem like much, keep in mind that it's a good half-mile to our mailbox, with an altitude change of 50-100 feet. Uphill. Both ways.

I think that's all the life-changing commitments I want to, er, commit to right now. Mostly because I likely will not follow most of them for nearly as long as my happily-idealistic mind thinks I will, and my fragile emo-kid ego cannot take such grievous disappointment in myself. Actually, Fragile Emo-Kid Ego thrives on self-loathing. Never mind, then.

Art Sequitur

Okeedokee now!

Argh, so much distraction. If I could sit down and type out every project I want to begin RIGHT NOW I think I would fill up an entire page. I consider it a plus that I managed to work on my one "official" project for about fifteen minutes last night. Oy, is that not pathetic?

Okay. This blog is really not about me whining, though 2 out of 2 entries so far have included it. Boy, I'm not doing so well at this, am I?

Let me talk about my "official" project. I say that like it's some uber-secret ultra-creative prototype-dealie. It's not. I'm making a grown-up picture book out of fabric, similar in structure to this felt book I made for a swap on craftster.org. I wrote a silly little story and am going to include one line on every page, like a kid's book, only each page is going to be abstract and crazy and filled with my own particular flavor of fabric art.
It's even a collaborative project! Husband is writing music to go along with each page, because he likes playing around with his music programs. The piece he wrote for the cover is not bad. It's not uber-professional, given that he has had about a semester's worth of actual musical training, but in my opinion it captures the mood of what I was going for pretty well.

So in the end, we'll have a whole little cloth book and a CD of ambient music. I'm working on the second page of it now.

It's very exciting, I know.

I like big projects like this, though, where I work on them steadily for weeks and then have something to show for it. It's weird, actually, because my patience level is approximately that of a 2-year-old hyperactive child, but it makes the payoff even better. Except I usually am in despair over how my product does not match my vision, alas, alack, oh what a world! I guess that's par for the course in the World of Artists®.

I will end this with a non sequitur: I have to pee. TATA!!!

Anhedonia

an⋅he⋅do⋅ni⋅a  /ˌænhiˈdoʊniə/
–noun Psychology. Lack of pleasure or of the capacity to experience it.

I'm finding it hard to write lately.

Used to be I could sit down at a computer and just let the words flow out. Usually once they started, they wouldn't stop. I had a lot going on in my head-- story plots, rants, whinings, little bits of fancy that I wanted to document in case they ever came in handy later on.

I wrote because I find it hard to talk to people, and if the words didn't come out one way, they'd have to come out another or I'd explode.

Now, though. Now I'm hard-pressed even to come up with a Tweet. 140 characters and I can't even manage that. It's like the numbness that steals over my brain when confronted with social interaction has taken to stealing everything else as well.

What's funny is this: when I was first diagnosed with depression, all I did was write. I was miserable, so I bled the pain onto paper. I wrote hundreds of stories and poems and drabbles, mostly pretty angsty and whiny, sure, but it was a means of coping, and a healthy one at that.

Then I went on antidepressants, and the flood instantly dried up into a trickle. I could still write my laundry-list journal entries, but nothing creative came out. I don't know if I even had many ideas anymore. The creative center of my brain (along with other key areas) felt wrapped in cotton wool, dull, mute, foggy. This lasted for roughly three years, and I always hated Paxil for robbing me of that time.

Then I weaned myself off the drugs. And slowly...slowly...slowly it came back. I wrote my first novel that year. I wrote two more in the two years after that. It was funny at first. Amazing! I can be happy AND creative! It's not like that anymore. I'm not sad right now, and I'm not happy. I just am.

The two journal entries I've written so far have taken days of thought and mustering of energies. I've had to browbeat myself into just sitting down and doing something. I don't know why this is, but I have to get back to the way I was.

I still have things to say-- they just aren't coming yet.

It begins with off-color humor and whining like always

I plan to love myself someday.

Although it could be said that I already do love myself.

A couple of times a week, even.

*rimshot*

I am currently very distracted because as usual there's a million things I want to do right now, and they keep warring in my head until I can't really do any of them. Welcome to my world! I want to make a 24-hour zine (haven't done that in forever), embroider, write a crazy novel, go spontaneously traveling, cook, do the dishes (yeah, this one's my fave), and clean the house.

All these wonderful, worthwhile things to do.

Aaaaaaaand I'm on the computer.

Like I said-- welcome to my world.