• Velvet-c There are at least 5 (FIVE) different terms related directly to the name of the site. My favorite is the one that is the ACTUAL URL FOR THE SITE!
• how to stop being an asshole well...hmmmm....I'm not sure you'll find the road map for that particular journey here, but best of luck to you
• hookah and bacterial infections no idea...I'm not sure that it ever occurred to me that there might be a correlation between hookahs and bacterial infections, but now I'm curious
• FAT LADY UNDERPANTS I don't know who you are or why you were searching for 'fat lady underpants' on Google, but I think it's fate. Call me, I have what you are looking for.
• secret lives chickens just call me the poultry whisperer.
• chukity fair enough, it's a word on the site. It's also a word I completely made up one day.
• abnormally small feet this is where I get confused. On one hand, sure I have abnormally small feet, on the other hand, my website isn't really set up to handle the needs of the niche fetishist.
• cerebellum sore GO. TO. THE. DOCTOR.
• doyenne I had a day where the word was stuck in my head AND it was the word of the day AND that was the day i learned what it meant.
• maddie, chester, ghengis someone looking for my dogs. Who's stalking my dogs?
• methods of euthenasia (sic) once again, speechless
• give me $1000 now YEAH! YEAH! I don't know, but...yeah? Who demands money from a search engine? why were they sent to me?
• twain upholstered sewer indeed
• yeast infection dog ate dough go to the vet or take a basic biology course.
• lysol dainty for a petite clean?
• will vistaril hurt me yes. yes it will. it will punch you so hard that you will puke yesterday's lunch all the way into next week (also it will make you sleep for like 18 hours straight)

and my personal favorite...
pilgrims on pills
Ah yes, remember the good olde dayes when Goody Proctor and Goody Hawkins got alle hopped up on ye olde goofballes and did runneth thru the goode towne square withoute compliment of clothes?

]]> http://www.velvet-c.com/2008/08/post.htm http://www.velvet-c.com/2008/08/post.htm Wed, 06 Aug 2008 19:21:36 -0600 HI! I'm CHESTER!! Remember me? This is me! Chester!

\
NO!! WAIT that isn't me! Not me! um, let me try it again...

GODDAMMIT!!! Maddie is lying to me! She's not helping me. I'm going to go bite her.

She knocked me down. She's a jerk.

Okay, now I officially hate Maddie! She is dumb and she has a fat head! Stupid Maddie. She doesn't know anything at all about anything.

HI HI HI HI!!! This is Chester! Do you remember me? do you?

So there's this weirdness and it's weird. The fat lady is home all the time now. It's weird. First the funny man was home a lot, but I think that happened before, but now the fat lady! I don't know? I like it. Sometimes she hugs me a lot or pets me and my name is Chester but she changed my name to 12pound and that's okay because she gives me her cereal bowl

MADDIE TRIES TO TAKE MY CEREAL BOWL. Maddie is just stupid.

When I go outside with the fat lady I always run out and yell "THIS IS MY YARD AND MY FAT LADY!!" even if no one is there!! I do it really loud in case someone is hiding. I want them to know. I tell them. This is mine. The fat lady says "SHUSH" but I don't care! Because the people and the dogs and the squirrel have to know. I have to tell them.

OH! the lady! the fat lady is home a lot and sometimes she sits and hugs me and I like that but I can tell that maybe she likes to be by me but also maybe she does not like this being home all the time. I know this. I know this because my name is Chester 12pound! I know. So I do things to help. I can help. See. Help.

The fat lady likes underpants! I know this. When she says the underpants she also makes laughs! So I put some of her underpants in the living room to make her happy! and she got to see them, but also Anna saw them. I like Anna. She smells nice and she pets me and tells me good things. I don't like Alan. I say GET OUT OF MY HOUSE YOU ARE NOT THE ONE IN MY HOUSE I AM TELLING YOU RIGHT NOW!! but he doesn't listen and he stays in my house and the funny man tells me to not yell at people.

No one understands.

Not even maddie but maddie is dumb. When I yell she gets ready to yell but all she says is "LADY! Where is the lady? Protect the lady! PROTECT!!" She doesn't even know. She just runs around all big headed and not knowing and being dumb and trying to protect the fat lady.

She doesn't care about protecting my toys or the place in the yard where I poop or my seat on the sofa!

MADDIE!!! I hate maddie! I had to chew on that place by my peener and Maddie put in another picture that was not me. I think she did it on purpose! I think maddie is doing this!

I'm going to go bite her and then jump on her

Tuesday....Psychiatrist told me I probably shouldn't say I'm 'crazy'. New therapist didn't talk to me for 10 minutes before deciding I had Attention Deficit Disorder. I don't have ADD. She sucked but whatever. The dentist blasted all the soft tissue out of my mouth leaving me with a bony interior! Then we had burritos in the back yard with beer and the dogs and sunset.

Wednesday...Anna and I went to OPH for lunch....mmmmmmswedish pancakes (she had bacon pancakes! those are like a sin but not the kind that makes you burn for eternity!) then off to buy the 'best per yard priced' yarn for the Ravelympics contest on Ravelry. I have a completely new design in my head and I need to start swatching now! Then we watched David Attenborough and went to the dog park and watched about astronauts and then she went home and I went to bed!

Today is Thursday! Today I learned how to hand spin yarn! Dawn made a spindle for me and had me over today for spinning lessons. I'm going to make a weekly habit of going to Dawn's, she's got 3 awesome kids that are so much fun to watch. The fought over who got to frost the cake next, they made birthday cards for their dad, they swam and ate goldfish crackers and got soap all over the bathroom counter and were generally just regular kids.

now I must make order of chaos and get my yarn related projects in order. I can't work for a while but that doesn't mean hiding in the house and punishing myself. I am 'scheduling' my projects so that I can get things done. boom.

You can help by making a donation to help her reach her fundraising goal. Do this, not for me or for Julie, but do this to help continue the fight against breast cancer.

I went crazy, as a result I lost my job.

In a nutshell (ha! I'm so punny) that's the most distilled version. The longer version is still being worked out.

I've been actively fighting demons in my head since I was about 10. That's 25 years of fighting, and the last seventeen of those years have been actively hiding the worst of the worst from the world. It's exhausting, really really exhausting. Eventually, all of my mental strength was being used on keeping everything seeming normal. I could not do anything else, like work.

This has not been an easy time, obviously. I do not have the words to describe what David means to me. I've shared this story before, but I will tell it again as it accurately describes the person David is for me when I need him.

A couple summers ago, David and I were down in New Orleans. One day we took a ferry out to Ship Island in the Gulf to spend the day at the beach. There were porpoises and this big crab and some jellyfish. Very quickly, a thunderstorm rolled in and everyone cleared the beach. The safety ranger dude told us we would be safe in the water so long as the lightning did not come close to us. We could not pass up the opportunity to swim alone in the ocean, especially with such a beautiful storm just close enough.

As we swam farther and played I noticed that my feet could no longer touch the bottom, I was too short. I also noticed that David was holding me. He held me and did the swimming so that I only had to lean back and relax. I could enjoy the buoyancy of the ocean and the display in the sky and he held me there.

And that is David. He is not one that says "I'm going to rescue you" or "look at what I am doing for you". You just slowly realize that when you needed him most, he was already there; that he will hold your head above the water not to be a hero, but because he loves you.

I am more than lucky to have him. I do not know where I would be right now if not for him.

As for my brain? Well, we're aggressively upping my meds, I have a psychiatrist and a therapist and I can check myself into the hospital as soon as I need to. Do I know about current popular NYT bestselling book on beating the crazies or current popular Oprah guest who specializes in making you not crazy or current popular herbal supplement that cures crazy? No, I probably don't, but please don't bug me with it. I am an ardent believer in science and will stick with those things that are proven by accepted scientific standards to be effective. I'm not saying this to be a dick (though if I wanted to be a dick I probably could given that I'm crazy and all) it's just that...wait, you know what? I am a dick. I don't buy it. I just don't believe that cures come in "Currently Popular" or "Bestselling" packages.

Anyway, my health and well being are being monitored. I am taking my medicines and seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist and my psychiatrist's boss.

Will I get better? There is no real "better" with this. It's not a scale on which we can measure things. Mostly, we are shooting for fighting the demons so that I will once again be able to function as an adult. I do not know how long that will take.

I do not write this to worry people or to gather sympathy or words of encouragement. I write this simply to be informative. Also, apparently, there is much anger amongst my former co-workers. Being that not much information was given out initially, rumors filled the open spaces. I can assure all my friends at MCAD that I was not a sacrificial lamb thrown on the alter of some higher conspiracy. Seriously, there are so few people in this world who can create and maintain an awesome conspiracy and those people just don't work at MCAD. It's just one of those things. Big conspiracies are hard to do and if you are really good at them you could be doing better than a little art college in the midwest of course.

I won't write much more on the topic here. Writing this allows me to mention being home in the middle of the day n a Tuesday without people saying "why aren't you at work?". I also just wanted to answer many questions in one jab instead of individually.

Otherwise, you know what? things are going to be okay because I own a frilly pink dress

She came back and had this to say:
"It's almost like you have a kitchen full of little children that are hungry and want to eat," said the Minnesota Republican, a mother of five and past foster mother of 23. "The pantry has a lock on the door, but the pantry is filled with food."
Via Star Tribune

Now, I don't care where you stand on the whole drilling in ANWR debate, but we have to be realistic about this. We're not little children, pitiful and starving while wholesome and delicious food is being kept from us. Really, it's more appropriate to say we're a mass of fat gluttons in the kitchen and the pantry is full of Twinkies and Hot Pockets.

When using that "small pitiful child" metaphor, maybe you should use it in conjunction with a situation that is truly life or death. Like the fact that there's all this "medical care" out there, but small children don't have access because there's no money.

As Americans, this fuel situation really has less to do with bad people starving us to death, but stubborn people with a sense of entitlement. I hate the fucking $4 gas as much as the next person, but I also admit that my car is a gas guzzler and that if I don't want to pay $88 to fill my tank I will have to drive less.

Being hungry isn't a reason to be given Twinkies.

Honestly, I can appreciate both sides of the ANWR and I believe that either path will lead to the same end.

You know, like most dogs would.

You made a mess, you little weenus!

There's a pretty good system in place where a company with a product pays to show its product to me. This money helps to subsidize small crochet oriented magazines and Hollywood's blistering cocaine habit. I'm still with this. I understand and accept that in order to keep the cost of my magazines reasonable there will be some advertising in the magazine and that advertising will be directed towards my interests (like yarn stores and bongs and hippo leashes).

Also, the ads are clearly labeled as such. When I flip through my magazine it is clear to me what part is an article and what part is advertising. And, if the magazine is good and pure, they will discuss products from a neutral point of view and not as thinly veiled corporate whores.

Stick with me, I'm going somewhere with this.

Now, mostly I'm talking about magazines because I don't watch tv and the few times that I do happen to see tv I end up yelling at it (or yelling at the person next to me to turn the Puppy Bowl back on or I will disembowel them). I'm not really in a position to write about tv advertising (except that it pisses me the fuck off and I can't stand it and it makes me want to people).

To recap, I'm not opposed to advertising so long as it is clearly labeled as such and it helps to subsidize a related product that I want to purchase, like a magazine.

What I am really opposed to is blatant product placement in movies! Look, it's obviously not subsidizing the movie or I wouldn't have to pay 8.2 billion dollars just to get in (and this doesn't count popcorn and Icees!). Yesterday we took my cousin Rosalie to see the Get Smart movie (my review...meh). 110 minutes of ads for Post-it notes, Vino scooters, GMC SUVS (one minute they're in a Yukon, the next they're in a Denali. Each shot requires the camera to linger on the nameplate of the car) and Chanel. Man, fuck ass. I already paid to see the movie, I didn't get any sort of discount or break and I have to sit here and watch commercials.

Commercials that aren't even labeled as such. Jackasses. Of course as part of their partnership or whoredom or brimstonic pact with Baphomet they are required to show the product over and over again in various panning shots.

and y'all wonder why I'm so damned crabby all the time!

On a completely unrelated note:
There's a repair dude in the other side of the duplex and whenever he talks he sounds like a toothless with a mouth full of mushrooms trying to tell us that Timmy fell down the well. Jesus! Be quiet man! His tone and pitch are so weird I picture him stumbling around in his white painter's pants and talking on his Nextel Wiener450 Super Beep Phone. To complete the picture, he's listening to "oldies". Why is it that in the almost 3 decades since the 70's ended they haven't managed to add to this "oldies" array?

We could not have asked for a better weekend. The weather cooperated!

Saturday we had the open house at my dad's house. All friends and all family were welcome to join us in casually celebrating April and Keith. I ran David and Anna just ragged helping me cater the event. Oh, and Sky, I just thought you would want to know that I served the maple pecan salmon on crostini with orange ricotta. Lovely. There was also artichoke dip, stuffed baby sweet peppers, mushrooms stuffed with bitter greens and feta, also mushrooms stuffed with faux sausage, and probably a few other this and that.

Sunday, the wedding proper, it was perfect. April was literally glowing as the bride. I was so proud of her and happy for her. I love her so dearly and I am nothing but thrilled to know that she is sharing her life with Keith.

The wedding was mostly problem free and the few issues that came up we dealt with quickly. We decided we got to choose to be upset or happy and we didn't want to be upset.

For the most part people behaved themselves. Some seemed tempted to make a scene but they mostly restrained themselves to one on one kvetching. If there's one thing I learned from this whole experience (besides to just elope) is that no matter what you choose, there will always be someone that believes they are entitled to more.

It hurt my heart a little to know that there were people close to April who felt that way. But those people get what they give and I will let life take care of that.

More importantly, there are pictures!
These were taken on the best man's camera, mostly by my stepbrother.

These were taken by my stepmom and show both the open house and the wedding ceremony.

I'm easy to pick out, I'm the freaky fairy princess!

Congratulations April and Keith! You are awesome!

Sorry!

There is a lot of BIG STUFF happening right now and I am afraid that if I talk about it I will jinx it!

soon soon soon!

This is in a warehouse in Nevada and it has my name on it (well, technically it has David's name on it since he bought it for me!) and it will ship soon soon.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!! This is what I say!!!!!

Now I have to get my motorcycle permit (because the engine is 150cc) and take the class and buy a helmet and feel awesome and awesome!

And I am getting better. so yeah, I'll be back soon.

In the meantime: