Recently in Opinionated Category

Communication (in case you couldn't sound it out) as defined by the dictionary.com website:

1. the act or process of communicating; fact of being communicated. 

2. the imparting or interchange of thoughts, opinions, or information by speech, writing, or signs. 

3. something imparted, interchanged, or transmitted. 

4. a document or message imparting news, views, information, etc. 

5. passage, or an opportunity or means of passage, between places. 

I don't think I have issues communicating with others, but some might think I do.  I'm not someone who is going to call you, email you, text you or show up on your doorstep if I don't have anything exciting going on.  I certainly would not show up to your door unannounced, even with people who are considered family.  I hope they would be kind enough to give me notice as well, though they are the only ones allowed to show up unannounced.

I tend to get remarks like 'just thought I'd call to see if you were alive' and so forth.  Uhm, well, you are a friend on facebook, so I'm sure you'd know I was dead as my daughter would so kindly update my status as to "Died of {insert cause here}".  I'm also on Twitter, Myspace and Google+.  I have one main email address that everyone who needs to know should know by now. I have a cell phone that people who are important enough to me have the number to.  I am reachable by all of these things.  But no, I don't make much of an effort to keep in touch.  Why?

Well.  I'm not much of a people person. Yes, there are those people who I care about, but I have to deal with people all day long.  I hardly talk to them either and sometimes that upsets them as well.  I won't apologize for my behavior, it's who I am.  I don't want to know every nitty gritty detail into your life or about the skeletons in your closet.  Unless you wish to share them, or need someone to listen, or if you have a question you want my opinion on then your life is your life.  Sometimes I will ask questions and I'm always afraid that they may get upset with me.  I make it clear that people can ask me anything at all and I'll do the best I can to answer honestly.  The rule is don't ask me anything if you think that the answer is something that will offend you because I don't care.  You asked, you're getting the answer. What happens after that, the nightmares it causes, the views of your world that get skewed, that's all your problem.

The clincher to this whole thing is that you are not me and you like to communicate with me.  Just because I don't take that step to contact you first isn't a blatant disregard of your well-being. It simply means that I didn't contact you.  If you call I will pick up the phone. Text me? I'll reply or forward back whatever crazy thing you forwarded to me so you know I got 'the message'.  Emailing me isn't always the best way but it does come right away and I generally have access to it almost all the time (best to text me).  If on some chance that I don't reply right away? I'm probably enjoying a hot steamy shower in all it's good steaminess.

Seriously though. It's not that I don't care.  It's that I don't care for the drama.  Everyone has drama, even I have drama.  I don't care to spread my drama and I try really hard not to do so.  I try to stay positive and in today's world that's very hard to do.  I don't want to spread my negativity around.  Though I do vent now and again about people and events that don't make any sense or drive me to wonder how on earth we are ever going to make it through whatever, if anything, happens on December 21st.

Alright, so I may text now and then, but does it always have to be me that starts a conversation? Am I the one who always has to make that first phone call? It's rare that I don't answer the phone or reply to a text or email and I'm always the one who is accused of being non-communicative.  I'm here. I don't go anywhere or do anything. I know that each and every one of you have very busy lives with lots of things going on.  You're welcome to contact me when you need me, or when you think of me, or when you want to ask someone a question who will give you an honest answer.  I am who I am, not who everyone says or thinks I am.  I'm just me and I'll be over here just 'being' the way I like it.  

I’ve noticed the past decade or so that kindness seems to be a dwindling commodity. Even people in service and sales positions don’t have the realism of fake kindness any longer. It seems that everyone is so desolate or depressed or can’t feel anything at all that they don’t dare use what little energy they have left (because no one sleeps right these days) to fake a little kindness.

I never know what to attribute this loss of kindness, too. I understand if someone was kept up all night by their sick child or newborn baby. I understand if they are overworked and very stressed. What I don’t understand is young people (20s young) entering the workplace, say a store at the mall so they can get a discount on their favorite clothing, are then mean or rude to customers. Not just one of them, but all three or four of them. Rude, unhelpful, it’s a good thing most of these people don’t try to earn tips!

I try to be kind to people in these positions because I know they tend to get the short end of the stick. Once they start acting like an ass though all my kindness goes out the door, out of my eyes and I allow the coldness in my mind to be absorbed into my words. When I’ve reached this point, there is no turning back. I deal with rude customers every single day, from people telling me how we should run the business (as if I have a say in that…) to yelling at me about something that went wrong (another thing I don’t have control over).

There are things that people can do to put a little kindness out there even if they aren’t feeling it. Such as if someone says ‘have a nice day’ you don’t say ‘uh huh’ ‘yep’ or ‘whatever’. You reply with something like ‘you as well’ ‘you too’ or ‘thanks, and you’. Especially over the phone to a (usually) very busy receptionist who is kind and polite and does her damnedest to get you to who you need to speak with.

Other things I recommend against (which I have to deal with every time I become acting receptionist) is not to repeatedly call back when you get someone’s voice mail. Especially if it’s lunch hour. Calling back to the front desk 5 times in a row isn’t going to get you to someone any quicker and anyone who goes into voice mail before you will get called back first. These are the things you should consider.

Yelling at the receptionist will only get you kindness in a facetious manner (at least from me) and you’re screwed. We will make sure someone knows you’re being an ass and therefore you’ll be treated with kindness in a condescending manner as needed.

On that note, I do hope you have a fantastic evening. Enjoy.

There’s a group of officials out there trying to take the rights away from criminals to worship how they choose, in the religion that they choose to follow. Yes, they are criminals and yes they have lost the right to many things but this right is what the entire country was founded on. The right to believe what we want, to be able to speak freely of whatever happens to be running through our minds (to a point anyway).

It’s all over Twitter that there is a petition to sign here: WhiteHouse.Gov - This will open in a new window. You do need to register to sign the petition. Problem is, people can’t click the ‘sign this petition’ button. I am not the only one having this issue.

So, if you don’t want your religion, or your freedom of speech, or right to bear arms and any number of other rights this crazy country of ours was founded on to be contested (it keeps happening…), please take the time out of your busy day of work, television and other exciting things to create an account and attempt to sign the petition. Then login to your Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and any other number of social media sites to spread the word.

Thanks for your time!

There are so many things wrong with that title. At least, according to society norms anyway. Yes, I’m single. Yes, I’m a mom. And sadly, YES, I am crazy. Although the crazy came way before the being a single mom. And to be completely truthful, I’ve never been married. Even more truthful, I feel blessed that I have never been married. The main reason is because never being married means I haven’t had to go through the emotional, devastating trauma that divorces can be. Let’s move on, shall we?

While raising my daughter I’ve been in 3 long term relationships. The first lasted about 2.5 years, the 2nd 5 years and the 3rd 3.5 years (give or take). None of these relationships were with my daughter’s father. There are many reasons why a) I didn’t stay with him, b) I didn’t want anything to do with him and c) to this day have never seen or spoken to him again. Which I will be kind enough not to go into here. I also want to state that I have never, not once, badmouthed him to my daughter. For the most part, we never really spoke of him. I did tell her when she turns 18 she can have his name and go looking for him if she wishes.

I’m currently single and happily so. After being everything from lied to, cheated on, the other woman (one time unknowingly to me until she started sending death threats), told more than once that no matter how long we’re together or whether or not we marry that I’ll never be cared for when they die if they happen to die first (wow, that made me love him so much more!) and manipulated into always believing I was a bad mother, a bad person and didn’t care about anyone but myself I decided it was time to stop the madness.

Don’t think that I went from one relationship to another, because I didn’t. There was anywhere from 1.5 to 2.5 or more years between relationships. I’m very picky about who I choose to share any part of my life with let alone be in a relationship with. Yes, I write a blog and share tidbits with you but it doesn’t even breach the crust of the thoughts that run through my head. There are as many facets to me as there are to gems.

Although, if you were to ask me a question I would give you the answer honestly in the best manner which it would be received. If you were being serious and needed a real answer, I’d answer you straight-forward. If we were joking around, having fun and the question was more in a comedic manner I would most likely answer you sarcastically. If you’ve been reading here for awhile you know that I can be both logical and creative. I believe in magic and science. Most people either don’t understand me or understand me so completely that it’s a little freaky. Sometimes it’s also a little scary to be able to look at an illusion and see both versions.

While I didn’t enter into motherhood by my choice I fully excepted what came along with it. Responsibility for another life. I needed to take this little baby girl and turn her into a productive member of a society I didn’t always agree with. For the most part I think I have fulfilled most of the obligation. She’s not 18 yet, but will be in just over a year. She’s smart, creative and can debate your pants off about any topic you choose regardless as to which side she’s debating.

While I didn’t sacrifice everything in my life for this child I did put a lot of it on hold. There are still a lot of things I want to do with my life. I don’t go out drinking every night/weekend/whatever (and certainly don’t plan to in the future either). I don’t spend my paycheck without paying bills and making sure there is food on the table, or I make sure there is food on the table before paying the bills. I go to work every single day unless I can’t move and since being hired in haven’t missed a day. I have made up all time missed taking my daughter to the doctor during the lactose-intolerance answer treasure hunt. I don’t bring strange guys home after a night out. Period.

I did have rules and structures in my house, some of them may sound unacceptable to you such as: “If you don’t do the dishes, you can’t go outside and play and I won’t cook dinner when I get home.” That’s right. If my daughter, at the age of 9, didn’t do dishes she wasn’t allowed to go out and play. On top of that she’d have to eat leftovers from previous meals instead of getting something new. Eventually she benefitted from knowing that it was best to do the dishes.

Now she does her own laundry. We do our best to share the rest of the chores but with her in high school (and having shit loads of homework) and me at work all day (and usually exhausted when I get home) we tend to do as little as possible to get by and make up for it on the weekends. Sometimes I’ll ask her to do a load of dishes when she gets home. Instead she’ll take a nap and not wake up until a couple of hours after I get home and have thrown in the load of dishes. Sometimes I still don’t make dinner when she does this and it ticks her off. She may not be an adult but she sure isn’t a child any longer and is more than capable of either doing dishes when she gets home so that I can make dinner when I get home or she can take a nap and I’ll do dishes which then means she either makes dinner, fends for herself or starves. Sometimes this works, sometimes it fails and we both get irritated. It happens. We are always going to have differences and we are always going to irritate each other. We are family, it’s what we do best.

I say I’m crazy, but I’m not clinically insane. I’m not depressed. I don’t take any of the hundreds of medications out there prescribed or unprescribed. I have control over myself most ( 99.4%) of the time. The last time I went Chernobyl on anyone I moved back from California to Ohio. Sometimes, less than once in a blue moon (maybe twice a decade) I wonder if I need therapy because of all the things I’m not doing. Out of all the parents of my daughter’s friends, I am the responsible one. I’m the one that ends up taking kids home because their parents are sleeping or stuck in Cleveland. I’m the one they ask the awkward questions to because their parents would blow a gasket. My house is the one they come to because they are tired of being yelled at or told to do stupid things and then do them again but differently. I’m not sure if single mothers out there are crazy… but I know a hell of a lot of parents in general that are definitely not anywhere near as stable as I am.

Single and Happy? Yes!
Shaming the Single Mom (Do we all secretly think single moms are crazy?)

Of all the bloggers out there I read, who have multiple public blogs on varying topics, I wonder how many of them have unpublished drafts hidden in between the published ones, ranting and raving about personal issues they can’t or won’t publish online. Or how many of them have these ranting and raving blogs completely disconnected from all the public websites they are involved with, kept from the light of day, simply to relieve the tension from day to day. It could be the little things like how often the neighbors come and go with the way the gas prices are now (how on earth can they afford it!) to how their boss did or said something totally out of character which was possibly taken out of context. You can never be too careful when hiding the personal things that you need to get out of your head in order to continue working on the meaningful articles, blogs, papers and other types of relevant work.

With how open social networking has become anyone out there can find anything on you if they punch in the right keywords. They don’t even have to be looking specifically for you, either. Perhaps your Facebook profile or something you tweeted just happened to fall into their search criteria. If your profiles are open to the world then they can look at everything about you they may have never wanted to know. Friends, Family, Ex-whatevers. I read an article on Slate today that detailed how the journalists father followed her on Twitter to the point of causing her to alienate her account. This got me to thinking about how often family seems to think that because they are family they have every right to be friended on Facebook; following you on Twitter and any other networking sites you might possibly be on that they can also stalk your every movement and thought.

There always seem to be three options regarding social networking. Allow family and coworkers to interact with you and hope that every word you type isn’t taken in the wrong context; Don’t allow family and/or coworkers on your social sites and keep everything completely private so only actual friends (not friends of friends) are the only ones to see anything at all; and option number three, Keeping one Facebook for Family and/or Coworkers and another Facebook for actual friends who you don’t care if they see those pictures from your weekend out with them. You can also do this with Twitter, and there are people who do have two or three Twitter accounts. Usually there is a personal account for friends and/or family; then the others are used for their public or work-related websites that they are associated with. It could also be one for work, one for family and friends with the other being just for their public sites. There are, however, issues with having so many profiles.

The problem with multiple accounts is that there are multiple accounts. That means an email address or username for each of those accounts, separate passwords would also come in handy. Then keeping track of what you say on which account could become cumbersome and what happens if someone blew up at you over something and you tweeted to the wrong account because that’s the one that you were logged into last? People get upset, more awful things get said, and relationships are (perhaps) broken to the point that there may never be trust again.

The best way to work out this are to figure out what you’re going to use the accounts for, how you’re going to set them up regarding privacy and then treat them as if you’re in a real public place and you don’t want to make a scene. Anything you post can be seen unless you don’t post it. Think before you post. Personally, I feel as if it is my account, my website, my whatever and if it upsets anyone they can click the little red x in the top right corner (or the red circle in the left on mac). You do have to remember though that there are people out there in the world who take every little thing over the top extreme and even if it doesn’t seem all that outrageous to you it may have to them. Think of the outcry when celebrities screw up or have their private parts flopping out due to wardrobe malfunctions. There are people who will take something completely out of context and report you to the highest of authorities. Those authorities could be the report department of Facebook or the hosting provider of your website.

Do what more people should do more often before they open their mouths to speak. Consider the consequences. Then those who are reading your private life story should also take a moment to realize that they aren’t hearing your tone of voice, they aren’t always the subject being crucified in what is being said and that they need to consider a private way of going about getting things taken down if they feel it was over the top outrageous and could possibly cause harm.

So I finally (again) installed MovableType 5.12 on a testing subdomain. (If anyone out there wants to check it out, comment and I’ll make you an account.) Basically I didn’t like it previously. I didn’t like the fact that I had to have both a website and a blog. So I ignored it and updated this version when security issues were plugged up.

It appears that MovableType 5.12 has allowed me to create a blog without a website this time around. I do sort of like the layout, although I am used to having navigation at the top instead of on the side.

I’ve noticed that for me it’s a little slower loading. It seems to take a few moments for the system to realize I clicked a link and then when it gets to that page, everything is loaded, or so I think. The little circle on Chrome is going nuts switching from the refresh button to an x showing that something is still loading. I’m not sure what, though. And while I look at the status line at the bottom of the page, it looks like it is trying to load Zemanta, which is something I disabled on this version after being annoyed with it repeatedly. Perhaps a permission wasn’t changed during the upload…. It’s telling me it isn’t able to do its thing. Ok, I had to change permissions on a file, silly me.

I’m currently copying this post to the test blog to see how it turns out over there. I just might download all of my entries and so forth and upgrade all of the blogs to 5.12 if I can truly create blogs without the website option. Ahwell, almost time for me to leave for work. So I shall play some more later and decide in a couple of days. Later.

You can view the test blog here: Testing MT5.