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Don’t Be Scared

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“Showing your true nature gives the other person all the power. Especially when they already knew what you were.” -Unknown

Take It Personally

Know the damage you’ve done, and please take it personally.

Know that you cannot measure up, and please take that personally.

Comparing yourself to others will never get you anywhere. Assuming everyone’s superior to you… Talk about that in therapy.

Saying one thing, doing another. Why would anyone want you in their life, you stupid motherfucker?!

You can’t lie to me, you’re simply not that smart. Insulting my intelligence continually, yes, I take that personally.

Faking relationships, offering false friendship, offering up dishonesty, all so you can lean on me.

I have no respect for you, so please leave. I feel nothing for you, perhaps I never really did.

That which I dislike in others are things I try NEVER to do, so how in the world was I ever fooled by pathetic, meek, little you?

 

Copyright © 2014 by Lisa Marino & Blackbird Serenity LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

 

 

 

Feigning Friendship

You came to me seeking “friendship”. Constantly leaning on my strength, always reminding me it is something you sorely lack.

I’ve handled situations you would not dare touch, but I was always good enough to leech off of.

You turned around, after so many proclamations, and tried replacing me with someone who is mediocre, at best. Good luck with that.

Please don’t think I’m stupid. Please don’t think I haven’t seen it. Please don’t think you’re getting away with what you have slowly, and quite calculatingly, done.

I am smarter than you. I am stronger. I am not weak-willed, and when I offer friendship, it is always genuine. I don’t seek people out to suit my needs, that’s sick.

Do not mistake my silence for weakness, you’ll have to check a mirror for that. Please don’t mistake my silence for kindness, I’m simply not that good. Please don’t mistake the fact that when the time is right, I have absolutely no problem telling you to go to hell.

Copyright © 2014 by Lisa Marino & Blackbird Serenity LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Hiding Behind A Computer…WordPress Harassment & What I Plan On Doing About It

Author’s Note: I was not going to finish this up until a month or so ago when additional news made it’s way to my ears. It pissed me off beyond words, and this is the result. If you’re generally offended by me, I strongly suggest leaving the page right now. For everyone else, please proceed.

Hiding Behind A Computer…Wordpress Harassment & What I Plan On Doing About It

Several months ago a former friend accused me, a Jewish woman, of being a part of Kashrut slaughter of animals “in the streets”. For the uninformed, Jews do not slaughter animals in the streets. In fact, we’re incredibly civilized in regard to animal slaughter on a whole. We have laws we follow to the letter, providing we aren’t vegetarians or vegans, and as I have established in several other blog posts, I will never be a vegetarian or a vegan. I’m all about healthy balance. I love animals, yes, but I am not an extremist. I don’t have to make changes I don’t believe in, in order to make other people feel better about themselves.

Kosher slaughter entails very specific things. My Rabbi and my brother actually know a lot more about it than I do, and I do not want to nauseate anyone with the gory details. Suffice it to say, YES, I do believe it is more humane. NO, Jews do not “torture animals because we believe it makes meat taste better”. There may be in-fighting, disrespect, and discord amongst our own religious sects (I have most of them in my family, and there is definitive in-fighting. Try being told you’re “not Jewish enough” a few times, then tell me we’re all good to one another.), but our religion is not one for viciousness and evil, nor animal cruelty. For the record, she claimed Muslims do it too. I informed her how very wrong she is, and explained the laws both religions adhere to. Alas, truth often falls on deaf ears. However, since this former friend accused me and all Jews of “slaughtering animals in the street” (Thanks B, you’re a peach!), I decided I’m going to slaughter a pig today. Rabbi Stern, I love you, I respect you, it’s after sundown in Israel, and I’m wearing heavy duty metaphorical gloves.

I’m not sure when it happened, but it has been a slow progression for quite some time as the Internet has continued it’s seemingly never-ending expansion. However, I find this particular situation so distasteful that I have been writing this in my head for a few months. For me, the best work comes with time. I like to have all the facts, and I like to be clear. Gathering the facts was easy, but the why of it all is still a real mystery to me.

During that time period when I first began writing this, people continued to approach me about ONE “man”. Coincidence? I think not. I already had my suspicions, everyone else just helped reinforce it with additional proof that I was right. By the way, I use the term “man” so loosely I hope he can strangle himself with it. I’m happy to provide him with the rope he will need.

Certain types of people are way too comfortable on the Internet. I don’t know why hiding behind a computer gives anyone the right to say things they wouldn’t say to someone’s face. We’re not talking about private thoughts, but things that are completely and utterly inappropriate, as well as out of line, disrespectful, rude… Lord, the list just goes on and on. I don’t give a rat’s ass if you’re drunk or sober: Don’t use anything as an excuse to be an asshole. Unless, of course, you ARE an asshole, and in that case, get the hell off the Internet and crawl into a hole with the rats where you belong, because not everyone here is scum.

Case in point: There is a snake charmer among us here on WordPress, trying to pass himself off as a decent human being. Every time I hear that, I have a hard time keeping a straight face. Who the hell knows what he’s like in his daily life, but on the Internet? He’s got some seriously questionable morals.

It’s not just the things he says and does, but the outrageous lies he tells, and the fact that his actions are vile, not to mention disrespectful, defamatory, outlandish, insane, and, in most parts of North America, would get his self-absorbed, self-important, psychotic ass into a lot of fucking trouble. He deserves to be repeatedly kicked in the nuts by women wearing spiked heels. If he is ever within 200 miles of me, he had better run. He fancies himself a real hard ass. I could not be any more unimpressed than I already am.

We each have our own blogs, which is 100% OUR domain. We can control what we post, what we discuss and share, and what gets said to us, as well as to our readers. Unfortunately, when someone starts blogging about you on their blog, in a completely defamatory manner, and they are hiding behind a “good guy” facade, not to mention an enormous lie, what recourse does a person have? Short of suing them or teaching them an evil lesson, we’re not left with a lot of options. Especially if they go under the guise of not naming names. Proof would be hard at that point, but there are other things that can be done, and should be done to protect bloggers within the community.

The person I am talking about surrounds himself with a harem of sycophants (Trust me, that is me being incredibly polite.), all of whom ply him with sympathy, thus making him feel he is superior to the rest of us. It’s vomit-worthy. He’s so full of shit, I have no idea how oxygen travels through his body. Maybe it doesn’t. It would certainly explain one thing, but it by no means explains it all. A little research clues you in on the fact that, they too, are also full of crap. Maybe not all of them, but most. It’s a scary little world, let me tell ya.

The women he has said inappropriate things to, myself included, is not a small number. In the past few months, many have come to me and brought him up as the perpetrator of one thing or another. If there was something I could do, aside from writing this, I would. This takes me back to my heyday, where I’d simply say “I’ve got a 9mm and a shovel, and no one would miss him.” That woman is deeply imbedded in who I am. In an instant, I return to the person that kicked down doors, kicked anyone’s ass that required a kicking, and always took note of names.

Several of the harassed parties have gone to WordPress and asked them to do something about this person, and they have refused. If that’s how they want to play it, fine. I am doing something about it. I am forming a petition so that no woman has to deal with sexual harassment on a WordPress blog ever again. Men can SAY they’re being “sexually harassed” on this site, but I have found that to be a complete and utter LIE.

If you’re married, don’t engage women in “on-line flings” and then claim you’re the innocent bystander. That is such bullshit, and you know it. Putting a stop to something is as simple as saying “I am happily married and I am not going to speak to you anymore.”, and actually NOT speaking to that person ever again. If you’re a woman engaging in an “on-line fling”, especially if you know the other person is married, take a good, long look at what you’re doing before you pretend to be the innocent party. Sending men nude photos of yourself and engaging in cyber-sex is still sex, especially if you’re cheating on a sleeping spouse or partner. If you’re both single, do what you will, but don’t come crying to other people when your “fling” inevitably ends, or worse, goes public on the Internet. Keep in mind that you don’t KNOW the other person. It’s just words on a computer screen. Discussions are simply discussions, unless it’s emotional cheating on at least one side. There is a difference. Thoughts that go unverbalized do not count as cheating, period, but when a person says certain things to you and you are speechless, I honesty can’t say for sure if you’re encouraging it or not. Unless you started it, my theory is, no. However, telling a person “I am not comfortable with where this has gone.” and ending all further contact does not make you a bad person, or anything else, regardless of how the other person chooses to spin the tale afterward.

None of us truly honest ladies deserve to be Internet stalked by a person we have put in their place, nor should we continue to be annoyed or made to feel like we have somehow done something wrong simply by lending a kind ear, as opposed to the outlandish story that was told in place of the truth. There actually is a lot of kindness here, but no one has the right to abuse that kindness.

The petition I am drawing up is calling for WordPress to offer a block feature, or a block button, for individuals that we do not want to read or comment on our work. Whichever they are willing to provide us with, we will gladly accept. This should be a standard option (I am willing to pay $10 a year for this as a feature, if it cannot be provided for free. I think that’s a fair price.), and we are the ones that get to activate it based on a person’s comments and behavior, and it gets triggered based on the ISP address of each harassing S.O.B., because when they log-on, they cannot read or comment on our work. Even if they aren’t logged on, their ISP address is blocked. If they do not interact with us, we can’t use it. If they belittle us, insult us, and insult our readers, then yes, we have immediate recourse to use it and shield ourselves from such a person, whomever they may be. If a person has to be blocked from your blog, that’s pretty fucking sad, but it’s also necessary. Many of us have to consider our safety above all else. I have heard others talk about a need for this, and I am in complete agreement with them. We should all feel comfortable and safe here because it is ours, not someone else’s. No one has the right to step into your world, insult you and be disrespectful, nor should they be able to criticize and accuse you of things that are 100% untrue. People in glass houses should not throw stones, and since I was recently blogged about, let it be known that I’ve got bigger, heavier bricks and I’m happy to throw them back. One of my Uncles’ was a former pitcher: I don’t throw like a girl.

The person I am talking about is, by far and large, not the worst offender on here, that goes to someone else who was recently taken down by one woman speaking up and speaking out. http://calamityrae.wordpress.com/2014/01/14/outing-eric-robillard-le-clown-the-magnificent-the-predator-with-the-red-nose/ Bravo to her. I do not know her, but I support her 100%. A lot of others came out of the woodwork after she spoke out, and basically, he was completely run off.

Unfortunately, the snake charmer is no better, and that is why I am writing this. This little pig needs to be slaughtered and I am here, knife poised, ready to do the job. Keep fucking with me little piggy, keep attacking my friends, keep pretending you’re a good person, keep blogging about us and claiming things that are not true. There is no excuse big enough that you can use to combat all the things you have done to so many different people because we’ve all got similar stories. I am NEVER surprised when someone else comes to me and your name is mentioned. You think you have friends, but people TRUST ME. THAT is friendship, you piece of shit. When you violate a person’s trust, you deserve to be publicly castrated. Be advised that anyone that comes to me privately and asks who I am writing about will be told precisely who I am talking about, and you will lose more little lambs from your flock.

Just because someone disagrees with you, is polite, but firm, and doesn’t kiss your ass does not mean you need to blog about them in a negative connotation. Not everyone is going to fall for your shit, and from what I have gathered in terms of intel, you are losing the battle. You’ve messed with people I care about, but your biggest mistake was messing with me. I am NOT a nice person when you push me, I do NOT eat bullshit politely with a knife and fork, and I do not take kindly to outright disrespect and blatant lies. You pretend to be this nice, kind, caring person, but all you want is followers to agree with you. You have crossed lines with me that no sane person would ever dare cross, and whether you realize it or not, you have completely and utterly disrespected the family you claim to love so much with your lies and deceit.

Take care of yourself and those within your own home, and stop worrying about people you do not know and will never know. None of us have any interest whatsoever in such a lower life form.

You targeted several friends of mine and tried to cut them down. Guess what? You’re the talentless one here, and you are the one who whines, complains, bitches, and uses other methods of attention-seeking behavior to try to garner sympathy and support because you cannot stand to be rejected or ignored. It’s called Narcissistic Behavior. I am also positive you suffer from Borderline Personality Disorder, and I strongly suggest you seek treatment for it. Being subjected to your nonsense is a clear-cut method to losing every last ounce of one’s brain cells. Be gone, before someone drops a fucking house on you. And truly, that would be a vast improvement.

I have absolutely no idea who died and make you some kind of “blogger of the world”, but on top of being talentless, you have absolutely no right to go around insulting other bloggers, especially female bloggers, and telling them they’re not good enough to be bloggers (Did someone make you royalty? NO. Did anyone make you a decent writer? FUCK NO. You can barely spell. Try taking a course on proper spelling and grammar, not to mention punctuation.), nor do you have ANY right to go around hitting on women, and then claiming that’s not what you did. There is proof to the contrary, so what lie are you going to tell to attempt to cover that up? My recommendation? Run and hide like a certain Clown that was publicly outed, and rightly so.

I had no interactions with Eric (Le Clown) whatsoever, but my intuition always prickled whenever his name came up. I was never surprised whenever someone was telling me something negative about him. He’s gone, and for some reason you now think you can step into his predatory shoes? You’re utterly disgusting. For nearly a year you were playing yourself off as a nice person to me, and then you made the grave mistake of outing yourself as something completely different. Not once, not twice, not three times, not even four times, but a grand total of five times. I kept it to myself, and slowly, but surely people started coming to me to warn me and inform me of exactly what you are, and what your game is. Not once was I shocked or surprised. Even better, everyone has proof, including me. You can try and call one person a liar, but a group of us? NO. And before you do try it, I say GO FUCK YOURSELF.

I do not know what your exact problem is (I have ideas, but I am a lady, after all.), but you need to learn how to treat women. If you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, then you absolutely don’t do it on the Internet. Who the hell raised you, a pack of rabid hyenas? Maybe you weren’t hugged enough as a child, maybe your mother didn’t raise you right, maybe you had an absentee, fucked up father, but whatever the problem was in your formative years, you, yourself are responsible for what becomes of you after age 18. Yeah, that’s right. We cannot blame our parents for every single fucking thing that happens to us in our lives, not unless we are 100% living under their thumbs, and even then, remove yourself from the situation, get into therapy, and take control of your own life.

I strongly suggest you grow a pair of big boy balls and get over yourself. I also recommend a full psychiatric evaluation to make sure you don’t have multiple personalities because I can attest to the fact that you did not start off as some twisted psychopath, but you have certainly become one. I actually liked the first personality, but whoever you are now is truly worthless beyond words, and an embarrassment to the world at large. Maybe you already know that and that’s why you behave the way you do, however, none of it is an excuse.

If you have anything to say to me, I suggest you do so directly. If I don’t respond, it’s probably because you don’t deserve more from me than silence, and a broken jaw. You don’t just owe me an apology, you owe a lot of people an apology. I, personally, am not willing to accept it. If you say anything even slightly veiled about me on your blog, or about any of my friends, you will be hearing from my attorney. Keep your absurd stupidity to the already mentally incapacitated people you share it with. I wish them luck, because Lord, do they need it.

WordPress, you’ll be hearing from me about my ideas after I further consult with my group about precisely what it is we’d like in order to protect ourselves from assholes like the one I had to write about today. I will be formally filing a complaint with you about him, and I hope that if others do the same, you will boot him off this site for good. He does not belong here amongst the good people that aren’t harming anyone, that are, in fact, producing some fantastic material and deserve to be awarded and rewarded for their efforts.

There is something seriously wrong with this “person”. I hope he gets the help he needs, and that’s honestly about as kind as I will ever get again in regard to this pseudo-monster.

To those that are involved in this crap, I’m sorry for that. None of you deserve it. Thank you for trusting me with this situation, and allowing me to handle it to the best of my ability. Thank you for knowing that what was being said was lies, and for knowing exactly who to trust in matters such as this. We are united, and no snake charming mother fucker is going to come between that. I will turn him into a barrel of monkeys before I let that happen.

Anyone that wants/needs to come forward, I am sure you have my contact information. Do not hesitate to let me know what happened so that I can further the case with WordPress. Anything we can all do will help make this the place it once was, and should still be. There are enough predators in this world and on the Internet, they do NOT need to be here.

The opinions and concerns expressed in this post are copyright © 2014 by Lisa Marino. The humor expressed is simply me being me. If you don’t like what I’ve said, please don’t read it. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

If you’re going to reblog this, make sure my copyright notice is attached. Grazie!

It Is During The Worst

Odd Marriage Trends & Idiocy Via Social Media

Author’s Note: I wrote this out of extreme concern for a person’s safety. That’s the place it comes from, so please don’t try and twist it into something it is not. I digress a bit at times, but I feel like I’ve made some very valid points.

Odd Marriage Trends & Idiocy Via Social Media

I’ve noticed an extremely disturbing marriage trend that just plain feels unkosher to me. I can’t describe it any other way than that. Creepy is another word I have to use, because deep within my soul, it just doesn’t feel right. When something doesn’t feel right to me, and it concerns another human being, or more than one human being, especially someone I know, and it involves their safety, I simply MUST speak out and use my voice. I’m generally a pretty quiet person (shocking, I know!), but when something feels so wrong that my brain screams at me to open my mouth, I have to do something, even if “something” is posing the question to my readers.

If a friend told you she’d gotten married to someone after only meeting this person a few times, having spent very little time with him, and that he lived in another country, what would you think? By “another country” I do not mean that he’s in the military or has a job that takes him away for lengthy periods of time, but 100% does.not.live.with.his.wife. Is that bizarre to you, ‘cause it just plain feels unkosher to me.

I’ve often joked in the past with my close friends about not needing my boyfriend/husband/partner with me 24/7, but in actuality, if I didn’t see him for a year or years, I certainly wouldn’t feel like I was in a relationship or marriage AT ALL. If he simply traveled for work at times and we had kids, which required me to stay home for some reason, like their schooling, then I do think it would get on my nerves eventually. A few trips for work a month is no big deal, but years?! Am I crazy thinking there is something not right here?

If a friend told you “I got married and I won’t see my husband for two years…” would you automatically think “Military” or would you be thinking “Mail Order Bride”? I have to be honest, when a man marries someone he barely knows, someone who lives in a country known for its extreme poverty, and he lives in a country on the opposite side of the world, it doesn’t scream “marriage” to me, it screams “Something isn’t right here.” There aren’t just red flags, there are thousands of blinking red lights.

Unfortunately, way too many women automatically believe that you are jealous of them if you pose a question of this nature, as opposed to seeing things from your perspective and realizing that you care enough about them to ask them about this “arrangement” because, in a world where women disappear into the sex trade and there’s rampant human trafficking occurring, you’d be a truly terrible friend if you didn’t speak up and say something BEFORE you find out that this person just went missing “on her way to visit her husband”. There’s not a whole lot you can do once that happens, but in the time leading up to it, yes, you can speak out and make them aware.

I am extremely disturbed by this arrangement a “friend” of mine has and I’m deeply concerned. Not just because she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but because she desperately seeks love and acceptance from others and the way she goes about it, to me, is extremely unhealthy. She believes everyone in this world, at their core, is good. Maybe it’s the detective in me, maybe it’s just intelligence and intuition screaming at me, but I don’t see everyone in this world as predominantly good. I’ve seen way too much evil to believe that every single person walking this planet is supremely good and that each person has nothing, but good intentions. I’m way too smart for that fairytale nonsense. She should be old enough to have some common sense, but she lacks in this department, as many people do. She’s all over the fairytale. She truly believes she’s found her “Prince Charming”. It’s scary, because she is suffering through a lot of health issues and this man is not physically present for her whatsoever. To me, that’s not a marriage.

Normally I would keep my mouth shut & mind my own business, but this time everything was screaming at me to check this guy out. I researched this man she constantly refers to as her “hubby” (God as my witness, a man is only your “hubby” when he lives with you and sees you every single day. If you don’t wake up next to a person every day, it’s not an ideal marriage. Especially during the first year of marriage. God help me if I EVER refer to a man as my “hubby”. Try calling me “wifey”, you’ll be picking up your teeth for the next month. I do NOT do cutesy nicknames or pathetic references to married life and the person I share that life with. If you’ve been married longer than a year and you call your husband “your hubby”, that is your prerogative. We all use different references and names. However, every time I hear it, I throw up a little, ‘cause it’s nauseating. My friends all say “my husband”, or they use their partner’s actual name, they do not use obnoxious references or ridiculous nicknames. Maybe that’s why it is so much more sickening to me, I don’t know.), because I, by no means, think any of this is genuine.

It might be genuine on her end of things, she’s a person with a good heart who has been seeking the right person for quite some time, but again, not the sharpest tool in the shed. I’ve never met a man that loves a woman and is willing to live somewhere else for years once they are married, not unless it’s a financial thing and they have a plan to re-locate within a certain time frame, and the time frames are usually short enough that it doesn’t ever raise a red flag. Generally, this occurs in the military or when people work in different countries for a period of time based on their profession. None of this has been mentioned outside of “I’m going to visit him next year and he’s going to visit me the year after that.”, so I think that, as a friend, I should be concerned. I have to go with my intuition here and it has never, not once, lied to me.

Many years ago a friend of mine met a guy on-line. After a few years, they got married. He lived in England, and she lived in the U.S. He had visa problems because he constantly had to go back home due to illnesses within his family. She missed him terribly and when they were unable to get his visa cleared, she finally had enough, got her own, and moved to England permanently to establish citizenship. They’d hoped to be able to do that here, but with his family in one country and not well, and only some of her family here, it was the logical thing to do. We’d been friends for years and remained in touch after her marriage and subsequent move, but eventually we just lost touch. The difference between that relationship and the one I write about today is that they didn’t jump in to anything, they took time to get to know one another. I didn’t have a single red flag when she’d call me about him. In fact, I tried to help her in terms of information at times because she was slightly unsure if she should move or not. Initially during her first three months there, she absolutely HATED it and wanted to come home, but she stayed because she loved her husband, he loved her, and she didn’t want to be apart from him. That’s commitment, and I’m sure most of the married people reading this will agree with me.

One of my best friends has been married since she was about 19. Several years ago her husband’s company asked him to help open a new office for them…in Australia. It was only supposed to be six month, a year TOPS. Her work takes her all over the world, but this time she didn’t want to make the trip. She sent him ahead of her, but after a few months, I told her to just go for a few weeks and see if she liked it. She came back after the initial trip, and when she returned, she ended up staying right up until the last minute of still being able to fly pregnant, which is when they both returned, and months later their daughter was born with dual citizenship in the U.S. and Canada. Again, that’s a committed relationship. Even while he worked, she still traveled for her own job, but mostly, she wanted to be a supportive wife, which is why she went in the first place. She said she was ok with him being in Australia by himself, but in reality, she didn’t like it. She thought that by staying home, she was being supportive. I am glad I encouraged her to make the trip. They are stronger for it.

I’ve slightly gotten into the red flag thing, but let me expand: If I told any of my best friends that this was an arrangement I had just entered into, or that I was romancing the idea of doing such a thing, each of them would tell me outright that something wasn’t right. They would also advise me to wait until we are both living in the same country before agreeing to marriage. After all, what the hell do you know about this person when you’ve only spent short periods of time with them? Not for nothing, they wouldn’t actually need to tell me any of this because I’m not impulsive and I don’t rush into anything. I believe in the sanctity of marriage, and if I’m going to stand up before God, my family, and my friends and take vows, then I’m truly committed to that person, and he damn well had better be committed to me because I’m not afraid to break out the shotgun, and neither is anyone else I know.

Red flags are a big thing for me in relationships. This one that’s bothering me has gigantic Red John sized red flags all over it. I was willing to let it go since she’s happy, until I sent her a response to a message that I found more than a little obnoxious via e-mail, where I basically asked her NOT to discuss anything private with me on my Facebook wall, or via Facebook at all. She responded, via Facebook (Like I said, not the sharpest tool in the shed.), with several different excuses as to why she cannot access her e-mail account from her computer, her iPhone (I’m sorry, but if I cannot access a Google Mail account via my incredibly overpriced “Smartphone”, then I do what any person with a functioning brain does: I get a NEW e-mail address with another company, Yahoo for example, where I CAN access my e-mail, and I let everyone know that I have had to make a change in e-mail addresses for the time being. Simple enough, right? We’ve all done it at one time or another. I myself was gifted with a new Android phone sometime last Spring/early Summer. I activated it on my birthday after Verizon terminated my previous cell after I’d already paid them. The bank got my money back, and despite truly loving my Verizon service and my 4 year old phone, as well as the phone number, I sunk to a new low with this new phone and activated it with Virgin Mobile, a company I’ve never done business with before. In order to use this particular brand, you’re required to attach it to a Google Mail account, so when I was initially gifted with said phone, I created a Google Mail account, despite the fact that I rarely use it. No big deal, it took less than five minutes. It’s not rocket science. I can access my mail from anywhere in the world, Google account or not. Maybe this is an iPhone issue, I don’t know, but I still think what I said is completely valid.), etc., and then told me the big whopper that was something I simply cannot abide by: She informed me that her husband dictates her e-mail to her via FaceTime conversations, so the only way she can talk to me “privately” is via Facebook. Are you fucking kidding me?! Get out the Revenge Red Sharpie everyone, because this one seriously creeps me the fuck out. In what world do they live in?!

Do you let your husband/boyfriend/girlfriend/wife/partner read your private e-mail discussions between you & friends that they don’t know and have never met? I ask this in a completely “I’m not cheating” way, because I don’t, nor will I ever. I can understand if you’re just checking their phone to make sure your partner isn’t sending inappropriate text messages to someone else (if you’re the kind of person that does that. I do not.), but outside of that, I think it’s a bit much. I don’t let anyone read my e-mail. I might read something to a person when I am trying to handle a situation that bothers me, or when I want advice about something, but I keep the private sections to myself as any truly good friend should. As much as I give in the relationships in which I am in, and as much as I love, my friendships do not pertain to my boyfriend/husband/partner, so I do not feel he needs to know what I say to my friends or what they say in return. Unless something is said in front of him or directly to him, I believe in some semblance of a private social life. I expect him to have a private social life in many regards as well, and I don’t find that odd, I find it healthy.

I believe in each of us having our own friends, and in having friends as a couple. That does not mean I am cheating or keeping secrets, it simply means there are boundaries in relationships and I don’t cross them. Reading my e-mail to me like you’re some kind of overbearing father figure is not something I would EVER accept or allow, unless I was dead, in which case, have a fucking ball. He’d have to spend the next 40 years of his life deciphering the codes in which my friends and I speak any way, so not only would he be clueless beyond words, he’d get really bored, really fast.

This man, that I do not know and have never met or spoken to, had the audacity to send me a rude message on Facebook (interestingly enough she clearly doesn’t have any privacy considering the message was from her, with his name attached to it. How are our discussions “private” if he has her password to speak on her behalf?) because I was honest with his wife about something so minor, that no person on this planet with an I.Q. above their shoe size would take offense to. She is someone I’ve known for a very long time, and here he is telling me she’s been told not to get in contact with me ever again, and not only can’t he speak English, he can’t spell or write properly either. Considering he’s supposedly from a country where English is the predominant language spoken, do you find that remotely odd? I certainly do. Again, RED FUCKING FLAGS!

Thanks to the idiocy that is social media, people no longer feel the need to send out engagement announcements, wedding announcements, birth announcements, or invitations to anything. They truly think it is safe and completely normal to post their entire lives on social media, but then they wonder why their identities get stolen. and how people they don’t know suddenly know every single thing about them. They wonder why they get stalked. Lets be honest: It’s not because you’re a fascinating creature that people want to be “friends” with, it’s because you’ve lost the ability to keep your private life PRIVATE. Privacy is not a setting, it’s basic common sense. Every single aspect of their lives, from where they eat, shop, live, etc., and a plethora of photos that should be kept private, are there for anyone in the world to come across. Go to my Facebook page, apart from photos of my deceased cats and my new baby, you will not find any personal photos there whatsoever. My best friends (those that have known me for less than 20 years) didn’t even know what I looked like until they landed at the airport when I picked them up the first time they came to see me, and they were all fine with that. If you want to know what I look like, you’ll have to wait for the back cover of my novel, and that’s providing I go the picture route at all. When I say I’m a private person, I actually mean it. It’s not because I am hiding anything, it’s because I have learned to protect my safety and to keep personal things to myself. Do I want an absolute stranger approaching me in public simply because they’ve wandered onto my blog? The answer is an emphatic NO.

Several years ago I found one of my cousins on Facebook. I was utterly appalled to see that he had hundreds of family photos posted where anyone could come across them. I could have been a stranger, as opposed to a family member, and it would have been all too easy to do God only knows what because not only were his wife and children prominent in a great many of the photos, but so were photos of his home, his siblings, their children, spouses, and my Aunt & Uncle. Not for nothing, these people abandoned my brother & I completely after my parents died. They are my first cousins, the only first cousins I have. All four of them are married or in a committed relationship, and not a single one knows how to return a fucking phone call or be a decent human being. I did not get so much as a phone call or a condolence card upon losing both of my parents, but when their father passed away, I made sure we were all there before he died, as well as at the funeral, and at the house right afterwards. I spent months calling several of them after he passed away to try to make sure we established relationships, and they treated me like I didn’t exist. You can only ignore me for so long before I lose all interest in you from start to finish. I am embarrassed to share bloodlines and Grandparents with them, but I adore their children to pieces and would give them bodily organs if ever they needed it. That’s the difference between them and me, but I digress.

I generalize a lot of what I write on this blog, and I do it for a reason. Only a handful of you know me as a living, breathing person, have my phone number, or have friended me on different social media sites where I maintain a presence as a writer, and those that do have higher levels of information about me as a person are people I trust not to disrespect that, nor would I ever disrespect them and the friendship they have extended to me. If I’ve exchanged e-mails with you, and you can contact me like a normal person, then that means something. It means you are welcome in my life. Not just my on-line life, but my real, every day life. That is something I honor very few people with because I learned very early on in my professional career that far too many people wanted to be a part of my life for the wrong reasons. In turn, I let very few people into my life, heart, or home. I am a writer and I publicly post some incredibly personal, honest things here, but I also have boundaries to protect my privacy, as should we all.

This entire ordeal with my “friend” feels wrong to me for a lot of reasons, but the main reasons are: I have no respect for anyone that is trying to control another person, and somehow manages to do so from a completely different country. They don’t even live under the same roof! Moreover, I know that when something feels this wrong to me, the outcome is not going to be pretty.

When I have an intense sense of something, I am almost always right. I take no pleasure in being right about things of this nature, but I truly feel she is in danger and I have no idea how to approach her with it. She’s being civil with me, moving towards childishly friendly, but this guy is in her ear and she’s preaching The Bible at me, among other things. Before she met this guy, she was practicing Wicca. That’s a drastic switch in such a short period of time, so I take offense to her responding to the things I write about Wicca because I never abandoned it. Maybe that seems ridiculous or childish, but if you know me, you will understand what I’m saying and that it’s not coming from a judgmental place, merely a place of extreme awareness, as well as extreme concern.

I’m concerned for her safety in going to visit this guy. I do not trust him as far as I can throw him, and I’m pretty sure I could take him. I have no respect for a man that has the audacity to come into my domain and tell me what to say, how to say it, and whom to say it to. No one tells me what to do, I am not anyone’s property. I am not something that needs to be controlled.

For the record, my boyfriend was APPALLED that a man that does not know me would do such a thing. He, himself, would defend me if someone was physically harming me, he’s never let anyone disrespect me, but he knows full well that in pretty much every situation, I can handle myself. He does not have to speak for me. He’s smart enough to stay out of things that do not pertain to him. I do the same. It’s about respect, it’s not about a lack of emotion towards the other person.

He has been a part of my life for far longer than he has been a boyfriend, and much like me, manners are important to him. Facebook nonsense irritates him just as much as it irritates me, and he is not a part of it because he feels it would be detrimental to his professional career. When he sees me dealing with these things, he asks me why I don’t just tell all of these people to go to hell. He doesn’t understand why I navigate it gently. In fact, he thinks this piece is “too soft”. His advice was to be a lot more “in your face”. Alas, there’s a reason I’m the writer and he is not.

Being in a relationship of any kind, especially marriage, requires a foundation of friendship and respect. It doesn’t mean you hand over every single aspect of your life to the other person, or that you allow them to control you in any way. That’s just plain sick behavior to me, not to mention antiquated thinking.

Exactly how many people are omitting “Obey” from their wedding vows? If you want something or someone to obey you, get a fucking dog. Train it. Throw him/her a bone every now and then, and it’ll “Obey” you. If you expect your 21st century wife to “Obey” you, you definitely won’t be marrying a modern woman. Maybe that attitude will swing in other cultures, but if that way of thinking is working anywhere in this country, get yourself to therapy IMMEDIATELY. Don’t walk. RUN. Subservience and passiveness in women is a huge issue for me. I know for some it is simply in their nature, but I lack the ability to be a “People Pleaser”, and I also completely and utterly lack the ability to be a poor friend.

Far too many women are marrying people they do not know and end up in human trafficking, sex trades, become drug addicts overnight, or they end up dead. Many lose every single dime they spent their lives working for, all in the name of “love”. How can I not be concerned?! Meeting someone on the Internet does not guarantee that he is being honest with you about anything, especially if you’ve only ever been around him, or with him, for short periods of time. For all the Match.com and eHarmony “success stories”, note that you’re not being told all of the horror stories that run rampant through dating sites of all kinds. I’m a very open person, and a lot of the stories I hear are enough to keep me far, FAR away from any forum where I could potentially be meeting someone that has done nothing to earn my trust. It gives you an illusion of safety, nothing more. In reality, it’s about as safe as most bars, except that more and more bars have cameras around as a precautionary measure.

I strongly encourage women to run background checks on guys they’re dating, if for nothing else than pure peace of mind. At the very least, Google him first to make sure he’s not wanted for a crime, and make sure he’s never been to jail for anything questionable. If you live in California, do both a Google search and an IMDB search. Trust me on this one.

Call me old-fashioned, but no matter how I meet a guy, I want to be looking him in the eye when he tells me certain things. I want to be able to see his body language. Once you’ve spent enough time with a person, you know whether or not you feel comfortable enough to pursue a relationship. This does not happen right away, not if you’re smart. I would rather spend time talking to a person and getting to know him as an individual before jumping his bones. Call me crazy, but I like knowing a guy’s middle name, where he was born, what his parents and siblings names are, and what his tells are. Hell, I’m even happy to hear about his Grandparents if they’re still alive. I don’t want a resume, but I do want to know he’s not a piece of shit. If you’re friends with someone, you will find things out so much easier as opposed to jumping into a relationship with them. And at the core of the best relationships are two people who genuinely like spending time together, even if they’re simply reading different things in the same room, you’ll see them glance up at one another and smile. The silence is comfortable, and each person feels safe with the other.

I am a little concerned in posting this because I know I wasn’t Ms. Sweetness & Light here, but anyone that knows me shouldn’t expect me to dump 50 pounds of confectioner’s sugar on something that could potentially be a very serious matter. In turn, this will be available to be read for a short period of time and after that it will be made Private to protect the guilty, as well as the innocent. In the meantime, please tell me what you think.

How would you handle this sort of situation with a friend? And yes, I am perfectly willing to let the friendship end if it means she gets a brain and is kept safe. I would rather she see him for what he really is, than end up a statistic. I have said nothing to her about my concerns because she is not open to hearing anything beyond her own self-involved “bliss”. She thinks he is the greatest thing in the world. Love is blind, sometimes too much so, but love should never be suicidally stupid.

Some People Think It’s Cold

You know how some people think this time of year is insanely cold? They would be right, especially if they wake up after three and a half hours of sleep wondering WHY it’s so damn cold (I put the heat on 67 before going to bed, which is high for me.). After all, they ARE indoors, under the covers, in warm clothes. When I checked my thermostat yesterday morning to find out why it was so cold, and jack the heat up, it said it was 61 degrees. That’s ok for a short period of time in triple digit temperatures, but it’s like 26 degrees outside, and my internal thermostat says it’s 57. I WISH it felt like 57 degrees, but it doesn’t. It feels like frost bite is about to set it! Of course, I turned it up and the sense I had a week ago that a part was going to die on me came to life when it didn’t click on. Turning all the power off and turning everything back on didn’t help either, so that meant asking for help.

The fuses were checked and replaced. That’s a good place to start if you are relatively clueless about your HVAC system, which I absolutely am. Unfortunately, it was not the cure-all I thought, and prayed, it would be. I have a local company coming in the early afternoon to get this fucker up and running again. I am pretty sure I know what it is, and I am praying it’s an easy fix, as it was two and a half years ago in the middle of one of the hottest summers. That was my first lesson as to how these things work and it was interesting to hear the technician tell me that the part I needed is one he replaces around here “very often” because my electric company limits the amount of power each home gets during extreme temperatures. It makes sense, but having to replace it once every 2-3 years adds up. This coming year, I am going to learn how to do some of these things for myself. It’s certainly cheaper if you don’t have to call someone out to fix something. I am also going to find a quality handyman because I am utterly useless when it comes to things like electric wiring, plumbing, and fixing things I already know I am not qualified to fix.

Extreme temperatures and I have never done well. Summers have always killed me (even as a child), but with Fibromyalgia, as I get older, it hurts so much more to endure the extremes. I have several layers of clothing on and they will remain snug until the heat goes back on. Pray for me.

If you saw the insane amount of blankets on my bed and wrapped around me, you’d think this part Siberian chick was actually IN Siberia. If I could find earmuffs right now, I’d be wearing them with absolutely no shame.

If someone passes the freezer, kindly hand me the Svedka. Thank you.

UPDATE: It was 51 degrees inside when I woke up this morning. It’s 20 degrees outside and will eventually reach into minus temperatures. Plus, a good 4 inches of snow and minus temps are expected here Thursday. UHHHH! When everything is good, I am thawing out in hot water until I use all of it up.

If You Feel…

This is definitely how I’ve been feeling for quite some time. I was SO on the fence after my last post, but after talking to the foster mother, I’m feeling more confident. Even better, I’ve got a potential Tortie about an hour and fifteen minutes away that is the same age as the little girl in the previous post, and all she’ll need is a special food bowl due to an allergy and an additional shot in a few months. That feels like I’m hitting the kitten jackpot…out of nowhere. I already have their names picked out, so I am waiting to see photos. I’m stoked, and praying.

Be true to yourself and what you want and need in your life. Cats bring out the best in me, so I think that says a lot about what I want and the direction my life is taking.