Bad Moon Rising

Tonight, I watched the movie Blow...again... and it's made me introspective.  Thinking about things I'd rather not remember. I'm not sure if it has something to do with the movie's soundtrack, or if it has to do with the sorrow, the regrets, the pure shit that just happens because life is hard; and then you die.

How my uncle returned from Vietnam a shell of his former self and shot himself in the head in my grandparents' farmhouse just after my cousin had been sent upstairs to let him know dinner was ready. He told her, "okay, I'll be down in a minute."  That's it, that's her last memory of him alive.  The bloodstains are still on the old hardwood floor up there in that bedroom.  How her brother is still emotionally scarred now that we are all adults because he idolized his father. How people said suicides go to hell. And how that made me not believe in God because that can't be right.

How my grandfather used to get on the floor and wrestle with my brother and I when we were very small and then he had a massive heart attack, had open heart surgery, and was never the same man. Not ever. He felt bad. He lost weight. He could never get warm again. And, I think he wished he had died that  day. 

How I refused to use the toilet at my maternal grandmother's house because it was so filthy. The entire house was filthy. My mother and her siblings used to go over there and clean before letting us children loose in there...and it was still dirty. In the summer, we never were in the house.  We all peed outside, no matter the weather. No matter who else was around.  And upstairs, there were always those bloodstains.

How one of my uncles was born with cerebral palsy due to a doctor's error and lived his own personal hell of knowing exactly what was happening around him, but being unable to interact, trapped inside his own body and was trapped in there for 49 years before he died.

How my maternal grandfather was an abusive drunk. He's still alive to this day, and wonders why no one wants to visit. He's still a raging asshole.  Respect for my mother drove me there to say hello to him last Christmas even though it was the very last place I wanted to be. She thought, as she always does, it will be his last Christmas. I don't know. I'm not sure that man will ever die.  I don't know how she and my aunts and uncles survived living in that nightmare dirty house with THAT man.

There are good memories.

Fourth of July family gatherings where illegal bottle rockets were fired into the sky as my Aunt Nita and her band played country songs. They were so good.  She's the only person I've ever met that can really sing.

Creedence Clearwater Revival playing on the record player along with Charley Pride, Hank Williams, Sr., Herman's Hermits, the Beetles; and other records my dad had from when he was a kid.

But, tonight, I can only remember the things that hurt.

Where I Left Off

I'm beginning with October 2015. Why October? Because I have evidence of what happened in October on the very early morning freight crew.  My very wonderful friend Jen found something more fun to do than stock. Unfortunately it's a phone video. What I miss about  Tractor Supply is a lot of the silliness and fun we had. Other than that, I'm glad to be done working there.

I was also supplementing my income cleaning up cow and sheep pastures for a very nice lady.  Her neighbors landed a hot air balloon there one night when I was out working. These are also phone snaps. This job provided my gas money each week for a while, which believe it or not, really helped. Also, I got to hang out with cows, in peace. Big perk.

I still have the same phone. But, its now possessed and dials people it wants when it wants with all disregard to the lock screen with a pin number being activated. I, er my phone, called three different people this week, all at inopportune moments.  It's hard being my friend. Unfortunately, one of those people was my close friend Ruth and it called her at not quite six in the morning as I was getting ready for work. Here is her wonderful son, James, who has grown much larger since this was taken.

We adopted an abandoned cat. He was older than we knew, and had chronic kidney failure. But, he was a very chill, bomb-proof, friendly cat.We thought he was skinny when we got him, but in these photos, he looks beefy compared to his final month. Snarf gave no fucks about my dogs. Move, over dog, cat is here! He passed Christmas Day 2016. I had been visiting my parents and came home to a failing cat who had no hope of recovery. It was such a rough day. I miss my Snarf.

That's 2015.

On to 2016, specifically April, when Jon and I went walkabout around Michigan with no real plan. It was such a fun time, we hope to plan another trip wandering around randomly doing whatever we feel like whenever we feel like it. This is South Haven, MI.

These were all taken at Holland, MI.  There appears to be graffiti of Grimace of McDonald's fame on spray painted on that buoy.  I had to take a photo of that!  As you can probably tell by the fog, it was warm outside, but the water was still very cold. There was quite a big of fog. What I like about the middle photo is the difficulty identifying just where the lake ends and the sky begins.

We crossed the Mighty Mac. And visited the lighthouse at St. Ignace.  Seagulls have been pooping constantly on that red roof. That amuses me, for some reason. Even more amusing, one of them was on the roof, probably pooping while I took photos.

We crossed back to the Mackinac City side and I took some more photos. I took tons of photos, but I'm only posting a few or this blog post would never end. As it is, I suppose this is the equivalent of watching slides of someone else's vacation.

That's enough writing for now. we drove back home the next day. Three days isn't really long enough for a trip. There was a lot of driving. But this trip really did make me want to move to Northern Michigan despite my hatred for cold and snow.

I hope to post sooner than two years later the next time. It's not that I plan on letting my blog go dormant, in fact, I rarely plan anything.

I'm back.

Look! It's the blog I abandoned almost 2 years ago because I suppose I was tired of writing about the same old things, because nothing happens to me, until it does.

I have a new job of about 4 months with its own different bullshit. But, its NEW bullshit so I'm not to the point of quitting on the spot yet. The only thing that kept me at my retail job was I couldn't just quit, I had to find a new job first. I can tell you, I still miss my old co-workers. We were a family of sorts.

 I'm getting ahead of myself.  I want to start with something good because I've had a very awful weekend that includes forced sleep deprivation as my husband's Jeep was stolen, reporting the crime, going to work, then, because he works nights and I work days, going to pick him up from work, getting the call that the Jeep was impounded, driving to Crackton to retrieve the Jeep, and, now, since the bastards stole the license plates off of it we get to head to the Secretary of State to replace those so he can drive it without getting pulled over.

So, I'm going to make a separate post and start over.

I Deeply Regret

Moving to the asshole capital of the world, Michigan.

Not somehow managing to die naturally so no body can blame me for giving up the fight for this useless life I never asked to live. It's absolutely pointless.

Being born in the first place.

I hope people think about the likelihood that that baby they are so desperately trying for no reason at all to bring into the world probably won't want to be in the world anyway.

Platinum to Red in a Weekend

This weekend I undertook going from platinum to being a ginger.  My hair was just getting too nasty from the bleach and I felt it was time for a change since work got on my ass and decided I needed to be in the "natural color spectrum" and the main reason for me going platinum was so that I could dye it crazy colors.

 This is me, blonde:

I quite liked the platinum blonde.  Upkeep was a bitch, as my hair is tenacious. Every week sometimes, I'd notice quarter inch roots. Sometimes, I got away with every two weeks, and sometimes, three, but by the third week it looked pretty damn awful.

The first dye I used was Loreal Excellence Creme in 8 RB Reddish Blonde.  I think it cost around $8.

I mixed it with Colorful Protein Treatment in #10 Red Red to try and let the color have somewhere to grab, and also, because ginger plus white is going to be lighter than the box result since color is cumulative and my hair was so very pale. Plus, my natural color (should it ever be seen again) is medium brown. To get from platinum to brown, yellow, red and blue tones must be introduced. Basically to replace all the tones I stripped from my hair to get to platinum...color is bleaching in reverse. The protein filler cost around $5 at Sally Beauty.

I liked the result, under inside artificial light:

 Unfortunately, outside, it looked worse than this last photo which was Super Ginger. It was barf orangey peach. Not at all attractive. At least not on me.  Plus would be a no no at work considering it was not really a color I've ever seen in nature.

I had bought two boxes of it, so I even tried a second dye job thinking perhaps the pigment just didn't properly stick to my hair after two years of bleach. Uh, no. It did not work.

So, luckily for me, after MUCH internet research before I even started, I had bought three OTHER shades of red in varying tones.  Since my hair was so peachy, I selected Ion Color Brilliance Light Burgundy Blonde.
Thinking that because burgundy is a blue based tone, and blue is the OPPOSITE of orange on the color wheel, it should cancel out the orange. (That's basically what toner does to get to platinum, too. Purple/blue tones create that ice blond if it came out too yellow/orange.)

While this is NOT a box kit, it IS simple to use. You mix the tube of color with 10 vol developer. I had 20 vol, but if you water it down by half, you get 10 vol. Simple math even I can do! And basically follow the instructions depending on what result is needed. I was going DARKER so the instructions told me to leave in on for 25 minutes. I didn't like the super perfumey smell of it, but hey, the results are what are important, right?  The box I bought was a creme, not the liquid in this photo. I prefer creme colors as they are less drippy, but to each their own. Same color, different format.  The box plus the developer probably cost about $10. So STILL super inexpensive.

Again, color is CUMULATIVE. So I was going from about a level 10 blonde to a level 8 red, thinking I can always easily go DARKER. As someone who draws, its always much simpler to go darker gradually than to go too dark and try to correct that. Dye works exactly like that.  Then from the level 8 yucky peach result, I went bluer, and down to a level 6 red. Got that?

Home hair dye is not for the faint of heart. If you have any doubt, go to a salon.


Result of light burgundy blonde:


This first one was in the bathroom light. Super Red. Love it, though. 

 Since the outside lighting test was so yucky with the other dye, I went outside to test this result. Yep, still love it.

 A color found in nature!

Pictures are probably a bit scary. I had showered twice in the last hour and a half, was not really amused, and am definitely NOT wearing makeup. Which I rarely do, but I like the look of, like in the blonde photo, above.

And because I LOVED my mad purple hair:

Someday, when I am otherwise employed, I will meet this hair again :)

This Summer in a Flash

It's been a while since my last post.  Time goes by so quickly in the summer, especially. Winter just crawwwlllsss by, but summer, gone in a flash.

My elderly cat breathed her last, sadly.  I still expect to see her every morning and every night when I come home from work and its been a bit over a month now, I think. That was not a pleasant day. 

                                                     My beloved Moose. She was 18.

I managed to get the rest of the blue carpet up and the wood floor underneath was beautiful.  Also discovered there is wood floor beneath the white yucky bedroom shag.  A project for later.

Adventures this summer have been close to home as finances are tight. The mortgage went up, income went down, the typical bullshit.

Jon and I went to Belle Isle with our friend Ruth and her family. It was really rainy and cool but they got to see the Scott Fountain running, at least for a bit, it was turned off as we looked at it because it was just damn windy that day.  We toured the Aquarium and the Conservatory, laughed at some poor yay hoos whose wedding was going to be incredibly wet.  Then Joe went fishing while the rest of us went inside the Maritime Museum which is really really neat and that we need to visit earlier in the day so we can see the rest of it. We walked in shortly before the museum closed  We also toured the Nature Zoo with its turtles.  A good place to go.

                                           Captain James at the Dossin Great Lakes Museum

                                                       Lighthouse Lens

                                                    Joe and James at the Aquarium

                                                      Joe and James at the Conservatory

My birthday happened. Jon got me some pretty flowers, some nice booze, and my parents in law got me a new wallet.  We also drove to see my parents for a short, short weekend visit.

A few weeks later, Ann Arbor had its annual Art Fair.  Off we went again.  All but Jon who, unfortunately, had to work.  It was abominably hot, but always interesting.  We popped into the Museum of Natural History while we were there to cool off and because there was a storm brewing. It was much much cooler after the storm passed.  Didn't take many photos. But we were all drenched in sweat anyway.  Ruth bribed James. But he looks quite resentful that he had to have a photo taken. 

                                                   Bad cell phone photo. But pretty museum.

Jon's parents became boat owners.  So one weekend we went out to the lake so Jon could be taught all about boats in case we wanted to borrow it.  Kensington is always pretty.  However, my father in law is a lame teacher and Jon got frustrated.  I sat relaxing on shore while they ran aground, and my father in law fell out of the boat and they took on a bit of water.

At work, a T Rex made a meal of a small unfortunate dinosaur in the supplement aisle.

Jon's birthday happened.  I went birthday shopping for him with my friend Jen. Spotted an unusual product.  And got him some Legos. Jen and I sword fought with foam swords but mine broke and she won.

Today, Jon and I went back to Belle Isle. The island was CROWDED as it was a lovely day with low humidity.  We took the opportunity to venture toward the lighthouse, apparently the only marble lighthouse in the country, that we somehow always missed.

                                          Bridge that connects Detroit to Belle Isle

                                               

                                                 The lighthouse is VERY art deco, I LOVE it!

                                       Nice walk, hidden swimming holes, ect.
              
I should probably have taken my real camera as I am always disappointed at how my cell phone camera takes photos. But, then, I have to carry it around.  Sigh.