The One Where Miley Cyrus Had a Sweet 16 Party….

I am completely exhausted today, and am determined to write a whole post on “Modern Idolotry”, but I must admit…  did have some fun too.  Here are some photos since most of you missed it.

Miley Cyrus Throws a Birthday Bash.

ugh…  I can barely get myself off the couch.  I am anticipating what all this days going to bring….

FYI People: She turns sixteen in November.  A random Saturday in October was just a good day for the for-profit event. Poor Miley has to save her pennies for college you know!

Word on the street for you spontaneous ones are that tickets are on Ebay for $4,000-$5.000 right now.

….but don’t even freaking try it.  We are SO FAR AHEAD OF YOU ON THAT. There is/was no advance ticket delivery. If you win an auction— you. are. an. idiot.

Let’s look at the Guest List, shall we. We know it won’t be me. Or anyone else that I know personally… we’ll be busting our asses…

NO JONAS BROTHERS invited!

From “Hannah Montana“
* Billy Ray Cyrus
* Emily Osment
* Mitchel Musso
* Moises Arias
* Shanica Knowles
* Anna Maria Perez de Tagle

From “Camp Rock“
* Demi Lovato
* Meaghan Jette Martin
* Cody Linley
* Roshon Fegan

From “High School Musical”
* KayCee Stroh
* Matt Prokop

From “The Suite Life of Zach & Cody”
* Dylan and Cole Sprouse
* Brenda Song
* Phill Lewis
* Debby Ryan

From “Cory in the House”
* Jason Dolley
* Kyle Massey
* Madison Pettis

Older stars (25 years and over)
* Kobe Bryant (Los Angeles Lakers)
* Steve Carell (”The Office”)
* Vanessa Williams (”Ugly Betty”)
* Sela Ward (”House”)
* Jennifer Love Hewitt (”Ghost Whisperer”)
* Kate Beckinsale (”Pearl Harbor”)
* Cindy Crawford (supermodel)
* Babyface (singer)
* Pepe Aguilar (singer)
* Rogelio Martinez (singer)

24 Hours?

When you essentially woke up at 330AM today like I did, evidently at 1:20PM, 3:30PM, 5:00PM, 5:45PM, 7:00OM, and at 8:10PM you wonder why it’s not at least midnight… forget more like 3AM, or 4AM…  It’s so fucking early!  Why does it feel like this day won’t end?!

Insight, Clarity, and Battling the Self.

Why can’t the life awake be this insightful?

I woke up at about an ago from a pretty traumatic nightmare. Not traumatic as like depicted in the movies, but traumatic in that I was involved as the main protagonist and it hit on so many of my core issues. But even though I was jolted awake, I seemed to have instant clarity and awareness of the triggers and anecdotes in my recent life that played into that part of my mental ruminations.

My nightmare I guess you could say started out as any other dream. Do most nightmares do that and then descend into the depths?? I dunno.

I was a young teenage girl, but I was living in a locked residential institution, what is typically referred to level 14 in California. Incidentally, California is one of the few states left where you can lock up a juvenile that is not in jail or in a psychiatric facility.

Other than God’s general provision in getting me through this every-day evey moment financial crisis, is that I desperately want to be home with my family this Thanksgiving. I believe God desires this to happen for me and will make it happen in His way.

Anyway, it was a pretty rapid succession of scenes/images in the nightmare.  It must have been Christmas Eve, and I was led into a “Group room” or a “Day Room” with other residents.  There was music playing of some sort, or a choir singing Christmas carol.  It was then that I broke down. I fell to the floor.   It was a reminder that I was yet again alone for another holiday. No holiday cheer, no family warmth, nothing to celebrate or more importantly to celebrate with.

This is where I mention “triggers” or “insights” and “antecdotes”.  As I am this teen breaking down, I urgently and impulsively decide that I want to start physically harming myself. I grab a black stapler–interesting–the very same one I have on my desk at work— and start stapling my foream as if it were papers to be stapled together.

At this point a female staffer/counselor grabs me, puts me in a safe-hold on the floor.. but actually comforts me. I sob. Insight that I don’t really want to hurt myself but that I must deserve to be hurt if I am to be alone and abandoned. Only someone bad, unwanted, and deserving of pain and torment would be abandoned and left alone.

In the next scene, I am standing in the kitchen of the house I grew up in. Damn that house. I’ve lived in so many places–sure, mostly of my own choosing as an adult—but in my dreams and nightmares it’s almost ALWAYS this house. Duh.. probably because I lived longer there than any place else…..anyway..

I am standing in the kitchen–before we remodeled it—with the ceramic tile. This time I am with a male counselor/staff person who looks frighteningly a lot like Dateline NBC’s Chris Hansen

If you know me… well, then that’s no shocker…

There are decorated Christmas presents around me, holiday decorations. He tries to get me interested in opening up some of the gifts, but I refuse.  I do decide to read a Christmas greeting card that is suppossedly from my nephew Jacob. Knowingly, because he is only five,  it is in my sister’s handwriting. It is suppossed to be Jacob’s words dictated on paper, but it is immediately evident that her own “bias” and tone comes through.

It discusses “Remember that time when you and Jen poked yourselves with needles?” [flash to a scene where we are essentially "sewing" our own flesh]–think a sewing needle making like an inch-worm] **Which by the way has never actually happened.***

The card goes on to say,”Well, now I do that.. you taught me that. And it was spoken with a type of appreciation and gratitutde.. but also as like a slap in the face. Sarcasm, if you will. Which.. would, well.. be my sister. She is the epitome of the “backhanded compliment”. She can tell you that you are her love and she would do anything for you;and and leave you abandoned in a horrible neighborhood in literally the next breath. Nothing she says having anything to do with passion or emotion can be trusted.

So, this was about the time I woke  up in a horrified startle. It was right at the moment that I was feeling the ambivelance of feeling grateful to have heard from my nephew; to have felt remembered and loved; but realizing that this was also a veiled way to hurt me. To slap me in the face.  Like, you are my aunt and I am obligated to “love you”, you are my blood.. but really I have this laundry list of reasons to actually depise you, and never could I actually respect you.

And of course this is all a “nightmare”,-and thank God, because a five year old child is not capable of such complex thinking and concepts.

I think this all came to a roaring head at this very moment, because it was about 11PM last night that I recieved an email reply stating an appointment with a bona-fide book representative next week where we will sit down and have an actual meeting regarding this book in the works.  Maybe it’s the economy and the fact that I feel like I am liteerally dying financally, but I feel the need to be productive and to push this forward.  Well, I have a brief meeting scheduled. Maybe it’s a good thing. Maybe ths book is gonna come pouring out and finish itself.  I have no idea.

Anyway, more than I even articulated here.. (because  am honestly losing steam, it’s not even 6AM yet, and I have been up since the nightmare awakening at 3:30AM) I just felt clarity and insight and I could point out what triggered what, and what antecdote added to what, etc, etc.

Why can’t life’s battles be this easy?  Why can’t there be more clarity and insight into daily battles?

Even Better QOTD! (essentially bumping out the last QOTD..)

“I think this unprecedented financial crisis is great news for George Bush. Now this will be the president’s lasting legacy! It will cover up all the things that were going to be his legacy! I mean, just think of Iraq, torture, wiretapping, Katrina as little paint drips on the floor of his presidency. This financial disaster is like painting the whole floor! Now I don’t see any mistakes. It really freshens the place up. Now, sure people in New Orleans’ ninth word still don’t have houses. But soon neither will anyone.” –Stephen Colbert

QOTD

stolen from dooce.coms latest Twitter(Tweet?)

Me: “Jon, the money tree plant I bought at Ikea is dying.”

Jon: “You sure it’s not an economy tree plant?”

announcement

My very white, bio-sister just used the slang term “SHIZZLE” on her Myspace page.  Thus I declare:

WE ARE NOW OFFICIALLY UN-REALTED.

Democracy in Action

WE DID IT!!!

Just minutes ago, Congress passed the PROTECT Our Children Act.

It was a long, hard campaign… one that started with committed PROTECT
members like you and then grew to over half a million Americans after it
was featured on the Oprah Winfrey show. Many Washington insiders said we
would never win. We wanted you to be the first to know that we did!

As our campaign showed America, law enforcement now knows how to locate
and stop hundreds of thousands of criminals who assault children and
traffic in child pornography. But despite years of empty rhetoric from
politicians, less than 2% of these cases are even being investigated. That
begins to change today, with the passage of the PROTECT Our Children Act.

In the coming days, we’ll share many of the details about this landmark
bill and how it was passed. But we didn’t want you to wait to hear this
news. Please take time today to celebrate what we’ve accomplished
together, because this never would have happened without you!

In Sickness & in Health

I have so much I need to be blogging about…

First and foremost on my mind today is that instead of “I think I am getting sick” Let’s face it, I am pretty sure I a have officially graduated to sick.  I feel feverish despite the fact that I will never know since I do not own a thermometer. Since I woke up yesterday I have been battling a dry scratchy froat. I really freaked out yesterday because I was going to be visiting a seven-month old baby, and never would I even want to be a hint of even sick and be around someone so young.  So, I chugged some Airborne I had (that everyone seems to swear by, btw..)  Drank some hot liquids through a straw, gargled hot salt-water, took my regular regimen of vitamins… and actually felt ok.  The throat thing mostly subsided throughout the day.

Until my drive home..it started creeping up again. I’ll get back to my drive home in a minute.  By the time I got home, I self-medicated with some completely gratuitous chocolate-Krispy-Kreme donuts (yes, that’s plural) that I stopped off for on the way home and promptly went to bed. This was at about 10:30.

Now I woke up this morning and the throat thing is back. As well as I feel like my ears are hurting too. Yes, I know that the likely culprit of BOTH of these issues is a “post-nasal drip” but I am not feeling any.

The other issue is that my anxiety and specifically panic-attacks seem to be a new peak. It was no surprise last night that one actually occurred (despite all I did to head it off) but how full blown and serious they seem to be becoming.

If anyone has experienced a panic-attack, or is knowlageable of them, you know that one of the signature, classic, and paramount symptoms is the feeling of “dread” of that you are actually going to die imminently.

Now I have  had enough panic attacks in my life to know that I am not going to die. It’s the feeling. For me, the “Dread” is simply the “Im out of control of my body and surroundings” that is the clincher for me.

What I am getting at though is I had this full blown panic attack in the middle of a major California Interstate Freeway. So, the “panic” increases several fold when I realize the amount of people around me and the fact that I am sitting in such a machine of mass destruction of carnage if I were really to lose control.  I am a Christian. I frankly don’t fear dying. We all know that sometimes leaving this world would be a welcomed respite. Not to say that I don’t have regret. When I think of dying instantly or tragicly, what I think of is not the deep spirtual stuff, and Where Am I at with God? that I might want to be debriefing on. My Ideal self wants these things.  My True Self  thinks of all that went unsaid; The people I didn’t get to see; the last hugs I couldn’t give; the last words of appreciation not said; The hole I will leave in others lives, and the grieving and pain that they will go through.

So, I immediately start to pray those emergency, begging, pleading, “God help me, God help me, soothe me, calm me.. You Are With Me, … I Am Yours, I Am Safe… dire prayers.

I want that to be enough… but in that very moment it wasn’t.  For the first time ever, I actually had to put on my hazard-lights until I could find a place to pull over. Problem was..  I wasn’t in the far right lane.. I would have to work my way over.. (now with only hazard lights and the inability to indicate merging right) to get over to the shoulder. Not easy.  Cars are thankfully going around me.. as I can’t gain control enough (thankfully, in an ironic sense) to go much above 40 MPH. And they see my Hazard Lights.

When I have had other anxiety issues while driving, one of my predominant anxious thoughts is that I am going to hit the acelerator all the way to the floor and knock out about fiver cars in front of me, or T-bone the cars going through the intersection.  This has never, ever, ever, occured in all my years of driving. At a red-light I will even put in in “Park” if I feel I can’t be safe.  And God has always, always, always, protected me.

So, never really finding a shoulder safe-enough to pull over on so I could take some medication to quell the attack that was inches away in my purse, I finally decide to coast off into an exit.  Of course, I realized I was now pulling off into one of the most gang-prone areas of the City. It’s a standing joke in newspapers (not that’s it’s funny or a joke) but if a gang-affiliated shooting or murder happened.. it happened here.

And that’s the part of town I found myself in. Nightmare, right?

All I want to do is pull over long enough to grab  my medicine, down it (with no water, or anything–dry, down-the hatch) wait about 5 minutes long enough for it to start to work, and head home.  But in my then current surroundings, frankly I was afraid to be a white girl pulled over in a car just sitting around for any reason.

Somehow I managed to down the medicine while at a red-light, and I started to head back towards the freeway.  I knew that in a few minutes, I would be more in control,and could at least make it home.  I made it home finally, never actually getting on the freeway, but taking major surface streets. I felt comforted and like God was with me in the fact that even though I felt like I got off the freeway quite a ways from my normal exit, I really wasn’t all that far from home.  It took a ton more gas that I am sad about, but it maybe was only 20 minutes longer.

More later on this storage of needed to released blog posts. I promise.  Right now, I think I might go back to bed.  After all, I think Im sick. Maybe thats where I should be.

600 PAGES OF NEW DOCUMENTS!

Is the prosecuting nerd in me excited or WHAT!?