Please read this lovely column in the Chicago Tribune wherein an advice columnist informs a girl that her rape was her fault for going to a frat party and committing the heinous crime of drinking while in possession of a vagina. http://www.chicagotribune.com/chi-1127-ask-amynov27,0,759611.column?page=1

Feel free to email Ask Amy at askamy@tribune.com and cc the editors at ctc-editor@tribune.com, JWinnecke@tribune.com, bdold@tribune.com, JHirt@tribune.com, BAdee@tribune.com to let them know your opinion on her views.

I've already let them know my opinion and that I will no longer be purchasing their newspaper until Ask Amy is gone.

It's never the victim's fault, only their bad luck at being in the presence of a rapist.

I have two days off in a row. "Woo!" you may think.

Oh no. Not so much.

See, despite the fact that EVERY manager is off today and tomorrow, Corporate said we HAD to be off those days this week, my Territorial VP is going to be visiting stores. I WAS on the list for 10 am today.

At 9:30 pm last night I got the call- "well, she keeps changing her mind on when, so just get ready and be ready both afternoons, and I'll call you if we're coming!"

Fan fucking tastic.

I now get to spend my days off this week unable to fucking DO anything, because I have to be in dress code and ready to spring to my store at a moments notice.

I'm livid. It's Holiday, I don't GET many days off and I NEED that time to recover, because, shockingly, HOLIDAY IS STRESSFUL FOR US STORE-LEVEL PEONS.

No matter how bad it gets, remember. You are no longer at Stratford.

It occurs to me that the walls in my house are rather bare. I know a few things that will be put up when I obtain them, but it's still going to be bare. There are a few posters (that will be taken down and relocated from the common areas when James leaves) but not really anything else.

So, people planning to get me stuff for Yule and other reasons- get me wall decor. Paintings, plaques, tchotchkys (sp?) anything. Particularly to hang in the bathroom. Although I do not want seashells in the bathroom. No ocean theme there, thanks. In fact, I think after the holidays this year, I'm going to redecorate in there with sea foam green and purple. Because the beige towels and bathmats have gotten a bit nasty, and at least if I put down purple it will hide dye stains better.

I think I may have gotten sick. Again. The right side of my throat is all swollen and painful, and my ear on that side itches. Fabulous. I need to go to the store before work.

I'm getting all nesty again. My garden and therefore my desire to improve the outside of the house is gone, along with my desire to BE outside (it's COLD!). So I'm improving the inside. And it needs a lot of improvement.

This year, I think my goal is to repair the two holes in the wall (I need drywall for that) and paint the dining room. Before May, when I will no longer be interested in the inside, but go back to my garden. That doesn't seem like a lot to do, until you realize that I work retail. It's almost Holiday. One week and two days to go. Between Nov. 1 and January 9 of this year, I will not be able to breathe, I will be so busy. I think I'll talk to Selena about taking a 3 day weekend (though it may be in the middle of the week) in February, when I get personal time again.

So I work in a college town. In retail. This means I have a TON of applications coming in. And I'm thinking about hiring someone for holiday (since they may be stealing my Assistant Manager for a different store). So here, my dear readers, is a list of dos and don'ts culled from those applications. All are true.

Do- fill out the references. I need those just in case I hire you.
Don't- use 'my boyfriend' or 'my friend' or 'my rehab counselor' as references.

Do- fill out your availability completely.
Don't- state that you can work only after 6 pm any night of the week when we close at 8, and you 'will discuss' Saturday and Sunday. This is retail. You'll be working Saturday and Sunday. There is no discussion.
Don't- only write 'AM' or 'PM' in the little boxes. This tells me nothing. I have enough applications that you're not even getting a call back.

Do- fill out the front of the application completely.
Don't- write in that you were arrested for underage consumption in April (application is from August) but it was removed from your record. If it's removed from your record, why are you telling me?
Don't- write a paragraph about your school in the little box where you check 'yes' or 'no' for 'did you graduate?' I don't care. Honestly. If you have the availability, I really, REALLY could care less if your 'PhD in Underwater Basketweaving will be completed in fall of 2040, when you'll continue on to attain several more valuable degrees and you really do intend to remain a college student all your life, don't you?' Got a good availability? Got education or business references? Work history, including retail? Sweet. I'm calling you.

Do- fill out previous job history completely.
Don't- write a cutesy little paragraph on how you have no job history, but you're totally pumped for this to be your first job! I'm not hiring an utter noob during Holiday. You probably wrote that on all 352 applications you dropped off today.
Don't- leave job history blank, then use your previous boss and coworkers as references. If you don't want me checking where you worked before THAT BAD, I don't want to hire you. Additionally, if you just totally didn't realize you were supposed to write your job history down or forgot to? Yeah. I don't want to hire you either.

Do- come in to grab your application or drop it off and chat with us. Smile and be positive.
Don't- come in to grab your application and fill it out while your toddler runs rampant through the store ripping things off pegs.
Don't- bitch and moan about how you really, really don't want to work, you just need the money.
Don't- come in with your boyfriend and\or a group of your BFFs, then stand around vacantly giggling, trying stuff on and dropping it on the floor, or indulge in a lot of PDA.
Don't- try chatting with us while we are performing a piercing, assisting other customers or ringing sales.

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed (or maybe underwhelmed) right now. I just scheduled an appointment for a Mirena insertion on October 7 with Planned Parenthood.

And it was ridiculously easy. They could have gotten me in a week earlier, I just wanted to wait to get paid again. I'm feeling a bit weird about this. I feel as though it should have been harder.

As my sister said "sometimes you don't HAVE to fight to get what you want." I'm not used to that.

My father, his girlfriend Melanie and their two daughters, my sisters Somara and Sienna, were down here over Labor Day weekend. Now Somara (henceforth referred to as Sammy) is about 4, Sienna was two months old. We had breakfast together and during that time, I told Melanie that I would be sending both girls a copy of "The Crow", white face paint, black lipstick, black eyeliner and a Hot Topic t-shirt when they turned 13. "Instant goth- just add water!" She turned to my dad and told him "if your daughters do that to MY daughters, we are going to have words!" Now, all of this was said in a teasing manner.

But I'm halfway serious. Because I view it as a protective measure. See, in our family kids get whacked out right around that age. Maybe all families, but I only know about mine. And I remember the way my high school worked. If all they do is go goth and pick up a cigarette and pot habit, they're in good shape.

In my high school, we had a nasty drug problem. And the goth kids tended to not have it as bad as the preppy kids. (Besides, being a preppy kid takes money for new clothes, something I never had and my siblings probably won't either.) Example- a few years ago a kid followed his friend home from a party. He shouldn't have been driving, but they were afraid to take his keys away. He was drunk out of his mind. He wrapped himself around a tree in my mother's yard. Preppy kid. When I was IN high school there was an 'accidental shooting'. I remember the kid. I'm pretty sure it was suicide. Heroin was pretty common, coke more so. And you needed money for those. So the goth kids, who tended to be broke, weren't doing as much of those. The goth kids were smoking up, sure. So was almost everyone there. Pot was cheap. So were cigarettes and booze. So the goth kids smoked, drank and walked out of high school with fewer unintended pregnancies. Either they were using BC more, or they had come to terms with aborting.

Given the options probably available to my sisters? I'd rather they be goth kids. It's safer. So they dye their hair. It grows. Shave their head? Again, hair grows. Get piercings? Well, they can close over. If these are the wost things they do, then they'll be all right.

So yesterday J and I went to a shooting range. And I learned that yes, I can point a gun, pull the trigger, and it will go roughly where I want it. I also learned that I overheat faster than electronics do. It was mildly entertaining. I'd probably go again, but not on a regular basis.

Wedding update- One of J's friends (um... J2?)just got himself ordained so that he can do this thing for us. So now our plans are to meet up, sign stuff and go do something fun. No fucking ceremony. Period. I will be wearing jeans and a t-shirt. I'm going to try to talk them around to going to the aquarium to play with the sharks after. I swear, this is going to be the most stress free, relaxed, low key wedding EVER. I honestly don't like weddings in the first place, I never wanted my own and if my mother doesn't like it, too fucking bad. She HAD her fairytale wedding. I don't want one.

With everything going on, I made sure to discuss some things with J again. Such as 'if I get knocked up and abort, are you going to be okay?' And 'If this doesn't stop being convenient, and we have no reason to divorce, are you going to be upset you never had kids?' Largely because I'm not used to people not having a strong response to these things. Fortunately, despite his lack of strong response, he answered all questions correctly.

I've told most of the family that I intend to about getting married. I actually got a really positive response from the aunts (all two of them) that I told once they found out that the government would be paying half of my college fees- without me having to pay them back. And then Aunt A told me she might be entering into a 'domestic partnership' with HER best friend so that her friend could get health insurance.

Part of me is thinking how fucked up these situations are. Why should anyone HAVE to tie their life to anothers for reasons like these, purely material reasons. Then I seriously consider it.

Women have done this for thousands of years. The concept of marrying for an ephemeral reason like love is a relatively new concept.

The system is fucked. Getting to college (or trade school) is one of the few ways to try and gain stability and marketability in our country. It is the only way you can really leave the chain of dead end jobs or even advance past a certain point. Experience, sadly, doesn't count for as much as a degree. And it is fucking expensive to get that degree. (Thanks Dad! I know how much more important it was for you to move 6 hours north than for me to go to school! So don't bitch about me getting married so that I can afford to go without crippling loans!)

And as for health insurance? Well. That system is COMPLETELY fucked. I begin to think it's fucked past repair and needs to be torn down and rebuilt from the ground up.

That was the best joygasm I've ever had.

So. I've been playing Batman: Arkham Asylum. And I'm in love.

I'm so squee over this game, you have no idea.

Like, seriously? Told my mom I was gonna grow up and marry the Joker when I was 5. (Maybe that should have given her a hint?)

And I'm not sucking! Not too much, anyways!

I'm playing the game on Easy mode, since I really suck at action games, fighting games, most puzzle games... you know, anything not a turn based RPG. (Or WoW.) And I'm actually making my way through the game, because it is a button masher's dream. X is attack. So far, I need no fancy combos. Detective mode vision means I can see skeletons through walls. I can sneak up behind henchmen and do a silent takedown. I can HANG UPSIDE DOWN and truss them up, leaving them hanging. I can grapple away from a lot of danger.

I am the night. I am... BATMAN.

...so. The Scarecrow boss fight scared the crap out of me. My heart was pounding and I had a massive adrenalin rush. Bane is currently stumping me, since I suck at action games, and he's definitely one of the action bosses. Perhaps I shouldn't say that, since I only tried fighting Bane once.

But god damn. It's Batman. And it's the Joker, and they're real characters so far, not hackneyed parodies of themselves like some movie or comic book games. Hell, they even got Mark Hamill back as the motherfucking Joker voice. (Luke, you are... the Joker?)

Okay. I can settle down. I can stop gushing. I swear I can. (I love them all so... oh Harley...)

There is a reason why I am not now sitting on the couch with a very happy, cuddly adolescent dog in my lap.

So on Saturday night I got a text asking me if I knew anyone who wanted a dog. I thought about it, and realized that my mother and sister were considering a buddy for their dog Cobalt. Cobalt has been acting EXTREMELY depressed and lonely lately. Got in contact with the friend of a friend who had the dog.

Young female dog, seen running loose 7 or 8 times, almost hit her with the car once. Oh yeah, and she's in heat. Girl's own female dog doesn't like the young one, but young one seems okay with the other (male) dogs. Seems to be tolerably okay with cats, but will chase them if they run.

So Mom and Diane go out to meet the girl and the dog. They take her home. Two things happen: dog REALLY wants those cats, and Diane freaks out about change. So my sister's stressed, the dog is stressed, Cobalt gets stressed. They call me. Fine. I drive out at 9 pm on a work night and swap dogs. They take Buffy, who is known to my sister so she doesn't freak and is known to Cobalt and the cats. I take the new dog, name her Nadiya, and we put her in the spare bedroom. Not an ideal situation, but we've got plans in motion.

I call an animal behaviorist that works with the rescue out here. She asks about Nadiya's behavior when there's a door between her and the cats. She's not going ballistic, so it's likely that she's never killed a cat, and may not be aggressive, just young, curious, playful and hasn't been exposed to cats very much before. She also mentions that it takes 72 hours to get a dog accustomed to new circumstances. We're working out a time for an initial assessment. Her fees will kind of suck. But they're spread out enough that this is doable. So long as it isn't aggression. Those fees REALLY suck.

But now I'm in an odd position. I like this dog. But I can't have her and Buffy. And honestly, I'm TIRED of shelling out money that my mother and sister will benefit from in ways that have nothing to do with me. I'm actually really resentful. Especially since they now seem to assume that I'll just do it with no complaints. Keeping her with my mother and sister would be bad, as the behaviorist won't drive that far, and they won't keep up with Nadiya's training. Well, Mom won't. Diane will try, then Mom will undermine it by doing things however the hell she wants to. I don't want to give up Buffy. Despite how much I complain about her, I do love my dog. I miss her when she is not here. But Cobalt was getting dangerously depressed living by himself and Diane just freaks the fuck out way too easily when things change.

Mom and Diane don't really want to keep Buffy, either. I just can't think of any way that this is going to go well. Either Co will be alone and depressed and stop eating, or my sister will be a bundle of nerves that eventually will upset any dog they get, or they'll try to deal with Nadiya and get nowhere since my mother CANNOT FUCKING FOLLOW DIRECTIONS EVER or I lose my dog.

I'm so tired of this shit. I don't want to be the Great Family Savior. I don't want to be the one rousted out of bed when something goes wrong. I don't want to continually sacrifice things for the good of others.

Nadiya's so damned sweet. I feel really bad that she's confined to the spare room for half the day, but right now I have no other options. I've been switching off between her being loose and the cats being loose.

I really don't know what the fuck I'm going to do here. The local rescue could take her, and if it's aggression, they're going to, because I can't afford those fees, and honestly I really don't want to have to work at managing that aggression for the rest of her life. My mother won't. Nadiya would do just fine in a no cats household. She LOVES people. She thinks they're just giant laps.

We'll see.

We bought rings today.

Commence Fuzzball's "Wonder Twin Powers, activate!" Every few seconds.

Like living with a damned five year old.



...I'm panicking.

I had nasty, unpleasant dreams last night. I know why for most of it. Last week I found a flea on Naru's chin. So all of the pets got their flea medications, and I started to itch. I know it's mostly in my mind, but I itch like crazy. Last night, before I went to bed, I found a flea on my leg. Just one, and then I soaked myself in the bath, put everything but my nose underwater and tried to drown the little bastards. Then I sprayed everything with dilute tea tree oil.

In my dream I had bleached my hair, and it was really short, so you could see my scalp. Which had nasty red flea bites ALL over it. I washed my hair over and over to try and get rid of them, and every time I raised my head out of the basin of water I was washing it in, I had to empty it because the water was full of dead fleas.

And then for some reason, don't ask me why, there were bands calling my cell phone asking for me and wanting me to sing backup vocals (lol whut?) but I was too embarrassed of the flea bites to go. So I walked into this building and found myself holding a sniper rifle. I was in a room, and I knew that the man walking outside was a serial killer. I was competing with the other people in the room to see who could kill him, because he hadn't been caught. It was official and legal, somehow I knew this as well. And the serial killer looked like Eddie Izzard, which I even thought in my dream was weird.

So I shot him in the head. Then I woke up.

....I still itch.

I gun pierce. I know why I gun pierce, and I've read the literature on why it's bad and realize that a lot of it is massively outdated or otherwise currently untrue.

Got a problem with that?

Let's discuss it here. No flaming idiocy, please. No "U R EEEBIL!! I NO LISTEN!!! NEEDLE GOOD, GUN BAAAAD. FOURLEGS GOOD, TWOLEGS BAAAD." Discuss. Be intelligent. I will listen for as long as you will, if not longer.

Well, since the only person I was worried about knows anyways...

So, you know how James is joining the Air Force?

Yeah... well... if he were married, she'd get Army medical, a housing stipend and half her college paid for.

Do you see where this is going?

I want to go and be a psychologist.

So, we're gonna do this thing to get me to school and keep our bills paid. Let's face it, we're practically married anyways and everyone assumes we're a couple when we're in public.

No, it's not a big deal.

No, we don't want anyone to buy us anything. Wedding showers are meant to give a couple the stuff they need to have a household together. And we already have that stuff. And we're not a couple.

Srsly, NOT A BIG DEAL. No matter how much my parents and his mother and brother seem to want to make it one.

I'm sick.

Again.

Head hurts, body hurts, fever, sore throat and stuffed nose.

And I'm pissy because my roommate is up\downloading so much shit that I have to reload this page five times to get it to not time out. Then it loads like we had dial up.

Fucking hell.

The first thing I noticed about Canada? Everything is shiny. EVERYTHING. Cars, roads, everything. Toronto is... amazing. I'm totally in love. It's a city with plants. A pedestrian city with friendly, helpful people. Hell, the graffiti is even socially responsible. Across from our hotel is a beaten up, abandoned Victorian house with 'shame' and 'restore me' painted on the boarded-up doors.

I think I'm in love.

Yesterday we walked around the city for 8 hours. The gay village, the shopping area, Chinatown, the bohemian areas, walked around the college, past the museum... it was incredible.

Today we went to Niagara Falls. It was very pretty. And boring. And super-touristy. The best bit was hanging out with Diane and Nina's friend Zach.

Pictures and details later.

It's amazing how far things can slide in your life without really noticing. I only realized Thursday how miserable I had been for how many months. Because Thursday I was happy. All day.

And all I did was run some errands and go shopping for the garden. Oh. And weed the garden and prune my roses.

Now, I'm sure it helped that Menards had last year's bare root roses for $3.50 with a $2 rebate. And they had three Blue Girls in really good shape as well as an Heirloom in decent shape. I've missed my Blue Girls and Heirloom. Heirloom smells so good, and is such a nice purple shade. And Fuzz helped me pick out two climbers, Pinata and Joseph's Coat, which are gold with red edges. I still can't find either a Sterling Silver or its cousin Stainless Steel, which makes me VERY SAD. I miss that rose so much. Damn, they were beautiful. (If you want pictures, www.olive-trees.net has a good gallery.) And Pure Poetry roses seem to have vanished. By the way, if anyone finds those three roses, tell me. I will buy them. I don't want to pay $16 plus shipping per rose, plus I really don't like shopping online. I want my stuff NOW.

And I've digressed. Sorry. I really love my roses.

But. I was really happy all day. And I cannot remember the last time that happened. I love my job again. It may be boring, but I can sit in the back for hours reading a book and no one cares, because it's easy enough to keep perfect. I'm not killing myself with an hour's drive to work and an hour back. I'm recovering. I'm picking up my hobbies again, I'm socializing more, hermiting less, I see my family, my grandmother once a week. I had no idea it had gotten this bad. Sorry guys.

So. Back to my garden. Fuzz dug up our vegetable garden plot. We're planting three kinds of pumpkins. Traditional Jack-O-Lanterns, pumpkins that grow up to 200 pounds, and pumpkins supposed to get up to 500 pounds. The last two are all Fuzz. He wants them as ammo for the roof-mounted trebuchet. Ahem. We're also growing watermelons, carrots, tomatoes, potatoes (red, of course) and yellow onions. I want an herb garden, and we're figuring out where to put that. I already started some sage, thyme, basil, cilantro and Fuzz's mom bought a rosemary plant. She also bought us a blueberry bush, and Fuzz and I bought a blackberry bush. I'm stealing some black raspberry canes from my mother's, where they grow wild. I bought a crapton of seed packets for flowers. I want moonflowers on a trellis by my window. I love moonflowers. There are a bunch of sunflowers, my black flowers, black nasturtium, white nasturtium, columbine, all sorts of stuff.

And my roses. Six new ones, five already in the lawn. Can you tell we don't really want a lawn? We want one big garden. The roses are going in a row in the front, except for the climbers. Those are going on trellises on either side of the front corner of the house next to the driveway. And Fuzz loved marigolds around the mailbox, so he's doing that again this year. I'm thinking about getting an electric-blue iris. Everything else may be black, white, purple or burgundy, but... it's so shiny.