I went on vacation that turned into a REAL vacation! I forgot my laptop cord and was unable to do anything on here! I was cut off from all of technology; it was a trip and a half. I’m way behind! Looks like my bloggers took a vacation as well! Poezebel is up and running again. I will have a post up by tomorrow.

I’m trying not to ride my writers; but, I’m always looking for new ones! Contact me if you’re interested.

Thanks for the patience!

☮ღⒶ

~P*

I live in an area of the “city” where parking is always an issue, especially in the winter months. Now; I put that word in quotes because the city I’m in is more like a big town with a city-like atmosphere. Not everyone knows one another, but, the setup is similar; it just is not large enough.

Now, the law is simple. Put some little round metallic objects into various machines located in the area, you’ll have to figure out what it looks like depending on what street you are on. After that, you will receive a ticket, or not, depending on the robot you are working with. If you receive a ticket you MUSN’T carry it on your person, but put it inside the car you drove to prove that you are parked legally for the set amount of time in direct correlation to how many little round metallic, big brother approved objects you dispensed into the robot to park in consumer areas. Make sure it is somewhere the trolls can see.

If you carried the ticket, or placed it on the floor or seat of the car where these trolls can’t see, or even put it in the wrong way, you will receive a love note; because of course nobody can forget to buy a ticket! If you get a love note from the troll under your windshield wiper you can choose to either, pay the ticket and not be disturbed with your disgruntled lover or take the matter up to him with some disputations. If you can prove that you are in compliance with the law, you can reduce or dispose of the love note’s asking price; if you do not give them what they want, big brother approved sheets of cotton or dispute, they can make it so you cannot drive your personal robot. That makes life a lot more difficult if you get your sheets of cotton and metallic objects from appealing to consumers in consumer areas.

In the winter, residential areas are also a target for these trolls. Don’t be mad at them though, big brother pays them to do these things that disturb your day because big brother loves you so much, or maybe they love cotton and shiny things; who knows? Anyhow; residential parking laws are a little more tedious than consumer parking laws. During the winter you need to be conscious of what side of the street you park. You see, these relatively and mostly and sometimes flat areas of painted rock that we use as tracks for our rubberized mobilizing aluminum robotic death machines are used by multiple people for teleportation intents and purposes. When we all park on one side when the fluffy white stuff lines, or doesn’t line, the street we are less likely to be involved in accidents that hinder our teleportation. Makes some sense right?

What you have to do is think of tomorrow’s numerical association, let us say that today is Friday the 13^th; tomorrow is Saturday the 14^th. So tonight you have to think about tomorrow’s date as a map of where to park on the street. So 14 is even; and 14 is the numerical day of tomorrow; therefore you have to park on the side of the street where all the houses are even numbers. So the house numbers with the last digit of 0, 2, 4, 6 and 8 are safe to park at; not 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9. The night of the numerical day 14 you will park on the opposite side (1, 3, 5, 7 and 9). Not too difficult. Exceptions are roads where you can only park on one side; then this doesn’t matter, leave your robot.

Now, if you forget to move your car, or get confused, you are subjected to another love note. They want twenty-five of your lowest denomination big brother approved cotton sheets as a punishment for not obeying the law; and they will be upset if you pay with metallic objects. Again, if you feel your lover is being too harsh you can bring it up to him and he will, of course, correct his wrong. Or hold his breath until he turns blue and you pay your fine; I mean love note.

Occasionally, when you are driving long distance you will come across a beggar station. This station is set up to collect federal cotton, and they will humbly accept handfuls of metallic objects as well. The kicker is that you cannot pass these boxes if you do not have any big brother approved currency in the form of cotton sheets and metallic objects. This is a troll booth. You cannot pass without giving the beggar troll one sheet of lowest denomination cotton or even three sheets and some metallic objects. Maybe even more sometimes! They always get what they want if you want to teleport efficiently. Sometimes these can be avoided, but, sometimes they are made to be a barrier.

Every time I make the trip to visit my father I keep an eye out for a memory. Two trailers on the right hand side, one was blue, and a large house on a hill. There were steps from the road to the house and a road right past the yard. It was white, but it was so dark that night.

        My mother was driving us to have a weekend with my father, I was young, fifteen, maybe? She asked me to be ready late that evening for our road trip and was running very late home from work. She had forgotten something at work that just couldn’t wait until Monday! We were an hour behind schedule for our already very late evening road trip.
She handed me a cigarette, and taught me how to properly dispose of one out of the window. Yeah. My mom taught me how to litter the “right way”. We sang a long to the radio and she was so surprised I knew the tunes of her teenage years! We were bonding. In our very strange way.
It was about three in the morning at this point and her me and the dog were taken aback as we see flames rising from this building.
“FIRE!” I hollered and the car came to a screeching halt!
We left the puppy in the car and split up. She went to check to see if anyone was in the house and I went for help. I knocked on the doors to both trailers and hollered for somebody, anybody, to come and help. It was no use, nobody was awake. I ran across the street, as my mother was looking for something to start putting the fire out.
The lady of the house was crying and phoning for help. I look down and see a gasoline can; somebody set this fire. It was arson! I grab the hose from my mother and point it at the fire that was steadily engulfing the two stories as she ran to the nozzle to turn it on. We took turns hosing the fire and making sure this woman was okay from this traumatic incident.
The woman told us her newly ex-husband and herself were spatting, he was not the best man and she firmly believed he set the fire not knowing she was in the house. She had just gotten home from drinking with her friends and her car was not at home. When my mom found her, she was stark naked and passed out from overindulgence of alcohol.

          When the fire department finally showed up, the fire had already been put out. They assessed the scene and determined what we had already known, it wasn’t an accident. I remember the woman saying that she would call us, she kept calling us angels! She never called, we never found the paper to prove we were there and if everything went according to plan… we wouldn’t even have been!
I do hope that she is doing better than she was on that night. I cannot even find that place.

While cleaning out my closet I discovered a number of things that alarmed me and calmed me. First of all I found a pretty full bottle of chocolate syrup. Not sure what the fuck I was doing with that. And then I found a tin of treasure! Which wasn’t as exciting as I wanted it to be. But, nonetheless, amazing! I found some fortunes in a jar of coins I forgot I had; a costume collection that just keeps growing, and of course what amounts to three or four loads of laundry! And now that my closet is clean; the rest of my space is cluttered.

Now, isn’t that the way that the world works in general, in a metaphorical sense? When you spend the best years of your life hiding who you are and you finally drag all of that out of the closet; now you have a mess of your public image intermingled with what you hide from the room. I’ve worn my crazy on my sleeve since day 2, I don’t open up often and when I do I pretty much regret it; every time. But, if I could just be me all the time and not regret it I feel that life would just be that much easier. If I could just wear my costumes as I want to, instead of when it is “allowed” I could express myself more clearly. I wouldn’t mind walking around town wearing over the knee boots paired with a long skirt, lacy top and a masquerade mask with a nerf on my hip and a fox tail on my belt. Do I really care if people stare? Not really; I pretty much dress like that all year round. Fuck Halloween. I am a character; I don’t just play one in the movies. Okay, I guess the fox tail and the mask only come out on special occasions, and the nerf for parties, but, really. A staple in my wardrobe is a belt that jingles! Actually my Halloween costume this last year was that of a normal girl wearing a black dress, fox tail and a boulder hat with a nerf gun holstered at my waist. I was a gangster fox or something, nobody asked; and nobody asked “what the fox say” without shots fired.

There is just something so hard in admitting that we all keep a part of ourselves hidden away like we hide our messes in our closets. I opened a shoe box from the very back of my closet that contained items from my first boyfriend! I was shocked and quickly closed the box and put it back. A bonfire is in order! We all carry things with us that even we prefer to leave behind. A hidden side to ourselves; our closets. This hidden box of things that we conceal and carry around with us as reminders to ourselves of what we want and don’t want for ourselves. The locket we would prefer be melted shut, but, alas, we carry it around our neck and check the contents periodically to ensure we are on the right path. Or, maybe, we don’t even realize we are carrying these things around, such as my memory box containing an item of clothing from the first guy I ever told “I love you” too. Maybe they are sealed away until a time when we are able to handle the contents from within.

I believe I carried that box with me to later on prove to myself that I never actually let go of my ex. Not in the way you are all thinking at this point. I have dated this guy many of times since we broke up, all in the forms of new beaus. Insecure, jealous, unsure men with which I spend a year or more with attempting to bring up their confidence levels so that I may finally enjoy being in the relationship. I have tried so hard to disassociate myself from these kinds of men, but, I always jump in head first like an idiot. In the beginning they are always kind and sweet; Wayne would pick me up for a date, at the ripe age of fifteen, with an energy drink and occasionally a bouquet of flowers. They always appear so confident, maybe even cocky; Dean used to strut around like a rooster for all the ladies but get very unnerved when I would complain about the asshole at work using the typical “I’m an asshole; look at me!” approach to flirting, he actually came into my work once EEEK. Vincent; he used to get pissed off at me when men flirted with me, anywhere, and we had agreed to an open relationship. And this was all just the men from before I was old enough to drink.

I’ve gotten better at spotting them, but, I still make mistakes. Something else I noticed while cleaning my closet; it’s cold in there and I can completely sympathize with small children afraid of what is behind the closet door. An extra room in your bedroom where you are not supposed to play. What exactly is behind that door? It is a place in your house that you don’t use for living. In the beginning of my teenage years, my mother got so mad at me because I took the fan doors off of my closet to utilize the space. It became a library; an entertainment center; and for a small portion of time the head of my bed was squeezed in there! When she finally came around to the concept and saw what could be done with the storage space, if you used it, she did the same in my little brother’s room; though, he ended up with visible storage instead of extra space. She also got mad at me once for turning my single bedroom into a three room space; I created angles and it obscured her view into my bedroom so she could no longer check to see if I was breathing at night. I had an entry way, an art studio and a bedroom all squeezed into my very small room. She saw me as abnormal; the only storage I had was under my bed. I guess, I’ve never been one for hiding rooms of storage about myself.

I encourage everyone to take the moments that they need to go into their metaphorical closets; to go into yourself and to at least see what you carry with you and how that mirrors with what you have. Actually, just clean your closet out; see what you literally carried with you! The key to happiness does not come in having what you want, but in wanting what you have!

**Names have been changed**

Everything you do in life is a learning process. Unfortunately, I haven’t completely obtained my vision for this website. It will, however, be a collaboration of different writers. I’m hoping to have some different topics to surf through here including blogs of varying topics, some art, as many opinions as I can manage to fit in here and perhaps some advertising of small businesses.
Please be patient with us as we work out all the kinks! :)
Contact me if you have any ideas!
Thanks!
~P*