dans ma cour

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Sun Dec 6

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

last dance with mary jane // tom petty

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It's no wonder..

You know, it really is quite easy to see how the holidays manage to help keep mental health professionals in business.

Every holiday there seems to be some thing that stirs up something unpleasant within my stepfather. I am unsure if I can truly recall a time where we have had a peaceful holiday celebration when he was involved. There has always been some sort of issue.

The past week or so, it has been building. Everyone feels it. It’s no secret, really… in fact, it is a feeling that is hard to miss, yet difficult to explain. You cannot walk by him without wanting to pick up your pace and avoid any sort of confrontation. Don’t look him in the eye.. if conversation is necessary, keep it minimal, just enough to humor him. Pretend everything is normal. Brace yourself and stiffen when he enters the room, expecting the worst. Even the dogs skulk away with their tails inbetween their legs in his presence. We tiptoe down the halls, living in fear, worrying about who or what is going to finally set him off. Heaven forbid you dare to breathe wrong. Always remember to keep your mouth shut (My mother is not very good at this, however). Who will he choose to direct his anger at this time? Although, I must say, it is not him that is feared. He is merely a miserable man that has his own share of inner demons. We simply just would rather not take part in the manifestations of said inner demons that are released within his awful rage. His tantrums are obnoxious more than anything, but it is not to say that they are taken lightly. We try to comfort ourselves and shrug them off, but they still affect us regardless. No matter how ridiculous or childish the reason his outbursts may be in pertinence to, they are often terrible, angry, and ugly.

Despite even when there is company around for the holidays, he can only keep his anger at bay for so long. The illusion of safety that there are others there to witness his behavior is transient. Eventually, the ugly anger overrides the guise of the proper, polite, wonderful man he tries to be. For example, allow me to drag you back a few weeks to my Thanksgiving night. This year’s Thanksgiving, we ended up having some half-unexpected company which I believe somehow inspired my stepfather to try and put on a show of sorts.

Basically, at some point during the day my stepfather found some Thanksgiving prayer that he wanted everyone to read at the dinner table that evening. He started to get hyped up about it in a way that I recognize often leads to trouble, but I chose to ignore it. When a guest that was supposed to initially read the prayer had to leave before dinner, he suddenly had to ensure everyone was still going to read it at dinner. Just as my mother and I were serving some bowls of soup and bringing them to the dining room, he waltzes into the kitchen and demands my mom’s presence at the dinner table. Anyhow, a little episode much along these lines ensued:

Stepdad: Please come and sit at the dinner table. We’re going to read this prayer.
Mother: Can’t you see I’m a little preoccupied right now? Give me a bit, I’ll be right there.
Stepdad: Just come over now.
Mother: I’ll go when the soup has been served to everyone.
Stepdad: Oh, F*** YOU! (proceeds to dramatically throw the papers with the prayer written upon them and stomps out of the kitchen)
Me: Uhh.. Happy Thanksgiving!

Needless to say, my mom didn’t really appreciate my attempt at humor in regards to the situation.

So, uh, yea. Now, as Christmas is approaching, there are a number of factors that have a way of adding up to his anger, never mind inner demons of the past. Currently though, his supposedly main reason for being upset lately is that he wants to travel to Canada for Christmas, but my mother and I don’t exactly think it is the best idea. For one, my stepdad has a way of doing things that involve him worrying about the cost of it after he has thrown his cash in all directions. Plus, flying is somewhat strenuous, and our passports have to be renewed. My mom cannot leave her newly-opened office. Not to mention, with all of our animals it isn’t exactly easy to leave our house behind for two weeks. Sigh. And so on and so forth…

Anyway, so there. To sum it up: He is disgruntled over the fact that he doesn’t get to take a trip and run away from his issues at home. Besides that, he needs to occupy himself somehow because being home doesn’t really do it for him—considering he spends the majority of his time watching TV. He must also be disappointed that won’t have any brag-worthy stories to tell anyone when he returns to work after his break, either. Really, those are the only reasons I can see as to why he would be so wrought with such negativity over the simple fact that my mother doesn’t think it is best to travel anywhere for Christmas this year.

The thing is, why get so upset over something so trivial? Or is the fact that we simply do not have the means to travel actually something worth being incredibly upset about? Childishly slamming doors, blasting the television, blowing people off or treating them like scum in some way or another (all ways to seek attention and purposely provoke my mother).. is it really worth it? Or is there something much more the he himself cannot even begin to realize as the true source of this anger?

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There’s something about this video I like, and I can’t quite put my finger on it. So, as with many of the things I enjoy, I am now here to share it with you.

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Wed Dec 2

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

loveyourchaos:

owltreethree:

zoee:

Death Cab for Cutie - Soul Meets Body

Cause in my head there’s a greyhound station
Where I send my thoughts to far off destinations
So they may have a chance of finding a place
where they’re far more suited than here

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Tue Dec 1

Confession #22

I kind of forgot about these confession posts for a while. Oops.

~~I NEED TO STOP PROCRASTINATING!~~

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Think You're Multitasking? Think Again (NPR)

psychotherapy:

“People can’t multitask very well, and when people say they can, they’re deluding themselves,” said neuroscientist Earl Miller. And, he said, “The brain is very good at deluding itself.”

Miller, a Picower professor of neuroscience at MIT, says that for the most part, we simply can’t focus on more than one thing at a time.

What we can do, he said, is shift our focus from one thing to the next with astonishing speed.

“Switching from task to task, you think you’re actually paying attention to everything around you at the same time. But you’re actually not,” Miller said.

“You’re not paying attention to one or two things simultaneously, but switching between them very rapidly.”

Miller said there are several reasons the brain has to switch among tasks. One is that similar tasks compete to use the same part of the brain.

“Think about writing an e-mail and talking on the phone at the same time. Those things are nearly impossible to do at the same time,” he said.

“You cannot focus on one while doing the other. That’s because of what’s called interference between the two tasks,” Miller said. “They both involve communicating via speech or the written word, and so there’s a lot of conflict between the two of them.”

Researchers say they can actually see the brain struggling. And now they’re trying to figure out the details of what’s going on.

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Mon Nov 30

Ah, my desk is in such an awful state of disarray. My book tower by my lamp appears as if it will not cease in growth any time soon (trusting that it will not collapse before long), and my paper piles only seem to fester. Honestly, it actually looks worse in person—the aerial view of my desk redeems its terrible ruin to some degree. When I actually sit here, I feel swamped by my piles and piles of.. whatever the hell has consumed my desk at this point. Papers, books, notes, various writing utensils, albums, boxes, pictures, figurines, random computer parts, cleaning supplies… gadgets and trinkets of all sorts, really. It all just has this remarkable way of accumulating over time. Sigh. I’m due for a cleaning. Truthfully though, I am horrified at the mere thought of having to sift through all of this junk and then find yet another place to pile it up that offers the temporary illusion of organization by sparing my desk of this ever-growing clutter.

~~Hooray for my ridiculous attempts at procrastination!~~

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You know you cannot resist the urge to fawn over his utter cuteness.

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Meet Frankie.

I had to say goodbye to some very adorable house guests this afternoon. Over Thanksgiving break, I had the opportunity to care for two crippled kitties while a family friend was out of town. Frankie, as seen above, is a kitten who was the runt of his litter and lacks any sort of muscle tone/definition in his back legs. He is very awkward with his walking and does not seem to be able to walk great distances. Not sure if it is a spinal problem, but he does not seem to exhibit and signs of discomfort other than his reluctance to walk. Domino, the other cat I was caring for, came to me on the same day he had corrective surgery done. Apparently, he had ventured outside one night earlier in the week and returned home the next morning limping—it was estimated that he had been clipped by a car. I don’t recall whether it was the socket or if it was part of the femur itself, but an area in regards to the femur was shattered (Sorry I lack specifics—it was most likely the socket), and was reconstructed by substituting/filling the damaged area with adipose tissue. Either way, he recovered incredibly well. I must say, he is quite resilient. Only two days after surgery, he became much more lively and was already jumping up and getting around with hardly any difficulty whatsoever. :]

Anyway, I’m gonna miss those two. I might post another picture of Frankie later—Domino was near impossible to photograph. In the meantime, I have to go and clean their living quarters and dispose of their kitty litter. Hooray.

PS: Sorry for the lack of interesting posts as of late. Since I have an awful load of school work to do today, I might end up finding ways to procrastinate (such as now) and post something possibly note-worthy before the day is over.

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Thu Nov 26

sweethomestyle:

(via obliteratedheart)