NOTE: This post is ridiculously long & rambling for a myriad of reasons, not the least of which is my good old ADHD kicking into overdrive. I would apologize for this, except that I'm the only one who reads this thing & I figure I deserve what I get for reading a blog by me in the first place!
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As I look to the lower right corner of my computer screen - the part that always seems to play host to the myriad of important (and not-so-important) update notices, "must read" messages, invasive pop-ups & so many other annoying side effects of PC ownership - I can't help but see Thunderbird gleefully reminding me that I have 247 emails (236 of which are still unread) waiting patiently for me to sift through.
**247, eh? It was only 108 when I last bothered to check. I guess I better get a move on...but then, moving on is often easier said than done, especially in your world, isn't it?**
The astute out there will likely notice that it's been a while since my last blog post. Not that it matters, but there actually is a semi-reasonable explanation for that: I haven't exactly been "home" the last couple of months.
No, I haven't moved or anything: I'm still eking out an existence in the very same Seattle area basement room that I've been nesting in for too many years to care about anymore. The "home" I'm talking about - and the one I've been skillfully avoiding these past months - is the one I was stuck with when I first made my appearance in this unsuspecting little planet some 38 years ago.
Namely, my real life.
**Real life? That's a joke! Doesn't life involve actually doing something?? Speaking of which, you really need to get your head back into "screen-shot mode" & finish those TS2 pictures you started 2 months ago. Also, you should at least get a start on sorting through those all those darned emails...**
I've never been much of a fan of reality, having always preferred the worlds I created in my head to the one in which I seem to be stuck in, which has managed to prove out to be one of those blessing/curse things you hear about in sappy poems, sentimental song lyrics & overly dramatic movies.
On the "blessing" side I like to count my ability to completely suspend belief & my knack for total immersion in all things imaginative. (In fact I actively pity folks who can go see movies like Avatar, Inception, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings or How To Train Your Dragon & then just get up & leave when the credits begin to roll.) I also like to count my artistic skills (honed by years of thinking not only outside the box, but outside the room - nay, the building - the box was sitting in) as well as my ability to entertain myself virtually anywhere at a moments notice. (This I credit to an imagination so vivid that I defy any drug dealer to find a substance that can get me even half as high as I can get myself with just a few moments of solitude, my over-active mind & maybe some paper & a pen.)
All those things - combined with an at times sarcastically sharp sense of humor & a sister who doesn't always think I'm a complete & total lunatic - have helped to make my survival on this stupid rock a lot more bearable than it likely could have been.
So what's the "curse" side of all this?
Pretty much the same as the above.
See, that same total immersion ability that makes a good book, movie or TV show so engrossing for me also means I can become so lost in them that I can gleefully spend countless hours obsessing over them. (When I say I'm a TS2 addict, I am not exaggerating. In fact, I'm not really sure "addict" is a strong enough word at times!)
That artistic ability I like to lay claim to also means I keep harboring delusions of self employment- delusions that lead to fights with my inner critic & fears of failure, keeping me in a spiral of non-action, which only fuels my desire to escape into my own reality.
My "unique" brand of humor often gets me labeled as having a negative attitude when dealing with people who don't know me well (which is really further proof that self employment is the only way I'll ever find an income again) & I know there are many times when my sister seriously debates the merits of bludgeoning me to death with the nearest heavy object & burying me someplace in our backwoods.
And as for my ability to entertain myself at will...well, that brings me to what I've been doing these last few months.
**Step one: sort everything by sender so you can separate out the useless crap quicker. Who the hell are "aquitami", "asimwen" "Gretchen B" and all those other names??? Ah, another batch of folks on that TS2 Yahoo group you so cleverly signed up for. Good lord! Just how many replies to a request for help about the stupid money cheat are really needed! Urg. Okay, delete everything that isn't a challenge update...and we're down to 211 emails with 201 unread. Awesome.**
It all started when I arrived home from my Tuesday night carving class back in March, actually March 1st to be exact. As I walked through the door with my usual dinner (Taco Bell's chicken tostada salad & I have a standing engagement on Tuesdays & Thursdays) I happened to notice the light was blinking on the answering machine, so I casually asked who had called. Turn's out, the caller had been my uncle & the call had been to inform us that my 92 year old grandfather had been taken to the emergency room after suffering a massive heat stroke. It seems his sometimes temperamental furnace had malfunctioned, sending the temperature in his home to over 100 by the time my uncle walked in for his nightly visit. Uncle found grandpa passed out on his bed & had to call 911 as he tried to keep grandpa from suffocating on his own vomit. In one of those "stroke of good luck" kind of things, grandpa's house is almost literally right down the hill from the local Fire Station, so help was on the scene mere minutes after my uncle dialed his cell phone. Apparently my uncle had called from the hospital & was still waiting to see how bad grandpa's damage was going to be.
By the way, when he was brought to the hospital, grandpa's internal temperature had been 109.
**Alright, what's next? Goodbye to you Amazon, Barnes & Noble, EBay & some other assorted spam. 183 emails with 173 unread. Yippee.**
The next several days were something of an unwelcome, surreal blur of car trips, hospital rooms, hand sanitizer dispensers & an oddly serene little waiting room with surprisingly comfortable chairs. At the end of the week, grandpa was released from the hospital & transferred to a local "rehabilitation center" while the rest of us started in on cleaning up the two very neglected spare bedrooms in his house. We also decided to paint his bathroom, which resulted in me managing to knock over a can of grey-blue paint & the purchase of a new toilet seat, but that's another story.
**So long Jerry's Art Supplies, Curves, Dilbert strips & Move On "dot" Org! That brings it down to 121 emails with only 111 left unread. Go me, go.**
The rehab center turned out to be...well, let's just say it's more than worthy of it's very own post, but all I'll say now is that I really feel that any place that claims to be good about working with the elderly should really bone up on their patient handling skill set in regards to dementia. And any rehab center that tosses a person aside the moment they are to sickly to "properly" participate in their rehabbing needs a swift kick in the...well, again, I think that's best left for a different day.
Grrrr.
Anyway, after his month long stay at the afore mentioned "Club Useless" grandpa is now residing in a small, privately operated "care facility" (the term nursing home conjures up too many negative images & really doesn't describe the place right anyway) where he gets 3 home-cooked meals a day & 24 hour supervision - the later of which he has actually needed for sometime now, but "family blindness" is a sneaky little bugger, isn't it?
**Sears, Rockler, Penny Press & more miscellaneous spam, be gone! 73 emails with 62 unread! Progress is mine! Boo-Ya! Take that, PC trash can!**
So just what in the holy heck does any of this crap have to do with where I've "been" the last few months? Well, remember that bit about my ability to entertain myself with little more than my obsessively overactive imagination? It seems that this latest bout of "family excitement" caused me to withdraw from my usual stress reliever (namely obsessively organizing the lives of the myriad of Sims who live in my TS2 game files) and fling myself rather unexpectedly back into an addiction that I actually hadn't thought much about for a few years now: namely my all-time favorite TV show, Law & Order: Criminal Intent. (Okay, I feel the need to clarify that I am talking about seasons 1-4 here & not the utter garbage that began in season 5 & took root in seasons 6 & beyond...but then, that's the awesome part of being me: in my world, the only seasons that "really" happened were 1-4 anyway. Gads, I simply love revisionist history!)
In short, instead of writing stories about Sims, I've been writing stories about NYPD's Major Case squad & their new semi-partners, the Extreme Victims unit.
In place re-scripting the lives of Don Lothario, Nervous Subject & Consort Capp I am re-scripting the lives of A.D.A Ron Carver, Captain James Deakins, Detective Alexandra Eames & Detective Robert Goren.
Rather than fleshing out NPCs & Townies like Kaylyn Langerak, Meadow Thayer & Goopy GilsCarbo, I have been filling in the gaps for characters like Detective Bishop (who never really got her due in the "real" world), Detective Eames (whom I have married off a second time to a child rights attorney named Jason Fisher) & Nicole Wallace (who doesn't heed the warnings of my alter ego & ends up very, very dead as it turns out that hell's real furry is actually a woman defending her man! Take that, you Australian bitch! Bwahahahah!)
Instead of creating new Sims like Preacher Dante (an evil Warlock), Jocasta Goth (a self-made 3rd child of the famous Mortimer & Bella Goth) & Zeebest Quizine (the storied evil rival of chef Julien Cooke that Maxis was to friggen lazy to create themselves) I am inventing characters like Chief International Marshall Jack Kelly (the US Marshall/Canadian Mounty who started the "Extreme Victims" crime unit, which is dedicated solely to solving the most violent, twisted & unusual of cases) Detective/Deputy Brian Cooper (my alter-ego's partner & long-time Deputy when she 1st arrives in New York), Detective/Agent Kevin Hanson (former FBI agent who becomes my alter ego's 2nd partner after Brian goes nuts & tries to kill her) & of course, the fiery Detective/Marshall Aryanna Taglioni (ace Extreme Victims specialist, superstar horsewoman, crackerjack gunslinger, rescuer of abused Great Danes & ultimately destined to become the love of Detective Goren's up-until-now pathetically sad & very lonely life. In case you missed it, she's my alter ego in this particular universe. Also in case you missed it, this whole universe exists just so Goren & my alter ego can eventually engage in the kind of stuff one doesn't write about in an unsuspecting blog. NC-17, eat your heart out, baby!)
In other words, rather than obsessing about my TS2 universe, I have been obsessing about an alternate Law & Order universe.
Well, that & making some much needed progress in the email sorting area.
**Okay, just deleted somemore spam & sorted out a few things I need to look through later. That just leaves 58 emails (with 45 unread) still to go.**
That's 58 emails & counting....
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