And now the rush to the holidays begin!

 Turkey Day is over, and now starts the frenzied rush to the midwinter holiday, whether you call it Christmas, Yule, Kwanzaa, or whatever. Hectic times trying to get in and out of a retail store without wanting to bash someone with a heavy object.
 We are severly limited on funds this year, as S's car repair bill last month came out to over $1200. So we will be getting W a new graphics card, so he can quit bitching about his framerate on WoW, a few stocking stuffers, and that's about it. I am making a few things, W finally agreed to throw away the "Aunt P blanket", which was a double sided cotton throw she made him to replace the original one that deteriorated years ago.

 

 

I tore the material into strips, and am in the process of crocheting it into a new blanket. I'll be making a few other things for family and friends this year as well.

 

 We don't travel much at any time, and the holidays are one time in which I don't like to even leave my house. I am always happy to have people come here, but the days of large family gatherings are long over. My parents are dead, as is my brother, and my sisters have their own traditions. The rest of the family is estranged, and we never see them. Xmas tends to be fairly low key here, lots of lounging, food and gaming, and some t.v. viewing thrown in. We will have W for the first part of the holiday, he goes to the ex's on the 26th this year. Some years we get to keep him a few extra days, since that is the ex's anniversary, but since his step-daughter came home from rehab pregnant, unemployed and now on disability, I doubt they will have the $$. The ex always wanted seriously broken people that he could 'fix', guess he's happy now.

 

 I was hoping business would pick up a bit, but I am having a hard time getting people into the shop. Advertising has to be low key, or we could be shut down by the city if they actually notice us. At least I'm not having to worry about paying overhead. Time to send the boys out again with flyers and samples. I'll be getting the Concrete Dragon Facebook page up and running soon, and things are starting to get made to put in the shop. I should be able to start up my 't.v. dinners' again soon, they are pretty popular.

 

 The indoor garden is started finally, it took me forever to get the lights up this year. Some of the red okra seeds I harvested this past summer are sprouting, and I'm hoping to have tomatoes soon. I have been neglectful about growing food, as my physical condition has been keeping me from traditional gardening. This year we will be changing over to large pots, with the yard space turning into hopefully a grove of small fruit trees, and maybe some blackberries if I can get the things to grow for me here. With W rapidly approaching 18, I'm going to have to figure out a way to replace the measly child support, altho the shop/bakery is making about half of it already. The other option is to cut expenses, and if W decide s to move into the garage apartment full time, he'll have to pay his own bills and food at least. I wish I could afford to support him while he gotes to college, but it is what it is. Both his father and I worked through school, he will have to be able to as well.

 

 

 

Thanksgiving, but for whom?

 It is time again for the Great American Gluttony, known as Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving in this country is supposed to represent the thanks of the white settlers escaping religious persecution in Europe. Thanks, Europe, for sending your whackjobs over here.

 You see, this continent wasn't uninhabited, there were people here already, and they weren't white Xtians. They were the People, or as the whites called them, the Red Savages, due to the color of our skin. (Yes, we really are red.) My People were not savages. We had a complex and involved society already, with agriculture, education and land management, and our own religion. When the whites were starving and freezing in their crappy little wooden boxes, we took pity on them and brought them into our homes, fed them the fruits of our labor, and in return they shit on us. And continue to do so even today.

 You see, we didn't invite you into our country, and we didn't need your Christ, your clothing, or your diseases. You refused to speak our language, tore our children from us and put them in white Xtian boarding schools where they were systematically beaten and starved until they submitted to the white 'teachings'. Some resisted, and were killed outright. Some kept their mouths shut, and were able to return to the People with most of their belief system intact. Many more were taken too young, and were brainwashed, infected with white man diseases, and then set back to the Tribe to spread the white-based filth around to the rest of the Tribe. The People were nothing more to the "white founders" (Thieves is more like it.) than animals to be exterminated.

 So as you stuff yourself with turkey, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie (All native to the Americas.) remember that for some people, this is not a holiday of gluttony and football, but a rememberance of the death of our People and our culture caused and perpetuated by foreign invaders.

So very tired

 I live in constant pain. Due to youthful stupidity, I have broken my body in some spectacular ways. After falling during an exercise walk 5 years ago, I damaged even more. And age is creeping up on me, and not helping at all.

 On a scale from 1-10, the daily pain runs anywhere from 5 to 10. Never less these days. Being in this much pain makes me a bit on the mean side. Sometimes more than a bit. I can either take drugs that cause me to gain weight and keep it on, or I can not take drugs, and be in excruciating pain. And let's not forget having kidney disease makes the docs unwilling to give me much of anything. Quite the catch 22.

 Some days I just want to lay in bed and cry. Today is one of those days. I can't concentrate on anything enough to be even the slightest bit productive. Today's pain is running a solid 9. Sleep is something I remember fondly. I don't sleep much when there is this much pain. I haven't had any 'spoons' in some time. Work this week is not going to be fun.

 Even things that others take for granted, like being able to go to the grocery store, is a major ordeal. Sometimes walking to the mailbox is too much. And it never, ever stops. Not even for one single moment.

 I am so very tired.....

Texas is NOT the South, no matter the color on the map!

Today's angry rant is against people who badmouth Texas, incorrectly calling it a 'southern' state. Yes, we are south of the rest of the country. Yes, these days it is heavily Repub, but so was every other state at some point or the other. Texas, however, is not like anywhere you have ever been, it is its own country in a lot of aspects.

 You claim Texas is 'all redneck'. Really? Seriously? Then you have NEVER been here. And there are 'rednecks' in YOUR state as well, I have met several in California, as well as other places. You obviously know NOTHING about our state's history, and that includes many of the people who were born here.

 Texas is the ONLY state that could be its own country. We have TWO deep water ports. We have some of the best medical facilities in the country, and many of the top specialists. We have enough space and agriculture to feed the entire country. There is enough oil and gas under Texas to run the ENTIRE COUNTRY for 50 + years. We have Silicon Hills, Dell, IBM, AMD and much of the computer gaming industry. Oh yea, let's not forget NASA. And colleges that are FULL of people from out of state. Hhhmmm, I wonder why, if this is such a backwards ignorant place.

 Texas is a rich and successful state, which is why the whining titty babies in other places are burning up the freeways to get here. Why else are all those out of state plates on the road? Oh, right, they can't be, because NO ONE wants to move to Texas. (Yea right.)

 The people in Texas are multicultural, and proud of it. We don't run and hide from problems, we face them head on, and deal with them. If we don't have something, chances are someone here will invent it.

 Are there places here I don't want to live? Of course, but then I wouldn't want to live in the equivalent in your state. So shut the fuck up, go back to your ignorant little life and stay the HELL out of MY state. We don't want nor need your skank ass here.

T-minus 12 hours

So tomorrow's voting day. All over the country, people are claiming that they are being suppressed and not allowed to vote. I'll be taking my fully charged phone, in case I need to take pics of any kind of shenanigans at the polling place.

 Texas has threatened to arrest any foreign observers trying to get into the polling places. I have to agree on this one, there is no reason whatsoever for ANY foreign countries to be invading our polling places. It is a secret ballot, and they have no business here anyway, any more than we have any business interfering with their country. Things would be alot better in the world if everyone would mind their own business. The USA needs to stop sending aid to other countries, until our economy is recovered, and ALL our people fed, clothed and housed.

 I am against welfare programs as they are now. I think anyone applying for welfare needs to be given a job. Don't like the jobs to choose from? Then tough shit, no government $$ for you. My parents worked at shit jobs, because they had to, to feed and house their family. I have been poor, but I have never taken one cent of food stamp or welfare money. I have been so poor that I walked 5-6 miles or more a day, picking up aluminum cans along the freeway to sell so I could buy food. I picked up pecans and sold them for 40 cents a pound, and paid for college. I have been a driver for a call girl, because it was the only job I could find at the time. Think I like spending mucho hours a week on my feet, to make a few dollars a day? Think again. And by the way, I'm considered disabled. See my disability check? Of course you don't, I don't get one. I could, but I do not consider myself to be in need of disability, because I can still get out and hustle if I need to. I take responsiblity for myself and my family, I don't let the government fo it for me.

 

The start of another week, kinda

 Ah Monday! The bane of the working 8-to-5 stiff everywhere. Here we are again.

 Actually, Monday is my Sunday. I work Tuesday-Saturday, so I get to mostly enjoy Monday as a day off. Like most people, my 'day off' consists of catching up on those little things around the house like laundry. Since W has a job now, I have had to take up the slack around the place. With his cat being confined to his apartment, I have no cat pee I have to clean up on a regular basis. W, however, has a buttload. N. M. P. He's the one who promised Judi he would take care of Simon until he died, not me.

 This was a good week at the bakery. I made the most $$ in one week than I have since I opened the storefront, and totally sold out on Saturday. Most of my customers are bread buyers, so I will be dialing back the sweets and offering more bread. With the holidays coming up, business should pick up steadily for the next several months. And with holidays come pie! Because of a personal chef client a couple of years ago begging for pot pies, and PROMISING he would buy a dozen every month or so (Which he didn't.) I have an entire case of small pie pans. So small pies for the holidays! Two servings, perfect for one or two people. Next week will be the beginning of "Pie Season".

 The weekend was good, much better than the last one. No exes to have to deal with, things worked out between S and I about the last one. No, this was NOT the first ex of his I have had to deal with, but it will be the last, or I will be single again. This time the ball is in S's court, it is up to him to decide if he wants to remain in this relationship or not. While I tried really hard not to be one of 'those women' who are suspicious of the exes, it turns out I need to be. So I will be from now on, since these bitches have NO fucking clue that they should be keeping away from other women's husbands.

 The house continues to evolve, being a living entity. If you haven't been here in a while, chances are things will look a bit, or even radically different. Turning W's old bedroom into a den has been great, we can watch t.v. without a constant steam of peope and animals parading in front of us. I don't like that it faces the street, but with the air conditioner out for the winter, I can open the side window now, so all's good.

 My weight is continuing to drop, cutting portions and daily exercise is doing the job. Saturday is my eat anything day, but after a week of small portions, I am quickly finding that "all you can eat" is a LOT smaller amount these days. I used to be able to knock out half (or more!) of a large pizza, now 3 slices are all I can manage without feeling like I'm going to hurl. After my sister developed Type 2 diabeties, I went and got a new blood sugar monitor. A week of testing showed me VERY firmly in the low normal range for blood sugar, and I want to keep it that way. My sister has been doing so good that the doc thinks she might be able to come off the meds soon, we're so very proud that she is doing so well. Our family averages in the 80's for lifespan, we'd all like to get there.

 Onward and upward!
 

Bread Day

 Saturday is traditionally Bread Day here at the bakery. The neighborhood wakes up to the smell of fresh bread, which brings them in to buy bread and what I have been told are the best scones in Austin. Squee!

 My love affair with bread didn't start till late, I was 20! Grandma was a pastry chef, not a baker, so my first things were lattice topped cherry pies (Thanks to my sister Pam for walking me through that one at 6!), cakes, cookies, that kind of stuff.

 I married way too young the first time, and the poverty was crushing. Xmas was around the corner, and we were totally broke, My ex made a passable bread, that he shaped into teddy bear loaves that we gave for presents. After helping him, I began to be interested in bread. It was cheap to make, and in those days, the only kind of bread you could be in the store was Wonderbread. Bleh.

 So off to the library, and to dig through the huge stash of cookbooks and recipes my mother gave me when I got married. In an ancient cookbook, the kind you sent off a SASE to a food company for, I found an easy bread recipe. The booklet was the Fluffo Cookbook, the many ways to use the man made grease that was Fluffo. The first batch was ok, kinda dry. I persevered, and soon was turning out mediocre but edible loaves of plain white bread on a weekly basis. As I got better, I began to experiment with other kinds, and eventually began tackling more difficult recipes like brioche and French bread.

 After moving to Austin, breadmaking really took off. I was able, thanks to Whole Paycheck, I mean Whole Foods (Which in those days was in an old house down on Lamar and 9th Street, I think.) to get all kinds of different flours in the bulk section. College opened up even more ideas, since anthro/ancient history were my majors, I because interested in the culture of food. And bread of some sort is in almost every single culture in the world. Bread is the staff of life, after all.

 Now I make pretty much every kind of bread. My favorite is heavy dense peasant bread, full of whole grains, nuts, seeds, whatever bits of flours are left over in the bags. It never comes out the same way twice, and the customers don't seem to mind. Sometimes I have a hankering for a grilled cheese sandwich with tomatoes, so I will opt to make some plain white bread, and sweet yeast rolls are a must for any holiday dinner. (Think Grandy's rolls, took me years to find a similar recipe.) While I understand that some people go gluten/grain free, I come from old European peasant stock, my people are adapted to eat grains, and bread is high on the list. And being fresh made, with only King Arthur flour, we can be sure that there are no nasty additives. Good stuff!

Freaks and Geeks and Life

 I admit it. I'm a geek. I have been all my life. My mother was a Trekkie, and I being all of 3 years old when the original came out, I watched it with her. My father then took things further when I was 8 by presenting me with a copy of Tarzan. That was all it took, from there I went on to other ERB books like the Barsoom books, and ended up reading pretty much everything ERB wrote by the time I was 12. I then branched out into many of the other classic sci-fi authors like Heinlein, Silverberg, etc.

 Then came a little game called Dungeons and Dragons. By this time I was firmly in the only geek group in our small town, and my mother, figuring it at least got us doing something besides sitting around reading all the time (Remember, bookworms were bad back then!) she bought me the very fist one sold in Wichita County. I took it home, called my peeps, and that was all she wrote. We LOVED it, jumped into the whole gaming culture without looking back. My brother had returned from 11 years in the Navy, and he and I because the town's top gamers.

 Then came the computer. My brother had been involved with computers on ship, and since he was an electronics specialist, it was only natural that he slid right into computers. Programming came to him as easily as breathing, and when I was 15, he started a little side business, Platinum Software, the very first computer gaming company in Texas, and I became his game tester. This was back in the days of the green text era of computers. Home PCs had not even been thought of at this point, and my brother ordered his first out of an HP catalog, and build it himself. I spent nearly every Saturday at his house, testing the latest round of his current project, a D&D based text game.

 When I started dating in high school, anyone I would be interested in had to be intelligent, well read in the sci-fi genre, and preferably a gamer. As these were in relatively short supply, I had to expand my field to include non-gamers. On to college, and I discovered the Society for Creative Anachronism. Gamers and cosplay (Altho we didn't call it that back then.) all together, I was in heaven! I dated in the SCA community exclusively, mostly fighters, who were amazed a woman knew about armor. A head injury at 19 killed my fighting career, so I turned to armoring. Then I met my first husband, a swishy-poke (fencer) turned heavy arms fighter. Not a geek, which probably should have tipped me off that things would not end well with him. They didn't, and I was back in the dating scene.

 Fast forward 15 years, and I'm back in the gaming community, this time in the big city of Austin. Then the Internet and home computers became affordable, and the geek world opened up. The very first person I met in a chat room was S, my husband.

 S is a geek. He, like me, is second generation geek. To all outward appearances, he looks to be a mild mannered nerd, the kind that got shoved into lockers in high school. But appearances can be deceiving, behind that polite mask he shows to the public, is the heart and soul of a warrior. He is very easy going, but once his anger is aroused, don't stand in his way, or you WILL regret it. And when his mate or child is attacked, as one woman found out this past week, he will deal with the problem, and you will not like the outcome.

 I have problems with S's ex girlfriends and other women he's met over the years creeping out of the woodwork. These women treated him like shit, used and abused him, and then went off with some asshole. Usually things went wrong with the asshole, like they always do, and then here the women come, wanting to cry on 'the nice guy's' should before they are off to the next asshole. These women think it is OK to be friends and flirt with him, even tho he (And many times they) are married. They think he's 'safe', because he was never a jerk to them. And for the most part, he let them. Well babies, I'm here to tell you that you all have NO fucking clue what is behind my husband's polite mask, and it is NOT the sweet innocent little geek you all treated like shit. You do not want to piss him off, because much like a tornado, when he finally does get angry, that's the end. One of his exs, as you know if you are a regular reader, found out the hard way when she became totally inappropriate, actually coming to Austin to try to meet up with him. That did not end well for her, to say the least. She did not realize until a couple of days ago that he is not the sweet little pushover she thought. Not at all. I'm sure she was totally surprised at the "fuck off and die" email she got from him, which SHOULD have been sent long ago.

 It is NEVER appropriate to remain friends with an ex when you marry. And it is certainly NEVER appropriate to try to meet an Internet ex in person once they are in a relationship, and ESPECIALLY when they are married. I have no issue with opposite-sex friends, as long as they are not an ex. I have no exes in my group of friends, because when I'm done with someone, I'm done. Which is the way it should be. Hanging on to an ex because you think you can get something from them, like these women try to do with S, is wrong on so many levels. He let them get away with it because he is polite, and they take that to mean they can take liberties with him. Uh, no.

 S and I have weathered this latest round of an ex, and we will survive. This will be the last, however. He has purged all exes from his life now, and they will remain so, in the past, where they belong. Let them go troll some other poor guy. Mine is happy with me and me with him, and we don't need anyone else fucking with our calm. As Michelle Rodriguez's character Letty in The Fast and The Furious put it so succinctly, "I smell skanks". And I can smell a skank from miles away. Just because we are geeks does not mean we will sit there and take shit. Don't mistake my cordialness for an invitation. It's not. It is simply Southern politeness.