A house is not a home

Oops, I missed yesterday. But I have a good excuse! We were painting the ceiling in my room, and doing more cleaning, and the power to my PC was shut off accidentally. After that, it wouldn’t turn back on. Everything else did, except the PC. We left fixing it until last, and the entire desk got cleaned out, every piece of computer equipment came out of the closet (oh yeah – my desk is currently inside a closet) and we untangled wires and got rid of unnecessary things. I apparently had 4 or 5 power supplies plugged in that weren’t hooked up to anything. I’m not exactly sure how that happened, but at least now there are less cords in here. While the tower was out of the closet, it got a good cleaning, including a light vacuuming to remove any dust inside. Once we hooked everything back up, thank god it worked. But at that point it was late and I was exhausted so I went to bed instead of writing anything. But, I’ll stop rambling now and get on with the facts.

Fact 3: I live with my mother.

Voluntarily, even. I have the financial ability to live on my own if I chose to. It just makes more economical sense for me to live here. The house is paid off, so there is no house bill/rent to pay. I pay for the cable internet, as well as maintain it and our network — something she doesn’t have the PC knowledge to do, so she benefits from it. She pays for the cable TV – so technically we’re splitting that bill. We split just about everything else as well: cellphones, electric, water, etc. I don’t help pay the regular phone bill, but I also don’t use it so no calls incurred on it would be mine. While I earn enough money that I could pay for all my own bills in my own apartment: having someone to split the bills with allows me to put a little extra money aside for vacations and other travel, which I love to do.

Plus, my dad died 4 years ago. My mom is British, and her entire family lives in England; so the only people she has in the states is me and my little brother. She, by her own admission, is difficult to be friends with. That means she doesn’t have any close friends, or any one that she hangs out with, except for me. Even if I move out, she would be bugging me to come over all the time, or to go out shopping, etc, so it just makes more sense for me to stay here, especially when we can split the bills. If things change in my life to a point where I want to move out, I will. But for now, why mess with something that works?

Dirty, dirty dawg

To “celebrate” the opening of “Snakes on a Plane,” the radio station I listen to was talking about snakes and that segued into phobias, since one of the DJs is afraid of snakes. Since I’ve been trying to figure out what fact to write about today, that gave me the perfect idea.

Fact 2: I am terrified of dachshunds.

Put me near a pitbull, rottweiller, etc, and I’m fine. I don’t believe those dogs are evil by nature, there are just evil people who train them to be vicious. I’ve even stared down a snarling, growling doberman that was roaming the streets loose, not scared at all. I love dogs. They’re loyal and sweet and protective… wonderful creatures. I’m not scared of dogs as a whole – ONLY dachshunds. Those are the vilest, most evil creatures to ever roam the other. (I also say dachshunds are related to cockroaches: short legs, long body, evil creatures; but that’s neither here nor there.)

And yes, I do have reasons for my intense hatred/fear of these creatures:

1) I was roughly about 10 years old, and my mom and I were visiting a friend’s house, who had a dachshund. I’d been there multiple times before, so I wasn’t a stranger to the dog, and he never had issues with me. On this day, I was in Misty’s bedroom and we were QUIETLY playing Barbies. My mom, her mom, and the devil dog were in the kitchen at the complete opposite end of the house. And when I say we were playing quietly, I mean that there was no fighting, arguing, screaming, loud laughing, etc. All of a sudden, her dog came flying out of the kitchen, through the dining room, through the living room, down the front hall, into Misty’s room, around her bed, past her, and attacked me. It latched onto my left earlobe, it’s teeth almost piercing the skin all the way through. The dog stays hanging there while I am screaming bloody murder in pain, and Misty started screaming for her mom. Our parents had to come into the room to find out what was going on and remove the foul vermin from my ear. That resulted in a trip to the ER for me, but I was lucky and the wounds didn’t require stitches. (I was going to do a drawing of the house to show how far out of the way the dog had to run to attack me, but I couldn’t get anything to turn out right.)

2) I’ve been around other dachshunds before, usually in PetSmart/Petco, etc, and they all snarl and growl at me. It’s not a thing of them smelling my fear and growling – it’s somewhat the opposite. I’ve passed them before I developed this phobia, not caring one way or the other, and they will growl at me. Since the phobia, I can have my back turned and have no clue at all there’s a dachshund around when I’m in a pet store, until I hear that telltale growl and turn around to see them. Some have even tried to snap at me before.

3) A youth pastor had one of these vermin, and I was forced to deal with it whenever we were at his house. I did my best to face my fear, even letting the creature near me. It had a fascination with me, always wanting to be near me out of a group of people. When it tried to climb on me and sniff my ears, that was it and I freaked out. I couldn’t handle it, and I couldn’t go over there anymore when the dog was out.

(And for the record? Nope. I’m not afraid of snakes.)

Baby you can drive my car

I like to jump on bandwagons. Sometimes they can turn into fun parties, sometimes they go awry. We’ll see how this one goes. The point of this meme is to tell a fact a day about yourself for 100 days, hence the title of the meme: 100 Facts in 100 Days. 😉 I have a hunch it’ll take me longer than that, though – I’m sure I’ll miss a day here and there. I also don’t know if I’ll be able to do the full 100 facts since I can’t decide if there’s 100 facts about me worth putting in a blog. I guess we’ll see as time goes, huh?

Fact 1: I’ve always had a wonderful sense of direction.

I was all of 3 years (and 2.5 months) old when my younger brother was born. At that point in time, we had only lived in the Dallas area for almost 4 months. So, I’m just a very young tyke in a great big massive city that I haven’t really spent any time in, so technically I shouldn’t know my away around. My grandmother came in from Louisiana to stay with me when my brother was born, since my dad was at the hospital with my mom a lot. She wanted to go see my little brother, but she had never been to the hospital – so it was me to the rescue! Little 3 year old me rode shotgun in grandma’s car, telling her when to turn, etc to get her to the hospital. I guess I had memorized up the route from trips there with my mom towards the end of her pregnancy. I’m still able to pick up directions fairly easily like that. I might need printed directions the first time I go some place, but after that I can usually drive it from memory even if it’s a few years between trips to whatever location.