Amarantine

This post is all about friendship. I grew up not having very many people my own age around me. So I grew up very mature & acted that way. Well, I wasn’t very popular with the other kids my age, but I grew to learn that my maturity was a blessing in disguise. I learned quickly to tell who my friends were & which ones weren’t. I don’t have very many people that I actually call my “true” friends. You see, I may have a lot of friends but I have very few “true” friends.

I am not an easy person to get to know & I, honestly, make a person “jump through hoops” to get to know me. I have been burned by supposed friends too many times to let anyone get to close to me. Yeah, I know I probably seem like the most easy to get a long online, but I am not that way offline. You all barely know me, trust me on this.

You see, I can count the number of true friends that I have on one hand. These are friends that I can count on to come when I call them. They will always be there when I need them. I don’t have to worry that they will not show up when they say they will.

When I am friends with someone I expect them to do the following:

• be understanding
• not shy of standing up to me
• do what they say they will
• be completely honest with me
• understand that I will be the very same way back to them

You see, I will walk through fire for my “true” friends. Case in point, when R’s husband’s beat her I was there in the amount of time it took for her to call me & then for me to drive there. I also know that if I needed her then she would be there for me that fast. If she said that she was going to meet me somewhere then she would have been there on time or if for some reason she was late she would have called. Hell, I take collect calls from my friends.

Yes, I realize that the person that I am writing about will understand that I am upset with her. Quite honestly, I don’t care. I made myself sick waiting for her to show up. No call, no nothing. This is not the first time this has happened but this will be the last time. I am not supposed to be outside in the sun. But I wanted to have lunch with her. I was going to buy her lunch & give her the present I made her. But not now. I refuse to have this type of friendship. I refuse to be used. My mother & I waited three hours for her & she never showed, never called or anything. My mother, out of the kindness of her heart, brought me down to the fair even though she knew that my father & she would be having a harder time of it later once the day set into me. But she didn’t mind cause I was going to get to spend time with my friend. My mother is like that. She always wants me to have my own life even though it is going to make taking care of me harder. But to not show up at all with no excuse or phone call was just plain rude. So there will be no Christmas present or anything else from me to her. Consider us no longer friends.

I don’t need the stress of friends that I can’t rely on or depend on. So I don’t keep in contact with those that I can’t. To those of you that think I am being harsh, then that is your opinion. You don’t know the whole story.

As I have mentioned in a previous post about Io (my Sony EReader) & while I still adore Io, I am finding that I am upset over the lack of ebooks that I can find for it. Why is it that authors or publishers (I honestly don’t know who to blame) don’t publish their books in this format automatically for the older books? For example: The Sword of Truth series by Terry Goodkind. The only way I can get it is to illegally download torrents of the books. Which I absolutely refuse to do. I just don’t understand. The publishers sit there & push the customers to buy these new electronics & then the authors don’t follow through with publishing them to the electronic format. Geesh, I might have well, just picked up a cheapie reader until all my book are released. But that is something I am hoping will be fixed soon. The list of books that I want are just the ones that I re-read all the time. I am not turning to my reader for all my books, but I want the books I want. I just wish that the publisher & authors would stop pushing the readers when the books are not published.

Thanks for the concern everyone. With the heat being as it is. Mom & I have been staying at the local library during the times when she isn’t at work. They are nice enough to let us use their WIFI & steal their air conditioning. So we stay there until about 7 or 8 pm. Then we come home. By the time we get home the house has cooled off to about 88 degrees compared to the 91 or 94 degrees F it was during the day. So then we turn the window fans blowing in & it will bring the temps down a couple more degrees. So though it is still very hot, it isn’t going to kill me, I hope. It is supposed to cool down to the 80s by next Wednesday so I should have a chance to rest by then. What hurts me the most is the fact that I am unable to stay home & rest & recuperate from the week. So for the past three weeks I haven’t had a day to stay at home & rest.

On another note I think we are going to make an early doctor appointment to discuss the possibility of fibromyalgia being part of my problem. We don’t think that it is all of my medical problems but the symptoms of it match 3/4 of my problems. The bad thing, there is only treatments for this problem, no cure. The other bad news is that the treatments are the same ones that we are already doing. So basically short of a diagnoses I am doing everything I can already other then learning to live with it. *I honestly just want to *

I have added a new page to the Galleries. UMW Key Chains have been added. My mother’s Christmas present to the United Methodist Women group of her Church. I have also added about four more picture to Michelle’s Christmas Present, but to access that page you will have to have the password. Just make a comment & will email you the password to the page.

In other things, Missouri is going through a heatwave. We have been having temps in the high 90s but it actually feels like it is in the 100s. Well, it wouldn’t be too horrible if we actually had air conditioning in the houses & at Dad’s office, but Father gives us the choice of living the lifestyle that we are accustomed to or we can have air conditioning. For example, we, the family (3 of us), like to eat out a lot & go to the local big city (Springfield) to shop once or twice a week. Well, we would have to give that up if we get air conditioning. The electric bill would be way to high for the family to afford it. But on the good side, Father says that he has had enough & that he is going to put it at the office. With the heat as high as it is the house temp is in the low 90s which is too hot for mom & me to stay home. So we go to the local library in Republic most days to stay in the cool. The joy of that for me is that I have access to high speed internet on most days. The down side is with the heat so high I don’t have any days to stay home & rest. So I am so exhausted that I can’t even see straight. Usually, I stay at home on Fridays while my parents go shopping & I spend the day cross stitching, reading, & sleeping. Fridays are my days of relaxing & getting my energy back from the previous week. But for the last four weeks I haven’t been able to sleep in or stay home on Fridays & it is beginning to show. I am in so much pain & I am having so many seizures (or fits as my father puts it) that my mother is seriously considering taking me to the hospital the next time i have one in public. So here is to hoping that I don’t have one in public again.

I have finally gotten Mimi’s present page uploaded. But I haven’t really gotten started on it with my other two commission pieces that I picked up. But it is there & ready for me to upload pics too. I also loaded the other commission page called Cat’s In Charge Here which is for my mother’s friend Kris. Then as soon as I get that completed & in between Michelle’s & Mimi’s present I get to make about 15 UMW (United Methodist Women) keychains for my mother for Christmas. So much for adding two more Christmas presents to my stitching list. I doubt if I am going to have time with needing to get Jungle Scamp finished also. But that is my life of stitching.

I am also trying to come to terms with my love of this pre-made theme & the one that I have been working on for the last three weeks. I really like it, but at the same time I really love this one. I have most of the quirks worked out of this one & it isn’t that bad to look at. But it isn’t mine. Plus it isn’t as if I have all the time in the world to make new themes all the time. I just don’t know what to do. I tell myself that it isn’t wrong for me to have a premade theme up here, but I guilts me that I know how to design my own themes yet, here I am using someone else’s theme. Oh well, I don’t know what I will do.

Yes, that can actually happen. I don’t know why people seem to think that when a man & a woman sleep in the same bed that sex has to be involved. Give me a bloody break. I spend the night a Jock’s house all the time. Do I sleep in his bed? Yep, the man has a king size bed. I may be a plus sized woman, but I am not that big. Does anything happen in that bed? Nothing besides talking & reading. Hmm…doesn’t sound like sex to me. So how does that make me any thing besides me? I don’t believe that sex is wrong, but I sure am not having it. So don’t stand there & judge me just because I choose to spend the night in the house or bed of the man that I have know for over 15 years & consider a big brother.

Here is what happened. Friday I spent the day at Jock’s house since neither my house nor my parent’s house has air conditioning & it was too hot to stay home. Well, my parents didn’t get finished with their running around until about 10pm & I was too tired to wait for them any longer so I just decided to spend the night. Jock lives just outside the city & he has neighbors. I am not used to having neighbors that can see into the house. I guess they are not used to seeing Jock with female visitors staying overnight. *new neighbors* I showed up in the kitchen Sat. morning in my nightgown to help Jock make breakfast & seen the neighbors making breakfast. *still don’t understand how you city people can live that close to people* Anyway, the woman in the family saw me & then about three minutes later the doorbell rung. Jock went to answer the door. Desi comes popping into the kitchen with the two dogs & asks me why the neighbor lady is mad at Daddy. Hmm…I thought & told her I would go see. The bloody lady is telling Jock off for having me over. She is telling him that it is disrespectful & degrading to have me spend the night. Umm…did we somehow shift back into the 1900′s? I could tell that Jock was having a hard time not busting his gut. I excused him & told the lady that I was Desi’s adopted mother & that due to my health I was unable to live with them all the time. She then said that unless Jock & I were married we shouldn’t share a bed. I asked her how she knew that we did & if she was peeking in windows didn’t that make her a “Peeping Tomisina” & if that was the case then she needed to learn to keep her mouth shut & her butt on her own property. Then I promptly shut the door in her face. I turned around to head back to the kitchen & saw Jock with Desi just about to die with laughter. Desi has now decided that I need to live with them permanently.

I know I said that I wouldn’t buy one, but I use my net book to read my EBooks at my house. Well, the Church hasn’t gotten Mom’s computer set up for the Internet & she needs to have access to the Internet. Well, the net book connects through the WIFI just fine & so Mom is taking that & so that left me with the problem of needing something to read my books on. So Mom & Dad asked me if I wanted a reader instead of my net book & then Mom would take the net book. So I went researching. I decided that I didn’t want a Kindle or a Nook due to them being too much of a “store brand” reader. I remembered that I researched the Sony Readers before & liked them. So after about a week of reading different reviews & looking at the Sony Pocket Reader I told Mom that it was what I would take in exchange for my net book.

I have had Io for about three weeks now (since Jun 28^th) & at first I hated it. I didn’t like the width, wanted it to be the size of a normal book. But Dad bought me the cover that turns the reader into a more book like reader. So no I absolutely love it. The screen is easy to read & I have no problems with it. I haven’t had to charge it since charging it that very first time & I have read approximately 3000 pages with it. So I am happy.

I like EPub (Adobe EReader style) books so I knew that whatever reader I got needed to be able to read that type & I wanted it to be able to read PDFs. Well, the Sony Reader does that. Also it will let me rent the ebooks from my library ( ) which I do all the time.

The only thing I am unhappy about is the fact that I can not read with it after dark without another light source. But I knew that before I bought it so it wasn’t a surprise. So now it is just waiting to see how many charges the battery will take before the battery dies & I have to hope that Sony will replace it for me without having to replace Io with whatever is new at the time.

At this current time, Io is being used for my ebook rentals (library), & those books that I keep having to re-buy cause I break the binding from reading them too much. For example, Outlander series, The Sword of Truth series, & Kushiel series. I think I have purchased the Outlander series in total about three times, cause I reread them so many times that the books fall apart. They just don’t make books that are over 1000 pages to stand up to reading.

I do not intend to ever stop buying books, to me, reading is not that pleasurable without the feel, smell, & look of an actual book. No EReader is ever going to replace that. Nothing replaces the feeling of opening a new book (even one that you haven’t read before) & seeing words that you haven’t read before & knowing that an amazing new world & story is waiting for you to come & join it. *Yes, I am weird & quirky. You should know this already.* If you are not a book lover you will not understand this feeling.

I backup the database. I am a good girl & automatically upgrade the WP. Then after I do that, I go to my FTP to upload new pics & my bloody hand spasms & I accidentally delete my folder that contains my WP stuff. So I thought, ok. No big deal, I just re-install WP (the old one & then update it to the new 3.0). So that is what I did. Did it work? NOPE So now I am sitting here at the library, pissed off, & wanting to scream bloody murder at myself. So now instead of scooting along nice & smooth, I have to re-create my site from the ground up. :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: :twisted: So bear with me while I get everything back up & running.