I was going to write something tonight, but the damn Adobe Flash Player was being a bitch and now it's time to pick up HAM from work. I am in my memoir writing class now. Also, applying for full time jobs and going on interviews, secretly hoping I don't get hired so I can go to grad school and eventually become a professor of Creative Writing after I become a successful author. I am also making this AMAZING vegan minestrone soup regularly, which is not only saving me money, but delicious and healthy too. I am loving the whole cooking thing lately. I'm good at it and I am slowly converting HAM to veganism through example (never through pressure because that is guaranteed to backfire). HAM is getting worse and worse at saying "I love you" lately. It's so hard for him, even though it's easy for him to show me he loves me in every other way. Why are those words so hard for him to say? I am wearing my hair in pigtails for him RIGHT NOW. I made him soup. I am picking him up from work so he doesn't have to spend money on a cab. I told him today, just like Bryan Adams said, "Everything I do, I do it for you." And it's true - I always want to make him happy and keep him loving me. But he's so weird about just saying those three fucking words, even when he knows how happy it makes me. I mean, I know what makes him happy - pigtails, homemade food, deep-throating, and back massages. I do all of that for him. Why can't he just say "I love you" a few times a day? Why is that such a problem? But whatever, that's besides the point. The real point is I want to go to grad school, I want to be a professor. Becoming a "professional" will only deter me from that path and that sucks hairy balls. So anyway, thanks, Adobe, for making this post so short and wishy-washy. What I really wanted to say was something eloquent and poetic, with deep social underpinnings. But instead, this is it. Damn you, Adobe!

Well, of course, I overreacted about the wood. After going to Home Depot and Lowe's and not having any luck, I decided to just email my dad a confession. He assured me it was not that big a deal, that he had plenty more wood and stain for the wood, and that it could probably just be sanded out anyway. And I could breath again. Ahhhh.

Today I got my hair bleached lighter. I am seriously blonde now. I have this thing online called Mint that uploads all of my financial accounts and separated my spending, etc. into categories. It turns out I spend more money on my hair than I spend on food. Jesus! I guess my hair is to me like shoes are to most girls. Even when you're feeling fat and there aren't any clothes that fit, buy a new pair of shoes and all is well. For me, I really don't care for shoe shopping. I would go barefoot if I could. But my hair - I would go to the salon every week if I could afford it. I love how it looks when I leave the salon, so smooth and healthy, no dark roots, every strand in place, shiny, pretty, perfect. I do a pretty decent job with my hair, but nothing beats the work of a professional. In the past, before I could afford the salon, I dyed my hair every possible color. Every time something terrible happened, I would dye my hair. Every time I broke up with a guy, or if I had really awful PMS, I would dye my hair. After I left E and was living in the domestic violence shelter, I cut off my dreadlocks. Then I went on a platinum blonde crusade, stealing bleach and developer from beauty supply stores once a week in an attempt to get my hair to look like Marilyn Monroe's. It probably started when my Mom bleached my hair for the first time when I was 12. I don't remember if any tragic incident occurred before she did it, but I wouldn't be surprised, as the year 12 was a rather hellish year for me. We were living in these disgusting condos, Bellevue Manor, on 148th. It was the ghetto of Bellevue. Still is, in fact. My mom was in a relationship with TM, the biggest, fattest, loudest, most disgusting Italian jerk-off on the planet. His teenager daughter moved in with us, too. She was a crackwhore...no seriously...she was a 15 year old whore. I'm not positive if it was crack that she was after, or just the love and attention that her father never gave her, but whatever her reasons, she was selling her body. TM was horrible to me. He wouldn't let me talk on the phone. We had one phone line in the condo and in the living room, a little red light would turn on on the phone console whenever someone picked up the phone in any room. So if I picked up the phone in my bedroom, TM would see the light, storm in, and make me hang up. He wouldn't let me open the refridgerator. I would walk into the kitchen, reach out for the fridge door, and he would yell from his throne on the couch in front of the TV to back away from the door. When I would get home from school, I liked to watch TV for a while, but when he got home from work, he would tear into the living room, sit down on the couch practically on top of me, grab the remote out of my hand, and change the channel as if I did not exist. One time I came out of the shower with a towel wrapped around me (my bedroom was right next to the bathroom) and he came after me, screaming about something (I don't remember what), grabbed me the neck, and pushed me up against the wall in my bedroom. He was actually holding me up by my neck so my feet her dangling. My towel started to fall off, but he didn't care. He was up in face, screaming at me and I was terrified of this asshole. He was the most controlling jerk I'd ever known up to that point in my life. He was fat and he let his bodily functions fly whenever he felt like it. He yelled and swore all the time. He had road rage before there was a name for road rage. But my mom loved him for some reason, no matter how fucked up his kids were (his son was no better- in and out of jail and rehab and only 19 years old), and no matter how abusive he was towards me. So, I don't know, maybe in my mind, dying my hair is a way to escape pain? Maybe that's taking something superficial a bit too far, but I think there is some truth to it. She would also do things like take me shopping at Ross (Ross was third in my highest spending categories on Mint), and she would buy sweets and we would indulge together. She would buy 2 lb bags of peanut butter M&M's, or an entire cake, or a box of cookies and some ice cream. There were always sweets around, but especially if I was going through a hard time. Sweets were one the ways she helped me to feel better. And today, my three biggest spending categories are hair, food, and Ross. If I include all stores, not just Ross, shopping is the highest category I have. Five times that of hair. So I am addicted to dying my hair, shopping, and sweets. Big surprise. Mystery solved. But even if I am aware of the root of my compulsions, it doesn't stop them. I still want chocolate. I still want to be blonde. I still want a new pair of jeans. I wure would love a way to stop feeling like I need these things. I know I'm a shopping addict. I shop like I'm made of money, even though I only work part time and I am in major debt. It's actually really out of control. But I just want to spend. Sometimes it's not even the spending, just the shopping. The hours spent wandering around a store, picking things out, trying them on, making a decision. Half the time I don't even buy anything, even after spending hours in a store. There's something trance-like, meditative, about shopping. It's soothing and mind-numbing. Everything else just fades away, like how it would for a gambling addict when they're shoving quarter after quarter into a slot machine. The only time I come back to reality when I'm shopping is when I'm in the dressing room and i have to face how fat I actually am. Like today, for instance. I was wandering through Ross and I found some cuter jeans. I went to try them on and I could barely pull them up over my fat legs. They were glued to me, and they were a size 5! It's repulsive. It wouldn't be so bad if my stomach wasn't a bowl of Jello. I wouldn't mind being a size 5 if I had a nice, tight stomach but just had a big fat ass. A fat ass is fine if the rest of you is tight. Look at Kim Kardashian. She's made millions off that fat ass. But she has a small waist. That's key. My waist is soft and it has no definition. It has become grotesque. It makes me so sad because my waist used to be rock hard. You could see the muscles rippling through my skin. I looked HOT in a bikini. And this was only last summer. Now, it's Jello. Even though my stomach is still extremely strong, possibly more so than a year ago, you can't tell because of the fucking layer of fat covering it. I just wish I could get a handle on what I put inside my body. It's like, ridiculous because I can cut out meat no problem, eggs no problem, dairy no problem, soy only a slight problem, but for some reason sugar just has a hold on me. And sugar is the number one thing that makes people fat. Why can't I just let it go and stick to it? Why does it always creep back in, practically hours after I commit to giving it up. I just can't stop. I feel totally powerless over my cravings for sugar. Will I ever be normal? Will I ever be non-addicted? I feel like, even if I'm not drinking, drugging, or smoking cigarettes, my brain always attaches itself to something, clings to it and will not let go. How do people free themselves from addictions? I am tired of being ruled by outside sources, things that can never make me happy long-term, only fill a void temporarily, because the void always reappears. It opens back up almost instantly after the damage is done. All that money spent, all those calories ingested, and for what? I don't feel any better. I'm fatter and I have less money. That wouldn't make anyone feel good. I want to treat myself, my body, my money, my future, with respect and love. I want to save money and eat healthily. I want to stop this insanity because that's exactly what is is: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. It will never happen. Blonde hair won't make me happy, chocolate won't make me happy, a cheap shirt that I won't even like in two weeks won't make me happy. It's no wonder I have piles and piles of clothes but nothing to wear. What would make me happy is a flat stomach and a savings account full of money. I don't mean that in the superficial way, either, I mean it in the sense that if I have a flat stomach, it's because I'm taking care of my body, and if I have a full savings account, it's because I'm taking care of my financial future. I want to be someone who treats themselves with that kind of love and respect. That's what would make me happy - being congruent with my beliefs. Being vegan is a fantastic start, but I still have a long way to go. I mean, let's be real, here: bleach is NOT vegan.

I'm starting to feel a bit more optimistic and a lot less angry now that my period is toward the end. HAM and I got into a huge fight the night before last and wrapped it up sometime before he went t work yesterday. He has been holding on to a lot of resentment about my talking to and considering going back to ALL. For good reason, but the part that really hurt me was that he was bringing up every relationship I've ever had and how they were all such losers and how I've made so many bad decisions and that makes me untrustworthy. He even said, "I can't imagine being your dad at your wedding and having to give you away to some toothless loser. No wonder he got wasted." I don't know why, but at the time, I thought that was the most painful thing he could say to me. It really hurt. It hurt so much that I was just bawling uncontrollably and had to leave the room so I could go email my dad an apology. I'm not mad at my dad anymore. That's always just a PMS thing and I do it every month. I actually really love my dad and don't want anything bad to happen to him or DL. I want them to be happy. I don't want to disappoint him or make him ashamed of me by my poor decisions. He wrote me a really nice email back, accepting my apology and telling me that he's not ashamed of me and that we're all human. He said some things about his faults as a parent, and his own father's faults as a parent, and that while we're all responsible for our own choices, our upbringing can affect those choices. He said he was too lax with me, didn't enforce any rules, didn't teach me how to manage/ save money, or how to clean up after myself. He always did those things, he just never taught me. But whatever, live and learn, I suppose. But anyway, I asked HAM if he could just say whatever other hurtful things he needed to say because I couldn't go through the pain of it a third time or more. He finally decided to just forget about it, move on and forgive me. He wants me to get my tattoos covered up. That's fine, I've wanted to for a long time, just haven't had the funds or any good ideas on what to cover them up with. I have an E on my ankle and I thought maybe I could change it to Evolve...but the E is in Olde English and that particular font doesn't really convey evolution. So I don't know, I guess I could get a stupid flower. The little girl who I babysit at work sometimes thinks I should get a dragonfly over my ex-husband's name. I'm not really a big fan of dragonflies, so that probably won't happen. I'd like to get another lotus flower. And he also wants me to delete all the pictures of my ex that are on my external hard drive. That's fine, too. It's not that I need them really, except for maybe describing his features in my memoir. That's the other sad thing - he won't read anything I write in my memoir class because he doesn't want to think of me ever being with someone other than him. The rest of it is all fine, but I'm sad I won't be able to get his opinion about my writing because he's such an avid reader that I can trust his feedback. I guess I'll just have to rely on my fellow writers and the instructor. And my mom, of course. Also, my dad says when he gets back from China that he'll talk to his financial advisor to see if it's possible for me to purchase a modest condo. I've been obsessively searching the MLS for condos ever since. What a dream come true, to have my own place - not an apartment or rental of any kind, not even in my dad's name, but really, really MINE. My own little chunk of space on the planet. Fuck. I'm already seeing it my head, imagining the hand made wall mosaic, blown glass chandeliers from HAM's friend, JF, who is a professional glass blower and sells his larger chandeliers for 15k. Of course, we would get a much, much smaller one and hopefully he'd give us a discount. I imagine huge framed painting, maybe even a mural. HAM has an artist friend, who I guess is a heroin addict, but that means he'd probably do it for cheap if he's not too strung out. We want a big, soft, comfortable couch and a Vitamix blender and two dogs. Or one dog to start and then another one, but at least one dog. I think about it day and night. I look at the same places over and over again, waiting for something new to get listed. Although there are several places I want to look at. I can't do anything yet because it's not a guarantee that it will happen, but DEAR GOD, I pray it does! My dad said something about giving us his study so we would have two rooms upstairs and then he could rent out the apartment. That's definitely better than just my bedroom, but still, I don't want to live with my dad anymore or be right next to his bedroom. He's retired - when would we have sex? We certainly couldn't just rip eachother's clothes off in the middle of the kitchen like we have been. Also, when my dad is here, it always feels ike the kitchen is his. I never cook food when he's here because he's always cooking and taking up all the space and I just feel crowded out. Basically, this house ain't big enough for the both of us. If it wasn't for the prospect of owning my own place, I would've moved out long ago. The other exciting news is that we have tickets to see Jay-Z and Kanye's Watch the Throne tour. It's not until December, but it's gonna be AMAZING! The new album is interesting, lots of stuff going on, but some great lyrics and beats, and it seems like they had a lot of fun makng the album. I've been listening to it on repeat since it came out a few days ago. They have a song called HAM, which, in their case, stands for Hard As a Motherfucker. My HAM has had a tattoo on the back of his arm for years that says HAM and recently someone asked him if it stood for Hard As a Motherfucker. I love it. He is pretty hard, I have to say. Damn, I just love that guy. I hope he asks me to marry him one day. I just realized I'm wearing my sunglasses inside, and I've worn them the whole time I've been writing. Damn, I'm more gangsta than I thought.

I am work and nearing my period. In fact, according to MyMonthlyCycles.com, I should have started it yesterday. I feel tired and, of course, fat. I finally got enough sleep last night after not being able to sleep for two nights because I was so mad about this thing with my dad and DL. But I may end up being able to purchase a place anyway. It will only be for half the amount that I would've had, but whatever, at least I will have a piece of property in my name and the value will actually be increasing instead of decreasing like it is right now in the stock market. But I have to say, I think it's ridiculous that she's getting half of my inheritance when she's going to die a few years after him anyway. I should get at least 60%. My grandparents didn't leave me anything directly, it all went into a family trust, which means my dad gets to wield his power and control me because he knows I want a house. And he has all these rules on what the money can be used for. Like, I can't use it to pay for grad school or get breast implants. I can only use it to buy a house and only on his terms. I wish I could just move out of his fucking house and stop having this dictator tell me how selfish I am and how I think everything is about "me, me,me". What a cock-sucking sonofabitch! Seriously - we're all selfish, our own world always revolves around ourselves, even if we don't want to admit it. We spend more time thinking about ourselves than we do anyone else and that's just plain fact. He's just as selfish as anyone else, and I know because he's hoarding all that money pretending like it's all his when I was my grandparents ONLY grandchild and they loved me and I'm sure they meant for some of that money to go to me. So really, my dad is the selfish one, not me. God, it just gets me riled up thinking about it. Usually writing makes me feel better, but I'm just getting more and more angry as I write this. And the worst part is, I can't move out. HAM has a criminal record and I have toilet credit, and together we are the anti-rent poster children. But now my dad doesn't even want HAM living in the MIL apartment in the basement because he could get more rent from someone else, so that means that we'd have to live upstairs in my childhood bedroom, right next to my dad's bedroom. Fuck that noise. I don't know what's going to happen. All I know is I am sick of living with my dad and dealing with him taking pain pills and drinking every day and I hate his attitude toward me as being some incompetent little woman who can't handle money or responsibility. For a long time, he said I could ONLY get a condo because I wouldn't be able to take care of a house. That's also bullshit. I'm just so tired of him knowing everything about my life so he can always give me his opinion. I just want to separate from him and his bitchy, whiny cat and maybe not talk to him for a while so I can make decisions for myself without being clouded by his thoughts on my decisions, or his "suggestions" that seep into my subconscious so deeply that I always end up doing what he wants. He is the number one controller in my life and I've been nice for a long time, always telling him he's right and smart and knows how everything works and I'll just listen to him and do what he says but you know what? It's not me! I can't ever do any goddamn thing without his opinion finding it's way into my brain. I want out of this relationship! I want my money and my freedom, everything else will be up to me, mistakes and all.

I couldn't sleep last night. See, my dad was supposed to move to China in about a year, and before he moved, he and I were going to go in on a house. This way I would have a place to live and he would have a US address, which you apparently need if you are an ex-pat in China. Then his wife got a VISA and came here to visit. Of course she realized that the US is about a zillion times better than China, so now she wants to move here after she retires. And my dad is now saying that he may not move to China at all, but instead will just continue to visit her two months at a time. You know, I went my whole life never thinking that I would own a house. Twenty-nine years I spent thinking I would just rent and that was all I knew, so it was OK. But then my dad tells me this and I've been dreaming about it ever since. I've spent days searching the internet for real estate. I think about it daily, it's one of the things that makes me the happiest. And now what? The bitch is already getting HALF of my inheritance, and now she's ruining my chance to own my own house? She'll probably only outlive him by a few years, and then what? A million dollars goes to her family? Who the fuck are they and why do they deserve my money? Chinese people don't need a million dollars; they live in China. I live in the US and I need that money. I hate this stupid bitch. It's all just some dumb fantasy anyway. My dad always wanted an Asian, and now he's got one and he treats her like a piece of property, like a fucking trophy. It's all just bullshit. I hate them both. I hope she dies first so I'll get all my money.  

Lately I don't even know what to write about. I feel like crap today because I drank three beers last night, which was way too much for me. I'm such a lightweight now. There was a time when three beers would've been an appetizer for me. I was drinking like cases of beer back in the day. Well, I don't know if it was really cases, but it was a shit ton of beer, just sucking them down like fruit punch. But now, three beers gets me pretty loopy and feeling like ass the next day. I still went to counseling this morning, then work, then the gym where I did personal training and cardio, and now back to work again. So I'm not fucking up as far as my responsibilities go, but as far as my general well-being, I'm fucking up. It's just not worth it. It's not that fun. For instance, last night, HAM and I were watching the first episode of Mad Men, and int this episode, one of the guys tells his fiancee, "Of course I love you, I'm giving up my life to be with you, aren't I?" This made HAM laugh, so I jumped on him immediately and gave him a hard time the rest of the night for laughing at this guy's joke about marriage being a trade-in for your life. HAM knows I want to get married. Ever since we first met and he asked me what I wanted, I said I wanted to get married. He said he didn't believe in marriage, and he explained to me that he didn't need the government interfering in his personal life. I understand that. I don't need that, either, but I still want to be married. It doesn't have to be legally bound, that's really not the point for me. I just want the commitment. I want him to declare his undying love for me and make a promise to stay with me no matter what. I don't need the court document, I just need the personal statement during a ceremony where I get to wear a pretty dress and there are witnesses, like his mother. So for me, when he jokes about marriage being the end of his life, I take it seriously. I'm a good girl. I'm pretty, funny, smart, and I'm a great cook. I mean, I have my flaws like anyone, but as far as girls go, there's lots of guys who would feel lucky to have me, and I think HAM should want to marry me before someone else tries to steal me away. There's these two guys who work in the same office park as my counselor, and every time I walk by, they always stare at me. Today, they finally decided to say hello to me and I found out that they work for an engineering recruiting firm that allows them to travel to several different countries. They are both young men, fine looking, with careers, and I know they think I'm cute. Of course, I'm not interested in these guys, I love HAM and only want to be with HAM, but the point is, it's not like I'm some loser that no one else would want. I'm attractive to people. And once they finally talk to me, they discover that I'm not a bimbo, I'm actually interesting to talk to and funny and not at all stuck up. I'm someone that guys want to get to know. And HAM is young. He's only 24 and I'm 31, so I worry he's not ready to commit to me, and I could spend years with him waiting for him to want to get married, and in the end he decides he wants more experience or I'm not right for him, and he leaves me when my expiration date has long since passed. In a lot of people's eyes, my expiration date already passed since I'm over 30 (for some men, 25 is the cut off). It's not that I believe in these expiration dates - I think they're offensive - but they're a reality for a lot of people. Women's stock goes down as steadily as men's stock goes up. As men progress throughout their lives, working their way up corporate ladders or what have you, they continue to increase their value to the opposite sex, meanwhile, women get older and accumulate more fat, wrinkles, and gray hair, making them less and less valuable with every passing day. It is sad, but it is a fact that cannot be denied and it is true in almost every culture. Men are visual creatures and they desire beautiful women. It may not be all that matters, but the fact is, it does matter. HAM loves the way I look today. He loves my big butt and small waist, he loves my makeup and hair and he loves my tan and nails. I can keep up a lot of this stuff, but there is the inevitable aging process that will change the shape of my body, turn my hair gray, and produce fine lines and wrinkles on my face. I want him to love me enough to love me when I'm old. I want him to look at me and not just see a hot chick with a nice ass, but I beautiful woman who he wants to grow old with, who he loves so much that I would be beautiful to him no matter how many years have passed or how many gray hairs I have. I have been with people who have said they felt that way about me before, and I don't really know if it was true or not, but I know there are some men out there who truly love their middle-aged or elderly wives, and I think I deserve a man that loves me that much, too. A man who doesn't see my gray hair or wrinkles, but sees the real me and thinks I'm amazing, stunning, and the only girl he'd ever want. That's how I see him. I imagine him twenty years from now, HAM the man instead of HAM the baby. I see him being just as sexy, if not more so. I see him always being the guy I want to be with more than anyone else in the world, no matter if he develops a gut or stays in perfect shape. Whether he loses his pretty blonde hair or keeps it. I don't care, because I love him as a person, not as a good-looking person. I've never even been with a good-looking guy before I met him. All my boyfriends were toothless, fat, or bald. Or all three. I don't care about looks on a man. I care more about their sense of humor than anything else. I need someone who makes me laugh, and who thinks I'm funny, too. HAM does that, too. He thinks men are always funnier than women, as I've mentioned before, but he does think I'm funny, and I think he's funny, too. But I do have this fear that he'll only love me as long as I'm pretty, and one day if I'm not pretty enough, he'll either stay with me out of obligation but long for someone younger and more attractive, or he'll just leave me. Because when I met him I was physically perfect and since then I've gained like seven pounds. My stomach isn't perfectly flat anymore and I've had months of being pale instead of tan, or I've been too poor to afford to get my nails done so they grow out and look ratty for a while. I'm just afraid how I look is extremely important to him because I looked perfect when he met me and he's really into physical appearance. He loves Katy Perry and he was totally into the idea of my getting breast implants (which didn't pan out partly because of cost, and partly because I read all of the literature that they give you when you go in for a consultation and it scared the crap out of me). Katy Perry has those giant milky globes and I have just slightly more than a twelve-year-old. I often joke that I should shop in the training bra section. So I don't know, maybe I'm just insecure, as my counselor says. I know I'm insecure, but I don't think it's all in my head, I think HAM really has an aversion to unattractive women and wouldn't want me if I was fat or ugly. And I can control fat, and I'm not ugly, but I can't stop time. I will get old, I have no say in the matter. I just hope he'll fall more in love with me and see me as beautiful as I get older instead of just old. I know I have an expiration date, I just hope he'll still want to drink me once I've gone sour.