People elected as a member of one party should not be allowed to switch parties and keep their position. Their constituents elected them under certain assumptions, and I think it's wrong for the elected person to jump ship and bail on those assumptions. I think it's true regardless of which party they leave and which they join. If they want to switch for the next election, fine. If they want to switch and give up their position, fine. But I think it's profoundly dishonest to switch parties mid-term and keep the job.

Rar.

Also! Is there a way to answer comments directly? My other blog works that way and it's awesome but I don't see any 'reply' links in this format. FAIL, BLOGSPOT. FAIL. *sigh*

Aaaaaaaaanyway. PLEASE BUY HER HOUSE, KAMILLE. OR TAMMY'S. I'M NOT PICKY. As for the shrine, I moved out of that bedroom in 1995. It was completely redecorated for my sisters when they took it over, so while it was the refuge of my teen years, I have no actual personal investment in it any more. So, mostly I'm amused. Her obsessiveness toward her hobby makes me feel less of a freak in my obsessiveness. Of course, she produces beautifully functional things and I don't, but whatever. *grin*

Randomly Unrelated Thoughts

Got it in one, Kamille. I'm not surprised you guessed it right.

• I think it's really unfair that I can't just sleep for, like, a week. I should totally be independently wealthy so I can just never leave the house again.

• I am looking forward to going back to choir again next week. This class has been good for me even though it has been difficult and I have not done all the assignments but I am ready for it to be over.

• I realized last Friday that my mother will never ever approve of the way I do things. Anything at all, ever. More importantly, though, I realized that I don't need her approval to be okay. She loves me. She doesn't understand me and probably never will, and that's okay. I think I can stop hoping for the approval that isn't there and start appreciating the things that are, and hopefully have a better perspective on her and me and our relationship now. This is not entirely unrelated to the above thought, because of the things we've been talking about in class.

I've never been able to separate her opinion on the way I do things with her opinion of me personally before. They're related, sure, but they aren't the same thing. And her disapproval is based on her perspective, her idea of what she thinks it is I do and don't do. Her complete lack of a fangirl gene factors in hugely. I get that from Dad, although he's not a fanboy. He has an appreciation of pop culture that completely baffles her, and of course I took that appreciation and magnified it a thousandfold into actual fangirlism. She never really even had a hobby until she took up quilting a couple years ago. So I tell her I'm going to a fan convention and get nothing but crickets. Literally. She completely has no idea what to say and so says nothing. It's sort of funny in a totally ironic way - she can't believe I'm willing to spend so much money on tickets and hotels and airfare and pictures with/autographs from certain celebrities (and ONLY certain celebs -I am totally monogamous with whichever fandom I am currently in; I am not wired for polyamoury panfandom interaction) and at the same time, she was seriously giddy over finding a special quilting machine which was more than the total cost of one of my con trips which she bought and set up in my old bedroom at her house. I SWEAR, MOM, IT'S THE SAME THING. REALLY.

I drink a lot of cherry diet Pepsi. So when it's on sale for a good price, I stock up. Regular price is 4.29 for a 12 can pack, so if the grocery store has them for 4 for $11, I'll go in almost every day and buy 4 or sometimes 8. They limit on those sales to 4 per purchase, so sometimes I don't want to go back in. I always feel like I'm doing something wrong, lol.

Anyway. I keep it on shelves in my detached garage. I didn't lock the door, either, until one day several weeks ago when I got home from work and noticed two 12 packs missing. It's not that they stole my Pepsi, it's that someone invaded my space and took something that didn't belong to them. It's not really about the Pepsi. But. Still. It's my Pepsi. I was irritated but not angry, and I simply started locking the door to the garage. No big.

So this morning, I'm lying in bed half awake and hear the neighbor kids outside. I heard a rattling sound and then a very disappointed little boy's voice: "The door's locked!"

Me, 1, obnoxious neighbor kid, 0. I feel very smug.

Sometimes I'm kind of a b*tch

There was a woman in my ward who sort of drove me nuts. I called her Rambly Woman when I mentioned her to friends in texts. She always had a story, and it was always a lot longer than it needed to be, and it frequently had nothing to do with whatever we were talking about in class. But everyone else seemed to love her and love her stories, so, you know. Whatever.

Last Sunday, the counselor conducting announced that she was sick, so sick in fact that she'd only been given a few days, and that her family was requesting no visitors so that they could spend her few remaining days with her themselves. They didn't seem to object to having help arranging the funeral though. Again, whatever. So yeah - funeral. She died Wednesday.

Everyone seemed so upset about the news last Sunday, and I sort of felt off. Like I frequently do. I mean. Her husband of several decades died fairly recently, so she's with him again. And she's done. She gets to go home and doesn't have to deal with this crap here on Earth any more. Where's the sorrow in that? Part of me feels like I should feel bad because everyone else clearly does, but I don't. She's better off, and she's not around to annoy me anymore. Everyone wins.

I think this sort of attitude may be part of the reason I don't really have many friends.

My supervisor's husband brought her in yesterday while most of the carriers were out so she could see a few people and see the workplace under the least stressful situation possible. (She was in an bike accident and has some brain damage, although she's recovering both physically and mentally remarkably well.) I am almost always done first and got back to the office while she was there.

She didn't recognize me. I was prepared for that, honestly. She didn't always recognize her husband at first and is missing a lot of details from the last few years. She remembers the employees who have been there a long time, but not those of us who are newer. So yeah, I was expecting it, but it still stung a little. I've worked for her for almost three years. She knows more about me than my own parents do, is the reason I was able to start seeing this therapist who wasn't taking new clients, helped me move into my new house, and she looked blankly at me yesterday without the first clue who I was.

And then I woke up with a migraine this morning. It's not related - I have had a bad headache literally since I left my group therapy class last Thursday and nothing has helped. But it wasn't bad enough to call in sick until this morning, and even though I've slept most of the day, it still isn't really going away.

Sometimes life just sucks.

Dear ward organist,

I am not up there leading just so I can wave my arms around. Part of my job is to set the tempo. Part of your job is to follow the tempo I set. When our positions are reversed for choir, I follow your leading. Please, please do me the courtesy of returning the respect. Otherwise we have a day like today, when you were seriously three beats behind me by the end of the first line in all three songs and I felt like I was trying to drive freeway speeds in second gear.

Rar.

For some reason, my car is fine until my parents visit. Especially my tires. The last time both parents were here, I blew out a tire about four blocks from home. I managed to get my car into my garage but was driving on the rims by then. Dad put the spare on for me and I went up to Big-O. I ended up buying two new tires. That was about eighteen months ago.

Yesterday, Dad noticed that my tire was low (same one I blew out before, coincidentally - front passenger side) so he drove my car to the Maverick and filled it. He drove it up to my grandpa's condo, which was maybe six blocks at most, and then I drove it home, which was another six or eight blocks. It sat in my garage all night. I pulled out of the garage this morning to go to work and could tell something was wrong, so I pulled over and got out and lo and behold, the tire was completely flat.

I tried to call Dad but his phone was off. It was 7:30, so he was possibly still asleep. So then I called work to tell them I'd be late but would definitely be there, and started to try to change the tire myself. Some guy I have never seen before was out jogging, and stopped to help me change it. I am so grateful. I miss steps when I try to do car things - last time, I didn't get the hubcap off before trying to remove the lug nuts. This time, I was jacking the car up before loosening the nuts. That sort of thing. And the guy ended up literally jumping on the wrench to get the nuts loosened, too, so I probably could not have done it myself at all. But we got the spare on and I got to work.

Dad called me after a couple of hours and I told him what had happened. He said, "I wonder if the valve shaft (I think that's what he said, anyway) is broken. That's really strange." A couple hours more and Mom called. She and Dad ended up coming to get my keys and take my car to Big-O for me while I was at work. So instead of spending hours sitting at Big-O after a full shift at work, it was fixed just in time for Dad to pick it up and bring it to me at the end of my shift.

Whatever valve thingie he thought was broken was broken. And he had them replace some something belts (I am awesomely informed about cars, clearly) because they were cracking and if they had broken, my car would not run. And they told him my battery isn't holding a full charge any more. Which, it's seven years old, so I am not surprised. But it's yet another thing that wouldn't have occurred to me until the car was dead. Now I can replace it in the next few weeks before it's a problem.

These are the times I hate being so far away from my dad. Because I never think about these sorts of things in advance. But I have so far been very lucky, and things have only gone wrong when he was here to help me fix them.

My parents are coming! I miss my dad a lot, so I can't wait to see them again. Mom will be disgusted by how messy my house is and she will hate the color my hair is, but that's okay because she loves me anyway. And Dad will look at the towel rack in my bathroom that is coming loose. And after they leave, I will hang my giant Jensen banner up in my room. Because Mom will never let me live that one down.

A REAL POST, or something.

Hi! I am Joslyn. I love my cats and music and Supernatural, not necessarily in that order. Depends on the day. I also love Chuck and NCIS and The Mentalist and The Big Bang Theory, also not necessarily in that order.

I currently work for the US Postal Service as a letter carrier. I've got a good ten years plus with them under my belt, doing everything from data entry to sorting mail to selling stamps. Delivering is my favorite out of all of that, but I hope not to be doing it forever. My knees won't last that long. I am, however, happy to answer any postal-related questions.

I am a first alto with the Southern Utah Heritage Choir, although I am currently on leave and will return to rehearsals May 7, just in time to learn all the music for the Summer Concerts on the 29th and 30th.

Fascinating, isn't it?

This is all Kamille's fault. No, really, it is.