10 Book confessions

1. I have never read a Narnia book.

2. I have read all of the Lord of the Rings books except The Return of the King. I make it about half way and then sleep takes over every time I try.

3. I have read every book in the Princess Diaries, Harry Potter, and Artemis Fowl series and enjoyed them.

4. I read all but one of the Hitchhiker's Guide books and loved them, but I embarrassingly remember little about them.

5. I am the only one from my Senior English class in high school who liked Adam Bede.

6. I often enjoy children's books more than those written for adults.

7. I have read The Little Prince in the original French, twice.

8. I have to read parts of the Redwall series' books out loud due to the amazing accents that are written out.

9. I like reading book compilations of real people's diaries and letters.

10. I hate getting rid of books. There are piles of them throughout the house.

In a year

I have been looking forward to this date. Today I can say, "Only one more year!"

If all goes well, next year on this date I will be marrying my fiance.

It is both exciting and frustrating. Exciting for the obvious reason. But furstrating because I haven't actually set the date with the church yet. The reason is that I know they may tell me I can't set a date until all the paperwork is done. All the paperwork is done on my end. But my fiance hasn't completed his yet. Whenever I ask I hear some excuse and then I feel much frustration.

I don't know what else I can do or say. I know he wants to marry me since he asked me and we both agreed on a date. So why is this not getting done? Yes I have asked and not gotten a decent understandable answer why it has been 4 months without completing it. Is this some guy thing I just can't understand?

Right now I find myself wavering between trust him to get it done and nag him until it's done.

So honey, if you're reading this, please PLEASE get the papers finished!

And I love you.

Another year

Today my daughter turns 18 years old. Thanks to her autism she typically behaves as a younger child. But still, it's a milestone for her and a reminder to me of how old I'm getting. :(

Did I really hear that?

Random strange things I heard from my family today:

"After this last one there's one more left."


Q: "If the zombies ate their hearts, how come you can see the hearts on the floor?"
A: "Well they I think they ate them AND they're on the floor."


Q1: "What do Daleks do?"
A1: "They like to exterminate."
Q2: "Are they the one's who say, 'Exterminate!'?"
A2: (sighing heavily) "Yes."


"You never see them die. How do you know they're dead?"


"It's on the TV there, see?"
"But I couldn't find it on the internet!"


Q: "If a vampire became a cannibal or ate human flesh wouldn't it stop being a vampire and actually be a ghoul or zombie?"
A: "That would depend on how raw and bloody the flesh was."

Words are important

Thanks to my migraines, and loudness being a big trigger for them, the time I spend watching TV involves turning off the volume and turning on closed captions. Sometimes shows have no captions, which means I cannot watch them. Sometimes the captions are there and are perfect. Sadly, a majority of the time the captions are not accurate at all.

I can understand that if the show is being captioned live, such as a news broadcast, that it is impossible to transcribe everything perfectly. But when it is a recorded show that could be captioned ahead of time, and it is obviously not or is done poorly I find it hard to tolerate.

I cannot understand why a captioner would type the words "witches" instead of "which is" when witches would not fit into the subject at all.

I cannot understand why captioners bother to type half a sentence only to leave out important words that would be necessary for understanding. "The person would non-corn based products" is one caption I saw today. I have no idea what it meant since the rest of the speech did not clue me in.

I also cannot understand when captions seem to become completely out of control. The captions suddenly spout gibberish, turn bizarre colors, or change position on the screen for no reason and block the view of the picture. I always joke that the captioner must be drunk or on drugs to have messed up so badly.

And I also do not understand why captions sometimes block important words on the screen that are not captioned, such as text translated into English or a person's name. Doesn't that defeat the purpose of the captions to begin with?

I can imagine that the deaf community feels ambivalent about the current quality of closed captioning. They don't like it but are afraid to complain too much for fear the captioning of visual media will be reduced or eliminated.

If I were blessed to be able to provide a wonderful service for a minority community I would be ashamed to put out such shoddy work. The little I have heard from said captioners is full of excuses. Face it: transcribers exist in many other businesses and are held accountable to be as accurate as possible. In this day and age there is no decent excuse for the overall poor quality of captioning.

Frustration in paper

I hate paperwork. A simple form that merely asks for my basic information is fine. I can handle that. But anything further I cannot stand. For some reason it gets me incredibly stressed and that, in turn, causes a killer migraine.

Naturally the government likes to dole out loads of this paperwork onto citizens, who then have the burden of listing every detail of their lives. Lately doctors and lawyers have also begun to request large amounts of information via a multitude of paperwork as well. So then, since I am dealing with the government, doctors, and lawyers regarding my and my children's disabilities I am up to my neck with paperwork. I want to scream. Then crawl back into bed. And stay there.

The best I can do is to work on it a little bit and then either leave the rest for another day or ask for help.

Today I asked for help. The person who I asked to help me thinks I am just being lazy, when in actuality I am trying to preserve my sanity and health. This person should know that as well as I do, yet they still make these comments and try to bring me down.

So what should a good Catholic Christian do? In this case I am choosing to not make excuses for myself to this person, since I do not want to argue about their validity, yet I am still asking for help because I need it. I hope this is the right choice.

*sigh* I really really hate paperwork.