Dream Journal 3/2/17 | Will Smith

I was walking through a large store by myself, just browsing around in the women’s clothing section, when I saw a man pacing angrily through the aisles of greeting cards. The man was wearing a gray beanie, dark sunglasses, and a leather coat. He was shouting angrily about there being no one around to help him, and cursing under his breath. Despite him seeming slightly terrifying, I walked over to him and asked if he needed help looking for a specific card. I told him that I used to work in the store, and might be able to help him. He just stared at me for a few seconds before dramatically ripping off his sunglasses, and saying, “Get the fuck away from me.”

I stared for a moment, completely in shock. It was Will Smith. Will Smith was the man angrily pacing through the greeting card aisle. Will Smith had just cursed at me and told me to get away from him. I calmly asked him if he was sure he didn’t need any help, and he started hollering incoherently at me. I backed away and quickly retreated back to the women’s clothing section. I was shaking, and felt a strange mix of confusion and excitement. There was a girl nearby who was folding shirts on a table, and I walked over to her and told her that Will Smith was in the store. She got excited and said she wanted to say hello to him, but when I told her what happened, so said we had to warn the other employees.

We walked over to the Electronics department, where a really young guy was working at the counter. He literally only looked 12 or 13 years old. As we were telling him that Will Smith was in the store, Will Smith walked by, and before we could warn him that the guy was kind of an unstable jerk, he ran up to him, excitedly asking him to take a picture. Will Smith looked over at me and the other girl, and started shouting that I was stalking him, and that this was all my fault, and whatnot. I stood there, completely frozen, while security showed up to drag him away, still screaming obscenities in my direction.

Then, I was at home. I was sitting at my computer, and Facebook Messenger popped up. I didn’t know the person, but they sent me a link to an online blog, run by Will Smith. In his most recent blog post, he wrote a scathing article about how I was stalking him, and harassing him, and had gotten him removed from a store. He mentioned me by name, and there were pictures of me as well. I was horrified. I never told him my name, and how did he even get the pictures?

I read through the comments, and there were at least a dozen people with “Jan” or “Janise” (my name) in their screen names, all claiming to be me, and all saying horrible things, and making me look bad. There were links being posted to other blogs, social networks, and even YouTube, where people were pretending to be me. I tried writing a comment, apologising to Will Smith, and telling him this was all a huge misunderstanding, but as soon as I hit enter, I was flooded by horrible, mean replies. Most people thought I was another fake.

I started crying, and closed the blog post. Back on Facebook, I had another two dozen messages waiting for me, all from strangers, all with links to these other sites where people were pretending to be me. Trying to twist the situation, and tell “their side” of the story, trying to get attention. I clicked on a few of the YouTube links, and saw girls of every age, ethnicity, etc. impersonating me, making me look awful. It didn’t make any sense.

It went on like that for a while. Endless videos, endless tweets, endless blog posts, all people trying to garner attention for themselves, while destroying my good name.

After a while, I woke up.

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Dream Journal 10/19/16

I was sitting at my kitchen table, drinking coffee while Liam ate his breakfast, when I heard the sound of voices in the building’s hallway.

Small Stones 8/29/16

His big sister tells me his name is Gus.

Small Stones 8/23/16

All it took was one lie, repeated over and over, to cast a dark shadow over an otherwise bright day.

“Bad” Parenting

You know, it drives me nuts when people call other people “bad parents”, just because their parenting style differs from their own.

Dream Journal 7/15/16 | Blood and Mold

[Dream #1]

I was in a large warehouse style store, and I was trying to pull something off of a shelf, and a ton of random stuff fell down on top of me. A bunch of people rushed over to pull me out of the pile, and when I came out, my face was covered in blood, and one of the workers started screaming that my eye was missing. I started to panic, but discovered that my eye wasn’t missing, it was actually cracked open, like it was made of glass.

Dream Journal 7/3/16

Kyle and I were about to start our vacation in London. We had just gotten out of the back of a cab, when Kyle’s phone rang, and we were informed that our hotel had a gas leak, and that we could not stay there. Frustrated, we dragged our luggage into a small cafe across the street, and tried to figure out our next move. We were sitting at our table, scrolling through hotel listings on our phones, when a man approached us. I looked up, and there, standing by our table, was Felix Kjellberg… or PewDiePie, as you may also know him as.

An Email to My Landlord

Hello, friends. I thought I would update you a bit on my current apartment situation, as you all know, is absolute crap.

It has now been over two weeks since I called the company that I rent through, Yanke Realty, about our leaking fridge, and was told (very rudely) that it would “be a while” because there is a lack of maintenance employees. Over two weeks though? No. I don’t think so. Well, the linoleum and floor molding trip are now discolored and starting to warp around the side and back fridge, and I am pretty sure we have mold under the floor, as well as on the wall behind the fridge, where the water has been sitting. I can only mop up the water on the front and right side, as the fridge is too heavy to move on my own.

I took pictures of the floor and wall between the fridge and cabinets, as well as the hideous, uncovered panel that was supposed to be plastered over nearly a year ago. I also mentioned about how we called TWICE last summer about getting some screens on our windows, since we have none, and was told someone would come out to measure. Yeah, that never happened. We still have no screens. I mentioned all of this, and attached the photos, in a very long, polite, email to Yanke Realty, pointing out the potential health hazards, damage, and cost that a mold issue could cause, and mentioned quite casually that I will get legal representation if need be, because I am now very familiar with my rights as a renter. I will only communicate with them via email from this point on, and will document everything carefully.

Your move, Yanke Realty.

Here is the email:

“Hello, this is Janise H. from *** **** ****** **, and I am emailing to remind you about our fridge that is still leaking water from the back. I called several weeks ago, and we are still waiting for it to be looked at. I have not heard anything. The linoleum and floor trim is now discolored  and is warping from the reoccurring puddles (I included a picture attached to this email), and I am pretty sure there will be a mold issue beneath the flooring, as well as on the wall. I don’t particularly like mold in my apartment, especially since I have a toddler, so if someone could please come out soon, that would be great.

I also called last summer about getting some screens put in our windows, as there are only two windows with screens in the apartment, and we are unable to open any of the windows due to the numerous wasps, hornets, and spiders around the outside of building. We were told someone was going to come out to measure them, but that never happened. I’m also hoping that we can get this hole in our ceiling patched that has been sitting like this for over a year now (picture also attached picture)… we’ve called about it several times, and nothing has been done about it. While it does not pose any health risks that I know of, it is quite an eyesore, and really should have been covered when the leak was fixed, over a year ago. I’m afraid that if we are facing a mold issue, and it is not taken care of, I will seek legal representation, for the sake of my family’s health and well-being.

My phone is currently shut off, so please reply via this email, but you can still reach my husband at ***-***-**** if you need to get a hold of us.
Thank you for your time.

Janise H.”

What do you guys think? Should I be more aggressive, or was this okay? I don’t like confrontation, but I am so tired of being taken advantage of, you know?

Thanks for reading, friends.

Jan

Dream Journal 6/9/16 | Hashtag

I was sitting at my desk, scrolling through Twitter, when I saw the trending hashtag: #Get********to50k. I censored the name, because it is a real person on Twitter, who I have had very public issues with in the past. I thought it was strange, and clicked on the hashtag to see what it was all about. There were thousands and thousands of tweets showing support of something, but it wasn’t clear what their cause was. One tweet read something like: “#Get********to50k because we’re tired of not being listened to.” A couple of the other tweets made it seem like it had something to do with the Warcraft community, but they were all vague enough to give no real answers as to what the hashtag was about.

I went to this person’s Twitter profile, who actually has me blocked in real life, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary, until I noticed that their follower count was just over 49,000 people. Their tweets were all about equality and justice, but once again, still very vague as to what the cause was. I got upset about it for some reason, and left my computer.

I called Kyle while he was at work, and told him that there was a bad storm happening outside, even though I could clearly see that there wasn’t, and he was confused, and hung up the phone because I wasn’t making any sense, and he knew I was lying.

The last thing I remember was making two salads for Liam and I, and working really hard on them, and he kept throwing all the vegetables on the floor, and it made me start crying.

Then I woke up.

Mom’s Visit | Day 6

[You can read about Days 0-1 here, Day 2 here, Day 3 here, Day 4 here, and Day 5 here.]

Hello, friends. Today has been very… trying.

Kyle went back to work today, though I had him with me all morning and early afternoon. I had planned on getting some housework done, since it has all gone undone ever since my mom arrived, but that never ended up happening. Liam was incredibly fussy all morning, despite sleeping for nearly 13 hours straight, and was being quite naughty. On top of dealing with a cranky toddler, Kyle had a meeting with the financial aid office about getting financial help with his CDL class… and they basically told him there is nothing they can do to help him. So he came home very upset, which only made me more upset about this whole day getting off to a rough start.

Liam took an early nap around 10:15, despite only being awake for 2.5 hours, and ended up sleeping for 3 whole hours. I decided to put off doing anything with my mom until after he had his lunch, in the hopes that his long nap would put him in better spirits. This did not stop her from driving all the way to the park up the street from our apartment, and texting us about all the comings and goings happening there. It made me feel bad, and a little annoyed, that she drove all the way here, when we didn’t want company for a while, but whatever.

After kiddo woke up and had his lunch, my mom came over, and we all sat around, playing with Liam’s blocks, doing puzzles, and chatting. Kyle left for work, and my mom and I left shortly after to take Liam to the play area at the mall. We stopped to get some concrete mixers from Culver’s (basically, for those who don’t know, it is just building your own delicious, frozen custard treat with all sorts of candies and toppings to mix in), since we’ve all been craving them lately. We brought one to Kyle at work, and visited with him and one of his co-workers for a while, then headed to the mall play area.

Unlike yesterday, we had the entire play area to ourselves, and Liam had a blast, running around and screaming like a silly boy. Unfortunately, it wasn’t all that fun for me, as my mom was driving me absolutely insane. She was crawling around, playing with Liam, and chasing him, and kept stopping every so often to proclaim loudly, “Oh, I better stop, I’m probably embarrassing mommy!”, despite the fact that there was no one around, and I had not said anything at all. She did this at least 10 times. That’s just something she does, and it honestly drives me insane. She always says things like, “I’m just so stupid, don’t listen to me.” or “I’m probably wrong, I’m wrong about everything.” or always assumes that you are embarrassed of her, even when you aren’t arguing with her, or correcting her, or anything. It is so irritating, and she has been like this my entire life. I was hoping that she had changed, even a little bit, in the 8 years since I’ve lived under the same roof as her, but she hasn’t. I’ve called her out on it before, and tell her to stop saying things like that about herself, but it just makes her angry.

Anyway, after a little while, it started getting close to dinner time, so we headed to the bathrooms at other end of the mall to change Liam’s diaper. Once we got there, my mom told me she was going to just go wait for me by the car, which was parked outside of a totally different entrance, and I told her I was going to be a minute, because I wanted to take Liam to say goodnight to Kyle, since he wouldn’t be home in time for bedtime. She just walked off without a word.

Back in Kyle’s work, where it was absolutely dead, I found myself ranting irritably to Kyle and his co-worker friend, while Liam ran around, playing with the various things that hung from low hooks. I eventually went to meet my mom back at the car, where she argued with me over where we should eat dinner, and we ended up eating nowhere, and she just dropped me off at the partment.

Ugh. I don’t know what’s going on. I’ve just been so exhausted lately, emotionally and physically, and it has put me so on edge. I knew that this was going to be a hard week for me, as even spending 24 hours with my mom gets under my skin, but this week has been hard for so many reasons. Tomorrow is her last visiting day with us, even though her flight leaves Saturday night, but she doesn’t want to stop by that day. I’ll be honest, I really missed alone time with my son. I missed cleaning my apartment. I missed taking naps. I missed spending Kyle’s days off with him, cuddling on the couch, watching Netflix. I missed normality.

I guess that’s it for now. I want to spend tomorrow driving around, looking for garage sales and yard sales in the area. My mom is still pushing that she wants to buy me stuff, so maybe I’ll be able to find a decent dresser somewhere for her to get me. Who knows.

Well, Kyle literally just walked in, and I want cuddles. We’ve been watching The Adventures of Merlin on Netflix, and I know I’ve mentioned it before, but seriously, you should check it out.

Also, before I go, I wanted to add something else that she does that I find… odd. Whenever Liam does literally anything, like how he plays with blocks, or babbles, or runs around excitedly… just the things he does normally, she never compares him to me at his age. Not at all. She always says that everything reminds her of herself, or her and her mom, from when she was little. She never even talks about me as a baby, or her and I. I just find it strange. Is it? I don’t know. Meh.

Anyway, thanks for reading, friends.

Jan