Dorienne's Log

God, I’m so frustrated.

That’s it. I’m completely and utterly frustrated with life.

Hillary Clinton lost another state. Just so frustrating. I’m not even a Democrat and it still pisses me off. Why can’t people just be honest with themselves? Barack Obama IS only winning because he’s black. That’s it! If you compared him against a white senator whose full of “ideas” and only been in the senate for all of two seconds and then take away race, there no difference. People say he’s charismatic. Who the hell cares? Hilter was charismatic. How the heck do you think he managed to nearly take over the world? Charisma has nothing to do with leading the country in right direction. And, I think I’m just truly insulted by the fact that this is affirmative action at it’s absolute worst. I can’t even stand it. There is nothing about him that would make a good president. No one, and I mean no one, can explain to me how he’s going to beat McCain. Good God! If Hillary won, I would vote Democrat for the first time in 3 years, and I’ve only been able to legally vote for five!

Honestly, this country is just not ready for a black president. If Jena 6 can be manage to be national news, this country’s not ready for a black president. If the state of Ohio can vote Republicans into every other office except for the governor’s chair for whom the Republican candidate coincidently happens to be black, this country’s not ready for a black president. What is wrong with America? Why can’t we see past the flash in the pan charisma and quit getting caught up in the moment? The only way this country is ever going to see a black president is if he (and I say he because I will never see a black woman as president of the US in my lifetime) is a Republican. A black Republican will win the conservative vote and will win the proverbial “black vote” at the same. We’ll see how many of these “time for change” people will back the first considerable black Republican taking a shot at the candidacy.

Grrr! I’m getting to the point that every time I hear the name Barack Obama I want to throw something high into the air and shoot it into oblivion. I just can’t stand it.

I’ll just start listing everything else I hate about the world right now:
Gas is 3.45 a gallon. That’s right. I can feed two people off Wendy’s dollar menu for the same cost as a gallon of gas.

Working sucks. I’m just not cut out for this 40-hour week thing. In fact, I don’t think I’m cut out for any job, but I can fake it real well; that is, when I’m not actually crying over the fact that I can’t be perfect in a job I hate.

Hypocrisy is alive and well. *coughSpitzercough*

My weight is never going to be normal. I’m just going to get fatter and fatter until I’m one of those people who has to have a wall torn out off my house just so that eight people and a tractor to carry me to the fork lift so that I can attempt a risky quadruple bypass surgery.

The environment is in the tubes. Apparently, in fifty years, we’re all going to be dead from either some super virus that mutated from something that escaped from a lab, or we’ll all bake to death from global warming. Though, I suppose I could add freeze to death as well because if having two feet of snow follow three days of near 70-degree weather in March is not a sign of climate change, I don’t know what is.

School sucks, too. I just turned in the single worst thing I’ve ever written as a final. I deserve to get a C in a class where I couldn’t pull together two coherent thoughts for long enough to even come up with some crap that resembles a thesis statement.

I lack the desire to update any creative writing. Nothing poetic, nothing short. Just nothing. I know I have the desire to write or I would’ve abandoned this post after my “Grrr!” about Obama, but I don’t want to update anything to create anything new. All these ideas have just piled on top of me to the point that I’m all worn out and now, I don’t want to do anything, but go to bed.

In case it wasn’t already obvious, I’m losing touch with my faith. I think that’s probably just about the most depressing thing out of all of this. A part of me knows that this is just the ADD in me feeling ready to move onto greener pastures, but will Jesus ever forgive me if stray away for a bit…even if I promise to come back later?

Sigh…

This kind of depression and frustration is not supposed to hit until the end of the month. Well, hurray for surprises and multiple disappointments.

I’m so ashamed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7030170.stm

It’s not even me; she just shares my skin colour, and yet, I am so ashamed. The only word I can think of to described this feeling is “saddened” I remember looking at her image in magazines and thinking, “Wow! Look at her. Go Marion, go!” I rooted for her, cheered for her, defended her in my mind and said, “I wish they’d just leave her alone.” And, now. Look what’s happened. Now, I understand how my mother felt during the Vanessa Williams scandal. To look at someone with such pride and also happiness at knowing that she was a wonderful, graceful black woman athlete who “triumphed” over all, and look what’s happened. I find myself wondering who else will let me down next. Perhaps Oprah will down fall to some horrible scandal? Perhaps Dr. Rice will be warped by some kind of disgrace?

God, she couldn’t have died without telling the world that? Disappointment doesn’t even begin to describe this feeling. Only sublime shame. I want to say this doesn’t even have an impact on my life, but it does. It impacts every woman who has every stepped foot on a track, every person who dares to succeed, and every black face that has ever found glory. I just have all these swimming memories of her on magazine covers and how the thought of her would just bring a smile to my face. “Marion Jones – fastest woman in the world” and she’s black. I suppose this is all supposed to be very humbling or something, but I still call it rubbish. Today, I wish I was any other colour in the world except for hers.

I just don’t know…All I can really say is, it doesn’t help having heroes in this world. Eventually, every[one] will let you down.

Now, I’m not one for the l337, but seriously, wtf?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7023245.stm

I mean honestly! These women are not just nuns, but nuns held in the highest regard. Why was this even allowed to happen? I don’t think I’ve disliked anyone enough to start scratching them in the face. These are supposed to be godly women! Married to God, and so on and so forth! It’s just so aggravating! No wonder there are so many atheists and agnostics in the world. If women who are supposed to be devoting their every thought to Jesus break down into Maury Povich-ish “I’m gonna get that bitch”-mode, then what does that say about the rest of us?

My pastor constantly says that not everyone who goes to church is on their way to heaven and this really makes me consider that comment. I mean honestly! These women are supposed to be Godly and they can drop all inhibitions and start duking it out just like hoodrats in the street. This is a dark day for the church, and I’m not even Catholic, but I’m looking to the pope to make some kind of comment about this.

Why does Micro$oft have to put their hand in everything? It’s like Bill Gates sees something wonderful in the world and says, “What? A market that doesn’t make me richer in some way? Inconceivable!”

Consider the past five years of human evolution: Sony comes out with the Playstation; Microsoft says “me too” and comes out with the X-Box. MySpace erupts into a phenomenon; Gates comes up with Windows Live Spaces. The iPod becomes the greatest thing that has ever come from Apple, or ever will for that matter; Microsoft comes out with the Zune player, for no other reason than wanting a piece of another pie. Now, YouTube is becoming one of the greatest entities, or tragedies, depending on you look at it, to grace the internet. God knows how long before Gates wants to dig his hand in there too, if he hasn’t already. The entire idea of it makes me sick. If I only had the time and patience to discover Linux, I would drop Microsoft and everything it entailed.

I dream of a world where people are not just offered shoddy products and expected to buy them, just because they are offered. My thinking is that after this current generation, my generation, grows up a bit and raises our kids aware of how companies like Micro$oft just love to continue their monopolized marketing strategies, that the world will move away from nonsensical entities like Microsoft. Just imagine what the world could be like if we didn’t have people like Gates standing in the doorway of progress because he isn’t ready to take his piece of the pie yet.

All this ranting stems from this article. How on Earth can Gates say that copy protection is too complex for buyers when it is his company that does the most DRM?!? It’s mind boggling! Now that his Zune player might suffer from his self-imposed copyright protection, we suddenly have a problem. Blech! The whole thing makes me want to vomit all over myself.

Anyways, I’m down two pounds. Whoop-de-doo.

Why can’t I do it? WHY CAN’T I DO IT!?!

Tonight, the women of the church came together to fellowship and everything was…so nice, and positive, and good. We then came to prayer requests and I just couldn’t do it. I had requests. I have requests. Please, pray for my grandmother; I think she’s worrying herself into the ground, a little too literally. Please, pray for my mother; she sounded so sick when I spoke with her tonight. Please, pray for me as I attempt to venture back into the working world and struggle with these monetary woes of mine. I have loads of requests, but I can never voice them. Why? I’m always so frustrated with myself. It seems like it would be so easy to do, but I just can’t do it.

It’s like some deep, innate lack of self esteem. I don’t know what to do or how to approach this. Everyone talked so long about the women of our church coming to one another. That one of us hurts we all should hurt and bring one another back up again. But….I just don’t feel like I could ever deserve that. It seems like everything going on in my life is so insignificant compared to everyone else’s, and just I can’t let go of that feeling.

I’m just sick of it. All of it.

I’m sick of these “Tired Santa” commercials. Like I need another reason to feel less than festive during this holiday season. All I see on television are countless versions of Santa, completely stressed out because no one wants to sit on his lap and ask him for gifts or Santa being ignored by kids because they are so enamoured by by Best Buy or whatever gifts already under the tree, or the infamous Santa coming home early because “everyone” is giving one another gift cards from wherever. Ugh. I’m just sick of it. It’s nearly December and I am no where near being in the Christmas spirit.

I’m sick of dealing with everything that’s happened in the past four years. I feel like I should just get up and drive to a new state and start over with my life. Just find a new place to live, find a new church and just start over.

I cried today and they weren’t happy tears. I feel like I’m being punished and it doesn’t matter how many times I fall to my knees displaying my sorrow for my actions in the past, these things just keep coming back to bite me squarely in the ass.

Obsessions are heightening, yet depression is coming. I have less than three hundred dollars to my name, yet absolutely no manner of income. I want so little, but need so much. When does this get easy? When do I get to start living my life?

I don’t know. I’m just sick of it.

So….I was put in charge of the plan to have calendars printed for our church, using images of members and of the church in general. The plan was tell sell the calendars to make a buck or two. So, I pester anyone I can think of to get various images from church events, I take the time to Photoshop the image for each month so that they all come out beautifully, I go to Staples and arrange for the calendars to be printed; I do all of this and what happens? I am totally screwed over by Staples!

I spoke to THREE different people at the same store on THREE different dates and each time I went over, what I wanted to be printed, when I needed them by and the final cost. THREE TIMES this was discussed and THREE TIMES I received the same answers. So today, I make some final adjustments to images that were too small on the proof and head on over to Staples to pay for the 100 calendars for our church where I learn that not only were their bogus dates on the calendars, “John’s Birthday”, “Nini’s Wedding Anniversary,” et al, they made sprial bound calendars instead of stitched, but also, the final cost was not the agreed upon $200 I had discussed with three different people; my calendars were going to cost over one thousand dollars!

Apparently, each of the people I spoke to regarding these calendars neglected to mention that the $200 cost applied only to pre-printed Staples calendars, not those with custom images; that which I needed for my church. Ready to burst into tears, I demanded to speak with a manager, who informed me that while they could possibly offer me my order at a somewhat reduced price, there was no way they could offer me the previously discussed $200 calendars. So, I took my proof and my order and walked out of the store, so upset that I nearly screamed on my way out.

It’s November and these are 2007 calendars. I am literally out of options because nowhere else would someone offer them cheaper. What irritates me the most is that I did everything I was supposed to do, and I still can’t catch a break. It was not like I was just stupid and ASSUMED that the $200 price referred to custom calendars. I asked three different people if I could get 100 calendars with custom images for $200 and they ALL said yes! I was sandbagged by the most incompetent group of imbeciles in the printing industry.

In the back of my mind, I think that I should have known better. I once worked for a Staples and left not four weeks after starting because it was clear that they were going to leave me at the Copy Center, all alone, and without any training. There were days when people came up to me and asked how much X and Y would cost. Since, I felt it irresponisble to give people a price and not have the information to back up the said price, I simply said that I didn’t know. Rather than let someone make an order and end up in the situation I found myself in tonight, I simply said I was ignorant in the matter, and hoped that I would later receive training.

All I’ve got to say is that I refuse to go down quietly. I will be telling my tale to anyone who dares listen. I will voice my utter disgust with Staples to any business I come across and I will be lodging a complaint come Monday morning. I was let down on something simple like church calendars. What if this had been something even more important, like wedding invitations or novel manuscripts? I refuse to buy anything from Staples ever again; even if it’s Staples brand staples. I don’t care! I would rather do without than give another dime to a company such as this. It just makes me wonder, how many other people have been hurt by this extraordinarily incompetent sham of a business called Staples?

The Cardinals won…bah. They only won because I didn’t want them to win….

Anyway, the diet official starts tomorrow. Green beans for breakfast lunch and dinner, and carrots and fruit to fill in the empty spots if I feel like I’m hungry enough to eat my own thumb. It’s nothing, but necessary though. I went out, to pick up my wings, of course, and when I put on my winter coat, the same winter coat that could fit me with a hoodie on, the bloody coat just barely fit. And I was wearing a t-shirt!

I was so disgusted with myself as I had to mildly struggle to fit the buttons. There is no excuse for all this nonsense. I must have gained forty pounds in the past year! Forget the new’s resolutions, forget the to-do lists! I’m just going to eat green beans until I fit my coat properly again.

I can’t believe this is coming as such a shock to me. I’ve seen it developing day by day, week after week, month after month. And here I am. I’m not sad or depressed or ready to cry. I’m just angry! Angry with myself for allowing this to happen and then even angrier at myself because there’s no one else to blame.

Grrr! Diet! Tomorrow! Huzzah!

Leave Xanga for two weeks and they change everything on you…

Oh well. I’m back and again, nothing much has been happening.

All my “friends” hate me now. It happens, but I know when I’m right and this is one of those situations. A-B is effectively screwing me over for the rest of this year and the next, but I will hold my head high and smile nonetheless. This week is going to be excruciating there. I have so much to do it’s really just ridiculous. They do this every year. The “let’s wait to until the last second and ask Dorienne to do a million tasks at once” attitude is getting old. I have to teach, that which is difficult enough to learn for my own needs let alone teach when no one else knows what’s going on. The whole thing just makes me sad and I’m in desperate need for a vacation. Luckily for me, I’m having surgery again and I’ll have plenty of time to “rest.”

I’ve just been feeling so low and useless lately and I’m not sure what, if anything, I can do to remedy the situation. I think I’m just ready for a change. I’ve been here for far too long and I need to see some new faces and do some new things. I think I just feel especially down today, because I was just soooooo tired in church today and I left immediately after the service. The Lord’s Supper service just kept going on and on and on. I had half a mind to just get up and walk out; I was just so tired I could barely focus. I understand how important communion is. I really do. But I have yet to see the significance of saying the same exact things over and over again in a hundred different ways month after month. It’s always the same people there every single Sunday. We all know what’s up. It’s getting to the point where I’m considering not attending the first Sunday’s service, just to avoid these annoyingly long lectures about communion. Every month, I just feel like, “Please! Just give me the cracker and the juice and let me be on my way!”
I think I’ve also been annoyed with church recently, because last week our pastor made such a big to-do about coming to afternoon service as well as morning service, and when I showed up, it had been cancelled. I drove ALL the way down there and then had to drive ALL the way back. Then yesterday, I got to our 10:30 choir practice at 10:33 and waited another 20 minutes before anyone else showed up. Our director was even late. And today in Sunday School, the little booklet they give us, said something I thoroughly did not agree with in regards to evolution versus creation, blah, blah, blah….I honestly don’t see why science and religion feel they must mix. You can’t test faith. You can’t make experiments on it. It is what it is. Science is based on testable, reproducible facts. Religion is based on faith. Why must the two be set in comparison all the time?! Why is that I can’t believe in both evolution and creation?! Why can’t anyone else agree with the idea that evolution is what got everything on this Earth to this point and that God is the “why” behind everything?! Why is this a principle that is so difficult for people to understand?! Science is the “how” of anything in the world and faith is the “why” behind that “how.”

Sigh…

I just feel so very sad and I don’t know why.

Maybe because it’s another September and I’m coming ever closer to another birthday without feeling that I’ve accomplished anything. The other day at work, I told everyone that I felt old, like I was closer to my late 30s than my early twenties and they all just laughed and said that I was “cute.” Why? It’s not like they ever felt fifteen years older than they were at my age. So, what’s with the laughter?

I set some goals for myself in my last entry and it was like the next day, that I went back on those same goals; the McDonald’s one anyway. I haven’t had any more since then, but it’s very discouraging to have a goal fresh in your mind and squelch on that goal when you feel trapped. Oh well.
I’m going to work out this week. In one form or another. I need to lose at least ten pounds before my surgery. I’ve told myself that to keep from gaining an exuberant amount of weight like I did with the first surgeries, I was only going to eat when I needed to take pain medication. We’ll see how well that’ll work out.

Okay, time to uplift myself….
Today I will:
Do all my laundry
Clean the bathroom
Finish the subdomain for the wedding pics
Clean my room
Make this stupid video thingy work
Work on my book
Study for next and winter quarter’s

It’s a good list and the best part is that it’s quite doable!

I’m still going strong right now. I’ve got my plans in place and we’ll see how this goes…

I’m still off fast food for the month. I’ve actually gone hungry instead of stopping at a Wendy’s or something, but I know it’s for the best. I caught myself wondering what I would be like at the end of the month. Will I be so accustomed to not eating fast food that I wouldn’t even notice when the end of the month came and perchance I could make it two months without any fast food? Doubtful, but there’s always the hope. I’m pretty sure I’ll be standing at Chipotle’s front door waiting for it to open on August 1st, but there’s still hope.

I’ve been finessing a lot of things lately, especially the code the websites I’m doing. One of the people on Coding Forums, brought up a good point to me as I was attempting to give advice to another. I know CSS and its basics, but I don’t know the theory behind it, so I end up with a lot of redundant information in my code. I get the style, just not the cascading part, but that will soon change.

I’m planning to start another blog, but the new one will be run completely by me since I’ve found the code to make a perfect blog under my own domain. It’ll probably be blog.doriennesmith.com, but I haven’t decided yet. It’ll be a lot on how the website is going and the “hows” behind a lot of my updates.

I’m taking a web class right now, I try as I might, I can’t resist the temptation to show off a bit. Hopefully, my instructor won’t mind that I used XHTML 1.0 instead of the crap code they suggest in the book. I mean I want to scream just looking at the code they are suggesting for their readers; especially since the book is no more than two years old. In fact….okay, the book was published in 2002, which brings up a whole new set of issues. Why on earth are we using a book that’s this old in the first place, especially when the class is on the internet and standards and such change every few years. I mean, honestly: the book is telling people to use uppercase letters and inline presentational code! For a class like this, all the textbooks should be less than a year old. Otherwise, the information is most likely ridiculously out of date by the time class starts. For that matter, I don’t see why a textbook is needed when the W3C is online all the time and holds free information for anyone who wants it; not to mention something simple like w3schools.

Speaking of being annoyed by this web class: we are forced to create our web project. (basically just a simple web page), using Geocities, which both “sucks and blows.” It is so irritating to go through all the work of creating beautiful code that validates using a Strict doctype and have to throw the whole thing in Geocities, which flays my code into some horrifying monster with its stupid and unvalidating side bar. Speaking of validation, I don’t know why I love, or am obsessed over having my code validate. It’s as if seeing the green “Passed Validation” page gives a bit of validation to my life….

Anyway, I always feel bad when I do work on my own website instead of making more progess on my church’s site. I think it’s just that there’s so much more to do for the church site. I mean I’m practically rebuilding the entire site. I’ve got the layouts already sketched out, but it’s matter of going through the daunting task of making my designs come to life in the code. Some things just are feasible from my inexperience, which means loads of time asking questions on Coding Forums and then waiting for answers, not mention all the new things that I need to create my “vision” for the site. (Sigh) There’s just so much to do, but one step at a time I suppose.

Last week looked like the end of my relationship with my mother. Honestly, it looked like we may never be on good terms again. That is, until I got a good look at what other people have to go through with their parents….It was only then that I realized how lucky I was to be in my situation, but have a clear, defined way out of it and with the support needed to keep me from failing. I’m just glad that Jesus helped me stay calm enough from going off the deep end and saying or doing things that could not be taken back later. I was so emotionally I had to revert back to the “Tweety Book,” my old handwritten journal, mostly because my language was getting slightly out of hand and there were things I need to write down that really are not meant for the internet. That’s something I think a lot of people don’t understand about the internet and blogs. EVERYONE can read them, and even if they’re are private, if someone wanted to, they could get to it still. I’ve never put anything on the internet that I didn’t want to be shown to the world. Pictures I would have problems explaining or truly personal moments don’t belong on the internet.

Anyhoo – It’s time to get ready for Sunday School. I haven’t been to Sunday School, literallly since I was seven years old, so this will be a sort of adventure in itself. We’ll see how it goes…