I just went back and looked at my “archives” and if I’m looking at things correctly – ALL of my pictures from the past NINE years are gone.  Just completely gone.  And even more sad, I was going to start looking through these pictures to start saving many pictures that I had lost when my last computer died.

So very disappointed Xanga.

Here is the picture I used as my background picture.  Gorgeous picture I managed to snap our one night in Milan, Italy.  Wish I could adjust it to look the way I want for the background here.

I used to love using this website.  So easy, so quick, so user friendly.  I could post private entries for no one to read, for only some people to read, comments/no comments.  I used to love changing up the colors, the pictures, the whole look of my page to go with whatever project I was working on.

And one day I came here and EVERYTHING was gone!  All my customization, everything I had set up.  Just GONE.  I don’t get it.  Luckily, I paid the “Lifetime” fee once all those years ago and have not been wasting money on it.

But I will give this one more shot.  I will see if I can customize the page as easily as I used to do.  We shall see whether I ever bother with this again.

Okay – now I’m looking for the option to fill this post with a background color, or leave it transparent.  I am not finding any option to do so.

Strike 1 Xanga.

Oh, and this automatic double space when I press Enter?  Who does that?

Strike 2 Xanga.

I have found their account on Twitter.  Let’s see if they respond.  Or if they are just dead.  I think there is the possibility they were taken over by WordPress and may just now be a “dead” site.  Not really sure right now.

I may never use this website again.  They’ve destroyed it.  I can barely make head nor tails out of it.  Took out all my customization.  Made it boring as hell.  Made it almost impossible to find your actual blog page.

What is the matter with people?  It’s like when Facebook makes drastic changes or when we had the “New Coke”.  People at these companies think, “Oh, it’s working, so let’s ‘fix’ it.”  Did they lose their brains the moment they got a Marketing degree or something???

I’m posting this here because my family & most of my close friends don’t follow me here. But…I’m turning 50 this Saturday and I can’t tell you how depressed I am. The only birthday that ever hit me before was my 35th. That’s because I was halfway to 40 and that really bugged me. 40 did not bother me because I was at Disney World for the first (and so far only) time of my life. We were at the Magic Kingdom and I’d found out that if you go to City Hall there and show you I.D., they give you a big button that reads TODAY IS MY BIRTHDAY and all the employees have to wish you a Happy Birthday when they see that button. My favorite was the guy dressed as an undertaker at the end of the line for The Haunted Mansion, wearing sunglasses, who didn’t move, but just as I walked by, said in a snarling voice: “Have a miserable birthday.” Made my ex and I laugh so hard we were crying with laughter. BEST WAY to spend a 40th birthday. But now… my plan WAS to be back at Disney World for my 50th birthday. That plan fell apart when our Italy trip got postponed from last year. Italy broke me. So much so that I’m really worried about cash flow until tax refund season, which is a long way off. Don’t get me wrong, Italy was THE trip of a lifetime, and so very worth it, but it didn’t happen on my actual birthday.

What’s happening on my birthday? Nothing as far as I can tell. Most of my friends are in the One Acts at Aurora Community Theatre this Saturday night, so they’ll all be busy with that. No plans for me hitting the Big 5-0 this Saturday. The big frickin’ half century.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m very happy to still be around to SEE age 50, but only ONE of my big life dreams has happened. I was supposed to have met my husband – the love of my life – by my mid-30s and we were supposed to be married have our own house by now – a REAL house with a yard and at least one dog. We were maybe even going to have kids, who would have been teenagers by now. And I was supposed to be in a job that made me happy because with two incomes, I wouldn’t need to do something that necessarily made me really decent money, but that I was happy doing. Maybe I was even going to be making some money as a writer, an actor and/or a voiceover artist.

But what is my life as I’m about to hit 50? Doing a job that while I don’t hate it, I don’t in any way love it. And not only that, but I’m coming to the end of having been on a delayed six month probation at work, worried for over 9 months now that I was going to lose my job after having worked for this company for almost 19 years. It’s not an enjoyable job in any way and I’m constantly thrown into new stuff that I have to figure out on my own via the Internet alone. (don’t worry, I am aware that a recent survey shows that 70% of people in the world today hate their job)

I don’t have a house. I have what amounts to a 2 bedroom apartment, but that I have a mortgage on – so I own a mortgage. No husband. I’ve had one long-term relationship in my life, but he could never truly share himself after 10 & 1/2 years together. And I look back now and realize that I was never truly in love. Single for 8 years and dateless and celibate for 7 years. Fat. Fatty fat fat, despite the fact that I workout 5 or 6 days a week.

I do get to act. That is the one pleasure I have in life, but it is completely volunteer. Still very worth it for the sheer joy it can (usually) bring.

And I have a dog. I have my Fazio, with whom I don’t know how I got along without him before and I don’t know what I will do when he’s gone (and shouldn’t even think about that).

And that’s it.

So how will I probably spend my birthday? More than likely post a few more pics/memories of my Italy trip on Facebook. Maybe take Fazio to the dog park. Watch a movie or two. And wallow and drink whiskey.

Happy frickin’ 50th birthday to me.

Going pink with the borders for a while since I’m going to be in “Legally Blonde”!

Out of nowhere, I’m suddenly very bored with Twitter and Facebook, which I thought would never happen. I guess it’s just because it suddenly hit me how very boring and uninteresting my life truly is, so why post about it anymore? And it happened the same time I got a new follower on Twitter because of my radio show, which I find very weird – I mean, how he knew I was THAT Eric Oswald, I don’t know. So maybe I’ll post my radio show information on here and Tweet the links to that info occasionally, but I’ve just suddenly gone into this I-want-to-crawl-into-a-dark-hole mode because my life wouldn’t be that much different or interesting if I did.

Meh.

So I’m thinking of writing two separate blogs and trying to make money with them. I’ve found a couple of online articles about how to make money doing it and there are quite a few people who actually make a living doing it. I would be happy just to make some extra money doing it. And I have two ideas for my blogs. Both ideas might already be out there in similar forms, but each person’s perspective is their own and unique, so I think it could work. Now to find the time to research it and get it started. But of course I’m also pre-occupied with my trip to Italy in June.

PS – don’t know if I can continue using this Xanga phone app because it does freaky things when you make a mistake and try to correct them. Hence the weird letters at the end of this post.

tnIJun

I’m washing dishes, almost ready to leave for work and I’d given Fazio a Dentastix, which he gets as a treat if he does his “duty” on our walk before I leave. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him moving down the hallway, acting like he’s playing with a toy. I think maybe he’s got his favorite ball in his mouth and he keeps putting first one then the other paw to his head. Then he turns and I see his mouth is wide open, but nothing’s in it. He’s choking. He’s probably done his typical thing he does with his rawhide – he throws his head back with the rawhide in his mouth to move it into a better position to chew. He’s done that with his Dentastix and instead it’s lodged a piece in his throat. I drop the dish I’ve got and run to him, fully prepared to do the doggy Heimlich maneuver I’d JUST read about last night on Facebook (thank God for some of the things people post on Facebook) and when I get to him, he coughs the piece out, then promptly picks it up and finishes eating it like nothing’s happened. I’m shaking and crying and he just looks up and me and burps (’cause he’s classy like me that way). I held him for about 5 minutes crying and he just puts a paw up on my arm like, “Hey, it’s no big deal Dad. I do that ALL the time.”. It’s a moment like that that just makes me wish I was able to login to work from home so I could keep my eye on him all day. He’d probably just fall asleep at my feet, but I’d be quite all right with that.