This past month or two I've been riding this goddamned rocking horse for all I'm worth but these walls, they're still whispering at me.

For the past year or so, the walls have been quiet, leaving me to finally rest after deafening me for most of my life. But when it rains, it fucking pours man. Car repair bills, a nephew wanting to test for his green belt (those tests are not cheap - and he passed! Next is green with a brown stripe), dogs needing vet visits, showers deciding to stop working, blah, blah, blah. Same old shit but we got forcibly relocated to Bandini mountain and I'm just about done in.

Le sigh. Thank for listening. It'll be all right - I can see the light at the end of the tunnel we've bored through the fertilizer. I only wish my horse'd rock forward faster. :-)

After my dad died, I developed this pervasive need to make sure the people I love know that I love them. Not too hard to figure out, right? This compulsion has metastasized into letting people know if they're doing a good job or they look good on a particular day or basically anything that might make someone's day a little brighter or cause them to feel that they matter.

Real life example - Shannon took The Niece to get her ears pierced the other weekend. We'd gone to see "Up" and stopped at Claire's after leaving the theater. The girl there was handling the busy store by herself. She was incredibly nice and professional, competently handling the many different customers and their requests with aplomb. So I told her I was impressed with her ability in running the store. I don't know if it made her day or if she's used to being complimented on her work efforts but I felt better for having said something and acknowledging her.

It's as though if I don't seize that one particular ephemeral opportunity to say a nice thing or let a person know I care, I'll never get that chance again. I have to reach out and grasp it, add my spin and then release it into the neverwhere, hoping that I've made the impact my heart so desperately needs to achieve. Perhaps my motivation is truly selfish in that regard. I do these things because they make me feel better about myself.

All I know is whenever I don't give in to this compulsive need, I flagellate myself with "what if" and "why didn't you say something". These repeated affirmations of love and caring have to be annoying to the people closest to me. To paraphrase James Taylor, "smother the people you love with love/show them the way that you feel". It's okay, Lil, we know you care now just back the fuck off!

Eh. I've totally lost control of this post and have no idea how to compose/re-arrange/detonate it so that it makes sense. These thoughts were tumbling around my brain and spewed themselves out into a blog entry. It is what it is, I suppose.

• Violator by Depeche Mode was a great album.
  
• I love that Dave Gahan sings with an English accent because if he pronounced laughing any differently in Blasphemous Rumours, it just wouldn't be the same song.
  
• I know Blasphemous Rumours wasn't on Violator.
  
• Admission of Guilt: I LIKE ZZ Top. There, I said it.
  
• In Hot for Teacher, Van Halen totally ripped of the drum part of ZZ Top's La Grange to the point that hopefully they gave them credit on the album.
  
• I always wanted ZZ Top's car in those videos they did where they were fairy god-musicians and made the lives of the geeky guy and downtrodden girl so much better by giving them the way cool ZZ Top key chain.

That is all. Oh wait, just to scare the crap out of you:

It's me! Hadn't posted an updated picture of me in ages so, me being the kind person that I am, am posting this picture taken the day I got my hair done. Rest assured, it has not looked anything like this since.

I figure this might be a good idea seeing as I refer to most of these people on a fairly regular basis. I'll link it on the side so you can all have it handy for future reference ('cause I know you're all so fascinated by my life ). The idea for this was born from someone asking who The Nephew is. I realized that if you're new to me, of course you wouldn't know who The Nephew is.

Shannon - Shannon is my best friend. We've known each other for over 20 years. We met in high school when we were in the same English class. She's been my closest friend ever since. She's family more so than my biological family - I consider her my sister. In fact, her family is more so my family than my biological family. They've always accepted me as I am - a complete dork - and have loved me unconditionally. I can't say the same for a few of my biological relatives.

David - Shannon's husband (married in early 2008) and also a friend I've had since high school. I actually had a crush on David for about 2 weeks or so before he and Shannon discovered each other. Their story is really disgusting in a Harry Met Sally movie kind of way. They dated for 3 years way back when and then broke up. They were apart for 13 years during which they both got married to other people, had a kid each, and then split up with their respective spouses. I remained close friends with Shannon during that time but lost touch with David. Then a couple years ago, Shannon finds David on Classmates.com. She e-mails him. They got back together almost instantly and have been together ever since. Isn't that just so gross?!

Adam - David's son who is 12 years old and is pretty much David's mini-me. I swear - they look exactly alike! He now lives in Florida with his mom and stepfather and seems to be very happy there.

The Nephew - Shannon's son whom I consider my vicarious child. I've been around him since he was conceived, basically. You've all heard about him and his many exploits as well as his cleft palate and the many surgeries he's gone through. He's an amazing kid and I call him my nephew because that's easier than saying "my best friend's, who's pretty much family because we've known each other so long, son" over and over again. I talk about him more than Adam because I'm closer to him, having been a part of his life for so much longer.

The Niece - Shannon and David's daughter who was born in 2006. She's freaking adorable and has the best personality already at just 2 years old. She is currently obsessed with happy faces and the Backyardigans (damn their insanely catchy musical hides).

Tofu - the cutest doggie alive today - she was given to The Nephew by his great-aunt Carol for his birthday in 2003.

Shasta - the most kick-ass independent beautiful kitty alive today. Shannon and I have had her since we moved out of our respective parents' houses in 1993. Sadly, Shasta died a few years ago (she was 13 years old). I still miss her.

Vigilantes - the group of people I've come to know through the Vartypants' Vigilantes Love Lounge message board, which I co-own. I've been hanging out there since November of 2002, when I was a fan of Michael Vartan, an actor on the tv show Alias. The show has since become a piece of shit and I no longer fancy Varty but the people I've met through the board are some of the greatest psychotics on this planet. I recently met two of them in real life in Toronto. The Vartypants Vigilante site has been shut down for some time now. I really miss the message board and the people I met through there but it lived a good life and died at the right time, I think. I'm horrible at keeping in touch with people and am ashamed to have let these relationships lapse. One of these days I'll have to do something about that.

Work - I work in a small CPA firm in Southern Orange County. There are only two other people working here - the owner and my immediate supervisor. Both very nice people. I also have a second job doing transcription/general typing work for a local secretarial firm. My boss there is also incredibly nice. I'm seriously lucky.

WCIL - this is a past job, where I worked for a little over 7 years (from 1997-2004, which is when I moved to Orange County, CA). I made a lot of friends there and miss them very much. Luckily, they're not too far away and I talk to most of them a few times a week. Please see aforementioned comment about how I'm awful at keeping in touch with people. I recently connected with a couple WCIL people on Plaxo and one of them said "you're still alive!" *hangs head in shame* Also, this is a very worthwhile non-profit organization. WCIL helps people with disabilities to live independently in the community as opposed to being institutionalized. I firmly believe in what they do there and have gone from being an employee to a donor. There are independent living centers (ILCs) all over the country and they all do the same good work so if you're looking for a good cause to support, this definitely qualifies. To find the independent living center near you, go to http://www.ilru.org. They've got a list of ILCs in every state and also in Canada. </plug> I left there in 2004 to move to Orange County. This was the singular best place of work in my life. The pay was crappy but the people and the workplace were wonderful and inspiring. My amazing boss, Mary Ann, died just this year (2008) from pneumonia and I miss her terribly.

So that's it. Those are the people I'll mention the most around here. If I talk about someone and don't explain who they are, just ask me. If I end up talking about them a lot, I'll probably add them here.

A long time ago, in a county far far away….

Truthfully, it isn’t actually that far away, it’s about 40 miles which takes about ½ hour to 45 minutes to drive and, well, you get the picture.

When I left WCIL back in 1997 and moved to Orange County, I was hopeful and excited to be entering a new field that logically seemed as though it would always be around. No longer would I feel threatened by the State of California’s annual budget wars. Everyone would always need a house, right?

I’ve worked at three different jobs since leaving Los Angeles County. Two of them were in the mortgage industry. I left the first because it was wearing me down, body and soul. Endless hours of work, not enough help and way too little acknowledgment.

Second job was only slightly better. I was working with friends, which made it more tolerable but, for me, it was not good for my self-confidence and self-esteem to be trying so very hard to learn a job and do it well but not succeed in any fashion. For so many years, I was the queen of the Office – I knew how to do every office job and was able to do it well. Not so much with the loan processing.

It would have been better if I was able to multi-task under immense pressure but I’m not. That, in a nutshell, is what loan processing is all about. One has to keep track of innumerable details all while wheedling with underwriters to approve the loan, begging doc drawers to send out the loan docs before the borrower’s go out of the country (because what better time to travel than when you’re buying a house) and prostrating oneself to funders to please, please, please fund this loan. Then add to that the loan officers needing this, wanting you to call that person, and WHY HASN’T THE LOAN FUNDED YET!!!!! It’s an incredibly difficult job and not one that I was meant to do. This has been a very difficult realization to come to. I tried for 2 ½ years to get it right and to be completely honest, the only reason I stayed so long was this little girl:

I was working as Shannon’s assistant and after she had her baby (in May of 2006 - please see above photo) due to HIGH child care costs, The Niece would come to work with us. Trying to make it as a loan processor while helping to juggle a baby (albeit an adorable, sweet, even-tempered one) is a disaster. With the housing market imploding into oblivion and mortgage companies going under left and right, the number of loans went into a decline. This was offset, however, by all of the lending rules changing and becoming more conservative. These changes required a great deal of creativity (completely legal creativity, that is) to get loans approved and funded, which often meant submitting a loan to multiple lenders. One person could not take care of a growing baby and do this job – hell, two people had a hard time with it.

The workload got to the point where Shannon would not have needed an assistant had The Niece not been going to work with her. Had we continued to be able to close the high number of loans possible prior to the mortgage meltdown, Shannon’s income stream would have allowed for day care much sooner than it actually happened. However, mortgage rules tightened, numbers of fundings decreased, and as a result, the company we worked for was not doing so well. Add into that an owner who is not so good at managing his finances and you may see where this is all going. For much of the second half of last year, our paychecks would suffer cuts that we didn’t know about until we actually got the check. Or we wouldn’t get a check at all. There were other financially creative measures on the part of my former boss that I won’t go into but suffice it to say, I made just about as much from unemployment when I was finally laid off in December as I was getting paid the last six months of last year.

I’d been looking for a different job from about October on but I’d really shot myself in the foot by going into the mortgage industry. People didn’t want to hire someone without recent administrative assistant experience. It didn’t matter that my skills were still good or that I’d been doing much of the same office work that an administrative assistant does. It was only through a contact known by one of the loan officers I’d worked with that I was able to be signed up with a temp agency and they in turn found me my current job.

I’m only now finally getting my shit back together, both financially and in regard to my self-confidence. By no means am I out of the woods completely but I can see the tree line from here. Perhaps it’s a sad reflection on me that so much of my self-image is related to being good at what I do for a living. If that is the case, then so be it. I’m finally feeling better about me and having a steady, reliable paycheck, even if it is a wee bit smaller, is worth its weight in gold.

I’ll have to save the rest of my update for the next entry. My lunch break is almost up and I have to get back to work. It’s April and I work for an accountant – ‘nuff said.

Whenever I hear moi, I instantly think of Miss Piggy. Maybe that tells you what you really need to know about what I'm like. My name is Lillian but I also go by Lil. I'm a 39 year old woman living in Southern California in what I refer to as The Commune. I live in a house with my best friend since high school, her husband who I've also known since high school, their daughter (The Niece) and her son (The Nephew) by her first husband. It's unorthodox but it works, kind of like me.

I'm coming up blank with what to write so this is going to sound like a really bad personal ad. I don't like pina coladas but I love getting caught in the rain, singing badly, using writing as catharsis, reading, hoarding office supplies and drinking too much Diet Coke, among other things. Words I'd use to describe me are kind, weird, loud, loyal, caring, occasionally idiotic and generally fiscally irresponsible but trying to do better.

Yeah, so that's me in a nutshell - and it's a damn big nutshell too. Like nuclear big.