Potpourri

Mike's mom loves to give things to us. It's kind of peculiar, really. When Mike and I were dating she'd regularly bestow random items on him, but now that we're getting married she wraps them and calls them wedding or shower gifts.

The things she gets are rather random. I'm not sure if she just collects things as they go on clearance or if she has some rationale for the things she gets, but normally it's a bag of unrelated things. Here's what she gave me today:

- a set of orange, daisy-shaped magnets
- a magnetic notepad
- a green pen
- a box of note papers...they're kind of like post-it notes, but not sticky and all sitting in a box
- a small hairbrush
- a small, decorative metal box
- a bag of potpourri

She said the potpourri could go in the box. At first I planned to take it to my office, but then I was afraid that some of my lower-functioning students might try to eat it or something, so instead I poured some into the box and planned to put it on the TV here.

Now, I've never resorted to potpourri for my air-freshening needs. I'm a big fan of scented candles and incense instead. So even though I'd seen potpourri before, this was my first up-close-and-personal experience handling it.

And I have to ask, what the hell is potpourri, anyway? I mean, you can tell by looking at it that it comes from a plant, but man. It's so weird. There's leaves and shavings and pieces of bark and bits of pine cone and some kind of pod. Plus some of the bits were a shade of teal not found in nature.

So I Wiki'ed it. And apparently it is dried plant parts, either naturally scented or dyed and sprayed with an artificial scent.

I have plans to bash one of the pods open with a hammer to see what's inside. The rest of it will sit fragrantly on top of my TV until it goes stale or one of the cats tries to eat it. It's a toss-up which will come first.

Lonelygirl15

Okay. I know that lonelygirl15 is fake. But I also know that I really can't stop watching it.

For those of you who don't know, lonelygirl15 started out as a video blog on You Tube. An odd storyline developed about this teenager, the crush she has on her friend, her adventures in being homeschooled, and her preparations for a religious ceremony she's taking part in. After awhile, it was discovered that the girl and the story weren't real. It was all scripted and fake.

However, I'm still interested in it because of the girl's religion. She's been preparing for this ceremony for awhile now, and she had to lose weight, take medicines and shots, do exercises, and learn some old language. It's clear that she doesn't know what the ceremony entails, but she's doing it anyway because she's pretty hardcore about her religion.

But the big question is...what is her religion? She's already mentioned that it's not Christianity or Judaism. In her last video she showed some of the characters from the language she's learning, and mentioned celebrating the Equinox and participating in bibliomancy. When I heard about the Equinox celebration I thought about Wicca, but I've never heard of a Wiccan ceremony that required weight loss. Then again, I know little about Wicca.

I hope they talk about this ceremony soon. I know it's just a fake video series on the internet, but it's really bugging the hell out of me.

fooltoworry, I'm looking in your direction

Perhaps after his presidency Bush can consider a career in music.

Oh no!

Last night I was lying in bed drifting off to sleep and Mike was just finishing a newspaper article when the phone rang.

Now, I knew it was his mom because she tends to do this. She calls just as we're going to sleep. It's the least convenient time, really...if she actually woke us up I'd inform her of it without reservation. But when Mike mentions that she called just as we were going to bed, she regards it as getting ahold of us just in the nick of time and doesn't feel bad at all about chattering away. I think that since she's retired she forgets that some of us have to wake up at a certain time every morning, which means that we have to go to bed at a certain time every night.

Anyway, after awhile Mike was able to hang up the phone and crawl into bed.

"Why does she always call so late?" I asked sleepily.

"Well, probably because she knows I'll be home," Mike replied.

"Well, we should just tell her never to call past ten," I grumbled.

There was a pause. "Um...it's not past ten," Mike said.

My eyes popped open. "Holy crap, I'm old!" I cried.

I can't believe I was complaining about nine-thirty phone calls. I'm turning into my mother.

The Police

On Friday night and Saturday morning I recieved 18 messages from Liz. She thinks I got engaged in some sort of competition with her relationship. She was crazy.

Now, it was the first time in awhile I was scared. But with the ranting and the twisting of facts and the fact that she was doing it all night (each message was time stamped) it made me realize just how nuts she is. I wasn't quite scared for my safety, it was more that it was just a little frightening to be given a front-row seat to her psychosis.

It made me realize how tired I am of all of this. I'm sick of dreading every text that comes in, and I'm sick of crossing my fingers each morning when I open my email, hoping that it's not full of nasty little notes. It has to end.

So I conferred with my dad, who said that at this point it's clear she won't stop. The next step was legal action. So after a long talk with Mike I decided this evening to go to the police station.

Now, I wasn't expecting great things. However, I was expecting someone to look at the records I've collated, think it over, and give me some advice. I know it's an overburdened system, but it was also 7:30 on a Sunday night in a fairly quiet district of Milwaukee. Someone would at least listen to my story.

Man. I've been watching too much Law & Order. The guy I talked to flipped through my timeline, remarked that there was a lot of pages there, informed me that the one threat that Liz made didn't really count as a threat because the guy she threatened to send after me was a ghost (I said she was nuts), and suggested a restraining order.

"It's not that she's threatening you, really," he said. "But it is pretty clear harassment. You could get a temporary restraining order. But then you'd have to go to court to get a permanent one, and I doubt you'd be granted that."

"Really?" I asked, my heart sinking.

"Yeah," he replied. "The judge would probably just tell you to change your phone number. That's a solution that wouldn't clog up the courts."

I narrowed my eyes but bit my tongue. I wanted to tell him that he didn't know shit about a clogged system until he had worked in public education.

"This is a civil case, not criminal," he said briskly. "And it's even more complicated because she lives in another city. So you'd have to go there to do this."

I sighed. The idea of a temporary restraining order and a day in court tempted me, but I knew that if it was just repealed in the long run it would just encourage Liz. She'd feel that she'd won.

"You can think about it," he said, seeing that I wasn't ready to take immediate action.

"Thanks," I muttered, turning around and heading out the door.

Mike had accompanied me to the station and put his arm around me as we walked out to the car. "So what are you thinking?" he asked.

I started to cry. And I sniffled all the way home.

It's so unfair. Liz pushed me around when we were friends, she's pushed me around the entire last six months, and now if I want her to leave me alone I either have to change my phone number or go to court and listen to a judge tell me that I didn't do enough. I had hoped that when I finally made the decision to go to the police that they'd be helpful, but no. Keeping my cell phone number - which has been my primary contact number since college, and is the number that everyone, from my student loan company to my grandmother, has - was the one way that I was standing up to her. Now that has to stop too.

And what happens if I do change my phone number and block her from my email? What will she do next? Drop by my parents'? Call me at work? Come by my house? She knows the street that Mike and I live on, if she remembers me telling her when we were still speaking.

It just sucks. The police suck.

Dammit.