Snoskred – Life in the Country

I got a phone call about 2:30pm. I was actually in the middle of a West Wing episode at the time. The caller said “10 Minutes” and I hung up the phone and raced off to get ready because I knew what that meant. 10 minutes later, my Dad pulled into the driveway for the last time in his old car. Well, not like old, it was only 3 years old. But today was the day it was going back to the dealer, never to be “ours” again.

During the time he had it I had only driven it twice and both times broke speed limits but fortunately for me did not get caught. It was a Ford XR8, and it had the power. That’s why I didn’t drive it more often, because it could have tempted me into being a very bad individual while driving on the back roads. Or any road, really.

Saying goodbye to a car is not an easy thing. The Other Half and I have recently talked about the possibility of saying goodbye to our car, and that car has been many places with us. The side mirror is a very good friend of mine. We’ve only driven 50,000kms in it, over three years, but when I close my eyes I can see images of many travels from the perspective of looking out my side mirror. I feel like I’d want to keep that part of the car. I know that sounds utterly insane.

However, saying hello to a new car is a very easy thing. This new car is *beautiful*. It truly is a work of art. It’s sitting in Dad’s garage as I type this. It is very low to the ground, and the car dealer said to us that it’s inevitable that the front of the body kit will scrape and get cracked. The old one on the XR8 did. He’s got a guy who fixes it easily if you want it fixed, but he figures it’s a fact of life, live with it.

That is the one thing holding me back from saying to the other half yes, let’s get the new car. The person I was when we first got our car wasn’t the nicest of people. I get pretty angry over anyone careless enough to even look at it the wrong way, let alone go near enough to it to scratch it. When they really damaged our side door as I wrote about here (my side door, so each time I get in the car I am reminded) the more I think about it, the more I realize I probably would have really damaged that person who left the dent in my door if I had turned up when they were doing it. It still manages to fill me with such a rage. I’m not sure I’m meant to be such an angry person.

In other news, today is the first day of the school holidays, and please can everyone pray for rain for the next 2 weeks so those people across the road won’t interrupt my peace. This afternoon the kids across the road started up with a soccer ball on the road in front of my house and I have just realized, it’s two weeks of school holidays with them constantly out there making noise, and I’m still stuck in this house. I had hoped we would have moved by now.

The idea of watching one West Wing each day was dead in the water on day one, as the first episode meant the second had to be watched, and the second definitely meant the third had to be watched. I was in the middle of Episode 3, and I’m going to finish it now, and then off to bed.

It’s 1:30am and my mind is wide awake. The other half went to bed quite a while ago now, and I don’t want to go in and read till I’m tired because it will wake him up. Much of this post won’t make a lot of sense. It’s ok, I just need to get it out.

I’ve made many mistakes in my life, but the one that keeps annoying me today is why did I place my faith in other people when I should probably have struck out on my own and created what I wanted to create, especially when those other people suddenly decided they didn’t want me to be involved in things to the same extent I originally was.

Those people let me down and yet, I continue to support them. Those people say nasty things about me when they think nobody else is looking. Well, people are looking and whether you like it or not, they have no good reasons to treat me badly, so they let me know what is said. And I don’t say anything, and I probably should, but I figure for the good of everyone, it’s better just to let them talk and try to show them by my actions that I am not the person they think I am.

I know this – I have done a lot of good things. I don’t talk trash behind peoples backs – if I am going to say something about you I say it to you. Maybe I should have done what everyone was urging me to do – create my own empire, make my own site, do my own thing, but that would have taken the focus away from what is really important, and it would have meant a lot of the work I have put into things would have to have been put into creating the empire, and realistically that would have been a waste of my time and energy.

People think I’m holding grudges, but I don’t. I’ve put the past behind me, well behind me – they are the ones with the chips on their shoulder and no real desire to remove them. I was told to build a bridge, and I did. And let’s face it, someone who said some very nasty things about me, and continues to do so from what I am told, recently I put a fair bit of effort in to doing something nice for them – for the good of the bigger picture.

People ask me why, when I was treated so badly by certain people, I continue to stick around. It’s a good question and one I find myself asking myself today. I have a little piece of paper on my desk. You might have seen it in the doll pictures. Maybe you can’t make out what it says, but it is the answer, and that is why it sits there on my desk, right in front of me, day after day.It’s entirely true. What it says is – sometimes taking the high road is no fun at all.

It hasn’t been fun. I’ll be honest with you. I don’t enjoy the way certain people treat me. But the good things that have come from me taking that high road are very worthwhile and one day, maybe, those people who have been so unpleasant will come around and see my actual actions instead of making sh*t up. They’ll look and see and maybe they will eventually think – damn, she did that, even while we were talking crap about her? Even when we kicked her in the teeth, and then kept kicking her in the teeth, over and over till most of her teeth were missing? What would I have done in her shoes? Would I have stuck around? Would I have stuck it out? No f*cking way. I’d have resigned publicly, made a huge fuss, gone off and made my own site, and split the community even further from what it already was.

Right now today, I am truly wondering if this has been worth it, when people won’t let go of the past, and they still seem to think kicking me in the teeth is a great idea. And maybe what I should do is exactly what *they* would have done in my place – resign publicly, cause a huge fuss, go off and make my own site, and split the community. But I can’t do that, not because I can’t go make my own site, I have in house technical support and my own server is finally back online etc, but because I believe the community is split enough already, and further fractures will only do more harm.

It’s time. People need to stop trying to hurt each other, and remember why they are involved in any of this at all.

Today I did go make my own site. It’s actually for all my stuff, because now my server is back online I’ve managed to get things into one place, and some kind of order. It’s got all my scambaiting audios there in one place, well a lot of them anyway. I’m going to get back into doing more of that stuff soon.