I will not pro­vide a pho­to, but I fig­ure this point­ing device would be all-too pop­u­lar with any felines or canines in your house­hold. I would­n’t ever imag­ined such a thing if the Instructa­bles peo­ple had­n’t sent out an email plea to who­ev­er abduct­ed Mouse-Mouse from their table at SXSW to please return him.

As slick as Word­Press is, would­n’t it make sense for it to fig­ure out some­thing like day­light sav­ing time? I mean, if you could just click some­thing, the way you do in Win­dows, to say, “Yes, I’m in an area that observes DST” it would be much, much eas­i­er than going through every bloody WP instal­la­tion for which you’re respon­si­ble and man­u­al­ly chang­ing the time, which is what I just real­ized that I need to do. I’m sure I would have noticed if there’s a plu­g­in to pro­vide that func­tion­al­i­ty in the Plu­g­in Repos­i­to­ry, and I don’t think there is one.

I tried Time Zone Cal­cu­la­tor, but it just seems to fig­ure var­i­ous time zones and will dis­play them in a wid­get or wher­ev­er you want to call it via php. That does­n’t help me. Auto­mat­ic DST change func­tion­al­i­ty seems a no-brain­er to me, so why isn’t it built in, and since it isn’t, why isn’t there a plug-in?

Have I men­tioned late­ly how incred­i­bly stu­pid I find DST? I’m total­ly unsur­prised to learn that it does­n’t save a bit of ener­gy, any­way.

Sam has talked about this sub­ject in sev­er­al of his pod­casts, but I don’t think I’ve ever tried to address it. I may fail mis­er­ably, but I’ll try.

Sam and I had one of our twice-week­ly “date nights” tonight. That means that from about 7pm ’til we go to bed, we do noth­ing but have fun with each oth­er. The girl amus­es her­self oth­er­wise, or goes out, and we do what­ev­er we like. Usu­al­ly, that means we spend some time gam­ing.

Wow.

It’s been almost as fun lis­ten­ing to the kids (Katie’s gang, here for her birth­day par­ty) game as it would be to be part of a game myself. Maybe I will play Vam­pire some day. I sup­pose I’d trust Sam to run just about any­thing.

They’re watch­ing some­thing now — Mir­ror­mask, it sounds like. I could­n’t believe that her Wolfie had­n’t seen it, as it’s so very much her kind of movie.

The house is clean­er than it’s been in a coon’s age. I’ll mark that up to being large­ly (not quite) done with the semes­ter and to mak­ing prepa­ra­tions for the par­ty. Sam and Katie were both mar­velous about clean­ing up.

The girl has been so exhaust­ed that she missed dance yes­ter­day, so I was a bit wor­ried about her. She’s still going strong, though. She slept well past noon today! With her health con­cerns, she’s always run­ning at the edge of her ener­gy, even with catch­ing naps where she can, so I sup­pose her fatigue is to be expect­ed after she stayed out ’til (mum­ble­ty-mum­ble) Tues­day night/Wednesday morn­ing.

Yes, on a school night. The one thing she real­ly want­ed for her birth­day was to go to the Dres­den Dolls con­cert, and the only night they were in town was a Tues­day. She man­aged a TMBG show on a week night last year with­out a stum­ble, so we final­ly gave in.

Some­where between the time I bought tick­ets online for an “all ages” show (back in August) and the time I picked up tick­ets on Sun­day, it changed to an “Adults only” show! Well, that was a sur­prise. I asked around a bit, and we decid­ed that we were still cool with her attend­ing. For­tu­nate­ly, she and her friends had no trou­ble get­ting in. The rea­son for the rat­ing was a bur­lesque show in the open­ing act. God­dess for­bid that teens see boo­bies in pasties!

I still remem­ber when birth­day par­ties were all-girl affairs with lots of pink­ness, games and bal­loons and crafts and squeal­ing. They weren’t bet­ter than this, by any means, but time does fly.

Sam is try­ing to lure me back onto Sec­ond Life now. Dread­ful man. I sup­pose we might as well go be even nerdier at this point.

I gave myself a gift today: a head­set with my very own micro­phone for the pod­cast.

It isn’t as fan­cy as the one that I was using, which is my part­ner’s Very Nice (read: intim­i­dat­ing) micro­phone. That one, though, sits on the desk­top on its own stand. I know this sounds piti­ful, but I have trou­ble stay­ing with­in prop­er range of it, because my voice is soft. I have to lean over and up from the chair I’m in, and even then I end up feel­ing as if I’ve had to near­ly shout to record a pod­cast, which takes far more ener­gy than sim­ply speak­ing nor­mal­ly and is very stress­ful, to boot!

That removes one of the main bar­ri­ers to get­ting pod­casts out on a reg­u­lar basis. The next is that Sam pro­duces the show for me, but he has a full-time job and is much busier than I am out­side the home. Do I dare release the show unedit­ed, brain fog effects and all? What do y’all think?

I have referred to The Man Diet sev­er­al times as some­thing I have done and rec­om­mend. After explain­ing it sev­er­al times, I’ve decid­ed to write it up here and just refer peo­ple to the arti­cle.

I call it the Man Diet, but that’s real­ly a mis­nomer. It should be an SO Diet or Rela­tion­ship Diet or some­thing like that. It just does­n’t roll off the tongue quite as well, so just take it as giv­en that I’m refer­ring to women, men or who­ev­er you would nor­mal­ly have romantic/sexual rela­tion­ships with.

There was a time when I went from one rela­tion­ship to the next. If I did­n’t have one or more SOs, I felt incom­plete. I did­n’t have incred­i­bly healthy rela­tion­ships, but I was sel­dom alone! I derived much of my self-esteem from being in rela­tion­ships with oth­ers.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, that led to “set­tling” for peo­ple who did­n’t real­ly meet the stan­dards I thought I want­ed in sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers, and often to accept­ing treat­ment that ranged from unpleas­ant to down­right abu­sive.

Right now, I do not tru­ly remem­ber what trig­gered the real­iza­tion that I’d nev­er have a tru­ly healthy rela­tion­ship if I felt that I absolute­ly had to have a rela­tion­ship with some­one oth­er than myself—that, in fact, cul­ti­vat­ing a healthy rela­tion­ship with myself, being com­plete in myself, was vital.

I did­n’t think all that out so clear­ly at the begin­ning. I was just tired of the crap. I was tired of going from one rela­tion­ship to the next and hav­ing the same crap come up over and over again. I was tired of the mer­ry-go-round. I did­n’t hon­est­ly count on hav­ing any more sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers. I just decid­ed that I was done. I swore off men for a year.

At the begin­ning of that peri­od, I felt anx­ious. I felt lone­ly. I felt more than a lit­tle des­per­ate, because hon­est­ly, I have nev­er been alone unless I chose to be that way. I’d spent my life using rela­tion­ships to avoid hav­ing to deal with my own issues in a deep way. If I had­n’t told sev­er­al friends what I was doing and asked them to help keep me hon­est, I don’t think I would have stuck with it.

In the next few months, I seemed to meet poten­tial SOs every time I turned around. It was tru­ly rain­ing men! That was dif­fi­cult. It was real­ly tempt­ing to just make a lit­tle excep­tion, because hey, he was just so nice! Or so smart, or fun­ny, or what­ev­er. But there’s noth­ing like true friends to kick your butt when you need it.

To be hon­est, I’ve nev­er had a prob­lem deal­ing with most prac­ti­cal things—balancing check­books, basic home repairs, even sim­ple auto main­te­nance. I did­n’t need a man to take care of any of that. No, I looked to SOs to keep me com­pa­ny, to keep me occu­pied, to suck up lots of ener­gy. I felt beau­ti­ful because they said I was, because they want­ed to be with me.

So I found oth­er ways to use my time and my ener­gy. I went out with friends as friends. I devel­oped new friend­ships that were much bet­ter because I was­n’t putting any­thing into won­der­ing whether or not the rela­tion­ship would move into oth­er areas. If nobody else want­ed to go see a par­tic­u­lar music event, I went alone.

I final­ly faced up to some of the issues I was avoid­ing when most of my ener­gy was going into inter­ac­tions with an SO—like why did I need a man around to feel worth­while? Why did I accept treat­ment that I would­n’t want any of my friends to accept—that I had, in fact, told oth­er peo­ple to walk away from? Why was­n’t I hold­ing out for the kind of per­son I want­ed? Hell, why had­n’t I sim­ply become the per­son I want­ed?

While I was real­ly count­ing the days at first, by the end of that year I did­n’t even real­ized it was done. I did­n’t think about it until a cou­ple of months lat­er when a friend men­tioned it. Hey, it was over! I real­ized that I did­n’t feel an urge to run out and start any­thing new. I was just fine with being me, with­out a man.

I won’t pre­tend that I’m all past all of that stuff. It comes back at times, but not near­ly as strong­ly. It’s much eas­i­er to insist on the kind of treat­ment I deserve from an SO, because I don’t fear being alone. I can be alone, and be hap­py. Not a prob­lem.

I think spend­ing at least a year alone as a tru­ly inde­pen­dent adult is a good idea for absolute­ly any­one. If pos­si­ble, live alone. Be sole­ly respon­si­ble for your­self finan­cial­ly. Devel­op a healthy social life that has noth­ing to do with whether or not you have an SO. Do any­thing you’ve been putting off. Were you wait­ing to take a vaca­tion until you had some­one to go with? Go now. Go back to school. Change jobs. Vol­un­teer. Learn to dance. Just do it, and enjoy it.

Dur­ing that year, prac­tice celiba­cy. That means not only do you not have SOs, but you don’t have “friends with ben­e­fits” or one-night stands. Just be with your­self. Hon­or your­self. Love your­self. Treat your­self as you would some­one you tru­ly trea­sure.

Tell some­body what you’re doing. Tell peo­ple you can trust to help you con­tin­ue on to your goal. If some­one isn’t sup­port­ive, dis­tance your­self from that per­son. I don’t care if that per­son is an imme­di­ate fam­i­ly mem­ber. You need to main­tain bound­aries, and you don’t need any­one tear­ing you down. Seek out new friend­ships with peo­ple who are sup­port­ive.

It may take some peo­ple longer than a year to get past the “ohmigod I’m gonna get old and be ALONE!” pan­ic. That’s fine. Take what­ev­er time you need. I promise that you will be health­i­er and hap­pi­er for it. The world, and all the men and women in it, will still be there when you’re ready.