So, I Googled Firefox 1.5 problems and found a lot of familiar sounding stuff: huge amounts of memory being chewed up by my favorite browser (and it wouldn't give it back even if you closed tabs and such), freezing, crashes for no obvious reason. But the folks at Mozilla don't seem entirely convinced there is a problem, or if so, what the cause might be.

I've been trying various things I've found through the search results, but so far, the memory hogging (at some points, close to 200MB worth!) has continued to plague me and my poor laptop. It took me forever to give up Internet Explorer in favor of Firefox and now I may be forced to switch again. Waaaaah!

But, given that I'm always one to try to get people to laugh, I did take advantage of the opportunity to make fun of my lack of breasts quite often. The subject became so much a part of my personality that I even included it in a list of "facts" about myself which I posted here about five years ago:

My not-so-secret dream is to have breast implants. When I hit puberty, I was relieved because I was sure that meant the breasts were on their way. I'm still waiting. I've only had cleavage once in my life, and I was pregnant so it didn't last. I often joke that implants will be included in my funeral arrangements, so at least I can enjoy them in the after-life. -- retro: "bits & pieces of me", 03.26.01

But no one, including me, ever really took these comments seriously. I always thought it would just continue to be something I had fun with at my own expense.

Then I turned 40. I bought my iPod, but it didn't feel like enough to mark such a significant birthday. So I kept thinking and thinking and thinking about some bigger thing I might want, but nothing really came to mind - until I had one of those total Holy Shit! moments, when I knew exactly what it was going to be.

BOOBS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yep. The not-so-secret dream isn't just a dream anymore: the AAs are now full Cs. (Though technically, the size isn't really considered to be "final" until about a year post-op, and generally, if it does change, it's in the direction of larger rather than smaller. I'm pretty happy with the size they are now, but apparently something like 80% of women who have breast augmentation wish they'd gone larger. So far, I'm in the minority on that.)

My plastic surgeon (Dr. David Genecov) is a pretty funny guy, too. When he asked me about size, I said I wanted them big enough to justify the pain and the money, but not so big as to be obscene. He replied: "I don't do obscene." Whew!

Then, he made some measurements of my chest and noted that my left breast was slightly larger than my right. I asked if he would add more CCs to the right one to even them up, and he said, "They're sisters, not twins!" That made me laugh out loud, and I knew he was exactly my kind of doctor.

My decision about choosing him was reinforced during my pre-op appointment, when I asked if I'd need to remove my belly button ring for the surgery. The answer was yes, and I mentioned that I had never taken it out and so had absolutely no clue how to remove it. The man got down on his knees in front of me to give it a try himself! (He wasn't able to do it though, so I ended up going to a tattoo/piercing place, where a scary looking guy replaced the ring with a barbell that would be easier to take out right before the surgery.)

So, fast forward to December 14th, 2005. My sister and mother picked me up at about 8 a.m. We arrived at Medical City around 9 a.m., and the nurse took me back to start prepping me. The worst part was waiting for the IV - being needle-phobic, I was more worried about that than I was about any possible post-surgical pain. Once the IV was in, I started to relax a lot more. (Plus, they put this time-release pain patch on my tummy - it was supposed to last 72 hours, but I wore it well after that and it kept on working. It was so wonderful that I barely even needed the Vicodin they'd also prescribed.)

The doctor showed up to draw on me (with a purple marker!), then the anesthesiologist injected the knock-me-out drug into my IV. He and the nurse wheeled me into the operating room, and the last thing I remember is them lifting me up to move me to the table in there - I was out before they even put me down!

Then (what seemed like) minutes later, I was waking up in recovery, the doc was saying, "Let's take a look at 'em!" and I lifted my head to see. All I managed to say was "Yay!", followed by "Ow!" - my breastbone HURT LIKE HELL! It felt like someone was trying to rip the skin right off the bone!! My left breast wasn't exactly thrilled either, but the right one was pretty happy (so much so that I actually started to feel guilty for neglecting it in favor of tending to the left). Fortunately, the meds started kicking in hard and everything just felt stretched and tight rather than out-and-out brutal.

Seven weeks later, the "girls" are settling in quite nicely. The left one is still the problem child - the implants are under the muscle, and the muscle on that side is much tighter, so it's keeping that implant a little higher up than the other one. Patience is apparently a requirement with these things, and as many of you know, I'm rather lacking in that particular trait. So I'm constantly stretching and massaging the left side to coax the muscle into relaxing so the implant can drop down into place faster.

Some days, I do get worried that it's not going to ever drop, but all I have to do is look at the progress pictures I take periodically, and I can see the improvements with each new set. They've actually started to look like real breasts now rather than "frankenboobs", and I even bought them their very first Victoria's Secret bra for their one month birthday. Awwwwwwwwwwwww! LOL!

(And hell yes, I spend a lot of time admiring them in front of a mirror! You would too, if you'd spent 25 years wondering what it would be like to have them!)

Even though I waited such a long time to finally do this, I'm glad that I didn't do it sooner. If I had, I think it would have been for all of the wrong reasons. Instead, I made the decision at a time when I was already feeling happy with who I was. I didn't do it out of a sense that something was missing, or to bolster a weak self-image. I didn't do it to attract men, or to satisfy a "significant other" (there isn't one, though I do occasionally wish there was, just so he could take over these massage duties). I could have very easily spent the rest of my life without larger breasts and been quite content.

So why pay all that money and go through all the pain and trouble for something I didn't really need? Because they're fun. Because I wanted them. Because I knew it was now or never.

And because I needed some new material for my stand-up act. ;-)

You say there's no good reason
For me to walk away
You say there's so much good between us
Who wouldn't want to stay?
But how can I be with you
If deep down I believe I'll lose a part of me?

Sometimes goodbye is the only open door
I can't turn back
When I know there's something more
I've got to find
What my heart beats for

I've got a half a page of reasons
And a napkin full of tears
From trying to pull my spirit
Through the pocket of my fears
As the lunch crowd empties out
Into the city
And there may not be a way for me
To make you understand
I'll write down the words I'm feeling
And I'll leave it in your hands
But the memories of our love
I'm taking with me

You say there's no good reason
For me to walk away
You say we're meant to be together
And I'm making a mistake
But this emptiness inside me
Has brought me to this road
And I have to let you go

Sometimes goodbye is the only open door
I can't turn back
When I know there's something more
I've got to find what my heart beats
For the passion everlasting
For the deepest dream
For a chance to love like that
There is no in-between

Sometimes goodbye is the only open door
I can't turn back
When I know there's something more
I've got to find
What my heart beats for

Performed by Terri Clark

While Snopes could find no proof that Oprah is responsible for this list, nevertheless, it has some good one-liners women (including me) would do well to remember. So I'm putting it here for sharing and safe-keeping.

• If a man wants you, nothing can keep him away. If he doesn't want you, nothing can make him stay.
• Stop making excuses for a man and his behavior.
• Allow your intuition (or spirit) to save you from heartache.
• Stop trying to change yourself for a relationship that's not meant to be.
• Slower is better.
• Never live your life for a man before you find what makes you truly happy.
• If a relationship ends because the man was not treating you as you deserve then heck no, you can't "be friends". A friend wouldn't mistreat a friend.
• Don't settle.
• If you feel like he is stringing you along, then he probably is.
• Don't stay because you think "it will get better." You'll be mad at yourself a year later for staying when things are not better.
• The only person you can control in a relationship is you.
• Avoid men who've got a bunch of children by a bunch of different women. He didn't marry them when he got them pregnant, why would he treat you any differently?
• Always have your own set of friends separate from his.
• Maintain boundaries in how a guy treats you.
• If something bothers you, speak up.
• Never let a man know everything. He will use it against you later.
• You cannot change a man's behavior. Change comes from within.
• Don't ever make him feel he is more important than you are, even if he has more education or in a better job. Do not make him into a quasi-god. He is a man, nothing more nothing less.
• Never let a man define who you are.
• Never borrow someone else's man. If he cheated with you, he'll cheat on you.
• A man will only treat you the way you allow him to treat you.
• All men are not dogs.
• You should not be the one doing all the bending; compromise is a two way street.
• You need time to heal between relationships; there is nothing cute about baggage. Deal with your issues before pursuing a new relationship.
• You should never look for someone to complete you. A relationship consists of two whole individuals; look for someone complimentary, not supplementary.
• Dating is fun, even if he doesn't turn out to be Mr. Right.
• Make him miss you sometimes; when a man always know where you are, and you're always readily available to him - he takes it for granted.
• Never move into his mother's house.
• Never co-sign for a man.
• Don't fully commit to a man who doesn't give you everything that you need. Keep him in your radar but get to know others.

If I am the only one who finds them interesting, well hey, at least I posted something on this damn site.

(All definitions are taken from the Wikipedia.)

Casual sex refers to promiscuous sexual activity, consisting of a range of informal sexual encounters.

A hookup (colloquial American English) is casual sex activity that could consist of kissing, oral sex, and full sexual intercourse.

An extended hookup oftentimes refers to prolonged instances of casual sex interactions. This is a situation in which the involved parties occasionally meet for casual sex multiple times; always without any sort of monogamous commitment.

A booty call is a telephone call, other communication or visitation made with the sole intent of achieving sex with the person being contacted. Such a call is usually made later in the evening and often after consuming alcohol.

Intimacy is the basis of friendship and one of the bases of love. It may take several forms. The main ones are emotional intimacy and physical intimacy.

Emotional intimacy is a dimension of interpersonal intimacy which varies in degree, much like Physical intimacy. In an emotional context, intimacy can be observed in terms of communication pertaining to emotional states as subjective experiences. The degree of comfort and effectiveness of the communicative process can be seen as an indicator of the emotional intimacy between two individuals. Relative emotional intimacy depends primarily on trust, as well as the nature of the relationship. Emotional intimacy frequently involves individuals discussing their feelings and emotions with each other in order to gain understanding and offer mutual support. It is necessary for human beings to have this form of intimacy on a regular basis for them to develop and maintain good mental health.

Physical intimacy is informal proximity and/or touching, usually between two persons, where their positioning and/or touching is an expression or result of intimate feelings (such as close friendship, love, and/or sexual attraction) which they have for each other. Examples of physical intimacy include being inside someone's personal space, holding hands, hugging, kissing, caressing, and sexual activity.

An intimate relationship is a interpersonal relationship where there is a great deal of physical or emotional intimacy. It is usually characterized by romantic or passionate love and attachment. Sexuality may or may not be involved.

In monogamy (Greek: monos = single/only and gamos = marriage) a person has only one spouse at a time (as opposed to polygamy). Monogamy is also usually used to mean having only one sexual partner during an entire lifetime.

Serial monogamy is a form of monogamy in which participants have only one sexual partner at any one time, but have more than one sexual partner in their lifetime. Partners can be married or unmarried, but there are never more than one at a time. Within Western culture, this form of monogamy is more prevalent than 'true' monogamy, which is having only one partner in an entire life.

Polyamory is the practice of having more than one loving relationship at the same time, with the full knowledge and consent of all partners involved. The relationships are long-term, intimate, and usually (but not necessarily) sexual. Persons who consider themselves emotionally suited to such relationships may define themselves as polyamorous, often abbreviated to poly.

Swinging, sometimes referred to in North America as the swinging lifestyle or simply the lifestyle (although this simplified term is also used by people into Leather and BDSM), includes a wide range of sexual activities conducted between three or more people. Swinging activities can include having sex with your partner while being watched; watching others have sex (perhaps with your partner); kissing, stroking, or having oral sex with a third or fourth person (called soft swinging); or having penetrative sex with someone other than your partner (Full Swap), which is the commonly understood definition of swinging.

Typically, swinging activities occur when a married (or otherwise committed) couple engages with a similar couple or a single individual. These acts may or may not occur in the same room. Sex on these occasions is often referred to as play. The phenomenon (or at least its wider discussion and practice) may be seen as part of the sexual revolution of recent decades.

I quit smoking last Monday (September 26). It was virtually painless, I'm sure due to the Wellbutrin.

But the reason it's been hard for me to write about the quitting is because it's only one tiny element that signals how fundamentally changed I am feeling these days. I want to write in more detail and explain exactly what I mean by that, yet I've not been able to find the right words to convey the significance of what is going on for me right now internally.

It's as though I am miles and miles away from who I was a few weeks ago, but it's not that I'm becoming someone different. Instead, it seems more like the real me who I've somehow managed to shove aside over the past eight months is back in full force. Of course, no one reading this has any idea of what I'm talking about because I haven't talked about it here before. Heh.

But let's just say that it's really making me mad that I finally have something that should be significant enough to write about on a personal website which is begging for content - and I can't get enough of a grip on it to make it worthwhile.

Grrrrrr. Frustrating. And I can't even light up a cigarette to help stimulate my creativity.

Every now and then, I like to remind myself that I do have a heart - it's just a little harder to touch than most.

Yes, at 99 cents a song it would theoretically cost me about a grand to fill with music, but I have a hard time imagining how many years it will take for me to accumulate a thousand songs that I like.

Maybe it's the Wellbutrin XL I'm taking now in an effort to kick my nicotine habit, combined with the birth control pills I'm also back on.

Maybe it's the after effect of drinking three glasses of White Zinfandel, one Margarita, and six Jello Shots combined with being awake until 4:30 a.m. because I also drank three Amps and two Red Bulls.

Maybe it's all the dancing in an over-crowded club with a 29-year old Air Force navigator hottie who loves to "shake that tailfeather" and smells so good he makes me dizzy.

Maybe it's the realization that the choices I've been making over the past few months for mild entertainment and weekend playtime just do not make for an emotionally satisfied Girlie.

Maybe it's hearing the soothing drum of rain outside my window.

Maybe it's the tryptophan in the turkey sandwich I just wolfed down (yay me, I ate something).

Maybe it's being one day closer to the big shock of turning 40 this month.

Whatever is responsible for this jet-lag sensation I'm feeling, I wish it would just go away already. I'd really like to plan a vacation, but the idea of travel any further than my bedroom simply makes me want to curl under my purple blankie and put my thumb in my mouth.

• Jessica Simpson - These Boots Are Made For Walking (now my primary ringtone)
• Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl (Bananas)
• Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl (Chorus)
• Gwen Stefani - Rich Girl
• Usher - Burn
• Usher - Bad Girl
• 50 Cent - Candy Shop
• 50 Cent - Disco Inferno
• Pussycat Dolls - Don't Cha (Wish Your Girlfriend Was Hot Like Me)
• Black Eyed Peas - Don't Phunk With My Heart
• Billy Currington - I Got a Feeling
• Outkast - Roses

And here's what I already had:

• Justin Timberlake - Rock Your Body (first music tone I ever downloaded)
• Pink - Get The Party Started
• Nelly - Hot in Herre
• Toby Keith - I'm Just Talking About Tonight
• Toby Keith - Who's Your Daddy?
• Britney Spears - Outrageous
• Britney Spears - Toxic
• Gretchen Wilson - Redneck Woman

Now, I just need to assign a different tone to everyone in my phonebook, and wait for them all to call me!!

(Um, yeah, talk about your mindless entertainment, but it's about all the fun I can handle right now.)

Thankfully, he never hesitated and immediately rode to my rescue. He comforted me, stroked my hair, hugged me a lot - and then proceeded to knock some much-needed sense right back into my head.

The combination of a crying catharsis and an affectionate but blunt lecture had a positive effect - for the next couple of weeks after that day, I felt happy, strong, and confident. But I also noticed a rather manic edge to these feelings, and the best analogy I can come up with is that I was "overclocked". (The geeks out there will understand that term; for the rest of you, overclocking means forcing your computer's Central Processing Unit to run much faster than it was intended to be run. The CPU is the most critical element of a computer system, equivalent to the brain in a human body.)

The upswing in my mood after letting out all that negative emotion was so drastic that I even had trouble relaxing enough to fall asleep at night. I felt constantly on guard, fearful that the bad feelings would come sweeping back in again. I worked like a demon, then played equally hard - probably trying to exhaust myself mentally in an entirely different way (i.e., denial, suppression, avoidance) by doing things which weren't really inside my (admittedly loose) range of normal behavior.

In simple terms, my personal CPU was operating at a speed waaaay faster than that for which it had been tested and approved. Overclocking may be a popular and effective technique for getting more performance from a system, but it can literally fry your CPU if you get too ambitious.

And that's exactly what happened to me: I crashed and came to a screeching halt in another overly dramatic way. At first, I seriously started to think that I had some weird bipolar disorder, or worse, I was just quite literally losing the last remnants of my grasp on reality.

But this time, I noted a different element which I hadn't been paying much attention to, one of the more hormonal variety: within a few hours of the last crying jag, I discovered that Mother Nature had abruptly dropped Aunt Flo off at my door, a full week before I was expecting her to show up. And she didn't just sneak in like she gradually does, she came in at full force, pummeling me with near excruciating cramps and lower back pain. WTF?

Traditionally, this particular visitor has arrived on a predictable schedule, always with a few days of subtle warning signs before she arrives. But hey, didn't she also make an unexpectedly early appearance within a few days of the last round of bottoming out? Hmmmmm, that got me thinking about some other things I've noticed over the past eight months or so since I stopped taking birth control pills.

Waking up hot and clammy, even though I sleep naked with the A/C cranked up. More intense signs of PMS, which has never been much of a problem for me. Insomnia and restless, erratic sleeping patterns. Irregular, inconsistent and frequently downright painful periods. Anxiety attacks, accompanied by the sensation that my heart is pounding so hard it will burst from my chest. Fuzzy thinking and forgetfulness. Frequent feelings of depression and a sense of being overwhelmed. And now, this disturbing pattern of dramatic mood swings with low points that verged on hysteria at times.

Put all that together with the upcoming milestone of a 40th birthday, and it started to dawn on me that I might know exactly what's going on: my body is likely preparing for a pretty significant change that all women of a certain age face. (Um, no, I'm not quite menopausal yet, thank you, but there is a transitional stage which can occur up to ten years ahead of time.) Because I no longer take the birth control pills which would keep these things more level, I suspect my body and psyche are just dealing (rather poorly) with the stress of hormones gone wild.

I've always known that my body needs the balance of those extra female hormones. I just wasn't paying attention this time around, until well after the point where I should have started to question why I've been acting in a way that just wasn't like me. Now I'm kicking myself with regret, because my erratic behavior over the past few months has put a big ugly mark on a relationship which was very important to me.

Of course, because I realize that self-diagnosis isn't always accurate (and because if I'm right, I certainly can't prescribe a cure for myself), I've made an appointment with my gynecologist to see what she thinks about all this. 9:45 a.m. Thursday morning.

Here's hoping her answer isn't a dismissive "No, sorry, you really are just a nut case after all."

In comparison, back when I started this site in 2001 as a journal, I had 149 entries during the initial sixteen months (an average of about nine per month), but after that point, things started to taper off and I only added 38 more entries before shutting it down in early 2004. Why? Because people actually started to read what I was writing.

The thing most people who have websites want is visitors. For me, the more aware I became of how many people were actually reading my site, the more it killed my desire to write anything at all here. I became too self-conscious about what I was putting into public view. I developed personal and then professional relationships with people who I met as a result of having the site in the first place, and I realized that maybe there were some things they just did not need to know (like my innermost thoughts, which are sometimes pretty dark; or details of my sex life).

Now, while there is actually some new personal stuff I could talk about which would probably make for some interesting reading, I just can't bring myself to share on that level anymore. I know damn well it might be highly entertaining (at least, I know the lascivious among you would enjoy it), but so far, I've not been able to shake off the sense that I need to keep most of it private.

And yes, maybe I could just find something less complicated to talk about, but my writing never seems as inspired to me as it does when I'm talking about something which is intensely personal. I'm not a blogger - I'm a journaler. It's all about me, me, me. :)

Over the many years of my life (oh my hell, there have been almost 40 of them now), I have always turned to writing during stressful emotional times, or as an attempt to make some sort of sense out of various negative events. (I'm definitely one of those writers who feels less inspired when life is humming happily along.) Unfortunately, I've done a horrible job over those years of keeping track of my writing in an organized fashion, meaning I have no cohesive record to go back and reflect upon at will.

But, lo and behold, through the great power given to me via a hosting account and Movable Type, I do have something preserved. Over the past few weeks, I've spent time reading through those 185 journal entries, from 2001 to 2004, sometimes blushing, sometimes laughing, sometimes hanging my head in shame. Most certainly this is not the first time I've read them this way, because I always enjoy the new insights I gain from looking back at myself and the things that were happening to me during that period.

But on this occasion, I did something a tad bit different (which some of you more eagle-eyed readers may have already noticed a week or so ago in the sidebar links): I read the entries with an eye to bringing some of them back into the public view. From the initial 185, I have chosen 95 entries to place in a special retrospective section of this site.

Recycled words are still worth reading, and maybe some of you might like what you find there. If not, oh well - keep checking back. Who knows, maybe I'll throw off my chains of self-restraint and tell you about the wild orgy I had last weekend.

Heh. Yeah, dream on. ;)

Before I hit my twenties and got married, I always had a best girl friend. For some reason, after I got married, the woman who was my best friend at the time and I drifted farther and farther apart, and I never really brought anyone into my life to replace her.

Now, don't get me wrong - Brenna is obviously a female, and I'm closer to her than pretty much anyone else in my life right now. We stay in touch all day because of work, we're very much alike in how we think, and we've definitely bonded in a unique way. It's just hard to "be there" for one another in the specific way I'm talking about here when one of you is married in Minnesota and the other one is single in Texas. ;)

I have other friends too, both former co-workers, one a married woman with kids, the other a gay man with dogs. The gay man in particular is someone who I also consider to be one of my best friends, as he knows more intimate details of my life than most people do. But (for obvious reasons of sexual preference), we travel in different social circles, making it hard to hang out on a more than occasional basis.

And, I've had a man in my life over the past few months who has also become a close friend. He has held my hand (and handed me several tissues) through some extraordinarily tough emotional times lately. He's also been a good "self-esteem cheerleader", continually reminding me that I'm smart, attractive, and entirely worthy of being treated with a higher level of respect than I've been allowing from certain other men recently. Sometimes you do need someone else to tell you "Forget him, he's immature, he's insecure, he's a loser, he's beneath you!!" over and over before you really start to believe it for yourself. Even so, it's easy to question the sincerity of those words when the person saying them to you probably has his own selfish motives, wink, wink.

So what I've really been needing is a friend who is more like me than not, a single female who's trying to navigate the same shark-infested waters that I'm swimming in. And I didn't fully appreciate that she was missing until I found her.

Granted, our friendship is at the early stage, and like any other relationship, you never know exactly how it's going to work out. But the really weird thing is that the first time I saw this woman, I had an immediate internal reaction of liking her immensely. I can't explain it other than to say I somehow intuitively knew she was someone I should - and would - get to know better.

Now that I have, I'm really enjoying her presence in my life. Love ya, Jules!! :)

I'm sooooo craving sun, sand, and water; blue skies and warm breezes. I've never had a beach vacation, and dammit, I want one. Now!

Sigh.

I play it every time I'm in Da Hussy, which isn't much, but it's often enough that two of the songs have lodged themselves in my brain.

Simple Things

It's the simple things in life we forget
You hear her talkin' but don't hear what she said
Why do you make something so easy so complicated
Searching for what's right in front of your face
But you can't see it
You need to pay her attention
Give her what she needs
Do the simple things
Before you lose your girl to me

Let It Burn

It's gonna burn for me to say this
But it's comin from my heart
It's been a long time coming
But we done been fell apart
Really wanna work this out
But I don't think you're gonna change
I do but you don't think it's best we go our separate ways
Tell me why I should stay in this relationship
When I'm hurting baby, I ain't happy baby
Plus there's so many other things I gotta deal with
I think that you should let it burn

When my mind locks onto words this way, to the point where I'm feeling worn down by their echo, I know I have to heed the message they represent: I've suppressed my own needs for some very simple things in a particular personal relationship, and the strain this has placed on my mental and emotional state has become painfully evident.

I ain't happy, baby, and despite all the "great talks", I still don't feel like I've been truly heard. So I'll simply give up this time around, rather than repeating myself yet again to someone who isn't really listening - or who just doesn't care enough to pay attention.