I'm Still Alive / Coke Rewards

I think this is the longest I've been away from my blog. Since April 11th I've been spending my Internet time on entering sweepstakes. Since that day, I've entered 849 sweepstakes, 150 of which I enter on a daily basis. Before you worry too much about me, I do have a piece of software I use that types my information on forms for me automatically. So, it only takes me a couple hours a day. Most of the time I'm sleeping.

Speaking of sleeping, I found out recently on the Internet that only 15% of people with depression sleep a lot. Mostly, depressives have insomnia and a lack of sleep. I don't know how I ended up with hypersomnia. I feel so unlucky. But I'm sure the other 85% feel like they're the ones that are unlucky. I only complain because I'm sleeping my life away.

I'd like to say thank you to the person who signed up for the account I talked about in my last post. I got my $10 thanks to you. :) It's now in my bank account. I thought they would tell me who signed up so I could thank them, but it does not tell me who it was. So, whoever you are, thank you for signing up so I could get $10, and I hope you enjoy your $25. I've now made a total of $35 from that Pay-Pal-like service. I'm going to use it on groceries! If you'd like to tell me who you are, it would be nice to know. Also, from now on, if anyone signs up will you please tell me you did so so that I can give you a proper thank you?

I don't know right now if I'm going to come back and regularly post on this blog. I'm too involved in my sweepstakes obsession right now to regularly attend to it. I know there will be a time when this phase will dry-up, but I can't predict when that will be. All I know is that I have these daydreams of winning money or things I can sell for money. When you have money, you don't think about it. When you don't have money, you do. Gas and grocery prices are horrible right now. Now I'm buying store-brand strawberry preserves instead of Smucker's. I envy the people who don't have to be concerned with such things.

I may have more to say in the next few days. At the moment I don't feel like I've said everything I want to say. I don't know what it is I want or need to say, but I just feel like I've gone on vacation and forgotten to pack something. It's a horrible feeling. What is it I'm leaving out? I'm sure I'll think of it soon.

P.S. I'm now saving Coke Rewards points that come from Coca-Cola products. I'm saving my points for a telescope. I have 90 points, and the telescope is 14,000 points. If any of you drink Coke products and don't use your codes found on the caps or packages, will you please save them for me? You don't have to take the time to type in the codes in an email; you can send them to me after a while. I ask for a lot, don't I?

I hope everyone is well. I know there are some comments on this blog recently that I haven't responded to. I read them the day you post them, so they're not going unread.

Free Money - Until May 15, 2008

I just got $25 for free by signing up for a service that is kind of like PayPal. If you sign up using the button below, you get $25 and I get $10. I scratch your back and you scratch mine.

The email address that is used to refer you with is not my normal email address, but please keep it as it is because that's the address I used for my account.

I just had the $25 transferred to my bank account as of today.

You have until May 15, 2008. Also, like me, if you refer people and they sign up, you get $10 per person, up to $500.

The accounts are issued by First Bank & Trust, Brookings, SD, Member FDIC and part of the Fishback Financial Corporation.

Unlike PayPal, you can send and receive money for free through this company.

Let me know if you sign up. Although, I'll probably notice once that $10 shows up in my account. ;) Just please make sure you sign-up through this link instead of signing up through another link on their web site so that I get my $10! It would really help me out a lot. Thanks!

P.S. This is for U.S. residents only.

Star Trek, Life

OK, promise you won't think I'm a nerd or anything but I'm excited to see that CBS is airing the complete first three seasons of "Star Trek: The Original Series" on their website.

Yes, I went looking for it. I used to love all the various Star Trek series on t.v. when I was a kid and also in high school. I typed in "star trek episodes online" into Google, and that is what I found. My original intent was to find episodes of "The Next Generation", but I'm happy with what I found. I'd also love to see "Voyager" and "Deep Space Nine", again.

http://www.cbs.com/classics/star_trek/video/video.php

Don't ask me how I went from obsessively looking for spiritual teachers to watching t.v. on the Internet. I think my search for a spiritual teacher is over. I never found one, but I don't think I have the attention span to devote myself to a path right now. I'm living in the mundane world and loving it again, in the peacefulness of my little home with my little family (husband, two dogs and four cats). If I never had to leave the house again I'd be very happy. I'm watching movies on the t.v., t.v. shows on the Internet, reading and entering sweepstakes. Nothing that takes too much brain power, surprisingly. I think my brain is taking a break from living inside itself for so long. I believe many would be pleased to hear that I'm starting to get out of my own head. I'm not lost in thought as much as I was.

Leaving work was probably the best thing for me because I'm much more relaxed. I'm going to be poor as heck, but I'd rather survive comfortably than live uncomfortably. In fact, I'm going to be poorer than I was when I was in college, when I was trying to pay for school and afford food at the same time. We didn't even have cable or satellite t.v. back then, and lived in a trailer! No, I'm not embarrassed about having lived in a trailer before. No, I'm not "trailer trash". It was a cute little trailer out in the country on the peaceful part of the river. Living out there like we did, we ended up fostering many stray dogs and puppies that were dumped.

Anyway, I just hope my husband can retire soon. We're waiting to see how our finances are going to pan out. I like having him home with me. Today I sadistically made him play Scrabble with me. I made him promise earlier this weekend that he'd play, and he couldn't get out of it. I won, but don't tell him I told you. He told me not to brag about it on my blog. ;) It's really difficult to get him to play board games with me. It's probably the first time in three years that we've played.

That's all for now. This is probably the most boring post I've ever put on my blog. I owe some emails to a couple of my friends. If you're reading this, you know who you are. I'll get caught-up on that tomorrow as well as respond to the comments that were left the past couple of days.

I love you all! (And I don't care if that sounds mushy or sappy.)

Uncertainty and Insecurity

I've thought a little bit about the meaning of my most recent dream. Driving on the wrong side of the road and lying about winning the lottery really says a lot about my fears and financial insecurity.

I used to live a comfortable life. I wasn't rich, but I never had to worry about not having enough money to pay the bills. Things are different now and I can't stop worrying about what is coming in the near future. It's really going to be bad. We won't even be able to afford to go out to eat anymore. We have been eating at home a lot the past few months, but to know there won't be any money in the budget for a dinner outing is disturbing me. We're going to be pulling it real close. We created a spreadsheet tonight that shows all of our monthly expenses and income, and I couldn't help but notice that there'd barely be enough left over for groceries.

Not only am I worried, but I'm angry at myself for letting depression interfere with my life to this degree, to the degree that I can't even go to a job every day. Each time I come out of an episode, I tell myself that it will be the last and that everything is going to be all right. But every time, around the corner, I end up in another episode. Not only is it hurting me, but it hurts my husband, who was wanting to retire this year. He used to be a happy go lucky guy, but I've noticed the past year or so that he sometimes gets depressed, and I know that it is my mental illness that brings him down. I've asked him about why he seems down sometimes, and he admitted that he doesn't like to see me depressed.

I miss the days when we went to museums and zoos, and I'd play happily at my piano. I have photographs of those days, and I always had a smile on my face. Once, in college, a college-paper journalist wrote an article about me and my smile. If he saw me today, I don't know that he'd recognize me.

I really need to get back into entering sweepstakes. I know the odds of running into a windfall are against me, but if the Law of Attraction is true....

Dream Date April 10, 2008

Pollyanna's leg was hurt. I went to examine it and she held it up for me to look at it. My husband said he was going to take her to the vet because of the strange look she kept getting on her face. He said she was "jowling". (In the dream, this word meant closing one's eyes partially and sticking out one's jaw.)

In either the same dream or a different dream, I'm driving down a highway. I end-up on the wrong side of the road, heading into direct traffic, but no matter how hard I turn the steering wheel towards the right, the car won't head in the correct direction.

Eventually I am able to get the car to start slowly heading towards the right side of the road. I turn right into my old neighborhood. I pull over and get out of the car. I get on my knees and put my head in my hands. A boy that I used to go to high school with shows up in front of me. (This boy / young man is not someone I knew in real life.) He's a boy that wasn't one of my friends. He used to pick on me. But I want him to regret not being my friend, so I make up a lie. "I'm set for life, now. I won the lottery."

If I remember correctly, in the car with me was a painting. It was a real painting but it came out of a book of paintings. It was blue, with translucent Greek letters all over it. There was also a whale's tail and clouds with a sun and rays. The name of the painting was "A Summer's Day in xxxxx". I don't remember the last word.

The Turn of the Screw - Possible Spoilers!

Last night I finished reading _The Turn of the Screw_, by Henry James.

The language in the book was overly ornate, but I eagerly anticipated reading a little bit of it each night. So, it was suspenseful!

The tale is related to us by a man at a small dinner party somewhere in England. Everyone at the party thought it would be interesting to hear a true tale about two children haunted by spectres. The narrator of the story goes on to tell everyone about the governess that goes to stay with the children. She begins to see ghosts, and believes that the children can see them, too, but accuses the children of hiding their sightings from her. The governess confides in a maid named Mrs. Grose.

The question that the reader asks himself/herself throughout the story, is, "Is this governess really seeing ghosts or is she insane?"

The young boy, Miles, had earlier been expelled from school, but no one knew why and the boy never mentioned a word about what happened, so the governess and the maid often discussed how the boy could have been kicked out of school. In the end, the boy said he was expelled because he "said things". Upon further questioning, the boy said that he "said things" to "those he liked". I don't know if it's just me or not, but I wondered to myself if this alluded to his being a homosexual boy? Also, sometimes I felt uncomfortable with how close the governess tried to get to the boy. I don't think James intended for the boy to be homosexual or for the governess to be a pedophile, but the language of the time made the relationship seem flowery.

Aside from the ambiguity of these instances, I really enjoyed the novella.

I am now reading Henry James's _Daisy Miller_. The language is easier to comprehend and therefore the story is less of a struggle to read than _The Turn of the Screw_.

If you've read TTOTS, please let me know about your thoughts! Was the governess mad? Was the boy homosexual? Was the relationship between the governess and the boy Oedipal? Or are these modern times clouding my perspective of this novel which was written in 1898?

The book is available for free HERE.

Dream Date April 7, 2008

I was looking out the window in the storm door. In the sky I saw a white blimp slowly making its way across the sky, with big pillowy white clouds. I went outside so I could see it better. Then, I was next to a tree. I was there to smell the flowers that were growing on it. The flowers were almost like roses, and they were white and yellow. They smelled sweet. The lady from across the street called out to me, "Oh! I'm so glad you're outside!" She walked over to me and placed four containers of her homemade cookies in my arms.

(The house, tree and lady are unfamiliar to me.)