Howdy!
This has not been my finest week ever. Juruseh and I have been fighting non-stop. Sun-up to sun-down, the arguments go on and on and round and round. How do you argue with someone who says they are the emperor of the world and that it’s their world and you’re just allowed to live in it? There’s no rational way to handle it. He gets like this, and it won’t let up for weeks. I guess at least he’s just emperor this time. Last time I was a lizard-alien who possibly wanted to consume him, so I suppose it’s progress.
I feel like even divorced couples get out their relationships easier than this has been. I don’t like who I am right now, I feel mean, vengeful, and the longer this drags out, the worse it seems to get. I swear when I get out of this never-ever again. I am going to live out my life quietly, away from the rest of the world. I will gratefully be an old-maid and not be bitter when I die, and it takes people like over a month to notice, so my cats, chickens, and dogs have mostly eaten me. I feel ok with that. I should probably leave lots of extra food out when I get that old, not really fair for the animals to go hungry because I’m dead.
I’m not sleeping again, up at 3:30 am almost every day like clockwork. Nothing but nightmares for the last few days, which I suppose isn’t shocking. Haven’t been focused on that lucid dreaming thing either. It says you should keep a journal, but I can’t, Juruseh would find it and come up with some awesome way to make me miserable with it.
I know you think that’s a little paranoid, but he can’t stand anything I do to better myself. I tried running for a while because I needed a way to blow off steam, and daily he’d attack me for it. “What’s your IQ, like 40?” “Only people with very little intelligence run.” “If you have the energy to run, why don’t you try doing something productive instead, like mow the lawn?” It’s like this with anything I try. I thought I’d learn to belly dance from a video once, and because I was doing it on my lunch, he took a whole week off work and made fun of me until I gave up. If he had a whole book full my darkest fears, I don’t want to consider what that would be like, and am not interested in making that a possibility. I think it’s going to have to wait till I get back to the mainland.
On a higher note, I’m pretty sure I’ve found the perfect place for me to go. Leavenworth, WA. It has all four seasons, a low population, but is like a two-hour drive to Seattle, not super rainy like you’d think. At Christmas it looks like a Thomas Kinkade painting, they have outdoor plays during the summer, and there’s a reindeer farm. I still have to handle things in Cheyenne, first, but I think that is where I would like to end up. Build my little house in the woods and live peacefully with my animals and venture out to be sociable now and then.
Nothing is as attractive as that thought of being blissfully alone, in my little safe haven, that I don’t have to share with anyone (but my animals). It’s my lifeline right now. This remodel is going to increase the value of the house quite a bit, and it’s my ticket to never needing a roommate or significant other ever again. True, it won’t be a glamorous life, but I’ll have everything I need, and I’ll be safe. I can work, write, hang out with my animals, and there will be no one but me to tell me what to do if I can get through this with my sanity intact.
Anyway, enough of the drama in my life, let’s do a book review.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James
I’m going to admit that my disappointment in this book is my own fault. It was built up as such a scary book, and I was all psyched up to sleep with my lamp on or make my dog sleep next to me, I was really looking forward to that little thrill of fear, and it never got there for me.
I love an unreliable narrator, and the governess in this book is about as unreliable as they come. I will say, I thought she was a little excitable right off the bat. You can’t help but question everything you’re told, and the author seems to be purposefully vague a lot. While I like that the story messes with your head and makes you question the sanity of the narrator, I don’t like that I was left with a ton of questions. I won’t tell you what the questions are because it would be a big spoiler, but I think answering some of those questions might have given the text more of an edge.
Not a bad read, but not as scary as I was hoping.
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