I totally jacked this quiz from Nance, because it looked interesting.

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Four - The Individualist

"I am unique"

Romantics have sensitive feelings and are warm and perceptive.

How to Get Along with Me

* Give me plenty of compliments. They mean a lot to me.
* Be a supportive friend or partner. Help me to learn to love and value myself.
* Respect me for my special gifts of intuition and vision.
* Though I don't always want to be cheered up when I'm feeling melancholy, I sometimes like to have someone lighten me up a little.
* Don't tell me I'm too sensitive or that I'm overreacting!

What I Like About Being a FOUR

* my ability to find meaning in life and to experience feeling at a deep level
* my ability to establish warm connections with people
* admiring what is noble, truthful, and beautiful in life
* my creativity, intuition, and sense of humor
* being unique and being seen as unique by others
* having aesthetic sensibilities
* being able to easily pick up the feelings of people around me

What's Hard About Being a FOUR

* experiencing dark moods of emptiness and despair
* feelings of self-hatred and shame; believing I don't deserve to be loved
* feeling guilty when I disappoint people
* feeling hurt or attacked when someone misunderstands me
* expecting too much from myself and life
* fearing being abandoned
* obsessing over resentments
* longing for what I don't have

FOURs as Children Often

* have active imaginations: play creatively alone or organize playmates in original games
* are very sensitive
* feel that they don't fit in
* believe they are missing something that other people have
* attach themselves to idealized teachers, heroes, artists, etc.
* become antiauthoritarian or rebellious when criticized or not understood
* feel lonely or abandoned (perhaps as a result of a death or their parents' divorce)

FOURs as Parents

* help their children become who they really are
* support their children's creativity and originality
* are good at helping their children get in touch with their feelings
* are sometimes overly critical or overly protective
* are usually very good with children if not too self-absorbed

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Wikipedia also has a nice little summary of the Four personality. This summary lists the following under general characteristics:

The desire to create and seek meaning is emphasized in the Individualist. They are emotionally driven, passionate people, who want to be recognized as special and distinguished from others. They are, at their best, compassionate, empathetic, and refined. This often leads them to artistic endeavors of various sorts, or alternatively, to relationships that would bring them intense feelings whether sublime or despairing. On the flipside, their emotional turbulances and excess fantasizing can cause difficulties with living in the moment, rather than in the past or in the future, chronic dissatisfaction and depression, and conflicts with others.

This all sounds more like me than I would perhaps like to admit. But, for the most part, I am too laid-back (lazy?) to be chronically dissatisfied or depressed, and I care more about how I feel about myself than how others perceive me. I used to have more problems with negative emotions like self-hatred and feeling unworthy, but being with Trapper has really made me get over that shit. I am far from a "romantic" in the modern sense of the word, but the "individualist" part is me all over.

So....not bad for a test that only makes you answer two questions.

When a blogger posts an entry saying, "Oh Lawz, I can't believe I've abandoned my blog, I shall never do that again"...and then promptly abandons her blog again.

I SUCK.

I honestly don't know what's wrong with me. Has my life become boring? (Not any more than it already was.) Have I decided that my poor little blog doesn't stand a chance against the heavy-hitters of the blogosphere, so I might as well give up now? (Well, of course my blog doesn't stand a chance against the Dooces of the world, but that was never really important to me, anyway.) Or am I just lazy? (Probably.)

I'm going to make a concerted effort to take back my blog. I'm going to sign up for NaBloPoMo to encourage myself to post at least once a day in November, to get back into this whole blogging lifestyle. And I'm going to once again start thinking about things that happen in my life, This will make a great story for my blog. Because maybe that, more than anything, has led to me neglected this blog for so long...that I no longer look at things around me as being blog-fodder. I don't know why that is, but there you have it.

Anyway, here's hoping for a resurrection of my blogging spirit. And, if I find myself uninspired to blog in November, then I'm just going to have to give up the ghost and close this place down. Because it makes no sense to pay $60 a year just to have a pretty little website sitting here, all alone and abandoned. And that makes me sad, because this blog has been a big part of my life for several years now, but I have to face facts.

I hope it doesn't come to that. I miss my little corner of the blogosphere, I really do.

I think I honestly forgot that I had a blog. I certainly forgot how to log in to my admin panel, which is not something I'm proud to admit. I literally sat here in front of my computer typing in random URLs containing "EE," hoping that one of them would work. Finally one did (obvs).

So yes, here I am now, looking around my blog's control panel much like someone with dementia might look at their spouse of 60 years...like, I'm sure that I know you from somewhere, but I honestly can't recall where, or when, or why the hell you are sitting in my favorite recliner. I can't believe it's been 6 months since my last post. What the hell is wrong with me?? I missed my third-year blogging anniversary and everything. I am so lame.

Anyway, I'm going to try not to forget again that I have a blog. I still have things to say, and I still want to say them to the wide open cyberworld, even if only a few people care to read them. Because I have missed the fun, sweet little community of my little corner of the blogosphere.

Also...a world of thanks to Gwyn for sending me one of the best care packages ever in the world, ever! And it came on a perfect day, too - a dreary Monday that's been stressful from start to finish. Come closer so I can hug you, Gwyn.

Is it just me suffering delusions, or have the subject lines for spam e-mails gotten more...well, surreal? I used to open my spam folder in Gmail and see self-explanatory subject lines like "Parris Hilton SEX TAPE!!!" and "CHEAP Morgage." Now, though, I see subjects like this:

• it chantey he distinguish
  
• To budgetary at buttercup
  
• regurgitation
  
• saint may become habit-forming
  
• le meilleur casino en ligne *
  
• To noise the saffron

That last one is my favorite. How DOES one noise the saffron? Why would one want to noise the saffron in the first place? I personally think that To Noise the Saffron would be a great album title for some self-important, overrated hipster-friendly band like Radiohead. Spin would probably cream themselves talking about the brilliance of the title and how it relates to themes of subtle individualized humanity in a radical-populist world. Or some such bullshit.

To whom it may concern:

Why, oh why, do you insist on taunting me with your holiday-season-only sales of your peppermint mocha creamer? You know that I am your bitch when it comes to this tasty substance, that I will travel to twenty grocery stores just to find even one lone bottle so that I can turn my coffee from black and boring into CREAMY MINTY DELICIOUSNESS. If you sold this marvelous concoction throughout the year, you would make enough money off of me that you would eventually change the name of your Peppermint Mocha Creamer to The Whitters Blend Creamer. YOU KNOW THIS.

And yet...you insist on only selling this, this heaven-in-a-bottle only a few short months out of the year. This, my dear friends at Coffee-Mate, is nothing short of torture. Why do you do this to me? Don't you care about me? What prompted this decision, anyway? Did your market research show that consumers only crave peppermint-flavored coffee creamer from November through February? Is there something physically wrong with me that I want pepperminty coffee ALL YEAR LONG? Are you trying to tell me that I'm some sort of peppermint-mocha mutant? WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?!?!

It's bad enough that Starbucks only sells its Mint Mocha Frappuccino bottles during the holiday season, or that Joe Muggs only offers its Peppermint Bark Mocha during those chilly wintry months. You, Coffee-Mate, were my last hope at ingesting a cup of coffee full of peppermint goodness...but even you, who I thought were my friend and ally, even you have deserted me. BASTARDS.

I know that I can't do anything to change your mind. Like any major corporation, you're going to go full-speed ahead with your company plans, not caring that there are those of us in the world who like peppermint coffee not just at Christmastime but ALL YEAR LONG. I only wish that I could make you see things from my perspective...that you could look upon a peppermint-creamer-less world through my eyes, and feel the overwhelming sorrow and pain that I feel as I face ten months without my minty coffee.

And then, and only then, would you understand.

Sincerely suffering peppermint withdrawals,
Whitters

Well, my flu did indeed turn into pneumonia, which included horrible rattling sounds emanating from my lungs that would actually WAKE ME UP in the middle of the night. I'm happy to report that I'm feeling better now, albeit a bit tired and still a little cough-y.

It's always so strange to come back to the "real world" after an extended sickness. For one, my Bloglines folders are full to overflowing (over 10,000 unread posts in the Pop Culture folder ALONE). That'll teach me to avoid the Internet for a week.

I am officially Dying.

OK, well, not really, not OFFICIALLY, not exactly DYING...but I feel like I am, and that's what counts, right? Because, my friends, I have the flu.

I haven't had the flu in several years, and the last time I succumbed to it, it was a Nice Flu, a polite little virus that mainly just made me sleep for thirty hours a day with very few other ill effects (well, it did take hours of storing up energy just to be able to, say, move my arm an inch to the left, but it was a small price to pay for my lungs not drowning in yuck).

This flu, however ... is A BITCH. This flu has knocked me on my ass and has been repeatedly anally raping me with a studded 12-inch dildo for the past five days, and it is showing no signs of letting me free any time soon. It began with a sore throat so vile that I was literally begging friends and family to just behead me so I could get some relief. When the horribly, body-wracking, hacking cough and ungodly chest pain at the least little breath moved in, I decided it was time to go to the doctor. Of course, this was on Christmas Day, which meant that I got to spend five hours at a doc-in-the-box, but at least I got opiates out of it.

The doc in the aforementioned box looked pretty sympathetic when confronted with my glazed expression, wheezy shallow breaths, and Cough of the Living Dead. He prescribed me some Tamiflu and then asked if I wanted painkillers. I almost kissed him, except that such an action would have probably killed me from the energy expenditure, and certainly the doctor would have been repulsed enough to take back his generous offer of pain medicine. "Please," I rasped, the air whistling as it escaped from my ravaged lungs. "Please give me something to kill the pain. I just want to sleep. In fact, if you could just club me over the head with a wooden mallet, Looney Tunes-style, that would be fine, too."

So he wrote me a prescription for codeine.

I have been diligently taking my medication and ingesting buttloads of fluids since then, but I feel little better. In fact, I may now in fact be feeling worse, as my formerly dry cough has now upgraded to "productive," with its "product" being mucus the approximate color of rust. WebMD tells me that this is a sign of pneumonia, and if I had any energy whatsoever, I might be worried by this. (As an aside, I have had pneumonia before, and I found it infinitely more enjoyable than the flu.) At this point, though, I just can't bring myself to care. I've reached the point where I feel like I have been this sick for all of my twenty-five years and will be this sick for the rest of my life ... that I can't remember not feeling like shit and can't imagine feeling better. In short, I am fully immersed in the only-room-for-one pool that is self-pity. I have found that the flu is very, very good at bringing on such wallowing. (Well, what else are you going to do with your time but feel sorry for yourself? It's one of the few activities that takes little energy.)

So anyway, that's my sob story about how I got the flu for Christmas, wah wah wah, cue the sad Charlie Brown music. And now, if you'll excuse me, I must go cough into a tissue. It is my newest hobby, and I am becoming quite adept at it.

What is wrong with my life these days that I have such little blog fodder? I mean, certainly I don't lead the most fascinating life under any circumstances, but usually I at least have semi-amusing anecdotes to share with my reader(s). Things are happening in my life, to be sure, but they don't really lend themselves to great blog posts (does anyone really care about my control-freak mother-in-law? I thought not).

If this keeps up, I will have to resort to drastic measures. I'm considering getting pregnant and having a child for the sole reason of having something to blog about. This would not be your average mommyblog, I promise you that. I can see it now...

SAMPLE "POLYESTER MOM" POSTS

• Polyester Baby said his first word today: "FUCK."
  
• Trapper and I are having an argument about corporal punishment. He thinks we should use it on Polyester Toddler, and I think we should use it A LOT.
  
• Polyester Child left his letter for Santa on the fireplace hearth last night, and Lola ate it. (We told the Child over and over again NOT to leave paper products within Lola's reach, but does he listen? Nooooo. Six-year-olds, GAH.) Now we have no choice but to tell Polyester Child that Santa died in a tragic sleigh accident and will not be bringing presents to him this year.
  
• I bought Polyester Preteen her first training bra today. Then I showed her how, using industrial tape and shoulder pads, she can have Victoria's Secret cleavage. There's nothing as heartwarming as some mother-daughter bonding.
  
• Polyester Teen has taken to locking himself in his bathroom for hours on end. I think Trapper has been slipping him Playboys. Either that or he's inherited his momma's myriad intestinal disorders. Whatever the reason, it at least gives me some peace and quiet around the house.
  
• Polyester Grad said today that she thought her dad and I were going to pay her college tuition. Oh, how Trapper and I laughed and laughed!

Yes, what a wonderful mommyblogger I would be.