Friday or Thursday or something while subbing at Jupiter Middle School, I walk into the cafeteria and they're having one of those drug assemblies they always have in Middle and High Schools. You know, the ones where they have a bunch of blown up senior pictures and other happy go lucky pictures of all the people who then overdosed and died. I mean, you see enough of these you become immune or desensitized to them or whatever. Plus, it's always been pictures of people you've never met, never heard of, and were too much older than you for you to consider this as a "now" problem affecting you or anyone you know.

I remember my thought process back in the days of 6th grade. It pretty much consisted of "these are a bunch of older people who died years ago, no one I know does any of this, maybe back then it was an issue but....." the but was usually my illogical thinking that the kids I was currently in class with had been saturated with enough of this "anti drug/if you do drugs you will surely die and then go to hell and nothing will become of your life" nonsense that they would know better. Plus you also had been taught to associate drugs with gangs and ghetto type areas and shoot outs and all that nonsense. I lived in Jupiter. There wasn't anything here back in '95 'cept some woods, a river and the beach. Oh, there was a Publix too.

Then, once you get into highschool, then you know better, in one sense at least. You know that people really do use drugs, and in lovely little Jupiter, there is a whole lot of weed going around, and in a highschool dedicated to the arts, there is a whole lotta other stuff going around too. But by then your thought process has changed to "it's just weed, that's not gonna do anything too bad, and you sure as hell can't overdose on the stuff". And you figure that those around you who are doing more than weed know what they're doing, aren't gonna be overdosing anytime soon, and they're still in school and their grades are fine so their lives obviously aren't going down the drain anytime soon (and the ones whose grades are not fine never had good grades to begin with, so their problem is obviously something else, not drugs). So in highschool, when they do the drug assemblies with the blown up pictures of all the smiling dead people, once again, it isn't about you or your friends or those around you. It's about people who were obviously really really messed up, came from really really messed up lives/neighborhoods/situations, or were just really flat out stupid, cause once again, no one you know is gonna be ending up that way anytime soon. Yeah you know plenty of people that do this and that, but still, they know better than to take it to that other level. Like I said, my illogical thinking.

And then one day you graduate highschool and guess what? Nobody died. Everyone is alive and well, addicted to this and that maybe, but for the most part, they're all still going to some kind of college, or have found some kind of job, and they sure as hell haven't overdosed on anything. And so the drug assemblies of "if you touch this you will DIE......." are still something to roll your eyes at (and once school is out and you never have to attend one again, they are easily and readily forgotten). Getting addicted, getting arrested, getting kicked out of school, spending a whole lot of money on dumb shit to keep the party going, getting sent to rehab by your parents, yeah all of those things obviously happen, but the death thing? Like I said, you gotta be pretty stupid or messed up to take it that far, and I don't know anyone like that....

Then one day you hear that so and so put a gun in their mouth when the cops were after them for having/selling who knows what, and they were more than likely high when they decided to blow their brains out. Ok, so that's somewhat of a shock, and yeah obviously it was drug related, still not an overdose, but definitely a drug related death. Then you start hearing of all the 18/19/20something year-olds out in the Farms who are constantly overdosing on this and that, all after having graduated highschool alive and well, and you find yourself fairly relieved that all you've ever bothered to touch in your life is weed. And eventually, the whole so and so overdosed on this and that becomes something else you are now desensitized to. Yeah, you think it sucks, but it's something that happens more often than not, and well, that's what happens when all you want to do is party and swallow pills, and they're the idiots who thought they were "all so cool" and superior to everyone else for doing it and living that nonstop party lifestyle, (it's so much easier to think this way then to really sit down and think about it, and thinking about such things is something I avoid all costs) and once again you're relieved that you're smarter than that.

By now, over 5/6/7 years after the 12th grade, the drug assemblies of death are a distant memory, something in the past, something you haven't thought about probably since the last time you had to sit through one, and you sure as hell don't think about them when you hear about the latest overdose. Drugs are still something you roll your eyes at because after working in a psych ward/drug rehab for the past four years all you're really thinking is "man, these kids are really stupid, how many overdose/horror stories do they have to hear before it knocks some sense into them? I mean, just here in stupid Jupiter you got someone OD'ing on a monthly basis, how cool do they really think they are doing all this crap, it's retarded, but whatever, it's their life, you can't force anyone to do anything".

And then one day you walk into the Jupiter Middle School cafeteria, looking for the group of kids you're supposed to be subbing for that day, and up there on the stage, all set up for an assembly later that period, are all the blown up senior/happy go lucky pics of all the people who died from drugs, and you're kind of smirking to yourself, cause it's the Jupiter Middle School cafeteria, and this is the exact same place you had to sit for this 14 years ago, and you're smirking because you know that these people in the pictures with their 20something year old ages of death, are too far removed from these 12 year olds' minds to really mean anything to them, and you know they're gonna say the same old thing, weed is the gateway drug, if you touch weed this is what will happen, and you know that's not true because you've touched a hell of a lot of weed and that's all you've ever touched and you know a whole lot of other people like you and you're thinking all this as you briefly glance at the pictures and then you do a double take and you realize that you know half the people up there (most you haven't heard of since highschool or a year or two afterward) and for a moment you're confused because you were pretty sure this was a drug assembly, but now you're not too sure. Maybe it's a "choose what highschool you want to go" to assembly?, or a "get your senior pictures done assembly"? But that last one doesn't make any sense because why would they be telling middle schoolers about getting their senior pictures done, and for that matter, what do senior pictures have to do with choosing what highschool you go to, and then you realize there's a picture of some dude in a coffin, so you ask that one lady, the same one who was an AP back in the day when you went there and who gave your class many a drug lecture, if the pictures on the stage are of people who died, and she's like "yup overdoses", and then it's all just really fuckin weird.

It's weird cause now you're standing there, in your stupid old 6th grade cafeteria, surrounded by a bunch of loud mouthed 12 year old residents of "J-Town" who are about to have an assembly about the evils of drugs and are gonna get shown a bunch of pictures and told a bunch of stories about people they've never heard of, never seen, don't care about, and are too far removed from their reality to really make any type of impression in their minds, but you know all those people.

You know the one girl who got kicked out of school in the 9th or 10th grade for having a locker full of god knows what, that you never heard from again, nor really thought of again. Well turns out she lived to the ripe old age of 23. Then there's the other one you worked with, another one you knew through friends, there's one you actually sat with in this same cafeteria, through this same assembly, all of them people that you knew used this and that, but you always thought they weren't going to go to that extreme, all people who died within the last 5 years. I mean a few you already knew were dead, and that wasn't much of a shock, but a bunch of others you had no idea.

I wish I had something really deep (or whatever other word people like to use) to say about how I felt standing there staring. But I don't. All I have is "weird and confused and odd". Like the drug assemblies have come full circle and they are now about my world and I'm standing there in that stupid cafeteria staring at people from back in the day that don't exist anymore. And I can't believe how many people my age I've known that have died, cause back in the days of middle school, no one my age would ever die, unless it was some sort of rare freak accident, and how often do those happen? And I know that none of these silly kids are gonna care or listen much, they're just happy to be missing 1st period. But I want to stay and listen but can't because my class isn't scheduled to come to this. And I want to listen because I want to know exactly what happened to him or her and what they were doing during the years between "just out of high school" and now. And everyone else around me in that cafeteria is either too old to know these people or too young. To them, they're all just a bunch of people who were too messed up or too stupid to be able to control what they were doing, that's all they are to them, kids who failed to pay enough attention to assemblies such as this one. But to me, those are people I have memories of or with. People that when I think back to the good ol' days of stupidity, to the days before bills and responsibilities, to the days of skipping class, waiting for the next party, the next clematis hang out, the next beach/wood/sand pit day, the next day of BS at Publix Supermarket, the days of hoping the bus doesn't show up that morning so we can run around the neighborhood like jackasses. These are the people that were there at some point or another  during those days of nonsense, they are characters in my story and apparently they no longer exist. They aren't going to be stealing fried chicken and sneaking it up into the breakroom for me ever again (I mean, that wasn't going to happen ever again regardless, those days are long gone, but it's still just so much more final when it's because they don't exist anymore). And I keep thinking of the years 20-23, the years when I did the most of my running around like an idiot with the J-Town loser club, going to random parties, watching other people snort this, swallow that, smoke some, nights of participating in the "high rides" of blunts around the same old streets, never giving a second thought to what we were doing and where it was gonna end up, and apparently, all along, people were dropping like flies here and there.

Whatever. It's weird that's all. I never felt the urge to do anything other than smoke some pot. So I will never know what these people's lives were like, how they thought, or anything like that, but I still wanted to take the microphone from that one lady and tell all the 7th graders that the people up there really are real people, people that at some point existed and now they don't anymore, and that I knew 'em, and that some of them sat in this same cafeteria about to nod their heads at, while simultaneously tuning out everything that is about to be said (if only because they will not feel like any of it applies to them or anyone they know) and that I could tell you some real funny stories about quite a few of them back when they still existed and no one thought anybody was ever going to die, least of all any of us.

Looke me using the internet again.......

So after the desk top crashed a while back and the laptop went kaput, I had an obvious break from the world of the web. (Yes there is internet at my job, but 95% of sites are blocked....)

So couple weeks back I bought a Mac to replace the desk top, but apparently the little antennae thingy I use to pick up the neighbor's internet signal is not Mac compatible (in other news, the free printer that came with the Mac is also not Mac compatible, and this I got at the Apple store.... You'd think they'd know better). (In even more other news the dog just farted. What a stink, and it's too cold outside to open a window.....).

Long story short, I have since reinstalled windows on the lap-top and am now using the Windows compatible antennae apparatus thingy to once again pick up some neighbor's internet (and one of these days I'll figure out exactly which neighbor it is that this belongs to....) and here I am, catching up on internet shit.

I must say, my little internet vacation was quite productive though. For some reason I have yet to figure out (could be the drop in gas prices) there is extra money in my bank account (the dog farted again, uck), therefore, I must be doing something correctly in the world of sporadic employment. I have also finished painting my living room and dining room (concrete floor and all) and have bought pretty little area rugs to make it all beautiful.

I haven't done much photography wise, but I've been super busy....

And then I met the 19 year old boy (who led me to believe he would be turning 21 sometime soon, LIES!!!!). 19 or no 19, I liked this boy, he seemed like a normal nice guy and appeared to have his head on straight and acted more mature than the majority of people older than me that I know. And he appeared to like me. Calling me, cooking me fish, telling me he was intimidated to kiss me cause I'm so purty or some crap. Yup. (Did I mention that said boy comes across as your typical southern country (redneck if you will) boy. Complete with a deer/hog hunting obsession, camo gear, rebel flag blankets and a father that at first glance I thought was Santa Claus holding a shot gun. So soon after I found out he was 19 I asked "you know I'm 25 right?" he said yeah, I then followed that with "you know I'm hispanic right?" he gave me another affirmative, so I figured it's all good (the roommate who had been screaming "WE NEED TO KEEP THE WHITEHOUSE WHITE!!" at the T.V. during election time had me a little worried about my spanishness, but apparently he doesn't like his roommate so I guess things work out).

So yeah, so I finally get asked out by a boy I like who continued to ask me out, and guess what? His mom decides it's time to move out, he had basically a week to find an apartment, went through about 5 jobs in two weeks (the dog farted again, no more chick peas for him) and is now working 7 days a week and 5 of those days he has doubles, and he's all stressed out and sick so I guess I haven't been hearing much from him. What a poop. Then again maybe he got bored with me cause I wouldn't get naked after having kissed him twice, but sheesh, I woulda eventually if he continued to be nice, it just takes me awhile to warm up to people and get comfortable with them you know?

But whatever, here's to hoping that he is just overwhelmed with life at the moment and did not lose interest....

I wish I understood how this whole dating worked (I also wish all the little friends of the last guy I was with would quit trying to get with me, it's like what? Because I got with him that means automatically I'll get with all of you? Um no, never mind that you're all on quite a few drugs and have all taken turns getting arrested and getting bailed out of jail, but even if you weren't, still, just, no.

And oh yeah, it's freakin cold out!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (And I have blisters on my hands from painting all day).

Much love to you all!! Hope your Thanksgiving was as delicious as mine!!