History is the story we write with our lives.

I had originally wrote this on Wednesday morning but due to fear that Victor might delete this journal too I kept it saved as a draft until I was done salvaging his life:

All is not lost! Yesterday I'd remembered another journal he kept and I dared not mention it until I'd saved it. I'm in the process of saving it. I can't seem to figure out his password to actually go in and use a client to download it so I'm going about it the hard way. I viewed the page source and copied the code to my html editor and spent a half hour, thereabouts, looking through it and fixing it until I got the colors right. He used a dark background and light text, which when I go to print would use up my ink cartridges fast. No reason to waste all that. So I messed around and got all the backgrounds white and the texts black and even made neat little black lines to separate the entries. It still has the basic layout of the way he set his journal up, even shows his userpic, and if there were comments and everything, just in different colors. I'm saving them in 20 entry increments. And so far all two of the comments he has aren't worth saving. If there are any good comments I'll save a separate page for them.


And to be fair about 75% of that other journal was fiction. But that doesn't mean that some of it wasn't based in truth or that the other 25% deserved to go. Especially since the first part of it was mostly truth and the last bit was truth. So I'm still upset about that, but as long as I can save his other journal I'm happy. Cause that one goes from 2002-2006. Which makes me wonder about the one he deleted because I seem to remember it being at least a few years of writing. Yet he met me in 2007, we weren't together until later on in the year (August), but still, I don't remember it as being only a year and a half long.


Oh, and now that I have the coding figured out on the other one it's a simple matter of search and replace. I did page 2 in about five minutes. Anyway, if there's four years worth of entries to save I'd better get to it. Dunno when I'll print them but I certainly will, and then I'll hide it.


Yes, there's things in my journals that I don't like reading, especially from my teen years, but journals are important. As Indiana Jones' dad said, "I wrote it in my journal so I wouldn't have to remember it." I remember all sorts of things, going on adventures with my family. Hiking, trips to the beach, I remember doing something with floaties and a creek, going to the space museum, the air force museum, going to church and the games we played and stuff we did. I don't remember details. That's when I go to my journal to get these details. To get my day-to-day thoughts.


And Victor's life is so very interesting. I really wish he'd sit down sometime and write about it. Start to finish, doesn't have to be a detailed journal of what he ate and stuff, but just memories that stick out from childhood and when he gets older, a timeline of where he lived and what he was doing at the time, and maybe some specific memories. And I wouldn't print it out, I'd leave it there for him to add to whenever a new memory surfaces. All the things he's done, all the places he's been, shouldn't just be forgotten. A journal is your legacy, your children might read it, their children. It'll be a study of history and the life of an ancestor. I would love to have a journal some great-great-great-great grandma of mine wrote. I'd love to see her talking about life on the farm or whatever. And Victor's story is not one that should be lost. Maybe what he writes is only special to me, and will only be special to our children and their children, but because it's special it should be preserved. It's well and good to tell me things now about one's past, but when we're old we won't remember them as accurately. By time we're in rocking chairs telling stories to kids they'll be blown out of proportion and all truth will be mottled.


Well, back to salvaging Victor's life. Though some of it is fictionous like the other one, this one has a lot of truth to it, I think. Either way it's being saved.

And back to today. I think I made his journal look very nice in a print-worthy kind of way. And it made me think. I sometimes joke that I dusted him off and polished him up and I guess it's true. He has love and a home now. He'd look at his old journal and say he was being a whiney emo ***** but I say reading that makes me feel closer to him because it makes me want to hold him and stroke his hair and make everything better. I know I already have healed him a great deal, but I know there's still a little bit more healing to do.

Some parts were amusing. Like how he hasn't changed. Some things he said then are things I could see him saying now. Some things he talked about as liking then or doing then are things he'd do now or like now. I can see the man who is my husband shining through the depression and blight he downtroddeningly suffered through.

I do really want him to make a timeline of his life because different parts just don't fit together right in my mind. I'm more of a visual learner, so seeing it would make it fit better than reading and hearing it.

It sorta makes me want to post more poetically, but I have nothing to be happy and descriptive about at the moment. Give it about three more months.

Yesterday was a pretty good day, though. Victor put on the blue and white snowman button-up shirt I made as a present for our first Christmas together. And I wore this black long underwear type shirt that was smooth (normal long underwear has those squares but this one was just smooth) under a gray and black shirt. And we went out. We got drive-through Taco Bell and sat in the parking lot at the mall and ate and read. Then we went in and wandered. Victor wanted to wander through various stores for the sheer sake of being out with me and doing stuff. There's a new clothing store that's more a closet, really, so we didn't go in. He started to go in Buckle and I tried telling him their clothing is mainly over-priced grunge, but it took seeing a pair of jeans that cost over 100 dollars for him to believe me and leave. We went into Claires for a moment but the employee was all nosy and offered us a basket. ugh, go away. I saw a hair pretty I liked but didn't get it. We went skipped Herbergers as I feel I'm not rich enough to even walk through the door. I dragged Victor into Payless Shoes but the employees there were irritating as well, telling us the latest sales and asking how we were. Do you have any idea how many sales stores lose out on because of their *cough* "friendly customer service"? The best way to scare me off is to ask if I want help or to try to otherwise talk to me. They almost chased me out of the bath store by asking what our favorite fragrance was. I did end up getting some fragrance oils for soaping and the checker was asking me what my plans were for today! It's none of her business. We went into the game store which embarrassed me because of the manner in which Victor held out his arms and pretended to zombie in. We got Sim City Creator with some credit we have there. Then we went to Super 1 and their 12-hour sale had nothing I wanted on it, but we did end up getting some RC Cherry Cola that Victor wanted. And a coffee energy drink because he saw a migraine spot and wanted to beat it back. It worked but he was still kinda unresponsive the rest of the day. Then we sat on the couch the rest of the day and he played various video games and I read.

I am something like 240 pages in now. It is really good. I have high hopes for that ball. It is my belief that a certain scene that was shown as part of the future in the telescope scene will play out at this ball.

I have a little more to add to my thoughts up there on why Victor should write down his life: He doesn't even tell ME things he does. Like when he comes back from work he just doesn't think to tell me things. I prod and he tells me a tiny bit and I ask for clarification. Like in his blog the other day he spoke of something that happened at Borders and I had to ask him for details. The reason he paid for the other book when he knew he didn't have to pay, was not an accident, it was to make sure I got the book because he knew he could get a refund. It would have been nice had he told the whole story from the beginning. And just because something is a "day to day" occurrence to him doesn't mean it's not interesting to someone else. I'm sure someone who lives in the middle of Kansas or Oklahoma would love seeing pictures of where I live, but to me I can go weeks without really looking at the mountains. They're there and I ignore them for the most part. I do occasionally look up and go "wow" because they can be very pretty. But usually I don't even see them.

Oh, as for Victor's journal, if he reads this: I have made various backups under various code names spread about my computer. At some point in the future I will print a handful of copies to hide about the house in various places. Do not try to find and delete these. I spent hours working on this, I forwent your Valentine's present to work on this. I don't know if your present will be done in time now, but this was crucial to get done asap. Also, it is the ONLY reason I stopped being mad at you. Remember, some of those entries in your other journal were about me and now those memories of you and me are gone forever.