1. FACT: I AM BEING EATEN ALIVE BY PAPERS.

2. I JUST TRIED TO CITE THAT IN MLA FORMAT.

3. I THEN REALIZED I SHOULDN'T DO THAT - NOT BECAUSE THIS IS A BLOG ENTRY, RATHER THAN AN ACADEMIC PAPER, BUT BECAUSE I CANNOT CITE IT AS A FACT BECAUSE I AM NOT LITERALLY BEING EATEN ALIVE BY PAPERS.

4. I THEN HAD A FLASHBACK TO MY 10TH GRADE AMERICAN LIT CLASS, AND MY SOUL DIED A LITTLE MORE INSIDE, BECAUSE THOSE WERE BAD TIMES.

5. SERIOUSLY, YOUR MOM IS A BIASED HISTORICAL TEXT AS;LDKFJDLS;KFJSL;DKFJSDL;KJGSDFL.

Ohhh, school. ♥

R-71PASSED.

Politically, there's a lot to be upset about right now. Even this victory is an imperfect one; it was a close race, it's an "everything-but-marriage" designation, and it's still something we shouldn't have been voting on in the first place.

But it's a step forward. It's kind of a major step forward, actually - for the first time in any U.S. state, we saw a gay-rights measure up for popular vote, and then we APPROVED THE SHIT OUT OF IT.

...;asldkfals;kdjf WE DID IT. ♥

I spent my Halloween sewing feverishly until I was a giant cranky mess on my floor, blurry-eyed from too-thick new contacts and the fabric's grain imprinting itself until, no matter how much I blinked, there was nothing else.

So I went outside, and I was a wild-haired boy-king in fleecy wolf pajamas and a paper crown. It wasn't the magic I wanted it to be, but I was alone and I was proud.

I'm prone to agonizing over my work. Amidst my very human relationship with self-confidence, I've always had enough of an arrogant streak to believe that I can do exceptional things - not all the time, perhaps, but here and there and someday, with effort and thought and the odd luck of the universe. I want to show the world my best, out of respect for whomever has assigned me my task, and out of hope that this here, this could be something special.

Which is to say: I have trouble starting things, and even more trouble finishing them, and while my rational brain can accept that it's common and move on, the rest of me nitpicks and squirms and, too often, gives up entirely. At best, it's a reminder to relax more. At worst, it's a stomachache of bad hair, failing classes, worrying about money, and forgetting to take my meds on time, growing and growing until it's encompassed my entire life and I swear to god I can't do anything anymore, much less anything of merit - and shit, guys, that's heartbreaking.

And it's become something of a theme for me over the past year or so. I've neglected posting because I've been trying to find a way to talk about it - about school, because that's been such a huge component, but also about depression, and ADD, and finally feeling like I'm starting to grow the fuck up, and how melancholy and frightening and oh-shit-exciting that can be.

Except, of course, it's a long story that I want to do justice, and it's one more unfinished thing gnawing at my gut.

So: that story is coming, when I know how to tell it. I know because you're reading this, and I've pushed forward despite having too many clumsy words - and I've done that because on Saturday my hood was too small and my shoulders were a crooked mess and I wanted to cry, but I walked away and became Max, and it was more than good enough.

I'm going to go back and fix the sleeves until they're something lovely, mind you. I just wanted to tell you that I'm learning how to work again.

Also, I just remembered that everything's going to be okay.

I have a great many important things to say here, and it's been like pulling teeth trying to form them into something remotely articulate, and I really just need to take a break from that momentarily because

I DREAMT THAT LEONARD NIMOY GAVE ME A KITTEN.

( Yes, really. )

...Yeah, I have no idea, but it was FUCKING AWESOME, so who am I to question?

-My stuffed white tiger is still faintly green from all the Pillowman bodypaint. I can't bear to wash her off.

-I made it in and out of the DOL in 30 minutes yesterday. What strange fortune is this? I suspect it means I'm going to fail my driving test five times or so once I actually get around to that bit, but we'll see.

-Went into BECU (hooray!) this morning and finally got my bank issues squared away. This means I will soon be able to actually pay people who've been waiting so very patiently. Apologies, world! I am a goober! I am doing my best to make it charming, rather than obnoxious!

-Am unable to decide if I like the new guitar strings or not. It was definitely time to change them, and they don't sound bad, per se, but they're...a bit bright, perhaps? Something's a little off. Oh well, I'll know to try something else next time, assuming I don't fall in love with these eventually. I'm still having plenty of fun playing; in my insistence on keeping this newer, smaller room clutter-free I moved the bigger instruments (guitars, bass, violin) into my closet/a corner of the living room, and I'd nearly forgotten how soothing it is to be able to wake up and grab a guitar. I probably won't make it permanent (I really don't have the space, and in a matter of weeks I'll be back in a dorm anyway), but it's nice for now.

-Perpetual phone-tag with the doctor's office and the pharmacy=epic fail. I'm not trying to sell my Ritalin, guys! I kind of need it. *eyeroll*

-Thanks to the magic of heretofore-undiscovered gift cards, I now own a fifty-dollar bra. It is the most expensive undergarment I have ever worn, and I'm kind of in love with it. I am not a fifty-dollar bra sort of girl; I am the sort of girl who gets yelled at by Oprah for buying five-dollar bras from Ross and Target, so right now I feel like someone should be fanning me and feeding me grapes. I've needed something new for a while now - all of my other bras are either too small or in awful shape (like I said, five dollars! Think missing underwires! Think fraying in confusing places! Think no-longer-remotely-stretchy!). And this one is so fucking awesome, guys. It's basic but elegant, with just the right amount of padding, and it's stupid-comfortable. I'm a little too giddy about it, I think. I kind of want to run to a crowded street corner, pull up my shirt, and scream, "I'M WEARING A NEW BRA!"

-Kind of.

-Birthday on Sunday! My aunt and grandmother are coming from Montana to be here. They are good sorts, so I am pleased with this. I will probably go to Beth's and have shenanigans with people that night; check Facebook soon-ish for my (terrifically casual) invitation.

-Finally: tonight, I rendezvous with lady_rock; tomorrow, I rendezvous with bachlives (and perhaps tathramakan as well, if we are indeed going to the Hiroshima thing?). This is a fabulous way to live.

-Did I mention I'm wearing a new bra?

Harmony and I are at the Apple Store, molesting the pretty pretty iPod Touches. We are both failing at the tiny screens, but it's something to do while we wait for my Charger Issues to be solved through the magic that is AppleCare. :D

Yesterday: A comforting reminder that I'm no longer in high school (cash for my college guides and SAT/AP review books, despite being several years out of date), shiny Doc Martens, Neutral Milk Hotel, blessedly cool buses, guitar restringing (a stupid task to undertake in 100+ degree weather, FYI), then sprawled on a couch in the dark with Harmony, and a healthy dose of cracky sci-fi (with promises for more soon; I think we managed to sufficiently intrigue one another with our respective shows).

Today: Driving with Daisy (Pixies, Paul Anka, Prince, Dr. Dre) to visit Annalee at work, swimming at Seward Park (the water a cool, perfect temperature), meaningful heart-to-hearts about stupid people, getting all dolled up (necktie skirts, spandexy black minidresses, white vinyl boots, too much eye makeup) to take Hilary and Brian to Beth's, breakfast for dinner, cup after cup of black diner coffee (the waiter was bored; it was too hot for customers), receiving a hug from a boy named Angel who, it transpired, thought I was his friend Emma (it's not like strangers hugging me is even on my "weird" radar at this point; I just thought he was being friendly), contemplating the jukebox (Al Green, Van Halen, Hank Williams, Rocky Horror), explaining the origin of the Velvet Underground's name to the aforementioned Angel (an S/M pulp novel), crayoned drawings imbibed with the spirit of David Lynch, hangman, innuendo (always, always), swearing in front of the children (it was an accident!), planning burlesque performances, harmonizing, then drifting off to her voice (gravelly, growly, then frilly and sweet) and cheek-kisses goodbye.

Tomorrow: Replacing the last two guitar strings, making sense of my hair, then buses to work and more work and finally, finally not being broke (sort of).

My belly is full and - I have to say it, because it seems a little remarkable still - I'm happy.

YEAH.

I want to SHOOT THIS WEATHER IN THE FACE, but can't because the heat has sapped me of all useful energy. I am a person-shaped lump on the couch, grateful for what little exposure I have to our tiny fan and the Melanoma Melona popsicle in my left hand. They're not much, but they mean I'm no longer outside, where it's too uncomfortably awful to contemplate.

You know what would help? A glacier. I would really, really like my own glacier right now. Or possibly a bucket of ice the size of an Olympic swimming pool.

Anyway. What I'm trying to say is that I want to update, but it's too hot to brain properly. Instead, I offer you a meme, because I am a kind person lady_rock is tricksy and tagged me.

( MEME'D. )
ETA: Yeah, uh, I suppose I should tag people.
1.torchbaby 2.rose_vert 3.iheartsarahduh 4.bachlives 5.mcollinknight 6.hyper_drum_girl 7.flanika 8.the_heap

Speaking of lady_rock, I'm heading over to her house tomorrow afternoon, where we will proceed to have the most Epic DVD Marathon Ever To Be Marathon-ed™. I am going to attempt to indoctrinate her into the crazy that is Torchwood, and she is going to attempt to indoctrinate me into the crazy that is Supernatural. Wish us luck; I am confident that it will be Awesome and Exciting, though I am not confident that we won't both be a giant mass of eyestrain by the end.

Ta-dun!

I AM RETURNED.

To be fair, I've been RETURNED for a few days now, but it's mostly been a mess of running around being productive (to-do lists! so many to-do lists!) for the first time in two weeks, and then poking about the internet very tentatively following the insanity that was CoE, so not so much with the updating.

Select things I have done in the past 72 hours:
1. A shitload of campfire-scented laundry.
2. RSVP'd to the wedding of two people my own age (eek).
3. Waged smelly, smelly war on our yard waste bin.
4. Set up an entire badminton net by myself in the burning midday heat.
5. Had a psychic connection with lady_rock.
6. ESCAPED FROM A BURNING CAR.
7. Searched all over the Ave for the perfect used copy of The Secret History.

( Hang on, let's elaborate further on 6. )

So. Right. That's that, then.

Meanwhile, Torchwood. Torchwood! I might re-watch it this weekend, now that I'll have a chance to do so on an actual TV, though I'm not positive. I'm still in kind of a strange place emotionally with it, but I did enjoy it enough that I know I'm going to watch it again, difficult as it will be. I've been completely afraid to enter the general fray of fandom, because from what I can tell it's still on levels of batshit crazy. However, it was nice to come home to some lovely, twisty, thoughtful reviews - positive and negative and everything in between. I expected nothing less from those authors, though.

Now I just need to get my paycheck and figure out my bank shenanigans and call my eye doctor and see HBP and...well. I think I'm going to watch Wilde.

So my life is pretty weird right now. I don't know if I feel like I have the vocabulary to talk about it because, frankly, I don't feel like I have the vocabulary to talk about anything anymore. I honestly can't remember the last time I finished a piece of writing - to-do lists and three-line bios included. My sentences start out so lovely, so articulate, so full of promise...and wind up circling back around on themselves and falling over and containing made-up words like "mindow" and a faint suspicion that I'm somehow drunk. It happens when I'm talking, too, which would be normal and possibly endearing except for the fact that it's the only thing I seem to be able to do. Oops.

Still, I'm going to hope that I'm just terribly out-of-practice at this whole communication thing and barge on ahead, because I've really wanted to tell you all about what I've been doing lately.

And what have I been doing lately? Well, there's the part where I just finished doing a show (I hadn't done a show in forever! I kind of thought that maybe I was done doing shows, and that maybe I was okay with that!) in which I was crucified and then painted green, and I got to shout things like "I fucking AM Jesus!" and be with people I hadn't seen in quite a long time and generally have a lot of fun helping create something fairly heavy.

(Now, I'm mostly just finding green face paint all over everything I own.)

There's the part where I have an occasional job that involves taking several south-bound buses to a fabulous record store, then sorting things, dusting things, playing things, trying not to sneeze on things - and, sometimes, selling things. By "things," I mostly mean, uh, records. For those of you not here when I was 14, this is more or less my dream job and I feel like the Queen of Cool, except when I realize that I've been left in charge of an ENTIRE STORE and I am pretty much responsible if the building blows up and oh god people keep asking me questions and I have no idea what the answers are. Then I feel like the Queen of the Goobers. I eat a lot of really good Japanese food from the Asian deli nearby, though, and that helps more than one might expect.

(There is, however, the matter of it only being an "occasional" job, which means that I must search for further forms of gainful employment. I'm taking a few days off from thinking about that one though, shhh.)

There's the part where the house I'm currently occupying is not the one I left at the end of winter break, because my mother realized she was quite sick of all the crack addicts and neo-Nazi slumlords in our old neighborhood (to say nothing of our collapsing roof and bug infestation[s]). I'm mostly okay with that at this point - despite all the horrors I just described, it was very much home, and had a sort of ruined beauty that I genuinely loved; still, it was time to let go and get out, and this new place has a fabulous retro stove and big gorgeous trees and an actual backyard, and our neighbors have three fat hens who notice us every so often and cluck softly. I've spent a lot of time meticulously arranging and rearranging my room, trying to make it the right balance of comfy and geeky and stylish, all the while aware that I can't form any serious attachments or do anything of permanence because it's unlikely that I'll ever spend any greater length of time here than a summer, and there's a very real possibility that my mother could decide to pack it all up and move to Oregon or Montana in a few years.

(It's a strange state to be in, but I'm trying to appreciate it for what it is.)

There's also all the in-between, the trips back and forth and back and forth to and from the library, and the stacks and stacks of books, and the writing notes to myself in colored fountain pen ink, and folding laundry on the back porch while watching Hartnell-era Doctor Who, and doing the dishes, and seeing Star Trek twice (so far), and remembering for the millionth time in life that Ziggy Stardust is a fantastically stunningly stomach-achingly wonderful album that never ever gets old, and thrifting and Twin Peaks-ing with Daisy (pics of the results from that Value Village run, as well as a few others, soon to come, because SPOCK WATCH), and walking miles and miles barefoot with Thy and eating too-rich chocolatey things from little bakeries, and showing up at Harmony's house because I can, and being kidnapped by Cara and Kate (see: previous voice post), and texts with Kyndra regarding shoplifted hamsters and Doctor Who porn, and Chocolati and busstops with Emily, and defending Lily Allen's honor, and becoming a giant ball of excited nervous wreck thanks to NEW TORCHWOOD approaching, and sun and birds and cats and coping with allergies and riding my gorgeous green vintage Schwinn all around the hilly streets of my city.

(And there are decent-sized doses of melancholy and anxiety and fear for the future, and doctor's appointments approaching, but those things are balanced out by the fact that, for the first time in years, I'm really, truly enjoying my summer.)

ARGH WTF WHY IS IT STILL SNOWING. Missoula understands weather even less than Seattle does.

Anyway, I'm off to Sociology, in which we're watching a movie about pornography. I suspect it's going to come down on the anti- side and generally make me want to gnash my teeth, but I'm still curious to see how they're going to argue it.

More later.

So. Let's say I were to register for both Japanese and Arabic next fall, armed with the knowledge that I'd have nearly a month of classes before the add/drop deadline passed.

How much of a crazy person would this make me?

(It took me forever to narrow it down to those two, and I'm still not convinced that I shouldn't be taking Irish or Latin. If I could go through college taking nothing but languages, I would be a happy nerdy thing.)

So I'm editing audio of an interview I did for my Photojournalism slideshow and, having removed the "um"s and "uh"s and gratuitously long pauses, I decide to transcribe said interview so I can get a better sense of where else to cut it (I need it down to a minute, and it's currently at 3:35).

After a minute or so of rapid-fire typing, I pause Audacity and inspect my handiwork. My extremely dyslexic-looking handiwork which, I soon realize, looks roughly the same way CJ Cregg sounded after her woot root canal:



I suck at typing and The West Wing is awesome. Film at eleven.

Mondays have been weird for me lately. I think it's because they lead to Tuesdays, and Tuesdays are stressful, and so I build up Monday night in my mind until I turn into this big ball of stress and nerves and identity crisis and wanting to simultaneously hide under my blankets and run away to Europe. I snap out of it in a day or two, and then I'm mostly fine, but Mondays are, frankly, a bitch.

I tried to give myself a break. I thought I would watch an episode of House, since I haven't done that in a while, and I discovered over winter break that I adore House. Like I said, though, it's been a while since I watched it, and while I was enjoying it intellectually, it was hitting too many weird notes emotionally for me to keep watching.

And then I read this and realized I needed to put on The Velvet Underground & Nico RIGHT AWAY.

( And suddenly, I stopped feeling like my stomach was going to explode. )

P.S. I sort of hate to end this with a shameless plug, but the above link is from a music blog that my friend Holly (iheartsarahduh) has just started. Six days out of the week, a different writer will take on some aspect of music that is important to them. Sundays are our High Fidelity days, in which each writer contributes a Top Five list on a designated topic. I write on Fridays. We're still getting things together, but we're off to a pretty exciting start. Please check it out and feel free to join/promote: eclecticsix

I should be doing my reading for Sociology.

Instead, I'm contemplating what would happen if Jack Harkness got attacked by a zombie.

These are important considerations, people.

I mean, would it not affect him, or would he go all zombie-fied until they killed him again, or what?

Please remind me to stop arguing about feminism with white boys who have overdeveloped senses of privilege and sophistry.

ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH.