So at 5 am this morning I was awake as I am far too often lately, lying in bed listening to my neighbour’s radio play through the shared wall and pondering homicide. I hate waking up that early since it screws me up if there’s *anything* that can take my attention away from convincing my body that sleep is good. Considering our neighbour “can’t fall asleep without [her] radio” I spend a lot of time losing the go back to sleep battle.

So off I stagger to my beloved couch and while I’m trying to convince my body that it’s quiet now, sleep good, please god, go back to sleep… my brain starts planning my day. “9:30 am tutorial, then a 1pm appointment with the writing centre, then 2:30 pm tutorial… I could fit a trip to the gym in that space… maybe… but two showers in a morning? Should I go to the women’s gym nearby or stop being a scaredy-cat and go to the laurier gym instead?” and so forth until I finally gave up and loaded up Morrowind on the Xbox.

It’s that space time and I’ve decided that I have no desire to go to any gym, sweat, shower and have to reapply the war paint for a second time this morning. I’m very aware at the same time that I really, really need to go to the gym. I guess I feel out of control again (already!) and pressured to balance everything. There’s a sense of nostalgia for last term and the few times I took my readings with me to the gym and went in the mornings before class. Plus I haven’t touched a camera in any artistically driven way yet this new year… and… and…

I want great, amazing grades. I want to be a great mother. I want to use my skills to take care of my family. I want to make time for my best friend. I want to be a photographer. I want to keep my equilibrium. I want to write and continue learning about myself and how I relate to the world around me. I want to build an audience for my thoughts and my pictures. I want to be healthy. I want to be strong, fit and energetic. I want… so very much.

But there just doesn’t seem to be enough time in the day to do all of that. They weren’t kidding about the 1 hour in class to 3 hours out of class ratio. If I do the tricks that I know will increase my absorption of what I’m learning, we can add an easy hour or two to that number. Plus, I just hit a point where if I have to think anymore I’m going to go insane, so I stop.

I guess at heart I feel scattered and out of control of my own life. Going to university has changed my life so drastically that I’m just floundering. I keep making plans, lists, routines and they go to pot almost as soon as I put them into play. And I’m so tired. I mean last night, I got home from class and I was completely ready to crash for a nice long nap – but Sara had swimming lessons, for which she was unprepared and couldn’t find her swimsuit. So we end up running out to Kitchener to find a new swimsuit for her (she needed a one-piece suit anyways) and by the time we got home I just wanted to die. So insanely tired.

It’s not the tired of earlier last year when we were tweaking my meds, it’s just a “I’ve hit the end of today’s energy. Stopping now.” thing. There’s an idea, perhaps. If I track when I start getting tired and what I do throughout the day, maybe I can figure out what level I end up per day. No, no… not another thing to add to my list of shoulds.

When I was in therapy (the heavy duty shit) I would think of myself as having an allotment of energy each day and lots of it would go towards keeping myself stable. So the days when I’d be doing a lot of self-exploration I’d be exhausted much sooner than an average day. This holds true even now in terms of emotional expenditures sapping me of my overall energy. Maybe because of the PTSD and that I don’t honestly function well at a basic level, I am just simply using up a percentage of my daily energy keeping myself together here at school. I mean, as I said to Lindsay this week, there was a time not too long ago that I couldn’t leave the house because of the fear and anxiety.

I used to be unable to be in public without an extremely high level of anxiety. I needed to keep my back protected, sit in corners so I could watch the people around me for threat, never leave myself vulnerable to attack. It was just easier to stay at home where I was safe. Yet here I am, spending most of my day in an area *filled* with other people, teenagers for the most part. Teenagers are the ones most likely to viciously verbally attack strangers, in my experience. Verbally attack *me* -- not to put too fine a point on it.

Just poking at this and thinking about how severe and controlling my fear was is creating an emotional response for me. That usually means I’m onto something. So maybe I’m just expecting too much from myself on a daily basis by staying at school all day. Maybe I do need to try and work from home as much as I can so that I’m not forcing my subconscious to continually hold down the anxiety. I know if I allowed myself to feel the anxiety I wouldn’t be able to be here every day and I have long experience with suppression of emotions on a subconscious level. And now poking at it, it’s pretty damn obvious that my anxiety has to be running like a massive undercurrent to my days.

Interestingly, my back is tensing and feeling highly vulnerable now. Oh, there’s another line of thought… the continual knotted and tense state of my back could be a signpost as well. Fucking fear, fucking damage. I may accept that I’ll never be able to live completely without anxiety and fear, but I can still hate it with all my soul. It’s irrational and stupid. Pfft.

Today is the first day of classes for the winter term. Hair’s done, the war paint is on, my backpack has all the various things I figured I’d need for today – I’m ready. Oddly enough I’m more nervous about classes today than I was in the fall. I wonder why. First class this week is History 109, the continuation of the history course I took last term. That’s a bit of a relief. I guess I’m worried that I’ll have people sitting beside me in the lecture hall and my other course (HI 102) is really popular and fully enrolled.

Those seats in the lecture halls are a wee bit squishy for me. There’s my motivation to lose a little weight – to sit in my lectures comfortably. I do want to lose a bit of weight this year, at least a bit of the quit weight. It’s still an immensely loaded issue for me, but I want to stop hurting so much. I’m pretty certain that part of my back issues have to be related to the extra weight I’m carrying. We’ll see.

I’ve been working on my uberlist for 2006 over the past week or so. Have a fairly substantial list, but not enough yet to post. I’m reminded as to why I wanted to work on it throughout the year. It’s hell trying to make a to-do list of over 100 items all in one go. I find it interesting looking at the assessment for last year’s list and realizing how little I actually got done. What’s funny is the items under ‘one time only tasks’ I figured I’d get done easily. You know, set aside an afternoon and go. Enh.

The other thing coming to my notice is that it’s really hard to get me to work with my photographs. From simply going out on a photo shoot to processing them for the photoblog to even posting to the photoblog, I just don’t seem to want to do it. I wonder why. I mean, I’m obviously skilled at it, I obviously enjoy it, why is it so hard for me to do it? I seem to give myself permission to shoot when I’m not at home. 5 rolls when we were in Ottawa for the weekend, the same amount on our road trip to Vermont and Nova Scotia. Perhaps some of it has to be shyness. Not wanting to pull attention to myself. Because someone with a camera wandering around taking pictures of fountain drains is very noticeable.

Plus I want a better camera. The digital started showing signs of dying when we were in Ottawa and that makes me very nervous. I guess I’d rather not take photos at all than have the digital die on me completely and make it clear that I *can’t* just go out and shoot. But the downfall is the digital I’ve decided I want is going for $550 before taxes on eBay and $700 retail. Might as well buy a good replacement if we’re in the market for a new digital camera. Enh, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll ask for it for my birthday. :)

So I’ve been typing this up sitting in a Timmies waiting for Mike to get done with his physio appointment on my new laptop, Mormallor. The typos are monstrous. I’m not quite sure how I can miss letters *and* do doubles at the same time. It’s most likely because I haven’t been doing a lot of typing on here yet. I hope it improves over the next term. Hah. A $1500 notebook so I can take better notes. That’s kind of sad.

Blah. Half an hour now and I’m written out. Time to clean up the typos from hell.

Completed!
Partially Done.
Not Relevant.
Incomplete.

Daily & Ongoing:

1. Take care of my back - Do my physio exercises 3x weekly
2. Walk at least 3x weekly for at least 30 minutes -- Joined a gym.
3. Take a photograph a day or seven photographs a week
4. Update the photoblog at least 4x weekly
5. Update the online journal at least 2x weekly
6. Keep paper journaling at least 2x weekly
7. Volunteer or find a part-time job -- Mainly I wanted to get out of the house, school is doing that now, woo!
8. Respond to emails promptly
9. Buy MS Money and use it
10. Start bookcrossing again
11. Restart meal planning and cooking
12. Do after-school routines with Sara, break out the flash cards again
13. Wear more jewellery
14. Slow Down
15. Clean up my Email
16. Be less cranky and stop taking it out on the people around me if I am.

Weekly:

17. Kidnap Sheila for a bi-weekly lunch/coffee date
18. Start a Library night, and go weekly with Miss Sara.
19. Do Photo Friday every week
20. Play my silly pirate game more often. Play being the operative word.
21. Dishes completely done by Sunday Night

Monthly:

22. Call Dad more often
23. Monthly game night
24. Have someone over for dinner at least once a month
25. Wash, Vacuum and Armor-all the car monthly
26. Get a Princess Cinema membership and use it
27. Make more jewellery

Ongoing Projects:

28. Clean off my desk and keep it clean
29. Start (and continue adding to) the rogue's gallery
30. Start and complete the Watercolour course book
31. Back up SkyWorks and PtF
32. Back up my hard drives
33. Goodwill trip
34. Learn how to Sail -- Delayed indefinately.
35. Recycle old Magazines
36. Sort through my cam pics folders
37. Photoshop workable pictures
38. Burn to disc all photos
39. Learn how to save
40. Make CDs for people (and catch up on the ones promised already!)
41. Stop and listen to the people around me.
42. Find an online community that interests me and actually become a part of it. -- being online means much less to me now.
43. Update my address books with all information for the people in it.
44. Do more road trips
45. See more live music
46. Get back in touch with the Boys
47. Write letters to people I care about
48. Make the 2006 list throughout the year

One Time Only Projects:

49. Paint the hallway
50. Clean out under bed
51. Close down SkyWorks completely
52. Clean out the dumping bins under my desk
53. File crap
54. Clean and organize my bookshelves
55. Clean and organize the bathroom cupboard and medicine cabinet
56. Paint the bathroom cupboard and baseboard
57. Take a weekend road trip with Mike
58. Purge the closet of clothes not worn in the past year
59. Clean and organize Media bookcases, including the top
60. Measure, buy and use new shelves for the media bookcases
61. Go to the Zoo
62. Go to Toronto for a weekend and visit the museums and galleries
63. Do SkyWorks Accounting
64. Build shelving by my desk
65. Clean Porch
66. Wash all windows
67. Go away for our anniversary
68. Look into (and if possible, do) putting in track lighting in the hallway
69. Update at least 6 pages on PtF
70. Take a Watercolour class
71. Go to Chesapeake Bay -- Yeah, not exactly a trip I need to make anymore.
72. Do something awesome for Sheila's birthday
73. Have a birthday party for my 30th
74. Take a course
75. Spend a day at the beach
76. Make a scrapbook
77. Get divorced
78. Go to a TARcon
79. Solve coffee table issue

One Time Only Tasks:

80. Send birthday Thank You notes by the end of May
81. Rent a storage unit -- We somehow managed without it all year, hee.
82. Make the pillows for the couch
83. Finish sewing the summer pants
84. Sew Sara's back to school outfit
85. Add the elastic to the bras
86. Add two photographs to my art gallery area
87. Add a painting to my art gallery area
88. Frame the Sara painting properly
89. Wax the Car
90. Make curtains for Sara's Room
91. Replace living room curtains
92. Clean out and organize linen closet
93. Go to a fricking Aquafit class already, god.
94. Get two B&W photos printed.
95. Do Taxes
96. Book Physical by beginning of December for January 2006
97. See a Ballet Performance
98. See a Symphony Performance
99. Buy myself something frivolous and beautiful
100. Christmas Cards done and sent by December 1st
101. Throw out a box worth of unused crap
102. Complete two airplane models
103. Mend Mike's quilt
104. Find a therapist
105. Get a Massage

I keep meaning to sit down and write out a journal entry about the past couple weeks, but I just haven’t. Out of the habit I guess. Whole bunch of things on my mind lately. There’s excitement about Mormallor, my new iBook. (on which I am currently typing as well…) I’m also completely done my very first term of university.

That’s the big one for me at the moment. Love the laptop, but really the only reason I bought him was to use at school. In the last week of school I borrowed Mike’s powerbook to test out a suspicion I had that if I was typing I’d be able to take better notes. And whatduah know? I was right. It’ll just take a while for me to get used to the new keyboard and the massive caps lock key. The idea of having mobility with my computer goodness is a bit of a thrill. And expensive thrill but what can you do? Sucker needs to last me about 5, if not 6 years and I won’t get that by buying cheap.

I had exams last week. Only the two of them, but they were so drastically different from each other. The Med Studies, much like the course itself, was ridiculously easy. I didn’t walk out with 100% or anything, but I have no fear that I’ll be losing my solid A there. It almost feels like cheating to get a good mark in a mismanaged overview course when I wasn’t even really trying by the end. I had a mini-rebellion and ended up handing in my final set of mini-essays late. I just had no desire to do good work for a course that felt given up on, at least from my vantage point.

My History exam was a completely different matter. My first exposure to the “cattle” type handling of students. About 400 if not more of us all in the gymnasium, split up by class types… that meant I was in between a group of French students cheating their asses off at the start of the exam. I was so very temped to be the busybody bitch and tell them to stop fucking cheating like a bunch of morons. What were they doing you ask? Well apparently there was a vocabulary section and one of the four was reading her exam, the other was noticing the words they didn’t know and hollering over to the guy to my right “hey, what is a dance club? How do you spell that?” *shakes head* Apparently the concept of “they will FAIL you and possibly expel you for cheating” was too complex for the braintrusts.

I definitely wasn’t ready to the level I wanted to be ready for my exam. I think I nailed most of what I needed to get to get a decent mark, but I was missing the little details that would’ve made it an excellent exam. That’s my entire fault though. I knew what I needed to do to really excel in the course and I dropped the ball about mid term. I was having a hard time adjusting to my new world, and I know why I did it, but it doesn’t take away from the simple fact that I dropped the ball. And with that comment I’m one of the people I despised in high school. I will be *very* shocked if I don’t walk out with an A in Med Studies and at least a solid B in History and yet I’m bitching that it’s not good enough.

I think part of that has to be coming from my sense of this being a second chance to do this right, you know? I’m very smart. I learn very, very quickly. So the fact that I barely graduated High School is a thorn in my side while I’m also very proud of that fact at the same time. I feel that this is my time to show just how brilliant I am, and not just in ways that I see it. Anyways, I know what I did right and what I didn’t and next term is a whole new ballgame to play.

Something I don’t understand and I find fairly offensive? Young women baby talking and acting completely ditzy when speaking to a young man. There’s a girl in the lab with me at the moment doing just that and I want to slap her. It’s far too easy to sell ourselves so very short to be doing it deliberately. Ok, so he’s cute, but why on earth would anyone want someone that wants a stupid girl?

I know I’m a 30 year old woman sitting in a room filled with people barely into their 20s, if that. I know that I’ve paid my dues as a stupid girl, pretending to be remarkably stupid to get the guy. I know the thought process that’s involved when you’ve been turned down a few times because the guy you like is intimidated by you.

It’s still selling yourself short. I mean, I’m in a lab in the Science Building on the WLU campus. This is not exactly the land of the idiots. (Contrary to what uwaterloo people have the bad habit of saying… bastards. ;) ) *sighs*

Things I never realized I knew until I was surrounded by people that haven’t figured this all out yet. Well, that’s not exactly true. I never really had a clear, simple childhood. I’ve always functioned older and more mature than my age would imply. And yes, in many ways I was remarkably stupid in my early 20s.

Sometimes I sit in my classes, in the labs before classes and there’s this mild feeling of regret. I wish I had done this at the “right” age. I understand that at any age people feel out of place and nervous, but I just keep realizing how different my world view is from my peers. The very concept of getting trashed out of my head until I puke… Oi. Or skipping classes. Hell, no, I better be on my fucking death bed before I miss a class.

I’m incredibly driven when it comes to school right now. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to keep it up over the years, but for now it’s there, baby. I want the best goddamned marks possible. I want to see my name on the Dean’s list. I want my professors to know me by name as well as face and expect good work from me. The deck was so very stacked against me in High School. I want to take this chance and prove myself capable of being a kickass student.

And I want to prove it to nobody other than myself. It’s always been something missing from my life, this core deep confidence in my abilities. Not that excelling at university will give it to me, necessarily, but it’s another level. The quiet knowledge that I looked at my desire to make soap and from there created a decently successful business all. on. my. own. is pure gold for confidence building.

Gah, I can’t access any of my slides from previous lectures. I’m so bored. *laughs*

Today has been such an utter comedy of errors. Start with waking up at 4am because my lower back is killing me. I staggered out to the living room to throw myself upon the mercy of my fabulous heating pad. Then by the time my back started feeling better and I felt sleepy once again it was nearly time for Sara to get up. I somehow staggered my way through until I decided to warm up using Mike as a heating pad. I fell asleep.

I vaguely remember waking up at 8:24 and hollering at Sara that she better be ready to go out the door… and then her un-brushed head popped around the door edge and said she wasn’t ready. Yeah, duh. I fell back asleep after that. So very tired this morning. I’m starting to think that maybe if I had dropped Mike off and promptly gone back to bed life would’ve been in a much better state for me on this fine autumn day.

But, but, there’s always a but. I watched an Oprah show last night that talked about heart disease and that whole thing about belly fat being worse for you than ass or thigh fat in terms of heart health. I also have a $57/month membership to my gym that’s been going neglected for quite some time at this point. Add in that I’ve been feeling stressed through the roof lately and that exercise is supposed to be a stress reliever and we have my activity for the morning – going to the gym.

I’m thinking of turning my formidable will upon myself and just making it *very important* that I go to the gym every other day or so. I need to move, my lungs are bad, my back is bad, I’m sleeping better but still not well, and just making sure I take time on a regular basis to move my body should help with all of that. I just have to make it a priority again. If I go in the mornings, that helps. I’m realizing more and more that I’m just done in the evenings. I run out of steam fairly early.

Anyways, back to the drama of my fine day. I leave the gym with a blinding headache (that’s still hanging around like a very unwanted guest) and I reach for my sunglasses to take the edge off of the lovely yet far too bright sunlight. They’re broken. It’s a metal fatigue break, and if I had a soldering iron I’d fix it myself, but I don’t, so they’re going to have to stay broken for a while. At least until I get a chance to take them to lenscrafters. I’m not really annoyed since they’ve lasted 4 years now, and my glasses proper are just fine.

Then my beautiful car… Oh, Mephostophiles. It was fill the tank time again, and we’ve been noticing that the tires look a little under-deflated so I decided to try to fill the tires. 3 broken air pumps later, I’m looking at a front left tire reading 15 PSI, when the recommended is about 34 PSI. There’s no way in hell that I’m going to drive on that, visions of cutting through the tire walls dancing in my head… so I stomp off into the Canadian Tire and buy us a mini-air compressor. I’m highly unimpressed that I had to buy an air compressor to inflate my tires. So stupid. Ahh well, hurrah for more rarely needed toys to live in his trunk.

But now here I am, at school waiting for my lecture to begin. I think I like this taking of some time to type up a journal entry before class. I could be reading for class, but it’s not a big deal to do later or while I’m elsewhere. It’s all the balance act, as usual. Just feels like there aren’t enough hours in the day. Plus I then spend far too much time recovering from things. No matter how well I think I’m doing, when it comes down to it I have complex post traumatic stress disorder and that makes me different. I don’t process stress in a normal fashion and I do need goodly amounts of time to come down off of things.

It’s one thing I’m grateful to Lindsay for. She is very clear in pointing out that YES, writing an Essay is stressful, that YES, dealing with an unholy mess with the administration of a course is stressful, that YES, feeling tired and overwhelmed is utterly normal in this situation. Normal for the young ones, normal for the adult students, and therefore normal for me too.

I just wish my headache would go away. I’ve just finished an extra large coffee and it’s still hanging about so it’s definitely not a lack of caffeine situation. Blah. 2 hours and then I’m home and I can drug myself. *laughs* Ok, time to post this sucker.

It’s just one of those days. I’ve been poked and prodded and twisted by my chiropractor, gone over my woes with my therapist-type-person and now I’m killing time in the computer lab waiting for my History class to begin. Oh and I’m handing in my first real essay of my university career (such as it is) in lecture today. Oh, oh! I almost forgot, I also have a root canal booked for 4pm.

It’s just one of those days.

The depression weight’s been sitting on me all this past week. It’s gotten worse over the weekend and yesterday. I figure it’s just a reaction to the increased stress of this whole situation. I’m tired, I’m in a foreign land, I’m finding no time for myself, I feel like I’m failing at everything I should be good at… it just sucks. Money is freaking me out, school is a fucking mess, and I’m not eating right… gah!

I’m never taking a new course again. This course has been massively mismanaged and booched beyond all recognition. The assignments don’t match the expectations in the syllabus, the teaching styles and coverage changes between the profs, there’s no acknowledgement that they’ve screwed up and the cream on the top? My assignment that’s worth 10% of my total mark? They’ve decided to not give it a mark at this time.

So I’m the student that got 84.1% on the first test in the course and beyond that I don’t have a single blessed clue as to where I stand at all. Granted until I get my essay back from my history course I don’t know where I stand there either, but at least I knew that coming out of the first class. That class has actually matched the syllabus.

The inability to do anything about unprofessional behaviour in this environment is maddening. As a student I have 2 choices available to me: take it or leave it. I mean I could make a big ass fuss and take it to the dean, but ultimately there’s nothing that will be done. I’m enough of a realist to expect that. It just drives me batshit crazy. If I behaved as arrogant and dismissive of the concerns of my customers as these people do, my business would’ve failed instantly. Yet they have their cushy tenured jobs where they get to lecture a classroom of nearly 40 students about how men are the root of the entire universe’s ills… and nothing happens to them.

I sat in a room with my prof a couple weeks ago and said “Look, the syllabus says one thing about how to do this assignment; you have told people individually something completely different. This has created confusion. The sources we were given are poor.” And she responded with “I’ll keep that in mind as I mark.” Specifically the fact that the provided French sources were utter and absolute shit. The comment on my returned assignment? “The French answer is a bit weak.”

Un-fucking-believable.

I’m just going to make it through this course and then make damn sure to avoid any classes with these profs again. It’s my only recourse. Well not my only, but definitely the only practical one. Anything else would put my already way too high stress levels through the roof. It’s just bullshit.

Ahh well, at least I got 84.1%, eh?

So I get up early today for god knows what reason, but I decide to turn it into a bonus and take the opportunity to visit the Farmer's Market. On the drive over, I'm flipping through the radio stations looking for something that doesn't suck when I hear "obese". Now considering that medically speaking I'm an obese woman, I'm always curious about what people are saying about it. So I flipped back to the station and listened.

First Man: "... now if my doctor told me I was obese and needed to lose some weight, I'd be grateful that he dealt with me straight."
Woman: "Well some people like it differently..."
Second Man: "No, here it is, you're FAT! You're unhealthy, you have to get off your ass and lose weight now. Don't complain that your doctor is telling you that you're obese, you are! Do something about it."
Woman & First Man: *laughs*
Music: "You're a pig..."

At which point I flipped elsewhere.

Now let's try something, ok? Let's play swap in the words.

First Man: "... now if my doctor told me I was black and needed to become white, I'd be grateful that he dealt with me straight."
Woman: "Well some people like it differently..."
Second Man: "No, here it is, you're BLACK! You're different; you have to get off your ass and change. Don't complain that your doctor is telling you that you're Black, you are! Do something about it."
Woman & First Man: *laughs*
Music: "You're a monkey..."

Not quite so funny anymore is it? How about another one?

First Man: "... now if my doctor told me I was female and needed to become male, I'd be grateful that he dealt with me straight."
Woman: "Well some people like it differently..."
Second Man: "No, here it is, you're FEMALE! You're different; you have to get off your ass and change. Don't complain that your doctor is telling you that you're Female, you are! Do something about it."
Woman & First Man: *laughs*
Music: "You're a pussy..."

Shit, suddenly it's racist and sexist and would probably get the broadcasters into a deep, deep ocean of trouble. The new acceptable bigotry is weight. Now I've seen this argument before, when compared to gender or skin colour the response is always "You can't change your gender or skin colour, you can always lose weight." I'm not even going to go there because of one simple little thing.

It's a mind-blowing concept. Brace yourself. Are you ready?

My body is none of your business. Her body is none of your business. His body is none of your business.

I don't need to justify why my ass is fat. I don't need to explain to anyone what I eat, how I eat, what I do for exercise. I certainly don't need to flip through radio stations and have obesity be the funny colour commentary for that morning's show. It's not fucking funny, people.

Calling a fat woman a pig is the exact same as calling a black man a monkey or a woman a pussy. They're all dehumanizing, degrading and vile. Dehumanizing a person is not humour; it's ignorance and hate. This bigotry keeps getting more and more accepted as reasonable. It sickens me.

Do we really need someone to consider inferior, to demonize, degrade, to mock? No? Then why do we keep doing it?

So there’s this pile of things going on and I haven’t been writing about it at all, in any journal form, hand written or typed. We’ve been traveling a lot of this summer, and mid-trip out to the east coast I got the email saying I had been accepted as a conditional adult student, part-time at Wilfred Laurier University.

Earlier in the spring, when I was still a bit more stubborn and hopeful about my chances of becoming a full time university student, I didn’t think the conditions Laurier places on their adult student admissions were reasonable for me. I had some idea that I would have student loans at that point as well. Then came the letter from OSAP telling me that Mike makes too much for me to qualify for anything in the student loan arena. Followed with the essentially “fuck you and please, go away” letter from UW making clear my grades from 10 years ago still had far too much bearing on my life now.

So, I gave up. I figured it was too late to do anything for this coming year, and I’d try again next spring. In comes Julie. When my response to her asking me if I could complete my admission to Laurier was “It's too late anyways.” her response was to take over. She found out that it wasn’t too late, exactly what I needed to complete my application, redrafted my essay answers to UW into the format WLU wanted and then delivered it all. I was packing for our 3-week trip, and basically distancing myself from the whole process at the same time.

I think I was willing to let her do it because I really didn’t think it was going to matter. I was going to receive another “Go away” letter and that would be that. What does it matter if someone else is willing to expend her energy towards a fruitless goal? Right?

Then once we hit Truro and had Internet access once again, there was an email there from the admissions office at WLU asking to confirm that I really did want to continue my application, even though I had emailed in the spring stating I wanted to stop. You would think my completing the requirements for my application to be processed 5 months after that email would be a hint, but… no. Anyways, I confirmed my desire to apply and they responded a few days later that I was being extended an offer of admission.

There's something interesting in having such a major life changing event hit your lap when you’re 2000 km away from home and the ability to do anything about it. I emailed back asking if there was anything that required my attention before we were scheduled to return home on he 10 to no response.

(The Admissions office certainly seems to be allergic to responding t any questions. Twice have two fairly major questions been completely ignored by them. The level of unprofessional behaviour has been utterly mind-blowing.)

So we got home on Monday, cutting short our Vacation as it was planned. Mainly because we just wanted to get home to our cats, our lives, and in Sara’s case, her father. Since we got home, I’ve picked up my letter containing my offer of Admission, registered for my allowed 2 classes this term, bought my books, got my student card, activated my student card with the library, attempted to get my WLU email set up, booked an appointment for therapy, and spent far too much money on school supplies for myself and Sarabeth. Oh and also had a mild panic flurry because I don’t have the faintest idea how to do a bibliography or footnotes and my grammar is disgusting.

So my Mom’s going to help me with some of the issues I’m concerned about. This weekend I have homework in the form of 2 chapters in the “easy” grammar workbook. Then I’m to move onto the not so easy workbook.

Plus, I thought about it, and if I’m going to need to write a lot I need to practice writing, so here I am. :)

I find my relationship with my body interesting. Even more so after reading books like "Passing for Thin". There's this concept that if you're fat, you must be eating disordered and ashamed of your body. That there's this stigma placed on the body at all times.

I don't buy into that. I've worked very hard to get to this point, but I've discovered acceptance. I know what I look like, and frankly I don't give a flying fuck. The weight will come off once I exercise and continue eating right. Or maybe it won't. Either way, it's my body and I'm ok with it.

I've always said this but sometimes, many times I didn't really "buy" it, not deep down. Hell, even as recently as last December I was worried about how my friends would treat me because of my body. I don't much care anymore. I want to be strong; I want to be fit.

I joined a gym last month. Went from an idle idea between Julie and myself to a reality pretty quickly. I figured I'd be all for the classes, but with the exception of one positively absurd Tai Chi (and I use the term loosely) class, I haven't been to any of them. I've been following the very basic workout outline presented to me on my "Introduction to Circuit Training" session. 24 minutes of Cardio (usually the reclined bike, so I can read), stretching and then weights.

I realized yesterday when I went to gym after driving to and from Toronto that I've jumped levels already. The previously ok level on the bike barely raises my heart rate now and stretching hurts a lot less. YAY! Getting there.

Next up is to figure out what my max press is on the weights and see about starting some strength training instead of the simple lightweight stuff I have been puttering with. I want to be strong again. I don't care about the fat, but I do care about the weak. I've never been a weak person, and to have my body be that way right now really frustrates me.

During my fitness assessment they had me do the knee style push-ups. I managed 8 with this terrible muscle weakness in my shoulders and arms. I keep remembering how that felt, how internally angry I was at myself for allowing my body to become so weak. That's my goal in this coming month; I want to rock the fitness assessment next time around.

Problem is, I feel the niggling of obsession there. I want to go every day. I want to push myself really hard to get strong again, damnit. And I know that's a bad path for me to wander my way down. I'll burnout and stop going to the gym, in the best case. In the worse I could hurt myself or end up obsessing about my body and getting trapped into those negative thought patterns again. Self-hate isn't pretty and I don't want to play that game ever again.

Balance is the key, as it always is. I want to go 3 times a week, ideally. No more because that way obsession lies, No less because god it's expensive. *laughs* I love the irony in that I've become one of those fools that drive to the gym and I still don't walk to pick Sara up yet.

It's all in the finding of balance. Balance the gym, balance the chores, balance the game, balance my depressions and the treatment, balance a social life, balance my family, balance it all. I suspect I'm going to spend the rest of my life figuring this stuff out. It's not an easy answer that you put in place and it simply stays there. I'll find some measure of balance then something else comes along and knocks it all down. Then the work starts again.

Perhaps that now the Zoloft is working (Dr. Mckeown said yesterday that I'm on "target" for my depression level) it'll get easier to balance things out. Not always needing to stay mindful of where I'm at emotionally so that I don't miss my slip into the dark again. Knowing that when I wake up in the morning that I have a stable emotional base to start from. I think it'll help.

Wish the exhaustion and insomnia would fade though. Lovely side effects. Wooo!

And that's it for today. :)

So a quick until the laundry timer goes entry, mainly to break the bad habit of not writing at all lately. Today is a chore day for me, trying to get caught up with laundry and dishes, to lose a bit of the feeling that I'm slipping. I keep getting exhausted again around mid-afternoon, but I think it's the Zoloft. We've increased the dose again and I suspect I'm re-adjusting.

I've been having random ideas to journal about, based on the books I've been reading, things that happen in my silly pirate game, my relationships with other people. All the usual idea fermenting fabulousness. I just haven't taken then time to sit down and type. Not sure exactly why. I'm doing a lot better depression wise, but there's still the little off kilter bits here and there.

I've joined a gym in the last month, and I love going to it. I go with Julie most times, but I've snuck in a couple visits on my own over the past couple weeks. I had a fitness assessment as a part of my membership and it was *funny* and mildly sad. The only thing I didn't score "dear god, you're about to die, you're so unfit!" on were the crunches. Yay for physio exercises! I look forward to being a lot better by the time of the next assessment.

I've lost my balance again, gotten sucked completely into my silly game again. I think it's a mix of reasons. But the reasons don't matter too much right now, just finding my balance again is much more important to me. I need to find the time to do all the wonderful things that make me happy. And take care of the needs that need to get taken care off too. I know I can do it; I'm just out of balance and have to work at it again, alas.

Ahh well. Just a day at a time, right? Today I do this little cheapass entry, the laundry, some dishes, play my game, pick up the various chaos we leave behind us as a family... and see what happens. Tomorrow I'm spending time with a fabulous young man. See if I can trick him into crawling for me. *laughs*

Patience just isn't my virtue though, I don't want to take the slow time it takes to rebuild routines and balance again. But, that's the way it goes.

Ok, that enough rambling out of me for today. Perhaps next time I'll natter about my big thoughts.

I woke up this morning at 6:30am, after fighting insomnia for hours the night before. It's to the point now that when I wake up, I'm surprised. Surprised I managed to fall asleep at all.

At 9am this morning the exhaustion hit me like a motherfucking mack truck. So heavy, so hard, that I wondered if it would be wise to drive home, that I'd be a danger to myself and the people around me.

I type this out now, right into my movable type, and I can barely keep my eyes open. I have to pick up Miss Sara from school in 2 hours. I'm going to post this, curl up around my hot water bottle and cry myself to sleep.

I'm worth nothing right now. I cannot get anything done. I'm failing my responsibilities so totally. How is this supposed to help my depression? If I make my "be patient", you should see improvement within 4-6 weeks, will I have any self-esteem left?

I'm starting to think the depression was better than this bullshit. If I can only remain awake for 2 hours at a time, what am I worth?

On Sunday, October 3rd, 2004, my Tree, Matt Naslanic died by crashing into a guardrail on a motorcycle. I was told this by his cousin, Karin Yarborough (Dunaway) the following Monday after she, concerned by my concern that I hadn't talked to him in 24 hours, called his cell phone to find it answered by his mother.

I've spent the last 4 months mourning the death and loss of someone I loved dearly.

Then last night I got to have a lovely chat with a handsome, 6'8" young man named Matt Naslanic who just happens to live near DC. He confirmed that the set of pictures I have on my hard drive, given to me by my Matt and Karin are photographs of him. On noticing the log file I've saved of when Karin told me about Matt's death, we discover that we have Karin in common.

The math is pretty simple, even for someone as math challenged as me.

I must say, now that it's been a few hours for it all to really sink in, that having Matt "die" by a crash after I jokingly tell him that he'd make a horrible mess for someone to clean up if he had an accident was a beautiful touch. I'm sure the absolutely lovely mourning workbook I sent Karin was used to its utmost. You know, while she came to terms with the loss of her "brother". Bravo. Well played.

You fucking piece of work.

My grief, every fucking ounce of it was real. I lost someone precious and beautiful and good. That blinding pain of the first few weeks was truth. That quiet grief after I had pulled it in was truth. That I still have moments out of every day where I pause to just miss him is truth. That seeing a super-tall guy at the grocery store makes me hurt is truth. From the moment "Matt" asked for some coffee to right now, my end was truth.

I wonder about the mechanics of it all. I played around a little at being someone else when I first got online and the multi-tasking was *hard*. I wonder who played the role of the eager young man, aka Squeaky, aka Matt. I wonder how it got juggled. And then I realize it doesn't matter. It really doesn't. What really matters, what really hurts is what came after he "died". And that's all Karin.

I can't even resent the passion, the care, the concern I spent. Because they speak to whom I am. I honest to god believed that my sweetheart died in a horrible, violent manner. That I was dealing with that reality and still giving as much support and love to his "cousin" as I did, says an awful fucking lot about who I am as a human being.

That she took it, for months, says an awful lot about whom she is.

But I suppose I owe some measure of gratitude. Greg's one of the best friends I've ever had. He's as beautiful and kind as "Matt" ever was, and he's real. He makes me laugh, feel cared about and valued, and is simply there. If it weren't for Matt's "death", we would've never become as close friends as we are. Thanks a ton. I'm blessed.

Home from my fairly typical "drove Sara to school and Mike to work" mornings. I usually drop them off and then go to Cafe 1842, buy a coffee and sit and write in my paper journal for about an hour. It's a good time for me. Quiet, alone, nothing to worry about or feel pressured by from any other source than myself.

I started doing it right after I bought my new journal notebook (very cool, hardcover yet coil bound so it lies flat and can be folded over) at Mike's urging. I was so worried that I would lose the memories, specific ones of my time with Matt, that they'd fade away as so much does to the tides of time. Which to be honest they have -- 4 months later. Mike told me to just go and write them down, everything little or small that I could remember. Get it down on paper and it would never disappear completely.

So I did. And for the first month or so, that's all that is in there. Memories. Stories. Then slowly it morphed into my writing about what was on my mind that day, and slowly what was on my mind stopped being about Matt all the time. It's become a routine for me now -- my coffee and writing hour. It's a balm to my incessant sense of urgency. For an hour every couple days, I just slow down to a space filled with my pen, my notebook and my thoughts. It's good.

I'll need a new notebook soon.

Driving home afterwards I had a clear memory of Matt asking me about my photography. The way he kept pressing me to say that it was my passion. I think my unwillingness to say it was a passion was my (now known) depression at the time. I hadn't handled my camera in months by the time Matt asked me about it. I guess the thought was if it was my passion, there was no way I'd be able to just abandon it for as long as I had at that point.

But he was right. It is my passion. I'm not technical about it. I once knew the language of F-stops and aperture and depth of field and sweet spots and... I once knew how to play with the chemicals in a darkroom to end up with beautiful images. Now I just shoot and tweak and play until I end up with something that is simply "good".

I know my ignorance does affect my final image. I know I could be a much stronger artist if I took the time to educate myself about what I am doing when I do shoot. I found some articles in a photography magazine about digital workflow and sharpening. I figure I'll take some time and experiment with the different ways of doing things. I'm kind of excited about it, to be honest.

I like learning. I like experimenting and touching new things and seeing how they work. Maybe that could be my course to try out -- digital photography "darkroom" techniques. We'll see.

*shrugs* Yes, my photography is my passion. I guess it's high time I started treating it like it is.

Just because it's been a while, I hate my fucking back and Sciatic nerve. I went for a walk Sunday morning and shortly before I got home, my sciatic nerve flared. It's been acting inflamed and irritated since then. Making me freak out a little, because if it gets severe, I can't walk and I fly out to DC on Thursday. God. Sitting in a hotel room for this trip because I can't walk is a nightmare -- here's hoping that I can drug it into oblivion and reduce the inflammation before Thursday. *knocks on wood*

I was driving around getting stuff done this morning and I started thinking about my relationship with Greg. I fucked up big time last week, and he's the one paying for it. (Standard Linda has a big mouth situation, but on acid insane.) I've apologized profusely, and meant it, but there's not much that can be done that wouldn't make it worse. How very masculine of me -- I need to find a solution, damnit! FIX! FIX!

*sighs* You'd think I'd learn by now.

Anyways, I was thinking this morning about how it all started out. I was in his crew when I started playing my silly pirate game, but we never really talked about anything personal. After I left the crew I lost touch with most of my crew mates including him. Then a bunch of things started happening all at once. Making greeter, getting back in touch with Greg and his expressed interest in bringing my crew and me into SD. God that was a crazy, crazy time.

What was funny is I developed *quite* the crush. I think that crushes are really not about the person, the object of the affection, really. Not who they are as people. It's more a hint that you'd like to get to know this person; that they appeal somehow on a basic level. Which could be utter bullshit, who knows. I got over the crush, mainly because Matt just blew me away.

And then Matt died. And there was one person that was there all the time with a "How are you doing?" and not the "How are you doing? Please god, don't answer that truthfully." version. I didn't have to walk on eggshells, watch what I said or how with him. I just talked and talked and talked (well typed, to be honest) my way through that hell. There are no words for how grateful I am for that... no words for what it meant and still means to me.

I'd have to say Greg's one of the best friends I've had in years. There's just something about how easy and random it is when we chat in the evenings. It kills me that it's so internet based too. The option of having a beer and shooting the shit in a bar just isn't there.

It's maddening sometimes, these friendships made online. You click with someone, you talk, you hang out, but it's all in some way, false. The ability to hug your friend when they're upset or lost just isn't there, and how much of our relationships with each other on a basic human level needs to involve touch? It is damn near impossible to recreate the quiet sitting beside each other times.

One of the best parts of my best friendship with Susannah in high school was our weekend afternoons. I'd bike over to her place, and we'd chatter a bit, but inevitably we'd end up with me on her bed reading something and her doing something at her desk. Together but silent. I think all my best friendships in my life have included that kind of time on a regular basis. So then what does that say about the friends I make, the friends I care so very much about, online? Do the relationships mean as much as the ones that are physically available?

I just don't know. All I do know is that I make (and have!) friends that I would love to spend the physical time with and I just can't and on a quiet, deep level, it really hurts.

So, a welcome to 2005.

I apparently am unable to sleep anymore. I keep waking up at 6:30, 7 am... or in the case of this morning at 5:30 am. Fully, oh no you're not going back to sleep anytime soon, awake. I thought maybe it was because of my back hurting, so for the past couple nights I've been taking a painkiller before bed, but I'm still waking up early. I guess it's a good thing, gives me some quiet alone-ish time first thing in my day.

So I figured I'd get a keener start on my uberlist for this year, hence the photoblog entry and this journal entry this morning. If I get it out of the way early, then I don't sweat it later. I'm looking forward to showing Julie my uberlist and seeing what she thinks about it. She's a resolution maker, so she might like the idea.

I've never really been a resolution maker. It just always felt like setting myself up to fail, or giving myself another reason to beat up on myself. I like the idea of a to-do list. As an anal-retentive list maker from hell, I know that they're more guidelines and reminders than set in stone do or die items. I can manage that. Plus most of what I wrote down I've been carrying around in my head on my mental to-do list for ages. It's a relief in many ways to put it on paper. (Even though it hasn't actually been printed out on paper yet. *laughs*)

A little less than 2 weeks until my DC trip. This goddamned trip has been such a focus of my worry, stress, and excitement for months and months now. I think I'm going to be relieved when it's over. I have my weirdo American cash sitting on my desk waiting to be shoved in my wallet. I have my lists made of places I want to see, information I really don't want to forget, what to take, where to drink beer, and so forth. My sister will be driving me to Buffalo airport (Gah! Need a map on how to get there!) to get my flight out. I'm for the most part ready to go.

Except emotionally. The reason for the trip is, rather was, to go spend time with my "flag mates"- the people I play my silly pirate game with. But it's been planned, um, not at all and I've been growing more and more distant from the flag and the people in it in the time since I bought my airplane ticket. So there's been a lot of debate on what I'm actually going to do with my 3 days and 4 nights in DC.

Do I do the flag stuff and potentially dislike these people and lose out on experiencing this city I've never been to and probably won't see again for years? The lack of planning really bothers me. There are a lot of good reasons for it, but personally I look at the money I've dropped into it at this point ($700!) and my desire to potentially spend a single evening wandering around a major American city looking for a restaurant that will seat over 10 people without a reservation plummets. I can be spontaneous... on my terms and for cheap. This trip is not cheap.

The other option is making it a 'Linda travels the world alone!' trip, ditch the flag stuff, and spend my time exploring DC on my own. I could easily spend an entire day in the art gallery, I suspect. Or any number of the Smithsonian Museums. I already know that Friday will be about the Wars, the memorials and the cemeteries. The downfall with this option is it would get lonely. I've gotten used to having people around me.

I just don't know. I don't think I will know until I'm standing in DC.

Yay for indecision!

I have in my dusty and neglected favourites area in my browser a link to someone's uberlist from last year. I never made a list ofr 2004, but I woke up this morning thinking about this coming year and how I'd like to have a list for it. It's taken me about 3 hours to make this list, but voila!

(For more info on what an uberlist is, here's a great explanation)

Daily & Ongoing:

1. Take care of my back - Do my physio exercises 3x weekly
2. Walk at least 3x weekly for at least 30 minutes
3. Take a photograph a day or seven photographs a week
4. Update the photoblog at least 4x weekly
5. Update the online journal at least 2x weekly
6. Keep paper journaling at least 2x weekly
7. Volunteer or find a part-time job
8. Respond to emails promptly
9. Buy MS Money and use it
10. Start bookcrossing again
11. Restart meal planning and cooking
12. Do after-school routines with Sara, break out the flash cards again
13. Wear more jewellery
14. Slow Down
15. Clean up my Email
16. Be less cranky and stop taking it out on the people around me if I am.

Weekly:

17. Kidnap Sheila for a bi-weekly lunch/coffee date
18. Start a Library night, and go weekly with Miss Sara.
19. Do Photo Friday every week
20. Play my silly pirate game more often. Play being the operative word.
21. Dishes completely done by Sunday Night

Monthly:

22. Call Dad more often
23. Monthly game night
24. Have someone over for dinner at least once a month
25. Wash, Vacuum and Armor-all the car monthly
26. Get a Princess Cinema membership and use it
27. Make more jewellery

Ongoing Projects:

28. Clean off my desk and keep it clean
29. Start (and continue adding to) the rogue's gallery
30. Start and complete the Watercolour course book
31. Back up SkyWorks and PtF
32. Back up my hard drives
33. Goodwill trip
34. Learn how to Sail
35. Recycle old Magazines
36. Sort through my cam pics folders
37. Photoshop workable pictures
38. Burn to disc all photos
39. Learn how to save
40. Make CDs for people (and catch up on the ones promised already!)
41. Stop and listen to the people around me.
42. Find an online community that interests me and actually become a part of it.
43. Update my address books with all information for the people in it.
44. Do more road trips
45. See more live music
46. Get back in touch with the Boys
47. Write letters to people I care about
48. Make the 2006 list throughout the year

One Time Only Projects:

49. Paint the hallway
50. Clean out under bed
51. Close down SkyWorks completely
52. Clean out the dumping bins under my desk
53. File crap
54. Clean and organize my bookshelves
55. Clean and organize the bathroom cupboard and medicine cabinet
56. Paint the bathroom cupboard and baseboard
57. Take a weekend road trip with Mike
58. Purge the closet of clothes not worn in the past year
59. Clean and organize Media bookcases, including the top
60. Measure, buy and use new shelves for the media bookcases
61. Go to the Zoo
62. Go to Toronto for a weekend and visit the museums and galleries
63. Do SkyWorks Accounting
64. Build shelving by my desk
65. Clean Porch
66. Wash all windows
67. Go away for our anniversary
68. Look into (and if possible, do) putting in track lighting in the hallway
69. Update at least 6 pages on PtF
70. Take a Watercolour class
71. Go to Chesapeake Bay
72. Do something awesome for Sheila's birthday
73. Have a birthday party for my 30th
74. Take a course
75. Spend a day at the beach
76. Make a scrapbook
77. Get divorced
78. Go to a TARcon
79. Solve coffee table issue

One Time Only Tasks:

80. Send birthday Thank You notes by the end of May
81. Rent a storage unit
82. Make the pillows for the couch
83. Finish sewing the summer pants
84. Sew Sara's back to school outfit
85. Add the elastic to the bras
86. Add two photographs to my art gallery area
87. Add a painting to my art gallery area
88. Frame the Sara painting properly
89. Wax the Car
90. Make curtains for Sara's Room
91. Replace living room curtains
92. Clean out and organize linen closet
93. Go to a fricking Aquafit class already, god.
94. Get two B&W photos printed.
95. Do Taxes
96. Book Physical by beginning of December for January 2006
97. See a Ballet Performance
98. See a Symphony Performance
99. Buy myself something frivolous and beautiful
100. Christmas Cards done and sent by December 1st
101. Throw out a box worth of unused crap
102. Complete two airplane models
103. Mend Mike's quilt
104. Find a therapist
105. Get a Massage

Last week as I was dropping Mike off at work, I apologized for how completely useless I have been since Matt's death. He said, "Honestly, outwardly you haven't been much different these past three weeks than you were for the six months before." Me being the cranky ass I've been snapped at him something about implying that my grief wasn't a big thing.

Then I thought about it. I had it wrong, what it's been is I've been in a severe depression for 6 months now. The depression from losing Matt is just another barrel-full to the already huge lake I've been quietly drowning in. All the signs have been there, but I just haven't paid them any attention. The apathy, the thin skin, the increasing isolation from the people offline, the increased tunnel vision on my online life, how hard it's been to get myself in the damn shower, not writing, not reading, not photographing, being so incredibly tired all the time, my emotional disassociation, the list just keeps going.

Shit.

So there it is. I'm severely depressed to the point of lack of function. I am not suicidal, thank god. I just don't give a shit about anything; specifically, I don't give a shit about myself. This incredible apathy.

So what are my options? Go back on meds? I fucking hate the meds and anyways most of my depressions are situational. So back to therapy then? *sighs* I've been trained to do this for myself, I don't need a therp to help me dig around in my psyche to figure out what the fuck's up with my head. Might be nice though to have someone to talk to and to give me a marking point each week.

The time's just running away on me so fast. I keep trying, but by the time I get started my day's gone. Blink and a week has gone by, I haven't done anything that needs to be done. Need to slow that down then.

Simple truth... if you want to make a change in your life, you just do it until it becomes your reality. (aka the fake it till you make it principle.)

So where do I want to end up? This shit's not doing it for me. Matt gave me a much-needed injection of life to my life, but he's gone. Plus, I can't count on anyone else to give me my goals. That never worked with quitting smoking, why on earth would it work with my life. *sighs* Little steps.

Ok. I want to be at the point that I am clean, my home is tidy, and I'm writing. That'll give me my starting foundation to do the heavy work.

So a shower every day, at the same time every day. This will cut off at the knees one of my negative coping mechanisms of isolation. Super easy to say "I can't go out without a shower first!" and then never have the shower. Ok. First thing in the morning. Get up 15 minutes earlier and shower. Every day.

Home tidy. I punish myself for being depressed by allowing my home to get disgusting, then hating myself for my mess, then getting more depressed, etc. I've been not bad about it, it's manageable. I need to tell my family to get off their asses and pull their weight around the home or be willing to pay for a maid to get their share done. I need to get back into the routines I know work for me. 30 minute tidy every day, floors on the weekend.

Writing. I need to write to be able to work through the depression and come out on the other side. I put a lot of my truths here, but not all, and I need to explore the ugly I don't share with anyone. So, buy a new notebook, write in it once a week for an hour. Write in my OLJ daily for a minimum of 15 minutes.

And that's 30.

I am infinitely prepared to deal with the heavy lifting of grief. They trained me to be able to. I learned how to explore how I felt and why. I learned how to change the self-defeating belief systems. I learned how to slow down and stop reacting to my life. I learned how to accept and embrace all parts of me and of my life. I know how to do this and I have been.

Yesterday was a bad day. It started out really well, a song to sing along with, and friendly chatter with my various friends on gaim. Then I remembered and missed and started to finally realize what exactly dead means. Please don't mourn forever, she's not coming back.

I guess I've been doing my heavy lifting and trying to keep from thinking about what it all really meant, to me. Looking at the big painting and ignoring the stripe of purple, the dab of black, the line of maroon that made up the whole. Getting upset about the missing logs, and ignoring the missing man. Because I've known from the moment I locked down on myself 2 weeks ago that missing Matt would be my undoing.

Realizing that I'm never going to have any more than the tiny bit I have. That I'm never going to create more memories. Just missing this precious person in my life. How do you write out what this feels like? How do I?

I try because to be alone in this is so dangerous for me. I can't hurt this bad alone. Isolation means I start thinking about suicide. So I keep talking and talking and talking because I am never going back to that place inside me. Never. I should tell Ed that, hah.

I'm never going to get my head-squishing hug. I am never going to get to sit across from him and actually ask the hard questions about his life and answer his hard questions about mine. I am never going to get to mail my stupid letters, even though I was patient when he asked me to be. I am never going to get to see him row. I am never going to get to be one of his best friends. He's never going to be one of mine. I am never going to be able to tell him how much I wanted to sit in the waiting room for his surgery, because that's what I do for the people I love. I am never going to be able to say any of the stupid little things I said to him, ever again. I'm never going to read any of his stupid little things he had for me, ever again. I'm never going to get to prove to Matt that having someone that sees all of you and loves you for it and in spite of it isn't scary.

I think I need to go on a mad "I love you" spree again. Because this hurts so fucking bad, but I have people around me that I adore so fucking much and I love so much and I can either disappear into the pain and die too, or I can reach for the love and the joy and the friendships I have and fuck the pit.

I'm coming round to open the blinds
You can't hide here any longer
My god you need to rinse those puffy eyes
You can't lie still any longer
And yes they'll ask you where you've been
And you'll have to tell them, again and again

And you probably don't want to hear tomorrow's another day
But I promise you you'll see the sun again
And you're asking me why pain's the only way to happiness
And I promise you you'll see the sun again
And I promise you you'll see the sun again

See the Sun, Dido

The world is coming to an end. An entry on a Saturday. *gasp* I just need to get this down before I lose it. So yesterday, as I was packing up my stuff for my quiet hour while Sara has her swimming lesson a question came to me.

After all the noise from other people is gone, what remains in the silence?

I dance when I hurt. I dance to feel life. That when my soul bleeds I need to move and feel alive. I stopped dancing because I stopped hurting because I stopped living. I once went out dancing every Friday night. I danced until I was soaked with sweat. But I was so alive.

I'm pretty fucking brave. I feel something, I say it. I don't fuck around when it comes to love or appreciation. I love each one of my friends so very much and goddamnit, I tell them. Because shit happens and one day for whatever reason that person you love might not be there to hear you say it.

I think people that use other people are scumbags and cowards. I should know, I was once the queen of the people-using scumbags and I was a fucking coward. I know what it's like to stack the dating deck with sweet, quiet young men who just need a hint of sex and the possibility of being loved to keep them there. They deserve better.

I absolutely loved and knew Matt. We didn't use each other. We didn't know what the fuck was happening to us or why it was there but we both knew it was there for us and we needed to take it for every ounce, every second. And we did. The next time I question this amazing gift I was given, I need to remember our everything conversation. I need to remember that while it was only 3 weeks, we packed a fucking lifetime in there. I need to remember that every single time I doubted when he was here, he told me he loved me.

I've come really far. A lot of the stuff I started as a fake it till you make it routine is now my reality. I still have a lot of work to do, but I've come so very far from the broken girl I once was.

I'm still a petty bitch. I knew just dropping offline the way I did would upset my friends and I didn't take the small steps needed to make sure they wouldn't worry. This smells an awful lot like a 15 year old hollering, "If I just disappeared nobody would give a SHIT!" And yes, I'm terribly thrilled with myself in this. *sighs* I have apologies to make.

I'm blessed with Mike. He sits and talks with me about Matt. About all of it. He just looks at me, at who I am, what I do and accepts it. Accepts me. We need to figure out how to talk to each other again.

I regret nothing.

I'm angry. I'm hurt. I'm lost. I'm scared. I'm mourning so fucking hard. I'm alive again. I want to dance, I want to fly, I want to run on the water. I burn really bright when I live and anyone that can't handle that can fuck off. I burn bright because my life has been so very dark. I'm done apologizing for being too much, too serious, too intense. That's me. Deal or leave. I will always love my friends, but not at the cost of my self.

I love myself.

Truth lives in the silence.

I quit.

I went to bed last night hurting. I ran into a wall of silence last night and it hurt. So I finally did the smart thing and went to bed, where I lay for half an hour just thinking. Thinking about my friends, about my little pirate world, about where I fit in my life, and where I don't fit. Thinking about walking on eggshells, what to say, what not to say and to whom. Thinking about loyalty and love. Thinking about quitting. Giving up. I thought about suicide for a moment. I thought about my past. I thought about my future. I thought about Matt.

And I quit. I fucking quit. I'm done with trying to figure out where I fit in this new world of mine. I'm done juggling what to say to whom and when and how. I'm done with putting myself out there to get lost in the rest of the noise. I quit.

For a day or two.

Then I'll go back in and I'll keep trying to figure out where I fit and how. I'll go back to keeping some truths to myself because they make other people uncomfortable or put them in bad positions. I'll keep being amazing because that's what I am. I'll keep being "too strong" because that's who I am. I'll keep moving because goddamnit, it's what I do. But for right now, I need to just quit for a little bit.

Because this hurts so much. Very few people have ever understood me. Understood my big fancy pants routines and the small little scared girl inside. Understood that I could be so incredibly accepting and wise and level headed at the same time as being terrified and lost. I don't think Mike understands me that way, he just simply accepts me as I am and that counts for a whole lot. Matt understood me.

My god, the shit I didn't have to explain. What a fucking amazing feeling that was. And it's gone. Fuck me, I had accepted that I didn't fit in anywhere. I was ok with that. I was ok with keeping most of my stuff to myself because of how uncomfortable it made people. I was ok with living halved. I had burned out so many friendships with how intense I can be, that I had just reined myself in and tucked it away.

And I was so lonely. I don't want to be that lonely again. Please god. But I think I'm going to be and I have no idea how to make that process stop. The person who wanted to know how I saw the world, and made me think and made the loneliness go away for such a small amount of time is dead. I can see myself burning out the friendships I do have now, the starting signs are there. What's left for me is to pull my truths back in and make them burn a little less bright. But that fucking sucks. This fucking sucks.

Fuck you, Matt. You made me believe again that I could be a whole person and then you left. I don't know how to do this alone. Fuck you, Death. Keep your fucking hands off the people I love. Fuck you, my shitty shitty life. I'm gonna keep moving but how many times can a human be beaten down before they can't get up again? I fucking quit. I'll be back once I shove myself back into my fucking box again.

I get far too much of my sense of self from the people around me. It's one of my major issues and something I just don't seem to be able to budge from my psyche. I let their opinions of who I am alter the way I see myself. I question my feelings, my motivations, and my views. I may talk a good game now, but I know deep inside there's this part of me questioning, questioning.

I've been doing it in a big way over Matt, his death, and what we were. We never got a pretty shiny and secure label on it because it kept changing on us. I used to ask him to let me know where I stood, I didn't mind being insecure with him like that. I didn't mind him knowing how unsteady I actually am. Anyways, we never fit some package, pretty box with a bow and we were ok with it. I think in part because even though we both knew core deep that death was right there and could come at any time, we also thought we had lots of time to figure it out.

We didn't. Go figure. The one reality we both accepted as a part of life, is the reality I have to deal with in my face right now. And I'm not doing so shit hot with that. I've been taking my cues off of other people in attempts to find my pretty packaged box with the perfect label and to avoid causing more pain. But in so doing I've betrayed myself, Matt and the crazy mess we had together. We just knew even though it had no more of a label than 'crazy mess' it was something special, perfect and what we both needed so very much right then.

But Matt's gone now. I can't say to him "dude. I feel all freaky stupid insecure." and have him tell me what I meant to him. I deleted my fucking logs so I can't even go back a re-read them. I have to rely on my memory with its fucking holes and gaps. So I've been casting about to the people that knew him to tell me it's ok, that what I remember is right. Problem is, we didn't talk about it much to the people around us. It was our crazy mess, we didn't need anyone else mixed in.

So now that I'm absolutely numb, feeling so very little, I question myself. I question what I felt and how I felt it, if it was real or not. I question what I feel now, because love and care doesn't die, even when the person you love and care for does. I stopped yesterday and actually asked myself if my numbness meant I had been lying to Matt about how I felt.

I was thinking about it this morning as I puttered doing dishes and tiding. And oh my god, I am such a fucking moron.

My primary coping mechanism throughout my life, that kept me sane, kept me alive was my numbness, my disassociation from my emotions. I allowed myself two emotions, rage and fear. I've only started to learn how to feel other things in the past 5 years or so. So my god, how else would I deal with this insanely stressful, painful situation? I have never lost someone I love this much, this dearly to accident. I have never been faced with the brutal reality of one sunny afternoon, joking about life with this man I *get* and he *gets* me and the next afternoon I'm being told he's dead, gone, never going to come back.

I've said a few times that the first couple days felt like I had no emotional skin. And I think if I let some of my disassociation go it would hurt that bad again. I probably could, I mean I learned how to... I just don't think I should. Not yet. My subconscious is much much smarter than my brain when it comes to protecting me (it better after that many years of practice) so I should probably pay attention and let it take care of me.

And I have to stop looking around at the people that knew and loved Matt for my acknowledgement. They had no idea. I did and I have to trust that.

And that's 30.

Transcribed from my notebook, written October 7, 2004

I'm sitting at a picnic bench at Conestoga Lake CA. I just finished painting in my sketchbook and taking a few pictures. It's a beautiful fall day. The ducks and geese are being noisy, and the only human sounds I hear are the occasional passing car on the dam to my right.

The depression sits on me like a lead cloak. I managed to shake it loose for a little bit this morning, driving here. Now it's back and oh so heavy once again. I know I need to cut myself some slack here. I guess I'm so used to handling my normal depressions that I don't know how to deal with this one.

I've never been here, this place before. I've lost friends, family to death. But never someone I loved like this.

I have a really hard time with knowing that I was the last person he loved like that, ever. He told me once that how he felt about me blew everyone before out of the water. I remember thinking but not saying that I so hoped that someone fully available to him would come along and blow me out of the water. She never came, and I'm that one, the person he loved like that when he died.

That's awe inspiring and terrifying. It hands me a geas. For me to crawl back into my safe, distant shell would be a betrayal of this man, a betrayal of the something special he saw in me. I know this, core deep. And I don't betray a geas like that. Not when it's sealed by death.

So where do I go from here? I'm just as scared, if not more so as I've always been. I'm just as shy, as quiet as ever. I'm still me. But the me I was before Matt came into my life had given up. I had reached safety and simply stopped.

...

A motorcycle just accelerated across the dam. I stopped to watch it. I understand why he wanted to go ride like that on Sunday. It looks perfect for the adrenaline junky he said he was. I just wish he had come home on Sunday and sent me an IM saying he had so much fun. But, I can't even really wish I had asked him to stay. Not when he loved it so much.

I think I'm going to go home now.

On September 11, 2004 I met Matt. Squeaky. My new friend I was getting to know, Karin, had just gotten her new Grand Frigate in the game and was showing it off. I never pass up the chance to look at the bigger ships in game, so I was so there. Somehow I ended up making some offhand comment about coffee and Matt asked if I'd share. I replied that you must always share fresh coffee, and he sent me a hearty invitation in response. I'm not one to turn down potential friends, so I of course accepted.

We ended up standing there talking to each other about random stuff for an hour, as everyone else gradually left the ship and went off to their other things. I learned how tall he was because of a silly offhand comment about how he was big all over, completely unintentional. Which me being the brat I am I teased him about. Something about "dude, we just met!" 6'8". So tall. I can't even comprehend how tall that is in a human being.

I took off to do chores for a couple hours, and when I came back he was there with more talk. I was so worried, he was so charming and so into me, and I was engaged. He had also broken up with his GF, Amy a month before. I didn't want to be his rebound crush, and I really liked him so I was trying to figure out a way to say that without hurting him. I dropped a couple hints and he got them. So smart. We kept talking in game and then moved to IM.

We clicked so fast. There was nothing we didn't talk about. If it came up, we'd talk about it and explore it and see why it was so interesting. He had this incredibly bad habit of editing what he would write to me in IM, I could tell because I have a "user is typing" indicator. So we made a deal, that we wouldn't delete. That we'd just type what we thought and hit send -- straight, brutal, honesty. We played the question game that I've been playing with people since I was 15. He drove me so nuts because he'd never have any questions for me.

By the 3rd night of us talking to each other every moment we could, I knew he was someone really precious to me and that he felt the same way. He gave me a bouquet of flowers in KoL, just because and that got to me, so very much. Stupid black and white line drawing graphic of a bouquet of flowers.

One of the things we talked about was being life bruised. He had been in an accident 2 years ago that killed a friend and should've killed him. He had found out 7 months ago that he was going deaf because of it. He was scared, so very scared to do anything about the deafness, to go for the surgery that might save it. I told him how scared I am everyday. I told him my story. We just understood, deep understood what that does to people and what it did to each other.

One of the best moments for me was when he said he was going for the surgery. He just tossed it into the middle of our little banter chats. We just knew when to make a big deal out of something and when to simply say "That's cool." And keep going. He would ask me these amazing questions, just perfectly set to make me think about myself. I did the same, he'd tell me. It's how he said he loved me; just out of nowhere he said that every time I made him stop and think he just wanted to tell me he loved me.

He loved me an awful lot. He would have taken all of me, if I had been free. But I'm not, and he just understood and accepted it and was so incredibly happy with what we did have. I cannot describe what that simple acceptance of my limitations and me feels like. I hated it too because I love him an awful lot myself and nobody should ever accept leftovers from the person they love.

We spent so much time talking to each other, every day. Sometimes it would be intense and thought provoking, sometimes so unbelievably stupid. He talked about his friends and how he was never lonely because of how much they loved him. He never had even the slightest doubt of the love his friends had for him. I admired that so much. I admired how he just lived. He loved so much and so many things and he'd do them. Life was this gift to him and he was so excited by it.

He made me remember what it was like to love something with a passion. I told him about the dreams I had to be able to fly and to be able to run on the water. I never told him that because of him I decided I'd finally learn how to sail. He went one night to the Duck Dodge and came home and described it to me and it was something I wanted to see and be a part of somehow. His life and his passion for it made me want the same thing in my own life.

I called him my Tree because his nickname, Squeaky was so silly and he wouldn't let me call him pip. He called me silly girl.

I once asked why this friendship of ours was there. What it had for us. Was it there for him, for me, for both of us? I figured out my part pretty quickly, I adored him, I loved him and he was perfect to me especially his bruises and where he was broken. I made him happy. His gift to me has been my life back, a remembrance of what it was like to be excited about life. That I could be scared, so very scared and still live a full life.

The last time I talked to him he was going out on a motorcycle ride because it was a beautiful sunny day out. I teased him about being safe, and that I wished he'd stay. But he loved the beautiful days so much, and being an adrenaline junky, he said. So I said I loved him and that he should shoo. He called me his silly girl, told me he loved me and shooed.

Matt died on Sunday, October 3, 2004 when a truck sideswiped his motorcycle and he went off the road into a guardrail. He died instantly. He died the way he wanted, fast, doing something he loved and happy. I am going to miss him so very much.

I'm going to run on the water, Matt. I promise.

So, 30 minutes on the timer and a lot of things on my mind. God, where to start.

Last week Mike and I had a talk about how much time I've been spending in game, what that's all about and how he feels about it. It was again brought to my attention that I've been avoiding my life. And that my starting in the game also coincided with a fairly shitty spring.

The biggest thing that sticks with me is the idea that I've been avoiding my failure. Not that I don't want to be an active part of my life, but my life also includes this big pink elephant in the room of the slow excruciating death of my business. SkyWorks has been finished for a long time now. I just haven't been able to accept or even face the reality.

I have nice polite letters asking where my PST remittance is piling up on my desk. I have an actual order sitting in my SW inbox that I can't be shifted to deal with because it means I have to actually pay attention to the fact that it's my first order in almost 2 months and it's for 10 bucks. I haven't made soap in months upon months. I have no inspiration and no desire for this anymore.

I just don't want to let it go.

I don't want to admit that I failed at something else in my life. That even though I busted my ass, it still failed and barely got above a trotting start. I don't want to go back to the drawing board to figure out what the fuck I'm going to do with my life. I don't want to figure out how to balance my PTSD, the simple fact that I'm always afraid, and my intense desire to have a normal life. I just wanted this to work. And it didn't.

But, I'm no quitter. I might say I am about a million times over, but I'm still here. Everything I have in my life I fought for and is infinitely precious because of that. So I need to cut this dead weight from me and try again.

So. I'm closing SkyWorks down. I'm going to take the time this week and do a real inventory, and then I'm going to drop everything price wise to half and I'm going to let all my former customers know. Then I'm going to turn around and donate whatever is left to a local woman's shelter. I may sell off my FOs and EOs, I may keep them for the someday hope that I'll make soap for myself again. But I'm going to let this lass go.

And with that money I'm going to buy a plane ticket to a con in Washington, DC that my flag is having. I'm going to hug my friends I've made in these past months. I'm going to have raunchy girl chat with the women I'm sharing a room with. I'm going to have geeky conversations and laugh my ass off. I'm going to do this because even though I am shy and scared shitless, I've always had so much fun meeting other people.

And after that, and before that, I'm going to figure out who I am now. Where I fit in my life. What I want, and how I want to get it. This con is one of the first things I've actually wanted in such a long time now that I stop to think about it. I've gotten complacent. I've given into my fear.

I think I needed the time to regroup. The years I spent in hospital, in out-patient therapy, were so fucking hard. I think I burned out on wanting to be able to live so goddamned much. Maybe, I worked so hard and wanted it so much that I forgot being able to live is also just a matter of taking the day to day and being there.

So maybe instead of doing my usual bullshit of sitting back and thinking everything to death, I'm going to just do shit. I'm going to go to this Tai Chi class, because I've always been curious about it and I think it looks cool. I'm going to keep playing my silly game, because I have this community of friends that I play with and that's fucking awesome. I'm going to spend more time with Miss Sara, because she's so smart and awesome. I'm going to kidnap Mike and try to shake up his boring life a bit too. I'm going to have my intense, honest talks with Matt when we can. I'm going to talk boys with Karin and laugh my ass off at how impossibly foulmouthed we end up. I'm going to "Dude. Your Mama." with Ed every morning because it's just what we do.

I think I've decided to live again. What a fucking awesome feeling.

I just realized while I was doing my 30 minute tidy today that the issue I was having weeks ago of running around all over town has for the most part disappeared. Now it's specific trips, and I don't leave the apartment for full days anymore. I'll go to the library this afternoon before I go to pick up Sara from school, but there isn't this pressure anymore that I should get everything done right now. That must be a hold over from borrowing cars for an evening to get some shopping done. I would run myself into the ground on those evenings just so I could get every second I possibly could out of the loan.

Now it's more of an "Ahhh, I'll get it later when I really need it." response to things. I'm so pleased. It also costs less to be at home. I now grab myself a couple pitas and some hummus for lunch instead of finding the nearest fast food joint and spending money we don't have.

Tonight is Sara's final swimming lesson until the fall, and her best friend's birthday party. So I should have a bunch of time to work on the site for my crew. I've been drafting up the content in a notebook when I have to wait for her. I should have most of the content done soon. Maybe not, since school is done for the year next Wednesday. I'll have to figure out how to keep her somewhat busy and out of my hair so soon!

You know, I don't have much to say today. I'm doing ok with my back and the nerve, my crew is growing, my house is getting clean, things are finally equalizing. Heh.

after spending roughly two days cutting out, and sewing a white dress for your daughter's dance recital.

"That's really pretty Mommy, but why are you making it? I'm not dancing that one."

I almost died. Then I thought back to the detail discussions I've had with her dance teacher and I'm going with the fact she needs this dress. She better.

Today we're having Sara's family birthday party for my side of her family. We're going to Laurel Creek CA and barbequing up some meat, drinking some pop and watching her open some presents. Nothing big, but it's usually a fair amount of fun. Since I seem to leave everything to the last moment, I had to go out this morning to get the food, wrapping paper, and assorted other crap.

On the way to Dollarama, I was making a right onto Albert. The truck in front of me was tooling along at 30 km, so I moved left to pass -- in front of the woman about to jump past me. It was a clean, signalled move over -- I had lots of room. We both made the move at the same time. I didn't cut her off. This is important.

Anyway, I drive pretty fast normally if conditions are good. So I'm clocking it at 70 km/hr in a 60 zone. And this woman is right on my ass. I *hate* tailgaters, so I tap the brakes twice and make a back off wave with my hand. She starts screaming at me and comes up even closer. She's so close that I can see maybe a foot of her hood before the windshield in my rear-view mirror, forget headlights. I figure she's maybe a foot off my back bumper.

So I slow down to the limit. She's flipping out. Just as an aside, this is on a 4-lane street. She could have moved over right at any point and passed me. But no, she's on my rear bumper, screaming and flipping out. My turn comes up for Dollarama, I signal and check for her. She has turned into the previous entrance to the plaza. So I watch her roll up to Dollarama, incredulous. She gets out of her car, glares at me and continues throwing a fit and goes into the Dollar Store.

This woman was in such a massive rush that she was tailgating, speeding, flipping the fuck out, to get to a dollar store!

I wait in the car for a little bit so I calm down, I dislike scenes in stores, and in the mood I was in, I wanted one pretty bad. When I finally go in, she walks past me avoiding my eyes. What's with the bullies in their cars, who become cowards once they're faced with a human, not another car?

So that's today's driving moron update. It's so fucking bad that I thank the ground a good driver drives on when I see them. There's the guy that "pretended" to rear end me when I tapped my brakes at him in Cambridge. I'm serious. This guy got so pissed off that I told him to back the fuck off my ass, that he would slow down then accelerate to the verge of rear-ending me, then slam on the brakes and do it again. Then the one that honked at me for stopping at a red light after tailgating me the entire way down University.

People, I'm not a slow driver. I'm not even a hesitant one. If anything, I drive too fast, I take turns way too aggressively; I like the feeling of power and speed. What I don't do is drive at the cost of the people around me.

Because whenever I get behind the wheel I do so with the full and utter knowledge that I am in control of over a ton of steel. A ton of steel that if for whatever reason I lose control of, I am lucky if I just seriously injure someone. I am lucky beyond imagining if the person I hit walks away. But I can't count on luck. I can count on killing someone. Taking away a future, taking away someone somebody loves, taking away something vastly more important than anything I have to do. I remember this every single time I get behind the wheel.

And if you don't, you shouldn't drive. Period.

I was once a perfect (sewing) size 18. I'd open a pattern envelope, lay out the pieces and cut on the line marked 18. Then I'd sew it together and voila! Clothing. No alterations, no weeks spent trying to figure out how to balance an apparently tiny back with a massive shelf of booage. God, I miss those days.

I've spent the last day or two focusing on my sewing. I went to BouClair yesterday morning and spent a good couple hours looking at the various patterns, notions and fabric. I can feel myself doing the crazy sewer thing. I want to horde fabric just because it might be useful someday. I'm refraining though. No fabric without a matching pattern and planned outfit. Anyway, yesterday I bought a Burda pants pattern, a Simplicity comfy clothes assortment pattern, fabric to sew both and some notions. I cut out the Burda yesterday afternoon and tried to make the tank top today.

I must be a glutton for punishment.

I cut the damned thing big, to make room for the crazy boobage I haul around. So now there's room in the front, and massive gaping armholes and I swear, 6 inches worth of loose fabric at the back neckline. It's another fucking piece to be finished eventually and donated to goodwill at some later date. And I'm now 0 for 4 patterns cut and sewn for myself (tank top, shell, shorts, tank top).

I was talking to my mom about all this yesterday, and I bitched that all I would be left with to sew for myself would be baggy skirts. She said something about getting to a size where that's all that fits anymore. Dude! I'm not that fat! I can walk into any plus sized store and walk out with a sharp, fitted outfit. (I can also walk into Walmart and come out with cheap scary jeans. But they fit!) I can buy off the rack. So why the hell can't I sew for myself?

Mike and Mom both suggested finding a tailor that would make me a sloper. I may do that and bypass this insanity. Because at this point I've spent more on trying to sew for myself than I would have if I had gone into Cotton Ginny and bought myself my summer clothes.

And that's 15 minutes.

Bad Habits seem to appear fully-grown out of nowhere, they really do. For example, today is the first day that I can remember clearly walking Sara to school in the morning since we bought Mephostophilis. For the most part it's been a shrug, let's take the car, we're late anyways. Which isn't exactly true.

Another has been my complete and utter abandonment of my routines. I rather obviously haven't been posting to my journal or photoblog. I just haven't and won't take the time to do it. Not even a stolen 15 minutes when the apartment is quiet. Do I know why I've so gleefully dropped everything? No clue. No excuse either. Which is just kind of sad.

I know I benefit from regular routines and expectations, but I just haven't cared. Ahh well. Here I am now; I'm going to work on it. Walk to school with Sara, come home and write and post. It'll work out.

So! So many things have come up to tempt me by being all sparkly and wonderful and new.

I've been playing Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates for a goodly amount of time. I started at the beginning of April, spent several weeks in a crew being someone else's free labour, debated no renewing when my paid for 3 months were up, and finally dumped the crew and started my own. Since I started my crew, I've been having a great time. It's a mix of multi-player world and puzzles. Some play it really, really seriously. Me? I play it silly.

I've also started sewing again. I bought my sewing machine right after we took possession of Mephostophilis. I don't fit to the patterns anymore, which is insanely frustrating. But at least Miss Sara is a perfect size 10. I went a little nuts on fabric in May, before I knew that I wasn't going to be able to sew for myself. So I have piles of beautiful fabric just waiting to be made into summer wear, and no patterns to sew it into. *shrugs* Maybe I can switch back to wearing more skirts now that I'm not walking everywhere. We'll see.

I've also jumped on this Italian charm bracelet thing. Sara bought a book and a bracelet set through Scholastic and as soon as I got to see it up close, I went out and got a starter bracelet and some cheapy charms. I covet a few ones I found online.

And that's 15 minutes. Now to water my poor plants.

So a 30 minute free write. I'd probably be better served by getting back into the habit via short, sweet 15 minute ones, but oh well.

It's been really hard trying to figure out what my new routines will be, how they will serve me best. Having Mephostophilis changes so much. It's so easy to just get in the car and drive Sara to school in the mornings or to take Mike to work. The nice part of that is my hips have been incredibly sore in the mornings lately. I suspect it's just a bit of moving pain from my back (I've been very bad about doing my exercises)
but I'll have to ask Liz when I see her next. It's bad enough that my willingness to walk for 30 minutes is gone. So Miss Sara got a ride to school this morning. I fully intend to walk to pick her up though. It's beautiful out.

It's almost as if with the car I've given up even the appearance of work. All the running around I've been doing has been for persona stuff and honestly the business hasn't suffered at all. Actually, I can't remember if I've even had one sale this month at all. Well that sucks. But in other ways I don't mind anymore. I don't think I'm willing to do the professional socializing that my business required anymore. Heh, I don't think I was ever willing and I think that why I stopped chatting once I realized that my sales were directly linked to how much time I spent in a chat room.

It wasn't even the chatting really. It was the constant awareness that with every word I typed I was representing my business. There was no such thing as time off, or just Linda chatting. It was always through this filter of being the "soap lady". Which is fine, if I wanted to be in a chat room for 8 hours a day being the soap lady. I don't. So I quit and so have my sales. *shrugs*

I do need to work on my wholesale pricing some more. I think that's the only way I'll really stay in business. Not that I'm going anywhere, it takes very little effort on my part to keep this maintenance level going. I have to make a batch or two of soap every month and answer the occasional email and... rarely fill an order! Hah.

I keep looking at these various storefronts that are up for rent and think about getting out of the apartment. There's a part of me that wants a place to go during the day now. I toy with the idea of getting a desk job somewhere the same as I toy with the idea of getting a storefront for SkyWorks. I guess I'm coming to realize just how isolated my life is now that I have all these new options opening because of the mobility Mephostophilis gives me. Maybe I should look at saving my pennies to get into a watercolour course.

I know I had already decided to focus on my painting a few months ago. But there just isn't the money anymore. I don't resent the car, but I do find it funny ironic that now we have the mobility to go do these various things and we can't afford to anymore. I've been working away on a long-term budget so we can save for these various items that come up; like Sara's dance & swimming lessons, maintenance on Mephostophilis, the vet for the kittens, etc. They're broken down into their monthly amounts and I'll set aside the total when I do the bills. Within a couple months we should have a nice pad there.

This is really something we should've had going for years now but we never really needed to. We were comfy. If something came up, we'd just pay it and tighten our belts for the rest of the month -- but never too tight. You know, I'm really grateful for my life. I'm glad I know what that knot of pure terror of poverty feels like. The memory of a woman at Bell telling me that they'd need a $100 deposit to give me a phone line and feeling like I was going to faint at the very idea of trying to find that kind of cash. And the flipside of now, the knowing that finding a hundred is a piece of cake. I've never been stinking rich, but I've seen comfy and I like it.

Ok, I'm written out now. I have to remember to write about finally giving myself permission to lose it all over an asshole driver. Tomorrow.

That's not 30, but I'll pretend that it is.

I just got back from a feeding frenzy of a book sale. It's the (apparently, I've never gone before) annual used book sale at a local church. There were thousands of books -- and almost everyone there was busy shoving any and all books they could get their hands on into boxes and bags. I was thinking that maybe I could find something interesting in the way of SF/Fantasy for a buck but there was no way I could manage to browse in the middle of the chaos. I ended up getting a chance to look at the CDs and bought two; a set of Yo Yo Ma's Cello stuff (I like the Cello and at $3 for a double disc set it hurts nothing to get it.) and the Enigma 3.

What was interesting was when I was in the paperback room I heard a really familiar voice, looked up and there's the guy that owns/runs Casablanca Books. So I started looking around and noticed several more familiar faces. It makes sense I guess that a used books sale with thousands of books would be a place to stock up for your store. I finally left deciding that if there was any good SF/Fantasy one of my favourite bookstores would grab it and I'll get it through them later.

~*~

So I've been gone lately. I managed one journal entry this week and I'm not sure how many photoblog entries. The apartment shows my absence in many ways as well. Not as much as it would if I was home but not maintaining, so I guess Mike has a point that part of the mess is created from me working from home.

The place I notice my lack of home time the most is my inner self. I'm feeling very off-balance and transient. I'm not getting the daily routines done, I'm not spending any time on the business, I'm off doing this or that and somehow not getting much done at all.

Take yesterday, for example. I gave Mike a ride to work and because I want to get at least a half and hour a day of driving practice in I decided to hop over to my Mom's place to drop of some stuff. I ended up back home a little before 3pm, with just enough time to putter and get Miss Sara from school. I don't begrudge or resent the time I spend outside of home -- after all I am the one deciding that things can wait, I'll get to it later, nobody is getting hurt if I don't do my photoblog / 30 min tidy / journal routine.

But I'm starting to suspect I am getting hurt because I'm not doing these little morning routines I've developed over the past year. I am more stable now than I have been in my entire life and I think in many ways it is because of my routines and habits I have created for myself. And I've ignored them or passed them up in favour of running around. So now I'm exhausted at the end of the day and there's still the dishes to be washed, dinner to be cooked, Sara to be taken to whatever lesson it is that night.

I guess I've never really paid attention to how much I do and get done in the daytime. I've noticed it not getting done before when I've been sick or depressed, but I've never taken weeks off and disappeared. I've never had the ability to leave before. Running away used to take a lot of work. Now it's a matter of "going for a drive" and losing a day.

I think maybe I should take today off too, but in a different way. Stay home, cocoon in my bed with my book and read and sleep until it's time to pick up Sara. Take some time for me that doesn't revolve around the car (as pretty as he is) to regroup and slow down. Then maybe over the weekend decide on how next week is going to move and work. I do think I need to stop with the "you sure you don't want a ride to work, honey?" after I get home from walking Sara to school. Mike doesn't care either way and it's become this springboard into losing my morning. If I don't get into the car in the morning, I'll be better able to flow into my home-based routines.

Plus we can't keep putting this kind of mileage on the car. Ahh well.

I spent a good chunk of yesterday prepping myself to make up a Wholesale pricing sheet for SkyWorks. There's been a fair amount of interest in my stuff from various companies over the past couple years and some fairly serious talks with a local business. I've finally decided that I can't continue ignoring how badly my sales have been in the retail end and stay in business. I need to expand into another stream of potential revenue to keep going.

So, a wholesale pricing list. I couldn't decide on an attractive and professional layout and look for it so I ended up looking at the various templates Microsoft offers for Excel. As usual I got sidetracked into looking at all the other templates they had. I found a couple useful ones, like a personal budget spreadsheet and a personal fitness chart.

The chart's interesting. I put in my height, weight, and various body measurements and it gives me back my rough lean body weight, fat body weight and BMI. I think the BMI is total bullshit, but the rest is kind of neat. That you can track your measurements and weight over time is the most useful. I think I may start using it on a every week or so basis. No more because that way madness lies.

It got me thinking about size, weight and self-esteem. I want to get back to my pre-pregnancy weight. It was a good weight for me -- comfortable, good energy levels, strong. The weight I'm at now is hard on me, on my feet, my back, everything. I had been within 20 lbs of my goal weight after I moved back from Toronto. (Oddly enough being unable to eat without vomiting from stress for months makes you lose weight! Imagine that! Hah.) Then I quit smoking and gained 60 lbs. According to the little scale I bought a few weeks ago I've lost 16 lbs since I bought it.

I can't tell but I'll accept that. I usually lose about 10 lbs every spring and regain it in the fall. It's just the way my body works.

That's the hard thing about talking/thinking about weight -- it's so hard to keep focus on how my body works. To keep in mind that I'm a German housefrau body type courtesy of my genes and I will never look like my sister, much less the "ideal". I'm ok with that, I really am. I've fought damn hard to accept that I'm who I am, my body is the way it is and I have limits. Ever since I hit my adult height I have never been smaller than a size 15 (cotton ginny) and my biggest has been a size 24. I'm best at a size 18.

That's just my body truths. I can be active (biking everywhere, working as a theatre tech, etc), eat well (according to the Canada Food Guide!) and I'm still fat. So where's the profit, the gain in being dissatisfied with how I look? I gain nothing but self-loathing. Who gains? It's no secret. The diet and exercise industry does. Millions if not billions of dollars are spent every year on changing who we are. It's powered by self-loathing.

I admire the people that diet and work out for their health, and only for that. The people that take joy in the power and movements of their bodies. The people that go to the gym because it feels good. I think I know one. Everyone else I've ever talked to about their bodies use phrases like "I'm fat.", "I'm ugly,