Recording it here because it's beautifully written and I want to remember it.

You want to be helped. You want to experience your life. You want to feel yourself again; the owner not just of muscles, connective tissues, nerve endings and senses, but of a soul, and a familiar personality. You want to feel inhabited. In lieu of this you'll take any transaction: pain, discomfort, cold, upset - anything. You've been trying to jumpstart your atoms; shock them into life again. It's what they do in hospitals after all - the gelid paddles on the chest, and then lightning shot into the unresponsive core. You've pinched your skin red. You've skipped meals, whole days without food, until you are starving. Only then would you eat; blue cheese, raw fish: anything with a strong taste. You've begun to eat meat again after a decade of being vegetarian. You eat it rare, savouring the wet iron on your tongue. Venison. Liver. In the grocery store your eye lingers over the stocky red slabs, bound with rind, vacuum-packed in white trays. When you arrive home, there they are at the bottom of your shopping bag, weeping pinkly against the plastic pane.

school starts monday-- it feels way too soon. a 3 week break is not enough.

so i got back from taiwan last monday. the trip back was nowhere as eventful as the trip there. the trip there involved spending the night in detroit because of a fuel leak-- less a leak and more of a waterfall-- that involved them having to get us off the plane and call the fire department. oh, and my luggage got routed to chicago, where someone realized that it wasn't supposed to be there and managed to get it to taipei close enough to the same time i arrived. so in taiwan, i shopped, ate, and saw lots of doctors. i was diagnosed with GERD (yay, my self-diagnosis was correct), got an upper GI endoscopy and biopsy, found out i have infected ulcers, and got put on antibiotics. i also got lots of anti-anxiety meds. yay. so the trip was fun. it was good. i spent some time with my aunts. there was this dog that i really wanted at the flower market. she was so cute! and she kept climbing on me and licking me. i was sad i couldn't take her home with me. i also got a new computer. it's an Asus, but it's like a Macbook Air.

so that was the trip in a nutshell. got back monday, started working again wednesday,  T-dawg finished our abstract on Friday to be submitted for the conference, and now it's back to the regular school thing.

the cops just drove off with the man who threatened to kill Knockout last summer. with his cane which allegedly contains a sword/knife thing. i hope he goes to jail.

I hate how hard it is to find an apartment in a "good" area when you have a pit mix, even when the dog is super friendly and non-aggressive. Co-op living may be the only option. Or staying in our current apt, which would be fine if it wasn't on the expensive side and if the damn landlords would at least fix something on the list that we gave them when we moved in-- something, anything. I'd settle for them coming in to screw the cabinet doors on properly.

Last night was insane.

Went to dinner with the lab last night and that was really good-- looking forward to my leftovers-- and then I had Jen and Alecia drop me off at Ol' Wondermoth, where the craziness began.

I learned how to eat fire. I learned not to be afraid to touch it and to lick it. While Crystal was teaching me, Robert was practicing. A crazy lady saw us and started yelling, "Oh shit! He eating fire! Eat that shit! That bitch is eating it too!" Then she wanted to try and when we wouldn't let her, she tried to sell us shoe laces. After the crazy lady, a drunk lady started yelling at us, "Oh my God! You need to stop that right now! Do you know how dangerous that is? I'm a nurse in a burn unit!" I think she was upset by me touching the fire. While she was yelling at us, a guy across the street got shot by a BB gun and fell down. The guy's girlfriend comes up to us and starts yelling at us, "Do any of you have a BB gun? My boyfriend just got shot with a BB gun!" He was actually shot in the stomach and not facing us when it happened so... definitely asking the wrong people. While the guy was laying on the ground and his girlfriend screaming about calling the police and asking who had a BB gun, the nurse stumbled off with her friends, avoiding the whole situation. The boyfriend tells the girlfriend that it's okay, she doesn't need to call the police. The girlfriend called the police, the boyfriend walked up to a cop car stopped at the red light and told them what happened. The cops drive off. The girlfriend yells at them. The two of them and their friends spend the next half hour standing in front of the house crying (the girl), trying to flag down every police car that passed, and then flipping them off and ranting on how the Buffalo police suck when they were ignored. Actually, it was the girl trying to do all that. The boy just sort of stood there and tried to calm her down. Later, when they left, firemen showed up at the apartment building across the street. We watch an ambulance speed down the street and make a right turn at our intersection-- the opposite direction from where the firetruck was. A minute later, it comes speeding back and parks next to the firetruck. Good job, guys.

So that was pretty much the night.

Functioning is hard.

Migraines all weekend-- forcing myself to work today has sort of worked. I'm so behind.

No one is here. The realization that I have no one to call who would be willing to come over is a sad one.

I don't want to do work-- POCs, diagnostic reports, papers, presentations, taxes. All I really want to do is make things-- cut, print, glue, staple.

I wonder if I have cancer. Maybe a brain tumor. I doubt it, but I wonder. I went blind once. Three years ago, I had a migraine, I put my head down for 5 minutes to rest my eyes in Tower Cafe. When I opened my eyes, I was couldn't see for two minutes. Sometimes I wonder, but if I had cancer, would I really want to know?

I miss my dog.

i had a good day today. that doesn't happen very often anymore so i'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

i learned how to screen print today at Roycroft. i had a lot of fun and i think i might take the class in two-color screen printing in November. meanwhile, i'm definitely going to buy the materials needed to do this myself at home.

( The art )

So I bought a plane ticket for spring break.

Going to Seattle. To see Matt. I've missed him. I don't know if it's the best idea. Timing might not be great. We'll see what happens. Hopefully it'll all work out.

Now that I've purchased my plane ticket, all the travelocity ads that I've been seeing have been advertising flights from Buffalo to Seattle. I ALREADY BOUGHT THE TICKETS! FROM YOUR SITE! STOP STALKING ME!

While I'm there, I'll go see my cousin in Vancouver. And if things don't work out well in Seattle, I might head to Portland. So that's the back up plan.

sometimes i hurt so much i don't want to move. then it goes away.


never understood that.

I'm not sure there are 5 people who read this, but anyway...



The first five people to respond to this post will get something made by me. It will be about or tailored to those five lucky "victims." The catch? Oh, the catch is that you have to put this in your journal as well, if you expect me to do something for you!

This offer does have some restrictions and limitations:
1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make!
2. What I create will be just for you.
3. It'll be done this year.
4. You have no clue what it's going to be. It may be fic. It may be poetry. I may draw or paint something. I may bake you something and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!
5. I reserve the right to do something extremely strange.

I just drove through that shit.

And the majority of the weekend was spent shoveling it.

Too much snow. Zero visibility. Unplowed roads. Stuck car. I survived it all.

Let's hope tomorrow's better. And Tuesday 'cuz that's when I fly home.

This is one of my favorite songs ever:

Sayonara daisuki na hito


sayonara daisuki na hito
sayonara daisuki na hito
mada daisuki na hito

kuyashii yo totemo
kanashii yo totemo
mou kaettekonai
soredemo watashi no daisuki na hito

nanimokamo wasurerarenai
nanimokamo sutekirenai
konna jibun ga mijime de
yowakute kawaisou de daikirai

sayonara daisuki na hito
sayonara daisuki na hito
zutto daisuki na hito
zutto zutto daisuki na hito

nakanai yo ima wa
nakanaide ima wa
kokoro hanareteiku
soredemo watashi no daisuki na hito

saigo dato iikikasete
saigo made iikikasete
namida yo tomare
saigo ni egao wo
oboeteoku tame

sayonara daisuki na hito
sayonara daisuki na hito
zutto daisuki na hito
zutto zutto daisuki na hito
zutto zutto zutto daisuki na hito
And it's also really depressing.


Alcohol + regrets + lack of sleep + さいよなら大好きな人　= bad combination

we'll get better though. don't worry.

Got snowed in today. Like I opened the front door, looked, shut the door, gave up and went to bed. Then Beth texted me and let me know that J-Suss had sent the department home and that T-dawg had told her to go home and me not to come in. So it all worked out. All the shoveling I did on Wednesday made me extra sore anyway so I didn't shovel until Ben got home and needed to get the car into the drive way.

i am tired.
martinis are good.
i miss having matt around.

and because I can't stand schoolwork right now.

Am I the only one who doesn't get ____?
- The Allentown Shoe Licker: why the hell would anyone want to lick somebody's dirty shoes? Eww. Seriously.
- these virtual gift things

Maybe I'll add more later, but that's all I could come up with.

back from Chicago. ASHA was interesting. the grad school fair and career fair and vender expo were kind of disappointing-- mostly because i don't have a clear idea of what i want to do yet. most of the sessions were really neat. i learned some things, found an area that i want to do a master's thesis in. i stayed with stephanie and we hung out, talked, got all nostalgic, partially recreated the late night balch days, and shopped.

so that's the short version of the trip. the long version involved starting with several disasters and the suppression of several panic attacks and being ill. perhaps i'll edit this thing later and write out all that.

i guess the most important things about the trip are: i hung out with stephanie, i learned things, i got an elephant, and i bought a dress.


now it's back to work for 2 days-- 2 crazy days of classes and clinic and work and projects and homework-- then 15 hours in the car to get back to georgia with ben and the pupsicle.

These are the kinds of jobs that the Monster Job Search Agent has been sending me for the last 2 years:

Secretary/Receptionist
Housekeeper
Assistant Executive Housekeeper
Construction Worker
Waitress
Administrative Assisstant

Apparently that is all my B.A. is good for. Good thing I'm getting my master's?*



*This is what I keep telling myself everytime I get overwhelmed with school.

I always get nervous when I buy plane tickets-- what if I buy tix for the wrong dates? What if something happens and I can't go? What if? What if?

I'm going to Chicago in November for the ASHA Conference. Yay. I hope some of the speechies are on my flight(s).

I'm overwhelmed by school and have been sort of taking it out on Ben. Now we're working on patching things up. I make messes and suffer from catastrophic responses when I'm stressed. Sometime I do wonder if all those years of being dropped on my head repeatedly by people have caused a mild brain injury.

Things will get better.

So I survived my first week of clinic. I had a crier and a runner. And I got sneezed on. It was nervewracking. I screwed up a few times while screening the kids, but never too badly.

We were at Head Start on Tuesday and Thursday and an elementary school on Friday. The kids are cute. Very cute (like the one little boy, age 4, who made sound effects like explosions with his whole body when asked what sounds certain letters made) but some have really sad stories. My best behaved kid on Thursday started telling me that his brother's in jail for arson and his sister punches people when I showed him a set of pictures with fire in them. "That's nice, dear, now show me pencil" does not seem like an adequate or appropriate response. Neither does, "Oh... that's not good... now show me pencil". Some of the kids are just so figdety. They don't listen to me. I've learned that I'm not very good with kids. The one little girl that ran off... I only caught her because she stopped to say hi to someone.

So other memorable kids:
The little girl who almost started crying in the middle of the test-- she laid her head down in my lap and said she wanted to go home.
The little boy who claims to eat a dozen eggs a day and was worried that we wouldn't finish the test before his mom picked him up.
The boy who wanted to do sumersaults  when he saw the picture of the boy tumbling (also the sound effects kid).
One half of a set of twins, dressed alike and doused in cologne-- Old Spice I think. I think they were 3 or 4. I kept wanting to sneeze.
The little girl and the little boy who both wanted to brush/braid/style my hair.
The nose picker and the boy who came after her-- I wiped down the mat after she left and he saw me do it. Halfway through the test, he asked me for a tissue so he could wipe down the mat some more.

So, yeah, survived the week. But now I'm sick. I'm blaming the preschooler who sneezed on me.

Test on Wednesday.
All the information about the brain needs to go in the brain, but first, I need to keep my brains for leaking out.

School is going to kill me.

i didn't end up going to pick up last tuesday because i felt bad about leaving the dog alone for so long.
i didn't end up going to pick up on saturday because i went strawberry picking instead and didn't get back in time.
i probably won't end up going tomorrow because hopefully i will have biked to work and back and my legs will be too tired to run.
i hopefully will go play this saturday.

last saturday, loren, joe, MSG, bryan and i went and picked ~70 lbs of strawberries. i brought about 15 lbs home, while they took the rest. the ones i brought home are already almost half gone. i bought a blender just so i could make strawberry smoothies. i'll definitely have to go again next year.

this weekend, we'll start moving into our new apartment.

i'm trying to convince myself to go join the pickup game today at delaware park. apparently it's a weekly thing.

reasons why i should go:
- i love ultimate and haven't played in forever.
- i'll meet new people.
- exercise.

reasons why i'm afraid to go:
- i haven't played in forever.
- i don't know anyone.
- i'll meet new people.
- i'm terribly out of shape.
- i haven't even thrown a disc in ~2 years.

3 hours to make a decision.