Briars

2003-02-17T14:27:00.000-08:00

I think seeing two guys kiss is erotic.

I don't think two women kissing is a turn-on.

But I'd rather be kissing the girl.

2003-02-17T14:24:00.000-08:00

I am typing this at the library. There is an acculturation class working across from me. Five guys from the engineering department who have never seen a computer.

2003-02-17T14:17:00.000-08:00

Hi.

Long time?

Yeah.

I suppose it bears noting that I did not get a B in French. I passed. But I didn't make it through the summer. I got two B's, biology and history, and then this last fall? Horror. I had to drop French, quit the job I had for all of two months, got 3 B's (two in my major) and came very, very close to completely losing my mind.

But I'm better now.

2001-12-07T19:54:00.000-08:00

I got a B. I know it already. I got a B in French.
I had an A (90.75) going in to the final, and I know for a fact that there is no way i got and A on the test, so there goes my GPA, down to a 3.645. I suck. I can't graduate Magna Cum Laude now. Therefore, I suck. Therefore, I have no right to exist.
Now someone please explain to me why i think purging would solve this?!

2001-12-04T20:30:00.000-08:00

It's been a while.
Thanksgiving came and went with all the attached problems, although it could have been much worse. It was interesting to be told, over and over, that I had gotten skinny. Too skinny. I once would have cared, but now I don't. It mattered when i was actively trying to be thinner. Maybe that's the difference.
I won't pretend that I don't get a huge thrill when I realize that my size 12's are loose.
But I'm just sad.

2001-11-15T15:30:00.000-08:00

Okay. Let's put something straight here. Just becuase I don't go off the deep end, does NOT mean I don't get pissed. Just becuase I don't flip over every little thing, and I laugh at the things that hurt the most, does NOT mean I'm not bleeding inside.
This comes up becuase I apparently startled K quite a lot when I told her I had gotten pissed when she was lecturing me about ditching class yesterday.
I was royally pissed. I never accepted being lectured by my parents, and I'll be damned if I'll just take it from my roomate. We're kind of at odds. You see, she's two years older. So she feels like I'm not giving her enough credit for her experience, and I feel -- well, I feel like she doesn't give me enough credit for my intelligence.
So, I spent the afternoon and a good peice of the evening stewing quietly, before going to RCIA, almost starting crying in class, and getting loked in and having a panic attack. How fun.

2001-11-15T15:16:00.000-08:00

"One Night in Bangkok". This song makes me frighteningly happy. It's the guys from ABBA, for goodness' sake. But the horn sections...man.
That song, and "Embassy Lament", plus "Opening Ceremony", are really the only songs that I like from CHESS. I find the rest of the musical horribly depressing. "Where I Want to Be" and "Nobody's on Nobody's Side" hit far to close to home.

2001-11-07T13:09:00.000-08:00

My back! Yeouch! I'm not used to dealing with back aches, and this one will not go away. Yuck.
I paid my housing and tuition bill for the month. Now I'm all paid on my tuition and up to date on housing. I really, really want to get off campus. There being a few problems with that. The biggest being, WHEN? Next fall? Over the summer?
And KT seems a little bit perturbed now that I'm thinking of getting a camp counselor's job and NOT staying here this summer. She's now thinking of being here one session. Great -- which one? Not that it should matter. She wasn't going to be here, she said, and so I wrote her as a roomate out of my plans for the two summer sessions. But if she is, maybe I could get an apartment. Auugh. Life is complicated.
What I'd really like is a house.

2001-11-06T08:51:00.000-08:00

I wish I could sing.

2001-11-06T08:48:00.000-08:00

I went to the Health Center last day becuase I've had this cold that's kicking my ass. I don't feel good at all. The doctor said it was just a cold, but if I'm not better by Friday I'm going back. My joints are aching, and I'm terrified that this is something more then just a random virus.
I hate going to doctors, however. They weigh you. You can't win either way. If you admit that you have a problem with an eating disorder, they ask if you're in treatment, they get all anal about your blood pressure and what you've eaten that day and check for swelling if you say you're bulimic. Then they want the number of your primary care physician and your psychiatrist, and if you say you don't have one they try to give a referral.
On the other hand if you lie and don't check the box, they get concerned when they take blood pressure and they get even more upset when they find swelling in your neck. And you have to be careful at a university health center, becuase if you develop into too much of a problem, they can ask you to take a leave of abscence.
And so here I am with a history of bulimia and anorexia, the accessories that no middle-class princess if complete without.
The least I ever weighed was one hundred pounds. I'm not that skinny anymore. I'm working on it.
Becoming skinny isn't going to make me happy, somehow.

2001-11-03T08:54:00.000-08:00

I saw my advisor yesterday. She was fairly impressed by my degree plan, although I can't file it until the spring. But that's okay. I decided on a social work minor which fills me in for all of my upper-level division courses. If everything goes well, I can graduate after the summer of 2003. Half a year early. I might even manage to make it in the middle of the summer. Then I would have an excuse for not walking the line.
But that means being here this summer. Which would mean getting an apartment -- summertime on campus SUCKS. So I'd have to find a roomate, and as my current one pointed out, she'd have to be someone who wouldn't bring her boyfriend over, who liked cats, and could be depended on to pay her half of the bills. Oh, yeah.
I don't know if she was trying to drop a hint that she'd like to still be roomates in the fall. She isn't going to be here over the summer. And lately I've had the feeling that quite frankly, she doesn't like me anymore.
Not that I could ever figure out why she liked me in the first place. I am so completely the opposite of her. I'm loud and rude and stupid, and that essentially sums it up.

2001-11-03T08:49:00.000-08:00

Well. I should be happy. Instead I'm feeling kind of gray.
I got a 9 out of 10 on my French oral exam -- I got What time is it? confused with What's the weather like? -- two phrases that are completely different, but somehow I was thinking temps was time...
I got a 31 out out of 40 on my precalculus test, which is a raw score of 78%; with a curve of at least three points I'll have an 81% which gives me a B, which I am irrationally thrilled over. But I'm scared, becuase the exam is comprehensive. I CAN'T flunk that.

2001-11-01T14:57:00.000-08:00

It's not the physical exhuastion that's a problem, it's the mental. I am tired enough that sleep is a bad idea, becuase i might never wake up.
Anyway. No word on how i did on my last precalculus test. I have a French test tomorrow, which I should study for. Emphasis on 'should'. Tonight I have hockey and a party I should go to, neither of which I want to do. Becuase I suck. Becuase I am simply a sucky person.
Mom finally sent me my optometrist's history and an extra prescription. I'm blind as a bat, in more ways then one. I didn't really expect that there would be anything else in the envelope (there never is) but I couldn't help the feeling of disappointment. It's always a let-down to realize exactly how little my family cares.

2001-10-31T13:48:00.000-08:00

So, happy Halloween, blessed All Hallows, and merry Samhain. To everyone else -- well, I hope you had a nice Wednesday.
I never went trick-or-treating on Halloween. Mom didn't think it was safe. Instead she threw a party for me and my siblings with all the traditional things and a scavenger hunt. We did hand out candy to those trick-or-treaters who came to the door, though. And costumes were a big thing, although my repertoire was usually restricted towards girly ideas like ballerina, princess and oh yeah -- Oscar the Grouch.
We didn't have the parties by the time I got to middle school. We still handed out candy. But I was the only kid still at home, and my friends and I weren't exactly 'party' people. Not that I had all that many friends. Also, Halloween had become less of a secular holiday and had begun to take on the flavor of an actual religious day. For Halloween is the modern retelling of the festival of Samhain, the pagan festival; it honors the dead, and on that day the dead are said to walk.
I always expected a ghost to walk up to me.
I feel confused right now. This has been happening more and more often and it hurts. I've been trying to remind myself that, at best, the pagan ideas are superstition and at worst, actual sins against the first commandment. I try to remember that instead of taking it upon myself to ward off evil, I should turn towards God in the form of Jesus Christ. For I am a Christian, that is the creed I have chosen to follow.
But I still find myself automatically turning towards those superstitions: to throwing salt and invocations and a ritual that is older then Christ.
I talked this over with Deacon Sid, who teaches my RCIA class. I feel slightly stupid for doing so, but I'd also been talking about it with my roomate. And they both came together on the idea that following those superstitions was a sin.
And I am scared.

2001-10-30T11:22:00.000-08:00

Testing, testing, 123. I have a test in fifty-seven minutes. Yes, I've studied. No, I'm not studying now. I'm going to vent becuase I need to, just a little, before I blow this out of proportion.
Have you ever had a moment where you realize that you are, without a shadow of a doubt, something you don't want to be? I just did. And it's no one's fault; it's just a reflection of my own jealous and nasty nature.
I just passed my roomate on the street coming back from class. Let's start this off with the simple statment that she's beautiful. However, on some occasions she's just more beautiful then usual. Why these occasions coincide with her wearing ripped pants and paint-stained shoes is beyond me.
She's the kind of person who looks wonderful first thing in the morning, covered in sawdust, or wearing twenty pounds of equipment playing hockey. She is also extremly intelligent, she never makes a mistake or says anything stupid, and she's one of those people that everyone likes. And she doesn't seem to know it.
It does sting a little -- okay, a lot -- that she is all of these things, becuase, well, I'm not. And there's no way I can be. The fact that I'm jealous sums it all up, after all.

2001-10-29T14:54:00.000-08:00

So I should be studying. I'm not. I need to learn the fundamental trig identities, half, double, sume and difference formulas, and the trig table through 7pi/4 by two o'clock tomorrow. And why? Becuase I have a test.
If it was just going to be over identieis, I would be fine. I think it's kind of cool, trying to prove an identity. If I could remember the basics, which I need to, becuase I can't use my little cheat sheet.
Let's clarify this. The test is closed book. However, I am not going to be the only one there cribbing off of an idenx card taped to the cover of a graphing claculator. Capeesh? Those who aren't doing that are the ones who have a frightening grasp of the TI-86 and programed the tables into it's memory. Either that or they're the ones who are throwing off the curve by acing tests the rest of us fail.
Moving on...I'm trying to figure out what my feelings are for this one guy. He's not at all cute, and he skips class a lot (a lot a lot). And he's waaaayyy too much attached to his PC. However, he is funny and he doesn't drink, and he knows who Robert Asprin is. Oh, and he's a Catholic, although that doesn't mean much, becuase he hasn't gone to church since the beginning of the semester.
What am I getting at here?
Well, I think I'm sticking him firmly into the friend category.

2001-10-29T08:52:00.000-08:00

I love daylight savings time. Finally, I could walk to my eight a.m. class without needing a flashlight...although I was slightly disappointed to miss the sunrise.
Seven thirty is an interesting time to be walking around on campus. It's silent. Everyone looks somewhat blurry; nothing is quite in focus. Half the world is asleep; the other half is only half-awake.
I was a little irritated this morning, and I'm trying to get over it, becuase this issue really isn't worth any kind of fuss. But...here goes.
I have a cheap little battery-powered alarm clock. To be honest, I can appreciate that the sound is rather annoying: dit-di-dit, dit-di-dit. But, again in the interests of honesty, it rarely gets past the first beep. It doesn't take much to wake me up, and I never let the stupid thing just beep and beep and beep and beep...
But it really, really bugs my roomate. Intensely.
Then there's the fact that I have to get up at seven a.m. on Mondays (eight on Fridays). Now, I do do my best to be quiet, but there's a limit. I can get dressed in the dark, but I can't brush my teeth in blackness. There's very little I can do about squeaky drawers and doors.
Also in my defense, I present the fact that she can sleep through almost anything, wheras I get woken up when she turns over.
So I really don't think I deserved to be cussed at this morning when I was getting out my underwear!

2001-10-28T15:59:00.000-08:00

There was the cutest little girl in church today. She was there with just her father, and I'm guessing he was a single parent. Perhaps it's a bit sexist, but i think you can tell when a mother dresses a child -- the shoes match the dress, the tights wren't twisted and the hairties match. She had a head of curly black hair that was pulled back into two little pigtails. She had several toys to keep her occupied -- she was about three; little kids shouldn't be forced to sit still throughout a two-hour-long service. (It's hard enough for adults). She dropped them a few times and had to go crawling under the seat to retrive them.
During the Our Father she held my hand. She shook hands during the Kiss of Peace. She was in a bit of a hurry to go up to be blessed while her father took Communion. She had a temper tantrum during the homily.
I want to have a little girl exactly like her, sticky fingers and temper and sweet smile and all.
I find it hard to believe in the transformation of the bread and wine, and I maintain a deep skepticism towards other miracles. Except for one, and that is the miracle that is a child.