Finally Understanding Why Hell is Portrayed as Fiery

Love swept in overnight and, like a bushfire, it has consumed me.

This is not a crush. I know crushes; I get them all the time. Crushes make me giggle and hug myself and sigh happily, lost in daydreams. This doesn't. This hurts.

A month ago, a week ago, he was just a guy. And now he's the only thing on my mind, and the reason I can't eat or sleep or think. A day ago I liked him, felt friendly and warm towards him, and today I can't speak his name without bringing tears to my eyes and a lump to my throat.

This doesn't happen to me. Not since I was 15. I don't know why it's happening to me now.

Nothing can happen. I know that as well as I know my own name.

All I can do is make a vow that he'll never, ever find out.

Morpheus Hates Me

Juliet...
The dice was loaded from the start.
And I bet...
Then you exploded into my heart.
And I forget, I forget
The movie songs...
When are you gonna realize
It was just that the time was wrong...

- Romeo and Juliet, Dire Straits -


My music tastes right now are definitely veering towards the mellow side of things.

[This part of the post got eaten by the blog monsters. :( ]

 The only problem has been keeping guys - and some girls - at arm's length.

And somehow in the last couple of months, since the late summer, I've fallen into a parallel universe where I crave romance and love and security, and can't get a date to save my life.

Jeez, I didn't realise quite how long it's been since I sent you guys a note. Funny how when I was going to the library once a week, I was quite good at remembering to update you, but now I have internet at home I can't seem to remember to do it. *shrugs*

So I'm lying here on my bed and 4.37am, plagued by insomnia once again, although I desperately need sleep. Last night I didn't get even ten minutes - pain, nausea and a ghost conspired against me - and then I had to go to Hemel this morning for last-minute gifts. (I have presents for everyone now, but the ones Mom ordered from a catalogue for Jamie and Craig are out of stock, so we have to go into town and find something else tomorrow.) So I got through the day - at least until 2.30 - on a dark cherry mocha from Starbucks, and a cranberry-orange muffin that probably had about 400 calories in it. I needed the sugar at the time, though.

I did manage to sleep a couple hours this afternoon, but now I've spent this entire night working on the computer, as well as messing around uploading photos. Go look at the pictures; I'd hate to think I wasted the whole night.

I can tell how tired I am, because just about every single word I type has a typo in it that I have to go back to correct. Usually my typing skills aren't too bad, but I'm tired enough that I've lost my coordination. Normally I can deal with tiredness, since I generally exist on about 5 hours of sleep a night, but I think all the rushing around these last few weeks has caught up with me.

I'm not even tired and crabby. I've gone past the crabby stage into totally chilled, almost as though I'd been smoking weed all night. Now, if only I could get my brain to switch off enough to sleep.

Hell. I need a back massage. I need some chamomile tea. I need someone to snuggle with, and I hardly ever snuggle.

No ghosts. I'm not too hot or too cold. I don't feel ill. I'm not particularly hungry. WHY THE HELL CAN'T I SLEEP?

I think the sleep gods hate me. I have this dream that's been bothering me a lot this week. I meet a guy. Hot, smart, very attractive in a sort of sharp, sophisticated way. Older - he looks about 40. Piercing blue eyes and a chiseled jaw. So we meet in a coffeehouse. I'm attracted. He's attracted. We go to a hotel and have a great time.

Then he gets out his wallet and shows me his wife and kids. OMG, I think, I slept with a married man. But that's not the worst. His wife is beautiful. His daughter looks like her. And then he shows me the picture of his son, and it's Apollo.

Yes, my Apollo. My fantasy. I've just slept with Apollo's father. And what's more, I liked it.

Holy shit. I need to stop dreaming. I need a nice big moonstone to put under my pillow. That's what I'm buying with my Christmas money.

OK, here's what I'm going to do. Tidy my room up a little bit, because sometimes I can't sleep when there's mess around me. Make my bed, put the computer away. Go take a warm bath with some orange and calendula bath salts in it. Eat some proper food, not just wasabi peanuts, and get back into a nice clean warm bed. Then by the time I've read a chapter of my book, I'll be ready to fall asleep, right? RIGHT?

I also need to set my alarm to make sure I don't sleep the day away. Only two more shopping days till Christmas.

Well, wish me luck. And anyone who's interested in snuggling, giving back massages or kissing under the mistletoe, gimme a call. You have my number.

Morpheus, You Ass

SO...I've been having this dream.

I finally work up the cojones to meet a guy off here. I find one that catches my interest. Sexy, handsome, older. Piercing blue eyes, just the colour of my own - this should have tipped me off, but it didn't - and a smile that lights up the room. We meet in a coffee shop. I'm attracted. He's attracted. We go back to a hotel room and have a fantastic time.

Then he shows me pictures of his wife and kids. OMG, you're saying, You slept with a married man! Yes, yes I did. Not knowingly, but there it is. But this isn't the worst. His wife's beautiful. His daughters look like her. AND THEN I see a picture of his son, and it's Apollo.

My Apollo. Apollo the SBD, the absolute fantasy since I first met him when I was twelve years old.

Oh yes, I slept with Apollo's father*. What's more, I enjoyed it. The whole time, I kept trying to figure out why I was so comfortable with him, why I felt like I'd known him for ages.

Come on, dream analysts, do your worst.

* I didn't really sleep with Apollo's father. This is a dream, remember?

Christmas Wishes (And Thoughts, And Whines, And...)

I'm supposed to be preparing to go to the Official N-Dubz Concert Afterparty (no, I don't know why they capitalised it, they just did) right now, but my date cancelled on me yesterday, and I just don't care enough to get dressed up and go alone. Although they are supposed to have snow machines, which would be fun. And there might be some nice guys there.

But...ehh. I'm not depressed, I'm just exhausted. There's no real reason for me to be this tired; I haven't gone anywhere in the last couple of days, but I never really recovered from the cold that I got back in September - the one that had me stuck in bed for ten days - and then the little one I had last week didn't help. The condition I have means that my immune system attacks my nervous system, and any time I get an infection of any sort, my normal pains and fatigue are worse for a period afterwards, while my immune system tries to get back to normal.

(For some reason, it always reminds me of a dog that's become riled up at the sight of a cat. The cat appears, the dog starts barking and growling and showing its teeth. The cat disappears in a matter of seconds, but the dog keeps up its racket for quite a while before it calms down. Anyway, my immune system is still baring its teeth at me, so I'm very tired and sore.)

After cooking late Thanksgiving dinner, only my brother and his wife showed up. It was a nice evening, and they took all the food home with them, but my stomach hasn't been quite right since then. I'm pretty sure it was the oil in the cornbread, but I shudder to think how slow my digestion's become if I'm still having stomach problems nine days later. I just hope nobody else got sick. (Not that I really got sick - just pain, but pain's enough.)

So anyway, I've been trying to get all my Christmas stuff done, while coping with all-over pains and tiredness and a sore tummy, as well as looking after Mom and making sure she doesn't climb up on counters and chairs, or lift anything too heavy. Mom had her friend here at the weekend, and I spent most of Saturday cooking for guests on Sunday, only to find that they couldn't come, since Joey had hurt himself and couldn't drive. So Mom and Brian took all the food to them instead - including all my banana bread and applesauce-spice cake - leaving me here to work and sleep. (I can't handle the drive to Leighton Buzzard, it hurts too much to sit in a car for that long unless I make several rest stops.)

We decorated the tree, and it looks pretty good, although I can't find the garlands that go on it. I was supposed to go into town on Saturday to buy mistletoe and a wreath for the door - for some reason Mom decided that the normal fake one should go on the side gate this year, and we should buy a live one for the front - but I had too much to cook, and then Sunday and today I wasn't feeling well enough. And I can't get in tomorrow, I have my last Japanese class before Christmas. I HAVE to go on Wednesday, though, or the guy will be sold out, and I also have to get a new key cut for Ry, and one for Chris. And I still have a ton of Christmas shopping to do. I only have about half my gifts, which is irritating, because I'm usually finished by now.

And I have to go to the post office, because somehow I forgot to buy stamps and mail any cards that have to go abroad. I don't think they're going to get there by Christmas. *sigh*

I don't know what possessed me to think I could do all that needs doing in the next ten days. I wrote twenty-three Christmas cards yesterday - for the people in my class - and about thirty today, for friends and family, and I feel like my hands are going to fall off. Everything I've baked has been eaten already. I don't know when I'm going to get to London to see my Dad - which reminds me, I need to buy them a wedding present, as well as Christmas presents.

I have to go to Hawkins' Bazaar in Hemel, because the catalogue didn't have the naughty origami and balloon animal kits that I wanted for my nephews, and I have to go to Sports Direct in London Colney to find a sweatshirt or jacket for Ry, because the sports stores in town don't have any sales on and there's no way I'm spending £64.99 on a hoodie when I can probably pick up the same one, or at least similar, in Sports Direct for £25. And I really wanted to go to the West End, specifically to the Trocadero, because they always have neat stalls to pick up last-mintute things for Mom, and I wanted to see Oli too.

All of this would be easy if I had a car at my disposal, but the car still hasn't been fixed, and I still haven't managed to get my license either. My plan for this year was to get driving again, but then Mom got sick, and I got sick, and I didn't have the money...

*sigh*

I'm not actually unhappy. Except about the car, but that's nothing new. Despite the complaints, I'm enjoying the Christmas season. I'm just kind of frazzled. I wish I had someone close who'd be there to help out with all this stuff. October through Christmas is really the only time of year when I clearly feel alone, but for those three months I really, really miss having a boyfriend. (Although not just any boyfriend; I've found out from experience that the wrong boyfriend makes me feel more lonely than none at all.) But if I had Curt, or Adam, or Apollo, to come home to me at the end of the day and help me wrap presents and sing carols, everything would be so much more pleasant.

I mentioned those three in particular because two of them actually have reappeared in my life recently. Not Apollo - he's always in and out of my thoughts, and I rarely actually see him. But Curt and I have been texting a little, and he said he'd come and visit before Christmas. Which is really nice, because I miss him a lot. He was my best friend all through college, and for the years after, and it was only two summers ago - after seven years of being best friends - that we stopped seeing each other so much. (Long story.) He needed time to heal from all the problems that we had, so I gave him time. But now we're talking again, and it feels good, although there's that little part of me that wonders if I really truly want to get involved with him again, when it took my heart so long to recover last time.

Adam was even more of a surprise. I wrote to him, just on impulse, and he wrote back. We hadn't talked in about four years, so it was a shock - I expected either no reply, or a response that said something along the lines of "Go to hell, I don't want anything to do with you." But he was sweet, and couldn't even remember why he stopped talking to me, and I forgot how much I'd missed him too.

With these wonderful people - and Oli, of course - coming back into my life, albeit just a little bit, I shouldn't feel lonely. But somehow talking to them has just reminded me how empty my life's been for the last few years. Things have been difficult for several years now, and I needed a pared-down life that didn't tax my emotions too much, but perhaps it's time to start letting things get personal again.

If Curt comes to visit me, and I find that he's single (for once in his life, LOL ) I'm going to go for it. I never made a move on him before, because I didn't want to ruin our friendship, and when I finally found out that he was interested in me it was already too late. But this time, I don't have anything to lose, except my pride, and that's not really worth much. I'm not a child anymore. We met when he was 16 and I was 17, when we were both kids who were scared of our bodies and our emotions and the way we affected each other. He grew up, and I stayed scared. But I'm not scared now. Or rather, I am, but I can push through it. Working where I do has taught me that I can't just let things slide and lose out by default, instead I have to push the situation until I either get what I want or find out that it's not possible. No more letting people I love slip away.

I think that may be a New Years resolution, a couple weeks too early.

Anyway, enjoy your Christmas - I know I am - and I hope you spend a wonderful festive season with the people you love!

Holy Shit, My Parents Got Married

I had a pretty major shock this evening. My stepmother called me and broke the news to me that, back in June, she and my father got married. (Yeah, the father who had a stroke in April.) They didn't tell anyone at all, because they wanted to wait until he could talk properly about it, but since his speech still isn't back to normal they decided it was time to tell me and my sisters, and then everyone else.

I'm not honestly sure how I feel about this. I made a big production of it on the phone, telling her how happy I was for the two of them, and what wonderful news it was. I suppose it is wonderful news. But I'm in shock. I don't deal with surprises well at the best of times - even nice surprises; I'm the kind of person who's likely to walk out of a surprise party rather than laugh and enjoy it - and it's taking quite a while to assimilate.

I do love my stepmother. I wasn't too keen on the last one, but this one is pretty awesome. And I can totally understand why they married. Nearly dying changes a person, and they both nearly died this year: my Dad from the stroke, and my stepmother from a bout of pneumonia in Feb-March that was misdiagnosed twice. It's totally understandable that the shock to both of them would make them realise that they wanted to be married for however much time they have left.

In addition, I imagine that my Dad was worried that he was going to die, and knew that common-law marriages are murder to prove in court. In the event that he died before he and my stepmother married, it's likely that a third of his estate would come to me, and the other two thirds would go to my younger sisters; however with neither of them being of age to inherit, their mother - who hates my stepmother - would be in control, and would certainly insist on my stepmother finding a new place to live.

(This in no way negates the idea that they're in love, and WANTED to be married, but my father is nothing if not practical.)

So sure, I can totally understand why they wanted to marry. I can even understand why they wanted to keep it quiet, although I admit that I did have fantasies of a beautiful wedding, with me and all four of my half- and step-sisters getting to wear fantastic gowns and feel like princesses for the day. (And I imagine I'm the only girl in the world who has a good relationship with her father and yet wasn't invited to either of his weddings.) But neither of them is much for ceremony.

I guess I just can't understand why they kept it a secret for this long. Secret from friends, maybe. But from their daughters? The reasoning she gave me, about him wanting to explain in his own words when he could speak again, just felt kind of odd to me.

Ehh. I suppose I feel a little hurt, although I shouldn't. I know that they'd be horrified if they knew that they'd hurt my feelings. And hell, it's not like I share everything with them. There are plenty of things I keep to myself, including one large secret that I really should have shared with them by now, since most of the other people I know are party to it. But part of me's wondering if they would have told me if I'd been a better daughter, if I'd come to visit more often, if I'd generally had a more open relationship with them.

*sighs*

There's nothing to be gained by being sad about it, I guess. In the past I've often envied friends of mine - and boyfriends, come to think of it - for their close relationships with their families. All through college, I had this best friend, Curt, and he had such a huge extended family, dozens and dozens of aunts and uncles and cousins and second cousins. He had the type of family where he could ring up his uncle and say, "Wha gwan, what's for dinner? Rice and beans? Save me some, I'll be over in half an hour." I, on the other hand, have always had the type of family where if you want to see them, you make an appointment a week in advance. I don't mean to make it sound as though we don't care about each other, because we do. We've just never been close. We're less like parents and children and more like distant relatives who get on OK, but don't really know each other very well.

Which is much my fault as anyone's, I suppose. I could have made a big effort to change things, but I always figured, this is how it's always been, too late to change now. My Dad's stroke brought us together - well, brought me and my stepmother and my two step-sisters together, I'm not so sure about my two younger half-sisters - for the first couple of months. Until I started having panic attacks when I had to spend too much time in London, and then stopped visiting as regularly.

I don't know, I guess it's just guilt rearing its head again. My Dad and stepmother are happy, and they don't seem to feel like I'm a rotten daughter, so there isn't anything that I should be concerned about. I'm glad they're married, I really am. I'm just...wistful, I guess.

Always wanting what I can't have. *shakes head and smiles a little*

Today...

...I am cooking Thanksgiving dinner.

OK, so it's a little late, but Mom was sick last week. Unfortunately, *I* am sick this week - nothing life-threatening, just a cold, but it's annoying - so am feeling a little harassed. Add that to the fact that I only got three or four hours sleep last night, and desperately need a nap, and I couldn't find my other leggings to cook in, and the McCalls cookbook has gone missing in the black hole that is my house, and things are more than a little hectic. I wouldn't even be online, except that I was hunting down a recipe for cornbread since the one I use is in the McCalls.

Luckily, my cornbread is now in the oven, and will hopefully turn out pretty good, although I think the oil I used wasn't very good quality, and the top looks a bit greasy. I expect I can dab it all off, though. My potatoes are ready to cook a little later (I'm going to cheat and fry them instead of roasting them with olive oil; they taste pretty much the same anyway) and the chicken (instead of turkey; none of us like turkey much) and stuffing are cut and refrigerated, since we're having them cold. (We only have a single oven - I desperately want a bigger one, but there just isn't space for it in the kitchen, even if I had the money to spend.)

Please excuse all the parentheses - I'm probably explaining too much.

Sadly, all my nice crockery and glasses are packed away for when I move to my own place, so we're left with a couple of 4-person sets that don't match each other. I'm not sure how many people we're going to have - Mom and me, and my brother and his wife are coming, which makes four, but they may bring any or all of her kids. (Who aren't really kids, they're 22, 20 and 19.)

Ack, my cornbread has puddles of oil at the sides. What the heck was the person who wrote that recipe thinking, to use so much? I used only half of what they said, too. And what the heck was *I* thinking, to not smell the oil before I used it, to make sure it was good quality?

Well, I guess I was thinking I have a cold, and I assumed that if it was in the cupboard, it was OK.

*shrugs*

I can pour the excess off and then dab it with kitchen towel. Worst-case scenario, we have to cut the sides of the cornbread off.

I need a bath, and so does Mom, and I think that Ry - our new sort-of ward, long story which will be explained later - may have used most of the hot water up.

But it'll be a really nice evening. I love to cook, and I like entertaining well enough, as long as it's small groups of people that I know well. (I'm not really the party type, normally.) I haven't seen my brother and his wife for months, and it'll be really great to talk to them. And the food will turn out well, I'm sure.

I'm really glad to be back here on AFF - I haven't had internet for more than a year, and the library wifi won't let me access adult sites, even on my own computer - and when this cold clears up and I feel a bit better, I imagine I'll start posting regularly. Or semi-regularly, at least.

Hope y'all are well, and enjoying the winter.

Oh, one last thing - I'm not sure if blatant promotion is allowed on here, but unless AFF emails me to tell me to take it off, I want to use this end bit to promote the LMHR Christmas party. My place of work works closely with the Love Music Hate Racism movement, and I said I'd help spread the word, both about the campaign itself, and the Christmas party.
.
Party details: 7.30pm-1.30am, Tuesday 15th December 2009
Proud Camden, The Stables Market, Chalk Farm Rd, London, NW1 8AH

I'm not sure exactly who's performing, because there have been some changes in the lineup, but I'm sure it'll be a blast. Tickets are £10 in advance, £12 on the door, with all proceeds going to the LMHR campaign.

Weirdness, I put the link for tickets in here, but AFF changed it to their own site. Hum. I guess you'll have to Google it, or search on facebook.

I sadly can't get there - my last Japanese class before Christmas is that night, and I think I have an exam to take - but everyone's welcome, as long as they buy a ticket.

Anyone who manages to get there, tell me how it went!

Aloha

I'm back.

I hope.

TV, Plus

I am extremely tired today, so most of what you're getting this week is a review for a TV show that I had to write for a newsletter at work.

Last night (Thurs) saw the premiere of the new E4 TV show, Misfits. This dark comedy-drama is set in London, and follows the exploits of a group of young people who survive a freak lightning strike, only to find they've developed unusual (read: paranormal) talents. OK, so far, so Marvel. However, since this is a British urban show, our super-group isn't composed of the usual squeaky-clean youngsters (plus one villain) that you usually see in shows like this; rather, the lead characters are all tough-talking juvenile delinquents who were serving community service when the lightning hit.

In addition to the five teenagers (actually six, but one of them kicked the bucket during the first twenty minutes), their probation officer is similarly afflicted. Unfortunately, instead of developing a super-power, the lightning strike either imbues him with, or unleashes in him, a psychotic rage as well as super-strength. After the five leave for the night, the sixth member of the community-service squad is still sitting in the toilets, smoking (having completely missed the lightning strike) when ominous footsteps are heard outside the cubicle door, alongside a grotesque grunting, and as he puts his ear to the door an axe comes through it. Oops. Later in the programme, his body is discovered by the group, although from that moment on it's fairly obvious to viewers that he's been disposed of.

Meanwhile, some of the teens are discovering their powers. The ponytailed girl - I haven't yet learned their names - finds that she's able to hear what people are thinking, which causes her to break up with her boyfriend. The next day, while they're all changing into their work clothes at the community centre, the quiet boy finds that he's somehow turned invisible. There's very little time for them to discuss these strange goings-on, though, because after running off on her own, telepath-girl is attacked by the PO.

She manages to run away from him, and heads back inside the centre to frantically try to convince the others of what's happened, both with the telepathy and the psychotic probation officer. The others are derisive, even after the invisible-kid (who is currently visible) speaks of his own experiences. One of the others - a sprinter who had Olympic hopes, until he was caught with cocaine - heads towards the door, and as telepath-girl tries to head him off, the PO - who, by this point, has become little more than a humanoid beast, complete with crazy eyes and rabid mouth foam - breaks through the door and hits telepath-girl with a metal bar he pulled off the gate outside, killing her instantly. Suddenly, time stops for all but the sprinter, and seconds later we find that time has been turned back to a point before the door was opened. Obviously shaken, the sprinter corroborates the story, and tells the others about how time has been turned back. Some moments later, the probation officer manages to break into the centre, and telepath-girl is forced to kill him to defend them all. The body of the sixth member of the squad is also discovered in one of the lockers.

Naturally, as per the usual teenage paranoia, the five agree that nobody will believe them if they tell the truth, so they decide to sneak the bodies out of the centre and bury them down by the river. (This is achieved by cleaning the bodies up as well as possible, then putting them in wheelchairs and pretending to anyone who sees that part of their community service involves taking special-needs people for walks, in case anyone's wondering how they managed it.) The plan to hide the bodies appears to work, and the rest of the workers at the community centre (none of whom were there for the first and second days; I'm assuming that it was a weekend and the centre was closed for everything but the community-service group) are left wondering where the two missing people have got to. After some brief initial questions about whether they noticed anything out of the ordinary, the episode ends with the five teens standing on the roof, grimly telling each other that they think they may have gotten away with it.

There's nothing particularly ground-breaking about this show - it's The Breakfast Club meets Fantastic Four meets Skins meets I Know What You Did Last Summer - but somehow it manages to feel both fresh and exciting. The gritty setting, the interesting camerawork and the use of virtually unknown actors gives a feeling of reality to it, despite the paranormal subject matter. Unlike with many of the American superhero shows, there is a definite feeling that this could be YOUR life that you're watching. However, the complexity of the characters is what elevates the show from being watchable to being quite enthralling. The creators of the show have managed to fit a huge amount of personal moments into an hour, and yet there's the sense that all you've seen about them is just the tip of the iceberg. It's especially interesting to note that all of the teens seem to have developed abilities that centre around something that's a particular issue in their lives. Telepath girl obviously has low self-esteem, and now she can hear everything bad that people are thinking about her. Invisible-boy is the introverted loner of the group, and all of a sudden nobody can see him at all, and he's more alone than he's ever been before. The sprinter has fitted his entire life around being the fastest, beating the clock, only to find that time no longer obeys the usual rules. The fourth member of the group, a pretty curly-haired girl, has made her looks and attractiveness to men the main focus of her life, and now all of it is meaningless, because her power means men touch her and instantly want to rip her clothes off, whether she bothers with makeup and sexy clothes or not. It's only the power of the fifth member (an Irish boy) that has yet to be disclosed. However, the personality traits that I've most noticed in him are a need to be flippant and make a joke out of everything, and a need to be in control and to manipulate every situation, so perhaps he'll find that he has visions of things that he can't control and can't make a joke of.

All in all, it was a fascinating hour, and I'm definitely looking forward to next week's episode.

Reviewed by Sati Marie Frost


The past week was actually pretty OK. No nightmares, although last night I did dream that my mother married Gok Wan, in a sort of marriage-of-convenience thing. Let me tell you, however much you're going WTF? right now, it can't possibly compare to the things I was saying when I woke up this morning. Some of the things that I dream about are just so completely random that I have NO idea of where they come from.

Class was fun last night, although Magdalena mentioned something about an upcoming karaoke lesson...I really hope she's joking. While it would be very fun to watch everyone else sing, hell will freeze over before they get me performing in front of people.

I did some Christmas shopping today, and I'm somewhere between terrified and happy. I spent a fearful amount of money - more than a quarter of what's left of my monthly paycheck (after rent / bills / gym etc) and I only got paid yesterday - but I also got a lot of presents: something for Lauren, something for Chris, something for my Mom, something for Tony, something for Jamie, something for Craig, something for Lucy, something for Stacy, and a couple of other things besides. Plus I wrote down a whole heap of ideas from things that I saw, as well as seeing two things that *I* actually wanted. (iPod speakers and Tommy Girl perfume that was half-price in Boots.) Making up a Christmas list for myself is always a nightmare: most of the things that I want are out-of-print books and hard-to-find CDs, and everybody - even the people with internet at home - seems to be too lazy to search for them. So I usually buy the books with any Christmas money I get, and get a lot of cosmetics, since they're easy gifts. Not that I'm complaining; I like cosmetics, and I buy them for a lot of other people too.

I still have a ton of things left to buy, though. Christmas always bankrupts me. And I know lots of you will be saying that I shouldn't buy so much, it's the thought that matters, but...eh. I just don't feel right unless I go a bit overboard. It's the only time of year I get to be a little bit wild and uncontrolled.

I keep seeing things in the shops that I would love to get for Apollo. I saw a shirt today, beautifully cut, in an incredibly soft fabric that somehow managed to hold its shape even while it draped the body, and that peacock-blue colour that looks so incredible with his golden hair and skin. I actually would have bought it for myself, to wear to sleep for good dreams, had it not been for the price tag. And I see dozens of books that I know he would love. Actually, most of them were books that I would love, too - we have many of the same tastes when it comes to reading. I need to stop thinking about him, though - as much as I dream about him, and as much as his mentality affects the way I think and act, he is not an actual tangible part of my life. It's fine to keep him as a fantasy - thinking about him keeps me calm when I'm angry, and cheers me up when I'm gloomy, and helps me exercise even when I'm tired, and I always think that a daydream is better than a drug anyday - but I need to stop thinking of him as though he's a friend. Because he isn't. Not really.

I think I may FINALLY be starting to take off some of the weight that I gained this year. For the last couple of days I've been looking in the mirror and been somewhat pleased with my appearance. It's useless to get on the scales - as I get into shape, my weight goes UP to start with, because I gain muscle as I lose fat - but I think that my clothes are looking a little better. Sometimes it's hard to assess my weight and my looks objectively, because when I'm not happy I look terrible, regardless of my weight, and when I'm contented I have a glow about me that attracts people to me, whether I'm particularly heavy at the time or not. I seemed to glow today; at least two dozen people turned around to watch me and smile at me when I walked past, and I don't think ALL of that was due to pre-Christmas cheer. It's nice to have those days, although sometimes I find myself getting a little nervous, when people take it further than looking and smiling. My iPod and headphones are a blessing at times like these, because I can smile at the same time as making it very clear, I'm not available for flirting.

That said, I've been feeling a little more flirty recently, and have actually been on a couple of dates. Nothing serious, just casual things with a few kisses at the end of the evening, but it's been fun. Somehow, this last year, I forgot how to have fun. At least social fun. I still enjoy reading and playing computer games and sewing and watching a couple of programmes on TV, but I haven't done much socially this year - I think Lori and Chris and Oli are the only people I've gone out with at all, and I've only gone out with Oli for an hour or so a couple of times after visiting my Dad in hospital, back in the early summer. Oh, hang on, I picked berries with Sasha one day in July. Still, four or five evenings out all year is not much. The tendency towards reclusiveness is so strong in me that I have to constantly battle against it, and it's such a tiring battle that a lot of the time I stop fighting it and just let myself get sequestered with my books and my work and my once-a-week classes and my home-family. (That's how I think of Mom and Lori and Chris and Ry - my home-family.) I force myself to leave the house on Tuesdays and Wednesdays to work and go to class, but the rest of the time I do very little outside the house other than grocery shopping and chores for (or with) Mom. But I'm trying to push myself - I really am - and I'm (slowly) starting to remember that I'm not an old person, I'm a young, moderately good-looking woman who needs friends and dates and activity.

It's not easy, but what ever is?

Thanksgiving next week, and I'm (sort of) looking forward to it. Looking forward to seeing Tony's family, anyway. Not so sure about the cooking side of things, but if I get plenty of rest beforehand, it should be OK. One thing that I AM looking forward to is making cornbread - Mom and Debbie and Craig all loved it when I made it for Fourth of July, and I think Chrissie and Tony liked it well enough too. It's always nice to get praise for something. :)

I think I've probably gone on enough here. I'll let you guys get back to what you were doing. Me, I'm going to download a couple of Janet Jackson songs from iTunes ("Again" and "Every Time") and see if I can afford to buy the books that Mom wants for Christmas, and then I'm going home - my back and feet are sore, and my bank balance even more so, and I'm looking forward to a hot bath and dinner and an early night. I changed my sheets last night, so bed should feel wonderful tonight.

Hope y'all are enjoying the season, and have done at least some of your Christmas shopping by now!

Hugs. xx

News - Week Starting 9th Nov

Another odd week. I don't seem able to block out other people much at the moment, so at any given day I can be barraged with emotions. Some days I cope, other days not so well. I made the mistake of saying to Mom the other day that I was thinking about getting my own place sometime soon, which was stupid, because I'd somehow forgotten that she has to have the operation on her back. I suppose it's easy to forget stuff like this; the NHS moves so slowly that she hasn't even had her first consultation with the surgeon yet, let alone set a date for the op. But she was not happy about my thinking about leaving, to say the least, even though I fully intended to come back and look after her when she needed me. So I guess I'm stuck here for awhile.

I shouldn't complain. I have a roof over my head and I can just about pay my bills. I have a nice enough room, although at the moment everything is piled up to the ceiling, because of the decorating. I just don't play well with others, I guess. I love Mom, and Lori and Chris and Ryan, but there are times when I crave solitude, when I just want a little place that's modern, with a fitted kitchen and hot water on demand, that doesn't gather dirt the way Mom's house does, that's quiet and all my own. Those times are getting more frequent.

There is this constant guilt that pervades every inch of my life, and it gets stronger with each successive year. Some of it is rational guilt, and some is totally irrational. I feel guilty for being a burden to Mom. Guilty for not being able to help more around the house. Guilty for being ill in general. Guilty for doing my own paid work first and then not having the energy left to do the stuff Mom needs me to do. There always seems to be so much work - I don't know anyone who has the kind of junk to do around the house that I have - and sometimes I find that I'm totally infuriated about it all. I'm mad at the world, at the house, at Mom - because sometimes I feel like she makes more work than is necessary - and then I feel guilty about THAT.

I don't know where it all comes from, to be honest. I clean a thing and then half a day later it's dirty again. I try to put things in order, to find a place for them, and then when I come back everything's been put elsewhere. There are far too many possessions to fit in the house, even with just Mom and me there, and things that are normally stored in Lauren and Ryan's closets are now piling up in my room, because I can't get to their closets. And the open-plan things that Mom designed for the house years ago, that everyone notices and approves of when they visit? The open shelves of videos and DVDs, the kitchen full of glasses and crockery that sits nicely on shelves instead of hidden away in cupboards, the collections of pretty glass jars and containers that we keep pasta and rice and sugar and coffee in, that everyone admires, that make them say, "Oh, it's so pretty! So airy and bright!"? They get FILTHY. Keeping even one room in my house clean is like painting the Golden Gate Bridge: you finish, then you turn around and start from the beginning again. Because Lori and Chris now have one of the fridges, and two of the four food cupboards, Mom's moved some of the utensils out of the lower cupboards to make room for foods, and she stores them ON TOP of the high cupboards, and then they get covered with grease from the cooker and the boiler. (Whoever decided to put a gas boiler in a kitchen, without building a cover around it, should be shot.) And it takes me an hour or more to get one vase or one bowl clean enough to use.

What I need to do is empty out the cupboards, take everything that we never use, and give it to the Salvation Army. At least one of those cupboards is full of all sorts of crap that hasn't been used in years.

I HATE CLEANING. I REALLY, REALLY HATE IT. But even more than cleaning, I hate things being dirty.

Mom keeps things looking mostly clean, but it's the places that you don't always look that gather it all. Lampshades, and the gaps between the cupboards and the big appliances, and between the louvre doors. She actually cleaned the whole of the living room a few weeks ago, top to bottom, because she was so freaked out about my allergies, and I sat there begging her to stop cleaning, practically crying with frustration because there was nothing I could do to help, and nothing I could do to stop her, and I just had to sit and watch her get more and more sore, half-wondering if her spinal cord was going to snap and paralyse her all of a sudden. She doesn't give up on things. And she keeps telling people this, and I just sit there, more and more guilt piling up on me, because I'm a quitter and my mother isn't. I DO give up. If something hurts a lot, I stop. If I can't keep my place clean, I scrimp on food and hire a cleaner to help me. If I can't manage my class load, I drop a class and retake it next year. I'm more likely to let something slide than endure extreme - or even moderate - discomfort.

Rationally I know that probably I'm the sensible one. I'm in a lot of pain even when I don't overdo things. Nobody is going to be helped if I push myself to do something that I'm not capable of, and throw my back out, and end up in bed unable to do ANYTHING for a month or more. Yet I feel like I'm constantly surrounded with people or the memory of people who don't give up on anything, whatever it takes - Mom, Tony, Oli, Ellie, Richard, probably the SBD, Lauren, all of my Dad's family - and the knowledge that they're all so much stronger, so much more capable, so much braver, so much less selfish than me, is crippling at times.

And yes, I get the irony in that.

I used to have so much pride in myself. It was never an overabundance of pride - at least I didn't think so at the time - but I was able, and I knew it, and I was proud of myself for it. I was proud of myself for surviving a rape without getting bitter and hating men. I was proud of myself for not getting depressed, even when my life basically sucked. I was proud of myself for being a good person, for being kind and caring about other people, for always doing what I thought was the right thing, even when it wasn't the easy thing. But right now it feels like all that pride has been drained out of me by the rush of guilt that frequently sweeps in and drowns me.

Irrationally, I get mad, and then feel guilty about getting mad. Because of all that I've been given out of life, I feel like I don't have the right to get angry about things. I think I picked this up from Richard, who was horrified on the few occasions that Mom and I had a fight, and I disrespected her. In Ghana, you don't disrespect your parents, EVER, no matter what they say to you. Here - at least in my family - when you have a fight, you give as good as you get, and when it's over you both apologize and that's the end of it. But these days, I feel bad when Mom and I argue. It doesn't matter what the argument was about, doesn't matter who was in the wrong - I'm the one who feels like the bad guy. And more and more, I'm holding my tongue around my mother, even when I feel like it would be the morally right thing to say something, because I feel like she's given me so much that I don't have any right to be upset with her when she acts like a bitch.

The same goes for much in my life, really. The universe has given me so much - a life that's lasted 25 years, a home, a family who love me, good friends, the ability to love people, a mostly-decent brain, a body that basically works, enough to eat, plus a whole host of little luxuries - that I don't have the right to sometimes be sad about the constant pain, or the brain damage, or the money worries, or Obie, or anything else. Sometimes this is a good thing, because a lot of the time it keeps my spirits up to think of all the good things that I have. But at other times it's a burden, because if I feel even a touch of anger or sadness, I feel like I'm being ungrateful.

*shrugs* I don't know if a lot of people feel this way, or if I'm the only one.

On another (but related) subject, it can be difficult - especially at the moment - to tell what's my feeling, and what's someone else's. I saw Alistair the other day at the fireworks display, and while he looks good - mature and confident and all grown-up - I can still feel a wave of sadness emanating from him. He's one of the strongest projectors I've ever met, and I'm uncommonly senstive at the moment anyway, so that wasn't an easy evening. I couldn't even say hello, and I don't know if he noticed me, since I kept my face turned away, and he hasn't seen me in years anyway. But we saw him a couple of times during the evening - the girl he was with was a friend of Chris' - and every time they got near, I could feel him fifty feet away.

In class there was another sad one, too. I don't know what was the matter, because he usually seems pretty content. I meant to talk to him afterwards, ask if he was OK, but he slipped away before I could grab him. He was a strong projector, too, and for the whole two hours I kept thinking he was going to start crying right then and there. Distracting, to say the least, and more than a little worrying. Not that it's really my business to be worrying about people I don't really know, but...eh. I like people. I like this guy. I don't want him to be sad, and if he IS sad, I want to know if I can help.

Most of the time I've learned to block out the majority of the emanations around me; I have to, or I'd have gone crazy long before now. (*More* crazy, LOL.) But in the last couple of months - although it's gotten markably worse in the last few weeks - my shields seem to have slipped, or broken, and I'm not quite sure how to put them back up again. Perhaps I can ask the ancestors. The only good thing I can say is that, touch wood, I don't seem to be having so many nightmares, although I did have a Papa-Jackie-Obie nightmare last night, which followed much the same pattern as I told you about in the last note.

The rest of life is...well, it's life. Nothing much to say about it, really. I had some good moments in the last week. As I mentioned, I went to the fireworks display at the park last Saturday, with Lori and Chris and Ryan, although Ryan went off to join his friends after a while. The fireworks were incredible, and lasted at least forty minutes. It's been a long time since I saw fireworks, and I forgot how beautiful they are, and how much I love them. Afterwards, we wandered through the fair for a little while, and eventually managed to get on the Waltzers. I love that ride - it's probably my favourite, although I also like anything that goes high in the air, like a Ferris Wheel, or one of those Paratrooper things - and that was great. I used to be so in love with movement, but I've been mostly sedentary in the last year or two, and it was good to have a reminder of that glorious feeling. The whole evening was wonderful, actually. And not just because it was the first night out I'd had THIS YEAR that didn't involve seeing my Dad in hospital.

What else am I enjoying about life? Well, I haven't been getting to the gym as much as I should be. Mondays I hate, because the place is full of guilt-exercisers, who always come on Mondays because they overindulged at the weekend, and then you don't see them again until next Monday. On a Monday you're lucky if you only have to wait ten or fifteen minutes for the weights you want. Tuesdays I have class, and Wednesdays I work. Thursdays and Fridays are fine, and then it's the weekend, and everything's packed, unless I wait until the evening, and they close earlier at the weekends anyway. There just aren't enough days in the week for me. Friday evenings are my favourites, because there are hardly any people there - I guess other people have better things to do with their Friday nights than go to the gym - but for the last two weeks, I've just had too much to do at home, and in town, and the buses aren't running properly, and a lot of the time I just don't have the energy. I have the energy for the gym, but not for a forty or fifty-minute wait in the cold and wet for a bus that doesn't come.

I need to be driving. I don't know what to do with the MX-5, because the insurance people are still being idiots, and until I can replace the alternator it's not safe to drive in the dark (which is most of the time, at this time of year). Even if I get it fixed, and get my license, I don't know if they'll insure me to drive it without paying through the nose for it. I'm seriously thinking of taking out another loan so I can trade in Mom's old Fiesta and get something little that the two of us can drive - well, that I can drive now, and she can drive when she gets her back fixed. A Seat, or a Honda, something like that. Nothing flashy, just something that'll get me from point A to point B. Either that, or I'm going to have to move to a city where there's decent public transport. The rain is making me once again think longingly of those Northern cities with the Skywalks or the underground tunnels.

Fringe is back on TV. I'm enjoying that. :)

Thanksgiving is coming up soon, and after so many years of wanting to cook for it and not being allowed, because Tony and Debbie wanted to do the entertaining, this year we're probably having it at our house, and I'm not convinced that I have the energy to cook and get the house looking nice. Bleh. Plus, with Mom sleeping downstairs now, there isn't a huge amount of room. Perhaps it'd be a better idea to see if we can go to their house again.

I miss having Thanksgiving with Curt. Not just for the obvious, either, but for the sense of warmth and companionship that I had when he was here. Perhaps I'll invite him this year.

I've been doing some Christmas shopping - not easy when you're permanently broke - and I've managed to accrue quite a few things. I think I'm maybe a quarter done, which I suppose is not too bad. This week, though, I need to sort all my accounts out, find out how much I owe the bank and when it's coming out, and then sort out a budget to pay off my overdraft. And THEN I can start buying all the things that I need, both for Christmas presents and for the house.

Until next Tuesday, I have about £6 in the bank, and about £3.20 in my purse, so things are very tight. Mom owes me £20, but she won't be home until tonight, and I need to do some grocery shopping on the way home. Not quite sure how THAT'S gonna work. *sigh* I need to stop buying food. I keep forgetting to eat it, and then it goes off. I need the SBD to pull me out of my food problems. I keep telling people I'm not anorexic, I'm just so tired I forget to eat, but I suppose either way it results in poor digestion and low blood sugar, regardless of the reasons. Maybe I'll just buy some jam, or garlic sausage. We have bread and peanut butter, and I can make sandwiches. Not the most healthy things in the world, but they'll keep me alive.

*shrug*

This is why I can't have kids yet, you know. I'm still a kid myself, despite my advanced age. Sometimes I'm surprised that they keep me on at work, I'm such a bad influence, but I guess I manage to project an image of success and maturity while I'm on duty. I yearn for a life where I eat well, and make my own juices, and go to work, and go to the gym every day, and cook my own meals, and visit with friends, and answer my emails on time, and sew my clothes when they tear, and still have time to read informative, educational books - not just Mills & Boon - and generally live the domestic goddess life, but...eh. Some days it's all I can do to get the minimum food and exercise.

I do, however, always remember to brush my teeth and take off my makeup, so that's something to be proud of, ja? :D

Hell, at least I can usually find the humor in it all. I guess that's a lot more than most people have.

News - Week Starting 2nd Nov

I'm sitting in the library and for some reason it smells like lasagne and pistachio kulfi. Great smells...not too sure about them together.

This is going to be a fairly random note; I don't have the mental capacity today to try and put it all together.

I had to move a few minutes ago, and I think the cute guy I was sitting opposite might think that I don't like him anymore. I'd better go talk to him when he comes back to his seat, and tell him I just needed to use the plug point.

He has a really nice smile. People have been smiling at me a lot lately. :)

LOL my friend Nathan just sent me a link to a page with topless pictures of Leo the Lion...niiiiice. :D He's been trying to get me into photography recently - as a photographer, not a model - and I think this is his latest attempt. Might work, actually. ;-)

I use facebook a whole lot more than myspace, because I generally find myspace to be disorganized and hard to navigate. One thing I do like doing on there, though, is reading blogs of famous people. Some of them are the usual boring stuff - OK, most of them are the usual boring stuff - but now and then I come across one that's well-written, interesting, and presents them in a new light. I have very little patience for celebrity culture, and generally I don't think about famous people at all, either in a positive or a negative sense. They're so far removed from me that I don't even consider them the same breed of people most of the time. And it's weird, but oddly pleasant, to find out that sometimes they're just like me. Well, almost. :)

I got my books from Amazon in the mail a few days ago - The Complete Poems of Edgar Allan Poe and the fifth and sixth Obernewtyn Chronicles by Isobelle Carmody. I'm on the sixth book now, and they're really good. Which is a good thing, since I've been waiting forever for them. (She published the first book in the series in 1987, and I read the book in 1989, which gives you some idea of how long it's been. It makes it interesting, though, because you can really track her personal growth and the growth of her abilities as a writer, through the books, since they were written so far apart.)

The bank gets most of this week's paycheck. Boo hoo.

Bonfire night tonight, but the firework display here in town isn't on until Saturday. I'm hoping to go to that with Lori and Chris and Ryan...if they remember.

I was in Wilkinson earlier and I think I scared three teenagers out of buying condoms. Oops. That's not a good thing, IMO. Some of you would say, teenagers shouldn't be having sex...but I've learned many times over that not having condoms is NOT going to stop them having sex. Not most of them, anyway. It's just going to stop them being smart about it. *shrug* You work with teenagers, you learn to pick your battles. "Use a condom" is a battle I can usually win. "Don't have sex" is not. Even assuming I agreed with that idea in the first place.

It's funny, though, how when you're a teenager you get embarrassed by so many things. I wouldn't even buy underwear for several years. I got over the fear of buying bras when I was about 13, but other things, like tampons and condoms...forget it. And then suddenly, when I was about 17, I just didn't care anymore. It wasn't even a gradual process, it was practically overnight. One day I would blush every time someone mentioned bodies or sex, and the next day I had no embarrassment left. Now I grin when I have to go to the personal aisle of the store, because I know there'll be teens in there who are in the exact same position that I was in 10 years ago. I wish I could tell them that it gets easier, that there will come a day when you don't care who knows you're having sex, but if I said anything it would just make them feel even worse.

I found a really neat cami top today that I don't think I've ever worn. I bought it a couple years ago, and then didn't have anything to wear with it. It's the deepest indigo blue, almost royal blue, and it has these little tiny elastic spaghetti straps - thinner than spaghetti straps, really, more like vermicelli straps - that cross over in the back. It's a really sexy top, very much like something you might see in Victoria's Secret (still my favourite clothing store in the world - wish the shipping costs weren't so exorbidant), and I feel good wearing it.

I had to cut some of my hair last week - the bit in the front - because it was damaged, and for a week I didn't have any idea what to do with it. The short stuff just sort of sat there, all fluffy and disorganised, and I bore a strong resemblance to Dappy from N-Dubz. (Yes, Dappy. No, not Tulisa. Dappy. The guy with the hat.) But finally I managed to cut it into a more-or-less straight fringe, and with a little help from my hair straightener, I've got it looking OK. And I'm actually starting to warm to it. It makes me look younger. It makes me look - and Oh My God, I can't believe I'm going to say this - it makes me look fashionable. With the fringe cut, most of the blonde has gone out of my hair now, aside from a few bits that are mostly hidden by my ponytail, and it's very obvious all of a sudden that I am now a brunette. This is weird for me, because aside from the short period of time in college when I dyed my hair black, I've been blonde for at least ten years, maybe more. I THINK of myself as a blonde. Yet I'm starting to like the brown hair. I can't wear my normal (bare) makeup with the brown hair or the fringe, so I've been experimenting with eyeliner and mascara and darker eyeshadows, and then lipstick. And I look...well, I look kind of good, I guess. Good in a different way. Before I looked pretty, but I looked like a pretty soccer mom. Now I look 19, and a lot sharper and less suburban than I did.

I can't believe it's November...I have so much to do, and no time or money to do it with. I need to call Tony tonight, and start planning for Thanksgiving. I desperately need to do some Christmas shopping. I've found loads of things that *I* want, but very little that would be suitable for anyone else. And there are half a dozen people I want to see. I need to call Jackie and make an appointment to see my Dad - and I've no idea about how they're going to recieve me, after I've been AWOL for so long - and I want see Sasha, and Becki, and I really NEED to see Oli.

Of course, Oli and my Dad both involve going to London.

When my Dad had his stroke, I visited a lot at first, and I started having really bad nightmares right afterwards. I assumed it was stress, maybe compounded with my heart problems, but it didn't occur to me until recently that it might be to do with London itself. Something that I haven't admitted to you guys is that I've basically avoided the city since the rape. It's been easy to hide, because I don't HAVE to go there most of the time, and if I do, it's usually with someone. Before Papa's stroke, most of my trips to London were to see him, and just involved the outskirts - Highgate doesn't really feel like London to me, anyway - and half the time he picked me up or dropped me off, so I wasn't alone much. I saw Curt a few times, and he picked me up and dropped me off in his car. I went to work a few times, but I mostly commuted from home. And I didn't go clubbing. I didn't shop. I didn't hang out in the West End. I didn't go to see friends.

I didn't even realise what I was doing, really. I suppose I knew, but not consciously. And then when the stroke happened, and I HAD to be in London a lot of the time, the nightmares started. And stupidly, I wondered why.

People sometimes ask me if I'm still scared of Obie. I suppose a part of me will always be scared, because he's crazy and unpredictable, and there's always that slight chance that he'll come back. But most of the time, I don't think about that. If he comes to the house, I'll defend myself and anyone else there. What I'm most scared of is not remembering. Nobody wants to talk about the rape. We certainly don't talk about it in my house; my mother uses half a dozen euphemisms, like "the Obie thing", and any time I mention it I see her face go blank and she stops listening. The biggest mistake people make with rape victims is to tell them that they don't need to talk about it. When someone says "you don't need to talk about it", what they really mean is, "you don't need to tell me, I don't want to know". I'm sorry if that sounds cynical, but it's the truth, at least as far as I've seen. People need to talk. My mother didn't want to tell people about it at first, and she forbade me from telling the newspaper or writing into a magazine, saying that with the amount of money his family had, they'd hire a good lawyer and sue for libel. But you can't keep something like that secret - at least *I* can't. When something becomes a secret, it makes you feel dirty, and eventually ashamed. And I'm not willing to do that. I'm not willing to keep quiet because other people get uncomfortable. I've already made the sacrifice of not talking much about it when I'm there in person with someone, because they become awkward and don't know what to say to me, and it's just not worth it. But I will NOT keep it under wraps. Although that said, there are a few people I'd prefer not to know about it, since I know that they'd spread rumors about how I'm making it up to get attention. So just use your judgement - if you know someone doesn't like me, probably better not to mention it to them.

I talk because I'm scared that I'll forget again. My biggest fear, worse than him coming back, worse than him stalking me, worse than anything else - is that I'll forget his face. And then one day I'll be out in London, enjoying myself, and some guy will hit on me, and we'll dance and get friendly, and he'll ask for my number, and I'll give it to him...and it'll be HIM, and I won't know it.

This is what I have nightmares about. And sometimes I have other nightmares, too. I have nightmares about guys who get to know me, and then I find out in one blinding instant that they're friends of his, but it's too late to save myself from them. The worst of these dreams involve other people that I know, usually members of my Dad's family. The other night I dreamed that I was meeting Haley for something, I don't even remember what, and Delroy was there with a friend of his, and we talked, and hung out, and Delroy left and the friend stayed, and I don't remember what happened next, but suddenly we were in a dark alley at night, and I was finding out that the guy only made friends with Delroy because he was a friend of Obie's and wanted to get to me, and he hit Haley, knocked her into a wall to get her out of the way, and then he was tearing at my clothes and biting me on my neck and the whole thing was happening again. Different place, different guy, but same thing. It's not always Haley in the dreams. Sometimes it's Stacy, or Amy, or Lucy, or one of my cousins. Sometimes it's my Dad and Jackie, and we're at their house, and they've invited a guy in as a guest because he said he was a friend of mine from college who was trying to get in touch with me, and then the dream goes much the same way as the Haley-dream.

I do wonder, sometimes, if this isn't one of the reasons I've been avoiding visiting my Dad. Not just the fear of London, but the fear that I'll bring something unclean and wrong into their gentle, safe lives. My Dad's family are good people, all of them. I don't know how tough they are, because I've never had the opportunity to find out. But I think of them as sweet, innocent, CLEAN people. And I don't always feel sweet and innocent and clean anymore.

I go through phases where I don't think of Obie at all, and then phases where he bothers me a lot. I'll get over it; I always do. Part of this phase was precipitated by a TV programme I watched last week some time. It was supposedly an experiment to find out how racist people are - I say "supposedly" because I'm not convinced that it had merit, at least not the way the woman ran it - and much of the content took me back to the days after the rape, when I had to deal with the accusations from Obie and his lawyer, and even from the police and CPS, although to a lesser degree. It was a hard time - the aftermath was harder than the rape, believe it or not - and it's not something I like to be reminded of. I probably shouldn't have watched the programme, but I kept thinking that if I saw it through to the end, it would all be explained and I'd learn something. The only thing I learned is that I don't like fanatics, even when I agree with their cause.

I'm OK. I know you lot are worrying, because that's what you do, but I am OK. I'm not going to have a breakdown or anything. I'm just...dealing with things in my own time.

Halloween was good. I handed out a ton of candy, as ever, and have definitely kept the local dentists in business for the next few months. Classes are going well, too, and we're now learning about food, which has stimulated my appetite. :) Lovely Eli, who usually sits next to me, wasn't there yesterday, but I had a lot of fun with our table, and when Magdalena made us move and sit with people we didn't know, that was fun too, and it was nice to talk to some new faces.

OK. I have a backache, and I need to get home and eat something. The smell of pistachio kulfi is driving me mad. And I want to take a bath, and read some more of "The Stone Key". (That's the sixth Obernewtyn book, btw.) I skimmed ahead just a little, and found out that Domick is going to die, so I'm very sad, but it'll still be a good read.

Hope y'all will forgive me for not replying to messages today - my brain isn't working well enough to give you guys the attention you deserve, so I'm going to leave that until next week. Or perhaps work on them when I'm in bed. :)

Happy November!

News - Week Starting 26th Oct

(This uninspiring titling of my notes is starting to become a habit. Sorry.)

It's been a strange week. A bit up and down - and no, pervs, not in *that* way. My hormones are all over the place, and I've spent much of my time lying in the bath, or lying in bed, or lying across the kitchen table, because my kidneys hurt and flat is the most comfortable position for me. Of course, there are times when I have to sit up straight - I went to class yesterday, and I had to sit in a straight-backed chair for two hours, and then wait for forty minutes at the bus stop on a slanted seat that I kept falling off - remind me never to wear a velvet jacket or skirt to class again; I slip off the seats too much - and that was pretty agonizing.

The other main downfall of the hormone surges, of course, is that I've eaten half the Halloween candy, and as soon as I finish here I have to go to Tesco and buy some more.

Class was good, though. I brought lollipops for everyone to eat, which was fun, and I'm really warming up to our teacher, as well as the other people in the class. About a third of the original class seems to have dropped out - either that or they've been ill for several weeks - and we're now down to about 15 of us, so we sit on two big tables and are very loud (and probably slightly obnoxious, but nobody seems to mind, although Magdalena - our teacher - doesn't always seem to get our humour). All in all, it's a great class. It seems wrong somehow that you should have so much fun LEARNING. Part of me wonders if I'm going to walk away from the class knowing anything at all, since half the time we seem to chat and laugh, but then at the same time I do feel like I'm learning quite a lot. It's a challenge, and I like that; it's been too long since I did something that used the learning part of my brain.

It's always a long night - class is only two hours, from 7-9pm, but with all the buses I usually leave the house at 5.40 and get home about 10.15 - IF the buses come. I'm supposed to take the 9.28 from Hatfield to Alby, and then the 9.56 from Alby town to home, but not once in four weeks has the 9.28 arrived. Which means I end up on the 9.45 (which is usually a few minutes early), panicking the whole time about whether I'll make the 9.56, or if I'll have to wait another hour - because the S3 (or is it S2?) only comes once an hour at that time of night - or take a cab, or walk. None of which are particularly nice options, because either way it means I don't get there before the Chinese takeaway closes.

Luckily, though, I've always managed to make the 9.56, although a couple of times that's only because I took my shoes off and ran for it. So my Tuesday nights have so far always had the same routine - class, buses home, pick up some chicken chow mein and a can of Lilt, go home, say hi to Mom, take a bath, and eat my noodles in bed while I read a good book. Wonderful.

Monday I went to Homebase and bought paint. I'm painting my bedroom pale pink. It hurts to paint it, a little - the peppermint green has seen me through a lot of good and bad times, and when the colour changes and I put away some of the decorations, and buy a bed, the whole character of the room is changed. And you all know how I hate change. I last painted the room back in summer of 2002, when we moved back into the house after living in Spain, and I've been holding off redecorating for several years because of all the memories.

When you keep things looking the same, you can remember better, and there's a lot of things that happened in that room that are worth remembering. Not all of them are particularly happy things, but all of them are events that helped to shape the person that I am today. Part of me is scared that when everything looks different, then I'll be different too, and I'll start to forget all the people I've known and loved in the last seven years. If they were all still part of my life, it would be easier, but some of those people are long gone. I suppose the issue isn't really the room at all, it's the fact that I miss them. I miss Richard, and Curt, and Sanjit, and everyone else who's no longer a big part of my life.

No matter how much I tell myself that change is healthy, change is a vital part of life, I still hate it, and probably will until I die. But I do it anyway, because it needs to be done. :)

So the green is going. And the mattress on the floor, where I've been sleeping since Richard was sharing the room with me that summer, is going too. My cardiologist said that I have to have a bed, so I'm getting a bed. After much deliberation between a couple of very different beds, I decided to go with the one that I wouldn't normally pick. Usually I go for natural woods that are simple and low to the ground, and admittedly those are the ones that I automatically gravitated towards this time. In fact, I had one all picked out, until I realised that it was an almost carbon copy of Curt's bed - or at least the one he had when I last saw it, a few years ago - which freaked me out a little.

So I pushed the changes, and now the one that I've picked is very different. It's metal, ivory-coloured with brass bedknobs, and very Victorian-looking, but not ugly. Perhaps if it were a dark colour it might look weird and gothic, but the ivory-colour makes it quite pretty and elegant. It'll go well in a pink room, and Mom bought me a new door handle - pale blue, with a crystal effect to it - and I'm going to buy some matching knobs to put on my furniture. And I've been saving pretty things for years, that I've got as Christmas and birthday presents and have never been able to put out because they didn't go with the decor before. I have an antique-effect oval mirror with enamel dragonflies at the top and bottom, and a butterfly jewellery box, and an incense burner with crystal beads, and at least fifty beautiful candles. I have photo frames with silk and beadwork, and crystal prisms to hang in my window, and silk pillowcases with lace. I have beautiful white Egyptian cotton bed linen with a broderie trim that makes me feel like a Victorian bride, and beige-and-raspberry silk bed linen with Japanese cherry blossom on that Mom gave me last birthday. I intend to paint the frame of my boring wood-effect long mirror in a pretty sky-blue colour, and possibly to paint the melamine dressing table and nightstand, which I've had since I was seven years old, to match.

It's been many years since I had a girly bedroom, and it's never been *this* girly. I had flowered wallpaper when I was seven or eight, but since I started choosing my own decorations when I was about ten, I've gone for things that are more androgynous. My room at the moment is a nice room, but if you didn't know who lived there you might not know whether it was a girl or a boy's room, aside from the clothes and jewellery and stuff. I have bright colours, splashy pillows, African and Native American masks on my walls. For a few years, though, I've been yearning for lace and ribbons, and my fear of losing my memories has held me back.

(Quite ironic, if you think about it.)

But I'm doing it. I'm making the leap. And it's going to look beautiful. I just hope that any friends I have staying over - guys, really - don't feel like they're going to break things. Guys always seemed to like the unisex look that I went for, and I'm a little bit worried about how my male friends will react to the change. It should be OK, though - they seem to have reacted positively to the changes in my person over the last few years (or at least most of them have). And even if they react badly...hell, it isn't really their business, anyway. It's *my* room. I don't know why I even worry about this stuff.

OK, what else? Class, room...hmm. I'm not sure what else there is to report for the last week. I came into town today to use the library and pick up work, and found that my last paycheck didn't go through, which was a pain in the ass. (Yes, Paul, that was a direct dig at you.) So I'm overdrawn at the bank again. Unfortunately I didn't find this out until AFTER I bought a couple of things, because I was relying on the paycheck being there. So now I have to go home, sort through bank statements, borrow money from the savings to put in the bank to cover the overdraft so I only get charged once, and then come back tomorrow or Friday to put the money in. I'm really pissed, because there should have been enough money to go to CeX and buy some games for my DS, and now there isn't. Bleh. I wanted to do some more Christmas shopping, too. And I wanted some more songs from iTunes.

Yesterday I finally caved into pressure from Kell, and agreed to model for him. We did a Halloween theme, so it was actually a lot of fun, and while my costume was skimpier than I'm used to wearing, I didn't have to do any nudes. (Thank God - I'm not comfortable enough with my body yet to get back to doing that. Although I probably will have to force myself to be, because I need the money.)

Unfortunately we finished late, so I didn't have a chance to change before I went to class, although I did manage to put on a slightly longer skirt and a cami under the jacket I was wearing. So I turned up to class in an ankle-length black velvet jacket, cut low to show plenty of cleavage, and held together at the bust by only two buttons, then flowing down to show the skirt underneath, along with smoky grey and black eyeshadow, eyeliner, mascara and blood-red lipstick, with red flowers in my hair and on my handbag. God only knows what the people in class must have thought - I tend to be pretty conservative in my clothing, and as for makeup I rarely wear more than face base and eyeshadow, with a little blush if I'm looking peaky that day. Certainly lipstick and mascara are things I wear maybe twice a year, and eyeliner not much more often.

Despite the embarrassment, it was actually quite fun, and I looked kind of neat. So I'll probably repeat it again on Saturday for the trick-or-treaters.

Ah yes. Candy. Don't forget to buy candy. Damn, I'd better check and see how much change I've got in my purse.

I've been reading a lot of Poe for the last week, and I'm nearly finished with the book I bought last Wednesday, so today I bought the matching book - "Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque". I've never read most of the stories in it, so I'm really looking forward to it. Although I may have to take a break for a little while; some of the stories in "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" really unsettled me. "The Fall of the House of Usher" was very haunting, and "The Masque of the Red Death" and "MS Found in a Bottle" gave me intense flashbacks to nightmares that I've had for my whole life. By far the worst for me, though, was "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar", which makes me shiver every time I think of it.

Interestingly, I mentioned the fact that a lot of my nightmares seem to have come out of Poe stories that I'd never read - I'd previously only read a few of his that I know of - and she told me that she thought she might have read him to me when I was a little girl. Certainly she said she remembered reading some of the poetry to me when I was learning to read. Which is something I never ever knew before, and brings up the question, WTF? Who on earth reads Poe to a two-and-three-year-old?

Well, apparently my mother does.

...I don't want to give you the impression that she's a bad mother or anything, she's just...I don't know. She has a lot more faith in me than I deserve. She's always had this assumption that I'm so much more mature and intelligent and capable than I actually am, and I've never wanted to disabuse her of that notion, so whenever she did something with me as a kid that probably wasn't age-appropriate - like buying me "Pretty Woman" for my sixth birthday, to teach me the facts of life - I just sort of sat and got on with it. Truly, I probably didn't realise until I was nine or ten that not everyone grew up the same way that I did. I always thought that the kids loved coming to my house because they liked me, but in hindsight I realise that probably a lot of it was due to the fact that they'd get an education that they never got at home. That said, my Mom was always overprotective when it came to letting me do things alone, and she was much more involved in my life than any of my friends' parents. She certainly wasn't neglectful or anything; in fact she was quite the opposite. But some of her ideas of what kids should and shouldn't be exposed to are...well, liberal, to say the least.

Which I suppose I should celebrate, since my upbringing has made me into a person who's generally happy, generally confident, and can cope with just about anything, despite the nightmares. Very little surprises me, even less shocks and horrifies me, and there are very few things in the world that I can't deal with. And if the price for that is a slight aloofness, a slight sense of distance from the rest of the world, and occasional accusations of being unemotional and too cerebral...well, it's not a high price at all.

It's not like I don't CARE, after all. I care. I'm just not controlled by my emotions.

Although that said, I had a pretty freak-out moment today. I found a child. I was in Wilkinson, buying masking tape and potato chips, and I came across a little boy sitting in one of the seldom-used aisles at the back of the shop, playing wiith the displays and eating a packet of custard creams. He couldn't have been more than three, and I'm guessing it was more like one-and-a-half or two. And I had no idea what the heck to do. He didn't seem to belong to anyone, and I searched up and down a couple of the aisles on either side, looking to see if his parent might have left him there while he / she was getting something one aisle over, but nobody was there. I couldn't walk away to find the security guard, because he was right at the other end of the (fairly big) shop, and the kid might have moved by then, or got snatched or something. If he'd been crying or seemed upset in any way, I'd have picked him up and taken him to security, but he was just sitting there happily, eating his cookies and playing by himself, and I thought that if I picked him up I might upset him. So I just stood there for ten minutes or so, waiting to see if a parent would appear, and none did. So I sat down next to him, and asked him if he knew where his Mummy or Daddy was, and at first he didn't want to talk, but then he said he didn't know. I asked if he was here with Mum, and he didn't know. And I asked if he was here with Dad, and he said no. And I asked if he was lost, and he said he didn't know. And I just kept thinking, what if I take him to information, and while I'm doing that his parent comes back to find him and thinks I'm trying to steal him?

I should mention here that I have NO idea of how to relate to children. I'm not a kiddie person. I like them well enough, and I can feed them and change a diaper and stuff, but aside from the physical needs I really don't know anything about how to take care of them. I especially don't know how to talk to them, and tend to treat them as very small adults. So I didn't know what else to ask, so I just sat there and played with him for a little longer.

I suppose if many more minutes had passed, I'd have had to take him to the information desk and see if he knew his name, and have them put out an announcement. Luckily a frantic mother showed up a couple of minutes later. Turned out that she'd turned around to pick something up, and in that half a minute the kid had toddled off, and she'd been searching the entire store for him for the last twenty minutes. God knows how he'd gotten all the way to the back corner by himself. And I felt kind of bad about that, because if I'd taken him in as soon as I found him then she'd have got him back sooner, but hell, I did the only thing I knew how to do. The whole episode scared the crap out of me much more effectively than anything Poe's written.

So yeah, it was a strange day. Strange week. I don't know what else is going on with Ryan's situation; Lauren isn't talking about it much. She and Chris have both had bad colds this week, and she's working so hard, and I think she's just lost the energy to fight. But she needs to fight, because the last thing that Social Services said was that if he was living with her, they weren't going to pay to support him. So basically they're saying that they're refusing to support a homeless minor. And I told her, you have to push them, and when that doesn't work, push harder. We do not live in a country where we let children go without home and food. You hear the liberals talking about all the starving homeless kids here, but most of it is bunk. The government isn't perfect - hell, it isn't even good - but they don't let kids live on the streets if their parents kick them out. They either go into the care of a family member, or they go into foster care, and either way the carer gets a government subsidy. And yet that's what they're saying to Lauren, apparently. "Either you support your brother, or he can go be homeless." So I can only assume that there's been some kind of misunderstanding, on either end. I'm not entirely sure what to do about it, to be honest. I haven't been invited to do anything about it, and on the one hand it's not really my business. Yes, this is what I do for a living, but Lori and Ryan aren't part of my work life, they're friends. And until she asks me to help, there isn't really much I can do. She's not even getting any support from her Dad - apparently he's been told that until the maintenance situation is sorted out in court, he's not allowed to give her any money, which is the biggest load of balls I've ever heard. If a parent wants to give money to a child to help them out with something, it's not anybody's business but theirs.

Then on the other hand, I worry.

*sigh*

This note has been overly long, I'm sure, and Tesco closes in a little under an hour, so I'd better leave you guys there. I don't want y'all to think that things are bad right now - they're really not. Aside from worrying about Lauren and worrying about Ryan and worrying about Mom and worrying about money, things are going pretty well. Class is great, the autumn is great, and hopefully tonight we'll get out the Halloween decorations. Normally we'd have had them up weeks ago, but we've all been busy and tired. I need to go to the gym tomorrow, and hopefully that'll give me a bit more energy. :)

I also need a date. It's been a while since I had one of those, and Chris - Chris Kennedy - has ordered me to take some time for fun.

Enjoy your Halloween! And give out treats - it's only once a year, after all. :)

News - Week Starting 19th Oct

So sue me, I can't think of a better title than that. :P

School is going well. I still haven't bought any jeans to wear (and won't until I get rid of some of the fat off my belly - what's the point of buying jeans that I'll only be able to wear - hopefully - for a month or two?) but I'm dressing a bit more sharply. Less skirtage, more bling. Sneakers and a hoodie yesterday, although that wasn't my choice; I have blisters on my toes and it's too cold to wear suede or velvet and not cold enough to wear my long wool coat or my parka.

The weather is being crazy here. October isn't supposed to be this cold, but last year it snowed before Halloween - we usually don't get snow here until late December, or even January or February - and this year looks like it may well do the same. So my nice little autumn clothes are all useless, because I'm stuck in boots and sweatshirts. Bleh.

But anyway, yeah. Class is good. Hard, but good. We learned - allegedly - a lot of vocabulary last night, but I can't remember any of it yet, since I haven't had a chance to revise.

The campus is really great. Did I say that last week? Probably. And the guys are cute. (Sorry Lindsay, I guess we'll have to agree to differ on that point. I actually *like* the dodgy ones, LOL.) I love uni, and I love autumn, and I'm really having a great time. Everything is so full of life at the moment; there's so much promise in the air, and I'm really feeling exuberant about the season. (You can probably tell this by the overusage of semicolons. Normal people overuse exclamation points when they're excited, I overuse semicolons and hyphens.)

The nostalgia comes and goes. Yesterday I kept seeing people I thought I knew, and even though it never turned out to be them, the almost-sight of them brought me back. While I was waiting for the bus (the third bus of six that I took yesterday, I'm sorry to say) I saw a girl who looked so much like Sanjit that I had to do a double-take, and a triple, and a quadruple. She didn't have Sanjit's lovely curves, but the face was perfect. And then on the bus home from Hatfield, there was a guy whose body was the perfect double for Richard's. He even SMELLED like Richard, which is funny, because after six years I wouldn't have thought that I remembered what Richard smelled like, but it turns out that I do.

I'm back at the gym, although not heavily. The cardiologist gave me the OK, and that's enough for me, but Mom worries - I guess it's a mom thing - so I've promised to go easy. This means no 3-hour sessions, at least not for awhile. But any exercise is better than none, and it was nice to sit in the sauna and soak up the warmth; I've been cold for weeks. I met a guy in the sauna the other day, actually. It was a very strange encounter. You ever meet a person and you just know instinctively, Oh my Lord, I know this person. Not know as in, we've met before. KNOW, deep down. I'm not necessarily talking on a spiritual level...or maybe I am, I don't know. It's not something I can explain - it's not something I can even analyse properly, although not for lack of trying. But I saw him, and I thought he was cute, and the longer we sat there - even without talking much - the more and more I felt like I knew him well. He wasn't even my type, really. I guess he was good-looking, but he had the type of looks that aren't particularly striking or memorable. And yet I know I won't forget his face.

The best description I can give, really, is that he looked gentle. Sweet. Kind. And very smart. OK, so sweet and kind and smart IS my type, but I usually go for sweet and kind and smart when it comes wrapped up in pretty paper. What can I say, I haven't entirely grown up yet. :P

I forgot to ask his name, but I have this strange feeling that it might be David. Just one of those things that I know without knowing, I guess.

It wasn't until I got home and was thinking about him before I went to sleep that I remembered that sometimes I wake up with the name David on my lips, and I've never figured out why, because I don't know many Davids. David Clapworthy and David Airey from high school. David Fruin, my Mom's old friend. David Wolfe, from a book that I like. I can't think of any others, offhand.

Hum.

If any of you tell me I'm romanticizing again, I'll shoot you, because I'm really trying hard not to.

OK, I'm just about done with news. Nothing from Social Services. Nothing major health-wise to tell you. It's been a really good week, but I have a backache now from sitting at the computer for too long, so I'm going to go home. I have a chicken sandwich from Greggs, and Edgar Allen Poe's "Tales of Mystery and Imagination" from Waterstones, and I downloaded a couple of different versions of Pachelbel's Canon in D Major from iTunes, as well as "La Marais" from Jean-Philippe Rameau's "Pieces de Clavecin en Concerts" and a couple of Halloween songs (as a nod to the season), and I've ordered Poe's complete poems from Amazon, so I'm a very happy bunny. (Payday yesterday, can you tell?) So I'm going home to eat chicken and listen to music and take a bath and read Poe.

Enjoy your day, and week. :)

(G - I know you read these, so I'm adding a note here for you because for some reason I can't send notes to you or write on your wall, I have no idea why. Happy birthday! I tried to send you early birthday love last week, but your wall wouldn't accept my post, and then yesterday I couldn't get here because of class and a hospital appointment, and when I finally got here today I STILL couldn't get your wall to work, argh! Hope you had a great day, and here's a hug and a kiss from me, with lots of love being sent your way.)

Aha!

Heart problem solved. But anyone with a medical background, please read and then tell me if it makes any sense, because I've never heard of anything like this and I don't understand it AT ALL.

Apparently I have allergies. Not quite sure what I'm allergic to, but it's something in my house. When something that I'm allergic to enters my personal space (LOL - such a funny term), my bronchioles and alveoli get inflamed. Inflamed alveoli means that I can't get enough oxygen to my bloodstream, and I get nauseous and light-headed. Apparently this (the poor oxygenation, not the nausea and lightheadedness) normally results in cyanosis and eventual tissue damage if it isn't sorted out (kind of like in emphysema, I guess?) but for some reason my heart's compensating by beating faster so I get the oxygen I need.

This is the medical explanation. And I guess it makes sense. I know that my blood is poorly oxygenated, from seeing the colour when I have blood tests, and tests on my oxygen levels in arterial blood (I think) confirmed it. I know that I don't get tachycardic episodes when I'm walking outside, or when I'm at the gym - only at home. I know that when I stay at Phil and Jackie's house, I always feel a whole lot healthier.

But somehow, it just seems weird to me. I don't know why, maybe because I've never heard of anything like this before. Maybe because the episodes come on SO suddenly - sixty or ninety seconds between the nausea and the start of the heart racing. Or maybe I'm just being paranoid.

The problem is that we don't know what exactly I'm allergic to. It's obviously not general street pollution, because I don't get sick when I'm outside. It's probably not animals, because I don't seem to have a problem when I'm at Tony and Debbie's. I don't think it's general dust, because, well, dust is everywhere, although I admit that my house is more dusty than most; Mom and I don't have the energy to clean as well as we should, nor the money to hire a cleaner. (Although I'm seriously thinking of getting someone to come in for a couple of hours a week, even if it means cutting back on expenses elsewhere, or taking some extra modelling jobs.)

So I have my orders. No being around cigarette smoke. If someone smokes in the house, all the doors and windows have to be opened for ten minutes. (Mom is actually being really good about this; I think the whole heart thing really freaked her out.) Change my bed every three to four days, and only use cotton bedding. (I do use cotton anyway, but all that constant laundry is going to be a pain in the butt, especially with the amount of washing Lauren has to do.) Buy a new bed and mattress as soon as I can (money!) and when I do, get the old mattress taken away by the council, and launder my duvet and pillows at 90 degrees. Buy an anti-mite spray for the furniture. (We can't find one. It appears that everyone's stopped making them.) Hoover my bedroom at least once a week, preferably more often, and dust as often as I can. Luckily I don't have carpet in my room, so that helps a lot.

Aside from this, we're just monitoring everything else. I do have some weakness in the heart valves, but she said that unless it gets markably worse, surgery will probably cause more problems than it solves.

So despite all the pain-in-the-ass stuff, I'm happy to have answers. My cardiologist is really nice, and actually listens to me, which is a relief. With most of the doctors I see, they listen to me for the first five minutes, until they ask if I have any other medical conditions, and then as soon as I say "ME" or "fibromyalgia" I see something change in their eyes - it's just like a shutter drops down, and they stop listening. So I'm sending many thanks heavenward for a doctor who doesn't write me off as a hypochondriac, or worse, someone with Munchausen's.

All in all, it wasn't a bad week. I started uni, and I'm not sure how much I like the classes yet, but time will tell. I love the campus, though. It really tickles me that after spending SO much time checking out universities when I was at City & Islington, after having high hopes for Brunel's wonderful reputation, for Royal Holloway's beautiful campus, for Queen Mary's incredible medical labs, for Sussex's laid-back atmosphere, and NONE of them feeling right to me...the one university that feels good, that feels like home, is University of Hertfordshire. Weirdness.

So if I ever decide to do a degree course, I imagine it'll be right here.

Of course, that could be something to do with the people. I love the people on this campus. One thing I did notice, though, is that I don't dress right. I dress like an American college girl from the fifties and sixties, and sometimes like an American college girl from the nineties, but I don't dress English. English college girls do not wear A-line skirts and heels and V-neck sweaters and little preppy twinsets. They don't wear pretty cropped velvet jackets and knee-length suede jackets. They certainly don't wear tartan miniskirts and angora sweaters and penny loafers and hats, the way I think of college girls as being. Some of them wear gym clothes, and the more fashion-conscious ones wear skinny jeans and boots and funky jackets with slogans on and lots and lots of big, big jewellery.

I'm not sure how much I can look like an English girl. I don't wear big fake bling, I wear little delicate silver things decorated with opals or carnelians or amethysts or peridot. I certainly can't wear skinny jeans, and I don't care enough about designers to wear those, even if I could afford them. And I will NOT wear my gym clothes for hanging out; I don't have the money to keep replacing them. BUT...I suppose I can try and find some jeans that look right. Ones with loose legs, not skinny ones, but still closer to normal fashion than the skirts and sweater-sets that I wear now. Jeans and a sweater would be OK. What I really, really want is one of those Diane von Furstenburg wrap dresses, but I suppose that would be too old-fashioned.

Or maybe I should just forget the whole thing. Guys seem to like me the way I am; they consider me to be some exotic creature that's just wandered onto their campus from a completely different world, and that's attractive, apparently. It's funny, because it's the first time in my life I've been considered exotic; most of the time I'm your average girl-next-door.

I dunno, I just want to fit in, but I've never really fit in anywhere. Even the places that I've been comfortable and made friends, like at C & I, I was never really the same as them.

*shrugs*

Anyway, it's been a good couple of weeks, aside from this terrible tiredness that I just can't shake. That, and the autumn is working its magic on me, as ever, and making me yearn for someone to love me. The rest of the year I don't care much either way about relationships - if I have one that feels right, then great, and if I'm single, that's fine too. But from October through until just after Christmas, I have dreams, and memories, and longings. Just about everything memorable that's happened in my romantic life (even the things that weren't really romantic at all) have happened during the October-January period. Julian and I saw the most of each other in the autumn. Curt and I started hanging out in autumn. I became aware of James Painting in October, when he sat beside me and stroked my foot at a party - and why I remember that I don't know; it was just very memorable for some reason. Perhaps because nobody had really caressed me in that way before. Richard and I became a couple in November. Cam and I first met in June, but then I didn't hear anything from him until October, when he called me and we met up. I went to visit Oli for the first time in October. PJ and I first started talking in autumn, I believe - I can't remember exactly, but I do remember talking to him about the wonderful crispness in the air, and how nice is it to put on boots and a jacket and take a walk and breathe that coldness into your lungs.

September through December is my favourite time of the year. Halloween is my actual favourite bit, but the whole of the autumn and early winter fills me with joy, and a little nostalgia too. I look back on all these experiences with happiness, but also with yearning. I miss these people, even the ones I didn't know very well, or who I haven't seen in a long time. I long for someone to hold me, to love me, the way these people made me feel loved, whether it was for an hour or several years. I'm not entirely sure how to go about finding someone, though. I've never known how to find a guy; they just fall into my lap sometimes, but I've never learned how to actively pursue, how to catch someone's interest. Any romantic interests that I've managed in the past have been entirely instinctive.

Maybe someone gives classes for this sort of thing? :D