News - March 26th

So I'm sitting here on my bed, nicely relaxed for the first time in what feels like months, clean-sheeted, clean-shaven, clean-faced aside from a slight case of panda eyes due to my refusal to use cleanser and toner on my face (I wear mascara so rarely, and anything else comes off easily with Clean & Clear or St. Ives apricot scrub), and since I'm so nicely clean and it's only 23.47 and I don't have anything pressing to do (for once), I decided now might be the time to update you on some things. I know I've owed you guys notes for a long time, and with the lack of internet access here and my limited time at the library - even when I take my own laptop so I'm not on the library's clock, I can only stare at a screen for so long - I haven't been able to update you as regularly as I like.

Although at least I can COME on here when I'm at the library; some of the sites won't let me on at all because they have a filter for adult content. It never once occurred to me before that the filters would apply to my own computer, but apparently they do.

Bastards.

Ahem, sorry. I shouldn't be cursing them, since it's only due to them that I'm able to come on and check my facebook and email and stuff at all. Very few places in this town have free wifi access, although I may try Starbucks; I know a lot of their shops have it.

Anyway, it wasn't until just a couple of days ago that I had the brainwave: I CAN WRITE THE NOTES AT HOME AND THEN COPY-PASTE THEM ONTO FACEBOOK. Duh. Sounds obvious now, innit? But as we know, I can be a bit slow sometimes, so it's taken me until now to figure it out. But hell, it took me two months of no-internet to even realise I could use the library computers in the first place, and several months after that to realise that I could take my laptop in and use the wifi. (I don't think I even knew what wifi was before this. I knew that my laptop was wifi enabled, but I thought that just meant I could use my own network anywhere in the house without cables, I never realised that I could actually use someone else's network without having to download software beforehand. The only previous use I had for public wifi was swapping Pokemon with strangers on my Nintendo DS.)

Anyway.

So I figured, I could use this note to write you a short - or I'll try and keep it short, anyway - update of my life for the last several months.

Living Stuff:

OK. Lodgers. The Italian guy is gone, thank God. One day he just gave in his notice, said he'd be out by the weekend, and left the very next day. Didn't come back for his TV, or his deposit, and didn't leave an address to mail it to (the deposit, not the TV - I can barely even lift the TV). I assume that he went back to Sardinia, since he never stopped complaining about England. Well, good luck to him.

So we interviewed several, and none of them ever rang back, and we were starting to lose hope...and then Lauren appeared. She's been with us for near on five months now, and I kid you not, she is the perfect lodger. Or as close to perfect as they get. She's a really nice person, fresh and sweet as watermelon in summer, and surprisingly easy to live with. She pays her rent on time, doesn't steal, doesn't do drugs, doesn't have wild parties every night, doesn't make a vast amount of mess. (Some mess, but that's just par for the course - she IS eighteen, after all.) And although her boyfriend Chris seems to be living here more often than not, I'd much rather have two nice lodgers (for the price of one) than one obnoxious lodger, so I'm not complaining. Chris actually went to school with me, and I remember his face, but I didn't really know him - he was a couple of years below, and Lord knows I wasn't there all that much. Anyway, both Mom and I get on well with the two of them, so it's working out well. I expect they'll get a place together at some point, but I hope it's not too soon - I really like having them here, and I dread the day that we have to get someone else in, since most lodgers...well, suck. Aside from Lauren and Justyna (who was only here a couple of months), Ali and Brian were the best of the bunch for the last six years or so, and even those two made me slightly uncomfortable due to the monster crushes they seemed to have on me. (Don't ask why, I never managed to explain it.)

But anyway, having Lauren here has pretty much restored my faith in the lodger system.


Health:

Is not good. I got sick on my birthday - it's the birthday curse; I haven't had a birthday in five years when I wasn't so sick I had to stay in bed - and then got the flu right afterwards, and now I have glandular fever (or mono, to you Americans). So I'm off work for a couple of months, which means careful budgeting if I don't want to completely deplete my already-low savings account.

I can't actually remember a time anymore when I felt well.

But that's enough about that.


Dating:

I don't have anyone special in my life right now. Oh, all the guys I know are special in their own way, but I don't have anyone that I could call a boyfriend. Cameron and I don't see each other all that much anymore, and I think we've both finally accepted that we'll never be together as boyfriend-girlfriend. From a practical standpoint, we're very well-suited, but we're also both passionate enough people that we need to be with someone we really have chemistry with, and the chemistry just isn't there for us. It's a shame really, because in all other ways we're perfectly suited.

And ironically, the other guy who's been in and out of my life recently, I have nothing BUT chemistry with. We're great together in the bedroom, and great friends, and totally not suited for romance or everlasting love.

So I'm still just hanging here, waiting. I wish that I could be one of those women who's perfectly happy being a singleton, but I'm just not. I'm contented enough with my life, but I can't see myself living this way forever, and whenever I look into the future I see myself married, probably with children. I can't imagine anything else, honestly. Perhaps some women are happy alone, but I don't feel entirely right, or complete. It's not that I don't feel complete without a man, it's that I don't feel complete without THE RIGHT man. I certainly don't need a man to validate me, or to be my reason for living, but there's a wistfulness in me that makes itself known at certain times, and it's then that I realise that a part of me always feels like it's just waiting, yearning, longing for the right person to come along and make me feel happy and whole. While I'm not unhappy being alone, I certainly prefer being with a person who makes my heart soar and my body sing with joy.

The dragonfly really is the perfect symbol for me. People have been buying me dragonfly things for years, and it's only in the last year or so that I've realised how well it fits me.

Of course, on the other hand, I much prefer being alone to being with the wrong guy, and most of the guys I meet are wrong. Not wrong in themselves, but wrong for me. It's actually really difficult for me to find a guy who I feel right with. I've only met four or five in my life, and I haven't even dated all of them. Of course, I've never really actively looked for a man, either. The ones I've had just sort of fell into my lap. :) I don't know whether this shows faith in destiny and the universe, or just plain laziness.

I did meet a nice guy last week, on the train,, named Ty. I didn't manage to get his number - my station snuck up on me - but he has a lot of friends in the New Greens area, says he spends a lot of time here, so I'll probably run into him at some point.

There was also a really nice waiter tonight. Mom and I went to the Harvester for dinner, and we had the loveliest waiter. I've seen him a couple of times before, and I always mean to ask his name, and I always forget. He's not my usual type - for one thing, he looks a lot like my cousin Nick (hi, Nick), and frankly it just feels weird to be attracted to a guy who looks like your cousin. But "looks like" certainly doesn't equal "is" or even "is like", so where's the harm? I ended up tipping him a fiver for a £25 bill, which was perhaps a little high, but hell, I remember the days when I basically lived on the tips I made waiting tables. It's not like the restaurants ever pay you well. And he was sweet, and friendly, and called me darling, and he smiled with his eyes as well as his mouth. I'm a sucker for guys who smile with their whole face, especially when their eyes crinkle up the way this one's did.

I ate salad, and one of those Cajun chicken burgers - which, strangely enough, has been renamed the Mesquite Burger. (I say strangely because I'm pretty sure that mesquite doesn't grow either in Louisiana, where Cajun people live, or in Nova Scotia, where the original French Acadians came from.) And then half a Rocky Horror. It doesn't sound like such a lot of food, but it felt like it. Although funnily enough, NOW I'm kind of hungry again, even though I only finished eating like two hours ago.

Naturally I couldn't eat it gracefully. I've never been graceful with burgers. It's frustrating, because when I go to a restaurant or to someone's house for dinner, I try so hard to have good table manners. At home it doesn't matter so much, because mostly we eat in front of the TV anyway (we did go through a stage when I insisted on sitting at the table for dinner, and talking about our respective days, but that was back when I was in college and actually had a day to talk about) so it's not so important to be ladylike. But when I'm out, I strive for elegance and grace, and it's irritating when I end up with mayonnaise all over my chin.

I often wish I could be more like Debbie. I bet Debbie has never got mayo all over her chin, or snorted Coke out her nose because someone made her laugh (yeah, I know - you're supposed to snort coke UP your nose, not down - I've heard all the jokes before), and I'm a hundred percent sure that she doesn't have to remove her shirt when she eats chicken fajitas.

Debbie is the epitome of femininity and class. There are many, many ways that I wish I could be like her, not just concerning food. She's everything that I always think a woman should be - elegant without being pretentious, well-manicured but not vain, beautiful but not too flashy. She's a fantastic mother, a fantastic wife, a fantastic cook, a fantastic homemaker. She seems to have limitless energy to do all the things that women do, and to top it all off, she's one of the nicest people you'll ever meet. I can see why my brother loves her so much - why everyone loves her, really.

I suppose that I hold her in such high regard not just because she's wonderful and nice, but because she seems to me to be the ideal woman, and her pastimes are so very like my own. Like her, I'm naturally a homemaker - I love to cook, and garden, and sew, and I can think of nothing nicer than to have a husband who adores me, and a nice home, and just live a quiet life with my family and my cats and my garden, looking after everyone and making life nice for them. Yet I've never quite figured out how to do this. I don't know if it's because I'm still young, or because I'm so ill, or because I'm selfish enough that I haven't learned yet how to live with other people, or some combination of the three. I want a boyfriend, and eventually a husband, but I haven't learned the art of compromise. Despite my genetic legacy, part of me wants children, even if I choose to adopt instead, but a large part of me is scared that I'm too selfish by nature to be a good mother, that I'll never be happy if I have to live a life where someone else comes first. And I've been ill for so long that I don't enjoy things the way I used to. Even the things that I like doing seem like huge chores these days. I've always loved cooking, but I don't have the energy to do it most days, or to work in the garden, or make up the herbal medications and bath products that used to take up so much of my time. And when friends want to see me, a lot of the time I find myself wishing I could stay home and sleep or read instead. About the only things that I force myself to do as much as I used to are work and go to the gym. And even the gym's been sporadic for the last few months.

I hope and pray that one day I'll recover, and things will seem fun again. I don't want you to think that I live a life of misery or anything. I don't feel unhappy most of the time. I just feel...tired. Listless. Apathetic. The way you feel when you're at either the beginning or the tail end of a nasty flu, or when you don't sleep one night and then have to go to work early the next day, except I feel that way all the time.

But I live in hope that I'll get better - perhaps when we finally make the move to a warmer, drier climate - and then I can be a happy homemaker, as well as taking better care of my looks and wearing nice clothes and being altogether feminine.

Of course, I'll never be quite like Debbie. I'm harder, for one thing. More cynical, more prickly. Debbie is an English country garden, all roses and lupins and foxgloves, petunias and hollyhocks and sweet alyssum. I'm not saying that she's not tough - she has a lot of inner strength. But there's also a softness and a sweetness about her that I don't have. People think that I have it, but it's mostly an illusion. I, like my status says, am a child of the desert and scrubland, a child of creosote and mesquite and joshua trees, of gorse and heather and many kinds of cacti, and bougainvillea and oleander and night jasmine are about as close as I get to flowering. There's nothing soft about the desert, but it has its own beauty. A stark beauty, to be sure, but it's there.

And if sometimes I yearn to be soft and sweet like a cottage garden - well, you guys are the only ones who know about it.

It's funny, though, that people think of me as being soft and feminine. There's that side of me that's cheerful and innocent and girlish and as wholesome and all-American as apple pie, and that's the side that people seem to remember. They forget my logical mind, and the way I overanalyse everything, and my lack of emotion, and the fact that I'm too cerebral for my own good a lot of the time. All they remember is a girl who hugs everyone, and smiles easily, and loves quickly, and laughs often, and never lets anything get her down for long.

I suppose there are worse ways to be remembered.

Well, this note didn't turn out exactly the way I meant it to be, but it's well enough. I got the main news to you, and I'll keep you updated when I can.