Why Didn't He Call? He Promised He'd Call Me!

So Curt has gone AWOL, and it's scaring the crap out of me. I'm mocking myself, with the title, because that's what I do when I'm freaking out about things. I make them sound unimportant, like I'm overreacting, like one of those idiot girls who goes into a major panic when the douchebag she went out with at the weekend didn't call when he said he would. And who the hell knows, maybe I am.

For the last couple weeks Curt and I have been talking a lot. Texting for hours, just friendly banter, you know how it goes. He IS my best friend, after all. We talked every day, and he was supposed to come and spend Christmas Eve with me. On the 22nd his mom had a cold and had to cancel lunch plans with him. On the 23rd it was the flu. On Christmas Eve he texted me in the morning and told me the doctors thought it was swine flu, and he might have to take her to the emergency room if her fever got any higher. He updated me a couple times in the day. At 4.30 he called me and told me they were in the hospital, waiting for results on some sort of test, and when they got through and he knew if she had to stay in or not, he'd call me and see if it was too late to come over. I said, even if it's too late please call me anyway and tell me how she's doing, and he agreed.

He didn't call. Late that night I texted him to ask how she's doing, and he didn't reply. Christmas Day I texted to say Merry Christmas and how's your mom? and he didn't reply. Boxing Day I texted to say, I'm really getting quite worried now, if you can't call it's OK but please send a text and let me know she's alright, and he didn't reply. On the 27th and 28th I left him alone, and yesterday I texted to say Happy birthday, and how's mom doing? and he didn't reply. Today he was supposed to be coming over and I was going to either take him out for dinner for his birthday, or cook for him, and he hasn't called or texted me to say either that he's coming, or that he can't make it.

This is not a man who ignores my messages. When we've been out of touch it might take him a few days to get back to me, but when we're in a phase where we're talking a lot, it takes him a couple hours max. And for him to miss two dates, and not call me when he knows I'm worried about his mom...well, that's scaring the hell out of me right now. In ten years, the ONLY times he's ever avoided responding to my messages are when he's been going through something so bad that he can't bear to talk to anyone, and then he hibernates and cuts out the whole world. And even then, he doesn't always cut me out, he usually calls me in the middle of the night to talk things out.

Which leaves me with:

a) His mom did have swine flu, and she died;

b) His mom DOES have swine flu, and she's sick enough that he hasn't made it into work to check his work text message account, and he's not getting the texts I send to his cell phone because i) he's lost or broken it (which happens surprisingly often to him) or ii) his wife is intercepting them and deleting them before he reads them;

c) He's been in some sort of accident and is either i) dead or ii) comatose;

d) He caught the swine flu from his mom and is either i) dead or ii) too sick to remember to get in touch with me;

or e) He's just a total c***.

I'd like to think that e) isn't a possibility; I've known - and been best friends with - the guy nearly a decade, and I've never known him to do anything like this. But if none of A-D is correct, if he's alive and well and his mom's alive and well, then he IS a c***, becuse he should know from my messages how worried I am.

Nonetheless, I hope that in a couple days I'm flaming his ass for his jackassery, instead of comforting him - or, God forbid, needing comfort myself.

I'll make you all a nice post detailing my Christmas soon...for now, I'm going back to holding off the heart attacks with yet more sugar and Beethoven.

Will Pay In Hand Jobs

I don't suppose there's any pharmacists / doctors / "street pharmacists" in the Herts area who could bring me Otomize ear spray tonight.

Will pay in sexual favors.

Blog Games And Hotlists

Well, I'm home from Somerset, but I'll have to tell you all about that another time, I'm tired and both ears are now infected, and are killing me. And of course, I'm nearly out of eardrops, and it's a Friday so I can't get any till Monday. *sigh*

But enough whinging.

Now, I don't always participate in blog games, but I do like them a whole lot. And one that I'm definitely up for playing is LadyUnlaced's Virtual Gifts game. Go to this post - LadyU's Christmas Blog Challenge! - and read about it, since she explains it better than I can. And from now till New Years, watch out for my gift posts!

Oh, and just a heads up - in the next few days I will be hotlisting all the people I like on the blogs here, because it's one way for me to keep track of you in the status box (unlike most people on here, I actually do like the status box, heh) and my watched blogs list seems to be screwy atm. I would friend all of you, but standard members seem to have lost the ability to send invites. Boo hoo.

Anyway, if you get a hotlist from me, it's not me hitting on you, just my way of keeping an eye on you. It means I think you're awesome, so don't freak out too much. I only lech when it's wanted.



Enjoy your weekend!

What do you use your hotlist for? What about the flirts?

So Many Targets, So Little...Actually, There's Plenty Of Time

"NO! I TOLD YOU! ALL THE FUCKING TIME, NOW LEAVE JESS' SEAT ALONE!"

This is what the woman sitting opposite me - the one who, five minutes ago, was ignoring her crying baby while she sent text after text on her cell phone - is currently screaming at one of the other two children. Who is approximately three years old. Granted, both of the little girls (minus the one in the pram) are running wild, and I would have liked to see them have a little more decorum. But hell, if that's the kind of parenting mom does, what can you expect?

Yes, I know. I'm judging too soon. She could just be having a really, really bad day. Maybe she got dumped. Maybe she got fired. Maybe her father has just found out his AML has come back after a long remission. Who the heck knows? All I know is that I'm in a snarky mood right now, and that woman is very close to getting a tongue-lashing from me. Especially since she told one of her kids to sit in my (reserved) seat, without even asking me.

I booked my ticket online. I checked the boxes to request a seat on a table, with a power point for my laptop, and explained to them that I'm disabled and cannot sit comfortably in a normal seat. I paid the extra for the privilege and was assured that my seat would be there. I paid my booking fee. Of course, I got to the train, and it's not the seat I paid for. If I sit in the seat they gave me I'll be in agony after ten minutes, and this is a two-hour journey. So I'm sitting here on the floor of the train, because three men - who aren't even using electricals, for fuck's sake - have occupied the table seats.

Oh, lovely, the older child - probably five - has just asked her mother, "Where shall I put my bloody wet ones?" Not sure what wet ones they are, I'm hoping it's just tissue or something.

In addition to this, when I was at Farringdon - which is the first leg of a three-leg journey - some asshole - heck, some DOUCHEBAG - was in such a hurry, he pushed my suitcase over, knocked it down a step, and the base of one of the wheels shattered. And of course the wheel came off. And because the wheel base shattered, there's nothing to attach the wheel to. I have no idea if there are people out there who repair suitcases, although I hope there are, because I am miserable at the thought that my beautiful, expensive, hot pink Pierre Cardin suitcase, which I've only used twice, may now be unusable. I did buy travel insurance with the ticket, which I know covers theft, but frankly I'm not overly impressed with the company's record so far, so who the heck knows if they would pay for damage?

I know that by tonight, or at least by the time I get home and no longer have to lug 45lbs on one wheel, I'll be laughing about this. All the crap is a learning experience, right? But right now, I'm snarky, because I'm in a great deal of pain because of someone else's screwup.

This is on top of the really fucked up text message I got this morning from the BFF:

I am not using this phone for this week so please don't contact me on it. Will ring you later. Don't reply to this text.

Never in my life has he sent me a text like this, and he always, ALWAYS encourages me to text him back. Even when he's at work, he'll take five minutes out to have a little conversation, even if it's just one or two messages before he tells me he has to get back to work. Whatever it is that's preventing him from getting in touch with me would have to be pretty serious, because my Mom - a woman he calls Mom, too - had a serious accident on Friday, and last time I spoke to him he was very anxious to get the news of whether there was internal bleeding or not. (There wasn't, she just cracked a couple ribs, and after four days of running around 24-7, trying to do everything she needed, in addition to everything I needed, she's insisted that I go down to Somerset, albeit a day late. And Ryan's looking after her now, to set my mind at ease a bit.)

So there are at least three people that I want to flame right now - wifey, yelling mother and inane trainline people - and I expect, that when I'm in this kind of mood, I can probably think of a couple more if I really try.

Shit. My back is killing me, and my legs hurt.

I'll try and post you something a bit more upbeat tonight, but for now I'm going to go and listen to some fuck-off music, and maybe find a cup of coffee. That'll help my moods, right?

And if I ever, EVER use the f-word when screaming at my three-year-old, you all have my permission to hunt me down.

My God-Given Solace

To borrow a phrase from the wonderfully fabulous ArtemisJ, I call shenanigans on the packing fairies. I would have sworn in a court of law that I only packed a few things, plus the presents for my father's side of the family, and now somehow I have a 3 foot x 2 foot x 1 foot case, weighing roundabout 45lbs, and I can only assume that some naughty little imps have snuck things in when my back was turned.

And I'm only going for two freakin' days!

So yeah, I'm getting on a train down to Somerset in an hour or so, to see Papa and Stepmama. I thought I had to leave for the station at 11.15, but I misread my train time - it's an hour later than I thought - so I don't have to leave till 12.15 now. So I'm watching crummy daytime TV and wishing I was in bed, or at least wishing that I'd got some sleep last night. Unfortunately I had pain, and nausea, and just couldn't sleep. So I played on Farmville, and wrapped the presents, and played Sonic the Hedgehog, and talked a little to Kurisu-san (who works various hours in a bar, and last night he didn't get off until 4-ish).

We only talked for fifteen or twenty minutes, but it was really nice - I hadn't talked to him since before my lack of internet. He and his girlfriend went to Paris for a couple days, right after the last post that I mentioned him in, and then my internet went away, and since then we just haven't connected. But it was so good to talk to him. Being around him brings me peace. It's been that way since the first lesson I had with him. He walked into the room, the first day of the second semester of Japanese last year, and I looked at him and felt like I'd known him and loved him for years. Nearly a year's gone by since then and that feeling hasn't faded. The title of this post is what Morgan once called Garcia in Criminal Minds, and while I've never been entirely comfortable with the idea of a person getting their solace and peace from another person (as opposed to drawing it from inside themselves), the phrase feels curiously appropriate for how I feel around K. I hear music when I'm around people I know well and care about; they all carry their own theme music - and K plays the Second Movement from Beethoven's Emperor Concerto.

To be honest, even though words and I seem to get along fairly well most of the time, that piece of music - and the way it makes me feel - trumps anything I could ever say about him.

Well, enough of the sappiness - I need to check a couple things online, and then make a sandwich and find some socks and try to work out if I have the energy to carry some of the presents in a carrier bag, because I'm worried that all the beautiful wrappings that I spent hours making perfect will tear if I try and cram them all into my suitcase.

It's Tuesday morning now, I'm planning to come back on Thursday afternoon. Papa doesn't talk all that much since his stroke, and even spending the day there can be a little difficult sometimes, so it's likely that I'll have plenty of spare time in the next few days. So either I'll be online a whole heck of a lot, or not at all, depending on whether or not I can get a signal down in the depths of the countryside.

Love y'all, and hopefully I'll talk to you soon.

I'm Back, Babies

After a week of being confined to emergency internet (ridiculously expensive - in six hours I'd spent £15, which is what my usual MONTHLY bill is) and then a couple days of no internet at all, I can safely say that while it was a frustrating week, I did manage to get a lot done. I don't think you really realise how much of your time work takes up until you don't / can't work for a week.

I did a lot of Christmas shopping. I'm now done, except for Margie (my sister-in-law's mother), and a couple of little things for Ivy and Zia (friends from college who I only see now and then, but send little things to at Christmas - earrings, bookmarks, that kind of thing). Considering that in any given year I have somewhere between 20 and 40 friends and relatives to buy presents for, some of whom need multiple gifts, I think that completing my Christmas shopping by early December is pretty impressive. ESPECIALLY considering I haven't even gotten into London yet. I do need to go to the Trocadero for some last-minute things, mostly for Mom (and me, LOL), but the bulk is done.

Of course, there are always more things that I want to buy. It doesn't matter if I'm done by September - which I am, some years - I always, ALWAYS find things in the shops that I want to get for people, right up to Christmas Eve.

Yeah, I overspend at Christmas. I love giving gifts. Luckily, when your parents have multiple partners, you end up with halves and steps all over the place, and that makes Christmas shopping really fun.
:D

I really want to get a new wok for Mom, since the old one is starting to burn a bit when you cook, no matter how well you treat it. Even when I cut meat up using my Sabatier knives, which cut so cleanly that there's no scrappy bits at all, it still burns sometimes. I really shouldn't spend more money, though, or she'll be embarrassed. I suppose I could tell Tony, but I'm not sure if he'd get the right one. She needs a 31-cm Ken Hom from Robert Dyas. The 35-cm is too heavy, and the other brands are crappy, they put all sorts of teflon coating on, and they don't cook properly. Believe me, I've tried a whole lot of them, and none of the British-designed ones work well.

For a white girl who's never learned proper Asian cooking - or at least one who's self-taught - I know my woks.
:P

Ooh, or I could buy one for her birthday. Yeah, I'll do that. Problem solved.

My budget (oh, okay, my overdraft) even managed to stretch to a couple of things for me. A cropped white cardigan, very thin (read: must buy a nude bra to wear underneath it, or wear with a dress) with fabric roses and faux-pearl beads around the neckline. Sounds ridiculously feminine, but on me it works. A navy blue silk skirt from Jaeger, with tiny white polkadots on that falls down in a profusion of ruffles - that I somehow managed to get for £8.50 in the charity shop. I bought it for court - yes, there are occasions when Sati actually has to look respectable - but according to my kids, I look more like I should be going to Ascot or watching the polo. (They can bite me, because dressing well really DOES sway decisions in your favor sometimes, no matter how much people may laugh at the idea.)

Oh, and a green velour elf outfit that was going for half-price in Ann Summers. There's a halterneck dress with white faux-fur around the neck, and a matching hat and gauntlets for your forearms. The dress is far too short and tight to wear out in public without tights or leggings - because of my long long body, it doesn't even cover my ass, although on most women it would probably be a couple inches below - but with a white skirt or opaque tights, it's very cute.


You can't really see the whole outfit there, but there isn't anyone around to take pictures of me - Mom is death to machines - and so a close-up is the best you're getting. For now. Oh, and please excuse the giant mosquito bites on my cheek and chin. (I know, mozzies at this time of year - WTF?)

What else did I do while I was away? I arranged a time (this coming Monday) to go to Somerset to see Papa and Stepmama. I'll probably stay a couple days. I got the decorations out of the attic today, and got absolutely filthy doing it. I made many lists, including who I need to write cards to, although I didn't get round to actually writing them yet. I had a makeover at the Body Shop, which was really nice - the last time I sat in a chair in a shop and had someone pamper me was a haircut in November 2005. I love haircuts, and facials (STFU, pervs) and manicures and pedicures and reflexology and massages and...oh hell, I could go on forever - but I simply do not have the money to spend on myself. I cut my hair myself, or Mom does it. The rest...well, I try to keep myself looking neat and tidy at home, and occasionally do a pedi or something, but not as often as I'd like. I really need a gal pal for stuff like that; I love having so many male friends, but none of them are much for beauty and relaxation treatments. Except for LOML, funnily enough. I don't think he'd do anything like that at home, but I can definitely see him taking a spa weekend and getting massages and stuff.

Actually, now I think of that, I lied. Christie gave me a manicure in the summer. And she offered to cut and color my hair, and I'll probably take her up on the cut - we just haven't made our schedules coordinate, aside from Thanksgiving dinner.

I read several books. I'm currently on Southern Vampires (aka TrueBlood) number 6 - don't ask me what it's called, I can never keep the titles straight - and have read all the previous ones (aside from 2, which I don't have) in the last week. I read a couple of romances, too, and a little of this book that I bought on criminal profiling.

I talked to Curt a couple times. He called me yesterday and left a very funny message on my voicemail, singing Merry Christmas to me in a Santa voice...and then promptly fell ill. He left the message at 1.30-ish, when I was in the bath, and by the time I called him back 2 hours later he had the flu and had lost his voice, and couldn't talk to me. Oh dear. Could just be a cold, though. I love the man, but he is a little prone to exaggeration, especially when it comes to his health - every cold is the flu or pneumonia, every stomachache is appendicitis. It makes it a bit hard to know when he's really truly sick, and when he's just feeling a bit miserable. He's still at work, so I don't think he's at death's door yet, but I do hope that he's got someone around to remind him to keep drinking water and all that stuff.

I slept. Like, a LOT.

I got another ear infection, which is giving me a lot of trouble right now - which is why I'm online at nearly 6am. That makes three in the last couple months (two of them in the last month) and I didn't even bother going to the doctor for the second and third ones. There's nothing that they'll do for me other than give me the drops that I already have. I probably should go back and demand a swab, though, since it seems to be passing from ear to ear with no apparent reason. I don't use Q-tips, I don't use earplugs - I haven't even used headphones recently, since I still haven't taken my iPod in to be fixed - and I haven't been swimming recently either. I don't know why the infection keeps spreading around, after a couple years of not having it. I know it can't be poor hygiene - I'm the most anal person I know when it comes to personal cleanliness, although my surroundings sometimes get a bit dusty.

I'm sure I have other news, but I'm damned if I can remember it right now. I'm getting very sleepy - well, I've been sleepy all along, but the sleepy was masked with hungry / horny / pain - so I'm gonna take some paracetamol and see if I can get some shut-eye.

It'll take me awhile to catch up on blogs, but I hope to get it done soon. And then I can make a start on my mail inbox. *rolls eyes*

Happy Advent!

Ugh, Going Offline For A While

Chances are I won't be online much, if at all, until next Saturday - Dec 4th. Computer probs.

It's really a pain, since I have plenty of things to say! And most likely, by the time I'm back I won't remember them.
:P

But feel free to drop by, and I'll catch up with you next week.

Big hugs. xx

What Are You Thankful For?

I need some quick replies to this post from my friends (and anyone else who cares to answer) if you can. I should have posted it last night, but I was shattered. If you're all willing to play, I'll post the whole thing tomorrow.

At Thanksgiving my family sits round the table and says what we're thankful for. Pretty standard, right? But I was talking to my best friend the other day, and somehow the subject came up that I always seem to be thankful more for the things that affect other people than the things that affect me. And he teased me a lot for it, and I tried my best to defend myself, but truth is, it didn't fly. He's totally right, I AM more thankful for other people's stuff.

So, this year, in addition to the things in my own life, I'm making a list of all the good things that have happened to my friends and loved ones, that I can send up thanks for. And that includes YOU, dearest readers. I want to know what's made you happy recently. What's made a good change in your life. What's filled you with joy and lit up the world for you. What's made you smile. Anything, big or little, as long as you don't mind it being put up on here, and on my FB blog, and read out over the table at the Frost household for all to see and hear.

And if this doesn't reach you in time, never fear, I'll be doing it again at New Years.

Love and light to you all.

The Bulimic And The Emetophobe, Who'd Have Thought?

Doesn't sound quite like a match made in heaven, does it?

I was talking last night, with a friend I feel I've gotten close to in the last couple months, and he confessed several of his deep dark secrets to me. Including the fact that he's been struggling with bulimia for the last couple years.

(Yes, kiddies, men get eating disorders too - more now than they ever did, although they're still not catching up to the women.)

Now, if there were one thing that a person could tell me that I'd expect would make me back off and think, "Ummm, okay...yeah, I really think I don't want to get involved with you," bulimia would be it. (Other than, y'know, a penchant for murder or arson or bestiality or raping young girls / boys or...okay, there are several things that would make me back off - but bulimia would be high up on the list.) Petrified of throwing up here, remember? Only thing in the world I'm scared of aside from bugs hatching out of my skin - any of this ringing any bells for y'all? Yeah. I'm the type of person who'll spend my savings on a hotel room if one of the kids comes home with food poisoning, let alone something contagious like norovirus.

Yet he hasn't put me off. All I can think of is how brave he is for dealing with everything he's gone through in his life, and how much I wish he hadn't had to deal with it in the first place, and how I hope for wonderful things for him, and want to help make his life better - even if I can only do a teensy weensy bit for him.

I think I can call this progress on the road to maturity, don't you?

And that's my offering for today. My ear infection has me constantly dropping off to sleep.

What "secret" would put you off a person if you found out? What would give you more respect for them?

Thankfulness

[The top two paragraphs here have been removed, for the same reason as the last post.]

I think I'm done talking about this for now. I talked to Kurisu-san for about two hours today, plenty of it about this subject, and now that I know I can talk to him I won't have to bore you guys with it anymore. Except maybe occasional updates.

I find it really nice that out of a monster crush has sprung a really nice friendship. I don't have a great deal of platonic male friends these days; a lot of the ones I used to have have either mostly dropped out of my life because girlfriends didn't approve, or have expressed interest in being more than friends, or I've started to become interested in them. Admittedly I AM still interested in Kurisu-san, but he has a girlfriend (not the same one he was with before) and their relationship seems pretty solid, and that's fine by me. And because we've never even got close to getting physical, the fact that I find him extremely attractive doesn't detract from the friendship, as long as I know that the attraction can't go anywhere.

He sent me some music today, that he'd composed recently. It was pretty awesome, and he's really glad that I liked it because he feels like it's his best piece so far. He doesn't feel that he's very good, but I think he's got a lot of talent, and the potential to be something great. The music was wonderful, Japanese-sounding electric guitar riffs and a sort of twinkling bell-like sound running through the whole thing that made listening to it feel just like watching the moon over the ocean in October. He titled it "Moonlight," too, so I think that was the imagery he was hoping for.

There was supposed to be an image here, but I can't get it to show up!

He said he's composed another one that's very Japanese-sounding, but he hasn't recorded it yet, so I'm really looking forward to hearing that.

I have another freakin' ear infection, which is really annoying me. This morning it twinged a bit; by the early afternoon it was agony. I have drops left from the last time, but they're not working yet. And the PMS pain in my kidney area is still not great. Plus I have general aches and pains, from not getting to the gym since Wednesday. Aside from that, I don't feel too bad right now. I was in kind of a cruddy mood earlier, what with the divorce stuff, and knowing that LOML was going through hell trying to figure out when and how to tell his Mom, but talking to K made me feel a lot better. We look at the world in very similar ways, and he always manages to make me laugh. Even when most of the conversation is serious.

Plus he understands the pain and irritation of having a stalker, which isn't something that a lot of people I know can understand.

So yes, I'm very grateful to have a guy like him in my life. He's one of those truly nice, caring, genuinely awesome people that I don't meet as often as I'd like. There doesn't appear to be an ounce of malice in him, and how many people can you say that about? And yet he does have a bit of a wicked sense of humor, and can be quite naughty sometimes.

My life is full, right now. Full of sickness, full of drama, full of money worries, full of too much crap that needs to be done, and takes more hours than I have available - but also full of really great people, and that pretty much makes up for the rest.

Just A Short Update...

[This post has been removed. I was shooting my mouth off again, talking about my friends' personal lives, and even though I never mentioned names, I'm still fairly sure that they wouldn't like me doing that. It seems kind of unfair to me - I am entwined enough with them that I consider their problems to be my problems, particularly when it comes to LOML - but what can you do?]

I Am Right, Right, Right And You Are Wrong, Wrong, Wrong

Humanity i love you because
when you're hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you're flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop

- e.e. cummings -

I was going to quote Ayn Rand instead of e.e. cummings, but honestly, I hate Ayn Rand, and I have another post to write in a couple of days (when I'm a bit calmer), on another situation entirely, that seems to merit that particular quote more.

I had this post all written out in my head when I was in the bath - I do my best thinking in the bath - and now a lot of it's gone. Dammit. You'll have to forgive me if my thoughts don't flow as well as they should.

Today, Sati is going to tell you a couple of stories. They're true stories. And I'm no Aesop, or even Scheherezade, but I think that there are things that can be learned from them. There is some humor in them, in hindsight, but at the time they could have been quite serious.

The first is a tale from about five years ago, when I was just out of my teens and had been working at my current workplace for about four years. I work in Dagenham - for anyone who doesn't know London, that's a fairly rough area just outside the city proper (technically in Essex, but I still consider it London, as do most people I know) - and for the whole time I've been working there, my mother and most of my friends have been worried about me getting hurt, as I have to deal with the seedier side of life on a fairly regular basis. However, the only physical violence I've ever personally experienced while working came completely out of the blue, not from a drug addict or a gang member or an angry parent, but from a fairly "good" (albeit hasty) girl at work who is now a friendly acquaintance. This is a story about that time.

I tend to go by the title of youth worker, but this can mean a number of things. In turns, I am mother, big sister, cook, maid, counsellor, nurse, legal advocate, bodyguard. My duties include running a telephone helpline for kids who need either someone to listen or practical help (like someone to organize somewhere new to live if they have to leave home / a lawyer if they've gotten themselves into trouble / a lift home if they got dumped by their date / etc), giving talks on the physical effects of STDs, counselling rape victims, basic cooking, cleaning, baking treats, organising parties, helping with homework and / or tutoring, acting as an advocate if parents are being abusive, filling in forms for college applications / citizenship / EMA (Education Maintenance Allowance - money that 16-18 year olds from poor families are given by the government if they stay in full-time education and go to all their classes) and teaching basic life skills, amongst other things. On this particular day I was working with five boys who had either recently moved out of their parents' home or were planning to do so soon, and we were having a pretty good time - in the morning I'd taught them how to make vegetable soup and chicken stir-fry with rice, and in the afternoon we'd moved onto washing and ironing clothes. We were walking down the back hall, away from the laundry room, and I was talking, and the next thing I knew a hand was flying out from somewhere and hitting me smack bang on my nose, and a girl's voice was screaming obscenities at me.

It hurt a lot, and bled like a mofo, and I blacked out for a few minutes. When I came around I wasn't sure what the hell had happened, and could only assume that I'd run into something. And then I remembered the fist and the yelling, but still wasn't sure what was going on. So we all tramped into Paul's (that's my boss) office, with a girl I vaguely knew glaring at me the whole time and occasionally shouting, and got it sorted out. To cut a long story short, I'd been talking to my boys (who were mostly Black; only about 20% of the kids where I work are white) about how to wash their clothes properly, and she hadn't heard any of the conversation except me saying something about how important it is to keep whites and coloureds separate. That hit a button for her, and so she hit me, thinking that she was defending people from me.

I can look back on this now and laugh, but at the time it hurt. It hurt physically - I fractured my nasalis bone and had a black eye for two weeks; luckily the nose didn't get pushed out of joint enough to need it reset, but I still have a noticeable lump that you can see in my old profile photo:



It also hurt emotionally. Having my motives called into question was painful, but what was more painful was knowing that *I* hurt someone enough, with my words, to push them to react with physical violence - even if my words were taken in a different way to how I meant them, and it was just a big misunderstanding.

Poor communications can do this sometimes. As individuals, we are never fully able to see through another person's eyes, and this can lead us to misunderstand what they mean. We hear something, and for whatever reason - we don't like the person it comes from, we're overzealous in what we perceive as being the defense of a friend, maybe we're just having a bad day - we decide that they mean something unkind by it. And rather than asking straight out, what did you mean by that? a lot of us prefer to raise our hackles and go into "defense mode" - which ends up being more of an attack mode, because we're defending ourselves against an imagined enemy.

Sometimes I hear the recurring drama on the blogs as being referred to as a blog war. I dislike this term, because I think that anyone who's ever seen a real war (and I haven't been in a military war, but I have been on the streets of Peckham and Hackney and Brixton back in 2007-8, when kids were getting killed in turf wars every week) would find it an offensive comparison. Yet there is some truth in the term. One of the things that I believe is central to just about every war the modern world has seen is that both sides think that God is on their side. Substitute the words "truth" or "righteousness" for "God" and you have a similar situation here now. Everyone who's been involved in this conflict, including me, thinks that the people they know and like are right and reasonable, and the people who dislike them, or who they dislike, are acting unfairly and wrongly.

The people on here who I call friends, or friendly acquaintances, have never been anything but kind to me. I've rarely seen them be anything but kind to anyone. Yet I understand that not everybody sees things this way. Some of the people that I like are hated by others. And some of the people I dislike are well-loved. This goes for real life, too: the woman who did her best to singlehandedly ruin my life has tons of friends and the love of a man who I have a lot of affection and admiration for. She's a nurse and a Christian, and she does plenty of volunteer work. And, in my eyes, she's nuts. To her friends and lovers, she's a great person, but to me she will always be the person who stalked me all over the internet, leaving increasingly vile comments on my Facebook and MySpace profiles and, more seriously, my college site blog - resulting in me losing my job as blog representative for my college and subsequently, since I could no longer afford tuition without the staff discount, dropping out of school.

So is she a good woman, or a psycho? Which of these is the truth? Does it even matter? I suppose it does, but I don't think I'll ever get an answer. Some people will always love her, and I will always dislike her. Our respective truths are not compatible. Maybe one day she'll do something to cause Oli to realise that she has a cruel streak, and maybe he'll never see her in that way. Sometimes we simply cannot see a situation from another person's perspective, no matter how hard we try. In these cases, we need to step away from the person. Yes, it hurts when you see someone who you feel is manipulating people getting adored for it. It hurts when we see something that offends our sense of rightness and fair play, and other people don't see it. It hurts, and it makes us angry. Believe me, I understand the anger - over the last month I've seen things that have me seething, and no matter how I tell myself it isn't important - it FEELS important. It feels WRONG.

Yet from a practical standpoint, there is very little that can be gained from stirring things up. It doesn't matter whether you honestly believe that you are righteously defending your friends, or whether you just enjoy your anger too much. (And IMO, there are people on the blogs who fall into both camps.) Flaming a person who you feel deserves it may feel good at the time, may even appear to have some benefits in the short-term, but when it comes to the long-term, who are you really helping? What purpose are you serving, except to perpetuate the anger? Are you educating people about the unfairness that runs rampant on here? Maybe. But maybe not. The way you feel about particular people and situations is real to you, but it is subjective. Some people will agree with you, and therefore don't need convincing - and others will never see what you see, and will defend their friends' honor till their dying breath. These people you cannot get through to.

It's getting late, and I'm rambling. So just a few other points I'd like to make, and a few to reiterate:

~ TRUTH and OPINION are not synonymous.

~ If someone sees something different to you, it doesn't mean that they're blind or naive, just that they're different.

~ If someone is friends with someone you dislike, it doesn't necessarily make them a follower or a pawn. Not everyone is friends with someone because they need something from them - sometimes they just LIKE them. I get that some people don't want to be friends with people who have friends that they don't like. Bearing in mind that everyone is going to know SOMEONE you dislike - or at least someone who knows someone who knows someone - I don't agree with it, but I get it. Fine. Decide for yourself how many degrees of separation you can live with. A word of advice, though: if you can't live with any less than five or six degrees of separation between you and your enemies, you're probably going to have a very lonely world.

~ If you are going to block someone from your blog, you also need to block them from your words, and at least attempt to block them from your thoughts. Banning someone and then blogging about them all the time is senseless, and IMO, it's dishonorable. Make a choice: either allow someone the option to explain their words and actions and attempt to change your opinion of them if they're so inclined, or excise them from your life. There is a reason for the saying, "Hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil." If you do not want to see or hear someone, do not speak about them.

~ If trouble seems to follow you, ask yourself what YOU could do differently. It is easier to change your behavior than to constantly keep changing your surroundings. This is not a matter of who is to blame for the trouble, rather a matter of what changes can be made to improve the situation. And if you cannot come up with anything that you think you could change about youself - ask yourself why.

~ A person who can admit that they were wrong is brave, but a person who can admit that they were wrong and leave up the post that they regret making is braver by a dozen times. Far too many of us remove things that we have written, as though by removing the post we can rewrite history to make ourselves appear cleaner and better than we really were. By all means, write an addendum to the post that says you feel differently now, and regret saying what you said, but don't pretend you didn't say it.

~ Remember that nobody ever regretted their compassion, even when it was misplaced or unmerited.

Finally, I point all of you to my signature. Not to the post link - although if you want to read that, that's fine - but to the quote. Be the change you want to see. James told me that, and it's something that I try to remember every day.

How Do You Know When It Stops Being Worth It?

So, I talked to LOML. He's having marital problems. I don't want to go into them here.

I don't even know what to say to that. Oh hell, what to do? Do I go for self-preservation, and try to stay away from him, or do I remain his friend since he so desperately needs one (scratch that - he doesn't need *a* friend, he needs ME) and for the last decade he's always been there any time I needed him. Suck it up, and be the friend that he needs and deserves? Or cut and run to save myself from further heartache? Can I really ensure my own survival at the cost of his? Am I being totally melodramatic here?

The last question's the only one I have the answer to.

I want to hate her, but I can't. She's a void, there's nothing there to hate. When I look at her, I get no emotion at all beyond a vague weariness. Mostly I feel sorry for her - but not sorry enough to want anything to do with her.

Mostly I hurt. For me, partly, but mainly for him. I'll be fine. I'm always fine after a little while. I'm one of those people who always bounce back, no matter what, and whatever happens between us I'll manage to live a happy life. With or without him. But HIM...I hurt for him. He's so unhappy, and can't see a way of making things better.

And yes, I know that he's a grown man and has made his own choices. I'm not denying that he's responsible for his situation. I just wish that I could help him see that life isn't supposed to be like this. But how do you convince a person to do - or at least try to do - what makes them happy, when they don't believe they deserve happiness?

You can tell me not to get too deeply involved, but it won't do a blind bit of good. I AM involved, deeply. In most relationships, I've always managed to keep at least some degree of distance, but more and more I'm finding myself melding with emotions of the handful of people that I am close to. Since my gifts for healing and prophecy have all but disappeared, the empathy has increased exponentially, and with the dozen or so close friends that I have, the bond is ever-present and nearly unbreakable. Our lives are so profoundly and intricately entwined that my heart breaks for him every time I feel his pain. He hurts, ergo I hurt. I don't make the choice to, it's a law of nature that is beyond my control.

I don't think I'm capable of walking away. All I can see that I can do is step back, and watch, and wait for things to change. And when they do change, I can reassess.

Remember The Red Silk Dress

Meh, good and bad this week, although it's certainly been packed full of stuff - enough that I haven't even managed to read my watched list, let alone comment or make new posts in here.

My bubba's (in case you're wondering, that's my brother) been back in the hospital again this week, for the fourth (I think) time since the summer. We thought it was another bad colitis outbreak, but yesterday they rushed him into surgery and whipped his appendix out. Oddly enough, he got sent home today. Good old English hospitals. *rolls eyes* With any luck I'll get to see him tomorrow.

Ugh, I know how self-centered this sounds (so you don't need to tell me, LOL ) but dealing with stuff like this is sooooo the last thing I need right now. Mom freaks out every time Tony gets sick, and I understand why, but it doesn't make it any easier to cope with. I'm just not the kind of person who can give constant reassurances to her. I deal with my worries by finding out as much as possible about them, by educating myself and figuring out the likelihood of any possible outcome, and when all my research says that the probability of a problem - whether health-related or not - being life-threatening is minute, then I stop worrying. Well, okay, I only worry a tiny bit. But Mom...I dunno, it's hard to explain. Logic doesn't comfort her. Research doesn't comfort her. I don't know what DOES comfort her in times like this, and she can't tell me, and because I don't know I can't provide whatever it is she needs. She was like this when I was raped - *I* was the one who was in trouble, and I had to spend most of my energy on holding her hand and making sure she was OK, and telling her that I was fine. It's not the same now, because it's Tony who's the one in trouble, so the fact that I have to tend to Mom's emotions doesn't strike up quite the same resentment in me as it did back then, but it's still hard to admit to myself that I have absolutely no idea of how to make her feel better.

I'm trying to be sympathetic, because I can see and feel how hard it is for her. I don't have children, at least not in this world, and therefore I can't understand how it feels when you're scared for them. I DO know, from talking to people, that when you're a parent it's far worse for you when something happens to your kid than when it happens to yourself, but as I can't experience this I can't entirely understand it.

Meh, what can I say. Sympathy doesn't come naturally to me, at least when it comes to my family. Empathy, yes, but not the whole comforting thing. For someone who considers herself a nurturer, I fail dismally when it comes to my family members.

Hmm, other news. I've been more-or-less sticking to my diet, and I went to the gym today and Monday, but I'm seeing no results from the dieting yet. This could be because it's not working, or it could be that PMS is playing a hand. I'm very pissed off about this, because I don't get my monthlies anymore, since I had the implant put in (which unfortunately needs to come out in the coming Spring; it's only licensed as a contraceptive for five years and it'll be five years in April) and aside from a couple hormonal mood swings - nothing compared to what I used to get - I only get the PMS symptoms (achy breasts, pain in my ovary and uterine and kidney areas etc) two or three times a year. And they usually last a couple days, instead of the couple months that they lasted pre-implant. But this appears to be one of those times, and it's annoying me. Plus, I think I'm getting a cold.

If it develops into a proper cold it'll drive me nuts, but if I could keep it at this level of coldishness I would, because when I'm just a little bit sick I feel better, as fucked-up as that sounds. I have an auto-immune disorder - my immune system recognizes normal cells as foreign tissue, and tries to kill them off, and it especially affects my nervous system - so when my immune system is otherwise occupied trying to fight ACTUAL foreign stuff e.g. viruses, it lets up a bit on the rest of my body. Although afterwards, I feel like hell for a month or so, until it stops overreacting.

What else happened this week? Ohhh...the red dress. I managed to get a red silk dress from Hobbs, that I'd been eyeing up for a couple months and never thought I'd get into, and I got it for £30 (instead of a probable £150-200) because it was missing two buttons and had a couple stitches that had pulled loose. Easy to fix, and it's a lovely dress - it's knee-length, with an unusual neckline that I don't quite know the name of, and a tiny keyhole cut-out (just enough to be sexy without being immodest) and a flared skirt, and when I've lost the inch or so I need to lose from my bust, I'll look fairly yummy in it. Here's hoping that with diet, exercise and a minimizer bra, I can get into it for any Christmas parties.

The Light of my Life, the one who married a girl in the summer and broke my poor vulnerable heart, is back in my life. When he got married, he told me to stay out of his life if I couldn't support him. I couldn't, so I stayed out. I don't know if it's a good thing or not that he's back - how many times can love be torn apart and then put back together again? Evidently many times, at least with him and me. Our friendship has survived many girlfriends for him, a couple of boyfriends for me, the attempted suicide of a mutual friend that he was dating (who I still see; he doesn't approve but generally keeps his mouth shut), him sleeping with one of my closest friends, me getting raped, me losing my memory, him believing I'd had a lesbian affair with aforementioned close friend, sleeping together and getting treated horribly afterwards (I thought it was because he regretted it, it was actually because he was jealous of another guy I'd dated a couple times, and thought that I just slept with him for shits and giggles), a boyfriend of mine who turned into a stalker, and our various respective neuroses, of which we have quite a few. Surprisingly enough, even with this disgustingly long list of things that have gone wrong for us, our relationship isn't generally tempestuous - most of the time we move along on a fairly even keel, it's just that when something goes wrong it goes REALLY wrong.

So there's that stupid, poisonous little hope, that this time it might actually work out between us now. I can't explain what I feel for him, exactly - I love him passionately, but mostly like a friend rather than a lover. Yet when he gets seriously involved with someone, it hurts. For better or for worse, I cannot imagine myself marrying anyone but him. Every time he gets involved with another girl I'm crushed, and eventually inflate myself again and come to terms with it, and manage to stay friends with him, and I think that I'm over him and that I'm not going to fall for him again - and then he splits up with the girl, and I fall. Normally I'd tell someone that if they can't work it out with someone, to cut their losses and move on. If something doesn't work the first time, or the second, let alone any times after that, why would it work now? But with him and me, I honestly don't believe that it was our relationship that was the faulty thing - it was the rest of the world, plus really lousy timing.

Instinct, and the Ancestors' gifts, tell me that he is the one I'm supposed to spend my life with. I've been told that since the first conversation we ever had, back when he was sixteen and I was seventeen. In dreams and visions, I've seen our whole lives together. Yet I don't know how much of this is reasonable, and how much is me hanging onto an outdated fantasy.

You can all tell me what an idiot I am, if you like. Maybe if I hear it enough, it'll sink in and I won't keep doing it.

But damn. The spirits of our children have been talking to me for as long as he has, and when he got married I thought that was it - but I still couldn't silence their voices, I could only quiet them down a bit. And now they're as loud and frequent as ever.

Mleah.

So yeah, that was my week. Or the vital stuff, anyway - the rest was just hack work, although plenty of it. I'm hoping that the next couple weeks won't be so packed, so I can get back to posting and reading, but I'm not holding my breath.

Mmm, Manthers

It's official: teenagers are disgusting. I just had to get a mattress out from under Ryan's bed, and I nearly passed out just from breathing the air in there. What's really freaking me out is that Mom's planning to SLEEP on that mattress tonight, since she has a friend staying over. I found her a rubber sheet and a thick duvet cover to wrap around it, so the cat hair (atrocious, although Lori SWEARS she grooms the cat - not once in a year have I seen her do it, though) and dust and all the other crap doesn't get to her.

Really, I'd rather she slept in my bed and I slept on a duvet on the floor, but she won't go for that.

Anyway, that was just a small aside, although it does bring me onto the main subject.

Those of you who know me probably know that I tend to go for younger guys. Not just younger, as in, the younger end of the spectrum, but actually younger than me. Sometimes by a year or two, sometimes by quite a few years. The last big crush I had was nearly six years younger than me. Aside from my first (when I was 13) and one other since then, all the guys I've been really into were younger than me.

HOWEVER, I'm starting to get tired of young guys. I don't know what to do with them. I feel like I need to take care of them. They never have any money. All important points, natch. So I'm starting to wonder if it's time to get me a manther. After nearly a decade of working with teenagers, and a year of living with one, and two years of living with a guy who THINKS he's still one (at 24), I'm beginning to see the attraction of the older male. If I dated an older guy, I could get Christmas presents that I can wear outside the bedroom. I could go on dates to places where you don't have to pay for your food until after you've eaten. I could buy a new outfit and wear it on a date, and when they mention it, not have to justify my purchase with any reason other than "I wanted it".

OK, so I exaggerate a little - the younger guys I've been dating aren't QUITE that bad. But still.

Anyway, something to think about.

And for the record, I would settle for any of the following:



OK, it wasn't entirely fair of me to stick Damian Lewis in there; he's not quite old enough, but he's just so darn smooth. *grins*

What's your take on the cougar / manther thing?

Dreams

[This post was originally titled "Last night I got done from behind by a chubby guy wearing a dress" but it seemed too long for this site.]

I'm back, my preciouses.

And you just KNOW I'm saying that in a Gollum voice, right?

With any luck I'll be able to resume a somewhat-normal (for me) schedule soon, and comment on all your lovely posts that I've missed. So happy to see you're all still here, and that some of you who were missing are now back.

As for now, I am excited BECAUSE I get to go to bed and read Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, which arrived in the post from ebay and is proving, so far, to be absolutely delicious.

Have a good evening!

P.S. The title of this post was actually last night's dream. There were two guys, one chubby, one not so chubby, and I think they may have been Matt Lucas and David Walliams as seen in those bank ads.

And right after that horror, the dream segued into a second one where I came home sweaty and dirty and sat in the garden for a few minutes - for some reason it was June, and my garden was a whole lot bigger than it usually is - and Kurisu-san suddenly appeared and asked if I wanted to go watch his band play. And I said yes! but I need a few minutes to shower and change. So I took the fastest shower my house has ever seen, and then agonized over what to wear - for some reason I thought I needed to wear a silk cocktail dress to watch a rock band in a pub - and K yelled at me for taking too long, and said he was already running late because he'd come to ask me to come with him, and I told him to go on ahead and I'd catch him up...and then I realised, after he'd gone, that he hadn't told me what pub it was and I had no way of getting in contact.

I don't know which was a worse dream, the whole Matt Lucas (I think) thing, or K saying that I was too high-maintenance to be his friend. *cries*

I am never again eating chocolate before bed. EVER.

P.S. #2 I don't usually put titles like that, that have so little to do with the content of the post, but I wanted to see if this post got more views if I sexed it up a bit. It's an important psychological experiment, y'know.

P.S. #3 Or I could just be full of shit.

P.S. #4 I lied about the chocolate thing.

Taking A Short Break

My computer is getting taken away tomorrow to get fixed - it keeps freezing up, and nobody's sure why - so I may be offline for two weeks or so. It's possible that they'll be able to lend me a computer to use while mine is in the shop, but I'm not banking on it.

It'll probably do me good to take a break for awhile, actually. I'm getting so exhausted by the rollercoaster of emotions on here. I'm finding myself thinking about the blog fights for much of my day, and that's just not good. I don't like it when drama, whether online or not, eats into my relaxation time.

I'm hoping to see a sea of yellow posts when I come back, and if my entire watched list isn't still there, I shall cry and refuse to give you the sugar cookie recipe.

If the exodus happens to take place while I'm gone, let me know the details of where everyone's moving to, mmmkay? I personally have started a blog on a site called Tumblr, after much coercion from my twin flame. I haven't quite worked out how to use the site - it's not as convenient as the blogs here, or my FB notes - but with any luck I'll get it up and running when I come back.

If anything dire happens that you think I should know about, loop me in on FB - I'll try and check that a couple times on my phone if I can get it working. Otherwise, I'll see y'all at some point before Thanksgiving.

Enjoy the rest of the fall - it's the most wonderful season, IMO!

Dammit, People Keep Disappearing!

Dammit, every day I seem to be gaining a watcher, and then losing a watcher. But when I go to look to see if it's the same watcher I've gained and then lost, it never is - it's usually someone I've been communicating with for awhile. In the last couple days, InnerPeace07 and evil_lolita have both disappeared, and they're two of my favourite girls on here.

In normal times I'd assume that they'd turned their profiles off to get some rest, but with things how they are, my first thought is, "Oh God, did someone else get banned?"

I'm starting to change my mind about LadyUnlaced's suggested exodus. I thought things were going to blow over after awhile, and we could all go back to blogging peacefully, but it just appears to be getting worse. It looks to me like a reaction (as in, the scientific term) that's reached its critical point: up until now it could have been stopped if we'd just turned the heat down a bit, but now I'm not sure that anyone can stop it. It reminds me of nothing so much as a phosphorus burn, and I think it's going to keep burning until either all the reactant - in this case, hate and resentment - gets used up, or until we're left with nothing but ashes, and have to rebuild from scratch.

Hopefully I'm just in a pessimistic mood, and this is not a premonition. As an empath, though, it's very hard to remain here when there is so much negative emotion flying around. I often feel emotion, whether it's directed at me or not, as a physical force; people's feelings affect me the way physical blows affect you. Some are worse than others - anger can either be like a fever or like a drug, but the hatred that some people feel is like a third-degree burn to me. And yes, I've had third-degree burns before, albeit on only a small part of my body. Add to which the bubbling resentment that I get from a couple of people on here, resentment that they shove down deep inside them, and this place is making me nauseous and cranky and generally uncomfortable. The deep resentment in particular is a strange thing. In some of us here, it's shoved down so far that only a tinge of it is visible to me. So I "meet" a person (in a blog) and instinctively don't like them, but I don't know why, I only know that something about them makes me uncomfortable. And I can't figure it out, because I feel like I SHOULD like them - they appear to be kind and sweet and generally nice, and their characters seem to smell sweet - until I realise that it's the sweet smell that maggots sometimes get.

No, that paragraph wasn't targeting anyone in particular, although I can tell you, I am quite resentful that I feel that I have to make this disclaimer each time that I say something. I've encountered several people who feel this way to me, both in and out of Blogland, and most of the ones I've met in Blogland are now gone, thank goodness. IRL I've met quite a few recently, too.

I'm not in a fighting mood, or even a defending mood. There are times when I'm happy to stick up for what I feel is right, and take on the world if need be, but I'm not in one of those phases at the moment. I'm tending towards reclusiveness right now - I'm tired, and sick, and I don't feel able to function very well or cope with any demands, even simple ones like doing my paperwork. Mostly I just want to be left alone with my books and some food and the couple of hours a week of TV that I watch. And my Tommy Jay, because none of my wishes to be left alone apply to him. He is my spiritual twin - my mirror, my soul, my shield - and we are bonded tightly enough that I don't think he could leave me alone if he tried. But as far as everyone else goes...yeah.

I've been coming out of my shell a bit in the last week, going to Sainsburys twice (yes, I did go back today, and I did manage to get writing icing for the cookies and three more blue T-shirts, plus a black one, as well as two pieces of New York vanilla cheesecake *drools*) and making cookies and answering emails and talking to B and Zia, and preparing for the hordes of kids that will come tomorrow and flat-out DEMAND candy rather than asking nicely. (In this neighborhood, kids are generally not taught manners.) And tomorrow I will dress up in my long black velvet coat-dress, and my black sequinned bat mask, and blood-red lipstick - my fingernails are already dark red and sparkly - and I'll hand out candy and be generally gregarious, at least for a couple of hours. And I'll spend several hours with the spirits of the Ancestors, because that's what we do on Samhain. So yeah, I can force myself to be social, when necessary. But I'm not quite feeling it yet, and it IS a forced thing rather than something that's coming naturally.

You don't need to be worried about me, though. Like I said, I go through phases. There'll be times when I'm a hermit, and then other times when I'm the life of the party, and socialising comes as naturally to me as breathing.

I can't promise that I'll be posting on anything resembling a regular schedule - although I will try to get that cookie recipe put up, and perhaps a couple more pre-Christmas baking recipes - but even if I disappear for a little while, I'll try and keep myself apprised of what's going on in Blogland, at least the pseudoapocalyptic stuff, and if you need me you can always look me up on Facebook.

News, And Guys, And Baking, And Guys, And Shopping, And...Are We Seeing A Pattern Here?

Bonjour, mes petits fleurs! Or something like that, I don't actually speak French.

This is going to be a short one, because I am full of pepperoni pizza and sleepiness, and I have to be up in about five hours to go to Sainsburys, I promised I'd buy some piping icing, and I want another four T-shirts like the one I bought yesterday for £2.50 or some ridiculous price. It's cornflower blue, and absolutely the most comfy thing I've worn in months, and I've decided that this is what I'm wearing to sleep from now on. So I have to go back and get a bunch more of them.

I had a pretty good day today. The morning was a write-off, as most of my mornings are atm (although not yesterday), but this afternoon I made some phone calls that I'd been putting off, and then Mom and I made icebox cookies. That was difficult, but good. The dough we use is a real pain in the ass, you have to mix it up and then refrigerate it overnight, and then roll it out the next day, cut your cookies and bake. The real problem is that the melting point of this particular dough is very low, so once it's been out of the fridge for about five minutes it starts to go gooey and becomes impossible to work with, and you have to keep putting it back in (it also melts straight away if you have warm hands). It also sticks to EVERYTHING, including the rolling pin, but we managed to get around this by using wax paper. Oh, and if you dust your surfaces with flour to stop it sticking, the dough gets tough and the cookies aren't nice - but we managed to get around THAT by using powdered sugar instead. Aren't we inventive?
So yeah, the dough is a pain. I used it once before and the cookies didn't come out well - they were tough and dry, and I was absolutely crushed because it's the only recipe I have for rolled cookies, that you can use cookie cutters for, and I have SO many wonderful cookie cutters. For Halloween - the ones we used today - I have a bat, a ghost, a cat and a tombstone. For Easter I have a bunny face, and a couple of different flowers. For Christmas I have a holly sprig and a bell and some stars (also good for 4th of July and Thanksgiving) and possibly a couple more. And for Valentines' Day - oh man, Valentines' Day. A couple years ago Mom went really overboard buying Valentines stuff, and I ended up with a bunch of hearts in different sizes, plus a REEEEEALLY expensive set from a gourmet cooking shop, which had a L, an O, a V, an E, a cupid, a pair of interlocked hearts, a heart with an arrow through it, and Lord only knows what else. So yeah, I have a heap of cookie cutters, most of which are good quality metal ones that'll last me half a lifetime, and I'm always buying more - although unlike Mom, I usually buy mine one at a time - so I was pretty unhappy when the last sugar cookie recipe didn't work. I was not looking forward to having to pack away all those cookie cutters. But then today's recipe, despite being a pain in the ass, turned out quite well. After experimenting a bit, I found a way to roll the dough and use the metal fish slice that let me get the shapes up without breaking them or squishing them enough that the shapes were unrecognizable. The only one that really gave me problems was the cat - the legs and tail were so thin and spindly the dough wouldn't hold together. I did manage to keep the legs on most of them, but all the tails fell off. Guess they have to be Manx cats.

Happily, I can tell you they taste pretty awesome. I'm not so much of a decorated sugar cookie type person - I tend to like big chewy cookies, either of the peanut butter or the oatmeal-raisin varieties (or occasionally chocolate chip) - but they did taste good. They need a bit of brightness, though, so I have to go to Sainsburys to get some pipe icing, since I can't find my icing bag.

(The fact that I can also get T-shirts and scope out the adorable guy who gave me the most perfect smile yesterday...well, that's just the icing on the cookie, so to speak.)

So anyway. Yes. Good day. I didn't manage to carve the pumpkin that Mom wanted me to do, though. I need to do that tomorrow, because I went a bit overboard with pumpkins this year, and ended up with four instead of our usual two (or occasionally three, if I have a boyfriend that year). We also usually get little ones, and this year I ended up buying one little one, two medium ones and one that's actually pretty huge. Not huge compared to the ones you sometimes see at State Fairs, but certainly bigger than a basketball - perhaps twice the size.

At Sainsburys yesterday, they had these absolutely adorable ones called Munchkins, which were smaller than my fist. Not much good for carving, unless you're extremely good at it (which neither of us are) but so cute to look at. I managed to restrain myself, though. (Although there's always tomorrow.)

I wish I'd managed to get to Marshalswick to get some decorative gourds from the florists there, they always do nice ones for a reasonable price in Autumn. The ones in the supermarkets are ridiculous prices. I did get some nice Indian corn, though.

Oh, how I love Fall!

Hopefully it'll be bright enough tomorrow to take pictures of the cookies and pumpkins. And I'll post the cookie recipe when I get my hands on the cookbook.

Oh, the other nice thing - I finally managed to get to the bookshop on a Thursday morning, and that guy was there again. I didn't get to see much of him - he was working in the back room, and he only came out a couple of times to stock shelves - but when he came near me, and we were standing back to back, I got this rush of emotion from him. I can't even explain what emotion it was, exactly - sometimes they're like a jolt of electricity, and the shock of it prevents me from analysing it properly - but it was intense. I doubt that it was about me, but it still felt amazing. I can't explain what it is about him, but I just find myself wanting to be around him. It's not even a lust thing really, although he is attractive. There's just this yearning in me for intellectual and emotional stimulation that he fulfills, much in the same way that Kurisu-san does. (That's my redheaded musician, who I should be in class with this year, and I miss a great deal.) The only explanation that I can give is that some people feel things very strongly, and project them very strongly, and those people are like gravity to me. (Or more accurately, like magnetism or nuclear forces, since gravity's actually quite weak, comparatively speaking.)

Since I don't have pics of the cookies or pumpkins or Halloween decorations yet, here's a pic of the dress I was wearing when I met him. (He seemed to like it, or at least he kept looking at it.) [Whoops! Already posted the picture on the post I wrote about him. That's what I get for not looking ahead, I guess.]

Hope y'all are enjoying the Fall!

Ooh, New Undies!

WARNING: This post contains semi-nude pictures that some readers may find offensive.

I was going to write you a blog detailing what I've been up to the last few days, but I'm too tired. Don't worry, you're not missing much - they've been pretty much a write-off, both time-wise and money-wise.

So I'll just give you a new pic instead. The bra is new, red silk, and has matching panties with a cut-out heart on the back - if I can get someone to take a pic of the panties I'll put that up too. (And maybe put it on BlackProfessor's Booty November post.)

I so need to get a decent camera, so I can get pics that show the detail on these things. *sigh*

But anyway. Hope you're all well, and I'll be back to posting as soon as I stop sleeping all the time.

Words To Live By

[I do miss AFF occasionally, because some of my posts - this one, for example - had a LOT of views. This one had over 12,000, and that doesn't even take into account the people who viewed it as part of the whole blog. It's hard to give that up for a blog where you currently have one follower and a handful of views a day.

That said, I don't miss the rounds of drama and nastiness that went on there. It's amazing how cruel people can get sometimes when you challenge them. I posted this in response to a month or so of "war" (*snorts*) on there. And probably fed the flames by doing so, but ho hum, them's the breaks.]

I created this post as a reaction to the recent blog drama. I have chosen not to participate in any of it, but I do now feel that I need to have my say. Therefore I offer this to you: my code of blogging conduct. This is a code that is personal to me, not something that I believe all bloggers should live by, but I urge you to create your own so that people may know who you are and what you stand for without needing to resort to names and labels that can have multiple interpretations.

I cannot promise you a blog without drama. I write from life, and my life is dramatic. Or so it seems. Perhaps you, too, feel that way about your life.

I can promise you that my drama is *my* drama, and that while you are here bearing witness to it, you will never need to get involved unless you choose to.

I cannot promise you a toxic-free blog. I write for therapy; my journal is my way of purging the emotional toxins that would otherwise build up and poison me from the inside out.

I can promise you that I am just as willing to share the love and lightness in my life as I am willing to share the shadows. And there is a lot of love and lightness, despite the sometimes grim posts that I make.

I cannot promise you that the numbers mean nothing to me. I see comments and watchers as a validation that I am doing something I love, and doing it well, and I see nothing wrong with feeling this way.

I can promise you that I am not here to be adored by everyone. In the outside world, I live a life where it is necessary to play everyone's sweetheart, and I tend to find it as much of a burden as a blessing. I am here to escape that.

I cannot promise you that I will never have a problem with you. I can be impatient at the best of times, and not everyone is my cup of tea. I have played the open-armed, love-everyone goddess for many years, and I am not willing to play it here.

I can promise you that if I have a problem with you, I will contact you directly to see if it can be resolved, and if it cannot, I will let you be.

I cannot promise you that I will never offend you. Sometimes I will, and you are free to either leave, or to tell me exactly what it is you find offensive - just as I am free to consider your point of view and either write it off or make changes to my own opinions and / or actions.

I can promise you that I am basically a kind person, whose brain damage occasionally causes her to say unintentionally hurtful things, and when this happens I will do my utmost to apologise and atone. I can also promise that I am not someone who is hesitant to change their opinion. Life is a continuous cycle of learning and adapting, and I am (almost) always willing to listen to people who believe that something that I have said or done is wrong. I may not agree, but I will listen.

I cannot promise you that you will not have an issue with my friends. Your relationships with people, whether I know them or not, are not my business.

I can promise you that I will never rely on my friends to defend my honor. My honor does not need defending; it is not at risk. Nothing that you can say or do will damage my integrity in the slightest. Only I can do that.

This is my pledge, my manifesto, the code of conduct that I intend to hold myself to. I do not believe that arbitrary labels are useful: I believe that only by creating a personal code and attempting to live by that code can we create a definition of ourself that others can understand.

~ Sati-Marie Frost - October 2010 ~

(Please feel free to repost.)

MOBO Awards 2010-11

Sooo, I'm supposed to be blogging this a couple of days ago at the actual awards, but life interfered with my plans so the best I could do was a repeat on BBC1. Nevermind, there's always next year.

Anyway...

The show opens with Mark Ronson. I can't remember the name of the song, because it's one that I don't like. Mark looks cool though, with platinum Ken-doll hair (I saw it like this the other day on Buzzcocks). Whatever the first song is segues into "Money in my Pocket", with Wiley coming onto the stage to sing. Good way to start a show, everyone seems to like both Wiley and Ronson. I don't know why I can't warm up to Mark's music. Hmm...

The song finishes, and the next camera shot is of someone being carried in on a litter. Who is that person that they're carrying like a king? Heyyy, it's Reggie Yates, our co-presenter tonight. Nice to see him again, I haven't seen him in anything since Trinity.

Reggie stands up, introduces himself, and makes some joke about Jason Derulo. Ooh, Reg, I didn't know you could be a bit of a bitch. It's OK though, because DeRulo stands up and sings in the "queen" of the night...the lovely Alesha Dixon! She's wearing some bizarre concoction of magenta and black with Nicole Scherzinger-style shoulder pads, but it's OK, because hey, it's Alesha Dixon, and I still would. Reg looks bizarre but quite good in what appears to be a petrol-blue velvet jacket with a waistcoat underneath. He also has on geek-chic black-rimmed glasses - he's obviously channelling Tinie Tempah tonight - and they suit him well.

Best UK Hip-Hop is introduced, and Jermaine Jackson comes out to present it. What on earth is he wearing? Some sort of pantsuit with sequins all over. Oh well, he's a Jackson, he could wear anything he wanted and he wouldn't be the oddest one - probably wouldn't even be in the Top 5. Nominated for Best Hip-Hop are Giggs, Professor Green, Skepta, Akala and Wiley. I figure it'll go to Wiley or Skepta, hopefully the latter since he had such a great year, but Professor Green gets it. I guess his songs really took off. Actually, I liked the first one a lot, not so sure about the Lily Allen one.

JLS come on to present the Best Newcomer award, since they won it last year. Up for this one are Tinie Tempah, Professor Green, Scorcher, Labrinth and Devlin. It's gotta be Tinie, right? And it is. Sheesh, that man gets hotter every day. He can even get away with tight jeans, a style that I normally loathe on non-emo men. The JLS boys look pretty damn good too, not that I've ever seen them looking anything less than immaculate.

N-Dubz (who are interviewing people backstage) come and perform their new song. I can't remember what it's called - Best Behaviour, maybe? Not one of my favourites of their songs, but it's a good solid performance, and did anyone know Fazer could play the piano that beautifully? I'd never have guessed.

Best Album is up next, and Nelly's here presenting. The choices are Plan B's "The Defamation of Strickland Banks", JLS' self-titled, N-Dubz's "Against All Odds", Chipmunk's "I Am Chipmunk" and Dizzee Rascal's "Tongue in Cheek". I'm guessing it'll go to N-Dubz or Chipmunk (although surely Chipmunk's album came out more than a year ago?) but JLS get it. Well, that's nice. They're as sweet as ever when they accept.

Alesha comes to to perform "Drummer Boy". Another weird dress, this time white. Plus lots of hot male dancers to perv at - so the time goes quickly, even though I'm not in love with the song.

Ryan Thomas and Holly someone (I didn't catch her last name) come up to present Best Music Video. It's between Mark Ronson & The Business INTL ft. Q-Tip & MNDR's "Bang, Bang, Bang", Tinie & Labrinth's "Frisky", Tinchy Stryder's "You're Not Alone" (now I KNOW that one is more than a year old, they played it at the gym last summer), Alesha's "Drummer Boy" and Dizzee Rascal's "Dirtee Disco". I kind of hope Dizzee gets it, because the video for that was so hilarious, but I'm not disappointed when Tinie gets his second award of the night. Good, he's had a great year, and I'm glad that it's being recognized.

N-Dubz briefly interview Jay Sean, and when they ask him what British stuff they should take to America with them, he tells them Jaffa Cakes, Hob Nobs, Rich Tea, basically all kinds of biscuits. Bless, I'd happily take - or bake - him biscuits as long as he'd take me along with them. Next we're back to the stage, and Jay Sean's performing a musical mix. He looks good in jeans and a really beautifully cut tuxedo jacket, which has silk lapels with a notched collar instead of a shawl collar - good choice, he's too broad in the chest to wear a shawl collar well. Not sure about the trainers, boots would have been a better choice methinks. He performs well, though, and Skepta comes onstage to sing along with him on the last song, the title of which slips my mind atm.

Reg and Alesha are back. Who on earth picked her clothing for tonight? This one looks like two nice dresses were taken and made into one weird dress - silver lame top and a poufy white skirt. Oh well, she's still hot. Reg and a troupe of dancers decide to highlight past MOBO shows using the medium of interpretive dance while we hear songs from the past - Lighthouse Family's "Lifted", Mark Morrison's "Return of the Mack", Artful Dodger & Craig David's "Rewind", something by Wiley, and Dizzee Rascal's "Bonkers". Hmm. The dancers are very good, but not sure what their dances have to do with the previous shows. Nice bit of nostalgia though - I remember most of the shows from those times.

Backstage again, where N-Dubz are interviewing Tinie Tempah, who's looking smokin'. Ahhh, that smile...I could watch that all day. Our favourite trio all look a bit weird - Dappy's wearing way too much bling (why am I surprised?), Fazer's in some sort of lumberjack's plaid jacket and Tulisa is wearing a weird dress, I think it's supposed to be black and gold but on camera it comes out more olive green. Somehow she manages to pull it off, although I'm not sure I know anyone else who could.

Back in the main hall, and Professor Green's performing "Monster", along with the very sexy Ed Drewett. They perform well together, and I hope that they continue making music.

Best UK Act is up, and Michelle Williams is here with Ricky someone (again, I didn't catch his last name) to present. Ah, this is how a woman should dress at a show like this! She looks fantastic in a teal green dress. Up for this award are Tinie, Jay Sean, Taio Cruz, N-Dubz and JLS - all good candidates. I have my fingers crossed for Jay Sean, although this wasn't his best year, but JLS get it. Not that I'm disappointed, I get to see the yummy lads again, and Marvin actually speaks this time!

Tinie performs "Pass Out" and I nearly do. Phew.

N-Dubz chat a bit more from backstage. Tulisa is lying on a chaise-lounge, being fanned by men in grass skirts. Oh, the life of a celebrity...

Corinne Bailey Rae comes on to present Best Song. She looks nice, with a gray outfit and lots of hair. Up are Taio Cruz f. Ke$ha's "Dirty Picture", N-Dubz f. Mr Hudson's "Playing With Fire", Tinie Tempah's "Pass Out", Mark Ronson's "Bang Bang Bang" and Professor Green's "I Need You Tonight". Is Tinie gonna get yet another award? Nope, it goes to N-Dubz, and they dedicate it "to one man only - Uncle B". Is there really an Uncle B? Guess so.

Reggie's been moving from table to table through the evening, and now he's at JLS' table, so he interviews the lads and asks them what music they've really been liking this year. JB loves the whole of Drake's album - good choice. Marvin loves Tinie Tempah, Oritse loves Labrinth, and Aston asks if he should sing the song he's been singing in the shower for ages. Reg answers in the affirmative, and Aston starts singing "Billionnaire". Which leads right to the next performance, the delightful Travie McCoy. Bruno Mars isn't here tonight, so JLS get up on stage with him to sing the chorus. I've liked Travie ever since Gym Class Heroes released "Cupid's Chokehold", and for some reason he reminds me of Curt - they don't look or act anything alike, but there's something in the way they grin, and the way they hold their head when they're being charming.

Straight on from Travie's performance is Nelly singing "Just a Dream". I've never heard this song, but it's really nice. It's a nice understated performance, too, in contrast to the energy of the last one. Nelly looks really good in a navy blue sweater and - OMG, could it be! It is! Finally, a pair of jeans that fits properly. First ones I've seen this evening. And is that Slash in the background, playing guitar? Surely not, I must be imagining it.

Reg announces the Lifetime Achievement award, and Trevor Nelson comes on to talk about the recipient. He's looking pretty sharp in a nice plain suit, sort of mink-coloured. The jacket fits really well, and while I'm not a fan of pleat-front pants, they actually look alright on him. He says a couple of things about the recipient of the award, and it's pretty clear he's talking about Billy Ocean. Lovely, who doesn't like a bit of Billy Ocean? Billy comes out to recieve his award, and talks about how different it was in his day, and how happy he is that there are things around like the MOBOs, so artists can get the recognition they deserve. He looks great too, in an avocado-green suit that shouldn't work but somehow does.

Roll Deep come on to perform a mix of "Green Light" and "Good Times". I'm liking this album, it's very upbeat.

Reg makes a very hammy speech about peace - LOL.

Kanya King - the founder of the MOBOs - comes out to talk a little about the awards. God she's beautiful. I don't know how old she is, but if she thought up the MOBOs 15 years ago she's got to be more than 19, which is about how old she looks. Her dress is gorgeous too, white with slightly puffed sleeves and flapper-type fringe.

Tinchy Stryder closes the show. He's looking casual and good, and reminds me of Oli more than ever. I quite like this song (Second Chance) and am glad that he and Taio Cruz are collaborating again. Taio isn't onstage, but he's singing on the monitor behind. Tinch then sings something else - I'm not sure what - and is joined by Giggs, Professor Green and Devlin. What a great quartet! Oh, there's Tinie too - so a quintet. Nice way to close the show.

All in all, it was a great show. I'm sorry I couldn't be there in person - health probs got in the way, so Cam took his brother and sister (thank God they could get a third ticket last minute!) - especially since BBC1 only showed half the show. The bits they cut out were Best African Act, Best Reggae, Best Jazz, Best Gospel, Best UK R&B / Soul, Best International and BeMOBO (I don't know what that is). I particularly missed the Best Reggae, because I hear Gyptian won - I love him. That said, it was nice to watch from the comfort of my couch and blog to you from my bed rather than the car!

Hope you enjoyed, and you can always catch the show on BBC iPlayer.

Men, Money And Measly Ear Infections

I haven't posted much recently, as you can see. Two, maybe two and a half weeks ago I got struck down by an appalling ear infection, much to my horror. I used to get ear infections a lot, and actually had to have operations on them to clear stuff out a couple times, but I haven't had one since my brother's wedding two or three summers ago, and I'd stupidly thought that maybe that was a good omen, and I wouldn't get them anymore. No luck - although I suppose you could consider me lucky for having a break for a few years, I dunno. Anyway, they're excruciatingly painful, so painful that I find it very difficult to walk or talk or eat or move my jaw at all.

So I spent a lot of time in bed with a cold soda can propped against my ear and throat, since cold and lying down eased up the pressure a bit. When I stood up or even sat on the couch, the blood started pounding and made it even worse. Therefore my bed got very well-used over the last two weeks, and not in the way I'd prefer. *sigh* Stupidly, there wasn't much I could do beyond lie there and try to sleep. I even found it hard to concentrate on reading, although I got a couple of books from the Oxfam bookstore - a Karen Robards romantic suspense, and something by Chuck Palahniuk that I haven't read yet - so that was something. The Karen Robards wasn't her best, but was still entertaining enough to actually take my mind off my ear for a couple of minutes at a time.

Happily it seems to be nearly better, although it's a bit itchy, and I sometimes wake myself up by scratching it in my sleep.

Not last Thursday, but the Thursday before that, I went to the doctor early in the morning (well, 10.40, which is early for me - I'm a night owl) and got antibiotics and eardrops. The doctors is at the beginning of town, so Mom and I walked to the chemist to fill the prescription, and then into town to go to Tesco and buy some groceries, and we stopped in the Oxfam bookshop, and that's where I met this incredibly interesting guy.

I can't explain what it was about him - all I can really say is that he was magnetic. He was average height, good-looking but not traffic-stopping, had average reddish-brown hair, average casual clothes, and was not my usual type. And yet he was anything but average. He was reading a cyberpunk novel, and there was something slightly cyberpunkish about him, although I'm damned if I know what it was. In some ways, he reminded me a little of Julian, although once again I can't pinpoint what it was. But the way he talked...oh man, that was amazing. He seemed incredibly intelligent - and you know what a turn-on intelligence is for me - and we talked about what seemed to be hundreds of things, although in reality it could only have been a handful. A couple of the books I was buying - not the romance, but the Palahniuk, and John Gribbin's "In Search of Schroedinger's Cat" caused him to say, "I didn't see that! If I'd seen it, I'd have had it." I actually surrendered the John Gribbin to him, since I'm a nice person, and when I went back today it wasn't there, so I guess he did buy it.

He even tried, unsuccessfully, to explain Schroedinger's Cat to my mom. Mom is a fairly practical person, though, and her response was to look a bit blank and say, "I'm pretty sure a live cat would create a fuss if you tried to lock it in a box, so you'd know by the noise and movement that it was alive."

:D

So yeah, I have a bit of a crush. Knowing my luck, he's probably gay, or at least taken, but he sure did give good conversation. I've been back to the shop a couple of times since then, but he's never been there. He told me he was a volunteer, so I'm gonna try again on Thursday morning, in the hopes that he always works the same hours. Even if he is gay or taken, I'd like to talk to him again, and see if I can work out why there's this magnetic pull between us (or at least on my side). Happily I was actually looking pretty good that day, despite my ear infection. It was a beautiful sunny morning, dry and warm, and I was wearing my white cotton halterneck sundress with the red flowers down the front, which is my favourite dress. It's really made for use on the hottest of hot summer days, because it's just a single thin layer of cotton (and quite diaphanous, so I have to remember to wear white or nude panties with it), reaches to my waist in the back, low cut over the boobs with a tie around the neck, ruching under the breasts to make your waist look smaller, and a huge billowy skirt. It was cream when I got it, but even though that was only in July, I've worn it so much that it's faded to white, and I can barely read the care label. Over the breasts and then in a wide stripe down the front are a profusion of flowers, mostly red, with occasional bits of pink and dark blue and green. It's a beautiful dress, and even though I can't wear a bra with it it suits me well - it skims over the bad parts and accentuates the good parts - so I should really try and get a photo of me in it before the weather gets cold for the winter. So I was wearing that, and a little dusky rose cardigan from Hobbs that I got in the seconds sale because it had a tiny hole at the back, and white sandals with flowers on them, and my hair was caught back loosely in a clip with curls hanging down, and I had on that magnet perfume that guys always react to. So I was looking and smelling good, and I think - I think - that he was attracted to me, although I could just be deluding myself.

I do hope I get to see him again.

[Like this, but pulled up a lot at the neck, so my breasts look firm and round and I don't show a lot of cleavage. My neck really hurt when I took this picture, so I let the halter out about four inches. Different cardi, too.]

Anyway, that was two Thursdays ago, and after that I went home and went to bed for a week, only getting up to bathe and occasionally watch TV in the evenings. Then for the rest of last week I was frantically trying to get any outstanding work out of the way so I could prepare for uni, which was supposed to start last Wednesday. Except on Wednesday I got an email from admissions saying that the course had been cancelled due to not enough people enrolled. So I don't know what the heck I'm going to do for the next nine months. Travel, maybe. I'm too sick to go right now, and I'm also too sick to work full-time, but maybe after Christmas I can pack my things and go visiting people in various countries of the world. I've always wanted to travel, but I never have the time or the money, and there's always something that I have to do at home, either work or uni or looking after Mom. Perhaps this would be a good time to get away, while I have a non-college year and Tony's still around to help look after Mom. (They're hoping to move to the south coast next Spring.)

If not travel, then I have to find something to keep me occupied, some sort of course that will give my weeks a schedule, even if it's just one day a week. I found several short courses that I want to do, things that run for a few weeks - Thai cooking, Chinese cooking, a really nice looking desserts class, a couple of courses on Christmas crafts and Christmas flower arrangements - but nothing that will continue for a whole semester, let alone a year. I suppose I really need to set my mind to it, and look around for something, because the fall semester is definitely under way, although there are a couple of things that don't start until the end of October. Problem is, I don't know what to do if I don't do Japanese. Spanish, maybe. Mom suggested Italian, but you can't really use Italian outside Italy, unless you're considering a career in music or the arts. Spanish would be more practical, particularly for someone who's considering living in California or Texas, and although I used to be fluent, I lost a lot of it when I lost my memory. If I get a good class, it should take me a year, maybe a year and a half to get back up to fluency. But I don't know what level I'm at right now - probably pre-GCSE - so I don't know exactly what course I would need.

I suppose I could look around at different universities for another Japanese course, but I really like my teacher and my uni. Perhaps they'll run the course in the spring semester, and then I'll only miss out on half a year.

But damn, I miss uni. And I REALLY miss Kurisu-san (that's my redheaded musician, the one I wrote about a couple times back in May). We talked once on msn, but since then he hasn't appeared on there - I dunno if he's blocking me, or if he just doesn't have internet access, or doesn't get online.

So I had a pretty crappy week with the ear, and the week since then has been split into crappy and nice. I went into town a couple of times and didn't manage to get any of the things I needed done. Ann Summers had a great sale, and I bought some really lovely underwear, but when I went back with Mom so she could buy me some corsets and negligees for Christmas, they'd just finished the sale the night before. What kind of store puts a sale on for only a week, honestly? It's the most ridiculous thing. And Jane Norman had done the same thing, and they had some lovely dresses in there that I was coveting. My friend Zia, who's been suffering from clinical depression for as long as I've known her (which is coming up nine years), was dumped by her boyfriend on Saturday and fell into a suicidal depression which worried me a great deal, and I went to visit her yesterday, all the way in Upton Park, after an already gruelling day of visiting my father and stepmother in Highgate. I'll write more about that day in my next note, since there's too much to write here. It was good to see her, but I'm very concerned - even scared - and she needs a great deal of support right now. On Sunday I went ice skating with B, one of my closest high school friends, and we usually have a great time, but neither of us could really get into it: the ice was cut up and nobbly, making it hard to skate (for some reason they didn't smooth it down every hour the way they usually do) and she'd been having man trouble, so she wanted to talk more than skate, and while we both would have benefited from the physical activity, the ice was just too cut up and crowded to get any decent exercise in.

Which reminds me, I need new ice skates, mine are just a tiny bit too small and give me foot cramps. It will hurt to see them go, because I've had them since I was about 13, and they've seen me through a lot. I've always kept them in really good condition, so I should be able to sell them on ebay, which will help with the price of new ones. But it'll still be a big expense - figure skates are really dear over here, and for a good beginners pair I could pay anywhere from £60 to £130, although I doubt I'd find them any cheaper than that unless I bought second-hand. If I'm lucky I can sell mine for maybe £30, and then either buy a pair of £60 ones, or get them for Christmas.

*sigh* Yet another major expense. I still haven't bought that coat - although I did go and try the blue one on again, and it looked kind of weird - and I really need to, because the weather's rapidly getting cold. We're supposed to have a freezing snap in the next week, same as last year, which is really a bugger - I hate it when it gets cold and snowy before Halloween. Halloween should be warm enough to go trick-or-treating and not be covered up in winter coats. I love winter and snow, love wearing my coats and boots and hats with matching scarves and gloves, but not until late November. Coat and hat weather should start at Thanksgiving.

And of course, I need a haircut - argh! I got paid today, or maybe it's tomorrow, and nearly every penny is already accounted for. I bought a couple of books today - Charlaine Harris' "Grave Secret" (in hardback, which was expensive, but they didn't have it in paperback) from Waterstones, and a Mills & Boon book and Hawthorne's "Rappaccini's Daughter" from the charity shop. And I got some bubble bath from The Body Shop, because I've developed allergies to so many of the branded ones, and a couple of groceries, and a sandwich and a cup of hot chocolate from Costa - seven freakin' quid for a hot chocolate and a sandwich! I'm not going in there again - and Ne-Yo's first two CDs (which I'd been wanting for a couple years, and I never managed to find them for less than £15 each, and today HMV had them 2 for £10 - and that was it. I spent £10 on the CDs, £16 in The Body Shop on bubble bath and a Christmas present, £7 on lunch, £18 on books (which I can't do again for several months now, although when Grave Secret comes out in paperback I can sell the hardback) and about £10 on groceries - about £60, and the rest of this month's money goes on bills. I can just about pay my bills, but I'm flat broke as far as anything else goes.

Friends ask me how it is that I have so many problems with money when I don't actually spend a lot on myself - my girlfriends spend as much on beauty products and pampering in a month as I spend on everything else - and when I did the mental math today, I found out why: taking into account my base salary (although not any extra jobs I pick up) and my carer's allowance and Mom's attendance allowance and statutory sick pay, I am running a household on an average of £8500 a year. For the record, that's about $15,000. I don't know if it's possible to support a family on $15,000 a year in America, but over here it's a huge struggle. B is a nurse, and you know how poorly nurses get paid, and she still makes £18,000 a year - more than twice what Mom and I make combined, when Mom's not working.



So. Fucking. Tired.

I get that there are plenty of carers out there, and it's not easy for any of us - but most carers get some sort of support, from family or doctors or community support workers, and most carers aren't sick themselves. In a world that works the way it's supposed to, if I listened to my doctor, I should be the one HAVING a carer who comes in to look after me - not being one myself.

But I am, and I don't have anyone who can look after me - except Mom - and the government won't help, so I just kind of have to get on with it. It's especially hard when I've just had an infection, though, because with an auto-immune disorder like fibromyalgia / ME, every time I get any sort of infection it takes a couple of weeks, even a month, for my immune system to calm down. (At least somewhat - it never calms down to a normal state.)

A couple of people, including my brother, have said that I should try and come off the medications and find more natural ways of dealing with it, but the natural ways don't generally work for me. I've tried so many things, and the only natural things that really help are massage and a hot climate, neither of which I can afford. As things are, when the doctor put me on a lower dose of tramadol - and I was on the lower dosage for more than two years, so I know my body had time to get used to it - I was in so much pain I could barely concentrate on anything. I was lucky to get three or four hours of sleep a night, before I was awakened in agony. And even now that the dosages have been put back up to the right place, if I miss a pill it often causes so much pain that I black out.

Shit, I wish I were in the US where you have proper drugs for stuff like this.

Ugh, enough whining. My whines always go the same way - money, not having any money, not having any money because I'm too sick to work full-time, health. Enough already! Truth was, parts of my week were good, if a little depressing. My father and stepmother are moving next week, so that's kind of sad - I can't imagine London without my PaPa, and I'm really going to miss their house. That was the place I came home from college to. I fell in love for the second (and seemingly permanent) time when I was in my bathroom there, when I was seventeen, when Curt texted me to ask me to the Valentines Dance. Come to think of it, I fell in love for the first time in that house, too, when I fell for Michael three days after my birthday, the night that PaPa and Jackie took me to see Saturday Night Fever. Was that my fifteenth birthday or my sixteenth? I can't quite remember, although I think it must have been my fifteenth.

So yeah, there are a lot of good memories in that house. I'll miss the Curt-memories more than anything, I think, because most of our early good times were when I was living there. We were kids when I fell for him, so innocent and naive, never imagining that life could work out to be anything less than wonderful. We never worried about getting together as a couple, because we thought we had all the time in the world. Zia's first suicide attempt the following summer was the first thing to change that, the first layer of that frost that gradually built up and iced over his heart, and he's been building walls for one reason or another ever since. But the fall and the winter before that? We were happy children, and he was experiencing the freedom of college for the first time (he went to a rather restrictive private school), and I was experiencing true love for the first time, and we were so full of joy.

I think I'll miss those memories as much as I'll miss anything. I'll still see my dad and stepmother, of course. I may even see them as much as I see them now; for all that they've only been twenty miles away from me while they were living in London, I haven't been to see them as much as I should have. Between the rape and PaPa's stroke, I didn't spend much time in London, and what time I did spend was always escorted: I'd visit PaPa or Curt, and they'd be with me most if not all of the time, and they'd pick me up and / or drop me off at home, and I'd spend very little alone time. If I went into work, I'd only have to change trains quickly at Blackfriars, and that was the only part of the city I'd see until I was in Dagenham. But when PaPa had his stroke, I was going to the city once a week, sometimes more, and I started having a lot of nightmares. So after he was out of the hospital, my visits got less and less frequent. And the worst thing was that I could never tell him why I wasn't visiting, because I never told him about the rape.

*sigh*

I seem to be doing a lot of sighing at the moment. *rolls eyes*

But it was nice to see them, and Lucy - my youngest sister - was there for lunch, which was also good. Now that Amy (my middle-down sister) has gone to uni, Lucy is sort of coming into her own, discovering her own likes and dislikes instead of following in the older one's footsteps. Over the summer she discovered a love for science and psychology - and this is a girl who was raised to sneer at modern things like science and technology, and put all her energy into Latin and Greek and Classic Literature and History, you know all those good upper-class English girl things - and it was really nice to see her animated about something. Amy is reading Classics at Oxford, becoming a mini version of her mother, and it's really nice to see Lu breaking out of the box a bit. She was even talking about going to uni in the States rather than at Oxford, which must have appalled her mother. Whether she does so all the way, or ends up at Oxford doing History and Latin, remains to be seen. She was always the more stubborn of the two though, always knew her own mind well, so perhaps she'll fight for what she wants. That would be a sight to see.

OK, this blog has got FAR too long - I try to keep them to a length that won't bore the pants off too many readers, but I've failed miserably this time - so I shall let you go. I need to get some sleep soon anyway, it's getting late (or early) and I need food and then sleepies.

Hope y'all have been well while I was away, and I'll try and catch up with reading your blogs soon!

Update: What the snacks? They denied this post because apparently it has my email on it...I read the whole thing, and NOWHERE does it give any email addresses.