Post!

I think I look more like Amanda Seyfried.

Sigh.

Some people just have issues. Huge, insurmountable issues. Issues that get in the way of ever having an ordinary connection with people. Basically I had a bad morning and would like to move now please, except for the deposit and transporting my things, and not being a quitter. My roommate Jad already did move out for similar reasons a few weeks ago. No one in this house aside from the landlord has lived here for more than a few months. What would it be like to have people prefer to forfeit $500-700 than live with me?

So I was pretty unhappy and couldn't talk to my room mates about it because they are working and I don't think anyone else could give me very relevant advice. I started applying for every single job I am remotely qualified for and am thinking of applying as a live-in something or other in Santa Cruz. But the issue in the first place is setting boundaries and respecting them, not sure how well eldercare would work for me.

I don't have television but was watching the nbc.com miss teen USA and it turns out I really like pageants. People say they're based on looks, but it is really enthusiasm, and it's fun to watch fifty people having a choreographed dance thing. I think they would have better luck dancing in flats because they are a little stiff and I definitely can't dance in tall shoes.

Power And Intention

There is no such thing as a five page paper. I have been working for 2 weeks, I have 4 quotes and six paragraphs and it is only three pages long. Every time I go to it I add a paragraph and try to branch off of the thesis in another way and add little details and clarification but it is just not breaking the three page barrier. Possibly there are not 5 pages of things to say about charity. My thesis is basically that charity is a front that lets people feel fulfilled without actually affecting social change, thus maintaining a power imbalance. If I can't convince someone in 2 1/3 pages maybe they are too stubborn to learn new perspectives.

Today I listened to a half hour conversation that contained under a minute of information.
Part A: Everything you see, percieve, or think, is just the mind trying to make itself heard. We don't need to be anything or ascribe meaning to anything. We don't actually have any needs once we go outside of the mind.
Part B: But even saying that and discussing this you are using the mind. It's all the mind.
(repeat, ad infinitum)
I tried to bring them back to something I could care about with "What he is calling the mind is what you would call the ego." and while it did shift the conversation for a few rounds:
Part A: The mind tries to make it complicated and say "look at me" but it's all very very simple. We don't need anything. Life is enough as it is.
Part B: But when you say that, "life is enough as is", that's a thought.
I was ultimately a failure.

If I am going to discuss philosophy it had better be the funny kind or my head starts to get so incredibly heavy I can't hold it up and my eyelids do as well.

Hitchiking

Since I am on the upswing of my bipolarity I had an amazing, amazing day but technically one of my bike wheels got stolen. So I learned to hitchike! That is mein the biggest convertable truck ever! It is the kind with special big wheels. I didn't have time to talk myself into walking instead because someone picked me up as soon as I turned to face oncoming traffic. And I am going to do it again tommorow. And every day until something bad happens or I am ready to try again with my bicycle. I'm thinking of dragging it under the railroad bridge to keep it out of everyone's way while I wait for a change of heart. And since I am used to so much exercise now I have soooo much energy from not biking. Possibly 1/2 hour is not considered soooo much.

Maybe the person who stole my wheel will give it back if I make a little sign asking. Because if I saw a sign like that I would give it back right away!

When I do a thing I like to learn all about it, so I tried to learn about hitchhiking from online forums and found out I do not want to be a hitchiker.

I think I even look 19!

Today was a very odd birthday. I sort of knew it was my birthday because I spent the weekend doing birthday meals and shopping but I forgot that today was my exact birthday until this afternoon when I saw that there is a caramel apple making at Kresge on Tuesday Oct. 23. Because I already knew the day of the week.

I got mail presents. I really like mail presents. My best present this birthday is my camera because I love to take pictures! Except I think I may have taken pictures of everything there is to see in Santa Cruz. But the weather will change and I can do it again. And I am going to drop into a tightrope club thing tommorow so that might be photogenic. Unless drop ins aren't allowed. I read the policy but I think I am repressing it which I would only do if drop ins aren't allowed. My oddest present was a pair of gloves that feel very cold. It was a very hot day today so I put on my mysteriously cold gloves and they retained their cold for several minutes. I forget what that's called.

My worst present is that hamstring stretches make me dizzy/nauseous. Which is maybe not a present but today I learned hamstring stretching in Theater Arts and it was crazy! I think I have been progressively tightening them or something because I thought I might pass out. Normally I don't do things that are strenuous enough to make me pass out but I was not expecting it to hurt so I just started in, like how swinging your arm into a tree hurts more than punching a tree.

Racism

I really hate discussing racism because discussions never seem to come to a good conclusion. Today in Kresge Core was no exception but it was certainly different than what I am used to. Our teacher wanted us to discuss racism not as an external force but as part of daily life, even on campus. Our class split into groups of seven to discuss a 1988 essay on white priviledge. It said, basically, that in addition to the disadvantages minorities have, there are unfair advantages for white people, and we have to give them up to make any real strides toward equality. Not doing so perpetuates systemic racism. The advantages were things like failing without representing your whole race as failures, being able to speak without your race on trial,and combatting racism without negative consequences. It was not a very convincing essay.

In my group we first tore apart each of her arguments, then said that clearly the eightees were very different than today, then we criticized the author's ability to focus and be coherant. We ridiculed the concept that systems are designed for white people: One priviledge listed was being able to get your hair cut, and another was finding familiar food in the grocery store. "When was the last time you got your hair cut by a white person?" one of us asked. "Grocery stores don't have a 'white' section!" and we laughed. "I say, grocer, procure for me a pheasant, a measure of barley, and mincemeat pies, there's a good man." Then we talked about our own races. No one in my core class is black, but in my group we renounced our priviledge and guilt one by one. "I'm half Israeli" offered one boy, and then we all got into it. "Yeah, I'm actually Irish..." "I'm Asian, from Armenia." "I'm Asian from Russia." The tone of the discussion was very 'These mythical "white" people are apparently behaving very badly. If we see them, we must ask them to stop oppressing everyone.' The half Israeli boy said "You see, none of us are really white. It's an oversimplification. She just wants to make people feel bad." At this point I pointed out that I personally identify as white. I am not visibly the most German/Swedish girl in the world, with my brown hair and green eyes, but I thought that as the physically most northern/western European person in the room I should probably represent a little. It's also a little hard to claim my ethnic roots as I don't speak either language or celebrate the holidays or eat the food or plan to go to either country and I am at least 4th generation American on the most recently immigrated line and American Revolution descended through another line.

We were upsetting our poor teacher with our insistence that we were a multicultural, racism free group. She couldn't actually tell us "No matter where your parents are from you are white kids and people treat you the best and that is wrong and you must change it.", but that is what she implied. "For homework, create a list of the priviledges you have because of age, finances, gender, race, or orientation."

I know that people give me slack that not everyone gets, because I am nice, and young, and sort of pretty. But that doesn't make bandaids or hair salons racist. Honestly, walking around that campus I feel like I'm on the safe side of the power binary. It's a 40 year old state school, not a 200 year old private school, but I still feel it. The way the people who work the dining hall don't speak very much English, the trees and library and the views and the courtyards and the art gallery, the way students ignore all of the people with hands-on jobs except the bus drivers... There is a class issue, if not a concrete racial one. Outside my Core class there were men cutting branches with power tools, and because we absolutely must have silence for our important analysis and high level thinking in our mandatory freshman Core class we were joking and complaining about the noise. "I'm sorry, but it's driving me crazy!" said one girl. "Anyone have a bb gun?" joked our professor.

Neighbors

Today I followed the railroad tracks near my house instead of the road, because the road is very narrow and surrounded by toxic plants that I used to fall into before I decided I would rather be possibly hit by a car than certainly covered in weeping sores. Since it rained yesterday the low parts of the path were muddy and I got mud on one of my feet. The path was very nice and the toxic things were mostly far away. It was quiet and I saw a horse! At one point I had to take my bike over a little railroad bridge and it was fun but scary. It was fun because the gaps between ties were only a little smaller than my foot so I had to be careful and I could see the river, but it was scary when I had to get my bike off of the tracks and didn't realize how steep the concrete bank was. I was walking my bike at that point and it started sliding over and since I had my groceries and books in its crate it was very heavy. Eventually the tracks ended but I could still hear the road and see the path, so I carried on quite far, and biked up a steep paved road that I eventually had to walk up. It was a mile long paved road for just one house!
The house was big though, with chain link fencing and solar panels.

I turned and biked back the way I came and asked the first people I saw, a family with a horse and dogs, which way would take me to the main road. They were so nice! The mom of them sent the son of them on with me to show me the path. He was adorable, showing off like everyone does but not with the subtlety older teens have. "Look, a banana slug!" I said. The santa cruz ones are big and bright! "Have you ever licked one?" he asked. Of course, he has. He also explained that he could fight a mountain lion statue with his pocketknife (it was a really good statue!) and has been electrocuted and when we encountered fallen trees that I took my bike under slowly with some twisting, he said "I'm gonna have to bring a chainsaw up here." I don't know why but I bragged a little bit as well.

Waah.

So on Monday I fell off my bike- actually my bike and I fell, I didn't come off of it- and got poison oak on my hands, and then I touched my eyelid, chin, neck, cheeks, and applied lip gloss with my fingers before washing my hands. I was trying not to do that and didn't realize I had until I started growing a terrible rash. I suspect that rather than touching almost my entire face before washing my hands I moronically touched my contaminated jeans after washing my hands, thus spreading the urishiol oil everywhere.

The internet says urishiol reactions take between 1 and 2 weeks to heal, or possibly as many as five weeks, and can have giant pustules and blistering and can get worse on repetition. This is the third time this year I have exposed myself to urishiol (or fourth because there was one time this summer I didn't do anything out of the ordinary and still got swollen itchy lips), and about the 10th time in my life, between mangoes and summers at camp and I think this is the worst I have had. Still no pustules or blisters, thank God, but talking hurts and I am all itchy and I look terrible because I am holding my face immobile in a sort of droopy sad way.

I am hoping to get over this before my second Macy's interview ("No, it's not contagious! Even the pus is not contagious, I read it online! I got it from touching poison oak, and even though this has happened to me 4 times in the last year, it will not happen again! And I could totally sell makeup even though right now I can't wear it or even talk! And I am still cuter than some of the employees here! And nine out of ten people in general! Excuse me while I curl into a shaking ball to keep from scratching off my own face.") and hopefully over the worst of it before class on Monday.

My new goal is to never do this again ever, which I am accomplishing by staying on the paths at school, and on the pavement where available, and staying on the road when biking (even though cars come so close to me on the tiny roads out here when two drivers are coming in opposite directions! It is so scary!) and possibly buying things to counter urishiol and carrying them everywhere.

Because I consider myself above average in intelligence and also common sense, I do not believe that I keep doing this accidentally. I think there is something about looking and feeling ghastly that my subconscious craves. I sort of like going through my day without moving from reflective surface to reflective surface, and the quality of my interactions with other people is different, in kind of a good way. Because technically I feel better than people I look better than, and worse than people I look worse than, and so when I meet people who look ordinary I am maybe disinterested or watching myself in their glasses and sometimes I feel proud that I am willing to talk to them. And when I am deformed, like right now, I feel kind of grateful that ordinary people are nice to me, instead of entitled to it.

Not sure I can post that, even to a blog no one knows about or has ever read, but I think I need a less painful uglification. I could get glasses again, but those hurt my nose and ears and get stuff on them and I can't see anything that isn't straight ahead of me, which most people apparently don't mind but I normally have the world's best peripheral vision so it drives me crazy. Also my ears are different heights (I am really not as pretty as I delusionally think I am), so there's that. Hm. I could just get Body Dysmorphic Disorder, which is what Uma Thurman had. (although most people are much prettier than her, so I don't know why everyone thinks she has BDD and not just low self esteem) I could just try not being a terrible, judgmental person but I don't really know where to start.

Whee.

I left home at 6 am to get to my 8 am class.
I was late, but it was okay because History of Consciousness has been cancelled. They sent emails to our school accounts but mine isn't functional and I haven't got the internet anyway. Now I have 10 units instead of 15, and trying to add anything is hard because everything is
A) Full
B) on a day I don't have to bus to Santa Cruz
C) Too late in the day for me to get home before 10
D) scheduled at the same time as my remaining 2 classes
E) Impossible to add because I've missed the entrance exam
or
F) Dead boring.

So I guess I am going to sign up for philosophy or poetry, but someday I will take an art class. (all art classes were A or D)

In conclusion: I need a laptop and I need a car.
This is a phenomenal amount of effort- and I haven't attended a single class.

Alright.

Someone is not having a good Welcome Week. Someone with zero planning skills and a new out of town address and no car. Someone with zero planning skills hasn't got a major and signed up for classes using absolutely no criteria, apparently. History of Consciousness? It has history right in the title! And linguistics because one time in community college a girl said she'd taken and liked it.

And has there ever been a smaller college town than Santa Cruz? I can walk across it in an hour and a half. At one point I accidentally walked into the wilderness that is conveniently located down town. My first class is still 2 days away, I don't know why.

Moving

I always sort things into good and useless, I think it's called "wheat from the chaff" but I am not sure because like 98 percent of Americans, I am not a farmer. Anyway, I find this process very satisfying and orderly. These are my attractive coworkers, and these are my unattractive coworkers, and these are the bills that are shabby and going to the bank and these are the crisp ones to give as change, and that is the BART rider I would save if the train was on fire, and these are the destinations I would rather go to Iceland than and these are the destinations I would rather go to than Iceland.

It is really more satisfying than I expected to sort my things into things I am bringing to college and things I am abandoning to the attic. Sitting in my bedroom filled with odds and ends and old projects and seasonal clothes and just detritus of modern life is so sad, but standing in the spare room filled with those items that are essential or wonderful and just relevant to my new life is very satisfying. But my mattress is in the old broken things room and the catbox is in the new life room, so one guess where I still hang out.

Things

I was reading The Simple Dollar, which is a blog written by a man who is not very funny, but I don't mind because I am having the first biologically motivated (as opposed to deadline motivated) all-nighter of my life. Anyway, he says that as a cleansing excercise he examined every item in his office and got rid of it if it didn't truly bring value to his life.

And obviously I have had detachment phases in my life but lifestyle transitions like I am in right now are apparently conducive to hoarding. I got into a fight with Nick about an apron. Because it is my apron, and he has an identical one that he refuses to use because he has gotten it dirty and wants to look professional but not badly enough to actually clean his apron. Further discussion revealed that he believes laundering does not clean garments.

Then I went to Wellsfargo.com and checked that my balance was comfortably high, and then I went to amazon.com and bought only things that will truly bring value to my life, as I have somehow used up or lost all but 4 pairs of panties and can not do laundry every 3 days in Santa Cruz because I hate the laundromat so very much and also will be too busy. Also I bought a jacket that will truly bring value to my life and would bring even more value to my life if I had a massive pair of black sunglasses with brown frames, but I have a pair of massive blue sunglasses with silver frames and they will have to do, because I am poor.

Then I looked at many items in my room to decide whether they truly add value to my life and because of the hoarding mentality every item seems vital. Well, not my books, since the internet came into its own (instead of being composed of poorly punctuated teal text in comic sans, with grey buttons and page update times and visitor counters and moving clip art, oh it was sad.) books are much, much less essential. Are books designed for the juvenile mind? Am I just reading the wrong ones? I am so spoiled by the internet that at the library I will pick up a book and try to read it but I will want more detail about something and want to wikipedia it, or I will be done thinking about oppression or welfare. I want to have conclusions up front and then research them myself.

The pacing of a book is so slow! And in nonfiction books the writers really end up talking down to their audience and sounding patronizing, with their careful interpretation and presentation of endless background information. Very nice hypocrisy Naiomi Watts, stating that women's issues should not be trivialized and then having incredibly one dimensional rhetoric, rivaling any 8th grader's persuasive essay. Perhaps I am reading a book about Wales because I have heard of Wales, not because I have come out of a coma with no memory of my prior life and headed to the library to get my bearings. Maybe if you have to mention the continent and climate and ethnicity you could work it in more subtly.

I am paranoid about being late to my grocery store job so I go to Alameda a little early and sit in the library for 15 or 20 minutes and then head over to the shop, but it's not a very good plan, obviously. The other day I found the upstairs so I guess I can read amgazines, but actually those also assume that the reader is a new transplant to the civilization and has not heard of eggs, or shampoo, or knitting.

The conclusion I take from all of this is that people are not very talented, and writing is too hard for them, and events go by too fast for them to think of timely responses. Or possibly my soul is dead or something and I can't identify with humanity.

School

When I was little I decided not to have children, because there is so much else to be done, but having met people and parents and children I have revised my plan because I think I would be insanely good at parenting.

What I'm trying to say is my Dad is going to homeschool my brother. And I won't be here to help and I know I don't have a very normally structured family but I am the tiniest bit convinced that I was (unknowingly) the anchor that was keeping us from disintegrating (it's a special anchor, okay?) into something unrecognizable and chaotic. So in my last 2 weeks here I am trying really hard to get this one big thing, the homeschooling, into gear, because someone has to. It is mid-September but the homeschooling has yet to begin. Mid September!

To my way of thinking, this homeschool has got to be maximally structured! With deadlines and assignments and curricula and reports! Because as lazy as I am, that child is four times lazier. For example: at work I use a little bucket when I'm mopping instead of rolling the big smelly wringer bucket; Nick doesn't work.

I am a first year university student so this little issue doesn't involve me at all really, but that doesn't stop me from doing my little research and compilation and nagging.
Me: It's September now. School time! Go!
Dad: First we're working to get you settled, then we'll figure things out with Nick.
Me: What are you doing to get me settled?
Dad: I've... delegated that to your mom.

When I was researching educative models I found the multiple intelligences, which my middle school academy was obsessed with. I was always visual but at the moment (by which I mean for the last few years) I feel very, very logical. Comparatively speaking.

Do I have to?

The more I think about what I like the less college seems like a good idea. Degree, yes, proper life on hold for FOUR YEARS (Longer than I have spent on anything in my life!), no. I think that I would like to spend all of my young adulthood working job after entry level job, trying everything and being an insider at everything! The advantage of college is the whole future earnings thing and also learning a thousand things, neither of which is the specialty of a certain liberal arts college.

I think what I'm trying to say is I have enough money to fly to Wales, and back. And presumably stay somewhere unless Wales prices things higher than America does. And also maybe get coffee and a postcard. Or whatever. It's also one quarter's tuition. Oh my God, Wales. And Welsh people! With the Welsh voices!!!!

What I am trying not to say is that today at work I saw the back of someone's head, and it looked like the headback of someone I knew once, someone rather attractive but nonetheless quite rude. It probably wasn't him, but if it was at least I look good in my workshirt, which is green with orange writing, and my hair looked good and I was wearing my favorite pants, not khaki pants, and actually come to think of it even my shoes were cute, so I think I'm okay. I wonder why all my cuteness came together today, and also why only crazy people asked me out:

Crazy man: Hey! *something else but I have my headphones on* real pretty today.
Me: Polite smile.
Crazy man: Naw, I'm not SCARY!
Me: No, of course n-
Crazy man: It's cause I'm not FROM here!
At that point I gave up and turned down my song.
Me: Wow. Really.
Crazy man: I mean I'm not FROM here.
Me: Oh, where are you from?
Crazy man: Pennsylvania. Do you like snow?
Me: Uh, no, it's pretty but I wouldn't want to shovel a walk or anything.
Crazy man: Well, I'd have you shovelin my walk! No, I'm just playin. Ima catch the bus and see a MOVIE! Gonna go to the MOVIES! You catchin the bus? What's your name?
Me: Uh, that's not important.

And I gave up again and put the volume up. But if he had had a Welsh voice, like crazy men in Wales presumably do, it would have been excellent.

Juggling

I think I maybe want to be a clown.
I can't see the outfit and facepaint and wig, though- trying to visualize myself in a pair of pants with a wire rim at the waist is really hard to do. But I definitely could learn juggling and balloon animals and stilts and all of that.

Fat March

I haven't got television, which is sort of okay because I have, you know, hobbies, but the internet has abc and nbc episodes, some of proper shows like desperate housewives and some that are just pilots or a few episodes, which is what Fat March appears to be. The show is about people who have to walk really far, but they have a really long time to do it in. I want to love it because it is like a more dramatic version of my whole "Not a Wimp" thing, but I feel uncomfortable about the focus on fat people, because honestly I only know a few people who are stoic like everyone's ancestors were, like people are meant to be.

Washington

So I'm on vacation in Washington. I absolutely adore the climate and the foliage. In California plants look like they are being tolerated, sort of isolated and confined, but in Washington there are hundreds of kinds of tree and fern and flower everywhere, spilling over the boundaries and growing and growing. It's refreshing and relaxing and gorgeous. I seriously considered a couple of Washington colleges, but I'm glad I'm going with Santa Cruz because the people here are very different from what I grew up with. When I told Grandma Colleen I'm going there she asked if I had it all figured out. After a bit of conversation I figured out she was asking if I'd been accepted. Aunt Sue did the same thing. Perhaps when they went to school colleges didn't enroll students until the start of classes.

Grandma Colleen and Aunt Sue are cat people- cat stories, cat impressions, and pet cats. I understand cat people because I'm the same way with shoes. "Where are we going today?" I ask them.



So today I got these shoes and also a pair with sort of mini british flags on them (That is a very good flag for putting on things, compared to all the two and three stripe flags and the flags with pictures of animals or whatever.) I can remember the old days when after a year my feet would outgrow all the most fantastic shoes, but now I can keep shoes for my entire life! Stylistically, I'm excited about my twenties and thirties but after that I'm not sure... Grandma Colleen and Aunt Sue get the LL Bean catalogue delivered and I'm pretty sure I can't rock supima cotton full fit tees or whatever. I mean, if models can't... On the other hand, my eleven balls of sportweight lambswool yarn should be delivered by the time I get home. So I clearly have at least some mature... inclinations.

Bitter

When did I get bitter? Last I heard, I was an 18 year old idealist, painfully and obviously naive (people can be a little harsh). And last time *I* checked I was a bit of an optimist, happily knitting woolen socks and sculpting the things I saw in my dreams and confident that the misanthropists I encounter are simply having bad days.

I'm not really comfortable with Lily Allen's "Not Big" as my personal theme song, but it has been for weeks. Really? Mine? "I'm sorry if you feel that I'm being kinda mental, but you left me in such a state- now I'm gonna do to you what you did to me, gonna reciprocate." Really? I remember rather liking people, on the whole. "You're not big, you're not clever- not big whatsoever." Well. There it is. And not as a response to a breakup or whatever, just as a general outlook, applying equally well to life and to humanity. Really?



You know, "Ooh, Flowers! Picture time! Daddy will you take my picture, too?" Not "Eff this, I can't believe I'm wearing heels to a garden tour. I can't believe I'm ON a garden tour."

Employed!

I am employed! At a grocery store! I am the supplements girl, and work in the Health And Beauty Aids part of the store. I really prefer the beauty section because I'm more familiar with the products and the stakes are so much lower- "Where are your facial scrubs?" vs. "Do you have anything to reverse the effects of lead poisoning?". But I'm getting the hang of supplements, to an extent- I at least know where the mushroom tinctures and the multivitamins and the women's health sections are, and all the other sections, but I'm not neccessarily able to find individual items, such as kelp or Gaia Milkweed or charcoal tablets.

And employment is about the best thing ever, because it's like being in a club except accomplishing things at the same time. We have teamwork and a work schedule and familiarity with long term trends in sales and a staffroom that isn't exactly dirty, because that wouldn't be allowed, but is much less polished than anything in a grocery store, or any other store. And we have a bulletin board and a label maker and an intercom and an employee health drawer and ALL SORTS OF THINGS!

And half my job is "facing"- turning and dusting and straightening products so that they look new and tidy and appealing. You would not believe, from looking in my purse or at my bedroom, how much joy this brings me. People do chaos, I undo chaos. Over and over, all day until they go home and I count the drawer (with the help of supervisors with various levels of expertise)and mop.

There are some things I don't like very much, such as the concrete floor and the confusing ancient operating system and ringing up customers (because I'm really, really slow at it). Also, very few people work full time at that shop, and so every shift I meet new people and the old ones are gone. (Well, I've only worked 4 shifts so far so I imagine that will stop soon.)

But the really lovely thing is people come in convinced of a need, a deficit, and I have only to direct their need. This is great because whenever I used to sell things, cookies or balloon animals or bumper stickers, I felt really uncomfortable trying to convince people "really! your life will be marginally better if you exchange money for this item!" And luckily no one asks me what I use, because that would be "Whatever people give me" in the beauty section, and "I try to stay hydrated" in the health section.

Cardigan

So today I bought a cardigan at Goodwill (with cables! and it'd such a good color, sort of slate blue). I'm not a very imaginitive person (I might not be as linear as other people but I don't just think things up from nowhere) so most of the timeI spend on the internet is spent on wikipedia, google images, or wists.com looking up things that I happen to see or interact with that day, such as "US Mail" "credit card" "beeswax" "mango allergy" "shampoo" and the like. Sometimes it's dead boring, like "Wells Fargo", but sometimes it ends up being amazing, and "Cardigan" is one of those:

"In an assassination attempt similar to the incident that took the life of Bulgarian dissident Georgi Markov, former Bulgarian state radio editor Vladimir Kostov survived an attack in Paris as he was leaving the subway when a Bulgarian secret agent injected into him a ricin-coated platinum pellet hidden in the tip of an umbrella. The agent failed to kill Kostov because the heavy woollen cardigan he was wearing that day kept the pellet from penetrating his skin too deeply. "

Cardigan's also a town in Wales. And then there's Cardiganshire. Which might be a farmtown or might be a steeltown but to me it is filled with librarians and teachers in little stone cottages overlooking rolling hills.

Mangoes- Friends or Foes?

Would a friend swell your lips so they sting for days? (3 days and counting). On the other hand, if I hadn't been eating my friends it wouldn't have happened... but I'd do it again in an instant, I'm not a coward, I can take a little swelling and some stinging and even open sores, for I am human and God gave me everything in his creation to use as I wish. And what God didn't give me, human ingenuity has provided me with, such as Neosporin and also chapstick.

Shopping

Like most people, I love new things and beautiful things, the sort of things that can be attained by shopping. However, shopping is one of the dreariest things ever because almost every aspect makes me uncomfortable. Mainly, of course, I don't like the people- they seem much ruder and also uglier than the average person. I don't like shoppers no matter which shop, a yarn store or a shoe store or the grocery store or a bookstore is going to be filled with unpleasant people. They just seem vaguely desperate and irritable, and sometimes they touch me or complain about the shopkeeper to me and I just don't like it. I like people at the park or the library or definitely the train, but shops attract the worst people on their worst behavior. The other unpleasant aspects of shopping pale in comparison, such as the distance from my house (HELLO, I use my bicycle to get around, how exactly can I buy mirrors from IKEA without my parents driving me which they won't because they think I have enough, which yeah right like I even have as many square inches of mirror as I have square inches of body!)or the lighting and music in shops.

But, from now on I will never go into a shop again except for food, because I have got a Visa card with a low limit and also a job. So far I don't think I'm going overboard, because it is the first day I activated it and the first day is sort of special, but it is true that I have to dial it back for tommorow and so on. Also I love getting packages in the mail because it is exactly like presents! If presents were the exact thing you wanted and then eagerly anticipated and then found one day at your house in a lovely box with no thank you note to write.

Although today I believe I spent 3 times as much as I earned. And the night is young. Youngish. Actually, not young, but I am too excited to sleep.

Streamlining

A few weeks ago the neighbor children came to my bedroom door, which is an exterior door, and asked to play with my father. Apparently he found them poking the beehive with sticks and so he gave them each a drone to take home and now they are all best friends. You should know that my Dad is best friends with everyone, instead of favoring interesting or age appropriate or like minded people like most people do. Anyway, I was lying in bed watching the exchange and Dad went off to grab something for Show and Tell (maybe the bee bonnet?) so they turned their attention to me. "How old is you?" asked a very little boy. "15?" the other suggested. I told them my age. "You coulda BEEN moved out!" "Well, yeah, I guess."

I will be 18 and 11/12 when I finally move out- school starts on 9/22, I turn on 10/23. I did second grade twice. (In other words, I coulda been moved out.)

I'm in the process of reducing my collections by taking out the things I hate, and there's so much of it! I filled a garbage bag with clothes I hate and 6 paper grocery bags with books I hate. I was originally going to be hardcore and only keep the things I love but all I couldn't find anything because I am enlightened and don't cling to posessions. Also I don't have very nice stuff. Why do I accumulate things I hate?

I actually think it might be a way of insulating and anchoring myself. "I am a person, look at all of those items that I have purchased or handled!I exist!" Also, anyone who looks at my room will see a massive collection of items but not know which ones are important, which ones define my interests and, to an extent, me. I feel sort of naked with my nearly empty shelves holding only my Japanese textbooks, borrowed books, and glimpses of my soul. I think too much? Well, maybe next time I won't take a 6 hour nap in the afternoon.

Delicious

Now, I think in lists most of the time, which sounds Type A but when you think about it lists are more fluid and less restrictive than, say charts. Some things are not really worth talking about because they are so banal, like The Smoothest Pens List or the Possibly Recyclable List, but sometimes things make it onto a boring list that you wouldn't expect to find there- new to the Delicious List is ginger with peaches. I found out while eating a candy and drinking peach tea, but I think it would also be delicious as a pie or a smoothie.

The Delicious List
-Balsamic Vinaigrette salad dressing
-Carrots
-Ginger
-Peaches
-Peaches and Ginger
-Pad Thai
-Cheese Pizza
-Focaccia
-Gnocchi
-Peppermints
-Coconut
-Parmesan Cheese
-Creme Soda
-Chicken Soup
-Fudge

Man, now I am super hungry, I wish I had massive platters of everything on that list, except the soup and dressing could be in bowls instead.

The Never Eat List
-donuts
-cold tea
-Hershey's chocolate
-things that may have molded
-jelly beans
-mayonnaise
-ranch dressing, and all dressings besides mild balsamic vinaigrette
-things which have sat uncovered in the refrigerator absorbing smells
-hamburgers
-desert wine
-cold tortillas

And now I am not hungry at all. Well, hungry for not havign my stomach empty but not hungry for putting things in my mouth.

edit: Oh, I hate myself- while I was typing that my TEA got COLD.

Crap.

Man, you know I have Mammal Powers, to protect little kids and get along with mammals in general really well, but MAN! There is one little neighbor girl who is completely unwilling to live past ther age of 4. More later. My legs are still shaking. Geez.

Racism

Remember the Never List? The list of things I will never, ever do voluntarily? "Discuss Racism", a longtime component of the list due to the inescapable emotional component of the issue suspending rationality and thus making discussions terribly unproductive and also frustrating, is off the list. And I haven't even started at my social justice college- I've only put my first assignment into my netflix queu.

I was reading about skin lightening (because no one at my office has a job for me and after half an hour of asking I decided to stop drawing attention to my uselessness) and wow, the colonial mindset is insane. And white privilege is interesting but I don't think I'm going to think about it in those terms because white people don't have special things that they don't deserve, it's more that many people who do deserve them don't get them.

Also there is something called being a race traitor, which would be using white privilege to reverse systemic racism by interracial marriage and promoting minorities in your office and things like that. Although I was planning on marrying an Irish person because the actors on The Black Donnelys are so fantastically attractive. And then there are the voices, like on the site I think I posted about before, the bbc dialect recordings. However, this has technically only been my plan since yesterday afternoon when I found the show on nbc.com, so I suppose I might revise the plan at some point. Although I do really like the way those actors wear sweaters, it's amazing. I think I need to move to the UK, and I am sure they have some race-traitor tasks over there as well.

Keyboards

I spend more time than most people thinking about keyboards. I would share my passion with people in real life but for some reason I'm the only person in my house awake at 1:30 in the morning, which is prime prying-keys-off-of-my-keyboard-and-discussing-it time for me.

On a qwerty keyboard the letters are all over the place, grouped by frequency of use (by which I mean seperated by frequency of use), which is not random but it's close enough that it impresses me that my initials are both next to each other, and my most common keyboard shortcut. (little tiny signs like this are part of the reason I always feel vaguely special.)

Furthermore, if you make a little chart of the layout of a keyboard and then color in the letters of a particular word, you've generated an improbable visual representation of that word, which, if you are into tiny signs that show specialness, might entertain you for hours.

[ ][ ][ ][ ][t][ ][ ][i][ ][ ]
[a][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][ ][l]
[ ][ ][c][ ][ ][n][ ]

I enjoy everything about the qwerty keyboard (it's called enlightenment) but I do have slightly small hands so I am teaching myself dvorak. And by "teaching myself dvorak" I mean "prying all of the keys from my keyboard and rearranging them and then realizing that I don't have system privileges to change the keyboard settings on my mom's laptop and giving up and trying to be satisfied with all of the good times I've had with the qwerty keyboard." Besides the indications of specialness described above, there was also... typing the word "were" and the japanese word for "carrot", which is "ninjin". And here comes the rationalization; I can feel it forming: ninjin has been my password at different times to almost every one of my accounts. I love it for its improbable perfection and convenience. Why is it so easy in a language that requires mental gymnastics to use a keyboard? Why did I choose the word carrot as a password anyway? With dvorak, that would be gone.

Personal Apocalypse

There is a movie about some policeman rescuers who got trapped in one of the twin towers. And I just thought I would make it known that if I am ever, you know, trapped in or under something or eaten by a polar bear (I think those are probably the scariest mammals) and then killed and the whole ordeal is made into a movie, there are some things I really need my character not to do. These are things I would never ever do but I thought of the posthumous portrayal as a possible loophole for these affectations to taint my life, and this post is really just to make sure I have all my bases covered.

Essentially: no using overcompounded words (insofar, inasmuch, everso).

Wow, I thought I had more behavior standards than just that one, but I'm not thinking of them right now. Hm. What else? It's not as big of a deal, but I don't really say "due to" except as a question. I use the implicative pause.

Pandora Radio

So I have a Pandora radio account with 20 stations and I sometimes find really good songs. But some stations really don't work- I tried to have a "Britney Spears" radio and it gave me everything that was super popular in 2002 or something, it was not what I wanted but I was, you know, still emotionally intact. But on my "Lily Allen" station there was an Emilie Simon song- "Never Fall In Love" - The Worst Song Ever, replacing Hips Don't Lie, even. But all day I've been kind of flighty and so I told myself I would listen to the whole thing and I'm not a wimp (I'll explain my Not A Wimp personal regimen later, but trust me for now) but by 2/3 completion I was gasping in my cubicle and I really should have stopped but my NAW training is such that I endured it and then went to wikipedia to check what the hell happened to that girl to warp her mind and vocal skills. And it turns out she's French.

Later, perhaps, I shall recover enough to explain my relationship with the French.

Skillz

So I spent yesterday sleeping and eating and feeling sort of gross and tired, and spent last night lying awake until 4 am, but I had work this morning and so here I am. But wow, I really do need sleep. Like I was in the kitchen looking for something that is easier than reformatting resumes and thought of eating the cereal the company provides and keeps in the cabinets. I opened the cabinet labeled "coffee/tea" and was sad to find that it contained no cereal, but elated to find that it contained tea! I love tea! Although my observation skillz apparently suck. Similarly, I got it back to my desk and discovered that it actually isn't very good tea, or maybe I'm too tired to make tea properly, so I got a green tea candy out of my bag to suck. Five minutes later the thought slowly formed in my brain "hey, the thing in my mouth tastes like the thing on my desk. That's sort of mysterious. I don't really like this taste. They taste like.. like... oh. tea. yes."

Religion

Now, normally worrying about the details of my religion is on my "Life's Too Short" list because there is so much data and the events that invite controversy were all so long ago... mostly I just enjoy the rituals because of the symbolism and tradition, and the teachings because they fit perfectly with how I was brought up (avoiding the 7 deadly sins and embracing the gifts of the Holy Spirit is second nature by now) and with the laws of my country.

I haven't been to church in a few weeks because I want an epic, thought provoking experience. I want church to be powerful and exciting and enlightening and what I get instead is church that's comforting and routine and practical, and a little self satisfied. I want latin mass with an organ, not reader's-digest-anecdote mass with a guitar, but I'm okay with the tenets of my faith. (No, I can't define the word tenets. It's not called faith for nothing.)

But do you want to know what I found on Wikipedia?

"Because the story the book of Exodus describes is catastrophic for the Egyptians — involving horrible plagues, the loss of thousands of slaves, and many deaths (possibly including the death of Pharaoh himself, though that matter is unclear in Exodus) — it is conspicuous that no Egyptian records speaking of Israelites in Egypt have ever been found. "

No! That's impossible! Really? Hmm. Have to find someone without a Life's Too Short List to process that and tell me what they come up with.

Accents

There are really no words.

http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/index.html

here is one transcription:

So if you’re not having a good time there’s no point in you being there. And these people’ve paid a lot of money. OK, I thought a lot of them were ripped off, absolutely terrible, you know, the, the rip-off, you know. And it was, they were, they were moving away from that deep-rooted, what was holiday camp, if you like, working class holiday. They were trying to move it up a notch, you know. Therefore what they tried to do was take the Scottishness out of it and make it more like Blackpool. But they were getting English people coming up from down south for the Scottish experience and they weren’t getting it.

And, eh, I, I’ve found that, ehm, you could take the mickey out the Irish; you could take the mickey out the Welsh; you could take the mickey out the Scots; but if you tried it on the English, cause the place was full of English managers, now not that I have anything against the English, but I’d get warning letters saying, “Please do not slag the English”. And I, I’d think to myself, “But I’m not, I’m not having a go; I’m not having a pop.” I do it to the Irish, I do it to myself, I do it to the Welsh and if you’re Australian, ho ho ho, you know, nae luck!

Brave

I have always thought of fear and cowardice and timidity as sort of repulsive things to nurture in one's character, but somehow I left it out of my rather informal declaration of purpose ("I want to be epic"). I still want to be epic, but more essentially I want to be brave.

There are a lot of examples of people having poor bravery skills, but the internet is potentially rather public so I will summarize with: succumbing to fear is disgusting. If you are old enough to know better and have done it in front of me, rest assured that I have an indelible little bit of scorn for you that I somehow can't eradicate, and when I see you that's the first thing I think of and I have to squash it down in order to function politely.

If you disagree, you basically have to look up the Code Of The US Fighting Force, and you'll be right here with me.

Neanderthals

Neanderthals are so weird. Unbelievably weird.
What would it be like to coexist with other species of intelligent life?
No one knows, except our ancestors and the Neanderthals, who are (probably) no one's ancestors. So weird.

Wists Again

I was wisting things, because I love wisting, because it makes me so happy to see collections of things that I want and love, like a wonderful, perfect, personalized shop.

The perfection that is wisting is boundless, but what I think I was trying to say is that I always sort of admired the jacket Emily Browning wore in A Series of Unfortunate Events, but I found a picture of it and actually I think I just like Emily Browning, because that is a nicely tailored, nicely detailed ugly coat.

I think the worst part is the collar, the color, the buttons and the puffy sleeves.

Transcript

I just got my final, official transcript! And 9 more in sealed envelopes! Total Community Service Hours Required: 20! Total Community Service Hours Completed: 0! Academic GPA: 3.714! Credits required: 230! Credits completed: 354! Class rank: 4 of 22!

I never got into collecting badges or medals or any of that because it seemed silly, but seeing all of my accomplishments over 4 years summarized on one sheet makes me think that if I continuously collected something it would become more meaningful in time.

Who can have a summer job?

Caitlan can!

It's true. My business casual skills are still developing, though. But I work on the 17th floor of an office building. I have 4 bosses, because I am an intern and anyone at all can give me tasks, like getting coffee or filing things. But my workweek is only 15 hours, so I only have 4 people as my official bosses.

So far I have filled out a lot of paperwork, including a little that I didn't really understand about withholding money for taxes. I also got a company mug! And drank company coffee! And watched the sexual harrassment video! And and and! Got a company computer! And and and! An employee id number! Also keys to the office! I almost got keys to the company car for errands, but Mom told them I can't drive. I would have told them that too, of course.

I wasn't expecting HNTB to be just like ACLC, of course, because one is an engineering and design firm with 3000 employees nationwide and one is a charter 6-12 public school with 220 learners, but since one supplanted the other as the place I spend my time I naturally draw comparisons. It's cleaner and fancier and has more procedures to follow, but the most noticable difference is in the age. At ACLC I was either the oldest or in the oldest 10% (probably not if you count every staff member, but certainly if you go by how many were there at a given time) and so had to break up little scuffles between children and arbitrate various things for various people. At HNTB people don't get into fights over the chairs or computers, and I imagine if they did they would still be able to self regulate. I feel a little vapid and very young while I'm in that building, riding the elevator and alphabetizing and unlocking the ladies' room with my little bronze key.

Soft

I've gone soft, in my old age. I used to be hardcore anti-obsolescence. I'd eat apple cores and orange peels. I'd shop at Salvation Army and consignment stores. I'd wear clothes until they were too worn out to hold together. I once wore the same tampon for 3 days. (I was at camp. In retrospect, I should have gone to the nurse instead of washing it in the shower, but that isn't what "hardcore" means.)

I'd quietly disdain the overconsumption my friends and others indulged in ("You need a car, and your sister and parents need cars?"). I publically mocked the smartboard my math teacher got to replace the previously sufficient whiteboard*. I put things I wanted on a list each week, and if they kept showing up on the list I'd buy them. I'd salvage things from the sidewalk to decorate my bedroom (I'm still sad that someone threw away my pair of arched mirrors when we moved.). Hardcore.

What changed? I think my priorities are different. It's okay for life to be easy, for tasks to be streamlined or done away with. That's why housework took 30 hours every week in the 60s and takes 10 hours now. Not everything has to be meaningful or precise. Sometimes things are just convenient, and it won't be that way forever, because of scarcity. Carpe diem.

I am rationalizing. But I've outgrown liking the jury-rigged, the dirty, the makeshift, the second best. I can spend that energy on maintaining worthwhile things and creating wonderful things.

*Actually I'm still not over that. That man never in his entire life lay awake at night wishing he could email his students the things he writes on the whiteboard. The smartboard, like orthodontia, creates a need where there was none. It's disgusting.

Wists.com

Would you trade everything you own for the things on your wist? I absolutely would, even though Nick would miss my cat. (But here's a hint: if you want me to love you don't destroy things higher than you on the Hierarchy of Love, like my ipod headphones.)

Lists

I'm not one for order, but I do keep lists. Rather a lot of lists. Lists of goals, lists of songs I need to buy, lists of people to politely ignore, lists of countries to visit, that kind of thing. And yes, I invariably lose the lists, but at least I have a general idea of what's on each one.

One important (and long) list is the Never List. This is a list of things that don't fit with my worldview or what I want from life, and so I will never, never do them. The list is not exhaustive but it has the things I do over and over again because I always forget the consequences.Nothing on the list will make me happy in any way at any time. This is the current incarnation of the Never List:

1. Flirt with BART passengers
2. Discuss race or racism
3. start a load of laundry and get in the shower
4. say insofar, inasmuch, or everso
5. go into malls or grocery stores
6. Cut my hair by myself
7. Wear things on the Never Wear List
8. Do things on the Life's Too Short List

Now, there are many things that don't need a list because they are ingrained, and that's why killing children and taking people's walkers and setting churches on fire are not on the Never List. But I have to be careful with the never list, it's not something I can automatically follow. Part of the Never List is avoiding situations that would lead to doing something on the Never List.

For instance, UC Santa Cruz has 10 colleges, Cowell, Stevenson, Crown, Merril, Porter, Kresge, Oakes, Eight, Nine, and Ten. Kresge College has a social justice focus, so joining them would violate #2 on the Never List. No problem, Caitlan Of Three Months Ago asserted. I applied to Porter, which has an arts focus. Art would be on my Always List if I needed one. The rest of this story is too depressing, and I'm sure you can see where it's going.

Imagination

Before I was enlightened, I used to have the best imagination! I could imagine anything! Dying on the Titanic, being drafted, being a Spice Girl, being filled with sand, being fantastically strong... and then it just stopped. Now that I understand the world a little better I have no time to imagine anything different, because I'm busy with nuances and patterns.

It was in English that I realized I can't imagine any more. We were supposed to write little fictional dialogues, and instead I wrote one I was in and left out the boring. It happened over and over until I realized I wasn't just having off-days, I really have let that skill lapse. Now when we have to do that I adapt something I've read or dreamed.

This isn't really important but I love language and have always had "writer" on my future hobby list, and now I'll have to go with nonfiction. To that end, I collect the particularly interesting or thought provoking or just clever or baffling things people around me say (or the things I say. I say pretty good stuff sometimes.) in a little red journal.

But I didn't invent collecting things, and so here are some excellent things from overheareverywear.com:

Gotcha!
Girl: I'm not a nerd.
Boy: Yeah, you are.
Girl: Well, if I'm a nerd, you're a nerd.
Boy: No, I'm not.
Girl: Yes, you are.
Boy: No. Being a nerd is not a transitive property!

If You Were to Fill a Hat with Ice Cream...
Blonde: If you could be any flavor of ice cream, what would you be?
Redhead: Um...
Blonde: Well, you are what you eat. You can be monkey fudge!
Redhead: What?!
Blonde: Oh, wait, I mean Chunky Monkey. I'm making fun of your husband!
Redhead: You know, I'm the one drinking here.
Blonde: If you were any hat, what would you be?
Redhead: No.

I think the titles are what make them funny.

China

Do you know what scares me? China. I think I will take my minor in Asian Studies because someday I would like to understand it. When I try to think about China I can't get a coherent, self contained picture, it just spreads out like infinity. Eras, pronunciation, ethnic groups, major cities, industry, landmarks, geography, laws, religion, history, education, language... it feels like trying to collect the ocean in, you know, any receptacle.

China reminds me of infinity, but unlike infinity people want to talk to me about it pretty often. The world feels much smaller to me than China does. The world has 7 continents, 250 (ish) countries, 2 poles, things fall at 9.8 meters per second each second. There are 4 oceans, 6 billion (ish) people, and one moon. You see?

China... China is old. So old. So well documented. They invented writing in the most intuitive and least practical way imaginable, and that's almost what it's like today. It is the 3rd largest country in area and the very largest country by population. And that's the end of my coherent China Knowledge.

After that it devolves: China has all of the pandas, except you can lease pandas for 10 years and..... Taiwan.... something something Massacre.... more carnage ... than WWII... dynasties.... mongolia cantonese mandarin tonal language... Gobi Desert Olympics are going to be in Beijing... pearl tower... communism... puyi was last emporer of china in 1911... FOOTBINDING... so, consorts, fililial piety confucianism buddhism taoism tao te ching.... farming, rice swamps, bridges dams flooding adoption poverty, Yang Tze and Huang He... population control, martial arts, acrobats, zodiac in 4 cycles of twelve animals... paper, gunpowder, dragons, printing, compass, going blind from sweatshop work, domesticated silkworms, 1421, silk road, opium, immigration to US for railroads and goldrush, .... fighting with Japan and Korea (colonizing Japan and Korea?), tea in bricks, trade with Europe in the ....

Does that seem like an appropriate comprehension level for 18 years of accumulated trivia and facts? Did you know that I've even studied Asia twice in school, in grades 8 and 10, and that today I am graduating from high school?

I don't think I'm equipped to understand China. I like my history and my culture bite sized. A person can name every battle ever fought in my country, I'm pretty sure. That kind of thing.

Fun, but not too much fun. Like chess.

You know people who read dictionaries, right?
That's super boring. Try it (no, don't actually try it, just imagine yourself trying it and dismiss the idea. You know you trust me- on this at least.) and you'll see. There are so many Super Fun Dictionary Games! You're never bored with a dictionary, unless you choose to read it. My game that I play (every night; this is apparently Dork Confession Time) is to look at the top of the page-the continuation of the previous page's last entry- and then the name of the entry after it, and try to come up with what the partially defined word is. Sometimes it is easy, like "...soup." for the fragment and "consonant (n)" for the next entry. Sometimes it is very hard, so hard that I fail, such as "...by melting" for the fragment and "fly (n)" for the next word.

Other Super Fun Dictionary Games
-choose a page. Count the entries. Close the book, write the first and last entries, and fill in words between to see how close you can get to the original number.

-get from one word to another by looking up words from successive entries, and see how few you can use. (It's less boring if you race someone. Although if you have another person there are absolutely tons of Exciting Games, and not just for the dictionary, so forget that.)

-choose the two words from the page that are closest to antonyms, and the two that are closest to synonyms. The two that work best win, and you can keep a tally for best of five. (It's epic! Like the eternal battle of light and dark.)(If that statement didn't bother you, look up epic.)

-after you use a particular dictionary a lot, try reading a word and coming up with the exact definition. You get points off for things you've left out or got wrong, and if you've missed more things than the word has letters, you've lost. (If you find you're good at it, try "red".)

Today is Household Advice Day!

Wash your bedclothes!

I know, I always forget or worry that they won't be clean and dry by bedtime too, but it really works! My comforter smells exactly like honey now.

Hi, Internet!

For most of this afternoon I've been having little adrenaline surges that make my breathing really fast and my heart pound. I don't know why I have them, but I think it might be the glory of everything. And I can't say that to people, can I? Enlightenment isn't for everyone, (especially people with weak hearts, I suppose) and I want to avoid sounding smug. I do it all the time- I guess I'm giving it up, now. I'll save it for my new pollyanna blog, and spare my friends. Then we'll have more time to talk about the fake problems healthy and smart American teens think they have. Whee.

Today's Glories:

-sitting on cement in the sunshine painting children's nails
-crappy dorodango # 3
-board shorts
-ponytails
-bees
-palm fronds
-wikiquote
-punctuation
-chai tea
-coco rice cereal
-english muffins
-ipod
- family
-denim
-Abigail (abigail is my cat.)
-tying stuff to my wrist
-duct tape
- lotion
-anxiety (because of the adrenaline.)
-fingernails

So, as I guess you can see, I had a really, really good day. It doesn't have to do with what actually happens, but I try to train myself to embrace things that make me happy and ignore things that don't. (ask me if I'm graduating, btw)

You see, contrary to what doctors and my friends and family think, I am bipolar, and also autistic. I just supress it better than people who get diagnoses. And I'm not seeking treatment because I'm not into medication and doctors.

I used to be okay with it and them, actually, but two experiences really changed that. The first was when I was 14 and my doctor told me I was fat (no, she didn't use the word fat, because she was a doctor and presumably familiar with the self esteem issues 14 year old girls are so susceptable to, but that is what she meant.). I should have said "Yes, but so are you because this is America." but I think what I actually said was, "I'm perfectly healthy! I've never even been sick!" and then when she made me tell her what I usually ate I lied and said I only ate salad and candy, because I was a vegetarian. For 7 years, actually, and I gave it up last year because it was childish. Some people can rock vegetarianism (I've not met anyone who could, this is an assumption right here) but I'm not one of them. To really rock vegetarianism I think you need to let go of the morality of it, and the health of it, and that's a start. The other important bit is to reevaluate it a lot, and not be in a vegetarianism rut- "This is what I tell people I do, this is what I have the groceries for, so this is who I am" and instead re evaluate each time you are shopping. Do you want beef jerky? Beef jerky for you then. Did the cow suffer? Maybe, but I think you can get basically 5,000 sticks of beef jerky from one cow, and also look where they would be if they weren't domesticated. Extinct like the other juicy, slow and stupid species. Yes.

The second thing that drove me away from the clinical expertise of western medicine was having a boyfriend who needed behavior modifying drugs to get through the school day, and different ones to get through depression. He's still alive, not thriving but it might just be finals, or something.

Which is not to say that I approve of alternative medicine. For all my embarrassing optimism and constant delight in everything, I can be pretty cynical when it comes to herbal remedies, hypnotism, chiropractice, and whatever.

This is another thing I don't admit except when pressed (and now, when not remotely pressed), but everyone can heal themselves with positivity, and convoluted routes to positivity, like having a therapist or an acupressurist, are useless. "Please, someone hold my hand and tell me that I'm healthy and give me nettle tea and some sort of obviously super legitimate healing crystal" it's called not being 4 years old ergo not needing a kiss for your owie. Self sufficiency, people.

Alright. That got kind of vaguely abusive.
Forget it.