I'm wearing two hoodies today. That's how bleedin' cold it is, like a witch tit. Just because summer has ended, this usually isn't a cue for the wind to bite. Of course, as if to defy me, the sun is now shining in my eyes.

I have three more classes today, already had one. In fifteen minutes, American Authors (featuring Nathaniel Hawthorne) starts. I've already read maybe ten of his short stories. I think he was an insecure man with a massive inferiority complex, his writing warbling around like a flock of birds. Not to say that all of his writing is bad. I like some of it. I liked the Maypole of Merry Mount, and My Kinsman, Major Molineux. The rest is just shaking with its insecurities.

In American Writers, I had to read Kate Chopin's the Awakening for a second time. I've decided that I like it. I like the cozy beach setting, and the way you can argue the actual intellect of the main character. I like how she commits suicide. I like it. It's easy paper material.

I hate Women's Studies, common fact most people are seeing throughout my many internet outlets. I hate the fact that I have to create a creative autobiographical description of my female coming of age. I want to tell her to stick it up her ass. I've decided to draw a comic in three parts, doing a style in between Persepolis and Fun Home. When I propose my idea to my professor, I imagine she won't like it because she's a typical close-minded wench.

I feel uncomfortable when I think about what topics I can write about. I'm thinking the main one will be how I had a poor relationship with my mother because of her mental instabilities, and how because of that I learned more about how to be a boy than how to be a girl. Hence, tomboy youth. But all of that is none of the professor or the classes business. I hate that this damn class is so autobiographical. Sure, I suffered from some things as a female, sexual harassment, those things... but this class makes females sound so damn victimized and weak, and I certainly dont want to tell these dips about anything I've gone through.

"Females are more likely to be depressed."
"I was picked on in high school - now I'm comfortable with my image."
"If I had been a boy, maybe I wouldn't have been sexually abused."

Fuck you, Women's Studies. I know what it means to be a female. I even consider myself a feminist. But you are WRONG.

Okay, off to class.

I was born in the 80s, but I'm obviously a 90s child. And boy, do I miss 90s music:


Blatantly superior to all modern and 80s crap. Oh, the nostalgia.

Hey everybody, look - good music.


Umbrella Tree is amazing.


The Rosebuds as well.

The embed code was disabled for this, but it's amazing: Hey Ya cover by Matt Weddle, as a slow song. It sounds amazing.

Hey Ya by Matt Weddle

I'm so busy, and it doesn't help that I don't have a computer. Apparently, it had a virus or something. All I know is that they must nurse it back to health, take its temperature, feed it crackers, until I can have it back. Quickly.

I thought I missed Clet food. What was I thinking? The food in that dining hall is terrible. The second I ate my first meal there I felt my stomach protesting and churning. How gross. At least Gally opens soon - and I work there, which means the good must be good. HA! Not true. What can I do when the ingredients for the food taste like shit?

Though I always enjoyed the chicken fajita sub.

Anyway, I start working again next week.  I loved seeing all my coworkers again. It was all hugs up in that food court.

I have been whiplashed by nature. Seriously, as much as I protest my country roots, I need an ATV when I'm older and living allah knows where. Whipping through the world in one of those makes me think of Stephen King's short story, "Mrs. Todd's Shortcut". I feel I can be eternally young flying through nature like she did. Enter another world, where my face smooths and my hair retains its volume and my neck is as porcelain as when I was sixteen.

As we drove through the mud, Cassie shouted, "Mud is good for the skin!"

We are such country gals, in the end.

---

I'm off to college tomorrow. Once there, I want to take Robyn and whomever down to the hookah bar in Buffalo. I adore hookah, it's like candy in smoke form. I want mango hookah. Mango is my favorite flavor of anything, possibly. Or, mango schisha, or whatever the actual thing that is smoked is. 

And I want the Mediterranean cookin'. 

---

Back to school
back to school
to show my dad
I'm no fool.

My friend Jay asked me yesterday, "Why does everyone say 'I miss my loves!'"
I said, "Well, it's a trend, I suppose."

I think maybe now, it's because we actually really love our friends and it's just a popular way to express it. I mean, I go back to college in one day! And I'm even cooing over Kevin, who I miss so terribly, even though for the whole time we're together it's all like, "I hate you more!". But he's the only friend as daring as I am. He even bribed a hobo with money for alcohol. And then scared the shit out of me by calling and telling me a cop had caught him. Bastard.

IN DARKER NEWS...

My laptop is broken. Again. The Geek Squad, who are always so polite to me, took my computer to Repair Land and hopefully that works. But I'm not going to have a computer at college for a while. Thank god we have a computer lab! And it stinks, because as Editor-in-Chief, I have to send out emails all the time, and I need the internet to look up numbers and the like. I'm going to need Nidge's compouter on the first day, so I can schedule a room for the first Literary Journal Meeting.

Gack.

PACKING

All I have left to pack are my beauty products & other vain stuff. My make up, my hair products, my shampoo, and my jewelry. I don't know why I've waited to pack those items. I also need to take the posters and photos down from my wall. Today, I had my dad take some pictures of my gecko Henry so I can have a picture of him while I'm away. Now I have my kittens, my Jasper, and then now Henry. I love my pets!

VAMPIRE WEEKEND

When I found out my computer was busted, I bought myself a treat to cheer me up. Vampire Weekend! Ack, I love them. My favorite song, so far, is "Oxford Comma".

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford com-ma?

I've never seen a more apt lolcat...

"Religion makes me uncomfortable. I don't like talking about it."
"Okay, so let's talk about religion."

Sigh.

Okay, let's. This is a literary defense. A justification of minset. A detailing of beliefs.

Disclaimer: I'm not even an atheist, I'm a grumpy agnostic. But sometimes I put on atheist sunglasses because I like making arguments. "I don't think there's a god. But how can I know?" Okay, let's roll.

The Jaded Atheist
We all hear it. "I don't believe in God because how can there be a god who let's such a horrible stuff happen?" A lot of people view atheists as people who are merely jaded by the lack of presence of a god, and therefore bitch and whine their whole lives until they convert before they die. This is, my friend, what we call a stereotype. Sure, some people do this. My justifications? I'm not a non-believer because I'm jaded, that's for sure. It's just, as a child, my face was thrust into religion. Count these beads, go to church, love god or you will go to hell and suffer. No thank you, church people. It was repetitive concepts that meant nothing to me. Completely unnecessary. The church is not necessary to love god, and when I walked around, I found no love for god. I just didn't care. It was all meaningless actions to me, when I could be out smiling with a friend, talking, working, loving life. I somehow missed out on why I need god in my life. I certainly wasn't jipped by him. I just missed the point entirely.

People say to me: Someday, God will find you. Because I am wrong to believe what I do. Really. Well! All I hope is that he brings a cake with him, and maybe some Vodka with like a mango flavor or something. It's all mad anyway, why not enjoy it?

"Isn't it enough to see a garden and know that it's beautiful? Do we need to believe there's fairies at the bottom of it too?" 
- Douglas Adams
Here's a good way of explaining. I look out at the world, and I love it, and I love the humans I see. It's completely unnecessary for me to further waste my thoughts on things beyond that, this god, that angel. Whatever. By the way, this is one of Nidge's favorite quotes, it seems.

"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
- Steven Weinberg
Yummy. Here's another thought! Evil and good will exist without religion. But - why? Why is there good and evil? How can a mere human being explain this concept? Well, the answer is, religion. It's human beings frantically searching for reason. We want to know why, so we tell ourselves why. But is it true? I suppose we'll find out. But I don't quite trust the false comfort of humans, as much as I fancy our imaginations.

"Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one." - Richard Dawkins 
Is there anything more nicely put? Bless this man. Nobody lives anymore. Religion tends to get in the way of life for many, I have seen. I would much rather live than spend my life praying to live again. It's just damn perplexing.

"People will then often say, ‘But surely it’s better to remain an Agnostic just in case?’ This, to me, suggests such a level of silliness and muddle that I usually edge out of the conversation rather than get sucked into it. (If it turns out that I’ve been wrong all along, and there is in fact a god, and if it further turned out that this kind of legalistic, cross-your-fingers-behind-your-back, Clintonian hair-splitting impressed him, then I think I would choose not to worship him anyway.)" - Douglas Adams
Haha! Just in case. Yes. Religion has an angry god to keep us naughty, naughty humans in shape. We are, after all, animals in a sense. We do terrible things. Religion is such a lovely method of controlling large groups of us.

"An atheist is a man who has no invisible means of support." - John Buchan 
A lot of people I've known have used God for support. For guidance. And that's wonderful for them. If that helps them, then how could I ever take it away? But I suppose I am lucky, because I can find support in myself. I have had days where I think too much on death, but I pick myself up and I get through it. Okay, okay - I use medication too. But that supports my other belief - that human beings can help each other. I believe in human beings. I'm a sucking, vile little humanist who believes we can do good things for each other. And God does not come up in this conversation. 

"I have no need for religion, I have a conscience." - Anonymous 

"If God created the world, then who created god? and who created whoever created god? So somewhere along the line something had to just be there. So why can’t we just skip the idea of god and go straight to earth?" - Ryan Hanson
You can call me a shameful skipper, if you wish.

So what happens when we die?
I suppose we'll all find out. Why bother thinking about it? Especially when we have a perfectly lovely life right here, and a whole world to move about in. Every second is candy. I'm not going to think about what happens to me when I die. All I can tell you is I am damn sure that at least Hell does not exist, haha. As sure as someone without a clue can be. 

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it." - Mark Twain 

Oh! And while I was writing this, this lovely, gorgeous, inspiring Of Montreal song came on:

I guess it would be nice to give my heart to a god
But which one, which one do I choose?
All the churches fill with losers, psycho or confused
I just want to hold the divine in mind
And forget all of the beauty's wasted

Physics makes us all it's bitches. ;)

---

So there.
 

Four days until I go back to college. Four days, and then I'm going to be bombarded with life. I still have to call in and reserve a room for the first meeting of the Aquila Literary Journal. I have to talk to Bill at Campus Activities about reserving a table for the Campus Activities Fair, so we can call all writers to submit their stuff. I need to make posters for the first meeting (Robyn love will help me, Jay too). What else do I need to do? Oh! Storm the IT office and ask them how to add users to a Blackbourd group. This is for the literary journal as well. And, why "storm", may you ask? Because the IT office is full of fucking twits who don't listen to me. Man, are they gonna feel the wrath of I, Nunu, the Chihuahua, Hurricane Crystal, thou who must be heard!

AMERICAN GODS by Neil Gaiman
I'm not far into this book yet. I love Neil though. He's my big literary crush. Big hunky British man who writes quirky, morbid fantasy. This book is different from the other things I've read by him. I have nothing much to say about it, BUT, there was a scene where a woman ate a man with her vagina. 

Nom? The scene was worse than Teeth. Speaking of Teeth, cue the best movie scene ever: a gynecologist curling up in the corner of his office, holding up a hand where the fingers were just bitten off by a patient's vagina, screaming in an overly dramatic voice, "VAGINA DENTATAAA! It exiiists!"

MY CRAZY MOTHER
What can I say? She's crazy. Today I heard her hollering upstairs about me being on the internet and how she can't even make a damn phone call. Just fucking screaming like a madwoman. And she keeps calling her cane her crutch. And she's talking too loud again. My mother, the grayhaired woman with a cane who hollers and yells at the cats.

---

I packed a little today. Shoved some clothes in my suitcase. Then I laid down and my kitty napped next to me as I read. I fed Henry, he wasn't grateful. He never is. Stupid gecko.

---

AND YOU WILL KNOW US BY THE TRAIL OF DEAD
I've listened to their song "Will You Smile Again?" a gabazillion times, blasting on an iPod in a car, me screeching along. But I just realized that it's about writing:

And just how long did it take for you to understand
Where your feelings stopped and writing began?
Convince yourself to take control
Play to the hilt this unlikely role.

Remember all the bad dreams
Are not far from reality
Will you write again for me?
And who bade you stop this living art?
Have you forgotten just what you are?
If you don't want to then you could at least pretend
That the paper's your soul and your blood's the pen
And maybe then you'd see the light
And read the truth, that you had to write.

D:

I am so unorganized, I realize. If you look at my prior post (which I pretty much just posted), you'll see that I'm going back to college soon. When I go back I'm not going to have a lot of time to think about what I need to do or any of these little projects of mine. This is like a to-do list, so if I forget anything I can look back and be like, "Agh! I need to do that."

For Suzanne's Contest
I want to write something really good for this, but it looks daunting with college looming so close. I finally have a real idea - less of the abstract stuff I was going for, more of the familiar setting but with the sprinkling of surreal/higher power. I don't have a title yet. I'm thinking something Islands-y, Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone, Bones, Bones, something. I'll try to make it short, but I write too much. Involves Death, alcohol, and teenagers. 

Mary Full of Sound
Similar to my Hell in a Handbasket - short, bizarre, involves madness. I got the idea from a writing prompt in my Pocket Muse, "Write about a character who hears a sound that won't stop", or some such. And the title is from a Motion City Soundtrack song, Mary Without Sound, except I changed it for more religious tones and so it will make sense with the story. Little girl, noise, anxiety turning into something much worse.

How to Dance Freely in Your Underwear
This is currently on the backburner because I just don't feel like writing anything in it, even though I like Suzan.

Story Involving Reoccuring Character "Jenkins"
Technically, this would be a series. I actually have it all jotted down in my Brainstorming file. Also, this is fantasy. I miss writing fantasy! Ah, well. I probably won't get this even started for a while. But I want to try to write it. After all, I finished the first story I wrote about Julia. However terrible it was.

Neutral Milk Hotel Art Series
This is an ongoing art project of mine. Based off NMH songs, I'm thinking about redoing some of my first pieces because I feel like I've gotten much much better. And according to dA, my King of Carrot Flowers is immensely popular, so if I take that and tweak it but keep it moreorless the same, I'm thinking I can have so much better. To be honest, I still have so much to do with this. My goal is to one day have all similiar minimally colored artworks all in a binder based off these songs. I'm really far behind though, and I LOST Two Headed Boy pt 2. Good thing I have it on dA, though it's being redone.

Painting
Screw that, I'm not painting any more.

NaNo Novel
People at YWS are all talking to me about this, and I think I'll do it. But it sounds scary! And I have no ideas. But I have a lot of writing support, so I might be able to work this out. AHH! I need a plot.

----

So that's it. I also want to do more collages, but that's iffy. And when my contests are over, I'm going to have to put time aside for drawing things for people.
 aa

I am so ridiculously excited to go back to college. I miss my people. I miss my Robyn, who chides me when I'm too wild and is there for appropriate bitchfests. I miss my Lisa, who is so innocent and always is up to do something. I miss my Cameron, my lumberjack Oregoner who is now my neighbor on campus, and I miss my coworkers and I miss doing whater the hell I want. 

Like doing laundry when I want, waking up and going to breakfast, going to the art gallery and spending more time talking to the docent than looking at the art.

And most of all, I miss Nigel (or, should I say, having sex every other day?).

I hope someone brings a bottle of something good to open up the new year. I miss lounging about in the dorms, drinking, talking, laughing. I'm a little worried about my unknown roommate, Mirna. She sounds Slavic. Russian, maybe? I hope she is! Probably not.  Anyway, above all, I just want someone friendly who doesn't mind my abstract painting or my cushy chairs or my stuffed turtle. Or how messy I am.

I've finished packing my clothing. I bought notebooks. I bought Diner Dash (unrelated).

When I get back, I'm going to Canada and getting so drunk the world will be something that dances. what

Ok, I'm going to talk Wuthering Heights because I'm reading it.

Basically a torturous romance novel delivered by Emily Bronte, Wuthering Heights is a wordy account of the psychological torment two awful people deliver upon each other and all of those around them. I suppose whether Heathcliff and Catherine are truly horrible people is up to question. I think it's more accurate that they are selfish - horrifically selfish. But the psychological damage these two people cause each other seems like something only someone (Emily) who needed to vent emotional turmoil would write. Still, it's classical literature venting that I adoooore.

I'm going to ignore Cathy and Hareton's half of the novel, mainly because I haven't reread that part yet. Plus, it's just not as interesting. It's the conclusion, the aftermath, the repenting, but not as great as the messed up rantings of Heathcliff and Catherine. 

What's amazing is that this is, stripped down to it's bare essence, a love story. Except the love is solid and unstoppable, unchanging - it's mentally unhealthy. The way these two love each other is not something admirable, it's more of a disease of the mind, love from an awful perspective. The way Heathcliff and Catherine both act toward their love is self-destructive and disgusting. For example, Cathering says more than once that she thinks that her and Heathcliff are the same person. When she chooses Edgar Linton over Heathcliff for social status and financial reasons, she still acknowledges that her decision is purely selfish and that she loves Heathcliff: "It would degrade me to marry Heathcliff now; so he shall never know how I love him; and that, not because he's handsome, Nelly, but because he's more myself that I am. Whatever are souls are made of, his and mine are the same".

So she doesn't marry him. And there's hurt all around. You would think that because they are supposedly carved of the same material that they would forgive each other, which surprisingly they're capable of doing - at the most inopportune time. Obviously, that's when they would do it. Wait, until they're both so mentally aggrieved and Catherine's gone mad while she's fat with a baby. It's downright frustrating. Either way, Catherine gets what she deserves more abruptly then Heathcliff does, but of course this only makes Heathcliff beg for a ghost. Asking for torment. Asking for torture. They're my favorite lines in the novel:

"Be with me always - take any form - drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!"

It's downright sadistic. How can I not love it? So, beyond the romance, there's the rest of the mental torture - Hindly abuses Heathcliff, Heathcliff abuses... everyone. Catherine haunts Wuthering Heights and attacks Lockwood in a dream. "It is twenty years!" So peace can only be found in death...

Hahaha.... books are great.

How the hell does one become a writer?

"Write." Haha, smartass. Been there, done that. I mean the horrific aftermath, of distributing the unholy material to the masses.

I feel like I've read everything about manuscripts, agent queries, manilla envelopes... it makes my head spin. I've been thinking about joining a writing group, most helpfully an online one, but where do I find one? Google is not the proper medium to find one, let me tell you. So where? Why is this such a horrific, African wilderness of a hobby?

You have to be mildly to extremely defunct and crazy to want to do this stuff to yourself.

I am supremely unhappy at home.

I try to search for happiness here. Sometimes, when it's sunny out, or I feel unburdened, I'll be cleaning my room with my music on and feel a pulse of happiness somewhere inside me. But then I'll come back down to reality and have to face my mother. I love her, I really do, but sometimes it's just not easy to love her when with her. It's so easy, unbelievably easy to love her from afar.

My entire life she's plagued me. I know she'll never disappear, even when she's gone. She'll always be on my back, weighing me down, filling my mind. Even when she's away from me, I feel a lifetime of our arguments and trials compacted in some part of my brain, bringing down my confidence, my self-esteem. She was always so quick to say I couldn't do something. She made me feel so embarassed about my writing and my art. She never really understood - and how could she? That stuff isn't "real" - not like college, and a diploma, and grades.

And then there's just... everything else. How she always focused her anxiety and anger on me, when it wasn't on my dad or my brother. How I would sit at the kitchen table and she would glower at me from her seat and say, "Crystal, you are a bad person, you know that?"

She would say that all the time. She made me believe it. I felt like I was trying to be my own person, I was just a young girl trying to figure everything out, and somehow I was screwing it up and just being a bad person. I developed such a sense that something was wrong with me, something that my family saw and recognized and turned from. My adolescence is not a pretty scene, typically and stereotypically. And my mom stands over the smoldering heap.

She counters this today with all of her "I'm so proud of you"s and all that, but I still feel scarred by that glare of hers, by her accusations, by her implications. Even far away from her, I feel my confidence being sunk by that fear, that paranoia, that anxiety, that nervousness and sense of smallness that she's drilled into my brain. When I am home, I feel every day that I might walk down stairs and be assaulted with her unhappiness, with her anxiety.

I'll never be free from it. Ever. I can be relieved from it - when I'm away from home. In college I was a picture of supreme happiness. But then, when at home... or "home", since this place is nothing but a collection of tunnels to me now... I feel the bombardment coming on almost every other day and my confidence turns inside out, I become unhappy, depression flips me upside down.

Diagnosed with depression, with anxiety... I still haven't overcome it even, despite the fact that my doctor told me to try to stop taking the medication. I can still feel it, my worse fear, my mental incapacity lurking under the surface like that blob from Stephen King's short story "The Raft"... ready to devour me if I even dare to reach out and touch it for a second. When I can feel the awfulness of my anxiety creeping up, I try so hard to ignore it, not to touch it, despite how it slowly tilts my world back and forth, makes me feel like my body isn't mine, like my mind is some ill off disconnected object. 

I'm stronger than it, I know I am... just not at home. In any other world, it doesn't exist for me anymore, I am bigger than it. But at home, my mom gives it new life with her own anxiety and depression. 

I just can't be home for very long... in fear of being swallowed whole.

And I feel like no one can, in a sense, "save" me. Take me from this personal dark place (doesn't everyone have one?) and allow me to be free from my filial and genetical confinements. I'm so used to abandonment - I have a long history of giving friends something horrifically precious to me, and then having them drop it and speed off in disinterest. I think this is why I'm so harsh sometimes. Because I feel jaded by people, but I love people so much. I depend on people. Yet I've cared so much for someone before only to be abandoned - these people still haunt my dreams. I wish they would leave my dreams alone. 

I wish all of my anxiety and sadness would just leave me, along with their faces.

I don't have my laptop to write in, so I'm using this new and unusual outlet. Unusual mainly because people I actually know have access to this journal. Usually my journals are bound and hidden where no one could ever even dream of reading them. Why protect such banal thoughts?

I've been home from college for about a week. I really miss the dorm life; going wherever as I pleased, not having family troubles looming over my shoulder and breathing down my neck. But I rearranged my room to make it more "mine", in comparison to the shell of an adolescent Crystal my room had become. Now I have a little hiding spot in the house again, with all the comforts of pillows, clutter, pictures, and music. 

The number one uber-bad thing about being home again is my family issues. I'm not saying my family is exceptionally dysfunctional... but I've lived... a bombarded life, and only recently have taken the dominant position where I'm using my loud and outspoken personality to elevate myself in a friendly, but non-interested, way from them all. The first thing at hand is my mother's knee surgery. My ma has really horrible arthritis that is eating away at her bones. It's destroyed her knee and is working on her back. The doctors have decided to do an operation on the one knee to help repair the bone. It's a really minor operation, with a small interval of pain and some therapy. It's really not that awful, and considering how poorly my mom has always taken care of herself you'd think she would feel moved or lucky to only have such a tiny speck of a surgery to face. But this isn't the case. My mom's always had anxiety (Thanks mom...) and OCD, and this surgery is too much. She researches it every day, pines over it every day, and has had frequent panic attacks just walking around the house. If I walk into the kitchen, I'm struck with frustrated yells of "Why am I so nervous!" and she asks me numerous questions I can't answer and throws all of her stress onto me. She's got me all high strung. I didn't realize how bad it was until I went for a drive into Gowanda: usually, this is a calming, therapeutic thing, but instead I found my hands clenched to the wheel. I realized how tense I was, how I could feel the stress coursing, just from my ma coming at me and coming at me all day long. It's enough to make your nerves get into a bundle, to make you feel all knotted up, even when you're out of the house. 

The second thing is my grandma. Now, I don't really have any relationship whatsoever with this woman. She's been cruel to my ma in the past and so off and on throughout my life we have been in contention with her. When we were getting along with her, I would just be placed in front of her, give an obligatory "Hello grandma", and then head off into the yard to play with my cousins. If she were to die, I wouldn't really care all that much. I would be very sad for my ma, but that's it. I know this makes me sound like a bad person, but it's like if someone you saw once or twice on the street in town died. You would be sad for their family... and that's all. It's not so unreasonable of me. Either way, she's in the hospital (again) but she's been in the hospital so much I have this theory that she's immortal. She refuses to take care of herself (things as minor as drinking water, or walking) and she's started hallucinating. She sees plumbers and other people coming into her room to fix things, but of course this isn't really happening. I have to go to the hospital to visit her, but she doesn't really talk, and I just watch the sick people hobble around. She and my ma's sisters call home and badger us to come in, implying my ma doesn't care. But my ma does care. She gets stressed out, and relays this stress to my dad, my brother and me. My grandma has got the whole family high-strung too.

The third is my oral surgery. Getting my wisdom teeth out! This somehow upsets my ma, even though it won't happen for a while (I'm trying to put off them being yanked out for a few months). She gets all worked up over it. 

I guess the conclusion of my family issues is... my ma. She freaks out about everything. Drives me crazy. She always tells me that Jasper isn't going to live long, barking at squirrels the way that he does, but the truth is she is exactly the same way. She gets so worked up about things it's no wonder.... everything.

So, I suppose, on to the good things. I bought a Nintendo DS and this is pretty much amazing. I've been playing my Gameboy Color on and off over the years, and... Gameboy is pretty much amazing. A portable videogame console... what a great concept, really. And I love the games for Nintendo DS. Lately I've been playing Ace Attorney: Apollo Justice, sequel to Ace Attorney: Pheonix Wright. I like it so much because it's got a lot of strategy involved, like an online point and click adventure, or some kind of strategy-RPG hybrid. Actually, it is the latter. I also bought Lunar: Dragon Song because I absolutely love the Lunar RPG series. My favorite is Lunar 2: Eternal Blue. The battle system is a little outdated and bland, but I've always like the art, story, characters and world of Lunar. So it's all good.

I also bought a Tokay gecko. I went to the store to buy some fish for my aquarium, but decided a gecko is more what I wanted. I've always wanted a pet lizard; I think they're so adorable. Anyone who's talked to me lately knows I'm in love with my little gecko, who I've named King Henry VIII. I've been researching all about him to make sure I take care of him well so he'll live a good long life. Tokay geckos are very aggressive and bite; they can even draw stitches, when they're adults. When I try to handle Henry he opens his mouth real wide and I can see his little tiny teeth and his pink and black tongue - it's downright adorable. They're also very bright colors, and Henry is too - he's green, with white stripes and bright orange/red spots. They're arboreal species, so he's always hopping around his tank, and also nocturnal, so he does this mostly at night. They also bark. Which... is amusing.

Except, I have this suspicion that Henry might be a girl. I might have to rename him Queen Henrietta VIII if I ever find out.

My parents are kind of flustered with my strange taste in pets. I blame my cousin Aaron, for having my babysit his salamandars when I was four. It left a lifelong amphibean-lizard loving brand on me. Also, for the rest of my dad's side of the family: during family picnics, we would always go down to the creek at the NC town park and catch salamandars in buckets. The slimy little things never fazed me.

Over the weekend I'm going to Rochester to attend the Lilac Festival with Cassie and Ethan. I'm going to meet her mom's new boyfriend and see her house in Rochester. We're probably camping out too, knowing Cassie.

That will be fun.

Talk about classic.
Modern music can only strive to be this good.

I reached a joyous, retrospective revelation while sitting at my Learn & Serve today. Basically, my Learn & Serve is the volunteer hours I spend in local classrooms, as part of my English Education major. I'm always exhausted before I go, but there's something about being in the classroom (or that classroom) that livens me up.

Today I was sitting at a round table in the back after having spoken with some of the students. They are sixth graders and in that awkward stage between game-strewn childhood and discovering the sexual reality that our media dowses them in. I was recalling when I was their age, and looking at the books on the shelves. There were so many books, and the students actually seemed interested in them. They always read during their required reading time, and their books always matched their personalities and interests.

I remembered then an old dream. I've always wanted to write, but it hit me how I used to always desire to write for kids who had been like me. Thirteen year olds with huge imaginations in need of an outlet. I used to want to write things that I would read when I was that age. Over the years, I've strayed from that. During the past few years, I've been dappling in things that either don't interest me, trying too hard, and doing weird projects that I believed would help me in some way.

I still just can't go pounce back into that hobby - dream - whatever. But I think I'd like to pocket the dream in that form that I used to possess it in. Writing things I loved to read when I was younger, things that meant so much to me, that took me places.

I was a kid who relied heavily upon books. My world hadn't been enough for me. I needed more, I needed to stretch my mind out to places that were so much more than where I was, and so I buried my head in books and books. I've always been an escapist. Books were my escape, just like so many other things have been my escape.

I would never change anything. I think my book-nerdington past has made me an interesting person. I'd like to think, someday, as an English teacher, I can help students experience some sort of joy/escape/realization/relation/comfort through reading.

Things of interest:
http://www.asofterworld.com/index.php?id=294 A Softer World comic
Strange Mag Bizarre, strange things
Woohoo, Online Makeover!