Klovharu

spring cleaning

2008-05-31T17:18:00.000-07:00

our surroundings hid ferocious beasts aplenty

2008-05-03T12:18:00.001-07:00

Alright, goddamn. A few people have told me how depressing this blog has gotten lately (the last six months?), and I fully agree with them. It's been a depressing blog, and what's more, I'm told, it's been creepily intimate. Apparently (and I'm not going to confirm this myself because reading back in time would probably destroy me, eyeballs first), I've talked a lot about my health (blegh, spittoo) and my feelings? My bad feelings and dark, dark emotions?

Well, yes. Yes. It was a fairly incredibly shitty winter, all told. Now things are looking up and I'm only freaking out once every few weeks, and by freaking out I mean feeling (mature content warning) pitifully sad. And I'm still taking wads of beautiful (shield your eyes, mother) MEDICATIONS that my doctors tell me to take, and it feels like they're having (don't say it) an effect. And I've been running around and going out of town a bunch, and there's serious travel lined up to thrill and amaze, and it's finally the sprinnng, so shut up! I only feel peculiar these days when I push myself too hard by driving all night or talking all night (but half the time it's a good peculiar, like giddy as hell followed by a slightly hung-over - though not related to drinking - day of introspection), so there. So now I'll stop talking about it forever. Except whenever I FEELS like it, nyaa.

I went to Seattle a couple times and then to Portland, where I semi-attended the Stumptown comic con. There were good people to see and meet, and though I know they'll never see this (this being a cryptic, frightening little blog akin to a doll fashioned from my own hair and nails), thanks to Farel for putting us up, Brandon for shelling out more than his share of gas and board and then lending me a library of comics I've never read, Eric for driving endlessly around Portland when nobody knew how to get where we needed to go, J-Fish for being a very good fellow about sorting out directions and then giving them, Jacob for talking me through the blues one night, and Marian for the virtual chalice of Godlord held to my chapped and pallid lips at every opportunity. And Doug for getting us in on the second day, us being such cheap-asses and all. Plus other people too, I'm sure. Oh yeah, thank you COREY (who doesn't read my blog) for drawing two of the most sublimely fetishistic fan-arts of There Will Be Blood right in front of me in a Denny's and then refusing to let me buy them because they were too good to exchange for crude, dirty currency. Well, alright, np, I'll just break into a museum and steal them 3000 years in the future. Then I'll thumbtack them over my bed. Um um!

I was going to be on the island this weekend for some well-needed (I say) relaxation and so forth, but my car has had its check engine light on for some time now, like back in Portland, and the garage can't look at it until Wednesday, so no go. No me go island. But that's alright. I'll get there later.

The other night I had some adventures with Caleb and Nick. I'm too lazy to go into it in detail (mark of a born writer) so I'll list some highlights. Not to entertain or interest anyone reading this, but to serve as a memory tool when I'm older and my memory has been erased by, uh, the net... and this blog is my only map home. So: Hot Berry Lychee Latte (no pearl, obviously), Burnaby, bowling, one strike, hands hurt, shrill judgments made, amended, bad Chinese food on Hastings, great revelations, "life choices", further revelations demanding deeper conversation, the crazy soap opera of two girls who were just in a car accident, hilarity ensues (for us, not them), finding their lost keys in the gutter later, hilarity enhanced, ridiculous beautiful downtown from across the water, freezing cold, a cat/raccoon, dog called "it", magnolias out all over the city.

That ought to fix it. I should have done the same thing for Seattle, and Portland, and the Seattle before Portland, but I'm lazy and I have a notebook I mostly keep to. Lest I forget myself and post the horrifying truth on my goddamn goddamn ghost city of a blogharu, correct?

Notes in closing: Playing Final Fantasy Tactics (the reissue) on my brand-new (already well-used) PSP, and reading lots and lots of comics. I'm annoyed that Odwalla Superfood is better than Happy Planet's Clean Green, which is all that's available in Vancouver. Somebody wrote me a nice letter today that I'm going to respond to after this. I wanna live on vacation.

back pages

2008-03-29T21:38:00.000-07:00

I'm at the cabin now. It's pitch black outside and the fire's going, and the freezer is making a noise like whales surfacing. I keep thinking it's real. I go outside and freeze my ass off on the front deck, listening.

My last post was written when I was feeling wickedly depressed. That's the best adverb I can come up with: wickedly. Then, in the time between that post and now, things were somewhat bad and then very bad, because my old cat got more and more sick and had to be euthanized. Poor old Midders. I knew it was coming but it was hard to accept. Is hard.

I realized today that this is the first time in my life that I haven't had a family cat. First there was Lenny, then Toby, then Misty III herself, then Ema, then just Misty alone, and they all overlapped so I never had to be without a cat in the house. Now I wonder if, after a while, every cat I see will give me a sharp jab of nostalgia. Or they'll seem gradually more and more alien, like parrots or iguanas. Maybe I'll become allergic. Maybe I was already allergic and didn't realize it, and I'll become not allergic.

But yes, I will miss my cat. I miss all my cats. Except maybe Lenny, who died when I was three or four and used to spend the nights screaming in my closet.

Here come the whales, (not really). The dogs are snoring. I have to put more wood on the fire. Go away now, internet. I'm sorry I woke you.

one more time, for the sweet souvenir

2008-03-18T23:22:00.001-07:00

My parents were in Europe and I had the house to myself for a while, aside from the plumbers, contractor, painting people, cabinet people, architect, substitute housekeeper, two dogs, sick cat, and Jacob.

I drove to Seattle to pick Jacob up and then brought him here after two nights of being sorely depressed. There was nobody to complain to or distract me from myself. Those nights were bad. Then Jacob came up and things were much better, although I swear to god I'm lousy company and anybody who attempts a conversation with me these days deserves a fucking medal. That sort of thing.

We held down the fort. I drove frantically away a few times for classes, appointments, Judah's first birthday party, but then returned to watch Holmes on Homes, which was weirdly satisfying and able to convince me utterly that by watching a man assess and repair shoddy construction I was almost constructing something myself, almost moving the kitchen renovation along by sheer force of will.

One night we did laundry in the basement laundry room, lately a temporary kitchen, minus fridge and microwave - which were moved upstairs to accommodate me, if you can believe it, and frustratingly installed in the so-called "breakfast nook", also known to the dogs and cat as "pleasing area in which to shit" - which is normally haunting but in this case became downright homey. I've always found laundry comforting and we made tea and Jacob wore borrowed plaid pajama pants while we washed his hole-y (probably also holy) jeans. I folded shirts and did a damn fine job, worthy of Holmes (as in, Holmes, my man, lay one on me, etc) on Homes, if he did things like fold shirts.

There were other fun things as well. My mind is fizzling out right now because I'm reacting to a sedative or two. Just not in the right way, obviously. Tomorrow I have two places to be, both at the same time, and I haven't decided which one to skip, which person(s) to piss off. It pains me. Imagine if I actually made plans with friends, how bad I could fuck it up with only a day calender and the very best intentions.

But back to Jacob's visit. There was a day when we went downtown with Brandon and Marian and discovered H-Mart, a brand-new-florescent-Asian-import-second-story-grocery-store, which I got really excited about at first. Then I looked around and started to feel like I was killing whales, just being there. But being me (hypocritical to the last) I bought some stuff anyway, including strawberry popsicles that turned out to be not that at all, but instead some sort of wax-coated freezies shaped like Coca Cola bottles.

Another day we sat and drew in Starbucks, of all places. There I dutifully attempted to fill that big, blank sketchbook I mentioned in an earlier post. I have no idea what the point of filling it might be, since people rarely see the insides of my sketchbooks and I hate them as soon as they're "completed" and always resolve not to look at them again until I break down after a couple of years and do, and then I want all sorts of bad things to happen because they're so awful. They inspire me to great feats of inwardly raging at myself. Much like this blog.

I can't shake the feeling lately that doodling in sketchbooks and occasionally sweating out a story to meet my deadlines isn't cutting it anymore. All around me (I chatter to myself constantly) people are picking up momentum, getting things done and making things happen. It's like some godawful movie from the 80's or early 90's, something I might have watched when I was a little kid, home sick in bed, when nothing good was ever on television. I still feel like that invalid kid a lot of the time. Or a gross parody of her, I mean.

But that's the hour talking. I should be asleep or distracting myself in some healthier way. Some way unrelated to the internet. I don't want to have to read this tomorrow.

There were other events. I can't remember. Even if it isn't true and I just feel this way, very much, almost everything lately is low down and rotten to the core.

monologue on accidents

2008-03-06T15:52:00.001-08:00

Nnnnaggnanannanan. The only thing that makes me post is not wanting to look at my previous posts every time I come here. Which is often. This blog is at the top of my bookmarks list. I hit it automatically every time I sit in my desk chair, along with email. But nothing every happens in this territory. The wrong people own this town. Stranger.

I had a doctor's appointment today at the same time as my class, so I skipped class and got a doctor's note. Just like high school, and elementary school, and the school of HARD KNOCKS. Oh no wait? Then I came back from St Paul's hospital and had to take my mother to a whole other doctor because she has the flu or strep, or something. This whole family is riddled with sick-ocity.

And god damn. There are lots of people I need to get back to. I'm so slow at that. It takes all my energy to feed my dog and feed myself, and walk my dog and read some books, and watch some dvds and take some showers, etc. But not much etc, just a little bit.

Oh I'm so cute I want to stabby myself. I've been putting stuff from my old sketchbook up on deviantart lately. That's another thing I've been doing. I started a new sketchbook and it's big. Grown-up size. I don't know what to do with it yet because when I'm finished drawing a picture there's all this space left over. It's a waste of fine paper, is what it is.

Ya. Stabby.

How I Oughtta Go

2008-03-05T13:35:00.000-08:00

My authentic japanese name is 清水 Shimizu (clear water) 弓美 Yumi (beautiful bow, as in bow and arrow).
Take your real japanese name generator! today!
Created with Rum and Monkey's Name Generator Generator.

Delightful bullshit I found on Corey's lj.
Edit: Delightful because my given name, in most languages, means "clear", and if I were an RPG character, I'm told, I'd be a ranger. Or in FFT, an archer. So: bow! See how the universe enfolds me in it's billowy arms? Billowy.

and other stories

2008-02-23T21:55:00.000-08:00

It's Saturday night. I guess it's still reading week? I've decided to come up with something and post it, no matter what, and I'll just think of it as a note to my cousin Emily, who still checks this blog from time to time and asks me about it.

The other day a friend asked if I was coming out of my depression, or getting better, I forget which. I tried to think about it objectively (ha ha ha) and kept second-guessing myself, and then I got choked up and couldn't answer anyway. So maybe I'm getting better but it's going very goddamn slowly. I'm taking my pills every day, as ordered, and eating and sleeping. I've gone back to pilates and a little bit of strength is coming back to my arms and legs. The muscles in my shoulders are tight and I keep hurting myself by working them too hard. I lost too much weight over the winter. My arms look the way they did in high school, narrowing before they reach the top. So heroin chic. So cry for help. But I'm working on it.

My appetite's come back. For a while it came and went and came again, and then I'd scare it away and jesus christ, how I hate to hate the smell of food. For the last week I've eaten well at dinner, which has always been my most important meal. Tonight though, I ordered pizza. Cop-out. I know. I know already!

Last night I talked to Jacob on the phone, which is something I plan ahead of time to spend my evening doing, because somehow long-distance charges don't apply in my head if they're all clumped together. We bought tickets for the comic con in San Diego in July, and made hotel reservations and so on. It's weird. The convention is so packed that you have to plan this far ahead or you won't have anywhere to sleep. We learned that last year when we got off a train in San Diego at three in the morning and had to sneak into a hotel to find somewhere to sit until dawn. But the idea of planning something that won't happen until July feels crazy to me. I can't imagine the end of term, spring break, the summer, at all. I guess I've been going from day to day for a while now. I'm trying to think of another way to put that, that doesn't sound as dramatic, because things haven't been bad enough to feel dramatic for a couple of weeks, at least. I just mean that I focus on the immediate future, like what book to read or whether or not to go out tonight, than I do on far-flung, theoretical ideas like "summer" or "next year".

Though I've had people ask me what I'm going to do when school lets out, and I never have any idea what to tell them. Maybe I'll get to go back to Italy? Maybe not? And New York is an option. There is this San Diego thing, however, because last summer (when I was confident and happy, alack) I decided that I was glad we went, although it was fucking crazy, and that I would go again. So.

My neck and shoulders are killing me right now, frankly. I'll just be frank with you. They're frankly spasming all over the place. I only wish I knew what I did that messed me up so much. Story Of My Life! Cry for Help and/or Attention Positive or Negative Doesn't Matter! I can imagine that being the title of my autobiography, except that it would be so annoying that it would annoy even me and I'd have to scratch it out. Scratch scratch. That's me scratching it.

Hem haw. I'm not sure if should be writing fiction for children right now, instead of this. I mean of course I should, but I'm not sure if I've got a deadline on Tuesday or whatsit. Maybe I have deadlines on Tuesday and Thursday. That'd be slick. I've arbitrarily (or so it feels) decided not to drop my classes and abandon all society as of yet, but who's to say I won't just throw it all away (Oh! All of it! Let's all be criminals!) at the drop of a hat, because Words Don't Come Easily. Etc. For example. (There's no way in hell that I'm reading this over before posting it. I'd die of shame and sorrow. And boredom and confusion. ETC.

But ahm, here's a list of the books I've read lately and what I've thought about them. It being, after all, reading week. See?

Your Vigor for Life Appalls Me: Robert Crumb Letters 1958-1977: I think I only read this because I found it in an used bookstore for cheap. Robert Crumb's art has always sort of freaked me out, though I do have a couple of vintage Crumb t-shirts (given to me by a family friend) that I can never wash and so can never wear. But anyway, these are some very depressing letters, (heigh-ho), for the most part, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I followed them up by renting and watching "Crumb" for the second time, having mostly forgotten it, and found it much more depressing and much less enjoyable as a whole. If only I couldn't understand what anybody was saying, it might have been a soothing documentary about comics. As it was, mood-wise, please shoot me! Okay next!

The Night In Question and The Barracks Thief by Tobias Wolff: I like his writing. What can I tell you. He writes a lot of semi-autobiographical stuff set in an all-male prep school in the seventies and I like that too, but only in the sickest way possible.

Little Nemo in Slumberland Vol. 1 by Winsor McCay: This is the Big Guns, strip-wise, and I'd seen the most famous pages reproduced a lot but never got a sense of the story or characters. Like for example I always thought Flip and "jungle imp" were the same character. Silly me.

Confederates in the Attic: Dispatches from the Unfinished Civil War by Tony Horwitz: This is my non-fiction for the month. I picked it up because I'm obsessed with the civil war, and Tony Horwitz conveniently wrote this book about people obsessed with the civil war In Our Times. Unfortunately most of the people currently obsessed with the civil war are racist and/or hardcore into dressing up as soldiers, so I still feel fairly alienated. Can't I just moon over Lincoln's speeches and Robert E. Lee's... face? Do I have to look at the bigger issues? Yes? Dang?

The Man who was Thursday: A Nightmare by G.K. Chesterton: A delightfully insane little novel written in 1908 about the anarchists who are everywhere and wish to destroy our empire. It features a group of top-notch anarchists named for the days of the week. What's not to love?

The Lost Stradivarius by J. Meade Falkner: Haunted violin story circa 1867? Yes! Complete with lots of fainting spells and the seeing of startlingly pale persons assumed dead but thankfully not dear to one. So I can relate.

The Key Above the Door by Maurice Walsh: I bought this ages ago because, let's face it, it had an attractively faded Penguin cover and a Narnia chronicle-esque name. I assumed it was a 1920s murder mystery or somesuch, so imagine my surprise when it turned out to be a 1920s love story, set in the brack and breigh-honny or whatever of Scotland, and quite, em, the word is... sexy? And not only that! The author (dead now, but anyway) is said on the back cover to reside "beneath the foothills of the Wicklow mountains" in Ireland. Which is where Daniel Day-Lewis, who I currently have a crush on, totally lives! With me as his wife, I almost added! But that would be creepy!

Now I'm reading some semi-journalistic non-fiction about New York in the seventies. It's like Taxi Driver with all the acting cut-out, so that all you see is shots from a moving car of grimy city streets and prostitutes and Bad Men. It's hypnotic and dismal and won't let up. I'm going to go read some more of it after this.

I really like reading. I just have to remember to keep doing it, or my brain will die. I mean I seriously think that could actually happen to me. Brain death. Keeping it at bay since 1982.

With which, I leave you.

Exeunt!

*dies plentifully*

no read

2007-12-16T00:32:00.000-08:00

I still don't have a computer. It was supposed to come back tonight, and it did, briefly, but things weren't making themselves correct. It had to be whisked away again. Maybe I'll see it tomorrow? I hope it calls first. Girl, I need to wash my hair.

Really, after the initial two or three days of internet detox, it hasn't been that bad. I'm an adaptable species like that. I roll with the punches.

When you think about it, one person rolling and another person punching doesn't make much sense. That's something little kids would do. They don't make sense either.

Yeah. I can live without the internet. Like I'm doing right now, on my dad's laptop, as it burns through my thighs. You know what I wish I could live without? Facebook. It's making a fool of me. If I'm not losing a game of Scrabulous or writing inane comments on the wall of some person or other, I'm sending a too-long "personal message" with a request for confirmation of friendship. Facebook makes for an unsexy future. See Star Trek. Voyager. Why I friend the non-friends I friend, and ignore the non-friends that friend me is up for debate. It's embarrassing, actually. I think the excitement of discovery takes over when I come across a one-time acquaintance and see their little picture and their little non-threatening name. I get very thrilled and triumphant about it. I'm like the girl in Jurassic Park when she hacks the system towards the end. The system is these twelve, beige, three-dimensional blocks on a grid. Wait, I know this! I know this! The dinosaurs in that movie still don't look ridiculous to me but I can't stand that one scene. Despite which, on Facebook? I become that girl. Then I wake up the next morning and regret it, because nobody likes being reminded of the past, do they? Really? I do. I'm a sucker for the past, no matter how sorry it be. Gimme dat past. I'll take it and mash it up like a dog does a blanket and then settle in for a nice dwell.

Well. Whatenvangelion. Tomorrow is another chance to shine my brightest, nay?

This will be a shocker, but my last post was written while I was under the influence of sleeping pills. I remember typing it out and feeling like you do in a dream when you need to run but can't. That slow, underwater jog. I don't know why I took the pills before taking up the blog. I think I forgot I'd taken them, officer. They read to me like flat Pepsi, now. Not even Coke, and a flat Coke is disappointing, at least, because it once had potential. Flat Pepsi is just Pepsi gone all flat. Thesis statement: I can't disassociate posts from the why I feel as I write them, even if they don't take much writing. I never understood how to work a thesis statement, neither.

I've been dealing with this virus in my head, lately. That sounds like a description of bad feelings, unfortunately, but I mean a literal virus in my throat and sinus... es. Passages. Ahem hem. It's been getting worse and worse for more than a week now, despite everything I throw at it. I've been gargling salt and sucking Halls and scarfing Cold FX and Dispel Invasion (Korean pellets, smell bad), and today Marian found me some Acai berry drink at Capers, but nothing works. My throat even looks bad in a mirror, to me, and to me all throats look bad in a mirror, but this is different. It's a pain in my ass, metaphorically. I hate being sick all the time. Especially now, during the holidays with all the running around and talking. Talking hurts. I'll have to go to the doctor if it gets worse but what can she do? I want somebody to just lance it. Lop it off, whatever. That whole back of throat, sinus-y area. So I guess I want to lose the stuff behind the face, as well, because that hurts too. Let's just keep the top bit of the brain and my face hanging down like a curtain. I'll eat through the stump of my neck, like the chicken that lived for fifteen days after its head was cut off. Which isn't true, I'm sure. Rural myth.

Hack wheeze. Moody bloogs. Fun to write. Bad to read. NO READ! I need to go take some sleeping pills. Excuse me.

P.S. Facebook can be fun, I can behave pleasantly, and my throat can be not hurting. If I've suggested otherwise, I'm a liar. Thighs on fire.

it works

2007-12-10T22:48:00.000-08:00

I'm writing this only because I've been kept away from the internet all day, and will be all night, and it's fucking killing me. It wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't spent most of the day at home. Every five seconds I'd think of something that made me want to go online. I'd actually walk towards my monitor before realizing how pointless it was, and that reminded me of this: when you glance over your shoulder right before changing lanes and there's a van in your blind spot. Your body very abruptly has to pretend you weren't going to change lanes at all. It makes your nerves scream.

What else? Was there anything else? At least the previous post already broke my funny streak.

I... want scones.

this is just to say

2007-12-09T17:12:00.000-08:00

Richard left the house with my computer at around 3pm today. It's 5:10 now and I'm already brainsick with missing it. I know it's for the best and everything. My computer is old and needs to be looked over and made good again. One day, maybe in a year or two, my computer will have hit its ceiling for hard drive replacements and ram stuffinages (new word, good) and I'll buy a new computer, because Richard will tell me to, and which one to buy.

Computers are hard. Not like napping. I always thought I'd love to have a laptop I could use in bed, but the warmth coming off this thing is putting me to sleep. When will I have my computer back? I don't quite know. Maybe tomorrow. Hopefully tomorrow. Not tonight.

You're fascinated by this.

Last night there was drinking had (by others and myself) in my living room, and many napkins were torn into pieces and twisted into sperm darts. This morning I emptied a glass of leftover Guinness and soggy, swollen, discoloured sperms into the garbage and thought about birth control.

I don't say sperm. I say sperms. This is because in high school, grade nine, a potential first boyfriend told me a joke over the phone. D: "I walked to school today and saw something white, what do you think it was?" Me: "What?" D: "It was SPERMS." (here follows raucous laughter, not mine) Only later did the humour inherent in David's joke occur to me. Like, it was sperms.

Originally there was a Die Hard 4/dinner happening tonight, but it's unfortunately been canceled, so instead I'll do some napping. I need to catch up on that. There have been a lot of late nights, lately. Late/ly.

But. Wait. I wouldn't be thinking about napping at all if it wasn't for this damn toasty notebook. It's the computer equivalent of a sleeping Hobbes. Now I yawn.

Nothing else, much.

marsupials are nature's popples

2007-12-04T20:59:00.000-08:00

Before I start anything here, let me please just say that whatever follows will probably not be funny. Please don't except something funny and then tell everyone it wasn't funny after all and you subsequently killed yourself. If you want to read this, I ask that you prepare now for a thoughtful, spiritual experience that is bound to change you, if you let it. Is there a smile in your heart? Than notify your face, and just stop it. There's too much pressure. I'm going to pee.

That done with, Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon is the videogame I've been playing lately. - By lately, I mean since about October 23 this year. I know because I checked my blog. Wicked.

Anyway, Rune Factory: A Fantasy Harvest Moon? It's a shit wagon. It's almost the worst game I've ever played at any length. - It's transcended narrowly by some of the ticket-sprouting arcade games at CIRCUIT CIRCUS in Kid's Only Market, Granville Island. One of those games features 1990-style Ninja Turtles on the casing and the words PIZZA DROP on a smudged panel of Plexiglas. Behind the Plexiglas is something that almost resembles a pachinko machine. It's a yellow board with nails driven into it. When you put your 4 quarters into the slot below, which of course you do, Christmas lights (some dead) come on above the yellow board and flash. An alarm sounds. Nothing happens. Beneath the enigmatic PIZZA DROP lettering, you notice a hole cut into the Plexiglas roughly the size of a fist. You ponder the nature of PIZZA DROP until the lights go off again. Game over. - Rune Factory is so bad that I could easily do a month-long series of reviews. Each would introduce a new, major flaw of the game, and each would as scathing and bitter as only an internet videogame review can be when the reviewer herself can't stop playing the fucking game.

I won't list everything wrong with Rune Factory here. Firstly, nobody who reads this blog has played or will play Rune Factory, excepting Jacob who got it for free and played it for all of three seconds because it sucked so fiercely badly. Secondly, I really don't have the energy. But here is a brief description (non-judgemental, mind) of the game:

It's a farm simulation game so it simulates farming, but not really. It also attempts to be a fantasy rpg, because instead of farming you can enter caves and fight monsters to gain experience.

You kill monsters when you defeat them, but the game calls it "releasing them to the first forest" so that's fine, even though the game characters seem to treat the monsters as pets. You also use the skins/bones/teeth of the monsters, because otherwise it's wasting? But you can "tame" monsters if you want, and put them in a tiny barn closet, and bring them out occasionally to follow you around. For no reason. But don't let that put you off killing monsters, because you'll have to kill multitudes to progress in the game.

Also, you can get married. You do this by talking to a girl three thousand times. Once that pinnacle is reached, the game arbitrarily decides when the girl, (not woman, they're all about eight) is ready to marry you. At that point, instead of saying "gee, turnips are my favourite" (example) as whoever it is always does, no matter the time or situation, she will start talking about her feelings and the game will trap you into marrying her, so you'd better power off right away and if you haven't saved recently, hurl the DS hard at something soft, because really it isn't the system's fault. Nice system. Mommy loves you. Don't ask me what happens when and if you do get married. I imagine your child-bride stands in your house and says "gee, turnips are my favourite".

Was that brief? It was not. I'm sorry. I get so mad and lost and I can't help myself, it starts pouring out of my mouth like gasoline, if my mouth was a hose filled with gas. Drawing challenge! Anyway, you get the point. It's a bad game. Not fun. Shit wagon.

AND YET, I keep playing it. I keep wandering through caves and killing pets/monsters and talking to insipid townsfolk and planting soulless cabbages. I won't ask you why I do this, despite everything. Only I know the reason, deep inside my heart, and one day I'll get shot in the heart by an arrow and the reason will pop out my butt onto the ground, and it will look like a poo.

Did I mention that the music for Rune Factory is repetitive and dismal? I probably should have, because that's where I'm going with this. Thanks to the invention of ear phones, I can listen to an iPod while playing the game and not really miss anything that I wouldn't detest anyway. But you can't listen to any old thing while playing theworstgameevafeaturingkillingandfarminginone, you can only listen to things that are related to farming in some way. That's the fun of it. Otherwise it's stupid.

So okay, here's what I have so far. Suggestions welcome!

1. King Harvest (Has Surely Come) - The Band
Actual lyrics: Dry summer, then comes fall/ Which I depend on most of all/ Hey rainmaker can't you hear the call?/ Please let these crops grow tall.

Theory: This works on many levels, or actually on just one level. Unfortunately it only rains about 3 times a year in RH, so you don't really depend on the rainmaker as much as backbreaking labour. But I like how it's all "hey rainmaker", like "what doing?"

2. Straw hat and old dirty hank - The Barenaked Ladies
Actual lyrics: I tend the wheat field that makes your bread/ I bind the sweet veal, pluck the hens that make your bed/ Mother Nature & Mother Earth/ Are two of three women who dictate what I'm worth.

Theory: This is just entirely fitting because the guy in the song is psychotic and kills the woman he's obsessed with because she won't return his feelings. Other memorable lines include All of this corn I grow, I grow it all for you, and damn if I haven't said that aloud to my DS while courting my jail-bait love interest(s) in-game. Actually, I'm still hoping the game will end the way this song does, because that's the only way any part of it would every make sense, ever, ever.

3. Jubilee - Ida
Actual lyrics: Hardest work I ever done, working on the farm/ Easiest work I've ever done, swinging my true love's arm.

Theory: This song is far too cheerful on the whole, but it underlines the futility of the "dating sim" portion of RH. In this world, being friendly with folk is as physically and mentally exhausting as breaking twenty boulders every morning. And boulders sprout by the dozen every morning. Just saying.

4. The Calender Hung Itself - Bright Eyes
Actual lyrics: And I kissed a girl with a broken jaw that her father gave to her/ She had eyes bright enough to burn me. They reminded me of yours/ And in a story told she was a little girl in a red-rouge, sun-bruised field/and there were rows of ripe tomatoes where a secret was concealed.

Theory: More pedophilia, which I swear to god this game keeps hinting at. The father of one girl character is a Catholic priest (or so he suggests in dressing as the pope) who keeps telling you his daughter is becoming a woman in that way... No wonder the poor girl is reaching out to whatever wandering squatter shows up at the old farm. Plus, rows of ripe tomatoes. Been there.

4. Field Behind the Plow - Stan Rogers
Actual lyrics: Poor old Kuzyk down the road/ The heartache, hail, and hoppers brought him down./ He gave it up and went to town. /And Emmet Pierce, the other day, / Took a heart attack and died at forty-two. / You could see it coming on, 'cause he worked as hard as you.

Theory: This whole song is a fucking goldmine. Every verse is rich with Harvest Moon-style pathos and tragedy. It colours over the lines a little with "buy the kids a winter coat", when you could just craft one from the skins of your pets and then, oops, you're barren anyway, but basically it should be on the game's soundtrack.

5. Maggie's Farm - Bob Dylan
Actual lyrics: I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more. /No, I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more. /It's a shame the way she makes me scrub the floor. /I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.

Theory: One of the most dissatisfying things about RH is that you don't really own the farm you're creating. You're just "working on it" for a girl named Myst. The people in town know this and most of them mention it every time you try to talk. "It's good you're helping with the farm" they say repeatedly, or "has Myst pulled the wool over your eyes?" That's a clever reference to sheep, which incidentally aren't in the game. Instead of sheering sheep you may shave the fur off your captive monsters. It's as rewarding as it sounds.

Last and least, I have for you the official theme song of Rune Factory: Harvest Moon. Please watch at least 1.5 seconds of it, because I watch that much 100 times a day, at least. It's impossible to restart the game without "FRY DOWN TO MEEEEEEEEEEE" blaring tinnily from the DS speakers. The lyrics make no sense at all, but the sound makes them indecipherable anyway so it doesn't matter. The accompanying video has nothing to do with the game. At all. Exceptions to this rule include the starring male character (that's you), the blushing girl with white hair (that's Myst, the slave-driver), and the brief glimpse of cabbages in a cave.

CABBAGES IN A CAVE.

Fin.

Humping Guy

2007-12-04T12:22:00.000-08:00

Come on, tell me you didn't do dirty Mad Libs when you were little. This gem was filled out when I was around ten or eleven. That's my printing in the blanks, so you can't blame me for the content. Nine-year-old cousin Emily? I'm looking in your direction.

I've seen official "Dirty Mad Libs" in the store lately, but that would ruin the fun completely. And when will Mad Libs become an application on Facebook? Please say never.

That's Happiness

2007-12-01T18:49:00.000-08:00

Also available on YouTube here.

I wanna get fizzickle

2007-11-29T23:50:00.000-08:00

Ahem hem. I did end up having enough energy to be social after class on Tuesday. It almost killed me (afterwards, when I remembered about having legs and lungs and all that bunch of bull ass) because there was a lot of walking to distant points on campus that I never go to, and a lot of laughing and shrieking. That is what I do in mixed company now: laugh and shriek.

Which brings me to, what constitutes mixed company? Please to tell.

Then on Wednesday I was running around and being ushered (ushered!) here and fro, to get my hair cut, thank you yes, and etc, and then Brad (strange new person in life) picked me up and we went to the end-of-term department-related creative writing party. If that sounds amazingly awesome you've got good hearing. We in creative writing know how to get down and drink a cider or two. OR TWO.

Needless to say I'm a cheap drunk. Now more than usual (even) because I've lost a bit of weight and a lot of strength, so it all goes through me and makes me crazy. But fun crazy. Limits are fun, guys. I love and embrace them. Much as I loved and embraced lots of people at the party. But only in a joking way. Ha-ha. Many people were wasted beyond the telling of it. They made me look good.

Or not good, but sober. Anyway, that was fun, but I was about to pass out by 11:00, so we left and I came home to my bed. I don't hate my bed anymore because I'm not always in it, see? Limits, bed. You can't have all of me.

Now I'm overtired again, yet again, again, because my last fiction class and last class of all, this term, was today. I love fiction and love my professor with all my hearts and heart pieces. The reason is, he made me feel good at writing. That's all it takes. But he's not going to be teaching us next term, for some stupid reason probably involving The Man. Rage and sadness for me, yes. Instead some DUDE is coming in, who I will certainly resent and/or hate at, named Kevin Blanketyblank. Go away, Kevin Blankety, noooooooobody likes you.

If this post seems manic and crazed, it is, but I'm not. Not particularly. I'm just tired, as I mentioned above. Today after class I went out for drinks with my fiction people, and now I hate Growers cider forever. First because: it sucks, we all know this, but I've been back to drinking it lately because I have no tolerance and it's weaksauce. Second because: UBC is sponsored by Growers, or some goddamn thing, and all the bars on campus refuse to stock Strongbow or anything reasonable, and instead have big chalkboard ads for Growers. It's embarrassing.

Over than that, today was good, and it didn't run too long. I sensibly excused myself long after my single horrible peach cider to head home, but ended up giving a friend a ride to Clark and Broadway. That's like, out of my way? but I was very heroic about it. You can imagine.

So now I'm here and I've been resting up, as they say, and I hope I'll be at least this lively tomorrow. Because what happens tomorrow? I don't know yet, but it will probably require some serious hardcore being alive. I hope.

Is it obvious that I'm not so depressed anymore? Even at night? When I'm tired? Well NOW IT IS, SUCKER. You fall over. End of strip.

bad medicine

2007-11-26T19:07:00.000-08:00

Being sick has distracted me from the whole depression thing, except for the times when I've been depressed about being sick. Mainly I've just been really sick? The doctors gave me antibiotics (which I didn't need) and the antibiotics + antidepressants did a bunch a bad stuff that turned into pleurisy. Please hit my informative link if you're picturing a medieval rash, because pleurisy just sounds horrible and chronic and catching. Really it's only horrible. And contagious in extremely rare cases, but whatever. I hate pleurisy.

Being sick has also kept me from doing everything I normally do. The exceptions are playing Rune Factory, watching the Dog Whisperer, and reading. It's really making me crazy. You wouldn't think that it would, but it is.

For example: I have bookshelves in my spare closet now. They fit and look good. The space for books and comics has doubled. I got rid of all the stacks on the floor. But it's all tainted by pleurisy. Imagine inflamed and rasping pleura draped all over my well-displayed stuff. That's what it's like.

Tomorrow is my first class back (and last class of the term, oddly enough) since this all went down. Hopefully I'll be physically capable of riding in a car to the university, sitting in a room, talking calmly, and then being chauffeured home. Almost definitely I won't be capable of hanging out with people post-class, and having a bit of carefree, lighthearted fun like a normal person, or pixie.

Rage! Raaaaaaaaaage!!? I'm so petulant and whiny, though I don't have it that bad, I know. (Cancer is going to read this post and come get me.)

cross your fingers for the laser show

2007-11-13T23:31:00.000-08:00

Right, well then. I know I should update my last post, which ended with a few paragraphs on suicide? What the fuck? When my brain is broken, it's kind of a creep.

Obviously it's still broken, or not-broken, or the same as it has been. Not life, I mean, but my brain. I'm still depressed. But I don't feel depressed.

Just now I'm getting a headache because the storage closet to my immediate right is reeking of fresh paint and something fake-orange. But never mind. I was saying.

I haven't been so bad for the last week, mood-wise. I'm still not eating as much as I probably should be, and I sometimes crash at night. Generally, though. Generally things are stabilizing. Outside my brain, in life, things are looking up in some key ways.

One very small example is how my nervous energy translated into a CLEAN SWEEP recently, and I completely emptied that storage closet I mentioned. Most of the stuff is in boxes now, headed for the basement, which is getting less and less like the basement in Silence of the Lambs since the renovation. So I didn't really get rid of much, I know, but I made some steps. Probably if I didn't live at home, these are steps I'd have taken at, what, eighteen? But there's no fun in that. Then you don't get to find your giant Papa Smurf doll when you're twenty-five and be all nostalgic and muttering. Not to mention the binders of letters and shoe boxes relating to people you don't talk to anymore. Which isn't fun. Actually, a lot of it isn't fun, but I powered through it anyway with moderate emotional outbursts, like the Jetson's maid. Now the closet's empty and very uplifting, except for the cancer-smell of paint, I mean. Soon it'll be full of bookshelves and then a lot of books will come down from their stacks and find a home. Just like the boll weevil. I'll treat them mighty nice.

And then there are bigger, better things, like friends and new friends and stuff. It's just the closet is easier to describe. Like the person said, I'd have written you a shorter letter if I had more time. I can't stop babbling right now, so I have to pick my subjects carefully.

If none of this made any sense, I blame the paint.

waiting for something not coming

2007-11-05T21:40:00.000-08:00

Today was decent. That's actually me being a sullen teenager about it because today was better than all the days in the past week.

I spent the first half of it buying my cousin an ancient rock with flaking pieces of brown clay stuck to it that are actually particles of feces left by a Neanderthal hunter! Exciting! Then I ran errands like a normal person. I went to Terra Breads and bought bread and ate a slice of Grape bread (tasty but impossible to describe, like melting grapes in flat bread? tasty?) and a disc of Apple Foccacia, again like a normal person.

For dinner (yes, dinner!) I went to Kimi and Sachi's. It was exactly what I needed. Sachi made delicious eats. Tuna Casserole (the platonic ideal of), and two kinds of vegetable salad things. I had forgotten about those things! Judah was hilarious and somehow more cute since I last saw him, because he's become more expressive and able to channel his cuteness into his wants, and he has many wants. Kimi and Sachi were both very understanding about the case I've turned into. They made me feel better about a lot of it, and much less isolated. I'm not really isolated at all, but I get to feeling that way when I'm depressed. I need distraction, but not like a movie or a book, because then I'll be depressed about it. Unless it's a Garfield treasury that features no death or loss or real-world problems, but that's depressing anyway because it's a Garfield treasury. So, yes, it's very important right now to have friends around who I know really well and who sort of take care of me a little bit. And that's what I had tonight! And did I mention it was great! Thank you friends!

Now I'll go before I get tired and gradually shift in tone to something like an Elliott Smith song. Who I've been listening to a lot lately, just coincidentally. Him and the lovely Nick Drake. Please do suggest any musicians you can think of who've killed themselves? Other than Kurt Cobain, I mean.

But omg, I'm not suicidal, btw. That's never been my thing. I just like songs where people, um, sing about it. Because they understand. But then they kill themselves and stop understanding, so I need to find more.

Plus, my iPod has 160GB. It needs to get fat.

lately

2007-11-04T22:48:00.000-08:00

My blog gets no attention because:

a) Instead I've been writing some long, unhappy, ridiculous letters to an arbitrary handful of patient people.

b) I have no energy. What energy I have goes into Rune Factory (worst addictive game ever, and not in an addictive way) and feeding/walking my dog. Also communicating my pain. Very exhausting for me!

c) The Internet isn't a safe place for me when I'm CLINICALLY DEPRESSED (poster girl for it, I am) because I get paranoid about the weirdest things. No specifics here because I don't even want you to know that much about me.

d) I can't remember why I thought this list format would be a good idea. I need to make a genuine effort to remember little things from moment to moment, much like a demented, old-age sort of person, with my diaper on wrong.

f) Oh my god, that image is sad. Poor elderly! Let me help you, elderly! But except diaper gross.

So you understand.

last fair deal gone down

2007-10-29T00:17:00.000-07:00

Things have been up and low. To be honest, things have been mainly good, and better than before, and I've been sleeping every night. Only just right now, I feel shitty, but that's because I'm tired. I tend to get really sad when I'm really tired. It's a very unpleasant thing about me and I'd like it to change soon. Please Santa.

It was my birthday yesterday, and it was mostly nice. My parents bought me the new iPod. Not the iTouch thingy, which I don't even know what that is, but the latest version of just iPod. I'm very pleased with it so far, but I haven't even tried to hook it up to my computer yet. Why is because my computer's been glitchy for a long time and refuses to update to iTunes 7.whatever. It also refuses to acknowledge that I've paid for anti-virus updates like more than twice, because it keeps giving me little alerts that I need to do that. Then it gives me the option of paying now, or having it remind me later. Apparently I can't choose the "lying monster I paid you already" option so I always have it remind me later. Which it does. Every day.

But my god. I can't believe I'm writing about computer trouble. Now I'll keep doing it: This could all be solved by me calling my all-knowing computer guy to come bail me out, but that's just too hard right now for little babies who are just getting over their insomnia, and walking the depression line. Depression on one side, happy little babies on the other.

More about my birthday.

My dog got sick. There was blood in her poo. Yes gross bad. I don't care how gross it is. I'd eat the stuff if it meant she was healthy. Sadly, this is not considered helpful. So I phoned the vet emergency (my Pop's Chocolate Shoppe, as it were) and they told me to drive down there right away, and I did, and there was some crying while driving, and some talking on the cell phone while crying and driving.

Since this whole blue period kicked in, my driving has gone to shit. True story.

Then we did the whole emergency deal and they said the usual, but a bit more optimistic, which was "we don't know, we'll do tests, you'll have to wait and see, but she seems bright and energetic, so that's a good sign". To which I scream (in my head, and still): THAT IS NOT NECESSARILY A GOOD SIGN. THE LONG-TERM ANIMAL EMERGENCY IN BURNABY SAID THAT SHE WAS STOIC, AS IN A DOG WHO SEEMS BRIGHT AND ENERGETIC EVEN WHILE LIVING WITH CRIPPLING PAIN, ETC.

I apologize for the all-caps. I realized halfway through that it was too much, but couldn't go back.

Anyway, we got some nasty-ass medicine and I drove straight (wildly straight) to the Murakami's house, where they were patiently waiting with dinner in the oven. What dinner, you dribble? Why, only Tuna Casserole, the dinner I love most in the world. And Kimi and Sachi make it better than anyone ever. Plus, Judah was there in an orange jumper and I love him and wouldn't put him down. Plus, Marian gave me wooden thief knives, so that now I can be a thief? In my mind? But with props, and one knife is named Sneak, and the other is named Take. My own brilliant mind came up with that, so bask in awe. Also, Sachi is making me some beautiful woolen accessories that are beautiful. She's very accomplished, our Sachi.

At some point during the night, proving that I'm better but not entirely, I let Judah bump his mouth on the table edge and we both starting crying. Me and a baby. It was so fitting and pathetic. He was fine, but I just couldn't stand seeing his famous "sad face". His mouth makes an upside down U. It is and was tragic and heartbreaking. So I wept.

Then I got over it and Sachi and Marian and I walked over to the Parade of Lost Souls on the Drive, where they block off the streets and Halloween-crazy adults run around being mental and setting things on fire. There, I learned that I'm afraid of close-proximity firecrackers. But there were some good costumes that I could appreciate on some costume-appreciating level, including a Lego man, No Face from Spirited Away, uh... I can't remember any others. But anyway. Sights to see. Places to go.

Today I went with Marian to Quilchena park with Happy and Moss. Happy did some almost semi-normal poo, sans blood (Yes, this blog features a lot of dog shit, sometimes with detailed analysis. I'm okay with that) and ran around with Moss and had a good time.

Later, we had sushi. My brother gave me $50 for a birthday present, which will come in very handy whenever I try to spend $50. I've also got a bunch of stuff from Amazon on the way, gift-wise. And, uh, I shouldn't be in such a bad mood.

Again, I'm just tired. Forgive me a lot. Everything will be better in the morning!

up jumped the devil

2007-10-26T17:12:00.000-07:00

Things are looking straight ahead, if not exactly up. My fiction class was canceled on Thursday, and from about 1-3pm, I had my first off-and-on sleep in a week and a half. I wasn't even heavily drugged, unless you count the hangover from the night before. My dreams were demonic, frustrated by a build-up of random images and irritations in the back of my stupid head. But I can handle weird dreams. I welcome handling them, for they mean sleep.

That bit of rest gave me a wicked thrill. Taking myself off caffeine means that I get my nervous energy from unlikely sources, I guess. I even felt up enough to see a movie. Which I did, with some people/friends from my kid fiction class. Amazingly capable of me, no? Compared to how blue in the dump I've been for the last two weeks, I really think I deserve prizes.

Or, my pills deserve prizes. Or Dr. Drug. Or no wait, be serious, my therapist deserves it all. Off and on, over the years (since I was, what? 17?) she's come in first with 150cc's, and won gold on the Extra Difficulty Special Cup, where all the courses are in reverse. Which is a metaphor I don't understand myself, but that just makes it more fitting.

In any case. I saw The Darjeeling Limited and liked it a lot, unsurprisingly. Except I kept thinking about Owen Wilson's suicide attempt and wondering in every scene (does he want to die now? Does he want to die right now?) Which may have made the movie better. I don't know. It also made it more sad.

Then, last night, I settled in for a long autumn's nap with my 50 mg of Trazodone and 2 MG of Lorazepam, and it actually worked. I slept through the night like a person. I probably would have slept longer, too, but I had to get up for a dentist appointment at 12:45. Or so I thought. I went downtown through sluggish traffic and got to the office 15 minutes late, where they explained to me that my appointment was actually for 2:45.

This has been happening to me a lot lately, this thing of getting time wrong. It tends to make me feel even more isolated from the normal world, which is already a habit, thank you.

I killed time by wandering down to the comic store on Granville, but got sidetracked at Urban Outfitters, where they had the Banksy book I've been curious about. Then I noticed some decent shirts and figured I could use a new hoody. When I eventually got out of there, I'd spent something like $130. This surprised me, especially since I have no money right now. I mean, six dollars at the most, no kidding. If I weren't such a spoiled live-at-home 24 year old, I probably wouldn't be able to buy anything at all.

As it is, I had charged everything to Visa and then had a tasty lunch down the street (also on Visa), and then I ran out of time to kill. So I never got to the Comic Shop, where they'd have certainly forced me to buy more stuff, probably comics related. I went back to the dentist's office to my molar filled with pain and presumably some kind of acrylic? For which I paid with Visa.

Once home, I continued to amaze myself by not collapsing on my bed for a few hours of Rune Factory, and instead walked my dog to Quilchena and back. My mother's been taking up the slack with Happy since I've been sleepless and depressed, but now she's at the cabin so it's up to me again. It gets me outside in the light (assuming it's a day with light, which lately there haven't been so many of) and the air, and the walking and the breathing. All good things, I'm told, to fight the bad headspace.

I talked to my mother on the phone, post-walk, and told her what had happened. That wacky Visa, I exclaimed, what goes and buys things for me alone! But actually I told her the truth and because she's feeling guilty about being away on my birthday (tomorrow), she said "good!" Which proves my point about the spoiled twenty four (for the rest of the day) year-old. BECAUSE I AM ONE/CANNOT TELL A LIE. I'm just like toddler George Washington except that story with the cherry tree never happened. And anyway Lincoln is so much cooler. So tall and... craggy. Lincoln got depressed too! All the time!

Except he probably had better reasons for it. Maybe.

Plus he got shot while enjoying theatre, and I don't want to emulate that. I go to a lot of movies, you know? I get paranoid in movie theatres, too. Like the big Vancouver quake will finally hit and the ceiling will fall in, or mass panic will ensue for some justified reason, like Serin gas, or somebody will be talking really loudly during Diehard 4. But, anyway.

Oh right. I'm done.

black-eyed frog

2007-10-23T19:57:00.000-07:00

I quit caffeine. I had a cup of decaffeinated English breakfast tea today (4% the caffeine of a regular cup), but that was the first drop since the 18th, when I slept through my Thursday fiction class for the second time. That freaked me out a bit, because I've missed three of those classes already and if you miss six classes in the entire year, you fail automatically.

I picture a steel robot with red eyes, buried in a vault below the Buchanan tower, that comes to life as soon as that sixth class is missed. Its robotic hands clank into angry fists and its big, square teeth slowly open, and then it screams FAIL.

I've been miserable lately, mostly because the no-caffeine thing isn't working, and the no-sleep experience is forever. I called my drug-loving doctor, Dr. Drug, and he put me on Lorazepam. Which is virtually the same stuff I've been taking from the medicine cabinet for weeks now, with two major differences- it isn't expired, and it doesn't work. Last night I took two pills and rolled from one side of the bed to the other until the windows got blue and I could hear somebody making coffee downstairs. Then I sat up and turned on my Nintendo DS.

I got a DS Lite, which is sort of a compensation prize for not sleeping, because I can play it in bed, right? I also purchased the unfortunate farm sim/rpg "Rune Factory", where you can fight monsters, grow crops, and fall in love! It's really a terrible little game, but I keep at it because it's something to master. Even if it makes my hands numb.

Tonight I've got this new prescription. I can't remember what it's called but it's actually an out-dated anti-depressant. They don't prescribe it for depression any longer because it's also a sedative, which I guess is a lousy side effect. So now it's a sedative with the side-effect of being not depressing.

I can't think how to wrap this up. The trouble is how my brain is too slow. I feel like an invalid. I wish I could write or draw or read or lose consciousness, and not in that order. This is such a goddamn non-starter situation.

leeloominai

2007-10-16T04:59:00.000-07:00

Late last night, Marian and I went to London Drugs to score some Halloween candy. Specifically, the little chocolate bars. Specifically the little Kit Kat, Coffee Crisp, and Score bars. They were out of Score bars. Then we ate candy while we drew things, and I watched 28 Weeks Later, and Marian occasionally glanced up from her drawing but mainly just listened to my running commentary, a sampling of which I present for you here: Oh, shit. They gots rage. These kids are gonna contract some rage. Oooh, there's a dead guy got stepped on. Fuck, if I were her I would totally do some opposite thing from what she's doing. Etc.

As a result of the five (six?) of the little chocolate bars I jammed in my little mouth (I just mistyped "chocolate bras", ha-ha-ha, PRICELESS), I'm still awake at 5:30. Which means Klovharu gets an update. Silver lining for this cloud, I'm telling you.

I think I have a honest-to-good caffiene/sugar addiction. I mean I know I do. The other day I was telling somebody how I missed a night or thirteen recently due to caffiene injested after my cut-off point, and they were all wide-eyed with "Oh, I'm like that too. That's why I don't drink caffiene, or eat chocolate". I sort of nodded sympathetically like they must have a serious problem, far removed from my own situation, and changed the subject. Inwardly however, I was shrieking wildly and flapping my hands in their face, so better to dazzle them before running away to consume a Grande Tazo Chai and a Kit Kat Chunky. With maybe some Hickory Sticks to balance it out.

Blah blah. I started working on a sixteen-page comic today. Let's see if I finish page two! I think I can!

Also, my dog loves me so much right now because I've been taking her to the actual dog park every day, rain or drizzle. Her love for me fluctuates depending on the qaulity/qauntity of our walks, whereas my love for her is a perpetual burbling brook of gummy infinity. Unfair? I THINK NOT. Right now she's curled up on the floor in a donut shape, with one leg sticking out like a fork in said donut, because she can't be in the other room while I'm typing. That's how much she currently loves me.

Wibbles!

dances atop a thimble

2007-10-10T03:36:00.001-07:00

A very great argument for the general unfairness of life is how sick I felt on Bowen over the long weekend. Granted, it's just a cold, but I'm talking about how sick I felt, especially when there was so much good (better than) food to eat and happy little babies to enjoy (one in particular), and the nernies were out in full force, having fun and being hilarious and productive. And how did I contribute to it all? I caught a cold. Winning.

Now it's a bit better but it isn't all better, and I spent the day doing so little that now I can't sleep. Why should I sleep? I never properly woke up. I ate a small margarita pizza at around dinner time and shuffled around a bit, but that doesn't count. I couldn't go to class, which makes me feel as if I've missed an episode of my favourite soap opera. My favourite soap opera has very low production values and I have to sort of tilt my head and squint to find it entertaining, but once I do, boy. That's entertainment. And now I don't know what happened.

Am I whining? Yes. I am whining. I don't like having a cold. It lacks all the dignity and glamour that I feel I am owed, this late in life. I don't know what I'm talking about. Colds are stupid.

Hickory Sticks, on the other hand, are thin cut, lightly seasoned, irresistible. There's an empty bag crumpled in front of the monitor. Love 'em for the CRUNCH! MUNCH! TASTE! Who writes that stuff? Does it pay well, coming up with that? It sounds like a crazy person screamed it aloud. Who looks at a bag of chips, thinks long and hard about how to make it as appealing as possible, and says, ah yes: TASTE! It's a good thing there's French on the bag, so French people can consider the GOUT! They've got to be as informed as I do, those French people, so they can made an educated decision when buying Juliennes A L'Hickory.

Ya. Take that, Hostess. That's some biting blog commentary you can't ignore. It's poison in the vein, Hostess, and heading for the heart. Best repent.

I wish I had a pile of new books to read, instead of weird old y/a books from a free bin on 4th avenue. Although Corrie and the Yankee has it's good points, don't get me wrong. But it's no Micheal Ondaatje. I haven't read his latest whaddyacallit. I haven't been reading any current stuff at all, and I think it's starting to affect me in ways that are strange.

I had a long bath tonight and read through The Old Man in the Sea for the first time since high school. I was struck by how much it reminded me of fishing in The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass. I couldn't have made that little connection in high school, could I? Which shows how much I've grown. As a woman.

I wish I hadn't finished that game so quickly. It gave my life purpose.

If you can get a higher scrore than 2000, I'll give you something better!

But still. It's not the same. I need a quest.

and much, much more

2007-09-30T20:29:00.001-07:00

No sleep at all for three nights and then two nights of drug-induced sleep courtesy of Lorazepam, expired June 2006. But I'm told this stuff never really expires anyway. That's what I'm told.

Last night I slept for a couple of hours pill-free, and had horrible dreams of people dissolving from the inside out, with geysers of liquid shooting out of their bodies like rays of light. I woke up freezing cold, covered in sweat, and drove to North Van to take my grandmother her keys.

Yesterday we had lunch, my grandmother and I, and played Scrabble. She's losing her memory (short-term and long) at 92, but she still kicked my ass by more than 200 points. We also went to the bank so she could take out some money, and I pushed her in her wheelchair up and down Lonsdale. It was only a few blocks but it winded me. Later I found out her wheelchair isn't actually a wheelchair. I mean it has wheels, but it's actually just a transport chair to get her from the car to the door; it isn't designed for more than that. So I blame the chair, but anyway. She gave me her keys to carry and I told myself "don't forget to give them back" and then I forgot to give them back and drove across town.

So this morning I had to return the keys, which I did. Then I came home and polished up a story for my fiction class to workshop on Thursday. The scary thing about that is, not only is it my first submission in fiction class this year, the other two people handing in with me wrote these fucking terrific pieces that I can't hold a candle to. It's sort of inspiring and terrifying and challenging and lousy, how good other people can write.

Typing of which, my dad bought this weird little book in Victoria that consists of one long interview with Alan Moore. "Alan Moore Spells it Out" I think it's called, which is embarrassing, but it's a great interview about writing comics vs. drawing comics et cetera. Which is a thing I think about, that whole thing. Moore talks about his start in comics, too, which I never knew anything about and which really interests me because I can pretend to apply it to myself. Here:

"I probably imagined that I would be an artist, rather than a writer. I did still have delusions of adequacy as an artist until my mid-twenties. I mean, when I first got into comics it was as a cartoonist... which was a weekly gig, and which I'd hoped would improve my art to the level where I was no longer as embarrassed by it as I frankly was. This didn't turn out to be the case. After I'd been doing it for a couple of years, I realized that I would never be able to draw well enough and/or quickly enough to actually make any kind of decent living as an artist."

And then later:

"When I got to my mid-twenties, and kind of wised up a little, I realized that writing would be a lot quicker. I'd got a lot more control over how I wrote than how I drew. I could describe a person in words very quickly, while actually drawing them would be a lot trickier for me. So that was probably why I made the shift, and I'm very glad that I did. I don't think it was any great loss to the world of art, quite frankly, when I became a writer."

That alarms me. That whole idea of adequacy. And even if you know you're better and faster at writing a story than drawing one, how do you just 'make the shift' and abandon drawing? Drawing is so cool. But my dad used to draw comics in his twenties, strips and things, and then he realized "he'd never be good enough", (his words), and switched to something that came easier to him. And I don't know. I just feel like a deluded adolescent for trying to draw at all, sometimes. Because if I'm going to do something that other people are going to see, my demented little perfectionist self wants it to be really really perfect and brilliant. Not embarrassing and inadequate.

It's kind of a surprise to me, at twenty-four, that I am a perfectionist, because I always thought perfectionists got good grades and would know how to spell and so on. Over-achieving, right? I never did that. My own brand of perfectionism pairs nicely with laziness. If I can't do it really amazingly well right away, I just don't bother getting started.

Except sometimes, with coaxing, I do, and then even if a drawing is really clumsy and badly coloured I feel pretty good about it. For like fifteen minutes. Which isn't to say I'm any more confident about writing, except that I must be, a little.

Basically, I wish I were a better writer (by now, already, please), but I really necessarily have to be a better artist, or I'll never do anything with drawing, and that would make me sad because I love drawing so much. Which is a weird little ultimatum to give myself, I'm aware. Probably I'll feel differently tomorrow.

In other news, I have 667 books entered into LibraryThing, and I'm still not tired of doing that.

And I'm maybe probably going to buy a videogame tomorrow. Sssh.

nervous breakthrough

2007-09-22T05:24:00.001-07:00

I've done nothing to deserve this insomnia. I refuse to accept it. Take it back.

THINGS TO DO WHEN CAN'T SLEEP:

-Think about My Day, including time spent/wasted with Library Thing and Paper Mario (really way too much), time spent hyperventilating over the phone (slightly less, but enough), errands run (2), caffeine units ingested (1), money lost ($25), friends seen in person (1! good!), schoolwork done (none), etc.

-Look at Facebook for the first time in a while. Be offended and made afraid by all these new "applications" and "friends". Then add some people.

-Give up on responding to Facebook wall messages, which have been ignored for too long anyway so what's the point? There's no fooling anybody now.

-Be cold under blankets. Think about adding second blanket to Bed System (TM), but decide against it because it's warmer to stay in bed, in the short-term.

-Get up and write down weird script for future tiny comic? YES.

-Write this list. Grow very cold. Long for Bed System (TM). Watch clock.

-Consider cannibalism.

vee mustn't smear zee documents

2007-09-18T22:18:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the city and really tired, which is making me depressed about everything. SO LET'S POST.

Apparently working hard at stuff is turning me into a very stupid person. That seems unfair.

Tandoori King changed owners or something, because the staff is suddenly different and the food is suddenly different and not different in a good way.

My dog has been farting all night. Her farts smell like KFC chicken. Why god?

Today I accidentally used the word "fucking" in a presentation for kid's fiction. I'm hot-headed like that. I'm a rebel.

I had to pay Library Thing $19 for a lifetime membership. Once I got over 200 books entered they knew they had their claws into me and wouldn't let me enter another ISBN number before I paid up. Extortionists.

Sprite doesn't taste good to me. Neither does 7-Up. They both taste exactly the same. I only like brown pop. What would brown Sprite taste like? Probably gross.

The Magnificent Ambersons is an irritating book about annoying people, and wish I hadn't paid fifty cents for it.

As Toad says in Mario Kart 64, TIME FOR BED. (Or I'M THE BEST, or TIME FOR BREAD, depending on who you ask.) Time for bed.

like a cave people

2007-09-15T21:57:00.000-07:00

It's very quiet here. My mother was planning to join me at the cabin today but ended up staying in town because it's her birthday, (or was), and she's a popular lady.

I just went for a night walk with my dog. There's no moon, so it was pitch black when we got away from the cabin. The deer were everywhere. Happy or I would set one off and they'd go crashing through the bush. They remind me of the proximity mines in Goldeneye for the N64. So cheap, but so satisfying.

At the top of the hill, near the lighthouse, a car was parked with somebody in the driver's seat. The lights inside the car were on, and they were playing The Lion Sleeps Tonight on the radio. I couldn't see if there was more than one person. I didn't want to look directly at the car because it was ruining my night vision. Besides, I could see them and they couldn't see me, and with that song playing I felt like a serial killer just for walking by.

Down by the point I could hear people having a party in one of the rented cabins. Drinking and laughing. Some people with flashlights came stumbling down to the beach to smoke. Seeing flashlights from a distance like that, they always look so ridiculous and misdirected, wavering around. After a while, a dog that was with them barked in our general direction, and the people all got spooked. "Hugo! HUGO!" The flashlights went crazy as they tried to look around. Fortunately my dog and I are NINJA, and disappeared up the hill.

The stars are so bright here, crazily bright, but they never show up on my camera like the ones in the city. It's as if the light pollution in Vancouver is a required backdrop. I don't know. I tried to take some photos. I took one of a cruise ship sailing by. The exposure time was so long that it looked like the ship had just achieved warp drive.

I bought a book yesterday at the general store for 50 cents. "Twenty Grand.Great Short Stories by American Writers" it says on the binding. No explanation for the "Grand.Great" that I can figure out. Maybe they couldn't decide on just one? It also says, on the cover, EVERY STORY IN THIS BOOK IS A MASTERPIECE. I've read about eighty percent of them now and I have to disagree. "A Tooth for Paul Revere" is not a masterpiece. Maybe it was considered a masterpiece in 1969. At least of couple of the stories are at least grand.great, though, so it was worth my half dollar.

I wish I didn't have to leave at such a ridiculous time on Monday morning. I'd rather leave at a decent time Sunday night. This way, I won't even be able to print out my non-fiction work. There's no printer here, so if I want a hard copy for class I'll have hand write it. Like a cave people! And all my classmates will laugh at me and I'll run out of there with my letterman sweater torn and my freshman cap all askew.

It's hard being a baby. Lest we forget.

I don't have to ask ya

2007-09-12T22:56:00.000-07:00

So I drew a little comic and inked it and put it on deviantart, for lack of other ideas. It's looking very weird to me right now. The computer is making it weird.

School's in for winter. School's in forever. I've been freaking out in a big powerful way about the possibility of stress this fall, but so far I'm still on my feet. It's a big transition from sitting on my ass. My ass is lost without me sitting on it.

I'm obsessed with Library Thing. I know this is old news, but I only recently realized how incredibly comforting it is to enter ISBN numbers and choose from huge selections of cover scans. I've entered about 150 of my books so far, which means I've got a long way to go, because I'm a person who can't let go of a book I've read once, even if it sucked and I'll never read it again and Richard Rorty is on the cover with his shirt unbuttoned at the neck.

Speaking of books, I went into an used bookstore on the way home today and bought four more. Normally I'd let that go without posting about it, but LIBRARY THING inspires me to list them for you. Ahem: Weetzie Bat by Francesca Lia Block (odd and good, read it last year so must own it), Moominvalley in November (because it has a neat 1976 cover and I can't have enough copies? in case of fire?) Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones (I'm into her stuff right now and it's supposedly the sequel to Howl's Moving Castle, but more Aladdin-y, so okay), and Knight's Castle by Edward Eager (never heard of him, but Quentin Blake did the cover and the first page was nice). They're all kids books and all for cheap. Hooray for cheap.

I'm going to Saturna this weekend. It's my mum's birthday on the 13th and she's going to be there part of the time. Last weekend I went to Bowen with Marian, Sachi, Kimi, Judah, Juniper, Moss, and Happy. There was wonderful food and company and some serious moobs supplied by the Buddha baby. Sachi described it best. I'm guessing that no matter how beautiful it is on Saturna, it'll still seem very lonely alone. Except for my mum and all. You know.

I get back Monday morning at 9:20am. So I'll have forty minutes to get from the ferry terminal to Non-Fiction 405 at 10. S-s-super sonic? Yes.

I can sing a song for all who we love

2007-08-26T03:17:00.000-07:00

Insomnia is directly responsible for 95% of my posts. Exactly. I know because I did the math, and I'm a math scientist.

I drew for long enough tonight that I can't stop seeing lines on paper, which is a nice change from visions of We <3 Katamari. When I close my eyes I have to remind myself that I can focus on anything I want. It's absolute freedom, so why do I end up visualizing reality television and music videos? I need to get some better background noise to draw to.

Jacob is staying here. My parents are in Dublin, currently, so I'm looking after my mother's dog along with the other pets. Bonnie's starting to trust me a little more, I think, maybe. The other night Marian and I let her go off-leash at the Quilchena playground and she ran away from us and all the way home. But then last night I slept in my mother's bed and Bonnie got under the covers with me. Happy hated it.

Summer is almost over. I wore jeans and a sweater today for the first time in ages. But it feels like summer went by really fast, doesn't it? Is that why old people always say that kind of thing? Because it's true and it never ceases to freak us out?

Man. It's so late. 3:45 AM is just... that's crazy. I have to try and sleep. Again. I have to think of not fast, not frantic, stupid things. Not typing. No writing now.

earthworms are easy

2007-08-18T00:15:00.000-07:00

I said I'd post soon after I got home and I cannot tell a lie. Now might not be the best time, when half my brain is already asleep, but it's got to be done.

I went to a wedding today. Eric and Tara got married. You don't know them, but they're good people. It was a good wedding. I wore the dress I bought before leaving for New York and actually liked wearing it. Also, I like dancing now. This month features a whole new dress-wearing, all-dancing me.

It's good to be back. It'd be even better to have a moment to sit back and, I don't know, call people or something? But that will come to pass. Tomorrow I'll write a script for Nernies and go to breakfast with Marian and Murakamis. And that will be tomorrow.

The grand life

2007-08-15T13:17:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the long absence. I'm in New York for one more night and then I'll go home and write something here almost every single day. Promise to god.

I used to say that as a kid. "Promise to god." Not that I knew what the hell I was talking about, and my family wasn't religious in the least, but I'd constantly promise god stuff anyway. The idea was that I would die if I promised to do something (step on every paving stone in the backyard, hit all the posters in my room with one hand, et cetera) and didn't follow through. Because god, you know, totally kills people if they try to back out of promises. When it comes to the O.C.D. kids out there, he is very much wrathful.

Anyway. It's hot here, today especially, and I thought I was getting a taste of real Manhattan summer before about fifteen New Yorkers mentioned how perfect the weather is. As in, not hot. But whatever, guys, whatever. I know sweltering when I swelters.

I never wrote about San Diego, which turned out to be exhausting and stressful and well worth the trip, all in all. I met a lot of people I'm glad to know, and spent more time with people I'm damn pleased to know better. Plus there were comics and stuff.

This trip is a different matter all together. I'm here to meet my dad mid-publicity tour, as tradition (in my opinion) absolutely requires. All is going very well for him and that's nice, and in the meantime I get to run around and suck up as much Manhattan as possible in a ridiculously short time period. But not literally. Ew. I stepped on an (already) pancaked pigeon today in the street, and then blundered into a store that sells genuine stuffed puppies and kittens. BECAUSE WE ALL WANT SOME OF THOSE.

That was my sarcasm. Those capitals.

I'm writing this on my dad's laptop. One of the many benefits of being in the city with him is his laptop. Also his minibar, which is paid for by Nameless Faceless Corporation. So I clean it out every day and take it to my room on the floor above, no doubt puzzling the hotel maids. It must seem to them as if I have a magical minibar that never runs out of glass-bottled Cokes, no matter how many I drink. Which is all I've ever dreamed of, really.

Another benefit is that he buys me weird stuff, my dad, on impulse. Like a stuffed elephant (toy, it's now necessary to clarify) from Paul Smith. It's made of camouflage fabric from Sri Lanka. Utter nonsense. I'm going to name him Elby.

I don't have much money of my own after San Diego, so I only plan to buy one thing for myself, and that's an item of clothing not yet located. Possibly a shirt of some kind. They have shirts here, right? I'm going to go look and see as soon as I publish this and finish my Coke.

Tonight I'm doing something, no idea what, with a childhood friend who moved here last year. I used to assume that I'd live here too, at some point. Mainly because I wanted to. But now I don't know. I mean not only is it impossibly expensive, not only that, but I don't know how I'd deal with missing the stuff I take for granted at home. Grass and trees everywhere, places for my dog to run, clean air, people dressed as lazily as I am, and everything else that almost anywhere else has to offer.

It's not really a call I have to make right now though, is it. One way or the other. It's not like I promised to god.

This one goes out to Sachi

2007-07-23T15:37:00.000-07:00

I'm about to leave for San Diego. Or, technically, I'm about to leave for Seattle. The train to San Diego leaves Seattle tomorrow morning. I'm going to SDCC with Jacob. On the train. To San Diego.

All caught up? I haven't been posting lately because I've been trying to live my live like a character in a Murakami novel. I mean specifically those parts in Murakami novels where the characters take care of mundane tasks like grocery shopping, making spaghetti, brushing their teeth, etc. Also, I've been killing time. Murakami's characters do a lot of time killing. Going to movies, calling up old friends for drinks, having drinks with more recent friends. Lots of drinks, actually. I've been officially drunk twice in the last seven days. People get drunk in Murakami novels quite frequently, but usually on whiskey. I tend to drink rum&cokes or mojitos, because then you can hardly taste the liqour. Mojitos are my "fancy drink".

I got a couch yesterday. A little couch that I bought off Kim and Ciaran for $25, since they're going back to Toronto this week. I like this couch a lot. It has a good feeling to it. It's much nicer than my Ikea couch. I mean, not so much nicer, but kinder? It's a happier couch. My dog likes it.

People in Murakami novels are always noting that objects are "obviously not new, but well cared for". I love that, for some reason. I'm always wiping down the rubber on my Converse sneakers and murmuring "not new, but well cared for...". My car, too, though in its case the point is debatable.

Where was I going with this? Oh right. Seattle. I'm all packed and everything.

See you when I get back.

That's the sound of L

2007-07-13T19:29:00.000-07:00

Vancouver is hot. Saturna was probably just as hot, but so windy that you couldn't really feel it. Which was kind of dangerous, actually, because it made it so easy to burn. I only burned a little. Emily got sunstroke on the second day, though, when we hiked to Fiddler's Cove. She had chills and everything.

(I'm not sure if getting to Fiddler's Cove counts as a hike or a walk. Eighty percent of it is along a road, so: walk, but then to climb down into the cove you have to watch your step along ledges and cling to trees, etc. So I'll round up and call it a hike. A grind! Especially on the way back.)

We had a good time, Em and I. Went swimming twice in warm water and huge waves, by Saturna standards, and watched the entire run of Freaks and Geeks in the evenings. Emily loved the show as much as I do, which was gratifying. We both cried like little babies when it was over. I've seen it four times through, but still, what a great show.

Now I'm not sure what to do with myself. I wanted to see a movie tonight, but the trip back tired me out. For some reason we transferred at Galiano, not Mayne, and took a second mini-ferry to Tswwassen instead of the Queen of Nanaimo. Meaning no cafeteria, so no deliciously crappy burger with deliciously crappy fries. Total rip-off.

Yeah. I'll go read a book or something. I could call people, but that would be hard. Maybe later for that.

Take a last lick of your ice cream cone

2007-07-08T23:15:00.000-07:00

I've been spending a lot of time outside lately, with the summer and all. I'm sunburned and bug bit and covered in aloe vera. Tomorrow I leave for the cabin with Emily. We'll be on the island for five days, so I'll probably come back with virtually no skin, but that's cool. I look forward to it. I'm addicted to Vitamin D by now anyway, and we all know that itchy = tasty.

The other night I went out with Sachi and Sean and had five or six rum&cokes. I got just drunk enough to feel very happy but skip all the negative side-effects, unless you consider slurring negative. So that was fun. I'm glad Sachi's back from Russia, which I'm told is a very bad place to go twice.

When the cab dropped me off at home, I was feeling too euphoric and social to go inside right away, so instead I called Jacob on my cell phone and walked to the nearby schoolyard. Once there I lay on the wooden jungle gym and looked at the stars and tried to take photos. The whole neighborhood was perfectly silent. I was the only thing making any noise anywhere. It was a nice, peaceful way to sober up.

Now I'm gonna go read a book. Just so you know.

Lots of places we ain't been to yet

2007-07-05T13:28:00.000-07:00

I'm obsessed with this game. It's pretty (the sun goes down at night and everything), and you can make the dolphin jump so high! It makes me giggle like a schoolgirl.

It's hot. I've been lying on the front lawn a lot, re-reading Murakami novels and guzzling Orangina, which is all we have in the house in way of beverage. My dog is a glutton for the sun, and lies beside me until her fur is radiating heat like a stove. Then she heads for the coolest part of the garden, under the bushes by the arbour. I wish I could do the same without being damp and uncomfortable. When I get too hot I just go inside and play Metal Slug.

Dang. I want a pool.

All Confucianist and stuff like that

2007-07-01T19:19:00.000-07:00

Yes, well. I'm feeling less out-of-it today, but just as snotty. Really the only difference is that I'm more aware of my snot. Hello snot. And I went to Starbucks and took Happy to the park, which was exhausting. Baby steps are necessary for babies, see.

Here are some little drawings, because sinus headaches make me want to colour. Colouring is the height of comfort and satisfaction. Unfortunately it means I have to draw first, but it doesn't matter what I draw, as long as it abounds with possible colouring hilarity.

Another Viking, because I felt like colouring another Viking. He is called Gib. As in, son of Gib. Gib-son. It's HISTORICAL.

And Marco, from Metal Slug. Very uninspired position with no background, because I'm not creative like that. I coloured this while watching a program on the Discovery Channel about Egyptian mummies. Just like the mummies in Metal Slug 2! Amazing but real.

One day I want to be a very organized person with lots of energy for getting up and going. That is what I want.

Just a baby's breath away

2007-07-01T00:28:00.000-07:00

Claire's 5-step treatment for the common cold:

1. Sleep until 5pm every evening. Then stay awake until dawn. You'll get all the alienation of nocturnal living without the inconvenience of missing prime-time television and dinner (breakfast), which someone else will no doubt purchase/prepare and serve to you. Quickly now.

2. Play lots of Metal Slug 2, and use your continues wantonly until they run out on the final mission. Then go fiddle with the "everybody votes" channel on your Wii. Get that prediction success rate to soar! It's the most important thing in life.

3. Eat lots of sugar and dairy. Chai tea lattes are requisite, as always, but don't forget sundaes and candy. Order Tandoori King, because the spices will clear your sinuses. Tell that to whoever's paying. Also order the squeaky cheese dessert. The cheese squeaks in your mouth! These little pleasures will stave off the desolate specter of death that accompanies any illness. If anyone tries to deprive you of your squeaky cheese, scream "momento mori!" and burst into tears. Use extra phlegm for effect, as needed.

4. Watch episodes of Carnivale on DVD. Let the sorrows of the great depression make you feel better about your current state of health and hygiene. Bonus: pretend you have dust from the topsoil of a thousand drought-ridden farms in your lungs. Coughing adds to the sense of reality. Role play!

5. Entertain your dog by throwing her fish toy out into the hallway every once in a while. When she doesn't bring it back after the second throw and instead sighs longingly and looks out the window, assume she's exhausted and set for the day. As you are.

Arrows with bulbs on the end

2007-06-30T02:31:00.000-07:00

Can't type long. I'm on the phone. Pens are hard.

Vere are zee detonators?!

2007-06-27T19:12:00.000-07:00

Jacob drew a viking, so I drew a viking.

I'll probably colour it soon, because I should colour more stuff, more often.

Man. The apathy. I'm telling you.

Bound for Santa Fe

2007-06-26T23:36:00.000-07:00

There's a gigantic moth battering against my bedroom light as I write this. It sounds like a ping pong ball being rattled around inside a mason jar. It's the size of a mouse, practically. A baby mouse. I feel sorry for it but I don't know how to catch it without crushing its wings in my huge and unwieldy fingers. Stupid moth.

Today was a weird day. I did some talking about emotional stuff, had revelations regarding feelings and whatnot, and that was probably good. Or something. I can't help qualifying everything I think, these days, at least a hundred times. But the point is that I think things anyway, or whatever. Maybe. I don't know?

I love the Tenacious D movie, to change the subject (please god), and I've watched it four times since I bought an used copy at Scarecrow Video in Seattle, a place that makes Videomatica look understocked. I'm seriously considering buying the movie album so I can learn the words to all the songs and impress people by singing them constantly. Constantly.

I have to seriously consider everything I buy these days. It's not even really a money thing, although there's that, but I'm trying to avoid buying stupid shit as often as I used to. Mostly I fail to reach this goal, and end up with little Animal Crossing figurines and whatnot from the Japanese market, but well thought-out purchases are still my aim. In theory.

My other recent Seattle purchase, the Onitsuka Tigers, (best shoe name ever, though PF Flyers take runner-up), are bringing me great joy and good fortune. Wherever I wear them, whatever I'm doing, I feel a little more able to perform a roundhouse kick to the jaw or catch up with a speeding train on foot. The shoelace express, mothafuckas!

Yeah. I love those parts in movies where the people run to catch up to a speeding train (maybe not exactly speeding, but definitely non-stationary) and jump into the open (why?) freight car so they can spend the night crossing the country drifter-style, with harmonicas and bundles tied to sticks, and a grandpa-style pipe or two. I mean, I just totally love that stuff. Run for that train! Reach that convenient boxcar! Ride them rails!

There was this movie with young Al Pacino and Gene Hackman where they did that a lot. Scarecrow, I think it was called? It was mainly all long, slow pans of dust-bowl scenery. Sort of Waiting for Godot-ish. In a bad way.

Now I'm rambling. I'm tired again. Bad to always post when tired. Bad me. Stop now.

Sasquatch is my daddy (and he's going to protect me)

2007-06-25T22:43:00.000-07:00

Back from Saturna. From now on I'm going to start every post with "back from..." to make my life seem more on-the-go and ex-cit-ing. But I've already done Seattle and Saturna, which are the two places I seem to go. So never mind.

Marian and I went to the cabin with Happy and Juniper. It didn't end up being the monastic escape I was hoping for, exactly, but we did pretty well under the circumstances. I took some nice pictures of the dogs running around at the lighthouse.

I just had a much-needed shower. My bedroom and office are sparkling clean, for some reason. Little elves have been here. With little vacuums.

Probably I'm very tired, because forming sentences is becoming weirdly difficult and I'm starting to feel bummer-y, which is how I feel when I'm tired, sometimes.

Other times not.

Hang up

2007-06-21T01:41:00.001-07:00

Back from Seattle, where I stayed the night and bought a pair of Onitsuka Tigers for fun and the wearing.

Since I wrote my last post, a lot of things have been put into perspective, the way threats of nuclear war will make you worry less about some kid throwing water balloons at your car. I mean, there's silly past-relationship stuff and then there's stuff that blows my skull open and all over the wallpaper, just thinking about it.

So I'm trying not to think about it much. My dog is white and soft, yes? YES.

Non-simulated, for what it's worth

2007-06-16T07:21:00.000-07:00

You know that thing that happens a lot in episodic television where the protagonist is attempting to grapple with some problem-of-the-week and she/he has a dream about it? Like however many writers around a big table somewhere decided to grab an early lunch and have Brisco County Jr. dream about his impotence problem, rather than getting his feelings across to the audience in some less obvious, more creative way? And then Brisco wakes up in a hayloft somewhere and sits up the second he regains consciousness and is probably slightly sweaty or at least goggle-eyed and says something like "oh man..." and you know he's REALLY gotta figure this one out by the end of the 40 min or it'll be a two-parter, because the guy can't sleep at night and we know exactly why, kind of thing?

I just had one of those dreams! And it was way too realistic and believable for me to handle. So if you came back from a commercial break you might think it was really happening until I sat up in bed. Except I didn't sit up in bed because that's actually really hard when you've just woken up. Try it. Instead I just lay there and blinked for a while, all wounded. Because I get wounded like that about stupid shit from forever ago that maybe I just heard about the other day and why should I care? Why should I care AT ALL? NO REASON. I don't even have justifiable cause to be upset.

The only reason I care about stupid shit from forever ago, (to clarify), is because I have bad little voices in my head that compare me to other people. Where my smart bits of brain go "it's okay, those other people have their own problems", my dumb-shit bits say "shut up, you are stupid and pathetic by contrast! go dream about it!" And so.

You don't get to hear what the dream was because I'm not into making myself 100% ridiculous and vulnerable via Blogger.

Via other routes, YES.

Anyway. Jacob is here. Marian's birthday was yesterday. Sachi is in Russia. The world is very large and disturbing. Friends are good.

Like a hooligan in the football stands

2007-06-06T07:27:00.000-07:00

The other night Marian and I drove to Krispy Kreme in Delta, because we have problems, and on the way back it started pouring. I was determined not to miss the Knight St. Exit, which I always somehow do, but when we found it we got turned around anyway by not getting immediately onto Bridgeport and continuing, instead, along River Road.

I pulled into a driveway beside the mill down there, to go back the way we'd come, and right next to my car on the wet asphalt was this giant frog. It was the size of my dog's head, I swear to god, and greenish-gray, and sitting perfectly still despite my car almost squashing it. I'd have taken a picture but my camera battery was at home, charging, so we got out of the car for a closer look.

It looked like a toy, it was so still, and it didn't move until we were crouched down right in front of it. Then it hopped spazzily away from us, under the car and out the other side. Happy was in the backseat and jumped at the window when she saw it move. On the other side of the car it almost collided with Marian on its way to the tall grass and the ditch, where it presumably lives, and we lost sight of it.

Driving home again, we were both charmed by the encounter. Frogs are disappearing all over the place, so it's good to see one unexpectedly, blah-blah-blah, although I kept calling it a toad because I have more experience with toads (Bridge Lake, up north) and it seemed too massive to be anything else.

At home I googled it and realized it was a bullfrog. Yay. But no! Bullfrogs, it turns out, are ecological villains. They take over the territory of smaller, native frogs and shove (or wrestle?!) them out of it, and spread like (hoppy, spazzy) wildfire. They can be up to 20 cm in length, not including the legs, which is insane but seems about right to me. Our frog was maybe 15 cm from head to butt. The legs are longer than that.

In short, all that is green is not green. There are giant frogs. And we must fear them.

It was still charming though.

Oh Kermy.

Subject of intrigue, innuendo, and tittle-tattle

2007-05-31T06:10:00.000-07:00

The new Saturna set is up on flickr.

Yesterday I got a lot of stuff done. Like I cleaned my car, for instance, and made some frightening phone calls to official types, (only frightening because the phone scares me, but these fears ain't based on logic, my friends, oho no no no), and went through Visa bills and ate a lot of fruit. Cherries, baby oranges, peaches and miniature bananas. I don't know where all this tiny food came from, but I like it. It must go in my mouth.

The night before last, I gave my dog another bath. Now she smells better. You have to actually push your face into the fur of her neck to smell any otter crap. Unfortunately I do that all the time out of habit. So my face probably smells like otter crap. So whatever. Whatever!

I hardly slept at all last night.

Bonnie just walked into the room and surprised me. She's so low to the ground. I'd forgotten about that.

In which direction it had vanished

2007-05-28T19:04:00.001-07:00

I got back last night, tired and weird.

My bedroom smells like otter shit, because my dog rolled in some of that right before we left the cabin, and otter shit DON'T WASH OUT. It's like oil. Oil that smells like shit. I'd have taken Happy into a grooming place today but I had to go with my mum to a rescue farm in Mission.

My mum adopted Bonnie, a venerable corgi-dachshund that she fell in love with over petfinder. Bonnie's overweight, wary of Happy and utterly fascinated by Misty III, who's already tried to kill her twice. I'm sure she'll fit in just fine.

The farm that was fostering Bonnie was also home to rescued sheep, horses, dogs, cats, and a calf and a pig that just about killed me. They were so incredibly charming and pet-like. It was actually really disturbing, because these are the animals I eat? I like to... taste them? In meals?

Ugh. Omnivore guilt.

In other news, I need to put together a rough resume to see about film work this summer, and that horrifies me.

And I have a lot of photos to put on flickr.

Skin that smoke wagon, (jerk that pistol)

2007-05-27T00:04:00.000-07:00

Marian and I answered a distress signal by driving to Seattle on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning and somehow (planets aligned, schedules french kissed) ended up at the cabin on Saturna for three nights with Jacob, Corey and Brandon.

Now we're back in Seattle. I'm writing this on Jacob's melting laptop while he plays Castlevania and Brandon and Marian talk about mosquito bites and fruity Japanese belly shirts.

Home tomorrow, so I can help my mum adopt a dog?

I learned tonight that America doesn't have Smarties OR Caramilk bars.

My mouth is hanging open a bit.

Ink All Night

2007-05-22T15:06:00.000-07:00

Inking is hard.

1. I can't use Sharpies any more. I have my sketchbook open to a drawing I did two nights ago that I filled in with black Sharpie pen, and the fumes are still giving me a headache. BOYCOTT SHARPIE.

2. I got black ink on my shirt, right across the chest, from a Zebra pen, and I tried to lick it out. It didn't work. I am sad now.

Cooler than being cool

2007-05-21T00:58:00.000-07:00

I spent like an hour tonight putting stickers on the cover of my sketchbook. I'm such a twelve-year-old girl.

Today I was supposed to write, so naturally I drew instead and took my dog for a walk in the rain. She likes being towelled off when we get home. She wriggles around and presses her head into my stomach and it's nernie with a capital NERN.

What else. Emily read a story to me over the phone today that I'd written for her when I was fifteen. It was a romantic little number set in Ireland (of course) and really unnecessarily ludicrous. Like for example, I used the words "menaced them with his sword", "smiling Irish lad" and "ruffians". All I can say in my defense is that I was writing for my audience. What my audience's defense might be, I have no idea.

Plus, lately Facebook has been blowing my mind in twain. Just this week somebody posted my grade one class photo, and someone else put up a picture of Marian in her brownie uniform. O_O;

Vancouver Ink

2007-05-20T00:19:00.000-07:00

So I babysat Ivy on thursday and friday, and it was cool. She's much more articulate now, and can hold a conversation like nobody's business. We went to Granville Island the first day, and Science World the second. Both were awesome. I put photos up on flickr.

My whole "comic" thing was lying fallow for about a week, because I realized I needed to go back and write stuff. Which was very trying. I'm telling you.

So I did that, but not nearly as much as I should have before I got tired of writing because I just want to be drawing, goddamnit. I need to get better at DRRAAWWIINNNGGGUUH. Not writinguh. Which I'm obviously genius at.

Genius at. But seriously, I'm feeling insecure about my writing lately because it doesn't feel half as fun as drawing, and that's not good. But even still, I'm more insecure about drawing, because I suck more at it. So I just waffle back and forth (waffle?) between which one is harder and like... badder. And right now it's writing. As you can see.

Anyway. I'm going to start drawing again, despite not having the script finished. My first six pages have abruptly become useless, because I re-wrote the beginning. I had to. It made no sense. I was shooting myself in the foot by trying to work without narration, when I really desperately need it, because I'm used to working with words, not pictures. So let's get some words in there. You know?

If this is incoherent, I apologise. I'm not working hard at coherent just now. But I'm not upset about dumping the six pages that took me forever to draw, because now they'll be slightly better. I mean much better story-wise, but ever so slightly more well drawn. Which is incredible and the delight of making stuff. How it makes you better at stuff-making.

Or so I sincerely hope.

Bonfires of trust, flashfloods of paaaaain

2007-05-17T00:06:00.000-07:00

Weird day. I forced myself out of bed at noon to go meet a family friend who's a professional photographer, and he took some professional photos of me. I have no idea why. It was my mother's idea.

I didn't expect the whole thing to be so intensely psychological. My tendency is to look like there's been a death in the family when somebody points a camera at me. That is, if I'm trying to look human at all, which I'm usually not. I'm usually trying to look marsupial. So Mike (the photographer) kept telling me to think of good things, because the camera picks that stuff up even if you're not smiling. Like for example, he said to imagine "he's just walked in and he looks great, and you want him to know it's okay to come over and talk to you".

But fuck that. So I thought of three things, three happy thoughts (you're doing it, Peter!) to get me through it. One: The standing rock at the beach on Saturna and the inevitable LEAP... INTO... THE DEEP. Two: My friends standing in the studio, doing things to try and make me laugh but I can't laugh. Three: My dog receiving attention from any one of those friends, and giving me her bedroom-eyed sucky look because of it.

Once we left the studio I became much less self-conscious and didn't have to use so many tricks. We went to the downtown eastside for the texture of certain brick walls (or something) and everyone that passed by would make a joke at my expense, but in a nice way. One guy kept trying to distract me by banging his water bottle on a telephone pole, but I didn't fall for it because I'm America's Next Top Model. Then a trolley car doing a tour of Gastown stopped and rang its fake trolley bell at us, and the tour guide made everyone look at me. It was nightmarish but also funny and kind of helpful. I needed the distraction.

Anyway, Mike was a nice guy. Hopefully one or two of the pictures turn out good, and not just my mother's opinion of good, which is wacky. Then I'll show you what I'm talking about and we'll all go on with our lives.

I'll be getting up early tomorrow to babysit Ivy. IVY. I haven't seen her in ages. It's going to be bonkers. Bonkers, I say.

Panels

2007-05-09T00:11:00.000-07:00

Oh man. I woke up late again today, after a night of little sleep and the kind of dreams you have to tell your best friend about, no matter how surreal and idiotic they might be, because they were just that incredible at the time.

I also missed a doctor's appointment for a vaccination, which I feel rotten about, and reinforced my current habit of eating a single meal all day. But at least it wasn't pizza?

Plus, I'm a weird hermit. And my back hurts.

THIS COMIC IS EATING MY LIFE. But it feels so right, right now. I haven't been this excited about a creative project in years, which is kind of scary. And the funny thing is I know this isn't going anywhere. I know my art isn't polished enough to be published. But I don't care. I just want to get it down on paper and in the meantime, get better at drawing and writing at the same time.

At least I'll be able to hand in whatever I get done for my children's fiction class next fall...

I'm on the fifth page!

It's really hard to draw!

I'm totally happy about it!

But I'm also starving.

Dude, get off him. He's a dude.

2007-05-07T02:22:00.000-07:00

I fail at phoning people.

I woke up incredibly late today. Like 2:30pm? That's embarrassing.

Then I drew a lot, all bleary and strange, until I finally had a shower and went out.

I drove to North Van with Marian to visit Jess. Jess is a good person to visit. She has comical roommates and videogame systems all over her living room floor. How I envy her.

Incidentally, food is difficult. I ate so badly today, I can't even think about it. It's too pathetic.

At least I got new glasses. That's something I've been meaning to do since my other pair (the green ones) broke, abruptly, while I was lying in bed reading. That left me with my unloved brown glasses with no rim on the bottom. My new pair is also brown, but very different and better, I assure you.

Does writing posts at around 3am make me sound like a monotonous idiot? Because I feel like it does, really and truly. But the good thing about 3am is, I'm usually too tired to care.

In conclusion: Phone neglected. Food and consciousness, hard. Drawing and friends, less hard. Much less. Stay tuned.

Save the drama for your mama

2007-05-06T02:32:00.000-07:00

I feel guilty for posting when there are so many people I meant to call when I got back to Vancouver. A whole list of nice people to spend time with, and what do I do? I curl up in my room and draw until the end of time.

I'm weaksauce. I need to recuperate from fun and energy spent in Seattle. Everybody's already seen the photos. And by everybody I mean the five people who care. I love you, five people or possibly six! You complete me.

Seattle was good. It's always good. I bought paper for cheap, so I could start "my comic". (It feels ridiculous to refer to it as my comic, because it sounds like I have some kind of ambition or whatever, which I totally don't, not even). So I started it and now I'm the second page FOR REAL and it's scary and hard. But I'm going with Jacob's theory: start drawing a comic even if you suck, and soon you won't suck anymore and you can keep drawing comics for happiness, forever. YES.

My right hand is absolutely throbbing. It can only take so much abuse (aka use) before it freaks out and won't let me keep drawing. This is frustrating, what my hand will or will not allow me to accomplish. Damn my hand.

I took Happy to the field today for the first time in a while. Lately (like all winter) I've been using a different walking route, one through the back lanes east of my house. I always let her off-leash in the alleys, when my spider sense isn't tingling with warnings of a sudden car ambush, but she hasn't run flat-out in a few weeks. Today she ran like the wind. The portly wind.

Tomorrow is going to be all about phone calls.

There are clues everywhere

2007-04-25T00:29:00.000-07:00

I woke up really late today, like 2pm, after some seriously weird sex dreams. And I don't mean erotic sex, but like stupid, pointless, goofy stuff that made sleep feel like a waste of time.

My wrist doesn't hurt anymore, but now all the joints in my body are acting up in a different way. They feel warm and loose. Not loose like relaxed, but watery, untrustworthy. I wouldn't want to sprint on pavement or anything, is what I'm saying.

Probably I brought it upon myself by not keeping up with the gold, but still. It always surprises me when my body doesn't grant me that period of grace between injections. Like it bugs me that it won't always loan me money, no matter what crazy amount I've asked for.

Poor body. Poor joints. I'm a rotten tenant.

That said, I'm not feeling down about anything lately. Which is nice.

I saw Grindhouse tonight. Liked Planet Terror and loved Death Proof. Zoe Bell is hot, and Marian and I loved her before any of you punks. She totally stunted for Xena.

Uh. In any case. I need to have a shower. Tomorrow. And call some folks. Some folks I need to call.

Yeah.

It was a bad idea, I'm thinking now, to have finished off that large Coke at the theatre.

It's hard to be one when one is no longer

2007-04-24T01:15:00.000-07:00

Bah. I screwed up my post-almost-every-day plan. But I have an excuse, or two. Like hanging out and doing stuff.

There was a comic con in Vancouver this weekend and Jacob, Brandon and Corey all came up for it. They were only here for one night, though, so there was no time for anything but drinking at Shenanigans (my first time, dear diary) and pictures taken from balconies of the Empire Hotel.

It was fun to see those guys again, as always.

I like people who draw comics.

Because of this, I've been drawing more than writing. I'm even working on an idea for a comic of my own. Not a pitch or anything, but something for the fun and happiness of me. Plus if my friends like it, that would be rad and a confidence booster. Like a booster seat for my confidence to sit on, kicking his chubby little legs. Because my confidence is male, and a toddler.

My comic will (knock on wood to appease the gods of finished projects) feature a thylacine. So I've been drawing a lot of thylacines. Humans characters too, I mean, but the thylacine is important, so I've been researching them (more than usual, even) and trying to draw as many as I can.

Which is really hard. There are very few photographs of thylacines, and none taken in the wild. Museums around the world own stuffed specimens, but I get the feeling taxidermy before the 1930's was kind of... um... free form? Most stuffed thylacines look like big rodents with busted legs, nothing like they do in the photographs.

And it's just depressing. The whole thing. Every time I read a book about it, the extinction of thylacines, I get really sad. They were just so weird and beautiful, and completely unique, and we know nothing about them and it's our fault.

I have to find my own version of a thylacine that I can draw over and over again, from any angle. It's never going to perfect, but if I can keep it from looking like a greyhound with stripes, I'll be satisfied. Or try to be.

My wrist is hurting like a bitch right now. I was late with my gold injection, and drawing so much hasn't helped. Worse, the pain makes decent drawing impossible. URGH.

I'm going to go take some tylenol.

Inedible, even in curry

2007-04-17T23:45:00.000-07:00

I had lunch today with friends from my fiction class. We were saying goodbye to Drew, who's going back to Arizona, and it was also a good way to recognise the end of the term, finally, and eat a grilled apple sandwich with cheese and onions. Though it's possible that last bit was only special for me.

I also got my hair cut. Now it's shorter and I'm actually kind of afraid of it? But that happens a lot, when I change my hair.

Yes. Fascinating.

So here's more stuff from my sketchbook, for some reason.

It's a crook. RUN YOU CROOK.

Plet Skud is a liquorice candy from, uh, Denmark or something. I'm sorry his legs are cut off, now, although it looks fine in my sketchbook. My sketchbook is really tiny so I'm always cutting people off at the thigh.

And another guard-demon thingy after the one in Chicago. Minus the wings, I guess. This one looks more like a character out of Mulan, as someone pointed out.

Which reminds me, I should be as swift as the coursing river, with all the force of a great typhoon. With all the strength of a raging fire. As mysterious as the dark side of the moon. And stuffs.

Automatic talking

2007-04-17T00:03:00.000-07:00

I dug out the scanner today and hooked it up. I don't know why that was so easy this time around, because I've tried to get it working before and failed. It actually belongs to my mother, from her days of paying people to scan old family photos, and it's been sitting in my closet for more than a year since then.

Anyway, it totally works and it's actually pretty good, at least compared to my incedental-era models, which sucked the balls of the clown. It's a Epson PERFECTION 1670. PERFECTION.

Whatever. It scans. I scanned some pages of my sketchbook. Now I will post them. What glee!

This is from a statue in the Chicago Institute of Art that I greedily photographed because I dug the hair so bad. It's inked really poorly but, you know, I'm still getting used to inking.

Another statue. I dunno.

Here's Leonardo from TMNT. He's practically neon because I don't have enough green markers. Also his head is huge, but ignore that. I got carried away.

Okay no more.

Too much candy gonna rot your soul

2007-04-15T22:20:00.000-07:00

Really, I've been eating well. A delicious stew-by-Sachi at the Murakami house last night (along with bread, cheese, strawberries and cookies), and a steak chimichurri dinner tonight. I don't even know what chimichurri is, exactly, but I know it goes well with steak. Thank you Baru Latino. Thank you Murakamis.

I had strange, harrowing dreams last night, all night, in which friends and I barely avoided death (multiple times) in a seaplane over Seattle. For this, I blame my afternoon consumption of one UCC coffee from Daiso. But I love UCC. But it hates me. But I love it.

Yesterday I bought a couple of TMNT action figures. I wanted Leo, of course, but the only one left at Toys R Us had wonky eyes and a chip missing from his chest belt. That wouldn't do, so I went with Donatello and Splinter. Which means I'm going to have to get the other three turtles, now, because I can't just have Donnie. That would be weird and wrong.

I drew all day today, up until the steak, and fiddled with the internet, and talked on the phone. All told, it was a good time. I recommend it.

Short pants for short fellows

2007-04-14T00:42:00.000-07:00

A trip to Daiso this afternoon resulted in some needless purchases. Tiny wooden shelves (for various capsule toys, mini foods, etc), two tiny wooden horses that look paranoid, two tinned coffees for tomorrow (if I can handle it?) and some charms from the toonie machines: a Gumi Frog and an Animal Crossing Lion.

I saw TMNT again. Because it's just that much fun.

There's an alcohol pad lying on my desk that reads, in french, "tampon alcoolise". Which means the french for pad is tampon? Because that's just very confusing. For the vagina.

Um. In any case. I didn't get sick after all. So that's good.

I feel like reading some book now, and relaxing some bed.

Just try to keep it in line

2007-04-12T23:33:00.000-07:00

Good god. My throat is swollen and I think I might be getting sick. That's hilarious.

My last class was this afternoon, Kid fiction, and mine was the last piece of the term to be workshopped.

Having my stuff workshopped makes me nervous. I don't really know why, since everybody's always so nice about everything. I think it makes me feel as if I'm giving a presentation, and I've always been crap at that.

I was mainly exhausted, today, because I couldn't sleep last night for no particular reason. Then I fell into a coma at 7:30 AM and my alarm went off at 9:00. Bitch! I kept hitting the snooze button over and over again, because I was having this completely intoxicating dream about, um, trying on clothes. Somewhere in New York. And then I ran into Dex Thompson and she was like, "Oh Claire, you're such a darling fashionista who keeps showing up at all the right places! Let me introduce you to Paulo the photographer!"

(Dex isn't actually like this, thank god. My dreams always make my friends sound like idiots. Particularly Marian. Marian gets it the worst).

I was so starved for sleep that this completely banal dream had me in raptures. Even a nightmare featuring, I don't know, intestinal leeches would have been bliss. When I finally did get up, I had to rush for class in my zombie-like state and didn't have time to stop at Starbucks.

So I was feeling very peculiar throughout the class, is what I'm getting at. I probably left everyone with the impression that I do lots and lots of drugs. BUT OH WELL.

Hmm. I drew a picture of Leonardo last night. The ninja turtle, not the dude. It kind of sucks (his head is too big) but I love drawing that crap. And by crap I mean joyfun.

I'm starting to wish I had a working scanner again, so I could post some art.

And by art I mean drawrings!

Oboy Oboy OboyO

2007-04-12T00:40:00.000-07:00

I had a couple of realizations today.

One was that I'm running out of money, really fast, and I might need to do something about that. Something slightly less drastic than mugging old people on the street. Like for example getting a job. Maybe.

But probably not.

Another thing I know now, absoultely, is that I need a haircut. My hair has gotten ridiculously long, all of a sudden. It's starting to invade my personal space.

My throat hurts. But that doesn't count as a realization. I just need to cut down on the squeaking and hooting for a few days, maybe. Too much squeaking and hooting.

Can you tell that I'm really tired? I have to get up early tomorrow for my last class of the school year. But see how I keep them posts coming...

Light, distracting bullshit

2007-04-11T00:00:00.000-07:00

I went to a party tonight for the end of the creative writing year, and had some rum and cokes. Then I got a ride home and left my car on campus.

Now I'll have to go back tomorrow and get my car. ;_;

This is what my posts are going to be like from now on, folks. Emoticons and the facts, ma'am. Just the facts.

I'm also on the phone. Right now. EAT THAT.

Lacking all spell-checkery

2007-04-09T04:04:00.000-07:00

It's 4:00 am. That means I have an hour before my alarm clock goes off so I can catch the early ferry back to the city. This happens to me sometimes (often) where the slight tension of knowing I have to wake up at some point and do something is just enough to keep me from sleeping. I'll be exhausted on the trip home, I know, but maybe I'll be able to sleep in the van.

I flew over with Happy so I could drive the island van back to Vancouver. I guess it needs a check-up or something. Maintenance. What they call it when they fiddle with cars.

It's been an odd weekend. Nice and all, but a weird bit of time to myself. Plus dog, of course. The dog loves it. As soon as she leapt (actually leapt, despite all efforts to carry her) from the seaplane to the dock, she became her island self, which is much more independent and, well, kind of burly? I got the impression, as I walked up the hill from the dock (the van is always parked midway up a hill, for some bewildering reason) that her feet were hitting the road in a particularly symbolic way. My high-roofed house, my native land at last, kind of thing.

I, on the other hand, took some adjusting. It always happens when I haven't been here in ages (all late-fall and winter), and then I get here alone, when it's still raining a bit, and play hermit. I'm just not all that good at it, right off. I mean I got off the plane and I was a little shakey. Not plane-shakey (the little planes, perversely, don't do that to me), but just frenetic. I don't know. Like there's a time change when you come to the island. Not a change from one time to another, but a change in the way time moves. So I show up and I'm caffeinated and buzzed with travel, even that little bit of travel, and I'm coming from home where everything is phone calls and the internet and friends, people, everywhere, and I show up and it all stops and the quiet here, at first, feels like I'm drowning in glue.

If you were to start drowning in glue, but in a way that somehow wasn't unpleasant, just... you know, a transition from not drowning in glue? That's sort of what it feels like. The transition.

It's quite a transition, is what I'm getting at.

But of course it's also familiar. More familiar than life in the city, in some ways, because my daily life here never changes much. Not when I'm by myself, anyway. There's a trip to the general store once a day, and a couple of walks to the lighthouse. I watch for freighters (just now one went by in the darkness and it drove me crazy that I couldn't run out and binocular the name - I'm still doing that) and I watch whatever's in the ocean. Like yesterday the view from the deck was like a Ravensburger puzzle, 1000 piece, you know what I mean? Those puzzle paintings where there are about three dozen animals all stuffed into one little area to make it easier on the person who puts the pieces together. I mean there were porpoises (the porpoises haven't left once, this trip, they just stay in the same general patch of ocean, fishing or something, and I can hear them breathe when they rise) and the usual two or three seals, and a sea lion was passing (sea lion noise: BLEEEEEEEESH), and meanwhile the otters were out. All I needed, really, was an orca in the background, breaching like crazy. And maybe an eagle catching a salmon. And the head of a bear sort of hanging in the rising moon, all transparent and judging.

There used to be bears on the island but people killed them. Dumb people.

The otters though, they haven't been around for a while. It's been nice to have them back. They play on the lower rocks (whatever they do, it looks like playing), and me and Happy surprised them once by coming around a corner almost on top of them. They just gave us a look, though, and gamboled into the ocean before Happy could even rush them. They gambol all the time. That's how they get around.

Last night I watched Ben-Hur on channel 12, the only channel you pick up just by plugging the television into the wall, and it took forever to get through. At first I had high hopes for it being at least slightly gay, what with Judah and Messala being all backslapping with each other in a way that seemed a little strained, if you know what I mean, but they failed me. And themselves, I mean. Plus, the whole movie turns out to be about Jesus. Who knew? But they never show his face, just the back of his head, so it had the feel of an Extreme Makeover episode. I kept expecting Jesus to turn around and have brand new sparkling teeth or something.

Speaking of teeth, I can't watch Charlton Heston in anything and remain calm. He makes me very unhappy. He's like the previous generation's Tom Cruise, or I don't know what. Plus: least convincing Jewish prince EVER.

You know I'm having trouble adjusting to life at the cabin when I have to watch channel 12, really.

So I'm glad I'm going back. Because I'm just not in the hermit frame of mind, these days. I mean if I'd been up here with someone, that would have been different. Or if the weather was slightly better, and if I'd packed more appropriately, like brought a DVD player and the playstation 2, for example.

I can't wait to come back though, when it's really the summer FOR REAL, and do it right. All night. Because then it's paradise here, you have to admit it. It's all hot and tanny, (tawny), and my friends are around, and fun is happening...

It just occurred to me, and I know it's one of those 4:51 am observations that aren't really new or very meaningful, but the cabin wouldn't be great, see, if I lived here all the time, because the cabin needs the city to be, you know, the cabin.

Did I just blow your mind?

Seriously though. If I lived here all the time, I'd go insane. It's because I live in a city that makes all the wonderful stuff about the island really pop. Like Charlton Heston's eyes in technicolour, man, just popping blue all over the place. But better than that, obviously. Just... with the popping.

In summation: I wuvs my cabin, but I needs my peeps. And I could really do with one of those milky bubble teas from the place out in Burnaby. I'm telling you.

Also available for your face

2007-04-05T15:44:00.000-07:00

My goal now is more posts, more often. Which means they'll be shorter, but hopefully less neurotic? Let's find out!

My other goal is to shovel all the loose pieces of paper from the floor of my office/computer room, separate them into piles of keep or recycle, and then roll around on the carpet laughing hysterically.

I turned in my end-o'-the-year kid's fiction portfolio this afternoon, which was satisfying in a "now I may die" kind of way. I have an extension for my other class that means I can keep adding to my fiction portfolio until August. Sometimes it pays to have various chronic medical conditions, kids. I recommend six or more doctors. Just in general.

I'm looking forward to stuff. Tomorrow I'm flying over to the cabin with my dog. Maybe Emily will show up while I'm there, but maybe she won't and I'll turn hermit until Monday.

Tonight I sat around with Marian watching a documentary about Queen, but we turned it off while Freddy Mercury was still healthy. Then we took off in Volpone (o glorious resurrection) for the Krispy Kreme in Delta, yet again.

As we left the drive-thru, simultaneously stuffing donuts into our mouths, swigging bottled water and singing along to Meatloaf, Marian said something like "Dude, we're gross. No wonder we're sad and alone."

"If this is sad and alone," I told her, "then chain me to the wall."

Marian started to laugh at that, for some reason, and choked on her donut water, spraying it everywhere. She tried to keep driving and just barely did, managing to keep us on the road while practically vomiting.

Which is how we came close to death on 72nd avenue, and a few minutes later, when Marian stopped choking, she told me to post about it.

See above.

Gorgons and hydras all up in here

2007-04-04T03:28:00.000-07:00

3:30 am. The ol' toss n' turn, folks. The ol' can't sleep to save my life. And part of me wants a bagel, but part of me feels it's more pressing to be posting. Feeding myself, I tell you, means nothing. It's all about Klovharu, all the time.

Somehow, writing on this blog has achieved the high level of I-don't-wanna that I normally reserve for program-related writing that's due tomorrow morning. I have no idea how that happened, and I hope it won't last.

Only two posts through all of March, for christ's sake, and it's not like nothing happened in March. Things certainly happened.

Like for no small example, a baby was born. Yes! This baby I know was totally born. And then Jacob came up for a week-ish-long visit and stayed at my crazy house. It rained the entire time and we, together with Marian, mainly hung around my room watching reality television while drawing. Jacob and Marian drew/toned comics, and I drew/coloured ninja turtles.

Speaking of which, the new TMNT movie is so good! We saw it on opening night (I shall tell my adopted grandchildren) and Leonardo is my one true love. So much sexier than all the leather-diapered fascists of 300, I'm telling you.

And King City came out, and it's amazing and I (and everyone) love it, which has introduced a new level of hero-worship into my friendship with Brandon Graham that's very uncomfortable for me. I wish he would cut that shit out!

Marian and I have been hanging out with Jess lately, too, and that's been rad. She introduced us to a bubble tea place in Burnaby that gave me some sort of religious experience in the form of a honeydew slush milky tea, and we introduced her to the highs and lows of the Delta Krispy Kreme late-nite drive-through.

And then on the 31st we attempted to get to Seattle for the Emerald City con, but Marian's car, Volpone, started to break-down a mile across the border. We had to be towed back into Canada and home by a jovial CAA driver who happens to be the most accomplished CAA driver that ever lived, as well as the best driver on the road at all times. He told us all about it on our long drive together, and it turns out that Marian and I are actually unlucky morons. But he was really nice about it.

Will Volpone ever run again? Like the wind? We don't know. We made it to Seattle on Sunday in my own expensively-repaired Argo, for the last day of the con. Where I purchased four FF3 capsule toys and took photos of them! And there were people in Star Wars costumes and stuff, and I felt myself coming of age as I stared at them and tried not to make eye contact.

We drove home that night, though, because of this whole end-of-term thing that's happening. And oh my god it's killing me. I'm going to be known as extension-thompson-gibson when this is through. ETG 4 EVA.

But after this Thursday, I'm telling you, shit is about to get real. Because then it'll be like summer, almost.

But where's that bagel?

What gets stuck in your head

2007-03-12T01:55:00.000-07:00

I finally made the switch to the new blogger. I didn't want to, at all, because who cares? But every time I'd go to post, blogger would get on my case about it. "New Blogger! Switch to New Blogger! Last Chance!" So now I've switched, and it's exactly the same. Except that I can add "labels" now. Like for example, this post will be labeled "insular dwarfism". Because I feel like it.

What's the deal with it being so hard to write? I'm not talking about writing in blog-form, although that's hard too. I'm talking about school.

(To make a fluid transition into the next paragraph, I'll now connect school with relationships. Perhaps there should be a relationship school? Oh dear, no, that would be LIFE. Ha ha ha. Pwnd. Um. Relationships.)

Why do relationships fuck you (me) up? It's a good thing I don't get into them more often. Because as well advertised as all that stuff may be in the talkies, the aftermath tends to make me sad. Inconsistently enough, but nonetheless. Sad in the long term.

Last night I took my dog for a walk. It was raining and pitch black, and when I went to pick her poo up off the boulevard, one of the turds moved like a snake and vanished into the ground. Then another one did the exact same thing, curling and whipping into the earth. For a few seconds after that I just crouched with the bag on my hand, staring hard at the grass, waiting to understand what the hell I was looking at. Then I realized it was worms. Night crawlers, I guess. Massive shit-sized worms that only come out after it rains, in the pitch black. And once I knew to look for them, they were everywhere. I know worms are invaluable for the earth and plants, etc, and I like worms generally. I'll pick them off the wet sidewalk with my fingers if they're stuck, but I don't know. I think if if I ever knew the number and the sheer size of worms moving around underneath me, all the time, I might have to throw up a little bit.

This is a weird segue, but I'll remind myself now that it's okay to be self-absorbed here. It's a blog. It can't be anything other than self-absorbed, right? Unless I only post about American politics or cats who look like Stalin. Which I'm not really qualified to do.

It's insane, but I've been going through a period of not liking myself very much for being the kind of person who blogs. Even though practically all the people I love/enjoy are people who put stuff out there, about themselves, on the internet. Livejournals and blogs and art sites and flickr and even myspace, which is 89% pointless and superficial as hell. I mean, when it comes to other people doing it, I tend to think it's entertaining and brave and weirdly, routinely fascinating, but I've been working on a wicked double standard where when I do it? It's bullshit.

Wacky right? Totally wacky. But it really stops me from posting, a lot. I keep telling myself that I don't have anything to say. Which is a cop-out. Even if my day-to-day life isn't filled with startling anecdotes to dazzle and amaze, I can always post about seeing some freakish worms, or driving around at night.

Marian and I went out last night to look for pie. We actually do that. But it was around 2 a.m. so instead we drove through Richmond to get doughnuts. I can't actually stomach doughnuts since the apple fritter incident, but the Tim Horton's out there is a good place to drive to if you're a restless creep who doesn't care about the environment, and if you need to talk to your best pal about relationships, and how they sometimes fuck you up. So I took the more scenic route that winds up along the dyke and past some farms and fields. There are some disturbing new houses along that road. They look like they've been built from kits by meticulous dollhouse fanciers. But I mean, if you actually took a dollhouse and Honey I Blew It Up, it still wouldn't look like a real house that people could live in, right? It would look like one of those new houses on the dyke road. Is what I mean.

Anyway, we were listening to some old music that I'd dug out of my closet for the occasion, because when it comes time to revel in angst, I find, it's best to do it with lame (or not) music from the time period your angst can be traced back to. Did that make any sense? It's getting late. I'm getting late. I mean tired.

So the music was playing as we passed the kit houses along the dyke road, and for a second it felt the same as it did a few years ago. Because those houses arrived back then, out of nowhere, in the middle of nowhere, and impressed upon us their utter weirdness at the time. But last night the instant of deja vu passed when we saw behind those houses, in the gaps between them, to more new houses, and more behind those. And simultaneously, (as it happens), Marian and I shared a peculiar sensation of backward time travel. Not as if we were going back in time, not anymore, but like we were back in time already and going forward, seeing between the houses to the houses that would be there after/now, when we were twenty-four and I thought I was sad about relationships.

Then we tried to explain the feeling to each other at exactly the same time, and it was adorable.

No segue whatsoever, but self-censorship is the theme of March. Even still, despite all my carefully placed hints of mournful self-reflection and nuances of... stuff about me, I'm still fighting the urge to, you know, delete this bitch.

Instead, though, I won't. I'll let you see what I like to call... "my process". The process of my thinking words and typing them. Bald and vulnerable as a newborn eggplant.

I'm going to hate myself for all of the above, tomorrow.

Top left

2007-03-09T13:43:00.000-08:00

LOL, HAY, SUP.

A little comic by Marian. I heartily endorse it.

View of a deserted island

2007-02-28T16:05:00.000-08:00

Maybe if I post something, it'll kickstart the story-writing mechanism in my head. Right? I have to have a piece ready for my kid's fiction class tomorrow morning, and I'm not exactly filled with inspiration. I'm not quite boiling over with creative energy. I'm not at all prepared.

But I've been determined for a while now (it's been a while since I've faced a real deadline), to write something for that particular class that isn't written for that particular audience, if you know what I mean. Because the creative writing department's concept of ideal kid fiction doesn't have much in common with what I liked to read as a kid. And I have a bad habit of writing what I think a specific audience, (in this case about 12 people in a tiny room) will approve of, no matter how much I personally dig it. Which is lame. So I'm working on that.

Just not, uh, working very hard.

Instead, I keep thinking of starting projects that'll take a lot of time, like organizing my roll-top desk and storage closet! Creating a new stacking system (?) for the books that won't fit on my shelves! Buying proper frames for friends' comic art and hanging them on walls! Watching all eleven hours of The Civil War by Ken Burns and not letting myself draw in my sketchbook during any of it!

Some of which I've actually begun. But I get antsy knowing I should be writing. I can't even be properly masochistic when a deadline's looming. It SUCKS.

GET AN AFTERLIFE

2007-02-27T19:15:00.000-08:00

Lately, pretty much since I got back from Seattle, I haven't been doing very well at functioning. Properly. Like with eating, sleeping, and getting out. All these things are more difficult than they should be.

I blame bio-chemistry.

Apparently, (I haven't actually seen it), the major headline in the Sun this morning was EFFEXOR DRUG WARNING DEATH SCARE, or something to that effect. I'm told Effexor is freakishly toxic and dangerous, all of a sudden. It's put a lot of people in the hospital.

I've been on Effexor since I curled up and died in, oh say... 2003? I credit it with bringing me back from that and, after a long waiting period of zombie-like bummerness, fixing my head to where I could start to imagine having a life again, and I've been on a high dose ever since.

Anyway, my concerns are these: I want to get off the stuff, finally, but getting off Effexor sounds like a fucking nightmare, and the last time I told my doctor I was considering it, he actually upped my dose. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, he told me. Withdrawal symptoms by 6pm every day? You need a little taste at 5:30!

He's not entirely crazy though. Because, and here's where my second concern comes in, if I go off the stuff, what if I get depressed again? And for the uninitiated, I'm talking about incapacitating depression. Depression like somebody's marble ceiling has fallen on you in your blubbering half-sleep, and it would take a figurative crane to heave that sucker off your poor little broken (mashed flat) heart. Yes? Yes! And all this fear is further emphasized by how I've felt for the last week. Which is crappy. Like mini-clinical. Like nostalgia for days of serotonin depletion long past. Ah me.

Here's how it always goes: Life is good, then not so good. Things don't work out for me the way I've planned. Something happens to my brain. Things will never be good again and how could they be? Because look at me! I'm a stupid! Then I can't do anything, and things pile up, (lending more weight to the whole theory of how fucked-up I am), and eventually I have to drop whatever I have going on (school, friends, work, writing), and take TWO YEARS to drag myself, kicking and whining, out of the mess of my own head.

Actually, and even worse, it's never me who does the dragging. I mean, come on, like I'd be up for that? Which is where the support system (I prefer "sensitive scaffold") comes in.

It starts with my parents. Goddamn saints of understanding that they are. (As I see it, they kind of have to be, because it's from them I inherited my whole ungainly mess of self. Including, but not limited to, rheumatoid arthritis, bad eyes, clinical depression, procrastination like you've never seen, and an ever-hovering disposition toward addiction. Some Lorazepam and Coca Cola? Yes please! But. And yet.) I'm grateful, incommunicably grateful, for how much my parents have helped me deal with my shit. I can't even imagine where I'd be if they weren't around. If I'd be anywhere at all.

Because of my parents being so totally rad about their gloomy-ass daughter, my support system also includes the two (stout? Let's say stout) pillars of therapy and anti-depressants.

And I believe in anti-depressants. Even if Effexor killed me tomorrow, I'd be (dead, but) convinced that the right match between drug and patient helps people get better. Better from the bad place. Yes indeed.

My problem is that I'm ridiculously sensitive to drugs. Not in the good way. Not the "Tylenol cured my soul-destroying migraine" and "that's good weed, man" kind of way. I never seem to be sensitive to the beneficial effects of medication. Just the bad effects. Side effects.

So the two times I've been really, seriously clinically depressed, I've had a hell of a time finding a medication that doesn't do more harm then good. All around me my depressed friends will perk up after a week of Prozac or Zoloft, when all those pills do for me is make me faint five times a day and want to vomit at the smell of food. Actually, they also sort of help my mood, but I'm told dangerously low blood pressure and anorexia (minus the nervosa) aren't acceptable compromises.

What I'm getting at, I think, is that if I go off Effexor now (when I'm not even remotely cheery) and I do get depressed again, like in a few weeks when my year-end portfolios are due, I'll be screwed. Because the search for a decent drug will start all over again. And that takes time. And I've already lost too much time, seriously important youth time, to all of this.

So basically, I don't know what to do.

I have a lot of appointments coming up that might help me figure it out. At least one of my half-dozen doctors (brag) should be able to tell me something I want to hear, right?

Really, I don't think I'm getting depressed again. I think my medication is fucking with me, that's all, because maybe I missed a dose recently and couldn't handle it. But that doesn't make me feel any better about how little I got done on my reading break. Besides pass FF12. Which is kind of depressing in itself. Not the game, I mean, but having put 90+ hours into it, and being sorry that it's over. Because nothing numbs the pain like a good rpg, children. Nothing but some kind of numbing agent. Maybe.

I have a list as long as... my hand or something, of people I have to call. People I want to call, even. But I don't have the energy for it. Nor do I have the energy, apparently, for email. And clearly I haven't been posting here. Or writing. Anything. Oh god.

But maybe this post is a start? A good sign... post? OR SOMETHING?!?

Tonight

2007-02-14T00:05:00.000-08:00

Tonight I helped Narns paint her new bathroom a white-ish colour called "Hare" that isn't supposed to look as pink as it currently does.

I went over after dinner and forgot to bring any painting clothes, so I had to fashion a voluminous diaper out of a garbage bag (two holes in the bottom for my legs, gathered and belted around my waste) and stand balanced on the edge of the bathtub to reach the high places. I spilled paint on the floor, the toilet, my feet, and somehow, the ceiling. It was awesome.

We went to Bean while it started to dry (Marian doesn't believe in waiting the full five hours, or however long you're supposed to, between coats) and drank cider that looked like pee but tasted like cider. I wasn't wearing the diaper anymore, at this point. We tried to draw in the very bad light cast by the candle at our table. It was fairly impossible.

My car was gone when we got back to the apartment. I'd parked it illegally, so the back end was on the wrong side of the all-important parking pole.

A clever bit of detective work - I couldn't remember my license plate number - and the girl at the impound lot said they had Argo. She didn't actually call my car "Argo", but you can't blame her for that because she didn't know. I could hear her smoking over the phone. She said they were open 24-hours, so we thought we'd finish painting. And we did. Like crazy.

At around 11:45 Marian drove me downtown and we found the impound lot where it's hidden under the Granville St bridge. The girl in the booth opened a little sliding window to talk to us, and the smell of cigarettes wafted out. I had a strong hit of deja vu.

I paid the fine and we walked around looking for Argo in the sea of jailed cars. There was a little Gulfstream trailer against a bridge support that I kind of wanted, but my own sweet little Jetta was beeping at me, "nugh nugh", when I pressed the button on my key remote.

The reunion was all you could imagine, including me saying goodnight to Narns and getting into Argo and driving home.

Is this anecdote going anywhere? No ma'am.

My knuckles are spotted with Hare.

Buffalo N.Y. 1949

2007-02-09T15:06:00.000-08:00

I slept in obscenely late today. It's 3pm and I've only been up for 15 minutes.

Though the last few hours weren't really about sleeping. They were all about videogame-fueled dreams and half-listening to the gardeners in the front yard. One of dreams had dopplegangers of Link, in unbecoming chainmail, trying to break into the cabin at Saturna and, you know, cleave me in twain. Luckily I had my sword, and my first mate, and we chopped their arms off and turned them into smoke. Hack slash, et cetera. All those hours with the Wii have improved my mental swordsmanship.

Then I was back in high school, but not (for once) the high school I actually went to. It was McGill, but it had architecture out of Blade Runner and no door to the outside. I had to throw my backpack through a window and then jump out after it, just to skip class. Then I was running and running through West Van neighborhoods until I wandered into a football game and some quarterback told me to "Grill it baby, oh yeah, just grill it" and I complained to the coach of sexual harassment.

However active the old dream life, though, it doesn't keep me from feeling like a tool when I sleep through the entire day. Even one of these overcast winter half-days. What a tool.

It's all because I went crazy yesterday with the caffeine, and then I was up all night. Naturally.

Yesterday was a funny day. Fueled by the hyper, I kept running from place to place shrieking until I crashed at around 5pm and died the slow death in front of my PS2 for the rest of forever.

Naturally.

Man, this post got substantially less text-heavy when I moved from dreams to real life.

But oh, oh, I have a remedy!

No I don't. But I'll take a shot: I hung out with Jess yesterday, and in doing so, achieved my goal of hanging out with Jess. Triumph! I was riddled with caffeine-twitchiness the entire time, but that's no matter. Then I went out to draw with Marian, at Capers, but she was allergic to bee pollen (??) so little drawing was got done. Especially by my own self.

I thought I'd already crashed by then, after my two chai lattes (softshell that I am) had finally worn off, so went into convalescence mode and had some vegetable water and carrot juice. But I was kidding myself. I was hopped up. Kim appeared out of nowhere with some bee pollen in her drink (!!!) and Marian started to die, but we were unconcerned because of the weird serendipity of Kim being there. At least, Kim and I were unconcerned. Marian was busy dying.

So we left Capers and went into Duthies so I could pay for a book, and some jerk we know was there, and he gave Marian an armload of pills to counteract her death, and she took one. Then we pushed off and went to the comic shop, so that I could make fun of comics and covet comics, alternately. There's a new BotI (ha-ha-ha) out, but I didn't want to pay for it because I'd already paid for a book at Duthies. So I decided it wasn't good enough for me, with my high-minded taste in all things, and we left.

The pill Marian had taken was starting to kill her in a whole new and exciting way. Kim, meanwhile, had to get back and work, so we dropped her off at The Mack. Apparently her boy Ciaran is now a full-on Canadian. This is big news, so I passed on my congratulations and even now am saying Congratulations! Were there cards for this sort of thing, I would mentally send one.

Sigh.

The leader of the Cyber Babies is named "Blogger Spellcheck", and she does not play. She does not play.

Now to other things.

To hell with this

2007-02-05T03:45:00.000-08:00

Okay.

No, seriously.

It's 4:33am. The internet is being a baby. And I don't mean a baby like it's-hard-to-be-one, I mean like a BAD baby. Like a BAD BABY MONKEY. But not half so adorable!

First there's myspace, which keeps telling me I have lots of messages and friend requests and then deleting them. Or worse, making them up in the first place out of air. OUT OF THIN AIR. CYBER BABIES.

Oh my god, a brilliant idea for a movie pitch just came to me... and it's... about babies...

Fuck! I lost it! I can't even pitch nothing! And it's all the fault of these damned CYBER BABIES.

Wait, I'm reminded of something... vital. Some sort of... Hollywood... goldmine?!?

And man, the other thing that pissed me off earlier was Flickr. It won't upload anything for me. So that's just the world's loss, is all I can say. Because I might have been posting something important tonight. Something with naked in it, perhaps. You never ever know.

My brain is so broken. I feel almost drunk. Does this read drunk? Am I seeming all drunk to you? If so, take it as a lesson: FF12 is a devil's game that will lead you down the path to hell, and the internet is a haven of stupid, and roast beef is better cold and salted, unless you have some mashed potatoes left over from the night before. In which case, microwave that bitch. Microwave it SLOW AND HOT.

...

I'm kind of hungry, actually.

Omar don't scare

2007-01-28T20:24:00.000-08:00

I meant to post sooner about why I spent all of Thursday night throwing up, but I've been completely incapable of stringing two sentences together. Even in speech. I had a really nasty three-day bout of Nor... something... virus. Not Norwalk, but something like it. My GP told me what it was, exactly, but I was slightly delirious and couldn't keep track of anything she said.

The funny thing is that while I was sick, I kept having to write and tell people about it. First to cancel my plans for the weekend, which sucked, and also to warn everyone who I might have given my highly-infectious virus to. And all of my emails were over-long and detailed. I mean, I should have been in bed, but I felt like I had to tell practically everyone, in graphic detail, exactly what was going on with my insides. Now I'm asking, why? At the time though, it was necessary. Weirdly necessary.

So I'm kind of sick of writing about it. Also, my brain hurts. I have to come up with something fictional for a class on Tuesday, and it bothers me that once again I'll be forcing something out at the last minute.

There are so many comparisons to vomiting that I'm not going to make right now.

Maybe later?

I'm also a bit annoyed that the weather's been stupidly beautiful for the last few days. The only sunlight I've been exposed to was during a horrific ride to the doctor's office in my father's car, when I crouched in the passenger seat shivering and hissing. My eyeballs were dissolving, I swear to god, and my claw-like hands couldn't shade them. I had to come home after that and lie in the dark for eight hours before I could even turn on a lamp.

I really need to make a list of everything I have to get done this week. But instead, I'll make a list of the things I did over the last few days that I haven't yet shared with you!

When I could stand to read, I read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft. Bad for dreams.

I watched a ton of daytime television involving people renovating their condos. I have no idea why. I also watched free "for your consideration" dvds that were mostly outdated. Crash isn't getting my Oscar vote, I'm afraid.

I drank Gatorade, once I was able to keep liquid down, which has Electrolytes. For strong bodies.

I used my Gloomy arm/pillow to wedge under whichever part of my body hurt the most. Practical!

My sheets went from (what I consider) charmingly lived-in to vile, weird, malodorous things that clung to me like garbage bags made out of old people's skin. So I changed them. Progress!

And um, I stopped eating. Forever. Especially donuts. The End.

All with good reason

2007-01-19T02:30:00.000-08:00

I've been playing Zelda all night, and dang, Link looks good with his shirt off. Is this the end of innocence? Me no care.

Boylens Birch Beer isn't as good at room temperature, but really fucking good at 3:00AM, so it balances out.

Class is scary when you have to talk and people look at you.

Talking on the phone for five hours at a time affects my ear. Not my hearing, but my ear. It feels all... The fact that I can feel my ear on the side of my head without touching it is proof enough, right? I mean a doctor would listen to that and nod sagely and hand me some ear bandages. Or the like.

My room is all chaotic with new stuff not put away, and laundry not put away, and stuff with no place to be put. My parents were in New York for a while and brought me back a giant Gloomy arm. Like a pillow. Arm. Thing. It's hard to explain. But it came with a lot of bags and labels and paper, for some reason. Plus, the Wii was dressed in foam and plastic, enough to build a shanty town with, and now it's everywhere the carpet used to be.

Oh well. Swig Boylens. Think about bed.

In which I finally get a Wii

2007-01-17T18:33:00.000-08:00

And also hypothermia, but mainly a Wii.

I waited in front of the Broadway Future Shop from 6:30 to 10:00 this morning, in order to get one of the four unsold Wiis (I still think plural for Wii should be Wii) leftover from last night's shipment. Yesterday I was there from 9:30 to 1:00pm. The shipment came in at 4:00pm. Cruel fate, yes? But listen!

Today I was the first person in line. For a couple of hours, actually, I was the only person in line. I sat on the mat sensor in front of the automatic doors and alternated between playing my DS (with gloves, difficult) and reading Death Note (with gloves, almost impossible). I bought two tall chai lattes from the Starbucks next door, but the second one was just to hold on to. I was freezing.

The gaming manager came out to talk to me a couple of times. He said that the next three people who lined up after me would get Wiis, but there would be no point in anyone else waiting around after that.

About twenty people showed up by the time Future Shop opened, and I had to keep explaining that the store only had four Wiis left. Nobody believed me and I didn't blame them, but then they hung around right next to us (the lucky four) and it was awkward. I recognized a lot of people from the line-up yesterday.

When we finally got inside and the manager counted us off and turned everyone else away, people got angry. I felt sorry for them because I've had bad luck with the goddamn thing myself, but I was also so cold that I couldn't really think.

I bought Twilight Princess too, and staggered out of the store like a drunk. I know it's old news now, and all that crap, but it's brand new to me and I'm still reeling. Reeling and dancing, and shrieking, et cetera.

In any case. I have work to do for a class at 10am tomorrow, and right now that just seems silly.

Not giving two titties who wins

2007-01-09T22:23:00.000-08:00

I'm back from Chicago with the following to show for it:

1) A big black bruise on my leg from falling on a deadly patch of ice outside my hotel as I was rushing to hail a cab. I was also carrying hot tea and a suitcase. Somehow, as my feet shot up over my head and my elbow hit the pavement, I managed to place my tea cup on the sidewalk, upright, without spilling a drop. So even though I looked like a dumb ass, staggering to my feet and shaking my head and looking around to make sure (by looking around?) that there were no witnesses, I was still fairly amazed at my protective tea reflexes.

2) A lot of photographs of stuff at the Chicago Institute of Art, where I had a lot of time to kill. I went through each exhibit twice, the second time after I realized I could take pictures without being destroyed by lasers. Every exhibit, I should say, except Modern Art, which was being closed for renovations. Half the reason I went was to see their Jospeh Cornell boxes, so that hurt my feelings. But I know they didn't mean it.

3) A SOUL CONNECTION with Lynda Barry. For real. We are LIKE THIS now. Picture me doing the tiny-space-between-fingers thing when you read LIKE THIS. That is how we are.

4) Lots of writing. And a good feeling about writing in general. And reading. And drawing.

5) Less money.

6) This post.

Clarian and Brajacorey

2007-01-02T23:04:00.000-08:00

I'm back in the city again. Which city, you ask? Vancouver, bitch!

Marian and I went down to Seattle to see the Dicecat trio and try to kidnap at least one of them. Quest completed! We brought Jacob back up to Canada and took him to Bowen for two nights. It was good. There was wine and there were breakfasts, and we watched Jude Law have gay sex in Wilde, which also featured Stephen Fry, who I kind of love.

My dog came along. She loves Jacob now. More than me.

Then we drove back to Seattle on new year's eve, after much switching of cars, and we made the trip in record time. All the way back, along the I-5, we could see fireworks. Probably they were meant for us.

In Seattle again, I got drunk on rum and cokes and bit Jacob on the arm when I mistook him for a monster of some kind. He had a bruise the next day. Sorry Jacob.

Here's proof.

The next day we came back. On the 5th I leave for Chicago, where I'll be until the 8th.

Then classes start again?

What?

Very vital stuff, very topical

2006-12-26T18:23:00.000-08:00

Life is good, life is great, let's all hyperventilate.

That's a secular option for saying grace, if such a thing is possible, that I just came up with right this second. You might say I've been touched by a secular angel. Of words.

Who? What? I'm exhausted and stuffed. Two christmas dinners in a row is one more than I'm used to, and my skin feels tight. My breathing seems shallow. Could I be dying? Let's discuss.

Christmas eve was made much more deliciously food-y then usual because I snuck away to Kimi and Sachi's for dinner. A dinner they concocted with their own four hands and various digits! And it was violently good. I found myself sort of shuddering like an elderly person with the sheer pleasure of it. If I didn't feel, now, almost nauseous with having overextended my capacity, I'd probably be more specific about what-all they made. But remember, I could be in mortal danger here. Let's not rush the process.

Suffice to say it was a good time and the company kicked some sweet ass.

I left early to get home and wrap last-minute stuff with Emily. We get really obsessive about wrapping. I think I've mentioned this. The funny thing is, I'm actually not that great at it. I mean I wrap a mean cube-shaped object, don't get me wrong, and the paper is tight and the corners are sharp, for serious, but I'm bad at "prettifying". Prettyfying involves the bows and the ribbon and the curling of the ribbon, and all that, which Emily excels at. She's fast, too. Which is important in this business.

So what we do is, I wrap a book (for example) all tight and sexy in its paper and then I pass it over to Em, who tarts it up real nice. If we were preparing each present for a night on the red carpet, to put it the way readers of Star Weekly (where most of my hits come from) can understand, I would do clothes (including "Spanx", whatever the fuck "Spanx" consist of) and Emily would do hair, makeup, and rented jewelry that costs more than Canada. We're the next... team of people that do that! But with books, for example!

Then we all went to bed and dreamed of sugarplums/what those might be, and I stayed up no later than anybody else because I took some expired valium! Type! Thing!

Then the day, the day itself, was good. I'll skip over the presents bit, generally, because nobody wants to read about how spoiled I may or may not be. NOBODY.

I did get some really nice stuff though, books and stuff, and I've been playing Final Fantasy III for the Nintendo DS all day today, while I recline on my bed, bloated and sickly and yet very attractive, I assure you. I wouldn't want any of my readers to picture me looking stupid or ugly, ever, as I know they only read this because I'm the newest singing/ film sensation in Asia, and even when I vomit it's so utterly adorable that men and women start killing themselves over me, and fighting each other to do it first.

Then dinner was another dinner, if you can even believe it, and it brought the pole down between the donkey's ears, as they say, and stunned me into submission. Hence the fear now that I will burst and combust, all spontaneous-like, and cover my office and all the new goodies it now contains with bits of me, and turkey, and cranberry sauce, and the human-equivalent of cranberry sauce, and me.

Why am I still so full? How did I get so attractive? All day today, between feeling nauseous and thumbing my DS, I've been going downstairs, wading through piles of christmas wrapping and (for all I know) excrement, and making up little plates of cold dinner leftovers. And then I've been eating them! Like a FOOL!

Partly also I think I feel crappy (in body) on account of skipping one o’ my beloved prescription drugs yesterday, in all the hyperactivity, and then only taking it today at like, 2pm, when I finally got out of bed.

Why did I sleep in so late? Where can you send fan mail to? Because I stayed up half the night alternating between FF3 and Robinson Crusoe (don't ask) and didn't take another expired Valium. Type. Thing. Out of sheer respect for my body. Which is asthetically perfect.

So all ends well, if bloated, and tomorrow I'll be back on my adorably tiny feet (they taper to points, it appears to me now, like the tips of adorable pencils) and out amongst the world and my people, who look to me for guidance and tiny feet.

Yes? Left? I'm actually going to buy a new camera tomorrow, too, because my flickr's been sadly o'erlooked of late, and I can't stands not updating something at least. And neither can you stand it. When I don't.

But I've updated here, now, with this, and so I think I can go back to my video game and my well-worn pajamas and be perfectly content, if never hungry again.

Photos to come, maybe tomorrow, if I don't die.

Happy Holiday

2006-12-24T23:38:00.000-08:00

That's all.

I hope you are well.

Alright Jane

2006-12-14T11:01:00.000-08:00

Happy is home and I am... happy.

Ugh!

But she's doing well. I assume. She's soaking up the attention and eating and crapping. The crapping is very important and celebrated.

Her back legs seem quite weak and she's very tired, but I think (?) she'll get stronger over the next few weeks, while she finishes off her boatload of prescription medication.

Meanwhile, my car, Argo, has tuberculosis of the engine - I know a hell of a lot about cars - and will have to be in the shop for a week. It's also going to cost a ton.

How sharper than a serpents tooth, is the child that sucks you dry.

And my digital camera, Stupido Galore, is broken! Again! And it's so old that it's not worth fixing, so I'm going to buy a new one post-Christmas. Hence the upcoming dearth of Flickr updates.

In the meantime, though, I plan to borrow Marian's camera (as yet unnamed?) to photograph Happy's bald and spotted abdomen, and the haircut I got yesterday, finally. Because I'm an internet whore like that. Yes. Point and laugh.

But mainly: Happy is home, and I am glad.

Thanks to everyone who wished her well. Comments equal love. I heart your faces off.

^____^

2006-12-11T22:41:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow afternoon they're letting my dog come home.

Perform a stamping dance in my union suit? Why yes I will, thank you.

Five forty four

2006-12-11T04:57:00.000-08:00

I can't sleep.

I'm not sure why, exactly, as I'm exhausted. More importantly, as of yesterday, all the incremental changes in my dog's health since she got to critical care have been positive ones. Tiny little inchworm nudges towards wellness. Hurry it up, nudges! Yooo can do it?

(I'm very tired).

I've spent enough time in the ICU to get to know some of the other dogs there, just from what I overhear while sitting with Happy.

Rosco, the little half-shaved dog with a broken pelvis, and Bethany, the bull terrier who ate a flashlight, went home today. I'm trying very hard not to resent them for that. Still around are the two Daisys and Monty.

Good Daisy is a puppyish black lab who always wears a cone. I'm not sure what's wrong with her.

Loud Daisy is a French bulldog with possible epilepsy who paces around her kennel and never, ever stops crying until someone takes her out and holds her. The funny thing is, she sounds like no dog I've ever heard. If I couldn't see her mouth opening and closing (puppet-like) I'd have sworn the sound was coming from a baby or a cat. It sounds, near as I can get, like this: AAAAAWOWOWOWOWAAAAAAAAAGHAAAWAN? WAAAAAN? OOOORAW? It sounds like a baby/cat attempting to pass as an adult human, through the intervention of the devil.

Monty is some sort of hunting spaniel with anorexia.

I go to the clinic twice a day, afternoon and evening, and spend about an hour with Happy. Tonight she played with her panda toy for a while, though very gently, and that thrilled me to no end. They've given her a stuffed panda to keep her company, and at first she totally ignored it. I was inclined to think that the panda meant the ICU staff loved my dog above all, until I realized today that Loud Daisy has her own little television on a wheeled cart. They roll it in front of her kennel and she actually watches it. Apparently it calms her demon soul.

Happy's eating Gastro again, and some of her medication is being taken orally. The technicians hand her "meatballs" of Gastro-concealed pills with their bare hands. I'm trying to take a lesson in strength from this, and not totally gag, but it's hard.

I can't even believe how much this is all going to cost. I'm ridiculously lucky that my parents are footing the bill (that they can foot the bill) with nary a whimper. Nary a whimper. When I checked Happy in, the vet told me initial costs would be around five thousand dollars. But she also said that Happy would be there for "at least a couple of days". On the second day another vet told me "five days at least". I haven't asked again since then.

Now that I'm less petrified by the constant fear that I'm going to lose my dog, I can't stop missing her. It's weird, and people who don't have a pet that they really love aren't going to get it, but not having her around is like a physical ache. It feels like phantom pain. Like when a soldier in the civil war (!) would get his leg cut off and still feel it hurting. Not that I know what that feels like, but I imagine in my self-absorbed way that it feels like this. Where is my fatty cattle dog in the middle of the night? Where is her Dog On Chair, Dogs In Space, and Waggle Bum?

Stop that now! She's in Burnaby. But you see what I mean about the missing.

Little noises and such

2006-12-09T16:12:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the vet told me, when I asked, that Happy's chances were "fair, but guarded". It was a bad day for knowing anything at all, much less anything good.

Today they did another ultrasound, and things looked a little better. Her gallbladder is even smaller, she's in less pain, and nothing that could have gone wrong (hence the "guarded") has gone wrong yet. I didn't ask today about her chances of recovery. Pancreatitis (when it's this severe) is a waiting game, and I know she's not out of the woods yet. I'm just glad she's not any further... in. The woods?

Have I mentioned that my mind is shot? I haven't been eating enough (even now my pizza, the first thing I'll have eaten all day, is going to take more than an hour to arrive, damn it, don't they know my dog is sick?), and besides driving back and forth to Burnaby and distracting myself with frantic christmas shopping, all I'm capable of doing is playing Final Fantasy Tactics until my eyes bleed like a Bond villain. It's the most static videogame ever, and now I'm almost glad I couldn't get a Wii. Now I need things to move slowly, with great focus. How does one make a Calculator, you ask? Combine a level 4 Priest, level 4 Wizard, level 3 Oracle, and level 3 Time Mage. Would you like to make a Calculator? You have selected "no".

Being in the ICU makes Happy anxious, now that she's feeling a little better. I visited her today and she cried whenever another dog got fed. I think the crying was for my benefit. The ICU nurses tell me that she plays up her misery when I'm around, which I can believe. When I refused to snatch food away from a little half-shaved dog covered in stitches and give it to Happy, she slapped her paw on the floor of her cage in annoyance and cried louder than the bull terrier in another room who, I overheard, ate a flashlight.

My dog is starving. Or fasting, as they say. Today they gave her two kibbles, and I hope she's kept them down. She hasn't vomited since she's been there, which is good sign. (I collect good signs like stamps, if I collected stamps and stamps actually meant something). I'm going back there after I eat my goddamn pizza, when it goddamn gets here, to spend more time with her. Despite the crying and paw slapping, she slept for half an hour on my lap this afternoon. I don't think she's been sleeping much since they lowered her morphine.

Other stuff? There used to be other stuff.

Visiting Hours

2006-12-07T15:54:00.000-08:00

Last night Happy seemed her usual self, but this morning she looked bad. I took her to the vet, and a radiologist happened to be visiting the clinic. Happy was given an ultrasound and they found that her pancreas was hugely distended and blocking her colon. For some reason, this hadn't shown up in the bloodwork from a few days ago.

Meanwhile, we discovered an incredible amount of vomit throughout the groundfloor of my house. Last night she vomited the accumulated stomach contents of three or four days. So she hasn't processed any of her food or pills.

Now she's in critical care at the Veterinary hospital in Burnaby. She's on fluids, antibiotics and painkillers, and they're considering surgery. It's a serious condition, and it's life-threatening, but she has a good chance of recovery and should be fine. This is exactly what they've told me.

She'll stay in critical care for a couple of days, at least. They did a second ultrasound at around 3pm today, and her gallbladder appeared smaller. I can't remember why a small gallbladder is a good sign, but I'm told that it is. If she continues to improve they'll have ruled out surgery by tomorrow morning. If not, it's still an option.

I saw her at 3pm before I came home, and she seemed okay. But the vets keep telling me how unbelievably stoic she is, so it's hard to tell from looking at her if she's in a lot of pain or not.

Incidentally, that's how she got her name. She was found as a stray in rural Oregon with a shattered hip, which must have hurt like hell, but she was wagging her tail all the way to the vet's, so they called her Happy.

Probably they should have called her Stoic.

Obviously, I'm freaking out, but not as badly as I was after I talked to the solemn Burnaby Vet and phoned Marian, bawling, from the parking lot. I guess I have some sort of faith that my dog will be okay. Like I keep telling myself, the chances are good. She's young.

I'm sorry in advance for canceling on everything I had planned for the next week. This is taking up all of my time/brain.

The human tragedy, with top secret tips!

2006-12-04T04:54:00.000-08:00

Apparently I'm not going to sleep at all tonight. Today. This morning.

The crust of snow keeps sliding down the roof above my room, and every time it happens I think it's thunder at first, then rain. Then maybe somebody dragging a bag filled with power tools, bones and loose change over the house. Hello Santa!

Happy, I feel obliged to tell you, seems completely better. I mean I can't actually see into her veins (byakugan eye jitsu) and count her white blood cells, but if I didn't know to want to, I'd say she was perfectly well. Just addicted to Gastro.

Like I'm addicted to Final Fantasy Tactics, (thank you Marian), now that I'm playing it through a second time and sort of know what I'm doing.

Like I'm addicted to the caffeine in my sweet, sweet Dilmah ceylon (brownest of the brown liquors).

Like I'm addicted to not posting here enough, and then feeling perversely unhappy that Klovharu feels suddenly all grown-over and dusty. With spiders.

That last one isn't really an addiction. I just wanted to work it in. Oh Klovharu, Klovy, hon, I'm just a honky tonk man. When my money's all gone I'm on the telephone, saying hey there baby, let your daddy come home.

That's one of the first songs I remember requesting. My parents used to play it for me and my brother in the car. This was when I was three or four. I may have got the lyrics wrong.

Oh, I should say, Frank in Idaho isn't happening. The woman who's fostering him won't adopt to Canada. I talked to her today and she was all "You're foreign! Canada is far away! How do you know how to speak English?! I'm phoning the cops!" In my head.

My stomach hurts like it's empty. I guess it's empty.

How, I ask you, am I going to be able to get through my last class of the term at 10:00 am? A field trip, no less! And not, I think, to Bed Land. AND WHY OH WHY OH WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO BE A BABY?

Plague

2006-12-02T20:48:00.000-08:00

My dog, you remember my dog? Epileptic? Dangerously allergic to wasps? Fatty? She's just now getting over her latest health scare. A few days ago, right in the middle of the really big (for Vancouver) snow that practically wiped my neighborhood off the map (see: Pompeii) and buried us all, my dog got sick. It was the weirdest fucking thing. She was all of a sudden moody and quiet, sitting weirdly and looking nauseous.

If this had taken place in normal land, I'd have taken her down to the vet's that very day, and had them stick a thermometer up her ass, et cetera, and tell me what was happening. But as we were buried in snow (my car, Argo, having already failed to get more than a meter from the garage), and my dog is CONSTANTLY ILL ANYWAY, I figured I'd wait on it. I kept expecting her to heave up some grass or have some nice diarrhea all over the front lawn, but instead she stopped doing anything at all, and lay under my bed all day. That night, she did puke, and it was the most appalling, rank-smelling thing ever, but she didn't seem to feel any better for it.

So the next day I was determined to take her in, but the stupid cars were still buried in snow, and she wasn't well enough to walk to the clinic. She wasn't well enough to walk down the stairs, at that point, and she lay on floor (where I'd dragged her out from under the bed) and her paws were freezing cold, and needless to say, I was freaking out.

I don't think any amount of shoveling, rock salt and/or cat litter could have gotten my Jetta out of the back alley, but luckily my mum has a Rav4. I'd never had much affection for it, this "mini SUV", and never even given it a nickname. I called it "the Rav4" when I called it anything. But now I call it "HERO CAR SUPREME", because it trundled out of the garage, when pressed, like a little bull, and got my dog to the vet.

They told me it was probably her pancreas. That she had pancreatitis, which is fairly common, and that she was very dehydrated. They took her into the back and hooked her up to an IV and took blood, and I left her there.

It's hard for me to leave a pet there, in the back of the vet's, because it reminds me of the times I've left pets there forever, after they've been euthanized. It's a strange and horrible feeling to leave an animal you love on a table in a vet's office, and walk out of the clinic knowing you'll never come back to take them home.

I picked Happy up that night and took her home, but she was still in bad shape, so the next morning she went back to the vet's for more fluids. The bloodwork came back saying a bunch of stuff I couldn't understand, but mainly that it wasn't her pancreas after all. It was some sort of severe stomach infection. The blood wasn't specific as to the type of infection, so I don't know why it happened. And her white blood cell count was dangerously high. "Dangerously high" were the words used, and you can imagine I focused particularly on the bit about dangerously.

So antibiotics were prescribed. My old friends. And this kind of very soft, palatable food called "Gastro". Which makes me think of the futuristic every-organ striptease in Paul Pope's 100%. And Happy loves Gastro. I heat it up in the microwave for her and sprinkle it with delicious Clavamox and Apo Metronidazole and she gobbles it up and begs for more.

Long-story-medium-length, she's doing better. It took a couple of days but she's almost back to her old caninity. She's almost 100%, you might say. Oh ho ho ho, ah me. But seriously, and this might be weird, I feel so lucky. I know it's insane that I've got a four-year-old dog who is (as I may have mentioned) CONSTANTLY ILL, and that she's an expensive bugger to maintain, but I'm filled with fucking gratitude that she always gets better again, and she always comes home.

That said, (and sloppily), my mother wants to adopt a wire-haired Dachshund from Idaho named Frank. For herself. So I might be going to Idaho to get him.

And in January, I'm flying to Chicago for a few days to take a writing workshop taught by Lynda Barry who is, as you know, my idol.

Not much, besides that, is up.

The snow is all crusty.

I bought the new, fancy issue of Matrix Magazine with NERNIES on the back page, and that gave me a little thrill.

I've been doing a lot of christmas shopping for the family. I got Emily a big bag of water and meat (mixed) that can be used as both a pillow and a "comfort buddy".

That's what you get, EMILY, FOR READING THE ABOVE SENTENCE WHEN IT CLEARLY HELD SECRETS AND SURPRISES.

I still don't have a Wii. The guy at EB sighs really loudly whenever I come in.

Watching (or in my case re-watching) Deadwood with Marian is bringing me much joy.

Watching fan subs of Naruto on my computer is bringing me less joy, but has its own charm. Sasuke sometimes reminds me of Jack White. Is that wrong?

I feel like an idiot lately, on the internet. Everything I type is an idiot thing, and this blog is an idiot blog. Thus: I am an idiot.

But that's just how it goes, from time to time. By tomorrow I'm sure I'll feel as internet savvy as Britney Spears' crotch, (thanks mum, for those photos) or whatever the latest online phenomenon might be.

My dog is having a noisy dream, just now, and her tongue is sticking out of her mouth a little bit.
No more now!

When it gets like that

2006-11-26T16:59:00.000-08:00

Photos feat. snow.

My jeans are soaking.

UPDATE: The power's out at UBC! Class is canceled! I couldn't get my car out of the garage and when I finally did, it got stuck in the snow! It took forever to get it out! I had to go around the house with a rake and bash at the snow-covered trees to knock off the snow before they snapped like kindling! I'm very excited and hungry!

I expect it's the laudanum

2006-11-22T21:53:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow is Klovharu's birthday. It turns two.

Happy birthday, Klovharu. The above is a picture of Little Daddy Gibson, on his second birthday. Can you see the family resemblance? Fuck you!

That was rude. I apologize. I'm wound up on account of having to prepare a presentation for a class tomorrow. Which I've finished. Preparing. Finally. But it was rough going.

I got some things in the mail. You know how I love Lynda Barry? I got a piece of Lynda Barry artwork for my birthday, but actually long after my birthday for postal reasons. It's an outake from 100 Demons. You can see where she used White-Out on a comma. I'm totally in love with it.

Also, out of the thin blue air, Jacob sent me a copy of One Hundred Years of Solitude. No, I've never read it, but now I will. Wasn't that great of him? Stand up and take a bow, Jacob. Give him a hand, folks.

Can you tell how tired I am? Can you tell how I'm drooping and shuddering despite my gratitude for unexpected packages and completed presentation preparations? I don't know why I'm so goddamn tired.

O Say Can U C

2006-11-10T01:06:00.000-08:00

I know, I know, I know already.

But I've not been idle! Oh no. I've had to deal with three deadlines.

One piece was due the morning after I got back from Seattle with Marian, and had to be pulled out of my ass in the most frantic and upleasant way imaginable. I was really depressed about that one, because it was for fiction class (my most favourite-est) and all ass-pulled and everything. But it worked out pretty well for me because I'm a lucky bastard, and people actually liked it.

I have no idea why people like some of my stuff and not other of my stuff? Because I am not a cool. I would like to be a cool, but I am not one.

Next: I was out for chinese food at around 6:30 in the evening, last Sunday, and I realized I had to write 15 pages of radio drama by 10:00 on Monday. Wacky! So I finished my General Cho's Chicken and went home and did that. And I have no idea what I ended up with. But I'll find out in two weeks, because Monday is a holiday about remembering. I can't wait for my long remembering weekend. It starts tomorrow, and it'll be wild with memory.

Last: I had to hand in a piece this morning that I didn't start until 10pm last night. And I wrote it all shaky with the fear of the reaper, on account of thinking my mother had given me SARS.

Or not SARS, but the flu. She has the flu like crazy. And our doctor thinks it's a zero strain, or something. Meaning she would be the first Vancouver resident to have the new Asian flu? So tomorrow some men dressed in white suits are going to come to the house and test her. Which is what I get for being all flippant about SARS! Because now I'm probably riddled with SARS! And Marian probably has it too because I helped her shave her head today, and the good lord knows that we didn't use a condom.

Here are pictures of Marian with a shaved head. The electric razor she borrowed from her dad is of the sixties, or something, and came close to belching fire a few times. Dynamite! And Marian's head has a scar on it from when she was little and walked into a cupboard, and I don't know if you can see it in the photos or not, but it makes her look like Jimmy Hopkins from Bully. Which is a very sexy look right now.

That reminds me. Besides beating deadlines and probably contracting SARS and helping shave people, I've mastered 93.86% of Bully. And I've spent money on Playmobil and kid's books. Because Emily made me. And one of my Playmobil guys is a gladiator with sandals and stubble.

Stubble. Like how Marian's head has.

Also, the dems! Total donkey joy! America huzza! Et cetera!

Stumptown

2006-10-31T23:50:00.000-08:00

Photos from Portland here.

More later???

Living to see twenty-four

2006-10-27T07:52:00.000-07:00

Aha ha! It's me as a Final Fantasy Tactics-style Ranger! Because apparently I have high dexterity and do well in the forest or something! Clearly the best birthday picture ever!

Forbidding to new arrivals

2006-10-25T01:12:00.000-07:00

Damn it, when did I get so bad at posting on a regular fucking basis? There's no excuse for it.

What's been happening is: I've been writing in a notebook instead, which is a thing I feel inclined to do sometimes. It hurts my hand, as I tend to labor over my printing like a goddamn first grader, but it satisfies me to watch the tip of the pencil (a wooden pencil, no less) move along the lines on the paper, and how the pages fill.

I've never been good at finishing journals, or at writing in them often enough to make them feel, years later, like a book with myself at the plot's centre. Have I posted about this before? As a kid, I always filled the first few pages of each diary I was given and then lost interest. A few weeks later I'd want to write some more, but I couldn't use the neglected diary because then there'd be an unsightly gap between entries one and two. So I'd start a new one.

I have a fairly large box of these unfinished diaries. It alarms me to read them, as the entries are all so similar. Didn't I change at all between 12 and 15, for example? Is my life a watched pot? Et cetera, the alarm bells ring.

Now I've learned to ignore the unsightly gaps in my private journals as I write them, which is proof that people can grow emotionally and become richer as individuals, and that water eventually boils whether or not you stare at it, and then you can make tea. These days, I just keep writing (very fucking sporadically) in the same notebook until I reach the last page, and then I throw it in a box in my closet where it will remain until the great fire of 2012.

The journal I'm currently writing in was begun when I was twenty, and two days from now I'll be twenty-four. It sounds like crazy talk, I know, but it's true. My private (uncensored! un-spell-checked and edited!) journal is therefore a veritable time capsule of depressed and/or infatuated ravings. It's a powerful object, you see. One that could be used against me in the future. But do I toss it in the closet? No. I just read over it from time to time and want to shoot myself in the foot. Because that would make me feel like less of a clumsy fool than my entries from the previous year do, I'm telling you.

In any case. Now you know what I'm doing when I'm not doing it here, typing about caffeine and sleep deprivation and the state of my dog's brain. But that doesn't mean you should have to put up with zero updates for more than ten days at a time. Lord no. It just means I'd rather be telling my future (disgusted) self about the days events than you.

(By you I mean the Internet, which I see as a giant floating green head, ala The Wizard of Oz. I don't mean you you. You you are wonderful, and ought to be presented with some beautiful flowers of a not-overly smelly nature the next time we meet).

Moving on: I can't believe I'm turning twenty-four in two days. It's a fact that would probably un-man me if I had any man parts. What's even weirder about it, (if anything could be), is that I'll be in Portland, or at least headed there with Marian, I think, on the day itself. Portland. Where... um... there's free public transportation all through downtown! Does that not amplify the fucking weirdness? I think it does.

What's with the excessive swearing, me? I don't even know! I blame it on our culture as a whole!

...

I want donuts.

Strange form of life

2006-10-13T04:16:00.000-07:00

My way of dealing with Ema's death is apparently this: sit around on my ass all day attempting to "master" Okami, spend money on expensive DVDs, and fly into periodic fits of violent rage.

Violent rage, on me, is generally pretty contained. Slightly sweaty, maybe. Maybe some twitching.

Like Wednesday afternoon, after my mum and I came back from the vet without our cat, I decided I needed very badly to rent the Criterion Collection DVD release of Dazed and Confused.

I don't know why. Except that Dazed is a movie I grew up with in still-hippy-centric Kitsilano, where it was beloved by all my then-friends. It's the highschool experience I narrowly missed pretending to have. It's entertaining and weirdly genuine for a studio-financed movie about teenagers. And it has a really good soundtrack.

Rogers didn't have it. Blockbuster (ha-ha-ha) didn't have it. So I drove to Videomatica and asked them if they had it, and they didn't. The computer said they did, but they didn't. They only had the regular DVD edition. Which is relatively crap. When I watch a stoner movie, I want the director-approved definitive special edition double-disc set with all available supplemental features, thank you. Otherwise I might as well just get stoned. And where's the qoutable dialogue in that, fuckers? Eh? NOWHERE.

Then I looked in the sales section of Videomatica, and there it was. All sixty Canadian dollars of it. And I wanted it, but didn't want to pay for it, and the rage came on. Because they should have had it available to rent, damn it. And my cat was dead.

Which made me wonder, driving home without my movie, if any of the people I see in the city sometimes, the angry people in cars who maybe honk their horns at nothing, and the pissed-off people in stores, aren't really in some kind of actual pain.

I have a friend whose little brother died of cancer, and she told me that during the last year of his life she must have got about a hundred parking tickets. She just stopped caring about legal parking. Legal parking made no sense to her. As a result, she got into a lot of fights with towtruck drivers and metermaids, or the non-gender-specific version of metermaids, and more than once she got into her car as a man was attempting to tow it and drove away without looking back.

Now that towtruck driver was probably thinking "What a righteous bi-atch", but knowing my friend and knowing what she went through, I think she was a goddamn hero.

All I'm saying is, people who lose a cat they loved, or something so much worse, should get to wear a sash. The sash should read "Special Privileges". Maybe there should be different sashes for different losses. And everyone should recognize the sash and respect it. That's all I'm saying.

In any case.

Today I didn't go to class. I did, however, get a cheque in the mail from the government (or gummymint) for fifty-eight dollars. Why, I have no idea, but I promptly drove to the bank and then out to the A&B Sound on Southwest Marine, out in the sticks, to purchase Dazed and Confused.

But they didn't have it, so I drove back across town to Videomatica. Filled with rage.

And when I finally got home and watched it? It was good.

Gone away

2006-10-11T13:09:00.000-07:00

We had Ema euthanised this morning. Her kidneys were failing and things were deteriorating too quickly. She was disoriented and uncomfortable, and we wanted her to be able to sleep.

Everyone should get to have a cat like her, at least once in their life.

N'ema.

Zhesi jisheng

2006-10-09T23:35:00.000-07:00

I resolved after my last post to stop writing about my pets' medical problems. It was starting to seem like a thing I did every week.

But that's not working out for me. In brief then: One of my cats (Ema) has a mass in her abdomen. Probably a tumor. Inoperable because she can't handle the anesthesia and blah blah blah. Bad prognosis. She looks fine and acts (mostly) fine, but she isn't. Or soon won't be.

This all came out on Friday night, very late, at the 24-hr Animal Emergency place on 4th.

Bitch of a long weekend, really.

Saturday morning was all fucked-up on account of the sadness and exhaustion. Emily was staying over and we slept on my bed for about three hours before the sun came in on us. I spent the rest of the day jittery with anxiety and finally took some prescription medication (not mine) that I'd found in the bathroom, hoping to calm down. It worked. Fell asleep and dreamed about hallways. Marian standing up in a rowboat saying "Good water!"

I woke up stoned and went for breakfast with Narns, Kimi, Sachi and L.D.M. Tried to keep my mouth from hanging open while we waited for our pancakes, but failed.

I came home from breakfast all full and strange. Bed looked nice so I napped until dinner. Kim cooked a perfect turkey at her apartment, plus all manner of thanksgiving food. Including stuffing. I'm a fan of stuffing.

Dinner, then, was good.

Monday, today, I spent with Ema. Mainly we played videogames. I worked the controller and made the decisions (go this way, kill that imp) and she slept on my stomach. We also ate, read, sat at the computer and watched Animal Planet. It was a small day.

Now I'm tired without having earned it, which is a feeling I hate, and the light in my room is going all yellow on me.

I'm always sick of something when the light does that.

Ai teh tai

2006-10-05T08:36:00.000-07:00

ACKGH = not an acronym, but the sound my brain is making at the thought of how much has happened recently/how little, and how impossible it would be to make up for my recent lack of posts RIGHT NOW, before my morning class, when I still haven't "peer reviewed" (ACKGH) a classmate's piece for a children's fiction course.

ACKGH X 10, even.

God. Caffeine is necessary.

...

Okay, I made tea. Ahem.

I went up to the cabin last weekend, which already seems like a hundred years ago, and my dog got stung by a hundred wasps.

I'm guessing at the number, but it made her head swell until she looked like a badly treated pit bill/sharpei with (still) an obscenely swollen head. She also vomited quite a bit, and many calls were made to emergency veterinarians in Victoria, who all told me that she needed a shot of benedryl as soon as possible or she could stop breathing, etc.

So I ended up at a retired doctor's cabin, after more frantic phone calls, and he reluctantly gave her the shot, despite being late for his choir practice and everything. He'd never treated a dog before and seemed terrified that she might turn on him (or both of us) at any time. He kept telling me to hold on to her. But she was very well-behaved, if hideous, and the shot worked.

Her swelling went down slowly. It was insane while it lasted, though. I took photos that I'll post on flickr, because I am cruel and my dog's pain makes me laugh and laugh.

Oh my god, though, school is killing me. I'm loving more than half of it, but there's certainly a killing-me-aspect to the whole thing that I was unprepared for.

I mean, there's always a deadline. ALWAYS A DEADLINE.

I know that's normal for many people, part of life, etc, but I'm special and delicate, and it's driven me to videogames.

At the same time, it's making me write a lot.

Too much, really.

I deserve a nice break.

Hum. Thanksgiving weekend (CDN) coming up, which is nice. It'd be nice if I could get back up to the cabin and watch Happy fall into a giant hole filled with sharks, or whatever, but my parents are going to be there with the English.

That made me sound sort of Amish, didn't it. BEWARE THE ENGLISH, YOUNG JOSEPH. Or whatever. I rented Witness last week because my fiction professor mentioned it, and now I'm sounding Amish and it frightens me.

Oh my god. It's already nine.

What a way to make a living.

Hell's the hippest way to go

2006-09-23T12:36:00.000-07:00

I really have to post something. It's funny how I can talk for hours to certain people about every tiny detail in my life, but it's the hardest thing sometimes to take five minutes and write any of it down.

I'm addicted to Starbucks again. I lasted only two weeks of classes before I relapsed into my venti-a-day habit. Black tea does nothing for me now. I blame Seattle, where I went with Marian last weekend, and where caffiene powers cars. We had fun, and I had coffee, despite my doctor telling me to stay away from it.

Not Seattle. Coffee. Because of the stomach thing. Which, it turns out, isn't my gallbladder after all. The ultrasound was clean, so it could be anything. An ulcer, acid reflux, et cetera. I'm having a GI Tract in October to find out, but in the meantime I have these pills to take in the morning. I love these pills. They're the size of atoms, give or take, but they have a monumental effect on my sense of digestive well-being. So much so that I felt perfectly fine about driving down to Seattle and living on black coffee for two days.

Seattle was great. There are photos on Flickr that everyone's probably looked at by now. Unfortunately, they don't feature one of the most important aspects of the trip, my new love connection: Tony Jaa.

Let us honor him.

But yeah, I was talking/typing about caffeine. I'm so into it right now. It's amazing. I'm such an addict. There's this novel I'm reading about addictions and oral fixation and all that fun stuff, and it's really hitting me where I live. Anyone who knew me in my formative years knows that I was a total thumbsucker, and now I'm a mug sucker and a prescription pill-popper. I'm also a wannabee smoker (meaning I don't, and I rarely have, but goddamn it I still constantly want to), and an imaginary gum-chewer (meaning that sometimes when I'm nervous I'll pretend to chew gum), and a pouter and a high-pitched squeaker.

I mean it's good luck I never got into chewing tobacco, or I'd be that kid in the cautionary video saying "But I needs my chaw!" through a mouthful of brown tongue fur.

Typing with my hair on fire

2006-09-13T02:11:00.000-07:00

I realize I've already complained about this to a good 50% of my readership in person, but I went to the doctor the other day and found out that I probably have gallstones. Which is why my stomach has been hurting for the last few weeks.

Before this I was barely aware that I had a gallbladder. Stupid vestigial organ. And now it turns up full of stones and ruins my beautiful relationship with food?

Rage!

So tomorrow morning I'm going to go have an ultrasound. Yes. So they can stare at my gallbladder, ask me if I want to know its gender, and decide (I assume) whether or not to pluck it from my body and pop it in formaldehyde.

But I'm not sure I'm ready to lose my gallbladder. Charming, obscure little organ! Really I'd much prefer they shoot me full of lasers to melt the gallstones down. Or whatever.

At least my wealth of medical knowledge is doing me proud.

It's almost three in the morning, incidentally. I have to wake up at 6:30 for the ultrasound, so I figured I might as well stay up and obsess over television characters and deadlines until then, right?

But nobody wants to read about that. I don't even want to read about that. So. What else.

My dog, for those that follow the dog story, is still reacting impossibly well to her medication. She's slightly less clumsy, far more active, and has developed a genuine appetite for the first time in ever. Again, this makes no sense. Phenobarbitol is a sleeping pill, but it's working like a shot in the ass. Plus, no seizures. Medical marvel?

Change of subject.

I had to write a short story at the last minute for a fiction class today/yesterday. This being the first real thing I've written in months, and me distracted by my bouncing baby gallbladder, I found it absurdly difficult to sit down and come up with anything. Finally, in desperation, I began stealing bits from this blog, which got me through my first few paragraphs and onward.

So thanks, Klovharu. I dedicate THOSE GENTLE BALTIC NIGHTS to you.

It's the devil I love

2006-09-05T22:30:00.000-07:00

I've left this post very late. Now there are too many things to write about, and I'm too little inclined to do it properly.

In any case.

Happy went on Phenobarbitol. Finally. I was miserable about giving it to her, when I did, because I'd just been through consecutive lectures from my vet and pharmacist about all the possible side-effects. Like just for example: dizziness, drowsiness, decreased activity, and long-term liver damage.

"You pick your battles with this drug", I was told, which I felt was putting a positive spin on it. Depending on how my dog would react, I figured, the battles would be picking us. And she's never been the most active, healthy, coordinated animal to start with, especially for her age (4) and breed (Australian X thing). So I imagined her turning into kind of bean-bag chair, on the Phenobarb, lying around squashily and rolling down the stairs when nudged.

But I'd done all I could do to put it off, so I gave Happy-the-dog (as printed on the prescription bottle) her first dose as somberly and compassionately as I could. As if I was fulfilling someone's dying wish by smothering them with a pillow.

And she loved it. I mean she loved the spoonful of wet cat food I hid it in, and amazingly enough, she didn't fall over an hour later with her legs in the air and pass out for the rest of the day. Which would be normal for her, actually. But no, she thrived on the fucking stuff. I'm telling you, she got more excited than I've seen her in ages. Happy-the-dog was up and down the stairs like a flash, wagging her tail and growling around the designer tennis ball in her mouth. This being the designer tennis ball I spent way too much money on in Manhattan when I was walking around during Ivy's nap and missing my dog like crazy. For the first time, I felt validated in buying the stupid thing. And in starting her on pills. That too.

It's been almost a week now, and she's still doing incredibly well. She seems livelier than before, and only slightly more clumsy. I'm told most dogs adapt to the medication within a month or so, and I'm hoping she'll back to her old, only slightly more graceful self by then. But she seems, um, happy in the meantime. And I'm relieved. So that's good news.

Plus, now that I've gone ahead and got her loaded up with the paradoxical pills of wonder, and found that it hasn't ruined her life, I've decided to hold off on two of the three major tests that would prove, as much as possible, that she IS epileptic. Namely, the spinal tap and the cat scan. Both of which, the specialist assured me, would almost certainly come up with nothing abnormal, both of which would involve discomfort for Happy, and both of which would leave me just about penniless. Just about.

I think I was determined to go through with all three tests, to start with, because I was still hoping that it wasn't epilepsy. Even if it turned out to be a brain tumor or something much more dangerous, I was holding out for the possibility of a quick fix. To make it all better.

It dawns on me, (it has before), that this has more to do with my own medical background than Happy-the-dog's. When I started to have joint trouble in highschool, I couldn't bear the idea of arthritis. I went to all these doctors and did all these tests, and arthritis seemed more and more likely, but I still hoped it was something stranger, more rare. Like a nice bone disease. Wouldn't that be swell?

Even though arthritis was something that could be fixed, (not cured, I mean, but held in remission, using expensive American drugs I'd have to shoot into my thighs twice a week), I resisted the diagnosis like a crazy person. I didn't want something that had to be mantained. I didn't want an ongoing prescription. All that shit. I wanted it to go away.

But, blah blah blah, it doesn't always go away. Epilepsy is progressive, like my kind of arthritis, and the only way to keep it from fucking with your life is to treat it as you go. You can't just ignore it. And it could be so much worse.

See how I learn and grow? See how my dog helps me understand my life? Ain't that grand?

Yeah. Anyway.

I worked my last official day of work on the first of September. It was fun and sad. I only wanted Ivy to see the fun of it, though. I didn't want her to get the sense of something ending. Because I'll always be in her life. Just not as regularly. Not as often. So we had fun.

And then I babysat her the next night, and we watched That Darn Cat and she had a bubble bath that she told me featured too many bubbles. When I left she was running around the house saying "Catch me! Catch me!" She was having fun. I was leaving. It was how I wanted it, and it felt normal, but also weird that it felt normal. Because, you know, I haven't even missed a day of work yet, but I'm no longer a part-time nanny. And I know it.

It's a good thing Ivy can't ever stop being Ivy. That would be the last straw, I'm telling you.

Today I went to my first class, and it was a good one. I liked my professor, I liked the new couches in the creative writing lounge, and I liked how successfully I avoided the mobs of highly-stimulated first years that were all over campus. Driving home, I was exhausted and pessimistic, but I figure for a first day back, that's normal. It's the first days that fill me with excited hope that I have to watch out for. Not to mention, I was feeling slightly queasy.

The last couple of days have been hard on my stomach. I don't know if I had some bad carrot juice or something, but I've been feeling horrible after every meal, and sometimes all night long. Specifically, there's wanting to puke, and there's pain. As in stomach pain of the ulcerous variety. Delightful? No indeed! I've been self-medicating with glasses of skim milk, at night, which seems to help. A little.

So: Doctor's appointment on Monday. This is a reminder to myself. DO NOT forget the doctor. DO NOT forget her, man. She holds all the cards.

And probably there's more backed-up stuff I could get into, but I'm winding down.

Winding down.

Stopped.