Not Invisible

Contrary to popular belief - well, my belief anyway - I am not drifting through my days on campus complete unnoticed. Today, for the first time since classes started, I actually talked to people /outside/ of classes and had comments made that showed they obviously had noticed me previously! First off, I passed a LRPS geek in the hallway and he winked at me and then in Soc, the girl I usually end up sitting next to actually came up to me /before/ class to make sure we could sit together. After Religion, Emily (she has a name!) and I walked to SUB together chatting about random things, but mostly stupid boys who don't return phone calls and then when I bumped into her while registering for my Capoeira class she commented that she was not, in fact, stalking me, 'twas merely a coincidence. But the coolest moment was during Persian when we were looking at the word love (hobb) and I had asked if that could be used as in "I love you." Ahmad answered the question (no) and then turned to someone else's question when the older guy behind me leaned over and said, "I think it can be used in reference to things though. Like with that tshirt you had - I love geeks," and then proceeded to rattle off 'I love geeks' in Persian!! And then to top it all off, the cute guy in my Capoeira class (which by the way, OW) asked if I would be at the roda on Saturday. Eeek - I guess now I'll have to go.

The last several days have been really awful, truth be told, so I needed something good to happen. It was a little overwhelming to be sure and I crashed much harder over a tiny mess-up later in the day because of it but it was a nice feeling for a little while. I really do want to be happy again and I'm trying to figure out how to go about accomplishing that but it's hard. As I remarked to someone the other day, "I don't even wonder anymore if the glass is half-full or half-empty; I have just resigned myself to the fact that I will be perpetually thirsty." But we'll see, I guess. Waiting and wondering is no fun and I'm sure once I get a definite response to the pending email, things will seem a bit better, but until then I'm going to keep trying to find 'normal.' Not average as that contains a certain implied boringness but normal. Just, you know, sane.

***

PS: A funny story I forgot I wanted to tell - So on our lunch break the other day, my torrid lesbian love affair and I wandered over to McDonald's, being both poor and lazy. I asked for my burger and the manager guy (who's been there forever and at least knows some of our staff by name, others just sight) walks by and says 'no.' I laugh and add please to my request. He still responds 'no.' I pout and say, "But I'm having a really bad day." At which point he looked at me with mock sincerity and said, "Well in that case, what can I do to make sure you have a McMarvelous day?" T and I nearly died at that point - we were laughing so hard, we ended up doubled up and then to top it off he gave us little straw toppers for our drinks to make us smile. The rest of the day, everytime we passed each other in the store, neither of us even had to say anything and we started laughing. And on that note, I hope that you too are having a McMarvelous day!

Rapid Fire

It burns! It burns like... tiger balm?

Tick, tock, tick, tock

Kif-kif tommorow. Same shit. Different day.

Tick, manic, tock, depressive

And it's always times like these that I think of you and I wonder if you ever think of me...

Tick, angel, tock, devil

100/44 is probably not a good blood pressure rating. Maybe I should do something about that.

Tick, wet, tock, dry

The good ones are always taken.

Tick, up, tock, crashing

Whose bright idea was this anyways?

Tick, caffeine, tock, painkillers

There's always another hour in the day...

Tick, reading, tock, crying

Plus four against clevage... I'm losing my touch.

Tick, manic, tock, depressive

It's a fine, fine line - a line that's getting blurrier day by day.

Tick, tock, tick, tock

And then, because they were both Englishwomen and their hearts were somewhat broken, they turned back into the room and put on the kettle and made themselves a cup of tea. (Eva Ibbotson, Song For Summer)

Today Has Not Been Okay

One of the coolest musicians Alyssa has introduced me to is Emiliana Torrini, an indie Icelandic/Italian singer who I have totally fallen in love with. I highly recommend trying to track down her music or if you can't, email me and I'll send you a something to listen to. One of my favourite of her songs sings:

Wind has burned your skin
The lovely air so thin
The salty water's underneath your feet
No one's gone in vain
Here is where you'll stay
'Cause life has been insane but
Today has been ok
Today has been ok

Today has not, by any stretch of the imagination been okay. Actually, the entire past few weeks haven't been okay. Not okay in the way that someone I used to love with all of my heart and who I believed loved me, refuses to speak to me, return my phone calls or even make eye contact with me if we're in the same room. Not okay in that I spend my days at school being incredibly lonely and finding it really hard to concentrate because I'm wishing I wasn't alone. Not okay in that it feels like I'm being phased out at work - like if I stopped going nobody would notice. Not okay in that the manic is getting more manic and the depressive is getting more depressive and it's getting harder to deny that there might be more going on here than just depression. Not okay in that I feel physically sick all the time, like I want to puke or pass out or something. Not okay in that after two years I finally got up the courage to go back to Capoeira and I felt so out of place and unwanted. Not okay. Not okay, not okay, not okay....

*sigh* I am not the broken heart kind of girl. I don't stop functioning because some asshole told me I wasn't good enough for him - it's just not me. So why is this still hurting? Why has my life started to unravel again when I just was getting it back together? I have put too damn much effort into getting better to go back to who I was. I can't do it, I won't do it. I honestly don't have time to do it. But somedays, I just can't run fast enough to stay ahead of the depression.

Geeks on Ice

And I quote, "But the scariest thing is that rollerskates don't seem to impeded your enthusiam, or demonstration thereof, AT ALL!" It was the nicest thing anyone said to me all evening *grin* You've gotta love the Crazy Tea Monkey Ninja...

Last night was the Rollerskating Birthday Party for Star, myself and several other fabulous Babes. And all I can say is wow. That was without a doubt our best birthday party ever. I'm in incredible amounts of pain today and feel hungover despite not drinking at all but it was totally worth it. The smiles and the laughing and watching my friends fall on their asses while never once falling myself... it was priceless. That many romantic entaglements (see: girlfriends, boyfriends, exs, torrid lesbian love affairs, etc) in one place should have been a disaster. The night probably ought to have ended with blood on the floor, weeping over bodies or at least angry bitchy people but it didn't. For one night we got to be happy. I couldn't have asked for a better birthday present.

Plus I got gropped, petted, bitten, cuddled, nuzzled, kissed and otherwise fondled by all of my very favourite people and then some. It's good to be a Pixie.

Study Hard, Be Evil

One day of classes down, many many more to go. For those of you awaiting, apparently with baited breath, an update on my University career (*ahem* Tania *ahem*), here you go:

Poli Sci 101- First class of the morning and I kind of got lost finding it but was still early. Yay. Professor Brodie seems cool, sure know what she's talking about and made a few Bush jokes so I figure she can't be all bad. My only complaint is that after publishing our textbook list, they decided to not use one of them and since I bought it used I can't return it. Ah well. These things happen. Or so I hear.

Engl 113- This felt like a high school english class, probably not helped by the fact that two girls I knew when they were little grade 7s at Heights were in that class. But they were so wee! The prof is from Brazil though so I look forward to picking her brain. And it's literature in global perspectives so that ought to make it marginally more interesting than your average english class. As someone told me, it's just something you have to get through.

Soc 100- Big class! Well considering one of my classes only has 14 students, 275 seems huge. But Professor Grakal is incredibly passionate about the subject and it sounds like it's going to be so cool. She's a criminologist by trade and has done a lot of research on prison violence and gangs which she uses examples from. The storyteller in me loves it too - yea, I'm a geek. The guy and girl I ended up sitting next to seemed nice enough but we'll see if I ever speak to them again. Tory Turtle is very warm with that many students in it. Memo to self: Wear layers.

Relig 101- For all the Trekkies out there, my Religions of the World class is being taught by Q. Okay, not technically the Q but he looks like him and has the same facial expressions and it makes me smile. His accent also tends to wander which is amusing. Fall semester we do the Eastern religions and the outline looks really interesting. Not only do we cover Buddhist and Hindu, we go Sikh, Jainism, Shamanism in East Asia, Shinto, Daoism and Confucianism. Whee! I'm terribly excited.

Persian 111- I was terrified for this class, quite frankly. I figured I'd be the only young, white person in the class but I'm not! Granted, I'm still in the minority but there's a really wide variety of people in that class with really different reasons for wanting to take it. One guy's wife is Persian, a couple others have one parent from Iran and want to learn more about their ancestery; one woman is taking Middle Eastern Studies and another is studying Comparative Politics focusing on Islamic countries. It's really cool. And the professor, Dr. Sabetghadam (which means faithful) is very passionate about Persian culture and language and waves his hands a lot which makes the French part of me very happy. He also made it clear that we would go slowly in this course and he wanted us all to understand everything before moving on. Yay! Let's just hope my track record with picking up languages keeps up.

And that's my schedule. The rest of the time I spent sitting around reading, feeling kind of lonely honestly. It's hard not to know anyone there but I figure I'll get used to it. I did finis the book I was reading which was good. It was a very long day though. I was exhausted by the time I got home and then work today was equally as exhausting. So I suspect that burnout is probably scheduled for my near future but ah well, it'll be worth it. Right? Right.

Well tonight is off to BPs and Jekyll's with Star to distribute propaganda. You should come - I'll probably be wearing leather pants....

Oh and sidenote: A plethora of good music is coming to Edmonton and I desperately am wishing for more time and/or money. Fianna Fummana will be at Festival Place on Sept 26, Blue October is playing the Starlite Room on Sept 31, and then sometime in the new year Festival Place is hosting Alfie Zappacosta and Shooglenifty. Sigh...

I Can Cook Too

Last night, I actually cooked a meal. Of real food! We're talking rice and stir-fried chicken with peas and carrots and it was good. I mean, actually tasty. I'm so proud *grin*

Oddly enough, I'm doing the picture of domesticity today. Cleaning, organizing, getting things ready for school next week. It's strange but almost comforting. I used to clean all the time. Three o'clock in the morning, I was frantically scrubbing or dusting or shuffling papers. It was the only thing that calmed me down and made me feel better. Since I started being less crazy, I've been cleaning a lot less. I've learned how to live in a mess and while I don't necessarily like it, I can survive now. It doesn't induce anxiety attacks anymore, which is cool. So today I'm trying to catch up on much too much cleaning that I haven't had time for. The list includes things like cleaning the toilet and the sinks in both bathrooms, dusting my desk off, putting away the pile of stuff at the end of bed, doing laundry, finishing emptying out my last box of office stuff, and maybe vacumning my room if I can get it clean enough. I've already done the shower, garbages, vacumned the main room and, the most terrifying task, cleaned out my hairbrush.

You see, I have long red hair, as those of you who know me in real life will know, and I use a round brush for said hair. It has been pointed out to me that a round brush is really not the best idea but I've yet to find a flat brush that I actually liked, excepting Rob's, of course, which moved out. And my hair sheds a lot in general. So my hairbrush fills up with hair rather quickly and looks kind of awful. Except it really doesn't bother me so I don't tend to bother with it. It drove Rob up the wall though to the point where he would sit down and clean it out just so he didn't have to look at it. Boys are strange... But cleaning out my hairbrush is an ordeal. You have to sit down with a pair of scissors and a garbage can and cut loose the hair and then rip it out, slowly and painfully. And what's the point really, because two days from now it'll look exactly the same. It is one of the things that occasionally makes me wish I had short hair again.

In other news, I auditioned for Gypsy out at Festival Place and I have a callback on Wednesday. Unlike The Sound of Music, I am not going to get my hopes up because damn that really hurt last time, but I'm excited to go anyways. I mean, it's a musical about strippers. How can you go wrong!?! And speaking of ways you can't go wrong, my favourite Bunny and I went shopping this afternoon and I got a fabulous rainbow striped sweater and shoes with dice on them! And she got purple gingham tights which are just so cool. And I finally got ma jumelle her birthday present so I'm no longer a horrible sister. Yay me!

And speaking of my sister - we have decided to run a live Mage game. Propaganda will hopefully be out sometime this week. We're very excited - you should be too ;) Anyways, I'm off to be productive again. It's less fun but it has to be done. Le sigh...

PS: I updated weblog links! Check out other cool people's ramblings...