I keep meaning to post, and I write small entries in my head but then when I get to it I find that my time is gone. For example, right now I should be either in bed or getting ready and I'm not. I'm here, procrastinating. I'm going to try to make a real effort to change my habits, especially my computer habits, I spend too much time playing those damn facebook games :\ In my English class our teacher had us write and submit an op-ed to a paper of our choice, and it was such a fun thing to do that I'm going to keep submitting until I get success! Or until they send me an e-mail asking me to stop because they can't bear anymore :p, whichever comes first is fine with me. My English teacher commends me for my writing though, so I feel good about that for the first time in a long time. Probably since Daniel Duffy at QMC told me I would get published one day, then later in the semester told me I was a failure. Good times. I am also finished (almost) in my painting class, which is good! I have no idea where I'm going to put 6 huge paintings and 5 small ones. Things are going fairly well at work, which is great. It's so validating to be able to say to people that I am a working photographer. Brian and I did the whole 'legal but not really' anniversary a month ago. Hard to believe it's been a year. Soon we have his brothers wedding coming up but that's a whole can of worms that deserves it's own entry.
I'm a little worried about our iguana, Ziggy (technically Brians iguana but I take care of him most of the time). He's getting on in years (will be 11 or 12 this year, we're not sure how old he was when Brian got him) and iguanas usually don't live much longer than this in captivity. In 2007 he had to have most of his tail amputated because necrosis had set in (basically, it had died). A couple of weeks ago we went to El Paso for spring break and when we drove to Austin, we left Ziggy and the rats with Brians parents. Something happened to Ziggy while he was in the cage outside and we think that his tail might be broken. Initially we were going to take him to the vet as soon as we got back but he didn't seem to be in any pain (unless you touched his tail) and he could still move his tail around, so we thought that maybe it wasn't as serious as we first thought. Now i'm not so sure, mostly because he's *really* sensitive about you touching his tail, when he wasn't before, and although he can move it I've been reading how an iguana can break the bones in his tail but not the ligaments, so they can still move it.. so we're going to take him to the vet asap I'm worried about losing him though, when I first met Ziggy I would never have thought I'd get so soppy about an Iguana, but he has real moments of personality.. and I think because most of the time he's snoozing or otherwise perfectly still, when he does show some personality it's even more special. He has gotten in the habit of, every time I bring him inside from basking outside, following me into the kitchen and waiting by the fridge for me to feed him, and a couple of times while I've been cutting up his veggies he'll walk right up to me and peer intently up like 'cmon, hurry up, im hungry' Also, his habit of claiming every new piece of land by flapping his neck at it is totally cute. Anyway, if *I* feel this way about losing him, after only knowing him for 4 years, how will Brian handle it? I hope he's ok.
Brian has/had spring break this week so we drove down to El Paso for a couple of days, then drove to Austin for a couple of days so Brian could meet his nephew.. and now we're back in El Paso. So..kinda busy..but in a good way. Brians mom just bought herself a new car (the Hyundai Genesis, which is a lot cooler than it looks in the ad) so she decided to give me her old one. So I have a car! And I don't have to pay for it! Hooray! Lots of exclamations. I feel very lucky, and also slightly undeserving. The car is super nice. It's a 2001 model and has 100,000 miles on the clock but drives very well and when you get up to 80mph it doesnt feel like it's going to shake itself to pieces like Brians car does. It's a Mitsubishi Eclipse and the cruise control came in veeery handy when we drove to Austin.
The night we drove into El Paso Brians parents wanted us to go out with them because they were meeting some old friends for dinner. During the meal one of them turns to us and asks us if we are going to go to the tax protests that happened today. Ruth asked what they were about and the woman said 'about taxation without representation' and several of the other women turned around and said things like 'about how this country is slowly turning socialist' (i had to turn my head because my eyes started rolling instinctively). Brian did a wonderful thing and asked them what Obama had done, because he hadn't heard anything about him raising taxes (he was playing dumb).. and their reply was, 'well, it's just a protest really' and 'well, it's scary that he just removed that CEO, i'm frightened!' (I had visions of Glenn Beck).
Fact is, we're actually getting more money now that Obamas in office.. and, it's kinda funny that everyone is comparing the protests that happened today to the Boston Tea Party cause what people tend to forget is that the Boston Tea Party wasn't about the taxes being too high, but about them not being high enough.
'you have awful friends and all you really want is to go home and live with your mother.' yeah. Been a rough couple of days. Highlight of my week was when I biked to trader joes, then while on the journey back I was daydreaming and looking at the palm trees when I saw something that made me exclaim 'what the HELL is that?'. It was a mobile phone tower disguised as a palm tree. Masquerading. The funniest fucking thing I have seen in a long time. Complete with fake plastic palm leaves.
I just found out that the university health policy I had been part of no longer applies to me because I'm currently taking a leave of absence. This leaves me without any kind of health insurance. Adding me to Brians plan would cost $500 a month (we don't have that) and the kind of job I'll be getting when i get my EAD will probably be without health insurance. I'm kinda freaked out about this as I've been meaning to go to the Doc about a pain in my side that's been around on and off for a year. What happens to me if I get sick? Am I left out in a hallway to bleed to death? eeep. I had the bright idea of getting health insurance but the fact that i'm not living in the uk voids me for any kind of policy. I don't know what to do.
I keep having apocalypse themed dreams. It's always a passenger plane dropping a bomb. After I wake up I inevitably think, 'a passenger plane..? Really?' This makes three such dreams this week. There is a lot of stuff I have to do today that I'm procrastinating about.. highest of which is going to talk to a priest.. something I haven't done for a fair few years. After watching 'for the bible tells me so' I am somehow.. reconciled with my upbringing but I cannot in all honesty say that I believe. I just hope that question does not come up. I watched 'the last templar' last night, hoping that it would be good and I was disappointed. Ah, the dreams. Now that I think about it, it's because I read 'The Road' by Cormac McCarthy last week.
Tomorrow I am flying to Austin for Brians sister's baby shower. I am looking forward to it. Every time I fly anywhere now I reconcile to the fact that I could die on the journey and so today I've been having 'this is the last time I do this' thoughts.. which is bizarre I know. It annoys me because I overanalyze everything and my first flight was an amazing experience, I was completely calm about the whole thing. So much so that when I had to fly again I thought 'why was I so calm? What is happening? Why arent you nervous, you're in a tin can 20,000 feet above oblivion, if there was a hole in the plane you'd freeze to death, I wonder if I would die on the way down or when I hit the ground, is there oxygen this high up? Why is the plane bumpy? Why is that fat guy looking at me? Where are all the flight attendants? I haven't heard the captain speak for a while....' and so on. At times like this what I really need is a swift slap to the face. Also, last time I went to see Brians sister I felt sososo sick the whole trip... so.. I'm just nervous about the whole thing. I'm flying with Brian's mom and Oma, possibly also Brians Grandma and Aunt.. But first we have to drive to El Paso tonight.. I think we'll stop at beyond bread on the way out of town for my last Avi's Avo.
As I am currently in immigration limbo land I am unable to work or study so I've spent this week bored out of my skull trapped in the house. It doesnt help that when I leave to check the mail box I get beeped at by passing cars or otherwise heckled. This is kindof a rough neighbourhood. Yesterday while I was outside cleaning my rats cage there was a guy walking his kid down the street. The little boy seemed fascinated by the flagstone path which leads up to our front door and the father was happy to let him explore my front garden without even acklowedging the fact that I was looking at them.. even an awkward 'sorry' would have been ok. Of course, I didn't mind that this boy was having fun in my front garden but it would be nice for the intrusion into our property to have been acknowledged. Because I am bored out of my skull, and becoming depressed I want to ask what you would do in my situation...because if I don't take myself in hand soon I will never leave the house again and become incredibly depressed. So what would you do if you weren't allowed to work for a month (ish), couldn't spend any money and only form of transport was your bicycle?
So, no one sent me an e-mail or anything. Still no phone calls. I was in El Paso but I sent an email to everyone giving my phone number there so there's no excuse really.. apart from 'I was too busy'. I suppose. I had an ok birthday. As is always the case on the day, no one really cares about me but more about the end of the year. I guess this might be a set up to my personality, always in the background to something else. I feel slightly down today (as you can tell) for a couple of reasons. The water pipes on our house burst while we were away and thankfully our neighbours shut off the main. Still, yesterday we had no water, which sounds fine when you first hear it but then when you need to use the loo and discover the whole thing is empty.. and when you want to cook something, do some washing up etc.. then today I looked on ba.co.uk and discovered they're having a massive sale so that it would cost me $500 to visit home UNTIL i discover that the fare only applies to round-trips starting in london and it will in fact cost me $1400 the next time I want to visit home. So.. unless some other carrier has a sale this year I'm thinking about calling the wedding off. I don't want to force people to pay $1400 to go to my wedding and I'm not sure that Brian and myself can afford $2800 as well as the other costs (reception, food, venue, suit hire) So.. good start to a saturday overall.
I've heard a lot of this kind of statement since tuesday.. and it's starting to grate on me. Only in America, which is the only country in the world that has a history of racism could a black man rise to lead..? um.. um.. south africa..anyone?
“Hello, it's Sophie. Thank you to the person who just gave me a paid membership. So I can inundate you all with voice text. I'm feeling better now because I'm taking antibiotics. I had to go to the Urgent Care Health Centre at the University on Friday. I actually just rang up for an appointment to see a doctor because I'm still feeling kinda under the weather and the lady on the phone said that I needed to go in urgently. So I did and sorry. The doctor's listened to me breathe and he looked at my rash and then they took some X rays of my lungs which showed that I actually have pneumonia. I have pneumonia, me and because of the rash that I have. The doctor said that he, his first instinct was Valley Fever which if you know anything about ___ is quiet common here and was one of the reasons that I did not want to come ___ and if, if I do actually have Valley Fever. I'll be very upset and I don't find until about Friday whether I do or do not have it because the blood tests will take a while. Even if they come back negative, it may just be that I don't have enough of it in my blood yet to try a give a positive reading but he says that he's pretty sure I have Valley Fever and I'm really annoyed about that. Anyway good thing's that I have a new bike which is probably the best bike I have ever had. I tried it, I tried riding it to school today and it's really really smooth, really fast. It has this, thin tyres that racing bikes have but it's not a racing bike and yeah that's a really nice bike. Anyway I'm supposed to be studying. So I hope everyone else is well and that's it. Text me. Bye”
My body feels weird...like it doesnt belong to me and i'm this thing attached to it, following it around like a balloon tied to my wrist. my head kinda pounds and it hurts to draw breath in too far.. I don't know if I have a fever because I've never had one before.. and I'm alone here wondering if I can go to school tomorrow when I know I have to. I went today and everytime I breathed in too far I felt like I was going to gag. I hate self-pitying myself so I'm going to try to totally ignore it, take some paracetamol and play silent hill 2. My skin feels weird and when I get goosebumps they hurt me. I wanted to do a voice post but you need a paid account..so, oh well.
it's cold! In Tucson! What's going on?! How many more exclamation marks can I use?!! Apparently this is the fallout from hurricane something that's coming in off the baja peninsula. Anyway, it's brr cold. Earlier we went to Fry's to buy whipped cream and condoms (totally unrelated items) and didn't realise until we got to the cashier the connotations between them. um. Hello odd look. Apart from that we've had a good weekend. One of my newest rats has been really ill but I think she's on the mend now. Tonight we're watching X-files. yay!
Came home from school to find our iguana Dragon dead in his cage. It's all too easy to assign blame here and I feel so incredibly guilty just for being at school today and not being here to see if he was ok. It was sudden. On sunday we had him in the house and he was hanging out in the spare room. So I'll remember the good things. Dragon, you were the first iguana that let me pet you. Dragon, watching you eat made me laugh every time. Even with your tendency to want to whip me, the expression on your face when I came near you was priceless. Your overbite was the cutest thing ever. When we took you for a walk in the park, everyone thought you were so cool. Watching you walk around, swim and just be yourself was wonderful. One time we had Dragon loose in the house when we hear a thunk from the kitchen, we go in to investigate and there is dragon, sitting on some tins of food in the pantry, looking up at us like 'what?' Once we came home after a day out when he was loose in the house to find him curled up on my clothes shelf. I am thankful that we were able to keep you healthy and that you grew into such a big juvenile. I am so sorry that we didn't do better for you, you could have had a far longer life. It didn't need to end so soon and in such a crappy way (alone in his cage). Rest in Peace.
today as I was walking along the downstairs corridor bit of the ILC.. a place I didn't even know existed until a while ago (it's beneath the library, and it's like another world!) I started thinking about some of the problems I have with christianity, and christians. I say this as someone who, until I started to really question things in my late teens, was convinced that there was a big beard in the sky, smiling benevolently down on me. And even, as I say, type or think these things a part of me is praying for the salvation of my eternal soul which has surely been damned for eternity.
And that problem (for now) is this. The last book in the bible, the book of revelation, or, as I like to think of it..John of patmos goes to town and gets ratted.
It's the rapture.. and armageddon in general, the coming of the end of days. If you're a christian, and you believe that what the bible says is true, that Jesus lived (for the record, I do believe this) and died on this earth. Then.. you believe in the lessons his discipiles left behind. The book of revelation was always a bit of a mystery to me. Here were all these other books based around, as I saw it, morality tales and guides on living life.. and shoved in at the end a whacked out description of the end of days. A lot of my R.E. teachers tried to dismiss the book as metaphorical, parabolical or in some way, loftier than it is. anyway, ANYway.. im getting sidetracked.. my actual point is this.
A Christian leader can never truly want to make the world a better place for humanity, because God will do it for him. Oh, wait, sorry, god will 'work' through him to make the world better for us. Still, these fundamental christians don't want to change the world. They want the rapture..they can't wait! They want armageddon.. the world to end and for them to be judged. Because they know they'll get to heaven and be looking down on the rest of us going 'HA! Told you so'.
I've been trying to think a lot lately about what I actually believe, and I have to say.. I believe in humanity. We do not need God to be great, or to change things. We only need each other.
So, for now, I'm more of a Humanist than anything else.
I'm getting sick. Brian came home with a cold on friday and now i'm succumbing. He got it from his kids as last week was his first full week back at school. saturday we went down to the dmv to get my learners permit! I passed the written test first go and now I'm alllowed to drive with him in the car. It's a lot of fun and I'm learning really well. I was going at 50mph yesterday! And I drove part way up mount lemmon. I also drove along a busy highway altho i got a little freaked out and almost pulled over at one point. yesterday we went hiking up a stream in the mountains and I fell twice. The first time I was going down a hill and the earth was wet so i skidded and landed on my arse. (my arse has always been handy padding for falls) the next time I was climbing up a rock, slipped and fell sideways then ended up on my arse in a bush, i leapt up thinking 'bugs, spiders, eek!' and almost fell again. The second time I fell I got a scrape on my leg but we carried on anyway. It reminded me a lot of when I was a kid and you kinda were afraid of falling but also had to just think that it wouldnt happen otherwise youd achieve nothing. Like when you learn to ride a bike, you know you're going to fall off, you know you're going to end up with scabs and bruises eventually but the idea of riding the bike places makes you not be afraid. This is an important lesson. It's also why i need to learn how to swim, because I am afraid in the water, but I need to face that fear and just BE scared.. then get over it.
I'm back in america already. It's too hot here! Although we did have some wicked storms last night so today, instead of being 38 degrees its somewhere around a happy 27. Brian goes back to work in one weeks time and we're trying to figure out what we want to do with our week. I go back to school on the 25th August so I have plenty of time to doss around. I'm starting to try to be healthy again. Sometimes it's hard when you're happy to maintain that level of self critique that helped you to diet when you were single. But I am trying! I put on some weight last semester and I tried so hard to figure out why, my measurements have barely changed but then I remembered that muscle weighs more than fat and my legs have become less jelly like of late. I find it so hard to exercise because I don't become slimmer, I get a figure like an tri-athlete..and I don't want to look amazonian. My rats are doing well but I am worried about their interaction, Daisy is a big softy who just wants Betty to love her SO MUCH so she jumps on her and demands affection, when she doesnt get it she over grooms Betty to the point where Betty is losing fur around her shoulders because of Daisy. Basically she's Lenny in rodent form. I think if I get another rat it would ease the tension off of Betty but you can never tell what's going to happen. I found a way of making the dvd player region free! So I've been making Brian watch Doctor Who..heeh! We watched Vengeance on Varos the other day, next I want him to watch Tomb of the Cybermen or the Mind Robber. I didn't bring all of my DW DVDs with me tho because I wasn't sure if there was a way of making this player region free. The iguanas are ok too, at the moment they're sizing each other up in the living room. Dragon is so funny when he tries to make himself big, he puffs out and leans away from Ziggy..'look buddy, im bigger than you, fuck off' then Ziggy nods his head at him so show off his far bigger dewlap.
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madraykin's journal
worried
awake
silly
lethargic
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