Wednesday, August 28, 2002

Cooking With Power Tools
#1: Creme Bruleee, making use of a blowtorch
#2: Cotton Candy, making use of a cement mixer
#3: ...ummm, we're still working on this one...

One of the above is on my to-do list for Friday. I am debating the possibility of borrowing a face-guard from the lab to complete the welder look while making dessert. As long as I rinse off all the ethidium bromide it should be worth the humerous effect.

Monday, August 26, 2002

Summary of the weekend
-Tenuous peace restored on Friday night, reprieve granted in the form of IHOP breakfast on Saturday.
-Absence of wallet (and thus I.D) noticed after said breakfast.
-Much panicking on part of Lump.
-Much determination to get him on the f***ing flight anyway on part of the reluctant parent substitutes/keepers. (that's me and Matt)
-Found out a police report stating wallet was stolen would suffice in place of I.D.
-Lovely, wonderful, sanity-saving La Mesa police officer named Coffey gave us a police report on the spot, rather than enforcing the usual 8 day wait.
-Lump successfully ushered through airport security and out of our lives.
-Speedy exit from airport.
-Much jubilation
-Followed by…
-SIX HOURS of scrubbing, mopping, dusting, de-grunging, swearing at randomly sprinkled tortilla crumbs and general cleaning rendered the apartment once more homey and presentable.
-The happy couple (that's me and Matt again) proceeded to a refreshingly bohemian café in La Mesa to reinforce the ability to be free grownups without the worry of what they'll come home to, and especially the ability to exist WITHOUT AN AUDIENCE.
-There was further exercising of the joys of lacking an audience after returning home from the café…


Friday, August 23, 2002

Countdown to Lump's departure: 24hrs 40ish min

I had so hoped that he would go through the last week here without new incidents of belligerence, it was bad enough that he continued to steal food when he had supplies of his own in the larder, but rifling through his brothers things, not even just the stuff in the living room, going into the back of the closet and upturning boxes and drawers...

No farewell breakfast at IHOP for this boy, my only objection to Matt's new idea of dropping him at the airport at 8am is that we will have no way to be certain he's actually ON his plane!

How can someone who has clearly demonstrated possesion of a workable intelligence be so excruciatingly stupid in his behaviour? He is alienating every person who could possibly give a damn what happens to him, one by one he drives them away by refusing to treat anyone like a human being. Then he rails about the unfairness of being treated like a child, or a misbehaving pet.

Thursday, August 22, 2002

Countdown to Edinburgh: 16 weeks

Countdown to Lump's departure: 53 hours

Wednesday, August 21, 2002

Immunoprecipitation precipitating? [check]
Eaten breakfast? [check]
Coffee? [check]
Emailed everyone I can think of? [check]
Twiddled thumbs? [check]
Twiddled them in the other direction for variety? [check]

*sigh* I guess I have to go transfer stuff back to our freezer now then.

Tuesday, August 20, 2002

Did I ever point out that I've now had this journal over a year?

Well, um, I have.

Which means there's a whole heaping helping of anniversaries of last year's significant happenings on the way. The first would be the day I left Edinburgh for Atlanta; followed by Sept 11th, then the day I left Atlanta...

I most likely will not mark these dates, it may not even occur to me on the day itself when there is one. Samhain will be big, though it's not an anniversary of anything other than the last Samhain. It marks the end of my first entire year in San Diego: my fresh start year. It felt like much more of a dividing line than the day I arrived here. When I landed I still had to find a job, sort my head out, remember who I was and what I was looking for, clear up the last vestiges of bullshit with Loki. Well…ok, tell him plainly that by moving 3000miles away I was, in fact, breaking up with him, not just taking a little space to clear my head. Admittedly I'd assumed (or hoped) that message was implicit in the whole moving 3000 miles thing, but I suppose some people don't take hints. Especially if they don't want to believe them. No, this is not meant as a dig, I am thinking out loud, it's a journal after all.

It was after last Samhain that I got my job, my driving license, my car…saw my family again with most of my mental faculties restored (as opposed to when I left them in August, when I was just about functional, but that was it) moved into the new apartment, turned 22, took up some activities again, started dating, made new friends, fell in love. November is when my life started movingagain, this life I have now, it all took off after that blue moon.

I'm sure there will be some startling changes over the next 12 months as well, but somehow I don't think they will be quite as dramatic or fundamental as these have been. It will be a continuation of a path, not the forging of a whole new one.

I'm looking forward to my first Autumn with Matt, our summer got eaten up with business and crisis after crisis. Even if it isn't a peaceful last quarter, it'll still be nice to watch the seasons change over together.


Tuesday Boredom strikes again.

Last weekend a distant memory, next weekend too far off to do any good...

More coffee, that'll help. *twitch* Yeeeessss... more coffeeeeeeeee... perrreeciousssss coffeeeeeeeeee...

*looks around in dismay for the source of the Gollum voice in her head*

Monday, August 19, 2002

*happy dance*

Lump goes home on Saturday. I plan to arrive with a bunch of cleaning supplies and help Matt blitz his apartment after the departure, both a cleaning and a cleansing ritual combined.

Right now I'm starting the dreaded defrosting of the -20C freezer, the top half of which is almost a solid chunk of ice...and it's all grey and overcast outside...and I have cramps...but that doesn't matter because I got pouncedthis morning.

Me? In a good mood? Whyever would that be??



Wednesday, August 14, 2002

Progress Report
Agent: Ash
Mission: Introspection
Subject: Why so many shitty relationships?

I'm afraid the pie charts will have to wait a little longer: I haven't quantified it all yet, but I do have a great deal of qualitative evidence. It took only 45 minutes with Dr Baker to crystallize it too. He's that good at his job.

Or I'm that obvious.

Anyway: I keep coming back to two main underlying factors, which are most likely closely related, or at the very least one of them feeds into the other. The first, most fundamental one is the dependency "issue", which encompasses so many of the problems and repeated patterns in my bad relationships and friendships it isn't even vaguely funny. The secondary one is the feeling that I'm somehow damaged or tarnished by my experiences. Not that I'm dirty: for some reason I never had that, more that I'm fractured, broken, the teapot with a chip in the spout that makes it pour wonky, in desperate need of spiritual superglue. It's not even so much the worry that others will view me that way, the problem is that I do. It needs to stop.

No question about it, there is hope, I feel much more myself when I'm being independent, I just need to practice getting to that feeling. Matt is helping enormously, contradictory though it may be to have a boyfriend help you figure out and minimize your dependent tendencies…I think it's because I trust him to be there for me, and I know him to be entirely accepting, even if I he doesn't feel the same way, he believes what I say and that it is important to me. Since I know I can completely be myself around him, there's none of the temptation to change things just to please him.

It's so refreshing to have more friends now who can say "I'm happy for you", or "well if that works for you…" and not have it be a backhanded way of telling you they think you're fucking insane, and stupid to boot. In many ways those other people suffer from codependency just as much as I do, they cannot separate themselves from others, cannot allow someone to be utterly different and not have it be a comment on them. This is why I want to rid myself of it: I don't ever want to be that girl.

Yargh, my life has become a series of countdowns.

Not true really, there's only one that really affects me directly, the Lump's departure will be much more important for Matt, I'm able to pretty much ignore him now. It takes an awful lot for me to really give up on someone, to stop wanting to do nice things for them, but this lad has got to that point. Every time I think of something nice I could bring him, even if it's just handing him some sudafed for stuffed sinuses, I realize that this is reinforcing the idea that if you wait long enough and act pathetic enough, someone will hand you what you need. I have less and less patience with that mentality the more I'm exposed to it.

I've had a lot of things handed to me in this life, my parents are in the middle class income bracket and generous people, but I don't remember ever expecting it. I'll know that I can ask for this or that for Christmas, or that my parents will help me fly out to visit them, but I don't get mad or pouty if they can't afford to, or decide they'd rather upgrade their computer. More often than not I feel as though I've been spoiled, and I feel guilty for having been given some things that others have to work their asses off to obtain. Then I realize that sitting about beating my breast because I'm a poor little not-quite-rich girl would be a waste of all the gifts I've been given, both material and intellectual, by my parents, and that would be ungrateful. The best way to repay it is to improve myself, and build myself up so that I can pass on to my children what my parents gave to me: safety, comfort, travel and intellectual freedom.


Countdown to Edinburgh: 17 weeks

Tuesday, August 13, 2002

Countdown to Lump's Departure...12 days. Otherwise known as too bloody long.

Monday, August 12, 2002

I have recieved a new toy, a life-project, a morale booster, and a challenge from Matt all rolled into one package. The package is in the form of a shiny new Epiphone [>] acoustic guitar, which now lives on a stand at the foot of my bed.

The challenge was delivered in the most agressive tone he's ever used to me and was something along the lines of: I dare you, get better than me, I challenge you to out-play me in two years...I bet you can't do it... Which is horribly cute, because he's teaching meand he immediately followed that statement with a kiss and tacit acknowledgement that he wouldn't have challenged me if he didn't believe I really could overtake him. I don't want to overtake him, but that's only because I don't want it to be a comparison between us. I greatly look forward being able to jam with him. Being able to jam, period actually.

So I have two (fairly) new good friends who are also my teachers in one way or another, and both of them are telling me that in a couple of years I'm gonna be kicking their respective arses, and they revel in that fact. These guys are just natural born teachers, to take such pleasure in the thought of being out-performed by a bunch of whippersnappers. As a method it sure beats the crap out of "well...I'll TRY to teach you...but I'm afraid I'll be so limited by your natural incompetance that you won't ever get very far..."

DAMN my fingertips hurt now.


Friday, August 09, 2002

Countdown to Edinburgh: 18 weeks

Tuesday, August 06, 2002

I forgot to comment on Lughnasah.

A lot of things came together, some of them I didn't even know neededto come together. The festivals can have a habit of doing that. In retrospect, especially the past few cross-quarter days. Beltaine springs to mind...

As soon as the sun set, the beginning of the festival, I knew I should be out in La Mesa with Matt. I didn't know why, I didn't have a feeling of anything being wrong, just that I should be with him for the sabbat.

We were actually marking the day at our apartment, which was the first time we've done that, and it was a really nice idea, I just couldn't settle into it, at the time I thought that maybe being there was wrong, but it was most definitely the not being with Matt, rather than the being around the people who werethere that was causing my unease. So after I'd said a couple of blessings I changed into a skirt and headed out, buying sunflowers on the way. When I got there it turned out that he'd had an argument with Lump, and in the ensuing conversation I learned some more about Matt, and the way he thinks, things that he was worried would put me off…yes I'm being nebulous. Deal with it.

What it comes down to is this: we found yet another thing we agree on, it wasn't something that lack of agreement had really bothered me on, but it still adds another level of connection, another level of comfort. For both of us.

I was meant to be there that Lughnasah, it cemented things for both of us. Especially when added to coming to peace with a few decisions I've made, both recently and in the past. On some levels it bothers me that a high day or a holy day can really have that much effect on my life, but mostly it makes me feel more rooted in my developing faith.

Friday, August 02, 2002

I have been added to the roll at blog sisters [>], I suppose the means I'm oficially a member of the online international villiage, about time considering I've had a presence [>] for over two years now. Go check it out, lots of good debates going on there. Sorry guys, only women get to start threads, but everyone's free to add comments.

Thursday, August 01, 2002

Wow. There's just some things I never thought I'd find cute. Unusual? Yes. Sexy? Very possibly. Cute? Hrrmmmm...

I guess I must be in love.

He told me last night (and this morning) that I keep amazing him. That's the second person I've heard that from recently, and it's even better hearing it from him, because he's been amazing me since the day we met.

Countdown to Edinburgh: 19 weeks.