I've jumped ship and am over at http://radiolariat.blogspot.com/

I plan on keeping a journal that EVEN MY PARENTS CAN READ, and one that gets updated a little more frequently. So, you know, put me on your bookmarks and check up on me every once in a while. I'll be doing the same to you.

Hi.

Things are going well here. Matthew still doesn't have a job and we're pretty broke --so broke, oh man, so broke- but we've got more houseplants than you can shake a stick at and enough tip money to keep us in fresh produce until further notice. He's such a great cook, I'm so lucky. We're eating well, despite not being able to rub two dimes together.

The old assistant manager came back to the cafe after spending the year in British Columbia. She came back wound tighter than a top, but it's nice to have a middle man between us and Cathy. I finally got a raise. Things are clean. The cafe is already hotter than hell and it's only June, but I knew it would be like this.

We've been biking a lot, finding bones in the fields and feathers in the road, and bringing wine to the beach and falling asleep in the sun. My freckles are coming back and my hair is going blonde in places.

I think my parents bought me a digital camera, but it seems to be a birthday present. Seeing as my birthday is in September, I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to show you much of my summer. Trust me, it's scenic. My life is pretty beautiful right now, if not always graceful.

I'm mostly happy, pretty healthy, generally optimistic. I'm pretty run-down these days, but I'm starting to think that's just how it is when you work in the service industry.

I'm working on my very last paper.
My exams are all done, I made it through with a great deal of coffee, chocolate, and tears. In the end, I'm dehydrated but relieved.

I have to say, I've really noticed a huge toll this past year has taken on me physically. I've been tired, undernourished and overworked for weeks on end. Way too stressed, very little down time, and I'm really feeling the effects. I've got a wicked temper these days, and that's saying something.
There's been something grinding in my shoulder for the past few weeks, my gums are red, my hands are dry, my eyes are sore. I need a couple days in the sun.

That being said, this Saturday Matt and I are moving into our
( new apartment. )

We're on the top floor in the back. It's an old building, wood floors, weird angles, tons of light, loads of character. I couldn't be more excited, nervous. I'll show you the inside as soon as I get a camera.
The beat-up building next door, above the bookstore, is an old theatre. Yeah. I can't really explain how awesome Sackville is. Most of the time, anyway.

Those shots are misleading in the fact that they look so urban. You have to realize that this apartment sits on the main intersection of Sackville. Downtown is a two-street, blink-and-you-miss-it affair. We're in the heart of downtown Sackville.

I think it's going to be a wonderful summer. The logistics are still hazy, mostly because of money. Matt still doesn't have a job. I'm taking a spring session course that I can't pay for yet. We don't exactly have first month's rent yet. But we'll get it worked out, because we have no choice. I'm optimistic.

My Dad is bringing me back my bike, with a brand new basket attached so as to ferry books from the library, dinner to the lake, etc. I can't wait for summer to get here.

It'll be here officially when I finish this paper. Only 3000 words between us.

I noticed an empty pregnancy test box in the bathroom of Avard Dixon.
I hope things work out.

The show opens tonight.
The open studio opens next week.
I just got a part in a play that opens before convocation.

I have to finish:
2 6-7 page papers due on Wednesday
1 one-act play to be completed with 10 minutes performed at open studio on the 4-5th and the full script to be handed in on the 14th of April
1 scene from Paradise Lost to recreate on the 6th
1 10 page research paper to be handed in on the 11th
1 9 page term paper to be handed in on the 14th
1 writer's journal to be handed in on the 10th
1 exam on the 14th
1 exam on the 15th
1 exam on the 18th

Also, it's snowing.

I had coffee and vitamins for breakfast. Fourth year blows.
I'll tell you about the good things when I have more time.

So, I'm in the computer lab and I just saw my roommate bike past with his girlfriend sitting on his book rack, and then a few seconds later a big black dog come bolting after them. I'm going outside to check the situation, as he does not own a dog.

After a four-hour tea and study marathon, I've come to the conclusion that February has snuck up on me and pushed me smack into depressed mode. I'm so very tired of having wet feet and cold fingers and being tired.

Dear Livejournal,
mood: apathetic.

Just kidding. Christmas was festive, though I moped excessively about missing Matt while he Christmased with his family in Fredericton. I spent too much money in order to display my love for my family in material things, was given some lovely things, had some heart-to-hearts with folks I only see around the holidays. I met a new cousin, Regan Elyse, an insecure two-month old with long limbs and big eyes. I gave her a bottle, she was alternately fussy and cuddly, it was lovely. Want one.

I spent New Years and the week before school with Matt and his family, stress-balls each and every one, but warm and welcoming people. I am very much in love. I did not make a single resolution, but have found myself making bold moves towards being more organized and decisive. Will I go to the gym more? Maybe. Either way, I finally bought a pair of sneakers to wear whilst gymming and Matt says they look "very fast".

Marks-wise last term was my most sucessful to date, with a B- being my lowest grade. I worked very hard to get that B- and I've accepted that I'll never be a scholar. I don't know what I am, exactly. Classes this term promise to be challenging. I'm up for it.

I had something to say. I don't have it anymore. That's pretty much par for the course these days.

I wish somebody would knit me a scarf.

play thing game, all the game.
press the buttons all at once.
press the buttons all at once, all of the time.

thing game - wax mannequin

It may just be because I'm ovulating, but I was suddenly struck with a tremendous desire to become a doula. There are ways to certify, complete with written exams.

But how could I be taken seriously as a doula, having never had a baby? Clearly I need to have a child, stat.

My career is on the line.

School is getting hectic hectic hectic. I'm falling behind and feeling the strain, but I'm learning how to keep things in place. It's not even close to the constant humming low-level panic of years past.

I was home for the weekend for a cousin's wedding, and I snuck into a yoga class in the gym where my mother works. It's easy to lose sight of how far you're pushing yourself when your body is warmed up and tuned in, you reach further and further. My muscles are still complaining, but the metaphor is glorious.

Importance of Being Earnest opens tonight and we're ready, willing, and able.

A squirrel just gripped the screen on my window, paused, and flung off into the trees. Earlier, I was sitting outside and heard a rustling, thinking it was a bird, but it was just a dead leaf settling through the bush. Winter is closer than ever, and I'm moving the remnants of my summer into my room. Doctoring plants, playing music, burning incense. I smell like wood and mangoes and mittens.

I have ten minutes to get my cold hands and feet to my Indian Lit class, a class in which I feel like an idiot more and more these days. I'm discouraged but resiliant, and I will be there, tuned in.

I'm going to scan some more interesting things soonly (less my face and more my world).

I'm apparently trying way too hard to be indie, and Matt is in desperate need of a haircut. this was from August. He's just about as goofy as this picture implies.

Also, OMG, I've got a sizeable cranium.


( thrills. )

I'm in the gray area. Half an hour before you're supposed to be somewhere, what do you do with that? I'm sick of working on this class presentation (food preparation in Tudor England) and my Indian Lit class doesn't start until 1:30. It's limbo.

Matt left this morning for Fredericton, competing in Mathletics. Yeah, a math competition. Sometimes I forget I'm dating a Math major. His family lives in Fredericton, so he's spending the weekend with them and having a family thanksgiving. We split ways at the library over black coffee, and it's not that I miss him really, moreso that I'm very aware that I won't be saying "goodnight" to him tonight.

I just wrote a midterm for 17th century literature, which was easy as pie. Yet, the fact that it was easy in no way endears John Donne to my heart. The guy is a total prick. The midterm was so easy it in no way sweated out the midterm-stress/caffeine wave I'd been riding on, so I went to the Owens (art gallery) to space out on some heart-wrenchingly lovely animations. Elisabeth Belliveau, check this lady out.

(Anchor your heart.)

Her work is being screened at the Vogue on the 25th (go.), but that's smack in the middle of my rehearsal. I didn't tell you about auditions.

Auditions are the absolute worst part of theatre. I ran the gauntlet of two auditions for two women I absolutely would kill to work with. Didn't get either of them. Went to a third audition that a friend was putting on, and it turned out to be horribly offensive and titillating and poorly written that I walked out of the audition. THEN, when I had given up all hope and moped through a couple days, there was a last minute call for auditions for The Importance of Being Earnest, as one of the cast members dropped out. I bombed the audition, but got the part-- probably because only a handful of girls showed up, but whatever.

I have to work tonight, chez Bridge Street Cafe, where I still work two shifts a week. I don't want to go, partly because I'm sleepy and being dragged through the dirt by my middling immune system. Mainly, it's being THE ONLY senior staff there, and certainly one of the few with an actual work ethic. I'm just tired of knocking myself out while the other kids just let things get out of hand.

It's an autumnal sort of thing.

I'm back in Sackville after spending Thanksgiving with my family in Halifax. Matt came to stay, and it was strange and lovely to have him in my childhood home. He was quiet mostly, feeling the kick-in-the-ribs ache to record some of his new songs. My family adores him.
My parents are still your typical hardcore-Baptist parents, which means Matt and I slept in different rooms. Hilarious. Also, my mother heard me say "frig" for the first time ever, as in "Are we listening to friggin' Sam Roberts? Gah!" when I didn't know she had come in the room when my back was turned. She said mildly, "You can change the station if you like," as I turned red.

We're that couple that kisses in bookstores, super markets. Like yuppies or teenagers. I love him.

Seven years ago today my great-grandmother passed away from complications of Alzhiemers. I miss her, in a vague and half-asleep kind of way. She used to run a boarding house, just after the war, and during her stay in the nursing home she believed she was back there again. The nurses would turn down the beds in the evening, and Nanny would go behind them and make them all back up. Once she made up a bed with a woman asleep inside it. She would collect up dishes after dinner and wash them by hand in the little kitchenette, so the staff would have to wait until she was done to send them to the kitchen to be boiled and sanitized. She had a wicked crush on the Live at 5 anchorman, would tell me I had big feet even for a boy, and would say "Oh, there's Theresea!" (one of her daughters who went prematurely gray) when she looked in the mirror. She was fiesty and terrifying and lovely.

School is going along. I just finished a huge (for me) paper, clocking in at least five hours per day in the library this entire past week. Suddenly my deadlines are all a week or two away, and I'm not sure how to proceed. I always feel safest at crunch time. I'm going to keep up with my readings, get organized, and maybe even work ahead tonight.

I have more to tell you, and some pictures to show you, but I feel like I've been procrastinating long enough. School work. Yes.

I gave myself a stupid haircut last night and then slept, dreaming of endless sterile corridors, woke up feeling as raw as if I'd kept watch all night long.

I'm not going to get into the million little things that are tripping me up, because they're so goddamn banal. The same logistics that get at all of us, no money, no time. I'm more than the sum of the things that are getting me down.

bwah! I was planning on writing something introspective, but now I'm just too excited and happy for critical self-analysis. I'm going to see Matt in six hours, and I have a room to tidy and flowers to pot and a Lindsey to bathe of cafe-related grime. I'm blasting french punk and throwing wide the curtains and smiling from head to toe.


Have a good weekend, dearhearts.

My organs are made of lead.
Please shoot me.

I could fall in love with him, just fall and fall and fall.

I'm meeting with the Registrar this afternoon about going back to school in the fall. I'm so incredibly nervous, I don't think I can put it into words. I'm worst-case-senarioing right now.