This amuses me mightily:

mood: amused music: Mindless Self Indulgence - Ready For Love

Mmm, nebulous doubts and strange cravings.

mood: drained

P.S. Iron Man was rad.

I'm exhausted. I cannot be entirely sure what got me through this weekend (though I have some ideas, some of which are entirely too personal to be written on my most public of journals). I didn't eat enough, I didn't sleep enough, I drank alcohol on an empty stomach, and kept forgetting to take my medications at the proper times. All the muscles between my neck and my knees are sore. Money is a subject best not thought about...

But I'm feeling deeply, deeply contented.

I did a lot this weekend. I ran myself ragged a couple of times. Eventually I'll sort all of it out into some kind of comprehensive order and write it out on here. Well, most of it. Some of it is mine. Mine to think about and mine to be happy about. All-in-all, I am content.

In related news, I believe I'm going to be spending more time in Seattle. How I will afford this is a mystery. There is, eventually, a good chance that I'll move there. But that's to be thought about in the future...

mood: tired music: April March - Chick Habit tags: art, comics, con, contentment, exhaustion, funny noises make me happy, meow, seattle, secrets, sore, to be continued, weekends

Hey, many-and-sundry f-list people:

A friend of mine is going to grad school in Australia for sociology. He has a short survey that he needs people to fill out about environmental awareness, and I told him that I'd post the link on here. It's REALLY short. It took me under two minutes to do (it's about 21 questions long).

This would really help him out, if anybody would take the time to answer it.

The link is: http://www.edmeasurementsurveys.com/Lucas/lcswebsurvey2.html

mood: cheerful tags: helping out a friend

I've traded in my lip studs for lip rings again. After all this time, they feel alien to my mouth.

There are no flat metal disks in there to toy with, to chew on, or to tug. Which is really the point, I guess. Chewing on those things cannot be good for my teeth. I'm not sure how I feel about having the rings in again, but I suppose I'll just have to give them a few days and try it out.

mood: weird tags: me, nebulous doubts, new stuff, oddities, piercings

On a note unrelated to anything else I've written recently:

I just need to ban myself from listening to Nine Inch Nails - Something I Can Never Have.

Even if I have no focus for it, my emotional response is just too negative.

mood: drained music: Take a guess...

There is a reason that I've put off organizing my closet.

There are four boxes in my closet. The ones that look like over-sized Tupperware, you know what I mean? Well, even if you don't, that is a pretty accurate description. Moving along, two of those boxes are my 'memory' boxes. Filled to overflowing with odds-and-ends that serve no purpose except to appease my overgrown sense of nostalgia, they have become too full finally. I mean, I am creating new memories with every year, yet the boxes are mostly filled with things circa three years ago.

So, I have done what anyone would do. I've begun going through and throwing things away. Now we get to the crux of the matter. The reason for my avoidance. I have somehow LOST two and a half hours going through notes, old poetry, and useless bits of frippery. I feel strung out on nostalgia.

Not only have I found things that can drive me tears just by the sheer strength of their associated memories, but I've also found things that make me just a wee bit ashamed of my teenage years. I have pictures, other people's clothing, rocks, notes, too much bad poetry, drawings, and a thousand other little things...

But I've managed to get rid of about half of it now. My stomach is twisted and turned in on itself, and I feel caffeine-jittery, but I'm almost through it. Ugh. Memory hangover.

mood: nostalgic music: Me First and the Gimme Gimmes - Nothing Compares To You tags: change, chores, cleaning, letting go, materialism, memories, pack-rat

Also, I would like to state that I badly need a trip into a forest.

I need dappled sunlight through barely-clothed branches. I need little hidden meadows filled with new grass the color of spring.

I need to be able to take myself out of my head for a little bit, to kick the grown-up out for a brief period of time. I need to be an explorer, an adventurer, and even--I admit only half-ashamedly--a plucky fairy princess. Before you laugh at that last one, just know that I played the princess just as often I played the witch. Maybe I even played the princess less.

I need to find the first of the bleeding-heart plants flowering. I have childhood superstitions that revolve around them, which I've never quite managed (or wanted) to get rid of. I just need to find one, so I can gently tear a flower in half (but without tearing apart the little teensy-tiny heart in its center, then it won't work)...

I don't know about need, but I WANT to climb a tree. I don't know how many people out there know it, but I am a tree-climbing fool. The only flaw in this is that I often need a bit of coaxing to come back down. I am bit catlike in my ability to get stuck in trees.

I just want to go out to the woods and play pretend for awhile.

mood: creative tags: narnia, pretend, superstitions, wanting, woods

You know, it's just not a Sunday until PostSecret has made me feel tearfully sentimental.

mood: touched tags: sigh

In the midst of a week filled with dreams where I am trying to hold it together amidst apocalypse, or where I need to complete one mundane task to stop nightmarish events from unfolding...

Tonight, all I remember dreaming about is making a soft-boiled egg sandwich.

mood: awake music: The Cure - Just Like Heaven tags: dreams, food, oddities, silly

Oven mission aborted.

Found a spider.

Had to go into strategic retreat.

Contacting Special-Ops.

Will return with heavier artillery.

mood: accomplished music: Spiderbait - Black Betty tags: cleaning, i'm awesome you know, i'm funny, i'm such a girl, spiders

I just burst into a hysterical paroxysm of giggling at the realization that I have a pump-action mop.

I am the Ash of kitchen cleaning! Hail to the Queen, baby.

And, just because I cannot resist...

Good. Bad. I'm the girl with the mop.

mood: giggly music: Infected Mushroom - I Wish tags: accomplishment, awesome, badassery, cleaning, i'm funny, silly, zombies

I'm cleaning like a meth addict.

I mean, I just moved the fridge all by my lonesome. I've never cleaned under a fridge in my whole life, and now I know why you should. Indescribable horrors lurk underneath a fridge that hasn't been moved for two years. Seriously, I CAN SEE FOREVER.

Not to mention, that it is apparently where all the mousie-toys went to die. I found a veritable graveyard of little fur mousie-toys under there. Now they're lying all over the living room floor, back in circulation. The cats are assiduously stalking each and every one of them now.

I've paused in my neurotic mopping to post on here, and play with my music.

I'm going to attack the counters next. Maybe even *gasp* move the oven. A terrifying idea, but I'm extremely tempted to see if I can even budge it without help.

If this all proceeds as planned, and I don't lose my motivation, I may try to vacuum the furniture next. I'm tired of being covered in cat-hair. I feel like I'm being assimilated. Like they're trying to make me into one of THEM.

If this goes well tonight, I will attack my room tomorrow. Wish me luck, folks. If you don't see me again, you'll know that I am forever lost in the wilds of my bedroom...

mood: productive music: Tennessee Ernie Ford - Sixteen Tons

I composed a journal entry last night as I walked the length of downtown Bellingham for two hours. This isn't an uncommon thing for me to do. Somewhere, in the scrap heap in the back of my brain, there are piles and piles of never-to-be-written livejournal entries. Things I just never managed to type out.

I guess that I shall put down parts of it that I remember. The overall impressions, if you will.

I left the Black Drop when it closed at seven. With nowhere to go, and no one to go with, I did just that. I went nowhere with no one. I walked in any direction that tickled my fancy at any given moment, choosing roads to cross by barely-comprehended intuition. Maybe I liked the color of the bricks on the other side of the street, or maybe I could see the water from a certain street corner.

I fell in with a band of roaming musicians at one point. They were a rag-tag bunch seemingly led by a jellyfish on stilts. I noted an accordion player, a couple of drummers, a cowbell player, some guitars, and what appeared to be a trumpet. Even in my subdued mental state, I laughed and laughed.

Abandoning them on whim, I focused on not stepping on the cracks in the sidewalk. This is a little-known habit of mine. A minor obsession, really. I don't step on the cracks in the sidewalk or street if I can possibly avoid it. The seams are fine. Those are man-made, so they don't count. But the cracks that come of weathering and time, oh no. Can't step on them. Funny little habit.

At some point, I realized that the light was turning silvery and a light rain had begun to fall. I watched the buildings and people dusted in silver. It made me a little happier inside. As the day dimmed into twilight, I also realized that it was nearly time to catch my bus home. So, I turned my steps towards the bus station.

The sky shifted from silver to a deep blue that I don't know the name for (but I wish I did). As I walked, I chanced to look up, then stopped short in awe. I probably looked insane, staring up at seemingly nothing in the sky. But the streetlights had managed to get their light caught in the branches of all the still-naked trees lining the street. Limned in gold, their fantastic shapes glowed against the deepening blue. As I took a long look around me again, the neon signs were brightening with the coming dark, like messages from consumerist gods written on the night.

I smoked a cigarette as slowly as I could. Then I went to catch the bus, swaying just slightly to the classical music piped around the station. Someday, late at night, I am going to dance to that music under the bus station lights.

Sometimes it's so goddamned beautiful here. It causes this strange, sweet ache in that spot where I feel my strongest emotions. You know, that spot right below your heart and right above your stomach, below and behind the bottom of your breastbone.

mood: grateful music: Nine Inch Nails - The Great Destroyer tags: aching, beauty, bellingham, hurt, laughter, love, superstitions, walking aimless

I believe the key word here is: Ugh.

Well, only in reference to my list of things to get done today and over the weekend. I really need to take care of some bills, buy some things, and clean this god-be-damned apartment. It's becoming a little terrifying and I should begin the cleaning before it becomes a behemoth in the back of my mind, looming and being too intimidating to take care of. That's how things become irreparably messed up, you know. It's true.

I still haven't organized my thoughts enough in the various areas that I would like to write about to... Well, to write about them. Meh. I have a few subjects that I'd like to state my versions of. I've got some hopes and some dreams, and a few deaths of each, to write about. I've been meaning to write more, I swear.

I'd really like a laptop. That would be neat, because I could bring it out with me into the world. Or the proper AC adapter for my MobilePro would be cool, too.

Well, I should get to doing those things I'm supposed to be doing.

mood: hungry music: A Perfect Circle - The Package tags: bills, cleaning, meh, responsibility, to do, wishes

I swear to [insert deity here] that I am going to post things I think about on here at some point. Important and meaningful things, even. Really.

But right now I am at work, and I cannot.

Since I went to sleep last night I have had a song stuck in my head. It is Goldfrapp - Ooh La La. I love it, but I fear it may soon become irritating.

mood: mischievous

My birthday was suitably surreal. I swear to all that is holy, it hasn't officially been my birthday until the surreality hits. Really.

I am exhausted. Happy. Apprehensive. Content. Thankful. Thoughtful. Disappointed. Surprised. Hopeful. Overwrought. Rancorous. Relaxed. Sated. Very hungover.

All of those things. Really. Strange, isn't it? I mean, how it's possible to feel all of those conflicting emotions simultaneously. It's just that I feel some of them about different things/people/events, but all in the context of my birthday. Celebrating said birthday did manage to remind me of some unresolved things (nothing important, just something that nags me). But it also managed to be incredibly cathartic in many other ways.

I am feeling generally good about life and myself, in general. I know that the doubts are going to come creep-crawling back, sidling into unguarded back alleys of my brain. That is just the way it works, and I've become accustomed to it.

I am feeling incredibly vague right now. I don't know how much of my inner dialogue to allow out. I have twenty voices babbling away about my birthday experiences, just begging to spill out. Well, I do have six other journals. Maybe I'll surreptitiously slip information into those. Maybe.

mood: tired music: Fischerspooner - Emerge tags: birthday, exhaustion, fears, hopes, i just admitted to head-voices, laughter, life, pessimistic optimism, satisfaction, surreality, tired

I will be in town on Saturday for my birthday. I am going to go to Gameworks and the Merc. I might also get sushi somewhere, but I have no idea where.

I'm going to call people when I get into town, if I know that they want to hang out with me. If not, people are also free to call me and see where I am at. I am fairly sure that I won't be getting to Seattle until around 4 in the afternoon.

Anyone want to hang out?

Well, I went out and I conquered that benighted burrito. Also, a delicious taquito or two.

Mmm.

I feel better. Greatly, vastly, gigantically better. Not only did I have a few drinks and some yummy foodstuffs, but I also got to spend some time with people that I've been wanting to hang out with for at least a year (I'm not good at hanging out with people one-on-one, really). Turns out that my awesome roommate had secretly texted many of my friends and told them that I needed birthday love. I got to talk about nerdy stuff, and I had a fabulous time. An added bonus was that they gave me a ride home, freeing Michael from that duty; which meant that I got to stay out later, and he got to go home (he was tired).

All-in-all, not a bad birthday.

...

Tomorrow: I need to renew my ID, refill my prescriptions, and eat lunch with a friend. I must also eat dinner with my family-type peoples. Besides these things, I am free. If anyone has any interest in filling my time with hanging out of some kind, I would be up for it. *grin*

mood: content tags: alcohol, birthday, food, friends, happiness, plans