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29 May, 2005 - 12:51 p.m.
another one bites the dust

Ugh. It's been a few more days and I'm still sick, but not as bad. I mostly only feel like crap for the first few hours after I wake up and right around when my body tries to tell me to go to bed.

So. First week of internship down. Something like fifteen more to go. A certain number (240) of my hours needs to be "client contact", and I'm racking those up. I did seven on Friday. I'm still having a good time and I'm learning a whole lot. I'm working on letting other people's problems go, and I imagine that I'll probably work on that for the rest of my career. I just feel terrible that people go through such things.

My TB skin test was negative, but I have a big red welt around the injection site. Nurse says that I'm probably allergic to the serum. No harm, no foul. If it had been a positive test, there would have been a hard raised bump, like a bubble.

T and I went to this thing at the winery called Jazz on the Lawn, where you go out and it's free and they have a band perform and you buy wine and get drunk. We met H2 and some of her friends there. And they were sitting with a girl that lived in my dorm back in undergrad. Small world. She teaches at my sister's high school and knows my sister. She even knew about all the crappy medical stuff that went on with her last year and about the homeschool office losing all of her work. She thought it was shitty too. It was nice to catch up and remember other people. Mostly, I dropped college like it was burning through layers of my skin.

One of H2's friends was getting a divorce, so we went out to celebrate afterwards. The dj at the club actually played NIN, which made me happy. If they would play NIN every time I went, I'd not bitch as much about how much the club sucks. Something comes over me when "closer" comes on. You know how it is.

My neighbors have started putting all this stuff on the front porch and yard. Recall that I live in a townhouse and that their front yard is MY front yard. Now, in my front yard, there is a weight bench system, three pairs of shoes, two buckets, and a small grill. This is in maybe a four foot square area. It's starting to irritate me.

By the way, I finished The grapes of wrath and am struck by how it just abruptly ended. There was no resolution. It ends with Rose of Sharon popping her titty out so the sick guy could drink her milk.

24 May, 2005 - 5:29 p.m.
Don't make any Lewinsky internship jokes. Heard it already. (thanks mom)

I'm still sick, but at least I'm distracted. I started my internship today. It was great. I am the proud owner of a set of keys to the psych ward. Woo! Today, I followed my friend C around (she's completing her internship there, too) and read some patient charts. They were sort of entertaining, in a "follow their status as time passes" sort of way.


I re-read Communion by Whitley Strieber. I'd initially read the book for the Honors Discussion course in my undergraduate program. The topic was "the UFO debate" and we read books arguing both sides of the issue. And we watched some movies and a few episodes of the X-Files. My conclusion at the end of the course is my view of religion: you haven't proven it to me, but I don't discount it as an option. I know. I'm a fence-sitter.


Yelnad does this thing in her journal where she picks up a book (closest book, whatever she's reading at the time, etc.) and turns to page 123 and reads the 5th complete sentence on the page and writes about it. This is what I got from Communion. "I tried to talk to him, to reassure him that it was all right." Which reminds me of my relationship with my bf, only I do it way too much and it ends up reinforcing the behaviors that I wish he'd stop. I can only be supportive, encouraging, and nonjudgmental for so long. Especially when the encouragement (etc.) doesn't work.


I started re-reading The grapes of wrath last night when I finished Communion because it's always worked well at putting me to sleep. The fifth sentence on page 123 is "Well, that's somepin to think about." It's almost as if the two books had been designed to go that way, but anything can be relevant if you try hard enough. I laughed at some of the things that I'd underlined when I read this in high school. "Orgasms set by gears, raping methodically, raping without passion" (about tractors and farm machinary planting seeds rather than the hands of men who loved the land). "Spam". "I seen her beat the hell out of a tin peddler with a live chicken". And for some reason, I had this page dog-eared (and I never do that), "I'd git the bigges' old son-a-bitchin' piece a candy you ever seen."


Maybe getting out of the house during the day will do something for my insomnia. But then again, when have you ever known me to sleep? My allergies have made me unable to lay on my back for more than five minutes, so I either have to lay on my stomache or I have to sleep sitting up (reclined). As relaxing as it can be to sleep in a recliner, it is difficult to recreate that feeling of relaxation with pillows in a bed. Especially when it's already almost 4 in the morning and you have to get up at 8. But I did sleep a little and I got up on time this morning. That's a good thing, as I have to get up an hour earlier tomorrow morning. C and I are carpooling. 35 miles each way. Woo.

22 May, 2005 - 12:11 a.m.
Sick and tired.

I've felt like shit since yesterday afternoon (when I woke up). Ugh. Had an important conversation with the boyfriend Thursday night/Friday morning. It was sort of a State of the Union address about what needs to happen for me to be happy. I thought, for a while yesterday, that the speech had helped the situation, but I found some of the same behavior repeated last night, so now I don't know what to think.

T and I went to the crappy club in town and I think the smoke machine (and smoking) has contributed to my illness. We saw a chick wearing a skirt so short that her ass really was hanging out. Ghetto booty, and she was rubbing it on guys' crotches. The Cha-Cha slide came on and she was doing the "how low can you go? all the way to the flo'?" part and i saw everything. Girl had grooming issues that she should have taken care of before wearing that skirt and thong out to the club. I hate the dj at that club, by the way. Plays the same ridiculous shit over and over again. You don't play over an hour of salsa beats in a row. You have to mix it up. Got home around 2:30. Tried to sleep. Had the talk with the boyfriend. I went to bed around 7:30. On the couch.

Went to a party last night at the guys' house. Bunch of military guys we met a few weeks ago. Basically, T and I sat around (outside, in the other room, in the same room) while they told "my dick is bigger than yours" stories that we'd already heard a few times. Based on these stories, I (like T) worry about their sexual health. I was tempted to stop at the free condom table at Pride and grab them some samples. I also worry about the chicks who are stupid enough to sleep with them. I did learn a valuable lesson. Don't sleep with these guys or you will be reduced to a punchline. The original guys we were hanging out with are generally funny and cool and intelligent, but man. Crowds and beer reduce IQs. And then the guys we knew just left! They went to a strip club and didn't say (to us) that they were going anywhere. My friend C showed up for a few minutes after that, and then we left. Boys will be boys. Tried to go to sleep, but my brain said no. The sleeping pill didn't kick in until around 5, and I was laying in my bed, but I didn't actually fall asleep until after 6.

Got up today around 11 to go to our town's first Gay Pride event with some friends. It featured some activist/awareness/merch tables and a drag show. I spoke to the "ladies" who organize the group that created the website that I'd used for my research in transgenderism last summer. I thanked them for what they do for the people that reach out to them and for making the resources available for people like me (who aren't transgendered, but want to know more true things).

The drag show was a lot of fun and there were a couple of cute girls there. It made me wish I was gay just so I could feel like a part of some kind of community. I never feel like a part of anything. Statistally speaking in metaphors, I'm like an outlier. There were police there. At first I thought about how nice it was that they would be there just in case some asshole rednecks show up to screw up the event, but then it occurred to me where I live. It crossed my mind that they were really there to make sure we don't do anything inappropriate. To contain the event, so to speak. So we don't get Gay all over the place. This town isn't enlightened enough to value diversity. I'm glad I went, though. I felt it was important to support my friend and be there with her.

Ugh. I woke up today nauseated (again)(still), this time with a sore throat. I choked down some pills and some toast and started feeling better about two hours later. I wish I could de-stress so my stomache would stop acting up. I wish I could sleep at night, but if I'm not thinking about one thing, I'm thinking about another. Just get out of my head. I keep thinking about how much it will suck next week when I start my internship and I have to be there early in the day. I hope my sleep schedule rights itself. I kept waking up in the night. Everytime I'd swollow in my sleep, I'd wake up feeling like I had glass in my throat. The zyrtec fixed that for a little while, but I felt like shit when we came home from the Gay Pride event and realized I was either going to pass out on the couch, or I could take my last bit of energy and stumble up the stairs. I left T there talking to my boyfriend. (Sorry.) Woke up from the nap and now it hurts to talk. We'll see how it progresses.

Sounds like life, eh? Let's stick around for the punchline.

20 May, 2005 - 3:14 p.m.
fun things for you to do instead of reading my diary

I think that this is one of the cutest star wars parodies I've ever seen. And for those of you who haven't seen the numa numa dance, you really should watch it.

And here's proof that George Lucas did not write Episodes 1, 2, and 3 before the original trilogy, as he had previously stated. I keep telling you. *rolls eyes*

I had a difficult night last night (between 2 and 7 am). I'd better go.

19 May, 2005 - 5:11 p.m.
closure

I giggle because it's already available online. I couldn't sleep last night. I was up until 6:30 again. Something about the look in a man's eyes when he'll do anything for a woman just stays in my head. It's super-hot. Even though it brought us Darth Vader, it's still hot.

Because I was up, I went ahead and finished off "A thousand acres", and cheered when the main character got the guts to walk out on her husband and start her life anew. Free from family and friends and social expectations. She'd been stagnating on the farm her whole life. It made me happy.

This made me happy too. Greeting cards for people who are having affairs. Which goes with the book. But it also goes with an earlier plan that I had to create greeting cards for those who have recently had a gender-change operation. Sweet.

And this guy didn't like Chaotic either. But it reminded me that, like the author, T and I had eaten Cheetos while watching the show, too. And cake with strawberries and whipped cream.

The treat for those of you with the patience to battle through the previous paragraphs is a description of the crowd last night. Yes. There were guys (and girls) in robes as Jedi. As Vader. As Yoda. There were little bitty kids beating the crap out of one another with lightsabers. There was a guy who'd cut neck and arm holes out of a trash can and wore it as r2d2. He had the trash lid on his head. I'm not sure how he planned to watch the movie in that outfit. There was an itty bitty darth vader who barely came up to my knees. hee. It was cute.

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