not sure either...

not sure either...
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

so this is some weird double/triple exposure shot from finland (again, what is WITH the finland photos...i haven't been there in two years!) but the picture kind of reminded me of my double/triple/etc life (or is that lives??) i'm leading right now thanks to the recent implosion of the world...or at least my world.

i don't really feel like working at the moment but i know i have to...well, NEED to...but i'm so exhausted from last week, it's crazy and the doctor said that he has his doubts with all the changes that there will be adequate resources and that i'm going to really face a major pull trying to make up for all the abandonment...

my age has come up quite a lot this week and it's funny to see the looks of utter confusion on people's faces. i know...i'm lucky...i don't have wrinkles...my mom looks between 10-20 years younger than she is...and i don't know...i guess that my mix of interest in finding out what this generation is about and my knowledge about how quickly and easily (and scarily) things can change makes the whole age thing confusing.

but still...wow...some people are over a decade off!

tales from the transcripts...player one: oh, we don’t want to die.
player two: will we die?
player one: i don’t know.
player two: go for it.so a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, chip sent me this quote by miguel de unamumo from his work called tragic sense of life...when the disillusionment of the mind and despair of the heart come together you finally have something to build on.

so, yeah, i think i'm pretty much there right now. anyone up for a trip to home depot?

at the secret bat cave where i've been writing my 6000th version of my dissertation intro, although i'm finally convinced that this is the one, this is the right one. i mean i have bits of chapters written from all over the place, from all across time but this one at least tells the story of what i'm doing RIGHT NOW with the data and THAT'S IT...this is IT...no more new additions...no more new twists and turns...this fucker just needs to be done and done.

i think i found a cousin of mine on facebook, oddly enough. i did a global search on our last name and possibly found about 5 or 6 others that might be related. so, naturally, i started a facebook group. now i just need them to add me as their friend so i can invite them to the group.

yeah...i really need to yank the wireless card outta my laptop since even my armpit probably has wifi now. oh fucking hell i forgot to tell you -- weeds, season two just started. awesome. too bad dead like me is, uh, dead. but at least there's weeds.

i don't know about the lazy...but the crazy? we already know about that. cleaning up transcripts so that each line is numbered and i'm wondering, worrying if they all need to be in the appendices and who the fuck cares right now??? christ...just number the fucking things and get on with it. it's bad when you have dreams about the super-code that comes before the line numbering and i really just made that *super-code* up...it's more like a prefix code that tells you which transcript it came from at a glance and i woke up thinking "god, what if word can't do that with the autonumbering?" and then i got a packet in the mail, an advert for another drug and i'm thinking that i maybe should take it, as i decide to wash all the throw rugs in the house and forget to ask for a raise and dr b said the other day that watching tv in the morning is just as bad as drinking (really? is it?)...blah, fucking, blah.

and we're trying to fit in everything under my career objectives and i'm like oh yeah, what *are* those and i need to finish my cv and people are bugging me to fill out questionnaires right and left and it's all mine for the taking if i'd only wake up, wake up from this grand pause...

oooooohhhh boy. have you ever been in one of those lifetimes where everything suddenly implodes on you? where you don't even have time to explain what needs to be done because it needed to be done yesterday so it's easier to just do it yourself?

well, my boss is leaving in a few weeks for a new job and i think, yes, this is probably for the best because it's WAY less chaotic for her and her family. dorm stuff can really make your schedule, uh, interesting. but then i'm also like "great...what now?" it's not that i'm worried about the workload. but i am worried about the possibility of getting a new hire boss who will be tooooo new and i'll hate them for some reason. and i'm worried about getting a bad interim supervisor...the kind who wants to have 5 hour meetings 6 days a week.

i could apply for the job myself...but then you know me and stupid paperwork shit and i can imagine this existance of having to do icebreaker activities day after day after day...and teambuilding stuff...and training, more training, even more training. even she said that there was no way i'd like the job given that i hate all that crap. and she's right. i do.

omg...my head's just spinning now and i'm afraid it's not the painkillers...which i did indeed get this morning after a trip to the ER last night (see? told you!)...and i FINALLY got a pain clinic referral...thank fucking god. oh...and i guess i need to work out the registration thing so i get insurance again...

sigh.

finally this week is over and i'm, of course, now in cramp hell so, yay, great and i have to wait until tomorrow to get a refill because i don't have any health insurance at the moment and the other day when jesse and i were driving we saw the latest geo billboard...that says 40% of grad students can't afford adequate child healthcare...and here we go again. so this is what happens...geo puts all its eggs in one basket...as usual it's the child healthcare thing...the university freezes wages because they know that for those of us that childcard has NOTHING to DO with a lot of us, the wage freeze is SO FUCKING ANNOYING because (1) the university fuckheads have frozen our wages and (2) they know that this is one of those issues where a lot of us are like "SIGN THE FUCKING CONTRACT GEO BECAUSE WE DON'T HAVE KIDS."

see? a lot of us can't afford our OWN healthcare and bills (ask me about my water being shut off on friday!) so when i come home from work on a night like last night where i've just dealt with 100s of survey administrations in a damp, cold basement and collapse on my bed and apparently i was dreaming about the hell that it was all last night because chris said he had to wake me up because i was flipfloping all over and keeping him awake...when i come home from work i have to ask, you know?

what. the. fuck.

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1962...and the pill looks just the same...

and this is much less exciting than you think it is...it's a photo of the american classic "pamprin" that i just took because my period started early (ah...it's good to hang out with 100's of females for a week...sync-ing...) to go along with the 800mg of advil i took that didn't work...i had this weird feeling that it was going to start early on friday, the last time i could have gotten a refill on painkillers from my doctor...the way things are going right now, i should be arriving at the er around, oh let's say 8ish? maybe l will be there and i can give her those surveys again to fill out? hahaha. even in pain i still think of all the shit i have to do.

but it'd be much fun if that pamprin was more like some other drug that it looks like...feed your head.

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god and psych...

so i snapped this on my mobile while we were waiting for people to show up to take the survey on saturday night (which was, of course, a complete nightmare)...the residence hall i work in has a library in the basement with a rather eclectic collection...

so i look at the psych section and there's the classic "principles of psychology" by william james and it's next to...

the new-agey "conversations with god" books 1-4

wwfd...what would freud do?

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help sign at the library in the building that i work at and it's ok, really, because pretty much every help sign in all of the system also tells people that they don't have change and i had to wonder who would go to the library for change when there's a change machine near by that's much closer but whatever.

all i know is that i'm still dealing with some kind of respiratory *thing* from spending way too many hours doing a lousy debrief in the damp, cold, moldy basement...wahhhhhhaaahahahhahahaha

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michigan state?

ok so if you aren't from, well, the us then maybe you don't know (or care) about the big umich/michigan state rivalry. yeah, this is a lousy cell phone pix but in the campus-towny area of ann arbor, there are two movie theatres located very close to one another...and from my angle all i saw was the marquee for the one theatre, "michigan," and the marquee for the other one, "state," and i thought...how very subversive...

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umich...chris and i took a side trip to ann arbor, which -- and sorry to be the bearer of bad news, illini fans -- is a much prettier campus than ours (wow, how COULD that be?). i remember when r's husband, who went to purdue, exclaimed about how beautiful u of i's campus was and r and i looked at each other like "and WE'RE the crazy ones???"

seriously, though, the umich trip was four years after i was originally supposed to have seen it but we all know what happened there. actually maybe you don't so go look at my blog entries from summer 2002 and it's all there.

and this survey i saw said "have you or anyone in your family ever experienced a breakdown?" but then we saw the hotdog stand that's actually a soup stand and i learned that the internet, including the site wizzywig (a place that's amazing to see but then you're like, wow...it's cool but i don't know if i want any of this) and others, is actually located IN ann arbor. seriously. the number of internet retailers that actually had their *real life* offices in ann arbor was kinda crazy.

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the tribe has spoken...so the deal is with outdoor wedding receptions is that if you have more than 3000 people at your wedding and less than a handfull of toilets at your house...you have to install portapotties...which is both hilarious and disgusting (depending on whether you see them at the beginning or the end of the reception). but the best part of the whole thing was that they had tiki torches lighting your way and it was hard not to feel cast out of the tribe heading down the path to the toilets.

[postscript: seriously, cbs, so you decided to divide the tribes of the latest survivor along RACIAL lines??? are you that fucking crazy? why did you decide that you needed to do this? is hitler really not dead (and yet he must be the crypt keeper if he isn't) and he's on your board of directors? is some apartheid-era south african company now your daddy? wtf?]

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wedding fire...so even if you plan, plan, plan...some goofy shit is bound to happen at your (not mine) wedding. that's not to say goofy shit won't happen at my wedding but that's not really on the table right now, is it?

anyway, there were tealights on all the tables and polyester napkins and i guess it was bound to happen at some point but we look up and one of the napkins is completely engulfed in flames and it smelled like a barbie factory had just exploded...and damn, polyester really, really melts amazingly well so i'll have to remember than the next time i'm trying to burn up tacky scarves in my latest experiment in melting shit together to form new, uh, fabric...

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wedding in i forget where but somewhere an hour away from flint, michigan...somewhere out where the militia is near, i'm told...wedding of the young, wedding for the young, wedding to remember...young.

and we danced for the first time and isn't that funny?

it's a little bit funny this feeling inside
i'm not one of those who can easily hide
i don't have much money but boy if i did
i'd buy a big house where we both could liveand i didn't remember the words until you sang them...so excuse me forgetting but these things i do
you see i've forgotten if they're green or they're blue
anyway the thing is what i really mean
yours are the sweetest eyes i've ever seenand then i wondered what it must have been like to have been that age again and still believe in the fairytale and hope you never know any other way?and you can tell everybody this is your song
it may be quite simple but now that it's done
i hope you don't mind
i hope you don't mind that i put down in words
how wonderful life is while you're in the worldthat elton john...

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flint, michigan where you realize how stuck in time so many parts of our country are and it reminds me of southwest virginia only with closed down factories instead of closed down mines.

and i flew to detroit only in the middle of the orange alert moving to red...luckily the sign they had up to tell us was in greyscale so we had to ask, uh, which of those grey bars *is* orange and they made up put everything in our checked luggage and the department of homeland security had closed down all the vending machines and trying to take medicine out of a shallow fountain doesn't work as well when the pills start to dissolve and all you taste is the poison coming through and you must look mad ripping open packets of sugar from a closed down coffee vendor to dump into your mouth so you don't throw up and add to the liquid's a-no-no fiasco...

didn't i just get back from the uk? and didn't i just announce the study abroad spring break destination? and why exactly is it *brave* that i flew from champaign to detroit, as if that were a major terror threat (maybe in the *terror threats for dummies* series) and i say, sarcastically, i flew because if i didn't then the terrorists win.

right...

fun with words!

see ya, wouldn't want to be ya...
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

ugh. i hate all the double/triple/etc meanings of words sometimes. why does everything have to be so complex sometimes/all of the time? it just annoys me. kind of like the weather and the price of gasoline this summer. i mean i deal with these "loaded words" all the time in my writing...i just wish that other parts of my life didn't also come with so much baggage.

i don't think that this is going to be an easy year. you'd think that the longer you've been in a position, eventually things would fall into a groove...but that doesn't really play out in the real world, does it? instead you just learn to see more and the protective seal comes off and things get scratched up and messy and the things that seem clearly defined don't look anything like the actual.

you see i think our priorities are all fucked up. we have a billion troops fighting "terrorism" overseas and yet...

on a listserv i'm on i heard the arguments today for a family event, the strongest voice in favor of it that emerged for me was from the guy who tormented me from about the 6th grade on until i ran, ran, ran from home...but you can never really run far enough can you? and he has three kids now and the idealist in me thinks that maybe he's realized how cruel kids can be and is raising his kids to end the cycle, the sins of the father. but the realist in me knows that it probably hasn't come up yet and if it has he's either playing the *outraged* father wondering how his kids are getting picked on or he's playing the *clueless* father who simply laughs and says "well, kids WILL be kids."

all this research others have done on the effects of bullying and yet we have a president running the country that was/is easily part of club...but the problem is not here, is it?

"why do you hate america so much?" said the bully in surprise to someone might just hate him right back.

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move in day?

not for me

nor for anyone else

and don't even THINK about the state of the bathrooms...

omg...so the guy that plays "house" on the show, uh, house" studied at the same college at cambridge that i studied at...good old selwyn. damn i didn't even know he was british but to hear him on the actor's studio right now is blowing my mind.

yeah, ok. that was a complete random trivia post...sue me.

about the university freezing our wages until ALL current contract negotiations are finished...from GEO...our currently frozen wages...are another story. when the GEO repeatedly pushed the university [of illinois at urbana-champaign] on this unjust tactic, insisting that we bargain wages now, lead negotiator [and university counsel...a.k.a. the man representing "the man"] steve veazie snapped back, “just shut up!”

after a brief and tense standoff, veazie called for caucus and remained away for over an hour. he later stated that he regretted telling grad employees to “shut up.”

but veazie has already told us enough about the university’s attitude toward grad employees. our success at the table depends on the involvement of our members, and together we must turn up the pressure as the academic year begins. and so it seems there's plans for a strike or somesuch in early september because the university isn't budging on this issue, trying to force our hands in agreeing to this shitty proposal that the university currently has on the table that calls for NO guaranteed wage increase ever and NO guaranteed minimum stipend ever.

so meanwhile, people like me, who work as GAs for WAYYYYYYYYYYY under any university department's minimum salary are really fucked. you know, and i hate that money comes into issue when it comes to my job, which i wouldn't trade for the world, but you have to wonder why working on the frontlines of undergraduate education results in the lowest ranking on the pay scale?

i'm writing as fast as i can...but it's just not fast enough and i want to scream sometimes because i spend half my day trying to figure out how to pay for everything (rent, utilities, etc) and then i pop another couple maalox...

long journey

the greatest
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

if i could, i'd spread the ashes across the earth to all the places he'd been and never been...but i can't...

and i finally check my messages to hear her voice on the phone blaming the son for being irresponsible through a back road disguised as self-flagellation...and i remember why i never check my messages...can't they be archived somewhere, transcribed and hidden away so eventually the story will come together for someone, if not for me?once i wanted to be the greatest
no wind or water fall could stall me
and then came the rush of the flood
the stars at night turned deep to dustto mourn lost time seems like a necessary waste...catch22...but yet it must be done and they say she'll be amazing when she's well again...

why did i get broken? or, rather, was i ever together?

if you get cinemax, you really should check out the the mushroom club being aired now, which was nominated for a documentary short film at last year's academy awards. on the film's web page, it talks about why the director made the film and he said that it was the lack of response in 1995 to the 50th anniversary of the bombing of hiroshima...and i remember that lack of response...i was in england and there was a bbc documentary showing VERY vivid photos of the dead and the dying...in the us? nothing. and the enola gay sits at the smithsonian and i remember the end of the cold war and how we assumed that the only way it was going to end was to arrive at THE end...and there's some new series called jericho coming out this fall and i wonder how they can sustain a series about nuclear war but maybe if they can figure it out it will have that same impact today that the day after had on us then...

the first words out of my mouth this afternoon were "so did she show up or not?" and he lost the bet...and so it goes...a double mourning and a plot, a plan to drive to nebraska...hate fills my heart and i'm not sure if it's god or her i'm mad at the most and somewhere out there eva met sylvia and off they danced...

should i be mad at the pathology or does it really matter what the diagnosis is? denial, bargaining, anger, depression, acceptance and how can you ever arrive at the point where you say i guess we're all fucked and there's really nothing to be done? too much of too many people's lives have been destroyed and the son will be lost when the anchor gets pulled...yo ho ho it's a pirate's life for me.

but i finally asked him "there will never be any forgive and forget, will there?"

"no," he said.

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is this finally the damn mojito?

postscript: yes, it seems that my phone finally agreed to send it and now i don't really know why i wanted to send it to my blog in the first place...

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this is where i work. come by sometime and we'll paint it...seriously, they say the building will be ready by sunday but this giant trash bin is the only thing that looks halfway organized...

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getting in wasn't super easy or clearly marked so we ended up in 100 parking lots until they finally got the messages that, fuck yeah, we are here for a FUNERAL AND WE ARE NOT TOURISTS!!! jesus christ. it *is* a little strange to attend a funeral where people are wandering around taking pictures, fat and wearing fanny packs, *fbi* tshirts (yeah, if you have a shirt that reads *fbi* you are probably not IN the fbi...), and meanwhile you're being rushed around because they are on a time schedule more tight than almost any other cemetery on earth...

so turn your computer sideways, i never adjusted the photo before i blogged it from my mobile but, yeah, that's the navy's 7-gun salute deal and no matter how many times you've heard it, it still makes you jump and there was a weird mix of all the armed forces conducting services all around and it just dawned on us that a lot of vietnam veterans are now dying of causes more natural than war...and then there were the newly fallen from the middle east...and the beginning of the end of those from the 2nd world war...

he was born in 1916...his parents came to the united states from syria around the turn of the 1900s...before the end of the ottoman rule...their reasons for immigrating were never spoken of...

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this is really supposed to be a picture of a mojito but apparently my mobile phone only wants to send this laundry photo over and over and over again...

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from thursday when the sky opened up and dumped buckets of water on me as i was exiting my car and then became about 300 degrees hotter.

speaking of...my grandmother did NOT get on the train yesterday and my dad's gone fetal and for fuck's sake what's with all the restaurant reservations?

i should understand all this, i really should. i mean at the intellectual level, i do. i know exactly what's going on. i'm a psychologist for fuck's sake. [note: wow. that's two "for fuck's sake" in one post.] but somewhere back in there is that wounded little girl trying to figure out why i absorb all the pain?

it's tragic, really. there's no other category the whole story belongs in and if i told you the whole story you'd be tranported back to high school trying to make heads or tails out of sophocles...and i hate to do that to you.

maybe he's right? maybe the whole thing belongs between a front and a back cover of a book...

the earth just might be on fire

run, motherfucker, run
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

it's kind of like a sauna in finland or russia outside i guess...only you can't leave. and it's only going to get hotter over the next few days and we're flying to dc tomorrow afternoon where it's gonna be even hotter due to the "east coast heat wave" that's touching down now. and, see, that's gonna be a problem. because i had to ask chris to drive me home last night after spending 2 hours at peter's party or risk my passing out or throwing up...or both i guess. and, of course, i'm the bearing of disease right now, which ended up becoming an elaborate game of keep away...why exactly were so many kids there?

the funny part -- ok maybe only to me -- was that this morning i woke up and had all these mosquito bites on my legs. classic. then chris tells me that they've discovered that the *nip* part of cat nip contains something that repels mosquitos...great! only...it attracts swarms of bees. see? that's exactly the point that i've been trying to tell these doctors: "so, wait, most people get potentially fatal clots if they take this medication and have condition x yet you think i should take it anyway to get rid of condition y...even though i also have condition x and the medication could kill me?" wow. what COULD be making me refuse their wise words?

the thing is, i've never been involved with the program nor was i in charge of it. the only thing i've done is help make things easier on their schedules by encouraging them to coordinate their events with something already going on to help get people into the room. i didn't even find out who the next batch was until last week. so why is it that people seem to think that it was my job?

see? that's the frustrating part about the system. in the end, someone's gonna get kicked around for it and they probably weren't the ones who had any power over the situation. and now i've gotta type up all these proposals, my hands hurt, my period's on the way, i feel like i look completely hideous, i can't wear my contacts because i have two pox-things near my right eye and if they make one false move my vision's toast [note: ironically, this is the SAME eye that i had a ripped contact lens in during jason's talk at develop a week and a half ago] and if the cover of the august issue of vogue is correct, i should wear a red dress next tuesday since it's "the new black."

pfft. sorry. just had to get all that off my chest.

so my grandmother keeps forwarding a million and one sappy email chain letters [side note: when was the last time you got a chain mail letter via the post office? do people do that anymore? is it obsolete now that we have email addresses?]. anyway, the latest one was one of those "live for today because tomorrow is not promised" ones and right about now i'm feeling like tomorrow is more of a threat than a promise anyway.

oooooh. downer i am. yeah, i'm really, really annoyed at this whole shingles thing. i mean wtf? this is clearly this summer's wtf moment, ries. really. this trumps ear hair extensions without a doubt. but anyway my hands hurt the worst, as the pox or whatever they are called (shingles, i guess?) are focusing on my joints right now and i think i need to set up my voice recognition software and head tracking device if i'm going to get any serious work done.

my dad told me on the phone last night that if he don't teach me about money management (stocks, 401k, savings, budgets) before he dies than he's failed his job as a father. uh ok. there are too many things to say about this, really, barring the "uh, what about the 5 million other things you could be focused on or have you decided that those are lost causes?" i don't know where the latest money thing is coming from but, you know, i'm way under the poverty line when it comes to how much money i make and i found out that kinkos is hiring for more than i make per hour at my job. ridiculous. so, yeah, i'm really worried about my non-existant stock portfolio right now.

breathe, breathe, breathe. it's the denial taking over him now, the denial about the 30 minute "gig" next tuesday.

after today, i'm not ruling out scurvy as the next illness i get. so the allergy/rash/ebola virus is none of those -- it's shingles. wtf. it's like chicken pox redux, only with more pain. i was chalking up the pain to pms and, really, who could tell the difference between types of pain that hit the same areas. apparently it's entirely internal, which means it was my own (lack of) immune system that brought it about...it's probably fall out from the surgery, etc etc etc and is definitely fall out from...well, fuck. i was about to say the stress of the summer but let's get real -- 2006 has pretty much sucked ass for me health-wise.

ok, so maybe ries is right in that i can't really back up my statement of "who was i in the last life? hilter?" based solely on the car towing incident. but i'm starting to think that i was some kind of behavioral psychologist that tortured kids and monkeys.

so this brings the grand total of chronic diseases to...FOUR! one more and i get to call out BINGO. well, there's always the next life, i suppose. oh -- and if you have kids that you want to get exposed to the chicken pox, let me know! apparently you can't catch shingles but if you've never had the chicken pox, i can give it to you! no payment is required but you can make a donation if you want to support my chicken pox spreading efforts.

so i'm waiting for lawyers to start calling me at any second now because last night at 9:30, i was merging to a one-way and when i started to move forward, all the sudden this 6-year girl on a bike is right in front of my car, having darted in front of me from the right. yeah. holy fuck. i was only going about 1mph since all i had done was lift my foot off the break pedal at that point. but it scared the shit out of me.

no, the girl wasn't hurt at all. and i really shouldn't say anything more here about it right now. but it was 9:30 at night, it was a father riding up mattis with his two kids, none of them had on reflective anything, no lights on the bikes...and i was completely, completely hysterical last night after it happpened and i cannot, no matter how hard i try, get that image of the scene out of my mind.

to add to the surrealness of the scene, the father was riding one of those "olde tyme" bikes with the 4 foot wheel in front and a tiny wheel in back. jesse asked if i was sure i hadn't dreamed the whole event. don't even ask what ELSE can happen right now cause i don't even want to think about it.

thank god that girl's ok. she didn't have a scratch at all because i think all i did was nudge her and she kept riding so i didn't knock her over. but signs are now pointing to stress being the real cause of the hives because i woke up with a nice new batch this morning and i am so fucking sick of being a grad student, making -$11 an hour but i suppose if there was a lawsuit, just about the only thing anyone could take from me is my student loans...

uh...so i'm covered in hives...what the fuck am i allergic to and/or is it psychosomatic? this is *super* great timing too -- nothing like a benadryl cocktail 4 times a day to make you feel...

i forget what i was going to say. see? it's been like this for two days now!

back then, back a decade ago when i was in reno...it struck me this morning at the restaurant that this is the summer...i ran off to forget and drove around the desert for hours on the weekends...you've never been beyond...and the prostitute and the gambler staking their fortunes and futures on the web and maybe they were right, maybe that really did work out in the end...i have and i know what it looks like there...and elsewhere and the flights to dc on the weekends and you never came out here and i never thought that was strange and another you made the trip only i never arrived at the bench because i wasn't sure i wanted to know you again...it's just that this time...

never blog on an empty stomach.

FW:

talk to me...

at the laundromat and jesse and i were thinking earlier that we need to open a 24 hour laundromat with air conditioning, a coffee shop, wifi, etc so i sent this via my mobile and i have no clue why the title is FWD and it's getting annoying that i can't title my mobile phone posts

i kept hearing the beeping from the tv at the laundromat and it's so thick outside it's almost a color and i didn't pay any attention until the lady with the three dryers next to mine looked at me and we both said "fuck, it's an amber alert."

if you don't know what that is, no, it's not one of our stupid color coded terror alert messages -- it means a child has been kidnapped and it's named after a child named amber who was kidnapped and murdered in texas...and then i felt sad/mad at the world for the fact that the warning system that was activated wasn't for the fucking weather...it just had to be about a child, huh?

and then you start looking sideways at everyone around you...flashback to the movie unbreakable, the scene where he's standing at the train station, you know the one i'm talking about...and you wish that your secret super power could somehow see into the heart of darkness...and after all that desire to see the light? how could that be?

homeless guy walks in and drinks water from the fountain and asks me if i'm knitting or crocheting and looked really shocked when i said knitting and then he smiled and said "that's a good habit" and then he left...and the look of shock? maybe that was his seeing something not so horrible in what i imagine is a cold and dark world for him most days.

darker, darker outside and a guy with a notebook on a bike asked me how many quarters the dryers took and then he told me he's been doing a *story* about the price of laundromats in this town and showed me his charting system on a scrap of paper, the back of some sort of flier and then he rode off...and the rumbling started, sky grey, my head hurts and it feels so late and yet it's not, it's really not...

laundry at the laundromat and there i was in old, ragged clothes because it was either than or dress to the 9's because we're out of clean things to wear and i thought "wasn't i just in london a couple days ago?"

the fucking siren goes off again. this time it's for the weather.

there will be no arguments to the contrary accepted here...the shawshank redemption *is* one of the top films of all times. talk of unintegrated personality and parental conflict and blah blah blah and it all boils down to what gets said in the movie, that you either get busy living or get busy dying. that's not to say that you should keep busy to avoid dealing with living or dying...no, the point is right there...live or die.

someone seeing what i do and seeing the pain that drives it, the soul pain that screams to get out...the mask removed...i have to figure out how to become more integrated -- it's a continuum, not an absolute -- once i figure out what the fuck is threatening to break the silence of the glass...what do you fear, most? the psychologist said to her patient. glass, she said. why? because it's fragile? no, she said, because it's silent.the funeral is coming up soon and i learned that, at least in virginia, the law maintains that a relative must identify the body, even if they died in hospital...probably a law due to millions of fuck ups over the years...then there were those girls in, uh, michigan was it? wherever. those two girls who were mixed up at the car crash site and one's family grieved while one nursed who they thought was their daughter back to health.

ANYWAY...the point of this is that the business of death is insane and even more insane is my grandmother who is launching hate mail missiles to all of us any minute now. god i HOPE mine comes in the form of interpretive dance or in flowers...cause they say that you can say it all with flowers...in this case i'm sure they'd be white oleanders...

ok michelle. wake up.

dejetlagging still and they just delivered my luggage that didn't arrive last night and i don't think i'd have had the strength left if i had to carry it any farther so the lost luggage? no big deal, especially since i have it now.

i am starved, though. i forgot about that part of the jet lag cycle. i woke up super early mainly, i think, because my stomach was rumbling because it was way past lunch in the uk at that point. and i'm looking at my credit card statement and thinking "damn...that day in london cost a lot" so i'd better wear all this stuff. and then i went to their website and am thinking about ordering some more. what can you do?

but speaking of travel, i now have the unpleasant task of figuring out my travel for less than two weeks from now and, ugh, what's the easiest way to go to boston, dc, chicago, detroit, and back to champaign in the course of a week? oh and still get a lot of shit done? and...oh boy i just need to make a task list. i'm working straight through the next two weeks i think.

ah...brighton. why did we have to leave?

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i was right - heathrow is stil a huge fucking mess

heathrow where i'm drinking cans of coke because i really am just that exhausted from making my way from brighton this morning with that damn suitcase. so here's the thing: why do people just stare when you are carrying something heavy and you lose your balance? ok, there's the "shock of the moment" thing. but then after that...why doesn't anyone ask if you need some help? this is a world problem and not isolated to just one or two countries. why are we so closed off? it's exasperating.

i suppose i should start figuring out what gate i'm leaving from. it was nice to just sit for a bit...although i'm about to sit for quite a long bit now...

not much time left on this prepaid connection card and too much to say. i think that the best way to look at it there are a lot of things in this life that don't make a lot of sense, that they happen for a reason but that the reason might not be everything you might make it out to be. the reason might be quite simple.

maybe we walk around this world and occasionally meet the people we're supposed to meet for no other reason than for confirmation that there is something innocent and sweet left within ourselves and others. these moments are fleeting but meaningful and they should be followed for that brief second. because they are the beauty in this world.

and then you find yourself temporarily shaken and your eyes fill with tears on the street corner. and suddenly i was transported to her room at the hospital at 5am, standing in the doorway when we come some close to that moment where we have to reach out and take ahold of the arm of the person slipping. and someone else later offers it to you as a reminder of how lucky you are to have experienced a moment of safety, the arm of another as they say don't die. and then it's the point in the film where they are standing at the station and you can see into the heart of another, only you know that this time you've been given the gift to see what's too delicate to describe. everything and nothing to talk about, really. but i'm not sure any word in any language can describe the few moments where the reason why we stay here suddenly becomes clear. because we are needed.

long distance charges...and the money doesn't matter. and i'll be home soon. but i'm there. i'm there now.

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smoke kills sperm dead. isn't this kinda like an incentive TO smoke for some guys? just a thought...

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brighton hardcore is much like seattle on the sea...i'm not sure why we are the way we are but that's just how it is i suppose. but i think i could only live this way a few weeks out of the year. any more than that and it would be ridiculous.

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rooftops in london and you can hear people below screaming and the world cup final match hasnt even started yet...

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london.

go figure where i'm at? fucking starbucks at piccadilly circus. i have one of those t-mobile hotspot accounts that used to work at borders and now that they have switched to selling seattle's best coffee they've also stopped with the wifi. anyway...after two calls that probably resulted in about 10k pounds of charges, i got the damn thing working over here and i'm plugged into the wall so my laptop has power and i'm probably the only person in the uk who is working before noon on a sunday, on the day of the last world cup game. but what the hell...there's nothing else open and i *do* have to finish updating my presentation.

i could go out and take pix...but i'm so jetlagged and besides...how many more pix do i need of piccadilly, you know? but i took a phone photo, just for you.

at the bk next to the hotel with an easyinternetcafe in the basement and it's nice and cool here 'cept my hotel room which is broiling because there's no air (which i figured) and the window doesn't open (which i hadn't figured on) and howard jones is playing on the radio and it's making me crazy because my ipod can't compete with its volume.

yeah so i'm in london where football is the rage and i couldn't sleep last night from all the yelling and it's likely to only get worse tonight, ah but what can you do? drink more coffee i guess right now.

oh...and the hotel has fleas. either that or some other monster bugs were biting me all last night. can't wait to leave for brighton...god, it's been 16 years since i was there. anyway, i need to find a chemist that is open and get some benadryl, which i didn't pack to try and get the itchy level down...

my phone DOES work. thank fucking god...

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my super secret double life...and these default "multimedia message" things are getting annoying. anyway, i leave for london for about a week starting tomorrow afternoon and i have a million things to do but i think...i *think* everything's under control. i *think*...

anyway i was thinking earlier about how i seem to lead this double life sometimes -- one part glam and one part pretty down to earth. right now i seem to be wanted as a speaker for about 9000 conferences all in a row and that's cool...but how? then there's the day to day that is definitely unglam and...well, fuck i don't know what i'm trying to say or if i'm trying to say anything at all. i'm just tired at the moment.

antiik

antiik
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

matt told me recently that i say the things here that everyone thinks but never asks out loud or on paper. maybe. i don't say it all but i say a lot i suppose. the rest? ends up in my old school journals. or in my dream world. or with dr. b. or sometimes it gets left behind in my mind, maybe waiting for that someday to come that makes it ok to finally let it go free.

so i want to talk about funerals, specifically cremation. so i'll say it now, i'll say it here...(1) make sure i'm really dead first of all. i don't want any of that horror show shit where you've been given some kind of drug or herb that makes you seem like you're dead but you are in a deep, deep sleep. but barring that crazy ass possibility (my dad always said some quote from somewhere that he picked up where the worst of our fears never come true...i've always taken that to mean that you need to think about and say all the worst things in order to doubly make sure that they never happen...but there's always something you'll never think of...that's the flaw in the logic). (2) cremate me, for fuck's sake.

why? to restate the obvious...no one looks like who they were in this life once their body has been *restored* by the morticians. not even close. so i don't want anyone to see me unless it's right after i've passed on, before the wax, the make up. i repeat. i do not want an open casket memorial service. separate my ashes and place them on every continent i never made it to and if i've been to every continent than send them somehow away from this planet.

come live with me now, though.

who's gonna drive you home, tonight?

cry
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

so i didn't get to sleep until 5am and was magically up by 8:30am and now it's thundering...perfect weather for a drive...to michigan.

some of you have asked me if my grandfather's funeral is this weekend...no, it's not. he's being cremated and the funeral service will be at arlington national cemetery on august 1st at 11am. so there's the nitty gritty details...the business of the loved one.

now you may be wondering...will my grandmother be there? well, heaven and hell will keep you up to date in the weeks to come but as of right now no, she refuses to attend the funeral of her husband. i'm sure she has some other zingers built into the whole next few weeks and i, for one, just can't wait to find out what they are.

where did the good go?

i just want to go home...please help me go home...

time's up
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

that's what my grandfather told me a few weeks ago when i went and saw him for what i knew would be the last time in a trip to dc that would end my streak of only going home around xmas...

my grandfather left this place for the next place, yesterday. it was a night train that carried him from the station in his sleep.

and now it's the middle of the night for me...2:24am...and every time i try to go to sleep, i start breaking into sobs...which makes me wonder how good of an idea is it to go to michigan with chris for another funeral this weekend? but i don't want him to go alone...but i also don't want to be a burden should i break down during the services.

so much anger swirls around me directed mainly at my grandmother...what's her body count up to now? too much to go into right now and i'm tired...yet scared to go to sleep.

my dad kept calling me "mother" on the phone.

i guess i'm thinking of having a hysterectomy. i mean i can't imagine 15-20 more years of calling the doctor every month to only end up talking to her nurse who seems to be more in love with detective work than listening to what i'm saying on the phone. example:me: so for 3 days when the pain really gets bad i take xyz and then when the pain gets to the point that i'm ready to pull out my own uterus i take xyz+ for 3 days

nurse: wait, so now you are saying that the pain lasts six days sometimes versus five days? what? is your period that irregular?ok, so imagine that the "six days versus five days" is being spoken as if the nurse was saying "600 days versus five days" and then you'd have the voice down about right. that irregular...yeah, wow, 1 day is just amazingly irregular. how could anyone be that irregular?

christ. because i have migraines and because they act like they are pre-strokes (slurred speech, blindness in one eye, weakness on the right half of my body, tingling on the right side of my face) when i'm on any kind of hormonal treatment like the pill...and because of the depression, etc, which increases to sylvia plath levels when i take any kind of hormonal treatment like the pill...i can't take the pill without it being as risky as playing daily games of russian roulette. but, yet, somehow it always gets mentioned to me as if i'd been living under a rock no matter how long i've seen this or that doctor ("say, did you know there's this thing called the birth control pill?").

but now this nurse at carle is now *investigating* this whole matter to see if i'm a drug addict or if i really just use these painkillers for five or six days a month (and she even did the math and it worked out right...well, if you add in the possibility that sometimes my period lasts six versus five days...never mind the pain i'm in the week before where i'm taking advil as if it were candy). does this come as a surprise to me, that she's launching an investigation, calling me back every ten minutes to get more information? why doesn't she just outright ask me? do i use heroin the other 22 or 23 days of my cycle? there i go again with the irregular bit!

no, it doesn't come to a surprise because this happens every month with more regularity than my amazingly irregular cycle. does the ob-gyn nursing staff at carle get this week's "i hope you cry when you get home" award? yeah, sure, i guess. i guess they get the award one week out of every month...maybe i should just put them in their own category since it's not fair that they get the award so often. others deserve a chance to win, after all! so i guess i'm going to officially announce that carle hospital's ob-gyn department gets the lifetime achievement "i hope you cry when you get home" award. and if they aren't involved in a particular month (say, for instance, if i'm at home over break and my mother's ob-gyn is giving me the same grief) then you can insert "or other ob-gyn departments as needed" in for carle when appropriate.

what i want to know is who they think they are protecting? me? no, because all they are doing is making me wonder if it's easier to deal with a street dealer than them. and then the thing with the hormonal treatments...would they take them if they were me knowing that there's a huge risk that i might have a stroke one month? thanks but i know plenty of people who are my age who have already had strokes and i'm not willing to take a chance that someone might be around to call an ambulance in time to help avoid increased damage to my system and/or death.

yeah, i know. pain killers are not baby aspirin. but i shouldn't have to choose between something hormonal that could kill me or having a hysterectomy because month after fucking month i have to go through hell and back again just to get something prescribed that will allow me to get through five OR six days with some kind of dignity.

oh. and i hear rush limbaugh was caught with a prescription for big blue in his doctor's name and what exactly happened with his whole getting tons and tons of vicodin without a prescription thing?

coda: no more prescriptions, says carle. so i guess i'll be working one less week each month, which should make things easy on the wallet. oh -- and the nurse said that i should try hormonal treatments because taking pain killers are dangerous. kind of like a stroke. or suicidal depression. i need to look at my schedule and go to amsterdam for those five or six days one month...it's worth a shot. and i'm all out of options sans the hysterectomy.

so the strange tale of where my psych ices forms went has been solved: they were sitting in the online education office in engineering hall. of course they were...cause that just makes...no sense at all.

anyway...i have to bring them back to the ices office because for some reason they ran the comparison data with the library science department so the ratings are all kinds of fucked up. but, i got a 4.9/5.0...which means i'll definitely be on the outstanding list for that class. and, actually, it would even put me on that list if i were teaching in library science. so that's pretty damn cool.

4.9? well, i definitely don't feel like i deserved it since it was such a weird ass semester. i guess because it was so hard to juggle all the health stuff with the teaching load i felt like i wasn't really teaching it the way i'd wanted to. but then again...given how strangely the class was structured this year i kind of had to just improv everything each week because every time i planned things out, it would have to be completely thrown out by the end of the lecture. so that made discussion very weird sometimes and so i relied a lot on personal stories.

what got me, though, were the personal comments about how they had never had a ta who gave a damn about them as people until taking my section...and this was a class of mostly all graduating seniors. and that makes me sad/mad about this place even more because i believe it, i believe it because it's happened to me here (of most recent events was thursday's car *relocation* battle). as students, we're second class citizens of the universities that are *supposed* to be here for the students...at least that's what i (probably) naively still believe. so i guess i try the best that i can to try not to treat others the way i've been treated, the way i know others get treated, etc. i hear all the stories from the girls in wimse about their feelings of helplessness when they have a professor or a ta who won't take the time to consider that, you know, weird shit does really happen to people sometimes.

yeah, they've probably been burned before...but the thing that i really wonder about is are they acting that way because they no longer trust their students or is it because that's how they were treated so now that they have a position of power it's now "their turn" to be the assholes because that's how the system works?

i guess that's the choice we have -- we can either fight the system in the effort to try to change it or just help it keep running itself into the ground...

it's definitely a tiring place to be on the side of fighting the system, though. but i couldn't go with any other way of doing things. but that doesn't mean that there's not room for improvement in my methods...i guess if i felt like there wasn't room for improvement than maybe i'd suddenly wake up one day and find myself to be another brick in the wall. and that just won't do.

today's "i hope you cry when you get home" award goes to...the university of illinois parking services!yes, they are the official first winner of this highly regarded award. yes, without warning, they towed...uh, actually that's *relocated* since i didn't ask for the tow...my car while i was at work. better yet...while i was at work even though i'm owed about $2k in back pay. yes. apparently i had a *warning* on my car from march when my meter ran out and then today my meter ran out because i wasn't watching the clock like a hawk (yeah, i was paying attention to my work) so they *relocated* it.

oh but that's not all. so i had to pay the $144 for ignoring *the warning* i'd never received plus the cost of the two tickets. so when i said WHAT WARNING? campus police officer asshole shows me a sheet of paper with five lines of random codes and says "well it says here that you arrived as the police were giving you the ticket and that they gave you a verbal warning explaining that you were going to get towed the next ticket you got and you just laughed and drove off."

oh, yeah. funny...i don't seem to REMEMBER ANYTHING OF THE SORT and i probably was on campus teaching that day and my meter ran out because i stayed after class because some people had some questions. so i tell officer rent-a-cop that no such thing happened, that i did not receive a warning at all and i certainly did not receive one from a human standing in front of me who i laughed at and then got in my car and drove off. officer rent-a-cop says well the ticketing officer wouldn't have lied in her report so it obviously happened. so i said "well i'm not lying so what do we do here?" he said "well OBVIOUSLY you are lying."

mother fucking son of a bitch.

so chris drives me to the *relocation* lot where i have to pay another $125 to get my fucking car back (and they charge by the day so it's not like i could wait until the next pay day to get it)...and then i see "we do not accept checks" so there goes the writing the check out of my savings theory. so chris has to put it on his credit card and i'm crying because this has now cost me just under $300 for not feeding another 25 cents into the meter because i was working and yet not getting paid because the university is fucking around with my paycheck again (as usual?) AND i've just been called a liar and that there's nothing i can do about this situation.

i'm a peaceful person, really. i've never punched anyone and i hardly ever yell at anyone because when i do i end up feeling like a complete shithead. so, yeah, i internalized it immediately because it was humiliating to be told that you are a liar in front of a room full of people waiting to get parking passes, etc. i'm a peaceful person but today, i swear, if that rent-a-cop had not been hiding behind the cashier smugly telling me that OBVIOUSLY the officer wouldn't have written a false report because they'd be fired (!) i'd have pulled his balls out through his ears.

so you might be wondering how could one show that the officer did lie on the report? ah...it's a me versus them thing and why should i be believed over someone who has sworn to uphold, uh, campus *law*? so from this day forward, i'm hearby declaring that the university of illinois at urbana-champaign is a corrupt police state because this is the last straw. after seeing how they have handled rapes, suicide attempts, etc in the dorms over the last two years (yeah, with super sensitivity...they are a real dream team) and now being called a liar with no grievance procedures in place (i mean, fuck, $144 AND $125 -- could they not have taken off some charge off my account, given me a *little* bit of benefit of the doubt before called me a liar)i have lost all faith that the university administration gives one rat's ass about the students who go here. oh please, let ME pay YOU for fucking me over completely, while you *forget* to pay me, while you *relocate* my car, while you laugh about the latest rape or suicide case.

here's what i'm going to do when i graduate and receive my diploma. and now that i've said it, i have to finish that dissertation for no other reason than to be able to do this: i will burn that ugly ass blue and orange robe with that fucking stupid ass block I on it AND i will burn my diploma. maybe i'll even burn my diploma right in front of the campus police.

mo? kasey? i am sticking 5 pins into the voodoo doll in honor of officer rent-a-cop.

cry, motherfuckers. cry.

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lol. nice title that i can't seem to change. well, this is my *office* until july while we're moving space on campus and my housing office is closed due to building rearrangement/deconstruction.

the nice thing is that when i'm in a lot of pain -- oh, say, like NOW -- it's handy to have the couch to lie down on. on the other hand...i watch an amazing amount of *waste tv* while i'm here lying on the couch in pain.

my brain may never survive this summer...

so one of these days i'll get a professional website back up so i can put up some of the stuff that i'm involved in. speaking of, our panel just got accepted to SIGGRAPH's gaming sandbox so we're going to boston at the end of july...so, wow, the sig's made ACM SIGGRAPH now!

i'm not sure why i took my old website down other than it was soooooo moldy that i couldn't bear to look at it anymore. but i have to get my chops back up in the web world, now, i think. that's the fight for me. to announce successes? well, that's asking for trouble.

josh told me today that some of my articles have been put up in the department...huh? he meant the newspaper article, which i didn't know they'd put up, plus some other article that i don't know anything about...i guess i should go over and look. but that would smack of pride...and we don't do that in this family.

oh why is it so difficult for women to accept that something done well, something that gets notice...might just not be a fluke. instead, we bury it...and we look toward the next failure that we can beat ourselves up about...

oh...if i could somehow teach my wimse's how not to do that, how not to fall into that trap of "if bad = true than good = false"...maybe we need a feminist consciousness raising book club this year?

so nina simone's been popping up on the soundtrack radar a LOT lately...on tv...in movies...it's not the first time, probably not the last (i hope not, anyway). but what's causing this craving for nina all of the sudden. maybe it's the bottom dwelling of our current political situation? some mutual feeling that we'd be better off living some place else? where? i have no idea.

two redbulls and a ton of advil and pamprin to try, try, try to get ahead of the pain that's around the corner and i just got the bill for april's surgery...$3120.00...and that's just the beginning of the bill's stacking up. yeah, that's pretty cheap for a surgery but it was out patient so that helped. $3120...shit. that's more than i'll make all summer. oh...snap. that's sad.

just got an email from the geo, the grad student union, wanting to hear our healthcare nightmare stories in prep for some big showdown with the university administration. this time around they seem like they want to make the case that sometimes students have REAL health issues (as opposed to those in the "real world") and i swear to fucking god...if the administration here really thinks that we are somehow free from health issues by being in grad school...well, fuck, they need to get their brains checked out. wonder if THEIR insurance covers that? if so, then i'll just assume that they must have never had any kind of health problem UNTIL NOW when obviously they are dealing with their own memory loss about being a student...

...its a new dawn, its a new day, its a new life for me
...and I'm feelin good

ba. da dah. da dah. da dah dah da dah da dah...

madness? yes. brilliance? maybe.

depakote er 500
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

maybe it sounds cocky to bring up the the icarus project when you, yourself, are bipolar. thanks to having to briefly stop medications before my surgery in april i have been struggling with wildly swinging mixed episodes and i've been trying to get things back under control...is it mania or situational mania as an escapist response, an avoidance? after a while, does it matter?

i've always been scared about the mania...the lack of some kind of grounding in reality, things forgotten, and how my head feels like completely exploding...the extreme hyperfocus coupled with the the extreme multifocus. so i tap it down, drown it out...hope for the best. but more scary...the worst is the second floor where nothing happens at all...the blank world. the second worst is the depression crash down four stories...so i'd prefer to live on the 3rd floor when i can...but even that has it's hair pulling out problems. like now, when i'm wrestling with strange philosphical ways of being and seeing and i need someone to talk to every day about this. so i talk to you.

i know that this blog seems dangerous. you worry about how much i say, what reprecussions that might bring. does it matter? sure, maybe i'll never be tapped for that national security agency job...but i've already done enough in this life to make sure that NEVER EVER happens. thank god.

feed your head.

so you all pretty much know that i try to be as honest about my own experiences as i can. i've been working on the dissertation all weekend long and i think that things must be starting to work in sync...somehow. i'm only working on chapter four because i'm not doing myself any good to keep rehashing chapters one and two before i've finished my draft of chapter four. chapter three? ok, it's almost there but it's definitely the least interesting bit, since it just describes my methods...although how i arrived at the methods that i did use is a bit of a story!

but anyway, chapter four. i told myself thursday that before i met with chip on tuesday afternoon, all i was going to do was work on chapter four...go through the transcripts of, now, only 32 hours of videotape...well, plus the 32 hours of the game play feed that goes with it...so 64 hours. much less than the 96 i was starting with, i threw out all the triads because it was weighing me down too much and i may pare the data down a bit more but we'll see. so for now, i'm going through the transcripts of 64 hours video tape.

these are some of the things that i'm afraid about when it comes to writing this whole thing up: i wonder if i’m smart enough to write the dissertation i want to write? i wonder if this time around i’ll be strong enough to tell the story?

more on this later but there it is. fear. i'm afraid that someone's FINALLY going to realize i'm a dumbass once they read the final product. and i feel like i'm taking a leap, this big risk in what i'm doing and...

i.
am.
afraid.

i am afraid that no one will be there when i fall, that no one will even understand that i have fallen and what to do about it. but this weekend i'm opening up all the windows and doors and i'm stepping out onto the ledge and i'm leaping, making the leap and hope that the leap means breaking the loop, getting the fairytale, finding my, so far, nameless and faceless full self.

and i realized that right now and in all those "thens" that sometimes the hand that reaches out to catch you when you fall is your own.

after about 8 hours of going through transcripts like a paralegal or a detective or a forensic psychologist...my head felt like it was going to fly right off. but i'm doing ok.

but...i wish i could find a giant stapler to fasten my neck to the nearest sturdy object, like a pole or the floor so that i can't run from this anymore out of fear. i have to stay and fight.

shades of red, too

shades of red, too
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

joensuu, near the university and european college towns have always given me weird vibes and maybe it's because many universities in europe seem more like a strange cross-cultural showdown, as if we'd mixed private colleges and community colleges in the us to see what would happen. here's my reality show pitch (heavily influenced by, uh, another reality show): this is the story of two different colleges, picked to live in a small european town, and have their lives taped, to see what happens when people stop being polite and start being real...

so the ices are in and my psych ones are lost beyond all reason at this point. the lis ones got sent to gslis rather than my campus office address and psych is just generally baffled about the possibility that they might have some mail they might be holding...so maybe next week i'll get the psy430 ones back?

the ices game is a wild ride and it's funny to look at pages and pages of stat output on a small class -- 11 total forms were filed out for a class of 14, 1 of the 11 didn't fill out questions one or two...so my overall teaching effectiveness...[note: i love words like "effectiveness"...do i teach effectively...to me that always sounds like the corporate bullshit words like efficient, quality, synergy...how about this phrase? let's dialogue...oooohhh another good one. oh. snap. /sarcasm]...is 4.8 with a big ol' standard deviation to throw in some nice uncertainty so i'll be ranked as "excellent" but with all these oooo's around the x...throws my score into strange territory on the edge of excellent and outstanding. so i can't tell if i'll get an asterisk when the list comes out in the fall...but i am running up against other campus "electives" that tend to have crazy high ratings so probably not. but it doesn't really matter in the end. we had a fun class and it was one of my specialty -- "michelle's crazy ideas for wimse" -- courses. so the fact that anyone wanted to come out and play at all and sign up for the course was enough for me. :) although the 4.8 is a pretty amazing score. so it's double cool.

stay tuned for the psy430 report...if i ever get them!

super fucking hilarious

gotta be blue

gotta be blue
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

estonia. bottle. pharmacy. old. blue. borrowed. new.

no, i'm not as depressed as it probably seems. i'm just wondering about a lot of things so everything's coming out really cranky and sad.

it's kind of funny how non-hilarious most posts of mine are. because if you know me in real life, you already know how i act and how i am around you. maybe if i used a different blog template and didn't tell you that i hoped that you cried when you got home things would be much more light and cheery?

nah...

maybe i have up to 18 new below door neighbors now, i really don't know. i've never seen the same person come out of the apartment twice and then this afternoon i saw three guys dressed in red shirts and black pants yelling and running out the door, putting on suspenders and belts as they were getting into their car...and then there's the business of all the banging on the walls last night...sigh. i guess i'm getting sick of neighbors and apartment buildings and, damn, i could own this place by now, huh?

yeah, i'm trying to write and i'm frustrated because it's not going well and there's all those dreams at night and i should try to draw it out, put myself into some sort of self-trance state and draw out what it looks like or get a giant truckload of legos and build it because i think that there's more information in the structure of the dream world than there is in any one interaction that happens in any one dream. i'm no good at writing up procedures...

i remember way way back in the day when i was in chip's class with cece and laura who are now each done and done and i remember saying that the constraints of a dissertation were painful and scared me to death and here i still am trying to figure out how to tell just one story when there are so many that could be told. and that's the whole problem with the dreams at night too...there's too much that is going on to stay focused on any one thing and, dr b, no i don't know what's causing that fear exactly...

i was once a classically trained musician. now in the dream space i'm always forgetting about showing up for the lessons, the masterclasses, whatever because i've drifted off to some place else. my car won't start, my hair won't get washed, the pain won't stop, the world keeps spinning on the same damn dime. i once had that discipline and i've been running from it ever sense. i knew what needed to be done, how to do it, and how to be up on stage. i was a night worker...working in someone else's regular day work hours in some other country. i knew that there was no sleep to be had for us, ever, during the night because who could sleep reliving every note, every feared mistake and every real mistake...then we had to be up for the rest of the world in the morning and it takes it's toll, it took it's toll.

are things better when you live in the daytime space? what if you can't work there? maybe the dream space exists because it's telling me that i should be awake now? maybe it doesn't make much sense to keep trying to squash things in where they don't belong...

god i don't even know the point of this post anymore...

i'm trying the excedrin migraine thing today because i don't want to take anything else to be honest, anything stronger. i don't want to fill another prescription and i'm sick of seeing the collection grow higher. i can't decide about the topamax and i really don't feel like dealing with it, especially since it's way, way, far away from being generic and i don't feel like filing for prescription assistance because there's no way i could afford it on my own unless, say, i cut out something like food.

i have to get onto a more healthy lifestyle and there's only one way i know that will help me start. it's gonna hurt, there's no doubt about that. but there's no other way.

blue shit in hyper disco pink

blue shit in hyper disco pink
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

sleepy thanks to the sedative they gave me before the mri and i wish that they'd said that they did indeed upload your brain photos to snapfish to pick up at the local walgreens. no, nothing's wrong (i think) but because of the increase in migraines lately i needed another mri to rule out anything else since it's been ten years since the last one and now we're considering dopamax (insider lingo for topamax).

i've gotta get a new phone now because now mine's gone and, great, that means i've lost 1000s of phone numbers but what can you do? maybe i'll get a blackberry and be a hyper geek? nah, too pretentious. but i do like the new thin phones so maybe i'll get one of those?

so much stuff to do right now and i just want to sleep so maybe i will be able to do some of it when i wake back up.

how exactly do we get to the zest?

zest of lemon
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

so i feel the need to write about this because i've realized that 4 years have passed by. yeah, other amounts of time have also passed by. but i have an event that is very specific in mind.

i had to make a choice. live or die. it was that simple and it was that complex all at once. after hardly eating for weeks, not being able to leave the house, hardly being able to get out of bed...i had to take a gamble one way or another. either end everything right now or pick up the phone.

i wish that i could say that that was it. just call the health center, come in somehow, leave it up to them, and then i'd be fixed up and ready to go. i was ready to leave the sad girl behind, slap a sticker on my ass that said "sponsored by eli lilly," and join in the stepford brigade (that term was soooo much better before the latest remake of the movie). i was at the end, after all...did it matter any more if the meds made me some altogether different person, destroyed the sad girl that was a part of who i was? because let's not deny it...if she were gone, there'd go my empathy, my feelings of outrage when the world sucks ass, my late night crazy philosophical wanderings.

but i didn't care anymore. for years and years i'd been telling myself that taking meds would mean killing off who i am and that i'd be changed forever. and what if i didn't like that other "new" person. they kept saying that it would be "you, only better" and wtf did that mean? but when you you smack yourself out of catatonic depression enough to realize that you could, indeed, just die or you could try to live as someone else...when you've finally found rock bottom...what would it hurt to try and take something that will at least make you go through some kind of instant reincarnation?

yeah right. instant reincarnation. the truth is that it takes weeks and months and different types of meds and dosages and it makes you wish that thorazine was over the counter because it's all not working fast enough...but the thing was that i wasn't really all that changed after all was said and done. fuck yeah, even now i have days where my brain only wants to sit around and point out my flaws, i have days where i can't get out of bed, i have days where (at least in my mind) it seems that it would be easier for everyone if i wasn't around.

but it's not. i guess after her boyfriend committed suicide last month and she said "he was my everything" it started to dawn on me that it's not really an act that no really notices. maybe it seems better to unburden the world of you, maybe it's altruistic? maybe you are somehow saving the world by pulling yourself out of the running...nature...nurture...whose side are you on?

so i'm telling you this because i do get it. i get that the sad girl comes with the package deal. but the sad girl makes you notice when she's left the room, even if it's only for a moment. the sad girl makes you see the things others miss, forces you to confront it. the sad girl covers the angry girl and vice versa and, yeah, i'm still trying to pull them apart but without them...i don't really know who i'd be. i guess all i'm trying to say is that you aren't really alone...in fact, you are another member of our club. i wish that wasn't the case but since it is, i'm glad you are here too. because you know what it's like, because you DO get it, because now we're all a little less alone in the dark wood.

the other thing you have to know is that, no, i'm not really considering med school. i know that to do so would feed right back into the family psychosis where nothing will ever be enough no matter what and at some point we must arrive and see the place again for the first time (thanks t.s.).

my brother's turned to the church (methodist) as an attendee while i've chosen some other path. i was surprised when my parents told me this weekend but what can i say about it? he has his reasons and we all have our reasons for turning to the things that, for whatever reason, give us comfort. i worship on the altar of prozac and psychotherapy, my journals as my guide, plane schedules my bible. i don't think either is the wrong way...but it reminds me of how different my brother and i grew up and how different we remain.

my friend matt, who is now a unitarian minister in houston, wrote me recently to ask if he could quote some of my blog posts in a sermon on faith -- or lack thereof. you know...it's funny that i called this *heaven and hell* after taking down it's original title of *if you want the fairytale*. yet, i don't know...i guess heaven and hell came from seattle...how every bit of heaven here leads to an equal and opposite bit of hell. but anyway, it was funny to think of this blog as something used in a church sermon that wasn't an example of "see how dark a world the sinner leads?" it seems that there's some light here to be found.

on another note...i told dr. b today that the closest i came to telling my dad to grow a pair this weekend was to tell my mom that what i really wanted to tell him was that he needed to grow a pair. he said that i was getting pretty close. and before you tell me about throwing stones...i'm well aware of my own glass house. so fuck off.

so the main thing you have to know is that i was once pre-med. yeah i was also a music major...so i tried to tie it together with art therapy but the truth was after i did an internship in that i wasn't super convinced about that whole thing. or at least i wasn't sure i could pull that all off.

ok, so knowing i *am* insane...what do you think about my taking the basic science courses that would qualify me for the mcat as a non-degree student? yeah, wouldn't that be interesting with me teaching the same students who might help me study for the coursework i either never took or took in, uh...yeah...right around the time they were born.

why? why the fuck would i be thinking about this now? i suppose that i've learned a lot about myself in the last few years, learning that maybe i should have become a psychiatrist, that maybe that's what i was really meant to do. but i guess i have to remember...would i really be able to be the loud-mouthed social justice activist that i try to be, that i am on some days, that i fail to be on other days...would i be able to do that without losing my license if i ever got that far?

but then i look at all the materials...all the coursework that easily excites me less than my undergrads who all seem to be sure that med school can be the only possible route for them...and yet they don't like what they are doing...and they question it. because they aren't really sure that med school is what they want...but how can they (or any of us) know what we want before we've gotten the chance to do what it is we think we want to do.

i recently read a personal statement of a pre-med student (not one of mine) and it looked pretty much the same as every other pre-med statement i've read in the past few years: (1) they've always had a passion for science and medicine (2) they have a personal story of tragedy or semi-tragedy that resulted in their never wanting to have anyone die again (3) when they realized that "science" is not for them but medicine is (4) why they know that medical school is the only thing they could ever, ever do.

so i'm nowhere in that last category in particular. i have to ask why though? why now? i guess it was seeing my grandfather today in the *mental care* ward of the assistive living center...seeing the bed sores...the woman who the staff laughed at who was convinced that something what all clearly, clearly wrote...paranoid delusions, they said...and i later told my dad that, yeah, they must be coming from somewhere though...my grandfather silently screaming with the tears that couldn't or wouldn't come out and it was time for him to go home, he wanted to go home. i guess it was that same idea that i came to my current job in the dorm with...i think i can help. somehow.

my dad said earlier in the day "i'm from alexandria, where are you from" and my grandfather said "i'm from alexandria too." and my dad said that he thought that they probably planted that info into him so he knew to say it. but my grandfather isn't from alexandria...he's from virginia beach...and before that the navy...and before that rushville, nebraska. so later i asked him where home was and he said rushville, nebraska and i asked him who was there in rushville and he said that he didn't know but that he wanted to go home tomorrow.

he'd asked me how i knew him and i said that i was my dad's daughter, which didn't really register. i later told him after the nebraska comment that i lived in illinois, which is close to nebraska (closer than here for sure). tears in his eyes that wouldn't fall out, and the hemorages on his hands and arms and the bed sores, and the lips that were almost invisible against his almost pure white face and white wisps of hair...and he asked if i was trying to go home too.

i could just think to say that we all are. but i think he's ready to really go home now.

we all are...in this place, this world. we are all going home. wherever that is, wherever that will be. but the question caught me in a different way...going home. and i thought about how many times i'd tried to go home, how many times i'd wanted to go home, how many times i think about it now. trapped in this body, on this earth...but there are so many places to go still...so i stay and try and live another day.

all i could say to my grandfather was that he'd be going home soon, knowing what that would actually mean...the loss of his physical presense on this earth...and then the crazy lady came by and said that he was dying, he was dying, and that we needed to get him out of this place. and we do. now i need to help my father transfer him to the place where he'll likely die...the 24-hour care hospice. but at least i hope someone will be around when it happens...or that at least it will be a peaceful end of life, with some dignity...the dignity that's been removed from him all these years...my grandmother, the dealer of death.

tertiary stages, demenia ++, late stage this and that and it all comes across as blah, blah, blah. but where are the people that know that none of this really matters in the end...can't you see the pleading? it's time to go home. and i guess, see, that's what reminds me about medicine...knowing what i can see and knowing what i know...knowing that maybe, in another life, i would have maybe been a doctor...a psychiatrist. but would i have ever learned a thing that i know now? and how long would it take before i bought the tickets at the station for those in pain...

home. home. home. where do we go now, sweet child?

Vessel-store.com

vessel-store.com

so these lights are all over now, more and more outdoor restaurants and more and more apartments and dorms rooms that prohibit candles due to way too many *accidental* fires and at first i thought *future land fill material* but then i found out that you can actually change the batteries on them...and that they are led of some sort. i don't know i haven't really looked that much into them but they are a somewhat interesting trend...although, as my friend barb at tech might say, you know...it just reminded me of some kind of *love toy* you know? ok she was talking about intravaginal ultrasounds but still. same thing. ok, not really.

post 701. damn that's a lot of entries, high quality whining, rabid complaining, and whatever the blogging *elite* call a waste of space. yeah, i'm not a big fan of people pointing out how *serious* their blogs are and than any blog that is self-centered, a diary, etc cannot be called a blog, shouldn't be posted, blah fucking blah. well, you know...you *can* just move on if you don't want to stay on the page you're on. so go away if you are reading this and thinking that it shouldn't be here, don't give it another moment's notice. you are wasting your time sitting there and bitching about what belongs in the blog world and what does not. go do something else. go!

xyzal...the name you know

xyzal...the name you know
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

xyzal...you know...for allergies? how exactly is this pronouced? zzzal? i guess. maybe it's the "xyz" (the end) of "al" (allergies)? those finnish...it's probably pronounced spam. you know me and other languages...just second nature. ;)

speaking of drugs...anyone out there who has tried topamax (a.k.a. topiramate)? i know it's used for seizures and now migraines...and off label uses include bipolar. these migraines are killing me and i'm sick of taking so many fucking pills. seriously. mo said something recently about hoping to go free and clear of them before she leaves for germany and i've toyed with that idea before myself. yeah, i know. i can't go off them. but it would be *really* nice to cut down on the apartment pharmacy if there's something that could cover multiple things well.

the thing is...how exactly do you mourn when you don't know the deceased? or, as in my case, how exactly do you deal with a relative dying who you don't know but should who doesn't know you now anyway and never did...

alzheimer's...and my grandfather has it and he's had it for a long, long time. i'll write more on this later, as i had major waterworks earlier. which brought me back to something i thought when everyone was dying during undergrad and in the years after...that we mourn, we cry for the dead because of selfish reasons. no, i'm not saying that we're all selfish for crying for the dead and the dying. but in a million and one different ways, we are crying because we're trying to resolve it for ourselves. the dead? things have resolved somehow no matter what you believe that happens when we die. sure, we're crying because no matter how much time they had on this earth...but really crying because we know we're not going to see them any longer and because we know that someday that will be us as the subject of the mourning of others.

we mourn the days, the hours that we did not spend with them and never will have the chance to do so again. but the hours, these hours...this is a new style of mourning. this is the legacy of the sociopath known as my father's mother...and i mourn the generations of damage, i mourn the fact that i never got to know my grandfather no matter how many times in my life we've been in the same room. and now? there's no chance. yes, there's still chance that i will be able to see his physical being that's still here on earth. but where his soul has gone, where his will has slipped away...i'll never meet my grandfather for the first time.

and it makes me want to curl up and sleep for days but i haven't, i don't...yet. and it reminds me of the cycle...how the nameless and faceless person i was looking for was me. so i look on expedia and whatnot...knowing that i will soon become the nameless and faceless person for someone else. does that matter? does it matter that i am?

be strong and you shall be renewed on last day.

finnish windows

finnish windows
Originally uploaded by vrgrrl.

not sure why i take so many pictures of doors and windows. christine used to say something or another having to do with my poetic soul. maybe. you know i haven't had a photoshoot of c-u day in a while...when will the weather be nice but not 100 degrees again?

there's also been a lot of tasty sticker graffiti i've found around the town and the campus...why do i always forget to document the world i live in? dr b? help on this one?

crap i don't know why my cell phone isn't sending posts to my blog right now. i have 5 in the queue and it keeps telling me communications error. by who? you? blogger? me? anyway, it's not a huge deal...but it's one of those days where everything is bugging the hell out of me and that's one of them...that is that it is one of the ones that i'm focusing on because the other problems are too emotionally disturbing to deal with today.

some days you just want to punch people even if you know you'd only end up missing. yeah, i'm having that pre-game developers conference crap going on again with one person who i'm not sure could offend me any more if he tried...at least that was the funny part...that he was offending me by thinking he was offending me by pointing out how *ignorant* i was on the subject of learning disabilities and actually offending me by telling me what *people* with learning disabilities are like (you know...to clear up my ignorance of the matter...). wonder if he's read my latest, uh, yeah...see...YOU just blew it bud. but what do i know? my complete ignorance of the whole matter of my own dyslexia shows that he's right! and...oh shit! i'm not supposed to be reading or writing...or was that righting...oh no...my crazy ignorant self!