i'm not doing new year's resolutions this year. my secret resolution has been the same every year for like the past three or four, and it hasn't changed, really, and i still haven't achieved it. the other ones are just things i write down in the vain hope something in me will change, that suddenly i will be able to weather jen's horrid behavior with good cheer, that my mom and i will miraculously concur on all things, that i will balance every aspect of my life perfectly, hurting no one. i'm not deluding myself this year. this day is no different than any other, aside from its cultural significance. the paths of the spheres do not abruptly alter course on january 1st, nor do the stars change their patterns. but life is not without hope; in fact it abounds. i can change my life on any day i wish.

who says you can only kiss ONE person at midnight on new year's eve? i mean, really, you have a whole MINUTE!

can you say "one-minute orgy"?

the book o' men is officially begun. only two entries thus far, one of which is my very favorite, a certain hottie from seville, but it's already not fit for other eyes. i'm including some of my cheesier feelings here, so it's going to be quite classified. i have the perfect hiding place, till i return to school and my lockbox...let us say that when my delightfully crafty grandfather built things, he liked to put secret compartments in them. i doubt my mom even remembers it's there, and she'd have no reason to go through the trouble of getting to it, so we're good.

this morning i had my nitrous oxide experience at the dentist, and it was NOT as cool as last time because he said i didn't really need to be all the way gone so he didn't put it on as strong. so i got all tingly, and the room was very shiny and the cars outside seemed to be going faster than usual, or maybe they were just speeding? i couldn't help smiling, not because i was happy, but because the chemical does something to cause your facial muscles to contract. that's what they told me, anyway. not the relaxing mind-trip of last time, but fun nonetheless.

today i will work on my scrapbook, and play final fantasy, and read. i realized during one art history class that i don't remember the titles of all the books i've read in the past six months, there have been so many. the truly stellar ones i remember, but the ones i enjoyed just as a way to pass the time, to travel through another place, another person--those i do not always remember. but they are in me still, every word of every book i have ever read, waiting for the right moment to pop into my mind, a random piece of phrasing, an out-of-the-way word, to say "here i am! remember me?" i have found myself quoting lines from books i barely remember having. i can remember entire pages of my very favorite books, and it's strangely comforting, much in the same way that i remember poems. when i was younger i counted that as one of my favorite skills, to be able to remember the written word (even things i was not particularly interested in remembering). i couldn't do it flawlessly, of course; i don't have that kind of memory. but i could remember how a page looked in my mind, and where the word or fact that i needed was located, the context in which it appeared. that's how i remembered "deluge" when heather and i argued over the pronunciation; it was in our little eighth grade vocab books, lower right hand corner of the page, and the example sentence was about the visitors to the exotic waterfall being drenched in a deluge as the water crashed onto the rocks. yeah i remember weird shit like that. i remember using the word "bombard" when i was in kindergarten, having learned it from my dad who would always tell us not to bombard him, and then having an older girl tell me authoritatively that that was most certainly not a real word (which i believed, for several years) in fifth grade stephanie salvatore and i had to write poems in mrs barber's class and i put something in about the smell of roses permeating the room, and no one knew what it meant, and she said she'd known it was mine. strange how so many of my memories involve things i wrote or read...i was telling sara last night about a time when i was ten or so, reading nancy drew in a restaurant, when they used the term "ejaculated" to describe how someone said something (it's an antiquated form of use, but it really does mean "to spit forth" lol) and i remember slyly asking my mother what that meant, only to have her exchange a horrified look with jen and grab the book away. what i want to know is, how the fuck did i know that ejaculated was a bad word when i was that young?! i distinctly remember that i asked my mom on purpose, knowing it would make her awkward, but i have no recollection of what i thought it really was or how i came to know that. i was a precocious reader back then; i always read jen's books, whether for school or from the library, because they were better than the ones we were reading. i came to understand the meaning of the verb "to fuck" thanks to mr. john grisham. maybe he mentioned ejaculation. i don't know.

i started planning out my next project today. i went out and bought a new black scrapbook, and started sorting out my two shoeboxes worth of spain and france stuff into little piles. contrary to what happened when i made my first scrapbook for greg, where i didn't actually fill the whole thing, i managed to already fil every page with what i've planned out, and i didn't even use up all the stuff from spain! i only made it as far as the beginning of the segovia stuff, which would make no sense to anyone but rae, but it's not even halfway. biarritz was halfway, i believe. no, i'm lying, my stuff from france is nowhere near the amount of stuff i saved from spain...i don't think i even wrote anythign down in france! i save almost everything...reciepts for money exchanges, international phone cards, business cards from tattoo parlors where certain friends got their belly buttons pierced, chocolates from a five star hotel....the silver welcome home ballooon that sara drew a face on and "pretend it's manuel"-- that,i haven't figured out how its going in.

since my mom knows nothing of the Great Manuel Adventure, i guess i'll show her the book with that page removed (she already expressed interest in seeing it). i left those pictures at school, i do believe. poo. i can't beleive i'm doing this three years after the fact, but better late than never!

(about an unnamed gentleman acquaintance)
James is a King: i know. he dresses as if he's taking viagra.

i seem to be starting off a lot of posts recently with "tonight was beautiful". well this is going to change right now, when i saw.............LAST NIGHT WAS BEAUTIFUL! :-)

it really was beautiful, tho. i think heather adequately captured the magic on her last post....especially some amusing quotes such as "you bitches better lock your doors or i'll cut you!", "THE CHICKEN IS SAFE!" and "michelle, why do I have to be the ball-looker?" that last comment was after we started discussing how the four of us (me, rae, sara and flanny) could be the four hobbits--tho only rae and h. flizzle fit the bill heightwise muaha--and we made rae frodo because she was absent and had no say and i fucking hate frodo. i'm sorry, had to say it at last, sam's the real hero in the movie, not mr. i-never-change-my-expression-EVER baggins! (plus i hate elijah wood. he has no jaw, just neck! yessssssssss i hate him). anyway, heather demanded to be sam because he's the cool one, and that left me and sara to be the ambiguously gay duo merry and pippin. sara immediately claimed the role of pippin--before she remembered which one pippin was, and i reminded her that he looks in the big ball, therefore she had chosen to be the ball-looker. and that makes me the cuter one! whoohoo!

LOTR came after several grueling mall hours, during which i bought myself some silver hoop earrings, new rings and a bracelet with a bow on it. i have a thing for bows, i realized! sara grumped and groused until i gave her one of the rings to wear lol. oh and we sold my scarf, a black and neon green one that i only wore for like two hours, to this little punk girl in the mall. let's see if she's honest and actually sends sara the rest of the money.

tonight was beautiful. i drove home from sara's, after dropping off rae and heather,wondering for the thousandth time how i came by these amazing friends in only four years (ok so seven for sara, i had a head start, whatever.) i loved all the things they gave me, not just because they were things (but ok the model of the 1969 red corvette rae gave me was HOT!!!) but because they know me so well, they know the things that would make me happy, and that in itself just brings a smile to my face. rae made boxes for me and sara; mine was laquered over with pictures of our trip to spain and france, even little metro tickets (i saved all mine too--one day there WILL be a scrapbook) and inside was the car and caramels because she knows i love them above all other sweets. heather gave me a plush hedwig doll (to go with the thousands of stuffed animals circulating the michelle/wendy domain), a simpsons poster which i just put up in my room, and a plug in potpourri thing that she made for each of us. sara gave me a companion lobster for linus (still to be named), the pablo neruda book which i shall begin tonight, and a bobble head devil duckie!!!

i hope you guys liked what i made/gave you...heather did indeed go wild for the hot air balloon lol. sadly, though the poem i framed for her did make sara cry, and she loved the weird llama furry thing, nothing can replace the lure of the lost pirate flag. one day, sara, one day! all my love goes with those gifts. nothing i buy/make/write can ever tell you how much you guys mean to me, more than i have already expressed to you in words, but i'll say it again: i love you so much.

oh yeah and in ac's we played the "never ever have i ever" game and i WON! (or lost, depending on how you're looking at it cough cough). that was amusing, especially since we made absolutely no attempt to lower our voices or use euphemisms. "never ever have i ever gone down on him in a theater...." lol

tomorrow it is off to boston, to relatives, to another evening spent just slightly tipsy. maybe jj, the semi-attractive kid who goes to the coast guard academy and who is NOT related to me will be there. still a bad memory of my sophomore cousin sara offering to "so hook you up with him". ewwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww. anyway if i like you and you have a cell i'll be texting you a christmas message tomorrow.....i suppose i can call meredith....lol. i hope everyone has a very merry christmas, and rae whatever happens know that i love you, aj loves you, heather and sara love you, we're all one big fucking happy family unto ourselves so who needs another one? i mean really! :-)

tonight was a shitloaf of fun. yes i wrote SHITLOAF, it was originally shitload but i typed wrong and you know what i think it's better off that way. tonight was the gift exchange at khara's. mel cried when she read the little book i made for her, then laughed at the other stuff- an inflatable palm tree complete with coconut (since wendy's went over so well), stars, edible underwear flavored pina colada with rum, and a hot pink, strawberry flavored vibrator! lol. yes, going this morning to VIP by myself was sooooo sketchy. i mean it was a monday morning, but there were still only men in there besides the girl cashiers, and these were big burly middle aged men who all looked a tad embarassed to see me, like i was a reminder that their teenage kids are probably looking at the same stuff. when it came time to select an item for melissa, i was SO stumped. there were HUNDREDS of them, literally, all with cheesy names and naked chicks and various sizes, shapes, and flavors. yes, flavors. i even called khara for guidance, who found it so amusing i went in alone. i finally got one and left, picking up the underwear on the way out and feeling entirely too pleased that i was never carded. yay i look 18.

all the gifts were good. jessi gave me a hot topic gift cert and a LEGOLAS PIN WHICH IS ON MY CHEST!!! jessi recieved a bonzai tree with fiber optic lights from jess. emily gave jess some dvds and the free toothbrush she got from her dentist this morning. heather gave khara butt shorts and vicky's stuff, and heather got a bra/panty set from vicky's from mel, which she wanted to model. we made jesse (another one, this one male and khara's little bro who knows far too much about our scandalous lives) close his eyes and she came out in only her bra and with the undies on over her pants, and we were taking photos. then, true to the peerless comedy of our lives, KHARA'S DAD CAME HOME. it was so fucking hysterical! heather's face was priceless; first she dove toward us on the couch, then threw herself bodily into the bathroom just as he looked up. we were all practically peeing ourselves with laughter and he had no idea why, but he must be used to that by now!

later we went to the donut shop and this kid kyle who said he was a stripped in new york sat down with us, but his cuter friends didnt, they sat elsewhere. he was a tad sketchy i must say, and unsulted heather's drinking, and she was like "oh no a stripper from jersey did not just look down on me!" then who meanders in but sara lugo (s. lo from the block!) and steve "follow your nose" eberle. heather made him hug her, knowing full well he hates her guts. not like she gives a shit. then we returned to the hoyer home, saw mama hoyer who told us her amusing story about how she accidentally told mike craig's brother jiimmy that "anything is a step up from mike" (she didnt know he was his brother lol OR that mike and jess were back together).

other amusing anecdotes:
*discussing how an anonymous individual received some manual lovin' in a club bathroom* melissa: (confused), wait, so WHERE did she get fingered?"
jess: THE VAGINA!
the story of doctor flanagan giggling in church when the word "Ass" was mentioned in a song. discussing this tale later: jess: "so did they say ass like donkey, or ass like back that ass up?"
heather: (sings soprano) "jesus christ, baaaaaack that assssss uuuuuuuup! just like that!"
jess: "really?"

deconti taking an aerial picture of all seven of us with our hands on each other's boobs. random someone: "put your hand on my boobs!"
me: "khara has a free one!"
khara: "i have TWO free ones! "
deconti: "everyone look at me, look at me, YESSSSS!"

there were more but i can't remember them. poopies.

I haven't posted since I left school. Home is home, I already hate being around my sister. After last year's fiasco with the tree (my mom breaking down in tears in the line for the cashier as we're about to buy a fake tree) my mom waited until yesterday to buy a real tree, then decided it was too much of a hassle (don't know where she got THAT idea, since i'm the one always sweating and cursing putting it up) and sent me off today to find a fake one. sadly i couldn't find one that came with pre-attached lights like sara's, but i got it, it's sitting in a box upstairs waiting for me to assemble it. whoot.

tonight is gift exchange for the windsor/wh crowd. after a last minute deliberation over whether to buy melissa the gift jessi had suggested, i went with it, and BOY was that sketchy! can't post on that till tomorrow tho, just in case. i ran all over trying to find this calendar for my mom, which i couldn't find in the end, so i decided to make one of those fleecey blankets that sara had with her last night, you take two huge pieces of fleece and cut fringes all around and tie them together. it's black on one side and has this really bright blue on the other side with a bingo pattern (don't ask). i hope she likes it, it's so soft i'll take it if she doesnt!

speaking of sketch, the michelle/old man pattern continues! i stopped at a little gas station to use the atm, and the old man at the counter said "watch where you stand, you might just be under the mistletoe!" and gave me a truly awful wink. bleh. i fled quickly.

the past few nights have been great, though....i saw lord of the rings, which was FUCKING AWESOME, i must say. i love aragorn, love him love him love him!! then sara and i hung out, made sugar cookies and watched return of the jedi saturday night. it was so wonderful to be back with her, to be with rae and meghan, to be home with the people i missed so much. i loved last night too, when we (me, sara, heather, khara and emily) visited melissa at cvs and made dip and didn't watch any of the princess bride as we discussed sluttiness and people's sex stories and i don't remember what else. brought back so many summer memories. khara's dyeing her hair black, so now she and jessi will have really dark hair and ill look like a brunette! argh.

now i must go put together that tree before i head to khara's. tomorrow night is gift exchange for me and sara and heather and rae, and i'm super excited for that! i'm so proud of the gifts i made for them, so much more than the gifts i bought. but i'm still broke.

this is the last time blogging from school for the semester. actually im on wendy's comp because mine is already packed, and my wonderful roomie is behind me braiding my hair. just like when rae inflicted unimaginable torment on me during the HILL trip! love you rae.....goodybe room, goodbye moon, goodbye spoon.....poo. sniffle!

Last night was a lot of things. Painful. Uncomfortable. Sad. I finally told greg the truth about the night at melissa's house, where he thought i was drunk and i wasn't. i don't necessarily lie to be cruel; often i lie because i don't know how to explain the truth. i didn't know how to tell him i was scared of seeing him, so i had them tell him i was drunk instead, and that opened up a world of trouble. so that's settled.

i've made so many mistakes in my life. this is what i lay awake last night thinking about, until i forced myself to think of happier things...i never saw the complications coming, i always thought i kept my life simple, free of the shit that other people usually had. i started thinking, well it was less complicated last year. no, no it wasn't, there was stuff with sara and me being frustrated with greg and problems with my mom and jen. well it was less complicated junior year. no, there was the annie thing, and then the sara/greg thing. well it was less complicated before then, after my dad died. HA. no way. his death might have solved some things for this family but it sure as hell created another set of difficulties. well then it must have been less complicated before he died, right? wrong again. i remember how miserable i was a lot of the time, how i didn't like myself at all, how i constantly felt like the friends i hung around with (besides sara) , katherine, erika, pam, weren't really my friends.

so what was my conclusion? my life has never been simple, i've just been deluding myself. the complications sneak up on me. of course, some of them i've dealt myself, like getting involved with jackie, getting involved with andrew, etc. i always told myself i wouldnt be one of those girl with the soap opera lives. well, first i got involved with a guy one of my closest friends used to like, and then i broke up with him and rebounded toward another guy that one of my new friends liked at the same time, then i realized my mistake and cut that off, only to wind up with a new mess, and then was later briefly intrigued by the ex-boyfriend of an old acquaintance. thank lord above nothing happened there or i'd be in a worse mess, probably. but still, jesus! this from the girl who thought her intelligence would protect her from the sticky situations other mortals found themselves in. HA. big fucking good being smart did me.

why can't i look forward and perceive the complications before they happen? why can't i avoid some of this messiness? i never wanted a messy life. i'm a messy person usually but i thought i could keep my life in order. maybe not. why, why, why.

i have spent a while rereadin posts from many days past. like, last year. good things, bad things, sadness, nostalgia. insane. i had to re-post some snippets: "Mine and Greg's (grammar?) is two months from tomorrow. We'll just be getting back from the Southwest. I'm excited for both! Even when the fun of the trip is ending, I'll still have him to look forward to. And it becomes more and more apparent to me with each passing day how lucky I was to find a Greg. I can never figure out if it was fate or luck. At various times, in various moods, when I'm thinking about it and marveling at the fact that it happened at all, I lean toward one or the other. I'm in a warm mood tonight. Tonight it was Fate. "
that one made me kind of sad, kind of bittersweet. it made me wish i could go back there, not because i want to change how things turned out, really, because it's better this way, but just to enjoy that time a little longer.

"Another person's blog has gotten me thinking. It's possible to want opposite things at the same time because people are not homogeneous on the inside. Inside, we are strange amalgamations of completely disparate tendencies and desires. We are multifaceted, like the brightest of jewels, and it stands to reason that at different times, different aspects of ourselves will catch the light and make themselves known. Every part has its secret wish. Some parts of me wish that certain things could stay exactly the way they are, forever....and other parts wish i had my own separate universe, where things would be the way i made them, and i could carry out all those secret wishes without consequence. "

"When I opened the front door tonight and looked out onto the snow that is possible several feet deep on my lawn, I was struck by how similar it all seemed to the rolling sand dunes of the Sahara. The same little peaks and shadowed valleys, the same constant blowing and shifting....just all in silver-white. Beautiful. And then I went out there and blew it all to pieces.
Does this say something about humanity? It seems that we can never appreciate anything without destroying some part of it. We love flowers, and we pick them. We admire the fierce wild beasts, and we catch and cage them. We are awed by the vastness of the world and we set out to explore it, spreading conquest and disease.

Who hasn't felt it, though? That feeling you get sometimes when you come upon something completely pure, pristine; that dirty dangerous feeling, that overwhelming urge to just fuck it all up. Maybe we just can't handle things being perfect. Roald Dahl--great author--expressed this in the book Henry Sugar and Other Stories. He wrote one very short tale about the last really Good Child the world had ever seen. He was courteous, he was respectful, he was neat, he was quiet. And he was murdered by all the other children in the world who were tired of him making them look bad. So it goes."

those two i just liked. i love coming back to things ive written and not being able to remember what it was about, so excellently did i conceal my meaning.

sara made a site with pretty pictures!! sadly im not in like any of the ones from prom, but that's ok, i look cute in the one from columbus day! i loved that little dog! he was so nervouse! sara's photo gallery

home at last. not free, not till friday with this art history exam over my head which i should really be studying for RIGHT NOW, but still good. i'm unpacked, i've established christmas central on the dining room table, i put away all my clothes, cleaned my kitchen and bathroom because my mom never does, went grocery shopping, to dinner, and am now peacefully ensconced in the den. my mom and i had many an excellent conversation on the way home and at dinner, about a lot of things. nothing earth shattering, but at times like this i always feel closer to her. it's strange that for someone that most people find funny i don't really make my mom laugh very often. jen pretty much does that. i guess i'm more the one she has clear conversations with, and im ok with that. then again i don't think i annoy my mom after she's around me a while, and she always says she can't take jen for long periods of time. i suggested she go back to ireland for vacation, and maybe take jen because jen's already been andl iked it, and i have no desire to go, but she was like "umm....i don't think i can handle your sister for that long..." lol.

i was thankful more than ever to be escaping the drama today. an unnamed someone tacked up a "best/worst places to hook up" article from the Mirror on Amanda Piel's door, and who did they think did it? yours truly. if i may channel heather for a moment: girl, please. do they think i give a flying fuck what they're doing? not really, in fact i'd rather keep the thought out of my head and fill it with more attractive images like pablo and tfb. the unnamed someone only did it to poke fun at them anyway. i guess some people haven't learned the dangers of dormcest, but oh well.

ugh. what TIME is it, anyway? damn me and my caffeine consumption, i should have known it was fate when the machine was out of order, damn you tj why did you have to give me one? me, tj, meredith and james sat in his room for like an hour playing bomber man 2, which is really simple but fucking addicting, i must say. almost made me yearn for a nintendo which i thought i'd never do, being loyal to my playstation. james gave me final fantasy nine for xmas, you rock my socks james! yes so i was actually sleeping, in bed, well no not sleeping because i couldn't sleep, my mind kept running over things, and then i was just staring at the ceiling, which for me is the underside of wendy's bed, and then i just decided to get up. of course this required retrieving my glasses from my suitcase cause im good like that and already packed to go home tomorrow, and i think i made a lot of noise but wendy sleeps through basically anything. she is snoozing peacefully as we speak/i write. i love that girl so much. "this is my sad face--how can you resist me!"

girls of home, i look forward so much to being with you! that's keeping me focused. of course there's still art history to be considered on friday, but between then and now meghan and i will once again experience the orgasmic glory of legolas and aragorn on the big screen. ohhhh yeah. and i mean OHHHHH OHHHH YEEEEAAAAHHHH. muahaha.

every time i think of a certain person i laugh hysterically inside my little head. a bit disdainfully, i might add. is that wrong?

and now for today's update! found out by running into my spanish professor that my exam was THIS morning and NOT tomorrow, so after a full 30 min of studying (damn you, subjunctive) i took the exam in her office. thank whoever's looking out for me up there, i think i did fine besides a few conjugational errors. she told me that im really good at spanish and i should major in it, and to forget art history lol.

then i returned to the dorm to major drama. it seems our dear little andrew spend the night in another girl's room, who just happens to be the roomie-to-be of one lauren digiov. she, of course, is royally pissed that he's taking up with her future roommate (i think this is hysterical, personally, and i'm trying to encourage her to see the humorous side of all this). no word on what andrew has to say for himself, the little fucking hypocrite. sometime if i feel like being really cruel i'll quote some of the weepy shit he wrote in that note he gave me before thanksgiving, and compare that to his behavior....who exactly is he to call me a slut? i swear to god, one more little comment out of his mouth and he'll be flat on his back on the floor. don't cross me, i'm syrian.

finally for some good news, which is my final math grade! A-, despite me failing the final, despite not paying attention to his meaningless droning and wanting to shoot myself in every class. that man is such a crazy old fucker.

this is a post from last night that i couldnt get online to send:
I want to blog but the website won’t open the piece of shit. Andrew is seriously annoying me lately. Every chance he gets he makes some rude comment on how easy I am, or how I have no standards, or how evil and rotten a person I am. Example: if someone says, that’s so easy, he’ll add “just like michelle”. When Lauren talked about how vampire Andrew from home just wants to get in her pants, he goes “we all know that’s michelle’s only requirement”. It’s juvenile! I know he’s probably expressing his bitterness or something, but GET THE FUCK OVER IT it was a MONTH and now it’s OVER and I can do what I want with who I want when I want! He has no right to judge and even less right to be making snide remarks all the time! I told him that his lack of emotional maturity wasn’t really a big factor in me dumping him, which it wasn’t, but Christ is it a big factor now. I’m sorry he has mommy problems, attachment problems, girl problems, but don’t take your shit out on me. I don’t have to take it and I WILL smack the shit out of him. And he’s a pussy because when I made like I was going to hit him today after one of his little comments he cowered in fear. He tries to pretend like he just has fun making fun of me and it’s all in jest, but I know he means it deep down, after all the things that have happened.
Come to think of it, I have no idea if Andrew reads this or not. The link was in my profile so conceivably he could. Therefore, Andrew, if you ARE reading this, know that I am not kidding. If you continue acting like a stupid fucker, I—will—hurt—you. Got it?

Last night was entertaining. I had a dream involving all of my friend from here and from home running from Sean's skeezy friend "Trella" in the lazertag maze. we were playing tag and then he popped out and everyone screamed, meredith tripped, and we all ran like hell! should be studying or writing angry letters to math chair, but at least i packed a bit and my gifts are wrapped and life is slowly settling into some semblance of order.

**I think of the randomest things in the shower.** A few days ago my friend Lauren was in here, and in the course of the conversation i made some kind of joke about my dad, and she said the same thing that aaron meadows said four years ago, "you're not sorry about it, are you". the deja vu was stunning, really. obviously lauren realized quickly that she'd said something wrong. wendy responded that neither of us really liked our dads, and i agreed, at the time. yes that's the case and no it's not, and maybe i do give off that impression sometimes, but humor has always been the way i deal with things. i got my humor from him. i know he'd understand.

the hard part is that i can't really explain it all to her, or to almost anyone else. i could talk and talk and talk and still i would feel like they wouldn't understand, couldn't understand. they didn't know him. i would have to form his entire life with my words and i don't know if i can draw that picture accurately, enough to show what kind of a man he was, his flaws and his strengths, the way he loved his family, the stresses and disappointments he faced, the way he couldn't deal with it all. i could never tell anyone all the jokes he used to make, how funny he was, how sometimes me, him and jen would just sit at the dinnertable after we'd finished and just pass the time laughing at each other. i can't explain all the rage and the anger i felt, the helplessness when he and my mom fought, how desperately i wanted things to get better. i can't show it all, and without the whole picture there's just no way to understand why i feel the way i do.

i shouldn't be angry that people assume things like this about me. i know i'm hard to read. this is one of those areas where only my friends back home really understand. i doubt in the future i'll ever be able to make other people really get it. they weren't there with me. they didn't have all those long conversations that i had with sara and rae and heather those first few years, when i was coming to terms with things, when i relied on them so much whether i knew it or not. sara perhaps most of all understands, not only because she lost her dad, but because she knew my dad, she saw a few of his angry shouting rages (remember the time with the blueberries in the den?). it makes more sense to her. she knows that i'm sorry, and i am, so very sorry, for more things than i can ever enumerate.

the irony of it is that despite all the anger and resentment that so many people around me have towards their families and their parents (rae, lauren, meredith, wendy, andrew), it's not over for them. it's OVER for me and my dad, forever. i will never have the chance to know him or to apologize, and he will never have the chance to know me, to explain himself, to make up for when he hurt me and jen and mom with the things he said or the way he acted. no matter how infinitesmally small, there is always the chance that one day lauren's mom or meredith's dad will wake up and realize all the shit they've done and seek to make amends. even if it can't be done, even if those wounds can never be completely healed, there's still a little light of hope. maybe it'll happen ten years from now, maybe on their deathbeds, maybe never. never wish that your parents would die, no matter how much you think you hate them. death creates as many problems as it solves, and it robs you of any chance at all to have things turn out differently. i might have hated my dad for years if he'd lived, but i would have someday had the opportunity to truly know him.

there are days when i would sacrifice everything to have him back, knowing the cost, knowing the freedom i would lose and the resentment that might return, just to get back that tiny spark of hope, just to be able to tell him i love him one more time. those are the days i sit at my computer, typing and crying, remembering him and then thinking of what i can't remember, what i've lost, trying to hear the sound of his voice over the clicking of keys, and failing. if you think i'm not sorry, you have no idea. for your sake i hope you never do.

Philosophy's over, it was fine, i'm freeeeeeeee......now for calculus, and that will conclude my two classes i hated most. spanish and art won't be easy, but it's more interesting than this crap. one more semester of math and i'll never see it again.

i don't understand this whole stressing out thing. i would never pull an all-nighter, because that's just crazy. just study the damn stuff a day or two beforehand and don't wait till 11pm when you have a 9am, which is what i heard some girl ( a very tired girl) talking about in CNS today. plus i have my lovely playstation to help me relax, and currently mariah carey's "all i want for christmas is you". well we all know what michelle wants for christmas, but she can't quite have it. oh well.

one of wendy's gays, ryan, is so damned cute, and he knows i think so, too, thanks to wendy! sadly he's not one of the ones who likes to hook up with girls. if he were, there'd be many a cat fight about him, cause apparently he's like the coolest person ever. i don't even know him and i'd hook up with him! (luckily she didn't tell him about the time i offered to be the "dessert" if they all made him dinner. think frosting. lots of frosting.) gay men are so tempting, alas. but i'm all about the going home, seeing all my girls, having many a fabulous evening, coning many a car, driving many a tahoe (ok only one), and getting many an ass (ok maybe one or two)! it's all good.

i am so thankful that i don't need a relationship. i think if i wanted that on top of everything else going on, i'd explode!

After meredith and i brave the philosophy exam in approximately 2.5 hours, there will be no more RJ for us!! whoot! at this point, anything you want to know about ancient and medieval philosophy i could probably tell you...especially as it concerns guys named A. Anaximander, Anaximenes, Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Averroes, Anselm...seem like a pattern?

in other news, i instructed my subconscious last night very carefully on who to put into my dreams. who do i wind up dreaming about? billy bob thornton! what the hell?

Alright, I've got a couple of hours before our christmas party, I should be studying philosophy but ummm no not yet please please don't make me i don't wanna mommy....sigh.

I realized tonight that reading other people's journals is like tuning into a soap opera. some of them draw me back time and time again because of the sheer fucked-upness of the authors. they're like train wrecks; i try to tear myself away but i just can't. others, like flanny's, are cool because the people who write them are my friends, and it's like having a sort of inside peek at what's happening in their lives without them having to spell everything out to everyone. then there are the ones that aren't fucked up, really, written by people i don't really know, but enjoyable all the same. an example of this would be greg's friend conor. i don't actually know him, really; i think i've met him a grand total of twice though he lives in my town and was close friends with greg. i have no idea what this kid's life is like, or what he's like, or who any of those bands he's usually talking about are, but i still click on his link from heather's site every so often and see what he's said. sometimes i read steven's site too, and stacy's, just for the hell of it, and i don't even really have mental images of those people! you never know, though: sometimes the randomest line from a stranger's journal touches me.

among all my christmas wishes for myself, i would include so many for other people. i hope that Sara gets rid of that nasty claire and finds joy in her surroundings. I hope that darts, rae and digiov find the strength to deal with their respectively troubled families, and that aj's knee gets better soon. i hope that heather finds whatever it is she's searching for, or maybe that she finds that she doesn't need to look anymore. i hope that meghan and i stay close, i hope greg finds enough sense to put himself on the path to freedom, that my sister gets into whatever school she wants and doesn't move back in my mom, and that my pets just for once learn to get along. i hope that people who are always down on the world realize that it's not so bad, and to look beyond the trite hallmark-tainted flavor of the holidays to what lies at the center: those you love and those who love you. i would wish for world peace if i didn't know that is, regrettably, forever out of our grasp; however, i will wish for a world-wide feeling of Hope. no matter what happens to you or around you, there is always hope.

My chinese food fortune from friday: "If your desires are not extravagant they will be granted." I guess that one about getting a certain something before christmas is a little extravagant. i can always wait. there are other fish in the sea!

Math class with that crazy old fuck is officially over!!! amusingly he "forgot" to give us the teacher evaluations (maybe because we all would have written what a useless excuse for a professor he is?) class lasted about five minutes, so i spent the next hour reading hte Times and coming dangerously close to finishing the crossword puzzle, then having lunch with ma peeps. i'm getting ready to go to town at 2 to cash checks, buy tangerines (citrus = stress reliever), drop off eight library books (possibly overdue), and maybe shop for dahts and popham. whew.

i read sara's blog--that WAS long. i didn't know annie was in an improv troupe! muy interesante, this just after me and a bunch of people braved the foot of snow on saturday night to make it ALL THE WAY TO THE PEPSICO to watch the "secret" improv show. roommate loyalty is a powerful thing, i must say. i would love to see the improv troupes from other schools. they should have tournaments or something, Chocolate Cake City vs On the Spot (and Off the Wall, Wendy's troupe). besides a few off-color jokes about slavery (note: not a single african american person in the fully packed pepsico) it was hysterical. soooo many hot guys in improv but why are they all gay/attached/having sexual identity crises?

Our RA made us dinner in the lounge tonight and brought in this woman to talk about stress and relaxation. it was interesting, we made stress balls and gave each other hand massages; later we did a massage circle and did that whole primal scream thing where you just shriek for a few seconds and then laugh hysterically because twenty women in a stone room screaming is pretty incongruous. sarah from next door told me that i'm a good masseuse...i've been told that before, and it always kind of annoys me that i've rarely found another person to give ME a really good massage. annie was good, but she also was a little too rough almost....most people are usually too wimpy. i also used to think that maybe guys would be better than girls at that, but so far that hasn't proved the case. oh well, someday i'll visit a real masseuse, mmmmm......

Looking at Pictures from Past Vacations,
I Try to Remember Why I took Them

This first one
I took out of the window
of my hotel room.
Coming from the dense forests
of the northeast, it was a thrill
to see the land rushing away
into the arms of the vast mountains
crouching at the horizon’s edge.

I took this one of my friends
eating lunch at a picnic table
(inside a mall!)
from the floor above them.
It felt like spying,
but for once I caught them
before they had a chance
to pose or posture.
I caught them the way I knew them.

I took this picture, and that one,
and those two over there,
because I felt like I had to.
The grandeur of the scene
compelled me, and besides
all the other tourists were doing it.

I seem to recall
that I took this one
because of the way the light
fell across her face
at that moment,
and this one because I thought
the sign was amusing:
“Guests must shower
before entering pool”.

This last photo, however,
confuses me no end.
Why did I take a picture
of a street, at nighttime?
The light from the flash
reveals seven street signs
and one tree.
The rest is darkness
save for the glowing disc
that hovers, partly hidden.
Ah, I remember now
how the night was rather cold,
how we had walked halfway
across the city for dinner
and were chiefly concerned
with making it back to the hotel.
As we crossed a quiet residential street
I looked up and saw the sky,
clear, the shine of the stars
muffled by the moon’s radiance,
and was awestruck.

Had this moment occurred
a few centuries ago,
I might have fallen on my knees
right there, and recited a poem
in praise of the night’s beauty,
but instead I fumbled for my camera
and took one hasty shot.
Then I hurried on,
straggler in a long line of people
interested in nothing more
than the joys of a hot shower
and a soft bed,
the moon gently lighting our way.

i wrote this for part of my creative mind final project, based on oh-so-lovely pictures of the beloved southwest trip, which were not the pictures i asked my mom to Fedex me, but apparently when some people hear "stack of polaroids in my room" they turn it into "four kodak envelopes in the den".

Tremors is ONNNNNNNNN

Tonight was great :-) Which was really nice since today sucked walking home from work with no cover but the magic scarf! We had a big snowball fight out on the quad, taking advantage of the new fallen snow, which is currently at about three or four inches, i'd say. most of the cool people off our floor went, and i was out there about twenty minutes before i couldn't feel my fingertips anymore so i admitted defeat (we were throwing snow anyway, not actual snowballs cause the stupid powder wouldn't pack) and went inside, soaked to the skin and red as a beet. then we raced for the showers--i have NEVER gotten naked so fast. i mean, i was ripping off clothes left and right! the shower was fucking sweeeeet....digiov, amanda and i had one of those yelling conversations that the entire hallway could hear.

and we watched beauty and the beast and ordered chinese that took two hours to arrive and straightened daht's hair and actually had like half an hour of conversation about CARS. specifically, car troubles we've all had. think of this--four girls together in a room would usually be talking about boys, sex or something feminine, right? instead, we were talking about blown tires and broken axles and stupid michelle who drove her car in four wheel drive for like a week and almost blew her engine-- yes i admit my almost complete ignorance of anything automechanical. i know when it works and when it doesn't and when it needs gas, that's about the extent of it.

today is rae's 18th birthday! i was very confused when she told me she was at home, then i realized that coming home for the weekend made sense, there's that whole getting it on with aj thing to be had as well as presents. i even called her dorm and left a singing message, and we ALL know that it is a very rare occasion indeed when i sing (where others can hear me, anyway...at home in the shower i'm frank sinatra, baby...). christmas is almost upon us. HOW does it creep up on us like that? popham told me about a munson's factory store in bolton we simply must visit. hopefully i can get to the mall tomorrow, see about some final gifts for popham and dahts.

i was going to amuse myself by watching tremors, that movie about giant worms, but it's stupid nascar awards. bleh. i guess i'll read or do something similarly prosaic on a friday night/saturday morning!

last night, the lighting of the halls, was good stuff, i must say. props to captain chris *go northwest alums* who masterminded the map of the world made out of xmas lights! and the jamaican christmas carols, that was a good touch. tomorrow night we're going to go check out that lost in translation movie...saturday is our trip to nyc to see rockefeller center and then saturday night at 8 is the improv show at the levee, anyone who's around, go to it!! wendy's going to be performing! wendy who is currently in nyc with flanny seeing phantom....sniffle....i'm taping tonight's ep of "real sex" so we can watch it when she gets home. teehee.

We all went and watched the faculty debate tonight over whether or not exams should still be a part of the educational system (the ending vote concluded yes they should), simply because our little dahts was timekeeper. i'm going to join the debate team next semester if i can find a partner--no way am i getting shafted with the "shady sophomore" who doesn't have one. lauren's joining too, but she already drafted sean as her partner. i'm also going to apply for this "leadership" thing i got nominated for by one of my professors. it sounds just like all the bullshit we had in high school, meaning i can probably glide on through. in fact it sounds a hell of a lot like the old Honors Institute for Leadership in Life, also known as Two Periods With Your Friends Including Lunchbreak. i need to meet more people outside of campion, because it's going to get incestuous in here just like my friends back home, and let's just not have that happen, shall we?

two more weeks and the year's half over. how utterly insane. maureen, my boss up at bellarmine, told me today that i'm welcome to work there over xmas vacation. it means an hour commute each way, but it's more than i get paid at sofia's, it's easier, and they sure as hell are going to need the help. i guess i could switch cars with mom and drive the van, so that i don't burn a tank every couple of days like dad used to driving to and from niantic.

Can you believe I wrote four poems tonight? And they don't even suck? these are the two i liked best:

Clocks and You


I could never help but to peek
at clocks and you,
to watch the hands spin round,
to watch you fold your tight hands
in your lap like pieces of metal.
I felt myself ruled by time
and by your careful preciseness.

Your voice was like the ticking
of a clock to me.

You counted out the seconds
of my life
with such rhythm.

I look at clocks to be
reminded of you
and your intricate mechanics,
your wound-up hows and whys.

I ride the pendulum with my eyes,
the obstinate motion to and fro.

At night I dream of clocks
and you.

What I Really Meant to Tell You


I just wanted you to know
that the words that came
out of my mouth today
weren’t at all what I wanted you to hear.
In place of “Excuse me”,
I meant to tell you that your eyes
are the exact shade of blue
that El Greco used for the robe of God
In his famous Day of Judgement,

and if you heard me say
“Could you pass me a straw?”
what I actually said was that
I wish that I could sit by you
and write endless poems
about the grace of your hands.

Also, when I said “goodbye”, I meant it,
but next to that last e was a single,
silent declaration of my love,
(in case you didn’t hear).

i wish that just for once i could send messages only with my eyes.

oh yeah, did i mention what happened the greek art test that i knew i had totally bombed for phillip's class? despite phillip being a pompous, over-bearing ass, he is extremely fond of me, his litttle "star frosh", so he DIDN'T COUNT MY TEST. he wrote "medical waiver--mono blues" where the grade should be! sweeeeet! he loved my Met museum paper, on the lion of babylon, so much he read the opening paragraph to the class, and wrote on it "you are the lion queen" and "rrrroaaar". yeeeeaaah. scheisty, but i still got the A+!

I've started to plan for new year's eve. I want this year to be kick ass--not that last year wasn't, from what i can remember of it, but i do recall that we all chilled at annie's house and greg had to be home at like 1am once again. This time i want to do a hotel room, a nice one like the one sara had for her birthday extravaganza with the bedroom and sitting room and the two TVs and the NO FRICKING VCR, which cost about $120. that's not bad, considering that the people who will be invited are the following: me, heather, meg, sara, melissa, khara, jessi, emily, jess, pace, and any and all males who can possibly be enticed to come! heather suggested it be a "hot luck", meaning all the girls bring a guy to pass around *cough cough* and i already invited pace so i've done my part :-) i know it's kinda cheating, but oh well, what other guys from home do i really know well enough to invite? greg's going to nyc with mike for new year's. hopefully we can get some real champagne, pretend we're all sophisticated and whatnot when in reality we're just a bunch of weird college kids who want to party and not have to clean up afterward. actually no, i always do pick up hotel rooms, because i feel bad for the people who clean them....

in other news, my final project for creative mind is coming along nicely! it's a small scrapbook containing my poems along with photos that inspired them and some famous poems. naturally billy collins is in there a lot cause he's a big inspiration. katie just came in and read my "creative mind" poem and asked if i pull all those images and metaphors "out of my ass". gee, i'd never thought about writing poetry that way before!

Frustratingly, that's twice today i've run into/by a certain someone in the caf and i didn't say hi cause i was too distracted. argh. note: he has received a nickname: TFB.

Coolest person of the day/week/year: wendy scola! i think she's already received the honor, but i love her so much she's just gonna get it again. new roomie ritual: watching "real sex" on hbo with the lights off and the door locked...cough cough...another reason why i can't room with another person--who else could i watch a ten minute segment on the joys of anal sex with? who else would agree that we need to visit that club with the male latin strippers, or very calmy debate the pros/cons of group sex? yeah, we rule. and if anyone on our floor heard some shady noises coming out of our room at around 12:30 last night, be assured we weren't having mad passionate lesbian sex in there.

one of the segments was about this website that does pin-up pics of punk girls, it's called the Suicide Girls. check this out but be warned, some naked females ahead. although if like me you're a girl, this is nothing you ain't seen before.