notanias's diary

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i've been tagged by the artgnome to tell you six weird things about myself. and since i have to clean my entire apartment, go to the bank, and pick up my accident report at the police station, i'd be more than happy to do this instead.
(the problem with this is that generally, i don't think i'm weird. it doesn't occur to me that things i do or think might be construed by other people as odd.)

1. i will not walk through a dark room. if i have to pee in the middle of the night, i turn on the light in every room as i enter it. i then turn them off as i'm leaving. i occasionally take circuitous routes in order to do so, because of the location of light switches in my parents' house.

2. i am half convinced that there is SOMETHING lurking behind my shower curtain. if it's closed, i have to look behind it, just to make sure.

3. i really like to eat peanut butter and brown sugar on graham crackers. when i was younger, i used to mix peanut butter and brown sugar in a mug and just eat it with a spoon. my best friend in fifth grade taught me this. she also had me convinced that you could get drunk on sprite. i think that's because she was a mormon, though...

4. when i get really really upset, and things are going completely insane in my life, and i want to strangle damn near everyone, or i'm in a really uncomfortable situation--i start laughing. i guess i prefer to look at this as some sort of absurd joke the universe is playing. i was laughing in the back of the ambulance last week, in between all the crying.

5. i tend to imagine terrible what-if scenarios in my head. it was worse when i was younger, and hadn't figured out that it was an anxiety symptom. i have imaginary fights with people, and think of all the things i would say in the event that someone was mean to me.

6. i become extremely upset by people who are acting stupid, whether i know them or not. at my brother's party last week there were people acting like asshats, and i had to leave because, while their actions weren't directly affecting me, i was getting so agitated i was afraid i might actually harm someone. i can't watch movies like "meet the parents" because watching people act that ridiculously horrible drives me batshit crazy.

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I was driving home thursday night, minding my own business. there was a car stopped to make a left-hand turn on the other side of the road, and one in the left hand lane on my side, but i didn't think much about it, since i was driving in the right lane. at least, i didn't think much about it until he smashed right the fuck into me! i felt the impact, and the glass shattered across my chest and back. my hands started bleeding. the car pulled over halfway up the block, and someone came to see if i was ok. i think i told him i was. and then it took me forever to dial 911 because my hands were shaking so hard. i remember at some point i turned off my CD player...while i was on the phone trying to tell the operator where i was, the police pulled up. they took my license and stuff. i called my mother and then another officer started asking me questions, and i told my mother i was going to the hospital and i'd call her when i got there.

i climbed into the ambulance, trying to get the broken glass out from the back of my shirt and the waistband of my jeans. they strapped me to the backboard (why? i was already walking), and drove me to the emergency room. my brother called while i was still tied down, and i told him where i was so he could tell my parents. i lay there for what felt like forever, strapped to the backboard with all the muscles in my back begging for mercy, while nurses and orderlies asked me questions about insurance and tetanus shots and wrapped a bracelet around my wrist. then the doctor came in, and finally took the board away--you'd never believe how soft a stretcher can feel, after the unbelievable torture of being tied to a piece of fiberglass. and she poked around my back, and ordered x-rays of my neck, and left me to lie there again, still wearing the big stupid collar. i cried a lot, and my hands were all gross and cut up. the x-ray tech took pictures of my neck, and then when they took me back to my room, i asked if i could sit up. they let me. i tried to work on my final paper for my lit class, but i kept crying instead. my parents came, and we sat for a very long time, until the doctor came back and said my x-rays were good, and that she'd give me muscle relaxers and pain medication and to just try to rest. i got to the hospital around 7:15. i left it at 11:30, went to my apartment, fed the cats, packed some clothes, and drove home with my parents. i spent the next 24 hours in bed, sleeping, on very strong muscle relaxers.

and now i'm trying to write the final that was due friday, and wishing like anything i could take my meds because my back is killing me. unfortunately, i can choose either pain-free or conscious, but only one.

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Parents who bring squalling brats to R-rated movies
Circle I Limbo

my autobiography professor
Circle II Whirling in a Dark & Stormy Wind

drivers who pass on the right, General asshats
Circle III Mud, Rain, Cold, Hail & Snow

Republicans
Circle IV Rolling Weights

T-mobile customer service representatives
Circle V Stuck in Mud, Mangled

River Styx

George Bush
Circle VI Buried for Eternity

River Phlegyas

Creationists, Racists, Homophobes
Circle VII Burning Sands

Child Abusers, Rapists
Circle IIX Immersed in Excrement

NAMBLA Members
Circle IX Frozen in Ice

Design your own hell

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i'm graduating in a month. unfortunately, this means the student aid money is drying up, and i have to find a new place to live, a place that i can afford. at this point, the only place i can afford is my parents' house. which is also where my sister lives, with her three kids and her stupid, stupid boyfriend.

and the best part? she's pissed because i'm coming home. she doesn't want me to move back. she doesn't understand why i need the slighty larger bedroom, since the boys are the ones who will have to double up. the thing is, i'd be HAPPY to take the smaller bedroom. i don't want to make the boys double up. i don't like forcing my nephew out of his room. i hate it, and i feel guilty as hell for doing it. but the problem is, that bedroom is the one my parents have to walk through to get to the stairway for THEIR bedroom. and i have cats that can't be out in the rest of the house, because of the dogs. especially my sister's dog, who hates cats and would like to kill them. there's just no way to keep my cats in the smaller bedroom, because my niece is constantly walking through it. because yeah, my niece stays in my parents' room, not her mother's room. because her mother has a stupid fucking boyfriend and is therefore too busy to take care of her daughter. or her sons for that matter.

she started in on my mother again today. WHY does she have to take the bigger bedroom. WHY can't the cats stay in the smaller room? and when my mother explained it to her, she started saying how my cats stink and she guesses they're all in for the smell again. her dog has a skin condition that makes it smell so bad i nearly gag coming in the front door. and she's not fixed, so she bleeds all over the damn place. but somehow, we're just supposed to put up with that.

it's not the first thing she's said that lets me know she doesn't want me to move in. she talks about how "untidy" i am "to put it mildly," and how the house is going to be a mess all the time now. meanwhile, i can't FIND the sink under her children's dishes. she does them maybe once a week, and sighs and complains the entire time she does them. she doesn't clean anything else. she does her laundry, and then leaves it in the washer or dryer overnight, so that she has to do it again the next day. she flat out refuses to cook, and hasn't bought any groceries except deli meat and hot dogs in the entire time she's been living in my parents' house. my mother, sick as she is with FMS, cleans and takes care of her children. my father cleans what my mother can't manage, and cooks dinner every night, from the groceries he's bought for everyone.

my sister shared my parents' cell phone plan, ran the bill up by talking and text messaging her stupid boyfriend (text messages are 10 cents each), and hasn't given them a cent. the phones are turned off now. she hasn't given my parents any money at all, for anything. they're behind in taxes, in bills, everything. her boyfriend quit his job the week he moved in. she has child support money that she hasn't touched to support her children, because my parents are doing all the supporting. they told her how much they need from her and the idiot boyfriend each month, and now that it's come time to pay it, she's making excuses why she can't. first she had to transfer the money and forgot. then she made a mistake in her accounting and didn't have the money to give. the story keeps changing, and the money never appears. my parents are afraid that she's going to decide to move out with her stupid boyfriend, and leave them holding months' worth of unpaid bills, and that the house will be repossessed or sold at tax auction.

i'm 28 and i'm in college and only working part-time. i pay my own rent, i buy my own groceries, and i pay my own phone and internet bills. i'm not making ends meet, and i don't know how i'm going to pay my rent or eat this month, but like hell am i asking my parents to bail me out.

A Letter to My Sister

What the hell are you doing? Do you even realize what this is doing to our parents? Do you realize what they’ve done for you? They let you live in their house without paying rent. They let you move in three children, a dog, and now a boyfriend. They help you raise your children, while you go out and try to catch yourself a husband, who’s supposed to rescue you or something. Your daughter calls your mother mommy. She calls me mommy. How can that possibly seem like a good thing to you? Dad works on your car, for free, and you don’t even pay him for parts? Your son eats everything in sight, and you won’t chip in to buy food? You have over a thousand dollars in your child support account, and you don’t want our parents to know about it so you can keep crying poor and making them foot the bill for everything. How can you possibly think they can afford that? I’ll tell you now, they can’t. They can’t even afford the mortgage and the property taxes on the house, and there’s no way on Earth they can afford to support another whole family. Child support money is exactly what it sounds like—it is money paid to you so that you can clothe and feed your children. So far, you are not doing either one—Brianna has no clothes that are fit to go out anywhere. What she does have, Dad bought for her. There is no food in the house. You refuse to cook for your own children. I don’t care if you don’t like cooking. It’s something you have to do, even if it’s just for yourself, for God’s sake!

I’m in college. I don’t even know for sure how I’m going to pay my rent next month, and I still haven’t asked them for a cent all semester. I haven’t asked them because I know they don’t have it. I haven’t asked them because I know that at 28 I should no longer need them to be responsible for me. And you’re 40! How can you possibly think that they should take care of you?

We let you. We let you get away with all of it. We walk on eggshells around you. We don’t confront you about anything. We can’t. We can’t because we know, because it is always present in our minds, that you could take her away from us. That even though we feed her, we buy her clothes, we teach her her letters and we play with her toys and we let her sleep in our beds, she is not ours by law. That in the eyes of the law, you are her only guardian, her only parent, and nothing we say will ever change that. So we go through, and we watch you ignore her. We watch your new deadbeat boyfriend try to “fix” her. We watch her go for a week without a bath, because you can’t be bothered. We walk a tightrope between doing the right thing for Brianna and trying not to interfere to the point that you will cut us out of your life, and us out of hers. Because we live in fear of losing her. Because we will put up with anything for her sake. Because for her, we would walk through fire.

It shouldn’t be this way. We shouldn’t have to worry every time your own daughter goes out with you, because we know that you don’t pay attention to her. We shouldn’t be watching you sit with your head in your boyfriend’s lap for an hour while your daughter tries desperately to get your attention. We shouldn’t see your sons in rehab from trying to stifle the pain of dealing with a mother who just isn’t there.

In this scenario, it seems like you’re the only winner. Is that really the only thing you want?

the one good thing i have seen from this is my sister's children pulling together. today i watched my nephews take care of their sister. i watched them pull together for the first time without fighting in a long time. it hurts that the reason they're pulling together is because there's no one else for them to turn to anymore. i told them to call if they need me, but there's not much i can really do. if i had money, i'd get a place and let them live with me. i'd do it in a heartbeat. i'd get them through school (the oldest dropped out, and the youngest is failing the year again, and she does NOTHING).

i feel guilty about moving in and putting more strain on the house, on my parents. i should be self-sufficient. i want to be, but right now it just isn't viable. last night, my father told me that i was his daughter, and that i have just as much right to a place in my childhood home as anyone else does. right now, there's nothing i can do. i don't want to live there, but i have no choice. it's temporary, and it's going to be hell.

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i'm too lazy to edit. so i'll just add another entry. scroll down for the explanation of why i'm in a shitty mood.

last night i dreamt that everything came crashing down from my ceiling in the kitchen, and that everything in it was destroyed. apparently a flourescent light fixture (that i don't have) crashed into a wall-mounted telephone (also non-existent) and the microwave (which in this dream was mounted on my wall), and turned my kitchen table/counter (i don't have a real counter, i have a long folding table) into a pile of rubble and broken glass. all my stuff was destroyed and the floor was covered with broken glass. and apparently somehow it was the telephone that did it. and then i was driving, and people kept cutting me off and a woman jumped out in front of my car, and i pulled into a gravel parking lot and cried.

"Kitchen To see a kitchen in your dream, signifies your need for spiritual nourishment. It also forewarns that you will be met with some depressing news."

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me: "so, if you're not busy, want to come hang out in bloomfield on friday night?"

him: " Thanks for the offer, but I think I'm just gonna hang here on Friday. After work, I usually like to just come home and crash. Thanks for asking though:) "

ok first, you just turned down a second date. what the fuck is up with the smiley face? is that supposed to soften the rejection? because obviously, if you were interested, you'd make a little effort, right?

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what exactly does it mean when you go out to dinner and a movie with a guy, and by the end of the night he's touched you exactly twice? and once was to hug you hello, and once was to hug you good-bye? and part of that time was spent on his living room couch?

i'm thinking it means one of three things. either he's the sort of guy who thinks you don't try anything on the first date, he's incredibly shy and/or worried that i might not be interested, or he's not interested. i'm hoping it's either one or two. because option three? sucks.

we went out for dinner, which was nice. although it was funny--we both ended up getting salads. in the best italian restaurant in the area. i don't know if it's because i wanted to have a salad, or because it's the sort of thing that girls do when we go out to dinner with a guy for the first time. we talked, it seemed good. granted, we seem to have better conversations online, but i think that's because we may both be more comfortable with written words than spoken ones. we went to see thank you for smoking, which was awesomely hilarious. to kill time before the movie started, we played arcade games. i won my niece a miniature barbie in the claw machine, and he won a miniature spongebob mug, which he gave me for my niece too but which i actually kept (hey, if this ends up being my ONLY date in three years, at least i'll have a souvenier).

please, just let it be that he's shy. hell, please let him be sitting around right now, wondering if i like him. leslie says i left too early, and that i need to call him and tell him i had a good time. i'm afraid that it'll look like i'm being too eager. i'm waiting until tomorrow. maybe i'll send him a myspace message tomorrow...

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so, suddenly good things are happening. i'm a little disconcerted, to be honest. it's been so long since good things have happened.

i won the poetry award for my school. i just got the email yesterday, and then tonight my professor called me to ask whether i was going to the awards ceremony. as an aside, how cute is it that my professor called me at 7:00 on good friday to make sure i didn't have any questions about the awards reception and that i was going? i love this man. i broke down crying in his office last semester because i was up to my eyeballs in assignments and i was worried about my mother and i had a wicked case of PMS, and he just sat there and asked if i was ok, if i needed an extension, and told me how talented and smart he thinks i am. if this man was straight, i'd be trying to marry him, professor or no professor.

i have to stand up and accept the award and give a little speech (which i will now have to write and memorize to avoid looking like an inarticulate tool when i stand up there). i need to dress nice because the deans and provosts and donors and things show up, and jeans would be rather frowned on. which means i need to go through my dresses and find one that still fits and that looks ok. and i'm allowed to bring guests. so i just wrangled my brother into coming with me, so that i have some member of my family there, so it doesn't look like i spontaneously generated or something. my mother doesn't go out because she's sick, and my father doesn't go out without my mother, so at this point if i want family there, it's my brother. but really, i'm ok with that. because the thing is, while my family supported me (emotionally and financially) through this school endeavor, i really did this myself. i'm proud to have done it myself, and i'll be proud to accept the awards on my own. these are my accomplishments.

but anyway kids, i won the poetry award! the school is giving me money because they like the poems that i wrote! ok they're only giving me $200, but still! and ok, that $200 is going to help pay my rent for next month, but still! when i get my security deposit back, i'm going to take that $200 right back out and use it to buy myself something awesome. i should probably buy a fabulous first edition of something, or a shitload of new poetry books. but part of me is holding out for an ipod.

and i have a date tomorrow. i'm not sure how i feel about this. i'm excited, i'm a little uncertain. i'm thrilled, i'm nervous. i have no idea what to wear. i'd like this to work out to be something, i really would. and at the same time--it's been years since i was in a relationship. and my life is so completely up in the air right now. i almost feel like it's not fair to this poor guy, that i could date him and then in a couple years be moving to houston for grad school. i know, i know--get through dinner tomorrow night first. must. stop. mind. from. racing. ahead.

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i got offerred a free ticket to go see the sounds tonight and i can't go. this makes me sad. once upon a time i would have said screw college, let's see the show! but now i'm all responsible. and it sucks. i think i might really be getting old...

at work, i played boggle with the 7th and 8th graders, because i wasn't really up to teaching poetry to the 6th graders, who were supposed to have dance anyway. still, boggle is an excellent way to demonstrate the advantages of an extensive vocabulary, since i wiped the floor with them, finding words like "talon" and "tryst." which is extremely important for these kids, since there was one playing scattergories who insisted that a libra was an animal. and a whole bunch more who couldn't spell anything to save their lives. next week they're on spring break which is awesome for my time but terrible for my wallet, since when i don't work, i don't get paid. but i also have a portfolio and a rough draft of my autobiography paper due next week, so i'll take the time, thankyouverymuch.

in other news, i cut my hair today. i think it looks pretty good. i need to color it, but i'm not sure what i want to do with it yet. i'd really like to get it done professionally, but damned if i can afford it. here, i'll show you:
hair pic one

so yeah, nothing funny/bizarre/particularly interesting to report today. oh, except that on monday, i saw someone carrying a goldfish into a building on campus. in a tupperware container. that was odd enough to make my day.

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you know what? i'm going to try out the blog style. maybe it'll keep me writing more...

it's a date. he SAID the word "date." ok granted, we were joking around about vampires, and i said maybe i should be worried about saturday and what he actually said was "i don't drink blood on the first date." but still. he called it a date.

i can't be completely certain why, but i have a really good feeling about this. it's been a long time since i was able to say that. i'm half afraid to write it, for fear of jinxing it.

i'm scared that he's not going to find me attractive, that i'm not going to measure up to the image he has of me from my photographs (i make them as flattering as possible, but i can't do that in person) and from talking to me online. i have to try to get past this. i have to remember that i'm beautiful even if i'm not perfect.

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i wanted to say what i wanted, without worrying that i was going to censor myself because people knew who i was.

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