Tuesday, March 23, 2004

May barbarians invade your personal space!
Utinam barbari spatium proprium tuum invadant!
"May barbarians invade your personal
space!"
You are highly confrontational and possibly in a
bad mood. You would have sworn in this quiz,
if I had made it an option.


Which Weird Latin Phrase Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

So going to the dentist today wasn’t a waste after all. I thought they’d talk about pulling my wisdom tooth, but instead, they actually did it. I had to drive myself home. It was kind of funny because I’m still nervous driving the truck after my accident. So I must have been doing about thirty the whole way home. I was just worried that I’d pass out randomly or something because that happens sometimes when you get a tooth jerked. Nothing that dramatic happened though. Getting my bottom ones taken out was more traumatic than getting this one pulled; but this one hurt a lot more. I hope I can keep the remaining tooth. I think I’ll have room for it in my big mouth. My dentist said, as he pulled out my tooth today: “Isn’t that the cutest tooth you’ve ever seen?” It didn’t seem all that cute to me. But it’s nice to know that there’s something attractive about me somewhere.

I’ve been sleeping on and off all day, thinking about how eventful my life has been in the past few weeks. I’m having to make all kinds of big decisions. I’m worried that I’m not doing the right thing. I’m worried that I’m putting expediency over my own well-being. And I’m worried that I’m just afraid that I won’t fit into the real world very well, and so I’m prolonging the inevitable. To tell the truth, right now, I’d be very happy to have graduated and have a steady job, with boring expectations, and some money in my bank account, even if it isn’t exactly my dream life. I just want some stability, and the lack of it I’m experiencing currently is disturbing.

I’m experiencing some real ideological anguish right now. I know that everyone has to sort through the issues I’m going through. But it seems like the answers are more readily apparent for other people. I’ve never been a very typical person, so typical answers rarely have occurred to me. For instance, most people grow up expecting that some day they’ll fall in love, get married, have a couple of kids, have a job and so on and so forth. I have no desire to fall in love, and sort of suspect that I’m incapable of it. That precludes marriage for me, which makes having children difficult. The idea of pouring my entire identity into my job is unappealing to me. And, more so, because I will probably end up with a very unfulfilling job. I don’t want to end up a boring person. I know that I am already boring sometimes, and the idea of plummeting headlong makes me worried.

So many of my friends are recently married, or getting married, and even people who swore they'd never have kids, are having their first children born. There’s a part of my identity that I’m surprised to find longing after that. I think it’s really just the stability of it all. In the modern world, marriage isn’t necessarily forever. But it feels like forever; it's supposed to be eternal. And though, in the modern world, children aren’t necessarily forever either, there’s something decidedly final about bringing someone into the world. I’m craving stability right now, and I’m having a hard time finding it in my life as it exists now.

I’m evening to begin to question my health. I’ve been having some strange symptoms lately and I think I’m actually going to have to break down and make an appointment at the doctor tomorrow. I hope I’m not just indulging in hypochondria. But I haven’t been to the doctor since I was sixteen or so, so I guess it just makes sense to get a check up before I graduate and get kicked off my father’s insurance anyway.

I guess at my age what I’m going through is normal. After 21 years, I guess you just get used to things being a certain way. When that’s threatened, it’s a personal threat. Everyone I know seems to be going through an identity crisis. We’re all grasping at straws; we're all desperate. I wish I could make myself remember that things are going to be okay; if I could remember that, maybe my confidence in it would be enough to comfort those around me.

Spring Break is enjoyable. I'm not doing anything terribly exciting. But I'm having good times. It's no Ireland, but that's all right, 'cos I'm broke anyway and couldn't really afford the trip.

So a lot has happened since the 13th of March!

Winter Quarter ended, for starters. I managed As in Russian and African History, and a B+ in Astronomy. The B+ sort of annoys me. But I had a bad start in that class. I got a 74 on my first exam because it fell on the day of my grandfather's funeral. I didn't have time to study for that one. So I've been trying to climb out of the hole all quarter. I pulled my other test scores up quite a lot, but it wasn't enough to dig me out of the hole, I guess. That's the downside of the quarter system. 10 weeks isn't very long to make up for your mistakes.

The last day of Finals, I got in a wreck. We'd had a freak snow storm the night before. The next day the roads seemed to be pretty clean. But I managed to find an icy patch on a bridge in the country, and wrecked my father's newly unweighted truck. So that was nice. I nearly killed myself three ways. But I escaped with only a dent in the front of the truck, and a sore neck and back.

That night was much nicer though. My friends and I went out drinking, which is something I very rarely do these days. It was good times. We all got a little tipsy, and acted silly, and had a good time. Being as I've been unusually uptight lately - and remember, I'm always uptight - it was good to unwind a little. I have funny stories about it, but no time to tell them in. And somehow it seems mean spirited to blog about things that happened when everybody was out of it. So I won't.

Saturday night I went to see the Passion of the Christ with Jody. This time the cinematic weaknesses of the film were more clear to me. I really did enjoy the movie, and I think that it's doing a lot of good things. But I don't know that anyone would think it was so great if it wasn't about such a great subject matter. Anyway, I'm going to post a long review someday. But not today because I have to leave for the dentist in a few minutes.

I've managed to mess up going to dentist pretty well. I think I've managed to drag out what ought to have been two visits into three. And I don't know exactly what I'm even going for today, since they can't clean my teeth until the 1st of April, for insurance reasons. But I still had to get up early and all that.

That's my only big complaint about Spring Break this year. I'm not getting as much sleep as I'd like. Yesterday I got up early to go to work before I went to Jasmin's at noon. I had fun at Jasmin's though. She took me to see the house she's thinking of buying. We picked her son up from school, and we all watched Grease together. I'm not a big Grease fan, but Jasmin enjoyed it so much that I couldn't help enjoying it too. Besides, Jesse and I were playing guns throughout. And afterward we played Harry Potter and wrastling and whatnot. So that was great. He didn't want me to leave when it came time; the kid actually barred the door. It was nice. I like kids and there aren't a lot around me these days.

In any case, it's ten and I have to be at the dentist at ten thirty and I haven't even brushed my teeth yet today. So I have to get moving.

Saturday, March 13, 2004

So I promised a lot of people I’d blog this weekend, and here it is:

Not a terrible lot has happened in my life since February 26th. The event of most compelling importance was the demise of my poor vehicle. So now I’m in a bit of a spot. I’m broke, as usual, so I don’t have much hope of buying a decent new car. I’m trying to get used to driving stick again, and for the next while I’ll be using my dad’s truck. Those who know me in real life know that I’m hopeless incompetent with all things mechanical, and absentminded to boot. In other words, I was a bad driver on my automatic, and now I’m just plain taking my life into my hands every time I get behind the wheel.

Other than that, I’ve mostly been debating about whether or not I want to graduate this year. I can technically swing it, but I’d have to be at school from 7:50am every day to 10:00pm every night. Considering the misery that’s been being there from 12:30-8:00pm this quarter, I don’t know if my sanity will allow for it. Additionally, I may just slack another year, suck up another major and enjoy my predictable lifestyle. Or, maybe it would be better for me to kick myself in the ass and grow up and finally get a real job and adult life. I’d always hoped I’d be far away from home when that came to pass at last.

But after a lot of agonizing, I think I’ve decided to stay here in Ohio for a while. I have important reasons to stay here; reasons that seem to keep growing all the time. And even though I had a lot of dreams that would take me far away from home, I can’t imagine anything more important than being here right now when I’m needed. More on this later, when I have more time and more liberty to speak freely.

Anyway, I’ve spent the last two days violently ill. Yesterday was worse than today for the most part. I went to sleep Thursday night early because I didn’t feel well, and I woke up at about 2:30 in the morning and started projectile vomiting with such force and finesse that I easily could’ve beat out Linda Blair for the job during casting for the Exorcist, had the two events coincided. Anyway, at some point the vomiting subsided and was replaced by a horrible headache and general feverishness. All I remember of it was that my brother had brought a car out for me to test drive around six, and I didn’t give two damns about the car, except that it had a nice heater that almost stopped my shivering for a while. Almost. I came home after that and slept until about 11am this morning.

Now I’m feeling a lot better. I don’t feel good and I’m still running a fever, but I feel okay. Or I was anyway. My stupid dog went and got stuck under our porch this morning. I don’t know how she managed it. But somehow she crawled under the damn thing, and couldn’t climb out. So I spent about an hour in the back yard, with a shovel, trying to dig a hole big enough for her to crawl out. Between my fever making me weak, the fact that the ground was filled with giant rocks I had to dig out, and her frenzied barking aggravating my headache, it was really a lovely time. But it was worth it when she finally managed to crawl out and ran a few victory laps around the yard.

What I should be doing right now is studying for finals. But I’m just relaxing for a bit instead. I’ve already got one class down pretty much, with only two to go. I really feel sort of ahead of schedule for the time.