urbandruid

Ugh. I really didn't want to get up this morning.

I've been going to bed a little earlier every night this week- and have taken a nap every afternoon when I get home from class- and I'm still exhausted. Cumulative affects of turning my whole sleep schedule upside down, I guess.

I guess it could be worse, though. I only have one hour to kill on campus today between my Geology lab and Abnormal Psych. Well, maybe more than an hour- depends how much work the lab assignment is. How long can an assignment on the scientific method possibly take?

It's been way, WAY too cold in the early mornings- anybody whose weather is behaving strangely want to take a little of this? I think our HIGH for today is supposed to be 50 F. As if hanging out at the bus stop waiting a half an hour for the thing to show up, couldn't suck any more than it already does.

On Tuesday the library had a sign posted that they have wireless capability, and I've been trying to figureo ut how to get all ten-plus pounds of Anna plus Anna's case, to school on at least Tuesdays.

A day or so later the sign was gone. It wouldn't surprise me if they took it down because the wireless is broken, or something. The school's famous for not doing so well on this newfangled tech stuff. Must ask nice reference librarian about this today. Also must ask him if they stash the library's two copies of the DSM-4 behind the reference desk. Probably do, as my Abnormal Psych prof says the book costs about $100... but I'm gonna need to get at it for my psych paper, and also, it's just kind of cool...

I've been too busy to drink as much in terms of fluids as my kidneys like, and they're bitching at me a bit because of this. Oops. I've got to work on that one, or I'm going to have BIG problems.

Is it Friday yet? I get Monday off for Martin Luther King day, and I'm going to need it. I'll probably spend all day asleep...

My cat owns me.

No, seriously. I got up this morning, said hi to the kitty, fed the kitty... and she started rubbing my ankles like crazy. She likes me a lot, but she doesn't usually do that much of that. So I got her a couple of cat treats. She ate them. And meowed at me.

And I realized that Mom usually puts one or two in her food dish, and I forgot.

Owned, I tell you.

She's cute, though.

In other news, my history teacher, being the nice, scatterbrained woman she is, forgot which of her classes she gave an extension to on their papers, and was more than happy to take mine when I turned up with it at her office before class. Didn't even want to see my doctor's note. Score!

My birthday was yesterday, and I had a very nice one. The weather was beautiful when I woke up, and we had all the windows open for a couple of hours. Mom took the day off to hang out with me. Even drove me to school and picked me up after class, so I didn't have to take the bus or wait three hours for her to get off work, which was really nice of her. Then we grabbed lunch, and went to Baskin Robbins to pick up the cake. Ever seen an ice cream place with twenty people in it, and one person behind the counter? A bit insane.

Went home, watched the news. Bird flu may kill us all before the government figures out what the hell to do about it. Of course, I love the guy they interviewed- some kind of expert in something- who said he didn't think that quarantining people would help. Okay, dude, tell you what- when the first person comes from overseas with the bird flu, they can stay at your house.

Hello?

The local news anchor, idiot that she is, seemed most concerned by the fact that "In a worst case scenario, malls and sporting events may be closed." Oh, Goddess, the horror. Please. If it gets that bad, that's the least of our problems, and we can all cope. Buy your crap from online like I do, and they can have the police bomb squad's robots deliver it. Or the mailperson in a biohazard suit.

I mean, I'm just saying, you know? I'm aware the locals are morons- I once knew a guy who worked for one of the local TV stations, and even he thought they were idiots. Said he was always telling them not to ad-lib stuff into their reports, but they did it anyway even though everyone told them it was stupid. So, I know they're not the sharpest knives in the drawer, but yes, if the bird flu comes to town, our greatest concern should be the mall closing and sporting events being canceled. Because, you know, in that case, my first worry would be that I couldn't go to the Fresno State game.

Although, if Mom misses Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young this July, I can't be held responsible for what she might do, because I'll be hiding in my room with the cat. Especally since the last time she saw them on tour, Neil Young was having one of his tantys off doing his own thing, and not touring with the others.

So I'm sitting here, writing the letters that will go in my Christmas cards (which are going to be late, but I'm sending them anyway), and I'm starting with my old gaming friends, who moved to Arizona last summer. And the funny thing is how little I really want to write this letter.

I loved them. I missed them terribly, and sometimes I still do. But too much time has gone by, and there are whole parts of my life they know nothing about at all. I was very much in the thick of the eye thing when they left, deciding whether to have the surgery or not, but I never said one word to them about it, and I don't think that I'm going to start now. It's too much, and they don't... I loved them. It pains me to say they might not get it. But well, they might not.

This letter is going to be one of the hard ones, I think.

...

Okay. It's done. I think it's sort of crap, though.

*sigh* I need to clean my keyboard. The 'v' is sticking again.

...

So the letters are progressing, and I'll probably be able to get the bulk of the cards out tomorrow. And I am so tired... still recovering from Return of the King, I guess. Wow. What a long day that was, yesterday.

I'm seriously considering just ignoring my mother when she comes knocking on my bedroom door in a few hours. It feels much later than it is, so I keep expecting to see her, coming to drag me off to Grandma's for another fun-filled night of odd food and crappy games. I don't want to go. I really don't want to go.

Tomorrow we're going to my uncle's ex-roommate's place to watch Finding Nemo. I don't want to do that either. I'm feeling overexposed to my family, and I don't know if I can even deal with my uncle, the roomie, and the girlfriend, even though they're all more or less okay.

KB Toys was...interesting. At first we thought no one was there and the place wasn't even open, but we checked the mall door. It was open, so we went in. There was a large line in front of the store, so we joined it. They let people in a few at a time, and someone had to leave before another person could go in. Crazy. Then, they have half the aisles blocked off so you can only go one way. First you had to weave your way through to the aisle you wanted to look through; then you had to line up with everyone else and walk through the entire rest of the store to get to the cash registers. It was crazy, and a lot of people lost patience and left. We didn't, though- Stubborn, that's all it is. We're just stubborn.

No Eowyn, sadly. Goddamn short-packed figures. Sometimes I could just kill the people who think this stuff up. But I did find something worth standing in line for- the short-packed Galadriel figure from Two Towers which I've been going after for ages, plowing through racks of Gollum, King Theoden, and the occasional Ringwraith at Wal-Mart and Target every time I'm there. The Ringwraiths, for some reason, tend to fall on my head. Though I got hit today with a Gollum (Mom knocked it off the pegs accidentally, and I couldn't duck in time).

So we stood in line for almost two hours to spend $5.99 on an action figure that's going for at least $20 on eBay. Sometimes my mother just rocks. Anyway, we had some fun laughing at the people lugging huge sacks of stuff around, spending upwards of $200 on toys and various other crap. If you spent at least $100, you got a free Care Bear, but we didn't really want one that badly. I was going to grab one of the Care Bear beanies, though, in memory of the original bear my parents gave me back in the 80's, but they were sold out. Very sad. I have fond memories of my Care Bear; it was the green one with the shamrock on its chest, and I believe I loved it to death.

I distinctly remember getting that bear; it was my birthday, and we went out to dinner at a local pizza place I used to love. It's closed now, but they had the best pizza... anyway, I remember opening the oddly shaped package at the table- you know, those strange half-box tray things stuffed animals used to come in?- and just hugging that thing for all I was worth...

That was, of course, the year the Care Bears were in season, and I still sort of wonder who my mother had to kill to get it. I appriciated the gesture, though. :)

By the time we got out of KB, we were way too awake to go home and go back to bed, so we went out for breakfast and then hit a few more stores. We were out with the insane masses for about five hours, which was about all we could stand, but we got everything done that we'd planned on doing, and only the last two or three stops were really crowded.

Of course, now my feet are killing me, and I'm starting to get bummed out because I don't want to go to Grandma's. I'll be there for hours, and they'll make me play that stupid game...ugh. Sometimes I wish I'd stayed up north in the boondocks, where at least they couldn't so easily get to me.

The novel is kind of dead in the water right now. I have ideas of what I'm doing, where it's going, so it's not writers' block, it's just...exhaustion. I don't have the energy to write anymore.

*sigh* It would be so cool if someone could come along and rescue me from my relations...thank gods I have two more days off after this; I'm going to need them to recover.

We needed a few things last night, so we drove out to Wal-Mart. The Clovis Wal-Mart, where last summer I sold fireworks with my friends.

There was a booth in the parking lot, same as last year. Same company, same exact location in the lot. Jonni would've kicked our collective asses if we'd thrashed the place as badly as these people did, though- all the boxes thrown out back, and somebody's Dachshund puppy wandering around. (Granted, Jonni brought the baby with her, but this was when he was really really little. And he was way cuter than the puppy.)

It wasn't the same. I knew it wouldn't be, but as we walked past I got a glimpse of strangers in the booth, heard the sound of a generator that worked...and I had this terrible attack of nostalgia.

Nothing is the way it was last summer. Nothing stays the same.

And I hate it. I hate the changes, hate that they're not here anymore. Hate that we never got the chance to do the booth again- though how we'd have done it with the Clovis chapter alone is beyond me. I'd have been sitting there all day by myself, or it would have been me and Michael, and I always felt sort of redundant when he was selling. I'm, you know, not as good at it. But then, he was almost a car salesman. Too many speeding tickets, or he would've gotten the job.

Hell, they should've hired him anyway.

*sigh*

I miss them, but I don't even know how to write and say that I miss them. It's like they've gone a lot farther away than Arizona. Lindsay in Russia seems closer, though I'm sure this has to do with the fact that Lindsay and I actually email back and forth more than Michael and Jonni and I ever did, except when Michael needed Cam stuff from me. Michael was militant about his Cam stuff sometimes.

Okay...a lot of the time.

It's just funny and strange and not a little bit sad- my friends are gone. To Arizona, where there are no legal fireworks.

I've applied to play another character in twisted_hp, and have kind of narrowed down who I might want to play in the_second_war. I'm still having the great debate about Second War, probably because the field is still so wide open. Thinking up a second for Twisted was easier; I almost started with this one instead. Maybe I should have... Tabitha is so...barely skirting canon. 'Course, so is Twisted, but...

Yeah. I'm a geek. But what it amounts to really is that I'm bored- I'm horribly bored, actually. And it's two days till 4th of July, I don't know what I'm doing, but it won't be a thing like last year, when I was working the fireworks booth with Michael and Jonni and the rest of the gang. *sigh* I miss them. I miss the fun we had last summer, even though it was hot and horrible and some of our customers really truly sucked...

We had one of those big party pack boxes of fireworks left over, this thing we were supposed to be raffling off but which no one entered for, and since we'd paid for everything already (well, the school J. worked for had, anyway, and it wasn't something we could sell anyway), we took it and set everything off ourselves. Best 4th of July I've ever had.

I didn't get invited to parties before I met them. Now they're in Arizona, and I'm back to square one. Lonely. Writing and reading away my summer, wandering around town feeling so damn old, like it's been forever since I was the age of all the little teenyboppers who hang around the shopping centers and the movie theaters on Friday nights.

Feeling nervous and vaguely crappy, restless and bored and a little depressed. Or maybe it's just the heat. Waiting for the postman, the UPS guy, somebody, to bring my eBay stuff. Waiting for my new X-men movie Rogue figure to finish airing out in the living room so I can put her on my desk with everyting else, without being asphyxiated by the horrid smell of new plastic.

Trying not to think that this is the day of the goodbye party, and how bittersweet it all is. And I know- I mean I just know that Will and Keith won't show up. What the hell kind of party is it going to be without Will's "so I had this character once..." stories, or the "once I had this Tremere plot..." ones? Or Keith telling the ones he always does, making fun of a guy we all used to know...

It's not like they're moving to Arizona, too. But I don't think I will ever see them again, either. We're not that good of friends, and they aren't organized, or focused the way the rest of us are. We're losing the glue that holds us together.

I want to take my digicam tonight, but it doesn't have a case yet, and I am terrified of what might happen to it. Lindsay, what do you do with yours? I'm determined to work out something here, even if I haven't got a clue how I'm managing the camera, a six-pack of beer, and the bag of Oreos I'm bringing along for the potluck. (Not that it's gonna be much of a potluck; Michael's grilling, but if Will and Keith don't show...)

Five to 1:00 now, no mail, no sign of anything else...no email, and surprise of surprises, my phone doesn't ring. I need to be out of here for a while.

I think I'm going to the pool.

[reconstructed from what LJ ate]

So I'm supposed to be meeting my friends at the blood bank, Michael and Jonni and Will. And I don't really want to go.

We don't talk anymore. Haven't in a while. I know M and J are busy and they're moving, but it's not as if we have forever here. But J is busy chasing the kids around, and Michael seems to only want to bully me into taking Camarilla club offices that I don't want. Again.

Our games don't happen, or they happen and no one tells me about them, which ammounts to the same thing as far as I'm concerned. They don't call, they don't email, and I, either because I'm petulant and pissed off, or just because I'm tired, don't initiate contact. I think it's because I'm pissed, though. And I am. I tried not to be, since they're leaving for Arizona in ten days, but what the hell? Why not? Makes no difference anyway.

I wanted to have a party, one last get-together before they go. But they don't want a party. M wants to go see a movie or something. And I- Sigh. I used to go see movies with my dad, and other people I didn't really want to deal with. You sit in the dark for two hours, don't speak, and when you leave you have the movie to talk about; impersonal, requiring no real person-to-person contact.

I don't want my relationship with my friends to be like this. But it is becoming this, whatever I want. It frustrates me. It makes me want to scream, bash my head against the walls- but none of that would change anything.

In a way I am acting as if they're already gone. Hard not to, when they seem to have forgotten that I exist.

I was so happy for a while there- I had friends I saw face to face, friends who stood by me when others stabbed me in the back. Friends who, when made to chose between those others and me, chose me, when all the times before that that had happened to me, almost always people had run quickly as they could away from me. But now I can only wonder where it's gone, the good times we used to have. The happiness.

And I tried- I tried so hard to hang on, to not be angry and to not be sad. But it's not doing any good holding the anger off, they don't speak to me anymore anyway. When I see them tonight I know what they'll say- been busy, you should have called...you missed a great game. I have never understood the game schedule and now I suppose that I never will.

I don't want to go, but I will. I'll go not because I can donate blood; I can't. I think I've become anemic again. They told me to take iron pills, gave me lists of really weird stuff to eat, pushed the raisens and the orange juice... and my iron levels go down. So whatever. I give up. But I'm going because it's too much to explain why I wouldn't want to. They never call, but that they would notice, remark on somehow, sometime. And it's too much to explain why I can't face them, why I'd rather not. Going is easier. Putting on the false fronts at which I've become so good, is easier.

My friends have become strangers. It's no wonder I already feel as if they're a hundred miles away.

It's Monday, a day that I hate. I need about two more hours of sleep and time to digest last night's Alias. I also need to not have a math test at 9:00 AM today.

I have none of these things.

I knew they'd have to do something, knew somewhow things would change. But I never imagined this. Jonni and Michael, who have become two of my best friends in town, are moving. Leaving California. Nine weeks and they'll be gone. And Necie, dear Necie, my buddy, my pal, is leaving too.

I knew they wouldn't be here forever, but the plan was for them to stay a few more years, till M. finished school. I wasn't expecting this.

Why do the cool ones always go away? Why do they always end up somewhere else? And it happens so often- last year, my first LARP, I'd met this girl, knew her through the Fresno Pagan people. She and I hung out all through the Sabbat game, newbie solidarity. Me, Jennifer, Adam- strange, slightly annoying local Adam, not the ex from hell. Adam who wrecked my ice chest in spectacular fashion on 4th of July. Jen left before the next game; this was when I was with the Fresno chapter, who had games like they were going out of style. St. Louis or something.

And now even Adam's gone, off to join the Air Force. Though not to Iraq, thank all the Gods- I ran into Ryan at City College a week or so ago, asked him how everybody was, and especally Adam. Who I always thought was crazy, but never wished anything worse than an ice chest full of rancid meat upon.

Oh, I'm going to miss them! Necie and Michael and Jonni, my friends, my mentors, who pushed me and taught me and helped me... my first real friends after I came here, after I came home, my friends who stood by me.

We'll write, I'm sure. We'll email. Maybe meet up at games once in a blue moon, hug like old friends. But it will never be the same.

We have a blood drive on Tuesday night- same day as my usually semi-traumatic eye doctor's appointment- and I am going, I am going with digicam in hand, and enough vitamins in my system that I should be able to at least donate this time. We also have a get-together Friday, at which I will try not to cry.

Boy, do I ever need a life! It's good, though.

Went surfing around this morning looking for inspiration for redesigning my Gundam Wing site, which really really needs it, and one thing led to another; to make a long story short I found my old GW fandom buddy fablespinner, and she's living in the same part of the state as me. Not right next door or anything, but close enough... I'll probably see her Friday, there's this anime thing... Anyway.

Didn't get much work done on the site this morning, though I did sketch it out in my head in between classes. Funny, though, I pictured it being grey and red, and it's become grey and blue. But hey, at least it's not purple.

I hate Mondays, but this one hasn't been too bad.

Well, except for the C- I got on my history paper (the font's too big, and he wants more information... yes, and shall I walk on water while I'm at it?) But right now I don't much care. I have a friend in the area (and she's not a crazy gamer).

No, she's a crazy anime fan, but that's a whole different thing. :)