!,@,#,$, & %

! - my head hurts. stiff muscle in my neck. rolling my head around is not helping it, and i feel nauseous. I'll probably end up using the percussion massager and possibly sleeping on a heating pad. Both usually help.

@ - I am not in the best mood... had an OK day events-wise, but the mom is being uber-passive-aggressive today, even for her. Coupled with my PMS, this is not a good thing. She bickered with me about just about anything you can imagine today.

# - did I mention that the mom is being uber-passive-aggressive today? if she states one more reason, outright or heavily implied, that she thinks I am ruining or have ruined her life/lifestyle/peace-of-mind, I'm either going to clock her or hand her a knife and ask her to please kill me, 'cause I'm fucking sick of the nagging and snide comments.
(the mom would like to take this opportunity to interject that i am exaggerating, and that she does everything i want her to do. this will go without editorial comment as i am in no position to agree or disagree.)

$ - what did I do today? went to Orlando, used my Express gift certificate to buy some "staple" tshirts (replacing the ones I've outgrown), did not buy cute things elsewhere (monkey tee and "dysfunctional doll" tee at PacSunWear; cushy hooded cotton sweater at jcrew). went to bookstore and ended up reading Cardcaptor Sakura #2 and looking at cocktail recipes (i don't drink that much, but i like having ideas for new drinks to try when i'm out). went to other bookstore, and got a Blue Monday graphic novel (manga-style Archie-influenced neo-mod/new-wave goodness!) and some book by Elizabeth Wurtzel that amusingly has "sanity" in the title (uhhh... *digs through bag*... "Radical Sanity", to be exact). Big cd sale & I also got Weezer cds (the self-titled and pinkerton) and Beastie Boys Licensed to Ill, which I have wanted for ages... yay! I have LTI on vinyl, it was given to me years ago by a relative, but it's mainly the gatefold sleeve... the record itself is all scratched up. I don't have any other Beastie Boys stuff. (gasp.)

% - That has been my day. I am less angry with my mother, who I have been chatting with as I write this (she came by and made typing motions and monotoned "boy, you wouldn't believe the way that bitch was acting today... god, I hate her", so I read her what I had actually written, which probably wasn't as bad). I am about to drink tea, wash my face, go to sleep. I have an upset stomach. I am wearing my curious george tanktop today, and my camel-colored moleskin pants, which are really, um, low-riding, and have to be pulled-up over my hipbones anytime I want to sit down in them, making me feel ungainly... but they look cute. my curious george tanktop makes me happy. the beastie boys make me happy, and neo-mod/new-wave manga chicks make me happy. so i have lots of happy in my life today, as long as nobody comes and stomps on it.

(no subject)

Finished the Wurtzel book... it's slight ($15 for less than 100 pages in paperback), and full of things I already knew, but useful and true information nonetheless. I'd recommend it wholeheartedly if it were $5 cheaper, but as it is, get it if you need it. Three Black Skirts by Anna Johnson is also very good, and a bit cheaper and fatter and with cute illustrations by the author. Both are smart and useful books.

I am showered and lip-balmed. I am going to spend the day reading, probably, and doing laundry; possibly going out to pick up food but more likely cooking some mushroom rice and grilling some chicken and eating it with some duck sauce i picked up at Wms-Son a few months ago and some frozen peas with pearl onions. (This is a planned meal only because we don't have that many cookable things left. Rightnow, I'd like to drink some Spiru-tein - actually Fruit-tein in the Orange Banana Creme flavor that I love - but we don't have any milk! We have eggs, potatos, a lot of condiments, and some miscellaneous frozen stuff, and some dry stuff like rice and ramen and corn chips and oatmeal. I guess I could even live til Wednesday without hitting the grocery store, but by then I'd be too cranky for words.)

So, mm, yeah, that's my day.

pocketness

I am trying to be happyfied by little things today. My abs and back really hurt, and I'm doped up and a little sleepy in the way that I'm sleepy when I am crampy, which I am. Right now I am happyfied that the new dryer dries clothes so quickly. I am happyfied that I have books to read and water to drink. I am happyfied that my yarn and wooden needles came from eKnitting and are exactly as ordered.

So I read the Blue Monday series, though I'm not done with the early comics in the back of the book. I love it so much! It very much reminds me of an idealized version of my inner teenage life - heck, one of the boys (I think it's Victor) even looks like the first guy I dated (the one who I just got in touch with last month who lives in Cambridge, MA).

In reality, when I was a teenager, I had a lot of preoccupations that precluded "normalcy" or even what passes for "normal" in a subculture. I was artfaggy, but I don't think there was any particular band I was "into". One of my best friends was into grunge stuff and local indie rock (she now likes Limp Bizkit and Korn), the other was into more of the same things I'm into but in an overt way, and was friends with most of the punks and skaters and goths and ska-kids and so on (she gave me my first Morrissey tape and made me listen to Sisters of Mercy for the first time). The former friend almost completely clashed, in terms of taste, with the latter friend, and would jeer and ridicule me if I was listening to "wussy" music; she also drove me a lot, and dictated what we listened to in the car. I liked a lot of things from the radio and had certain definite tastes (which are pretty much my current ones - 80s synthpop and alternative and new wave, 70s punk, early 90s hipster stuff, etc), but I didn't even know the names of most of the things I liked. All I did was sing, and I could sing you "Ach, ich fuhl's" from The Magic Flute, but I couldn't tell you that "True Faith", a song I loved, was by New Order (or any Depeche Mode song but what was on Violator, which I'd bought myself in 9th grade with weeks of hoarded allowance money and strangely the same night I saw Edward Scissorhands, or just about anything about The Cure, whose music I knew I liked but seemed inaccessible and intimidatingly "cool", more than I deserved). I wanted to be either an opera singer, or, as a fallback plan, a medieval studies major working in a museum or doing research.

I owned only a handful of pop cds until just after I graduated from high school. I listened to Peter Gabriel's So all the time, and Sarah McLachlan's 1st and 2nd cds (before she got popular, when she was more "art-music" oriented), and Sinead O'Connor, and REM, and Depeche Mode. I spent a sizeable portion of my graduation money - around $1000, the most I'd ever seen - on comics (mostly Sandman and related stuff) and cds (Tori Amos and NIN were early purchases). It's true. I was parentally sheltered in various ways but my interests at the time were so arcane that I managed to keep myself 90% out of The Current Youth Culture without my mother's help. So I can't say that Blue Monday reflects my youth, but I can say that it reflects what I'd be like if I were in high school right now and not ill. (Finally, I should add that although I have a ton of cds, I'm about the least-involved or fashionable "music fan" you will ever see. I tend to buy a cd when I can't get a song out of my head. I still feel like I'm catching up... for instance, I only own two Pixies cds, the Beastie Boys cd I got last night is my first of theirs, I only have Beck's Odelay because I got it from a record club a few years ago. Etc.)

Regardless, Blue Monday is great, very charming, and should be read by anyone who likes little punky/mod/new-wave arty girls and our bizarre obsessions with hairdye, safety pins, and Adam Ant or Duran Duran.

and Windy has stormy eyes

All I have eaten today is a bowl of oatmeal (maple raisin), 3 kosher dill pickle spears, a small container of Yoplait blackberry yogurt, and a glazed donut (which I really should not be eating). My mother went grocery shopping, but by the time she came home I was no longer very hungry anymore (because I'd been hungry for hours!) and instead I went for a ride with her.

We meant to go just up and down the road for ten minutes or so, and drove down into the next county and the bay wildlife sanctuary instead. When we turned around it was on a dark, lonely stretch of highway, and the radio, on an AM easy listening station that had been spouting swank cocktail tunes, suddenly started playing a song that consisted of hearty eerie laughter. There were more stars overhead there than anywhere else around, and the trees were dense and too close. We turned around and came home. We were gone for around 90 minutes. I've been home for over an hour and I'm still not hungry.

I'm in a poor mental state... I know it's just hormonal, but I hate this sense of creeping doom. Like something is about to come crashing down on my head.

I feel bad that lately I haven't been commenting in other people's journals very much. I'm trying very hard to read all my friends pages but since I tend to read 200 entries at once lately, like I did today (and since a website I visited broke my right-click and I can't open replies in a new window), I'm not getting as many comments in as I'd like. I think of things like when I thought it said "Caligula, take me away!" in Pooka's journal (it was Calgon), as well as the bit about Batman's cape being so dusty it was the wrong color. Or the thing about the person hoarding food from their kids in Whorlpool's journal. Or things Internautte and Jamie say, all the time. Vignoche, Absolution, etc. I've been posting more comments to Ana lately than anyone because she's having so much trauma heaped on her head and I'm concerned for her. Anyway, I'm sorry I'm not more communicative. I mean to be. I'm not this self-absorbed. I just leave things unsaid, let inertia suck at my fingertips.