I got to work on time today and started at 8:40am. I worked all morning, had the chat with consultant man, had lunch at 2:00. I then stopped lunch early when E came up for a chat [haven't seen her in over a week due to her bump on the head] at 2:40. Then I rearranged my priorities so she could have a document she needed for a meeting tomorrow. Finally got to leave at 5:50. I’m tired. I don’t like long days that have nerve-racking stuff in.

Did have R suggest I just take a day off to empty my flexitime pot… he actually noticed that I’d been working longer than I ought to almost every day this month. Shock.

Our Postponed Christmas Lunch for work has been postponed again. So Doodle is coming over tomorrow night. Current plan is to go to the gym, clean, receive grocery order between 1 & 3, continue cleaning, have shower, receive Doodle around 4pm. Band practice until 9:30ish, then bed.

Thursday I leave work at 3 in an effort to get home in time to that ensure house and self are in orderly states. Then meet Adam and his posse at rail station before coming back home to drop off bags and pick up Weasel. Then to dinner @ Chinese restaurant. Then to Fun Lovin’ Criminals gig, then home and sleep.

Leaving house 8:30 on Friday morning to go catch train to Leeds for weekend with Horatio [yay] and UKA meet [yay]. Must figure out when I can pack between now and then.

Pity I can’t sleep when I’m dead.

“I think it’s dark and it looks like rain” you said
“and the wind is blowing like it’s the end of the world” you said
“and it’s so cold it’s like the cold if you were dead” and then you smiled for a second

So I’ve had six people confirm their presence at my birthday party. I’ve invited ten. Suspect we’ll be going for Chinese food then coming back here for games and general get-everyone-to-do-what-I-want activities. I think I’m probably quite mad for thinking I can handle this. I hate being the centre of attention. Ah well, probably good for me to leave my comfort zones.

I was thinking today, what if someone lied to me fairly early on about when I was born? What if I’m really only 20? I have so little memory of anything, it could have happened anytime. When I was in third grade [aged 8/9] I remember New Years and it was 1989 twice. I think the hype got to me beforehand and the year changed before it did in my world. So what if that really happened? What if I don’t remember so much because it never happened? I make my brain hurt.

I’ve been feeling blue for a few days. Hoping it is awful combination of hormones, anxiety and months of little sun catching up with me. Otherwise, people have more influence in my life than I’d like and I need to get rid of them.

“I think I’m old and I’m feeling pain” you said
“and it’s all running out like it’s the end of the world” you said
“and it’s so cold it’s like the cold if you were dead” and then you smiled for a second

I’m amazed at my seemingly endless capacity for guilt, even when I’ve done nothing wrong. E has been at home recovering after a bad bump on the head a couple of weeks back. She likes to call during the day, sometimes for legitimate business reasons and other times because she’s bored and wants us to entertain her. Unfortunately, today she called at 4:30, when I was on the phone with R sorting out one last thing before I went home. I had to hang up with him, try to remember what I was calling him about and try to find out if her call was real or fake. When I asked her to hang on for two seconds, I needed to write a note to myself so I could finish talking to R she got all sort of apologetic and pathetic. So even though I technically didn’t do anything wrong, I get to feel bad. Today was just very long and very hectic. I was doing four things at once all day. Editing documents as R finished them, correcting bugs that popped up on another website, testing another site on E’s behalf and thinking of all the eight other things I didn’t get around to doing. I felt quite giddy when I left, over stimulated. By the time I’d cycled home, I was just tired. Managed to get some lovely jacket potatoes made for dinner and feeling better but still tired. Very tired of feeling tired.

Tomorrow, we have a consultant coming to the office to chat with us. Find out what we think of things and generally put names to faces. I’m nervous and curious. Also have a review this week on Thursday. Overall I think things are better, will know better once I fill out survey thingy otherwise I just have vague ideas. Structure for the win.

Sometimes you make me feel
like I’m living at the edge of the world
like I’m living at the edge of the world
“it’s just the way I smile” you said

I kissed Weasel yesterday, kissed her like I did when I didn’t feel so mad at her. Was strangely new and exciting. I’d like to explore that properly.

This entry was brought to you by The Cure.

I have been beyond tired today. I guess I just needed to catch up. Went to sleep around midnight I think, woke up at 7:30 and decided to go back to sleep, didn’t wake up until 10. Then at 2 I went back to bed and slept until 4. I’m going to go get ready for bed again now.

Too much happening.

I have nothing to say which makes me curious.

My sister Middle and I have a very… strained relationship. She’s never really liked me, I’ve never been quite clear why. I’ve recently found some of her thoughts on the internet and part of me would very much like to get in touch and see if I can’t offer some words up that could give her hope and encourage her to embrace and chase change in her life. The other part of me knows she’d just resent it and it would make a difficult situation even harder. Then my sensible bit replies that she already hates me, why not go whole hog and be brutal and let her keep hating me? It’ll be no skin off my nose, I live half the world away. And it might just help and with the tools in hand it might let her work towards feeling happy. Only because the problems she’s expressed mirror the problems I had in myself for a lot of years. I worked hard to learn all my lessons, shouldn’t I share when I can?

Have been feeling oddly weepy and quiet for the last two days, need to shake it off.

Many years ago, Weasel and I went shopping in Camden Town. We had a lovely day out, she got a fancy leather coat and we both got new bags and all was well. My bag is dead. One side of the shoulder strap broke last summer, I sewed it back on, the other side it coming off now and it took the zipper with it. I cannot get my limited sewing skills to fix it. I’m so distraught. It has been so perfect, it sort of looks nice and small when it is empty and it can take sooo much crap. I’m talking books, mobiles, wallet, travel tickets, lotion, water bottle, tee-shirt, chap stick, mints, pens, pencils… and so much more, all at once. It has been abroad with me, all over the UK, to innumerable gigs and shopping trips.

I have tried to find something similar online, with minimal success. I found something that would work on eBay, but the bidding war got too rich for me. I’m trying to decide if I ought to just settle for something I found that might work, or if I should hold off and look around Leeds while I’m there next month. They have the most amazing shopping district of any city I’ve ever been to. Markets, elite boutiques and department stores all right next to each other.

I just wish my bag wasn’t dead.

A has had some issues with his girlfriend and I’ve been sort of helping him sort them out. And he keeps saying I should be a counsellor, and the thing is, I really wanted to be when I was a teenager, but everyone around me told me I was too fucked up myself to even begin to think I could help anyone else. Adam isn’t the only person telling me this. Every single friend I’ve ever had has at some point said I should. I’ve tried looking into it, find out what one has to do to get qualifications etc. but the problem I keep running into is time/money. I thought I could volunteer for the Samaritans, but they will only take you if you can work at night too. I really can’t. While I was in the shower today [best place for thinking] I did ponder the idea of quitting work and going into full time education to become qualified. But the implications and knock-on effects are far reaching and very scary in some ways. So I shall continue to vaguely think that one day it would be nice to do something I’d be really good at and continue to do nothing about it.

W has been lending me books lately, all of Paul Gallico’s works [sooo do not recommend him, is completely misguided as to how rape effects people and has some lousy opinions of the human race as a whole] and the Travis McGee series by John D MacDonald, which I am thoroughly enjoying. The characters are rich and colourful and the plots are well thought out and the writing is entertaining. Excellent stuff. Anyway, today I started my third book in the series, The Dreadful Lemon Sky and on page 16, there was an amusing conversation which I must share:

‘You ought to run a little,’ I told him.

“Would that I could. When the beach people see you running, they know at a glance that it is exercise. There you are, all sinew and brown hide, and you wear that earnest, dumb, strained expression of the old jock keeping in shape. You have the style. Knees high, arms swinging just right, head up. But suppose I came running down this beach? They would look at me, and then look again. I look so little like a runner or a jock that the only possible guess as to what would make me run is terror. So they look way down the beach to see what is chasing me. They can’t see anything, but to be on the safe side, they start walking swiftly in the same direction I’m running. First just a few, then a dozen, then a score. All going faster and faster. Looking back. Breaking into a run. And soon you would have two or three thousand people thundering along the beach, eyes popping out of the sockets, cords in their necks standing out. A huge stamped, stomping everything and everybody in their path into the sand. You wouldn’t want me to cause a catastrophe like that, would you?’

‘Oh, boy.’

‘It might not happen, but I can’t take the chance.’

The ‘I’ is Travis, and the other person is his associate Meyer. He is sort of a highly intelligent side-kick. I’ve already read The Green Reaper and The Scarlet Ruse. So need to keep track of what I’ve read, I may well need to buy the whole series myself one day. And while I’m quoting books at you, I’ve been saving this one for some time:

It is a small world. You do not have to live in it particularly long to learn that for yourself. There is a theory that, in the whole world, there are only five hundred real people (the cast, as it were. All the rest of the people in the world, the theory suggests, are extras), and what is more, they all know each other. And it’s true, or true as far as it goes. In reality the world is made up of thousands upon thousands of groups of about five hundred people, all of whom will spend their lives bumping into each other, trying to avoid each other, and discovering each other in the same unlikely teashop in Vancouver. There is an unavoidability to this process. It’s not even coincidence. It’s just the way the world words, with no regard for individuals or for propriety.

Neil Gaiman – Anasi Boys, page 256

Today was a rough, long day and I’m all tired. When I told Weasel I wanted a surprise to cheer me up, she hung up the laundry and ordered pizza. That helped.