.... is how long since I've had a cigarette.  I'm losing my mind.  Alister at least has (prescription) drugs to help him through this, I'm on my own.  I see someone walking down the street smoking and I get all jealous.  It's truly weird.

I'm strong though, I sat out on the back porch with Jason last night, chatting, drinking, and watching him smoke, and I managed to not even complain about it.   I figure it's better to be around smokers (all my friends) and get over it than isolate myself and make it more of a big deal.

I'm moving next Sunday.  I wanted to do something really fun for Alister's 27th but it looks like his present is going to be a girl in his house permanently.  (Dubious present)  He's rather excited about it.  It's a little funny how girls try to keep a bit of distance there, and guys tend to get all nuts and start picking out curtians.  Or arranging trips to Ikea, as it were.

I'm happy, it's what I want, I'm just a little shocked to actually get it.

 

Oh my god, I've never felt so bad in my entire life.  Well, I have felt worse, but not when there's no apparant physical reason for it.  I have nearly-a-migraine, my stomach hurts, my joints hurt, and to add insult to injury I'm seeing things running around out of the corners of my eyes.

If the DT's from niccotene are this bad, I'm never doing anything harder. 

My living situation in Leucadia is getting unbearable.  I really feel like somewhere I'm being significantly screwed over.  Every month I spend less time there, and every month I pay more utilities.  My rent is up to 600 for my room and a bathroom I share with three people, and I pay almost 100 in utilities.  Something is just not right. 

I told Ryan two weeks ago that I wouldn't be able to pay rent til the 5th, so sorry, just don't have the money.  (Not like I'm using it for anything else, I'm down to  2.10 a day to live on) Last night he askes me to overdraw my account by 200 so I could pay him sooner.  Yeah, right.  And pay 75 in overdraft charges. 

At least I'm moving in April.  Eeek.  Moving in with Alister.  Not like I don't already spend every night here, and live here more than I live in my own house, but Eeek.  I'm sure everything will be fine with us,  I'm just not looking forward to, and not sure he's aware of, the mountians of crap my parents are going to throw at my for this.  I will not be suprised if my mom tries everything she can to make her dire predictions come true, including cutting me off financially (not that I want it).  Going to be a mess, going to be a real mess. 

I have the worst feeling that I have made an unforgivable spelling error  in the title of this blog and haven't noticed til now....  "decent" is the right sound, but wrong word, isn't it?  Jesus Christ...it probably is right, but I've just looked at it too many times.... aargh.

I won't worry about it til I have a dictionary at hand. 

So, been about a month since my last entry.  I'm quitting smoking as of today.  I'm a little bitter about it, but that could be the niccotene craving talking.  I'm mostly quitting because Alister asked me to (it's a good opperatunity to do the right thing, so on and so forth...) but I'm afraid it won't work if I'm not doing it because -I- wanted me to.  I'm also afraid I'll gain weight.  I know my priorities are extremely twisted on this one, but there's a major part of me that really would rather risk cancer than be fat. 

I think half of that comes from living in Southern California, where being physically unattractive according to the status quo is worse than death.  If you're not Hollywood-pretty people just assume you're also unhappy, unsuccessful, and a general waste of skin.  I'm overly sensitive I know. 

So the whole new boyfriend thing is going well... the old boyfriend thing not so much.  He expresses intrest in hanging out with us, then just stands there and stares at me.  I'm getting a little creeped out. 

Blech, I'm done.

Crazy.  I have had the strangest January.  I love it, when you finally relax and think everything is pretty much how it should be for the rest of forever, and then everything suddenly goes totally pear-shaped.

Of course in my case it was an instance of myself sabotaging myself for the greater good of myself.  (Wow, I could totally work for the IRA!)

So anyway, not that any of you out there in TV land care, but I quit my job at the horse ranch.  It was killing me.  Not having a life because you're working sixty hours a week, yet still not making enough money to both pay rent and eat is a real drag.  Especially when you have a goddamn degree.  I did one of my infamous, "I made up my mind I quit" deals, and gave my notice within 24 hours of realizing that the only reason I wasn't quitting was that I had been too mentally exhausted to think about it. 

Then, of course, having some spare time to think (rather than collapsing in a pile at the end of each day) made me realize I was pretty unhappy with the long term prospects surrounding my boyfriend, and I fired him.  (The boy HAS TO get his shit together.  I mean, getting away without a drivers license for 24 years in a big city with municipal transportation is one thing, but in the suburbs.....?)

Now before my inbox fills up completely with messages from my avid single fans (HA, right) I am pleased to report that the position has already been filled.  I think I was technically single for a whole week. 

Before you assume I'm a cold heartless ice princess (which I am, so you'd be right, but hear me out first) I've been so stressed out about the whole dumping the boyfriend thing that I lost ten pounds in four days.  Haven't yet put it back on.... we have a large-dog scale at work, it's useful. 

 

Ooooh no.   Something is seriously not making a connection.  My spark gaps are corroded.  No writing on Nyquil, too little sleep, and an empty stomach.

Even though I'm one of those awful people who have a rational reason for everything (Goddamnit Mulder), sometimes I get a little fuzzy on it.  Too many books I suspect. 

However, I seem to recall thinking as a child about what I used to call the "Cream of Wheat Box Principle".  The guy on box is holding up a box with a picture of the guy on the box, and HE's holding up a box, etc...  Maybe, I used to think as a child, maybe if you were to go way far back from everything, really far out there, beyond anything you can imagine, the really big things look just like the really small things.  Maybe our planet and everything we think is important is an infintessimly small part of an incredibly small quark in an incredibly big atom.  If we made our microscopes powerful enough, we'd see minute galaxies spinning away in the smallest corners of our own atoms... and even more powerful microscopes could pick up tiny scientists peering though their own instruments in abject terror.

The universe swallowing its own tail.  Flush the toilet and it sucks its self down the drain with it.

Sometimes I'm very afraid.  Ever since I was a young monster, thinking deep thoughts and giving my My Little Ponys mohawks, I've had a sincere need to keep constant vigilance on the rational.  I have this nagging suspicion, that someday, maybe tomorrow, maybe when I'm one hundred and five and back in diapers, I'm going to let my guard down and see something slip.  I'll wake up and the door will be canted two degrees to the left.  There will be a naked hairless something sitting in the rain in the middle of the street, knowing no one is susposed to see it.  The third drop flung off my tipped glass will reach the ground far slower than it should.  I'll hear the dog running toward me though the house, but no dog will ever arrive.  I'll have a fleeting moment of vertigo, then the world will seem to be nothing but a shoddy Hollywood set, ready to come crashing down and any second and reveal the cameraman behind the curtian, people pulling strings and hustling props.  There'll be a notice tacked up at the grocery store: "Lost CAT.  Answers to ERICA.  American SHORTHAIR, black circle on RIGHT ARM.  She's stubborn, but we LOVE her.  REWARD." And then chalk stars and crecent moons and peeling wallpaper and everything will fall apart at the seams.

I was ok with all of this as a child I guess.  It seemed perfectly normal that the real world might not be.  After all, we are really all just programming.

I have had a weird couple of days.  I quit my job on Friday, and am only working through the end of the month now.  Saturday I was sitting at Denny's, watching a waitress serve a couple and an older lady, when the coffee pot she was carrying shattered all over the lady's lap.  She was burned really badly.  Sunday night I went up to Vinaka, and as soon as I pulled up I heard gunfire.  I actually thought it was firecrackers, so I went to go look.  I saw a car tearing out of the parking lot of the liquor store across the street, and someone laying on the ground.  I went over... I always feel vaguely responsable, since I know CPR and stuff, and the people there were just standing around staring.... there was a girl in the front seat of an SUV that had been shot twice in the chest and was dead, and a man laying on the ground shot once in the stomach and once in the chest who was still alive.  I didn't have to do anything, right when I got there a couple marines showed up and took over. 

Nothing happened yesterday, but on my way home from Carlsbad this morning, I saw a bicycleist who had been run over by a car seconds before I drove by (it looked like at least one of his legs was crushed), and watched  a white SUV lose control and plow through the front window of an apartment across the street.  It looked like it ended up about halfway into their living room.

I think I'm cursed.

Still sick.

Unfortuantly, what I've been craving all day, a warm bed and 12 hours of sleep, is far out of my grasp today.  I am writing this from work, where I am keeping a round-the-clock watch on Chexie, a sweetheart of a mare, who is colicing tonight.  Last week we brought her down to the ranch from our other pastures because she punctured the cornea of her left eye.  It was pretty awful.  We've been doctoring it all week, and although she's definitely going to lose the sight in that eye, if we can preserve the eye itself, she won't have a dry socket to deal with or an expensive implant.  When I first saw it, her eye was split totally in half and was leaking....stuff.  I don't really want to think too hard about what it was. 

So anyway, she's colicy tonight, and I have to stay here until at least midnight and check on her every 45 minutes.  I may be here all night.  That will be fun, greeting the other employees as they get here in the morning.  :b

I've got plenty of food, plenty of Dayquil (I'm still so fucking sick I could drop right here), all the coffee I can drink, satellite TV, and high speed internet, a space heater, and a couple pillows.  Eh.  Not too bad.  I can't sleep though, if I have to get up every 45 minutes.  And I REALLY want my cigarettes.

 

Still sick. 

I went to the store yesterday.  Got milk.  Went home.  Was so tired I had to go lay down.  Couldn't even manage to take my clothes off first. 

My world has collapsed to  the size of my room, three feet of hallway, and the bathroom.  I'd go watch TV but that would involve stairs.  I would really like a cig, but I would have to open the sliding glass door, which might as well weigh 500 lbs. 

This sucks.

I'm  used to running around all day, then running around some more.  I'm  too tired to eat.  I've been sleeping 20 hours a day.

On the plus side, I put on some jeans fresh out of the dryer today, and they practically fell back off (ladies'll know what I'm talking about yo, that shit just don't happen), and I've suddenly grown cheekbones.

It looks good on me I guess, already being one of the "I live in the 18th century and have tuberculosis" set.  Ok, while I have a bit of energy I'm going to go do my Madaline Usher impression and waft palely about the halls in my bathrobe.  (Might as well milk it for dramatic effects huh?  No matter how much make up you pack on there, you just can't recreate a good "Really Fucking Sick" complexion.)

 

I'm very ill today.  I've had the flu for about two weeks now and it's finally getting unbearable.  Last night I almost went to the emergency room, although my medical insurance is questionable, because I was having significant problems breathing.  I feel a  little better now, although I think I should go to the doctor somehow.

I had strange dreams last night.  (Probably because I waas running a fever).  I was trapped in this huge house that covered an entire island.  It was a maze inside, all staircases that went nowhere.  I could see the ocean from the window, and see that I could easily swim to a pretty beach and get away, if not for the huge sharks.  I traveled with one of the residents by carriage along the gables of the roof.  When I woke up, with a ripping headache, I was planning an escape by rowboat, but had been warned that there was at least one shark big and psychotic enought to take down boats.

I'm going to the doctor now.