As 2008 comes to an end...

...we tend to reflect on how it went. I can't say it was entirely bad. It's certainly had its highlights. Like the creation and booming success of the Stitch and Bitch society that GKL and I set up. Like watching my Brownies grow - in height and personalities. Like seeing Wicked in London with GKL. Among other things. But it's had low points too.

Another year ends with me alone. This time last year I was curled up with N and I thought I'd done with being alone. I was wrong. (As for my current status with N - there is no status. It's over. My friends were right. I've said goodbye. That's all I'm gonna say about it.) I'm alone again. And likely to be alone forever. I need to accept the fact that I'm going to be a ninety year old loner with ten cats. I'll be Auntie Colette, or Auntie Cleo, to GKL's kids, and to my sisters' kids. And I'll be childless, and loveless, and alone. And, chances are I'll not have had sex in 60 odd years either. I've realised no one is ever gonna want me for anything more than sex, but I just can't retract my no no-strings rule. So, no relationship, no sex. No nothing.

Still, despite some serious doubts the other night, I do have things to live for. I'm going to America in August! I'll be out there for sixteen weeks. I still have my Brownies, and my friends, and my mum and my sisters. And I have resolutions to focus on for the new year.

1) Do one new thing every week. Something I've never done before. GKL and I are doing this together, with our little mascots: Wolfgang and Hilde. GKL and I have scrapbooks ready to fill up, and the mascots have photo albums and lots of little outfits. We're very sad, but it keeps us occupied. According to my diary though, week one started yesterday, so I'd better work out something to start with.

2) Stop missing lectures. I've always had ridiculous attendance at school. I started the autumn semester with the best of intentions and then I had trouble with my ankle, and with moving and everything. It all went a bit downhill. However, if I don't pick up my attendance, and my grades, and my focus, I won't get to go to America. So, 2009 is the year I start buckling down.

3) Go back to WeightWatchers. I've been battling with this one. I'm happy with my size. I'm not happy with how I get treated because of it, or with not being able to buy clothes from anywhere but Evans and eBay. Plus, although my dentist said I'd get my teeth extracted while I'm unconscious, the hospital dentist won't do it because of my size. So I have to be awake. Joy. (I'm not going!) If I could find clothes in my size, I would quite happily stay the way I am. But, I have some skirts that I can't fit into yet, and I guess my health would be better if I lost weight. So, I'm going back to WeightWatchers. GKL and I both are. We're waiting 'til the January rush is over though. So, back on points on New Year's Day, and back to meetings in February.

I think that's it, for now. I wonder how many I'll be able to keep.

Post Christmas, Pre New Year

Well, Christmas was... well it was Christmas. I got lots of goodies. A Ducktor Who, thanks to one of my fabulous friends, and lots of other nice bits and pieces. Lots of jewellery. Not much money, just £20. I've spent it already. Either on a lovely dress on eBay, or on some toys from lovehoney, depending on who you are.

Tomorrow N is coming down for a day or two. Not for New Year, cos he couldn't get the holiday days so late, but he's coming down. I decided that I do want him back, much to the disapproval of all my friends. GKL isn't pleased, L made insinuations that I'd lose him if I went out with N again. We aren't officially back together. Discussions need to be had, things adjusted and looked at. We'll do that while he's down, I guess. For now, my facebook status is "it's complicated".

Generally, I'm a little episodey at the moment. I love my family, I really do, but they drive me insane. I've realised that a week is the longest amount of time I can spend with them. I came away from that week completely edgy, and had an episode the second I got home and didn't have to hold it off. It was not a pretty sight. It's wearing off now a little.

I need to make some friends in Basingstoke, so that when I am down visiting with my family, I'll have a place to go to escape them. It was probably partly cabin fever down there that got me so worked up.

I have no plans for New Year now. My family are 220 miles away, my boyfriend (??!!) will be back at work, my best friend will be in the bosom of her own family (who have taken to rubbing their happy relationships in her poor, single, lonely face - my sympathy GKL), and all my other friends have gone home to the various towns across the country they come from. That's what I get for only making uni friends. I need to make friends with some townies.

So, my task for the next week or so, is to traverse this delight that is the interweb and find friends in Stoke-on-Trent and Basingstoke. Joy. Of course, I also have two exams to revise for, application forms to fill in for the Study Abroad programme, a complete shit-tip of a room to tidy up, and loads of other bits and pieces to work on.

Oh, and an update on N

He does want to go out with me again. At least, that's what he said the other night. He can be a little... I don't think indecisive is the right word. He makes decisions, he just changes his mind frequently too. At the moment he wants me back, and i want him. I don't think we've definitely said we're back together, although the subject has been approached. I kinda want to leave it til next week. He's coming down to spend new year with me and we'll talk about it then i guess. I've told him that if he wants to date me, we actually have to go on a date. So we're going to see a movie - which one is still to be determined. That'll be our "first" date. If he stills wants it to be. And i'll have my boyfriend back. Against the wishes of nearly all my friends, but they aren't the ones who have to live with it. I'm the sort of person who'd rather regret doing something than not doing it. I won't pass up on this chance. If i didn't still love him it'd be a different matter, but i do and if there's the slightest, teeniest chance we can make it work, then i'm gonna try.

Christmas = family = insanity.

Every year i come out of christmas insisting that next year i'm spending it alone, and every year i always end up back at my mother's house with her and my two sisters. With screaming and shouting, with one sister constantly pestering me to entertain her, and the other sister constantly acting like she's so much better than everybody else. I love them all dearly, but they drive me nuts. I've been here since half two on the 20th and i'm already going crazy. I wanna go home. Back to my room where i'm not forced into chores, or socialising or anything else. To make things worse, when i'm here i have nowhere to escape to. My bed down here is the sofa, and my room is the living room. When things get too much i can't retreat anywhere. One of my resolutions for next year is to make some online friends in this town, so that when i do come down to visit, i'm not forced to spend every second of every day in this house. So i have somewhere i can bugger off to. Friends i can hang out with. Maybe these visits won't drive me quite so insane then.

Heart or head?

Just over a year ago I met a guy we'll call N. He was perfect. We clicked instantly on the site we met on, and then by email, and then on MSN. Then we swapped numbers and spent a week texting almost constantly. Then we met in real life. Our first date was at Manchester Science Museum, the Doctor Who exhibit. We were perfect for each other. It was love at first sight. For the first time in my life, I believed in love at first sight, because I experienced it. N and I were perfect together, I thought I'd found The One.

For a few months things were wonderful and lovely and perfect and I spent most of my time in blissful happiness. Then there was a blip. I had an episode and I spent a week depressed and crying and things, and when he came down that weekend (he lives 60 miles away), he sat me down and said "we need to talk." Never good. We talked. I cried. It came to a choice, he changes (he tends to close down emotionally when his depression kicks in), or I change (not be so clingy), or we split up. I said I wasn't going to make the decision, and I just cried. He asked if he should leave, and I just cried.

The biggest mistake of my life was letting him walk out. He got the last train home and my perfect relationship was over. Maybe if I hadn't let him get that train we'd have had a chance to talk about it and things would have been find.

For the next few days I begged him to meet me and let us work it out. By the Tuesday I'd convinced him, we met up, he admitted he was wrong and we got back together. That second chance lasted a month or so, then we split up again. I can't remember how, but after another month we started our third try.

Things were difficult, strained a little, but I was with him. I was happy. I loved him completely. He said he didn't love me, but still wanted to be with me. We were coping. Then his apathy kickd in.

N suffers from depression like me, and whereas my episodes make me clingy and desperate, his give him severe cases of apathy. Although at the time I didn't know that. I thought he was pulling away because he didn't care. After six weeks of him "not being bothered" to come see me, and not replying to texts and generally making me feel like shit, I broke up with him.

It was the hardest thing I'd done in years, and it hurt like hell, and I regretted it instantly, but I did it. And, probably a mistake, I kept texting him and I met him another time or two for fuck-buddy sex. The fuck-buddy sex faded. I haven't seen him in months, but we've been texting lots.

I still love him. I never stopped loving him. I got over him slightly, over the relationship we had. But he was the most perfect man I'd ever met, everything about him was right for me, and I'd truly believe he was The One. I couldn't let it go.

Then, over the past week or so, he's started to say certain things. Like, he wanted to see me for just a cuddle. And he got jealous about me and another guy. The sort of things he used to say. But I didn't get my hopes up. Hopes pinned to the floor. Hopes making love with gravity. I'm staying grounded.

And last night I got this... "I still love you. I've more or less been doing what a kid does and closing their eyes and going its not there anymore. Yeah I had my mood swings but after all that I still do. But you know its not fair on you, and stuff. Because we both know I'm a unreliable bugger at best and you can't really make a relationship out of that. Plus I've treated you really badly so I've turned you down because I'm guilty."

My initial response was... "I knew it!" I'm a miserable pessimist most of the time. But when it comes to love and relationships, even though I keep getting trodden on, I'm a ridiculously hopeless optimistic. I always believed (hoped/wished/prayed) that he still loved me, and wanted me.

GKL isn't happy. She hasn't been happy about me talking to him all this time, she's not happy about me meeting him for hot, kinky sex at New Year. She's frustrated and angry that I won't listen to her. She's scared and worried that I'll get hurt again.

I can understand her fear. I'm not stupid. I know I'll probably get hurt if I get involved with him again. I know I'll get hurt if I even keep talking to him. But... and here comes the head versus heart bit...

I can be miserable and depressed and alone 100% of the time. Or I can talk to him, be with him, and be perfectly happy for 30-60% of the time. The misery is still there, but there's happiness too. And how many women beg and pray for someone who loves them, that they love back? I have that! I don't want to let it go. I love him, and if I have another chance with him then why shouldn't I take it?

Urgh! I don't even know if he wants to get involved again. He said we can't make a relationship on him being an unreliable bugger. We can. I didn't know about the apathy before. If we got together, I'd be frustrated and hurt and lonely when we aren't together, or when he has a fit. But we'd be together at times, and happy.

It doesn't help that my best friends all think it'd be a bad idea. They're all dead set against the idea of me being with him again. I can see their points, but they can't see my heart. They can't know how I felt when I was with him, and how much I want to be with him again.

I don't know what's going to happen now. Maybe he'll want to get back together, maybe he won't. And if he does, maybe I'll say yes, maybe I won't. We'll just have to see, I guess.

I wish GKL wasn't so against it :( My biggest reason for saying no to him would be because I wouldn't want my best friend to hate me, but then I'd be scared I'd resent her. And I don't want that either.

More essay fun

Today I had planned to spend five hours working on my essay in the library before Cthulhu, right after I popped into town to get some food. Then I met up with GKL and she'd had a bit of a crisis, so I helped her and never went to the library.

It's okay, I'll spend all day tomorrow there, it's not due 'til Friday right?

WRONG!!

GKL and I were slothing on my bed and she asked if she could borrow the mini ruler in my filofax to measure her knitting. So I pull out the filofax, open it up to this week and....

Bollocks, piss, arse, crap, wank, tits, penis! Essay due in tomorrow. Oh dear. Where's the Pro Plus? Looks like I'm up all night.

Quick visit to Facebook to let everyone know I cocked up, cos that's what Facebook is for. And then I spot a friend's status. Saying she has a 3000 word essay to do. She's on the same module as me, but she must mean a different essay cos mine is only 2000 words. Right?

WRONG!!

So, not only do I have an essay to write tonight, but I have an extra thousand words to do. This was a couple of hours ago though. I'd already done 700 odd words on Monday, and it's now a finished first draft at 2200. Just need to edit, reorganise and pad it out a bit.

Still, a lesson has been learned. I'll never leave an essay 'til the last minute again after all this. Right?

Something in the water?

I'm the sort of person who attracts a lot of attention. I'm 5 ft 11, quite large (aka fat), I have a gazillion tattoos in visible places, I wear odd socks, I'm a goth/emo/weirdo type. So I'm used to being pointed and stared at. I am (unfortunately) used to the odd "fat bitch" or "who ate all the pies" and so on. Random insults occur on a daily basis. The Keele campus is about the only place it doesn't happen, although I did get a stranger ask me "Should you be eating that?" the other day.

Today, however, things have been a little more unusual. This morning I was in Hanley for approximately two hours. For 40 minutes I was in the opticians, for 15 minutes I was in the bank arguing over cleared cheques. Within the other hour and five minutes the following things happened....

1) In Woolworths a little boy turned to his heavily pregnant mother and said, "Look Mummy, that lady's having a baby like you." I can handle that, it's cute coming from a toddler. But then the mother said, "No, she's just a fat bitch." People who insult me are bad enough, but teaching toddlers manners like that? And she's having more kids?! People like that shouldn't procreate.

2) I was sat on a bench outside a shoe shop eating a jacket potato with chicken curry (yummy yummy) and the manager came out of the shop and told me not to eat there because I was repulsing him and his customers. Fucking sod. I just ignored him. I wanted to go and pull all the shoes off the shelves but GKL, quite rightly, told me this was a stupid idea.

3) An old guy who was walking around holding a bunch of flowers and preaching about Jesus told me I was going to hell because gluttony is a sin. I told him that I was going to hell because I kill old men and wear their skins for scarves. He walked away.

What is it with the people of Hanley today? Still, at least these ones have never happened to me before. At least they were original. I do get a bit sick of the "fat cow". It's not very imaginative is it?

Thursday the Monkey

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you.... Thursday the Monkey!

A bit of an experiment

Every week I get an email that tells me the week's top five viral videos. This week I wanted to share one with the world and wondered if I could stick it in my blog. Then I thought about photos as well. I've discovered the functions for adding video and photos, and there's an embedding thing I've found. I'm going to test it:



That should, in theory, be the video. And this.....


Should be the latest Lolpet I downloaded. It describes my current mood perfectly.

So, to publish and to see if it worked.

Monkey news

I have a very-nearly finished monkey! Thanks to work in the car on our (only mildly disastrous) trip to Birmingham yesterday, and this evening's Stitch and Bitch session, and an hour or two with GKL and new friend MR in my living room, and three hours of insomnia and bad movies (not impressed with Dark Knight) I have... stitched the body, sewn up the body bar a stuffing hole, made two-tone ears and attached them, made a tail and attached it and made a bloody awkward snout thing and spent at least an hour trying to attach that too. Now all he needs is eyes and stuffing. I can't stuff him before I get eyes on him, cos that's just silly.

I do have some safety eyes. I brought the biggest ones they had in Abakhan the other day, but having tested them on Thursday's face earlier they're ridiculously too small. Must buy big buttons. One more excuse to go shopping Saturday. Like I needed another one.

Fully assimilated

This evening GKL and I are going to Birmingham to watch the lovely Puppini Sisters. Since I had a seminar at 1, and am too broke to afford the bus home (yes, really), it was agreed that I'd spend a few hours in the library and GKL'd pick me up on the way out of town.

Not a problem. However, when I made this plan, I assumed I'd be frantically attempting to finish an essay and that the four hours would fly by quickly. I finished the essay during a six hour library stint yesterday - eventually. I finished the first draft and still needed five hundred words, so I went away and did more research and worked a bit more. Great, do a word count.... must be close... bollocks. 1000 words over. Took ages to sort. But sort I did. Finish I did. Print I did. Hand it in this morning I did. A whole day early too, go me!

But, that burst of enthusiasm and eagerness means I don't have an essay to desperately finish during this four hour library visit today. I could be working on the other essay I have due. Except that I left all my paperwork and my usb pen at home, not intending to touch it 'til at least Sunday. I have knitting in my bag - which is another story.

The monkey. I made it to Abakhan yesterday (which may be why I'm too broke to afford the bus home) and got a crochet hook and some double ended knitting needles, and a ball of pretty (purple, of course) Sirdar Click for experimenting with. Then I went looking for another ball of the purple wool with which to finish the monkey. No purple wool. I came out with a lilac-y one. I'm gonna do an insert for his ears, his bulbous mouth bit and his tail in the lilac.

So, I have knitting. I could go find a seat somewhere and knit. Except that I can't knit unless I'm talking to someone or watching a movie or something. I could listen to my mp3 player and try not to sing out loud, except that I left it at home. I brought my knitting for the trip to Birmingham.

I also have a book with me, Inkheart. For months I've been complaining that my American Literature module has left me with no time to read anything other than the required readings. Now that I've finished the last reading (not including re-reading some of them for exam revision) I can finally read what I want. I can finish Inkheart (which I started way back in October), except that now I can, I can't be arsed. Typical, contrary me.

So, what have I spent the last hour and 45 minutes doing? What am I likely to spend the next two hours doing?

Looking up knitting patterns. GKL would be proud.

Essay Fun

I've just spent five hours working on the essay I have due this week. I started off with 600 or so words, 150 of which were the bibliography and 100 were footnotes. Neither footnotes or bibliographies count towards the 2000 word total.

After my five hours work (which admittedly includes a hell of a lot of research - God bless the internet), I have 1216 words. Approximately 400 of those are footnotes and 200 are the bibliography. Which means I've increased my word total by.... not enough.

I still have more to write (obviously), and I know what areas I'm focusing on. I just need to do more research. I'm giving up for now. I need a break. I still have time, it's only Monday. Although, I did find out that this thing is due Thursday at 12 and not Friday at 12 like I thought. Oops. Still, I have tomorrow and Wednesday. I'll be spending all day tomorrow in the library getting more work done - after a quick trip to Abakhan :D

And another one bites the dust.

Well, that was, I think, the shortest relationship I've ever had.

"You're so devoted to the idea of yourself as a persecuted alternative outsider that it's impossible to tell whether you're being genuine or not. I do like you, you're good company and fun. But, ultimately, I just don't like you in *that* way." - IMP

That's what I get for going out with boys I suppose. Maybe I should raise my lower age limit from 'legal' to 'grown up'. And maybe I should start looking for people who know how to kiss, and have a little more experience than 'none'.