aimless ramblings of a life gone wrong

i feel like i'm slowly but surely losing control over a lot of aspects of my life. a lot of insignifcant things are really starting to stress me out, the biggest one being money, which i guess isn't really that insignificant. just the thought of people having spent money on me for christmas or having sent me money to spend on myself, or things that i've spent money on in the past that i really don't need makes me get so stressed that it's hard to breath and i get all teary.

i miss the safety of home.

life is unexciting. i'm forgetting all the exciting stories from the past, either that or don't feel like i can tell them since no one here knows who the hell i'm talking about. i always thought things would be different for me. that life would be more comfortably exciting, like curling up on the couch in a patch of sunshine with a really good book. no, more like a photograph of that rather than the real thing. it seems like everyone i know is living a much more intense, exciting version of life than i am, and i want to be living like that but can't quite figure out how to get there.

once again leading to me feeling like i have no control over my life. i know where i want to be, i can see it in other people, i can imagine what it feels like but can't ever quite grasp it. makes me feel like i need to start taking control of things that i know i can have control over. but none of them are very healthy, which scares me. but yet, i can't quite figure out if doing it scares me more or if doing it and having no one notice. kind of like a cry for help since i don't know how to physically voice that cry. maybe by doing this not only will a feel like i have a little more control, but i'll be more comfortable in my own skin, since i definitely don't right now. it's hard enough working with attractive people, let alone selling clothes to stick thin girls and guys. but i think it's almost worse when people act shocked that i have such a negative view of myself, that i wear the size i do and don't look it at all, according to them.

this probably doesn't make any sense. maybe the more i start doing this, the more things will start to make sense outside of my head again.

it's definitely been awhile since i felt the need to use this to get things out of my head, but alas, that time seems to have come again.

i've never really been one to deal with change very well. i like it when things are settled, predictable you might say. so now that everything around me has become unstable and has changed a lot, i'm having a really hard time dealing with it. nothing has stayed constant and it's finally taking it's toll on me, and a big one at that.

i miss home a lot. times of great change leave me longing for the carefree days of being at home with my parents. sure, i may not have been very happy at the time in my life, but at least it was familiar. i knew what was around the corner and exactly where to find thing. there weren't huge stacks of empty boxes and two houses with two different sets of my things at them. there wasn't anything gigantic to sort out. there wasn't this great feeling of isolation. even though i'm not living in a place where i feel the need to stay in my room due to not wanting to deal with the other people living in the house, i'm having a hard time breaking that habit. i even had that habit living at home. i could've easily gone downstairs to read my book or eat rather than doing everything in my bedroom, in my own space. it's tough though.

the worst part is how the stupidest things set me off right now. out of nowhere i'll start bawling over nothing. and the worst part is feeling like i have to hide it. i don't want anyone to see me this weak, this vulnerable and out of control. not even chris. and that hurts me the most.

*edit* spent some house bonding time with the boys and am now feeling a little bit better. got demanded to put my tupperware container of food away so that is now one less thing that needs to be packed up. got invited/demanded to go to capital ex with clayton tonight to see his favorite singer perform. except he made the mistake of saying "country" which automatically turned me off. and the fact that i was hoping to see chris tonight and perhaps transport some more stuff from nadia's. that way i can start cleaning that place up a bit more, in hopes of getting my whole damage deposit back.

alex is so insanely photogenic, if he didn't make for such good pictures i'd be insanely jealous

it's been much too long.

i put up pictures at least a month ago, only to have all the tape dry up and watch them fall off the wall one by one over the next week. it took me until now to get up the energy/time to re-hang them. except i decided to go for thumbtacks instead of double sided tape. unfortunately, there is only one visible wall made out of something other than plaster that i had any hope of ever sticking a tack through. so now all my pictures are on one rather small wall. but it does make this feel more like home.

chris' room has a small montage of pictures right beside the bed. my room always feel naked when i wake up here and roll towards the wall and look at nothing but blank wall. reminds me of exactly where i am, which isn't always a good thing. it's very strange having such a large chunk of my life hung up on the wall in a huge mishmash. makes me get kind of teary. i wish i had more pictures though.

note(s) to self - take more pictures (film)
- develop roll of film sitting in front of me from summer

having been back home and been exposed to how i used to live, i am so happy and excited to be back in edmonton. after having an insanely emotional day yesterday, i'm feeling a lot more emotionally stable than i've felt in years. i am so happy with where my life is right now and where it's heading. i really feel like things are starting to come together. i really feel like i can be emotionally healthy again. it's so amazing to have someone to talk to about these things who i know is really going to be there for me no matter what, and even better that he understands where i'm coming from with everything. it makes it a lot easier to get through the tough times. there were so many other things i wanted to say here but seem to have forgotten most of them, or they've at least slipped my mind. oh well. perhaps later.

right now, gin and tonic are my best friends in the whole world. everything is super fuzzy except for about an inch or two of my vision. i had some awesome conversations tonight about where my life is going and about how wierd it feels to be back.

my tongue feels numb and my eyes refuse to focus properly.

i have to work in 8.5 hours. boo.

partying tonight made me miss chris a lot. boo for missing boys back home.

now that i'm in courtenay, edmonton becomes back home. when i'm in edmonton, courtenay becomes back home. how strange.

anyways, i am anything but concious and coherent right now. hence, i should go to bed.

more sensical update to come later, i hope.

oh man, the familiar sound of buzzing ears after a loud show. how i have missed thee.

went to see run chico run play tonight! they played a lot of new stuff, which i kind of liked. their old "new peak" stuff was way better though, in my honest opinion. the first band (cape may) wasn't too bad, was a little too contrived (officially the word of the night!) as in they had extra little riff thingies playing in between songs, and not in a cool way but in a "thought out much too hard" way. it would've been cool if it had been stuff on a cd, but not at a live show. they also obsessively tuned, which got annoying, between every single song! quietly, mind you, but still. yuck. and then run chico run. they played the last track on "shasbo" and i almost cried! brought back memories of hearing them play that song at almost every single good venue back home. made me miss the people that would always be at their shows with me back home as well. third band "the dudes" pretty disappointed. all the songs sounded the same, the bass player was fairly incompetent and somehow figured he'd make up for it by dancing around really stupidly and taking up half the stage. it was like he had walked straight out of MTV. not good. the lead singer was pretty good though, and it almost made up for it. it felt wierd to spend the whole show sitting and not up dancing and rocking out, but it felt too out of place. the only people dancing were a bunch of girls who were doing it to show off, you could tell it wasn't "real" as in they didn't feel overly compelled to do it because the music moved them that way. kind of like when you think of the way jackson dances at shows, that's the way everyone should dance, and only dance when they feel that they can't stop themselves. if that makes sense.

stephanie and i have made a deal to watch more live music in edmonton. i miss good shows back home. it was wierd to see something so familiar (ie. run chico run) in such an unfamiliar situation. i felt like i could relate when they were talking about slang from the west coast, such as "those guys smoked us!" and talking about how fucking cold it was and how brave we all are for living here. i could definitely relate, but it really made me miss home.

*sigh* and now i just feel like a big huge downer. so tempted to pick up the phone and call a certain someone that was also there tonight. stupid me falling for a guy when i'm going back home in just over a week. things will no doubt not be like this by the time i get back, which is sad. :( it's nice feeling little sparks of electricity when you accidentally touch knees under the table, and even better when you feel them when you purposely touch knees! but we'll see how things work out, i'm sure for the best whichever way it takes a turn for.

oh my goodness, i am having a huge brain lapse right now, right at the most inopportune time!! i'm casting on stitches for an earflap hat i'm making for my secret santa. for the width i want, i need to cast on 72 stitches. i already have 38 stitches from the earflaps, so basically need to cast on 34 more stitches.

from a previous pattern that i've used, it had the majority of the rest of the cast on stitches in the front, and then half that amount in the back. i am totally lost as to how many stitches i need to cast on for the back and the front! also, i'm knitting it flat, which means i'd cast on half the back stitches on one side, then all the front stitches and then the other half of the back stitches.

someone who is a little more coherent please help!

what a good set of days lately!!

helped out a friend at marvel with her final exam on saturday, then headed downtown to meet up with ellen where we then walked to an insanely local yarn store! when i say insanely local, i mean 4 blocks away from my house :D so excited to go back when i have some more time and some projects in mind. on the way to meeting ellen at 2nd cup, i saw a show poster from across the street that caught my eye. i thought the headlining band was "the doers" and got a little excited but couldn't tell. as i crossed the street i realized it wasn't, but the next band name looked really familiar. as i got within actual reading distance, i almost screamed in excitement!!! run chico run is playing a show here on wednesday night! holy crap, so insanely excited!!!!! thank goodness rehersal ends at 6:30 on wednesday and there are lots of people in choir that would be willing to not only drive me there, but come see it as well! so excited!

then after going wool shopping, ellen and i came back and listened to choral music and talked about stuff and finally dyed our wool. hers is so pretty! it looks professional. but our hands looked like ogre hands! all green and blue and hers were purpley as well. so cool though! i had such a blast with ellen, i love hanging out with her and talking about crafty stuff and musical stuff. yay!

i discovered another awesome band today, i just wish i could get my hands on more than two songs :S they're called "Dog Day" http://www.dogday.tk/
check them out, totally worth it.

tomorrow, watching movies with chris (yay!) and then rehersal.

only a handful more days till i go home!!!

ps. my new roommate has an adorable cat that has been hanging out in my room for the past hour, she's pretty snuggly too, and i've been told to not be surprised if she sleeps with me (the cat, not the roommate... :P) i love cats! and i'm definitely getting myself a kitten after i get back to edmonton after christmas! yay!

it's snowing. but instead of making me feel all giddy and excited, it's making me feel terribly depressed. i really should be on my way to work instead of sitting in front of my computer choking back body shaking sobs.

4 days off in a row makes for some damn lazy days. except i'm really glad i didn't just sit at home by myself and be lazy, i actually spent time being lazy with other people!

went grocery shopping on friday, then kaleb came over to watch movies but ended up making me dinner (mmm, corn chowder!) and then we headed back to his place since nadia's sister and nephew were over. stayed up till 2am watching random movies and drinking and such. twas good. slept on the futon till 11ish, where we then proceeded to turn on the tv and watch more movies till i fell asleep again at 1 till 3:30. went home, took a shower, tried to get in touch with my mom who wasn't home. found out that people were going over to kaleb's to play boardgames so headed out for that. played games. got home around 1, fell asleep around 2. got up to go work at the casino as part of the kokopelli fundraiser.

i was so stressed that a)i'd be late b)i'd get lost in the mall (i didn't even know there was a casino in the west ed, let alone where the hell it was!) c)the job would be hard and i'd screw it up big time. turns out i was super early and had little trouble finding the casino. waited around for about 45 minutes till fahim showed up and we headed into the casino to figure out what we had signed up to do. turns out the job was insanely easy! we had pagers and everytime they went off we had to head to the cashier booth and pick up mini computer things, then either go open up a table and punch in numbers that someone else told us, or fill a table with more chips. whenever we had to fill a table, we'd have a security guard escort us! pretty cool. turns out we only had about 5 calls in the whole 7.5 hour shift, so spent most of it chatting it up with fahim or reading a book. strangest thing happened though! as i was doing was turned out to be my last run of the night, i had a security guard escort me to two different tables. usually they were really quiet and just walked with you, but this guy striked up a conversation and we talked for a few minutes. i can't even remember what we talked about. after i dropped off the computer back at the cashier booth and turn to walk back to the volunteer lounge he was like "i usually don't do this and feel really awkward about it, but did you want to go for coffee with me?" he was all flustered and it was super cute. how could i say no to that! so i gave him my number and he kept apologizing if he was doing this wrong. he was supposed to call me today but it never happened.

ran outside to catch the 1 back to downtown where i then headed into 2nd cup for a coffee (bad idea, i didn't need the caffeinne at all) chatted with the girls working for a little while then headed outside to wait for the 3 thinking it'd just be a few minutes. 45 minutes later... in the freezing cold... the bus finally shows up. finally get home around 9:30, making it a 12 hour day.

was supposed to go shopping with natalie from choir after going for coffee with said security guard. i thought that the arrangement was that i'd call her if plans changed and meeting at 2 didn't work. her idea was that i'd call if we were still meeting. needless to say, i showed up at 2nd cup at 2 and waited... and waited... and waited... eventually one of the regulars recognized me and we ended up chatting for 4 hours. we talked about everything, seriously, everything. relationships, sex, crazy teachers, music, poverty, politics, death, sky diving (he wants to take me sky diving! ack!) so even though today's plans didn't work out at all, i still managed to have a really good day overall. which makes me happy that i didn't let the unravelled plans get me down, like they usually do.

headed to choir, was the only kokopelli person on the bus which was a little unnerving. i kept thinking that maybe rehersal was cancelled and i just didn't know, or that it was at sacred heart instead of the school. turns out it was still at the school. sang the insanely corny and cheesy christmas pieces which make me loathe christmas. i actually miss the cantiamo carol books! and i never ever ever thought i'd say that. (1 month till i come home, give or take a day or two!!!!) then we got the new whitacre piece! we're doing "with a lily in her hand" (i think that's the one) with oran as a mass piece when mascato comes from africa.

and now i'm sitting here, with my electric heater plugged in beside me, which feels almost like sitting next to the fire back at home *sigh* missing home, but that's fairly usual i guess. listening to joanna newsom and wishing it'd snow. or that manda was here. or maybe cam and then he'd be playing the songs and i'd be singing. oh life back home.

yay! finally pictures up from my new camera (also known as pictures from koko's tour to fort mcmurray)

( pictures! )

i know it's been awhile since my last post. i apologize.

since then i've had my birthday. the actual day was pretty freaking miserable. i had to work and had the only guy coworker be mean to me all day. even once he found out it was my birthday. and the fact that everyone at work forgot, even though i told them 2 days earlier. that sucked. no one came by to visit. after work, i went home and had soup and a grilled cheese sandwich for dinner and watched junk on tv. sure, there were a few good things during the day, such as getting gift certificates for the marble slab (awesome ice cream place) from robyn, and finding out that my dad is going to send me his old (but still basically brand new) digital camera!

saturday night we had a mini concert. hung out with kaleb before, mostly to help him find a cowboy hat. ventured to a value village. must venture back asap. went to the dress rehersal which went alright. afterwards kaleb, glen, sam and i all went out for vietnamese food. holy cow! so good. and even nicer cause they insisted i not pay cause the day before was my birthday. went back to the concert, which went really well, surprisingly enough. afterwards, i was in such a terrible mood. all i wanted to do was go home, but everyone suggested we go out to boston pizza. so i went, and i'm glad i did. kaleb bought me 2 drinks (how sweet of him) and sam ordered me cake that came with a sparkler in it and everyone sang me happy birthday :D so at least the day after my birthday was a good day. hung out with scott afterwards till much too early in the morning.

worked on sunday. took home a ton of muffins!

monday was thanksgiving. waited all day for scott to call me and let me know if i had a ride to keith's thanksgiving potluck. by the time he called, i didn't have enough time to make anything, but it was alright seeing as how we got there late and almost everyone had basically finished eating by then. got to enjoy some turkey and good food as well as some awesome desserts. the only downside was that 90% of the people there are music/jazz students at grant mcewan. the night basically turned into them all jamming downstairs (with the one guy singing sounding like a terribly sleazy lounge singer) it was so bad it was almost not even funny. went back to scott's place to watch wrestling with scott, jo and sam. terrible matches and even worse plot line that night. was not impressed at all. jo then gave myself and sam a ride home, where we proceeded to sit in his car outside my house for at least an hour, just talking about things. it was pretty cool.

got up early to go to work yesterday, felt sicker than a dog. had chris call me at work, which was cool/surprising, told him i'd hang out with him. he picked me up after work and we drove around town for awhile, eventually ending up back at his apartment where he made me dinner and then headed to dairy queen where i had my first banana split in years (probably at least 6 or 7) went home and headed straight for bed.

i spent all day today either in bed, lying on the couch watching tv or being at choir. minus the 30 minutes i spent cleaning up soup/pieces of broken bowl. i went to lean forward to change the channel since we don't have a remote, and the bowl tumbled out of my lap and onto the floor. it sucked. i barely had enough energy to get dressed, let alone clean up what was supposed to be my lunch. watched some more tv, eventually headed off to rehersal where keely brought me a bunch of cold medicine (yay!) and scott brought me some pain killers. i love choir people :)

i did found out that scott's car got "broken" into last night (not really broken since he doesn't lock his doors) and they took all his cd's, including my joanna newsom cd that was in the cd player. so now i don't have either one of my joanna newsom cds which is currently making me really sad.

currently, i'm feeling really homesick and sad. i miss all of my friends from home so much. there are so many people i wish i could pick up the phone and call, but a) most of them i don't have their new numbers and b) i can't afford long distance. also, it really feels like some of them don't want to talk to me at all, which leads me to believe that a certain ass hole of a guy ended up spreading rumors about how terrible i am to those two people. oh, the memories that brings back...

so in less than 3 hours i'll officially be 20. and it scares the shit out of me. it's like finally realizing that i have to grow up. that i'm not a kid anymore. i'm not even a teenager anymore! but i guess i haven't legally been a teen for the last 2 years. but still. it's such a big change, even though it's really just a number. and how can you say that things can change that much in literally a day. it's like saying the day before your 16th birthday you're not responsible enough to drive, yet the very next day, somehow you've gone through something that suddenly makes you responsible enough. it's so crazy.

looking back on my last few birthdays, i've decided that i hate my own birthday. i like celebrating other peoples, but i guess because most of my friends are more outgoing and tend to plan huge parties, or know people that are more outgoing and through huge parties for them. but when it comes to my own birthday, i don't like planning anything big. it'd be nice if one year someone would plan a big surprise. especially this year since i already feel so out of place here in edmonton and it'd be really nice to finally feel like i belong and people want me to belong.

i know that no matter how much i wish tomorrow would be awesome and actually feel like a birthday, it'll just be another day. another day where i have to get up early and walk to work and make drinks all day and then wait around to catch the bus home and come home to an empty house and make dinner and go to bed.

*on the upside, i finally counted my tips from work today for the first time since last friday when i took out $20, purely because people were complaining that they couldn't fit anymore change in it. turns out i had just over $51! that almost pays for my bus pass, in just under a weeks time of working. now i just need to find a bank and deposit my two pay cheques. unfortunately they don't quite cover rent.

it's amazing/sad how talking about ones ex's and terrible past relationships can make me surprisingly sober in such a short period of time, especially after drinking much more than usual.

i am officially depressed, but not drunk enough to feel completely numb to it all.

thank god i'm not coordinated enough to trust myself with anything sharp tonight. (if you don't already know, don't ask)