commotiocordis

How did I spend my afternoon? Oh, Google!stalking my old orchestra teacher and rocking back and forth on the couch over how much I miss having a reason to wake up in the morning.

( LOL, nothing to see here, just a rerun of 'Alexandria Still Has A Giant Hero-Worship Crush On Someone Who Probably Has Forgotten Her Name' . )

Some thoughts on gender. Also sex. So, umm, vaguely graphic things you probably don't want to know about me? ETA: This got SUPER tl;dr, so you can treat the bolded bits like a summary and just read those, if you're interested.



Over the past couple of years, I've begun to sort of question my gender identification, but I always end up feeling . . . idk, inadequate. I have long hair and I wear skirts literally all the time, I must be like the femalest female who ever femaled, right? When I go bra shopping, I look for things that push them up rather than push them down. I can tick absolutely zero of the standard outward-appearance indicator boxes for other-than-cis-genderism.

But I was looking through an old notebook a few months (maybe a year?) back, and something in there triggered a memory of being very young (7-8 ish) and in the shower and sort of daydreaming that I was pregnant because I was both male and female, and had managed to inseminate myself internally. (Weird, I know.) And that was a running thing, the feeling that I was both male and female. I mean, I knew it was biologically impossible, but that ~fantasy stuck with me for years.

Beyond that, you had your standard tomboy stuff -- I spent every day at the gifted program in elementary school playing kickball with the boys during recess; I remember one of my friends moving back in with her aunt for the summer across the street from my house and saying "Okay, let's start on your tomboy-ification" because she'd spent the year getting her hair brushed and wearing fancy clothes and I wanted a friend to climb trees with; I thought makeup was a fun toy back in third and fourth grade, but in middle school when girls started wearing it to actually wear it, I wasn't interested (save a bit of the black eyeliner goth stuff for a while, but even that got given up on all but special occasions). Those by itself, obviously, indicate nothing about a person's gender identity, but I feel like it's sort of a record of my never feeling female. On the other hand, I never felt male either. I never pressured my mom to let me buzz my hair, or pitched any more fits than the usual kid being forced into a dress for Easter church; I even chose to go by Alexandria instead of Alex in middle school (though that was more because I wanted to be unique than anything else).

As I got older, I spent late middle and most of high school pretty sure I was a lesbian, but I think that's because I wasn't interested in penetrative, penis-in-my-vagina sex, and thought that automatically, logically meant I was a lesbian. It was also a role to play, an identity that I could have -- I still call myself a homo all the time, even though it's not 100% accurate, just because I want to claim that experience, to be a part of that identity that as an other-than-mainstream-branch queer I sometimes feel I'm pushed to the side of. (That gets into a whole other long thing that there have been plenty of diatribes about by people much less tired than I am, so have some keywords like biphobia and erasure and Google it yourself.)

But still, I remember somewhere in earlyish high school (I was probably 15 or 16) watching an Oprah about women with huge clitorises with my Dad omg it was awkward at the time, and it being mentioned that they were pretty much just like little penises, and wondering aloud why that would be a bad thing. He said it was probably just image, or being worried the people they're with will think they're not female, but I didn't really get it. You still have all the female bits, you don't have to deal with the stigma of outwardly presenting as other-than-cis-gendered, and you get a mini penis that could be used (as one of the women's anecdotes related) for penetration; what's not to like?

Late high school/early college, I started to wake up to my boy attraction (thank you, David Tennant), but realized that I still wasn't interested in PIV sex. I get sex dreams pretty much never (maybe two or three a year, idk) but the few times I did, it was always oral/handjob, frot, or me as the penetrative partner (with a strong slant toward the latter two). Okay, dreams, I figured, we'll see if there's anything to this. It's very rare that I would fantasize as myself with someone else (I always masturbated to fanfiction without putting myself in either player's place really, *shrugs*), but I sort of tried it a bit, and holy shit does imagining fucking Olivia Wilde with my invisible dick get me off. Imagining jerking off said invisible dick is also surprisingly helpful. Frot (with both males and females) is pretty much Number One and has turned into my hugest fic kink ever. So, um, okay then. Apparently, my subconscious had a point, and I kind of want a dick.


But I don't want to be male. Not particularly. Not consistently. I've expressed a desire to be male when doing things like going to the Adam Lambert concerts, because I wish that things like painting my nails and putting on tons of makeup and glitter were expressed to other people as the alternative gender performance that they really are for me, rather than it just being something that girls are expected to do. I'd get a hysterectomy simply because I have such severe premenstrual dysphoric disorder and it's the cause of much misery and suicidal ideation, but I don't think I'd ever get top surgery because my breasts don't really bother me. I'd love to magically have a penis, not gonna lie, but I don't know if I could stomach ever doing something so drastically radical and unchangeable to my body, and definitely not at the sorry state of technology that bottom surgery is now (for those who haven't spent ages looking this up and thinking about it -- probably another sign that I wasn't just investigating for Roommate and Scientific Curiosity -- a huge huge percentage of FTMs don't get it because it's like $200,000, and even then comes with severe risk of losing sensation and has only mechanically-assisted function and isn't even always able to pass, like most good MTF bottom surgery is).

Speaking of Roommate, I spent quite a while not talking about this (or even really thinking about it) because I was sort of worried that maybe I was just feeling this way because she had been exploring her FTM-ness and I just wanted to . . . be special like her? But now that I'm thinking about it, it goes back so far that I think it just took Rachel to make me realize that maybe this was a thing and not just that my body issues were just standard low level eating disorder and the fantasizing about having a penis thing was a minor and probably-should-be-suppressed-if-you-ever-want-a-working-relationship quirk. Would I ever have expressed it anywhere but my own fantasies if she hadn't been around? Doubtful. But I don't think that makes it any less real, I guess?



I think there's a lot of weight to be put on my attraction map. (I'm not sure if that's a thing, but that's how I've been thinking about it for some time now.) Somewhere along the line, my concept of beauty got set with a skew sort of towards the feminine, as this ideal with a feminine face and (generally) androgynous body, and that's more or less my ideal image for myself. One of them, I guess. I'm attracted to people who are more or less that andro-chic look, but I also find a strong aesthetic appreciation for people with more feminine bodies (i.e. curves), and therefore sometimes I'm okay with looking like that, too. Sometimes. The ~feminine me still doesn't like to do her makeup and hair every day, or make a sandwich for her boyfriend because she's supposed to, or stay home and watch the kids, and is definitely still more of the power female, but she's more okay with her curves even to the point of sometimes feeling sexy in a clingy dress or something. It's like I'm bigendered, with the two sides being genderqueer and female. Which is super weird.

I know that most of my gender performance is because it's just easier. The constant skirts is a body image thing, because I have, um, probably some kind of serious body dysmorphic disorder when it comes to my thighs and have a hard time handling looking at them, so it's easier to just wear skirts. The hair is vanity, given, but it fits in with my sort of feminine facial ideal. I'm not sure if I'd rather be flat chested or curvy (the andro or the feminine), but I've got tits. (Pretty easily bindable ones, much to Roommate's consternation, but all the same.) And so I work what I've got; I buy the push-up bras, because I at least want what I have to be perfect. (Hallo, perfectionism/control issues/the root of much misery.)

It tends to mean I attract "the wrong kind of person" for me; I think, because of the typology of people I'm attracted to and my slash hobbies and all of this stuff, etc. etc., if I ever were interested in a relationship, even with a man, it would probably have to be someone out of the queer community. I'm read pretty much as straight, or on very rare occasions, hit on by more butch girls, when I want to be the sort of dominant one or at least equal in a relationship (not that relationships require any kind of dom/sub -- and I do not mean this in the BDSM way, but just in general dynamics; the leader and the follower -- or male/female traditional binary roles, but often they sort of happen, even in friendships sometimes, I find). I'm the toppiest top who ever hasn't actually sexually topped, as we say. Which is why I think I'm not hit on by gay girls more often; idk, maybe I put off dominance vibes, so no one comes to me, but then I don't go out and go after anyone? I mean, I'm not interested in a relationship, really, which is why I have no particular drive to change anything about how I present, but it doesn't mean I'm not super jealous when Roommate gets hit on all. the. time. by lesbians and nobody ever looks twice at me.

I'm not sure if I'm attracted to males (almost exclusively gay males in real life, or celebs with more feminine features/presentation) more often when I'm feeling genderqueer/andro and females more often when I'm feeling feminine, or if it's the other way around. I think genderqueer me is attracted to both/pan, and feminine me is more attracted to the women side of the spectrum, maybe? I notice periods of time when I'm much more likely to look pretty much exclusively at women and periods when I look at both or more men (but I don't think ever exclusively), with androgynous types being somewhere in the middle of both, but I'm not sure if that correlates to periods of feeling one way or the other. (I also couldn't tell you how often I feel one way or the other, because it's not really a line that I jump across or anything.) I know I've never had a sexual dream/fantasy where I was explicitly female with a man (a lot of the time, I'm sort of . . . non-gender specific?), but I've been female-bodied in lesbian dreams.

And when I say attracted, I really just mean aesthetic appreciation. I'm pretty sure I'm pretty asexual. I can look at people and think they are ridiculously attractive, and I can look at people and think I want to spend time with them, and I can look at people and think both, but never do I look at someone and think "I want to have sex with you." That's just not something that goes through my mind ever. The biggest, longest running crush on a Real Life Boy I've ever had, I don't think I've ever had a sexual thought about him, and only fleeting ones for my Real Life Woman crush (but that didn't really count, because she wasn't really a Real Life person because it was literally impossible to have a relationship with her being, um, my teacher) -- I'll on occasion have sexual fantasies about celebs or something, but I know if I ever, for instance, had the opportunity to do whatever I wanted with Olivia Wilde for one night in real life, we'd have dinner and talk politics and maybe cuddle. I remember realizing, at a Halloween party last year, that I hadn't gotten off in a while, and there was a guy there who was kind of cute (in that lighting, at least; turns out not so much, but still), and that I could totally make out with, possibly do him if I wanted to, but I didn't. Not at all. Not even "oh, that'd be nice but I don't really know him so that's dumb"; there was just no desire whatsoever, even when I tried to mentally put someone else (including women) I knew better in his place.

But then again, I think I would have no problem, if I broke past some barriers and was in a relationship, having sex. I enjoy orgasms. (Or, um, I did. Fucking anti-depressants.) But I don't . . . go out and look for it? I have no particular desire to have sex with another person, save maybe for scientific curiosity, but if you were here and I was here and we were really good friends/in a relationship and were bored or (idk if I ever actually get this way, but) horny or whatever, sure; as is an occasional catchphrase in our house, "Here, have some orgasms." I've told Roommate before (I think I was probably drunk, but still) that I would totally do her if she ever wanted to fool around, just because I love her (platonically) and if I can do something that makes her feel good, why not? That puts me more on the aromantic side of the spectrum and would disqualify me from "true" asexuality in some people's narrow views, but whatever.


COOL STORY BRO. Just some things I've been thinking about. I kind of tend to just go "agh, fuck labels" because I am so confusing, but at the same time, I feel . . . idk, like I said above in regard to my lesbianism in high school, like I don't want to get left out of this group that I belong to? I don't generally stress about them, but they helped in this case to sort of ~express my feelings. Of all the things I angst about, though, this isn't one of them. The fact that I'm Ace doesn't disturb me (even though I have the probably unpopular opinion that most asexuals probably could be diagnosed with some kind of attachment or arousal disorder; just because it's a thing -- like Roommate's Gender Identity Disorder, or my redheadedness -- doesn't mean you have to do anything about it if it's not distressful or an impediment to functioning). I imagine the gender thing might be more disturbing if I was desiring of a standard, heterosexual relationship (or any relationship at all), but because of the asexuality, it's just not an issue. I wish that my gender performance could be more in line with how I actually feel I'm performing (see above Adam Lambert example), but that's life.

Sometimes, Roommate and I say we're 200% gay. It's crazy; we're like fucking SuperQueer over here or something. Fuck yeah, house of fabulousness.

I keep reading over this and wanting to add more/change things to make sure it all makes sense, but I think exactly two people are going to read even this much, so we'll just hit post.

Re: the Denver game last night Sunday (because fail at hitting post). This Subway commercial is oddly prophetic, innit? I didn't actually see the game, which sucks (I mean, how often is a coach gutsy enough to go for the 2-point conversion rather than take the guaranteed tie with the extra point), but from hearing everybody complain about it (including all the football recappers on TV), this seems to have been the scenario.

And LOL at what's the top listed "most popular" story on Yahoo atm: Doctors say leg pain can signal deadly blood clot. This is part of an ad campaign for House's season premiere, I am thinking. Kay, prolly not, but still. Made me smile when I opened up the news page.

And these bits are from today:
Dream of cracktasticness.

So, evidently my subconscious wants to sleep with Jackie Onassis. Slash is doing so. Because in dream, I ended up having to tell her kids that Kennedy was dead (though it was nowtimes, she was young like it was thentimes) because we were all relationshippy. There was comforting. Not the sex type, though. Very platonic, except in that way that you just know that it was not. And then I ended up not getting around to telling my brother because I was doing something else (I think bringing back food from random cabinets in the symbolic dining hall that was actually off of a landing in between flights of stairs), but then I was in my kitchen and I hear this random loud sob. My initial response is "Oh, somebody told him," because he's sensitive about this people dying type thing. But then he runs up the stairs, shirtless, holding his hands out cupped in front of him. In the hands? Potato chips. The plain, flat, translucent with grease, white Lays kind. My dreamself's next thought is "They must be hot or something," but I hadn't gotten around to wondering why he didn't just drop them when bleakone's phone call woke me up.

More crazy fast weight gain. I'm getting worried that it's some kind of hormonal/metabolic thing, because it's now up to 10lbs. Water weight from having access to soda at every meal?

Random observation: I just glanced down at my left arm (because it itched) and there's a significant sized pockmark/hole by my antecubital vein from the last time I gave blood. Like a dent in the skin. Fail, healing.

No real thoughts yet on the House episode. Except no flirting with patients, Remy. That's not cool. Because I refuse to allow myself to ship doctor/patient unless they're recurring or otherwise notable (read: played by an actor/actress I like), and so that's a waste of the network's miniscule allowed homosexual flirtage quota.

Quote of the Day:

"Don't let faux Klingons send real Americans to war."
David Wu (D-Oregon), 10 January 2007 address to US House of Representatives.

Yeah. Made me laugh. Found the bit of his speech on youtube; he starts off referencing those books that call Bush's support the Vulcans, and ends up saying that they're Klingons, not Vulcans, and fake Klingons at that.


Had a nightmareish thing Friday night. There was a bunch of stuff in it and for some reason a lot of it was set in my old elementary school, but the basic deal was that I didn't have my 20 minute speech prepared for theatre on Monday. Well, it's not looking good in real life.

I had planned to work on it on Saturday, but I've been sick all of a sudden and so I didn't feel well and then we went TV shopping and when I got home on Saturday I was too tired to do much. Friday was spent finishing reading the damn play, finishing watching the movie of said damn play (because we've been taught so little that I've got no idea how to express what I want on stage and I hoped that the movie would help me out in that area a bit), moping around feeling sick and watching DS9 episodes while sprawled out in bed, and then working. Now I'm back, just finished finishing watching the play, but am really too tired to do anything. Problem is that even though I'm legitimately sick enough to not show up tomorrow, this is a one day, no extensions, no nothing type of deal that gets recorded and sent off to wherever to be graded as part of the eighty-someodd dollars I spent as registration (the money being for said grading, truly). Man, this is definitely the most expensive class I'm taking this year. No kidding. I've spent (or should have spent, a couple of times I managed to get in free somehow), not counting the registration money, more than $30 going to see plays and such.

Back to the TV shopping. My mum bought some entertainment center thing (which I always used to think meant TV and stereo and DVD player and such, but really is just the cabinet for some dumb reason) and mixed up our entire front room, and me being so vehemently anti-change freaked out and told her that it looked horrid (it makes the whole room off center as the TV's now way off to the left and the new focal point of the room is this patch of bare wall in the middle where the molding at the bottom was ripped off right after everything got moved in order to replace it for some reason) and she yelled at me for being so negative (true, but it really did look bad) and completely irrationally and mostly because I was pissed at my mum, I then refused to go into the front room for a day and a half (or really just 20 hours or so, excepting the couple of times I averted my eyes as I had to go through to get a drink or something). We get to Saturday and my brother brings home two disks of the Deep Space Nine season two DVDs, and I'm trying to get them to play, but the TV just has fuzz on the input channel when it should be playing them. I fiddle with the cords, trying every combination, but neither DVD nor VHS input is working. My brother phrases something poorly and mum jumps on me for blaming her (when I hadn't even said a bloody thing, where's the fair in that), and I go back into my room to start reading some of the Beckett crap I got from the library. Later, I hear that shortly after that the whole TV display went out; it quit working for regular TV too, not just input things. So my dad and I then spend nearly two hours between CompUSA (as they're moving all the stores out of our city and as such we figured they might have cheapy TVs, and they were all 15% off, but they only had big flat screen things that were hugely expensive to begin with, so we moved on) and Best Buy, end up getting one from the latter. Which was no easy task, as we finally find a good and semi-reasonably priced one, but then they can't find the one that they've supposedly got in stock. Turns out that they don't have one, but then I ask if we could get the display one, because I really liked that one and it was the only one that had decent picture and would fit in said new entertainment center cabinet and wasn't a bazillion dollars. They say yes, but then they can't find a remote and don't have a box, so we're fiddling around with that, finding out if universal remotes will work (they said only one brand would, but luckily we brought it home and found out they were wrong and the cheapy kind we have does) and such. Da talks them down like $50, which was impressive (though half of it was in gift card form, annoyingly). He's really good at that, because he worked in retail for a while and just always asks. Most people have no idea that you can do that, or at least I figure my entire generation doesn't, but he says that there's always a lot of wiggle room with price and most of the time if you're looking at the right stuff you can get them to knock it down a little, especially if it's the last one in stock and there's no remote/box/documentation like with the TV. Anyway. Oh, and the guy selling it to us was rather nice looking and called my dad Sir. I love that.

We bring this TV home and plug it in and it's nearly 10:30, but I start watching the "Endgame" movie before going to bed. Wake up this morning and mum's bitching about how it takes like 5 seconds to change channels. Which it does, which is annoying as hell. She wants it taken back now, though, as supposedly TVs are like 2/3 or half that price around Christmas. I'm all "So, we're supposed to not have a TV until Christmas?" *shakes head* I dunno. Odd stuff, my mum lately. I decided this time that it's some odd Freudian shit. She's subconsciously afraid that I'm going to challenge her for her position as alpha-female, and as such is pre-emptively striking at me out the wazoo. That or she's just PMSing. I'm wagering it's a combo of the two. But my da says that his mum and sisters did the same thing, which is what makes me go towards the former. Even though I think Freud is a chauvinist pig, I do see where he gets his ideas.

Anyway. A good 30 minutes or so wasted typing this that I could have spent figuring out what the hell I'm going to talk about for 20 minutes tomorrow. I'm prolly going to make most of it up on the spot. Whatever. I was all uber, uber depressed Friday and to a slightly lesser extent (meaning that I wasn't actively thinking about how I wanted to kill myself, but still just as bad all the same) on Saturday, and right now I've now got the 'still really depressed in general but at this present moment in time closer to apathy than wrist-slitting' thing going on. Which suggests to me that dumb medicine isn't working, but on the off chance it is, I started the new pack today instead of waiting until Wednesday because I didn't feel like being miserable if it could be helped.

I'm probably going to go to sleep now if I can (I had a horrid time going back to sleep after I woke up after aforementioned nightmare on Friday just because I was thinking about how I might not get it prepared well; without having it prepared really at all at this point I dunno if I'll be able to sleep, but we can hope). I'm gonna set my alarm for a few hours from now, wake up and try to work on it then when I'm not just thinking about how tired I am. Hopefully my stupid stomach won't be bugging me as much then.

Oh, and if any of you haven't read yet and get the chance to read "Chronicle of a Death Foretold" by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, you totally should. I love the writing style of it, all circular and reporter-like and fun. Plus, the story is really good--you've got honor and murder and religion and apathy and all those fun things (I'd explain more, but I don't know how to talk about the interesting bit of the story without giving stuff away). I really want to at some point try to write something styled like that (shorter, though, as it's basically a sorta small novel) because it's such an interesting form. This is probably the thing that I've had to read for school that I've enjoyed the most all year. Even though I've still got like 30 pages to go in it, actually, now that I think about it. I should finish that. Ha, but I won't be in english class tomorrow because I've got to do the theatre thing, so I don't have to try to get through it tonight. Like I'd do it tonight anyway.

I set a package of shredded cheese out on the counter to thaw (because it was being stored in my freezer) a hour and a half ago. It's still lots frozen. Which means that I still haven't had dinner. And it's 10:30. Grr. And now it's too late to eat, really, so grr again. Not that that will stop me from making a salad as soon as it thaws, but still.

We had this theatre showcase thing on Friday, with the Chekhov plays and such. It went okay, I guess. We needed more work. I didn't get to see any of the bits, though, that I wasn't in, and I've heard they didn't go as well as the two I did. Which is nice/somewhat flattering to think about, that the people liked/understood mine better than the others. I have heard from audience types, however, that the actors weren't so much doing what I directed in the one scene as not. Which is sad.

There were prop issues, namely that in two scenes, people forgot to bring out/bring over the water glasses that were needed. The time I did it, it screwed things up because the lines assumed water was there and though I had the presence of mind to change the blocking to make it look like I was directing somebody towards the water instead of pouring it down their throat, I only slightly changed the wording when there was a way I could have made it make better sense by changing the lines more. But it was on the spot and such, so I didn't think it was too bad. The other time was in the scene that I directed, but it was fine because the only real mention was one actor's line "Give me some water?" and the other one was just like 'Urm, sorry, don't have any.'

And the light girl kinda sucked it up a lot and missed cues and such. Which was bad for us because it was like "And. . . scene. Lights off now. No, now. No lights. And we're still frozen here. Lights off!" etc. And between the second and third scenes, she didn't turn the lights up at all for set change, so I bumped into things. Twice. It was embarrassing. Made me more nervous than I was before, because I was all rattled from stumbling.

And lol at the communal white shirt. There was one white shirt that got passed between three of us for a bit of costume. Which was funny, because you've only got a tiny bit of time between scenes, so we've got the shirt tucked in while we're on stage, but everything that you couldn't see was unbuttoned because as soon as you got offstage (we were using the local middle school's stage because it was small and cute, so 'backstage' was really just the teacher's room that adjoined it) it was like *strips* *passes shirt*.

There was improvyness, which made me happy. In the first excerpt from the Seagull, there's this twisted love thing going on. Trigorin (me) is with Arkadina (Katie). Arkadina sort of flirts with the doctor (Kerry), and so at that bit, I'm all "Um, no. Back off, old doctorman. She's mine." And then Nina (Melissa) comes on and Trigorin's all "Umm, yeah. I'll hit that," and very flirty with his hand on her arm, and then Arkadina comes down between them and is like "Yeahno." And at that part? Best line delivery of the entire show, IMO, on Katie's part. She does the splitting Nina and Trigorin up thing, and is all very fake forced civil to Nina with her "Oh, don't talk like that. When you embarrass him-" and it gets even more forced and obviously angry and she turns to Trigorin "he wishes he could simply disappear." And she hit the last two words with a "Oh, you are so not getting any for the next week for that little stunt," thing and this look that was just amazing. I heart my Katie.

Hee, cheese is more or less thawed. *eats salad*

The director of that scene totally didn't figure any of that out; the whole bit about there being this love quadrangle and how we needed to play it up because it's funny was me. Which made me smile, because people got it and laughed. But at one part, I had mentioned earlier in a rehearsal that I wanted Trigorin to do/say something to Nina (or vice versa) as she's leaving, but the director (being just one of the other people in the class, as we all took turns directing a scene) sorta just blew me off (she's kinda annoying in that manner). And I figured out sort of what I wanted to do and so then when Arkadina's like "Oh, dear, Nina, someone must take you home, darling!" I (being Trigorin, he-who-wants-to-hit-that) was all *steps towards her in a 'oh yes, please let me take you home, sweet!' manner*. And then Katie (being Arkadina, she-who-is-hitting-Trigorin-and-not-liking-Trigorin's-flirting-with-Nina) grabs my arm and pulls me back by her and gives me another look. The first thing that popped into my mind was 'OMG. She just broke character like whoa in order to tell me that I wasn't supposed to exit then or something.' But then I was like 'No, Katie wouldn't do that, she must have just gotten what I was trying to do and played along.' So I was happy that our brains worked together like that because that bit ended up being really funny.

And then there were pictures and I was like "umm, no. I'm wearing a dress. And said dress is sorta tight. Meaning I'm not into the whole 'let's have photographic evidence of how Alexandria has no waist to speak of and annoyingly large boobs' thing" Because even though I had been a man for the second to last scene, I had to give the communal white shirt of doom to somebody else for the last one (the final scene being the one I directed and as such wasn't in), and as such needed to put something back on for curtain call and it would look strange if I was wearing my costume pants and a t-shirt. And I was carrying everything off stage while everybody else (meaning the other five) was talking with friends and stuff in the audience (which kinda really annoyed me, because it was my sister and I who got it all carted to the dressing room/backstage/german classroom.) But then Katie was like "Oy! My da wants pictures." And I was like fine, only because I love you. So there are pictures of me in a dress floating around somewhere. I doubt they're good, because I managed to not bring makeup because I was sick that day. And all week, really, but I actually stayed home on Friday because I had been not getting sleep because of the sick and I knew my acting would be all suck if I tried to make it through an entire school day and stay after until 9:30 (meaning being away from home and not sleeping and instead doing schoolwork and prop carting work and dumb stuff for like 15 hours straight) when I hadn't had more than one hour of unbroken sleep all week. But back to the makeup. I didn't bring any, so I ended up using Katie's for the foundation and rouge and lip stuff (because with the stage, you know, you're all washed out and not fun and so yay stage makeup), which is fine because her foundationy makeup is exactly my color (twins, I say) but I didn't have any eye stuff and I'm already rather pale, so I imagine from the back it was like "Oh, look, there's some floating lips. And rouged cheeks. But no eyes." So I dunno if the pictures are any good because of weird no-makeup on eyes, makeup on rest of face thing. But maybe. We'll have to see when they get developed/whatever.

But I managed to leave both my school ID and my glasses there, I think. Which is sucksucksuck. Because we used my backpack bag thing as a prop, and as such I dumped everything out from the main section at home, but my glasses and ID were still in little front pouches and so they got taken out (or in the case of the ID, fell out) and I didn't realize it and they're still there. (The ID usually is in a different spot where it wouldn't have fallen out of, but I moved it to a bigger holdermajiggy right before the show because you could sorta see the edge of the card in its actual pocket.) Bad because I had to take one of those big standardized test things the next morning, and I didn't have my school ID, so I couldn't. Even though I'd already paid and everything. And then, I go and find out today that since it was at my school, if one of the proctors had ever taught/known me (which would be likely, as there would be several there and I've been at that school for like forever) they could just have identified me and let me in. I didn't know that, so I didn't go, because I figured it'd be a waste of gasoline because they wouldn't let me in. Also found out today? Of the four times that a girl in my english class has taken it, this was the easiest version. And I missed it. Unnecessarily. Damn. $40 someodd bucks down the drain because my dumb ID card fell out of the pouch it was in.
And then my glasses were there too (which is what I'm more worried about) and so I had to borrow my sister's to do volleyball (as we have virtually the same prescription and all) but she had to have them for school, so I couldn't see anything all day today. Like math notes. Or chem notes. Or bio notes. (Though bio is dumb and easy.)

So yeah. Had a dream a week ago or so that basically made me go "Huh. So, whatever crack I was doing in my sleep that night was a bad idea." It involved two people from my school, a sesame street muppet in military clothing, and Bill O'Reilly. Yeah. I'll have to talk about that one later.

Hee at me starting writing this two hours ago. That's what I get for writing three things at once. I jump back and forth and it takes hugely long to finish any of them.

(Hee again at new icon. The coloring is weird because as I don't have that episode, I capped it from a scene in a fanvid. But it makes me smile. I've been all into the Star Trek of late, particularly the guyslash, which is rare for me.)

Random updates from the past week or so.

On Monday, I worked at the table at lunch for Transgender Day of Remembrance and got to use the line (in response to one of the principals who had gained a lot of weight really recently and Sadie thought might be pregnant) "rapidly expanding first trimester ass".

Monday night, up the entire time doing that paper so on Tuesday, I got home and pretty much just went to sleep and woke up in the evening (because I didn't have to go to school on Wednesday and so decided that I could sleep as long as I wanted).
Didn't remember that it was my brother's birthday (to make a long story short so this makes sense, he had a birth defect thingy -- you may remember my rant about the disgusting article that called the anencephalic baby an 'it' and "baby", quotes included, and talked about them parading him through the streets; this is why -- and died a few hours after he was born in 1999) on Tuesday until I dreamed while I was taking my extended afternoon nap/sleep thing about my mom crying. Totally forgot with the whole english paper thing that it was the 21st, and that was the only part of the dream that I remembered when I woke up, and I knew somehow that that was why she was crying. Yay, weird subconscious reminder dreams.

Did nothing the entire break. Got up at 4:30 on Friday to go down to Circuit City to try to get House season 1 (advertised for $13!) but parents didn't wake up until 7:30 and we didn't get there until 8:15 or so, so naturally none were left. Nor was the cheap hard drive just like my last one that I decided to get to use instead of the bulky one and only use the bulky one for backup and storing big movies and episodes and stuff. But the ad said season 1, and that was what was (supposedly, I heard from one person who had been there when it opened that there were only 3 copies) out there to be bought, but the picture on the ad was of season two. So I wanted them to give me both of them. Though they didn't have season one or season two at the first place, so I went to another store that had copies of season two left and made them give me it for the cheapy price. So yay for that.

And I knitted a whole lot. Made this bigish longish half a scarf, but I picked up a stitch somewhere and you didn't really notice that and I didn't notice that until I was quite past where I gained it (and still can't even see exactly what row I picked it up in) and so I just dropped one on the end, but that you can notice, so I'm kinda angered about that. You didn't notice my screwup, but the fixing of the screwup is obvious. I'm definitely going to go back and rip those last ones out until before I dropped it now so it's not so bad, because this thing is pretty long and I can't stand just wasting it.

And I finished Sula, at least. Haven't prepared for the presentation on the dumb Sula thing yet. Not doing that now.

So I did do some stuff over break. But none that actually helped me school-wise, save reading the book.

Finally went to the gym today after months of not going (I've gone maybe 4 times since school started at the end of August). I've gotten totally weak. Lost my mad sexy triceps. Though I was doing the tricep thing a different way (the right way, actually, now) so that would probably explain why I had more trouble than usual, because I was working a slightly different muscle when I was holding my arms a different way. But my mad sexy triceps are back, more or less, because I worked them enough that they're close to the old definition and should be back to normal if I keep going regularly. Watched a couple minutes of "The O'Reilly Factor", that was too sickening so I switched it to C-SPAN and watched some people from the US Institute of Peace talk about Syria/US relations without really saying anything which was only slightly less depressing, so then turned it to Fox, but "House vs. God" was on and that was the episode in which Wilson lost his awesome for sleeping with his patient, so I watched a few minutes of that until the first scene with Wilson and the patient and then just turned it off because we were leaving.

My dad called his mother today, found out that she had another stroke a week and a half ago and even though one of my dad's bum sisters (he and one brother out of 7 kids are the only ones that turned out any good, sad to say) is bumming off of my grandma and living with her on her social security and my grandfather's army money payment stuff, she didn't feel the need to let any of the rest of the family know that my grandma had a stroke. Whore. But I thought it was pretty cool that she figured out that she was having a stroke herself. She realized that she didn't know who the person (bum aunt) in the house was and figured out that she was having a stroke by herself (seeing as how aforementioned bum whore aunt probably couldn't figure it out if it was written on Grandma's shirt). Hospital people were mean to her again: they were making her lie down all the way back (which makes sense, to re-perfuse the brain after they gave her I assume TPA and probably warfarin) though she was telling them that the lying back was giving her an asthma attack. She was like "no, I can't breathe" and instead of figuring out "hey, she can't breathe, let's give her some medicine to fix her breathing and then ask her to lie down", they just strapped her down. And I assume, then treated her for the asthma attack. They did the same thing when she had colon surgery a couple of years back almost; the morphine made her nut out (like it did to her husband; there seems to be a genetic intolerance for morphine and such heavy duty pain killers on that side of the family) and they just figured she was senile and strapped her down and didn't talk to her normal doctor so he could say that she's not normally like this and something's wrong for a couple of days (because my dad and I had just left right before it kicked in) and only did she get fixed up when the non-bum brother of my dad came down there to visit and was all "WTF have you done to her?" But so she's lost pretty much the last 20 years, doesn't remember any of the grandkids (though for some reason my dad is lying to my brother and saying that now she does, because he'd get too upset if he thought that she still didn't, but the last thing I heard from my dad reporting it to my mom was that she still doesn't know), can't remember the date for longer than a few minutes (she asked my dad when they were on the phone several times), etc. But this is much improved from last week when it actually happened and she's bounced back from them before, so it might not be too bad. The only symptom she initially had was a swollen leg, meaning, I'm guessing, deep vein thrombosis from which a clot broke off and went to her brain. So she's got shunts in the leg now because there were still clots down there, but on the good side her heart is looking really good, better than it should be since she's had heart attacks and stuff.

Math teacher went in to labor reportedly last night, wasn't there today, yay for that. Not yay for the fact that the sub is bad (she just reads the steps in the example and doesn't give you time to think about what she's doing so you just copy it all down and try to figure it out later) and her voice is uber-grating.

So, yeah. To summarize, my math teacher being gone=good, sub sucking=bad, House season two for cheap=very good, weird somewhat predicting dreams=strange, going to the gym=good, Lisa Edelstein on Conan O'Brian right after these commercials=sex, grandma having stroke=bad, bum aunt not telling us about stroke=whoretastic. Also, me not knowing what to do for this presentation= v. bad.

Lisa on now. Bye.