commotiocordis

It feels like there's some kind of a three or six or someodd-week window (they always give the parents some amount of time that you're not supposed to visit your kids for that reason) where things are supposed to click and you're supposed to adjust to being away from home and I somehow missed it. It's not even like I was particularly close to my family in the first place; yeah, I love them and all, but I spent most of my time when I was at home in my room by myself. It kinda scares me, you know, in the ferocity of this. . . it's not homesickness, really, so much as it is hate-thereness, I think. I've got no idea. I can't articulate why I dislike it there so much (sure, I can bitch about whatever issue is currently pissing me off, but it's more a general loathing of the entire situation), but to sort of put things into perspective, I checked my Outlook calendar that I've got all my class times and everything typed into this afternoon and had a panic attack over the prospect of going back there. Not even just worked myself into one, which I'll do if I'm upset and let it compound, but it was sudden--there wasn't even a semi-conscious thought process of "Oh, man, schedule. I've got class on Monday. That means I've got to leave home. And go back to school. I hate school! *freaks*", it just hit--and it lasted a long time. And even after the actual attack was over, I was mentally shaky and feeling all self-destructive and bad.

So that's no fun. Break in general, though good at the beginning, got pretty not-enjoyable. As Dad got a call from bum Aunt Chris (re: bum--see the last time I made a post where things happened almost exactly like this) saying that Grandma had her second stroke this week (our reaction: OMGWTF THANKS FOR TELLING US AFTER #1) and somebody misrepresented/misunderstood/whatever the gravity of the situation (we sort of think that Chris needed a break from helping Grandma extra over the last few days when one of these last strokes mussed up her mobility, and she let Dad believe that things were really bad so he'd come down and help out. My opinion? You're living in your mother's house, driving her car, supplementing your measly sales income with her social security and your father's pension; bitchplease, shut up and help out your mother) and it essentially boiled down to Mom spending all of Friday writing out lesson plans for next week in case she had to get a sub for a funeral and Dad and Tyler leaving within about an hour of the initial phone call to go down there.

She's doing a lot better, Dad says--if I've said it once, I've said it a million times: if I inherit anything from this woman (besides, erm, breasticles), please let it be her stroke resiliency. I have no idea how many she's had, but she shuffles around for a bit (worse than usual--I think one of the early ones screwed her gait up, because she's shuffled more or less since I can remember noticing), has some short term memory loss (she loses a couple of days around the stroke that I'm not sure she ever gets back, and loses larger chunks of time/people transiently for a short period but does get that back), but that's it. You know, I think. It's hard to tell when I see her as rarely as I do what's stroke and what's just oldperson.

It was weird that afternoon. I was all lol!emotional vulnerability. I'm usually the stoic one in things like this (not even because I'm trying to or anything, just because I'm fairly cool with death), but was all . . . not. I think (self-psychoanalysis time!) I was picking up on the emotionally charged atmosphere with my dad freaking out (he really thought he needed to get down there quick until he called right before leaving to tell Chris that he was coming down and his mom answered the phone, LOL) plus my subconsciously being a selfish bitch pissed that my first visit home was getting screwed up by this by itself, and more so by Dad and Tyler leaving, plus the whole situation being reflective of how I've been more fearful lately because my dad's diabetes got bad (and by bad, I mean good--his doctor was happy with his control, but her happy meant he was having lows a lot more often. With diabetes, high kills your organs and you over time, lows kill you overnight, especially once you become less sensitive to them as everyone does; then it takes a glucose of say 40 to give you the shaky warning--or you lose the sick feeling altogether and skip straight to the disorientation, like Dad now does--that 70 once did, even though the setpoint of unconsciousness at 30 hasn't changed, you've just got less warning to do something about it) right before I left, and how I feel out of the loop of the whole family everything, and the fact that (as evidenced by the later-occurring/aforementioned panic attack) I seem to be an emotional wuss.

But yeah, he called and Grandma picked up, which surprised me because, you know, I sort of figure post stroke -> hospital. But then again, bumaunt earned the bum title from last stroke Grandma had last year when she didn't make her go to the hospital (Grandma didn't realize that there are things you can do for strokes now because I think her last one was a while back, so she just made an appointment with her GP for Monday morning), so perhaps not that surprising--I've yet to hear the medical story. From my side of the conversation (just listening to Dad talk to her), it sounded like she was doing pretty well. So then it became more of an "I have the weekend, if she's had two strokes in a week things can't be good no matter how well she bounces back, so I'd better go and be with her while she's still there mentally and before she doesn't bounce back as well one of these times", which I totally understand is still filled with that urgency for him--he's mentioned before that one of his biggest regrets about when his dad died is that he didn't get down there until after he was only in-and-out (and mostly out) mentally.

Dad's hoping to leave really early Sunday to get back around noon (yeah right, but hopefully) so we have a few hours to hang out before I've got to leave. Still not like I'd hoped--we were going to go fishing on Friday, and then he and mom had signed up for a canoe trip together all day Saturday, and I was supposed to be able to do about a bazillion things I'd planned and didn't get to because I've been feeling off.

Weekend update: Alexandria Edition

All this hooplah on Friday. Didn't do much else. Bummed around playing Sims: Castaway Stories (beat that in two days, somewhat disappointingly, and I'm not crazy about the gameplay for the open ended bit as it feels much more limited than the Life Stories one did), went to Sam's with Mom, exercised, had a nice feta, corn, roasted chicken, and Italian dressing salad for dinner (it's crazy--salad's all I eat at school, and yet throw in the chicken and the feta and the dressing, none of which are available there, and it's a totally different and significantly more delicious animal), did some more computer bumming, went to bed.

Saturday: was planning on getting up early to workout at 8, do the yoga class at the gym at 9 (as I've been paying them for several years for free group classes included, and when do they finally get classes at my location? About three weeks after I leave), and then leave at 10 to go see Obama at noon, followed by further shopping (the rest having been done with Mom Friday night) for the church family night chili dinner, which I'd then go down to around 4 to start stuff cooking (some eight pounds of pasta, mostly, as well as prepping plain spaghetti sauce and salad) for dinner at 6. The first two didn't happen because I was up until 5 or 6 playing around on the computer. The third didn't happen because I was getting ready to go and turned on the TV and heard that there were some thousands and thousands of people that had been down there waiting for hours already and the gates didn't even open for another 30 minutes, and that if I went, the time spent looking for somewhere to park (even in the closest Metro carpark; almost especially so, as it's the only one that even approaches the county, so it's always packed) would singlehandedly offset any benefit from Obama's energy plan. Went to the Jewish Community Center's costume sale instead, and picked up a bunch of stuff for Dad's classes for cheap. They had pretty much a whole set for doing Beauty and the Beast that I really wanted, but it wasn't exactly what he was looking for with his kids doing Shakespeare and all. Got a really nice dress, though, that I think is perfect for mideval stuff, as well as a flouncy underskirt that I'm saving for my colonial costume for taking Kaci to the Feast of the Hunter's Moon next year with the middle school Fiddlers.

Then I ran about shopping for church dinner food some more because the costuming took longer than I expected (I was looking for "the auditorium" instead of it being inside the auditorium inside the community center), and finally got back and did the food. Served the Catholics in my Obama t-shirt and got more pleasant comments than I expected, especially considering that it's almost always just old people that come to these things (which sucks, as it's family night and there's never really any family mingling because the old people all just stick together in the same groups and tend to exclude anybody that's not been in the church since before the last ice age--I mean, my parents have been going there since before I was born, and yet 90% of their conversations have to do with church stuff way before that). There were really no comments at all besides a handful of people asking if I went and a few that I knew--Rick, my volleyball boss and my friend Celeste's mom-- and one other random guy actually articulating support. Not even Father Jim had anything really to say save some remarks about how it seemed the entire city was there (but then again, I've been told he doesn't talk nearly as much anymore after he had a stroke a bit after I left, which sucks, both because I really like him and because he's always been v. v. softspoken and shy to begin with), which was a tad disappointing because I'd have loved to go three rounds on how the Catholic policy on birth control is an abject violation of their claim to honor and preserve the sanctity of life with somebody there.

Thing that made me angry: 8 people signed up to bring chili, 4 did because fail--even when my mom and the mother of a schoolmate of Kaci's brought some without having been included in the 8 count, we still ran out of all the "normal kinds" very quickly with only about a spoonful of ground turkey chili (that I think had been left for gone, but I managed to scrape it out because that was the one I wanted), and a little of each a v. hot white chili and a v. mild gluten-free chili left when the noodles line had finished and I got over there to see what was left, less than 20 minutes after mass ended. We had plenty of spaghetti and sauce left, though, so nobody totally missed out.

Then exercised, then hit up a couple of stores on the way home (the Farmer's Market because I wanted to check on pumpkin prices and because fruits/veggies yum, Big Lots because mom told me to grab some extension bar thing that I got the wrong one of--prolly because the best I can describe it as is "extension bar thing"--followed by Walgreens because I had thought that they had free after rebate stuff that I wanted, but it turns out that it was last month), then got mom to glob my hair up with henna while watching Andromeda dvds followed by the opening sketch of SNL (assuming Palin wasn't in any of the rest), then spent the last several hours (literally) writing this.

Whew. Caught up, more or less. Far more detail than anyone cares about, but ehh.

There's a list of things I want to do tomorrow, including going bowling, to this Natural Living Expo, carving a pumpkin, and tie-dying a shirt (all of which sound sort of random but are in fact quite easily possible), but I've got to leave before 7 and Kaci's got two soccer games tomorrow. After having (missing, actually, as nobody realized) one yesterday, because they're making up for the fact that they were rained out some 3 weeks already this season--I tell you, she got signed up for this city team rather than play with the school like she used to or the church like I used to, and they're a bunch of wusses. Both the city (not even our city, LOL, but one a bit farther West that we tend to mock a bit; I have no idea why that one, but somehow a bunch of her old teammates from the school team that didn't get going this year for whatever reason all went out there) and the school teams are, though the latter will at least play in the rain. I have pictures from when I played for the church of us playing in a freaking ice storm. (I assume--the playing happened, and pictures tended to happen, though I couldn't tell you where they'd be.) Us Catholic sports girls took our shit seriously.

Concluding thoughts (at least until I come up with more):
I'm almost painfully thirsty and have been for the last 500 words or so, but don't feel like getting out of bed until I'm done and am about to go to sleep.

The plastic wrap extension to my shower cap holding my henna'd hair in (too much hair, LOL, especially when thickened by goop) keeps sliding down and covering half of my eyes. I can't get it to stay up.

My laptop has another screen glitchy bit (this one's just a dark spot that looks like it's just a drop of scum on the screen until you get close and realize that it's underneath). I found out, though, that there's a place only about 20 minutes away from here that does warranty repair, so I won't even have to ship it in.
Best Buy was trying to tell me over the summer when I first asked that I had no warranty at all on this thing since I didn't buy theirs and had to give it to their Geek Squad to fix (which they couldn't do, as this is a manufacturer only replacement) for mucho dinero, the thieving arses.

I iz headached. Off and on the entire time I've been here. But my Springfieldhumidity-induced acne is almost totally gone after only two or so days. It's weird, considering that St. Louis is the place that people joke "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" about, because of all the rivers, not Springfield.

Speaking of weather, *temperaturegasm*. God, it's beautiful. You turn the air conditioning on in the car if the sun's shining on you, but I ran to get something out of the car around 10:15ish before SNL and was hustling because it was chilly and the grass was quite cold. It's camping weather--it might be a tad too cold to be really comfortable at night outside (at least for me, as I've got a very range of comfort I can fall asleep in--even if it's totally fine during the day, the same temperature at night and I'll be far too frozen to sleep), but it's the exact kind of crisp cool that would make sitting in front of a fire just amazing.

I'm falling asleep while I write this. Holy crap, I started typing this easily 2 hours ago. Nonstop typing, pretty much (at least for the last hour of it since I first really looked at the clock), not even the normal "type some, fool around playing a game/checking email/whatever, type some more, etc." thing.

So. Goo Goo Dolls was last night, like I mentioned about a thousand times. Twas pretty excellent. We left a bit after 7 (the show started at 8), and I thought that'd be plenty of time to get down there, as it is generally only 20 minutes to get downtown. Erm, no. Because of the whole London terrorism scare thing, they had maybe 5 blocks on all sides of the riverfront blocked off when we went down there, and the bigger streets blocked off to 10 blocks. I seriously thought that I was going to miss it, because I got dropped off a ways away, and then didn't know where I was going. But I didn't.

I got down there right when it was starting (I couldn't find where the show was at first, because I started going to the other stage, as that was the only one I'd been to before), and it was unbelievably packed. I don't know if I'd seen that many people in one place before in my life. But the good thing about being only one person is that I managed to push my way through the left side all the way down to the front. I was maybe 15 people away from the front/center spot, and as it was, I still had a pretty decent view. (And whoever came down towards the end and stood in front of the rail and was videotaping seemed to like me because I knew all the words when they had us singing bits of "Iris", which made me smile.) Though there's a big Anheuser-Busch banner thing on each side, which blocked the left third or so of the stage, which made me angry. Still, I was close enough to see John Rzeznik start shifting to avoid one of his strings after it went out of tune in the middle of a song and it was taking them a while to grab another. If I can find some kind of picture of the stage, I'll point out where I was (and perhaps even me).

Though, unfortunately, I think it was because I was so close that my mp3 player's recording of it didn't work. You can hear it, but there's nasty crackling and such on top (it sounds like you're turning cheap speakers way louder than they're supposed to go). I'm going to try to clean it up, but I don't think it will work so much as not.

There were a bunch of songs that I didn't know, a couple being new ones, which I didn't really expect. The one thing that I didn't like was when they were doing "Iris" (which is my all-time, drop down dead favorite), they had the crowd sing for bits. Which, you know, okay, because it's probably everybody else's favorite too, but it got to be way too much. Everybody is going to sing along anyway; I'd rather you guys did most of the main vocals. I think we sang most of it, honestly, and about half way through I just got annoyed, because I just wanted to hear the damn song. (Between you and me, St. Louis is flat.)

After an encore (I was bits afraid I'd blow my throat out yelling for that one), I started heading back. And then panicked, because I'm trying to get through to home to ask my dad to pick me up, and I can barely hear once the fireworks start, and the phone doesn't appear to be working. It was a new one, because mum took the one to Vermont and dad wanted me to have one for this, and I called probably 20 times to no effect. Turns out that even though where I was, where I bought the phone, and where I was calling were all in the same area code, I still had to type it in. I was more than a little freaked, though. I finally got through maybe 30 minutes after the show ended as I was walking out (I went the direction out of the stage area where the least people were, so I got out of there more quickly, but had to walk through the entire fairgrounds to get up to the street), and found out that I was on the total opposite side of everything from where I was supposed to meet him.

So some 12 blocks later (in my sexyshorthookerboots, which started killing my feet after about 20 minutes of standing in them during the concert), I stopped where I had gotten dropped off (because there was a nice fountain you could sit on the ledge of that breezed at you and cooled you down, and lights, and lots of not-scary looking people waiting around, and two cops right across the street) for an hour and twenty minutes or so, figuring that dad would just drive the 8 blocks from where he told me to meet him (because I figured he'd meant this place and just said the wrong streets). But no, because evidently, there were three blocked off blocks between the two spots. I went over to the other spot (where there was nobody else, nowhere to sit, and not much lighting), and waited there for another long while. All in all, they didn't find me until 11:20 or so, and then he had parked another 10 blocks in a different direction so he could get down there, so we had to hike those.

And then we got home around 12. And I was dead. I hadn't eaten, so I did that and watched 40 minutes of the pilot of Psych (which is going to be my new summer show if I can find it, since Becker has gotten to the episode where Reggie leaves and thus is not worth watching anymore), and was pretty much falling asleep on the couch (because for some reason I had woken up at 6:40 that morning), so I went to bed. That's my story.

Today I mixed up some henna to play with (because I don't try to use it on my skin very much as it takes the entire package to do my hair), so I'm probably going to get to that shortly (or maybe tomorrow morning; it should be okay for that long and it'd probably be easier to keep it not smudged during the day as opposed to trying to sleep with it on) as I've been letting it sit for a while now. If it turns out well, I'll probably take pictures of it or something (if it lasts long enough for mum to get home with the camera; I had forgotten she had it. Grr).

Also bought a flat-screen monitor yesterday afternoon (mum is going to kill me when she gets home for letting him do that) and set up another computer somebody had given my dad because they couldn't get it to work (we fixed it in about 20 minutes, LOL, though it still could use a new sound card). Ran out to get a wireless internet card for it yesterday too, and ended up with one of those USB plug-in ones, which makes me happy, because now we've got one that can go in any computer. So my brother's on that one now, playing some kind of first-person shooter game he bought at Big Lots today (I bought socks. See, who do you think spent their money more wisely? The answer is me, as I split the package of 10 with my dad and made him pay for it) and making lots of noise as he. . . idk what he's doing actually, I guess yelling at the people he's shooting/are shooting him.