I’m anti-social and lonely. Is that even possible? How bass-ackward can one person’s psyche be? I think I want people to want to spend time with me, to pursue my friendliness and then to reject them. Bah. Stupid me.

Also, on another note. Wear you seatbelt. Always. I didn’t used to and then my mother rolled her minivan with me in without a seatbelt. It sucked. I got to meet the ceiling and it hurt. I am damn lucky that was all that happened. Do yourself a favor, just put it on. And wear helmets too. Bike or motorcycles, whatever. And gods! Anyone riding a motorcyle in short shorts and no helmet – what in the name of crap are you thinking? Have we ever heard of road rash?

Okay. I’m done being a mommy for the day.

I bathed my cats. Possum had the termerity to growl at me. Bitch. Of course, now she’s being all snuggly.

I go back to my showtunes and my birdie cross-stitch. It’s nearly done and next up is either a girl cross-stitch or learning to knit from the website that katiedear sent to me.

i am full of angst and cantankerability.

i am so tired of caring about people who don’t care a whit for me or miss me or notice when i’m there or not there.

i’m tired of only being spoken to when something is needed or wanted from me.

I sometimes wonder if it’s a mistake. Well, I wonder if lots of things that I do are mistakes…but especially this whole grad school thing.

I guess I find it harder in the science world than I thought. It’s still very much a man’s world, especially in the “harder” portions of biology. The few women in the area…they themselves are hard women. They have to be so much bitchier than their male counterparts to get even close to the same respect, pay and positions.

It is so different than I thought it would be. The ambiguity, the “deductions” and the logic…all the assumptions that you have to make just to exist in this scientific world…they all make me so tired. Seems like so many times, they just ignore those questions they don’t answer. Whether this is a conscious choice to make life easier or an unconscious one to keep them sane, I just don’t know. I also don’t understand how people in the field of ecology can be conservative republicans – pro-Bush and pro-big business at that.

I wonder what will happen somedays. After the M.S. will I be able to put up with the…the hoops and bullshit of big schools, the beauracracy is painful….and even if I do, and get my PhD and my postdoc work…then what? Be a professor and deal with universities and other phds for the rest of my life? Deal with their overweening pride and hubris and arrogance…I just am not like that – I can’t draw a conclusion and say, because I looked at these facts and I am the scientist, the conclusion that I draw must be the right one…my deductions are the most logical, most probable, most RIGHT.

But if not PhD…then what? Molecular biology for big business? Biochemical weapons for the government? *shrug* I guess I can work for non-profit companies, make drugs or fiddle with the genetics of humans to save them.

What I really like, what I really want…is what I do now I guess…am I condemned to be a lab tech then? I like to read the papers, I don’t mind writing them too much. But grant writing and proposal writing – they blow. I don’t want to be the boss, I don’t like to be the boss…the research is what I enjoy. I like to look at a question and try to find one possible answer. I like to answer an ecology question with molecular biology…where else can I ask those sorts of questions though?

I really wish I was more sure of myself.

***

My roommate is impending, ETA less than 2 weeks…

I know nothing about her, except her name, the species she works with and the university that she attends. She could be insane for all I know…and yet, I still anticipate her arrival.

I like living alone. I like the solitude. Having company quickly drives me up the wall. I had my younger sister with me for a week and by day 5…I was ready to be alone. But at the same time. I hate it. Everyday. No one to ever know if I’m alive or dead until I stink up the whole apartment complex (or perhaps if the guys above me notice that I haven’t wandered on my patio in my underpants)…my cats will eat my eyeballs and I’ll leave a big black dead stain on my apartment’s carpet…

So perhaps a roommate for a while, a small while will be nice. The money will be good…perhaps I can afford a new bike? Retire my poor old 13 year old bike and get a “grown-Up” bike. Well, as grownup as you can get when you are my size I guess…

****

I’m tired of griping. I’ll go cross-stitch my future niece/nephew’s new bib. This time it’s a bluebird instead of a duckie…such a domestic chore…I wish I could learn to knit though…

my ceiling leaks

I’m watching ren and stimpy

and making tuna for lunch

i think the sum total of my day might revolve around the halfprice bookstore and X2 at the fifty cent theatre…

do you ever wonder about the other yous? what they’re like? what they do? if they’re happy?

a dozen roses
and a sack of beans

a box of chocolate
and dirty toes

wet pants, wet shoes and muddy puddles with you
splashes up to my ass and drips down my nose

Reunion is over. It was – well, boring for the most part. Only 31 (counting me) of 541 graduates showed up. I looked hot(ter) wearing my brown sundress, slut red nail polish and some tall, fuck me shoes. Rather a waste of looking hot and wearing making up I’d say - there was no one there that I’d hated that I could impress and there was no one there that I’d crushed on and could impress. Mostly, it was people I’d known, and thought of only rarely. Nothing spectacular and nothing disappointing.

My home town is under seige however, from big fatty vicious mosquitos. In broad daylight, with a brisk breeze…I was hanging out clothes on the clothes line (9 weeks worth of laundry was done this weekend) and I was nearly carried away by big tiger leg mosquitos. I’d always thought the striped leg ‘skitos were rare – but apparently after all the flooding and near evacuation situation that had happened and is still happening as they’ve gotten yet more rain, all mosquitos are just on the rampage. On the way to the door from the car, about 15 steps, I got bitten two times. I wanted to raid my mother’s garden, but I didn’t dare. Not even for fresh cukes and green peppers and tomatoes would I risk life and limb.

Also took my niece to the 4H fair where she met her first pig, goat, cow, sheep and chicken. The child has no fear, not of animals or of people. She patted all of them and made noises at them. She especially liked sqoinking at the pigs and boawking at the chickens as well as patting cow butts.

Would it offend you (ladies that is) if a man asked your father for your hand in marriage? My Bro-In-Law did it…and I guess the whole idea makes my blood boil. I suppose it is supposed to be sweet and romantic or some shit like that. But it just implies that your father “owns” you and that the man will own you afterwards. Argh. No one owns me, no man, no god, no woman….I own myself. Just seems crazy in this day and age to own someone else.

I like most music…I have most music on my computer…and I like to have it. Classical, rap, hard rock, oldies, country…you name it. Excepting two kinds: Emo and R&B. R&B I hate and I don’t know why…It makes me cringe. But EMO, the music of pain. Seems like whiney angsty music (this from someone who listens to country, no less). *shrug* My younger sister is big into the pop music scene – Britney and the like.

I’m rereading books again. Not that I don’t have oodles of new books to read, but I guess I seek the comfort of old friends when I can’t make my lab work go smoothly. So RJ, here I come and let’s take another ride on the Wheel of Time. It’s not the beginning but it is a beginning.

I miss my camera and photography. I haven’t really done anything with them since high school. I did a lot then, had the darkroom to play with and everything. It was great…independence and photographing things like sports – not something I’d have thought of together. I got tackled at a football game…used to leave the highschool to go out to lunch and then take random pictures…I sometimes miss a lot of things about highschool. Yeah, life kinda sucked in some ways, but it was often less complicated than my life is now. I had direction and goals. Money wasn’t really an issue and responsibilities were limited. Mom did all the cooking and I only had chores to do on Saturday mornings.

Now there’s lots of responsibilities and money woes, I do my own cooking and cleaning and things are crazy complex most of the time. But I do love living alone and I love graduate work (even if it is frustrating).

Sometimes I just wonder what I’m actually thinking. Or doing. Or wanting.

****

Edited to add: I also saw Pirates of the Caribbean. I thought it would be silly. But yummy. Johnny Depp and munchycrunch Orlando Bloom. They can both eat crackers in bed with me!

I think I found a ladder!!!

*does brief dance of joy*

Of course, I’m only halfway up said ladder…but at least I’m further than before.

do you ever feel like you keep banging your head against the same wall? no matter how hard you try to stop, go around the wall or under or over…it’s always there. grey, fuzzy, indeterminate in size. it’s always bigger than you think, taunting you…you can almost see through, you can almost get around, you can almost escape…but really, it seems like the only way that you can go is back the way you came.