Marie, Marie, hold on tight.

Hello.

On Wednesday afternoon, after having spent some time in the shower, crying, hugging my knees, staring blankly at the soap-bottle and thinking “Well, now what,” I received a call from MattThomas, fixer of all things. He and Daniel drove me home to see my mom, who had been taken to the hospital for surgery that afternoon. She was in a lot of pain for a couple of days. I drew her baths, scratched her back, held her hand, helped around the house, did what I could to make things better for her. Today she was feeling much healthier, so much so that we were able to go on a walk this morning. Hopefully she’ll be back to swimming a mile a morning in no time.

It has been good to be home. I feel useful here, and loved. Papa makes me cinnamon toast for breakfast, Joe and I stay up late watching his latest films (Teddy Roosevelt’s Organelle Safari is a must-see), and Tom the cat bites my toes (lovingly). Joe and I went on a date last night to the Witches Brew, and then later he, Monty, and I went to Lincolnton’s new Waffle House. Classy. Picture:

I’ve been to the doctor finally, (was still running a 100 degree fever till Friday for whatever reason) and I got my Zoloft dosage doubled plus a flu shot. I’m severely anemic again, which explains the fatigue. Lots more pills for me. Oh pills.

Thanks so much to everybody who has called me and expressed their concern for both me and my mom. It feels really good to know that I am cared for.

Love you guys. I’ll see you tomorrow.

Panic Attack Manifesto

Okay internets, here’s what’s up.

Much like a Rachael Ray recipe, the past two weeks have been erratic and absurd. The flakey crust of mayhem and laffs may suggest nothing but delicious enjoyment, but the hearty smattering of misery and confusion is leaving a bad taste in my mouth.

/end idiot metaphor

I’m going to go ahead and get all of the worrisome stuff out of the way right now. I really need to clear my head. Later on I’m going to pay tribute to all the good stuff and Jesse-mayhem that has gone on recently which will hopefully cheer me up and not make me seem like such a sad kid. But first.

Let me preface it this way. Here is what is not fun: having panic attacks for no good reason, leaving your friends downstairs to go curl into the fetal position and cry, hoping vaguely for someone to come comfort you (nobody does and your heart is beating muchtoofast). Here is what is not fun: the 6am check to see if the person you are seeing is in bed with any of your housemates, since he sure isn’t in bed with you, (and, well). Here is what is not fun: your mom being very sick with another strange chronic condition and she is worried and sad and you are worried and sad and you just want to go home and make things better. Here is what is not fun: vivid nightmares every night, sore tense muscles every morning, and the feeling that everything is and has been wrong for a very long time now.

Also I am worried about this: when I moved to Chapel Hill I didn't know anyone or anything and I liked it that way. It's been five years and my mistakes are written everywhere and I sometimes think it would be good to go someplace new and start fresh. But what if I'm just fooling myself; pretending like anywhere I move to next will be any different in the end, like once half a decade goes by things won't feel stagnant and spent, like living this way won’t mean having to keep on and keep on leaving people and places in my wake like wasted empty plastic bags.

On top of everything, I’ve been sick this week with a fever-tummy-headache bug. It rains all day and my heart hurts and I’m lonely. I want to feel good about things, people. I want to feel good about things; people.

...

I am officially out of reasons not to throw myself into oncoming traffic.

Bus Blog

This morning on the bus, a dialogue:

Emily enters bus with a million pounds of crap, sits down next to tall blond Austrian dude

t-bad: You have enough stuff dere, ya?
em: Ha, ha. Yeah.
t-bad: You having good semesta at school?
em: Um, I’m not a student. I work. At the university.
t-bad: Oh! What do you do?
em: I manage a research lab. Psychology.
t-bad: Oh! Does it make you happy? You sit on the leetle couch?
em: Heh…actually I do research on memory.
t-bad: On what?
em: Memory.
t-bad: On what?
em: Mem…ha, ha.
t-bad: So you work with the leetle rats?
em: Um, no. With people.
t-bad: You know how it is easier to remember some things, like… the ice cream flavors? but harder to remember people’s names? You know?
em: Yeah.
t-bad: You should do experiment…with different ice cream flavors. And different kinds of potatoes! You know? The little…red potatoes and the big white ones?
em: Oh yeah. That…would be interesting.
t-bad: Ah, I missed my stop.
em: Oops.

Today at work I noticed that the green light that the copier gives off is exactly the color of something that would cause one to mutate or develop superpowers. My right hand is constantly exposed to that green light. And so it is only a matter of time before I develop the ability to duplicate things just by poking them with my index finger. (Logic.) This would prove handy in replicating many things (twenty dollar bills, AA batteries, socks) but I’d have to wear a protective glove at times, for certain. Just imagine…I’d be absently petting Binx and wham! a house full of tiny black kitties. Jess’ sheets would never be clean again. Oooh…but at the movies I could eat popcorn forever and the bag would NEVER BE EMPTY.

Okay, best superpower ever.

Holly on the half shell

Holly wore a Ninja Turtle costume to Fuse last night.



I love her.

fiery death and Alice Cooper’s sinewy thighs

Dave was telling me a story this morning about a friend of his who got set on fire via Molotov cocktail during a fight (a change of pace from our current topic of the week, Bugs: eating them; big creepy ones) and I suddenly had the strangest wave of déjà vu. Did someone get set on fire recently? Was I talking about setting people on fire with someone? Rachael Ray? Were we going to set Rachael Ray on fire? Did she set herself on fire? This is going to bother me all day.

I’m curious about the guy on the bus every morning with the long wet hair who is always writing furiously in his Moleskine. Is he crazy, brilliant, pretentious? What the heck is he writing about? Is he taking careful study of everyone on the bus? Or perhaps writing down his detailed Alice Cooper fantasies? Mysteries.

Oh and really, there are few things quite as bothersome as waking up to find an angry e-mail written to you in Spanish from your ex. Okay, yes, I’m sorry I didn’t make it to see your band play last night. But I had other plans and besides, maybe I’m not ready to see you yet. Maybe I’m not ready to see you yet. Quizás no estoy listo verle.

It is a tiresome life I lead.

and then

In between all the nightmares I had last night there was one funny dream mixed in. I was trying to decide on what to be for Halloween and had narrowed it down to either a pixel or Helvetica.

Both remind me of how I used to sit in eighth grade algebra and stare intently at some symbol in the textbook, trying to merge myself into it. IF I FOCUS ALL OF MY MENTAL ENERGY ON THIS BETA I WILL SHRINK SO TINY SMALL INTO AN INK DOT AND THEN I CAN SLEEP FOREVER AND BE TINYSMALL AND NO ONE WILL EVER BOTHER ME

Those who know me well may recognize this sort of thinking from a time not too long ago. Ah, me! But all those people are gone.

Today during my lunch break I lay down under a sugar maple and thought about home.

when I was a child things being hurt made me sorry for them

(but it seemed the way men and women did and we had not made the world.)

My throat feels bee-stung. I’m starting to feel again like I should leave this place.

I also feel as if I could cry but I think instead I will make a list, read for a while, sleep if I can (I can’t), then go to work and do simple calm things.

Don’t take everything so personally, Emily.

Okay, okay.

copy room haiku

Two hundred copies
Double sided black and white
So very boring

I have a question
It’s: what the hell is toner?
What the hell is it?

The copy machine
Hates me. It knows I’m coming.
It will jam again.

Stupid copier
Quit eating all my papers
I will kick you hard

Today I am writing haiku in my head whilst doing tedious tasks.
Gotta put that English degree to good use. : (

Party at the House of Awesome tonight! Get pumped!

hangover update.

So I got in about two hours worth of work in before resigning myself to the office toilet for some quality heaving. I finally gave up and went home. (And really, I was and continue to be very put out by all this…I had one beer, one admittedly potent gin and tonic, and five sips of an LIT. I blame the bartender. I blame the “beer before liquor” rule. I blame twenty-one years of relative sobriety.) On the walk back to Carrboro, some idiot drove past and made kissy noises at me. Pity he hadn’t been driving a bit slower; I could have thrown up in his car.

I was pleased to find a sleepy Neil on the couch when I got home. Among his many other fine qualities, Neil is an exceptional generator of comforting body heat and cuteness. A few hours of napping and a lot of water later and I was pretty much back to normal. But poor little Jess is still a sickly, starving thing, and Holly and I did our best to ease her suffering with the healing powers of Star Trek, Wayne’s World, and Wendy’s. A strange man who turned out to be my dad showed up at the door while we were watching House to report that my car-beast is functional once more. (Felicidades!) So today was, at the last, a good day. Bed!

oh nos.

It is a terrible thing when you drag yourself into the shower in the morning because you think you smell like a Fuse-sicle, only to later discover that it is the house, not you, that smells like cigarettes. Cigarettes! Why must you make me so itchy-hurty-swollen? I feel like-a the poopoo. Last night was fun though.

First, a word about the weekend:

I think I’m getting to the point where I find Lincolnton quaint and adorable rather than stifling and vaguely depressing. And really, nothing is cuter or more representative of small-town kitsch than the Apple Festival. The fam and I made our rounds at the festival and then the lot of us went out to dinner at Fox’s, which has the best seafood ever. Ever. I found out the secret to why their baked potatoes are so damn tasty: they boil them in salt water a little before putting them in the oven. Genius! I was reminded of how when we were kids my dad would always order the seafood platter and give mom his deviled crab (her favorite). I used to think that this was the most romantic thing ever. I guess that I now think the most romantic thing ever would be having “International Small Arms Traffic Blues” sung to me, but what do I know about how the world works? Nothing, nothing.

Oh god, today. My only consolation is that eventually I will get to go home, eat a baked potato, take a nap, and go to Bryan & Andy’s to watch movies.

P.S. Holly: your head scratches so good make-a grown man cry.

homeward bound

Last night I woke up from a dream I was having, (violently bludgeoning a room full of people with one of those hinged closet doors from the south campus dorms, but that’s neither here nor there) grabbed a notebook and wrote this down:

Remember to unlock the car tomorrow. Remember to buy peanut butter. Remember to call everyone who needs calling. Remember to remove summer skirts. At the last of it, send out the following psychic message: Please don’t let me down. Please don’t let me down. Please don’t let me down.

I am going home today to see my family. The Lincoln County Apple Festival is this weekend, so hurry and get in all your requests for apples, apple tarts, apple pies, apple cider, apple butter, and apples covered in candy, caramel, and/or nuts.

earth is soft and it yields to pressure

Tonight Bryan and I were driving into Chapel Hill to get some dinner and he begins telling me about this guy that comes into VisArt (his current place o’ employment) whom everyone calls “The Masturbator.” As that moniker might imply, this dude comes into VisArt with the sole intent of hanging out in the porn section with his hands down his pants. Bryan says that occasionally this guy will surface, hand still securely down his drawers, stare at one of the female employees for a bit, and then retreat again into the porn room. The world is so full of strange people; I shall never be bored.

Bought a bunch of books today at the used bookstore downtown, including some old Faulkner, Graham Greene, and a book of Vonnegut essays that I had never seen before and which I am pretty excited about. Certain people who owe me thirty dollars better be glad that I was occupied in sharing an umbrella with a very dapper Will Walter coming home from the comic book store and that I didn’t have a free hand to ROB and KILL them.

Starting with my next paycheck I think I’m going to begin setting aside cash for travel adventures, the first of which will be a trip to Korea to see Cassidy-my-love. A bit more should be kept for later when I decide to escape the country for a while.

I have big plans involving a down comforter and rain on a tin roof, so goodnight.

cat post

1. Binx is a ghost

























2. And this is pretty much the best thing I've ever seen.

b is for blathering

So recently I’ve been helping design a study based loosely on Bar & Aminoff’s work concerning the cortical processing of contextual associations. Basically, we are going to try to test the idea that there are different neural mechanisms activated by visual cues that represent certain contexts (like a barn, a cow, and a haystack to represent a farm) and by those visual cues that represent certain categories (drinks, toys, shoes), but which are unrelated to any unifying context in particular. Anyhow. I was searching on the Microsoft website for photo clip art of toys and I found this beauty:

What the crap.

So I quit the cult in a fairly amusing manner and after that my weekend just kept on getting better. Nothing like free will to make your bed comfy and your food taste good. My car broke down and I continue to be lousy with ex-boyfriends (I mean that in the “covered with, as one might be covered in lice” sense, not in the “terrible with” sense) but these things are vaguely hilarious and I’m having a great time.

It’s almost autumn. I’m knitting ugly yellow legwarmers. People kept winking at me today, what’s up with that?

I’m spent.

the Legacy Center is a cult and I am miserable, part two

I forgot to mention that at the end of each session we have to close our eyes and listen intently to Tim McGraw's "Live Like You Were Dying."

I HAVE BEEN TO HELL AND THE COFFEE IS TERRIBLE.

the Legacy Center is a cult and I am miserable, part one

Okay. Okay. Here is my dilemma: I hate the self-help cult. It is hell on earth. On the first day of the seminar, the lead cult robot (who looks like Dick Cheney) made me so anxious that I actually felt physically ill. I haven’t learned anything. Every single concept is a watered down version of something you could find in a philosophy text or a social psychology class. It is inane. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that the point of the Cheney-bot being such an evil tyrant on Day One was to promote the post hoc fallacy…after any period of distress you are going to later feel a period of (comparative) upswing or satisfaction, right? So if I go back to the cult and things feel comparatively better just because they aren’t as shitty-awful as yesterday, I’m supposed to mistake that for personal growth and improvement, aren’t I? It’s like boot camp. Fuck that noise.

Oh, and yesterday? Cheney-bot taught us that everything is our fault. (Intended point: feeling like a victim isn’t healthy and taking responsibility for one’s own life is important.) His version, however, included the idea that depression (we’re talking the clinical condition, folks) is a choice. I was livid. I am dealing with truly stupid people here. The worst thing is that I know exactly what they are trying to say and trying to teach us, but they are fucking it up. Everything is scripted. If someone tries to introduce a complexity into the equation, Cheney-bot gets pissy and shuts them down. One of the robots who sits at the back of the room has a habit of constantly, constantly shaking his head in disagreement anytime anybody speaks unless the person is repeating the exact jargon the Cheney-bot has been feeding us. Fuck that.

I am twenty-two. I have an amazing family. I love my housemates and my friends. I have a great job. I have a million things to look forward to. My problems aren’t the end of the world; they’re part of my life. I get that now. I am wasting my time and money on this asinine program.

Back to my dilemma: do I quit the cult today and lose $500, or do I suffer through 30 more hours of this bullshit in the next four days and then ask for my money back? I’m screwed either way.

Thanks for nothing, Legacy Center.

ugh.

Well that was perfectly dreadful.

Prologue

My sculptor friend whom I talk with in the mornings was not on the bus to-day. (I hope he wasn’t late for work.) So instead I sat by myself quietly and thought about jellyfish; later an elfin man in a suit got on the bus and we made shy eyes at each other. We may be a little bit in love, which is completely understandable as he had black hair and eyes and I am wearing perfectly remarkable shoes.

It is 9:00 and so I have to start work now.

social ineptitude and spores again

Sorry, Random Guy. I’m awkward. Those were some awesome mushrooms, though!

I’ve begun to notice that people oftentimes mistake the perma-smirk on my face for me smiling at them. This is usually okay. But I’m also prone to staring lovingly at squirrels/birds/trees/fungus, etc. which can apparently lead to trouble.

I have no control over my facial expressions.

Therapy Cult tomorrow. Here’s hoping they can fix my idiot life.