Tome of Broken Thoughts

A Beautiful Anniversary

2009-05-28T12:46:00.002-04:00

So yesterday was my one year anniversary and I'm still smiling from it. It wasn't nearly as fancy or as well planned out as our six-month anniversary, but it was still a night with Chris, so I was so happy.

For our six-month anniversary, we had dinner at the fanciest, most expensive steakhouse in town, then went to see Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, then spent the night together. For our one year anniversary, we had dinner at Boston Pizza, then went for coffee at Tim Horton's, then he dropped me off at my grandma's and went home at the end of the night. It's kind of sad, in a way. Not because I'm someone who demands expensive things all the time, but because it would have been nice to have had things planned out. Like I said, I'm still very happy I got almost a whole night with Chris all to myself. That never happens anymore.

At first, it was rough. We've been fighting a lot lately and I wasn't really sure how last night was going to go. We exchanged gifts in the truck (he got to drive the truck without one of his parents tagging along! Yay!) and he was very happy with his season one of Supernatural on DVD and his new book Mr. T versus Chuck Norris. I felt bad, because he always gives me such beautiful and romantic gifts, and I always give him things that he likes, but that are thoroughly unromantic. He gave me a beautiful unicorn jewelry box. It's a round shape with a rearing unicorn standing on the top and it has a Celtic design. It's absolutely gorgeous. He also gave me cast iron antique horse bookends, which are also beautiful, but extremely heavy. I could barely lift them. I love my gifts so much! Anything would have made me happy if it came from Chris, but these are exceptionally wonderful. I can't stop staring at my unicorn jewelry box on my dresser and smiling.

We had no idea where we were going, because neither of us know Toronto very well (yet I've been living here for nearly a year now... go figure) and we ended up driving aimlessly for a long time. Chris hates driving on highways and I quickly learned that driving on the highway with him is a nightmare and to avoid it at all costs. He's not comfortable driving that fast and he gets flustered and nervous and misses all his exits, then snaps at whoever's in the car with him when they try to help, which happened to be me last night. We had a map with us and he kept telling me to read the map for him and tell him where to go, but he knows that I can't read maps very well. I tried my best to read it and help him, but I kept misreading things and getting confused and making mistakes and he got mad at me for it. Finally, I stopped trying to read the map for him. Every time I tried, I got snapped at and I just felt stupid and embarrassed, so I gave up. I handed the map to him instead, then he got mad at me for that and snapped at me that he couldn't read the map while he was driving.

We got to Boston Pizza in damp spirits, but cheered up over dinner. We were both starving and hadn't eaten all day so we completely cleaned up everything we ordered between the two of us, including dessert, which was delicious. Our waiter was an idiot, though. After our meal, he left us waiting there for fourty minutes for the bill, then he came up to us at almost ten o'clock, telling us we needed to leave because they were closing and asked us if we wanted the bill. I snapped at him that that's what we'd been waiting for for the last fourty minutes and he apologized, saying that he thought we were just "hanging out". Wouldn't we have ordered coffee or something if we were just "hanging out"? Poor Chris felt awful, because he accidentally left one less twenty dollar bill than he should have and the waiter had to come chasing us in the parking lot for the money, but I assured him the waiter knew that he had just miscounted. Most people who don't want to pay for their meals skip out on them completely, rather than just leaving less. That seemed to make him feel better.

After dinner, he asked me what I wanted to do. I told him we could see a movie, but that I wanted to just sit and talk with him somewhere because it's been months since we've been able to just sit and talk face to face. He seemed like he really wanted to see a movie, though, so I said we could see a movie, but then he got mad again, saying that I should just tell him what I wanted to do and when I explained to him that I just didn't want him spending a lot more money on me that night, so talking over coffee would be better than seeing a movie, but that I thought he wanted to see a movie, which is why I said to see a movie, he snapped at me that driving the truck around aimlessly trying to decide what to do was costing him a lot of money. He is right about that. I always forget that, because I don't drive. I am concerned about him spending a lot of money, because I know he needs it for school, so I always try to look for things that cost the least amount of money for us to do, but I don't think about how much money it's costing him to drive the car around while I think of something less expensive to do. I apologized and told him he's right, but that I forget about that a lot because I don't drive.

We ended up stopping at Tim Horton's for coffee, but that was rough, too. We mostly bickered and argued and I got fed up and said all we do is fight now and he got mad and told me that all I do is focus on the bad stuff. I hate it when he says that to me. It really hurts. I'm still trying to figure out if it hurts because it's true and I don't want to admit it, or if it hurts because it's not true and it's painful to know that he thinks that. In any case, it still hurts. I just kind of fell silent and didn't say much else. I talked a bit about how I feel like left out with my friends because they're all old enough to drink and go to casinos and gamble and I'm not, and even if I was, I'm uncomfortable with being around that stuff, anyway. It never used to be a problem to hang out with them in high school, because none of my friends really did that stuff and they enjoyed just being with me. Now, they usually want to go to bars or casinos, occasionally a club or two and when I ask them if they could do something that I could be included in (which I don't do very often, because I feel bad for doing it), they say sure but then make a big deal about how I'm inconveniencing them and how they'd rather be drinking and partying than hanging out with me. It really sucks. I don't know, I don't think it's a bad thing to have my morals. I'm happy living by them. I don't think I should be made to feel bad for having them. Someone told me once that I let my whole life be controlled by fear, and since then, I can't get that out of my head. I know it's not completely true, maybe in some respects, but that's not the full picture. I'm happy with the way I am. Why do I need to be made to feel bad about it?

Anyway, I'm going off on a tangent. We got back to my grandma's house and things immediately went from rocky to wonderful. My whole family was in bed and Chris said he could stay for a while, so I turned on the TV and we watched Babar, because there was nothing else on. It was kind of tense, but I don't even know how this happened; one minute, we were sitting apart from each other on the couch, looking moodily at each other and the next minute, we were in each other's arms, sobbing and telling each other how sorry we were for everything and how much we love each other. It was so beautiful. We've recently been going through a really hard time. I'm not going to go into the details, but about a week or so ago, we got into the most horrible fight and I was so hurt and furious that I took everything that he ever gave me and everything that reminded me of him and put it away because I couldn't stand to look at any of it. Since then, the relationship's been extremely strained, but last night was such a release. We needed to see each other face to face. I needed to know by looking into his eyes that he was truly sorry and that he really did love me. He needed to know by looking into my eyes how badly he hurt me and how much I still loved him. We finally got that and we just held each other and cried for an hour, but it was a good cry. It was a release cry; like we were getting rid of all the bad stuff so that we could start over fresh and experience good times again. It felt so good to be held after going through all of that alone. I know that didn't magically make all our problems disappear, and I also know that I'm not going to be able to fully trust and forgive him for a long time, but last night was the breaking of the wall between us. It couldn't have happened on a better night than our one-year anniversary.

By one in the morning, Chris said he had to go because he needed to work the next day and he told his parents he'd leave around midnight, so I walked him to the door. We didn't stop kissing goodnight for fifteen minutes and he actually picked me up and was half-way to the truck with me, about to take me back with him when he remembered how angry my grandparents would be with him for kidnapping me and he reluctantly put me back down. I was so sad; I wanted to go with him, and of course I sat up, worrying about him like I always do until he texted me, saying he got home safe.

Our one year anniversary turned into the brand new start we both needed.

It's Been A While

2009-05-16T22:48:00.003-04:00

Sorry it's been a while since I last posted. I suppose it's not a terribly long hiatus, but anyway, here I am again. Not sure how long this post is going to be, but we'll see what happens.

So the situation with Guelph and Manny and Shannon hasn't changed since my last blog entry. Manny came here once or twice to yell at me, and I called Shannon once to ask her to pay my Internet bill, reminding her that this school year isn't finished yet, and she only said she'd stop paying for me after the school year ended, so I got my Internet bill paid. Other than that, I haven't talked to them at all. I've been talking to my brother, Andrew, regularly. He's kind of annoying, but he's not really involved in the Guelph issue, so there's no point in cutting off contact with him when he has nothing to do with the conflict.

It looks like my best option is living in Bolton with Alex right now. She talked to her mom and according to her the conversation went (very roughly) like this:

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ALEX. So Mum, how would you feel about a third person living with us?

ALEX'S MOM. What? No! ... wait, who?

ALEX. Ashleigh. Her parents have pretty much kicked her out because she wants to move to a school where she'll be happier. Now she's trying to make enough money to go there on her own, but it's tough and she has nowhere to live this summer. It's just a bad situation for her, all around.

ALEX'S MOM. Ummm... I'll have to think about it.

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Apparently, Alex says that this is a good sign. She thinks her mom is okay with it after hearing about my situation, but she needs to get the okay from their landlord. Last I heard, her mom was kind of seeing, but not quite officially dating the landlord... I think... (sorry if that's inaccurate, Alex. Feel free to correct me in your comment), so I think that might help my situation, but I don't want to get too smug or confident just yet. I really hope it works out. Along with getting to see Alex a lot more, I'll be able to see Chris a lot more, too. His mom works in Bolton, and he drives her back and forth from there a lot. Alex's house is also within walking distance to a Tim Horton's and a Subway, so I can get jobs there. I really hope I can live with you this summer, Alex! I'll even help you clean your room! REALLY clean it, like organize everything and alphabetize your book and CD collections! Yay! Cleanliness and organization!

I still need to email Guelph and ask them if their June 1st deadline for transcripts has an exception for transferring York students this year. My exams don't end until June 2nd because of the strike and my marks don't get put onto my transcript until ten days after my final examination. This is completely beyond my control, and 0% my fault and 100% York's and CUPE 3903's fault, so I hope Guelph makes an allowance for my case. I've also been calling STA with no answer, which is extremely aggravating. I've called four times in the last two days and not once has anyone picked up the damn phone. I even redirect myself to Student Services, but they won't pick up, either. I left a message and hopefully someone with a brain will get it and know what to do about it when school starts again on Monday. It should not be this difficult to get a transcript sent somewhere. I asked Andrew if he'd go to the Student Services office and ask about it for me, but he wouldn't, because he's lazy. I'll ask Chris the next day he has off work.

So I know I'm going to sound like a geek, but that's okay, I don't mind. I've started drawing webcomics on Photoshop and The Sims 3 has just released three great new interactive teasers. All of these advertisements, promotional videos and activities are just getting me more and more anxious for the release date (JUNE 2ND in Canada, whooo!). The teasers are SimSocial, Sim Friend and SimsSidekick. SimSocial is basically a mini-version of The Sims 3 you can play online. I wouldn't really call it a demo, because it's not really the actual game and is much less in-depth than the real thing, but it serves to show people how the game generally functions. It's pretty sweet. I only stopped playing it today to go out to dinner with Chris. You can play it as a Facebook application or on The Sims 3 website, but I've been having problems playing the game on The Sims 3 website, so I've been playing it on Facebook. Sim Friend is pretty cool, too. You pick a Sim from a selection and from then on, you become their friend. That friend will send you emails, asking you for advice in order to help advance their careers, love lives and general happiness. If you give them good advice, they'll be more successful in their lives and win achievements and gain trust in you. You can go online to see all of their success/failures and to look at how well you're helping to manage their lives. If you give them bad advice, they'll be miserable and if you consistently give them bad advice, they'll quit being your friend altogether. My friend is Selma. She just got abducted by aliens outside a nightclub and I told her to go see a doctor to look at the mysterious lump behind her ear, haha! Oh, Sims, how I love thee! SimsSidekicks is a web application that lets you browse the Internet with one of the Sims in The Sims 3 as your buddy. They basically just hang out in the top left corner of your screen and do different animations depending on their personalities and what site you go to. Apparently, Firefox is supposed to be releasing a plugin for SimsSidekick soon so you can go to any website you want with your SimsSidekick and you don't need to use the separate browser underneath your Sim to browse the Internet with them. You can just use your regular Firefox browser.

So going back to the webcomics; I know I've probably said before that I'm not really into webcomics, but I do like to give new artsy things a try. My friend, Maggie (I mostly call her Mags) has a webcomic called Lord Knows. I was having a three-way chat with her and Alex on Skype a little while ago and Alex suggested that Maggie have guest strips on her website. She thought it was a great idea, so both Alex and I volunteered. I did a very poor drawing on Photoshop (I don't have a tablet and my scanner's a piece of shit so I couldn't draw it by hand and scan it into the computer to colour) and gave it to Mags, who loved it for some reason. So I drew another guest strip for her and she loved that one even more. She says I have a knack for webcomics, and I figured since they're fun to do, I'd start some of my own. I don't think I'll post mine online, though. I really don't want to stray too far away from writing, but webcomics really are fun to do. I just finished my first one of my own, but I want Alex and Mags' opinion on it. Unfortunately, they're spending the weekend camping in Marilyn's backyard with like a hundred million other people and lots of booze. Not really my thing. I love camping, but I don't like strangers or being around alcohol and I ESPECIALLY don't like those things together. I was going to go, anyway. Marilyn invited Chris and me, but after I told her to go to Hell and rot there, I uninvited myself. Chris said he wouldn't go if I didn't and assured me he was fine with not going and that he'd probably be busy working, anyway. I have to wait for Alex and Mags to get back tomorrow to get a critique on my first comic strip of my own. In the meantime, I'm taking advantage of Alex's absence to catch up to her level in Restaurant City, mwhahahahaha!!!!

Today was a lovely day. I had dinner with Chris at the Pickle Barrel at Yorkdale today and then we browsed around Indigo for a bit. I only got about three hours with him, maximum, but it was still so nice to see him and he made a really big effort to get enough time off to come visit me since he knows I've been going through a really hard time essentially alone. Overall, it was a nice dinner, but just a note to any vegetarians who don't like zucchini or eggplant, don't eat at the Pickle Barrel. Everything vegetarian (which isn't a lot to begin with) has zucchini and/or eggplant in it. I had to order a pasta and specifically request that they don't put any zucchini in it. I had a really good pomegranate smoothie, though. I haven't been able to afford a smoothie in months. It was nice to be taken out to dinner, as bad as I feel for making Chris pay. Hopefully, his anniversary gifts will make up for it, but I won't say what they are in case he reads this before he gets his gifts on our anniversary. I think I'm going to have to make him another card and wrapping paper, unfortunately, but he seemed to love it the last time. He even insisted on keeping the wrapping paper I made, haha!

Lately, I've been feeling really neglected by him, but I know it's not his fault. His stupid, whiny, childish family demands all of his attention all the time and his time on the computer is limited, plus with all the work he has to do he just doesn't have any time for me. That's why seeing him tonight was so important to me. It's just hard going from getting texts from him every fifteen minutes and hours on the computer with him every night to being lucky if I get three texts a day and maybe an hour on the computer with him every other day or so... When he's able to, he spends all his time with me, he just isn't able to most of the time right now. He says his dad is looking into buying a car for him and his sister and since it's not likely that Danielle's ever going to get her license, he'll have it pretty much to himself so I'm hoping that means we'll get to see each other more and have an anniversary to ourselves without parental chauffeurs.

Anyway, I think I'm done this post.

See ya!

Newly Orphaned

2009-05-08T20:49:00.002-04:00

Okay, I'm no longer having panic attacks and fits of uncontrollable hysterics over this, so I think I can write about it.

My parents found out about Guelph today.

Apparently, they got a letter in the mail, saying I'd applied. I knew the letter was going to get to my house at some point soon, but I was hoping it would hold off until after Mother's Day so I wouldn't upset her for Mother's Day.

Anyway, instead of calling me right away to find out what was going on and talk to me directly about it, my mom started posting mean and nasty things about me all over Facebook where all our friends could see it. I didn't even know about it until I went online to look at my Facebook notifications. When I saw it, I just told her to please stop posting personal stuff about us on Facebook where everyone can see and she basically just kept coming back with things like "i cn say wut i feel. ur the 1 bein imatoore!!!!!!" For the record, she actually types this way. I'm not making exaggerations to make her seem dumber than she really is. That's actually the way she is.

I just kept repeating to her to stop posting things about me on Facebook and she kept doing it. Then she called me, screaming and cussing at me. I never once raised my voice to her during that conversation and repeatedly asked her to speak calmly to me but she just kept screaming and swearing. She said that from now on, she and my dad refuse to ever pay a penny on me again. I can buy my own clothes, food, and pay for my own cell phone bill, tuition and books, and that they won't ever bail me out for anything, so don't bother asking them. She also told me that she was going to personally write a letter to the OSAP office and make sure they never give me any money to pay for school by telling them how much money my dad makes and that they were still supporting me. Essentially, she's trying to cripple me so I'll come crawling back under her complete control. That's not going to happen. I'd rather be homeless than controlled and manipulated out of my own happiness.

She ended up hanging up on me, then posted on her public Facebook wall so everyone could see that she doesn't want me to come home for Mother's Day. I won't say this didn't hurt. It did, but if that's what she wants, fine. Now I think she's trying to take it back and ask me to come home, but she made her choice. Now she has to live with it.

She even went so far as to email Chris and bully him into changing my mind. She basically told him that if he loves me, he'll make me stay at York because he knows that I'm throwing away all my dreams for him (WHICH ISN'T TRUE! I swear, she cannot get the fact that Chris is not an integral reason for the school transfer through her thick skull!) She lost any rights she had as my mother the second she tried to use the man I love against me. I will NEVER stand there and let him be used as a pawn! If my mother can't see that he is a human being deserving of only love and consideration for his well-being and happiness, then she's pathetic! I know better.

Chris basically just told her that he loves and supports me, no matter what decision I make.

Then Chris told me that Marilyn's started talking to him, otherwise RUDELY butting into my business, asking him what the hell was going on with me lately and why is my mom so upset with me. Newsflash: You're NOT my friend, Marilyn! My business is no longer your business as well! Keep your nose out of it, and most of all, keep Chris out of it!

None of this has been fair to him. He never asked to have all of this put on him, and never wanted to get involved in all of this directly, other than to comfort me personally through it. Now, both Shannon (from this point on, I'm not acknowledging her as my mother) and Marilyn have dragged him into this and made him the issue, when none of this has anything to do with him.

I was mad at Marilyn for being so rude to me about her concerns and expecting me not to go in the casino and be alone in Niagara Falls. I wasn't mad at her over Chris until she made it about Chris and basically made me choose. So I did. I don't regret my choice, either.

I was mad at Shannon for not listening to my reasons why I want to go to Guelph. The whole issue is the fact that she wants me to stay at York for the program (which I can't even get into for another two fucking years), and I want to go to Guelph for the better atmosphere, because I believe I'll do better in school when I'm happy at my school. She turned York vs. Guelph into Future/Parents vs. Chris, which is very unfair and ignorant of her, because she hasn't listened to me once when I tell her truthfully there is a whole huge list of reasons why I love the school and want to go there that don't involve Chris. She turned an issue that wasn't about Chris into a choice between her and Chris! In that case, I chose Guelph over York and not necessarily Chris over her, but that's how she views it.

Everyone's making separate issues into Chris issues, which is very unfair to Chris. He hasn't done anything wrong, and he's being blamed for every decision I make. I feel so awful for him. He doesn't deserve any of this. I keep trying to shield him from it and I keep telling them to leave him alone, because he isn't the issue, but they just won't stop bringing him into everything. I just want to (temporarily and figuratively) lock him up in a word-proof, harassment-proof room until they all go away where he can't get interrogated, verbally attacked or hurt. He's being punished for loving his girlfriend and supporting her decisions and that isn't right on any level.

I've lost track of time now, but a little while ago, my dad called me to yell at me. Turns out that not only is Shannon immature, but a dirty liar, too. He started yelling at me to keep our personal business off of Facebook. WOAH! HOLD UP THERE! EXCUSE ME??? Apparently, she told him that I was posting horrible statuses about her all over Facebook and she kept trying to tell me to stop, but I wouldn't and it was breaking her poor little innocent heart. You. Fucking. Dirty. Nasty. Vindictive. Vengeful. Hateful. LIAR!!!!! I told him the evidence was plain as day and to go look on Facebook himself if he didn't believe that her whole story was the other way around. Later, I went back on Facebook to re-add Joanna as a friend, since she's trying to work things out with me civilly and therefore I still feel inclined to patch up the friendship between us, and saw that Shannon had deleted every comment between us on her statuses! Now my dad has nothing but her word against mine, and he's never believed my word over hers. Never. I know she's going to twist everything and tell him that I just wouldn't keep our business off of Facebook and that I humiliated and embarrassed her in front of everyone; basically, every rotten thing she did to me! She always does that! She twists the truth to make her seem like the innocent victim when she's really the one making everyone else around her miserable, just like her own crazy mother! I just hope my dad has enough sense to look at her statuses, compare them to mine and see for himself that all of hers say something mean about me and my statuses don't mention any of this at all, but he won't. He'll just swallow any bullshit story she crams down his throat.

Now my cousin's talking to me on MSN. Shannon called my Aunt Michelle in hysterics and Devynn heard all about it so of course she hopped online to talk to me about it. I know she's trying to help, but she isn't going to make me change my mind on this. I'm not going back home, not while I'm constricted by her money and her rules. I know it's her house and the people in it have to obey her rules, but I also have the choice to decline living there if I don't like the conditions I'm bound to. I don't know where I'll stay during the summer, though. It will break my heart if I have to stay here and deal with an isolated and lonely summer, just like I had to deal with an isolated and lonely year.

I don't think OSAP can deny me money if they still think I'm in enough need of it, despite what Shannon writes to them. I'm not even sure if they're allowed to consider letters from pissed off mothers in their decisions if the student is eighteen or older. I don't think so...

Another bad thing on top of not being able to be home on Mother's Day is not being able to go to Chris' 20th birthday party. I'm trapped here, and that breaks my heart. The worst part is, even if I were to go home, I probably wouldn't be able to go, because his party's on Mother's Day and even if I split the day up between Shannon and Chris, Shannon would still be convinced that I'm choosing Chris over her. It's awful and heartbreaking. Why can't I be there for BOTH of them? I also had plans to see Chris' friends on Saturday, which can't happen now, and I know they're going to think I bailed out on them on purpose because I don't like them and that will make them hate me even more than they already do. Chris says he'll just tell them I'm busy with exams and that they'll understand, but I doubt it.

Awwww! Devynn and Uncle Ted are the best! I finally have two people who believe me and agree with me and want me to do what makes ME happy. Uncle Ted even told me that he's proud of me. That made me cry (good tears). That means so much to me. I don't feel like anybody's proud of me right now...

My head is pounding, I can hardly stand it; I can't seem to unclench my jaw, and I'm dizzy and nauseous. I need to end this blog here. Besides, there's nothing more to say.

The Aftermath

2009-05-08T14:59:00.002-04:00

So, while it was true that I ended my friendships with Marilyn and Joanna last night, I got an email from Joanna today, asking if we could work things out. At first, I was just going to flare up again and rudely blow her off, but then I remembered that Marilyn was the nasty bitch who insulted me and verbally attacked me on Facebook with no provocation, not Joanna, so I decided to write back to her and be calm about everything, since she was doing as much for me.

I wish I could just post both the conversation Marilyn and I had and the conversation Joanna and I had word-for-word right here on my blog. It would save a lot of typing and reiterating of what happened, but seeing as how I just recently explained to Alex that I didn't think it was right of her to quote me without my knowledge or permission, I'd be a hypocrite if I did the same thing to Joanna and Marilyn, as much as I hate Marilyn. That probably wouldn't please Alex at all, and I don't need to lose another friend. They were few and far between before, now they're severely dwindling into nothing.

I guess I'm just going to have to settle for reiterations. I'll use some direct phrases, but I won't reveal what's directly from them and I will also try to be as unbiased as possible in explaining the conversations. I'll quote myself, though. I'm not ashamed of anything I wrote.

I'm pretty sure I've already explained the whole situation with Joanna's birthday party and me bringing Chris. I know I probably made it seem like I just wanted an excuse to spend a night in Niagara Falls with Chris in my earlier posts, but you must remember that I had been fueling bitter hurt and resentment towards Marilyn and Joanna for a long time over them ignoring me and leaving me out of important outings. Of course getting a night together is nice, but the real reason I wanted to bring Chris is because I knew I'd be left alone in the hotel room while everyone else went to the casino and I wanted to bring someone with me who I could spend time with during those hours. Marilyn assumed I just used Joanna's birthday as an excuse to have sex with him (at least that's what she implied). I don't know why she would jump to a conclusion like that about someone like me or about someone like Chris.

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ASHLEIGH. 1. Is Chris permitted to attend the May 24 weekend at your place? If so, are there any particular rules about men and women sharing tents? It doesn't matter to either of us either way. I just wanted to be clear on it.

2. Are you planning on bringing Dylan to Jo's birthday in Niagara Falls? I know she said we could bring our boyfriends if we wanted and I asked Chris. He doesn't know if his dad's birthday will interfere and I'm not sure whether my cousin's birthday will interfere, but if it works out, we're both going. Also, the same question as your May 24 weekend applies. What's the situation with men and women sharing rooms? Again, not a huge deal, but it'd be nice to stay with Chris. I was just wondering if you knew what Jo's rules were.

MARILYN. (rough but accurate paraphrase) I already invited him to May 24. I don't care about tent arrangements. It's fine if you guys share. No, I haven't invited Dylan to Jo's party and you should ask her about sleeping arrangements.

ASHLEIGH. Oh, it's been a while since you sent out the invites, so I forgot who you invited and who you didn't. Sorry. :P

Okay, I will. I hope she doesn't get all weirded out by it. Well, if the only reason you're not bringing Dylan is because no one else is bringing their boyfriends, I'm bringing Chris if he can go, so you should invite him along if you want him to come. :)

So I heard you decided to go to Georgian after turning down... Canadore, is it? Congratulations. Wish someone would have told me about it, though.

MARILYN. I'm not inviting Dylan because it's Jo's birthday and I want to spend it with her and my friends. He's busy that weekend, anyway. I didn't tell anyone about Georgian. Just posted it on Facebook.

(I admittedly got a little snippy here, but I think keeping my answer short was the best way to go to avoid venting anger).

ASHLEIGH. Well, I never get to see Chris so I'm taking him.

MARILYN. That's not a good reason. It's Jo's birthday. I understand you don't see him much, but using Joanna's birthday as an excuse to spend a night with him is really pathetic. No one else is bringing their boyfriends because we know it's Jo's birthday, and you know Jo would never say to us we couldn't, but for once actually think about your friend for and not Chris.

(and here's me getting angry, but attempting to be as diplomatic as possible)

ASHLEIGH. Well, even you can admit that neither you or Jo have been very nice to me the last few months. You've both ignored me completely for the past two months, if not longer and then your idea of "including" me again is to invite me on a trip where I'll be stuck in a hotel room by myself all night long because I can't get into the casino? Um, thanks but no thanks. I want to celebrate Jo's birthday with the rest of you, but I don't want to be left behind all alone all night. I'm bringing Chris so that I'll be able to have SOME fun and go out and do something while you guys leave me out all night, and you know what?

If Jo lets the fact that I brought my boyfriend along so that I won't be lonely and left out the five or more hours you guys will be drinking and gambling ruin her whole birthday, then it's because she LET it ruin her birthday.

(and here's where Marilyn lost the right to be my friend)

MARILYN. Excuse me?! You haven't exactly talked to us or tried to communicate with us either. It's a two way street. If you didn't like the casino idea, why didn't you talk to Jo instead of making your own plans around her birthday? We won't be in the casino all night. Niagara Falls has a LOT of stuff to do. Why don't you for once think and communicate instead of assuming what is a lot of bullshit. There would be other people, someone would have hung out with you.

Also, it's not just the birthday. You are constantly making plans with Chris, but when was the last time you tried calling us or made plans with us? When we ask you, you say you're hanging with Chris, so we have just given up. If you'd rather hang out with him than us, that's your choice, but don't go using Jo's birthday trip as a cover up for a night with him. If you'd rather be with him, go to a hotel with him somewhere else. Everyone else got the hint not to bring their boyfriends, but you are obviously clueless to social cues.

(and here's where I gave up being diplomatic and informed her she can go to hell)

ASHLEIGH. You know what? If you want me to choose between you and Chris, that's an easy choice. Chris has been there for me every single time I needed him throughout this awful year. You never have. It's pretty simple to me.

So don't bother talking to me or inviting me to any more of your events. You and Jo can be bestest buds again without me as a hindrance and a third wheel, because that's the way it's always been, hasn't it?

Chris and I will go and have a lovely time on our own, thank you very much.

Again, most of Marilyn's speech is paraphrased but I did do my best not to let my own emotions skew what was originally being said. The parts that were direct were not put into quotes, because I've already explained that I think quoting someone without their permission or knowledge is wrong.

----------

So that's that conversation. The next morning, I woke up and checked my email and Jo wrote to me. Again, I won't quote her, but she basically said that she wants to try to work things out and that she's sorry if she hurt me by ignoring me and excluding me. She never meant to, and that she's been hurting, too. I emailed her back with this:

Jo,

It's true I took you both off my Facebook last night. I was very angry. I probably shouldn't have taken you off my Facebook without talking to you first, though and I'm sorry for that, seeing as how Marilyn was the one who was so blatantly rude to me, not you. As for Marilyn, she said some really hurtful and mean things to me last night and to be quite honest, I don't really want to try to continue to have a relationship with her after that, which is unfortunate, because I know that's going to make it hard for the rest of us to hang out as a group. I would still be fine with going to group outtings with her, and wouldn't try to make things difficult and as much as I dislike Marilyn right now, I think she'd be mature enough not to do that, either.

She called me pathetic and implied that I was selfish for bringing Chris to your party when I knew it would bother you and that if I didn't know, then I obviously didn't clue into social cues very well. She seems to think that I only want to bring him as an excuse to stay in a hotel room with him in Niagara Falls, but that's not the reason at all. I just wanted someone to hang out with while you guys were all at the casino, so I wouldn't be left by myself in the hotel room. I wasn't planning on ignoring you on your birthday because of Chris. We both really wanted to be there for you and spend time with you, but I just didn't want to get left out while you were all at the casino and I knew Chris would want to go on the trip. I know you guys don't want him around all the time, but he really likes all of you. When you said it was up to us if we wanted to bring our boyfriends, I assumed that meant that you were fine with us bringing them, you just didn't want to pay for extra people, which is completely understandable. Niagara Falls is an expensive birthday (but a fun one)!

I know I'm younger than the rest of you and that I'm less of a partyer than all of you (not that you guys are wild and out of control, or anything. I'm just saying in comparison, I don't party as much [drinking, gambling, etc]), but that doesn't mean I should be left by myself. I know it's your birthday and that's what you want to do for your birthday and that's completely fine. I just wanted to make sure I'd have somebody there to go do something else with while I couldn't be with you, that's all. That's why I invited Chris. I know he doesn't really like gambling much, so he'd be fine with staying behind with me. I'd feel guilty asking someone else to stay behind with me, because I know everyone else wants to go to the casino.

Anyway, that was my reasoning behind inviting Chris. It wasn't to hurt you or to have an excuse to do whatever Marilyn thinks we would be doing there. I just knew there was going to be a few hours time period where I'd be alone, so I invited a guest who wanted to come along to avoid being alone for that period of time.

As for both of us being hurt by not spending time with each other, I guess we both kind of just got closer with the people it was easier to see. It was easy for you to see Marilyn, because you live so close together, and it was easy for me to see Chris because we both live in cities where public transportation is easily accessible without a car and it was easy to hop on a bus to go see each other for weekends. The thing that hurt me most was that you took the road trip without me and we were planning that together for a long time. It made me think that neither of you missed me at all and there've been times I've cried all night because I missed you guys. I don't know if that's actually the way it was, but that's how it felt to me and that felt unfair; that I should be hurting so much without you guys while neither of you remembered me. Again, I'm not saying that's actually true, just how I felt.

Anyway, I understand if I'm uninvited to Niagara Falls, because of the awkwardness between Marilyn and me. I would still like to go and so would Chris and I hope you're not as opposed to me bringing him now that you know there was no malicious or sexual intent behind it (as Marilyn seems to think). Marilyn made it seem like you were really upset by my decision to invite him, but I thought it was okay and that you would just say you'd rather not have them there if it was a problem. I went by what was posted on the event wall, since that was all the information available to me.

If you'd still rather neither of us came, then I guess that's your decision. It would disappoint me seeing as how Marilyn initiated this whole angry situation and yet I was the one left behind, and I would also feel guilty for leaving Chris behind after I invited him. I'm not trying to coerce you into doing one thing over another. I'm just being honest about how I would feel, which I think is fair considering all the misunderstandings and miscommunications that have happened over the past couple of days.

I think that's pretty much my whole side or viewpoint on the subject. I hope you email me back and at least you and I can salvage something of our friendship.

Ashleigh.

----------

She messaged me back, saying that I was never once uninvited to her birthday. As far as she's concerned, I'm her friend and she still wants me there to celebrate with her.

I'd still like to go, but I would feel guilty for going and leaving Chris behind after I already invited him to come. It's not fair to him at all. I know he was really excited to go. Besides, I don't want to go and get left by myself still, and them assigning someone to keep me occupied while they go is just going to make me feel bad for that person because he/she can't go, too and has to stay with me. It won't be any fun at all if I'm feeling guilty for making someone stay behind. I still really want Chris to go.

Besides, I might not be able to go, anyway, since a situation with my mom has rendered me penniless. That's a story for another blog entry, though.

Shortest Blog Post Ever

2009-05-07T22:23:00.000-04:00

I ended my friendships with Marilyn and Joanna today.

I feel shitty.

The End.

Leftovers

2009-05-07T10:59:00.003-04:00

Just two points to add that I didn't in my previous entry today:

I have plans to hang out with my cousin on Monday! Yay! He's going to York next year for some kind of computer degree, and he's going to be at York on Monday to register for his courses. He's going to be doing registration stuff from 9:00am to 12:00pm, so I told him if he didn't mind waiting around on his own for a half-hour, that I could meet up with him in Vari Hall at 12:30pm and take him to my next lecture with me, then when it ends at 2:30pm, we could go get a late lunch and I could show him around campus. He said that sounded great and he'd borrow his mom's cell phone to contact me in case he runs late at his registration. I told my grandma and the first thing she said is "Oh, that's so nice! You'll have a friend to hang out with next year!" Um... yeah... but no. It's Guelph or working until I get into Guelph for me.
I'm so mad at Jacquelyn again! I asked her if she could print out my assignment before she went to class this morning and sent it to her last night. She said no problem, she'd print it out for sure and bring it to NATS so I could hand it in right on time. Then just now, she calls me, saying that she's still at home working on her NATS project and she doesn't know whether she'll be able to make it to class to hand her assignment in and might have to show up later to hand it in before the final 6:30pm deadline. Um, problem: SHE HAS MY PROJECT! This is a term paper, not some rinky-dink lab report that's worth only ten marks. This project's worth nearly 20% of our final grade and she may or may not hand it in??? If she was too lazy to finish her project last night and didn't hand it in on time today, then that's her own problem and I don't really care, but if she had taken the time to finish it last night, ask me to print it out, and sent it to me, I would have made damn sure that I was there, in NATS at 2:30pm on the fucking dot to hand in her assignment, because she depended on me and placed her grade in my hands. I KNOW she has at least three hours in between classes today in which she could have finished her project in the library at school. She even asked me to bring in my laptop today so she could finish it today at school, so now I'm stuck lugging this heavy thing around all day for no reason, with no report to hand into my professor and no idea whether it will get in on time at all, and IT'S ALL HER FAULT! The professor made it very clear that any assignments handed in even a second after 6:30pm won't be accepted and will just count as a zero. I'm so mad! I swear, if this project doesn't get handed in on time, I'm going to make her regret the day she ever met me!

A Few Days' Absence.

2009-05-05T22:24:00.002-04:00

It's been a few days since I updated my blog, so I thought I'd do it tonight before I get stuck in the habit of never writing in it and leaving it completely abandoned and forgotten about for nearly two years... again.

The last couple days have been pretty uneventful, but I've been losing a lot of my precious sleep trying to finish assignments. I still have to finish my winter term paper for Thursday. Luckily, I got the long, boring and tedious part out of the way over yesterday and today, so it shouldn't take me too long to finish it up tomorrow. I still need to resend my other assignment in to my TA, though. I didn't go to her tutorial this morning, because I felt sick, but we ran into each other later today and she told me the attachment to my email didn't go through. I told her I'd resend it tonight, but since I did the project in such a hurry last night, I'm terrified that I made a citation mistake and that she'll accuse me of plagiarism and then I'll get a zero in the course and get expelled from York, which will go on my educational record, so Guelph will see it and reject me because they don't want someone who plagiarizes attending their school... yeah... I worry... A LOT! I've been crazily paranoid about being accused of plagiarism since I came to university, though. They tend to strike absolute fear into your heart over it.

Now I've returned to playing Restaurant City, which I've abandoned for a while. It's nice to be able to relax and enjoy a game I really like. I haven't been able to do that for the last little while.

----------

Okay. What you just read above was the blog entry I started two days ago, but never finished. Yeah, I got sidetracked. Sorry. Since there hasn't been much to talk about lately, I'm just going to talk about the most recent stuff.

A few days ago, I got in a fight with my dad over the phone. I called him on my walk back to my grandma's from the bus stop to ask him what my mom wanted for Mother's Day and we ended up fighting over school. This is almost word-for-word how that conversation went.

MANNY. Well, I'm concerned about your courses for next year. I don't think two days off is good for you.
ASHLEIGH. You know, I'm so fed up, I don't want to go back next year. Like, I want to stay in school, I just don't want to stay at that school. I hate it. It's been nothing but depression and misery since day one.
MANNY. Well, what the hell do you want to do, then? You want to go to Laurier so you can play house with your boyfriend!?!
ASHLEIGH. No! I want to go to Guelph.
MANNY. Why would you want to go to Guelph? It's not a good school for you! York is where you need to be to do what you want to do.
ASHLEIGH. You don't know what's good for me and York isn't where I need to be. It's just where you WANT me to be!
MANNY. You know, I used to go on and on to all my friends about how dedicated to school and education you are! Boy, have you ever changed! I'm not surprised, though. You haven't been making good choices recently.
ASHLEIGH. I know what you're alluding to and that is none of your damn business.
MANNY. It is my business! Everything you do will always be my business!
ASHLEIGH. Newsflash, Dad! I'm a grown adult. You have no say and no control over anything I do anymore. Get used to it.
MANNY. Only in the eye of the law.
ASHLEIGH. Yeah well the law's the only thing that counts in this world.
MANNY. You're all talk, but no action.
ASHLEIGH. Well, I think you'll be very surprised soon enough.
MANNY. What are you talking about?
ASHLEIGH. You'll be very surprised when you find out that all my "talk" is more than just hot air and that I'm serious about what I'm saying.
MANNY. Well, you're just going to have to find a way to go to another school on your own, then!
ASHLEIGH. I'm already applying to OSAP and planning to work my butt off this summer.
MANNY. It makes no sense. You're going to put yourself in debt so you can go to a school that isn't good for you, just so you can have some fun.
ASHLEIGH. I'm hanging up now.
*click*

Yeah. As Alex put it, it's pathetic how he assumes his way is right, just because it's his way. Asshole. If I get accepted to Guelph and can afford it, I'm cutting them out of my life. It'll be easy when I'm living in residence and not with relatives and supporting myself and my own education. I can't stand my parents anymore. I put up with their controlling bullshit my whole life, thinking that they'd let go once I turned eighteen, but they've only tightened the choke chain more and I'm done. I'm breaking free of it, and if they don't like it, well boo-fucking-hoo for them. If they wanted me in their lives, they shouldn't have constricted me so tightly. It's their own fault. I reeeeaaaaallly hope I get accepted to Guelph. I still need to call my old high school and request that they send a transcript to Guelph for me. As for my transcript from York, well who the fuck knows when my grades will be in and they decide to get up off their asses to send it to Guelph? I'll be pissed as hell if they don't, because I already paid an eight dollar fee for them to send the stupid thing and I know that if I have to ask them again, the greedy bastards will charge me more money that I don't have. I'm begging change off my grandparents to take the stupid bus to school every day. Do I look like I have another eight dollars to send by money order, which is really more like fifteen dollars because of the money order fee? Even if I sent a cheque (my chequebook just came in a few days ago and I picked it up), I still don't have eight dollars that I can spare. I am SO fucking broke.

I also got in a fight with Alex a few days ago, but it actually returned very happy results. It's not my business to post her personal problems all over the internet, but I'll just say she was going through some stuff that made her very gloomy. I tried to give her solutions to fix her problems and improve her life and she just wouldn't listen, saying that it didn't matter what she did, nothing would ever change and that no one understands her and what she's feeling... basically, just being really emo (no offense, Alex). I finally got fed up with it and lost my temper, telling her that if she wasn't willing to do anything to fix her problems and help herself, why should anyone else care to help her and to call me when she actually decided to do something with her life. At first, she was all angry with me for blowing up at her and posted a blog entry with some... erm... colourful language concerning me, but then she came back about an hour later and apologized for being... oh how did she put it? A whiny git? Anyway, it was something along those lines. Beyond being sorry for not accepting any help from me, she's decided that she's going to finish this correspondance course of hers and complete the rest of the courses she needs to get her high school, get a job, and apply to college for ecotourism. In fact, she's away at an interview for a placement agency right now! I'm so proud of her! Now, I'm just hoping that she'll be wise enough not to spend money that she needs for tuition and books. I'd suggest to her to keep spending money and school money separated in separate bank accounts. Keep money she can spend in her chequing account and money that she needs for school in her savings account, and don't ever touch the money in her savings account until she actually needs to pay for her tuition, books, and residence/rent (at least, I'm assuming that's why a lot of people have both a chequing and savings account. I've realized recently that I'm a moron when it comes to financial knowledge, but I'm learning). I'm sure that if she's motivated enough and really serious about all of this that that won't be a problem for her. It'd also be a good idea to focus on paying off any debt she has first before anything else, too.

I'm also so angry with my other friends, Marilyn and Joanna that I'm seriously at the point of telling them I want nothing more to do with them. Joanna invited me to her 20th birthday party in June. Apparently, everyone's going to go to Niagara Falls for the night to gamble/drink at the casino. There's a problem with that: I'm not 19, so I can't even get in to the casino at all, and even if I could, I don't drink and don't gamble. I got really upset and told Chris about this, saying that they must have only invited me out of obligation and were probably planning on leaving me by myself in the hotel room all night so I don't get to celebrate Jo's birthday with any of them. Chris, always giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, assured me that that probably wasn't the case and that of course they wouldn't leave me by myself and at least one person would stay and do something fun with me. I wasn't so sure, but I wanted to believe that my friends wouldn't be so mean to me and calmed down, but then the next day, Chris saw Marilyn at the book store in our village and asked her what they were planning to do about me not being able to get into the casino, and she just kind of shrugged and nonchalantly said that she guessed I'd just have to not come with them. THEY WERE GOING TO LEAVE ME ALONE IN THE HOTEL ROOM ALL FUCKING NIGHT! I hate them! Why the fuck would they even invite me if they were just going to do that to me? Cruel kicks? Well, fuck them! I'm going to take Chris with me to Niagara Falls and we're going to have a great time at Jo's party on our own, and their whole cruel plan of making me feel like shit will blow up in their faces! Chris and I have been fantasizing about a trip to Niagara Falls together for a long time, anyway, so now we'll get that chance. I'm already looking for a cheap hotel room for us. Hopefully, we can go and Chris' dad's birthday doesn't interfere. He says he'll know by this weekend for sure. After this stupid party of Jo's, I'm telling them both to go fuck themselves and never try to talk to me again. Friends don't do that to each other, and I'm sick of putting up with their bullshit after months of them ignoring me. I think I have to go to Marilyn's May 24 weekend tent party at her house, too, because I already agreed to go months ago. Chris is going, too, so it should still be fun, even if Mare and Jo treat me like shit.

Also, on Saturday, I'm going to be spending the afternoon and/or evening with Chris and his friends. This hasn't happened for a long time. The few times he's made plans with me and his friends together, it hasn't turn out well. We just have nothing in common and don't really get along. Chris says they want to get to know me, but I don't think that's true at all. They're so loud and talkative with each other, but then never talk to me at all. Bobbi's the only one who bothers to acknowledge my presence when I'm with them, and she makes an honest effort and is actually really nice, but it's obvious we don't have a lot in common, either. One time, I got so fed up with one of his friends that I asked Chris to take me home early. It's not that I dislike all of them. I dislike a few of his friends, but not all of them. There are more that I like than I dislike, I think. They don't like me, though. Chris says they do, but I don't believe him. I can feel the dislike and alienation flooding the entire room when we all get together. Someone told me once that it's just "weird and awkward for everyone when I'm there." Later, they apologized for saying that and said that it actually wasn't true, but I still remember that every time I hang out with his friends and it makes me feel so awkward and weird that I can barely make myself say two words. I have a lot of problems talking to people I don't know, especially when I have nothing in common with those people. I never get any of their jokes, or have anything to contribute to their conversations that won't make them hate me even more. It's so stressful and frustrating. I still hang out with them, anyway, because I know it makes Chris happy and I really want to try this Saturday for him, but I don't know if there's going to be a noticable difference. I'm still so scared to open my mouth around them. I turned down bowling with Mare, Jo and Alex on Saturday to go to John and to see the new Star Trek movie with Chris and his friends, but that's okay. I didn't really want to see Mare or Jo anyway and if I'm really determined, I can figure out a way to hang out with Alex sometime in the near future. I'd much rather see Chris than Mare and/or Jo any day, even if it's in a stressful situation.

Okay, change of topic! So last night, I was finishing my term project I mentioned in the part of my blog entry I never quite finished. I was planning on finishing it the night before, but I got into a fight with Chris and crying and working don't go well together. As for the fight, I think it's been tentatively resolved for now, but I know we're going to have to revisit the solution we came to at some point, because it's not exactly the best solution for him. Anyway, no more details than that will be given, only that we're okay and we always will be okay because we work through our problems like adults instead of throwing hissy fits and walking out on each other every time we have a disagreement like a couple of fourteen-year-olds. I ended up finishing it at like one last night, instead of eleven like I wanted. My cousins came over unexpectedly and distracted me for a while and then Chris and Jaquelyn were online, so I was talking to them. Then I got sidetracked by looking at hotel rates in Niagara Falls. Once I finished it and sent it to Jacquelyn to print out (my printer/scanner/photocopier's pretty much in a vegetative state... permanently), I couldn't sleep. I was thinking about the fight with Chris and what awful friends Marilyn and Jo are, and just ended up crying into my pillow with Wilfred clutched to my chest under my chin. I finally texted Chris, but he couldn't stay up with me because he needed to work at the animal clinic for his dad the next day. I needed to get up at 6:30am anyway for class. I decided not to miss this one because I've missed too many classes lately and I need good marks to get into Guelph. I did get to sleep at like 3:30am or so, but it was really fitful and I was still semi-conscious, so I still didn't really sleep. The shower this morning helped wake me up, though.

Now, I'm sitting in that class and I need to pack up, because it's ending now. I think this is a good sized blog entry anyway, so I hope that makes up for the few days' hiatus.

The Birthday Surprise Revealed, Two Trips Downtown and THE BEST WEEKEND EVER!

2009-05-03T00:01:00.003-04:00

Okay, so I am so so happy! Another great, positively glowing blog entry! Two in a row! Chris and the possibility of Guelph combined have given me so much to hope for. I feel like I did back in high school; content with my life, completely and overwhelmingly happy, and a bright and hopeful outlook for the future. I haven't felt this way since September. It makes me want to cry... happy tears, of course!

Yesterday turned out to be fantastic. It started out frustrating, because I was running late the entire day, but after I saw Chris, things looked up. In the morning, I had to go drop off my lab reports that I had spent so long doing and met up with Jacquelyn for that. She needed to hand hers in, too, but she didn't tell me until that morning that she hadn't finished the lab report and needed to stay in the library to finish it before handing it in. I was planning on getting there at 11:30am sharp, handing it in, and being back by 12:15pm. Because of Jacquelyn taking forever to finish the assignment, I ended up being a half-hour late. I was supposed to get back to my grandma's to put together my outfit, clean my room and fill out Chris' card. He was getting dropped off by his mom at Yorkdale at two, and I didn't get back to my grandma's until shortly after one, so I had to rush around, throwing things into random drawers to make my room look spotless and completely organized before trying to gather the exact outfit I wanted to wear, plus brush my teeth and fix my hair all nice.

Now, don't go thinking that I feel I have to dress up for Chris. That's not it at all. It's just that usually when I see him, I'm wearing jeans and a t-shirt with holey sneakers and my hair thrown into a ponytail (if it's long enough) at most. I feel completely beautiful when I'm with him, even in my old barn clothes, but when a special occasion comes around, I like to put a lot of effort into looking nice (minus makeup. I hate the stuff). I really wanted to make this day amazing for him and really make him feel special and like his 20th birthday was important (which it is), so I made a really big deal out of it. He's always so sweet and caring towards me and I really wanted him to know how much I appreciate it and how much I care about him, too. Plus, I also really missed him. I hadn't seen him in a long time.

Anyway, I was still filling out his card after I cleaned and got dressed when he texted me, saying he was at Yorkdale. I left as soon as I finished writing the card, but it took a few minutes, because I always write novels in his cards. When I finally got out the door, I missed the Faywood bus, so I had to walk all the way to Sheppard in heels (I'm very bad at walking in heels. I tend to trip a lot... and the heels I was wearing were only an inch high). Luckily that one came fairly quickly. I just got the end of Frequent Service hours, so I got lucky. When I finally got off the subway at Yorkdale and met Chris, I felt so awful for being late. We rushed back to my grandma's house, where...

DA DA DA DUUUUUUMMMM!!!! The epic birthday surprise shall be revealed!!! Chris and I got back and I eagerly pulled a chocolate cheesecake that I baked myself out of the fridge! I'm a terrible cook. I have a hard time boiling water properly, but I really felt bad for not being able to buy him a cake and I knew it would be so special and mean so much to him to know that I worked really hard to do something I'm not very good at in order to make him happy. He says the cake was delicious but I'm not sure I believe him. I had some myself, and it tasted okay to me, but I think I heard something somewhere about how stuff you cook yourself always tastes better to you because you put the effort into making it or something like that. Anyway, I did err a bit on the cake. I ran out of batter, so the cake had no top layer. It was just the batter, then cookie bits, then icing. I also didn't know that you're supposed to make cakes upside-down, cook them, then pop them out of the pan onto a plate so it can be iced and decorated, then cut, so I just made it right-side up in the pan so we had to use a spoon to shovel it out of the pan. I was actually really upset with myself that I screwed that up, but I guess the important thing is that Chris liked his cake and that I worked hard on it for him.

After we had the cake, we watched TV for a little while before we headed out to have dinner and see the play. It was at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts in the Distillery District. Chris and I had been to the same theatre before to see a different play, but it was during the winter and was already dark when we got there, so we couldn't really see much of the area. Going there in the daylight, Chris and I realized how beautiful it was. The Distillery District is just a bunch of old factories from the 1800's that have been turned into restaurants and shops and theatres. It's kind of a trendy place now. The thing that makes it so beautiful is that they haven't changed the original architechture of the buildings or as far as I can tell, done anything at all to the buildings that weren't absolutely necessary. There's no cars in the Distillery District, and it's all beautiful cobblestone. You really do feel like you've gone back in time somewhat. It's gorgeous. Chris and I ended up eating at a little café, I think it was called Café Uno. It was very nice and Chris and I had a very nice dinner complete with Jones Sodas.

The theatre itself is very nice and classy, too. It has a café and bar in the lounge and a nice fireplace with benches around it where you can see out to the rest of the Distillery District. I silently thanked my professor for the tickets when we were seated because Chris and I easily ended up with the best seats in the house. We were four rows back and to the side, so we were at a perfect level in proportion to the stage with a crystal-clear view of everything. Though I think my TA may have deliberately given me those tickets when I showed up, because she seems to really like me; however, that may just be a pleasant coincidence.

The play turned out to be wonderful. Chris really loved it, which was great. There's only been one play I've taken him to see out of four before this one that he liked, so I was really nervous about that. I really wanted the play we saw for his birthday to be good. It's called I, Claudia and it's a one-hander, written and performed by Kristen Thomson. She plays four different characters with masks (the masks were wonderfully expressive and they showed different emotions when the light hit them at certain angles. They were fantastic). She's very talented. The play was hysterically funny, but also heartbreakingly honest. Chris and I laughed a lot. It really was a very fun play to see, even though it had very serious undertones. We both left in good spirits.

We stopped at Second Cup on the way back (because we had been so trendy all day, we didn't want to break our trend-streak) and it was there that I fell in love with Vanilla Bean Hot Chocolate with Whipped Cream. Oh. My. Goddess. It was the best thing I have ever consumed in my entire life. I cannot describe the sheer joy of vanilla-hinted hot chocolate and creamy goodness running down your throat and bathing your tongue in sugary goodness. Mmmmmmm... sugar.

When we got back, my family was all already upstairs in bed, so Chris and I just settled on the couch with some tea and popcorn and The Nightmare Before Christmas on DVD, because it was the only thing we both could agree on to watch that I hadn't lost the disk for. I MUST FIND MY COPY OF FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF! After that, we just kind of talked until I fell asleep around 3:30am and Chris had to practically pick me up and put me in my bed, because I was so exhausted. I couldn't even really sit up on my own very well without Chris supporting me. All the running around and preparing that day really wore me out. He even tucked me in, so I had no chance of protesting his use of the couch, let alone of getting up to go sleep on the couch myself. I fell asleep instantly. I'm sure that was his intention, the clever guy.

I went and woke Chris up at 9:00am or so because I heard my family rising for the day upstairs and since he insisted on sleeping on the couch, I thought he'd rather be woken by me than by my family coming downstairs for breakfast. I ended up dozing again on my bed while he got dressed. I was a little mad at him, because he told me he was going to get dressed and to go back to sleep because I looked exhausted and he'd come back and wake me up in a few minutes when he was done, but he ended up letting me sleep for an hour and a half until I woke up on my own. I realize he was trying to be sweet, however, so I let it go. I wasn't even really all that mad at him in the first place.

We had pancakes and croissants for breakfast and Trinity bored Chris stupid by showing him every single one of her million Pokémon cards, one at a time and taking five minutes to explain each one. Then we had until 4:30pm before we needed to be at Yorkdale where his mom was picking him up, so we decided to go to the ROM. It was a lot of fun going with Chris, but I was so disappointed in the new renovations. They destroyed the entire museum. It used to be a big beautiful historic building with original architechture and mouldings and everything just looked so Victorian and timeless. Now all it is is plain hardwood floors and slanted white walls with absolutely no décor. It's just modern and white and cold. It's like you just stepped into a chapter out of Brave New World. I remember how the dinosaur exhibit used to be dark and eerie with just lights on the skeletons, and the ceiling was covered with this giant beautiful mosaic of dinosaurs. It was gorgeous and filled you with a sense of awe, especially as a young child. Now it's just this bare, white room with the skeletons scattered everywhere. The only good thing about it is there's more dinosaurs, but it's just so anti-climactic after knowing what the original looked like that it's sad. I have to admit, the giant crystal protruding from the side of the building now actually looks quite beautiful, but it's sad that they put it on such a beautiful, old building, and the shape of the crystal makes the inside a big mess, because there's so much dead and wasted space. There's pathways that lead into walls and giant empty spaces with nothing but white to look at. It's stunningly beautiful until you remember the original beauty of the building it was put on. The crystal actually looms over part of the street, it's so big. I like the crystal itself, but I'm sad for the piece of Toronto's history that's been destroyed.

I think the best part of the museum today was the Book of the Dead exhibit. The ROM just got an actual Book of the Dead from a wealthy man's tomb and the papyrus scroll is about six feet long, with tiny little heiroglyphs outlining spells and chants and basically just trying to convince Osiris that the guy's heart was light and that he was worthy enough to be allowed into the Afterlife. It's really neat to see and look at the artwork in the scroll. A lot of it was damaged, but you could still see a lot of the spells, prayers and illustrations in the book. It was fascinating.

We also did the bat cave, because we wanted to relive our childhoods, haha. I'm so happy at least one thing about the ROM that I loved as a child stayed the same. It seems smaller and shorter now, but that's probably just because I hadn't been there since I was a little kid and everything looks bigger and grander when you're little... well, little as in a child, anyway. I'm still not much taller than I was when I was ten.

We were supposed to go back to my grandparents' early to play Trinity's Samba De Amigo Wii game with her. We told her we would, but we ran out of time, so we stopped at the Second Cup right across the street from the ROM before we headed to Yorkdale on the subway and I got another Vanilla Bean Hot Chocolate with Whipped Cream. Chris got a Mixed Berry Smoothie both times we went to Second Cup this weekend and we laughed at this magazine that was all about weed, because today was the Marijuana March right beside the ROM. There were so many people who were high walking around wearing shirts with glittering marijuana leaves on them. It was hilarious.

I was kind of sad on the way to Yorkdale because I didn't want to let Chris go again. We don't see each other nearly enough and it's always hard to say goodbye after having such wonderful weekends like this weekend together. It wasn't as hard as it is when I have to leave him behind at school. I always cry on the bus back to Toronto until I can't cry anymore. I feel like my heart's breaking. I know I'm going to see him again soon, though. If not this weekend, then definitely next weekend, because his family's having a birthday party for him (or maybe it's this weekend, in which case, I'm definitely coming home. There's no way I'm missing Chris' birthday party. Not for anything). We looked around HMV at Yorkdale for a few minutes and made fun of all the retarded Miley Cyrus/Hannah Montana shit littering everything in there, then bought a bottle of water at the food court so I'd have change to get back on the subway. I ended up forgoing my metro pass in favour of giving Chris a nice weekend, and I am so glad I did. It was really worth it to see how happy he was and how special I made him feel. He's worth much more to me than a silly piece of plastic.

We met his mom in the parking lot and she offered to drive me back to my grandma's, so I didn't need the change from Chris buying the water after all, but it will come in handy on Monday when I need to get on the bus. I didn't want him to pay for anything at all this weekend, but I'm still glad I at least paid for most of it, even our ROM tickets. I will find a way to spend the 10 dollars he gave me back as repayment on him. Grrrr... I wish I'd paid for ALL of it! Well, I paid for everything yesterday, and mostly everything today (I think. I didn't keep track), and I will just find a way to spend the money he paid on him somehow in the near future.

I gave him his cake to take back to his house when his mom dropped me off at my grandma's. I hope his mom doesn't make fun of it. I know she's a chef (or was for many, many years) and I'm not very good at cooking or baking or anything involving food and a kitchen, really, but I did put a lot of effort into that cake and really tried to make it special for Chris, so it would be very mean and hurtful of her to make fun of something I put a lot of love into.

After he left, I took a shower and just crashed. I was so exhausted. I did promise Trinity I'd play her Samba De Amigo game with her since Chris couldn't. Chris apologized profusely for that. He felt really bad. I think he's taken a liking to Trinity, though the reason why escapes me. I also think Trinity has a crush on Chris, which is absolutely adorable. Anyway, Trinity suddenly got really sick and shivery and started throwing up so she wasn't in the mood to play anymore, which was just as well. I was too tired to play the game, anyway. Trinity started freaking out because she thought she had the swine flu, then she thought she was having a seizure from playing her video games too much, then she thought she had the swine flu again. Personally, I think it might be swine flu, but I'm not too worried. The media's blowing this whole pandemic thing way out of proportion. Most of the people infected with swine flu didn't even need hospitalization. Just lots of rest and fluids like any other flu. I'm still going to make a point of washing my hands more often and not touching things I know Trinity touches a lot. No point in getting sick if I can avoid it.

I fell asleep on the couch while watching Ella Enchanted (terrible movie, by the way). I woke up and was planning on going to bed, but then I remembered that all the preparations for Chris' visit and nerves over Guelph had caused me to ignore Alex lately and I felt bad, so I talked to her for a few hours, then Chris texted me to say goodnight and thank you for the weekend. He went to bed fairly early, so I guess the weekend must have tired him out, too. It was such a fun, amazing weekend, though. I'm so glad it happened the way it did.

Oh, and one last note... GUELPH RECEIVED MY APPLICATION ON TIME! I just got their email today, thanking me for applying there! Now I just need to get my grades up and hope they accept me and if they do, apply for OSAP and start looking for jobs.

Now, goodnight. I'm pooped.

Finally, a Ray of Sunshine!

2009-05-01T01:51:00.002-04:00

I'm so glad I only have happy news to report today! It's been so long since so much good has happened in my life at the same time.

Well, last night I was up until 5:30am finishing up late assignments to hand in. Since the possibility of acceptance to Guelph has been dangled in front of me, I'm chasing after it furiously, which means I need an average of at least 70% to get into the arts program I want. I've snapped out of the "Who cares if I get bad grades? It's just going to be misery for the next four years anyway, no matter how hard I work." phase and snapped into the "If I work my ass off and manage to end the year with a good average, I have a chance at happiness next year!" phase. I've been working like mad to try to bring my grades up. The only bad thing about it was that I had to get up at 6:30am to go to my first class. I debated whether or not to tough it out, but then decided that I was just going to skip my morning class and sleep. I needed to have a clear head for my afternoon class, with enough energy left over to prepare for Chris' visit tomorrow when I got back from school and I knew I'd just collapse and get nothing done if I didn't take the break.

Oh? I didn't tell you about Chris' visit? Well, sorry. All the stress has kind of been at the forefront of my mind lately and I haven't had much of an opportunity to be excited when I felt so sick with nerves all the time, but now I'm in great spirits and will tell you all about it! We've actually had this planned for a while now. I'm taking him out for his birthday tomorrow to go see I, Claudia being performed by Kristen Thomson at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts. We both love seeing plays and since I'm in a drama studies class, I get to go see a lot of plays for really reduced prices, thanks to my professor who pulls strings and always gets huge discounts for her students. I always take Chris with me to go see the plays. During the school year, he'd take the bus from Kitchener to Toronto and stay the night at my grandma's in Toronto before going back the next day, but this time, he's getting dropped off by his mom at Yorkdale. His birthday's on the 14th, but this was the only chance I had to see this play with Chris and apparently it's completely amazing. It's a one-hander with masks like in traditional Greek theatre and Kristen Thomson is not only the actor, but the playwright as well.

The play itself looks like it's going to be fantastic, but that's not the highlight of tomorrow. The highlight is seeing Chris after so long of being apart, and being able to give him a really special 20th birthday outting. Unfortunately, applying to Guelph zapped my funds so I'm running out of money. I have 117 dollars left, but I need 96 dollars for my metro pass. Maybe I'll forgo a metro pass this month and treat Chris to a nice dinner, anyway. I had originally planned to take him to a nice restaurant and eat a proper meal before the play, then after the play, to come back to my grandma's house and give him his card, presents and spend the rest of the night cuddling on the couch with a movie in our pajamas. Just a nice, peaceful, quiet evening after the hustle and bustle and excitement of downtown Toronto. I thought it'd be perfect for his birthday, but I soon realized that I couldn't afford it after applying to Guelph. I couldn't even afford wrapping paper and a card, so I made both of them with printer paper, tape and Trinity's scented markers. I felt so awful for not being able to take him somewhere nice to eat, I prepared a special surprise for him to try and make it up to him. I can't say what the surprise is in case he reads this before he gets here tomorrow, but I tried really hard to do a good job on it and I hope it turns out okay (and don't give away what the surprise is in your comment, Alex!). I will reveal the surprise after it has been revealed to Chris. I still think I might sacrifice my metro pass to buy him a nice dinner, though. It's only the last month before school officially ends for me and I won't be using the pass from the 22nd to 26th, and then not again until the 31st because of exams. It'd probably just be cheaper to buy weekly passes or day passes or tokens or something like that, and Chris deserves a nice birthday dinner with his girlfriend. He's been so stressed lately.

I'm so excited! I've been preparing since I got back from school! I made his card (I still have to write in it), then put together his surprise. I need to wait until tomorrow morning to finish it off. Then I made the wrapping paper for his presents and wrapped his gifts. Then I took a nice long shower and got myself all cleaned up and ready to go out tomorrow. I'm planning on putting together a semi-dressy outfit for the evening out, to try to enhance the specialness of the occasion and I'm going to make sure my room is spotless and suitable for Chris to sleep in tomorrow. My room always ends up turning into the guest room when he visits, but I don't mind. My grandma's couch is really comfortable and I get to watch TV until I fall asleep when I'm in the living room.

There's a small chance Chris may have to either meet me at school or come with me to school in the morning, depending on what time he gets here, because I need to hand in those assignments I was up until 5:30am last night doing, but I don't think he's going to end up coming with me. His mother says she'll drop him off before four, but knowing Chris' mother, that could be anything from 8:00am to she changed her mind and decided she didn't feel like taking him anymore. I'm not holding my breath, but I will be so upset if this doesn't work out because of her. She's ruined occasions for us before in the past and this time, if we do not get there by 7:30pm sharp, we won't be let in. It's too distracting for the lone actress on stage to have people coming and going throughout the show. I always get extremely nervous whenever I'm forced to depend on Chris' mom for something important.

I also want to make sure I plan everything right. I'm so clumsy and useless at just about everything in life, which means a lot of dates I plan end up turning into catastrophes. One time, Chris and I went to see a play and it turned out so horribly, we fought and yelled the entire way back. It was awful. I want to make sure everything goes smoothly this time, so I'm meticulously planning our route there and every single twist and turn. I'm just nervous because I'll have to plan the timing on the fly, thanks to Chris' mom's lovely, detailed answer of "before four", which I can't even take seriously at all because the words came out of her mouth.

I'm so excited, but so anxious at the same time. I really want to make tomorrow special for him and make him feel appreciated and loved after all the stress he's been through.

Oh, and I got an email from the OUAC, saying they received my payment. YAY! The website's even letting me review and change my application online, so I'm hoping that means that Guelph also got my application either today or yesterday. The fact that the OUAC got my payment on time eliminates a good chunk of the stress, but I won't be completely in the clear until Guelph sends me an email, saying they've received my application. All I have to do after that is work my ass off at York and hope it's good enough for Guelph to accept me. Also, there's a bit of a confusion with the payment (I think). My bank statement says 185 dollars was deducted from my account, but I only payed them 178 dollars. Chris says he thinks the extra money is the fee for sending a money order. He's probably right, but I'd just like to double-check the numbers at the bank on Monday, just to be sure.

Anyway, I'm very tired and need to finish preparing for Chris' big day tomorrow morning, so goodnight. I hope you enjoyed reading a blog entry in much higher spirits than is my usual blogging mood.

A Bit of a Busy Morning

2009-04-29T11:13:00.002-04:00

I know last night's blog was rough to read. It went on forever and most of it (okay, all of it) was negative. I can't promise today's entry will be any happier, but it will be shorter.

I finally went to bed at 4:00am. At 3:30am, I told Chris I was going to bed and that he should go to bed, too. I felt bad for making him stay up all night with me, but I needed him so badly and he was insistent on staying up with me until I felt calm enough to sleep. Have I mentioned that he's wonderful? I was sure I'd just end up crying myself to sleep and texting Chris, telling him I couldn't sleep, but as soon as I had the blankets on me, my head on my pillow and my teddy bear cuddled in my arms (which Chris gave me. I can't sleep without holding the teddy bear in my arms now. I named him Wilfred because he's wearing a Wilfred Laurier University hoodie), I realized just how exhausted I really was and fell asleep almost right away.

While I was asleep, I had a horrible dream. I dreamed that it was the next morning and I found out that along with the remittance form, I needed to include a tape of some TV show about Guelph that was only going to air once on TV, and that if I didn't tape it and send it in with the form and cheque, they wouldn't even look at the application and I wouldn't get a chance to go to Guelph. I tried to tape the show, but found out that I'd missed it and I woke up in a cold sweat, terrified and anxious. That was at like 8:30am, and I had to force myself to relax and go back to sleep again, but I kept waking up every few minutes, thinking that I was going to miss my chance to go to Guelph. I got up at almost 10:00am and rushed out the door to go to the post office.

I left my coat at my grandma's, because it was still damp from yesterday but then didn't remember until I got to the bus stop (which is a 15-20 minute walk from my grandma's house) that I'd left my metro pass in my coat pocket instead of putting it back in my wallet like I normally do. It was too far to walk back and then to the bus stop again, so I ended up having to pay the driver with a five dollar bill. I grossly overpaid for my ride, seeing as how TTC fare is only $2.75. I got off at Bathurst and Sheppard, but was extremely nervous because I didn't know that area very well at all and I had forgotten my cell phone at my grandma's house, too. All I kept thinking was that if something happens to me, I have no way to call anyone for help. I just wanted to send the money and get back to my grandma's as fast as possible. There was a guy who was doing an evaluation of the bus driver on the bus. He was a TTC worker and he got off at the same stop as me and we started talking. He asked me if I was from out of town (because I looked completely lost on the bus) and I said no, I lived nearby but just didn't know much of the area. He asked me why and I said I'm originally from a small town, I just moved here to go to school. He asked me what town and I told him he wouldn't know it because it's this rinky-dink village out in the middle of nowhere. He said to try him so I said I'm from Tottenham. Surprisingly, he knew exactly where that was because he's friends with the bus driver and she's from Tottenham, too. That was pretty neat. He seemed nice, but I get nervous talking to people I don't know, especially in Toronto so I said goodbye and went to the post office in the back of a card store called "All In The Cards" in the plaza at the intersection and sent it by priority one day courier. The lady said it was guaranteed to get there before noon tomorrow morning. I paid $20.10 for the service and left.

On the bus back, I asked the lady beside me if the bus we were on would stop at Faywood Boulevard. She glared at me and snapped to ask the driver. A normal person would have just said "Sorry, I'm not sure, but I'm sure the driver knows." I asked the driver and she said it was the next stop. Turns out going Westbound, the stop isn't called Faywood Boulevard, it's called Wilmington Avenue. THEN THAT SAME LADY GOT OFF AT THE SAME STOP AS ME! What a fucking bitch! Either she knew the bus stopped there and she just didn't want to help me, or she didn't know that the stop name was different but the location was the same, in which case, she's a fucking retard. EVERYONE knows that Wilmington and Faywood are the same fucking street! The name just changes after it intersects with Sheppard. I'm a small-town girl with no navigational skills whatsoever and even I know that. I just think that lady was being a bitch for the sake of it.

I got back to discover that my grandparents still weren't around. I woke up that morning and they didn't seem to be home so I just left them a note saying where I went and that I'd be back soon. They came home a few minutes after I got back, laden with grocery bags so I take it they went shopping. My grandma asked me if I wanted Grandpa to drive me to the post office (she doesn't drive), and was shocked when I told her that I had already gone and come back that morning all on my own. I'm not very adventurous.

Now I'm just playing Restaurant City again and waiting until 1:30pm when I have to leave again to go to class. I wish I could have slept longer. I usually sleep until 1:00pm on Wednesdays but today was a special circumstance. I needed to send that money fast. I don't get back here until about 7:15pm-7:30pm tonight, so I'm probably just going to want to sleep. Unfortunately, I can't do that. I have three (or maybe four. I can't remember anymore) lab reports to fake (I'm too lazy to actually do the experiments) and hand in on Friday. It'd also be nice to have an annotated bibliography for my East Asian studies paper by tomorrow, but that's getting a bit unrealistic.

I'm going to be so worried about the money order and Guelph all night long and the rest of today. I know the lady said it'd get there before noon tomorrow, but all the "What if?"s keep running through my head. What if it gets lost along the way and never gets delivered or gets delivered too late? What if the OUAC gets it on time, but doesn't send my application to Guelph on time? What if I lost track of my money and the application fee, plus all the other fees I had to pay put me in the negatives and they don't accept my payment? What if everything goes smoothly, but I'm too stupid and Guelph rejects me, proving me right and my parents? It makes me sick to think about.

Anyway, I'll end this entry here. I'm getting knots of anxiety in my stomach and I have to leave for class in a half-hour. I might as well rest my eyes for a few minutes.

Pressed for Time

2009-04-28T23:51:00.003-04:00

Wow. Okay, this has been a most stressful day.

So now that I'm absolutely set on leaving York and going to Guelph, I actually decided to send in an application to the school. It turned into much more of a hassle than I thought it would. Typically, you'd think "Okay, fill out the online form, send it in, send some money and poof you're done. Just pray they accept you now. No big deal." Yeah, that's probably true for most human beings on the planet, but not for Briar Rosethorn (well, I guess I can call myself Ashleigh now, but my Wiccan name sounds a hell of a lot cooler). Of course, for me, the person whom the Lord and Lady like to make everything difficult for, ran into a multitude of problems.

Yesterday, I looked at the application deadline for the Creative Writing program at Guelph for this coming Fall, and was panicked to discover that it's May 1st. Fuck. I had to get moving on that application, so I made an OUAC (Ontario Universities Applications Centre) account after tearing my hair out for over an hour because I couldn't remember my old one that I used to apply to York last year, filled out all the information and went to go send it in. The grand total application fee came to exactly $178.00, which is completely non-refundable. Assholes. I was then informed that the only methods of payment are credit card, cheque or money order. I'm not a believer in spending money I don't have, so naturally, I don't have a credit card. I also don't have a chequebook, because my parents were previously taking care of all of my financial needs. I had nothing to do with it. Now that they won't pay for me to go to Guelph, I'm completely out in the water with no life preserve. I have no idea how to do anything or function in the real world at all. My only other option was a money order, but I had no idea what that was or how on Earth I would go about using that method to pay the fee. I had an emotional breakdown where I just sat in front of my computer and cried for a good fifteen minutes, because I felt so stupid and powerless and naive, then realized that crying wasn't going to magically pay the fee and I might as well just go to bed and figure it out at the bank the next day.

So this morning, I woke up extremely stressed out. I rushed to my 9:30am class. It was pouring rain and my boots don't keep out water and it was a long walk from where the bus dropped me off to where my class was so I was drenched when I got there. I couldn't pay attention in class. I think we were talking about a 19th century poem that defended Guinevere's infidelity in the King Arthur legend, but I don't really know the details. Then I rushed to the bank and was so relieved to find that the lady who I asked for help was so kind and wanted to help me so much. I explained to her that I'm 18 years old, my first year out of high school who has suddenly been thrown out on my own with no knowledge or resources to figure out how to function in the real world. She was very understanding and walked me through what a money order was and how to send a money order to someone. She even gave me directions and the bus route to the nearest post office to where I live. All of this hassle to send money made me realize that if I don't have a credit card, I at least need a chequebook now that I'm supporting myself, so I ordered one there today. It cost me about $20.00 and should arrive at the branch in a week or so. Apparently, she has three daughters, two of which are in university and she felt really bad for me and wanted to help. I was so grateful. I was close to another emotional breakdown but I left the bank feeling a lot more in control and confident. Haha, I bet I could do an ad for TD Bank: "I was thrown out on my own with nowhere to turn to for financial advice. I didn't know what to do to fund my education. The kind staff at TD Bank helped me find my way and now I'm in control of my life... and my money. Thank you, TD. Banking really can be this comfortable." Oh yeah. That's gold. Where's my contract?

Anyway, she told me I needed to go to the post office and mail it by one day courier, which of course costs like $15.00. Yay. More money being sucked out of my bank account, but I need to get that application in on time. I planned to go after my last class, but I needed to come to my grandma's first and get my OUAC login code to include in the envelope so they know who's sending them money. I walked around York by myself, stressed out and worried and thinking a lot about something else going on in my life which I'd prefer not to post on a public blog. I went to go deposit $40.00 into my bank account from the bank machines on campus, which now that I think about it, I could have done while I was at the bank, but I'm stupid so I didn't. There were no envelopes left to deposit money so I left, fuming (I was wet, cold, stressed and worried. Little things like that going wrong do not help in that situation). I decided to go sit and stare upstairs for the next couple hours until my next class when I realized I'd forgotten my cell phone at the bank machine. Perfect. Fan-fucking-tastic. I ran back to the bank machine to grab my cell phone, but it wasn't there. I assumed it had been stolen and then I broke down. I needed to contact someone, so I used a school computer to find Chris' cell number on my contacts list in my email, since I don't know it off the top of my head, then broke one of my twenty dollar bills I was going to deposit to get 50 cents back and ran to a pay phone to call Chris. I was crying by then. For some reason, I needed $1.60 to call him, but I didn't have it. I almost threw the phone at the wall, but resisted and went to the Booster Juice near the pay phones to ask for change back for a five. They said they don't do that anymore because it depletes their change supply. I just mumbled a "thank you" but I don't know why. They didn't help me at all. My last resort was going to the lost and found office. Thankfully my phone was there, but I was so emotionally drained by that point that I just collapsed on a bench in the middle of the busiest hallway on campus and cried for a half-hour. Only one girl stopped to ask me if I was okay and that's because she already knows me from the tutorial I'd had that morning. Oh, by the way, I had an assignment due in that class today that I didn't do because of all the stress I'm under. I forgot to mention that earlier. I have six overdue assignments I haven't started on. I'm just drowning at this awful school.

After my crying fit, I fell asleep on a low wall that doubles as seating in the busiest building on campus and woke up an hour before my afternoon class, so I headed there and saved a seat for Jacquelyn. She missed her train in to school so she missed the entire morning and got to our afternoon class literally five minutes before it started. Our original plan was to go to the ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) for a bit that day in between our two classes because students get in free on Tuesdays, but she had a group meeting for a project to go to and cancelled that, then cancelled all her plans with me entirely when she missed her train. It ended up working out, because I needed to go to the bank anyway, so I wasn't too disappointed.

During class, Jacquelyn talked about her ex and how stressed out she was the entire time. I tried to be sympathetic but I just can't deal with her problems right now on top of my own. It's too much. I mostly just made non-committal grunts and the occasional "I know". I was trying to focus on copying my notes, too, because I need at least a 70% average for Guelph to accept me into its Creative Writing program and I'm stressing over that because I haven't been putting a lot of effort into school lately and I really want to go to Guelph next year. I'm so scared of this not working out. If it doesn't work out, I'll have wasted my $190.00 or so that I spent on the application and getting it there, I'll prove my parents right; that I'm stupid and useless in the real world and I can never do anything on my own, and I'll have to live with them next year while I work and figure out what the hell I'm going to do next all the while with them laughing in my face and crushing me down into the dirt like they've always done. I won't go back to York, no matter what, so if I don't end up going to Guelph, I'll be at home working and that will disappoint Chris, which will break my heart. I'll be disappointed in myself, too and will feel like a worthless, stupid deadbeat. I'm taking a huge risk in banking everything on Guelph.

When I got back from school today, I had to talk to Chris about that thing I mentioned earlier that was adding to my stress. Yes, I still choose to keep that confidential. I will tell certain individuals whom I trust, not all of the internet. Turns out, there's no need for it to put stress on either of us anymore but I still have mixed emotions over it. By the time we finished talking, it was too late to go to the post office, which turned out to be good, because I found out that my application never went through properly the first time I sent it and I still needed to confirm my method of payment and print out a remittance form to include in the envelope, otherwise they wouldn't have accepted my payment anyway and I really wouldn't have been going to Guelph next year. Now, I have to leave early to go to the post office tomorrow before class and send it by 1 day courier.

Oh, and as a random side-note, I'm helping my friend Alex find a program to take at college. Woot!

Right now, I'm playing Restaurant City on Facebook, talking to Chris and Alex and trying to keep my mind occupied so I don't start crying. Chris says he'll stay with me all night if I need him to. He's so amazing. I'm so lucky to have him and I never, ever forget that. He's everything I could have ever wanted in life and so much more. I wouldn't have gotten through this awful year without him.

I think I shall end here tonight.

Funding A Guelph Education and Other Grievances.

2009-04-27T10:42:00.003-04:00

Well, currently I'm sitting in my English Literary History lecture, tired and glum, but I can't remember a Monday in this lecture where I haven't been tired and glum. My dad dropped me off at school early this morning, so I had to get up at 7:30am after staying up until 1:30-2:00am. I know I shouldn't have stayed up so late, but I was too stressed out to sleep.

I hadn't talked to my parents about leaving York and going to Guelph next year, and was so upset that I missed my chance. I planned to talk to them about it, but every time I thought of doing it, I got dizzy and sick and my heart started pounding. I knew it would turn into a horrible fight and everything was going so well before that. I didn't want to ruin it all.

Yesterday was really great. I got out of bed at 11:00am or so, lounged a bit, played video games with my brother, Andrew, cuddled with my cats (Mooch even snuggled with me in bed in the morning. It was so sweet of her). I also got to use the computer as much as I wanted, which hardly ever happens when I'm at home because I have to share it with Andrew. My dad even played a golf tournament on the Playstation 3 with Andrew and me and we were all joking and laughing and having fun. I can't remember the last time we did that. I didn't want to mess things up by starting an argument about Guelph.

This morning, I woke up early to pack and go back to Toronto in time for my first class and wasn't planning on bringing anything up, but of course my stupid mouth didn't listen to my brain. My mom, Andrew and I were watching Breakfast Television, and I was already pretty sad, because waking up on a weekday morning at home triggered all kinds of memories that I miss, like when I walked down the stairs today and my dad asked me if I wanted a bagel for breakfast. I wanted to cry, because I remember he used to ask me that every morning after I got my school uniform on and came downstairs to see him. Then I watched Breakfast Television and that's something I always did before school. Then Andrew walked out of his room in my old school uniform and I wanted to put my uniform on again and go wait for the bus with him, but of course I couldn't. I really got choked up when I walked to the car to put my stuff in the back of the car and I saw Buster sitting at the end of the driveway by Andrew's feet; right where he used to wait with me for the bus. I nearly broke down right then and there. I should stop writing about this. I'm starting to tear up in the middle of my lecture.

Anyway, I digressed. The original point was that I was watching Breakfast Television with my mom and Andrew and brought up Guelph when I shouldn't have. There was a bunch of protesters blocking University Avenue in downtown Toronto on a Monday morning (idiots) and no one really knows what the morons are protesting for. My mom said she thinks it has something to do with Sri Lanka, and I was reminded of all the student protests about some injustice or another that happened on the other side of the planet and got angry because like I said in a previous post, I'm so sick of their bullshit social justice. If they really were advocates for equality, they wouldn't have racially and religiously segregated social justice clubs. I blurted out, "I bet they don't have this kind of garbage at Guelph." and my mom freaked out on me and started yelling. She replied with the most ridiculous, childish response I've ever heard from an adult, which was "Oh yeah? Well, Guelph has swine flu! There's been a death in Guelph, but Toronto doesn't have swine flu!" There are a few things wrong with this idiotic statement:

Obviously, it is childish and immature, because it has absolutely nothing to do with my point and she clearly just wanted something to throw back at me because she knew I had a good point, but didn't want to admit it.
She lied. I checked into it later and although there've been reports of swine flu in Canada, there have been none in Ontario, let alone any deaths in Ontario.
What the hell does swine flu have to do with the University of Guelph's academic appeal?

I explained to her how childish this statement was and she just completely flipped and started screaming at me. She told me, "If you want to throw away your education, that's fine! You can pay for your own goddamned education! You're following a boyfriend! I never thought you'd never do that!" and ran out of the house, slamming the door like a temperamental five-year-old. I'd just like to say that I am not following my boyfriend. He doesn't go to Guelph. He goes to Laurier. They're still a good half-hour away from each other, which admittedly is less of a hassle to visit him than being two and a half hours away, but it is still a hassle from Guelph, anyway. Plus, Chris would be really upset if I changed schools just for him. He wants me to get an education that's good for me, but most of all he just wants me to be happy. No one else seems to care one bit about my happiness. I chose to go to Guelph next year because I'm unhappy at York and I'm unhappy in Toronto, I wanted to make a change to a school that fit me better and Guelph is that school. Of course it's nice that I'm closer to Chris. Who doesn't want to be close to the person they love? That's not any of the main reasons why I'm going there, though.

So now I'm applying for OSAP, praying one of my thousand applications I send out land me enough work to make at least enough money for residence, or tuition and books. Either one is fine, as long as I get enough OSAP to cover the other one. The scariest thing about it is that if I'm short of money, my parents won't help me. I also need to apply to Guelph and for residence at Guelph soon.

Okay, now to end this blog on a happy note for once. I know you must have been getting tired of reading depressed post after depressed post from me lately. Andrew has made me realize how fun Little Big Planet is! For those of you who don't know, Little Big Planet is a video game for the Playstation 3 where you're a little person made of burlap sack and fluff. You go around to different areas of Little Big Planet and complete levels to collect stickers and decorations so you can create things in the game. I know... if you haven't played, it sounds incredibly boring, but trust me, I was absolutely convinced that Little Big Planet was just a giant waste of money, but Andrew convinced me to play it and I got hooked. First of all, your little sack person is SO cute! Second of all, the levels are fun to complete rather than just being a giant, frustrating pain in the ass. Thirdly, collecting stickers and decorations is so much fun! Once you collect one, you can use it over and over again forever without ever running out. You have an infinite supply of every sticker you collect and you can put decorations and stickers almost everywhere, even on yourself.

Now, fare thee well, Alex and Chris (because you guys are the only people who read this).

A Sad State

2009-04-25T22:27:00.002-04:00

Okay, now that I think I'm over the whole weepy breakdown, I can write in my blog again. Yeah, I know. I've been crying a lot lately. Why am I crying tonight, you might ask? Well, I can't directly go into that without telling you all the backstory, so we'll get to that in a few paragraphs.

You see, lately I've been really, really homesick. Not so much for my parents and brother as for my pets, bed and just the home atmosphere itself. If I'm in Toronto for longer than a week at a time, I get very depressed. I didn't go home last weekend for some reason or another (I think my mom had baseball registration and my dad was overseeing the concrete being poured for the new garage). This week, I really wanted to go home. My dad called my grandma's house and I took the opportunity to ask him about it, but he told me that Grandpa's brother-in-law died and so the whole family was going to his wake and funeral. At first, I had no idea why that should affect me going home, because the wake my parents went to was on Thursday and the funeral was on Saturday. I didn't see why he couldn't take me home on the Friday. It was then that he explained to me that since my grandparents and aunt were going to the Friday wake, someone needed to watch Trinity, and someone also needed to stay behind to watch Trinity on Saturday during the funeral. At first, Tia (my aunt. Tatia means Aunt in Portuguese, but I always shorten it to Tia) said I could go home if I wanted and she'd just bring Trinity with her, but I know how Trinity gets around death and funerals. She's like me, she gets horrible anxiety attacks and since she's little, she panics and completely freaks out when she gets nervous. I knew it would make it easier on the whole family if I just stayed behind to babysit her. I choked out to my dad that I'd do it, because I was holding back a flood of disappointed tears (like I said, I was very, very homesick). My dad could tell that I was upset and felt bad, so he offered to take me home on Friday night after my Tia and grandparents got back from the wake and then drop me off again early the next morning to watch Trinity during the funeral, then take me home again for the rest of the weekend. I told him that was way too much hassle and needless moving around and told him I'd just stay until everyone got back from the funeral on Saturday afternoon, but could he please take me home then and bring me back early Monday morning before my first class. He agreed.

Now, you would think that would make me happy. I was fulfilling my familial duties and I still got to spend some time at home, right? Well, yes and no. While the outcome was the most desirable of the other available options considering the circumstances, this weekend was the weekend I was planning on trying to convince my parents to let me go to Guelph next year. I think I mentioned in a previous blog post that this topic alone would make my parents defensive and angry and that it was going to take more than a single conversation over morning coffee to convince them. I was banking on having the entire weekend to talk to them about it and hopefully get them to see my point of view and understand it enough to let me make this choice I want so badly. Even a single weekend isn't a whole lot of time to achieve this task. Now, because I had to stay at my grandma's until Saturday afternoon to watch Trinity, that plan got busted. I now only have essentially one day to convince them of this, which brings the odds of success down significantly. I can't wait longer to talk to them about this, because if I do, I may not be able to attend Guelph in September if I apply too late, plus I'll need to send in my residence application on time.

If they say no to this, I'm either stuck going back to York for another year or I have to put my foot down, claim my independance as an adult and tell them that I'm no longer accepting money from them, I'm applying for OSAP and getting a job and doing it all on my own. This I could technically do, but it's a scary prospect. I will do it though if I really can't get my parents to see eye-to-eye with me on this. The more I think about going back to Toronto and York next year, the more I want to sob and vomit. Literally. It literally makes me sick to think of going back there for another year and just completely crushes my spirit. I haven't felt emotionally stable since I went there in September. I need to make a change, or I'm afraid this depression is just going to spiral into something much, much worse. I'm always on the brink of an emotional breakdown as it is, and I know it's York that's causing this. I was such a happy person before September, and now I hardly recognize myself anymore, which scares me severely. I can't go back there next year. I'd rather drop out of school completely than go back, but the thought of doing that breaks my heart, too, because I can't bear the disappointment in me from Chris. I'm just not as strong as he is. I wish I was. I try so hard to be.

Aside from this awful, crushing stress, I've felt so isolated and alone lately, too. I've slowly started to drift apart from my two best friends, Joanna and Marilyn. I've been friends with them since I was ten years old, but we got really close when I was in grade 10-11. I always thought I could count on them for anything, that we could never ever drift apart. The three of us were friends for life, but I haven't seen or talked to either of them in months and they feel just like vague shadows in my memory now. It makes me so sad. I miss them so much. What really hurts is that they don't seem to be missing me at all. The three of us and a couple other friends of ours have been planning a road trip together for years. It was supposed to be this big, awesome event; just the group of us, hanging out in the car, blaring the radio and just having a good time and forgetting about all our problems for a few days. Unfortunately, the trip never happened, but we still had plans to do it eventually. Recently, I went on my Facebook account and saw in their statuses that they had all taken a road trip to North Bay and apparently had a last. There were pictures, too and they all looked like they were having way too much fun to remember me... they took that road trip without me! They didn't tell me! They didn't even try to tell me! They took our group road trip, left me behind and didn't even tell me about it. Not even two days later, I saw other statuses and pictures of them in Niagara Falls. We had all talked about going to Niagara Falls, too since we were in high school. My friend Alex says that Jo's told her I haven't been replying to her emails, but she's never sent me any emails... or Facebook messages... or phone messages... or text messages. Nothing. It's like they just forgot about me, and don't miss me at all, when I've been missing them so much this entire time. I haven't seen any of my friends in months. I'm not even sure if I still have friends anymore. I just feel so alone all the time.

I think I need to end this blog entry here. Not only am I starting to turn emo, but I'm crying so hard, I can't really seethe keyboard properly anymore.

Goodnight and sorry for being so depressing.

In Class and Semi-Conscious for Once.

2009-04-23T09:13:00.002-04:00

Well, I'm sitting in my 8:30am, two hour long East Asian Studies tutorial. Like I said I would last night, I got up at 6:30am to get here today on time, even though I didn't end up going to bed until 3:30am. I was going to go to bed at 11:00pm, but then Chris didn't come online until almost 11:00pm and I always get horribly depressed if I don't get to have a proper conversation that isn't over text messaging with him at the end of the day, so there really isn't any point in getting enough sleep if I don't get to talk to him. I just wake up terribly depressed and not wanting to get up, anyway, no matter how well-rested I am. I ended up talking to him until 2:00am, then I was going to go to bed since he was, too when my friend whose mother got laid off came online so I messaged her and apologized, explaining that I wasn't ignoring her. She was fine with it and we ended up talking until 3:00am, then I finally was ready for bed by 3:30am. When I woke up this morning, I was surprised at how easy it was for me to get up this morning on three hours' sleep. I think it was a combination of getting to talk to Chris for so long last night which lifted my spirits (we haven't been able to talk as much lately and it was making me really depressed), and the fact that I've been taking so many naps lately. I have to admit that now that I've been here for a while, I'm actually really tired. I still have four hours after this class before my next class.

I think I mentioned in my last post that I usually hang out with Jacquelyn between classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but lately she either cancels at the last minute or makes me more irritated and miserable than I already am by complaining all the time. I guess I complain a lot, too, but at least I try to keep my whining to myself when I hang out with her. I asked her if we were hanging out today and she said yes, but not until noon. I'm okay with that. I have my laptop to keep me occupied until then and I wasn't really looking forward to spending four solid hours with her today. I feel like a terrible person for getting so irritated with her, but it's really putting more strain on me that I just don't need right now. I'd have more sympathy for her if she tried to fix her problems or took at least some of my advice for once, but it's like she asks me for help, I give her suggestions, she ignores them, then just keeps complaining to me about how awful her life is. I think she just wants a free therapist, which aggravates me because I don't want a mental patient; I want a friend. *sigh* Yeah, I know... I'm a terrible, selfish person.

I'm getting really sick of Toronto. I asked my mom if I could come home this weekend, but apparently some uncle in the family died and they need to go to his wake and funeral. As long as they don't make me go, I still want to come home. Dead people freak me out. Seriously, I have panic attacks and want to pass out anytime I'm near death (cemeteries, funeral homes, funerals, etc...). Plus, I need to talk to my parents about leaving York and going to Guelph next year. That conversation is something I don't forsee as going well. My stomach hurts a lot just thinking about it, but I really, really, REALLY want to go to Guelph. Plus, I also miss my kitties and my own bed.

It's almost 10:00am. I need to text Chris to wake him up. He has an exam today. I know he'll do well. He's absolutely brilliant and he's been studying so diligently lately. I'm so proud of him for working so hard and doing so well at Laurier, though I think he'd do well wherever he went. Good luck, Chris! I'll be thinking of you today (not that I don't think of you all the time already).

I think I'll end this post here since my class finishes in less than 20 minutes and I need to take a power nap.

Depressing.

2009-04-22T20:53:00.002-04:00

I'm surprised I even mustered the energy to write in this blog at all today, considering how completely dejected I feel. Today really just completely sold me on the idea of leaving York and going to Guelph. I hate this hellhole. Anyway, I should probably tell you why I feel like utter crap instead of just going "I hate my life! No one understands me! Boo hoo hoo!" because let's face it; the whole world is so tired of listening to the bitchy whining of thirteen year old emo kids.

In my last post, I mentioned that my school went on strike this year for three months and because of this, they've extended the school year until June. Apart from loathing York for this fact in itself and wanting to strangle every single person on Facebook whose statuses are "My last exam today!" and "I'm officially done my first year of university!" for (indirectly) rubbing my misery in my face, this also means that I will still be in school on May 27th. If you remember my last post, you'll know that May 27th is my one year anniversary with Chris. The first year is a very important milestone and I wanted nothing more than to spend all day with him and celebrate. I've been excited about this anniversary since we had our six month anniversary and had all kinds of things planned for that day.

The only way I could get around being in Toronto on our anniversary was if none of my exams happened to fall on the 27th and I could go home for the day and celebrate Chris' and my anniversary. Ever since I found out that I wouldn't get out of school in the middle of April and that my exams ran from the middle of May to the beginning of June, I had hoped and prayed that the 27th would not be taken up with an exam. That was the only day I wanted off. I would have taken any other day gladly; even all four of my exams in one day, if only I could have that one very, very important day off.

Today in lecture, I got bored and used my iPod Touch to go on the internet. I discovered that my friend's cousin who goes to York posted on Facebook that she had her last exam on the 28th of May. Naturally, I assumed that this must mean the Winter Term Examination Schedule had been posted on the school's website. Previously, I'd been told that two of my courses were having in-class exams in order to free up examination time for us, which was very kind of those two professors. It was because of this that I was optimistic that I wouldn't have an exam on the 27th of May, because it stands to reason that the less exams you have, the less days the exams will take up and thereby increasing my chances of having May 27th off. Eagerly, I logged onto my student account to look at my exam schedule and nearly burst into heartbroken tears in the middle of my lecture. I should have known better. Nothing good can ever happen to me while I'm a student in this pit of despair. It's Ashleigh's Law: No good can come to any human being who attends York University. They should put that in high school science textbooks. Of course I would have an exam on the 27th of May. Of course it would be the class I resent the most. Of course it would be the class I'm the worst at. Of course it would be smack-dab in the middle of the day rather than early in the morning so I have no chance of spending a full day with Chris.

I was so upset. I tried to listen to my professor and get through the rest of the day but I couldn't. Holding back the sobs was agonizing. I just texted Chris that I was leaving and hopped on the bus to go back to my grandparents'.

I was so looking forward to just changing into my pajamas and covering myself with my blankets and sobbing until I fell asleep, but I couldn't even do that when I got back. I walked in the door and my grandma commented on how early I was getting back, so I lied and told her my second class was cancelled. Then she gave me this guilty look when I went to go into my room and I was immediately suspicious. I walked in to find both my grandma and grandpa and my aunt sitting in my room watching the Portuguese soap opera. Apparently, Trinity (the 9 year old brat I mentioned in my last post) kicked them out of the living room because she wanted to watch her shows so they decided to violate my privacy while I wasn't there and without asking permission to watch the soap opera. The fact that my grandma gave me a guilty look when I walked in just proves that she knew it was wrong and did it anyway. I was so mad, I texted Chris and fumed about it. He texted me back, saying that that's my space and they need to respect that. I added that they shouldn't let a 9 year old run their house, either. I ended up having to bite back my tears and pretend to be happy for a half-hour longer while I watched some stupid show of Trinity's in the living room and listen to her gab about her stupid Pokémon cards.

I'm also not looking forward to getting up at 6:30am tomorrow to go to my two hour East Asian Studies tutorial. In the wise words of Ferris Bueller; "I'm not European. I don't plan on being European, so who gives a crap if they're socialists? They could be fascist-anarchists and that still wouldn't change the fact that I don't have a car." Ah, Ferris Bueller, how I love thee.

It's not like I have anything to look forward to afterwards, either. My friend Jacquelyn and I usually hang out between classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but knowing her, she'll probably just cancel on me again, leaving me to wander around campus alone and sad for four hours. If she doesn't cancel, she'll spend four hours complaining about her ex boyfriend. He just dumped her a little while ago and while I want to be a good, supportive friend and help her through everything she's going through, I also just want to scream at her to shut up and move on with her damn life sometimes. It's not like he was a big loss. He was emotionally abusive and used her before throwing her away. She's all like "I'm so mad at him. He's already trying to pick up other girls at bars and we haven't been broken up for a full week yet, but I still really want to be his friend..." She needs a fucking backbone. Forget about the abusive bastard who destroyed you, pick yourself up and heal, then go find someone who appreciates you and loves you unconditionally. She's a nice girl, she really is, but I'm getting so tired of listening to her problems that she won't try to fix.

Also, a friend messaged me today saying her mother just got laid-off. This friend and her mother already have money problems, so this is devastating for them. I felt bad because I wasn't at my computer when she sent me the message and I'm afraid she'll be angry with me because she thinks I ignored her. I'm going to try to wait for her to come online again and explain, but she's on the computer at weird hours and I have to go to bed early tonight to be up for 6:30am tomorrow.

Ugh, I want to go to Guelph and start my own life there where no one knows me so badly! Even if I can't go to Guelph next year, I'll still be moving out closer to campus so that HAS to be better than this misery.

One Year Later...

2009-04-22T00:48:00.003-04:00

Wow... it's been over a year since I posted last in this thing. That's pretty insane. To be honest, I thought that this blog was dead and gone; for a long time, I completely forgot about this blog entirely. It served as a way to make myself seem important in my own eyes and opened up a channel for me to vent about the problems I was having. The first nine months after my breakup with my ex, I became very bitter and not so much depressed as pessimistic. Reading over my old posts now, I realize that this was very evident in every single post I published.

A lot has changed in the past year. For one, I'm not quite so bitter and pessimistic (but still just as sarcastic). This is a very minor, but pleasant change compared to some of the other changes. Do you remember a guy named Chris who helped me get a role in Sears Fest in high school? Well, we've been dating for almost a year now. We'll be celebrating our one year anniversary on the 27th of May. He's absolutely wonderful. Another big change is that we both graduated from high school and are now finishing our first year of university. Chris had a wonderful first year experience at Laurier. Sadly, I can't say the same for me. I chose to go to York University and it's been nothing but misery since day one. In the first six weeks, this horrid place has seen several fire alarms, a bomb threat and a strike that lasted for three months and now the students are forced to go to school until June. I've also been living my grandparents, aunt and nine-year old spoiled cousin. That has just made everything worse. There are two options for me next year. 1) Move out of my grandparents' house next year and look for student housing near campus, which I'm doing, or 2) Leave York University entirely and transfer to Guelph.

Pros and Cons

York University
Pros

Will not lose credit for any courses I've completed by transferring.
I have a friend at York (yes, one but still that's a pro)
Will get to experience living on my own completely next year
Will save money on TTC metro passes since I'll live beside campus
Will get to go to more school events since I'll be living within walking distance of campus

Cons

Toronto is a miserable city and I hate it here.
I only have one friend here, so I'm not leaving behind a lot.
I don't think I can handle another year of being two hours away from Chris and only seeing him twice a month (if I'm lucky).
I'll be living dangerously close to the ghetto.
No one at York is nice. They're all too consumed with their brand-name designer shit to care about anyone but themselves.
No one in Toronto is nice. Period.
The campus is modern and cold and ugly. It's so depressing.
I'm so lonely there.
There are no good clubs there. All of their 250 clubs are just segregated social justice clubs like "Muslims against deportation", and "Jews against racism". I'm so fucking tired of listening to all of their "hate the white man" bullshit every day.

Guelph
Pros

Guelph has a beautiful campus.
It's a small city, so people are generally friendlier.
Again, because it's a small city, I don't hate it quite as much as being in a large city like this giant toilet bowl.
Guelph offers the same program that I want to take at York and not many other universities offer this program.
I'd get to experience residence life, which I've always wanted to do and been a bit envious of other people who have gotten to experience it.
Everyone at Guelph are hippies who care about the environment. I'd fit right in and not feel like an outcast.
There's a huge Pagan club I'd fit right into, among other clubs that are actually normal and fun.
I think I'd have a much easier time making friends there.
It's only a half-hour away from Waterloo so I'd get to see Chris more often, plus he could could come and visit me more often.

Cons

It's kind of scary moving somewhere you've never really been to before.
The added cost of residence, which surprisingly is significantly higher than renting a room in student housing near campus (at least in Toronto, it is. Not sure about Guelph. I haven't checked that, yet).
They smoke a lot of pot there.
I'm taking a huge risk by leaving York and going there, assuming I'll be happier and more successful; however, anything has to be better than the situation I'm in now.

Yeah. Clearly leaving York and going to Guelph is the best way to go, but I need to sell my parents on the idea. They seem to think York is the be all and end all of universities and they have no idea how depressed this place has made me since they don't live with me and see me every day like they used to. I really think going to Guelph is the best option for me. My mom tried to argue that Guelph has terrible academics and is like the worst school in Canada when anyone who actually knows anything about the school knows that that's complete bullshit. Guelph completely slaughters York in everything.

As much as I think Guelph will be a great improvement for me, I'm terrified to tell my parents about it. Of course, I am a legal adult and could just flat-out tell them that I'm dropping out of York and going to Guelph. That wouldn't be a problem... IF I funded my own education. My parents pay for all of my schooling. I'm only working this summer to make money for rent next year. That's the only thing they won't pay for, and with my shortened summer, I don't even know if I'll be able to make enough money for that, let alone rent plus tuition and books. Really, they have me trapped into doing whatever they say because of money.

The only option left to me is to refuse their money altogether, drop out of university completely and spend a few years working until I have enough money saved up to go to school again on my own terms, but if I did that, I know Chris would be so disappointed. He'd support me no matter what I chose to do, of course but he'd still be disappointed. I don't think I could handle that. I can handle my parents hating me for the rest of my life, but knowing that Chris was disappointed in me would kill me.

I really hope I can convince my parents to let me go to Guelph; otherwise, I'll just have to settle for staying at York and hoping that living on my own will improve things for me there. I'm sure it will, but only marginally. I really think Guelph holds much more satisfaction and happiness for me.

School... A Complicated Thing.

2007-12-12T15:51:00.000-05:00

Okay, time to update my blog again. It's getting harder and harder to update this thing with all the work I have piled up on me, along with preparations for both Yule AND Christmas. Ahem... I have: English work, Literature work, vocal work, preparations for school masses and the Christmas concert tomorrow, philosophy work, maintaining my roleplaying site, maintaining the forum I moderate on neoseeker, preparing a ritual for Yule, preparing the house and decorating for Christmas, wrapping gifts, and preparing a severing spell to rid myself of this weird psychic connection to a friend of mine.

Yup, yup I sure am busy and it's beginning to take a toll. I'm always tired even when I get a good night's sleep, I constantly have knots of anxiety in my stomach and I'm always disgruntled and stressed out which means I tend to snap and freak out on people for the slightest reason. My friend Ashley told me I looked cute and I freaked out on her and told her I was going to rip her tongue out with a pair of pliers if she said that again. I know... pretty bad, but in my defense, I'm SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD! I SHOULDN'T BE "CUTE"! Maybe it's because my ex used to say that to me all the time. In any case, I hate it when people call me cute.

Ghuuuhhh!!!! All this stuff I have to do is driving me up the wall! I'm barely making due dates here and if more crap keeps getting piled on me, I won't be able to keep it up anymore. I've got a philosophy essay on the existence of Deity due on Monday that Mr. Perron hasn't explained in detail to us, I have to hand in my Literature ISP that's worth 15% of my final grade next week, I'm performing at my school's Christmas concert tomorrow night and I'm going to look like a complete ass in front of everyone because my vocal class is full of deadbeats who are going nowhere in life and don't give a rat's ass about any of this, I've still got play rehearsals two times a week for two hours after school where I do nothing but sit in a corner and wish I was home because I have a stupid role that says one line and is only in two scenes, it's absolutely ridiculous.

My friend Justin keeps trying to calm me down, but it never seems to work. T. J doesn't help at all. He doesn't care if I start failing stuff even though I'm banking my entire career upon going to university next year, he doesn't care that I'm stressed out all the time, he doesn't care that I have shit way up over my head to deal with, he doesn't care that he's started completely ignoring me in order to hang out with these two girls he likes but can't decide between. I mean, if he wants to hang out with them, that's fine but you don't just completely stop spending time with your best friend for two girls you have a crush on and probably won't last if he gets in a relationship with either of them. One of them's already his ex-girlfriend. What makes him think it'll work out the second time around? The whole thing is just stupid if you ask me. He's already cancelled D&D with me two weeks in a row and the only time he talks to me is when we're in vocal class together.

I'm getting so sick of all this crap. I'm so tempted just to throw in the towel and say "I'm done! I can't do this anymore!", but of course, I can't. One tiny slip up in my school work and it could cost me my chance to get into university. My average is already only a 91%, I can't afford to have it sink any lower than that and with that incredibly unfair 66% Mr. Perron gave me on my epistemology unit test, I have to work my ass off in order to bump it back up. It was so unfair! I studied and studied for that test and I deserved AT LEAST an 80% but no... I ended up with a 66%. I'm so pissed off! This complete idiot in my class got over an 80% on that test and that was because she CHEATED THE ENTIRE TIME! I can't afford to cheat. If I got caught, it'd be a suspension and an automatic 0%, and if I have either of those anywhere on my record, bye bye university. So the fact that I'm honest and had integrity is what screwed me over in the end.

I can't even begin to start counting the amount of bad things that have happened to me since school started this year. I swear, I'll just be happy to make it into university alive and well in one piece.

The Holidays are Here! Oh My, My, My!

2007-12-02T11:34:00.000-05:00

Well, just as the title says, the holidays are here and wow, it has been quite some time since I last posted in my blog. Don't blame me for it, though! Blame school and all the essays, projects and papers that need to be written, polished and handed in. It's not easy keeping up a 91% average, you know! Anyway, way too much has been happening to give a detailed account of everything, but I will give a brief overview of the important stuff.

All of my projects and essays are getting finished and handed in on time. Yay for me doing everything at the last minute and still getting 90's on it all! My parents are astounded and can't figure out how I manage it. Either I have horseshoes up my ass or I'm just that pro... I prefer to believe the latter of these two explanations, but I'm sure that's not it.

I just recently found this great word game that donates to charity and it's FREE! It's called Free Rice and it's a game that improves your vocabulary. For every question you get right, the site donates twenty grains of rice to starving people in third-world countries. It's the only game we're actually allowed to play on the school computers. I warn you, though. It's extremely challenging. The head of our English department even got stuck on a few of the questions. It certainly does improve your vocabulary, though. If you want to improve your vocabulary and end world hunger, follow this link:

http://www.freerice.com/

Now... as for what is going on in Rosethorn's life recently, not much beides school. I'm a little disappointed that T. J can't do D&D this week because he has "something to do". I'm kind of suspicious because he usually tells me outright what he has to do if it involves cancelling something with me. I don't care if he wants to hang out with a girl he likes or if he's working or something like that, but if it has anything to do with my ex, I'll freak out! I know he's friends with him and all, but ditching me and cancelling previously made plans to do something with him will not only piss me off beyond belief, but hurt me as well. I'm suspicious that that's what it is, because as I said, T. J usually tells me why he needs to cancel plans with me with no problems, but he was so vague this time. He knows me well enough to know that it'll hurt my feelings if he ditches me for Brad (my ex) so he probably wouldn't want me to know. Still, if that's the case (it might not be, and I might just be jumping to conclusions) I'll be soooooo angry with him. Assuming I'm right, he's my best friend and he's lying to me, cancelling plans with me in order to hang out with someone who emotionally abused me to the point where I didn't want to wake up and get out of bed in the morning, plus he knows that it's wrong and hurtful to me and he's doing it anyway. If it involves schoolwork with Brad, I don't care but I'm pretty sure they don't have any classes together. Anyway, if it turns out my suspicions are right, I'll let you know what happens afterward.

I was also very upset that I couldn't go to semi formal or prom this year, but then things brightened up for me. At first, T. J wasn't going to semi because he needed to save money for prom which meant that I couldn't go either even though I wanted to and went since grade nine, because I wouldn't have anyone to go with. Even though T. J's going to prom, either he'll have a date or he'll ditch me to hang out with Brad and all the rest of his loser friends, leaving me by myself on prom which would just be depressing. Then I was talking to my other best friend, Marilyn, and she told me that she was going to go to both and as far as she knew, she wouldn't have a date for either event so we could both go and hang out! I was so happy and I'm buying my ticket on Monday at school. Yay, one bad thing resolved with a happy ending!

Anyway, on an even happier note, I went to my town's Christmas Parade with Joanna and Marilyn last night. It was so much fun and we got candy cane hot chocolates at Tim Hortons. Best hot chocolate EVER! We stopped at the libray and I took out a stack of books. I'm already almst finished one of them, even though it's like 300 pages. T. J said he'd be there but he wasn't so I'm going to have to slap him on Monday after we record our vocal class' Christmas CD for a fundraiser at this year's Christmas Concert. He might refuse to sing if I slap him before we record. Oh, and we saw a REAL camel walking beside some miniature reindeer, even though it was like -30* celcius and snow everywhere. When I told my aunt's boyfriend afterwards, he started laughing and said "That poor camel's probably like 'where the hell am I... and what the hell are you?'" It was so funny! Then we saw a calf on the dairy tractor float and it was sooo cute! One of my favourites was a big tractor strung with Christmas lights and on the back it had a big sign that said "Rudolph the Red-Nosed John Deere"! The sign was actually printed in ink and laminated too! It was so cool! (Wow, I just realized that I sound like such a hick).

Anyway, enough for today. I have limited time on the computer and other stuff to do.

The Results of the Audition Revealed, My Report Card... and My Mother's Hypnosis!

2007-11-20T18:57:00.000-05:00

Drum roll please!
*Da da da duuuuummmmm!!!!*
Thank you.

Now it is time for the results of my audition last night to be revealed... I LANDED A PART! Yay, applause is much appreciated, thank you, thank you. I got to school this morning and I was editing my creative component for English in the library. Chris walked in just before the morning bell for homeroom period rang and told me the results were posted on the drama room door. Obviously very excited, I rushed over there to get a peak, and sure enough my name was on there. My official role is soldier #2. It's one of the minor roles, but I get to sing and I'm just so happy to be in the production this year! After all, like my drama teacher always says "There are no small roles, only small actors". Yeah, put that one in your wise quote book, folks! The only thing about it that pissed me off was my name being spelled wrong. Darn you, Mr. Fetterley! It's a major pet peeve of mine. It was awesome when I walked into homeroom and as soon as Chris saw me, he started clapping for me. He obviously knew I had gotten the part beforehand and just wanted to make me sweat a little, typical Chris. Anyway, I told him flat out that I wouldn't have gotten the role if it hadn't been for him and of course, he wasted no time in agreeing with me, the joker that he is. I'm going to buy him a cake and a thank you card! I'm not even kidding! I owe him big-time because he went out on a limb to help me out when he didn't have to. The funniest thing about it was when he told me he felt really confident that he would get a part because there were six male roles and only five males showed up for the audition. When I asked him what they were going to do about the empty role, he said the lead role is no longer Lester, it's Leslie. That got a laugh out of me.

Hmmm... which reminds me that I have to stay after school tomorrow to work on my seminar with Chris and his friend who may be his girlfriend but I'm not sure and for the most part don't think so, Christina. I also have to stay after school on Thursday as well for the first read-through of the play. I'm really excited! Me getting a role really digs a thorn in TJ's side because now he has to reschedule our Dungeons and Dragons night from Thursdays to Tuesdays. Unfortunately, I'll miss this week's session because he doesn't have the time to reschedule it this week (it's already Tuesday and I just found out I landed a role today), so he'll have it as his house with Samurai. His real name is Chris but then you would get confused with the other Chris I've been talking about so I'll just call him by his nickname, Samurai. Next week it's Tuesdays at my place though. Other than having to reschedule Dungeons and Dragons (D&D), I think he's happy for me... I think. He didn't really say anything other than "okay, cool." when I told him but for TJ, I'm pretty sure that's excitement.

Yay! My report card finally came! The stupid school decided to mail them out this year so the students won't throw them out before showing their parents. I really don't see the point. The kids who throw theirs out and their parents don't question why they haven't seen a midterm report card are the parents who don't give a damn about their kid's education anyway. Besides, most of the students ARE the ones who get the mail. My mom's been hounding me for a week about the report cards. I think she actually marks down the approximate few days in which they're supposed to go home. I'm so happy with my marks, though! I have an 88% in vocal, a 91% in English, a 90% in philosophy and a 96% in studies in literature. Overall, an average of 91%. Now I can relax and take a short breather before having to work my butt off again to keep it the same for my final report card. Honestly, I'm a little disappointed with my vocal mark. If I can bump it up a few higher before the final, I'll be really happy. It's not bad as it is though so I'm not too worried or upset over it.

Heh heh, I bet you're all wondering about the "Mom's Hypnosis" thing in the title. Well, this I had absolutely no clue about until I got home from school today. My mom's been a heavy smoker for well over twenty years and recently, she's become more health-conscious and really wants to quit. The only problem is she gets severe alergic reactions to the nicotine patches, nicotine gum and everything else they're released to help people quit smoking. When she tries to quit cold-turkey, she turns into this horrid monster no one wants to be around and she's back on smoking within a week. Basically, she gave up after a while but then she heard of hypnosis to help people quit smoking. Apparently she made an appointment today and now she can't even take one drag off a cigarette because it makes her want to vomit! IT ACTUALLY WORKED! Everything else failed, all the science and medical techniques had no effect or made her worse but this hypnosis thing worked it's magic in one day! My mom says the lady who hypnotized her asked her what the most foul, vile, disgusting taste in the world was to her. For my mom it's sugar. She hates anything sweet and if something has sugar in it, she wants to throw it up, she hates it that much. The lady hypnotized her and now my mom says that every time she tries to smoke a cigarette, it tastes like syrup and she wants to just puke right then and there. My mom's been trying all these scientific methods that are supposed to take weeks and weeks to make you quit and none of it worked, but one hypnosis session did. It just goes to show that natural healing is SO much more effective than scientific healing because natural healing heals the soul as well as the body wheras science just heals the body. We all know that if the soul is damaged, then your body will be affected by that, too. Science has yet to realize that, unfortunately.

Oh wow! I was just watching Oprah's Favourite Things (her Christmas special where she gives away hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stuff) and Josh Groban was on to promote his Christmas album, "Noel". I swear, his voice brought me to my knees! He has the voice of an angel and even though I've never met an angel, I'm fairly certain I'm not exaggerating by a large margin.

Anyway, it's time for me to go roleplay a bit since all of my homework's finished. Buh-bye for now and Blessed Be!

Audition, Exciting Philosophy Class and... Raving Schitzophrenic???

2007-11-19T19:26:00.000-05:00

Wow, what an unusual day. I went from neutral to bored, to entertained, to bored again, to anxious, to relieved, to angry all in one day! Talk about bi-polar tendencies. For the record, I'm nowhere close to being bi-polar. I just went through some crazy mood swings today. Anyway, I shall explain this seemingly vague and random introduction.

Hmmm... well, neutral was when I woke up this morning and got ready for school. I don't mind Mondays even though most people hate them. I like school so generally I like Mondays. I was a little irritated that it was week two instead of week one which meant I didn't have vocal class first period. I like having vocal class first period, because it's not really all that demanding and singing first thing in the morning really refreshes me for the rest of the day. That was all pretty much neutral. I bickered with my best friend T. J a little bit, but I do that every day so it wasn't anything all that unusual or aggravating.

Boredom set in when I went to philosophy class. I hate philosophy class and I wasn't going to go but then T. J got mad and told me to go to philosophy so I did. I don't know why he's suddenly being such a good role-model all of a sudden. It used to be the other way around and he would want to skip class with me but I would force him to go to class and get angry if he didn't go. Now he's the one who's telling me to go to class and he gets mad when I don't. Go figure.

Anyway, I was glad T. J made me go to philosophy today, because it was in philosophy that I was entertained. Who would have thought that philosophy could actually be entertaining? The lesson started off incredibly dull and dry as usual, when all of a sudden, Mr. Perron's attention was drawn to a guy in my class named Evan. He's a nice enough guy, really but incredibly immature and can do really stupid things sometimes... like today, for instance. Apparently, he was trying to break some record for chewing the most pieces of gum. He had five packs (not pieces... packs!) of gum in his mouth so far and he couldn't even move his jaw or talk anymore. Mr. Perron looked positively revolted and the whole class was laughing hysterically. After a few more minutes of Mr. Perron trying to ignore Evan and continue the lesson, but failing because everyone was distracted by him, he asked Evan to spit out the gum. Being Evan, he calmly walks out and walks back in within mere seconds even though our class is in a portable and it takes a good ten minutes to get to the bathrooms in the school and back. This is how the following conversation went:

Mr. Perron: Evan, where did you put the gum?
Evan: On Stephanie's car.
Stephanie: [laughing] Yeah? You know you're cleaning that up later, right? [stands up to look out the window] Uhhh... Evan, that's not my car.
Evan: [eyes wide] It's not?
Stephanie: [laughing] No.
Evan: SHIT!

At this point, Evan leaps out of his chair, bolts out of the door in the middle of class, catapaults himself over the wheelchair ramp and snatches the wad of gum off the hood of the car before the owner comes out and sees it. By now, the class is in hysterical fits of laughter and it took Mr. Perron a good ten minutes to calm the class down again. This happened in a Grade 12 University Level Philosophy course with a bunch of 17 and 18 year olds... which just goes to show how mature we are.

Now after this, I was bored again but not for long! Good ol' Lisa decided she would keep the entertainment going. As usual, she wasn't paying attention and was talking to her friend beside her. Mr. Perron asked her to leave and this is how that conversation went:

Mr. Perron: Lisa, please leave the class.
Lisa: [excited] I get to leave?
Mr. Perron: I will be marking you absent, though. Now please leave the class.
Lisa: What the hell? This is bullshit!
Mr. Perron: Lisa, I won't ask you again. Please pack your things and go to the office.
Lisa: You f****** shit! I'm gonna f****** kick your ass!
Mr. Perron: [calmly] Go for it.

Now if you know Mr. Perron, you'd know that him saying that is so uncharacteristic that it's funny. Almost every student in the class was in awe of him. I think I have a newfound respect for the man now. Not that I didn't respect him before. It's just been heightened now after him being so freaking awesome!

From there the rest of the class was boring and after that it was English. English wasn't so bad. I managed to finish chapter eight of my creative component for my big project. The time I became anxious was when the end of the school day came and it was time for my audition. My audition wasn't until 4:47pm and it was 3:10pm. I had nearly two hours to be nervous and build the suspense. I ended up practising my monologue for a few people and they all really liked it. Then I talked with Chris for a while until it was my turn. The only light in the room was a single spotlight on me and it was so intimidating! Mr. Fetterley had me do my monologue and stopped me half-way through. Apparently, he does that to everyone so I shouldn't worry about it. Then he gave me two improv situations which I think I handled fairly well and then he asked me to sing. I ended up singing "The First Noel" in Pachebal's Canon and when I talked to Chris afterwards, he said that asking me to sing was a really good sign. I don't think I picked a good song, though but it was the first thing that came to my head since I'm learning it in vocal class. I guess now it's just a waiting game to see if I was good enough to land a part.

Now obviously finishing the audition was when I was relieved but the anger didn't set in until I got home and got on the computer. Remember that schitzophrenic whack-job I was telling you about before? Well, even though I ended up forgiving him after he apologized and giving him a second chance like any good, caring person would do, he decided to use my kindness to try and destroy my life even further! I was shocked to discover when I went on my friend Maggie's profile on the website, he had posted a comment there saying that I told him to tell her she was a bitch and that I hated her! Obviously, I never said any such thing and it was just his low, pathetic, childish way of trying to personally hurt me since he knows that bashing my religion won't waver my faith and beliefs. Needless to say, he's blocked and I'm making it my personal mission to get him permanently banned from the site for his atrocity. What kind of pathetic low-life would go out of their way to harrass someone's friends and ruin their relationships just because they're not Christian? What a slimy sicko! Don't worry all you Christians out there. I know not all of you are like that and it's freaks like him who give all you normal Christians a bad name.

Anyway, that is my day from beginning to... well, approximately now. See ya!

Santa Claus Parade Day

2007-11-18T16:25:00.000-05:00

Hmmm, it really is difficult to get a blog entry started, isn't it? Especially when your life is rather calm and uneventful. Right now, I'm just sitting here on the computer (obviously), watching the Santa Claus Parade and roleplaying while talking to my friend on IM. It took me half the day to boot my annoying little brother off the computer. All he ever does is play stick figure flash games for hours and hours. It drives me crazy! At least I roleplay and blog and run websites which takes linguistic and organizational skill.

Well, let me start off by talking about the funny plot line going on in a Mystic Forest roleplay I'm in. I know it isn't the most exciting thing to talk about in a blog, but a blog means to just spew out the first thing that comes into your head. As my English teacher would say "just barf your mind onto the paper through your pen." Eloquent guy, eh?

Anyway, before I go into the storyline, you have to know who the characters are, so here they are:
Fiera - Elf. Commander of an army. She is very harsh and cold in her personality and does not show emotion easily.
Tharion - Elf. Warrior in Fiera's army and her lover. Emotional and passionate personality.
Yali - Elf. Young child. Fiera's adoptive daughter.
Duvessa - Faerie. Guardian of the Forest. Basically acts as a judge and political leader of the Forest.

Now, Fiera adopted Yali after her parents were killed and no one else would take her, believing that the girl was cursed because her parents died voilent deaths. Tharion was already Fiera's lover and he truly does cherish her as she does him. He wants to adopt Yali as his daughter as well but there is a problem. The Forest's law states that to jointly adopt a child, the two adults must be joined (married) and share a dwelling. Fiera and Tharion do not fit the qualifications. Tharion wants to become joined with Fiera so that he can adopt Yali (he also does love Fiera so it's not as though he is just using her). Even though Fiera loves Tharion as well, she is against the idea of becoming joined with him, because of her harsh and cold personality. This will eventually result in a nasty fight which splits the two apart and poor Yali is going to blame herself for it and run away which will send both Tharion and Fiera into a panic.

I'm not sure what's going to happen from there, but it looks promising. It should be fun to write it out.

On another, more realistic note, I'm watching the Santa Claus Parade. I watch it every year and it's become kind of a tradition. I love the big floats, they're really impressive. I could do without the announcer's lame jokes, though. That's probably why he's a news reporter the rest of the year. Humour is definitely not one of his strong points. Now they're showing the Penguin Party float... who the hell sponsors that one??? Probably Coca Cola or something... wait that's polar bears. Whatever. It's a cool float.

I love and hate procrastination at the same time. I love it because I have more time to what I want and have fun, but I hate it because it keeps me from getting what I need to get finished completed on time. I'm supposed to be writing an essay outline for English class but so far, I've yet to start it and it's due on Tuesday. Seeing as how I have my audition on Monday, I'm going to have to either buckle down and do it tonight (which seems highly unlikely) or rush to finish it on Monday night after I get back from my audition. I think the latter is what will end up happening. I love school but sometimes I wish I could just not do any work... I know, it's a strange polar opposite.

Oh great... another lame joke from the announcer on the Santa Claus Parade. Someone should smack him in the back of the head to knock the stupid out of him. He just made some ridiculous pun about the Rolling Stones. What the hell does the Rolling Stones have to do with Christmas?

On a completely different topic, it really bugs me when people become so close minded that they start to discriminate against people with other beliefs. There's this guy on a website I'm on who keeps posting in the forums saying that I'm going to burn in Hell and that I'm a filthy heathen whom God is going to cast into eternal damnation for my sins. All of this because I happen to be Wiccan. I think the situation is under control now, but it really hurts when people make false accusations about others without making an attempt to learn more about them first. Seriously, the guy's a whack-job. He claimed that he's seen Jesus and spoken with him and that he's been to Hell. I think he must have some kind of mental disorder, in which case I pity him and pray that he becomes healed of his illness somehow.

Anyway, I think this blog entry is long enough even though it was completely filled with fluff. It's alright. Most blogs are nowadays anyway. They're there for people to rant about random stuff in their lives. They serve as therapy for people more than anything else which is a good thing. Maybe that crazy guy who's buddies with Jesus should start a blog then because he really needs therapy.

*Note: In no way am I saying that Christianity is a bad thing or discriminating against Christians. The majority of my friends are Christian and I respect their beliefs just as they respect mine. I'm just saying that one guy is nuts for thinking that he's been to Hell and all that jazz. I accept all religions and all people who practise those religions as long as they are respectful of my beliefs as well.

The First Post

2007-11-17T16:06:00.002-05:00

Ahem.

Well, let me start off by saying that no, Briar Rosethorn is obviously not my legal name. It's my Wiccan name and for the sake of this blog, that will be the only name I refer to myself as. If you must shorten it, please use the name Rosethorn instead of Briar.

Unlike most teenagers my age, my life really isn't full of all that much drama. The situation that happened to me recently and is currently dying down was a rare occurance. I tend not to get caught up in who is dating who, boyfriends, catty fights with girlfriends and constant bickering with parents etc, etc. My life consists of school work, my religious faith and the computer. You may interpret that to be sad, geeky or whatever. I really don't care.

Hmmm... now to talk about what is currently going on with me and actually make it sound interesting. Quite a daunting task. Well, one thing I am very excited about is my audition on Monday.

The audition is for the Sears Drama Festival. It's a provincial competition that's sponsored by Sears and a bunch of high schools in the province compete to win the festival. It's very competitive and my school is one of hundreds that compete every year. Usually, we have a student write the script rather than redoing an existing one because that gets boring and there's no originality involved in it. Plus we don't have the money to pay the royalties if we were to do a major production such as Grease or Phantom of the Opera. There are over 30 people auditioning for roles this year and only about 10 spots so it's going to be tough.

I'm auditioning for the role of the bossy drill sergeant. Once you all get to know me a little better, you'll see that this role is perfect for me. We need to prepare and perfrm a monologue that is no more than one minute in length and use it for our audition. The monologue needs to showcase the characterization of the role we're shooting for. I chose a speech from St. Joan by Bernard Shaw to use. I finally have it memorized and I'm just working on the tone and blocking for Monday. I'll write it here, it's a good monologue.

"Ah! If, if, if, if! If ifs and ans were pots and pans, there'd be no need of tinkers! I tell you, Bastard, your art of war is no use, because your knights are no good at real fighting! War is just a game to them, like tennis and all their other games, they make rules as to what is fair and what is not fair, and heap armour on themselves and their poor horses to keep out the arrows, and when they fall they can't get up and have to wait for their squires to come and lift them to arrange about the ransom with the man that has poked them off their horse. Can't you see all the like of that is gone by and done with? What use is armour against gunpowder? And if it was, do you think men that are fighting for France and for God will stop to bargain about ransoms as have your knights live by doing? No, they will fight to win and they will give up their lives out of their own hands into the hands of God when they go into battle, as I do. Common folks understand this. They cannot afford armour and pay ransoms, but they followed me half-naked into the moat, up the ladder and over the wall! With them, it is my life or thine and God defend the right! You may shake your head, Jack, and Bluebeard may twirl his billygoat's beard and cock his nose at me, but remember the day your knights and captains refused to follow me to attack the English at Orleans! You locked the gates to keep me in and it was the townsfolk and the common people who followed me, and forced the gates and shewed you the way to fight in earnest!"

It took me two or three days to memorize this completely but it's such a relief to have it done now. I just hope it's good enough to land me a spot. I really need this to give me something to do after school. There's only so much time a person can spend in front of a computer before they become sick of it. I want to get out and do something, I want to talk to people and have some fun while doing it. That's why I'm really working my ass off to pull this off. I love to act and I really think I have a good chance at this. I think the fact that I typed that entire monologue completely from memory should count for something.

Actually, if I get this part, I'm going to have to thank Chris for it. Without his help, I'd be clueless. Chris is this guy at my school is a brilliant actor and also one of the writers for this year's production. I went to him and asked him for help because I hadn't acted in over a year and I was rusty (why I stopped acting for a year is a different story). He was kind enough to tell me to do a monologue from St. Joan. He said I read her character really well in Literature class and that I'd do well with it. I took his advice and now I'm feeling really confident so now I'm going to have to give him all the credit and thanks if I land the part. He's a really nice guy to go out of his way to help me out like that even though he doesn't know me all that well. He even drove me home after the first meeting because I didn't have a ride. Thanks a million, Chris!

Well, that's by far the most exciting thing going on with me right now. I should be working on an English assignment but I'm terrible for procrastinating and leave everything to the last minute. Anyway, I'll leave it here for now. My fingers are hurting from hacking away at the keyboard for so long.