Y'know when you have some caffeine to prepare yourself to work/give yourself more energy, and instead of making you more awake and focused, you just get sort of scatterbrained and sleepily jittery?

Yeah. That's what's happening with me right now. I had some chai to work on this paper (and ugh, I'm tired because the goddamned cats were in and out of my room all night, wanting to CUDDLE and PLAY!) and instead of it increasing my focus, it's just made me kind of jittery and nervous. Besides I'm freaking out a little about going back to school, mostly for various emotional reasons, and this is seriously not helping. At all.

I don't know. I mean, on a certain level I'm glad that I had work to do over this break since it kept my brain from atrophying in absence of school, and all (and obviously I'm grateful that I got the extensions, because there was no way in hell I would have been able to get it done with all the seizures I was having in the last few weeks of the semester), but ugh, it really does suck to have work to do when on winter break like this. I'm freaked, is what I'm saying. I never feel totally comfortable at school, and I'm so much lonelier and sicker there - like, always.

I do always do better spring semester than the fall one, though, because I'm going towards more light and warmth and longer days, as opposed to fall semester, when I'm going towards darker and darker and colder and colder and it's like some kind of hellish descent. Fall semester really fucking sucks. All the time.

Also? Grateful for these paper topics. It's been an American Studies-heavy semester (next semester is going to be an English-heavy one, and I anticipate it being way harder), so in the past couple of weeks I've written on Trainspotting, Citizen Kane, His Girl Friday, Twin Peaks, and now Mad Men. (The Twin Peaks research also got me a chance to correspond with Ms. Sherilyn Fenn, a.k.a. Twin Peaks' Audrey Horne - a fangirl's dream, if ever there was one. She was a peach.) Not that there aren't difficulties associated with this shit, because trust me, there are, but it's much easier when you're studying something you really find to be a lot of fun.

All this popular culture studies stuff has really given me a new appreciation for aesthetics. I've been following lots of variously aesthetic-focused blogs and I really do think it's just as valid as the study of anything else - I don't see why substance and style have to be pried apart and differentiated (they certainly aren't in film), or why styles and aesthetic can't be every bit as thought-provoking as a "higher" form of culture. And I don't think one has to be "trained" in this stuff to appreciate it - you just have to have a good eye for what you find beautiful and visually arresting, and cultivate and seek out what you like and find compelling. Sure, having studied art or film or fashion helps, but I don't think it's a requirement if you have a natural compulsion towards it.

I caught Vertigo on TV the other night after the Golden Globes (which were really good this year! Good show, good show), and it's still one of my favorites. Just hits all the right notes - dramatic and romantic and tragic and deeply creepy. Kim Novak gives the shivers - good AND bad ones! (Jimmy Stewart just gives me the bad ones.) She's exquisite. My favorite scenes are the early ones, seeing her dreamlike, haunted wanderings around San Francisco, her obsession with the portrait (that portrait still gives me major fucking creeps), her almost out-of-body hurling herself into the San Francisco bay. The sensuality, the paranoia, the obsession - it's all some of my favorite stuff.

And who could forget that fucking hair swirl?

More shivers. I read this terrifically creepy short story by Joyce Carol Oates called "Fat Man My Love" about Hitchcock from the perspective of one of his blondes. She's great when she's not completely grossing me out, which can definitely happen. I can kind of overdose on her stories a little bit and end up a bit woozy.

Enough morbidity! Let's see some aesthetic perfection! ANTM again, here. From the "short cycle," Ms. Rae Weisz:

Fucking perfect.

Also, my absolute all-time favorite photo from that show: Cycle 11's Lauren Brie:


I feel a little better now. And now, to the paper-writing!

So, it's been like a million years since I wrote in this, right? (Or six weeks or so, but hey, close enough...)

I'm well into my semester now and overall it's going pretty well. Classes are pretty great for the most part, and my health is...well, it's been worse. There's definitely been some sick badness (nausea, stomach pains, headaches, body aches, chest pain, heart palpitations, a seizure the other day, and even some weird new shit), but hey, at least I haven't gotten the swine flu, right?

I have been really homesick this semester though, worse than it's been in awhile. I always missed my mom really badly, but never "home" so much, and it sounds silly, but honestly I think a lot of it has to do with my missing my cats. Seriously. I am having serious cat withdrawal and it's a problem.

Also, a piece of awesome awesomeness that I forgot to put into my last entry and clearly have not put in since, as I have not updated and all and blah blah blah: The day before moving all my stuff in, when my mom and my brother and I were hanging out on campus, we went for a long walk on the Smith trails. A little dog ran up to us, and as I was, you know, talking nonsense to the dogs and so forth, the dog's owner came over - who happened to be Thurston Moore, of Sonic Youth fame. I looked up (way, way, way up because the dude is TALL), and there he was. With his dogs. I mean, I knew he lived in the area, but seriously, that was about the last place I would expect to run into him. Go figure. I basically squealed my face off.

But enough of this. My mom sent me some pictures of the cats and I'm gonna post them now.

Mabel in the cabinets:


Cuddling cats:




More to come, as always.

Well, I'm back at Smith. Moved in yesterday. Classes haven't started yet but they do tomorrow and I just saw my mom off. I'm going to miss her terribly but it's much better than last year, when I was moving into a new house and had very few friends, or my first year when I was totally suspended. This year I know and love my house and I know I have friends (even though Lisa is abroad this semester and I already miss her dreadfully) and I'm fairly well settled. I know my majors, I've declared, I have a better idea of what I want to do with myself, I'm working on finding a work study job and I'm a little more confident that I know I can handle things. I'm just going to miss my mom terribly, that's all.

And the kittens! I'm going to miss them awfully, too. I spent almost all day every day with them this summer and it's going to suck not having their screaming furry little faces around all the time. They got fixed and declawed this past Monday and we got them back Wednesday (Abbey, aka Princess Bitchcat, was VERY happy with the two-day vacation she got from them), and so it was a lot of antibiotic-giving. Those two just don't know to take it easy. Poor Duncan's front paws swelled up to nearly twice their normal size because he got cat litter in them AND is apparently not smart enough not to figure out that maybe he shouldn't be jumping up and down such high surfaces. Mabel, for her part, is a little bit OCD and would not stop licking and picking at herself. I now have cat blood stains from her feet on the surface of one of my notebooks, which is just LOVELY.

Plus they're going to be going insane without the attention and affection to which they've grown accustomed. My mom joked that she'd have to get a baby sling and hold Duncan in it while she cooked and cleaned and went about her evenings.

She also says that if she does that, that's the moment that she officially becomes a crazy cat lady and I am inclined to agree. Still, I can imagine doing that myself. Duncan in particular is my baby, after all.

I also left my computer charger at home - of all the things! so my mom is going to next-day it to me and in the meantime, I'm trying to limit my computer time and I'll try to borrow a charger from someone who has the same computer. It's hard, though. What am I going to DO with my free time??

It really is good to be back, though. I'm a little worried about how things are going to go, but there's no doubt that this is where I'm supposed to be right now and I'm sure I'll end up having a pretty good time. I'm excited about my classes and really excited to be back in Northampton. I want to try to start working out again (which I say every time a season starts or ends, I know), if only for my energy level, which seems to be decreasing quite a lot over the past couple of years. I don't have the same level of energy that I had even a couple of years ago, at all, and I want to try to make that a little bit better if I can. And I want to try to write more again. It's something that I've missed and I have a feeling I'll feel more like myself again if I can figure out how to get that going.

Till then.

The kittens have officially been named: Duncan and Mabel. Huzzah! Not very exciting names - I do kinda still wish we'd ended up going with themed ones - but they seem to fit the little critters really well and I'm just glad we settled on SOMETHING, finally.

(Because I know y'all were totally wondering.)

The health stuff hasn't been great - I threw up at work yesterday - but all my tests were normal and nothing drastic or terrible has taken place, so I guess it's been pretty consistently not-bad. I don't even know what the hell the nausea is all about. My mom and I hypothesized lactose intolerance, maybe, since dairy has been making me queasy more and more for the past few years, but who the hell knows. My digestive system has never worked particularly well, and lately less than ever.

The weather has been fantastic, though - 70s and sunny, mostly, not too hot (a good thing for my delicate little flower constitution, right?) Wow, I'm actually writing about the weather on my blog. How boring is my life?

In other, happier news, I got the Sims 3. Huzzah! Those of you who know me well know what a simming addict I am - I've been playing it since the first one came out, when I was 10 or so - so this is an exciting prospect in my life. :) It's...kind of strange, and definitely different, but hey, it's a shiny new toy and I'm really enjoying being super-absorbed in something again. It's been a while.

Going to New York next week and I can't freaking wait. I'll get to see my brother since he's coming up for the weekend, which is always fabulous, AND I'll get to be there for Pride which will be SERIOUSLY F'ING FABULOUS. I've actually never been to a Pride parade before (what a bad hag am I), and New York City pride, of all the things, will be amazing, I'm sure. So that will be exciting, and something to blog about as well.

Till next time!

Well, it's Friday, and at the risk of sounding corny, thank God for that. This week wasn't nearly as disastrous health-wise as last week, but it was still LONG, what with the chest pain and fatigue and nausea that are still very much present. Had an MRI on Monday (which was confirmed to be fine - apparently I have no tumors, lesions, aneurysms or any other such things on my brain - hooray for that), and an echocardiogram, the results for which I am still waiting...along with the results from my heart monitor that I had on for 24 hours last week.

So, yeah. I'm tired. And a little bit cranky, to be perfectly honest. There is nothing I want more right now than to be curled up in my bed, asleep.

The kittens are still awesomely kitteny and kitteningly awesome. We still haven't named them definitively, although it looks like the girl will be named Mabel (the frontrunning name from Day 1), and we're leaning towards Duncan for the boy at the moment. It was harder to get a handle on what he should be named...the girl just seemed like a Mabel from the very beginning. Boy kitty (Duncan?) is the neediest, most affection-desperate little critter I've ever seen, and we have a history of VERY codependent animals at my home. He sometimes runs after me screaming as though his little cat heart has been broken, holding up his arms to be picked up - and then immediately starts nuzzling my face and licking my nose once I do. Mabel is very needy as well, although not as bad as her brother.

They are also RAVENOUS EATERS and will eat everything in sight. Here is what they have stolen off my plate so far:
Chicken
Whole grain pasta
Red beans
Ranch dressing
Cheese
Onions
Spinach
Apples
Milk, half & half, etc.
Apple juice
Popcorn

FREAKING RIDICULOUS. What kind of cats go crazy over eating FRUITS AND VEGETABLES? They are CRAZY.

My mother and I have also discovered that we seriously need a hobby. I can't work out until my chest inflammation business gets better - even walking up stairs can be really painful right now - so that's out. We don't do crafts or make stuff, and reading can get tiresome and antisocial if we do it all the time. So we kind of don't know what to do with ourselves for awhile. As for writing...yeah, well, my muse has flown the coop the past few months. She's off in the distance laughing at me somewhere.

Suggestions of hobbies for non-crafty, somewhat inactive people?

KITTIES!

Now with MOAR PICSHURS. Taken with photobooth on the computer. (Please ignore me in these pictures, as I look positively HEINOUS in them.)

The kitty known, for now, only as "boy kitty":





He was squirming away from the computer at this point:



"Girl kitty":





They're as adorable and crazy and needy as ever. Love them.

More pictures to come, I'm sure! (Oh, and new blog title! It was my senior quote, heh.)

Oh, health.

Oh, my health.

What a piece of crap my body is.

I had a seizure at work the other day, which was awful, of course, although that's kind of only the start of all this business. My blood pressure was absurdly low when they first took it: 90/45, although it went up again soon after. Was in the hospital for about 4 hours (bloodwork and so forth) and got a CT since I haven't had one in 4 years and the clinic I'm going to in July is asking for as up-to-date information as possible. They didn't find anything (of course) except for a seemingly completely random UTI, for which I am now on antibiotics. Antibiotics that make me so nauseated that almost any movement leaves me nearly vomiting up my lunch.

I had a doctor's appointment today just so that my doctor could order and schedule another MRI, but while my mom and I were there, we got a lot of other stuff taken care of. Had a neurological workup, which was fine (of course) and discovered that I have inflammation in the wall of my chest, which is accounting for the chest pain I've been having the past few months. They also found a heart murmur. (Awesome.) Did an EKG, which was normal, but put me on a 24-hour heart monitor, currently hooked up to my chest.

If only I had House. HE WOULD BE ABLE TO MAKE THE CONNECTIONS. And on top of all this, the ol' piece-of-crap knee has been killing me the past few days.

Still, though, I am handling this with my usual brand of stoicism and self-deprecating humor because, y'know, I'm just used to this crap by now. It's just the way it goes with me.

The kittens are fantastic, albeit unbelievably needy. My mom and I still can't decide what to name them - right now they're going by "boy kitty" and "girl kitty," and/or whatever name we feel like calling them that moment. But yeah, the kittens and I get a whole lot of quality time together. It's awesome.

I HAZ KITTENS!!

KITTENS!

I also got home on Saturday, but more importantly: KITTENS!

Someone who works with my mom had them borned at her house, and needs to get rid of them. Five of them were brought into work today (I spent quite some time playing with them), and we went home with two - a brother and sister.

My cat Abbey is pretty pissed, as I knew she would be...she's VERY territorial and I'm sure is not taking at all kindly to this addition. But she'll deal. My mom and I figured that the two of them can entertain each other and so I can still devote time to her. They are so.freaking.cute.

So now I'm trying to figure out what to name them. Here's what we've come up with so far:
Bonnie and Clyde
Quentin or Benjy and Caddy (Allison's suggestion)
Sid and Nancy
Kurt and Courtney
Audrey and Mickey
Mabel and Malcolm

I also like Dante, Edgar, or Chase for the boy, and Lulu, Veronica, and especially Mabel for the girl. The boy is smarter and more alert than his sister, who is much more quiet and chill.

But I don't know. Any suggestions?