101mutts

Icarus and I have had a bit of a struggle in the show ring. We had a huge win in January but haven't done so much as a first place in our class since. With Icarus being my first real show dog (sorry Obie!) that drought was more than a bit of a menatl challenge. I know Icarus is a beautiful whippet with many attributes that meet breed standard. I know his breeder thinks he's finishable. I also know that the owners he went to live with for a bit have regret that they kept his brother and not him (he's mine, all mine!). This knowledge is all fine and good but without an independent assessment these things become tough to believe. Winning in January was amazing! Not winning even our class for the remainder of the year had me wondering if that win was a fluke, if perhaps that judge didn't really know whippets. Self confidence is a fickle trait in the show ring. This second win is perhaps more important than the first as it shows me this wasn't a fluke. Of course, that nagging voice in my head hears only that if you show a dog long enough statistically you need to win on occasion. This is where I tell that voice to STFU! I'm looking forward to Puyallup, that's a first for me.

Note to self: Need whippet userpics!

Monthly flowetry:

No good comes of pain;
Contorting in my bed linen:
My back bends that way?!

Just to add a touch of humour to the last line.


Dear macro-arthropods:

I currently detest you. Nay, detest those who studied your responses to cultivation, ploughing and frost. Frost you, mates! FROST YOU. I hope you get eaten by the birds in the census I wrote a report on this month.

(That's real ecology there.)

Glares at boring mind-numbing material,
Kiwi


I wish livejournal had 100 icons like InsaneJournal. Clearly LiveJournal is too sane.

Of course el-jay starts working the minute I start a 'dear el-jay' letter to slander it.

I miss my days of shorter entries, shorter lines, shorter...shortness.

16-year-old me seems to sum me up pretty well these days:
http://cranky--crocus.livejournal.com/71220.html
http://cranky--crocus.livejournal.com/74646.html
http://cranky--crocus.livejournal.com/74867.html

Today I have learned lessons from Scrubs and worked minimally on my scientific paper presentation, but it's another start. Tomorrow's another adventure.

I find it fascinating that the way I speak (save accent) has not changed incredibly since I was 17 yet my livejournal entries have changed ridiculous amounts. Well POOT on that, I do not want another super long paragraph!

Take that! Here's a new line! OH YEAH.

AKJWDFJWALKJVCWIJEFA DEAR LAST WEEK OF TERM: WHY MUST YOU EAT MY BRAIN? CONFUSION, KIWI

Life is hard with no brain. Off to see the Wizard...in Sleep...oh yes nummy sleep.

P.S. I may get to go pick up my sister from UMass when I'm home! And I edited her paper like a good little fake English teacher with the green highlighter in Word! Really done now. :P

Kristine (stardust/podling sister) came on earlier and sent me a Facebook message (we keep them going) that was so stardusty I didn't know what to do - I was talking to my mother about it as she messaged.

How we're confused with our paths because we had these clear dreams, and then something changed, and they aren't clear. We are complex creatures and want so much from life, and want to give so much, and want to end up in these beautiful places of love that just may not be orthodox. Okay, knowing us, they WON'T be orthodox.

And how we don't know what paths to follow because there isn't one to the places we want to arrive at. How people who have ended up where we want to be, or close, have done so pretty much accidentally; how those who are said to "forge their own paths" often do so accidentally, or have the term applied in hindsight. How few people decide from the get go, "I am going to create this starting from this moment and I am going to forge an entirely new path to end up where I want to be." Yes, allowing certain circumstantial changes, but having that the general gist.

So we were messaging about it. And once more, we are completely in the same place with it all. I grow more thankful every day for my sister (podling, stardust, anything - she is my sister) and knowing that as I sit here with these thoughts people consider 'out-there' and unfounded or too introspective or too 'thinky' or generally not help at this present moment...that there is another out there, perhaps not like in blood but like in love and family equally, thinking many of the same things.

As we were discussing it I realised I was beginning to sound like a Dr. Seuss book: Oh, the Places You'll Go! I offered to read it and she was game. She put in headphones and I made the call.

I read through the book, showing two pictures and replacing some words/lines to keep it gender-neutral (I think Dr. Seuss would have approved regardless). It just resonated with me once more, especially reading it with someone thinking the same thoughts as I.

I'm awake at 3.33, my gay boyfriend's time (she knows all about gay boyfriends). I have a poster due in tomorrow that I'm still gathering pictures for and will have to put together tomorrow morning and present tomorrow evening... but it all seem so inconsequential when I experience moments like this. Moments that I know I will remember until I die, beyond the time I remember what poster I was working on or what class or what year even.

Just the sort of moments that when I am older and people ask me, "What do you remember at university?" I can answer, "Well, once I read a children's book to my sister over the ocean because we were in similar places and it shared a similar story. Oh, the Places You'll Go! by Dr. Seuss. My mother's book her friend gave her around college."

I am still confused. I still don't necessarily know where I'm going, through posters and degrees and travels. I'm still not always okay with that.

But I am content in feeling this, and in connection and in a life in which I can read Dr. Seuss as a near-20-something to a sister I have been lucky enough to find in my lifetime. I am thankful for moments I will remember, these beautiful moments of present-life-contentment (over-riding future-life confusion) and knowing these moments for what they are at an intrinsic level.

I can get through these times. And I hope that when anxieties and stresses try to subvert this, hide it, jumble my mind until my heart and these moments are hidden...that I will remember at least a fraction of them anyway, and feel at peace at my core, even if my limbs and mind-goo-tentacles continue flailing.

This is peace and love.

P.S. I apologise for stealing your book, Mum; but thank you for this moment - it certainly has further generational value now! It will be returned to you in good order with more memories attached.

Bitch, by Meredith Brooks. It's been my favourite song since I was 7.

Also:

Next term Jujubean gets to take a course in which they discuss slippery-slope and straw man arguments; Matt gets to share his maths questions with all his friends.

Why did I not take philosophy or maths?

Clearly Lysia (classics) and I (ecology) are ridiculous.

I finished my bird census assessment in good time. I did my seminar report the day before it was due.

I finished NaNo WriMo. I don't feel very accomplished. Maybe next year I will, if I do and finish it. Not doing non-fiction again. NaNoWriMo, for me, will always be fiction.

My poster is due tomorrow. I still have so much to do on it. I'm still in the gathering-information stage. Then I will be onto organising it into sections, creating a pretty and efficient design, printing and creating, doing handouts if I want...

I know I've done these too many times before. And I've always procrastinated them, too. I just finished NaNo WriMo on the part of my freshman year in which I was procrastinating on all my springlettes (projects a lot like all these) and doing/feeling pretty fine. Besides depression about not being able to walk, I mean, quite fine. And somehow cheery in my own cynical way.

I hate the feeling of terror I get at the end of the term.

These next 2 weeks will be the death of me. But then, 16 days from now, I will be home. I need to get to there. I need to.

I wish I felt accomplished. For any of this. I hope I will 11 days from now, when I have finished my final thing for the term and go off to meditation retreat weekend.

At least I can come back to livejournal soon.

i finished the writing. it is not an all-nighter. i am over word count and a lot of it is crap, but the assignment is naff, so there's not much any of us could do with that. it has sucked out my grammar. i be dead, but shall revive tomorrow.

tomorrow i will finish all the top-up, cut-down stuff before passing it in at 4. then i will be home free for stuff. like sleeping and writing and being cool.

i had one panic attack and it was mild and i handled it well. my hopes for this term was: start doing things early, no all-nighters, no panic attacks.

it's not the end of semester yet but i think i'm doing pretty well.

also i forgot that tomorrow is black friday or whatever until andrew pointed it out. apparently lots of money will be spent tomorrow. not by me. i won't even be paying for a sandwich, because i actually made one for tomorrow this time like a good little girl.

alright! time to finish watching glee (was watching it in 5-minute segments to get me through), read oh, the places you'll go once more and crash! shower and school tomorrow.

I am Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea
And no one can stop me: not me, not today!
I'm pulling my mountain, I'm tugging along;
I'm playing ukulele and singing a song.
No noise can stop me, no bang and no gong!
No voice in my head and no scream in the throng!
I'll keep right on going through Lurch, Slump or Wait,
I'll keep right on going with green eggs on my plate!
I can't be held down, I'll just jump and fly high!
Won't pause 'til I want to, I won't explain why!

These are my mountains and these are my plans
And no one can stop me, not a plan-banning man,
No stick in the wheel or poo flying to fan;
I'll keep right on going, I'll running-running-ran.

Because I am Mordecai Ali Van Allen O'Shea;
The world is waiting because today is my day.
I'm off to great places, or I'm here to stay:
These are my mountains, and I'm on my way.

Piction (n.) - fanfiction in poem form. (Not to be confused with Poiction, which is specfically the piction of Poe's work.)

This is what I get up to when teachers assign me an assessment. Dearest teachers, do you have any idea what you do to my mind?