11-07-04
It’s been too insanely long since I wrote in this thing.  In my defense, life’s been driving me nucking futs.
First off, I had the worst day of my life a week ago tomorrow when I found out that automatic student insurance is only automatic during the school year, even if you go summer.  (Then why the frick do they call it automatic?)  So I have better than $800 in medical bills staring at me now 'cause they didn‘t tell me to pay $15 for the insurance.  Then, I found out that supposedly $2318 of medical income protection is built into what counts as income on my FAFSA, so optional reporting does me no good.  Did I do something in a past life, I wonder.
Second off, Melissa (Teresa’s and my roommate) is kinda a rich brat — the girl is just privileged.  She has eight freaking credit cards, and if she’s short on cash her daddy pays the bill, even though she has enough in the bank to pay off all her student loans from her first four years but she keeps taking out more loans.  Rich people … and her computer’s not even any good.  Dell rhymes with smell, and other words.
Classes are all right, I guess, though it’s more work than I expected from only 13 academic credits.  Practicum is my life source — 3rd graders are neat!  They’re short and easier to play with than grownups are.  Also, my writing prof instantly loved me, and so far I’m getting an A and she’s practically bullying me into taking fiction workshop next term, and if I didn’t want to anyway I think she’d talk me into it..
I have $110 in the bank and $115 and change in bills coming before my next money comes in — not good, but there’s at least a snowball’s chance of there being enough cans and bottles in my car.  I’ve got at least $100 coming at the end of the month, and another $100 not long after that, but I also have the same bills next month as this month, and Christmas, so $25 late fees would put a royal crimp in it all.  On the good side, I should also have money coming at the end of next month: I’ve got the paperwork to start getting paid for my ClubED website work, and believe me, I’m going to put in crazy amounts of time on that.  Maybe burn off most of my work-study before Spring, ‘cause then I start Professional Core (I know I should say I might but who are we kidding?) and I’ll have two other classes, so time’ll be crunchy.  (Especially if I keep volunteering at MES after the practicum’s over, which I seriously want to do.)  Cash-wise, selling a story right now would be awesome.  Three cents a word may not sound great, but multiply that by 3,000 words or so and you can see how that could come in handy.
And … dagnabbit, it’d be so much more convenient if I’d been writing about this as I went along.  In my writing class, one of the two guys in the class is in my group, and I think he might know I exist — anyway, there’s been at least one time outside of class when I was pretty sure he was using the project as an excuse to talk to me.  He started reading early like me, he’s into writing, he wants to be a teacher, and he’s insane enough to take eighteen credits.  (And, this is, like, the least important thing, but he even has a job.)  In short, I’m in trouble.  And, just to prove how logical human beings are, this is my idea of a problem.  (And I’m running out of "ands.")  What’s with me and the crappy time I pick to hit uncharted territory?  It’s like I’m turning from a brain on a stick into a girl, or something.  This sucks.  What’s the protocol on this one, anyway?

11-09-04
Computer hasn’t written back about that last question.  I guess I’d be more worried if it had.
The thing that sucks is, our group’s presentation’s tomorrow.  There goes the excuse to talk, so now what the frick do I do?

11-11-04
One of the writing books I’m reading suggests keeping a running tally of how many words I’m writing.  I don’t know if that’s going to help me any, but here goes nothing.  Tonight, I’m writing on the fragments in the “scraps to put together” file.  Before I started, the word count stood at 3209.
All right … now it’s technically tomorrow and the word counter stands at 3905.  700 words in a couple hours isn’t that bad, I guess.

11-12-04
So far, no writing today.  Maybe I’ll get a few minutes in after I kill this freaking printer.
12:10 AM of technically the next day: Right now, Tienna’s Story stands at 2165 words.
1:09: Word count now says 2569.  400 an hour when I need sleep — I can live with that.
Going to sleep now.

11-13-04
1:14 PM: In Menela’s story, there are now 3819 words.
2:20: 4238 words now, so again, about 400 an hour — and that’s with some editing, and checking on stuff, and of course a few random distractions, and figuring out what the heck was gonna happen to my characters.
I’m good.

11-16-04
I gave myself a day to think it through, and it’s still dire.
I have to go home this weekend, because Aunt Gena’s calling a Clan Gather.  We’ve had Family Meetings before, but only of those in one house—I can’t remember there ever being one that had to be on a weekend so people could make it.  John’s even coming down from Portland.  And, I know what it’s going to be mostly about.
My parents and sister have hit the limit of how much freeloading they can get away with.  So, things are going to get shaken up a bit: the rent is shifting to $400, but will only cover one meal a week—Mom’ll have to start cooking.  And, this July, after Rianna’s out of high school, Mom, Dad, Rianna, and Jason have to either be somewhere else or make arrangements individually, and Mom isn’t even going to be eligible to make an arrangement.  I’m not included in the banishment, so I guess my efforts to not be the houseguest from Hades have been noticed.
It wouldn’t be coming to a head now if it hadn’t been for Rianna’s kitten getting hit by DJ’s car—which I’ll agree was a rotten thing to happen—and Rianna saying some pretty horrible things, not the least of which being that she could “get their family in a lot of trouble,“ about living in a sub-code house with two babies I guess.  But…it’s been coming for a long time.  Rianna and Jason have been, fairly frequently, sucking down two cans of chili and a box of macaroni and cheese, and calling that an after school snack.  I can’t blame Aunt Gena, especially since it’s been eons since anyone in that branch except me has pulled their weight (and I’m assuming I have because I’m not getting booted out).  But the fact is, it puts me in an uncomfortable spot.
Objectively, I can see that Rianna and Jason aren’t helping the clan financially or taking a share of the work.  So, they’re making it harder for everyone else.  To milk the clan and then threaten the clan—that just doesn’t sit right with the Celt in me.  That’s not where I get myself in a serious knot, though I think I’ve given them a little too much room for teenage weirdness because they’re not Mom.
My parents are the true knot that messes me up here.  Objectively, they both have an obligation to pay their way.  My mother seems to do nothing all day, and she’s around the house, while my dad works all day in the truck.  So, I can at least partly justify to others that I blame my mom more than my dad.  The thing is…I know it’s got to be at least partly because I’m not mad at my dad like I’m mad at my mom for putting her crap on me since I was nine.  I can even see that maybe leaving the check-writing with her, where she wants it, is his way of trying to keep her happy so she doesn’t blow up at us kids…except we’re not kids anymore.  I’m twenty and my sister’s seventeen.  We don’t need to be shielded forever, but I must’ve missed the briefing on how to explain that.  But the point is, even though I think my dad should take more responsibility on this, I’m not mad at him, which means I’m not mad at my mom because she’s not taking responsibility.  I’m mad at her for a ton of other reasons, like how she made me believe Dad was cheating and a bad person, and all the while he stayed in their marriage so he wouldn’t lose Rianna and me in a custody battle … and I don’t know if he was or wasn’t cheating, though I think probably not ’cause I know what my mom thinks is good evidence, but I don’t really care.  It doesn’t affect me.  What affects me is that she tried to make it my problem, and she couldn’t even keep her private notepaper musings about how terrible her life is private, and between her telling what she told us and me reading the notes when I couldn’t help it, I bought that I was the problem to the point where I had nightmares that she went nuts and shot us all or choked me for ruining her life.
I can’t think of anything screwed up about me that’s not her fault.
And it sucks beyond belief—to the point where I wonder if I should even date, since that naturally leads to getting married and having kids, ’cause I don’t ever want to be to anyone what she was to us, and I’m not sure I know how to be anyone else.  She tries to say, “Marry a Christian,” like that’d somehow make everything perfect, but I don’t know.  I can see it being a good thing for the parents to match, so that the kids don’t grow up as the battlefield in a holy war, but the thing is, my mom can’t have some kind of exclusive deal on faith as a basis for not taking responsibility for her life.  (I’m pretty sure she still thinks she’ll be able to move out “when God decides she’s ready.”)  And I know how sweet she always acted in church—which is why I no longer go to church: I couldn’t take the hypocrisy, and not being Jesus I didn’t have the clearance to kick anyone out—so I figure, anyone who acts so perfect could just be acting, like her.  And that she tried to make Rianna and me “ladies”—which seems to mean we should pass out if anyone swears except her, and words like “freaking” must never cross our lips—still bothers me.  My mom would have loved to find a guy who wanted to take care of her, no demands or anything.  Now, for practical reasons (mainly, teachers’ salaries being what they are) I can’t afford a guy who won’t be able to pay his own way—but I’m bloody well not going to be someone’s princess/prostitute.  If I do get married, it’ll be to a partner and a friend, not a source of cash, and if I take a few years off my career to raise kids, I’ll save up, save money somewhere else to make it work, try to keep money coming in some other way like writing or a daycare in the living room or something like that.  (I don’t guess any of this applies if I win the lottery…)  Seriously, my best bet is probably to hunt down a male teacher who likes to clean things, ’cause then I’ll do the cooking thing ’cause I kind of like that, and we’ll know how to split up the housework.  (Alternately, a guy who’s bringing in enough money to afford a maid, so neither of us has to worry about housework, but I can’t count on that.)
Doubtless Mom would say that makes me a “Women’s Libber.”  Hmmm…I want to go into a traditionally female profession and split household chores fairly (which I think means in accordance with how much time each partner has outside of work), and she wants to be a PI and not do any housework.  Does that make her a feminazi?  I don’t know—I just can’t see scrubbing my own bathroom as a 9-to-5.  But if that were what I said I was doing, I’d bloody well do it.

11-17-04
The loaner computer’s up and running, and online!  Yay!
11:40 PM: The Journey stands, now, at 11123 words.
12:42 tomorrow: 11400 words.  I guess I’m just not in the zone.

11-19-04
I’m running out of fingernails.  Clan Gather’s tomorrow and then all you-know-what breaks loose.
And my ankle’s killing me.


~current~
Archives in reverse chronological order:
~recent (latest entries first)~
~Starting over (in progress)~
~So this is what it's like to not be good enough (earliest entries first)~
~interlude, including still more family stuff (earliest entries first)~
~Junior Year Begins, including more about my mitochondrial DNA (earliest entries first)~
~Summer before Junior Year, aka "This is why I worry about my mitochnodrial DNA" (earliest entries first)~
~When I started at Western... (earliest entries first)~
~When I went to Chemeketa... (earliest entries first)~