8-01-04
Freakin’ heck.
Yesterday, John had the gall to throw some of the moldy garbage around the motorhome onto the burn pile (that nobody’s gonna light off in the middle of summer anyway).  Mom flipped; yelling and cussing match broke out; Mom left.  She said on the phone that she’d come back if Aunt Gena kicked John out.  Later she said if they’d put the moldy crap back where it was, she’d think about coming back for a talk.  No takers on that one either.
Unless she gets some major help, probably involving drugs and a nice rubber room, I don’t even want her to come back.
We opened a betting pool on when she’ll be back.  It looks like Jason, with the furthest-out bet (36 hours) has it - she’d pretty much have to show up right now for Rianna’s “a little more than 24 hours” to take it.
Am I a horrible human being for taking bets on when my own mother’ll come back?  Do I care?
8:23: My mom has reached a whole new level of immaturity.  Aunt Gena, who saw and should know, says she’s in the Chevy, parked on the wide shoulder of the road - our street - on the other side of the bridge that’s just at the other side of the Squirrel Hill intersection.  Furthermore, she ducked down when Aunt Gena went by.  Does she think that the Chevy Crapmobile is also a Stealth-10-mobile too?
Whatever.  But this is a whole new low.

8-2-04
Mom’s back.  I’m not sure exactly when because I was downstairs in my room.  Jason wins the betting pool.
I can’t believe she came back.  Well, yeah, I can - I knew she’d just come back and all this would go under the rug with everything else.  I just don’t want to believe it.  I want her to go live with Aunt Mary and Grandma Violet in Portland, or something, and just leave us alone and stop making everything chaotic around here.  What happened to her temp job and studio apartment idea?  Why didn’t she figure out from me not calling her that I’ve got nothing to say to her, I don’t want to hear the BS she spews all the time, and I don’t want her around?

8-4-04
Bad news first: two of my queries came back today with a big, fat “no.”  Ouch.
Now, the good news: For next year, I’ve landed a $600 institutional scholarship and a $2000 OSAC scholarship.  So far.  Now, it’s probably a little late in the game for anything new to get thrown on, but hey, a girl can dream, right?
And at least I’ve got two more queries that haven’t landed back in my face, and if it comes down to it there are more agents on my list … all right.  We haven’t reached “this really sucks” yet.

8-5-04
So far, I’ve managed to avoid Mom, so I guess everything’s back to normal.  Everything that’s screwed up is under that rug next to everything else.
When I get my own place, no rugs.  Just hardwood floors, tile, linoleum, that kind of thing.  I guess I’ll have to have a bathmat, but like heck is stuff gonna find its way under that.

8-19-04
Literally couldn’t sleep last night … so I just stayed up working on stuff.  And now I’m so freaking tired, even though I was in and out for half an hour, an hour or so ago, and caught maybe twenty minutes’ worth.  And my neck hurts; I’m not really sure what’s up with that.
Still haven’t heard back from one of the agents.  I hope that’s a good sign…

8-24-04
I probably should’ve found some trouble to get into by this time … or at least a job or something … but it’s like I’ve been in this weird funk, haven’t felt like anything.  My writing isn’t even going right.
On the good side, I still haven’t heard back from one of the four agents.  That’s a month, and they haven’t said no.  Hopefully, that leads to money eventually.

8-29-04
Three weeks from now, I’ll be moved into the dorm.  Four weeks and a day from now, classes are starting again.  Maybe for a couple weeks in there I’ll be volunteering at Lamb again - like, before the term starts.
I’m still tired from going, let me think, eleven terms straight.  Six more to go, now, and I really hope I can get the class loads to go together right.  But the weird thing is, I actually want to get back into it.  For one thing, I’ll be taking a science class again - I’ve missed that a lot.  Frank’s Fake Science hardly counts, so it was two years ago this last spring that I last took a real science class.
Beyond that, it’s a whole new term with nothing screwed up yet.  I’ll finally be living on campus, in the middle of everything … well, technically kind of off to the northwest, that’s where the housing is in relation to most of the campus, but close enough.  If I did the projection right, I’ve still got at least a narrow shot at graduating with a 3.8, though not much better unless I start retaking things.
It feels a little weird that I’ve been going so long and I still have another two years.  I guess that’s what I get for starting early and going summers, but I darn near had to, to get all the classes I need.  It still has potential to get sticky at the end, trying to get one last Spanish class in to make my focus area, but if I hadn’t used summer terms to fit stuff in, I would’ve had to take 18 the whole time or something, and I might be messed up a term anyway.
I’m still not really sure how I’m gonna pull off fitting in the Personal Finance class to meet the one scholarship’s requirements, but the thing is, even with everything I’ll have to figure out, even with needing to become almost obsessive to keep my grades up, I still want to get back into it.

9-7-04
Mom’s still doing her thing - randomly running off all day or for a few days at a time.  And then she pops back up and it’s like we’re supposed to slurp her up one side and down the other … I guess she doesn’t know that the next time she gets in a huge huff and leaves, Aunt Gena’s going to ask her not to come back.  It’s gone from “cheating at a train show” (!) to “stuff getting cleaned up” (?) to “DJ gave her a dirty look” (?!).  Only that middle one, the cleaning, happened, and I can’t see it being that heinous.  I just have a heck of a time believing that she actually thinks everything that happens is everyone else being out to get her.  It’s like some kind of manic-depressive multiple personalities paranoia.
I just … I wish the term started earlier, so I could be at Western right now.  Even just unpacking, though cramming would be okay too.  I want out of this insanity!!!!!

9-10-04
A week and two days.  I guess I can make it.  Maybe that’ll give me time to find the cables for my monitor; I keep forgetting to get hold of Norvac.  If anyone knows how to get this stuff, it’ll be them, since the Gateway store closed and Frys couldn’t help.
Here’s hoping my dad gets a good paycheck, so he can loan me some money for books and monitor cables … I just can’t help thinking it sucks that fee payment is a week later than book-buy day.  What if we need money to buy books?  EEEK!