The past month

Random person: "So, are you looking forward to going to England?"

My mouth: "Oh, yes. It'll be great and blah, blah, blah."

My brain: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA"

Random person: "And what do your plans look like?"

My mouth: "Well, I figured I would get my MA before I start looking into PhD programs and yadda yadda yadda"

My brain: *foams*

In case you're interested, I'm so trashed I'm watching Snow Cake. (Actually, it's pretty good. And I guess the issue here is that I'm admitting to watching Snow Cake. And yes, it is hard to spell when you're this drunk.) How is your evening going?

Also, here's some advice for you: if it's going to be green when you throw it back up halfway through your second movie, it's probably better not to ingest it in the first place.

Houseplants

A while ago I got a raspberry cane to keep my aloe plant company and this pushed the balance of houseplants in the sunroom over and out of my favor. Before, my mother had one plant and I had one plant, but now that I have two and she still only has one, she figures I can handle all three. The problem is that hers is a 10-year-old, 3 foot tall geranium in a pot about 9 inches in diameter. I am afraid for it. Until I started taking care of it it stayed about the same size, but now it keeps shooting off more tendrils, probably because I pay more attention to it than my mother did. But if I cut back on its watering schedule to the one she used to use, it gets mad and starts turning red. I really don't know anything about plants, but I think at this point I am supposed to either take a cutting and reroot it, or repot the whole thing in a pot of a more appropriate size (probably about 18" across, at least.) I really have no idea, but I feel compelled to do something so that my mother will take care of my raspberry and aloe plants while I'm away. I don't think she'd feel all that obligated to take care of them if I let the geranium die.

The reason I am talking about this is because my unconditional acceptance letter came today, so even though I am convinced that the original acceptance letter dropped out of the Twilight Zone, I appear to be stuck there permanently. I have insomnia and semi-permanent nausea and last night I drank about twice as much absinthe as I normally do and watched a couple of British movies I would never go near in a normal state and then woke up to find I was stricken with a Ninja Period and had to do laundry. Houseplants are about all I can handle right now.

What do I need my knees for, anyway?

Yesterday, I ran 10 miles without stopping. I was actually all set to keep going, but it was so hard to pry myself out of bed that I expected to do my usual 3 and then go straight back home and pass out, so I didn't drink enough before I went out, and by the 10th mile I was ridiculously thirsty. Then, I went home and went back to sleep, and when I woke up, I pretty much had to barricade myself in my room to keep from eating the house. It was pretty awesome, though.

Also, this not worth making an entirely different post over. But was I the only one who, while watching the last Bones episode, barely noticed the whole ceramics class drama because I was so preoccupied with the fact that Booth's horse was not hollow and is going to detonate in the kiln and murder everyone else's sculptures? I wanted to yell "No! No! Take a loop tool and hollow that sucker out before you do any detail work, you foolish man!" But I didn't. It was pretty good otherwise, though. Certainly better than my current ceramics professor can do. Oh, did that slip out?

The British own my soul

I finally got around to doing my housing applications. My mother made me apply for housing for the full year instead of only 40 weeks, working off of the assumption that I will probably have things to do all summer. So, as long as I get full year housing (and I don't see any reason why I wouldn't) I won't be coming back. Because lord knows, even if I don't have anything to do all summer, I can't see any reason to come hang around New Jersey if I'm paying through the nose for housing in England.

In other news, I may cut off more hair. I will discuss this later.

Teeth

I like my dentist. I like that he shares a practice with his wife and her name is listed first. I like that he hires hygienists that can engage me in conversation without annoying me, which takes some crazy skills. I'm amused by the fact that he looks like Christopher Meloni, but is even shorter than I am. I like that I see him for a grand total of five minutes, twice per year, during which he basically says "Your teeth are still perfect. It makes my life easy." (I only go because my parents have this paranoid issue with teeth, and they make me.) But I think what I like most about him is the fact that when I told him I would be leaving the country in September and might not be allowed back until 2010, he said, "Then I'll see you in two years. I've never had to do anything to your teeth anyway, so I'm sure you'll be fine."

Of course, I have an irrational fear that I'll step off the plane and my teeth will spontaneously turn brown and drop out of my head, so I think I might go see him again in September, even though we both know it's a waste of time. England is having this effect on me.

I love people. With barbeque sauce.

I went to German class this evening. I'm not really sure why. I have yet to actually learning anything and the long-term substitute is excessively cheery (I don't really do cheery) and besides that, he keeps asking me questions. And the answers that come out of my mouth make me sound like some sort of creepy ascetic serial killer.

So far, I have said that:

I don't own a TV
I pretty much spend my weekends working on my Latin and reading history
I don't really listen to music (that was a blatant lie, I just wasn't going to discuss my music preferences with these people)
I'm not interested in clothes (not that you couldn't tell by looking at me) movies (another lie!) or talking with friends (I don't really have friends in the plural. It's either one friend at a time, or a group of acquaintances.)

To add to this, I always seem to be the only person wearing black and class always seems to fall on the days before I wash my hair, so I always have severe hairstyles.

But I think my crowning achievement, the absolute pinnacle of my creepiness, came this evening when he asked what sports I do. I told him I run every morning. So far so good. But then he had to go and ask why I ran by myself, instead of playing sports, and before I could come up with a credible lie, the truth just popped out of my mouth.

"Because I hate other people and don't want them near me."

I'm actually quite impressed with myself. I didn't even have to think.

Under the Bed

I didn't want to think about England today, so I took the opportunity to clean under the bed, which I've been avoiding doing since summer. All the ugly things I don't want to think about go under the bed, so I certainly wasn't going to do it until I had something worse to avoid. It was interesting. Some of it was funny, like the horrible stuff I did during my first figure drawing sessions when looking at a penis was still awkward, or all the stuff I hoarded during nine years of being obsessed with Ewan McGregor (holy shit, I'm glad that's over with) or the photos I took when I visited Paris (I kept those).

Some of it was not so funny. There were the letters from the toxic person I finally got rid of three years ago. There were the diet pills I used to abuse. There was the letter from USC telling me I wasn't good enough for them, but they'd be glad to take me and my money during the second semester when some of the people they really wanted had left.

I'm glad I'm not that person anymore. I've learned that being so preoccupied with the size of my ass is a colossal waste of my time, so I go running and I don't binge, but if I stay a size 12-14, I'm really not interested in berating myself or abusing pills or keeping creepy little notebooks with creepy little calorie counts anymore. There are more interesting things to do. And when USC calls looking for handouts, I take great pleasure in telling them to go fuck themselves sideways with a rusty chainsaw.

If I were a Victorian woman, I could call it "hysteria."

So, at first, this whole grad school thing was lovely. Hey, I get to go to England, I get to be in the program I wanted, they don't seem to have a grudge against me for being a stupid art student; what's not to like? But now that I have leapt on their offer like the desperate woman I am and paid my large and unrefundable deposit, I am suddenly faced with the fact that, so long as I don't get hit by a truck in the next few months, they will expect me in England at the end of September. Dude, I had complete culture shock just from going to California. In addition, this evening my dad casually brought to my attention the fact that, in grad school, you usually have to hang around all summer. Therefore, it's entirely possible that I will be leaving the US in September 2008 and not returning until January of 2010. (No, I don't get to come home for the holidays. Why would my parents let me come back when they could take advantage of my good fortune and visit England?)

I get a backpack and one suitcase. This means leaving most of my movies and pretty much all my books behind. This fact alone throws me into a tailspin. Do I count on Project Gutenberg? But I might not have Internet in my room. Will the library have Isaac Asimov, Damon Runyon, and Connie Willis? Almost certainly not. How many movies can I bring? What if my little region-free portable DVD player dies in 2009?

Plus, there are more practical concerns. Who will take care of my pretty, expensive American teeth? How will I hit my optometrist up for more contact lenses? Do I have to fly home to do all this? What a pain in the ass.

And, in addition, I have this list of things I have to do before I leave. Some of them are practical, some of them are not, and all of them make me panic.

Get my visa

Get the HPV vaccine (I'm now out of time and can't keep putting it off)

Kick my Diet Coke habit (I won't be able to afford it over there, but the withdrawal period is awful)

Lose the second half of my excess weight so I won't be the fat American (I'm soooo glad I started out in August, or life would be looking ugly right now)

Do something about the clothing situation

Figure out what other shots I need and get them

Figure out my housing situation

Pack and repack and repack again because if I forget something, I probably can't afford to replace it or have it shipped over

Attempt to raise the value of the dollar through sheer will

Find the cookbooks I used in California because the British are making me cook for myself and, having learned something about what they'd feed me, I'm actually pretty grateful

Hope for the Kindle, mk 2, to come out and solve my book problem

Find the money to replace my MP3 player, which has been good to me for nearly 4 years now but will probably not live through my entire stay (and, of course...I can't afford to replace it over there)

Buy the things I never needed in California, like an umbrella

Finish at least 3/4ths of Wheelock's Latin. When I did my application and they asked about my language skills, I was pretty accurate about German and French but had to put down "poor" for Latin because they didn't have a "horrific" option

Mourn the loss of House and Bones

And now, even though I'm nowhere near finished with this list, I'm going to take melatonin and try to sleep, because Item 4 requires me to get up early tomorrow morning and go for my run, in the pouring rain if necessary.