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.

Henna

I'll update briefly now because my social life snuck up behind me and grabbed me around the ankles, and I probably won't have time to do it later.

I'm going to have to grow out my henna. I had already decided to do this if I got into a British school (but I didn't mention it because the possibility seemed so remote). I just can't deal with hennaing while living in student housing. If I were going to an American school, I might have hennaed before the semester started and then just done it on breaks, but I probably won't be coming home for breaks in this case unless housing shuts down. I mention this now because I was all set to henna this weekend before the letter came, but I've already got a half inch of roots, so I'll call it a start.

Unfortunately, my natural color does not look good next to my hennaed hair, and it's driving me crazy already. Fortunately, I can do a ponytail since the chop, so I don't have to look at the stripe going up my part. It's going to be ponytails for a long time now.

Formal Offer of a Place

A grad program wants me. And I almost never found out about it, because they sent the acceptance letter in a depressingly tiny envelope, and they sent it three days after they mailed back my transcript with no note. I nearly tossed the envelope without opening it, but the address window was too big, and the words "formal offer of a place which has been reserved for you" were clearly visible under my address and my full name (yes, including middle name, damn those Brits) so I opened it to see how they could have incorporated a phrase like "formal offer of a place which has been reserved for you" into a rejection letter. Apparently, they will house me and feed me and love me for ever and ever for the cost of a single semester at my undergraduate school (even with the dollar being as weak as it is). I keep waiting to wake up, but I have fallen asleep twice since opening the letter, so apparently it isn't going to vanish in a puff of reality.

In retrospect, I suppose I should have stopped to wonder why they hand-addressed the envelope in which they mailed back my transcript.

Mine, Goddamnit!

It's 11 PM and I have to get up at 5:20 AM, but I can't go to bed because I can't find the book I want (To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis). I suppose it's all my fault, because my books are in absolutely no order whatsoever, except that I mostly keep books my parents might "borrow," (Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, history) in my room, and books they would never touch (Irvine Welsh, Chuck Palahniuk, Jane Austen) in my other bookcases down the hall. I suppose I could try putting them in some kind of order some time, but the very idea makes me feel faint. It's particularly unfair because Connie Willis is my favorite so I actually put almost all her books on one shelf, but of course the one I want is missing.

On the plus side, my dad finally caved and bought his own copy of To Say Nothing of the Dog after the last time I had to go extract my copy from his clutches, so I can just go steal that one until my own turns up. It serves him right. And, as a bonus, I can hold it hostage until he gives me back Last Chance to See.

Incidentally, I finally found my copy of 1984 in my brother's room when I went in to look for the German dictionary I lent him 5 years ago. He doesn't even read unless he's forced. There must be some sort of hereditary compulsion at work here,