Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

I'm in shit. I'm in shit. I'm in shit. I'm in shit. I'm in shit. I'm in shit. I'm in shit. I'm in shit. I'm in shit. I'm in shit. I'm in shit. I'm in shit. I'm in shit. I'm in shit, I'm in shit, I'm in shit, I'm in shit, I'm in shit, I'm in shit, I'm in shit, I'm in shit, I'm in shit, I'm in shit, I'm in shit, I'm in shit, I'm in shit, I'm in shit, I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shit I'm in shitI'm in shitI'm in shitI'm in shitI'm in shitI'm in shitI'minshitI'minshitI'minshitI'minshitI'minshitI'minshit...

ShitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitshitFUUUUUUUUUCK...

I'm in so much fucking shit.

Post-breakdown update: Charles is a great guy. I think it may be possible that someone cloned me at some point in my life, then took that clone back in time and killed it, so that it was reborn shortly before my birth as Charles. It is one hundred and ten percent possible. He helped me forget about kids falling off buildings, and I helped him work out some girl problems. Then, he told me another girl problem, which completely mirrored my own situation. I gave him the advice I'm too chickenshit to take, and he's taking it. Why can't I?

Tyla fell off the school. I'm too tired of telling this story to go into much detail. Plus I'm actually wearing the wrist brace my mom bought me (I aggravated my carpal tunnel while scaling walls and catching pudgy little girls as they battle the forces of gravity. Go figure), which makes typing a little more arduous. The event has already taken place, I can't turn back time, but I can combat its evil plots with more gusto in the future. I'm going to beat Tammy to telling my mother the news, earn some mother-daughter trust points and... well, probably get grounded by her and/or slapped around by my dad. Oh joy. I feel like I'm on deathrow, but really, my mom may shrug it off. "Okay, don't let it happen again" to me and "well, she's a teenager, I'd rather she climb public education facilities than experiment with drugs, alcohol, and premarital sex" to Tammy. It is even possible she won't tell my dad, who will, in turn, not kill me.

ALLIE IS BACK HOSHITS. That was a very pleasent surprise, and expect to rebuild a new (more sturdy) friendship with her over time. What a great girl.

Evan is not on, and I need to tell him about all this, so he can know not to come to Haywood this weekend. Hmm.

Sean is coming out for the parade, mostly to laugh at me than anything else. I wouldn't mind if he'd drive out my dear one with him. But, alas, it's Sean, and such miracles do not exist within his being.

I'm studying music theory and memorizing the fretboard to feed my starving need for guitar experience. I polished my Strat and my SG again today, and it nearly broke my heart, seeing them so dusty. So I plugged in the SG, trimmed my nails (much too long for guitar, hm) and played a few chords. It took about 30 seconds for the pain to kick in, sending me off to find the wrist brace, my saviour.

My heart's not in a lot of this and you can tell. Choppy, random thoughts. A lack of vocab-worthy words. Blaaaah.

-Manda

I'm not sure what's worse
The waiting or the waiting room
"You're next sir" becomes a cruel taunt to you
Recycled air, the smell of sleep and disinfectant
Your God is a two door elevator

Let's redefine
What it means to heal

The Best Thing For You Is To Leave This Dirty Town

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"Shaking" and babies. Hm.

Tonight is the first night I feel as though I'll sleep well, and with purpose. I actually worked today, and not the invigorating work I put into my own interests, but the genuine personal sacrifice kind of work - the kind of thing you walk away from with money in your pocket.

I looked after Stephanie's baby for her while she went out to bingo with my sister and Michelle. Rayanna is almost 18 months, and with all the charm one expects from a baby, and those extras one could do without: a bladder, a set of bowels, and a strong pair of lungs. She was a sweet kid, though, and I managed to get her fed, clean and in bed by the time her mom came home.

The little baby made me think. It's weird: leave yourself in small apartment with a strange chubby, pink creature incapable of expressing coherent thoughts, and your mind flies. I'd always been so quick to avoid children, always thought I was so horrible with them, always been so sure that I would never reproduce or raise one of my own. But this little thing is so fragile and helpless, and it needs you to look after it... I don't know, a part of me I didn't know I possessed fired up and suddenly I was patient, maternal, caring. I suppose it's a common, natural occurence with women, to discover a maternal instinct left dorment for so long, but it was amazing all the same. I was compelled to work so hard to keep this little thing happy, that I didn't even notice until I sat down and had a drink.

Whether I should be comforted by this or more alarmed than ever, I don't know. I can't say if my position on having kids has really changed. I don't think I could put my whole life into raising someone else. 'Slowing down' wouldn't be pleasent. And since I have the same inner conflict when I consider marriage in my future, I don't know if I'd ever be that comfortable in a family. It's a lot to worry about, especially for a 15-year-old with no boyfriend.

Tyler came by with drinks, and I was invited to spend the night at Steph's with them, but I felt really young, and I had been hoping to go home and wash the smell of the baby off of me. I made a mental note to spend more time with these people, though, because I like them so much more than the manipulative bitches that (sometimes) call me friend.

Slaughterhouse Five is nearing its end, and I can't keep it to myself. Evan went out and bought it yesterday, under my recommendation. It's going to be the first thing he's read in what? Three years? It seemed to be his kind of book, though, and I'm going to assume that the reason I haven't heard from him since is that he's hooked.

The bulb over the sink in the kitchen in flickering, and I can hear what I believe is the sump pump working in the basement. The breeze is crawling in through the windows. The dishwasher is in its second rinse cycle: this is perhaps the most hypnotic sound I've ever encountered. As any piece of machinery tends to do, it makes a sort of throb as it works, and the water sloshes around steadily, resembling the sound heard from the side of a large boat or ship. I'm in that sort of dozy, poetic mood. Damn that baby and her infantile charms.

I miss my guitar so badly that I dreamt about it for a short while as I was waiting for the baby to fall asleep. Then I dreamt of a game show of which I was the prize. It was creepy, but at the same time, I think I managed to untangle a few knots about the men in my life. Conscious, I am romantically retarded. Unconcious, I unravel mysteries and explore the inner workings of my own heart, and when I awake, it strikes me like an epiphany - "Eureka!" - and who loves me and who I love and every 'why' and 'how' beneath the matter is clear before my newly-rested eyes. Then within hours I manage to sink back into a low gear, denying the very existance of love. Rinse, repeat.

I vow to flirt shamelessly with my boy, and I will not let the month pass without asking him out. Life is only so long, really, and I'd really like to waste a little of it with him, just him, if he'll agree to do the same with just me.

I'm working on a picture of activists, and I'm considering using my 16"(18"? 20"? It's big, in any case) canvas for it. Hm.

-Manda

I'm searching for a change of pace
Trying to pull away all these names
Tell you how it all works out

I'm terrible on the phone
It's better when it's us, all alone
Tell you how it all works out

You're not the only one
And I'm not your only fun

I like the sounds you make when we're shaking
You like to lose control and I take it
I turn the music up, so it drowns us out

I scatter when the morning comes
Shattered over what I've just done
Tell me if it all works out

You're not the only one
And I'm not your only fun

So It Goes

Video cameras can turn the most fluid, composed human being into a giggling fool, and so it's a pity that they also capture such embarrassment for future viewing. But, as it would turn out, I happen to be oddly elegant in front of the little beasts. Perhaps the laws of 'vice-versa' apply here and I was an imbecile before that little red light came to life? Hm.

I sketched a little today, and mixed some paints together just for the hell of it, but the air in my room is still far too hot and clinging for my artistic lungs to process, and so I retreated to stretch my creative legs elsewhere.

What started out as anatomy practice on Paint on the family room computer soon escalated into a complete line art (and I'll admit, the anatomy portion of the project was quite bluntly dejected). SHE'S STILL GOT IT(?), FOLKS.



In heat like this, I'm anxious for the Centennial, wherein I'll be dressed in a colourful albeit poorly-ventilated French dress and pulled by atop a 'float' for all to see, sweating like a dog all the while. Last I heard, there was a ridiculous hat to complete the ensemble. Urgh. Ah, well, it's a favour for the Dedieus (why I was the one who was asked to do it, I don't know. I must look the most like a Dedieu?) and family is an important thing, yes?

Slaughter House Five is cracked open to page 47 (I got distracted, sue me) and already the late Vonnegut's voice seems contented to resound in my subconscious at every opportunity. "So it goes, so it goes..." plays back inside my ears beneath each loss of a life, each memory of a lost life, or the thought of a life being taken. The Vonnegutism seems to bear even more weight now that the writer himself is no more. So it goes.

And much like Billy Pilgrim in his post-near-death mental state, I'm eager to see life not as a beginning, middle and end - "beads on a string" - but as a collection of moments all very much permanent. When I die I'll be dead in that moment, but I'll have been alive in so many other moments that are just as real as they were when they happened, and there will be no cause for mourning or ceremony.

I will be dead. So it goes.

The more I think about it, the more I like it, and the more I like it, the more I think about it, on and on and over and over until every inch of my psyche is poisoned and, as they are doing now, the toxins find their way out by way of my tongue or my pen or my fingertips, into the world to infect other minds.

I'm not saying the book is prophetic in every sense of the word, I'm just saying that it's got me thinking, and you might consider picking it up at a bookstore (used, new, depending on what you prefer. I have a weakness for used books, to be completely honest. Call me crazy). While you're there, at your (new/used) bookstore, also consider skimming the shelves for Jesus' Son. I'm sure you know by now how I feel about that one. I'll throw a list together, one day. Perhaps.

The fact that I'm writing again when I made a new post just yesterday is evidence to just how monotonous the summer has grown. I should call Liam, one of these days, and I owe Stephanie and Justine a visit. And I've been meaning to call Tavis, too. Ah shit, I have options, I just have a habit of sleeping in till it's too late to make anything happen. Hm. Another reason I've been writing more frequently is that I now know I have four readers whom I actually know, and it's more compelling to write to an audience than to write to the endless depths of #ffffff space more commonly titled 'the Internet'. Cyberspace is not my friend.

Tammy Faye has lost her grueling battle with cancer. So it goes, and goes, and goes...

Manda.

Right on time
The symbols crash
And the tears you thought were gone
Have come to town again
Maybe my love wrecks everything
Maybe emptiness is key
There's a radio that calls your name
Everytime I hear it sing

I don't wanna miss you so much baby
I don't wanna miss you all the time
I don't wanna drive myself so crazy
And lie awake in someone elses arms
But I do

So much better

Maybe it's because I've been in the city so much, I don't know, but The Weakerthans have somehow become my priests, in the same way that Jesus' Son has become my bible. I'm starting my own religion wherein each member tries as hard as possible to become me in the next life. Whoever studies hardest wins - GO!

"Measure me in metered lines
And one decisive stare
The time it takes to get from here to there
My ribs that show through t-shirts
And these shoes I got for free
I'm unconsoled
I'm lonely
I am so much better than I used to be"

Now read every second story of Jesus' Son and develop a numerical version of dyslexia. Then we'll talk.

Now, for the more serious notes:

I've sunken back into the perpetual rise and fall of day-to-day life in my own house. I stay up till 5 AM on msn, then close myself into my room and take a few bites out of whatever book happens to be on top of the pile that night (lately it happens to be Catch-22, which suits me fine because it's so full of paradoxes that I'm usually out after four or five pages) and then wake up the next morning, shower, take care of hair, makeup, clothes - all those frivolities that I must confess I indulge in. By this time it's usually about 2 PM and I'm at a low. I shrug and mumble and text people back with dead-ends like "yeah" and "lol" because I don't have the heart to say "leave me alone, I don't want to talk to you" and I'm just too much a text junkie to ignore the message completely. I perk up after a couple bowls of cereal or a cup of Green Tea and a trip to 'anywhere but here'. After a sufficiant amount of time has passed, I'll come home and someone will remark on my presence in the most ignorant way possible ('Damnit, it's 6 o'clock and you're just getting up? You really shouldn't sleep in so late...')

Then it's either back on msn to waste the remainder of the day or out to get in shit around town. The highlight of the week was jumping off a building and walking in wet paint, both in the same night.

Hannah and Chris' relationship is a bust. Imagine that, scoffs the little cynic on my shoulder, Hannah with an ex-boyfriend. One wonders what sort of daddy problems make a girl that specific hybrid of indecisive and desperate. What was on a pedestal above her one week is in her arms the next, and the week after that that same idol lays in a dumpster, wounded and insecure.

I know this is the result of some deep daddy issues because, being the girl whose parents aren't separated but live 30 hours apart from eachother, I am just that familiar with the phenomona an absent/lousy/addicted father can cause. I like to blame my neverending cycle of boyfriendlessness on my absent father (Not because it's totally logical, though). And I suspect the reason I am so quick to trust men is another one. I promise to one day take a Psychology course and study the effects of fathers on their daughters relationships with men. I know there are connections, but I don't know the extent or magnitude of the repercussions.

Eric read through my blog before (One sentence! Good enough?) after managing to find it with some google skills I imagine he's downright proud of right now. He's not the type to tease unneccesarily, so if he did find the fact that I write in a blog particularly funny, he masked it well enough. I don't mind people who know me reading this, as long as they are open-minded enough to realize that just because I'm semi-popular and not overly ugly, it doesn't mean I can't also be...you know: smart.

I appreciate open minds like I appreciate a good murlough - greatly. They don't come much more pompous than I.

It would appear I'm something of a 'scene queen'.

Alright, that's a bit of an exaggeration. But it just so happens that my skinny-body pretty-face appearence is something coveted by scenesters (in the Winnipeg scene, anyway) and when paired with my superficial, egotist loud-mouth personality, it's common for such girls to become 'so' more than a scenester, hoisted up on the scene-kid throne and crowned 'Scene Queen'.

This is all bullshit to me, really. But it's interesting at the same time. I never meant to conform to such a degree with the subculture; all I really did was wear skinny jeans and flats to a Silverstein/Rise Against/Comeback Kid show (Holy Roman Empire is hereby removed from the bill due to SUCKAGE).

After a small dose of moshing I bought myself a Silverstein shirt and put it on. It's a faux-pas, yes, but I live and breathe faux-pas. This served as an eye-catcher to my 'fellow' scenekids and when they took note of my bold makeup, elitist sneer and long, stacked hair.. well, most girls were just nicer. Guys decided to come on to me, and I was beating off way-too-old-for-me emo boys for the rest of the night.

I have some bruises and such which is always cool. And I met my sisters friends who were very nice and not-as-pretty-as-I-had-thought.


Fond? Memory #223:

asian emokid: "Hey, [inaudible introduction beneath shrieks from encore-hungry fans]"
myself: *looking over the HRE shirts and wondering why they suck so bad* "Uh, huh?"
asian emokid: "[somethingsomething] Jay and [somethingsomething] hot."
myself: *glances around, leans in*
asian emokid: "Uhm...We've been talking about you all night. Right?" *gestures to friends, who make meek affirmations*
friend who isn't totally silent: "Yeah.. you have really long hair."
me: *funnylook* "thanks?"
friend who isn't totally silent: "Yeah..." *looks at me a long time* You're... *...*
me: *raises eyebrows or something*
friend: ...twenty?
me: [OMGWTF] fifteen.
friend: WHAT?
me: FIF-FUCKING-TEEN.
friend: oh, holy shit. Really?
Jay: She's pretty cute for a fifteen year old
friend: *nods, suddenly all coy because he realizes I'm so young and therefore insuperior* How old do you think Jay here is?
me: *long pensive silence* ...Twenty-one?
Jay: *laughs*
Friend: *looks at me a long time like he's thinking of something smart/mature to say* ...
Me: Is he?
Friend: Oh man... you're gonna think.... he's 28.
Me: Oh.
Me: ....Oh.
Me: ....Holy shit.
Friend: Ah, don't worry, he's a virgin!
Me: ....[wtfwtfwtf]
Friend: No, I mean, he's a virgin, so having someone like you talking to him, it makes him feel special!
Me: ....okay? *meek, very disturbed smile*
Sister: *muttering* what the fuck is with everyone and hitting on you... *drags me away, tells the story to her friends who are disturbed at amused at the same time*
"omigod! How old are you, even?"
"Fifteen."
"omiGOD..."
"You should have told them that"
"I did"
"They thought she was twenty!"
"Hahaha"
"That's so weird"
"That's so FUNNY" etc.

Okay, so yes, California was not-bad and I'm home now after an entire days worth of rescheduling, recommuting, gate changes and pretzels.

But that's not what I'm concerned with adding to this thing right now.

In fact, I'm not concerned with adding anything to this thing.

I've got heavy lungs and I'm starting to hate myself.

End transmission?