She tentatively steps towards me. Her eyes are rimmed red, her nose is swollen, and she definitely has a bad cold. I place my hands over her ears and tip her head back, and kiss her,

and try to put my heart into hers, for safekeeping, in case I lose it again.

----audrey niffenegger, the time-traveller's wife



something about postcards fascinate me-- us-- judging from how postsecret's "a contemporary art project that has turned into a cross-cultural phenomenon". i don't find them half as satisfying as nice long letters writ in longhand or cursive (would you believe in this day and age i had a penpal thing going for a while; more incongruously, it was with someone i met at a club. talk about strange), but there's something about the neat compaction and visual immediacy of a postcard.

combine that with the titillation of untold secrets, and voila-- postsecret. and even with a normal postcard-- the way it's open for all to read, a sharing of a worldview and an experience in transit--

good read, this-- so far at least, i'm still wading through it: http://www.bk.psu.edu/Documents/Academics/FromSouvenirtoSocialMovement.pdf

i've spent so long talking myself out of this that i wouldn't know what to believe if it were staring me in the face.

i'm not mad anymore incidentally! not after dance yesterday; how to stay mad with endorphins coursing through your veins. ellen finished teaching us her choreo, which only yuko can remember. there's a sense of something in the air-- like a breath, long held, released. we're going to do this! vetting wasn't the best and like krystal i forgot steps, but i am PSYCHED about practices and next week's string of performances. and nervous, but that's a given. i hope yuko liked her cake; the cream WAS a little overwhelming.

and have i ever mentioned how much i like this paula deanda song:
she's got green eyes and she's five-five
long brown hair all down her back
cadillac truck so the hell what
what's so special about that
she used to model she's done some acting
so she weighs a buck o'five
and i guess that she's alright if perfection's what you like

i'm not jealous no i'm not
i just want everything she's got
you look at her so amazed
i remember way back when you used to look at me that way

tell me what makes her so much better than me
what makes her just everything i can never be
what makes her your every dream and fantasy
because i can remember when it was me
Posted at 2:41 PM

i just want to blow up.

i'm going to miss matriculation fair AND blast class, and i already missed ahmad's class and who knows what else i'm going to have to not go for, JUST BECAUSE OF ONE LOUSY DICKHEAD.

omg. i cannot go for becky+lina's platform either. OMG. OMGOMG.

ARGHHHH i'm DAMN ANGRY DAMN ANGRY DAMN ANGRY. and sure everyone can say he didn't mean it and ta ye bu xiang de, but WHAT THE HELL i need someone to blame when i lose my temper logic doesn't exactly appeal to me and i HAVEN'T LOST MY TEMPER LIKE THIS FOR A LONG LONG TIME. at this point i don't care how much of a friend he was, because like what the HELL.

STUPID. STUPID. STUPID. STUPID. STUPID. stay goddamn home if you have the goddamn flu or are feeling unwell instead of goddamn going to work and ending up quarantining the whole goddamn office can.

ARGHHH. and while i can wear a mask out to get jia ni's present i can't exactly wear a mask to dance. wa lao eh AND I CANNOT REMEMBER STEPS FOR ALL PAT'S CHOREOS and tmr would have been great to recap but NOOO SOMEONE HAS TO RUIN IT. like one of my last weeks in sg. could you have had better timing???!!!

FRICATIVE.

ARGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Posted at 1:47 AM

genius-- eisen's 5-colour code for responses to "how's work", modelled after h1n1 alert levels.


Posted at 4:59 AM

?

maybe. mildly so.
___________________________________________________________________
I must have kept my hand on that switch a good thirty seconds before I flipped it. If I had it to do over again, I'd have waited a few moments more. I would pay good money for every instant in my life without that image in it.

and reading that i paused and shut the book and for a moment i just couldn't continue. like the protagonist i didn't want to see it either. yes, i knew it was coming-- wasn't like i'd never read this before. how in the world does someone who wrote the inexplicably stifling double fault come up with something as hauntingly, existentially stark as we need to talk about kevin?
____________________________________________________________________
the week ahead feels very empty. my thursday classes have ended, i'm not involved in dancetitude (damnit i really should have tried to push my departure dates) and there's no busking practice on tuesday (yuko's bday!!), which means i effectively only have dance 4 days out of 7 till sunday. sigh. just as well i have a load at work to deal with and it's bloody irritating.

woke up this morning, stared at the red marks (in the now-faded silhouette of an elongated ET) all over my arm from when the airbag exploded in my face on saturday and realised exactly how bloody lucky i was. i don't imagine i can dance with a broken arm or leg or neck, and THAT would have been unspeakably-- damning. also realised how lucky i am in having my gloomy-weather friend who keeps messaging me to find out if i'm alright. :):)

considering that on saturday my sister had to forcibly restrain me from trying to correct the blatantly, horribly painful grammar mistakes in my insurance report (i tried anyway, and the insurance guy gave me a Look), these stick-em-up offerings of dylan meconis would probably be a godsend of sorts.


i can't sleep. but instead of reading my cases for work i am re-cracking my mildewed volume of the time-traveller's wife.



what. it's still about matrimony, right.


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Posted at 4:18 AM

bye bye tuscani. it was fun driving you, until the day some bmw decided to run a red light and your utterly inept driver didn't see it coming.

although if BOTH the green light and the green arrow in your favour are showing and the car in front of you has turned, you would turn too, right, and not expect a maroon streak to come screaming out of nowhere?

what blows however is that because it was a junction and there were no witnesses (actually there were plenty, including tourists taking pictures-- what the??) the damages are going to be 50-50.

what blows even more is that-- and this is a plaintive wail of "not-fair-why-me"-- i've been particularly careful lately. i haven't even driven near 110 in weeks. and yet the very day after my dad changes all four tyres-- BAH. now he's considering scrapping the car cos the repairs may not be worth it.

bloody bmws made of bloody rock. and yes, like teri's accident counterpart, this guy yelled at me and said that it was a green light on his side. he only became a tad more diffident after i made him stand and watch the lights change to show that there was NO WAY HIS LIGHT COULD HAVE BEEN GREEN when all of the cars in my lane were making a right turn. but he still insisted that when HE moved it was green.

what are you, fucking colourblind.
Posted at 11:06 PM

get your money up boy
get your money up
you gotta throw something bigger than a hundred bucks

ecstatic-- class today was a cross between reggae and girls' hip hop and i ate it up like candy. for once i didn't hold back; on monday fred'd asked why i wasn't panting after open studio, but at the end of today's class i couldn't speak without hearing a tremble in my voice. i rather think i messed up the video, though, especially since i unintentionally whacked myself in the eye just before the last run and danced that with my contact lens misplaced somewhere on my sclera and streaming tears like summer rain. still felt goddamn hell of a good-- what a way to end, since she's going to broadway till november and i'm swanning off to sweden till january. no alex for me :( the rest of the class gets him, though.

i need to go for trinity's classes again! after three weeks of no trinity my back has become as stiff as a plank of wood.

and does no one else think that this is just outrageously gaga:
go to 3.03 to skip the posturing, and please ignore the britney tagged on to the end
__________________________________________________________

1) selfishness isn't always a bad thing. it's a selfish mantra, but sometimes the world is too large and life too short to care about what other people think. please yourself. mistakes, mis-steps-- lessons learnt.

the heart is stronger than you think/ things get better, through whatever

2) for all that emotions can be awful i'd take them over emotional extinction everyday. the highs-- like the high i rode on today, after dance-- more than make up for the lows, and sometimes i wonder if i don't like the lows too. (what travails went into the making of blake's songs of experience? as opposed to his plebian untainted songs of innocence?)

and besides, without the lows, how could you be my gloomy-weather friend, eh. *hug*

3) don't be a faithful sidekick. be a star in your own right.

at some point you wonder-- didn't robin ever want to kill batman for being such a dickhead?

4) people if you're going to get separated one hour after registering your marriage seriously why even bother. over ten freaking dollars, no less. spare me, and a whole host of other people's valuable billable hours.

5) good luck to michelle (ong) for khorale, and to michelle (poon) for jap!

6) and get well soon people. don't be sickos.
____________________________________________________________
Allow me, then, to elucidate: Countries all have different weather, but they all have weather of some sort, architecture of some sort, a disposition toward burping at the dinner table that regards it as flattering or rude. Hence, I had begun to attend less to whether one was expected to leave one's sandals at the door in Morocco than to the constant that, wherever I was, its culture would have a custom about shoes. It seemed a great deal of trouble to go to-- checking baggage, adapting to new time zones-- only to remain stuck on the old weather-shoes continuum; the continuum itself had come to feel like a location of sorts, thereby landing me relentlessly in the same place.

travel, eh. hur.

In the particular dwells the tawdry. In the conceptual dwells the grand, the transcendant, the everlasting. Earthly countries and single malignant little boys can go to hell; the idea of countries and the idea of sons triumph for eternity.
-- lionel shriver, we need to talk about kevin
Posted at 1:21 AM

if you believe
you'll do best without me
i'll let it go, girl
it's over
but before we say goodbye
let's just give it a try
so glad i stayed for open studio on monday despite feeling like i was ready to collapse after too many days of insufficient sleep-- one week's of work, friday's of too-keyed-up-after-12.30am-run-to-sleep, saturday's of too-scared-about-sunday's-10k and sunday's reach-home-at-one-plus-after-busking. i like the song so, so much. and the choreo. and the very different styles but very awesome way cs and rozana danced it AHHHH.

it's been a good time because i've kept busy. had dinner for the first time in a long while with family on saturday (pics to come!), and sunday i FINALLY finally finally ran my first 10k under an hour (just barely). but the route was new and since i'd completely NOT trained i held back a lot and at the end i was elated that i'd finished under an hour but FURIOUS because i wasn't panting. AT ALL. actually i really think the route was definitely shorter than 10k. whatever. next target <55mins. (which means i'd better run my ass off in sweden and learn to like running in -25C temperatures).

sunday's busking threw up this nugget courtesy of wilkson: "there are an infinite number of doors. science sees only the open ones; religion stays behind the closed ones. who's to say who's right and who's wrong?"
__________________________________________________________
i don't need time or space or a moment to breathe.

because i need to give and give until there is nothing left.

because i need-- need-- to just keep on going; just dance and dance and dance and run and work, even, cram 48 hours into 24, and not stop to think.

because the moment i start to think i think too much, and then it's a vicious downward spiral. and each time i never know if i'm going to pull out before i wipe out or just crash.

i want to have no time to eat and too little sleep and twenty-one thousand things that i have to do by yesterday.

kicking myself for not having booked and gone for trinity's class cos i thought i might need a break from dance, only to discover that in my book maybe there is no such thing as too much dance. too much distance to cover; it's daunting, it's scary, but i'm going to treasure it while i can that some things are just too good to last-- and dance may just be one of them. it's like-- i was talking to my mentor today, and she apparently used to be a sailor (you wouldn't think that from looking at her now she's so slight and fair). when you start working the things that used to drive your night and day and every waking and sleeping moment may just have to... make way.

carpe diem.




courtesy of someone who said this somehow made him think of me (?! i only wish!):

"with your daggers and your knives you carve little verses all over unsuspecting hearts."
maybe it's just our own hearts we all set out to carve up.
Posted at 11:34 PM

run baby run, don't ever look back.

wishing, wanting, yours for the taking. ARGH. i need to get to sleep and hope to god i can get up in time and runnnnnn like the wind (hopefully a hurricane and not a lazy country breeze)

good night world!
Posted at 12:43 AM

my favourite: you're on to me, on to me and all over at 00:40-46. insane musicality.
but before listening to the comments i thought kupono's characterisation was schizophrenic, because i've always thought of gravity as a yearning, clean, pure song (i love this song, it's perfect for post-midnight runs on particularly angsty nights)-- and so i automatically cast him as lover and equal. but mia michaels had a completely different interpretation of the song altogether-- and it fits, it fits.

away with preconceptions, i have so much to learn.

you're on to me, on to me and all over

4.29am: it just gets better with every viewing-- with nigel lythgoe's "addict" reading in mind the whole choreo is so much more insightful and takes on such extra meaning that it didn't have when i watched it the first time. AHHHH
Posted at 4:16 AM

typed and saved at work

God this office is darn cold. I am sitting here on the very cusp of shivering my bones to bits, unable to concentrate because the temperature is apparently awakening nascent serpentine tendencies in me and I am on the verge of going into perpetual mental (if not physical) hibernation.

I’m wearing a super thick formal shirt (I started melting the moment I put it on but once I got to my desk it had about as much effect as rice paper) and my blast jacket AND my blazer draped over my legs. If this goes on I’m bringing my winter coat tomorrow, pink and furry or not.

Fourth day of attachment, and well-a-day I got through the middle of the week. It’s actually been quite fun because it’s surprisingly akin to sph work in the sense that 1) no handholding, you sink or swim 2) you really get exposed to every side of human life 3) you learn not to take things—people, or words, or affidavits—at face value. Lies, lies, it’s ALL lies. What a cynic this is breeding (or perhaps just uncovering).

But it is different in the sense that there is 1) no facebook 2) no ebuddy!!! 3) no lotus notes chat. Seriously, I never knew how useful it could be till when I DON’T have it.

Spent the first day feeling sorry for one person whose legal costs had escalated to 10k. stopped a few moment later when I realised he earns 2.5 times that every month. Also spent time researching prices of watches—cartier is madness but no one touches rolex, and anyway I cleared up the mistaken impression I had that breitling is a v expensive brand (did I confuse it with breguet?). how the hell does anyone afford like 13 of these damn things (INCLUDING THE *#$&^%$# CARTIER) and then refuse to pay maintenance anyway.

I have 7 affidavits to read through and I’m starving. :(

Only the other day as I walked past somewhere I heard music—some music—and a bolt of longing stabbed me so, so hard.

Nowadays… nowadays my nights sustain my days; half the time I get through them only by thinking about whatever class or practice I have at night. Work, dance, running, family, friends—I’ve basically sacrificed the last three on the altar of time’s demands. life BLOWS.

______________________________

or not really. kind of made up for those sacrifices in the most unexpected of ways. am happy!

1) i don't have to use up the remainder of my danzp package on alex's classes because apparently he'll be taking adelene's classes for the next session (he took today's. haha yuko jealous?)

2) was not late for joo teng's class despite dawdling at the kallang class

3) met random ang in the most serendipitious of ways: smsed her after jt's class to ask if she was still around and if she wanted to go home together. she asked me to stay where i was (prinsep); i realised i was quite near where she was supposed to be and decided to wander around to see if i could find her. and lo and behold, suddenly someone screams my name :D found her standing by the roadside waiting for her dad and went for siglap supperrr. I'VE MISSED THE RANDOM ONE. still looks awesome. still awesomely weird. hahahahhaa

4) her dad fetched me home after supper so i had plenty of time to irritate mum and sis and dad. whee. and feed junk food to my dog (i'm allowed to, the vet says we should give him chocolate).

now i just need to run and get everything out of my system. but something's still wonky with my ligaments or something i still can't stretch properly (damn cycling and bicycles, all, and dads who would say "i told you so!" very very smugly if they knew). sigh. shape run on sunday just lock me up and throw away the key.

in any case if there's only one good thing i have gained from work (im not saying it's the one good thing, only "if") it's that sitting next to the smoking corner has decisively rid me of any sort of penchant for bad boys who smoke. even cute ones. (now i just need to work on the tattoos and the bikes thing)

going to read; i have somehow managed to make "the other boleyn girl" last me almost the entire week. maybe it will. no time to go to the library.

There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave
You were what I wanted
I gave what I gave
I'm not sorry I met you
I'm not sorry it's over
I'm not sorry there's nothing to save

Posted at 12:39 AM

and i'll know if this is something i can love, live with or never abide.



on another note-- saturday's bout of fever totally left its mark. when i left school i was a tad unsteady; by the time i met krystal and collen i was dead on my feet; when my sister found me i was mildly hysterical and laughing at everything-- and i mean everything, including the idea of me laughing at everything. i said i felt feverish; she touched my forehead, frowned and said, "you don't have a fever. it's cold. are you dead?" in any case the chill-wracked misery that was me collapsed at 10.32pm wrapped in three layers on a bed piled high with cushions and stuffed toys in a bid to trap every last vestige of warmth and woke at 12.17pm fever-free, but with about as much energy as a strand of overcooked spaghetti and aching in every muscle to boot. lousy, lousy, lousy. where am i going to find the energy to work and run and practise AND dance, at this rate? boo.

sleep. satellite save my life, i'm wishing on a two-way radio.
Posted at 3:48 AM

"He's an artist too, the deaf boy?"
"He'd like to be," said Michael, turning his back to her. "But he hasn't the confidence. He's afraid he'll never be great."
"Does it matter so much?"
He straightened the charcoal twigs that were already straight. "It's the only thing he's really suited for." Flicked the tip of a brush in the coffee can, running his fingers over the clean bristles. "If he can't do that, then why exist."

i see a red door and i want it painted black
no colours anymore i want them to turn black

"He's an artist too, the deaf boy?"
"He'd like to be," said Michael, turning his back to her. "But he hasn't the confidence. He's afraid he'll never be great."
"Does it matter so much?"
He straightened the charcoal twigs that were already straight. "It's the only thing he's really suited for." Flicked the tip of a brush in the coffee can, running his fingers over the clean bristles. "If he can't do that, then why exist."
"As long as he likes to do it, what difference does it make? He's just got to do it it, and fuck what people think," she said. "Otherwise it'll get all twisted up inside."

tell me how to live for something i'll never be good enough for.


here's hoping i survive busking practice. i hate being so weak.
Posted at 6:19 PM

i need only one C in my life-- Control.


oh, and maybe Common Sense, so that i don't end up walking down the expressway after reading a map wrongly. FAILLLL. thank goodness for small mercies, though-- i was wearing shorts so i could clamber over all the stupid barriers. at least i wasn't late for blast, which i'd thought i would be after getting mildly lost after visiting the grandparents after lunching with ning after unintentionally ps-ing my dad for gymming.

liked all the choreos we did today very much (although ellen's was killer. i really cannot cannot cannot do it decently :(:(:( ), and adored ahmad's yesterday. this week is passing too darn fast, as much because of my utter decadence in indulging in everything i want to do and nothing i don't-- you should see the small mountain of sadly, mostly trashy books i've finished since friday, my dad's complaining about it taking up space-- as because... well, because murphy is a bitch. :(

but oh well. in the meantime there's dance, reading, running, friends, and Friends-- hahaha i can't get enough of season 8 rachel and joey. i mean, RACHEL AND JOEY. and i do wish channel v would stop playing jk songs when my sisters're asleep cos i can't scream for them to come down and coo over the latest dbsk/suju/2am/whee sung videos, and it's no fun insulting them w/o someone to yell at me. hurhurhur. oh tt reminds me esther was doing the girl's gen song at blast today ARGH. my sis told me someone made a fan drawing and drew one fully-fleshed-out girl, two stick figures and a bunch of dots because the rest are apparently not pretty enough to register. ouch. that IS the group, right?

i wanna kiss you
but if i do then i might miss you babe;
maybe three seconds is enough for my heart to quit it


p.s. please visit www.gleeberry.com to support ellen and to see pretty girls in pretty clothes :)
Posted at 2:32 AM

What I've got they used to call the blues
Nothing is really wrong
Feeling like I dont belong
Walking around some kind of lonely clown
Rainy days and mondays always get me down

except that they don't, or didn't-- not for this my last week of freedom anyway. didn't manage to go book sheila's class in time-- sorry tommy! next week marathon session with sheila AND karen k :D (after a full day of black-n-white no less-- i hope i don't mess THAT up).

spent today in 1.5hours of tuition to make up for not going yesterday since i had to ferry my spoilt kid of a brother up and down and endure his quips on my driving. unfortunately i have to admit that i fully and painfully deserved every single one of them, including the "she's driving madly" over the phone to soozey/ellen.

read pinocchio to tuition kid. i can't read pinocchio without thinking of the blue fairy from A.I., and remembering the haunting last scene. i have a thing for pretty faces-- who doesn't. "be brave, truthful, and unselfish, and you will be a real boy". if that is what it takes to be real most of us aren't.

it's been quite a week; ayg opening on monday and supper with the blastards after while ellen sketched busily at clement's card; tuesday was a mad (to use fred's word) scramble to meet yuko, ellen and soozey at ps to get fred and clement's cards (from ellen), clement's cupcakes (from yuko), fred's green tea powder (from ellen), clement's colourful marshmallows (from carrefour-- and i've just realised that they're highlighter green pink and yellow) and paper bags to hold everything (from daiso). in the end we dawdled so much that soozey had to settle for breadtalk to tide him over class AND they ended up having to take a bus to pomo whilst i scuttled home, having happily forgotten earlier to bring all the other items we wanted to give them. drove to the airport where for a moment or two i was certain that they'd have gone in. as it was a frazzled fred was busy burning dvds while clement-- sporting the blast jacket! :D-- started gleefully munching at his cupcakes. the cup noodles and instant porridge apparently engendered much bemusement, including a "your friends are scared that prague has no food?"

waved bye-bye after the cds were done and sped off to siglap where my woefully patient and miserable sister was waiting for me, having had to take the bus down instead of being picked up like i'd earlier promised :S she got a treat for her pains and for her incredibly wonky tales of 1) being (verbally) mauled by an angry boss/watching the carnage 2) dropping her phone in, of all things, LAKSA. having scrapped plans for late night shopping we settled for comfort food at cartel instead-- a very pleasant interlude considering that we've been cold-- ok, chill-- warring for no good reason for a while. guess it was a belated acknowledgement of eisen's soliloquy on the "unspoken bond" between siblings: when we fight we REALLY fight, and what a bitchfest it is, but when we talk we spill. at least i do. and it's useful to talk to my sisters in a family like mine, by the way-- keeps me updated on what's the latest intrigue my mum thinks i'm up to -__- if my life were half as exciting as my mum thinks it is...!

INCIDENTALLY PEOPLE GELARE HAS CLOSED DOWN. :(((((((((

blast class on wednesday where i couldn't catch ANYTHING; the song (so bonafide by mark bonafide featuring gayle nerva) is surprisingly good seeing as it's apparently a local effort. brian tried to teach us a new freeze which no one could do. 1st busking prac that day was good fun, although my "happy feet" are anything but :( not the grooviest chick around am i. recapped steps from kate willis-- sadly i cannot remember any of trinity's reggae choreo coherently. i like the piano man choreo yuko and thomas were doing: play me a song about heartache, i promise i can sing every word; play me a song about love lost, that's another one everyone's heard. have the whole world singing tonight, won't you.

on thursday adelene finally accepted that we couldn't catch her steps and simplified the choreo, but it kind of lost the inspiration of the original. I don't want nobody else/ they don't understand that I gave away my heart/ the moment that I shook your hand. got it into my head that i wanted to go shopping since i couldn't dash down in time for jooteng's class, so waited for my sis and scooted off to expo where she got a pair of fcuk jeans for an absolute steal. then we went home and-- well. doggie woes, which are luckily fairly resolved now except for having to trick him into swallowing antibiotics and funny pills and dropping random solutions into his ears every day while he stares at us mournfully.

tooo looonnnggg. okay campbell's condensed soup version: friday kate willis with tommy+tracy shopping + mum picking me up after class and grumbling that my marking steps shook the whole car (THANKS A LOT MUM). saturday rebecca's sharing session with great choreo that released the inner slut in the guys (shame on us girls for not being that hiao hahha) and 1st danz people class (YAY), after lunch with monster freezes and enormous servings of fries, despite sleeping like 2 hours the night before and then orchard-road-trawling with the girls. sunday had busking practice that just went on and on till it was surprisingly late. i like how tired it makes us. ellen and yuko's pancakes were yummilicious! nearly killed myself on the way home; wet roads are NOT fun to drive on and tuscanis don't drift, they skid. harrowingly.

ok enough. off to read since i spent 2 hours garnering treasures at the library today whee.

take this kiss upon the brow!
and, in parting from you now,
thus much let me avow--
you are not wrong, who deem
that my days have been a dream-- edgar allan poe, found in the opening to amelia atwater-rhodes' persistence of memory (the only teen vamp lit writer i still read apart from lisa jane smith. stephenie meyer has nothing on them. nothing.)
Posted at 11:49 PM

"next time on your own car you can't ever put a peaceable bumper sticker, because a cop would pull you over and think you'd stolen it."
Posted at 5:06 PM

what every daughter wants to hear from her mum within 2.5seconds of entering the house:

"you look like death warmed over."

obviously age is getting to me and i can no longer survive all-nighters still looking relatively human. am being forcibly sent to bed. hurhur.

p.s. my sis told me that because of all the time i've been spending outside my mum thinks i'm carrying so some torrid affair. yes, mum, these are my confessions, in fact i do have a clandestine love whose name starts with D and ends with E who i've been in love with since primary three after watching an upper primary rendition of the moffatts' "i'll be there for you" in the sacps school hall.

p.p.s. happy (now belated) birthday abby the busty!

off to read my way to oblivion. good night world!
Posted at 12:01 AM

not nearly enough, and i never want to stop. :)
Posted at 12:21 AM

Today, I took a bike ride to enjoy the weather and stopped for a break on the sidewalk of an overpass, taking in the view of the beautiful hills. I was approached by a cop, who said to me: "Ma'am, I know your life is crap right now, but I'm sure it'll get better. Please don't jump." FML




racing through my mind last night-- or at least circling around endlessly:

"i am a SHIT pet owner, and if there were ever a private hell reserved for screwed-up pet abusers my name would be first on the freaking list."

although-- like dissolving into a furious wet mess while holding a pad of tissues against my dog's profusely-bleeding ear as my mum sped all the way to an emergency clinic was any use at all. pathetic.

came home from dance after fetching my sister to find dad scrubbing the garden while my dog was still oozing blood from inside his ear. ok, not oozing-- every time he shook his head in helpless irritation there'd be blood splatters all over everything-- shoe cabinet, tables, lamps, walls, floor. worse still there were occasional clots of blood-- large and so dark red they looked black.

five minutes after my dad had stuck a plumb of cotton wool in the black lump's ear-- despite my sister and me telling him not to since the creature would just shake it out-- he shook it out. yar, duh. we chased him all over and my dad plugged his ear again.

five minutes later the cotton wool was entirely bloodsoaked and had fallen out and the black lump was bleeding everywhere again. my dad-- mostly for the benefit of my mum, who had just reached home and was eating a very late dinner-- threw a hissy fit and flung everything on the floor. some people think the world can operate on solar power-- my dad apparently is of the opinion that sound can power the world. as he screamed i looked my mother in the eye, trying not to panic, and told her we had to get dalphie to a vet because the new wad of tissues i was holding to his ear was completely bloodsoaked. my sister went online and hunted until she found the contact numbers of 2 vets and called and found out consultation and ambulance fees-- 100 for before 12 and 200 for after midnight. my mum had wanted the ambulance so that she wouldn't get blood all over her car; on hearing the fees my dad roused himself enough from his petulance to say "why don';t you just fetch him there?!"

honestly, the two of them. but at least my mum immediately got up and went to line the car with papers and then hightailed it all the way-- the speedometer never fell below 100. at the clinic the vet-- dr james tan and his assistant, who was an absolute godsend-- eyed his ear and, to my everlasting horror, said, "*mumble mumble* maggot."

MAGGOTS.

WHAT THE HELL.

bloody summer and bugger its many flies. apparently it's a condition that happens to old dogs a lot, and i'm suspecting especially to pointy-eared dogs like the black lump (as opposed to golden retrievers or floppy foldovers). basically they get old and fat and lazy and then don't bother to swat away flies when the stupid critters come near them. and because my dog is perenially prone to ear infections some stupid fly crawled into his ear two days ago and laid eggs there. and the eggs hatched, and maggots developed, and they started chewing at the insides of his ear canal. and that was the reason behind all the blood.

i felt SUPREMELY horrible because-- the lump has a habit of whining to be let in when it's thundering. and yesterday it rained a little and stayed overcast and he was whining and crying like mad, and i thought he wanted attention, so i rapped him on the snout for being whiny. HE WASN'T WHINING. he was in extreme and horrible pain and discomfort.

bloody hell.

currently sitting here waiting for the h2o2 to settle before giving my dog his eardrops and anti-whatever powder. anti-maggots probably. *glOOm* i AM a shit pet owner.

but at least i wasn't petulant. seriously-- what is the goddamn use of "washing the garden 3 or 4 times already" (a number that got inflated to 4 or 5 times and would have escalated had we stayed around to listen) when it's obviously not helping the source of the problem at all?? how the heck does losing your temper help, when it's not like the miserable dog can tell himself to stop bleeding or something? is it some relic of being stuck in the government service for the past 33 years or something-- you end up treating only the symptoms and never the source, and you always need some form of "higher=up" authorisation before you can do anything? or even bother to take the initiative at all? it's not like the first time this has happened already. and OMG that infamously useless temper. i've inherited it, unfortunately, but at least i'm trying to control it.

trust me this is a very toned-down rant already. last night i was swearing like mad in the car as we sped off and i think even my dog realised i was on the verge of screaming insanity. it's not fair-- he quite likes car rides, but it seems like the only times he gets to go in the car are when he's being rushed to the vet. wthhhh. i'm screwing up my dog's life :(:(:(:(

and i think there's something to be said for-- ok, judge for yourself.
1) my mum was the one who sped all the way to the clinic.
2) she was also the first one i managed to speak sensibly to-- as in, to say that we had to go to a vet.
3) my sister was the one who googled to check what could be the cause of the bleeding and what to do about it,
4) and later, to find out contact numbers and to call to check consultation fees and ambulance costs
5) my other sister dabbed up all the spots of blood as soon as she got back home from aikido practice and calmed the dog and got his leash and headed with us to the vet despite having school the next day at 9am. i think we reached home at just before 2.
6) i-- oh well i went along for the ride and became a complete wreck over my dog, but that's er beside the point. actually ok just ignore point 6 it doesn't really support my point at all.
7) ah ha. yes. my mum paid the vet fees, and i am secure in the knowledge that every one of us there-- even my spendthrift of a super-junior-mad-second-sis-- could have paid too (just means forgoing about 6.5 pairs of sale-price fcuk jeans for this gss. blah).

AND after all that my point is that the only people who did anything of any practical constructive use in my entire family were the females. yes, you got that right (i finally figured out my constructive use-- i staunched the bleeding. counted right). is it any wonder that i am vehemently feminist, or that i need to be fiercely independent? i've always been trying to prove a point from as far back as i can remember-- that there is no such thing as the weaker sex, not where females are concerned. now i know why-- it's been indoctrinated in me, man. i think maybe what i'm trying to say is that while my dad is pretty damn decent as dads and husbands go, i cannot imagine or survive life married to someone like him. i don't know how my mum does it. hell, i can't even begin to imagine life seriously and long-term-ly attached to someone, forget marriage.

just as well. after seeing what a mess i'm making out of my dog's life i probably should take a cue and subscribe to darwin's theory of evolution. philip larkin could have been thinking of me (as the parent) when he wrote "this be the verse".

but seriously, if you ever have any pet problems or anything, i really think the james tan clinic is awesome-- and his consultation fees are cheaper than the others. now i have to put myself on flywatch and sit around swatting opportunist flies. bleh.
Posted at 7:29 AM