I got thinking about this as I was sitting out on the back porch, enjoying a choice, high-grade smoke (Marlboro) and talking about the glaring lack of plans we have for tomorrow. Not like I care. I don’t think I’ve ever had a New Year’s celebration to go off well for years. Last year was pretty much destroyed by breaking up with the ex. The year before was riddled with panic attacks in the wilds of Scotland (Aberdeen — dude… “wilds” is fitting on New Year I MEAN LIKE NO JOKE LULZ [huh?]). Before that was the fantastic experience of blacking out and coming to with some dude fucking me while I just silently prayed he’d get off, go away, and I could pretend it never happened. Year before that, my first and last experimentation with smokes beyond tobacco, which was a huge paranoid catastrophe. I think the New Year before that was fairly good, though. So it isn’t always fail.

And I can’t imagine this one being fail in any capacity. I mean, honestly? For real? I’d be perfectly content getting all jacked-up on sugar and caffeine, and crashing on the couch all snuggled-up and comfy. But that’s all I ever want to do any night. Sugar. Caffeine. Cuddle.

But this isn’t about what I want to do next year. This is about what I’ve done last year. And… well, yes, one thing dominates the whole handful of months: meeting Kev. He has been the most amazing thing to happen to me… all strutting into my life with his finger up his nose, eyebrow cocked and a sly-as-fuck smile breaking across his face. My god, how he lights me up. I can honestly feel myself glowing whenever he’s around. He doesn’t even have to do anything… just a look and I’m all ablaze with love and happiness. Just a smile. Just watching him sleep. Even watching him help his mom out with something makes me want to hug his face off. And then back on again.

I never knew how much I was missing out on until it arrived. How little I settled for. How starved I was for affection. I never knew I could be this happy with someone. Never knew I could be myself with someone, and not be afraid of being called stupid or insane. Never having to shut parts of myself down because it was better to hide than be hurt. Never having to feel like there was something horribly, horribly wrong with me. Never having to hear “normal people don’t do that”.

All that I had hoped for before, and expected before, but lost over the years. Feeling cheated by Hollywood. Feeling cheated by my parents, too, for having stayed together from the start… living the impossible dream, and making me feel like I could do the same. Like I deserved the same. I lost that. I lowered my expectations and my value. I let myself get cheated on, screamed at, blamed for everything that ever went wrong. I bowed my head and fucking took it, thinking now that my expectations were too unrealistic, and this was just how things were in reality.

And then this year happened. Like finally waking up, bye-bye ‘Wonderland’, shaking your head and going “boy, that was some FUCKED UP SHEET, YO”. Things always were as I thought they should be, after all.

Other things about the year, I suppose, was getting transferred to UK.  I’m somewhat frustrated about how plans changed there.  I did honestly see myself transferring overseas, so I didn’t look ahead at UK’s USPs, so this whole plan of getting my basics done for cheaper turned out to be fail in the long run, as I’m having to go backwards and take basic classes that the University required, tacking on an extra year.  The only way to make the time even itself back out is to keep my grade high and squeak into their one-year Master’s program.  Which, I suppose, is what I’ll do.  It’s what I’ve said I’m doing, anyway.  It just depends on how desperately I want to stay at UK.  Or leave.

The year was definitely not without loss.  Moses, my dear furry friend since second grade, passed on.  He gave it a good fight, bouncing back briefly with much gusto, and holding on just long enough to meet Kev over the summer.  I still have a hard time with that, honestly.  I miss him so much…

My resolution for 2008 was a pretty good success: To grow a backbone and unleash my inner bitch.  To stand for myself, and not only that, but know that I can stand on my own.  The brief period of singleness at the start of the year did bring me to that point.  By Valentine’s Day (aka “Singles Awareness Day”), I figured out that I was totally content to be on my own.   I was actually looking forward to not having to please or impress anyone but myself.  I was chuffed to have the chance to be entirely selfish and free from attachment.  Then… yeah, SOME DUDE had to come along and mess all that up. But if you ever hear me growling about that, it’s likely a norty growl.  Please you to be turning around and not perving outside the door.

Minor things: I has car; I lost 25lbs, gained 15, lost 5, gained 5, lost 5, FUCK!; finally saw Radiohead; voted for change; started really learning German for real.

And.. I guess that’s my 2008 in a nutshell.  Hey! As for the classic thing of writing out resolutions… yeah well, I have none this year.  I’m cool with myself and my life and where things are going.  I guess all I can say is that I’m looking forward to next year.  Did a tarot reading that said it’d have a bit of a rocky, stressful start, but that all in all it’ll be peachy.  We’ll see

I’m also clean, groomed, and smelling of oranges. I fucking rock.

Since I’m not gonna be home for x-mess, Mom decided tonight was Christmas Eve. I opened my pressies, and had them open theirs. Being skint as I am this year, I couldn’t afford much better than your run-of-the-mill gift-set, but they were chuffed: a box of Walkers Shortbread cookies, Earl Grey and English Breakfast tea, and a pair of mugs. Aye… some things I’ve carried back from over The Pond will never fade… we loves us some fukkin’ Walkers.

It’s just too bad I couldn’t get anyone else to like Marmite. SIGH. Ahhh I remember last Christmas, I got a leetle pot of Marmite, and had my brother try it… and he strained his neck, he was gagging so hard. Hahahah.

[pottymouth]
OH HELL I COULD TOTALLY BRING MARMITE. YES. I AM PACKING SOME MARMITE RIGHT FUCKING NOW. I WILL TORTURE THE FUCK OUT OF KEV WITH SOME MOTHERFUCKING MARMITE, YEAH!!
[/pottymouth]

As for my motherlode, I have a nice warm set of flannel sheets (RAWK!), a half dozen little ceramic jars for my herbs and botanicals, and a pair of latte mugs I fell in lurve with, each emblazoned with “Naughty” and “Nice” on either side. All I have to do is swich hands, and BAM! People will know what I’m all about that day. HA! Ah love eet!

I can’t lie… I’m gonna miss being with the fam this Christmas. Thanksgiving wasn’t a big deal, because we really don’t do Thanksgiving much. Christmas, though… yeah, that’s different. I love the family, the baking, setting up the Christmas Night party spread, cranking tunes. I love the Wensleydale, the Appleton, my spinach cheese balls and whatever heavily herbed cheeses look good that year. But who knows when the next time will be when Kev and I can spend Christmas with his crew? I am kind of stealing him away from everything down there… so it’s only right that I pop down this time around. We’ll have a few years-worth of of cheese-fest, at least.

Hmm.

Welp. I guess there’s only one thing left to say:

Kev: “I’m so gay. There’s something about you that makes you a dude.” [slight pause] “What a horrible thing to say!”
Me: “No, no… well if it helps, everyone online thinks I’m a dude until I’m like, ‘No, no, I have tits, seriously.’”
Kev: “…well bring ‘em here!”
Me: [chuckles]

Wait, no, that wasn’t it. I mean:

Happy Holidays, everyone

So… fuck yes.  Just have to make it through finals-hell before I get to have two and a half weeks of IN YO FACE.  Mmph.  Yessss. Then after that… to just survive the next few months til living arrangements get arranged.  That’s gonna be a bite in the side.  *flail*

At least I can sound like a proper caveman.  Can you imagine if I said “I plate”?  Pah!

Anyway, I failed to mention last night that Dad is back home, because I was freakin’ tired.  I twittered it, though, so you can’t say you weren’t informed… you can only say “I didn’t look hard enough for the information.”  So take that.  But yes, Dad is home, and sore, but I’m happy to have him back to Diddly-Dadding around.

Now I guess I should actually start working on that homework I was talking about.  But not before “wow”ing over how amazing it is to feel so loved by such a wonderful manboy.  Sometimes I get so happy I could barf.  And I hope it’s not like, barf barf.  I would think love-barf should be made of glitter and roses.  But I don’t think glitter is something a body synthesises.  Maybe roses, if you’re a vessel for the Holy Virgin, but glitter?  Nah.  I digress!  No one has brought me such happiness, fulfillment, and contentment before.  It’d almost be like ‘peace’ were it not for us both being kind of childishly chaotic.  I think it’s as close to ‘peace’ as either of us will ever get.  And it’s pretty damned nice.

So I had my weekend with Kev, which SUCKED cos of only a weekend, but for “only a weekend” it was something like total awesome.  Want to hear what we did?  Well sir, we pretty much did nothing.  A whole lot of it.  Just… had ourselves a weekend.  I drove up to Cincy and picked him up on Saturday at around noon, when we blasted down to G-town to stuff our faces full of chinese food wrapped in bacon.  Everything is better when it’s wrapped in bacon, I guess.  Farted around at Big Lots to look (found a frickin’ sweet extra-wide recliner that we are pretty much in love with), then Kohl’s to replace some sunglasses I lost (with the added bonus of browsing through housewares for more big-eyed-deers).  Blasted back here, chilled for a couple of hours, went out again for dinner.  Fell asleep watching Across the Universe.  Woke ourselves up again and started playing with glowsticks (lol glostix!).  It was the most fun I’ve had with glowsticks since Dad loaded the shotgun with army surplus and splattered the yard in toxic glowy goo.

Sunday was along the same lines of doing noooothing.  Slept in til late, had lunch, went out and bought some sidewalk chalk, and tore up the playground at Eastside (a few shots are up on Flickr).  Ran out of chalk, so I started playing on all the playground stuff, telling stories while he watched and laughed.  Went down the hill and found a couple of balls by the fencerow, which kept us entertained for another hour and a half before deciding to go out and have dinner, followed by some pretty frigid stargazing, all wrapped-up/snuggled-up in a blanket on the skate ramps at River Road park.

What follows that is a lot of emo.  Cos of leaving.  And leaving sucks.  So hard.  I know it’s only til Thanksgiving, but that is so far away from now… damnit.

It was absoultely wonderful, though.  And much needed.  And just flat out right.

Dashed off after the airport to go to class, slept through most of it, came home to take a nap, but as usually happens when I try to nap on-command… no nap.  I’ll try and settle down again shortly, cos of fucking TIRED.

So yes, I was (and am) quite a mess.  Thank holy lovin’ fuck I can come home and stress and panic and cry and wail and get nice, calm, caring support from the Kevbot.  I went from freaking out to the point of nearly flipping into a nervous breakdown to being on the ball (mostly, save for my goldfish-like attention span).  Gotta love that.  Gotta gotta.  Gotta love random flwrs, too.  If there was ever a day I needed lillies, today was that very day.  It may be by accident that he always hits it when I REALLY need the cheering up… but I’m going to say it’s intuition anyway ;P

But all is done, and I am finally satisfied.  I can now devote tomorrow’s break to catching up on Micro.  Should also probably see if there’s still a desk position available at the OUTsource… I need to get those four hours in… and desking would do it.

Other news?  I got a wicked bitchin’ new monitor… a nice 22″ widescreen dealie.  My original plan was to get two 17″s for a dual set-up, but meh.  This wound up being cheaper.  And it is fantastic!  Also fantastic, my ThinkGeek order came in the mail today.  I know have CAMP SPOONFORKNIFE.  Why the fuck do I need that, you might ask?  Cos of tuna, duh.  Also nabbed the Ladies’ T-Qualizer, OMG PWNIES, and a SpazzStick.  Party!

All these major snafus aside… well, you can imagine, right? I had a wonderful time doing mostly nothing… just being close, and laughing, and holding, and staring, smiling, loving, driving. We did manage to hold to a few of our plans, one being OMFG DAET NITE AT TEH MOVIEZ, watching the new X-Files movie. It was a good movie, but it was more like “A Plot That Just Happens To Have Mulder and Scully In It”. There was one part that absolutely terrified me, but it had nothing to do with the oogah-boogah plot. Hah.

I just… god. This isn’t fun. I do not like the “being ripped from your side” deal that comes with all this. I want him back… here… now. Or me there. Anywhere. Him need want augh. And if this schedule is reading right… it might be another two months before I get time off. And that, my friends, fucking blows. Can’t say I’m happy about that at all…

But, at least, I should be able to swing the cost without problems. Student loans rawk. And with classes kicking in so soon, I don’t have much time to dwell and be emo. Hopefully staying busy with classes will make the time go by faster than the slow-drag between my last visit and his. Crazy how the shortest wait felt like the longest… urgh.

Anyhow, I am hungry. And tired. And sore. I think I ought to choke some food down and lie down. SIGH.

Sorry, I know “how much I walked” isn’t really blogworthy news.  I’ll get the hang of this again, I swear.

Anywho.  Got all registered for next semester.  My advisor gave me the lovely news that I do indeed qualify for SW322, which saves me 3hrs in the long run… so I opted to take my (bonus) lazy-semester this go-’round.  So basically, I’m taking one course that really matters, two courses I should’ve taken in clown college, and (finally) German.  Yes!  I can finally do more than get a train ticket! Or inform people that my hat is black and white!  Or tell people to hurry the fuck up!
[I'd like a ticket please -- and hurry the fuck up!]

I’m also pleased to report that my student ID photo doesn’t look like ass.

Came home to find my books finally came in from half.com.  I finally bought a copy of A Field Guide to Otherkin by Lupa, and Witch School: Lessons for the Second Degree by some cheesy looking fucker with a gnarly beard.  I really shouldn’t talk about the leader of the trad like that, but my elementary school teachers always told me that I shouldn’t tell lies, so there you go.  But don’t let the cheese fool you… you wouldn’t think that anything called “Witch School” would be serious or valuable, but I really love their approach, and their First Degree program was pretty much awesome.  Nothing I didn’t know already, but you have to go through the motions.
So I flipped through both.  Beelined right for the Angels section in Otherkin… just to see… and yes, I’m in there!  Looked at the TOC in Second Degree and saw there is a section on sex magick.  As always, they have a very solid and mature approach… but I couldn’t read it without flailing (I have a habit of flailing whenever I have one of those overwhelming in-love moments).  Sex is sacred, a union of the God and Goddess, a union of… flail… God… flail… union… FLAIL.

On the subject of sacred sexual symbolism, my lilies opened today   I don’t know if they opened this morning and I just didn’t notice (I was in a sort of rush), or if they popped when I was off burning calories, but it was a very nice treat to see that on returning home.  Ahhh, flowers.  Aaaaahhhh, guys that actually buy you flowers.  I always laughed at the idea of getting flowers, until I actually found someone who believes in ‘em… and they really are special.  All I have to do is look at them, and my face busts.
All I have to do is look at him, and my face busts.
All I have to do is think about him, and my face busts…