I just ganked six dollars' worth of quarters from the family change jar for cigarettes and a glow-in-the-dark lighter. And if that isn't bad enough, I told Anne I was going to drop something off to Dan so that she'd let me take the car for ten minutes for the procurement of aforementioned cancer sticks -- a mere twelve minutes' walk from my front door.

I've decided I've made a tactical error when it comes to cigarettes: The first time I attempted to quit, it was purely motivated by peer pressure -- not peer pressure that was uninvited, even; I was practically inviting people to make me feel guilty about the habit. However, to successfully quit, I think a myriad factors need to be combating the addiction: peer pressure and guilt included, but also limited finances, and an actual desire to get the smell and taste out of ones' system (and hair... and clothing). I've never had all these factors combine at the same time, and it gets exponentially harder to quit after each failed attempt.

My sister's turning into quite the little composer. I'm glad to see musical interest rearing its beautiful head; I was a bit pessimistic about her eventual outcome as a human being considering her main interests for most of her life have been sports and church, in that order. But music! A good development. She's been taking piano lessons for about half a year now, and practices very diligently for someone with a typical ten-year-old mindset and attention span. She's been playing around with the recorder for a little while too, which was one of the first instruments I picked up as a kid -- it led to my doomed fling with the clarinet in high school. She can read music at this point, but she's a freelance by-ear composer -- she'll play a few notes on the recorder, and once she finds a pleasing combination, she'll then find complimentary notes on the piano, et cetera. It's interesting to listen to; I think she's actually got an ear for a kid whose voice would lend most people to believe that she's completely tone deaf (the curse of the Armstrong low female register, alas!).

Smoothed things over with C a good deal last night, just enough so that I'm pretty sure all the other little crap I was worried about when it comes to her might just work itself out -- nice, since I have a lot of other shit that I should be worrying about right now (new house, bills, withdrawing from ISU, registering at Heartland, making enough money to eat sometimes).

C and I went with Amanda for pool at Ride The Nine last night. Vitalik and Zhora were there with a couple of fugly female companions; V actually came over and greeted us. The experience was entirely too surreal -- I haven't seen either of them for so long! Far from being put off by it, I was dumbfounded by how much I didn't even care -- I forgot they were there every few minutes, which is weird, considering they picked a table directly in our line of sight. Also weird considering Zhora was my entire fucked up world for a few months only about the span of human gestation ago. I wish this could have happened before I met Jim, so that I could experience this relief and elation in singledom. Because it's easy for me to say I don't care now, seeing as it's so easy not to care -- Jim is everything Zhora was not as a romantic partner -- considerate, fun, level-headed, oh, and did I mention completely into me on almost every level? Everything is so much better now -- and I almost have to thank Zhora for that. Had he not come into my life and screwed it all up, I don't think I would have reached a level of emotional maturity within my thinking about romantic relationships that would have allowed me to get into my current relationship and enjoy it so fully. Comparison is a wonderful thing, and I'm thankful for it, because having had a complete asshole in my life, I can truly appreciate Jim and won't easily take his kindness and commitment for granted. I mean, it's not as if I only learned things about relationships through my uber-negative connection with Russia's Finest, but I do have to admit that he was my first older man, and that counts for something. I learned a lot from my relationship with Kiri, for example, but it was a different sort of learning, considering she's a few years younger than I am -- we were both too young, I think, to even understand what we ourselves individually wanted out of a relationship, let alone what to do to satisfy those needs in another person. Zhora gave me a bitter but much-needed taste of complete and utter disappointment and a host of unfulfilled emotional needs I didn't even know I had until they started starving away in my brain and making me completely neurotic. So, I guess I didn't learn anything about what I wanted out of a relationship from Zhora: just what I definitely didn't want.

On the other hand, Jim creates and simultaneously fulfills companion-related emotional needs in me every day. Wow, I think that's an utterly girly thing to say, but it's, liek, totally true, lolz...? But what's also true is that the sex is way better!!! Fuck it, I tried to be deep for a minute there, and it was a valiant effort, if I do say so myself.

Not much for happs today. Got back from the forest at a decent hour, and I've been sitting inside my disorganized room nook for most of the day, organizing music and doing some fun research for Green County. I took a lot of naps. I didn't shower or even put on any deodorant. Quite frankly, this room cranny is getting pretty ripe from my pheromone-stink. Better light some incense or something -- pew!

I'm going to go into some needlessly detailed and nasty female grossness now (Rosie has met her match), so if you'd rather not read it, I suggest you just stop now and we'll pretend that girls don't ever poop or sweat or bleed.

Okay, so I finally got my period yesterday -- it was four days late, which drove me fucking nuts, by the way, because I've been regular down to the time of day for years. And jesus, it was a doozy. I'm out of tampons and can't buy any because I only have two dollars to my name right now, but I have lots of pads, which wouldn't be too bad, and is a lot better than nothing... However, I must tell you, pads are not conducive to wren-catching! Seriously, hiking around with a big lady diaper on for six hours was rough -- and now I literally have a rash to rival any late-blooming toddler. And you know what's weird about it? I totally recognized the feeling! Like, I actually remember what diaper rash feels like!

And you know what? It's fucking horrible!

This has led me to the decision to make ass-care a very high-up priority when I start popping babies out.

Peace!

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