What the fuck?

The highest highs, the lowest lows... and it's all emotional.

I'm not on any drugs but birth control.

Sure, that might be sending my hormones out of whack... but this much?

Earlier today, I'm reading a great book, I'm happy, I'm laughing, I'm in a good mood, even though I'm stuck at the library all day.

And now, I want to cry.

She was my best friend.

She hasn't visited me since last October.

I saw her at Christmas, and I saw her during Spring Break, and I saw her in late April or perhaps early May when she visited my sister, who lives in the same town as me.

Apparently, next weekend, she's going to go visit my sister again.

I'm not sure why it hurts.

Maybe because she hasn't visited me in so long, but she's going to see my sister for the second time in just a few months.

Maybe because I've been trying to get her to visit me all summer, and she's agreed she needs to, and has yet to come down.

Maybe because she didn't tell me about it, and the only way I found out was because my sister explained why she was not interested in coming back to the house while I was in town job-hunting so my dad could have the car for the weekend.

Maybe because I don't know if she's still my best friend.

I haven't talked to my other best friend in quite some time.

I haven't really talked to him in months.

I don't know what he's thinking or feeling.

I don't know how he's getting along with his girlfriend.

I don't know if she even still is his girlfriend.

I don't know if I'm ever going to see him, either. He has nothing to do for the next six weeks. A trek cross-country would at least give him something to do, right? For at least a week...?

I'm at loose ends.

I desperately want to be able to be on my own in Pittsburg, with an apartment of my own, a job, a better line on a car, my classes arranged, all of that, by August 1st.

Right now, I have no car, no cash, no place to crash, to steal a line from a book title I saw at Hastings.

I have been working at this job since the end of May, and I've only gotten $81 from it so far.

I will have worked for ten weeks before I have a decent-sized paycheck, and it will only be 300 some dollars.

That's what happens when you take a summer job that pays on a monthly basis, with a month's hold.

If I move out on August 1st, I will have one decent paycheck, and one paycheck that will pay off my book club bill.

And now I know that me joining a book club is A Bad Thing (tm).

But that isn't the point.

I'm currently taking a Sociology class that I will most likely pass.

I'm also enrolled in one for the fall, because sometimes I'm a numbskull.

I can't change the fall class, because the PSU library screwed up and so there's still a hold on my records.

Perhaps it is gone by now, but my guess is that it will probably take them a week to work things through. At least. I'll be lucky if I have my classes fixed by the time I'm done with my summer classes.

Of course, by now, and because I haven't declared a major, all the interesting classes are either things I'm already taking, conflict with things I'm already taking, or everybody else is taking them and there's no room for me.

I need to pick up another class in case I need to drop a class.

Right now, the only class I can drop and still be at 12 hours (once I drop the Sociology class, that is) would be my AP lab (Anatomy & Physiology).

This is somewhat pointless, as the only reason I'm taking the lab is because I HAVE to in order to take the lecture class. They get really pissy about that for some reason.

Meaning that if I dropped that, I might as well drop five credits - which lands me at 9 credits.

I learned, this past year, that that's a really fucking stupid thing to do to yourself.

I'm thinking that I might enroll in Beginning Korean Conversation or whatever it's called. There are enough people in it - I think - that it probably won't be canceled. It's 3 credits. Who knows, it might even be interesting enough to stay in.

There's a 1-credit class for Lifetime Sports - Kin Ball.

I got to watch Eva-my-RA-who-kicks-ass kick ass last fall in the demo game to entice freshmen to play.

I don't think the enticement worked very well, but the image stuck with me at least.

On the other hand, I'm too damn lazy.

Tangent:

I think that it would be easier for me to get enough exercise and keep in shape if it didn't seem as though the only reason for the activity was to get me "in shape".

Hell, I already am a shape.

It might be slightly rounder than I'd hoped for, but at least all my guts are contained within my skin, right?

There is something to be said for that which requires physical labor.

America today, in the middle-class hell in which I currently reside, does not seem to have caught on to this.

So instead, we lift and lower larger and larger pieces of metal in hopes that we can squeeze into smaller and smaller pieces of fabric, while we go to work with huge lunches of fast-food and sit in front of computers and play games and chat with our friends and surf the net as our asses spread even wider.

What happened to craftsmanship?

I have heard that there was a time when making a thing was wondrous, and took effort, and skill, and resulted in justifiable pride.

These days, my (male) teacher won't even change his tire when it goes flat, and has to check the manual on how to replace the spare in its cubbyhole.

I am taking a class about how culture pervades our lives, hiding itself from us (not entirely unlike the new episode of Stargate tonight, if you know what I'm talking about).

Do I want to live in the culture that expects me to be at least moderately unhappy at work, and strive to be unhealthily thin, while it stuffs me full of fatty food and drink?

I don't think I do.

But how will I escape it?

I want to sail a boat around the world.

I want to own a bookshop.

I want to be an exquisite gourmet chef.

I want to be a blacksmith.

I want to be a Viking even more than I already am.

I want friends who know who I am and accept me for it.

I want to live in the worlds I find in books.

I want to be a teacher of languages.

I want to live in Europe.

I want to know what I should do first.

*sighs*

I'm a greedy little bitch, ain't I?

Anyway, the tangent was supposed to be that if I had something I would do on a daily basis that just happened to burn a lot of calories, that would be a good thing.

Maybe I should go with the sailing or the blacksmithing.

Except that one of my boyfriend's real fears is drowning, and there doesn't seem to be much call for blacksmiths these days, except maybe as a farrier.

Yeah.

So I guess that tangent got away with me.

So anyway, the point is that I could be more slender and all that shit if I felt like it, but going to the gym and watching people walk on a machine instead of walking even just around the room seems absurd, and I don't understand why I should be a part of the picture.

And at the same time, I was really happy that I'd lost five pounds in a few weeks... and now I've been staying at that five-pounds-lost weight (in my case, it's 220 pounds, give or take) for about three weeks.

I think I got down to about 218.

I am 5'7" tall.

In theory, this means that I should weigh around 135 pounds to be socially acceptable as a pretty and thin girl.

In theory, about 150 pounds is going to be fairly healthy for me, and I could get there within a year and keep it off, if I work at it.

And you know what?

I don't know if I give a fuck.

Maybe I'll take that "Seamester" instead of trying to go to Ireland or Scotland or WHEREVER in the spring.

I'm sure that after three months at sea, I would be stronger and skinnier than I am now.

And maybe just maybe I should say that if Greg doesn't want to come with me, and if I'm not going to see him for that long, since I know it would break my heart to do that, then that's just not good enough.

And now I'm getting self-destructive again.

You know, when I was caught up in that tangent, bitching at America, I was pretty much cheered up.

And now I'm crying.

I hate this summer.