A semi-friend (ie we only communicate through journal posts, although I think she’s rockin’ cool) posted in her journal that she wanted to give more to charity but wasn’t sure which charities or how to be of help with very little money.

That got me thinking. I’m really slack with helping people. My activist cred is zero. I’m not involved with the NDP anymore (I always vote NDP, but the bureaucracy [ha! I typed bureaucrazy] can kiss my ass), even though I used to be on the provincial council and was one-half of the editorial board. I used to be on the board at Planned Parenthood, but my work schedule changed and conflicted with their monthly meetings. I do give to the MS Walk every year, as someone close to me suffers from Multiple Sclerosis, but aside from that, I’m apparently a selfish lazy cow. 

A couple of summers ago I was walking down the street and stopped dead in front of the Adult Literacy office, which I didn’t know existed. As an instructor at a school where students rely almost exclusively on the written word, I am well aware of the literacy problems in this country. I’m convinced that 80% of the phone calls and emails I are because the student either can’t or won’t read (or comprehend) what’s in front of them. The school system doesn’t help - ack, I can’t get into it, my fingers are cold and it hurts to type. Suffice it to say, I’m not pleased with the Dept. of Ed’s view of how to educate its charges.

Anyway, back to the front of the Literacy office. I almost walked right in and volunteered, but I was chicken. By the time I got the gumption to go back, they weren’t at that location anymore.

As I told a much shorter version of this story in the comments to my semi-friend’s journal, I thought, hey stupid, go find out what you can do! So I looked up the Cape Breton Literacy Network, and composed a quick email asking how I could help. I am a certified Train-The-Trainer, after all. If nothing else, I can help with the website.

I feel a smidge better.

I need to keep the door closed from our “media” room (two computers, my tv & surround system) against the noise from across the hallway in my parents’ tv room. The TV invades my head and tears pieces out while jumbling the rest.

—

A boy - the barely-still-teenaged brother of a friend of a friend - apparently hopped a bus last week, went to the states, shot two pedophiles, got on another bus which got pulled over by the cops, and before they got to him he shot himself to death. Different pieces of this story have been in the paper every single day for a week. Front page, mostly, but sometimes hidden unexpectedly, destroying a random look through the middle sheaves with more horrors such as an interview with someone from that second bus ride.

My heart aches for this boy’s family.

—

I have access to cable tv, but I haven’t hooked it up, and therefore have watched approximately two or three hours of regular programming in the past six months - mostly episodes of Earl or Raymond that my mom was watching. I feel like I’ve read the entire Internet, so I swung my way back around to televisionwithoutpity.com and realized that there were half a dozen shows on their recap list that I hadn’t even heard of, much less any that I’d watched enough to care about a particular episode.

—

I didn’t think I had a theme when I started writing, I was under the impression that my thoughts were random. Yet they seem to connect to how fragile I am when it comes to broadcast media. I take my news in small bites - usually a cursory scan of the front page of the paper each morning, and maybe a hint of a headline at an online forum or two. I feel too helpless as it is, I can’t seem to pull myself together enough to take in all the negativity on the airwaves, assimilate it, and actually do anything about it - and so I’m back to sticking my head in the sand and ignoring it all. I just don’t have the strength. It’s so goddamn negative. What are we doing to ourselves?

—

Ah, here’s the random. I’m in a total funk today. I’m so lonely my tears are a razor’s edge away, yet I turned down an invite to hang out and be snuggled because I feel completely anti-social. To top all that off, I’ve been haunted by thoughts of Kevin. The bare few people I mentioned this to don’t seem to understand what’s going on. I’m not missing him; I’m not wanting him; I had enough of that while he was away for three months while I stayed in our unfinished apartment, missing him and depressed and lonely over him and still not done with grief about Ethan; and I missed him, not knowing that’s what it was at first, for ten months after he got back. When I think of the nights he was inches from me in the bed and I felt afraid to touch him for fear of him pulling away… and later, he was as far onto the edge of the bed as possible… and finally, for months he slept on the couch. Did you know that? It was ostensibly because the puppy was keeping me awake and I was working but he wasn’t, but I doubt that was really it. — when I think of all that, and how much I longed for him then, I realize all my missing and longing is over and done with.

No, it’s not that I miss him. I’m literally haunted, like an unwelcome ghost. An unexpected glimpse of a couple holding hands in a certain area of town just about tore my throat out. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone this story, but a while before it ended, we went for a walk downtown. We went together; we held hands on the way down; we had real conversation. I was ecstatic; I thought, oh, it’s getting better, it is! On the way back, my knee started to hurt, to slow me down. He kept getting ahead of me. I have a total complex about people having their backs to me, and I kept making him slow down and wait for me. He was getting more and more frustrated with me, and I with him. Finally I just gave up and let him get further and further ahead. Then I crossed the street. He didn’t even turn around. I was so angry, and it was so surreal, walking down the same street with all this space between us. I was almost wild-eyed with anger, hurt, and the goddamn symbolism.

So today as I walked past that place where I had seen a physical manifestation of the growing space between us, this couple crossed my vision holding hands, and my heart choked me. And so now he’s in my head. I wonder how we managed to fuck up something that was so good for so long; then I wonder, maybe it wasn’t good to start with. Do I blind myself? I’m sure we were happy. I was happy, I was. I’m sure I wasn’t blind. So then I get back to: what the hell happened? Where’d it go?

I did this for a while before we broke up: tried to make people swear that I was happy in the beginning, that he and I had fun and were right together. I couldn’t find anyone to disagree with me. It’s six months later; why am I doing it again now?

This is what happens when you repress feelings, I suppose. Maybe I would have been better off getting an apartment alone and going to work with red eyes for a month, instead of living with a houseful of people and being ‘strong.’

I think I’m done with this topic for now. Exorcism, indeed. I wonder what else is in my head?

—

I just spent another week or so watching Firefly through from start to finish. It is the only TV show I’ve ever been so emotionally invested in that it actually pains me that there are no more than 13 episodes. It’s literally the best television I’ve ever seen. That includes watching k.d.lang give the performance of her life at the Junos recently (‘halleluja,’ look it up, 99 cents on iTunes); the last episode of M*A*S*H (and the episode where Henry goes into the sea); and you know what? I really can’t think of any other examples. Everything else is lifeless in comparison.

—

Speaking of k.d.lang and iTunes… I downloaded her Junos performance as well as her Live by Request album today. It’s mind-blowing. I saw it live and it gave me goosebumps then; this time I waited until I had it on the Nano and in the headphones so I’d be surrounded by the strength and emotion of her voice. I stood with my eyes closed, my back to the window so the light wouldn’t distract me, and just swayed.

I’m also on a P!nk kick - I bought her latest album on iTunes (LOVE ITUNES) and have been listening to it for a week, and today I ripped the two CDs I own, and then realized I was missing the fourth so I iTunesed that, too. And, ha, I just realized I was listening exclusively to Pink while on the walk whose main objective was to obtain a pink iPod sock for my Nano (which I got, and which goes smashingly with my green camera sock).

[there’s kevin in my thoughts again - i’m mentally telling him to bite me, i am allowed to listen to whatever the fuck crap pop junk music i like, and kiss my ass with that snobbery]

—

There were four birthdays in the office this week. We had four stealth cards to sign, four half-hearted, incredibly-slow renditions of “happy birthday” - and four goddamn cakes.

—

I’ve been getting an average of 12 hits a day on my jewellery site. Real hits, by real people, referred from sites I post to. They stay to look, too, with a 2-minute average visit length. I’ve sold a grand total of four pieces - one to Rae from getbent.ca, one to a former coworker, and two to my aunt.

Yip-de-fucking-doo.

In addition, I have had zero ambition to do a damn thing in my workspace, despite the gorgeous beads I have waiting for me. Possibly it’s the fact that I haven’t cleaned my freaking room in a few weeks and it’s hard to get at anything.

—

I think maybe my head is empty enough for me to stop typing now. I hope sleep comes tonight.

Check me out! May 29th, there. Yikes-o-rama, how’d I get suckered into that???

I’m soooo out of touch with my birth-religion these days. Everybody’s all, “Happy Easter!” and I’m like, “…what? Oh! Right.”  To me, it’s just a day off work. I’m such a godless heathen. Don’t you just love it?

My biggest concern at this juncture is what the hell I’m going to eat for the next three days. I’ve already been having the weirdest, thrown-together lunches all week - crackers and peanut butter with a side of chocolate-flavoured soy drink one day; leftover kraft dinner with two slices of baloney another; a can of no-name alphagetti a third. I’m really scraping the bottom of the cupboard.

There are no stores open today, people are going to be consumer-crazy tomorrow (NOTHING makes me more frustrated than a mall full of people just before/after a holiday) so that I won’t want to be near anywhere. I’ll be eating crackers and peanut butter again, I guess! I think maybe there’s a can of beans somewhere… ugh. What I really want is some fresh ground beef so I can make taco dip. yum. Maybe I’ll have to brave the stores… or maybe my dad will track down a small grocery store that’s open today, he’s out now.

Ooh, I hear his voice now… ohhh, I hope something’s open! See you!

The next time someone has a problem with me eating cookie dough out of the tube, I am going to send them here.

I don’t really have a story to tell, I just feel like writing. So here I am. I know y’all must LOVE those random, going-nowhere posts, hey?

Working in a building where the bottom six inches of everything is ruined, tore up, ripped out or sticky with tar is interesting. With the flood a couple of weeks ago, all the carpets are ripped up, and in some places, they didn’t do so well with the cleaning up of the glue that was holding it down. I’m lucky - my office not only had the least amount of water across the board, but it also had 3/4 of a tile floor underneath ugly-ass carpets. But every time I try to visit someone to discuss work (or whatever! hush!), I end up with my feet firmly stuck to the floor. It’s disconcerting, to say the least.

I wanted to head to Halifax on Friday since it’s Easter; my plan was to jump a shuttle bus early Friday morning, come home Sunday afternoon, and veg out / do laundry on Monday. BUT we were informed yesterday that we do not have Monday off. Fuck. That makes me cranky, and so I’m not going. Three days is just not worth it when you have to work immediately afterward. I just know I’d end up out until 3am two nights in a row, and my sleep schedule is already fucked up enough (thanks for NOTHING, Sanford Fleming) and I’m already exhausted enough to make a trip just now entirely unappealing. I have a feeling Shauna is going to be most displeased.

However, Davey will be here (YAY) so I at least won’t spend the weekend bored in my room. He’ll come get me for something. Right? RIGHT?

I find myself plenty busy these days anyway. I’ve been on a few dates - some successful, some not so much. But at least I’m getting OUT. Someone I’ve been wanting to see for quite a while who lives a couple of hours away will be in town in a couple of hours, actually, so we’re going for coffee and such when he gets here. WHICH reminds me, I have to run. Gotta eat!

Cape Breton Springs are crazy.

Last week:

This morning:

This evening:

Also. I totally forgot to tell you! I bought a new camera a couple of weeks ago. When the office flooded and they told me to stay home, the sun was shining and it was gorgeous out, so I grabbed my iPod and hit the road walkin’. I ended up at the camera store and bought myself a shmancy new Pentax Optio S6. I’ve been wanting this camera for EVER (well, earlier versions, obviously). I totally adore the one Kevin bought me and it takes magnificent photos of my jewellery, but I hate carrying it anywhere because it’s so bulky.

But my lovely Optio S6 is the size of a credit card. It fits into the iPod sock I had originally purchased for my Nano - now I need a pink one for my actual iPod. So anyway, yeah, it’s teeny, smaller than my wallet (which also gets so bulky I don’t want to carry it). It’s 6MP. It’s got the largest LCD screen I’ve ever seen on a camera. It’s beautiful.

In addition! The new version of WordPress, with AJAX and whatnot? LOVE. IT.

At four o’clock this afternoon, I thought I’d see if I could come up with a new design for nightingayle.com. it was kind of half-finished, the gallery was all sad and useless, and it really needed freshening up. i figured i’d stab it halfheartedly and end up with nothing by the end of the day - at best, yet another half-finished incarnation.

It’s 9:46pm, and it’s finished. Even the galleries are populated. I’m astounded. And incredibly pleased!

Site being redesigned - for now, journal is here… after redesign, it will be on this main page. Which is so very pretty, don’t you think? I have a lime green iPod sock for my camera, and I have been meaning to go back and get the pink one for my actual iPod… but in the meantime, these colours have been jiggling in my brain.

Every time I try a redesign I attempt something Art Nouveau, but this is the first time it’s worked. Also, obviously, the links at left don’t yet work. Plus, I’m switching my journalling software yet again - this time to WordPress, just because it’s so damned simple and awesome.