Talking Budgie

We’re heading to the beach this weekend… To run a half marathon!

I’m very excited. I was meant to run a couple last year, but injury intervened. In contrast, The Boy did two PB’s last year (1:23). This running season I think I will be running two halves, the one on Sunday and another in two months. I’m set to do a PB, but I still won’t be anywhere near my goal time of 2 hours because I’ve been a bit flaky with my training. The thesis and family issues continue to exhaust me. So I’m aiming to do under 2:10 and we’ll see how that goes. My coach reckons I can do 1:55, but I think he was on crack when he sent me that email.

Once I break the two hour barrier I’m going to start my marathon training. As soon as this damned thesis is over a marathon is my next life goal…

I’ll let you know how we go.

Love to all :*

So here’s the thing. I’m not short sighted after all, neither literally in the ocular sense, nor figuratively speaking. The first optometrist completely stuffed up my first exam. I’m not sure how he managed to confuse short sightedness with worsening astigmatism and worsening long sightedness, but he did. And what’s more, the older optometrist managed to figure this out without the use of those awful blinding drops (despite almost knocking me out with his moderate dose of halitosis).

The new glasses I had been given were never going to work. I feel vindicated

Now all I have to do is wait another ten days for my two new sets of lenses to come in and survive on my old ones until then (thank goodness I saved the lenses…). Gah. And I’m still trying to figure out how optometrist #1 earned his degree…

Love to all :*

Soooooo… Some amusing and not-so-amusing stuff has happened this week. Two “Dad” stories to tell you about:

1. Recently I was interviewed for a couple of magazines about my work and my experience at an interesting national event. My mug even made the cover of one of these university-type magazines. This was over a month ago. A few nights ago my father came home from work with a copy of the magazine with the enormous picture of my face on the cover and said to my mother: “S [an employee of his] brought this to me. Her daughter found it at the university. Have you seen it?” Mum responded, “Yes I have”, refusing to open up any lines of communication about me. “Oh”, he said. Quite funny, considering Mum has had a copy of the magazine sitting on her beside table for a month. If only he paid her more attention..
2. Last night Mum and Dad were at a large dinner function and saw some friends who they hadn’t caught up with in a few years. One of them turned to my father and asked about me. Mum stayed silent, wondering what he could possibly say. His response? “Um, oh, um, her mother is probably a better person to ask.” Apparently trying to maintain the facade of the perfect family with no problems is becoming more difficult by the day.

What a tool. He’s obviously itching to find out what’s going on with me, but the only way he can do that is to contact me directly. And he’s too gutless to do that. Too bad, so sad.

Anyhow, it’s been a busy, stressful week. I haven’t felt much inclination to post although so much has happened. I sunk into what I guess was a bad depression last week. I think the event I was talking about in my last post became the straw that broke the camel’s back in terms my emotional health. I’ve never felt so low before, like there was no future for me. I slowly climbed out of the black hole over the period of a few days thanks to support from The Boy and Mum. It was terrible.

I also collected my new glasses on Friday and guess what? The new prescription sucks. Distance vision is great, but trying to read and work on the computer with the new glasses gives tunnel vision. What? Me having bad health luck? Who would have thought. I have to go back to day and get those drops which relax your eye muscles and blind you so the optometrist can more accurately re-test me. I am so annoyed. I won’t be able to see for six to eight hours because they stuffed up the prescription. The Boy is meeting me at the prescription to lead me home and collect my car from the ferry stop. [Did I mention that my main mode of public transportation these days is the ferry system? It rocks...]

I’m rambling. Sorry.

Should get some writing done now. I’ve had my work hours cut today. I’ll let you know how the eye test goes…

How are you all?

Love to all :*

My father is an idiot.

I am so angry right now that I can’t get it together to tell you about the latest in the saga.

Let’s just say that he is once again doing what he does best - playing favourites in a very significant way. I know I have nothing to do with him anymore, but I still get angry when I hear that he continues to act like an ass.

Grr!

Love to all :*

Weird things happen to you when you’re doing a PhD. Weird health things.

As I said in my last entry, I managed to almost kill myself with an E.Coli infection in my kidneys during my last (honours) thesis. I’ve got friends requiring eye surgery because a lack of blinking whilst staring at their computer caused hardened eyeballs. Other friends (oh, and me) have developed bad back and neck problems. Mental issues. Strange infections. Insomnia. You name it, PhD students get it because of the thesis.

For the past few months I’ve noticed things getting blurry. Well, more blurry than before. I’ve worn reading glasses since I turned 16, but my distance vision seems to have gone down the gurgler. I’m always asking The Boy what is going on with the TV. So today (a week and a half before I change insurance plans) I headed to the optometrist to get my eyes tested. And wasn’t I in for a surprise. Which isn’t in itself a surprise considering my life in general, if you get my drift…

I’ve suddenly become short-sighted. And no, that’s not a euphamism. I’m delighted about California’s gay marriage laws. But I digress.

My eye doctor dude was absolutely astounded. (And when I say “my eye doctor” I’m really saying “the random dude they got to test my eyes this time around because they never give me the same optometrist twice”.) In one eye I have had over a two-point turn around in my prescription, so that now I’ve gone from moderately long-sighted to moderately short-sighted. In the other eye I have also become more short sighted, but that just means that this eye is relatively normal now in the long vs. short-sighted stakes (although I’d say it’s destined to become more short sighted sooner rather than later). But! I still need glasses for reading. Nerd face here has astigmatism in both eyes, which is why I am unable to see both the computer and the television simultaneously.

The optometrist assures me that this is common in people who spend an excessive amount of time in front of a computer, although he did want to temporarily blind me with eye drops and check again for sure. I declined his invitation. I’ve had that done before and it sucks. I told him that his best guess is good enough for me. So long as I can see the computer I don’t really give much of a shit about any thing else right now.

So $600 later - that’s after my crappy insurance payout (thanks for nothing, Stupid Health Fund) - I will have a new pair of glasses and a new pair of lenses for my old glasses in ten days. I’ve never had a spare pair before, but since my luck has been somewhat poor of late I think that a spare pair is not such a bad idea.

With my scholarship running out next week however, I’m not so comfortable with the fact I just spent that much money. Then again, if one wants to finish one’s thesis, one has to be able to see. Hasn’t one? Shit. Money. Shit. Eyes. Shit. Thesis. Shit.

Love to all :*

P.S. The nutritious PhD diet is going well today, thanks for asking. So far I’ve eaten a bowl of cereal, something from the bakery, and two Krispy Kreme donuts. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster that KK has finally made it to my fine town. It’s going to save my mind…

It’s 3pm. So far today I have consumed:

1 cup of black organic tea with one teaspoon of sugar.

3 squares of cadbury dairy milk chocolate filled with caramel.

1 glass of coke.

1 small tin of tuna with a teaspoon of low fat mayo.

As you can probably tell, I’m not into eating so much lately. Last night The Boy held my hair as I threw up dinner and a whole lot of water I consumed after my run, so I’ve reverted to The PhD Diet of almost nothing. After the tin of tuna I feel sick again. I hope I’m not heading down the path of my honours thesis, where after subsisting on a diet of two minute noodles, I ended up with an E.Coli infection in my kidneys and the doctor ready to hospitalise me and chain me to a bag of IV antibiotics. (I refused - had too much work to do!)

All I know for sure is that by the end of this I expect my teeth to have all fallen out of my head. At least that would be better than getting another crown (the pain just never ends - don’t get me started on how the dentist “adjusted” it so much that now I have some silver showing through the top of the enamel and how I didn’t notice until after I got home)…

Oh, and I need to get my eyes tested again. Damn you, excessive computer usage.

Love to all :*

All this dreaming makes me tired. I had more dreams last night. And today. I went back to sleep at 9am and woke once between then and 1:10pm to answer a phone call from The Boy, who called amidst a dream about us breaking up over him deliberately losing the budgie’s travel cage. Needless to say, it was a relief to hear his voice.

Working at home has its perks. Not the loneliness, the isolation from workmates and society, but being able to sleep when I feel tired. That perk certainly isn’t helping get the thesis done though. I really hate my thesis right now. I’ve been so stressed that The Boy went to work late yesterday, staying home until almost 10am to make sure I was ok. At least I’m lucky in love (finally!)…

I’m not sure why I’m so tired right now. The stress? Maybe. Running? Maybe. Probably a mixture of both.

Rambling. Sorry. What I logged on to say was a big thanks to Velvet and NSLW for their analysis of my dream. Everything you said made perfect sense.

Now if you will excuse me, I’m going to figure out whether I should get some more sleep or do some writing before my speed (running, not drugs) session tonight. My half marathon is in less than three weeks…

Love to all :*

It was Fathers’ Day in the United States this Sunday past. I’m glad we don’t celebrate it until September - it will give me more time to figure out what to do regarding my own family and events like that. I really don’t know what the future holds for me in terms of Fathers’ Days, birthdays, weddings or funerals. And I’m not ready to think about that yet. At least during my waking hours, because my sleeping hours have been filled with strange and horrible dreams for the past few weeks. Dreams about my family and my work.

I had a particularly disturbing dream on Friday night that went like this:

I was in New York with The Boy. We were staying with our friend R, just like when I went to meet him there last November. For some reason I received a call from a man who wanted me to play my ‘cello in a concert. I told him that the instrument needed repair - the sound post is out and I need a new set of strings [all true in real life] - and that I couldn’t possibly play. The man said that it didn’t matter and that he wanted me to play anyway. It was strange.

The next thing I knew, The Boy and I were walking into an old terrace house, up a short flight of stairs to a large room with an unpolished wooden floor. Everything about the room was old, but there were about 80 chairs set up in the room for people to listen to me play. I took my instrument out of its case and tuned it as best I could with the bad strings and the sound post rattling around. As I began to play the first of the Bach ‘cello suites, I adjusted the position of my hand on the instrument to mask the fact that the strings weren’t holding their notes.

Just as I was about to stop and apologise to the crowd, all of whom seemed to be enjoying my performance, my mother walked into the room and said that there had been a terrible shooting on the lower floor of the building. A whole lot of people had been killed. Maybe 30, she said. I was shocked that she was there in New York with me in the first place, but even more surprised that such carnage could take place on the floor below us and nobody in the room had heard a single noise.

I walked down the stairs to the floor below. I was hesitant to go into the room to see what had happened. Just as I was about to walk away, somebody told me that a good friend of mine from university - Y - was in there and had been killed. I walked into the room, hoping that it wasn’t true. The floor was covered in blood. It looked as though the blood had been dragged across the floor rather than being pooled everywhere. There was a sandy type substance thinly covering some of the blood which I guessed was to help absorb some of the mess. A policeman approached me, asking if I could identify my friend Y’s body. I agreed. Anything to help.

The policeman led me and my mother to a row of four bodies which had been covered with a tarp. He lifted up the tarp and there was Y, looking as though he was asleep. No blood or gore. Just as though I went to cry and confirm the death of my friend, his eyes opened. “You’re alive!”, I exclaimed. I was very excited. But as Y began to stir, I somehow realised it wasn’t my friend, but my brother. The one which has caused me so much trouble over the years. The strange thing about Y morphing into Brother #1 is that Y is gay and this particular brother is - frankly - homophobic. And they look nothing alike in real life, but Y had some how morphed into Brother #1.

Regardless, I remained very excited that my brother was alive, even if he had always treated me badly. Nobody wants their brother to die like that. I shrieked with excitement over and over as he rose to his feet. As I went to hug him, he stared through me as though I was invisible. He turned around - completely ignoring me - to talk to my father who, up until that point, I wasn’t even aware had been in the room. I felt completely rejected.

And then I woke up. It was a horrible start to the day.

So… What do you think this all means?

Love to all :*

I read a blog post yesterday which made me think. In its essence, Liz argued that it was difficult to think about the fact that old friends could move on with their lives and perhaps even have better lives without you. This is obviously a difficult situation for anyone to deal with, and one which I have also dealt with in the past. I doubt there is a person I know who hasn’t had friends move on without them and not thought much about the friendship ever again.

This morning as The Boy and I were waking up, he asked me if I was ok. “Not really”, I replied. Feeling consistently well below par about my thesis and the family issues for the past couple of months has drained my energy and my motivation. The past few months have left me feeling flat. And it shows.

“You know”, The Boy remarked, “Even though you’re trying to leave all this family stuff behind you and say you aren’t hurt by not being invited to family dinners, it is really affecting you.”

He’s right. It does affect me profoundly. But it’s not the fact that my family don’t invite me to things, or has treated me terribly for years. The thought that my family can go through their lives almost as though I never existed is really what hurts. It cuts me to the core. The fact that my father can not bring himself to apologise to anyone about anything ever, and that I have never heard the words “I’m sorry” come from his mouth, cuts me to the core. The fact that my father, two sisters, and one of my brothers avoided like the plague the one time I saw them in public since I left (at a family friend’s 50th birthday party), cuts me to the core.

I am the leper, the black sheep, the stupid child and sibling who refused to go into the family business. I may as well have never existed to them. I am an inconvenience.

It hurts.

It hurts more than any of the friendships I have lost and the abuse I suffered at the hands of an ex boyfriend (the abuse which, for the record, some of my family used to laugh and tease me about). It hurts more than any physical pain I have ever experienced. It makes me want to crawl up and cry. Being rejected by friends is one thing, being rejected by your family when you haven’t done anything wrong is everything.

I know I am better off where I am now and I hope that with time I can accept my family situation. But it doesn’t change the fact that there will always be a huge void within me echoing the question: “Why?”.

Love to all :*