Ce que vous dites...

et ce que vous faites me montre ce que vous etes...
So I haven't written anything in a while. I've been writing essays, one after another after another after another, including one a finished this afternoon (A big ol 15 pager) and now i am sick of writing papers. Leah went back early with Jared today and I was sad to see her go. I will miss her and Benjamin and Reanna the most. I've been very lucky, I think, with my friends, and who knows what next semester will bring. I am imagining finding romance in my writing workshop (wishful thinking right?).
I got my blood tested again today and I am up to 9.8 which is much much better and despite everything, I feel less tired. Hopefully I have been building up strong red blood cells because I am really afraid of getting the flu. I got the shot, but that doesn't mean anything this year. I just got my asthma under control again from the weather change and I'm afraid it will all be useless if I get the flu. It takes my lungs so long to recover even after a cold and every little thing triggers my asthma, so I don't even want to think about the flu.
Anyway, my week is almost over. I have an exam tomorrow at three and then I am finished and can go pack. I think I will sleep the entire way home. It is supposed to snow on Sunday, so maybe Nicholas can see some real snow. The weather has been icky here. Cold rain over the last snow making everything slippery and wet. I had my first fall yesterday...my poor wounded pride and a sizable bruise on my thigh. There is a mini lake from the flooding in front of Kline and I wish I had some ice skates so I could go fall on my butt properly.
I made a 76 on my film exam which makes me mad at myself and furious at spitting John Pruitt. Get this, on one of the short answers he took away the full ten points it was worth. Albeit that I didn't know what the hell I was talking about, but damn it, I made a valiant effort and should have gotten some credit for it. I did get a B+ on my last essay. Which gives me a B, B+, C, and C+ in the class which should add up to a B- of sorts, not that I care. I'm going to get an A in my Islam class which makes me exceedingly proud because I am the only one getting an A in the class. Enlightenment is up in the air. I've made mostly B+s on all the papers. I can't for the life of me make an A on her papers. I had an A- at the midterm. Puritans is also up in the air. I've made an A and B on the Papers, so everything depends on my term paper which is 50 percent of my grade. It would be nice to make an A in my first lit class, but I also realize that I was way too ambitious in my term paper and not as focused as I could have been.
Not that any of it matters now. It's over. I don't even know why I am thinking about it. I'll just be glad to be home. I'm a bit worried though. I've done no Christmas shopping. I even set aside my last paycheck for it. I was going to go to this junkshop in Woodstock, but my ride went back to Maine early. Oh well. Bedtime.

"So I let the weeds grow up/ called them flowers of the common man." Dar Williams Stop Smoking

I had an idea for a story today, and let me tell you, those are hard to come by these days. I hope I get into that fiction class, but it's looking unlikely since we register tomorrow and I still haven't gotten a yes or no from the writing department. Maybe they don't send out rejections. Anyway, I had this idea about a character, a really really old man who used to, as a kid, rhave a job reading the titles in silent movies for the people who couldn't read who now, in his old age, narrarates whatever is going on around him.
I finished my film class today, with an exam that I didn't know about until last night. This is what happens when you don't go to class, but there's no use in yelling at myself now. I don't think, however that I did that badly. I might even scrape by with a B. An A is out of the question, and a C is likely, but I'm hoping for a B.
I am sleeping again which is good, and whenever I have those panicky little moments, I stop and concentrate and make them go away. I won't break. I feel a little bit better, a little stronger, not so tired all the time--a combination of getting more sleep and taking my vitamins. I'm drinking more water too. Hazel has a filter thing and it makes the tap water drinkable. I can't afford bottled water and bottled water always seemed really wasteful to me, all that plastic. I miss the water back home.
The snow is starting to melt and I haven't fallen and broken anything on the ice...as of yet. Snow is really kind of disgusting when it is muddy, and you notice the litter more. I get really bitter about the crap all over campus. Is it so much to ask for you to throw away your trash? And god forbid we put our cigarette butts in the ash trays.
What is it about cigarettes? I just have a really hard time seeing the humanity and intelligence in smokers my age. I mean, okay, so our parents may not have really truly known how horrible smoking was for you, but we have had slideshow presentations and lectures all through our entire lifetimes about how dangerous and unhealthy smoking is. We know this as well as we know the alphabet and yet these people do it anyway. No one gets addicted off the first cigarette. The thing is, these people say, "it took me a while to get used to the taste." which means this was a calculated decision that had to be "gotten used to." My film class smells like an ashtray. I can hardly breathe. My professor asked one day how many people smoked and almost everybody raised their hands, further proving their idiocy (which I knew about long before).
And what makes me even angrier is when "socially conscious people" who dread their hair and wear anti-capitalism/republican/government buttons are the ones smoking, when everybody who knows anything about the corrupt corporate world knows that Tobacco Companies are the worst of the worst. These people won't drink Pepsi or wear Abercrombie and Fitch but they'll throw practically every penny they make (or their parents give them) at these monsters.
And what annoys me more is the people who roll their own cigarettes, make a big production about their nastiness and further announce that they are cooler than all the other smokers. Okay, so they're not supporting RJ. Reynolds. Good for them. They're just coating their lungs with better quality, slightly less addictive, unfiltered SHIT. Shit is shit, people.
Since I was four years old, I haven't been able to rely on my lungs. Sometimes they give out. Sometimes when I am sitting at my desk I realize that my tubes are closing up and breathing becomes a concious, careful movement. Twice a day, in order to be able to walk from class and back without have to use my inhaler, I have to take a low dose of steroids that leave a bitter, powdery taste on my tongue to remind me that breathing is not a given for me. It has taken me a while to come to terms with my own illness, accept that this is how I will have to live for the rest of my life...carefully. So, I guess it is really hard for me to understand people with perfectly healthy lungs who take them for granted. Breathing is freedom. Breathing is a gift. And I guess smoking, to me, is like baptising a beautiful little baby, fingers curled delicately around his little pink lips, with hot chemical waste.

I know it's just a ride on the wheel

I'm cold. I've never been this cold in all my life, not Amsterdam, not Washington, not anywhere. When I walk outside my face stings and my eyes burn, and my lips are so chapped that I've used up half a stick of chapstick since I have been back. I can't wait to go home where I can walk outside and not be in pain. They make fun of me, but they don't know how cold it is. My Canadian immigration seems less and less likely, unless Canada plans to colonize some nice island off the coast of Florida. Maybe I can marry a Canadian and get dual cititizenship and live the warm season in Canada and the winter in the South.
Do you want to know how superficial I am? I've been really worried about my Ally McBeal tapes. Isn't that silly. Ally McBeal was my only real passion in late middle school, early high school years. I don't think I ever missed an episode, until, of course, I missed the entire final season. So stupid to have an emotional attachment to a TV show, but I miss it. And I wish I had been more systematic in taping them. I think that I taped (or had taped) every single episode that ever was, and they are all scattered on a million different tapes, and now they are currently lost forever.
See, I can't even write about anything important. I've got to go write a paper.

truckin'

Back at school. Nothing exciting. I think I'm gonna move out and move downstairs with Hazel. This wasn't my idea, but I think I am okay with it. Hazel and her roommate are not happy together and Catherine wants to room with Tanzina so that they can pray together or something. I'm skeptical. I've got some fundamental issues with Hazel as a person, but our sleeping patterns match and I feel like I can be much more honest with Hazel about my needs because I am much more comfortable with her. I think we could make it work. I wouldn't have thought so earlier this year, but I am desperate for more sleep and less food smells. Plus I would be right beside Leah and Ling which will be nice. So I think I am going to do it. I hope it's the right thing to do. I'll just have to tell Hazel to keep it down. I like Hazel, I really do. She's a Republican disguised as a Democrat and she's a rich white girl in all senses of the word, but we get along okay because she is really nice. I don't know. Hey, she is from California so she has as much junk as me!