bloodygranuaile

I have a blue belt! I probably should be happier about this than I am, but frankly, I don't feel like it's a huge accomplishment... especially since last year they bumped us up two kyu per test, and this year only one. If I'd been good enough to get blue with stripe this test, I'd be pleased with myself (one girl did, from WPI). I'd have to be pretty goddamn lame not to go up one kyu in four months when I had the best attendance record in the class, especially since according to the useless handouts Shihan hands out to intimidate you, blue belt is still on the "one kyu per two months" track. And the thing I am really still abysmally bad at is kumite. And since kumite is pretty much the measure of how good you actually are in karate (as Shihan likes to remind us constantly), it's not much consolation to be able to do everything else. Like... if I had issues memorizing kata, but could actually fight, I think I'd feel somewhat better about my overall abilities than I do having it be the other way around. And between WPI chick going up two levels today, and the fact that Tony got green at the end of last year, I really, really want to improve enough to go for green at the end of spring semester. But since I have absolutely *no* natural ability for fighting (being by nature both slow and highly timid), and not being able to wear my glasses makes everything out of focus and messes with my depth perception, as well as just psychologically slowing me down further (not being able to see makes me REALLY, really disoriented. I am an extremely visual person; I can't even "close your eyes and take a deep breath" to calm down when I'm nervous. Deep breaths help but the moment I close my eyes I feel unmoored and start getting really uncomfortable... it's weird). But frankly I'm not sure it'd be worth it to invest in contacts unless I had some other sort of indication that if I could see, I wouldn't still just be hopelessly bad. So yeah... I'm feeling like I made the minimum requirements today, big freakin' deal, and I have a SHIT TON of work to do if I even have a hope of progressing beyond the minimal level. And even then, I don't really know if I'll be able to pull it off.

For the moment, though, I need to stop feeling inadequate and do homework. I have two papers to write in exactly one week. AAAAAHHHHHHHHH. This probably means I also need to stop spending so much time poking around the AVEN boards, even though they are lovely and interesting and I feel like so much less of a freak there and they just make the world make SENSE. (AVEN is the Asexual Visibility and Awareness Network, btw. This be my official coming out of the closet statement, for any of you that were unaware of my asexyness (or have been misled by any of my lovesick ramblings, but you know what they say about exceptions and rules).)

I also got accepted to Heartless Bitches International but those forums (fora?) tend to have fewer discussions that are long long long and therefore any attempt to hang out there as a newbie is backreading like whoa forever. So no real time for that yet.

...I think I need a drink.

Taking a short break from movie reviews and dithering about YA fantasy to get out some IRL stuff. Sometimes real life manages to be heavy enough that I'd feel bad posting reviews for Mamma Mia or Breaking Dawn (that one might never get done, btw; it's seven pages already and I'm just not sure I can finish it). Often, I review things, sometimes at unnecessarily great length, because I have other things on my mind, and writing something long and opinionated has the cathartic effect of making me feel like I'm expressing myself, combined with the escapist effect of reading the book in the first place by focusing on something else, and also I don't feel like a whiny emo bitch since most of the shit I get upset about is the same stuff I'd been upset about the day/week/month before.

And then some days, your mother comes home from work and tells you that one of her co-workers, who she was supposed to hang out with that evening, is unavailable because her house burned down, her husband was killed, and she and her daughter are in the hospital for smoke inhalation, and in critical condition. And then you feel very guilty that the most important thing on your mind for that day was whether or not you'd have a big enough block of free time to watch Godfather II.

Oh, and if you're me, you also feel a little worried because the Ocho doesn't have working smoke detectors. Which I think is illegal. AND THIS WOULD BE WHY.

My little brother is off to UConn on Friday, and since he'd been kind of avoiding dealing with it, it is now crunch time. Today was go-out-and-buy-bedsheets-and-shit-day, which, being the day you finally have all sorts of tangible, concrete signs you're actually leaving for college that aren't paperwork, tends to be one of those times when it really hits you that you're actually leaving. I was mostly impatient to get the hell out when it was my turn, but I still remember getting very nervous when it was time to go buy all my shit, and I did it several weeks in advance. Tim has had a much better time in high school than I did, likes Madison a lot more than I do, and most importantly, has a much more fulfilling social life here than I ever did. He's very upset about leaving his friends. He's even more upset about leaving the kids he works with at Kirby. Mom is very upset about him leaving, and about him being upset. I feel kind of out-of-place for mostly just being impatient to get my ass back to Worcester and have the school year start again.

In the neverending battle between me and my brain (you knew this section would be coming), we have the following recent developments: 1. I have been running around like crazy lately and yesterday crashed, sleeping 13 hours last night and taking a really long nap this afternoon, 2. I skipped my dried frog pills yesterday and woke up this morning in a lovely bout of emo, 3. sometime in the past couple months I seem to have turned into a complete sap and music can now sometimes make me cry, which I'm rather embarrassed about, and 4. I've been having increasingly frequent problems with lucid dreams/sleep paralysis/general epic failure in the waking up department. Tuesday morning I woke up, went back into dreaming without falling into a normal sleep first, and spent what felt like hours in a series of very stressful attempts to will myself awake. I kept putting my dream-self through all sorts of tests to check if I was awake or asleep, and when I realized I was asleep, I kept making my dream-self do all sorts of things that ought to wake me up (like splashing cold water on myself, &c). I thought I was managing to do them in real life, because moving my dream-self was almost as difficult as moving when you're not completely out of muscle atonia, so I thought I'd managed to physically get out of bed and just hadn't shaken the hallucinations yet. I got very scared when I couldn't wake myself up even with the cold water, and despairing when I realized I was dreaming the cold water too and was actually still in bed. Then I tried to wake my real self up with sheer force of will, which took a bit of doing--first I managed to dispell most of the dreams and wake my consciousness up, but I still couldn't move and I felt like I kept starting to fall into the dreams again (actual falling sensation, btw). Then I managed to get one eye half open, but it was several minutes (or perhaps it felt like several minutes because I was panicking) before I could get it to *stay* half open, or move any other part of my body. I woke up literally gasping and shaking; feeling stressed, exhausted, and my muscles were stiff and sore like I'd really been straining them. I spent most of the day feeling similar to having tried an overambitious bout of weightlifting, except without feeling like it was good for me.

I should probably stop burying myself in Discworld books and craptacular vampire novels and just give my bloody doctor a call. I'm going to need more dried frog pills soon, anyway.

To end on a higher note (laaaaaa!) (sorry...), I got switched into the seminar I wanted (British Romanticism instead of Chaucer), and I'm writing, probably not as much as I should be, but there is definitely (non-LJ) writery activity going on. My car needs a new transmission, which will be expensive, but I still get to take it up on Saturday (!). Car is probably being named Rincewind until transmission is replaced, at which point there may be reconsideration. (Suggestions are welcome.) Also, this weekend I got to see my Jersey lovelies, and bought shiny things at Ren Faire. And tomorrow, I get to do nothing all day, which is very much needed.

And now to bed, and hoping I will wake up normally, and hoping everyone else will feel better by then.