listening to your sister threaten physical violence over the phone to people who owe her money.

I'm so mad that this happens in my house. This is not supposed to be a violent place. The best part is that she chooses to do it literally right outside my bedroom door. Where do I go? This is my only place away from everything.

I have to confront her eventually.

The screwed up part is that prior to this, so many friends were looking for roommates all at the same time. it's like the universe was trying to tell me something... (get out, don't live with your angry, crazy sister)

but then again, this could just be one more lesson in me getting a backbone... I can't be a pushover my entire life. Hm. Thinking about that, I realize how many other ways i'm presented with that same opportunity.

I guess a little journaling can do the soul good.

This is the home stretch, folks. I just need to do one last essay and a few make-up tests to get every last thing done for school and then i will be a graduated Robert.

I certainly put it off long enough... I wasn't ready until I was ready, though... I needed those extra "life experiences" years. I needed to know how terrible it was gonna be to work shitty jobs for the rest of my life. (not that my job right now is shitty, but... it's shitty.) I doubt I will ever make very much money here. I don't want to leave, but i don't think i'll be able to get any sort of a career off the ground here unless i start elsewhere and come back later with a skill set. I mean, maybe I will... and maybe I won't. We'll see.

with Spanish, I can do... teaching, translation, interpreting... or if i get another degree, i can just pursue that... but in spanish. Apparently, i only need 3 more classes to get a BA in spanish at UB according to this nebulous sheet of paper i received in the mail. I hate their papaer work. i literally cannot figure anything it is trying to tell me. i feel like you need specialized knowledge just to read it. i'll have to sit down with it some more. i rarely have this kind of difficulty with mailings.

I might just continue on to get a masters or phd in spanish linguistics... but i feel like i should should stick to one step at a time. Times are kind of testy, so i feel like i should just continuously set short terms 2 yr goals for myself. in case the US gets blown up by... i don't know. something. someone really mad at our global shenanigans. it's just that i don't want to over-invest myself in something that I may never finish. what if, what if, what if...

I picked up my cap and gown today, along with 3 tickets to the graduation ceremony. I'm excited to get it done, but I'm nervous to start at UB. Big people school... >_< ECC was so easy.

____

I ended up finally going to Don Tequila's... it was great. I loved the food. I got Vegetarian F, haha... I went with Jens and Tanya.

after the bike got fixed up, after almost a year out of commission, the back brakes came off, the tire popped again. there's an actual hole in the tire.... i patched it up and rode it from my friend's house after getting it all sorted out and it popped again on he way home. (e:terry) and (e:paul) graciously offered to let me use the extra they had down in the basement. just gotta get it fixed up. My bike was so old, it had honestly outlived it's usefulness. i probably would have ended up fixing it all summer long. It's too bad, i really enjoyed learning how to fix stuff on my old one.

It's gonna be stressful getting the last of my school stuff done this week. i have a lot of shifts this week.

some extra photos i never got to put up. We got a new Kitten. He's pretty much the best thing ever. He takes my mind off of lots of things :)

i was going through books to add to my expanding make shift bookshelf (aka very sturdy produce/tomato boxes stacked on top of each other) and i found 20$ in the sleeve of a book! I also got rid of some books.

my room seems to be in a constant state of flux. it's interesting, the things you find....

that awkward moment when you think no one is gonna see you naked going through the refrigerator, because your roommates aren't home... and then the entire family next door is grilling outside of your huge kitchen windows.

Yup.

happy mother's day, estrippers.

so, the other night i made this amazing fritata... and i just finished it. it was amazing. I took a photo but my phone ate it... the file is just gone. :D i found them! :D i can't recall having had better... today, i stopped slacking on my kombucha... bottled it up and brewed a new batch. this time, i bottled it with raspberry and strawberry! i blended them up before mixing it in. i sort of had to because I'd let the kombucha ferment for 2 weeks, so it's rather tart.

sometime, I'm going to write a tutorial. a lot of people had suggested i teach a class in how to do it... ha! i can't imagine that very many people wouldn't be able to figure it out like i did. it's pretty easy.

___

so, i don't really know what's going on with the universe and all of it's lovely coincidences lately, but it's been getting weird.

so i wrote that nostalgia blog the other day and decided i would send mikey some well wishes, but i stated that he didn't have to respond, just that i wished him well. well, not only did he respond, but has moved back to buffalo, around the corner from me, and in with the woman who wrote the play i'm in... and wanted to get coffee.

I was so not ready for that at all. the last experience i had with him was terrible as it consisted of me tracking him down as he wandered the city being a crazy person so his family could find him and pick him up. i was significantly more upset about it days ago, but not so much anymore. nonetheless, i can't have him in my life. i can't. he creates too much chaos and stress for me. The very thought of being near him sends me into a bit of a panic. i forgive him for a lot of what i experienced in our relationship, but post relationship, when he continuously found a way into my life is what i have a hard time getting over. the amount of stress and grief he caused is significant i won't get into all of that, though.

Alex has recently been drunk texting me again that he loves me. i never respond.

Alfredo (we never technically dated, but i would consider him a love) has suddenly been talking to me again and getting really flirty. he always comes to me when things are not going well with his business or boyfriend. it's sweet that he still regards me fondly, but it doesn't necessarily feel too great to be some kind of escape/plan b.

Michael (not mikey) seems ... i don't know how to explain it. maybe i shouldn't read into it, but he seems to really be trying to spend time with me more lately, and has been doing little things for me here and there that i would consider "cute" but he is a naturally caring/nice person, so i really don't know what to say about that. he made me dinner and cleaned off the table and put a flower in the middle... kind of reminded me of old times in our apartment on virginia. It was nice, but i just don't know... I have a hard time going back to something. i don't know if i even really feel that way anymore. I don't think i do, about him. i've only ever dated someone again/given it another chance after a break once ever and i don't think i'll be making a habit out of that because it was a hard lesson to learn.

he is permanently friend-zoned, me thinks. but he's a good, good friend... We understand each other pretty deeply.

gosh, maybe i should just throw an exboyfriend party. that way i just make it easier to conspire together so they can better confuse the shit out of me, hahaha

the only one who hasn't contacted me is Gökhan... but that's understandable. he was pretty furious when i broke up with him. I just couldn't handle how long distance it was...

is it normal for people to still be on speaking terms with almost all of their exes? i feel like it is not.

You know... It never ceases to amaze me how much yelling my sister manages to fit in one day. i literally do not comprehend how she can even yell as much as she does... like, she will fucking yell about pretty much anything if it is even remotely upsetting.

I don't even yell when i am at my most furious. I am not even sure if i've raised my voice at someone since my first ex.

The kicker is that when she starts yelling, pretty much right away, she will start to tell the other person not to yell, EVEN IF THEY AREN'T YELLING. This just happened. She was yelling at her boyfriend (i am amazed they are still together) and he got frustrated and *sort of* started raising his voice defensively and she goes nuts telling him to stop yelling.

how inobservant do you have to be?

This all probably comes of as judgmental. I am just so tired of hearing her yell at her boyfriend, our mother, our father, our sister, her friends... it's always someone. Never seems to be me, but maybe one day she'll flip on me, haha...

It's just that i don't see what yelling solves, it just makes a tense situation more tense, and then everything gets out of control. Why can't you just listen to each other? Why is everything a screaming match? I really don't get it.

Last time i got yelled at, i was running around at work trying to get this specialty boozy latte made and i was the last server in the building with one manager and one bartender... and we were all in separate corners of the building (if you've seen the buffalo club, you know it is fucking enormous), so my manager couldn't find me... and when i finally got it done, she started to go ballistic, and i just shut her down immediately. i can't handle being yelled at at all. i can't think, i can't talk, i can't have any logical thoughts. my vision closes in and i see spots, and my back gets really hot. it's not for lack of being yelled at, it's just that as time goes on, i seem to have less and less of an ability to handle it. I said "please stop yelling at me, the drink had to get made, no one was around, so i did it, it's done, stop yelling, it doesn't help" and served my drink/desserts...

well, that was a pointless story.

the point is, everyone should yell a little less and actual progress in solving disagreements might actually be made. the end.

we went down to Valentine flats. it was amazing. it was my first time to zoar valley.

we got lost at first and went hiking on private propert, but ended up finding our way. i can't believe i've never done this before. I can't wait to go again, and to find some more places.

driving to zoar with James Dean and Tanya. happyrobert.

Some way or another, I happened on old music from my very first ex, mikey. it's so weird... a lot of the time it doesn't affect me much, but it turned a calm introspective evening into a bit of a nostalgia fest.

sometimes we tend to whitewash our memories, but i remember plenty of things that make me unhappy. i wouldn't say i was nostalgic for the relationship, but more the period of time in general. spring time does this to me also... i get so nostalgic and wistful in this weather.

I guess it brings me back to that time where all i could really deal with was living in my imagination, and how good everything was gonna be in the future, how it'd get better. I envisioned every future moment with him. I had a hard time dealing with the reality of the now, but i really tried my hardest to just deal and live with it. I still find it hard to believe at one point i was working 12 - 14 hours a day, 5 days a week, and 5 - 6 hours a day on weekends just to support it all, while he did next to nothing. and we still never had enough money. I dropped out of college and lost contact with most all of my friends because of it all.

I think back on all that music he made, and it amazes me. He was really good. not the best, but he had something.

it's all gone now. almost every trace, except these digital files, and perhaps 1 photo. It's better that way, but at times it makes me a bit sad. It's hard when you invest so much in a person, your first person, and it doesn't work. It changed my perspective forever. I lost something permanently, and i'm talking about more than my virginity. I lost an outlook, a certainty, an innocence. It nearly never comes up, but there's points here and there that i still grapple with that.

Even the apartment we lived in is completely redone and different. my old neighbor told me about it when it happened. I wonder if even our skin cells are still somewhere in that place. Our dog is still around, but she isn't our dog anymore. My friend has her now, and she's doing well. She still remembers me, sweet jubilee. He calls her Ms. Judy.

Thinking about all of it, it feels like a totally different life time. We met days or weeks before i turned 20. I remember lying in bed, simultaneously entertaining the option of relationship with him, and mourning the end of my teens. I was so sad and upset to turn 20. He released an album on my 20th birthday and i thought it was secretly some kind of gift. he said it wasn't.

It really was a strange two years. I learned what most people learn dating around in their teens/middle school/high school over the course of 6 - 4 years, in 2 years. He was such a tortured artist complete with self-destructive tendencies, melancholy, physical/emotional distance, abusive behavior, and mental illness. It was partially what i was asking for. i'd always romanticized emotional torment as a younger person, and wanted someone with those intense feelings... well, i got him, and it was hell. No, i could not fix him. No, he did not want to be fixed. No, my every need was not fulfilled.

for having been told all my life i am wise beyond my years, I made a lot of unwise choices with him.

however, to quote a wonderfully cheesy j-pop song, "The toughness gained from my damage is unbelievable."

I am amazed I still think of all this and feel this nostalgia about it. It really was one of the most changing experiences. The amount i morphed, ignored, supported, let go of, learned, and gained still baffles me. Make no mistakes, i am thoroughly over him, there's no going back. There will never be a going back. I would never want to be with him again or anyone like him, but that time in my life was an incredibly emotionally charged time, and so it is hard to think of it without having something well up.

I know some of you are sigur rós fans... Has anyone else seen this yet? I really really love it.



They've dropped a member, and their sound has changed a bit (they seem to have gotten a bit harder), but it is still unmistakably them. The sounds are more metalic, and the drums have gotten more intense.

here's a better example of the range of difference in their change