december 15-21 i suffered from what i can only assume was the flu. i then felt well enough to take the GRE (on the 22nd) and do well. but then i made one of the worst misjudgments of my life by going out the evening of december 23. i won't divulge any details except to say that i haven't thought of the concept of sin so frequently in a few years as i have these last few days. *I* didn't even do anything all that risque. but i saw things i really truly wish i had not seen.

december 24. christmas eve, the traditional celebration for my parents and me. do i feel rotten because i am hungover? yes. but, as it turns out...

december 25, my dad's side of the family is over, and i am doing my best to be helpful and chatty and everything nice when it hits me. i know what's going on because it's happened before. this isn't rebound flu, it's strep throat.

so the next day my mom took me to the doctor, and he made a noise like "yucccchh" when he saw my throat, and they gave me a huge shot of penicillin in my "caboose," as the nurse put it. except it wasn't really my butt, more like where my lower back meets my hip. i don't see any reason to be all cutesy about that.

now it's nothing but ibuprofen, codeine, fluids--can hardly think about food unless it's a popsicle--and sleep for who knows how long.

and then, i guess, K is coming to visit. i don't want to say anything definitive because deep down i'm afraid he'll just let me down again.

i did well on my GRE. i feel very good. thanks to frantic math review, i even got a good score on my math portion, something i never ever thought i was capable of. so. good for me.

i am a human being, soft and lovely.

i think all of my 2000 parts smell fine.

by fine i mean good.

something i am beginning to realize about myself is that i will put up with shit looooong past the point where it becomes intolerable.

and i am terrified, because i don't know how to NOT put up with shit.

especially when shit comes from someone i think i love, not that i would know, because i haven't even seen him in eight months.

not that i don't dish out my own kind of shit.

but not like this.

i can't be with someone who does nothing but make me cry, right? so i've written an extremely serious letter. i'm sure he'll dismiss it like he does everything else i pour straight from my heart. and then i'll have no choice. i guess. but that scares me shitless. i don't know how to do these things. i never did.

ouch. i just read, for the first time since i graduated from the centre over a year ago, my tutor's opinion of my thesis.

i think maybe i'm not cut out for grad school. maybe i just can't write.

but on the other hand, i was going through some really crazy stuff when i was writing that thesis, what with Z and K and the moving out and all of that. hmmm.

maybe i just need more education. some of the other students already had their master's and i still didn't really know how to research or anything.

i worry too much.

i spent the weekend at the apartment of my friends allen and anna. it was fun. friday night sat around with some people smoking and drinking and listening to music. went to bed around five in the morning.

saturday had lunch, then coffee, then sat around reading. then saturday night clint and mike_l and i went gay clubbing. after having some nice conversation early in the night, clint went off flirting with people he knows while mike and i drank and danced. oh my lord. mike was in the cage. in only his boxers. we were drunk and dancing and drunk and dancing. it only got crazier when i got back to the apartment and found a bunch of people i didn't really know, and allen, and a lot more to drink there. these two girls became my new instant best friends. people started taking their shirts off. oooof. everyone left around 7 a.m.

today i had post-party hangover-curing brunch at perkins, then allen dropped me off at a pizza place where i was meeting my parents and a lot of extended family. i got to play with aaron, who is my favorite little boy ever. he's two and a half now and SO verbal. fun.

it was so good for me to get out of the house and see my friends again. i was really happy to be having social interaction.