Ryan on duty ;) 

Martha Stewart working a turkey up her ass. 

Things are better today :-)

Six weeks ago I started taking birth control pills. This was something I had always been adamently against, feeling it was unnatural to artificially regulate the cycle and exposed a woman to a ridiculous amount of uncomfortable side effects, all in the name of an easy excuse to have unprotected sex.

Then the cramps got worse.

I listened to my friends' experiences and did ridiculous amounts of research online, and did a complete 180. I realized that if modern medicine could make the misery I was going through every couple weeks disappear, as well as make it really, really unlikely that I would produce an 'oops' baby, why the hell not? Wouldn't I be doing my body a disservice when the alternative was available to me?

The first couple weeks were fine....then the nausea started. Then the soreness. Irritiability at some point, although that's hard to distinguish from my normal personality. Then the bleeding. Then more bleeding. Then everything was ok for awhile, then MORE NAUSEA. I couldn't eat a full meal at dinnertime, and I started to turn to chicken soup and ginger ale. I changed the time I took it and things got a little better, but now I just get the nausea a few hours after I eat instead of before, and MY BREASTS HURT CONSTANTLY.

So, instead of a week or two of misery, it's constant annoyance. I know I have to give it longer to get used to it, but goddamn I feel like a depressed person. Half the time I want to cry, half the time I want to snap and scream at somebody, half the time I want to run away, and the other half I just want to feel like myself again. (ignore the too many halves thing). Shit, there's tears building right now. I don't sleep enough, I can't take my job (not the CA thing), I feel like I'm responsible for everything and I don't get to have time to myself, I don't get to have fun. And when Ryan tells me to have fun I tense up even more and get unbelievably frustrated at him for telling me to be something I'm not. Stupid little things like sending out e-mails and making fliers seem unmanageably huge. There aren't enough hours in the day to be all the people I want to be, or need to be. At the end of the day I just want to be myself, get enough sleep, do all the reading, participate in class, eat healthy, have time to hit the gym, spend time with my friends and my floor, and feel like I'm doing good for myself. I feel myself slipping down this gentle slope and the angle is getting steeper, and there's less and less to hang on to.

I don't want to be medicated, and despite the evidence I don't want to be a constant 'poor me, give me sympathy and let me drag you down too'-type person. I just wish there was a magic button I could push to make me feel like myself again. I wish there was a consultant I could go to who I could give all the input to, everything that I am and I do juxtaposed with everything I feel I need to be happy, and then get the output of exactly how to make it happen. But for now...if you're still reading this after seeing the words 'birth control', 'bleeding', and 'BREASTS HURT', then you probably have a genuine, even vested interest in what makes me happy and why the hell I get so miserable. You're probably Ryan. Or my stalker girlfriends who live down the hall. Thanks for being you.

Fantastic - my uncles Rob and Jack, and my dad. (Hawaiian shirt thumbs-up guy) 

Spider at my aunt's house, Labor Day 2005 

Good morning.

My new floor is younger and a bit louder than last year's. The girls are still quiet, with the exception of Julie, but the guys are what I like to call "social." "Social" is a fantastic thing, I am thrilled that they are "social," but they are "social" at 3:12AM when I am attempting to sleep long enough to make waking up at 6:30AM to turn myself into a presentable human being for my 8am classes possible. So "social" is not always a good thing. At least they are not "assholes."

I'm trying a new thing this year - I'm calling it "doing the reading." Also, "not falling behind." At the moment I'm trying another new thing, calling it "staying awake." I rolled out of bed at 7:30 (blaming my "social" guys for that one) and made it to class, but alas neglected to make myself an entirely presentable human being. I pretended to be one for a meeting at UCTV with a furniture vendor representative who wants to sell us "edgy, fun furniture solutions" for the new studio, but the charade is really starting to fall apart. So I'm going to go try and put it together, and hopefully cram enough Advanced Accounting knowledge into my brain to make it through another textbook- and main point-lacking lecture with a former PriceWaterhouseCoopers partner masquerading as an accounting instructor, then put on an enthusiastic, get-involved face for the Involvement Fair, then spend the rest of the night doing that reading thing again. I think I should start drinking a lot more coffee.

This is a long-overdue picture of me and Ryan at my aunt's Fourth of July picnic this year. My hair is short now.