I am sorry, but the shit has hit the fan again; I'm not going to come online for a little while.

2009 is officially the second hardest year of my life so far.

Well, I have been moody off and on over the course of the recent past... Today was a nice day, thankfully. We have our video phone installed now and via this we got to talk to Chris and all my dad's brothers in Colorado this evening, and it was nice and made me feel a little better about the whole thing.

Annie's birthday is...technically today, as it's almost 1 AM, and she is having her party at a nice local park. I'm nervous about being there because I will only know a few people and I worry how they feel about me after all I've been through since they've met me... Unfortunately Tim can't go. Anyway, this evening for a present I got Annie the movie P.S. I Love You... I haven't seen it but she loves it and we don't own it. I wrote "Happy Birthday, you little charmer" on her card lmao. It's kind of an inside joke.

I got a couple of new icons... I had been lusting over icons abroad so much hehe. ^-^

PJ HARVEY WAS BEYOND AMAZING. She is a goddess. ♥ I couldn't help it, at the end of the set when we were all cheering I shouted "I love you" twice lol. Well it's true.

On the way there we listened to Hanson's album This Time Around, which came out when I was thirteen and I was obsessed with it back then... It was rather nostalgic to listen to, and I don't love it any less than I did back in the day. Save Me and Love Song were always my favorites. "Won't you save me, I don't want to be just drifting through the sea of life..." That is one of my favorite lyrics, ever. ♥ I ripped it onto my computer tonight and I've been listening to it non stop hehe. I think they are so underrated.

Well, I wanted to thank you all for your support... It means a lot to me to know I can come here and things are instantly better. ♥ Today (well, technically it's yesterday now, heh...) was much better. I wasn't very moody and I wrote a song on piano which was very helpful.

Aaand today is Polly day! ^-^

♥

I took this photo yesterday. I felt so gloomy and I needed a creative outlet.

I feel sad I've finished reading my friends' entries... I feel so alone lately, in light of Chris' cancer getting worse and my dad having to leave often for the same reason, and somehow I often dwell on my mom's body image and eating problems she has had most of her life and particularly difficult periods I experienced... It's strange.

I really wanted to see Warpaint play at Amoeba tonight but it didn't work out. It's been a very depressing past couple of days, really. I feel very ashamed of the way I've been behaving. My inner critic is stronger than ever.

On the bright side, I'm going to see PJ Harvey live on Saturday. I'm going to see one of my all time favorite artists live. ♥ I really needed this. It's going to be so inspiring.

farewell_mask ♥ sent me this link recently. She sent me her top twelve values (would love to see them again, though...) and I made a list of the ones that were relevant to me and compiled my top twelve out of those.

Love
Care
Gentility
Peace
Affection
Kindness
Sensitivity
Connection
Harmony
Warmth
Dreaming
Depth

I'd be really interested to see yours, too, if you're interested.

Kay, I am moody tonight...very moody...currently bouncing off the walls mentally a la a madwoman.

And now I bring you a meme!

1. Reply to this post and I'll assign you a letter.
2. List (and upload, if you feel like it) 5 songs that start with that letter.
3. Post them to your journal with these instructions.

Okie, now I realize in retrospect I have done this before, in which I was given the same letter (this time around L from joyyjpg =D ) but this time you get the added bonus of visuals!

( Here... )

My obsessive compulsive disorder and low blood sugar are out of control lately... (I'm shaking right now, ugh...) Must be some anxiety issue, I suppose. But it has been a lovely week. Annie has had time off and we've gotten to do some very fun things together which is always nice.

On Tuesday we went to Hollywood, because there was the release party for Jeff Buckley's new CD/DVD and we had tickets. Beforehand we went to a very nice vegan restaurant down the street, and a singer/guitar player from the band Warpaint I posted about recently came in while we were there. She was wearing a long white dress, and then some other girls came in to eat and they were wearing white dresses, too, and when we were waiting for the gate to open at the theatre they were walking around with flowers. When we got into the movie theatre for the screening it turned out they were the mystery musical guests; they were a choir together, in support of a music conservatory here that the party benefitted, and Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers is a part of it and he played bass with them... And they sang Hallelujah. =)

But before the actual screening we got to walk around and there were original written lyrics to his songs and a drawing of his on display; it was nice to look at those, and I got pictures. And there was a silent auction that included his acoustic guitar... How I wish I'd had $600 haha. And his mom was there, and I was too shy to meet her but I got to hear her speak, and take a picture of her with/for a fellow fan.

The documentary itself was lovely... Lots of eclectic live performances and interview footage. I need to buy a copy myself. It was a very nice night. I cried for about ten minutes when I got home, though.

Okay, just as a warning I had to make these kind of big for the details...

( Pictures... )

And the next day... Annie wanted to have a beach party but we have been having June gloom, so instead the plan has changed to having it at Venice Beach (it has art vendors, Henna tattooists, etc.) and we went there to check out the place and the weather down there and everything, and she got a Henna tattoo! And I got some nice pictures of the sun setting by the beach, but I put them on Deviant Art if you'd like to see them. (Don't want to freeze your computer, lol...)

And before we went there... Santa Monica is right by Venice Beach, and we walked through the Promenade there (it's basically an outdoor shopping mall, it's pretty cool) and took pictures of ourselves trying on glasses and headbands and hats at Urban Outfitters lol!

( Pictures... )

Whew! Okay, I think I got everything. Yesterday I finally got to watch Pineapple Express with Annie haha. We definitely cracked up in a few pot induced scenes.

Joy! I want to do the meme, but I'm so drained right now heh. I shall soon, though.

I went to Ilana's recital on Friday and out with her and her friends afterward and it was a wonderful night. She is an amazing musician, and she played the English horn and that's only one of two instruments she plays. She is so sweet. We got to talk about some things afterward, it was nice. And wow, I love Pasadena, the night life downtown makes me think of San Francisco.

I've been pretty sensitive today. It doesn't take very much for me to feel inferior and disliked. I don't know... It would be nice to have a break from feeling like everything is my fault... And also worrying I'm too sensitive to take a punch if one comes. Figuratively I mean. Ah. I don't know...

Went to see Land of the Lost today. It was pretty hilarious lol. Now I'm really looking forward to seeing Away We Go and Year One. ♥ I love comedy.

Ah, I wrote out something fairly long here but I took it out because I worried too much I would regret it. sigh

I guess I get like this with blogging... Sometimes I only wind up updating once a week or so and then other times I update almost every day haha. *hopes she is not annoying anyone* >.>

I keep seeing the most beautiful icons and banners around here lately. If only I could steal them all.

I tried writing a lengthy document on Wordpad today and I saved it halfway through but in the middle of it later my computer stopped working again. Sigh.

Yesterday was rather hard, because we had our pipes completely done over and our water was shut off all day. It's times like these I realize what a pain my OCD is. That and I feel nervous around people. But, it was alright until toward the end of the day when it was really starting to get to me, because it was a really nice day outside and for a while I sat on the porch and finished the last half of the Cat Power biography. I really loved it... The only thing I didn't like was the chapter on The Covers Record, because the author clearly didn't like it and some of her words disappointed me because I really love that record. But I did love the book... I cried a couple of times. I don't know what I would do without her music and her being a true kindred spirit.

Now I just need to finish Heavier Than Heaven. =]

I'm going to meet farewell_mask in two days! =D I'm going to see her recital. I know it's going to be inspiring.

Annie and I are going to see a thingy in Hollywood on Tuesday... So I finally looked on Jeff Buckley's official site for details on the new CD/DVD and there is going to be a screening for it as well as live music and his art and a forum and all kinds of loveliness. And Annie said she wanted to go, too, so yes. *excitedness* And they had some interviews/clips from YouTube on the LJ community here, that I hadn't seen... He was so hilarious. haha And awesome. ♥ I am a dork and I am obsessed with interviews and biographies and such for my favorite artists... ♥

Ugh, my lips are so chapped right now.

Please die, social anxiety.

My dad found our John Lennon compilation CD we've been missing today. Yay. ♥

My computer is still messing up a lot.

Conan premiered tonight... Er, technically last night now, heh. ;) I thought he was great. I love he has the quirky sense of humor...the best kind. =) And yay for him for having Will Ferrell and Pearl Jam as the first guests.

I channel surfed before that and saw a rerun of the MTV Movie Awards was on, and I wound up watching most of it with Annie because Andy Samberg was hosting and I wanted to see all his funny videos. Forest Whitaker singing D*** in a Box was one of the most beautiful moments ever. eheh I have to admit it was fun making fun of the whole thing. You could tell everyone was getting so annoyed with Twilight being voted for everything, against, like, Slumdog Millionaire and The Dark Knight ahah.

More moody than usual lately. Today ended on kind of a sour note, sigh.

Speaking of which Annie and I were really hyper Sunday night and wound up videotaping ourselves doing a cover of Without You from Rent. Oh, and also with me drawing on her. But that's another story. But you can watch ze video if you like, heh...

Here

I am cold, tired, and hungry right now lol. But, I haven't posted in a bit and had some things on my mind, so...

Well, I've gotten gloomier than I was at the start of the week, for the most part. I fully intend to keep my head above water but, I don't know. I guess it's just that our house is falling apart and it's pretty uncomfortable and a little scary at times. We're working on some major repairs, though, and have more planned. Oh, and my computer has been messing up again so I couldn't come here until now. I didn't want to be here today so I went with my dad to see where he grew up, in Alhambra and Canoga Park, and that was nice. I do like Los Angeles. I like that it's basically a big cluster of little towns, moreso than a big city. And how palm trees line up the main streets in them. =) I really do wish I had my own digital camera (I borrow my sister's when it's available, which it wasn't today), the sunset was beautiful on the way home and I saw a tree full of purple flowers that were falling like rain all over everything. It'd have been so cool to have a video of that.

Anyway, that whole trip got me to feeling a little better.

I've started reading the new biography on Cat Power. I'm a little over halfway through it. I've gotten to the recording of What Would the Community Think? ♥ If I felt like I could relate to her uncannily before, that's been amplified ten times now, really. heh =) I find it fascinating reading about her life, there's something really glamorous about her in an offbeat way. If that makes sense. It must have been amazing to be an artist in Manhattan's Lower East Side in the early 90s.

Speaking of which, if I understand correctly there is a new Jeff Buckley DVD, ooh yay. =) I've just been too nervous and lazy to check his official website for the details and to order it.

Gah, okay, need to go now...

Okay, I am back. =) I am so much better... This was much needed, fixing some things here... There are some things I need to do at the moment and it's hot in here and so I am feeling rather anxious and I'm not sure how much I will feel comfortable going into just yet. But as I think you know this has been a very, very hard year for me so far and everything was building up, and I could barely live with myself. So I did a lot of cleaning around here because I thought if my environment was more orderly perhaps I could think more clearly, and I consciously tried to be more expressive instead of bottling things. Things were looking up but on Friday I found myself in the middle of some horrible drama, and I felt depressed for two days but I cried and talked and wrote as much as I wanted and I've actually been feeling mostly pretty happy the past couple of days. =D

I've taken some quizzes on HelloQuizzy this weekend for fun...

( Here )

And I snagged this adorable quiz from sweetthumbelina ♥ ...

FPUC - Fruit Tart

Fruit Tarts have a gentle, sweet nature and enjoy the richness of the world around them. They have a calming and soothing presence. Their sense of humour is understated and can surprise those who don't know them very well. Fruit Tarts enjoy spending time in the evening with those that they care about.

And this meme from ametrine ♥ ... All you have to do is request five questions. =]

( Questions )

Things have gotten very bad here, and I am sorry, but I'm not going to come online for about a week... I need to focus on improving some things here. No worries. I won't be too long, promise. ♥ I'm sorry.

Mm. I have felt so lethargic lately... I am not sure what is wrong, but I just feel rather unmotivated lately, mainly to do mundane things but also I wish I could get more done along with less mundane things. I think perhaps unconsciously I am trying to heal my perfectionism a bit, and it's made me scared to take on tasks. I have noticed I take in a lot of simple things naturally; eg, I am really enjoying the spring this year, I love how all I have to do is step outside and the aroma of flowers is instantly there. Hee. I spent most of Sunday taking pictures of all the flowers in our backyard, and I posted the ones I was happiest with on my Deviant Art page. I got a sunburn on my shoulders but it was nice. I think perhaps I was happiest with this one; I felt it captured my personality well somehow...



I love flowers. ♥ I read in my copy of Please Understand Me that NFs love flowers... That made me smile.

I have been feeling rather ashamed of myself today. All of a sudden I feel overwhelmed with self criticism. Maybe I am self conscious of the lethargy. Maybe doing some cleaning would help.

Also on Sunday I saw Star Trek. I enjoyed it, Spock is love. ♥ I like that I'll actually know what Trekkies are talking about what they mention Vulcans or Romulans now, heh. Klingons remain a mystery. And, on Saturday Night Live I loved that Justin Timberlake hosted and they redid you-know in a Box, I literally went, "Yeah!" as soon as I realized hahaha. It was very funny.

I took this from lucretiasheart =)

1 question.

1 chance.

1 honest answer.

That's all you get.

You get to ask me 1 question.

Any question, anything, no matter how crazy, dirty, or wrong it is.

But I dare you to repost this.

And see what people ask you!

heh The delivery was intense there. I know I've done this in some form, but, I love questions!

Well, this is a quiz on the four humors that I took from cigarette_noir ♥ ... I hadn't found a quiz on it so in depth before so I had fun with this. But, I think it might be a religious site and that's not me at all so I took out the bits of the result that sounded religious... I'm putting a link, too, but I think you have to get an account in order to get results.

( Here )

Well, I got a bit depressed this week and have been a hermit crab... I apologize I have not been around very much. It was my sister's birthday yesterday and I thought I had said Happy Birthday but by the end of the day I realized I probably hadn't and I felt really bad. My dad's brother Chris has a cancer in his kidneys that has spread badly and he most likely will not live much longer. I feel so bad about it... I haven't experienced a relative I actually knew so well die since last year when my step grandmother did, also of cancer. I know it will probably sound silly but once I went to her house and I hadn't eaten something so she made me a frozen pizza, and if I ever eat frozen pizza now since she died I think of her. And, anyway, it's so weird this happening to Chris because since the trip to Boulder I keep thinking of things he said to me in particular.

I feel like several things have happened to me over the course of the past couple of years that have forced me to think about death and become more optimistic about it. Which is a good growing experience but still quite hard.

And this is a superficial thing but I don't like my hands. Except that I have piano fingers which is useful, otherwise I'm insecure about them. ...Okay, I feel a little more amused than insecure now. Good.

Yesterday I felt particularly in a funk because the night before I'd gone with Annie to see a Los Angeles band called Warpaint I've been a fan of since they started here two years ago... (Actually if you like dream pop you might like them... Here is their website...) It had been a little over a year since I saw them and I thought it would be nice to see them, and Annie likes them, too... But the club was really hot inside and she is very sensitive to the heat, and it wound up going on much longer than was scheduled so I felt bad... I don't know, I felt like, it was my idea and it didn't turn out as fun as I had hoped and I felt selfish. I hate feeling selfish, definitely a little too much so. They were wonderful of course, however.

Mm. Watched Into the Wild this week. God. I don't know when the last time was I felt that intensely, the way I felt after I watched it... It was all too much and after a while I just cried for like five minutes. I thought it was a beautiful movie. And the next night I watched a film that a fellow INFP recommended to me, called Before Sunrise, and it was wonderful. Very realistic and sweet. And I don't mean to sound silly, but, I was all happy afterward because I guessed Ethan Hawke's sun and moon signs right (Scorpio and Aquarius) and Julie Delpy's moon (Gemini)... But she's a Sagittarius sun and I was thinking Libra, but I was probably just biased because she was so much like me hehe. My favorite part was when they were pretending to talk to their friends on the phone "I mean, I've known you a long time" "Hey, dude" eheh ♥

Mm, am up to the part in Heavier Than Heaven when he is in his late teens. It feels quite sad and eye opening, reading about this transformation he went through after he lost any real sense of family... I have to be geeky for a moment and say, Ah, I didn't know he loved The Smithereens! That made me smile. Blood and Roses is one of my favorite songs. ♥

I spent most of Saturday at the clinic, I woke up with my throat and sinuses worsened and so I thought it was only $10 to go over there and get a check up. I got a couple of throat cultures done and a blood test for mono, but I have no idea how I could have that and today I did wake up without a sore throat so that's very relieving. =) So hopefully I'm only worrying and this really is nothing, just the sickness waring off. And, um, I definitely have a needle fetish. lol I love getting my blood drawn, this is sick but I had to stop myself from smiling when I saw the blood rush into the syringe this time. >.< Once when I was researching OCD I read David Beckham had it quite badly and he had a lot of tattoos because he's addicted to the pain of a needle. hm (I think most of you know but I've had OCD since I was fifteen.)

Well... I don't want to be boring or anything of the like, but, been contemplating that again lately. ( Cut for feeling vulnerable as I do... )

I don't know, perhaps I reveal too much... But I have felt a need to reveal certain things lately and I have gotten very nice support here.

Mm, this is a very beautiful song to me... I haven't listened to them in quite a while but they are wonderful, I need to rip my copies of The Downward Spiral and Pretty Hate Machine onto my computer.

Went to see Wolverine today. It was fun. =) I think Gambit is a Sagittarius lol, I kept thinking that. That'd be fun to try to guess the other characters, too... I love Hugh Jackman. ♥ Then there's a Borders right outside the theatre here and several books I either didn't see or didn't have enough time to look for, but I saw they had the Heavier Than Heaven biography on Kurt Cobain and Juliana Hatfield's autobiography, and I had been wanting to read both but decided on Heavier Than Heaven this time as it was significantly less expensive. I read a few chapters when I got home, I like it so far. =) I can relate to him in some funny ways... I used to draw pretty grotesque things when I was little. ;)

I think this album has changed my life... =) I don't just say that always. I should have known I would love his solo music so much. I have struggled with self mutilation in the past and I remember the first time I heard Pearl Jam's song Once it touched on something and I wanted to stop my habits for good ("Once upon a time I could lose myself/Once upon a time I could control myself")... That is the opening track of their debut album, and then later on I bought their follow up and when I turned twenty I started to feel so nostalgic and, frankly, old... It's not that I think of twenty as being old; it's just that I've struggled with feeling old since I was sixteen and so I felt scared. And I felt like I had left so much behind and I didn't know how to face life in spite of that, and I listened to Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town and it helped me get through that so much ("Hearts and thoughts, they fade, fade away...") And now I have his own music to listen to and it all really speaks to me... I still especially love the song I mentioned in my last entry, it makes me feel so much more optimistic about my social anxiety and more determined to keep relationships with people even though that's been so hard for me for a long time now.

( Once I built an ivory tower so I could worship from above... )

♥

I have to admit that sometimes...okay, a lot of times...I worry that I sound phony when I talk about these things, music that changed my life and such... I have tended to mostly just write about it in my private journal or contemplate it. I'm not sure why... Maybe I worry people wouldn't understand why music and ideas and all are more real to me than the real world...

Hey, I have two questions for anyone who may be interested ;) ...Well, Annie and I were discussing musical instruments, and I said whenever I hear a viola it sounds like my soul and she said she feels that way about a ukelele. I have to say I think that fits rather well with my being a 4w5 and her a 9w1 hehe. ;) Anyhoo, though, do you have an instrument like that?

And, my dad quoted My Cousin Vinny earlier today and he said that he could watch that movie over and over and he actually has, and I said the most I've been like that with a movie was, when I was seventeen I would watch Say Anything every night. ♥ So... What is the most obsessed you have been with a movie?

I have been struggling with a bad mood for most of today because I woke up congested with a sore throat and I had a panic attack about it. Sigh. I am so tired of this. At least it did not feel too bad. Hopefully it is like my dad said it was with his pneumonia and the symptoms just take a bit of time to clear away completely.

I took this from farewell_mask ♥ ... I thought it was wonderful and that I would pass it on.

Here