I really hate that I'm afraid of people. I really hate that I'm afraid of what people think. I hate how when I'm walking down the street and people look at me I get self conscious and nervous and scared. Even if they're looking at me because my clothes or my hair or because I in general look particularly nice, I get flustered and scared and all I want to do is hide some place where no one can look at me or find somewhere to check that I don't actually have something stuck to the back of my pants or a dread sticking out at a random angle. I hate how when I go into a shop and there are too many other people I start to get very warm and flustered and afraid and I feel like I'm being suffocated. And calling people, even sometimes people that I know on the phone? I can do it, but not without serious heart palpitations.

I don't even really like dancing all that much, but the other day I went to someone's 21st birthday party and a hall had been rented for it and the greater part of the evening was spent with everyone on the dance floor. And even though everyone else was dancing and some of them were making absolute and complete fools of themselves, I could hardly bring myself to move at all. No one was paying me any attention at all, but it felt like everyone was watching me, judging me. I stayed on the dance floor for a very, very short amount of time before I went and sat back down because I felt far too stupid and ridiculous dancing up there. It's kind of sad, but I was having far more fun just watching everyone else. When I was watching them I could enjoy things through them I suppose. When I was actually up there, all I wanted to do was sit back down so that no one would watch me.

I know my fear of people isn't anywhere as bad as it could be, but I still hate it. And please, if you leave comments, don't say things like, oh it's not really that bad, you can get over it, etc etc, because I'm tired of being told that. It's not a full blown phobia, but neither is it just a trivial fear, trust me. And don't leave comments of the well if you don't want to try to fix it then don't complain about it variety because that's not the point of this. I just needed to vent a bit.

I slept in again this morning. Ugh. I hate sleeping in. It's not so bad if I actually need the sleep because I went to bed really late, and that has been the case these last three nights, but still. The first two mornings that I slept in it was fine, but this being the third morning I think is just too much. Now when I say sleep in, I mean sleep in by my standards. When I tell you what time it was when I got up you will probably all say, that wasn't sleeping in! That was getting up early! So just keep in mind that I normally get up at 7 am or earlier if it's sunny enough. Today I actually slept in less and got up at 9, but yesterday I slept until nearly 10. (And I inhaled some tea by accident just now..)

Sleeping in makes the days go far too quickly and when I've only got a week left here, that is not a good thing. Plus it wreaks havoc with my brain... It's 10:30 now and my head thinks it's still about 8.. Oh well I suppose.

I just realized something.... You know how when you have 'a' before a word starting with a vowel you say 'an' instead? You don't do it with words starting with a 'u' even though 'u' is a vowel! Intereshtink... Well.. ok so there ARE some words that start with 'u' that have 'an' before them, but any of them that have a 'you' sound rather than an 'uhh' sound don't use 'an'.

Well I'm done all my finals now!! Wrote my use and abuse final this morning. They gave you an hour for it, but a lot of us were done in a half hour. (It was only 56 multiple choice questions.) So that's nice to be out of the way!!! :> Now I have almost two weeks to spend as much time as is humanly possible with Chris before I have to go home.

It actually worked out really, really nicely. See, originally we thought that Chris would finish his exams and then the next week have to go back to class (his course is a month and a half longer than everyone else) but turns out he gets this week off before he has to go back. Then we thought that since he had the week off he'd be made to work with his dad and do filing for about a million hours a day, but also turns out that he's not being made to do that either, so we'll be able to spend as much time with each other this week as we want! :>

I still can't believe that I go home in slightly less than 2 weeks... All year long my return date has been so far in the future it was hardly worth even thinking about. Any time I did try and think about when I'd be going home, all my brain could come up with was, a really long time from now. But now, suddenly, it's almost here. I don't even know if it's the idea of going home that seems so strange to me, obviously I always knew I'd be going back at some point, but I think it's the way that I perceive when I'm going back that's so different and strange to me. Not sure if that made any sense and if it didn't I'm not sure if I could explain it so that it did...

Sometimes I think I'm ready to come home, ready to see everyone I left behind. Most of the time it just makes me sad to think of leaving Chris here. I just keep reminding myself that it won't be long distance forever and that time passes much faster than you realize.

Ugh. I don't want to study, I don't want to study, I don't want to study, I don't want to study.. Siiiiiigh.

Oh my... they're tickling Sarah AGAIN... Sarah is very ticklish you see... except that while most people who are very ticklish just laugh and make normal sorts of I'm-being-tickled noises, Sarah squeals. And I don't mean in a cute/funny semi quiet sort of way... No she does full out, ear shattering squeals... Every so often, fine, but all the time??!?!?!?!?! *eye twitches*...

So up until just a wee while ago, today was being a very productive day. I got up at 6 (completely on my own) and had a nice early breakfast. The plan at that time was to get my laundry done nice and early and then go swimming rather than the other way round which had been the original plan. I was pretty sure that the laundry opened at 8, but I wanted to make sure so that I didn't end up going down there with all my laundry and having to come back only to drag it all back to the laundry an hour later. So I went for a wee walk at 6:50. There is absolutely NO ONE out in Glasgow at 6:50!! It was so nice and quiet and suddenly there are about a million flowers along the path to the laundry. I will definitely be going back to take pictures at some point. :>

Anyway, so I got back from my walk and then sat around for a wee while before I went and actually washed my laundry. That was mostly very uneventful except that the dryer I chose had something the matter with it and make some LOVELY sqeaking noises the WHOLE time it was drying. Well.. at first it only did it on and off and was fairly quiet, but towards the end of the drying time it was positively squealing! I was writing a letter to my friend Rochelle this time and I described the dryer as making sounds like a mouse (the letter was in French and I couldn't remember the word for squeak..) so then once it REALLY started to squeak I described it as the sound a GIANT mouse might after you kicked him and then drew a lovely wee picture of me kicking a mouse about 12 times my size. The mouse, understandably, had very large fangs and was positively roaring..

Once laundry was done I came back, folded it, and heading over to the pool. Unfortunately I got there at 10:30 which meant that I only had a half hour to swim because at 11 it's +50 swim, so I only had time to swim 1/2 km rather than my full km, but oh well, it was still good to go. As a side note, swimming only long enough to do a 1/2 km makes it seem like you get in the pool, swim about 3 laps and then get right out again. Madness.

Let's see, what did I do after swimming.. Oh yes. I walked over to Sainsbury's to buy some more fake sugar. I've still got tons and tons and tons of them, but the ones that I have are made of sodium saccharin and I think the amount of sodium in them is too much for me because my poor body has decided to retain a bit of water at certain times (hopefully this has gone over the head of the only boy who reads this...) so I went and bought a fake sugar that doesn't contain any sodium. Wheee for aspartame! :>

Very likely they are gone now, but there were several people handing out cans of Irn Bru 32 between here and Sainsbury's. Irn Bru 32 is basically super caffeinated Irn Bru. I haven't tried any of it yet, but I now have 3 cans of it from my various journeys back and forth so I've got quite an ample supply. This stuff actually has so much caffeine in it that you have to be 18 to buy it.. It's named Irn Bru 32 because it has 32 mg of caffeine per 100 ml which means that one small can has 80 mg of caffeine... Now, normally drinks of this type don't affect me at all. Red Bull? Nothing. Jolt? Nothing. There's only ever been ONE energy drink that had any sort of affect on me whatsoever, and it also had 80 mg of caffeine in the 250 ml can, which means that I think this stuff may actually do something to me. The only sad thing is that it also has sugar in it whereas the other one that I had ages and ages ago was sugar free. Ah well.

Right, so, the reason that today started out so productively was everything that I just wrote and the reason that productivity sort of came to a crashing halt was that I just woke up from a rather long nap. I only really meant to sleep for a half hour, any more than that is usually overkill and I'm just more tired when I get up, but once my alarm went off I sort of rolled over and just continued to snooze. So instead of a half hour nap, I had a 2 1/2 hour nap... Oh well. I must have timed it with my sleep cycles just right as I don't feel really really drowsy at the moment.

Hmm, what else do I have to tell you wonderful and numerous people.... (Numerous... HAH!...) Well I've only got one more final now. It's on Monday which means that I have a good long time to study for it, which is nice. It's my Use and Abuse of Drugs in Society exam and it's multiple choice and only an hour long (sweet!) so the study plan is to basically just memorize the entire course over the next week, write the exam, kick butt on the exam, and then forget it all the moment I finish the exam. :> It shouldn't be too hard to go through and memorize everything. Hopefully anyway because that's really the only way that you can get a good mark on the exam. I've seen the paper from last year and it's not just normal multiple choice... it's MEAN multiple choice.. You know the kind, where they give you all the different answers and then tell you, right, use these for the next 8 questions. Oh yea.. lots of fun to be had there. Oh well.

In other, other news.. the Canadian dollar is worth 0.90$ American! Oooooh!

There's some sort of parade going on today. No idea why on earth they have decided to go on the street in front of our kitchen window making lots of noise. It's not for mother's day as mother's day in the UK was a month ago. (Not really sure about that on either..) They've gone past the flat twice now. The first time was much more amusing as they were actually playing music rather than just having the one guy bang on a drum to make sure nobody's headaches go away... :> They seem to have a very large number of parades here for no apparent reason.. Maybe Chris will know about this one.

Hali has just informed me that in my absence Mel has decided to take over my bed and now sleeps there pretty much whenever she is asleep. As a result, my bed is quite hairy apparently. In fact, Hali says that no one washes my blanket and pillowcases because they would just get extremely hairy again and as a result my pillowcase is no longer blue......

I've been noticing lately just how much my hair has grown since I got my dreads. It hasn't been this long since grade 8. It's not all the same length, especially the wee dreads in the front (probably because those are the ones that I play with the most, so the ends keep slowly breaking off bit by bit), but the longest of my dreads go half way down my back now! :> It's so nice to feel my hair on the back of my arms again. Too bad dreads grow so much slower than normal hair, othewise my hair would be well past my waist by now (it grows a foot a year out of dreads and in dreads it's taken me three years to get it 7 inches longer). Oh well, another three years and it'll be down to my waist I figure. :>

In other news, after I washed my hair this morning, I decided to steal a wee bit of someone else's shampoo and now my hair smells very pretty rather than not smelling like much of anything at all. The only problem with this is that I'm so used to my hair not smelling like anything that just the little bit of smell it has in it is really bothering me and I can sort of taste it in the back of my throat now... Not entirely pleasant.. Oh well.

In other, other news, Chris has just received a new toy in the mail. It's a remote control helicopter which is currently sitting alllllll over my room... :> Should be exciting once he's got it all together and ready to go. I've always wanted to try flying some sort of remote controlled flying thing.

Mother nature has a cruel sense of humour some times... Luckily my next final isn't until Monday, and it's only French, because yesterday it was 20 degrees out and sooooooooo sunny and today is the exact same!!! Which means, not a lot of studying is going to get done on my part.. or anyone else's for that matter.. But in the end, what's more important? To do well on your exams, or to get a tan......

Well today was certainly an excercise filled day!! It being Tuesday, I went swimming in the morning. I usually go twice a week and I swim 1 km every time now, but today I was feeling adventurous (or just crazier than normal...) so I swam 1 1/2 km instead. It's a good thing I don't do flip turns.. because the pool is only 18m long which means that to swim 1 1/2 km you have to swim 84 lengths, or 24 laps. That many flip turns would have you sooo very dizzy...

Then not long after my swim, Valentina (who is here visiting us at the moment...) asked if I wanted to go for a walk with her around Glasgow. I didn't reeeeeealllllly want to go for a big long walk, but I figured that I probably should get out and get some air and such. The only problem was that I'd eaten breakfast far too soon before that to be hungry for lunch, but I knew that if I went on this walk that I'd have to eat lunch really late. I figured, oh we won't be out for tooooo long.... We walked for 3 1/2 hours... So lunch was eaten at 5:10.... Oh well.

Apparently I've been going, until now, with a false sense of the word skivvies... I always thought that if you were in your skivvies you were naked, but apparently when you are in your skivvies, you are in your underwear... Well? Am I the only one who had this entirely wrong all these years?...

Things have been a bit muddled lately. I won't share why because even I don't really know the cause. No matter how hard I try to discover its origin I'm still left alone in the dark. I hate it when my own mind turns on me. At any rate, I've written a lovely poem which I am putting up for all of you to read.

He'll be here soon
Almost time to go
What could be sorted by then?
Fixed in that short time?
Not much
Not rushed like this.
What we need is a roof and some stars,
A tree and the wind,
A blank openness where thoughts are free to bounce and reverberate
To liberate
To order
To fall in place.
A still night,
Black or bright
It doesn't matter
As long as there's time.
The quiet air
Lifting, flowing
Carrying up and away
Bringing back
Peace.
Looking up and seeing nothing but eternity
Black velvet and bright lines
Caressing my torn mind
Calm and cool
Nothing but me and open endless possibility.

Sing with me now, everybody!!

Oh where oh where have my commenters gone... oh where oh where can they beee????