sept 21

so i got a new part-time job personalizing nameplates and step stools and piggy banks for kids. it's because it's one of denise's jobs now and she doesn't have enough time to do everything she has to do for that job and also run her photography business (which has recently entered another busy season apparently). yeah so now i just go over to her studio to help her out with that stuff almost every weekday for several hours in the afternoon.

mike & tori's friend bill seems to like me i guess. he sort of asked me out through a facebook message. i'm flattered by his attention but i don't know if i could be into him like that.

jelly seems to be finally acting like a rat. she's curious and playful and mischievous like a rat. she explores like a rat, runs around like a rat. yaaay. i guess it just means she's not a baby anymore.

so two or three weekends ago i went cliff-jumping into the conowingo dam with mark & caitlin.

last weekend (two nights ago) i hooked up with mark & caitlin's roommate alex.

i think i like him.

i think he likes me.

i think he's really good at cuddling and other things.

i think he's fun to talk to.

i think the sean situation is a lost cause.

i think i'm ready to shift my focus to alex.

not to mention i haven't heard from the other sean since july. that's fine i guess. he didn't really add anything positive to my life. well yeah he did sometimes but not as much positivity as negativity.

alex climbs trees for a living. he's 24. he has brown hair and green eyes like me. he does fun outside things like camp and snowmobile and ride dirt bikes and 3 wheelers and 4 wheelers, and he has ridden horses before. he's adventurous. he's intelligent. you can just tell right away by talking to him. he went to art school but only for a year, then he stopped because he felt like the program wasn't really teaching him anything. he says he's almost done paying off his student loans. wow. so maybe i would be almost done by now too if i had only gone to school for a year.

july to september

from july 30

apparently some people have skin reactions to the sun if their tattoos have yellow ink in them. 

Can vampires smoke cigarettes?

from aug 1

In a way i miss having a stupid job like cashiering in a cafeteria. In a way i  miss having stupid tedious things being required of me and if i don't do them there's consequences like my livelihood being 
threatened. I guess i miss the feeling of having things be required of me. Things are expected from me now from my family, but if i ever 
don't do them cuz i forgot or whatever, they're just like "oh thats ok. Next time." there's no consequences. When there's no 
consequences for anything...life sometimes can just feel too easy and pointless. However, in spite of me saying all this about missing my 
old job, i know for a fact that if i were hired there again i would instantly regret having said those words.  

from aug 15

Know what my problem is? I'm a tattooist but yet at the same time i find buying  tattoos to be an expensive extravagance that i wouldn't necessarily invest in any time soon. So i'm selling ppl something that 
i myself wouldn't buy. Thats my problem. I find guilt in that. I find guilt in being dishonest. Therefore i'm a bad salesman.

from aug 22

So the other night i had this dream about finding dead chicken bodies  everywhere. I remember picking up at least one of them and throwing it over a hill and into this valley that seemed almost incomprehensibly 
deep. From what i could see of it it looked beautiful but it seemed like the kind of place i wouldn't attempt to visit 
anytime soon. It seemed too hard to get there or something. Then the next day i found out harry killed one of the chickens. 
...the other night i had this dream about dopie. I found out that he wears some kind of retainer. It wasn't a normal retainer though. 
Somehow when he put it in his mouth, it changed the whole shape of his jaw and therefore the shape of his face. When he took it back 
out he practically had a different person's face And he wasn't really cute anymore. He wasn't cute at all actually. ...the other 
night i had a dream about peter (in california). I had a dream that we found out he'd really been in a coma, not dead, and he woke 
back up again and he got to see the drawing i made him and he loved it and i got to see him one last time and i stayed up and drank 
and talked with him and larry and mom. Then the next day he died. At least i got to see him though. I do regard dreams as just 
being another form of reality, so if i look at it that way then i did get to see him one last time...........damn i miss larry and 
peter. ....then last night i had a dream about tom, my old sculpting professor, of all people. I have no idea why. I haven't 
thought of him in a while. In the dream he just kinda Hit on me and did and said some things to basically send me the message that he 
thought i was hot. Then i remember him trying to give me a present. It was something in a box. I remember being hesitant to open 
it. I didn't know if i wanted to or not. Somehow he gave me the feeling that once i accepted and opened that present, i would be 
obligated to fuck him. Either that or i wouldn't be obligated to fuck him but there would still just be something in that gift box 
that would reveal something about him that would make me never think of him the same way again. There was something obscene and 
kinky in that box. I was still just looking at it and trying to decide when the dream ended.

Today i was out weeding in the rain. 

...last time i saw tori, i told her "i  think it's been too long since we made out" and she just frowned and made a shushing gesture at me. I guess cuz mike was in the next 
room. I can't tell if she and i have started growing apart. Maybe the friendship is just going through a dry boring spell. I 
don't know. I also told her that i was a bit peeved that we always do the same thing when we hang out. We sit there and drink and 
smoke and talk and either watch tv or watch mike play video games. Oh and sometimes, especially last time, i try to have a 
conversation with her and mike always listens in and interjects. He always has his 2 cents to put in, and it just makes me feel all 
self-conscious and spied-on and scrutinized and Analyzed and therefore the conversation just doesn't go how it would have 
otherwise. I just can't relax. I just can't spend any fuckin time with tori without fuckin mike right there fucking everything up. 
Sigh. Ok i guess it was bound to get to me sooner or later. It would all be not as bad if it weren't for the fact that for the past 
week or two we've hardly talked on the phone. We usually do semi-frequently. And she's not always around mike when she's on the 
phone with me so it's good, it's like one-on-one time. ...anyway but she says she's just been having a tough time lately. Which i 
should be understanding i guess. Her parents are divorcing. Her dad's best friend just died. Her ferret died last month. Her 
brother just got in a drunk driving car accident that Almost killed someone and shattered his femur.
yeah. Tough times.

from sept 7

It feels almost like something's gone stale between me & tori. Something doesnt  feel right or doesnt feel the same or something. I dunno. 

from sept 8

Men can be really sexy. They can have a hell of a lot of sex appeal. But they  can never make you feel safe the way women can.

later sept 8

As mom was telling me i didnt have the best upbringing, telling me she fucked up  and she feels guilty, telling me she was too young to have kids and in a lot of ways i took care of her as much as she took care of 
me..... As she was telling me all this i was suddenly feeling an automatic urge to say or do something to make her feel 
better, something to take her mind away from all this and stop feeling like this, stop feeling like a bad mom. But by doing that, by 
trying as hard as i could to console and distract her, i realized i would just be reinforcing the truth of what she was telling 
me. I still did try to comfort her. I denied the things she was saying. Then she simply said "you're happily in denial."  i didn't know what to do anymore.  i couldn't do my job anymore, my job of making her feel better.  it made me nervous.  i started to sway back and forth.  i do that when i'm nervous sometimes.  i kept doing that until she was willing to drop the subject and let me go to bed.

from sept 14

i don't know why those few lines ended up looking like that. i don't remember feeling like the needle was jabbing in sideways like that.

so many thoughts.

"she's smarter than you give her credit for."

the FBI is at dad's work and watching us and tapping our phones?

mom put black walnut hull crap in molly's bald spot (the black stuff that dyes your skin if you try to peel a walnut skin off bare-handed) and it looks way better, way less noticeable

why has my right index finger's fingertip been numb for the last two days? i know it started when i was gardening. i was pulling weeds.



from sept 18

Porridge cooked with apples and bananas and plums and cinnamon is the most  heavenly thing to eat when you're high. Eat some of that, then eat some vegan cake, then eat some pear sauce (like applesauce but made with pears) that you yourself made from pears growing in a tree in your backyard.  mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.  it's heavenly.