It Is Time To Come Clean

When I was a teenager living in Amsterdam, I was very depressed. I know all teenagers are generally depressed and I was probably not as special or lonely as I thought, but it is important to what I am about to tell you, so bear with me. Anyways, I was very depressed and thought it would be better if I just didn't exist at all. I wasn't quite brave (or unhappy, maybe) enough to commit suicide, but I spent a lot of time thinking up ways to die without having to do it myself. When I moved to Germany, I became a little bit happier, or rather, I got better at hiding my unhappiness from myself.
After living in England for a few years, I finally admitted to myself how unhappy I really was and I went into counselling, which helped a lot. I finished counselling last summer, and I am starting it again on Friday. Now, I want everyone to know that I am nowhere near as unhappy as I was before the last time I had counselling, and I am better now at calming myself down and looking at things rationally. I do, however, have some issues I still need to sort out and the most important one is how little I like myself.
I feel lonely and abandoned, and wish I could do more about these feelings myself, but I have tried and failed (hurting someone I love in the process), and I am fed up. I am fed up with feeling like I am a freak who deserves no love or happiness, and I am fed up with pretending to be happy and strong. I am also fed up with lying to my family and friends, and I am most certainly fed up with being me.
So there you have it. I am unhappy but I am taking action. I do not want to bug any of you with my problems, which is why I haven't been talking about them, and I am sorry if that upsets any of you. I was going to sort this out on my own but I can't, so I am sorting it out together with my GP and a counsellor I have yet to meet.
Please think of me Friday, and please don't be angry with me for keeping this from you; it was hard enough to admit it to myself.
I love you all, and I will get through this.

What A Difference Four Fajitas, The American Chick And Gene Wilder Can Make

I feel much better! Thank you Wench for the awesome things you said and did to make me feel better, they definitely helped, too! Human contact can't be beat though, and I was going a bit insane on my own! Going to sleep happy now... (Well not quite right now because it is quite early)

I Sincerely Hope This Is All Due To Hormones

I spent almost an hour cleaning an airvent this evening. The airvent was very dirty when I started, and now looks clean, although no one can see because the vent is behind my bed. I say looks clean because I know there is still dirt lurking in there, but I needed to get ready for The American Chick to come over for dinner so I couldn't obsess over the airvent all night.
Please can someone help me get out of my own head???? I don't like it very much in here!

This Has To Stop

I must be feeling lonely, because as I walked to and on campus today and saw all the parents with their little children (for some reason, campus is a family hot spot on weekends), I kept thinking how much I really want to have children. And I do, someday, but not now! I have been feeling extremely lonely today though, so let's hope the silly feelings pass.
If any of you feel like cheering me up, please do so! I am watching 'Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory' tonight, so that's not going to help! But the company of my new friend The American Chick might, let's hope for the best.

Open Letter

Dear Crazy Person Talking To Yourself In The Street,

As I am walking home from the shops I can see you in the distance, gesticulating and talking. First I think you are having a conversation with someone I cannot see, but as I get closer I can see there is no one there.
I cannot hear what you are saying, but I feel happy in the knowledge that you are there. I keep walking and ask myself whether I should smile at you as I walk past. You look quite clean and harmless, so I decide I could even offer a 'Goodafternoon'.
As I get yet closer, I can see you have a little cart with green binbags, and actually look a bit too clean to be a crazy person. But, we live in hope, and crazy does not mean homeless (or vice versa), after all.
Then I get to the opposite side of the street where you stand, and it turns out you are an official sanitary worker of some sort. I feel happy in the knowledge that Reading Borough Council is not a discriminating employer.
But as I cross the street I see you are wearing a hands-free thingie in your ear, and as I walk past, you take your phone out of your pocket.
Technology ruins everything.

Bye bye,

Q. M.

Weirded Out

I signed up for student tutoring (at primary school level) today, and I am disturbed.
I need to do a police check next week, which isn't too unexpected, but I do think that in the UK, people have gone paedophileangst-mad. The reason I think this is because I was told today that while helping the children with whatever work they will be doing, I am not allowed to touch them. AT ALL.
I understand that as a parent, you are anxious about your child's safety and you never ever want them to fall into the hands of someone who might want more than just to be their teacher or friend, but surely this is taking it to the other extreme? The lady I spoke to today told me one girl was sacked (can volunteers be sacked?) because one of the girls in the class asked her to take a picture of her on her mobile and she did. Seriously, that was the whole story.
So now, I am worried that once I get through my police check-up and actually get a placement in a school, I will be way too worried about not touching children to actually be a good tutor. Basically, you can just about sit next to someone, but no more. How on earth is that supposed to work?
I love children and am really looking forward to working with them, but this is just plain weird.

Count Your Blessings

I have made up my mind: I am going to be happy. I mean, I am reasonably happy anyways, but I want to become happy with being myself and the life I lead, and not just sporadically feel ok. So, to do that, I have made a few decisions about my life.

I am going to start swimming twice a week (I did originally decide three times a week but my sponsor, also know as my uncle T (oh, wait, they're both called T. Ah well, you guys don't know either anyways, and my mum already knows which uncle is sponsoring me!), hasn't enough money for that, so now he's paying one time a week and extras (goggle, bathing suit), and I pay the other time a week. So every Tuesday and Thursday morning I will be getting up at 7 to catch the bus at 7:34 to be in the pool by 8! (I did it today and it is not as horrible as it sounds)

I am going to stop worrying about imaginary problems. This may sound obvious to all of you, but my brain is wired in such a way that I worry more about things that haven't and probably won't happen than things that are real. And as I don't really have any real problems right now, this new rule in my life should give me a lot of calm and quiet.

I will be more environment-conscious. I am already recycling (as much as can be done in the UK) and I get organic vegetables (the meat is way too expensive), but I have also (sorry for the intimate details to those of you who didn't want to know) ordered a mooncup, and I am thinking about taking a coach instead of flying to visit the family from now on. (Is that really better for the environment? Can anyone tell me if there's been any research into this? Because it would be a long coach ride!)

I will do more things on my own that I want to do (I went to the film last night and really enjoyed myself). Again, this may sound obvious, but I don't like being on my own and I don't really know what to do with myself when I am. But that is all going to change! Tonight I might be going to a lecture about Global Warming (depends on how much work I have done, how tired I am and how much I feel like it), and the Reading Film Theatre is showing a lot of good films this term, of which only one is on Wednesday so I cannot see it.

I am going to start developing a better sleep pattern, which might lead to me finally being able to actually fall asleep and stay that way when I go to bed.

Cats Are Not Trying To Take Over The World (No, Really!)

Dear Constant Reader,

I, Dr Bop, was very concerned to find the following comment from the Wench on my introductory post:

AAAAAAAAAAAHHHH when i first saw this pic without reading the text I thought The Cats had taken over the world and this was some kind of anouncement from our new feline overlords!

I would just like to state for the record that this thought is completely grounded in reality absurd, of course cats don't want to take over the world! All we want is feline control over mankind sleep, sunshine, and the occasional fish. World domination is the first last thing on our minds!!!

Sincerely,

Dr Bop

You Don't Have To Suffer Anymore!

Goodday Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls, Animals and Humans,

I am Dr. Bop, MD and I am here for all your problems. As you can see, I have access to all the modern channels of communication, and I floss regularly. I never miss my morning cup of tea, and am always awake and alert to answer all your questions.
If you have any problems, be they concerned with the loss of the will to sleep in the only sunny spot on the floor, what to do when you cannot go outside, or any other feline and/or human difficulties, drop me a line at the usual email address, and I will make sure you are not disappointed!

Wishing you Health and Happiness,

Dr Bop, MD.

Happy! (And Procrastinating)

Reasons I am happy:

- I have cold feet
- My room is tidy and clean
- Most of my washing up is done
- I feel much more confident about Mr G
- The Wench sent me a link to clips of the cutest tiger cub I have ever seen
- I get to read Freud now!!

(Guess which one is the odd one out?)

Stole This From The Wench Because I Am Bored

List of the top 110 banned books (of all time). Bold the ones you've read. Italicize the ones you've read part of. Underline the ones you specifically want to read (at least some of). Read more. Convince others to read some.


#1 The Bible
#2 Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
#3 Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes
#4 The Koran
#5 Arabian Nights
#6 Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
#7 Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift
#8 Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
#9 Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
#10 Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman
#11 The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
#12 Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
#13 Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
#14 Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
#15 Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
#16 Les Miserables by Victor Hugo
#17 Dracula by Bram Stoker
#18 Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin
#19 Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
#20 Essays by Michel de Montaigne
#21 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
#22 History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by EdwardGibbon
#23 Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
#24 Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
#25 Ulysses by James Joyce
#26 Decameron by Giovanni Boccaccio
#27 Animal Farm by George Orwell
#28 Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (absolutely love both)
#29 Candide by Voltaire
#30 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
#31 Analects by Confucius
#32 Dubliners by James Joyce
#33 Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
#34 Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
#35 Red and the Black by Stendhal
#36 Das Kapital by Karl Marx
#37 Flowers of Evil by Charles Baudelaire
#38 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
#39 Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence
#40 Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
#41 Sister Carrie by Theodore Dreiser (really liked it!)
#42 Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchel
#43 Jungle by Upton Sinclair
#44 All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
#45 Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx
#46 Lord of the Flies by William Golding (BRILLIANT book)
#47 Diary by Samuel Pepys
#48 Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway
#49 Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
#50 Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
#51 Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak
#52 Critique of Pure Reason by Immanuel Kant
#53 One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
#54 Praise of Folly by Desiderius Erasmus
#55 Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
#56 Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X
#57 Color Purple by Alice Walker
#59 Essay Concerning Human Understanding by John Locke
#60 Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison (love, love, love!)
#61 Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe
#62 One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#63 East of Eden by John Steinbeck
#64 Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison
#65 I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
#66 Confessions by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#67 Gargantua and Pantagruel by Francois Rabelais
#68 Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes
#69 The Talmud
#70 Social Contract by Jean Jacques Rousseau
#71 Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
#72 Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence
#73 American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser
#74 Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler
#75 Separate Peace by John Knowles
#76 Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
#77 Red Pony by John Steinbeck
#78 Popol Vuh
#79 Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith
#80 Satyricon by Petronius
#81 James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
#82 Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
#83 Black Boy by Richard Wright
#84 Spirit of the Laws by Charles de Secondat Baron de Montesquieu
#85 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
#86 Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
#87 Metaphysics by Aristotle
#88 Little House on the Prairie by Laura Ingalls Wilder
#89 Institutes of the Christian Religion by Jean Calvin
#90 Steppenwolf by Hermann Hesse
#91 Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
#92 Sanctuary by William Faulkner
#93 As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner
#94 Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin
#95 Sylvester and the Magic Pebble by William Steig
#96 Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
#97 General Introduction to Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
#98 Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
#99 Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Alexander Brown
#100 Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
#101 Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest J. Gaines
#102 Emile Jean by Jacques Rousseau
#103 Nana by Emile Zola
#104 Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
#105 Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin
#106 Gulag Archipelago by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#107 Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein
#108 Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Peck
#109 Ox-Bow Incident by Walter Van Tilburg Clark
#110 Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes

I think this is an okay list for an English Literature student! 'Read more' HAH!!! I wish I could!

I Have Nothing To Blog About

Or, rather, nothing I want to blog about. There are several things going on in my life, but I just don't have the energy and mindset to write a good and/or amusing, or even a bad post about them. I will just give you a list of what is going on right now.
- Mr G and I are having some problems adjusting from being friends to being boyfriend/girlfriend, but hopefully it will all be sorted soonish
- I am enjoying my course more than I thought I would
- I am starting swimming next Tuesday, I just have to make sure my uncle will actually sponsor me because it is expensive!
- I shopped very sensibly today and actually spent very little money, especially compared to my usual
- I am still in the process of tidying my room, which was helped a lot today by sorting my laundry and doing the darks
- I have a new pair of pyjama short and they absolutely ROCK
- I am changing rooms within the house soon, which is nice cos my new room will be quieter

Goodnight

Call Me A Capitalist Whore...

...but I got 4 books from my grandfather today and £80 from my father and stepmother, and that has really cheered me up!
I also had a really lovely time with my grandparents tonight, which is nice because I've been feeling a bit confused about Mr G the last few days. I'm sure it will turn out to be okay, but right now I need a bit of TLC from my family. Tomorrow I'm sorting through my old children's books and having dinner at my uncle's, so life is looking quite good.
Now to find some time to read these new books...

Not Directed At Anyone Who Reads This Blog

Okay, all I want to know is this: why does everyone always think they should tell you how to do things?
I vote this annoying trend should stop. Unless asked for help, people should keep their advice/comments/criticism to theirselves.
Thank you very much. (don't forget to spread the word, people)

The Little Frog

Once upon a time there was a little frog. The little frog liked his life. He had enough flies to fill his belly, and enough water to drink and swim around in when he felt like it. He lived on a lily pad in the pond, which was a nice pond because there were no herons.
The little frog didn't have a single worry in his life until the girl showed up. She had a ball made of gold that she played with, and this seemed to be all she ever did. The little frog payed no attention to her at first, because he was happy with his flies and his water. But the girl grew bigger and bolder, and she started to play nearer the pond.
Over the years, as the girl grew up, she was always in the frog's life, bugging him. He liked the girl but he didn't like the feeling of discontent she gave him. Before, his life in the pond had been perfect, but now the girl, almost a woman, took up all his thoughts. He grew unhappy with the pond and its simple pleasures, and wished to be with the girl always.
One day, the frog almost got what he wished for. The girl, who still carried her ball made of gold everywhere, accidentally dropped it and it rolled into the pond. The pond was quite deep, and the girl couldn't swim. The frog watched her cry, and when he could see she had calmed down a bit, he swam down into the pond, swam up to the surface with the ball and rolled it into the girl's lap. The girl was happy again and danced off, not paying any attention to the little frog.
But he followed her with big leaps, all the way to where she lived. And when everyone was at dinner, the frog hopped onto the table next to the girl's plate. She liked the little animal, and decided to make him her little pet. After dinner, the girl took the little frog to her bedroom and made him a nice home on her bedside table.
When the girl had fallen asleep, the little frog looked at her, thinking her more beautiful and lovely the more he looked at her. He hopped onto the pillow and gave the girl a little kiss on her forehead. She, still asleep, slapped at the frog a bit too hard, and he fell on the floor.
The little frog died straightaway, and the girl, who cried when she found him in the morning, soon forgot she had ever had a little frog for a pet.