sigh. i’m in a mood. great. i just feel so damn lonely. i wish i’d gone to nc to visit dad and juchan like i was going to, but we’d all have just fought or something. my self esteem has just sucked lately.

and i ate my damn lunch already, so now i have nothing to eat at lunchtime. i don’t know why i was so hungry… serves me right for bringing pop tarts for lunch. i could’ve sat outside and chain-smoked, but i left my damn cigarettes at home. if i’m going to smoke, i’m trying not to smoke too much. now that i’m in the sort of mood where i don’t really care if i drop dead, i’m just pissy because i don’t have them.

damn, i’m tired. i went to bed before 11:00 last night and i still can’t keep my eyes open. it’d probably help if my dreams weren’t always so exhausting. it seems like every night i have dreams where i’m being chased or i’m trapped, or some other high-stress situation. the night before last, i dreamt that i was drafted and stuck in iraq. if i could stop being so freaking stressed out while i sleep, i might not wake up feeling like this.

it’s so bad, i had to get a bottle of coke earlier, around 8:00. it hasn’t helped. i’m drinking soda in the morning and i’m still falling asleep. i do like leaving so early in the evening, but getting up at 6:00 is killing me. how did i do this while i was in college? i’d stay up past midnight to watch monty python, then get up at 5:30 the next day to catch my bus across town.

i wish i could go back in time. i’m not even that old, but i can’t get by on small amounts of sleep anymore. and i may as well be 80 as far as sex appeal is concerned. i know it makes me a bad, bad feminist, but i sure do miss being looked at with barely concealed desire. now i’m pretty much an asexual being to most people; toast is probably more desirable than i am. i wish i could be perpetually 18, with my whole life ahead of me.

enough of this, though. it’s too quiet, and i keep hearing this weird rumbling, which i reckon i ought to go investigate.

life has been unusually gorgeous lately. sometimes i feel so content i could cry. i love my job more than i ever thought possible, for one thing. and it’s other things, too.

the other day, i pulled into my driveway and got out of the car, and a gust of wind hit me and everything seemed so wonderful all at once i could hardly stand it. the weather is finally lovely again and just being alive seems a lot nicer when it’s like this. not like living under a hot, wet blanket like it has been for months.

and yesterday was fantastic. i went to this training thing, and got two lunch breaks somehow, and my friend and i went to starbucks on the second break. and i had my favorite frappucino (cinnamon dolce) and we walked around and the breeze kept blowing and, and… nice. and then we went to the break room and some of the librarians were taking naps on the other side of the room. they looked so peaceful and it was so quiet and i thought how nice it was to be in a place where everyone felt so comfortable that they could sleep. that no one would disturb them or tell on them or make fun of them. and i read my book and drank my coffee and everything felt so right it was like it wasn’t real. it was like a weird kind of home.

sometimes i wish it weren’t so easy for something like chemical imbalances to so utterly change my perception of the world. when i feel like this, i feel real and genuine. those nagging voices are so much quieter. i’m in love with the world, and it loves me right back. and the days where it seems like the world hates me are put into their rational perspective of what they really are: my depression and paranoia and low self esteem manifested and made real. real to me, anyway.

this morning, i woke up and it felt like i must have died in the night and i was somewhere so good that it couldn’t be real. sometimes, i think i die all the time, without realizing it, and am in different parallel universes now and then. that one universe is gone to me forever, but it’s okay because there are infinitely more. it’s hard to explain.

anyway, neko apparently is in desperate need of affection, so i’d better go before she chews my arm off.

i keep falling asleep sitting up. i’m supposed to be finishing up the geology project this week, but it’s not looking that way. at one point, i woke up, and it took me a minute to realize where i was. i seriously need a break.

on sunday night, i was so psyched to be done with my paper. but at 8:00, i found out i had another midterm assignment due and about had a coronary. i finished it on time, but my weekend really sucked. i’m just exhausted.

i just dozed off again…

i’d better try to work. this stuff has to get done.

has it really been three years since mum died?

i am finally finished. so i get a few more hours of weekend before i have to go to bed.

this. fucking. sucks.

i just got an email from work, and apparently not only am i working on veteran’s day (sohei has the day off, but now we can’t spend it together) but i have to fucking work late. i usually get off at 4:15, but i won’t be getting off til 6:30 that day. i love the library and everything, but who the fuck wants to spend a school holiday there? it’s supposedly “comp time” and i think that means i get a different day off later. at least, i hope that’s what it means, because if everyone else gets a day off, i want my damn vacation day, too.

if i didn’t have iris to listen to while working on this stupid paper, i think i’d have lost it by now. i should be about finished, but i’m annoyed that school has eaten yet another weekend. i know some people (like my dad) go to school full time and work two jobs or whatever, but i’m not up to it. six credit hours and one full-time job is about all i can handle.

ugh. well, i need to just suck it up and finish the damn thing. then i can have some fun, maybe.

it is a paper-writing weekend again. but, as you see, i haven’t been posting like crazy all day. mostly coz i’ve been too busy panicking. i think i’ll be able to finish it tomorrow, but i had such a difficult time finding sources for it, that i was really freaked out. and now i have a bit of a headache and stuff, so i’m calling it a night.

i hope i have good dreams again tonight. last night was pretty awesome.

weirdest. thing. ever.

well, not ever, but weird.

i just checked out a book to a guy i went to elementary school with. but that isn’t all. he lives on my street. and my street is pretty short.

the thing is, i wouldn’t have recognized him from looking at him. it was when he gave me his library card, and i saw his name. i asked him if he went to that school, and he did, and he probably thinks i’m crazy, coz he had no idea who i was. which isn’t all that surprising, really. i didn’t even mention the whole living a couple houses down thing, as i’m pretty sure the students wouldn’t be thrilled if they knew how much of their info pops up whenever we scan their cards. (address, email, phone number, etc. – and that’s without going to any kind of detail screen.)

so, yeah. wow. i wonder if i ever see anyone else i ever knew without realizing it?

From this morning’s White House press conference:

Reporter: Mr. President, following up on Vladimir Putin for a moment, he said recently that next year, when he has to step down according to the constitution, as the president, he may become prime minister; in effect keeping power and dashing any hopes for a genuine democratic transition there …

Bush: I’ve been planning that myself.

― Tim Grieve, salon.com

ugh. i’m stuck in the subbasement with a bunch of stupid frat boys. why the hell do they even want to work at the library?? shouldn’t they all work at abercrombie or something? they aren’t actually doing anything, of course, except talking like the dumbass ahedratron (or maybe the retarded frat aliens) and behaving like idiots.

but i’ve been reading my email which is making me smile. as much as i fret about being trapped on this planet with a bunch of idiots, most of my friends are pretty smart. it makes me happy to know that there are people like them, who actually use their brains and pay attention to what’s going on around them. and can mostly spell and use decent grammar.

speaking of intelligent friends, i hung out with lunachica last night. she helped me get set up with some knitting supplies and we went to panera to hang out, so she could show me how to actually knit. she let me practice with her practice yarn (we didn’t want to mess mine up) and she was an awesome teacher, coz i picked it up really fast. i kept dropping stitches, though, and i can see how that will probably frustrate the hell out of me when i’m actually making something. but for now i’m just practicing, so hopefully i won’t drop stitches when it counts.

i’d better get back to work, though. i have some stuff to finish up before i go to this afternoon’s meeting. it’s some union thing. i wonder if we have a union, coz that would be awesome.

i got yet another piece of ignorant email from my grandma and her husband, warning me that welfare and subsidy programs are the reason we’re losing our freedoms. i mean, it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with warrantless wiretapping or any of the other things the bush administration is doing… i wish they’d quit forwarding me this shit, like i asked them to before. it just pisses me off, and then there’s nothing i can do about it, because i can’t rant at them. and it’s pointless to try to set them straight. so i’m left to seethe with impotent rage that people could still be so ignorant, and that my relatives are part of what’s wrong with this stupid country.

[edited. a lot.]

some moron came up to the desk today and told me he’d just looked at the catalog and it said atlas shrugs had been checked out. he wanted me to check if there were any other copies. when people ask me to look shit up in the catalog, it annoys me anyway, because we have the same goddamn catalog they do, and it won’t magically come up with different results because i happen to be sitting at a tall desk. (the tall desks should be abolished anyway, for a lot of reasons.) so, anyway, i figured he was a moron the minute he mentioned ayn rand, so instead of trying to explain, i just looked it up, then turned the monitor to him and told him we had just the one and it was due back in november. he could, of course, put a hold on it. so then he fucking tells me he’s not taking any classes this semester and couldn’t check it out anyway. i wanted to reach across the desk and beat the crap out of him for being such a retard, but instead just stared at him until he withered under my harsh gaze and crawled back from whence he came.

see, it’s not like it’s difficult to do searches in the catalog or anything, but when you’ve got a line of people behind you and you’re holding everyone up for no fucking reason, you’re an idiot and i’m damn well going to treat you like one.

wow, this is weird. i kept seeing the dancer spin clockwise, and it said if you focus, you can see it go the way opposite of what you first perceived. it took a pretty long time for me to see it go the other way, but it weirded me out when it did. now i’m all dizzy…

silly recent conversations, because i know everyone’s dying to know what i talk about all day:

to guy in cafeteria with t-shirt that said “mustache rides 5 cents”: “hey, you don’t even have a mustache.”

to supervisor while discussing delegating project tasks:
me – “…and i’ll just do the lonely typey bits.”
him – “you made that sound so sad.”
me – “yeah, i’m pretty dark.”

to supervisor while discussing recent volunteer project:
me – “well i’m obviously going to have to accept that there are just a lot of people out there who aren’t as smart as i am.”
him – “…or as modest.”

and, because i don’t think i ever shared this one with you, a conversation between sohei and his dad this past summer, when they were working together:

sohei is sitting in the car, thinking about a case they’re working on. when his dad gets back, he starts to explain his idea, and his dad says: “see? that’s why you’ll make a better lawyer than me. you’re sitting here thinking about the case, while i was just out there thinking about monkeys putting on pants.”

the funny thing is, he probably was.

ya know, one of the major pet peeves i have about this job is that a lot of people seem to be under the impression that either a) i have nothing to do or b) they’re busier than me with far more important stuff. i swear, a lot of my coworkers are just about useless. i have to tell people things a million times, or get them information in a certain way at a certain time or i have to re-send it. unfortunately, half the time i don’t remember to send it again, because the task is already checked off on my mental checklist. besides, in the age of email, why can’t they just put the damn message in a folder and retrieve it later? why do i have to send something twice??

there’s this one lady, in particular, who is working my last nerve. she can’t ever be bothered to do jack shit. i don’t know what the fuck she does all day. it looks like she just sits on her ass playing solitaire, but from all the hollering and complaining she does, you’d think she was totally overworked. i know her student assistant is, coz it seems like he’s stuck doing everything. my supervisor mentioned someone who had a student doing all their work, and i bet he was talking about her.

at least the day is almost over. i do like my current project, but am not looking forward to leaving the subbasement. i’m hoping they find me something else to do down here. i can hardly stand being around the useless gits upstairs. (not that they’re all useless, but you know.)

also, i wish it would fucking cool off here already. i’m all in the mood for cold, because it helps me write. (don’t know why, but it does.) and i feel like working on my story, but it’s too fucking hot for it. it’s hard to explain.

and my radio better quit playing suck music! wtf???

oh. my. fucking. god. i am sitting at the circ desk, and this idiot just walks up and shouts, “hey, is that guy chinese?” we’re all busy, but stop what we’re doing to stare at the guy, and someone says, “do you mean ___?” so she fetches ____, who is japanese-canadian, thank you, and the asshole at the desk says, “can you read this?” ___ looks at it and says he has no idea what it says, and asshole says, “you mean you’re not chinese?” and ___ was like, “uh, no.” and i wanted to scream, “he’s japanese you freaking dipshit” but i stopped myself, mainly because i was checking out books to a patron. that and i don’t want to lose my job.

and, while typing this, a guy just came up and started shouting at this other guy, who is black, thinking he was the other black guy in our department. even though one is short and stocky and the other verrry tall and thin. for fuck’s sake. can i go back to the subbasement now?

did you know gary numan has a song called “stormtrooper in drag” coz i sure didn’t. but it’s pretty awesome. (i’m just going to assume he means the ones from star wars because i need that kind of amusement.)

what the hell is wrong with people? sting is a bad lyricist because he makes literary references? frankly, i think sting writes pretty good lyrics, generally. but then, i’m not a freaking idiot, so what do i know? it’s not just this, of course. i’m getting so sick of what passes for entertainment anymore. if you do anything the least bit intelligent, apparently you’re pompous. i’m so sick of living in a world run by and catering to morons. if it’s not about bitches or money or some other stupid thing, it’s not worth anyone’s time. the fact that britney spears is still selling albums is, i think, one of the signs of the impending apocalypse.

i wish it would just get here already.

ughhh i want to go home… it seems like it was about this time last year i started to feel really homesick, too. which was actually kind of silly then, because i’d only been away for about three months. i’m hoping like hell that i’ll get my requested time off so i can go to tampa for christmas. if i get stuck in an empty library for three days that happen to be smack in the middle of the week-long holiday in which the library is closed, i will be furious. if that happens, it would be stupid to go to tampa, coz i’d only be there for a couple days. of course, i’d probably still go even if it were for two days, because i’m that homesick. but i doubt sohei would be for it.

the only good thing about it still being fucking hot as hell here is that sohei is starting to think that tallahassee sucks (what with not having nicer weather after all) and tampa is at least better because it’s home.

wahhhh i wish the holidays would freaking get here.

i’ve really been missing mum lately. i guess i’m just kind of lonely. i almost never hear from my dad or sister anymore. come to think of it, i see more of sohei’s extended family than i speak to my own immediate family. besides which, i still haven’t seemed to completely grasp the finality of mum being gone. you know, like, forever. on some level, it’s like it seems as though i could talk to her if i wanted to. i just haven’t had time or something. but when i really, really want to talk to her, visions of her in the hospital bed hit me like some kind of flashback, and i can see her at the wake, in a coffin, and i know it’s not going to happen. ever. and then i try to remember her voice and i panic because i’m not entirely sure i’m remembering it accurately even though it was a part of my life for so long. i’m so terrified i’m going to forget things about her. and i just realized her deathiversary is coming up, which i hadn’t actually thought about, but maybe that’s why i’ve been such an idiot lately. it’s been three years, though. only three years? it seems like longer than that. but i shouldn’t still be in daily denial, i don’t think. it shouldn’t have to dawn on me that she’s gone. it should be an accepted fact of life by now, shouldn’t it? on the other hand, maybe it would be worse to be continually aware of her absence. maybe it’s some kind of self-preservation thing. i don’t know. but it feels like i’m going to miss her forever. like i’m going to get that pang every time i think of her for the rest of my life.

it’s the lack of control over life that bothers me, too. i could die tomorrow. anyone i love could die at any time. (i suspect that this has been brewing in the back of my mind, causing the recent spate of anxiety.) will i ever get over this control issue? will i be such a panicky nutjob that i make my child’s life hell? i freak out when the dog sleeps too soundly or when the cat throws up “a little too often.” zoe is going to throw up constantly until she’s about twelve, if i remember what childhood is like. am i going to flip out every time? am i going to assume she has leukemia every time she gets a bruise? probably. because i won’t know. it’s the not knowing. the driving to work every day, wondering. saying goodbye to sohei every morning, wondering. and, someday, sending zoe off to school, wondering. the part of my life where i just assumed that things couldn’t happen to me is over. if the universe could take my mother, and so suddenly, it could take anyone else at any time. i don’t know. how do people live with that?

i’m getting sleepy and my eye is doing that twitching thing again, so i reckon i’d better try to get to bed soon. i’m going to be like this for a while, apparently, just so you know.

well, as ahnold once said (and i’ve said, many times), it’s not a tumor. don’t ask how i know, because it’s pretty gross. but everything’s almost back to normal, gum-wise. however, i’m kind of irritated that i had another hypochondria episode for no apparent reason. my social anxiety has been really bad lately, too. but i so don’t want to go back on buspar. i know it’s chemicals and not a matter of willpower, but i’ve been doing so well. i don’t like it when i’m crazy. and i thought that as long as i was working and not stuck at home, i’d be okay. but despite having a job i love, i’m turning into a total weirdo again.

other than going crazy, things are going alright. sohei and i have been getting along, and his trip to tampa may have actually gone well. and things are mostly good at work, aside from the usual lazy coworker stuff.

i want to keep reading though. harry potter is totally addictive and i’m supposed to have this paper written by monday. and the library picnic is tomorrow, so i’d better get my goofing off out of the way. (we all know that i won’t actually get any work done til tonight, anyway.)

i haven’t had a hypochondria episode in a while, so it’s about time for one, right? well, that thing in the back of my mouth, where my wisdom tooth wound used to be, is getting more swollen. in fact, it’s so swollen that when i close my mouth, a tooth on the top touches it. so, being the idiot that i obviously am, i googled oral cancer, and found a picture that looks a lot like what’s going on with my gums right now. i can’t link to the picture, so i stole it and shall upload it here.

mine isn’t quite as large, and is slightly more rounded, so i’m kind of hoping it’s just a cyst. still, it’s annoying, and because i’m always aware of it, i can’t help but dwell on my imminent deformity/doom. i guess that’s what i get for smoking this summer.

as seen @ orb’s:

do you see why i’ve lost all interest in helping humanity?? do you?

i’m glad i can’t be a doctor. i’d probably want to let a lot of my patients just die. it’s like in interzone where burroughs says he’d be crying over a dead kid while everyone else died in the hall or something. (i’ll update with the actual quote later.)

yeah, it’s better for the world that i’m stuck in a basement all day. or maybe just better for me.

i wish sohei were home already. it’s all rainy and crappy and i’m worried about his flight. he’s supposed to get in around 8:00. i wish it was friday, so we could stay up.

i also wish whatever is wrong with my gum/tooth pit would go away. it’s been swollen and bloody all day.

mehhhh it’ll seem like forever til he gets here… i guess i’ll go read the harry potter book i started last night. i got halfway through the first book in an evening, and it made time fly. i think i’ve read the first two already, but it was a long time ago. oh well, off to shower and read.

The rules are as follows: Bold what you have read, italicize what you started but couldn’t finish.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
The Silmarillion
Life of Pi: a Novel
The Name of the Rose
Don Quixote
Moby Dick
Ulysses (i will finish this damn book.)
Madame Bovary
The Odyssey
Pride and Prejudice
Jane Eyre
A Tale of Two Cities
The Brothers Karamazov
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
War and Peace
Vanity Fair
The Time Traveler’s Wife
The Iliad
Emma
The Blind Assassin
The Kite Runner
Mrs. Dalloway
Great Expectations
American Gods
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
Atlas Shrugged
Reading Lolita in Tehran: a Memoir in Books
Memoirs of a Geisha (i read actual memoirs of a geisha, which is probably better.)
Middlesex
Quicksilver
Wicked: the Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
The Canterbury Tales
The Historian: a Novel
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man
Love in the Time of Cholera
Brave New World
The Fountainhead
Foucault’s Pendulum
Middlemarch
Frankenstein
The Count of Monte Cristo
Dracula
A Clockwork Orange
Anansi Boys
The Once and Future king
The Grapes of Wrath
The Poisonwood Bible: a Novel
1984
Angels & Demons
The Inferno
The Satanic Verses
Sense and sensibility
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Mansfield Park
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
To the Lighthouse
Tess of the D’Urbervilles
Oliver Twist
Gulliver’s Travels
Les Misérables
The Corrections
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time
Dune
The Prince
The Sound and the Fury
Angela’s Ashes: a Memoir
The God of Small Things
A People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present
Cryptonomicon
Neverwhere
A Confederacy of Dunces
A Short History of Nearly Everything
Dubliners
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Beloved
Slaughterhouse-Five
The Scarlet Letter
Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation
The Mists of Avalon
Oryx and Crake: a Novel
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed
Cloud Atlas
The Confusion
Lolita
Persuasion
Northanger Abbey
The Catcher in the Rye
On the Road
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Freakonomics : a Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: an Inquiry into Values
The Aeneid
Watership Down
Gravity’s Rainbow
The Hobbit
In Cold Blood: a True Account of a Multiple Murder and its Consequences
White Teeth
Treasure Island
David Copperfield
The Three Musketeers

considering i’m an english major, i’m slightly ashamed of this.

he should be halfway there. uhhhhhhhh hurry upppppppppp.

sohei’s flying to tampa today. in fact, his flight is due to leave in about half an hour. i’m looking forward to tomorrow when it’ll all be over. i hate flying so much that i hate it for other people as well. i know my dad has to fly at least a couple times a month, but i try not to think about it, or it would drive me insane. my recent feelings of doom aren’t doing much to reassure me, either. i’ll feel a little better once he’s safely in tampa, but will not feel all the way better til he’s back here tomorrow night. i don’t know how to feel about the interview. on the one hand, i obviously hope he gets the job, for a few reasons: 1) if i spend two days feeling panicky for nothing, it’ll piss me off, 2) it’s good to have a job during the summer when there’s no student loan money to live on, 3) um, well i guess that’s really all. but i’d also rather he didn’t get it because: 1) i’m not looking forward to being without sohei for another summer, 2) the corporate firm thing doesn’t seem to be for sohei, and 3) i’m not looking forward to being without sohei for another summer.

ugh. i’m tired. why is this day taking forever?? i even went to lunch late coz i went to the health fair. i didn’t learn very much about insurance, but i did get a tai chi schedule and a handful of condoms. (including one of those female condoms. ooh lala.)

i was going to go to walmart (ick) to get a hoodie and a pair of sneakers, but i’m feeling less like it as the day wears on. especially since my harry potter books should finally freaking be here today, and i want to leave them on the porch for as short a time as possible. i will probably still be stopping at taco bell to pick up dinner, however.

now to go to barnes and noble’s website to continue tracking my package obsessively.

i’m in the subbasement, listening to my mp3 player, which has some music from marmalade boy on it. i feel wistful even during the songs that aren’t supposed to make me feel that way… it reminds me of the couple of months i went back home to live with my family before i got married. i never really thought about it, but it was kind of my last shout, as it were. it was the last time i really felt like a kid. and didn’t feel like that was wrong somehow. i have the first gorillaz album on here as well, which i also listened to quite a bit at the time. the reason i went home to begin with (i went crazy and got really sick and couldn’t take proper care of myself) kind of sucked, but once i was home, i started getting better under mum’s watchful eye. so some of that time was bad, but i still have a lot of bittersweet memories.

for one thing, it was the last long stretch of time i got to spend with mum. and she took really good care of me. she took me to the doctor and bought my meds and got me a job with her at the library (where i discovered what i wanted to do for the rest of my life.) she helped me get all the wedding and reception stuff done. we fought of course, but i remember the good things better, even when it was little things like standing around with her while she smoked in the garage. i guess that was the last real mothering i got. so i feel kind of sad about it. it’s one of those times i’d like to go back to, if i could.

and there was other stuff, like eating junk food with juchan and watching all her marmalade boy tapes (all of them) and going neat places together and everything. it was also the last time i got to live with her at home. and we also fought, but, again, i mostly remember the good parts best. and she’d put up with me pining for sohei and crying whenever the nachan/meiko theme came on, etc.

then there was spending time with dad, which was nice, coz i don’t think we fought at all. we don’t usually, anyway. he was trying to quit smoking, so we went on a walk every night after dinner. the smell of nicotine gum always brings me right back to those evenings. and i went to work with him a couple times and read his epidemiology books and we had lunch and stuff. i guess it doesn’t seem like dad and i ever do much, but we’ve always kind of enjoyed just being. which is why we probably used to like fishing so much, just standing there saying little. we’re boring like that.

and i also got to go to a movie and spend some time with my old best friend, and it was kind of the last time we really hung out. it seems like i was saying goodbye to a lot of things without really realizing it at the time. it was when i can actually pinpoint the last time in my life that i was a child. when my parents were taking care of me and i didn’t have to worry about anything but getting well and having fun. and have fun i did. (i’m really glad i’m alone in the subbasement, coz i feel like i could cry at any minute.)

i didn’t realize that was all bottled up like that. i mean, i knew i had the memories and that they were good, but i didn’t understand how significant that time was to me. hindsight, i guess. i’ll just add it to the list of times i wish i could freeze and stay in forever. after all, without mum, i can never re-live it, and things will never be the same, anyway. time sucks.