ms. sensitivepants

Perhaps I've been going about this all wrong. Spending a night playing songs I haven't played for ten years affected me at least as much as all the weeks and weeks of frenzied journal writing.

Settled things slightly differently internally.

Maybe if I keep doing it I'll get better. *I* don't know.

I feel more like rorie than I have in a while. It's kind of nice. Actually, I kind of had forgotten I even wanted to feel like rorie.

Probably I should get some sleep. Or something.

Goodnight Alvarez, goodnight room.
Goodnight Zim slippers, goodnight doom.
Goodnight Cranberries and REM and other participants in my 90s-mope-medley.
Goodnight trouble: I'm sure I'll see you again soon.

Goodnight Mama.
Goodnight new rainboots.
Goodnight Brooklyn.
Goodnight, you. (I've been thinking of you.)
(All good stuff. Don't worry.)

1) Post a list of up to 20 books/movies/anime/TV shows/video games/bands [fannish etc.] that you've had an obsessive fannish love or interest in at some time in your life.

2) Have your f-list guess your favourite character/member from each item.

3) When someone guesses correctly, strikethrough the item and put the name of your favorite character next to it (i'm also adding the ID of the correct guesser).


1. Anne Bishop's Black Jewels books Daemon (sainfoin_fields )

2. Evangelion Rei (Michelle)

3. Benny & Joon Joon (ladyariana )

4. Firefly River (Michelle)

5. Tegan & Sara Tegan (ladyariana )

6. Dinosaur Comics T-Rex (sweeneytim )

7. Twilight (yes, well) (books not movies) Bella (sainfoin_fields )

Why isn't it cool to be like, way totally thankful?

My family always used to go around the table and say what they were thankful for.
Sometimes as a teenager I felt weird about this because there were things I was thankful for that I just didn't want to talk about with my relatives. But I was always glad to reflect on it.

Sorry, is that uncool? I know people who just think of it as a family holiday and never get thanky. And I know, based on the history of the holiday and our history of smallpox blankets, that perhaps using it as an opportunity to Give Thanks is a little bit arbitrary and even skeezy.

But, seriously? I just think it's a good thing and I'll take any opportunity to rock it. Much like Valentine's day--sure, it's a Hallmark holiday and a lot of its implementations are creepy and material and genderfied and not-really-what-love-should-be--but, who cares? It's an excuse to be lovey and romantic! I can do it my way. In your face, Hallmark.

Even when I'm at rockbottom, I always have things to be thankful for.
I'm far from rockbottom now, so this year I'm like, doubleplusextra thankful. And I'm glad to be able to focus on it.

I will now commence to try very hard not to deliberately make myself inaccessable when I don't want to deal with something.

Accessable Rorie Activate!

Access me freely! I am like a library. Or an open source project. Or. Uh. A public domain work. All of these things.

Found a recording!

Here! See how I have not progressed an ounce!

( clingy )

More bad dreams. This time a person not a squid.

Then someone rang my doorbell like five times in a row at noon, but by the time I made it down to the front door nobody was there.

Miscellaneous mommies and daddies and children looked askance at me in my pajama pants and confusion.

Whatever, Surreal Sunday. I don't want you.

Now, off to help my cousin buy a wedding dress. (Wait: that's kinda surreal too.)

I had a dream that I had two cats and I locked them in my car all night, accidentally, when I was staying at a hotel. They were mad at me the next morning and told me all about it, bitterly, when I discovered my horrible error and let them out.

I mean, literally. They complained in English to anyone who would listen. This did not seem odd to me.

More unsettling is that both last night, and the night before, I dreamed I was with someone--like, dating someone seriously, and we were staying somewhere together--and I can't remember who it was in either case.

In any event, I guess I should go to work or something.

I am totally sucking at finding my dad a birthday present right now.

I wanted to get him tickets to some awesome concert we would both enjoy. But apparently not that many musicians have shows during the holiday season. OH WAIT, I KNOW THAT BECAUSE I AM A MUSICIAN and yet I am still surprised and dismayed.

I googled "gifts" and "musician" to see if any brilliant ideas permeated my brain--again, despite the fact that I am a musician and you'd think I'd know what sort of gifts we'd like to receive.

It's a very unhelpful list but all of the items on it say things like "this will give your musician more time to work on their craft," or "your musician will love this because..."

"Your musician." Kind of cute, you know? Like we're someone's new pet. Like, The Care and Feeding Of Your Musician. Which apparently some of us need (care and feeding)--I'm beginning to suspect this because Lisa keeps pointing out that I'm forgetting to do basic things like eat and sleep. Thank goodness for roommates, you know?

Anyway, I'mma take a shower and go to bed and hope the answer comes to me in a dream.
Hopefully, this time, not in the form of a mind-control squid, a marriage, or a guest appearance on Full House.

Because, really.

I've been having trouble sleeping lately.

Personal crap I haven't figured out.

I've sort of given up and decided I'll let it figure itself out and in the meantime focus on music.

I told Michelle and Erica last night that I was going to marry my Song*. They said they would come to the wedding, especially if there was an open bar.

Srlsy, I am planning a CD release party (which is almost the same thing?) for January it looks like. I think I will probably have to have it on Long Island, or I could do a big one on LI and a smaller one in the city.

Last night I was troubled but exhausted and I thought to myself, I will dream of what's important. I'll figure it out that way. And I dreamed that Tegan and Sara both had books out and Tegan's was a seriousish autobiography called Everything I Am, and Sara's was a less serious one called "I Am Everything Too, Plus All This Other Stuff," and the title was written in giltter. Sara also had a bunch of short books for poetry out. I was very excited and I was debating whether I could justify spending the money to buy all of this stuff at once.

Then I was in the back of my dad's station wagon and he had been going to drop me off at a place and we were going to go our seperate ways, but it was pouring and I had forgotten my coat, and he was looking through crap in his station wagon for it, and it was pouring inside the station wagon too, there were leaky spots where the water was just pouring in like a faucet. They kept moving around and I kept being accidentally standing under one and the water would pour into my bag with my journal and wallet and everything in it. And I felt like I was totally inconveniencing my dad, but he was very nice about it.

That one, I usually wouldn't tell anyone about, because though it's layered with crap that means stuff to me, it's not entertaining like books by Tegan and Sara or my friend guest-starring on Full House. It must be early in the morning.

*Sean Nelson says in a song that he wants to marry his convictions, which I also think is a great idea, except I'm not 100% sure my convictions like me anymore.

PMS is like MSG for feelings. It doesn't change the flavor of what you're feeling, it just makes you taste it more.

I gave myself a D for yesterday. The only reason it wasn't an F is because I was feeling generous and I upped myself a letter grade for class participation.

Today: hopefully more accomplishmentful.

So this weekend I

You know what's great about the Patriot?

I'm so hard for a rich girl/My heels are high and my eyes cast low/And I don't know how

Anyway, I've been living in Bushwick for about a week but I still don't have all of my stuff moved in.

I'm putting my daybed together tonight.

Lisa's a great roommate.

Yeah, that's what I've got right now. Everything else? It's a bit soon.

Somehow over the past week, in my mind, the answer to my problems has stopped being "writing!" and started being "let's get drunk and see how i feel about stuff!"

You know? I don't even think it's such a bad idea.

Anyway, at some point I probably need to sleep or something.

Dear Chips,

Go ahead and fall where you may already, please.

I'm not afraid of being disappointed. I've already gotten myself used to it. I'm a big girl.

I'm not terribly afraid I'll do the wrong thing. I've spent a lot of time figuring out what I need and I'm through trying to pretend I don't.

I'm just tired and I want to be settled.

I want to relax.

I'm ready to relax. I'm too tired for guilt. Too tired of being riddled with stress-induced conditions to sit around inducing more on myself by wondering whether I deserve relaxation, whether I deserve to feel good.

yours,
rorie

---

Dear Rain,

Thanks for happening tonight. It meant a lot to me.

love
rorie

---

Dear Union Square,

On second thought, I guess the rat family, and the conversation about the rat family, was more or less what I needed. Insofar as I'm capable of accepting things I need anyway.

Thanks for being.

-rorie

---

Dear rats,

I think you're cute even though my city keeps trying and failing to exterminate you.
Keep warm! It's very rainy.

love,
rorie

Opacity rising.

It's like when you are trying to zoom in or out in Photoshop but you find you're still clicked into the opacity level of a layer and then your unsightly layer just faaaaaades back in.

I can't get past the attraction to just saying things openly and honestly to the people I care about most...

But then there's the fact that my words have so much capacity to hurt. Me or the other person or both.

Sooooooo.

Opacity up opacity up opacity up.

I'm trying not to in some cases. In others I'm just watching it happen and wondering rather frantically if I'm making the right choice.

But all that aside,
remember this entry?

Huh, look at that.
I was just going to say something light like, "I've been thinking about it," but hey: that was a year ago and I feel exactly the same only eighty billion times less sure of myself.

Opacity DOWWWWWNNNN. Startlement will do that to a person.

***

I'm not the kind of person who needs to be pushed in terms of Getting Things Done. If I'm not, it's because something else is horribly wrong and I can't deal with my day-to-day life. It's not because I'm actually lazy. I'm beating myself up to Get Things Done all the time and I don't need more of that.*

I do need to be pushed emotionally.
I'm too likely to push aside how I'm feeling until it explodes and goes kablooey all over everything. And even then, I usually just pay enough attention to unkablooey it. People who force me to focus on how I feel usually win with me.

I'm trying to change. I'm trying reeeeeaally hard. I'm good at trying really hard**.

But like the nice reiki lady said, I need to learn to ask for help.
I'm working on that too.


* I'm a Virgo; has anyone noticed?
** See above.

Instead of stewing in my juices tonight, I had a long talk with a good friend. Then I initiated a different conversation I should have perhaps initiated ages ago.

You know how I'm always running late.

Tonight it's all about Tegan and Sara and Lisa Loeb and Me From When I Was Fifteen.

O Hai, Oldschool rorie. It's good to see you again.

I think I want to do an acoustic gig somewhere this month. I wonder if I can hop on something at the perch or vox pop or something. I miss so many songs.

I'm living in so many songs. It occurs to me that it might be better to play them purposefully, with my guitar, instead of wandering around the seaport like a ghost singing Jump Little Children's entire catalog to the boats.

I do love the boats though. I suspect no one else sings to them.

But then, maybe I suspect wrong. It's a big city.

I'm moving soon. I don't want to jinx it by talking about it but... let's just say, damn soon.

I have a lot to do, which I'm sure won't get done in a timely fashion, especially because I have so many other commitments.

And one big one that I owe myself more time and energy on--music.

I have too much stuff. Stuff I don't need but have kept around for reasons of sentimentality, guilt (Am I Wronging the Person Who Gave This To Me By Getting Rid Of It?), and just plain... packrat-yness. "I'll totally fix this up and make it worth having! It's so wasteful to just throw things away."

It's time to clean house. Literally and figuratively.

I have a lot of stuffed animals, for example.
I really like stuffed animals, but I have too many. They won't fit on my daybed, at least not if I want to be able to sleep on my daybed too. I am going to make a serious effort to downsize.

But every one has a reason that I have it...
(This is the trouble with EVERYTHING.)

I'm going to try. If I can't come up with a good reason to keep something, or it no longer serves its purpose, I'm going to tryyyyy to give it away, sell it, whatever. Throw it away if it won't be useful to anyone else. (In which case WHY AM I KEEPING IT?)

Fall cleaning. Backwards. It's how I do business.

I totally wrote this entry in lieu of other, more important stuff I haven't sufficiently sorted out to write about yet.

Yeah, I've been Cranky lately.

The undercelebrated eighth dwarf.

(But that's not my fairy tale! Actually, I just looked this up. Disney was all "WOOO PRINCESS AURORA!" in the movie, but in Perrault's version L'Aurore was actually same said princess's daughter (by the same princeguy who woke her by kissing her). Then the princeguy's ogre queen mum totally wanted to eat L'Aurore as well as her brother Le Jour, with this fancy gourmet sauce, and the cook totally fooled the ogre queen mum by feeding her goats or something in the sauce instead, and then the ogre mum decided to go right to the source and eat their mother (the sleepy princess Briar Rose), who was like, "Go ahead, slit my throat and eat me! Since you ate my children and all and now I'm quite sad," because apparently she didn't know about the cook's kindhearted trickery. Pretty sad.)

(In closing, I guess I don't HAVE a fairy tale after all and I'm a little disappointed by this. But I guess being the Roman Goddess of the dawn is cool enough, even though I did always kind of prefer the greek pantheon! But who gets choices in these things. ANYWAY I DIGRESS!)

Anyway, I've been cranky, sometimes unwarrantedly so. Sorry if I've cranked at anyone, especially since I'm pretty sure I've only cranked at people I really care about.

I'm figuring some things out (yes: too late as usual) and I'm only about halfway there and haven't had time to myself to go further. Half-conclusions: really not a good place to live your life from! I really, ideally, should just sequester myself for a few days with notebooks and wine. I need to hash everything out with myself. Before discussing anything with anyone else. And therein lies the problem: I'm kind of having a minor identity crisis and it makes me lonely and want to reach out MORE, not less. But then my half-conclusions impede my conversations and I want to talk about it but I know I shouldn't yet and I become Cranky.

The real danger, though, is that I will realize I don't want to be Cranky and take pains to insteaad make myself be Comfortable. Instead of dealing with all this stuff, which is what I really need to do.


EDIT: Did I say "minor"?
Well: guess I know which one of me was writing THAT part.

(ignore me.)

In Other News...


Despite calling myself dumb fairly regularly

(which a few people who are really important to me really don't seem to like, sorry guys),

I still know I'm smart and that disagreements don't make me stupid.

Epiphanies: cooler in the morning* than in the evening.

*But only if you're in the train, not the car, and you're in the right mood, and no one's around to ruin it. Gosh, mornings are so tough.

In the evening: cuddles are still better.

In the later evening: but wine will suffice if it must.




I don't HAVE to blow off everything to go to another state this weekend (I could go to another state without blowing off anything) but I might do it anyway.

Things I Will Probably Bring to Another State This Weekend
-my guitar
-my shiny new (it really is shiny and it really is new) tuning fork
-my less shiny but equally new capo
-my iBook, and the other iBook that I am now no longer selling, but instead harvesting the logic board out of (but we'll see if I actually get around to that)
-my tarot cards, because they're not stupid but symbolic and worthwhile to me so there
-my journal
-maybe another journal in case i run out of pages
-wine