It started out with an accident: drawing on myself with a pencil that ended up scratching me and getting infected resulted in a scar and a serious of unfortunate events.

Sometime, it turned from purposeful scratches with a safety pin or pocket knife to plunging straight pins into my arm up to the head, all in a row down my vein, and pulling them out v e r y slowly. When that stopped doing it for me, I started scratching deeper and longer and graduated to razor blades from my dad's workshop. I once sunk one into my stomach to see what fat looks like. When I started to become a twitchy weirdo, I stopped using manmade tools and swapped to my own digits. Fingernails can make a lot of impact if you scritch and scratch for long enough. Sometimes, I would bite through my skin; leave little V's of blood on my hands and arms. It got out of hand, though. I couldn't stop scratching my own flesh away. The doctor (after a lengthy interview with me and my mother) determined the actions to be quite obsessive compulsive, and onto medication I went.

I'm doing so much better now. I only ever think of hurting myself when I skip my dose and the only picking I do is at bug bites and hangnails.

Or that's what I say. It's so easy to make it all look like an accident.

Isn't it funny that I automatically hit the "everybody" button? I consider blogging to be just for my own personal get-it-off-the-chest thing. Probably because it's just not the same to journal to yourself as it is to know someone is listening patiently on the other end - wherever that is. (Hi Internet People!)

You could say I feel like shit probably feels. Having traveled such a long, terrible journey, only to be rid and forgotten with a sigh.(Don't think about it too much.)

I'm pretty lonely. When I'm lonely, I get depressed. When I'm depressed, I can't pull myself out of the dark hole I find myself in. Thank God for night-owlish friends who never judge you.

I *know* that I'll be ok later, maybe after I take my medication and a hot shower, but I can't convince my present conciousness.

Stupid Fucking Brain Chemical Imbalances. That's all we are, right? Chemistry. A carefully designed solution of emotions and will and creativity. For me, I think I may have missed the tablespoonful of judgement. Maybe that little voice that says "Jo, this is not a very good idea" is still in the crate, left behind with my other packaging and instruction manual.

So I'm saying: Yes, I have problems and I am sometimes a poor judge of a situation and I am sometimes selfish and sometimes I just want to sleep forever, never ever wake up except with the Holy Father, who will forgive me my sins and have me walk with Him in His kingdom.

Somehow, clicking "everybody" helps a fucking lot.

Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss Uhn Tiss

beep boop de boop

IN

boop beepie Uhn Tiss

SOM

INSOMNIA

deedeedeelalalalaldeedeedoo

doo

doo

IN

SOM

NI

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Uhn tiss uhn tiss uhn tiss uhn tiss

bow chicka uhn tiss bow chicka

SOM

(drinking some tea, reading some books, and listening to calm music.)

If I lose two pounds a week for the rest of the summer, I will be less-obese. I may even be considered only slightly overweight by the dumb BMI chart that was invented in the seventies when people were rail thin from doing coke and ecstacy and smoking and drinking coffee constantly.

But also, I will just (hopefully) feel better about myself and be confindent as I go to college. Maybe I'll even be able to stave off the freshman fifteen if I get good habits ingraved in my routine.

Doo doo dee dah

In-som-nia

Doo doo dee doo

In-som-nia

lalalalalalalalala

I can't sleep tonight

Nor can the lions

In the jungle

Lalalalala

Doo dee doo dummmmmmmmmmmm.

(insert wild applause here)

And it was really weird. It started out at some highschool dance that was at a highschool from some movie. Then Juddy started trying to get me away from the punch bowl to come outside with him. There he told me to please stop hitting on him, because Mike is his friend and he feels really weird. No matter how much I tried to convince him that no, I wasn't hitting on him, he was all "shh, just listen to me, ok? It has to stop." Then he started to tell me that he had to go and pick up a package, at which point I read his mind (I guess I had magic powers in my dream) and found out that he was going to rescue some magical mice (?!?!?!?) that were trudging through some snow.

So, I decided that I would get there before them, because I realized the magnitude of importance these mice had on the world. I kind of race him to the place they were struggling, which turned out to be a vast wasteland that looked exactly like the KGH playground. I'm pushing my way through tumbleweed and a blizzard at the same time, and I see a HUGE mouse (ok, about the size of a cat) and a regular one. They're helping each other along, and one is wearing a scarf. I run up to them, assure them I'm a friend, and help them into my sweatshirt pockets.

Then someone finds me and is all "what's in your pocket" and the mice are like "don't tell him!" and then I'm abducted and on a spaceship.

It's not over yet...

Then on the spaceship, the mice and I are being kept in some kind of cargo hold. Every now and then, a big door slides open and I see people at control panels that face out a HUGE window, or maybe just a hole into space. Outside in space is all this orange dust and the people keep telling me to run errands in and out of the cargo hold. The mice secretly mind-tell me (magic remember?) not to breath the dust. But one errand, the people hold me down and I can't hold my breath anymore and take some in. Then I turn into a ferret.

And the mice turn into people! So now I'm a little ferret and the mice/people are in the cargo hold with me and I'm crawling all over the place trying to figure out what the hell is up... and my phone rings and I wake up.

Listening to: "The Ink and the Quill (be afraid)"---Anti-Flag

My job just got a smidgen bit more fun. James Keyler works in Soda Fountain now. He's adorable. Like a puppy adorable. I have to restrain myself from patting his flippy-haired head.

I took Piper to the track to play frisbee tonight, but she's not a great frisbee dog. Mostly, she was getting distracted by the forgotten soft/baseballs lying around.

In other news: Kite Runner is an incredibly sad movie. I'm sure the book is wonderful, but the movie made me so sad, I don't think I can read it.

Well, I've succeeded in eliminating the creamy icey goodness from my diet so far. When at work.

Ok, ok, I admit I've indulged in some "blue bunny" (otherwise the *diet* brand) ice cream... but that's because I was PMSing.

Yeah, not hardly an excuse.

But progress is progress, right? And I'm honestly planning on going and getting a summer gym membership so that I will feel guilty about wasting money if I don't go and work out/swim or whatever. And I've been walking Piper a lot.

There, I feel a little bit justified in my rebellion.

Well, I've totally lost Chloe. She's in a hardcore relationship. I mean, she IS engaged and all. I  have to say, I'm openly jealous of Robbie, who gets to have ALL of her time and energy and thought space.

Last night, when we were hanging out, she told me how she missed Robbie...

It had been about three hours since she last saw him.

GAH!

This past year, I went whole weeks without even talking to her and she doesn't blink an eye. I thought we were best friends, what happened? What happened to that saying "boyfriends come and go but friends are forever?"

She can't even just hang out with me whenever, she has to plan her hanging out with Jo time with Robbie, otherwise he gets upset if she springs that on him. Does that sound healthy to you? If those two are constantly attached at the hip, they'll never have anything to talk about later, they'll have said it all already.

I remember ("back in the day") when I hung out with Phil all day instead of her, and she was pissed for weeks. I can't even depend on work hours to be time to talk to her because Robbie comes in several times a day to visit.

Boys make life all complicated. Unless you have a really healthy relationship with both friends and significant others, and you can be nonchalent with both and nobody gets mad.

Listening to: "Confusion"---Alice in Chains

"I want to set you free, recognize my disease
Love, sex, pain, confusion, suffering
You're there crying, I feel not a thing
Drilling my way deeper in your head
Sinking, draining, drowning, bleeding, dead"

I hate to be like everyone else: complaining about the tourists. I know that they are the reason our town still exists. I know that on the ship, you get treated like royalty, and it's hard to get out of the mode when you go onto dry land.

But seriously, Sitka is not a place made up of paid-actors who are also highly trained botonists, geologists, and historians. Can you tell me the specifics of the harbor in your neighboring city?

Also, I work in a soda fountain, I do not know what the generic name of your prescription is.

Listening to: "P.S. I Love You"---All American Rejects

So, this is what it's like to be graduated. Hm. Not much different, except for that thought that keeps sneaking up on me: "I'm going to college next." YAHOOOOO!

I still have to survive the summer at Harry Race, though. I'm not sure if I'll make it. That or I'm not sure my body will make it. GARRR I wish I didn't work somewhere that requires standing on wood floor all day long, running up and down stairs with tubs of heavy ice cream, and scooping that same ice cream (carpol tunnel anyone?). Of course, my waistline may not survive either. I should make a pact right now, internet friends, to give up frozen dairy deliciousness for the entire summer. I will write it on my hand every day: "The Pact" and do my VERY VERY best to remember. I will chew minty gum all day, and brush my teeth often, as well, to make everything unappetizing.

Ellery and I were planning on working out together this summer. I hope we do, I don't want to be a pile of mush from lack of dancing.

Do all my entries end up talking about my body and my "plans" to lose weight? Why don't I just do it already and stop bitching and whining? (She says in a bitchy, possibly whiney blog-voice.)

GRRR! I'm pretty mad at my neighbor for being a grouch. We noticed that Piper was being awful quiet, so looked outside (where she was securly tied on a special, metal leash) and she was gone! So we call out and whistle, thinking that somehow, maybe, (no chance in hell) she'd be nearby and we could lure her back.

Hark! A small whine and scramble from beyond the fence. It was our dog, tangled in the neighbors bushes and plants and trees. I thought she was just caught, so called her somemore. But no, she was really stuck. So I hop the fence in some teeny shorts and a even teenier t-shirt (laundry day for pjs, I'm not just a weirdo) and try to untangle her. But she wasn't just tangled, she was hooked (with her leash) to the dog chain in their yard. How crazy is that? The neighbors have a bunch of blooming bulb plants in their garden, and a few were knocked down. I didn't want to climb into the garden with her and cause more damage, so I tried fruitlessly to free her leash from a tree while holding her still.

A bang is heard on the window and a very angry man is peering out at me. I wave, thinking he'd tied her up there because she ran away or something.

But no, he runs out and starts yelling obscenities at Piper and me. GAH I finally get her out of the bush, and he picks her up and practically throws us out of the yard. The whole while I'm walking away he's screaming how I let the dog bark all day and don't know how to treat animals right (he pours affection on his dog and treats his saintly wife like a pile of its crap).

Some people are just weird. I know that if that had happened at my dad's house, he would have gotten the dog out of the garden, calmly asked what happened, probably laugh about it with the owner, and then shrug it off. He probably wouldn't even accept a replacement payment for the flowers. But that's my easy-going dad, and this is the curmudgeon from next door.

Bug.

Do you realize what time it is? It is half past six am. I am awake and ready at half past six am.

I woke up at quarter till, thinking that I could fall right back asleep, but I didn't so I got up at 5:48 and did all my getting ready. Now I'm sitting around twiddling my thumbs.

I thought about this last week, how I wake up too early anyways, and how I should just wake up later and use exactly the right amount of time to get ready. But whenever I do that, I end up feeling like I'm late.

I tried to charge my cell phone all day yesterday and last night, but I stupidly plugged the wrong plug in, so it was just sitting there.

Last night's performance was AWESOME! I felt so good about my dancing. I was on a huge high from my senior solo, it was so great. People started applauding a ton at my four fouettes! I think my dad got it all on tape, but I'm not sure how good it will look. I want to make a DVD though to send to my family and friends who weren't there, since it was my senior recital. Man, my last recital. It's one of the first things that has made me feel sad about graduating. No more Sitka Studio of Dance or Fireweed Dance Theatre. I won't miss all the studio drama, but I'll miss dancing with my friends and performing for my parents.