My entries are so down nowadays.  I promise that if my period starts in a few days I will post something happier after the fact.  I know I will be less focused on the negative when I'm not so worried about the difficulty my immediate future may hold.

Everything is so messed up right now.

I mean, not with graduate school.  Graduate school is fantastic.  The other first year and I successfully grew and purified our first batch of DNA!  Both of us had acceptable concentration measurements and we totally high-fived with our gloves on, the nerdiest kind of high-fiving.  Also, I'm becoming more and more excited about the fact that I only have a few more classes until I never have to take another class in my life!  It's all really exciting and I know I made the right choice coming here.  This is the place for me.  When I walk into the lab I feel as though I am walking into my future as a respected scientific mind.  I don't know when or how, but there is something deep inside my mind telling me that one day I will create something earth shattering.  I just wish I could say the same for my husband.

He's the part that's messed up.  I guess I never realized, in all the years we were together before we got married, that he really has no work ethic.  If you've met him you can probably tell that he is very intelligent.  However, he graduated with a 3.4, and easily avoidable 3.4.  If there was an opportunity for him to slack off and waste time instead of doing homework, extremely simple homework in some cases, then he would take it.  When I first met him he was in some random blow off class, but because he wasn't doing the homework he had a really awful grade for no reason.  At first I thought it was kind of alluring.  This guy was extremely attractive and really smart, but he seems so "laid back" unlike me.  He relaxed me.  He still relaxes me, but when it comes to a real job he just can't cut it.  Everything else in my entire life has taught me that working hard and being proud of a job well done is a very important thing.  Earning your own money, taking care of yourself, these are footsteps on the path of life.  If you miss them then you get off track.  And yet I married someone who seems to think the exact opposite.  It's strange to say, but I don't really mind.  He's the part that's messed up because everyone else minds.  My parents, his parents, friends, other family members, all of them are constantly asking me about him and his job and why he doesn't like it and if he is going to quit. 

My mother reminded me today that if he quits a job in this economic climate he will probably never be considered for another contested position ever again.  I hear about what a horrible decision it is for him to quit over and over and over and I'm just sick of it.  I know it's a bad decision for many reasons.  I know he could make lots of money and we could save it up for a great house someday.  I know it's not the "right" decision for a lot of people, but we've all made our choices.  He has every right to make his own just as he has given me the right to make my own and come here to this university.  If this stupid, pointless job isn't for him then I have no right to tell him he has to keep working, and neither does anyone else, even if to us it seems crazy for him to want to quit.  Everyone has the right to live their own life, "the pursuit of happiness" and all that.  I'm tired of telling people I want him to stay and convincing myself that torturing himself for money is more important than him being happy.  If my period starts in a few days we will go back to baby prevention efforts and he will have my full support to quit his job and enjoy his life instead of waking up each day to the realization that his terrible job is waiting for him with hungry dripping teeth, stealing his energy and happiness from him.

I just hope that:
1) I am not pregnant.
2) I win a fellowship that will increase my salary slightly.
3) we can still save up enough for a modest home somewhere even without his income.
If these three things came to pass I would feel so much better right now.  As is, I'm really not in a healthy mental state.  Too many opinions and too many worries have been shared with me about our future that all I can think about is the negatives.  Sometimes people need to remember the "if you can't say something nice" rule of life, especially after they have already expressed their opinions.  I'm just...really tired.

Also, I stepped in bug poison this morning.  I washed my foot but I can't get it out of my head.  That shit is poison to people, too.  We just don't die because we are a lot bigger.

So I'm anxiously awaiting my period, hoping it will start around the 28th or so.  It's funny because I had prepared myself to never again have to worry about such things, yet here I am.  It's nerve racking.  I can feel eyes on me, judging me for my lack of resolve and my compulsive decision making, but they are my own eyes so I can't escape them.  Why do I judge myself so harshly, consider every mistake over and over until it is burned into my brain?  I suppose it's only human nature to be so constantly obsessed with one's own successes or failures.

I've been so busy lately.  There is so much to do as a graduate student that I rarely finish everything I set out to do in a day.  And when I come home there is cooking and cleaning and washing and exercising so much so that I am feeling a little lost and helpless.  The restless spirit of the girl I used to be, playing video games for 24 hour periods without food and going to bed at 5 AM only to get up again at 7 AM, is crying to be let free of her dark, damp cell and help me remember what it is like to actually procrastinate.  Consequently, I've stumbled into some kind of limbo between working extremely hard and completely letting myself go to the gods of laziness and relaxation, that being staying up until 4 AM playing video games and getting up at 10 AM to go into lab, followed by going home at 6 PM and beginning the cycle anew.  I hope it will keep me from becoming burnt out on the less enjoyable aspects of my life.  No one wants a repeat of the time of troubles prompting that one fateful phone call that I complained so incessantly about a few years back.

I'll write more later.  Right now I want to go home and play Mass Effect 2.  Spoilers, you don't get to see Tali's face so I'm fucking Jack.

So I guess I had a mini nervous breakdown last night.  To summarize the ordeal, I don't think I'm prepared to be a mother yet. 

I may currently be pregnant and in that case I'm sure I will be able to deal with the situation as necessary, have the child and raise it just as I hope to do someday.  However, if there isn't a baby inside my belly yet I would like to avoid it at this time.  I guess I just realized that all this talk about babies and houses and my husband's job and all that "grown up" stuff has really been getting to me.  I'm tired of worrying about a lot of unnecessary stuff on top of the necessary things I already have to worry about, like rent and electric and health insurance and all that.  I'm not prepared to start my research with the additional burden of wondering when (not if) Mike is going to quit his job, if we will have enough money for payments on a home or how we will raise a child when we both need to work/one of us isn't working and we don't have enough money.  It's just a lot to think about right now and I would much prefer the freedom to focus on my research, work hard to save some money, learn how to breakdance, play DDR and eventually find a really great job at which point my husband is free to bum around the house and we can start making babies.

I explained all this to him last night and I don't think I could have done a fantastic job of it what with the words being broken up by sobs of desperation and sessions of intense nose honking into at least 30 tissues.  I woke up this morning and looked into the trash can at the small heap of wadded up tissues and just sighed to myself.  I hate crying and I do it all the time.  I'm far too emotional and whether I am talking about something wonderful or something terrible I burst into ridiculous crying bouts followed by headaches from the pressure on my sinuses and stomach aches from the snot draining down my esophagus.  I really hate crying.  Plus whenever you explain something while you are bawling your eyes out no one takes you seriously or they focus on the emotion rather than the words behind it.  Anyway, he kept telling me that we would talk about it tomorrow when I was "feeling better," but that's not really what I wanted to do.  I wanted to tell him how I was feeling.  I think maybe he just really wanted me to change my mind.  I know he wants children just as much as I do, but he's so short sighted.  Yes, it would be wonderful to have a child of my own in my arms staring up at me and yes, I absolutely want to have a reasonable number of children so I need to begin having them relatively soon, but I'm not going to let my desire cloud my judgment.  I just don't want to raise a child while I'm dirt poor living in an apartment with barely enough time on my hands to even sleep because of my research.  Why make it hard on ourselves when waiting just a few more years will make it so much easier?  Really, if he wasn't so flaky about his job right now I would feel a lot better about trying for children, but until he finds a job where he isn't going to just up and quit because he thinks we have enough money, well...I'm not so interesting in baby making.

That's what I was trying to tell him last night.  Hopefully I can try again today without crying and he'll actually listen.
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In other news, Mass Effect is an awesome game and you should play it if you haven't yet.

I'm a mess right now and I cried last night.  More to come when I have time to type.

I feel like there is some underlying "togetherness" that all people who play Pokemon feel.  Whether you are 8 or 80, when you find out someone else plays Pokemon it's almost like you nod approvingly in your head, patting yourself on the back for finding another kindred spirit.  I've loved Pokemon as long as I can remember and the appeal doesn't fade with age.  Even as I am now able to play extremely complex and mature games, unlike when I first started playing Pokemon and still had to get my dad to kill the final bosses in FPS games, I can't deny my strange fascination with Pokemon.  I'm currently playing through Mass Effect, a game full of decisions that question your morality, realistic graphics (especially with my graphics card allowing visual recognition of the veins in people's eyes) that immerse you in the story and situations where you can kill whoever you want just because you feel like doing so.  I appreciate it as a plot driven story and thoroughly enjoy it, but there is something about Pokemon that it can never capture. 

Pokemon is the same game, packaged over and over with new graphics and new characters.  It should be boring as hell and I should toss it aside after a few minutes when I remember how I've done exactly what I'm doing a bunch of times before in all the previous games.  Yet I continue to play.  I get excited each time I see a "new" Pokemon, even if I've caught it a bunch of times before on other games.  I delight in filling out my Pokedex, pretending that I'm bettering the world's knowledge of Pokemon.  There is a childlike wonder that never fades for me.  As a Pokemon trainer you are never evil or cruel or nasty and if you are it means you are shitty at battling and letting your Pokemon die.  There is no option to go around killing everyone for fun and profit.  You are simply a "researcher" of sorts and maybe that's why I enjoy it so much.

Additionally, I have never met another "trainer" that I was extremely negative about.  And when I say trainer in quotes I'm talking about someone who is really into the game, not just someone who has played once or twice or might have played Red but never anything else like a certain husband I know.  It seems like the Pokemon community as a whole wants everyone else to succeed, to get all the Pokemon, to have all the items, to enjoy the game as much as possible.  People are always willing to trade and help one another, and because there is no option to screw one another over people who like doing that sort of thing shy away from the game.  It's a fantastic filter.  I mean...if you realllly wanted to be a dick you could be, but it's much more difficult than doing so in a game like, say, Counterstrike or something where being a dick is basically a summary of the game mechanics.

Anyway, I just wanted to give a shout out to people who love Pokemon.  <3

Also, if you are going to play the upcoming release, which is it?  Did you play gold or silver back in the day and are you going to follow your trend now or choose the opposite of what you played in the past for something new?  Do you still love Ho-oh or are you a Lugia fan?  Or will you just buy both because they're both going to be awesome?  Thoughts?

You know what always snaps me back into reality from one of my overly emotional escapades in hating myself and my life?  Sex does.  And not just any sex, but sex with someone I deeply care about even if he can be short sighted sometimes.  Frustratingly long periods have adverse effects other than merely being inconvenient and uncomfortable.  I'm probably some kind of low level sex addict considering I become extremely ill tempered should I go without sex for more than a week.  I can say that in no instance have I ever felt worse after sex with my husband.  I wonder for how many people that ISN'T true.

Anyway, I'm feeling a lot better.  I think additionally spending more time in my office and working in the lab has made me realize that I'm part of something amazing, something that could change the world.  And really, as long as I am changing the world either by research or by raising a child I guess most other things really don't matter that much.  I'm thankful that I didn't tell my husband how I was feeling other than to suggest that he was stressing me out because that's really all it was.  Seeing him and looking at him and knowing that having sex with him on my period would be super gross was just making me really angry.  I don't really think it can be labeled as his fault because he didn't do anything but be absolutely beautiful.  And when I am angry I can dredge up things that I normally wouldn't give a second thought and blow them out of portion, like we all can from time to time.

It's funny that if you ask anyone who sees me on a day to day basis they would probably say I am a really happy person, yet if you ask someone who reads my blog they would realize that I'm an emotional wreck who can't understand her own thoughts from time to time.  I wish we were all mind readers.  That would make the world much simpler I think.
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I'm going to start writing letters back and forth with my grandmother.  I'm excited about it because I love getting letters in the mail, but also because I know it will make her extremely happy.  She looks up to me in a strange way that I've never experienced before in that she wishes she had been born into the world I was.  I think she believes that her upbringing and the world around her shaped her into something "bad" or "wrong" as a child and she can see that the way things are today is so drastically different that she could have been something so much more amazing.

I think it is directly related to my previous post, except that she doesn't look back on choices she made but rather her very existence and wish things had gone differently.  I've jokingly said that I should have been born in the 50s so that I could have properly enjoyed disco in its prime, and of course I wonder what amazing things will be invented after I am nothing more than a memory to my descendants, but I would never punish myself for being born "too early" because I had no control over it.  I think she punishes herself.  She wishes her siblings hadn't died of diseases which can now be cured.  She wishes her abilities in mathematics and science weren't suppressed and ignored while she was growing up.  She wishes she could have gone to college instead of becoming a housewife.  She wishes a lot of things.  But maybe I'll be the same way eventually.  Maybe it's human nature to constantly believe the grass is greener in another existence.

I just realized how immensely lonely I am.

Maybe I'm forcing myself into the life I think I should want, when all I really want to do is something completely different and infinitely more amazing.  Maybe I'm no better than any of the people I chide in my head for the abhorrent use of their lives.  Maybe I'm still just as immature and foolish as I always was and I have no place deciding anything for anyone, especially myself.

I just filed a bunch of paperwork, took out the trash, changed two lightbulbs and did the dishes while the person who is supposed to support me and help me succeed in life took a nap on the futon.  And he'll wake up thanklessly and ask me to cook dinner.  It makes me think of all the blogs I've read of girls who are still in high school or just starting college.  They do drugs, laze about writing poetry, attend parties centered around campfires and illegally acquired booze, and have sex with near strangers without a second thought.  They are thin and whimsical and thought provoking.  They are free.  I was free once, but I threw that freedom away for safety and security.

Maybe I'm beginning to regret my decision.  I want to go back and be the photography major with no future, living from cigarette to cigarette.  I want to believe I'm complicated and deep because I cut my wrists and listen to music that no one else has heard of.  I want to look good in leggings and skinny jeans and dresses that barely drop below the lips of my vagina.  I want to wear smokey eye makeup and deep red lipstick just because it makes me look older.  I want to be so single it hurts, where a confusing mix of ecstasy and fear of commitment pulse through me each time I strip my clothing off for another beautiful stranger.

But it's too late to go back, just like it always has been.  The moment for action passed without me realizing it.  I can't quell this shrieking voice deep within my soul telling me I'm not the person I thought I would have been by now.  I live vicariously through the blogs of young women who still have their freedom and stories about relationships between two young men, relationships I will never be part of no matter how much I want it at this point. 

I'm everything I find boring and normal in this world.  I guess my failure is complete.

I feel like I could catch things on fire just by looking at them today.  I'm so frustrated and I can't even really pin down why.  I guess it could be a lot of things.

Today is the ninth day of my period.  Yes, that's right.  The NINTH day.  I can't take it anymore.  If it isn't over today I'll have to do laundry specifically because I'm running out of granny panties in which to insert pads.  My doctor said that if my periods were longer than eight days that there is a possibility that I have fertility problems related to something called endometriosis.  My last period was eight days and I was hoping that it was just long because it was the first one since I've been off of birth control, but that obviously wasn't the case since this one is even longer!  I just want my body to be functioning normally.  I want to produce children before my DNA is mutated too much from working with chemicals for several hours every day.

But do I really want children?  I mean, of course I do.  I want to produce viable offspring more than anything in this world, but with my husband so obsessed about how much he hates his job and wants to quit it and blah blah blah...well...maybe HE isn't ready for children.  I understand that his job is boring and he isn't really being challenged, but he keeps telling me that it stresses him out.  Let me rephrase that, a job where he almost never has to physically interact with a human or do anything other than simply sort things and send them where they need to go is stressing him out.  Well, then what the fuck wouldn't stress him out?!  That's as simplistic as you can get!  And he says we can look for another job for him, but whenever I suggest we work on it he says that stresses him out, too!  Sometimes I just want to slap him and tell him to grow some fucking balls.  We need his income to support a child.  I don't make enough as a graduate student for us to maintain our current lifestyle with the additional stress of childcare.  Yet with this fact looming in front of him all he can think about is how much he would rather just sit at home and do nothing all day.  If that is the case then there are two options:  1) deal with your easy fucking job and help to acquire the necessary funds to have and subsequently raise a child or 2) quit your job, sit around in your underpants playing video games and forget about having a child until your hard working wife finishes her PhD and can support an entire family on only her income. 

Right now I'm really REALLY leaning toward the second option because all I hear about when I see him is how much he hates his job and he's a complete asshole sometimes with the excuse that he's stressed out.  For example, I put a plastic food container on his desk today and he threw it on the floor because he couldn't wait the two seconds it would have taken me to remove my boots and pick it up so I wouldn't track snow through the apartment.  If he can get mad about something so retarded because his job is "stressing him out" then he can just fucking quit it and be a loser for the rest of his life as long as he is gentle and kind.  However, in that case I will be the one making the monetary decisions in our lives, like when we have enough money to have a baby or buy a house or upgrade his computer or even eat out and he can SUCK MY GIANT FUCKING DICK. 

There, I said it.  Fuck him.  I don't need his attitude right now.   He keeps talking about how he would rather be happy than rich and I totally agree, but I would not be happy if I was trying to raise a child and focus on my research and everything else that I have to do when I didn't even have enough money for the necessities.  That is not happiness to me.  And maybe he thinks somehow raising a child will be easier than his job or something.  Trust me, nothing could be easier than his job.  Or maybe he thinks I'm making it up that we are spending more than my paycheck each month and that we would not be "just fine" living on my income.  He's too incompetent to help me with anything financial anyway.  I pay all the bills and keep track of all our financial accounts and when I try and show him how much we spend he just waves me away and keeps reading his stupid Diablo 3 forums.  I basically already have a child at this point.  I just don't know what's going through his head right now and I don't really care to find out because I've got a lot of other things to worry about.  And it's not that I don't love him.  I do.  He just makes it really hard to like him sometimes if that makes any sense.

I just want to focus on my research.  I really want to dig in and understand things and immerse myself in my project and get published and complete my PhD to the best of my abilities.  And I can't do that if I have to worry about money.  I hate money.  I hate it so much.  Unlike money, a child would be a welcome burden.  Though it would be stressful and sometimes I would worry, the stress is part of the process.  As the child grows up there will be many hard times, but the end result so greatly outweighs the negative aspects that I would have no problem rushing home to rock to sleep or feed or even just spend a bit of time with him/her.  But money is not that way.  There is no required stress.  If you can make enough money to not have to worry about it, then why would you choose to be stressed instead?  This is my dilemma and why I am so angry with my husband.  He seems incapable of grasping the concept that his want to quit his job stresses me out.

I should stop ranting.  I just had a lot to get off my chest.  I'll probably regret writing this tomorrow, but as with all entries I will never delete it because it represents a snapshot of my thoughts in time.  Things so transient as this are often hard to capture, so to destroy them would be such a crime.

I really hate chapped lips.  I love winter and I love snow and I love beautiful white landscapes and I can suffer through the chilling wind and bitter cold, but I really REALLY hate chapped lips.