Words... what do they all mean?

*blows off the dust and cobwebs*

So, well, that was a hiatus. Unintentional, and of course the longer it went on the more material I would have to cover in a catch-up post so I avoided writing one and more and more time went by.

What started the whole thing was that the day after my birthday (and my last post), my grandmother died. It was... sudden, but not unexpected, if that makes any sense. She was diagnosed with an apparently nasty type of brain cancer back in September, and for several months not too much changed. Then it just came on hard and fast in the last month and threw the whole family for a few loops. I think we're all still just trying to adjust.

I've been in a bit of a funk ever since, probably mostly unrelated, or maybe this is how I deal with grief and I just never knew it. I've been staying up late (3am) and sleeping in late (noon), not leaving the house very much except to buy groceries and occasionally pick Morgan up from school. Alan has been great at picking up the slack, and part of me wonders if knowing that he will do so has allowed me to go on this long. The end of the semester has slipped past, so now I'm pretty sure my GPA is irreparable. No idea how I'm going to tell Dad. I think Mom has figured it out (she usually does). My cousin (who is three years younger) just got her BA in Fashion Design - today was her graduation party. While I was there I was very proud and excited but now that I'm home it's kind of depressing.

I just lost my train of thought.

I've been reading a lot, watching a lot of hulu and netflix. I honestly can't account for most of the time I spend; I manage to fill days and weeks with absolutely nothing. How is that possible? I feel like I'm in some kind of vegetative state or something.

Morgan has her first loose tooth. Looks like it'll come out in the next day or two.

Also recently we had our first serious parental discipline: Morgan screamed at her preschool teacher so when she got home we put her on time out, and she flipped (despite earlier telling us that if she were still at school that's what would have happened). We'd never really had to do something like that before, so I think she was thinking that home was like a safe zone or something. Part of me hates to take that feeling away, but the rest of me knows that she needs to learn even at home there are consequences.

I began an attempt at spring cleaning. It lasted about as long as that sentence.

Tomorrow I'm going to start a diet/lifestyle change. I went grocery shopping for it tonight and blew right past my budget. It's so unfair that healthy food is so damn expensive. Anorexia looks more and more like a viable alternative.

Kidding, really.

The kicker about going onto a diet is going to be resetting my internal clock. I'm going to have to actually WAKE UP (God forbid) and eat breakfast, though the meal plan seems to have been written for people like me, and nearly all the breakfasts are little-to-no-preparation things like meal replacement bars or shakes or cups of fruit or yogurt, etc. And I'll have to not stay up so late that I need a midnight snack - which my body thinks of as dinner, because the meal five hours earlier was of course "lunch." _How_ did I get onto such a weird schedule?!

Um, so, I'm back now. Thank you to those who missed me. I'll try not to disappear again.

I have reached that wonderful point in paper-writing when one goes back, reads what's written so far, and scratches half of it.

I've now nullified all the frantic writing I did this past weekend, for which I missed the Mother's Day hanging-out and shopping with my Mom and Grandma, and there is officially now not enough time to complete the paper.

This is completely ignoring the existence of the _other_ paper I also needed to write for tomorrow (that one was *only* five pages long), which I have never even started.

I'm going to have to take Composition _again_.

I only just learned about this notion of a golden birthday. Because apparently today is mine. Wish I'd known ahead of time; maybe I would have tried to plan something special for this "once in a lifetime" day (though I can't imagine what I would do). Thus far it's just been schmoozing around the house doing nothing. I decided not to clean or run my errands and give myself a day off. And then dinner with Dad this evening. He's picking me and Morgan up and "it's a surprise" where we're going.

For those who aren't aware, "it's a surprise" are quite possibly the worst words one can say to me. A fertile imagination is a lovely thing while writing stories. While trying not to think of what could be on the other end of a "surprise" and thus not get one's hopes up, not so much. It's getting easier to squash it, though.

Maybe that's why I haven't been able to write in three years.

Maybe this is all because it's raining outside (I know, birthday in the springtime. But I'm always disappointed when it rains on my birthday). Maybe it's because I just finished watching an episode of Battlestar Galactica.

I should have asked Alan to fly in a week earlier.

• First rain of the season.  Cold and wet: two things I hate to be. (cold is only acceptable if it's cold enough to turn the rain into snow)
  
• Finger slipped on the alarm pad at work while trying to disarm it this morning, set off the alarm.  And of course there are no instructions for disarming it once it's been tripped, out where they can be found.  The alarm company was apparently able to reach Linda on her cell phone, and after fifteen minutes of shrieking ringing, it stopped.  The only good thing there is that my arrival at work at precisely 9 am is now well-documented.  Really, though, I was almost looking forward to a dispatch showing up; maybe it would have gotten me out of the.....
• Geology midterm.  Oh god it's been a long time since I had to improvise essays.
• It took the bus forever to get to school to pick me up.  Or maybe it just felt that way because I was sitting out in the rain while waiting for it.  My jeans are still wet.
• Rew, Jordan, and Katie went to see the Prestige tonight.  Rew had told me they were thinking about it, so I got all excited about it and we were trying to go on Sunday.  Due to Grandma's birthday party and mom for some reason needing to take Rew to lunch, we couldn't go then.  Jordan calls me up tonight and tells me that he and Katie are going to see it tonight, and that due to his work schedule, there will probably never be a time when both he and I are available.  So he said he'd tell Rew and leave it up to him whether he wanted to go with them, or wait and go with me.  Yeah, real hard to guess that one.  So Rew _calls_ me to tell me he's going with them.  Fine, whatever, I'll just see it when it comes out on video.  And I hung up on him.  Asshat.
  
• Alan turned his phone off so I couldn't call him on his lunch break

So it's only ten o'clock and I'm thinking of going to bed because I have nothing else to do.  Nobody's online (not that I have a big list of contacts, anyway).

I drove Alan to the airport yesterday. We got an early start and built in lots of fudge time, so we arrived in San Francisco at 11:30 (his flight wasn't until 4:30). The check-in windows for Virgin weren't even open yet, so we stood in line but didn't have to wait long. He checked his bag and got his boarding pass and we took our time walking around, had lunch, schmoozed through a bookstore, where he finally said, "It's time." So we walked to the security area where much tearful kissing and desperate huggage ensued. I watched him work his way up to the metal detectors and through them, and stood on my tiptoes so I could watch him for every last second I could. Then I lost him. He hadn't gone down the hallway to his gate - I'd been watching that, too - but I couldn't see his brown hat anywhere. So I stood there for what felt like forever, pretty sure that he _had_ gone down to his gate and I'd just blinked and missed him, but hanging around just in case, you know? In movies the person flying would either completely change their mind or come back out for just one last kiss, or something... (/hopeless romantic)

So I stood there watching this sea of unfamiliar faces, losing hope every minute but unable to make my feet take me away, when his hat reappeared. And was moving _away_ from the hallway to his gate. My heart just about stopped. I ran over to the security area exit and saw my eyes _weren't_ playing tricks on me, so I hugged him and babbled "ohmygodohmygodohmygod" as he tried to explain that he had to go through immigration (wouldn't it be "emigration"?) before he could go through customs. So we set about to find it and nobody we talk to seems to know what we're even talking about, much less where to send us. So we end up at the other end of the terminal and down a few floors, in the International Arrivals area, and are sent to a door marked Special Alien Registration (though even this was only a "maybe the folks there will know where you need to go"). The officer who opens the door for us looks just as confused as we are about why we're there, and after Alan explained about three times what he'd heard over the intercom (non-US citizens needed to clear immigration before going through customs), tells us, "that's not me, man," and after finding out that Alan had already _been_ through customs when he heard the announcement, and everything had been clear, says that he's good to go, and didn't need to do anything else. I could see the "Gyah!" painted across Alan's face.

The officer then proceeds to ask Alan where he's headed to and why, and when he's coming back to marry me. *blush*

So we finally get back to the security area and say goodbye _again_ (as if once wasn't bad enough). But it was actually better the second time, at least until he disappeared again and I was standing there alone. I make my feet walk away and find a spot I can watch his plane, intending to stay until it pulls out of the gate and everything. But it occurs to me that I'm running up the parking meter, and he probably won't come back anyway (as it's past boarding time), so I made my way down to the parking garage. But the _entire_ way there, I can still see his plane, and when I get into my car, it's sitting _right_there_ in front of me. Gyah. Put it in reverse, drive away.

$18 later, I escaped the garage, and as I got back onto the freeway, I noticed another parking structure with a banner saying "SFO parking now available, $12 a day." Shite, I should have gone there instead of paying hourly. As my dear boy would say, llama llama.

I was surprisingly okay on the drive to mom's to pick up Morgan, and was denied the opportunity to bawl on her shoulder because Rich's daughter and her husband and two kids were there so mom was playing hostess. Guess it's a good thing that I couldn't just wallow. Morgan asked for him as I was packing her into the car to come home, "Where Alan?" I told her, "Alan had to go bye-bye, honey." She frowned. "No Alan bye-bye," and similar mutterings and grumblings. Mom hugged me goodbye and assured me, "He'll come back. He loves you and is really serious about you." Squee. I forced a grin and said, "Yeah, he likes me." "No," she corrected, "he Loves you," which makes me wonder exactly what the two of them have been talking about...

It was hard to fall asleep last night - teddy bears just don't snuggle quite the same - but I was happy to wake up to a phone call at 4 am telling me that Alan had arrived safely. It feels wrong not to be there with him as he's embarking upon this new life, but I have unresolved business of my own here.

Best wishes and prayers and love are being sent across the Atlantic.