I don't understand about complimentary colors
And what they say
Side by side they both get bright
Together they both get gray
But he's been pretty much yellow
And I've been kind of blue
But all I can see is
Red, red, red, red, red now
What am I to do
- 'Red, Red, Red' by Fiona Apple on Extraordinary Machine

This week still sucks, but I'm alright. Let's talk about something else. Oh, but I'll say one thing: Stanford recently opened up an iTunes music store where you can download lectures and panels and music for free, and I listened to Steve Jobs' commencement address this morning, and it was surprisingly helpful. He talked about three horrible times in his life: dropping out of college, being fired from Apple, and being diagnosed with terminal cancer, and how all of those things made his life much better in the end, and that he wouldn't have been able to see that at all when they happened, but it's quite obvious now. So, there's that.

I went and looked at an apartment on Sunday. I don't know if I've mentioned yet that I'm moving downtown in January, but I am. Anyways, the apartment is in a great location, right by Chinatown and Kensington Market, about a five minute walk from the subway. It's above a store, which is owned by the landlord, so he's always available and there's good security, especially since there is someone downstairs all day, watching the entrance. Only two of the girls were there, and one of them was the one I'm replacing, but they were so great. They crochet and sew and are in graphic design and one of them bakes and they have wine and cheese parties and they were friendly and funny and I felt at home with them right away. I'm going to meet the other two roommates before fully deciding, but at this point, they would have to be pretty off-putting to make me not want to move in. The room is big and bright and inviting. It will be such a good change for me. Time to get rid of my loft bed, yay! I've had a loft bed for the past two years because without it there would hardly be walking room in my bedroom, but I will not need it at all in this room. It will be nice to be able to actually sit on my bed without hitting my head on the ceiling, and without having to climb a ladder to get there in the first place.

I'm going to go to a MetaFilter Meet-up in a couple of weeks. I wasn't going to go before, but now it's time to get off my ass and actually go places and do things. I don't know why I didn't go to the last one. I should stop being lazy about such potentially wonderful things. I'm also going to keep a watch for the next Trampoline Hall event because I've been intending to go for well over a year and I keep missing it, and I'm going to go to a meeting of the Toronto Hookups Crochet Guild. I have a sweater that my mom made when she was in high school, and I can't figure it out. If they know how she made it, I'll join.

I'm also going to register a domain for this site. I've been intending to do this for a while, and I was going to use space on a server that Chris has access to, but whatever. I've been on the Internet for a long time, I know where to go and who to ask for such things. I've talked to a friend and it's good to go. Now to overcome the indecision about what to name it!

I'm reconsidering grad school. I have been for a while. I don't know... I am smart, and I know it. I like academia for the most part, at least the areas that I haven't yet become disillusioned with. However, I'm graduating in April with an Honours BA in Linguistics, and what the hell am I supposed to do with that? People don't even know what Linguistics IS. I am so tired of living on a student budget (below the poverty line, five years running!), and I don't want to be facing this same dilemma next year but with an MA too. I want something that will set me up for a JOB. A job that doesn't require another 6-7 years of school. Or do I? I don't know. I am looking at Publishing programs at Ryerson and Centennial College. I think both are pretty competitive, so we'll see how that goes. I could always work some shit administration job for a year and re-evaluate. Right now, I am just trying to study and wade through a massive amount of reading and not think about anything else.

I'm up at 5:30, not because of my stupid body waking me up super-early, which it has just recently started to waver on and lets me sleep in to 9:00 (!) sometimes, but because I half-woke up after a dream and then I realised all over again what happened yesterday and started crying. I couldn't stop it, I tried. I thought, "fuck off, please, just let me sleep," but this is insistent. So, woo, five hours of sleep. I'm sure that will help this weekend go better.

I don't know how to do this. I keep thinking that I should have picked up on a sign, any sign, so that I was at least somewhat prepared for this, but the signs were so mixed. I can't look back at last weekend and expect him to break up with me five days later AT ALL. It makes me feel so stupid, like I should have known, like I shouldn't be so surprised, that I shouldn't care so much.

I mean, I have done this before. I have been single, single for so long. I know how to do it, how to be strong and hate the billion couples everywhere and to say, "no, this is better! look at my freedom!" I just don't want to anymore. I don't want to be strong, I want someone to lean on. I don't want to be independent. I mean, I am, but I just... I don't even want to be mad at him, because I care about him so much and all I want is for this not to have happened.

And for no reason! There is no reason! It feels like he just woke up one day and decided to hurt me, with no provocation. And I keep looking back at the last few months and thinking, was that just a lie? Did you tell me you cared about me because you hoped you could make it true again? Am I stupid to have believed you?

I have two midterms and an assignment due this week, and I am asking for deferrals, but school doesn't let up. I'm just pushing this pressure into another pressure-filled week, and I don't know how I'm going to do this. I feel like this is the worst possible time. I can't even make myself care to study, because I hurt and that's so immediate and loud and I can't get through it to the things I need to do.

I have been so stressed out lately. I've felt more than ever that I'm at the end of my rope, and then my best friend, the person I tell everything to, just cut and ran. And I want to call him and tell him how my day went, but he's the last person I should be calling right now, and I hate it. I'm worried about him, and a few days ago I would have done anything to help, but now I have to help me, and it hurts so much that those things contradict each other now.

I know I'll be okay, that time will make this hurt less, blah blah blah, but right now everything reminds me of him and I can't stop crying. The TTC, Chinatown, Café Crêpe, Pages Bookstore, even Romni's -- everything I love about this city has Chris stamped all over it.

And he wants to be friends, and fuck... I've never wanted to be just friends! I've liked him since the day I met him. I can't just turn that off, how can you ask me that? I can't... I don't know how to do that. I don't want to lose him, I want to know him, but I -- how do you DO that? It is just always going to hurt. And what are we supposed to do as friends? We never were friends. We went for supper on dates. We went on walks as dates. We did everything in that context. How is that not supposed to break my heart?

I just feel like I got pushed into last year, before I met him and hadn't dated anyone for seven years and wasn't meeting anyone, and you know what? Nothing has changed except that I met him. There is no one else. And now I am almost done school and... fuck, I am so pessimistic and afraid of this.

I'm trying to think of positive things. I don't have to buy as many presents. I suddenly have my weekends back and I don't have this question of whether to do homework or be with Chris. Ugh, that doesn't feel positive. I can do whatever I want, but I already did... and now I can't, because what I want isn't available anymore...

I have figured out one thing. It's always hard to know whether I wanted to stay in Toronto because of him or because of my own reasons (as if he isn't my own reason, whatever), and I know now that I want to stay regardless. I like it here, I like the city and how safe it is and knowing where the cool little shops are and the friends I have here (who have been so great), and I like being this far from and this close to my family.

I have so many pictures, and no idea what to do with them. I have to break into a sealed envelope addressed to my parents because it has pictures of us in it. I don't even want to see pictures of his cats, because they're just another thing I can't have and I should stop. I should stop loving them. I should stop crying, I should stop loving, I should just stop. I should stop re-evaluating things, I should stop remembering and trying to figure it out, I should stop starting emails to him, I should just stop. Stop thinking, start studying. Stop caring and crying and wasting my time on something that's not going to change. I know I'm not being rational about it, but hey, welcome to my week.

Fuck, I seriously thought he was joking when I started reading the email. And, for the record, email? On your lunch break? Not cool, dude. I deserved more than that and you know it and I don't give a flying fuck if you're sorry, that doesn't make it better. You didn't do this fair. I was worth talking to, months ago. And I don't care if you don't know how, you fucking learn how, because that's what relationships are. Next time, just tell her that you're not going to try. That you don't try. That you stew about it in your head for months and give no indication, and then just break her heart without a reason. Save her the trouble. Because why am I spending my time going to your place every weekend, dragging all my shit an hour's ride downtown, living out of my fucking backpack half the week for a year, and thinking of things to do with you, to give you, to tell you, if you're NOT EVEN GOING TO TALK TO ME? Why am I bringing things up when they bother me, why am I being honest with you? I was so worried about you this week when everything went to hell at your job, and I should have been worried about ME.

I can't even eat. I feel like I'm going to vomit, all the time, and I never do.

I shouldn't even post this, but if I'm going to post about depression and my personal shit like that, and you don't even care enough to break up with me in person, then fuck it.

I wrote the rest of this post before I got an email in which Chris broke up with me. So, I don't care to edit it anymore or add anything to it. I don't really feel like saying anything more than that right now.

---

This blog post is about me. And yes, Nata, I had mostly forgotten about you too, and it did seem when we were friends that you would become (admit being?) an atheist and I would be the pastor, but that part got mixed up. Now you're the one who loves Jesus and I know he couldn't be real.

However, my journey out of faith wasn't quite like this: "First you find yourself doing laundry on Sundays, next you find yourself doubting if any spiritual experience you'd previously testified to was the result of anything but the bad cafeteria food you'd been trying to digest."

Yes, I let certain things slide as I realised they didn't matter. Legalistic things. Unreasonable things, like the ban on swearing, which I've been meaning to address in this blog. But I fought to keep my faith, and it was terrifying, and I hated it, and I didn't get a lick of help from Mr. 'love you so much and am always calling out to you' God. And my previously-testified-to spiritual experiences all happened long before I encountered the horrors of bible college cafeteria food. All of them. Also before the women we prayed for so hard were killed by cancer or Lou Gehrig's or CF, before I was in a car accident and realised that none of the people in my church actually gave a shit, before I realised that gay people were just like us, before I realised that the Promised Land already had inhabitants in it and they were killed in a mass (fictional) genocide.

I thought that going to bible college was my last hope, that it was either that or losing my faith, and I was sure that meant depression and probably suicide. But bible college sealed the deal. Systematic theology said, hey! Look at these "tensions" in the Bible and how people have tried to deal with them, and then let's poke holes in all of their arguments! Look at all these problems that you haven't even thought of yet! Look at how there are some verses that say that God will keep you forever, and others that say that he'll abandon you and deceive you so that you can't come back (1, 2)! What a swell dude.

And, you know, I tried to reconcile it, but the only answers I got were "you can't question God's character!" (even when he's commanding genocide), and "I just KNOW that God is good, you should have faith, pray about it."

I guess all I'm trying to say was that I didn't just gradually get lazy and slip away from the faith. I fought for it. Also, I didn't leave because of tragedy or people being assholes or any of that. My faith left me because I realised that God wasn't good. Not at all. Of course, that was a time of losing Christianity, not theism.

What I didn't expect out of all of this was the position I would end up in. I am happier with my thoughts on the universe and "spiritual" things and moral codes than I ever was. It is not threatening to realise that other people -- similar people -- disagree with me. I don't have this constant worry that maybe I'm not doing precisely what God wants me to be doing at that moment, a worry that I never truly noticed until it stopped. I do what I want, and what I want to do is generally what keeps me and other people happy, and not to harm people, and there is no Ultimate Expression of that, no Right Path, and so I can relax about it. I still like the fruit of the Spirit, and that's enough reason to pursue them.

I only have one exam this semester. The exam period ends on the 21st. So when is my exam? The 19th. At 7:00 PM. Of course. It couldn't be on a nice day, like the 8th or something, or DURING THE DAY. Argh. Oh well, I'm likely going to be on campus a lot during the exam period anyways. One of my bosses signed me up for twice as many hours than I can possibly do during school, so I'm going to take advantage of that during the break and make some coin. Woo, transcription editing!

Of course, this is all assuming that there isn't a strike on Monday. CUPE (course directors, graduate assistants, teacher's assistants) is negotiating a raise with the administration, and there has been a strike vote, which means that they're willing to strike if there isn't a satisfactory offer. This is necessary, because there's no way the administration would budge otherwise. Negotiations are supposed to finish on Saturday, but that probably means Sunday. I've been hearing horror stories about the last time this happened -- they were out for two months or something? And Lorna Marsden, our lovely president (ahem), has announced that if CUPE strikes, all classes are cancelled. So, even though only one of my classes has a TA, I can just go fuck myself and find some other way to graduate this year. Thanks a lot, Lorna. Apparantly only the Senate is allowed to cancel classes, so she might be BSing it, but who knows. Negotiations Update page.

So far as I understand (and I could be totally wrong), CUPE is upset about two things: Lorna got a 30% raise (or so they say), whereas everybody else in the university got a 3-3.5% raise, and CUPE got 1.5% or something. So, they're asking for 30%. Clearly they're not going to get it, but that's not the point. Half of our grad students are here studying something in Arts, and being taught to question power and the structure of corporations and why exactly there is such a huge gap between the rich and poor in our society, so obviously that's going to be questioned. The other thing they want is this: They want TA/GA pay to rise with tuition. Now, the university has countered and said that they simply won't raise tuition next year, which works out to the same thing next year. No tuition hike = no raise. But, you know, the year after that, maybe that means a tuition hike and no raise. CUPE is all "we gotta be able to live, you know" and the administration is all "fuck off, we like our money," so... obviously I'm on the side of the poor students. Here's something else they're asking for: Teacher's assistants make $12K in two semesters. Graduate (research) assistants make $8K. They do the same number of hours. They pay the same tuition (at least 6K). So, GAs are asking to make the same amount as TAs, or at least closer. The other thing is that TAs get $600 back from their tuition, and GAs only get $300 or so back. Apparantly research assistants just aren't worth as much?

Anyways. I'm just hoping that there isn't a strike, or that if there is, it will be very short. I would, in fact, like to graduate this year without having to be in class until May. That would be nice.

So, I was reading this Ask Metafilter thread about the morality and logistics of dying a cat different colours for festive occasions, and someone linked to this story about a farm in Alaska that injects dye into eggs, resulting in multi-coloured chicks. That is funny and awesome and SO TEMPTING all at the same time! :)

Advice to heed! "From a practical standpoint, I can suggest one method not to use: do not gather 5 people in a small bathroom, hot-box it, and then watercolour your white cat. Just sayin'. The cat didn't actually seem to mind too much, but we sure got paint on every single surface in there! This was almost 10 years ago, and the cat in question is still alive and well and demanding affection, so clearly no permanent harm was done to her. Also, be aware that if your cat's paws get wet for any reason, you will be the lucky owner of furniture/carpeting with tiny colourful pawprints all over them."

Also: "When we were younger, we spent a lot of time altering our indoor cats' appearances. None of our techniques resulted in any animal's physical suffering, and they remained crazy yet affectionate. Don't use food coloring; the stuff rubs off the second it touches anything damp. The best coloring technique: cherry kool-aid dip. (It helped that our cats liked water.) Rinse well -- and scrub the tub after; that stuff will stain like a mofo -- and you have a pink cat for a couple of months. (I don't recommend grape. It fades to a nasty grey color.)"

I have to thank Dani for mentioning Fiona Apple's new album, extraordinary machine. So so good!

This is what the sky looks like at 7 o'clock in the morning on a Saturday (I had to be at work for 8 for Convocation):


These flowers were so pretty but I have no idea what they are:


Trees in autumn are pretty:


Sunset as seen from my office (not in Linguistics, the one with the window) this afternoon:


Not much else to say. I had a test this morning, a film review due tomorrow, a term paper and assignment next week, other tests and papers on the horizon, still tons of reading to do (though I'm still not behind, hooray!). I did a lot of coding today for work -- actually stayed an extra hour and a half because I got really into it. CSS is wonderful but it's a pain in the ass when I don't remember how to do it. It's been a while since I started a site from scratch; I should get back into practice. Sometimes I think I should have done something like that in school. I like designing sites. I like being picky about fonts and spacing and various elements like that. Everything I know is surface stuff though, and self-taught. Anyways, it's fun.

The un-fun thing about the site I'm working on is that they have a design in mind and it is cringe-worthy in some aspects, and I am quite reluctant to commit such sins. Sometimes you should shut up and let the customer be right, and sometimes you should keep the customer from looking like an ass. We'll see how this one goes.

So, I bought cover-up today for the first time in my life, because Chris gave me a hickey. Awesome. This also happened in the first 2 weeks or so that we were dating, and I had to a) go to Meredith's huge birthday party, and b) go to a job interview. Tomorrow I get to go work at York's fall convocation. Luckily, our irritatingly Muslim (as in, I am Muslim therefore I will lecture you on how you should not show people your shoulders because it's against my religion) coworker will not be there. I'm sure there's a law in there about hickeys somewhere, and I just don't want to hear about it.

Anyways, it's a great feeling, walking into a drugstore at 24 years old and asking a woman with too much makeup on what to buy because I wouldn't have a clue where to look. She took one look at me and said, "Oh, you're very fair," and walked over and pulled out a concealer stick (?) and it was a pretty good match. She said she picked it because it was the lightest shade in the store. Yes, thank you, I know. I'm white. Whiter than my boyfriend even though he has basically the same background as me, whiter than everyone else in the store.

Last year, when I went for my physical, there's this echo-cardiogram thing that they do, where they hook up all these electrodes to you and get a printout of your heartbeat. My nurse was Hispanic or something and when she pulled the blanket off me, she exclaimed, "You SO WHITE! No, like, you SO white! You tan? (laughs) No, no, you BURN. Wow, you so WHITE!" and I'm sitting there half-naked with some machine hooked up to me and saying, yes, yes I am in fact white, SO white, thank you for noticing.

Sometimes Chris and I joke that my being whiter than him makes me better than him, because jokes about racism are absurd and therefore funny. I figure that I'm whiter, but he's male, so we're about even. Of course, my red hair might indicate Neanderthal ancestry, so maybe he's still got one up on me.

From this page about Depo-Provera (the birth control shot):

Weight changes
Weight changes may occur due to increased appetite. Average weight gain is 3 pounds by the end of the 1st year and 5 to 7 pounds, total, by the end of the 2nd year.

33.5% of women on Depo-Provera gain weight
20% of women on Depo-Provera lose weight
10% of women on Depo-Provera have no change in their weight.

Am I missing something? That's only 63.5%. What happened to the other 36.5% of women on Depo-Provera? Apparantly they didn't lose or gain weight, but there was also no change in their weight. How magical!

I was looking this up because I'm on antibiotics and one of my roommates said to me, "Don't antibiotics lower the effectiveness of birth control?" and I had never heard that. Answer: antibiotics lowers the effectiveness of birth control pills, but not the effectiveness of Depo-Provera. Once again, witness the goodness of the Shot!

Being Stalked By Intelligent Design from American Scientist Magazine. Interesting article on how the scientific community hasn't taken the ID movement very seriously at all and are now starting to see it as a threat as it's affecting public education in parts of the USA.

I'm going to the Creative Sewing and Needlework Festival on Saturday. I fear that I will spend all of my money. :)

Dr. Berman's Sex RX: on Dr. Jennifer Berman, a urologist who has popularized Female Sexual Dysfunction and is now getting paid big bucks by drug companies to research it and develop a sort of female Viagra. I've read most of For Women Only: A Revolutionary Guide to Overcoming Sexual Dysfunction and Reclaiming Your Sex Life which she wrote with her sister, Laura, a sex therapist. It was interesting, but I wasn't aware that there was such controversy over their research.

Dani has brought it to my attention that this blog looks like CRAP in Internet Explorer. Now, I recently acquired an iBook, so I have looked at it in the Mac version of IE, and yes it looks like dung, but it is not doing the weird things that she says it's doing in hers (i.e. loading content half-way down the screen instead of at the top where I told it to put it). Also, the background looks like crap. So, my dear PC readers, if you are viewing this in IE, I would like to introduce you to the joy that is FireFox. It will block most of the pop-up ads, allow tabbed browsing, along with a billion other features that I have fallen in love with, and LAST BUT NOT LEAST it will render my blog properly. Would you like to know why? Well, it's simple. When I look at the copyright licence for IE for Mac, it is copyrighted 1995-2001. It's four years old, which is ancient in computer-time. The internet has skyrocketed since then, and web developers are introducing web standards so that HTML and CSS and all that fun stuff is used to its full potential. However, Microsoft is not playing that game. It refuses to write its browser in a way that is compatible with the way that other browsers interpret code, so it is stuck in the dark ages. Liberate yourselves, dear readers. FireFox will bring you into the new millennium.

Okay, thanksgiving. Chris and I were in Ottawa last weekend, so we saw his family, and we stopped off to see my parents on the way home, so we opted not to rent a car two weekends in a row, and thus we are in Toronto. But I am still thankful for things. Here are a few:

- living in a safe, interesting city
- access to higher education (hello, OSAP!), health care, public transit, etc. etc. (first world! yeah!)
- for the Internet -- where would I be without it?!
- for having friends to talk to me about their own experiences with anti-anxiety/anti-depressant meds, and for the fact that I've been off of them for six months now and they totally worked
- that I've made it through the bulk of my deconversion process and things have worked out well
- for parents who took the "well, if we don't get to hang out with you in heaven, we're going to make the most of it while we're on earth" route rather than the shunning route when I deconverted
- heck, for my parents -- you guys astound me and I miss you!
- for Girls Nights with Meredi, Cat, and Linda -- for the frank conversations, chocolate, alcohol, and laughter
- for kittens that cuddle with me when I feel sick
- for the amazing, intelligent, confident women professors who take time to get to know me and share their knowledge and experiences
- and, of course, for Christopher, who makes me extremely happy for more reasons than I have space to list here.

This is one of the first Thanksgivings in which I'm not directing my thanks to Anyone. I think that's okay, though. The fact that I don't have some Mysterious Wholly Other to address this to doesn't diminish my sense of luckiness or happiness or gratefulness. A lot of the things that I've wanted for a long time have worked out this year, and I appreciate that.

Happy (Canadian) Thanksgiving! (hey, someone research for me why we have a different thanksgiving from the yanks, will ya?)

This week's post brought to you by my new iBook! Yay!

Chris and I went to Ottawa last weekend for my friend Sandra's wedding:

Sandra, Steve, best man Jeff, maid of honour Amanda:

Sandra signing the register:


Sandra made her dress, her mother-in-law's dress, and the flower girl's dress. I miss her a lot, I haven't seen her much since she moved to Ottawa, but we've been tight for a long time. I worked for a year after high school and Sandra was one of my only friends who still lived in Brockville at the time, so we hung out a lot. She said in her speech at the reception that she can't wait to be that dorky 85 year old couple at the mall wearing the same ugly sweaters, the couple that make you wonder, "How did they ever FIND each other?" That's so Sandra -- she has this great ability to step back and just LOVE things.

I also like it that she didn't wear white. Janice is getting married next summer and is planning on wearing green. I like this idea of ditching the white dresses, partially because it gets rid of the whole VIRGIN = UNDEFILED GOODS baggage. I don't know what I would do at my wedding, I don't really think about it very much. That kind of hindered my social skills in bible college, since there were more than a few huddles in the hallways around bridal magazines, leading to questions like "What kind of dress/flowers/favours are you going to have at your wedding, Heather Ann?" I never had an answer to that, except a) I wasn't dating anyone at the time, let alone engaged, and I think a wedding should be planned TOGETHER, you NUTS, and b) STOP BLOCKING THE ENTIRE HALLWAY, I AM TRYING TO WALK SOMEWHERE. Oh yes, and c) am I the only one who DIDN'T go to school just to get engaged? Oh. Okay then.

I recorded a conversation today with my friend Cat for an assignment for Sociolinguistic Variation & Change, and it's VERY weird to hear myself recorded. My voice is higher than I realise. It's such a strange feeling; I have this idea about how I present and how I look and sound and such, and it's weird to realise that it's inaccurate.