Here I am. I made my way here just fine… and with a disappointing lack of interesting New York characters along the way. Oh, well. I have tomorrow and Friday and Saturday and Sunday to make up for this grievous lack.

The strangest thing thus far is that I am typing on a Mac. The pet owners use Firefox as their browser, so I’m comfortable there. And that’s good.

I also didn’t feel like venturing out for dinner tonight since I was carrying my “weekend” bag all way here and am just tired. Tomorrow night, when it’s just my messenger bag and me, I’ll explore area eateries. I had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and made Junebug (the doggie) a dish of her food. She wasn’t particularly interested in it right now, but she did express an interest in my PB&J. Since her owners said it’s ok for her to eat most people food, I shared the crusts with some peanut butter on them with her. She enjoyed that and wagged her tail; now she’s back to missing her parents.

So we’re going to watch “Memoirs of a Geisha”, one of the DVDs I brought with me. It’s a fairly long movie, so it will eat up most of the night for me… which is good. I am tired tired tired. We’ll go for our evening walk around 8:30 or 9, and then call it a night.

Birthday. Rah rah rah.

I’ve spent three-quarters of the evening crying for no apparent reason. I cried when I got home, before dinner, after dinner and after dessert. I am puffy and swollen and gross.

There’s no reason for it and I’m even angrier about that. Restatement: there’s no clear reason for it, other than a depressive state.

LJ tried to get me to snap out of it via IM, but I am just too pig-headed and stubborn to respond to that in any way. He was insistent that the glass is half-full and that things are going to get better for me; I wish I could believe that wholeheartedly and not just to placate my friends who mean well. But I don’t. I even told him that he knows me - I’ve never seen the glass as half-full. I feel like I’m perpetually running on empty.

I can’t fault him or any of my other friends or family for trying to get through. I know that I’m just impossible. More reasons I will end up alone… unless Conservative ethics take over the entire nation and they institute a marital draft, I know how I’m ending up.

Earlier today, I got a lovely email from my friend Elizabeth wishing me a happy birthday and telling me that she and my other friends are happy to celebrate it since they have me in their lives; this morning, I choked up reading it. I think I still would. However, I almost feel like a lot of my friends haven’t known me long enough or well enough to know that this isn’t just a stage. This is me. And maybe, with time, people learn that and learn to stay far, far away.

I wish there was some mystical, magical switch that I could access in a dream or something that would turn things around - so I’d start believing that things will be OK and that everything I should have accomplished last year or two years ago or three years ago will come to pass sooner rather than later. As it stands, I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel. At all.

I’m in a bad way and a bad place right now. I can get through the days well enough because I have work to distract me in pleasant way and allow me to feel competent and smart and funny and “good.” I don’t concentrate on my looks or my weight or my loneliness there. But that’s a surface distraction; it’s got great value and merit, don’t get me wrong. It has helped me to feel more value and self-esteem than I have in a long, long time. I can’t lose myself in it, though. That’s not healthy.

Finding the balance is difficult.

In her email, Elizabeth asked me for my goal for this 28th year of my life - “make it a good one.” I was really stumped when I thought about it. I don’t have goals in the way she was intending it, I think. I focus on things like “moving out”, “getting a car”, “getting out of debt”, etc. I looked around for inspiration and my eyes settled on my calendar at my desk which had a quote from Lao-Tzu… “Do you have the patience to wait till your mud settles and the water is clear?”

I wrote her back that I was going to try to be patient and let the mud settle and the water run clear.

We’ll see. I’m waiting for laundry because I have to pack up enough clothing for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, as well as a book or two, and some DVDs to keep me occupied. I won’t worry about styling my hair - and I won’t worry about makeup. I don’t have to impress the doggie I’m sitting for.

It’s 10:30. This is going to be a late night. Let’s see how it all goes. I’ll be able to write tomorrow, so I can fill in the blanks then.

I just checked my grades for my classes… and I got a 25 out of 25 on the paper that I was freaking out about and stressing over.

So that’s good. That’s really good. I am greatly relieved.

I have class tomorrow night, but it’s also my birthday dinner with family, so I don’t know what I’m going to do. I can miss the class chat, but I don’t want to. Maybe I’ll attend for the first hour and then cut out after 7:00 for dinner, or vice versa.

I have a chapter to read for class tomorrow in any event, so that’s what I’ll set about doing now since it’s 10:00. It’s raining and will continue to rain tomorrow, so I should sleep fairly well.

However, it’s a pretty weird phenomenon I have going with my birthday. Every year, I wake up around 2 a.m. on the morning of my birthday, sit awake for a bit, and then fall back asleep. I told this to my mother several years ago, and she told me that she went into labor with me at 2 in the morning. I was born at 9:38 in the morning. So, I’m either just internalizing the fact and waking up because my internal clock knows that it’s 2 a.m. and wants to be funny, or I am actually experiencing some strange sympathetic labor sensation - sans pain.

Whatever. Either way, it’s fine. I sleep restlessly anyway. I just have to decide what the heck I’m wearing tomorrow with the rain and all. Pants and a shirt, maybe heels. I wanted to wear a skirt, but if it’s going to be as cold and rainy and windy as it was today, then the answer is NO.

My iPod and cell phone both need charging.

Today was my brother’s girlfriend’s birthday and if she liked birthdays, I’d use this space to wish her a happy B-day, since it’s just cool that we’re on consecutive days and stuff, but since she hates birthdays, I won’t say “HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!”

Well, plus tax it came to $13.77.

I bought myself a pretty sparkly “right hand” ring. It looks almost like a vintage ring I saw on eBay for several hundred dollars… but $12.99 at TJ Maxx was infinitely better.

Today, I spent the day with Kofi and Theresa. We had Sunday brunch at the Shubox Cafe in Cedar Grove, and then went to a few furniture places so they could look for furniture and a new bed and stuff. Ikea was a miss, Bob’s Discount Furniture left us with a bad taste in our mouths because the salesman was practically STALKING us from the moment we walked into the store, and we finally went to Raymour & Flanigan, where they found the perfect bed frame and the perfect mattress, so that was good.

We went to a few other stores - A.C. Moore and T.J. Maxx (apparently, the initials and last name thing were the theme du jour) - and I got some extra beading wire since the beads I bought yesterday were too heavy to stay put on regular beading thread, and the fun sparkly ring.

Now I’m relaxing while my family watches “The Sopranos.” I might go to sleep extra special early since the whole daylight savings time thing screwed up my sleep a little last night, and I woke up at the equivalent of 6 am after falling asleep around 1 in the morning. I don’t have any fun new nighttime reading.

I need new books to read, especially since I’ll be “away” pet-sitting from Wednesday night onward.

Luckily, I’m allowed to use their computer and internet connection, so I can attend class on Thursday night AND I can still update this portion of the site remotely. This is a benefit, indeed. All I have to do now is figure out which clothing to bring to last me for the whole weekend (I can probably get away with bringing sweatpants for dog-walking and a pair of black pants for anything else), which books/DVDs to bring, and to make sure I have CASH on me for food and any entertainment (if I opt to catch a movie or anything.)

As it turns out, my Amazon.com order won’t arrive until AFTER I’m already there and it’s too late to change the shipping. So… I’m going to go to Barnes and Noble during lunch tomorrow, probably, and get one (or two or three) of the four books on my list:

Kafka on the Shore - by Haruki Murakami
Madeleine is Sleeping - by Sarah Shun-lien Bynum
Snow Flower and the Secret Fan - Lisa See
The Hummingbird’s Daughter - Luis Alberto Urrea

Or maybe the USPS will prove amazingly wonderful and deliver my books sooner than expected. Though I doubt it. I’ll have to go to the bookstore. That’s not a horrible thing. I could save a good bit of money going through Amazon. I’ll just have to slow down reading and bring a CD case full of DVDs to spend time and conserve space instead.

Wrist hurts, head hurts, feet hurt… sleep now.

According to the Weather Channel and ForecastFox, it’s going to rain tomorrow and Tuesday (my birthday). I enjoy it when it rains on my birthday. It won’t be raining all day Tuesday - just in the morning - but at least I know I’ll sleep well the night before.

Google’s April Fool’s Day joke was pretty cool: Google Romance Beta.

Kingdom of Loathing also stepped up by redirecting their home page to a fake “this domain is for sale by Site-Pimp” page.

What did I do today? Well, I woke up and went to the bank, then took myself shopping. I intended to find a new spring purse to match my spring coat, but I was unsuccessful on that front. I found a pair of cute strappy springtime shoes, though, and purchased those. Maybe I’ll snap a photo of them tomorrow.

Anyway, my friend Vin has text messaged me yesterday that he was going to be going to the library today. I texted him back to ask which one and to offer yp my company since I am a library whore… and he called me around 11 today while I was out shopping to tell me he was planning on going to the New York Public Library - Humanities and Social Science Library - on 42nd and 5th. I said I would be glad to come along since I had no other plans.

On the way there, we stopped at Red Robin to redeem my free birthday burger certificate; since I’m on their email mailing list, I get a certificate about a week before my birthday that can be redeemed until about a week after. This was the chosen day. Next stop was NYC - we took the PATH in and then walked up and over to the library. It was a lovely - if slightly humid due to light showers - day for being in New York.

This was my first trip to the Humanities and Social Science Library - it’s probably the best known library facade since it’s the one with the statues of lions perched out front. Their names (at present) are Patience and Fortitude. The library is the main research branch, but it’s specifically the Humanities and Social Science Library.

We sat in the main reading room - which is gorgeous and stately and just a great atmosphere. I might start using that as my sort of “getaway” place some weekends. For the cost of parking (which can be found for free, if I get in early enough) and the cost of PATH fare, I can sit there all day reading. It’s cool and quiet and filled with books and huge windows. I was thinking to myself that it would be an awesome place to be sitting in during a thunderstorm.

So… yeah. It was a good experience.

On the way back, I stopped into a bead store (Fun2Bead) and bought some deep red coral beads and a matte black round flat stone bead. When I got home, I made a simple but pretty cool-looking necklace with them. I also managed to get Vin to stop into Lush store on Broadway with me. I got a couple of Bath Bombs (Sakura and Butterball) and a Bubble Bar (French Kiss).

I could’ve spent a LOT more money there, but I didn’t. I was good and walked out having spent under $20. That counted as a success.

After sitting in the library for a few hours and stopping for those two little shopping excursions, I returned home at around 6:30. I had some cereal for dinner (surprise), changed my bedsheets, did some laundry, made plans for tomorrow with my friends Theresa and Kofi, watched “The Legend of Zorro” and had to tell my parents what I want for my birthday and for my birthday dinner on Tuesday night.

I’m not too into my birthday this year; it’s not that I’m sad about it, but it just marks the passage of time and means that it’s been yet another year where I haven’t accomplished the goals or fulfilled the promises I had set forth for myself this year, last year, or for the past few years prior to that. I was talking about this with the doctor last night and he didn’t argue with me, but basically said that I have to stop being so hard on myself… that he knows it’s almost impossible with my expectations of myself, but he asked me to think about why I feel I have to justify myself and my actions to everyone, and why I feel that I “SHOULD” be doing something or have done something… essentially, where’s this “life schedule” of mine coming from??

While I was at it, I told him that I’d been in a funk for the past two weeks and asking myself who I am in terms of a woman/person/self and not just as a “good employee,” “good student,” “good sister,” “good daughter” or “good friend.” I’ve been feeling really lacking in aspects of my personal development, as well as sort of my interpersonal development. I don’t know who I am in terms of other people or who I am as a person in a relationship - since I haven’t had one. I feel a sense of emptiness and loneliness in that regard. However, I also feel like I haven’t been living my life for a long time… I’ve been dealing with all the other people in this house and in my life - not to say that I don’t love my friends and family - but I’ve been hiding from my crap by helping them through theirs and organizing their lives instead of mine. I want to be able to be selfish and not feel guilty about it, or get chastized by my family or friends.

So… there are lots of things going on in my head right now. And my wrist still hurts. And I have to be moderately early tomorrow to make sure my laundry dries in time. And that I shower. And that I go to Ikea with Theresa and Kofi and have breakfast with them. And that I finish my homework and maybe carve out some time to watch “Memoirs of a Geisha” since my father bought the DVD.

Then Monday is work again, but Monday night I want to bake some cupcakes or something to bring into work on Tuesday for my birthday. It’s my thing… I’ll bring cupcakes to work on my birthday. No need for me to be the only one getting treats.