I've only made it about three and a half months in this house, and I hardly live here any more. Though lately this is true in the literal sense, I feel it is also growing more and more accurate in a figurative sense. It's been more than two weeks since I've slept here, between mom's house in Jersey, Peter's place a few blocks away and visiting my sister in DC. I haven't partaken of my lovely queen-sized since the night of the 16th, and that was just one night. I spent the four nights before that at my mom's house. Though I am in my room right at this moment, I won't be sleeping here tonight.

Tonight, a few of my housemates are throwing a New Year's party. Not a big one, I'm assured. I was assured of this after I announced my disinvolvement. Why would I do this? Well, apparently, some "friends" wanted to throw a New Year's party but didn't have an appropriate facility so they offered to "help out" if we'd throw it at our house. Supposedly this aid was to be exclusively financial. Well. "Friends" was actually "friend" and not by my reckoning. No, this generous individual is actually the ex-boyfriend of one of my current housemates, assuming she hasn't been stupid enough to get back together with him yet in which case he wouldn't be her ex anymore, right?

For a bit more background info, this lovely gentleman lived in my current house for the previous three years, only moving out this past September when we new folk moved in. This person also has serious self-esteem issues and an earth-shattering need for acceptance which is demonstrated by his insistence on having a "cool" legacy. He is also well past an age when his immaturity can be attributed to being a stupid college student.

So, shortly after he left her, he showed up trashed at our Halloween party, proceeded to throw a shit fit at me for changing the "rules" of the house, and then got in a screaming fight with his ex-girlfriend which ended with him throwing his ring at her. What exactly the reasoning behind that was, I don't know. Maybe she gave it to him or something, but anyway, she was bleeding, he calmed down, and we couldn't find anyone big enough to throw him out of the house before he pretended to be a rational human being again.

And for some reason, our mutual friends don't get why I refuse to have anything to do with a party sponsored by him.

"I don't want a cat. Not ever again."

I got cats for my sister's 14th birthday. She just turned 18 this month. Four years of cats is too many, I said. They smell and they pee the nicest carpet in the house for no reason. You have to clean out the litter box for them. They shed. I hate getting cat hair on everything. They claw up the furniture and they don't go for walks and you have to take them to the vet, and I really don't want cats.

This little fellow is named after a sun god, but he is absolutely as kittenly as can be. Across the floor he bats: a ball of tinfoil, a pink rubber ball, a little plastic baby Jesus. He also attempts to chase the light from a flashlight. He is brown with darker stripes--a good solid calico kitty. His eyes are an amber yellow to my cats' yellow green.

He falls asleep in the arms of perfect strangers and nearly changes the mind of a girl who doesn't ever want a cat again.

While I have been thoroughly delinquent in posting, I'd like to thank Leah for adding me to her sidebar! I find that her approach to blogging is pretty similar to my own: using everyday experiences to relate some sort of sentiment, so if by some strange freak of nature you like what I write, definitely give her a read. :)

And just like that, he's gone. It was my own doing, so it oughtn't have been surprising. I left him at the gate, and now he's miles above the earth, somewhere between here and Fort Lauderdale. When I get back to my mother's house, a quick and belated safety charm.

At least it may be good for his flight home.

Wind to thy wings.

I lose myself in days.

Rain and grey somehow make time move faster as does the unavailability of fresh clothes. I haven't been home since about 8 o'clock Thursday night, but since then I've done a thousand things.

The house glowed in every red, blue, yellow, green and white that can be made incandescent. Tinsel, garlands and glass hang off the chandeliers, shelves, rafters, doorways, windows and walls. Beneath the riotous festivity, vaguely peculiar paintings adorn the walls. The figures in them are uniformly tall and thin with proportionally large eyes, hands, feet. As if every character in every image was being viewed through some lens of adolescence. The Masterpiece hung largely in the center of the longest wall, a man collapsed into his spaghetti as the woman opposite him looks disinterested. My favorite part of the image, though, was that the tiled pattern of the resturaunt floor was warped in the reflection of the single table leg.

So, I have the nation's capitol and all its amazing resources at my disposal. Gallery upon gallery...museum upon...well right next to other museum. And what did I do today? Lay in my sister's dorm room and reread a trashy fantasy book that I'd already read. Yeah. So I decided today that I don't give a damn what sort of road trip I'm on. This was my first really honestly empty day of winter vacation and dammit, I'm not moving.

Tomorrow, I'll only have a few hours here before departure which is only at my insistance that I'd like to be back in Philadelphia sort of early. So, I can shop for a few more presents or I can hit a few choice museums, or I can try to do a little of each. The sort of city that this is, I can probably find one of my presents without much difficulty. Not that I know what I'm looking for, but I should at least be able to find it...I think. I need one present by Sunday, if I'm going to get it at all, one present for...Wednesday? Is that blasted holiday on Wednesday? And one final one that I'll need in the first couple days of January. No pressure, right? Right.

Greetings from Washington DC. Hope you're all enjoying your winters.

I remember the leaving. There were socks, cat-ribbons. Once there was bread and posters. Always goodbye-cheek-girly kisses and "I'll see you soon, ok?"

I love to give presents because people love to get presents. I also love to get presents.

It fascinates me that I ordered Peter's Winter Holiday present at about 3pm yesterday and that my doorbell might ring any minute with the package. Which leads me to think that perhaps I should put some clothes on.

I'm leaving today. Not for a long time, but finals are over and I'm going home to make some present money, so I can bring my sister something nice when I see her for her birthday. More specifically, present money so that I can buy other people holiday gifts after I buy my sister her birthday presents. heh. I'm just all over the place today. What I mean, I guess is that I hate leaving places, and that...I just don't know, really.

At last, this term is over. Finally. Complete with one late-night paper-writing session and cramming for the exam two hours before it starts. Complete with flirting with the professor. Complete with hateful final critiques and being guilted over feeling as if I'd done something right. Heaven forbid, after all. And this is what I'll have to put up with for the next two and a half years, this staff.

Complete with the customary juggling of priorities versus responsibilities which, no, are not actually priorities. Complete with incredible triumphs and small disappointments in the things that really matter to me. Complete with ballet slippers. Complete. And over....finally.

Thanks to Peter's sharp tongue and stonehenge-accuracy biological clock, it has been pointed out to me that I get incredibly....difficult...about every 28 days. And it's all documented right here! There and I never bought all that "moody" pms bullshit. Showed me.

A perfect calm, bright sunlight, boyfriend-recording, singing abot sunlight. Mmm....wet hair, shopping, football? theater. Everything is working out thoroughly passably. Singing. Singing and guitar? Library books, splinters, new chapstick. Missing you.

When I woke up this morning, there were already two or three inches of snow on the ground. I didn't know for a few minutes. Actually, when I first opened my poor near-sighted eyes, I looked out my window, which faces a wall, and was disappointed at the lack of snow. Damn those meteorologists and their giving of false hopes, I thought. After I put my lenses in, however, I discovered the reality of the situation. Well. What an occasion. First snow of the year, indeed the biggest single snowfall I'd seen in a few years. This calls for dressing up. Oh yes. I dressed all in white except for my jeans and my sneakers. White underwear, white socks, and white tank top under a white, sparkly sweater. I even did my hair. At this very moment I have two tiny ponytails a couple of inches past my forehead. And all of this was before 8:30 in the morning.

Yes, this was intended to be a very busy day. Not hectic and running around, at least not til evening, but busy and full of work. In the photo lab around 9:30, I gushed to a classmate on the topic of my love of snow. Yes. It looked absolutely lovely from the fourth floor. She agreed. Would the school close for snow? We didn't know. It got to be ten thirty, and there was still no notice. Surely they would have announced a closing by then. Ten forty-five. Oh, and the university will have an emergency snow-closing today. All classes after 2pm are cancelled and university facilities will all close early today. Including the photo lab. Well, in order to send all the employees home by 2, they have to start shutting down the labs at 1:30. One thirty. As opposed to the regular Thursday closing time of 9:30. There are no photo classes in that lab on Thursdays. Eight hours. The photo students lost eight entire hours of open lab time in which to work on their final projects. Due: Monday.

Stupid snow.

Go to art history. I got to the front of my house, after class, before realizing that I needed to go check the callbacks list in the theater. Great. All the way there, all the way back. Callbacks for the student-directed as well as readthrough of the mainstage show are both pushed back to tomorrow. Great. Instead of having two simultaneous events on Thursday and one other event on Friday, I now have three simultaneous events on Friday. Perfect.

I hate snow.

And it really is all about time. Days pass without my really noticing as I frantically rush to complete projects for the end of the term. Not enough hours in the day. But every one there is has been carefully planned and plotted. Some of my agenda I've been able to keep to, some I have not, but it will all be a matter of hours and minutes, too soon. I just said the other day (day...week...month) that I'd misplaced a season. Well, I really have. All this work, papers, prints, what was I doing? Maybe I was doing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. Enjoying myself. Figuring out life.

I just wish I had something to show for it.

Philadelphia--Drexel--with its city blocks, sidewalks, every shrub carefully landscaped. For ease, that is. Ease of care. Somewhere for the gardener to stand in the wee hours of the morning, carefully trimming and shaping every bush to look like the one right next to it. Most of them are evergreens, so that they are still opaque in the winter and...more importantly, so that they don't drop leaves. Trees are somewhat scarce, here in the city. Mostly, they are tiny and slim and recently planted. There are some older trees in peoples' yards, but most city dwellings, unfortunately, don't include yards. Though there are large groupings of adult trees, they are largely found in parks...parks to which I have no time to meander. And so, for the first time, I feel as if I missed the changing of the leaves. The reason for this is that I really never made it home at all during the time when all the woods and farms would be golden or red or plum. I really should have.

I misplaced autumn, this year.

happy december.