Girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes

Night full of nightmares about essays. Getting them marked, handed in, submitting them, not completing them on time.

Please let up, head-space. I would like a day off.

...I don't know how much more of this I can take. I don't know if it was gearing up to be like this before I left home. I don't know. Adjustment period, etc.

Tried scrolling through my phone book to find numbers of people to call. People for silly conversation with, people who know without explaining. No one answered.

God this feels familiar and self indulgent at the same time.

Mother with grandmother in Cornwall; grandmother has pleurisy.

I got kicked out of my globalized world politics seminar today. It was two hours as opposed to a single hour, and thus when three hit, I got twitchy - and then we went until four and oh God. Two hours of politics takes preparation time. At the end, my tutor was all 'uh, go to your academic adviser and tell him I think this is a waste of your time'. So I attempt to get to my (now already started) history seminar, only can't work out what room it's in, practically have a panic attack over that combined with having to alter my schedule at Week Three and head up for my advisor's room.

He is not there. I shoot him an email (yay Macbook!) and curl up on the table outside his office in order to wait out anxiety attack/see if he shows. Run into John who was in politics lecture this morning; pass conversation. Freak him out with realization I am twenty-one, not random eighteen year old (note to self - people react way differently to my being three years older) Adviser shows up, waves me in and I get to unburden.

Now, I have to wait for results of him having a meeting with the head of my school in order to work out if I a) stay in the unit despite its uselessness and unwillingness of module tutor to teach me*, b) take an extra history unit to make up the twenty credits that would get dropped with global politics, c) take a second-year politics unit or d) take an extra unit outside the School, like creative writing. Which y'know, would be fun. Completely like going back to St Andrews in terms of three random units thrown together, and I'd have to do it again next semester with Intro to IR but.

What this means is my carefully balanced scheduling, notes, wall-maps, job-looking-for schemes and everything else collapses like a fucking house of cards. Global politics has one lecture - Wednesday afternoon, and a two hour seminar - Monday afternoon. Either I have two hours of lectures during a week and an additional one hour seminar, or the same time stuff as now. Either way, it means shuffling my schedule, possibly switching seminars in history and Social and Political Theory because of clashes with lecture times and jdfkhfjkshfjks

So much fucking stress. So I crashed at seven pm, it's three am and I'm wide awake. -_- Think I'm going in to Norwich to use the library tomorrow.


*Essentially, if I'm to contribute to the class, it means ten minutes breaking down what I said into non-International Relations terms so that everyone else understands. Either I'm painfully bored and learning nothing -- or I'm trying to extract usefulness out of the seminar and talking on my own level to the tutor - and confuzzlement breaks out amongst the rest of the tutor group. Hence my going off on Huntington's 'Clash of Civilizations' = manufacturing of overarching threat to keep American foreign policy strong = current Bush administration and war on terror as opposed to fall out from current international affairs structure and the rest of the class going O_O

As per usual

-insert cutesy 'help the dragons!!1!!!1!' message here-

My old dragon died from not enough love!

Help me save these ones. :3

We have returned to 'hot and sticky' weather. Do not want, kthnx.

Spent lunchtime having coffee/chatting with Tom, and helping him hunt for a dress waistcoat and a red cashmere jumper. Mocked him mercilessly for his idiocy in said hunt, and ended up getting 'commissioned' to knit a cashmere scarf for Christmas - he pays for the wool, I just put in the work. Which, y'know, YAY for working with yummy fibres. I have to locate cashmere in 'Cambridge blue' which is significantly harder than just finding cashmere, but.

Also spending the next forty-eight/fifty-six hours knitting like a demon. Been commissioned by Josie to knit bootees and a sweater for a baby shower gift she needs - it's cheaper to pay for the wool and have me knit it than it is to locate proper booties and pay out for them. Have got a really pretty petrol-blue wool that is synthetic and thus machine-washable, and will enjoy watching Bones/knitting.

Also on agenda- dance lesson tomorrow at three, and on Monday I have a contact lenses appointment, which is sorely needed before leaving for uni.

STUDENT LOAN COMPANY HAS APPROVED LOAN STOP

I CAN HAZ GOING TO UNIVERSITY STOP

GOING TO DANCE AROUND THE HOUSE TO CELEBRATE STOP

And possibly something to amuse myself with during the (inevitable) 'downtime' at university when online is implausible to escape to (bad idea, too easy to get caught up in, no one there, etc).

I have my brother's acoustic lying across my bed, and the tips of my fingers are already red and sore, but I'm not willing to give up yet. Quick computer break, then back to learning how to strum. The guitar is blue and I have learned through experience, it has steel strings. (Ow) I assume nylon would hurt less. It's battered; it's been around for roughly seven years, I think. Tim's eighteen and I think he began playing at age eleven, which would make sense.

At some point this afternoon, he'll come home and claim it back and I'll have to wait until the small hours to go downstairs and outside, and play quietly.

I've wanted to learn for a while. I've heard my brother get better and better, until he's playing snatches of tunes I really like ...But only for practice, and then he switches to his electric and the tune gets lost in the skirl of the amplifer and the distortion of the gadgets he has for his guitar. I remember sitting in 24/7, hearing CMAD play and sing quietly outside. An acoustic guitar, maybe five or six people singing along softly. It was very pretty and very simple and I wanted to do it. When I last went to Cornwall, Tim and I brought friends. We would sit, Emma and I, and my brother and Martin, in the garden of the cottage and listen to Martin play in the sunshine. Sometimes, Emma and I would sing along. It's a warm and happy memory.

As far as it goes? I am not musically talented. It'll take time and effort and likely buying my own and taking it with me, before I can manage anything so simple as playing a tune. I've never been one for the theory of music; I want to learn notes so I can make them into something else. With the flute, it was one note at a time, easy to jump to the next one. With piano, I struggled to make my fingers shape what I could hear in my head. With this, I have to learn chords rather than notes before I can begin.

But it's making me happy. I can sit and I can play around, and hopefully, I'll learn something and if I don't, I've made the start of callouses on my fingertips for something else that'll find them useful.

ugghhhh groggy. I totally, totally blame Nat for putting me on Californian time. This is ridiculous. Today I went to sleep at nine am, and woke up at five. Seriously. Ridiculous. In honour of this silly, I need to write Russ/Felicia today and possibly Selina/Shiva or Catwoman/Crane with Jordan, because it is awesome.

But first. Tea, movie, book.