Kat’s Pause 

Now that my faith in the Ontario healthcare system has been effectively shaken, it’s back to work. My kidney doesn’t feel much better, but there’s nothing I can about it. I’m waiting to hear from my psych professor on when I can write the missed exam (for which I am currently studying).

This week is the last for lectures and tutorials. Everyone who said it was right: the term has absolutely flown by. I can’t believe those essays that seemed an eternity away in September have already been handed in. I keep thinking there are giant projects I should be starting right about now, but no, those are actually done. I just have my lab report due in mid-December, and then it’s final exams and Christmas.

Can you Avoid ‘Em?

198 124th place WOO.

Yesterday’s attempt to write despite the pain and the painkillers.

The blissful, drowsy
numbness;
sharpness dulled as the room spins too fast,
The extraordinary effort required to move.
Painkillers are a dizzy white blanket:
the ache is not dead, merely sleeping,
and my mind has joined it.

The ultrasound revealed nothing visibly wrong with my kidneys. The nurse told me that this could mean one of several things:
a) I have kidney stone(s) that are too small to show up, or
b) I had kidney stone(s) but they passed through already, or
c) I had/have a kidney infection (this one’s especially murky).

I’m sincerely hoping it’s not just my imagination that I’m feeling a bit better today. Still woozy, but I blame that on not sleeping and eating enough. My psych professor told me to let him know when I would be able to make up my missed exam, and after I got back from the hospital I told him tomorrow, preferably after 4:30 when my classes end. I’ve been studying on and off for a few days and I have a pretty good handle on the material already, so I’m not too worried about the exam itself, just about jumping through all the procedural hoops I need to.

The first time my psychology professor opened his mouth, the term eminently reasonable came into my mind. He has yet to disappoint.

I’m still on antibiotics twice a day for the infection. I should have taken one earlier today, but I’ve been sleeping on and off and feeling really out of it even without painkillers. Since I need to take the antibiotics after a meal, I’m about to eat a few crackers. Eating hurts, so I generally haven’t been. Right now I’ll take one or two Tylenol-3’s so that I can eat, but I have to take Gravol before the painkillers to avoid feeling nauseated, which needless to say would mean not eating, and to hopefully combat some of the dopey dizziness from the Tylenol.

I have an appointment for an ultrasound tomorrow at 1:30. Unfortunately, my psych exam is 1-2:20, so I’ll have to make arrangements to get that deferred or something.

This morning I missed my fourth biology lecture in a row. I don’t know whether I’ll go to class tomorrow. My room is a mess — dirty dishes and shopping bags from last week all over the place, nothing where it should be. I don’t have the energy to start cleaning and it hurts to move. I would give anything to be healthy.

Yesterday, Ning and I spent eleven hours in the emergency room because of some pain I’ve been having around the kidney area for a few days now. Five hours into this we were joined by my parents and sister, who had come up to listen to my choir concert that night (which I was sad to miss). Like the first few doctors and nurses I talked to, I assumed my urinary tract infection had spread to my kidney, but it actually looks more likely to be kidney stones.

They hurt. If this post is lacking in sense, it’s because I haven’t been getting much sleep from the pain.

Almost nothing was accomplished at the hospital other than yet another confirmation that I don’t have a kidney infection — I went to my university’s heath services first, where she requisitioned me for an ultrasound, but the soonest appointment I could book is two weeks away. The doctor gave me another requisition and hopefully I’ll be able to get an ultrasound at the hospital early this week. He also prescribed Tylenol-3, which I think helped me sleep last night, but I don’t notice much difference in the pain when I take them. I hate painkillers and drugs in general; they scare me. And right now, because of all the health problems I’ve been having (most of which I don’t talk about) I’m taking oral contraceptives, antibiotics, fibre supplements, laxatives occasionally, lactase when necessary to digest milk, calcium supplements because being lactose intolerant means I don’t eat a lot of dairy, and now painkillers and also Gravol to combat the nausea from the codeine. I hate, hate, hate feeling medicated.

I’m also missing our second performance of Mozart’s Requiem right now. And this concludes my self-indulgent whiny post. I hope it’s a rare occurrence; everyone needs to complain once in a while, but no one likes a whiner.

A guide to webcomics using the “two cows” method.

It’s always fun when the high point of your day is excitedly telling someone, “My kidneys don’t hurt as much as before!”

On the bright side, my English paper is DONE. My friend and I went to class in our pyjamas to celebrate, and also because we didn’t have time to shower.

Working on my English essay. 600 words have thus far been written about the motif of cleanness in Waiting for the Barbarians.

I have another bladder infection, yay. Got some drugs today. I hope the pain around my kidneys is at least partly imagined.

Wrote nothing Friday, wrote 1300 words at 4am last night in a fit of guilt. Ning wanted me to write more porn for him (Soul Calibur this time). After he fell unwakeably asleep, I got bored of it and started the Dark Prince story I’ve been thinking about since finishing T2T.

I bought a three-CD classical piano collection at Zellers for $7. For the most part, the songs sound as if they’ve been played on a toy keyboard, and I dislike the pianist’s style, but he/she somehow manages Chopin decently well and that’s all I really cared about. Also, I’ve fallen madly in love with Claire de Lune.

Today is the first day since my last post where I haven’t justified my Communication Studies paper as fulfilling my daily word quota. Reluctantly inspired by the course, I’ve been planning out a possible plot for my modern PoP story — yet another ripoff remake of The Shop Around the Corner, wherein Farah is a profressor of some department that criticizes big companies (e.g. Media Studies) and teaches a course on Corporate Ethics or some such thing, the point being that she hates the Prince’s daddy’s company. But when they meet anonymously on a discussion forum for Hourglass Enterprises (or whatever), they get to be friends online. Et cetera.

I’m still fiddling with their names. The Prince, needless to say, is the hardest to work with. So far it looks like Sharaman will become Shah “The King” Raman, with his son Sanjar “The Prince” Raman, and Farah will get the surname Maharaj or the feminine form Maharani. (As far as I know, Shah means King and Sanjar means Prince.)

Ning cajoled me into writing a Jade/Mei fic with the explicit requirement of graphic sex. I acquiesced for experimental purposes.

Haha, it’s fun.

Update: 1224 words later, I think I’ve more than made up for yesterday’s slacking. I doubt anyone’s interested, but it’s on my Lemon Fingers if you get curious.

Update #2: I think I’ll take a moment to mention that I am now second-last from the bottom of the Geek Hierarchy.

Today I wrote only 111 words, not counting the 56 of this entry. I spent my time a) sleeping, b) researching for my communication studies essay, c) walking to Chapters with Ning and making various stops along the way because it was cold, d) reading in Chapters, and e) watching Erin Brockovich and Futurama. I promise I’ll make up for it tomorrow.

Formal night.
The stench of twenty
moderately-priced perfumes
leaks from my dorm hallway;
The girls flit between rooms
in too-alluring dresses—
And I, still swimming in my lab coat,
that academic garb which confesses
my tension from three hours of plant diagrams.

I can tell you where to find
the vascular cambium in a pine root,
but even though my bangs sometimes
get in the way of microscopy,
I will never smell like they do.

I’m waving the white flag on getting any sleep tonight. My floormates will apparently have none of that in this fine establishment. Earplugs were working for a while, but they were determined not to be held back by such a trifle. Oh, the doors that have slammed tonight, and the laughter that has erupted, and the preposterously loud conversations! I am in awe.

Anonymously complaining to my don was no deterrent. Politely complaining to the other girls also had no effect. Tonight, they’ve rallied together to let me know how dorms are supposed to be. Well girls, I must say, you certainly showed me. I humbly admit my folly: never again will I make the foolish assumption that night is a time for sleeping.

This is the only part of university that really and truly irks me every day: the students.

Four poems and some BGE scribblings later, I’m at 303 words.

Watching the colours fly
above the school’s soggy field
makes the storm worth it.

White is the colour
of your dormitory walls,
but your hair: fuchsia.

Update: Exactly 500 words today.

Inspired by NaNoWriMo.

There is a small
grey monster, who
slavers on my left shoulder,
gobbling up inspiration
and spitting out sense,
and I don’t have the heart
to swat him away.

He muses and peruses
the words he sees,
pointing tiny talons
at subject-verb disagreements
and awkward phrasing
and the lamest of clichés.

Sometimes I shout at him
to be quiet and leave me alone,
and he sullenly slinks back, grumbling
into the hollow of my collarbone
and tapping his little claws
until I let him out again.

The glint in his eyes:
so eager to fix me,
the brute,
and it hurts when his pointy nails
dig into my skin.
He cackles with every corrected word.

But I love my little pet.
Without him
those subjects and verbs would
continue to quarrel
until the neighbours complain.

Some BGE fanfic. Feels a little half-hearted. I took generous breaks to do, uh, research… man, I haven’t been to the BGE forums in years. I also haven’t played the game in a while, and Ning hasn’t reached near the ending yet, so I made some stuff up until I can confirm it, if this does go somewhere. Spoiler warning, ahoy.

Pey’j stared in horror at the pulsating wound on his hand. But it came as no surprise that he had been infected; with all his exposure to the DomZ, it was only a matter of time.

The serum. As his mind began to thicken, he fought to recall where he had hidden it – but – no, his swimming memory burst out: the last of it had gone to Double H. Pey’j’s vision turned green, then white. “Jade,� he wheezed, before his body met the lighthouse floor.

~

Jade laughed, to Double H’s chagrin. He couldn’t understand why she found his behaviour so amusing. He didn’t consider quoting Carlson and Peters “antics.� “Miss Thyrus,� he said sternly, causing her laugher to double at the sound of the nickname, “please be serious for a moment. According to Carlson and Peters—�

“Alright, you big lug, enough of C&P,� Jade sighed. “I’m getting hungry.�

“Do you recall where Pey’j said he put the starkos from the market?�

“In his stomach, most likely,� Jade snorted, one corner of her mouth rising into a smirk. “I told him I would go later this morning, but he didn’t want to wait. Stubborn hog.�

“I’ll check the cupboards,� Double H announced. By his tone, she half expected him to follow it with a salute. She tossed one off to him for good measure, eliciting a frown from the soldier, but thankfully, no more recitations.

To Jade’s disappointment, she didn’t find Pey’j tinkering with anything in his workshop. The small room looked oddly empty without her uncle’s bulk and the nuts and bolts he typically sent flying about the place while he worked. Walking to the upper level of the lighthouse, Jade stopped to ask ZaZa if she knew where Pey’j was. She shrugged, saying she thought Pey’j had gone to the roof earlier on, but she hadn’t seen him in a while.

Pey’j always had liked to watch the sun rise from up there. Pressing her hand on the plate to open the door, Jade jogged up the ramp and into the open air.

She called his name while her eyes grew accustomed to the blue glare of the shield. There was no response. But the sun rising over Hyllis made a magnificent sight, so she walked to the edge for a better look – and almost stepped on the prone form of her uncle.

It was a sight too familiar, and the panic she felt was instantaneous. She pressed her hands desperately into Pey’j’s pink skin, hoping for a miracle like before. He showed no signs of giving her one. She jumped up, intending to get help, and that’s when she noticed the gruesome mark on his hand. Another sickeningly familiar sight.

Double H. He would know something about the serum. She tore down the lighthouse ramps, crashing into her friend along the way and causing him to drop the starkos he held.

“Miss Jade!� he reprimanded, but the urgency in her eyes was enough to cut him off.

“Double H, I need the serum for Pey’j,� she said. “He’s been infected.�

“The serum?� Double H echoed. “But there’s none left… they gave the last batch to me.� His voice reflected shame and guilt at the memory of being a burden.

“Can’t we make more?� Jade urgented. “Where does it come from in the first place?�

“It’s synthesized from the green blood of the DomZ,� HH explained, appearing even more troubled. “And as you know, they’re not… abundant around here anymore.�

I’m imposing a daily word quota on myself. I’ve been mulling it over for a good three years now and I’ve decided that my dislike of feeling unproductive has outweighed both my stodgy perfectionist tendencies and my fear of falling behind in more “important” things, like school and, I dunno, eating.

I’ll start small: 100 500 words — pretty much a token amount so that I at least write something every day. If I fail, I’ll… deny myself something. Dunno what. If I fail repeatedly, maybe I’ll change it to a weekly quota. We’ll see what happens.

I kicked ass in my oral presentation today, despite getting only halfway through Wuthering Heights last night. My zombie tutorial classmates finally woke up and participated, partly thanks to the promise of tropical Starbursts, but I like to credit my animated humour too. That coupled with yesterday’s decent-but-poorly-studied-for midterm make me want to do something enjoyable and decidedly un-scholarly tonight. Unfortunately Ning’s passed out in my bed with a headache, so there go dinner plans. I suppose I should feel more sympathetic, but he seems awfully sickly lately and still refuses to see a doctor, so I’m a little annoyed.

When he was awake, he kept calling the yellow Starbursts “starkos” by accident. Teeheehee.

This review reminded me of my disappointment with the plot’s simplicity. While I don’t agree with everything “Joe” says, or his fairly harsh evaluation of the game as a whole, I did find the “truth” so obvious that I kept desperately hoping it was a terrific ruse. Rather than challenging our ideas of good and evil, as the title’s reference to Nietzsche’s philosophy promises, the game presents a very straightforward idea of a corrupt government and a courageous rebellion. BGE is full of wonderful details, gameplay, excitement, et cetera, but lacks depth in that respect. That was pretty much the only thing I didn’t like about the game.

Ning’s playing BGE right now, one of the sneaky stealthy parts. Alert! Demand zone clearing authorization!

So unused to being a minority.

Dinner with my boyfriend’s family. I assume I’m holding my chopsticks wrong because I can feel the tension in my right hand increasing with each bite. His mother seems surprised every time I use them; I’m sure she doesn’t mean to be discouraging. I try to look as if I’m eating leisurely rather than struggling.

A few glances around the restaurant confirm that I’m the only – no wait, there are two scruffy-looking white guys in that corner. Small comfort.

The spiced lamb is too spicy, the szechuan is too spicy, the Gung Pao chicken is too spicy. I take small bites of each despite my intolerance for hot food, keeping water and white rice on hand to calm my tongue afterward. What is szechuan, anyway? I see some vegetables I recognize, some I don’t. All I know is that it’s one of the dishes I usually stay away from.

Shrimp. I hate seafood, as does my boyfriend, but I eat some anyway because his mother likes it. I still remember the way his parents’ faces fell when he delightedly told them I didn’t eat sea creatures. He joked that it was one of the bigger reasons he loves me.

I make conversation with him. He makes conversation with his father, in Chinese. His brother interjects in English and I laugh. By now I’ve learned to more or less tune out when I can’t understand. His mother explained to me one time why she still talks to her sons in Chinese at home – so they don’t forget. She didn’t believe me when I told her she speaks better English than my grandparents, who emigrated from Croatia.

After dinner, I will whine to my boyfriend to teach me more Chinese. He’s begrudgingly given up only two phrases so far. One of my Asian girlfriends told me I’ll never be able to learn, but I think I should at least try.

Eating with chopsticks is always a little awkward.

Why would you register your pro-life website under www.prochoice.com unless you were fully intending to deceive — and then go on to to say that abortion is a biased “industry” rather than a surgical procedure and should be shunned for it?

If you have an opinion, have the guts to come out and say what it is rather than trying to manipulate vulnerable women into thinking they’ve found an informational site that in reality demonizes abortion and does all but scream “KEEP YOUR BABY” on every page.

Now, back to studying for tomorrow’s bio midterm. Sorry for the furious run-on sentences.

Foul findings.

Damned winter.

Nobody on my entire campus knew who I was for Halloween. But Ning did! We took some pictures. Just FYI, I didn’t get temporary black hair dye as I was considering, so I (hastily) desaturated my hair in PhotoShop to make it black. Also because I am lazy, I’m overdue to get my eyebrows waxed, but because I am vain, I digitally cleaned up my unruly brows a bit in some pictures. You know, because the Sasquatch look wasn’t quite what I was going for with this.

This is my costume. Ning’s floormate generously let me borrow his pointy umbrella to add to my costume.

teh makeup was fun to do.

I’m not sure why I’m so sublime here… or so evil here.

I look so paaale next to him… but it’s a good effect. Perhaps I should be worried that I didn’t need to put anything on my sunless skin to look deathlike.

Ning got an interesting shot of my ankh before getting distracted by boobs.

This is how my hair should look, but I don’t have a curling iron.

Generic goth shot for kicks. Death isn’t normally like that; she’s sweet and perky.

Reading Fiction (class average: 70-something) 82 - I lost 8 marks stupidly
Psychology (avg: 60) 84 - did not read beyond the textbook’s introduction
Biology (avg: 58) 84 - thought I did better
Biology lab exam (median: 67) 85
Communication Studies (avg: “very low”) 88 - did a month’s worth of textbooks readings in two days

Keeping in mind that they say marks typically drop 10% from high school, I am pretty happy with my first university marks.