moo

i'm moody again...

fixating on shtuff, being too busy being angry at the mess at home to fix it, hating the fact that my face is breaking out again and hating the fact that i could be resting, but i'm not.
i guess it should only figure that i'd be this restless after having slept 14 hours the night before. and i still have a hard time getting it through my head that its not wednesday night, and there is no going to the club tonight.
and yeah, i fell asleep at like 5pm last night. definately weird.

maybe a walk will do me good.

and i know there's so much stuff i should write in here about, but i hate updating when i'm in a bad mood because it totally skewes my tone.

the thinking i've been doing in the past few days is leaving me in weird spots. i've been realizing how much i perpetuate less-then-positive and less-then-healthy thought patterns, how i create scenarios/perspectives to justify insecurity/feeling out of place. which means that i just need to chill out & go with the flow a lot more. but, it doesn't do anything for the fact that i'm really socially awkward, and have just been getting worse with time. sort of like my accent. which i absolutely hate, no matter what anyone says (so shuddup!).
i have such mixed feelings about the class starting on monday.
on the one hand, i am really looking forward to the learning. but i'm also anxious about how the late nights in class will affect me, about how much tuesday nights might start sucking, and whether i'll be able to keep up with the workload. thank goodness that its only 6 weeks long.
and i've pretty much decided to take an online course over fall.
in theory, i should take an actual class in the spring, but i'm not going to hold myself to that if i start burning out. i think at this point, i'll either take a class in the spring and not take one the first session of next year's summer or vice versa. by then, it'll seem like a mini-vacation.
the sad part is, with this class, i'll be up to 74 credits. even if i take fall, spring, and both summer session classes, i still won't have senior standing by next fall.

i've also been thinking about time passing.
it started during my last visit to NJ, but was totally unconnected to my birthday (which was the reason for the visit).
i went to see viktor berkovsky with my grandparents.
and first, we were flyered for a nikitin show (note to self: bug roma about going to it when it gets here), and the photograph showed two white-haired people... who's faces looked like a water-distortion of the pictures i saw as a child. and then we saw berkovsky. i know he looks worse then he could because of his (semi) recent surgery, but damn.
we were backstage when he was giving an interview to a (rather stupid) reporter, and it was such a horrible facade at a cat and mouse game. he saw her being stupid & tried to play with it, only he kept missing success... and knowing who he is, it hurt to see him slipping. and it brought back the memory from jamaica, when my grandfather asked if i knew katia, the daughter of one his best friends, who i've known since i birth, and who i refer to as my evil twin.
i've never seen people age before.
the three deaths of my grandmothers (two great-grandmothers, and my paternal grandma) happened after i left russia; my stepdad's grandmother didn't age much between when i met her and when she passed, and i never quite knew my paternal grandfather. and when i was little, i was pretty much raised by my (maternal) grandparents. and i'm still very close to them, and even some of their friends - they just feel like family. and it hurts so much to see them age... to see how life is starting to escape them...
and seeing debbie isn't much less weird.
i remember debbie when she was abi's age... and now she comes up to my shoulders. the change just doesn't seem natural.

but, speaking of abi and debbie, here are some pictures (as owen is giving me a demonstration : P ) - i absolutely love the pic of abi hanging upside down - she had flipped over on the swings, and held on for something like two minutes while i opened up and focussed the camera to take a picture and her grandfather raced accross the field.
and whenever i get less lazy there'll be more pictures.

and i guess my mood's settled a bit... now i'm just getting sleepy...

the camping with the family was ok.
the drive to (that part of) upstate NY was much longer then i expected, which made me that much more greatful for his solomonian wisdom, but the latter half of it was very envigorating.
i took the pike past the berkshires, and right around the time of the 'welcome to the berkshires' sign, it was as if someone just turned the contrast up on the world - everything was such a lush green color. the area around albany was no fun, but then the countryside by I88 was neat again - so much empty space, filled with mountains and hills, green fields and forest. it really reminded me of where our summerhouse used to be when i was a kid.
i finally got to the campsite around dinnertime, and it was nice to br greeted by hugs and a table full of food : )
in the vein of 'be careful what you wish for' it got pretty damn cold that weekend, and because of the cold, i ended up staying in bed (well, the tent) will like 11am, which is really late for camping-sleeping...
i got up, and found that my grandma stayed behind as everyone else went to the lake, and had already started french toast for me. which was yummy, despite being fried & giving me a tummyache later on.
then we went to the lake, where i spent most of the time reading, and some time with abi - she's such an adorable little kid! i was also surprised by how nice other kids on the playground were - noone was being pushy, one boy informed me that he knew her name... another asked me if she talks, and when i told him that she talks, but not in english, he was really chill about it. there was another girl there her age, and when her stepmom informed him that she doesn't talk, he was chill with that, too...
we stayed at the lake till dusk, and had a late dinner, after which we just spent more time by the campfire...
on sunday, i had to get up earlier, as we had to leave the campsite by 11, and got my stuff packed up fairly quickly. just how much of a boyscout my stepdad is never ceases to amaze me - somewhere between moving the tent from and back two the car, i must have misplaced my stakes, and my tent needs 8 of them. and when i realized that on friday night, my stepdad had just the right amount of spares (luckily for me!).
after packing up and a huge breakfast (because who but russian people would bring caviar on a camping trip??), we went to drop off debbie at her camp.
stopped by ice cream on the way, and probably menaced the chickie working in the tiny ice cream parlor... i was almost surprised i wasn't dying of embarassment. and my grandfather reaffirmed a decision he made in jamaica - that he should always wait until i order desert, and then just have what i'm having.
debbie's camp left me envious.
its a huge house, with four instructions - two of whom are sculptors, one is an english major from yale and another is a history teacher. and they keep the kids occupied with neat projects all day, and force them to speak in russian. *ducks* and the instructor that's actually a relative of a family friend was rather cute.
we ended up staying there a lot longer then i expected because my stepdad was asked to take pictures of he house, but after that, i just drove home.
and boy was it a long drive. at one point, it took me over a half hour to move around 5 miles *shudder*

and i think i've run out of steam for now. more babbling later - hopefully, it will be less tired & moody babbling...