I hate to say this as pigeons aren't the brightest creatures, but today a male pigeon outside tried, in vain, to coo at and woo and try to mate with a really unimpressed female. And it reminded me of the way that too many guys have hit on me in the past year. He hit on her to such an extent that she flew away, and he sat on the wire cooing at himself instead.

I was intending to read Roald Dahl's Matilda, but the other night Hunter Thompson's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas took over, and...damn if that dude wadn't whacked. So I'm going to try to read a few things over the next few weeks, and try to write, if i can stop doing some things to myself that I start worse when I sit down to write. ahem. I'll get to that 'thing' in a second.

I've sat here staring out the window all day, doing nothing else but laundry and being agoraphobic, like usual. I've really wanted/needed to talk with someone and managed, because of that, to write two or three emails to school faculty regarding some questions I have. The only one that really means much to me though is the question about the newly added creative writing certificate. It is the only thing the school has added in over 2 years that is anywhere close to what I want. There are 11 classes to choose from for the certificate, and to my delight they include all the writing classes I was intending to take anyway, even though they're not "humanities" classes and don't count towards my AA degree that i'm only working towards cause, really, honestly, I get paid to leave my house - my very honest agoraphobic answer. I'm just not sure if they'll let me get both a certificate and an AA degree using finacial aid money. I don't really see how they can stop me, though. I'm allowed 90 credit hours. Only 65 go towards my actual degree, and of the remaining, I only need 18 for the certificate. Anyway, these are the classes I'll take starting Spring semester 2009 if they let me:

Creative Writing Certificate
Beginning Creative Writing � Fiction (3)
Intermediate Creative Writing � Fiction (3)
Literary Magazine Internship (3)
ENGL Any 200-level literature course (3) (99% surely Myth & Lit)
Adobe InDesign (3)
Creative Writing Portfolio (3)

= me having the coolest certificate at my school, and working in the bidness aspect of it all and participating in the process of actually publishing my own works, as well as working with a group and selecting and editing others works for publication, which sounds fun.

Something I don't want to admit, but need to, is that my hair pulling is still bad. I know school has been out only a few days, but I'm not feeling much better, really. Even with the crickets and ladybugs I've seen and heard in wonderful abundance. And the fact that today it was finally 82 degrees outside. My pulling today was so bad that I re-tried for like the 1000th time to do something Josh mentioned and asked me the other day: if I could pull from my legs or arms instead. And I was sitting here crying like a stupid baby, and I tried to pull a tiny leg hair, and it hurt like fuck. I pull from my head because it feels a certain way, weirdly enough it does feel similar with eyebrows and eyelashes, but I'm vain about those and I like the hairs where they are...I don't know why, it's just my head. Anyway, the other day I was watching trich videos and came across this show they did on ABC 20/20, I think. I really love the way they approached it, and presented that NO we don't have control over this, there is no pill that stops it, and we really don't want to be ridiculed by other people because we all feel really shitty enough about ourselves over this. And yes, a lot of us are really beautiful women too, even with this. And I know who my stylist is going to be when I'm an actress/famous writer-person. :-) The link to watch the video, if you care **trich show video link** (and a small warning, it does freeze my computer for about 10-20 seconds as it loads the page, I'm not sure why, so don't click if you have dial-up and don't freak out if you have high-speed.)

ugh, I just checked and my philosophy teacher is online, presumably grading the papers as final grades are due to be submitted by all faculty by tomorrow at noon. My teacher giving me the same A- grade despite telling me my papers were really good, continually better than the previous paper, and excellent, well-written and thought out and accurate and giving me no explanation of what, if anything I was doing wrong, really messed up my focus on the finals paper. And it's probably the reason I'm pulling my hair so badly this semester. I got really discouraged/depressed and felt plain ol' "fuck it" he's not giving me an A anyway, and 45 points of the total 100 points grade is tied up in the Finals papers, so why push myself this hard. I wasn't proud of my main finals paper at all, in fact it meant very little to me because his topic for the paper wasn't even philosophically related. I guess I'll know by tomorrow whether I still have a 4.0 GPA or not. It seems so stupid to lose it to a teacher who just won't let you win. (Because, yes, I've been here before in other areas of my life with other men.) If it was something I was doing wrong, or my lack of comprehension of abstract ideas, I could see it. But I was not lost on very much but his lack of directions for what he wanted from the papers and their format. It's the only reason I'm considering taking English and Drawing instead of Western Civ with him, those are my only two choices this Fall. And yes, this is because my college is a really small and rather 'sucky' school that is in no way student focused, and where classes for general studies requirements are 6 hours apart and so I have to go 3 days a week for two classes instead of 2 days a week. oy.

Is there anything I can say that's concrete set bound in stone good? hmm. My kitty knows I'm half-bald and he still prefers to sleep cuddled up to me...and he did all morning, nestled right in between my arms. <3 THAT was very VERY good. And I love him and his quirks. (The most recent honorable mention is that he accidentally dropped a turd on the floor by his litter box a few days ago, and he being the precious thing he is, could NOT just leave it there - no - he had to *try* to cover it up, so I watched him as he sat there and scooped pawfulls at a time till a small pile of litter collected onto the floor, and he covered it up the best he could - that was a Shadow moment. He's such a nut, but he's *my* nut.)

And the probably stilll ast honorable mention to myself: I still, as of right now, have a 4.0 GPA...that may change by morning, but after 2 years, a 4.0 is awesome.

your very truly relatively friendless severely agoraphobic hair-pulling honor roll student who...is now going to go ...isn't sure, but it's 1am and I'm sure I'll figure it out soon.

P.S. It's my childhood friend Sarah's birthday today, my best friend at age 9 - Happy Birthday Sarah, wherever you are.