With friends like these...

Or something. I don't really care, we don't celebrate Halloween over here like a lot of Americans do and at twenty-two I'm certainly too old for it. I don't live in an estate with a lot of kids so we don't really get people knocking on the door (and we're far more interested in Bonfire Night anyway).

I didn't get a wink of sleep last night thanks to being wound up and annoyed over something that I shouldn't have really been so bothered about, so I was tired as all hell this morning, but when mum wanted to go out for lunch I thought 'why not' and went for it, rather hoping it would wake me up. It didn't, really, and I was flagging on the way back home, at which point mother decides to try and talk to me about important things. She always does that. I wonder if she's trying to catch me off guard but she always tries to bring up important topics when I'm half asleep or otherwise impaired. This time it was telling me there was a job in Manchester, at which point I informed her that it would take me two hours, possibly more, to get into the city for a 9am job. Somehow, she didn't know this. Clearly she's never tried to get into Manchester for 9am on public transport.

So I was basically told 'if you can't get a job in Leigh you're going to be knackered'. Thanks mum, jeez, that's really supportive. I have zero desire to end up with a job that I hate, while having to get up at 6am to get there and not getting home until 7pm. My town has no rail link so I'd be relying entirely upon the buses, and there's only one route from Manchester to Leigh that all the buses take. I'm looking at pretty much the same situation in any of the towns around here that I could find a job in which is why I'm hoping for one that's nearby, or 'off peak' hours so it won't be hell to get to. I don't want my entire life to end up being comprised of working and sleeping, because I cannot tell you how much that would mess me up emotionally, as well as cutting me off from all of my friends. Mother would probably snappishly tell me that that is what being an adult is about. I don't agree with that.

Something else she tried to talk about was what was going to happen when my boyfriend comes over. He's already staying in a hotel because she doesn't want him here for the whole ten days, but she's now complaining about having to ferry us back and forth to said hotel because it gets dark early. Maybe she should have thought of that before she said he couldn't stay here, it's not like my not being able to drive is a secret |= Pfh. I don't think she actually knows what she wants. She said something stupid like 'I don't like the idea of you two being in the same room together late at night, awake' and I was just like... for god's sake, what does she think we're going to be getting up to? And even if we DID get up to those things I'm TWENTY TWO and if I WANT to sleep with a guy then I WILL. Jeez. =-=

Anyway, I talked to my dad - as I usually do when I have a problem because he actually listens and I don't feel like he's quietly judging me while telling me to just get one with it - and he's emailed someone at work that he knows worked for Oxford University Press. I've got some addresses that I can write to. Getting a foothold on the publishing industry is really hard x.x

Until then I guess the best I can do is show willing to keep the mother creature off my back. Blargle.

Still got a lot of writing to be getting on with. I'm going to be using NaNoWriMo to be doing a lot of it.

We went into London yesterday, though I didn't sleep terribly well because of Amy's blasted coughing. We've managed to make a joke out of it though and that somehow makes it easier to deal with. I'm not feeling half as twitchy today as I was yesterday, but Amy isn't coughing as badly either so maybe that has something to do with it.

Anyway. We went into London to see Les Misérables, and the underground was hot as always. Bleugh. I don't think that I could live in London. Taking that kind of journey every day would just wear me down. There's something so depressing about the underground - everyone is in their own little personal bubble and no one talks to anyone. Me, I like to talk. I'll talk to anyone. It's probably not that much of a good thing but it hasn't got me into any trouble so far. Coming out of the underground I saw someone playing bagpipes, and then Amy and I watched a man put himself through a tennis raquet.

We had McDonald's for lunch because pfh, convenience, but there was nowhere to sit inside because LONDON so we ended up eating our lunch in a churchyard. Along with about forty people who'd had the same idea. Amy managed to drop pretty much her entire Chicken Supreme (I think) off her lap and onto the floor, and then insisted that she wasn't hungry and I was pretty sure we were gonna have a grumpy sulk on our hands after that but nope, colour me surprised. We went down to the theatre after and waited a little until it opened, then went in and sat down. I've only ever been in a couple of theatres in London but I've been consistently surprised by how small they are. Once sat down I was immediately struck by a feeling of dread as not one but THREE young children were seated around me. One in front and two behind. I may not have expressed my dislike for children on this journal before but I really dislike children, especially when said children are in a place where they will be required to be quiet and also somewhere where something will be happening that they likely won't understand.

For anyone who's seen Les Misérables, would you honestly take a five year old to see it? She had barely any hope of understanding the romantic plot let alone the historical context and why everyone kept violently dying. Not to mention the sexual innuendo and dirty jokes. I managed not to get too wound up about it though 'cause to the kid's credit she was very well behaved, she didn't talk during the quiet parts but would every now and then pipe up asking 'who's that?' or 'what's s/he doing?' usually after a time skip or abrupt scene change. Had it been a pantomime I would have been more annoyed at the talking - not that she did much of it, it was more that the pitch of her voice was high enough that when she talked you could hear her, and five year olds have no concept of whispering.

As for the show itself, I loved it. I have to say Javert was my favourite character, and I nearly cried several times during the performance. I'm not big on crying so to get me to the point of welling up says something about how well it was performed. The last time a musical nearly got me going was when I went to see Blood Brothers, which I will highly recommend if you haven't seen it.

Today, we went out to meet one of dad's friends from work for lunch. I've met her before but Amy hasn't, and I dare not say exactly why it was so important that Amy meet her for fear of inciting my father's wrath becausehelikesher (teehee). It didn't exactly go according to plan since the place we were supposed to go was packed and then the backup place had no parking so we ended up going back near to where we picked her up and just having a sandwich, which I can't say I really minded even though dad kept apologising. It's not as if I'm a fussy kind of person. After that we went into town because Amy wanted to shop, though I ended up buying more than her. I found the 15th trade edition of Fables, a comic that I read in Waterstones, and also, in HMV, dad found the first season of Hetalia for £10 and got it for me. I hadn't expected to find Hetalia DVDs anywhere but online so that was a very pleasant surprise.

I also bought a new game. After spending 162 hours completing Elder Scrolls: Oblivion I needed a new game to play, and I'm not really in the mood to get back into Assassin's Creed or Fallout 3/Fallout: New Vegas just yet, so when we were in Game I noticed an interesting looking cover in the pre-owned section, which was this.

Madness Returns takes place directly after the events of its predecessor. Alice was released from Rutledge Asylum for the Wayward and Lost Souls at the end of the original game, and now lives in Victorian London under the care of a psychiatrist, where the traumatic memories of her parents' deaths in a fire continue to haunt her. Although she seemed stable for a decade, she now begins to experience previously repressed memories that indicate that the fire which claimed her parents' lives (which in the original game was seen to have been caused by a cat knocking over an oil lamp near the fireplace) may not have been as accidental as she remembered; these memories will take the form of retcons to the existing backstory. However, the stress caused by regaining these lost memories has caused her hallucinations and internal struggle to increase in severity, and she returns to Wonderland in hopes of security and comfort. Unfortunately, it has once again become warped by her growing insanity, and she must save its residents—and herself—from the evil that is taking over Wonderland and also embarks on finding the true cause of her family's mysterious deaths if she wishes to retain her precious sanity.

I have admittedly not played the first one, and the only thing I know about it is that it's a PC game and it's available for 800 MS points on Xbox LIVE. I'll probably just read the plot and see what I can make of it 'cause I don't really want to spend 800 MS points on a game that I don't need. I'm sure that if it's good I'll be keeping everyone updated on what I think as I'm playing it. When I bought it the girl behind the till told me that she hadn't played it but she'd heard good things. I then told her I'd just spent forever playing Oblivion and she told me that Skyrim was coming out soon. Apparently it costs nothing to reserve a copy, so maybe I'll do that when I get home.

Speaking of home, we'll be going back there on Saturday, so we have tonight and tomorrow night left here. Tomorrow, we're going to go to a pie shop for dinner. It's next to a barber's. The name of the shop is 'Sweeney & Todd'.

>=D

This entry has no tags because I'm now in the process of re-working all the tags in my journal. Apologies for any trouble this gives people until I'm done, but going through over two years of entries is going to take me a while.

RE: the title. I do this a lot. I have this strange aversion to any kind of responsibility that I think comes down to a fear of failing. It's this kind of thing that makes me think I'm never going to be able to hold down anything more than a low-level job, because really, I just can't handle that kind of thing. It's silly, really, and I don't entirely understand it because it's not like I can't manage to do it when I have to. I've been a waitress before for heaven's sake and when I was doing that I was doing far more than what should actually be expected from a waitress. It is, however, the reason that I don't yet have a job. It's pretty useless trying to explain this to my mum because I know before I even begin what she'll say to me. That's it's just how things are, that I have no choice, that it's part of being an adult and I have to get used to it but I think it's the lack of choice that bothers me the most. I've never liked being forced into things, and adulthood is just yet another one of those 'no choice' situations that I'm vainly battling against.

I'm probably going to end up wasting my life e.e

Ah well, stuff to do, stuff to do. None of it is stuff I'm supposed to be doing, of course.

• Clean out goldfish tank
• Write PrUK aph_fluffathon fic
• Write DenNor aph_fluffathon fic
• Write TurkEgy fic
• Reply to USUK roleplay
• Write first chapter of Oblivion fic
• Play Oblivon

To be honest, I will likely spend most of the day playing Oblivion. After I clean out the fish tank, because it really needs doing. The water smells weird e.e

The goldfish is still black, and actually it has got worse, but still his behaviour hasn't changed so I can only assume he's not suffering with it. He just.. looks kind of funny.

I would say that seeing the Red Arrows was totally worth this sunburn, but it isn't.

It's been three days and my forehead feels like it's on fire constantly. The rest the burnt spots are fine, if a tiny bit itchy, but my forehead.. it's like someone took a red-hot poker to it and it doesn't even look that bad. I have some aloe, but it's really only temporary relief (temporary, read: two seconds) and really it's just making me want to sleep all the time so I don't have to deal with it. I slept for ten hours last night and fourteen the night before, and for someone who normally sleeps eight hours a night that's a hell of a lot.

I don't care what my mum says, sunburn (no matter how 'healthy' looking it is - I don't think she realises what actually causes sunburn and tanning) is never a good look on anyone and unlike a lot of people my age I hate having a tan. Something about my skin being darker than my hair is incredibly unappealing to me. berwaldox put me on to her game, though. She's trying to make me go outside more often by saying I don't look that bad. I'm on to her now. 8|

What's annoying me more about it is that it's caused me to miss two usxuk  prompts that I was really looking forward to doing. I'll probably end up writing them anyway and posting them outside of the event, because I had ideas for both that I want to use. Yet more things to add to the list of fics that I have yet to finish.

The fish are still alive. Barney is back to his usual self though his tail is still a bit red-streaked. He's curious as ever and coming to the front of the tank when people are in the room. It was sad to see him get so shy and quiet when he was sick - he kept hiding and wouldn't come out at all. Robin is still very much tail-less, but I didn't expect that to change any time soon. Still not moving around that much, but that's not really surprising, it must be quite exhausting.

It's my mum's birthday today and she wants to go out for dinner. Me, I'm feeling utterly miserable and in constant pain/discomfort across my forehead. Mum says take a painkiller, which don't work on me. Amy says put make-up on, which is just a ridiculous suggestion. Who puts make-up on a burn? Silly girl.

Bluh.

My stepdad ate my bar of chocolate the other night. The following night he came home with TWO bars that he'd got on the cheap because the shopkeeper had dropped them on the floor while unpacking them and ripped the foil. All I have to do is just not eat the ends that got floor'd. Mother keeps telling him not to buy us so much chocolate and he always says he'll stop but he's not gonna. xD

Tinypic needs to stop deleting my icons. Every time I post a large amount of icons at once I have to keep checking for a couple of weeks afterwards to make sure that one or two of them haven't been randomly removed. If it keeps happening I'll switch back to photobucket. Sod 'em.

I have a feeling that the fish are dying. They've been out of sorts for a couple of days and have spent most of today just floating in the tank. The shubunkin has a rather tatty tail and the goldfish just doesn't look right, but I can't put my finger on why. I think by tomorrow they'll either be better or dead. Not sure what to think, really, and a little bit miffed because god knows I've been doing my best to take care of them and it's only been three weeks since they went into the new tank. Sigh. I know they're just fish but they're my fish and just.. buh.

Working on the 20th of 28 themed fics for the usxuk summer event. This one ('Supernatural'), if it plays out, is going to be quite a decent length. Which is why I'm trying to start it now and not leave it so late that I fall asleep and have to finish it in the morning. I don't plan to miss another deadline. I've had one energy drink today and there's another in the fridge because berwaldox is pulling an all nighter today and I don't plan to fall asleep at 11pm like I keep doing lately. It's annoying and I want it to stop.

This weekend there's an air show on in Southport. The Red Arrows are flying, as well as the Battle of Britain memorial flight and a tonne of other things. I want to go, but the only problem is getting up at about 8am on a Saturday, and then not complaining all day. It's not as if it'd be difficult for me to get home if I got bored, but it's still a pain. There's gonna be some heritage aircraft there and some Bucker Jungmann aircraft on display, which I kinda really would like to see (and take pictures of). There's just the matter of... getting up. =~=

I hope that everyone on my dear flist is doing well! Much love.

I seem to be on a child friendly films kick this past week. A couple of nights ago I watched Oliver & Company for the first time, also finding out that it was released four days after I was born (smart people, and people who can use wikipedia, can now work out my birthday). I just finished watching The Pagemaster, which is a film I have seen before, but so long ago I could barely remember it. Good film.

Onto the complaining. My sleeping had been a little skewed recently thanks to various factors, and that's likely contributed, but I've been getting annoying styes on my eyelids. Only one at a time thank god but it seems that just when I get rid of one another pops up. The current one is near the inside corner of my lower right lid, swollen and annoying and I can feel it all the time. Blinking feels like someone's poking at my tear duct with a pin.

I think I'll be giving class a miss today.

It occurred to me a few nights ago - what is the thing I regret most in life? It didn't really take me long to come to a conclusion. All my life, in everything I've ever done, I've never put 100% into it. That's why my relationships fail, why can't seem to keep friends, why I have no social life (not that I really want one) and why every time I get a grade back I know I could have done better. I could be scoring consistant 70+'s at university if I put as much effort into my work as I did avoiding it. It's all fine and well to say I'll put in the work next year but I know I won't, because I said the same thing last year and it didn't happen. I just drift through life oblivious to most things around me, somehow lucky enough to continually get good marks in my work. Sometimes I wonder if people on the outside looking at me actually realise how little effort I put in.

Yeah, I'm done bawwwing. I had a shower half way through writing that and forgot most of what I wanted to bawww about.

My Xbox is working again. My awesome friend Matt bought a new Xbox and gave me his old hard drive, which is a 120GB one, six times bigger than the one I had before. I love it. I'm getting better at Soul Calibur 4, so I can beat Richard's ass at it when I next go to his house which will probably be some time next week. Hopefully. I've also been playing through Fable 2 again, which has been fun but now the main quest is over there's a kind of hollowness about it. I miss the other characters even if I do have my dog running about with me.

Speaking of my dog, I now have him in my room lying on my bed. He's not been well the past few days so he hasn't been getting much food. He's a bit listless. I can't say I blame him, I think I would be too.

At least if he's in here he isn't at the back door barking.

I'm gonna get some writing done, if Cold Case doesn't distract me too much.