back to life

I was going through high levels of anxiety and feeling quite depressed since before I had to go to my parent's for the exams, but being there was (as always is) better than can expected, and now things are slowly falling back in place here too so my spirits are gradually higher.
The course hasn't started yet but I already have some of the books for my new subjects!! And that is only exiting if you're crazy out about discourse analysis, but hey, don't pretend to be surprised by my nerdyness. I never hid it.

M.'s boyfriend just moved in and I've said this in every possible social media platform but I can't grow tired of repeating it: he plays chess!! He does!! We were playing fridge scrabble yesterday (what, I'm not the only nerd in the house) when he suddenly asked whether I played chess "because it is the kind of thing he can see me doing", and I said yes, and he said we should have a game sometime. Yay!! I'm only afraid we don't have a board. Such sad souls we are...

And the writing club is being slowly worked on, and E. is going to find a way to be in two different places at the same time so he can still be in Cork while he studies in Dublin. I'm obviously very looking forward the development of such a technique.

Also, September is a month for beginnings, so there's lot of new people in town, and several of them are absolutely lovely individuals! To further increase my enthusiasm, some of those lovely newcomers want to be my students- oh joy!
Spanish tapeo meetings are back, along with ICC meetings, there is a Bank of Time to organise... we're all so busy it actually seems Summer was long and quiet,, it makes it almost feel like we did have holidays...

more on visiting home

Tomorrow is the day and I could not be more stressed! There's tons of things I've got to do today... plus I need to check whether I've got the money for next month's rent or not (it's a lovely sensation, this dubiety), and M.'s friend F. arrives today, and I need S. to print out my tickets, and my room needs a thoroughful tidying and cleaning and I need to bake something for D&D's fourth birthday (Yay!) which is tonight, because thanks Murphy.

Seriously.

It's so tiring.

But the worst part is that I won't be flying home tomorrow, nope: I'll be flying to Barcelona, then I'll be killing time to get a train that will get me to P. after a four hours journey, and there I will find my mom waiting and another half an hour later, I will, fuck yeah, be finally home.

Visiting home is always some sort of epic adventure, with all the tedious giants to kill before you get to enjoy your glory.

blah blah blah blah blah

I'm going to Spain again for a few days next week, and I'm not any prepared for it.
Visiting home is always anxiety inducing, but when I come back, the soothing effect of the Lee is there for me.
I can't be sure the Lee will be any soothing this time, though, and I'm worried.

I was supposed to meet E. sometime this weekend but I didn't get any word from him and it's so unsettleing! Our time is short! I'm slowly realizing how unprepared I am for him to go, because everything up there is about that too.
So hopefully I'll hang out with him tomorrow, and if not I'll go occupate Dean's sofa, and we'll watch Howl's Moving Castle there. Maybe both? That'd be definitely awesome!

Anyway, on the bright side:
Yesterday I had so much fun doing crafts with Dean, we're like little kids! Seriously: we bought this crafting kit for the child she's minding, but in the exact moment when we got home, we opened it and starting creating foam monsters and... well, I don't think the poor biy will be able to make anything with it, but he'll be allowed to play with our creations!

Today was completely eventless, and also, I've run pout of cigarretes. Eh, what if that is were all the anxiety comes from? :P

Cheers, whoever's reading!

How I met Dean

[semi-fictional piece in which "Dean" stands formy very dear friend L. and a reference to "Supernatural"]

I'd had a very stressful day yesterday, so I called E.  and convinced him to come all the way to the city to sooth me as we had dinner in SubWay. He couldn't posibly escape because he recently told me to just whistle whenever I needed to chat with someone, he's so nice.
So, as we were ordering our chicken rolls there, two super geeky girls came in. They got my attention because they were... super geeky, and Spanish.
We quickly went out once we got the food, and what did we find there? God, there was this beautiful kitten with think black stripes on a b rownish grey background meowing at our sandwhitches! We stopped to stroke her (even if it wasn't any easy) and fed her some of our chicken, and that's when the two Spanish people came out. The delight was obvious in their faces when they saw the cat, specially in one of them, and she as with us in a moment, feeding and stroking the little fella ( :P ), and we quickly starting talking to each other. Her name's Dean, and she's trying to stop the Armagedon that she started herself...

We all had dinner together and after crazily laughing about silly stuff for a good while we walked E. to the bus stop, and dropped the other girl home. Dean asked me whether I could help her go pick up her boyfriend at work so there we went...
The way to his workplace involved walking past the subway again, and there was still the kitten, who, probably remembering that we'd fed her before, followed us all the way to Dean's boyfriend's workplace. I spent all the way there lamenting how we are not allowed to keep any pets in our apartmen, but Dean said she could help her, and that made me feel extremely happy! She's such a nice girl, I'm so happy I met her! So we decided that the cat was going to be called Gwen, because I really really always wanted to have a cat named Gwen and even if she won't exactly be my cat Dean let me pick her name!!

So got there, and as we waited for B. to come (B.'s Dean's boyfriend), this person went into the building. And this person was... hm... he was a 50/50mix of Batman's Mr. Penguin and Silent Bob, so well, both of us were paying him lots of attention, so he dialed the code to open the door and opened the door and closed the door and I was focusing all my attention in that person who was a Silent Penguin and once he walked away I realised that I had memorised the code to open the door. So we tried, and it worked and we quietly stayed out but we felt we had something huge, and that, in case any of you don't know it, is a great feeling!

So the last bit of the story is that, once B. came down, he saw the cat, and agreed to keep her (-ish, but whatever), but he said every animal in his house needs to be given and Egyptian name and Dean and I didn't want wen to stop being Gwen but we decided she could have two names. That was when she became Gwen Anubis.


[That up there is a very distorted version of yesterday, but I did have a lot of fun with  L. and we did end up with a kitten named Gwen Anubis so... the essence of it is true. We just realised that the actual way how L. and I met isn't any cool so we decided to fit it into yesterday's story. Now, pretend you don't know this is not how it happened!
Also, thanks, E., for starring in my story :P I couldn't love you more :(]

More culinary experimenting!

Well today's cooking was not that experimental I just made Sheperd's Pie for dinner, which is just... something I'd never cooked before and that I'd only ever had at my hostfamily's.
So it could be called Cultural Adaptation Cooking, because, being quite a simple recipe (make bolognese sauce, make mashed, put the mashed over the bolognese in an oven tray, cover with cheese, grill) there was not much place for experimentation.
The reason why I'm specially happy about it is that in S.'s words, it was actually a good Sheperd's Pie.

Apart from that... the sky is cloudy! Oh joy! At last! We have had such sunny and warm weather lately, and... it was nicce the first couple of days, but I was starting to get annoyed. On the other hand, everybody loves clear skies, so the loveliness of the weather brought lots of awesome social gatherings, mostly in the form of barbecues. That was very enjoyable indeed!
So I went to E.'s house yesterday for a D&D BBQ and it was the most fun ever like! And her house is amazing, both the inside (I expected that) and the outside and the surroundings! It is amazing an amazing place, with the terrace over the creek, with its fish and its plants, and all the surrounding trees and bushes, the birds flying around (apparently whispering "eejit, eejit") and the star covered sky when night fell.

I discussed it with M. this morning and we decided we'll kick them away and keep the house for us when we get a driver's licence and a car :P

Don't know, everything's just great.

It's probablyMerrily's doing.

Didn't I tell you? She's our part time cat, with part time kittens, Merrily Murphy.


P.S.: We just made a shopping list three post-its long...

D&D, so

Hm...
So the last two D&Ds have been particularly awesome, and not only because E. was back there, but also because they're just a bunch of nice, fun people and because I'm getting used to them (well, yeah, I take my time, so what? ) and I'm getting to actually draw there too.
Anyway the other day was very nice and I got to hang out with E. before (and also afterwards... I hope he got home safe, by the way, I never asked... ), and K. is just unfairly talented and A. is so fun and whatever. I know you knwo, but I absolutely love D&Ds.

Here are some of my drawing of the last ones, by the way!

I'm very sorry about the quality of the photos. I could photoshop them into something decent, but I think I rather moan about how I have neither a photo camera or a scaner. "I wish I had a good camera or a scaner so I could get nice enough picturees of my drawings :( "

I think there's a few more new drawings somewhere (most probably the big pad) but I'm not going to get off my rocking chair to get them... some other day!

The kitchen smells of a kitchen.

A lovely light mixture of coffee, herbs, soap, and chicken soup.
I've been cooking a lot these days, and quite successfully too, I dare say! It makes me really happy when after a lot of guesswork (because cooking still involves a lot of guesswork for me) I manage to get my granny's soup or my mom's chicken stew.
And the thing is... it's hard to cook if it's just for yourself. That's why I hadn't really done it beore M. moved in, since I cooked for K. a few times but then she wouldn't eat it and... well, I stopped doing it anyway. But M. loves food xD so it's great to cook dinner for her too.
And every single day it is fun to set the window instead of the table and to climb onto it and to eat there. It's our little everyday thrill (as if we got any though...).
Anyway, my point is that my kitchen smells like a kitchen and I love it!

On a completely unretated note [I'm awesome] getting to get used to my new bedroom. I still don't like it and it doesn't feel like mine yet and I don't have enough space for all my stuff and everything seems to be in the wrong position and I can't sleep, but at least I can tell when it's daytime and when not. I like that.
I also stopped opening M.'s bedroom door everytime I want to get into my room.

And that's it about my routine. However...
Last Saturday, it was s.'s birthday party and we obviously were very enthusiastic about going (you get the most amazing compilations of people in that house, you really do :) ) but it was really late by the time we managed to get there and then we needed to leave super early because we were hosting the Spanish Summer Party in Cyprus Avenue. But! it was actually quite nice since I met two very lovely people there (appart from the always cheerful L.', and S.' and some other nice people) and they are like people with whom I would actually enjoy to hang out (because I'm not any picky or anything, you see ;) ): they're L.'' and B.

Now, I was going to also comment on last D&D because it was super fun, but I think I'll do it in another post so that I can also put some photos of the drawings I've made there lately and so.