[it's a thief in the night to come and grab you]

I keep having dreams that really confuse me because in them, I get out of bed and open my bedroom door. So when I do wake up, I can't remember whether that actually happened and I went back to bed, or if I actually dreamt it. I have to spend a few minutes trying to assess how realistic the possible dream was.

Last night's was fairly easy to figure out, mind you. I got out of bed, opened the door and there were loads of people at the top of the stairs. Daniel was by the toilet door, wearing pyjamas (first sign it was a dream). Sophie was in the bathroom, talking to someone who was, for whatever reason, standing in our bath fully clothed (second sign of it being a dream). I went closer and discovered it was an old school friend of mine (major clue that it was a dream). And Ben was in there too.

... yeah, I've no idea.

Right, to campus to meet Coz for lunch in East Slope Bar. I haven't been into East Slope Bar in ages.

[take a lover on the radio]

Law & Order: UK started this evening and, despite my apprehensiveness about it, it wasn't actually half bad. The format was exactly the same and it worked well. And they kept the 'doink doink', so, you know, that's a plus point right there.

... right, after getting distracted by Ben needing to use my laptop to check his Facebook (he is currently without internet, due to Daniel closing a window a bit too viciously on Ben's internet wire), I'm back. Not that you, mysterious reader, noticed my absence, but that is by the by.

My weekend in Cardiff was rather lovely, even if it did go far too quickly. My muscles still ache from rhythm boxing on the Wii. Seriously, it gets me every time. Although I don't suppose carrying a heavy rucksack the day afterwards really helped matters.

In more personal matters (do I feel comfortable posting about 'personal matters' on here? Does it matter? Will anyone care?), I broke up with my boyfriend today. Except it feels weird calling him my 'boyfriend' because, somehow, I never got my head around the fact that he actually was my boyfriend. Which, I suppose, was part of the problem. Amongst other things, mainly of my own infliction. 

Things will be fine between us. Yes.

I should stop doing this whole messing with boys head thing. Most of the time I don't intend to, I swear. It just sort of ... happens.

ETA: In my America in the Twentieth Century lecture today, Daniel Kane showed us an extract of a poem called 'Pull My Daisy' by Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and it appealed to me, somehow. So I'm posting that extract here, for your reading pleasure:

Bone my shadow

dove my dream

start my halo bleeding

Milk my mind &

make me cream

drink me when you're ready

[it's in the ABC of growing up]

This morning I woke up with the intention of finishing some reading that I didn't manage to get done last night. But I misjudged the amount of time it would take me, so now I'm finished with it, an hour and a half before I need to leave to go to campus. I could have stayed asleep longer!

And why didn't I get my reading finished? Well, Tim was here and distracting me, but overall last night was a strange night:

- Ben was all hyped up on his antidepressants so was being thoroughly weird and funny and creepy and generally distracting to everyone, including Sophie who was attempting to write an essay that has to be in for today.

- I moved to get off my bed and it collapsed. After lifting up the mattress, Tim and I discovered that my bed had fallen apart due to mould. It's now being held up with magazines, phone books and sweet tins.

- Daniel and I shook on an agreement, and Daniel discovered that I have a rubbish handshake, so we then spent ages with him trying to teach me how to do it properly. Ben and Sphie got involved, but I don't think I'm any better. I'm too much with the shaking and the elbow, apparently.

- Ben ate a Drumstick lolly, not realising how chewy it was, and took to hitting me every time he got a bit stuck in his teeth. He's French; he'd never experienced a Drumstick lolly before.

- Daniel tried to shove his underwear on my head (for reasons unknown), and I managed to trip over the table in the living room in my attempt to get away. Luckily, Ben caught me before I actually fell down.

I didn't get to bed until around 2am. And okay, maybe all that doesn't sound particularly weird, but it was more the randomness of everything. As Sophie said, "I think we're playing tonight."

Okay, I'm going to go and make myself some sandwiches for my train journey home. I get to put them in my special sandwich box! Yey! 

[I was ... looking at the lights]

I was supposed to be doing reading earlier. Instead I fell asleep for two and a half hours and dreamt that I was semi held hostage in a restaurant. I say 'semi' because everyone else I was with were allowed to stay with me, but they could leave at any time, and I couldn't. 

Wait, that's incredibly symbolic isn't it? It only just occurred to me. I feel as if I'm with everyone else, but they can get away and I can't, I'm stuck in the same place. Maybe it's to do with Colorado and how I feel like I'm going to get left behind and forgotten about when I go.

The nap made me feel really weird, so after I'd eaten (at half past 8, which I dislike doing. Tea time is around 6. My brain gets confused if I don't eat around then) I went and sat on the steps at the side of the house and wrote in my scribble journal. It made me feel a lot better. But then I had to come inside because my fingers were seizing up from the cold. I had been planning to go all the way to the swings opposite The Bear* but ... couldn't be bothered to. Come warmer weather, that'll be my first port of call when I'm feeling in a speed writing mood and need to get out of the house.

*The Bear being the pub where we won the pub quiz on Sunday. After going there for a term and a half, we won! Triumph is ours!

[up is where we go from here]

Despite my not having any classes today, I was up at 8am because apparently the guys insulating the walls of our house needed someone to be awake while they did this. They didn't really need to ask - the noise of their drilling would definitely have got me up anyway. Ben started playing his guitar at twenty past 9, which is unheard of (Ben is not what you would call an early riser).

So I did the washing up. And then yelled at Daniel about doing the recycling. I haven't yelled at someone like that in a very long time. It was almost satisfying. But now I can't use my anger card for a while - I can't remember the last time I used it, so it's been building up power for quite some time. It needs to build up power all over again now.

Okay, time to go into Brighton to pick up a parcel and look for some thick navy or grey tights. Yes.

[like a good book, I can't put this day back]

I've managed to get crumbs everywhere while eating ginger creams that I snaffled from Mark. Half of those crumbs are now in my mug of warm milk. I don't normally like warm milk, but I needed it for the purposes of softening the biscuits. For some reason, eating anything remotely hard is really difficult with this stupid ear ache. As is talking. And for someone like me who likes to talk, this is distressing.

Due to the pain involved when speaking, I didn't say much in my American History seminar this morning. Each time I spoke, though, I somehow ended up being slightly insolent to my seminar tutor.

Example #1: Robert asked us to think in terms of military strategy - what would Russia want the US to do to relieve the tension of Germany's invasion? My reply was "I'm sorry, my days as a military strategist are long over." It got a laugh from the class, at least.

Example #2: I asked whether the Cold War had been called so at the time, or whether it was named after the fact, or at least later into it. Robert didn't know - "I'm not a Soviet Union historian" was his excuse. "Maybe you should be," I suggested. At the end of the seminar, he announced he was going to go and retrain as a Russian historian.

Example #3: Robert was briefly running through events, and mentioned D-Day as being in July 1944. "June", I corrected him. He looked at me. "It was in June," I repeated, "June the sixth." He conceded that I was right. Which I was.

How long does it take for ibuprofen (or, in my case, some fake version known as cuprofen) to kick in?

[you can sit besides me when the world comes down]

Today feels strange. I should be madly attempting to do reading for my Tuesday morning seminar. But I'm not, because I've already done it. I'm not used to this situation. I feel somewhat at a loss for what to do.

The kitchen could use a clean, I suppose, but that requires effort, which is something I'm not in the mood for exerting. Maybe later. Yes.

While I was sorting in the back/upstairs room of Oxfam yesterday (I work in an Oxfam bookshop on Saturdays), the radio was on and tuned to Radio 1. It was quite an enlightening experience. I learnt that both Kelly Clarkson and The All-American Rejects have new singles. Wasn't too impressed with Kelly's (but then, nothing can top the whole Breakaway album. Everything is just jumping the shark, IMO) (wait, can a music artist jump the shark, or is that a term exclusively reserved for TV shows?), but AAR's Give You Hell is pleasantly similar to all their other stuff. So I'm currently listening to their latest album.

In other news, I have an ear ache. This is getting silly. There's a limit to how many illnesses/injuries one person can accumulate in a 2 week period. I think I'm being punished for something.

[I wanted pink but I took red instead]

Oh, hi, I appear to have made another blog that I probably won't update after a week or so. Why do I do these things?

It's gone two and I'm currently eating ... well, it's my first meal of the day so techincally it's breakfast. I could call it lunch but I'm breaking my fast, therefore it's breakfast. Yes. And a very healthy breaking of my fast it is - a clementine, followed by a banana, with apple juice on the side. Not sure why I appear to have turned into a fruit fiend. But still, healthy! And nommy.

The house is rather quiet at the moment. It always disconcerts me somewhat when the house is quiet. Ben's still asleep (or at least hasn't emerged from his room yet today), Sophie's on her way to Coventry, and Mark and Daniel are ... on campus? At work? Who knows.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to return to my reading on Harry Truman and the Cold War. Which, incidentally, I totally don't understand. How can you declare war without there actually being, you know, a war? It's all rather odd.