fifteen years of blood, sweat and tears (in amazement)

Oh my goodness. My entire life has acquired a distinct Rosencrantz And Guildenstern Are Dead theme lately. It's funny and sad and absurd on so many levels at once that I couldn't possibly put it into words. (Yet I predict that I'll try soon enough.) Also, the soundtrack currently consists almost exclusively of Kasabian's "Goodbye Kiss" and a Red Hot Chili Peppers b-side called "Funny Face" - as well as "The Crushing of the Little People" by Sucioperro when I'm angry, but that's nothing new (it's just so satisfying to hear someone sing "fuck you, don't dare think I'll take your shit again" when you're pissed off).

Now, as for those news. I've decided to risk going on vacation with my family regardless of my presently somewhat unstable condition, seeing as I would have had to go on "therapy break" soon anyway and I might as well make the most use of it that I can. Also, things happened and what is even the point of going back anymore, or of anything, oh gods I can't think I shouldn't be writing-

WHAT I AM TRYING TO SAY. Is this. Vacation: one week in Denmark. Monday nine days from now until Sunday. Therapy break: two weeks sort of surrounding that one week. From the Wednesday that's coming up until either exactly two weeks later or maybe a few more days if there are no free beds then. Which means I'll

lol DENMARK

I only just realised

... Does anyone even care? Basically I'll be back for a few days, gone for a week, back for a few more days and then gone again. And my brain won't let me finish sentences, so whatever.

GODS.

My mother and I may agree on a lot more things these days than we used to, which is great, but there are still some themes popping up in our conversations on a regular basis that make me want to bash my palm against my forehead repeatedly.

We just had another one of those If You Would Only Try Harder moments. It's not that she necessarily blames me for my problems or actually says that I could solve them all by myself if I made a bigger effort - she understands now that something is probably "broken" in my actual body* and that my mental issues are more complex than she thought, too. I only get this impression from her when we are discussing an isolated incident rather than the whole picture, such as an appointment that I missed. She remains convinced that I could "make an exception" for those if I really put my mind to it, that I should at least be able to "overcome" my difficulties occasionally because other people occasionally go to work in spite of having the flu as well, and that sort of thing should be perfectly possible for everyone as long as it doesn't happen too often. >_<

I can see the logic behind that, honestly. It's like, if you usually don't get up until 8 am and then one day you suddenly need to catch a plane at 6, of course you will grit your teeth and "just do it" this one time. There's no question about it, that's how life works. So I totally get why she thinks that this should translate to my situation faultlessly, but no amount of logic will make an untrue thing true.

She has a couple of catch phrases relating to this, you know. "Don't try, just act" is perhaps the most infuriating one - only Yoda gets to say anything like that, okay?! If you're not Yoda, then freaking forget about it. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN TRYING AND DOING IF YOU LITERALLY TRY AS HARD AS YOU CAN, ARGH. No matter from which direction you look at it. "I did it" means that you tried and succeeded, whether you use the word or not - what makes it so hard to imagine that the exact same process could sometimes result in failure??

It's important to be aware of one's own limitations in order to be open to the possibility of working around them. A slightly more reasonable person recently said that she was impressed with my dedication to finding such alternatives. "[Forcing yourself to stay awake the second-to-last night before an appointment] is an awfully huge sacrifice to make," she went on, "you certainly can't be accused of lacking motivation." And you know what? She is right. I never thought of it that way before, but in fact I go out of my way to achieve success through unconventional means. If I didn't do that - if I only ever applied my motivation the traditional way due to believing in some ridiculous, idealistic Jedi crap - then I'd be wasting my life running headfirst into walls all of the time.

Not that it doesn't still happen, mind you. And try as I might, I cannot find a way around every single wall that presents itself to me, either. Motivation isn't magic! They should teach that in schools.

*I don't like to use the word "broken" under normal circumstances, but in this case it's the perfect fit due to the nature of her attitude ...

[A/N: The tag "they do exist" does not refer to Jedis. :P Amusingly, "mrs exasperation" also doesn't refer to my mother. I swear it all makes sense! Most of the time.]

Aw, turns out I can't visit my family today, whether I'd have decided to spend the money or not. They've been having some trouble, involving mice behind the kitchen counters and a broken dishwasher among other things, so they're going to be busy doing all kinds of housework for most of the day (such as washing the dishes in the bathtub for some weird reason that I didn't catch). Well, maybe tomorrow.

I've already done quite a number of useful things myself this morning, and with my headstart from yesterday this means that I am actually approaching a point where I'll be able to look around the place without seeing anything that bothers me. Even the living room is getting tidier, which seemed almost impossible for a while because I still have all these things from IKEA lying around that I can't put on the walls by myself. Both my mother and Daniel have offered to help, but ... I'm not really expecting that to happen anytime soon. :|

Maybe it's good that I have to stay home today - I seem to be in the right state of mind for Getting Stuff Done. I also want to watch the new Merlin episode, although I'm not sure if I'll be able to hear much with my cheap headphones. I'll try to use VLC to watch it, which would allow me to turn up the volume past 100%, but it has happened to me several times that VLC refused to play a file to the end no matter what I did. *needs new computer liek nao*

Now I'm off to be useful some more.

Today has been one of the nicest birthdays I've had in several years. Not too exciting, but really nice. :) And not a single bad thing happened, unless you count the fact that I didn't get much sleep. It hardly made a difference.

Before I even went to bed, I already had some fun because I was still online after midnight, and so were dollrock, zanzando and chasingthunder (for whom it wasn't midnight yet). Between Twitter and here, I talked to all three of you at the same time once, which was awesome because for some reason I hardly ever manage to be online at the right moment to have ongoing conversations like that with one person, never mind three. It was excellent timing.

I was also pleasantly surprised just by how many people wished me a happy birthday. I doubt all of them truly cared (nor did I care whether some of them cared, if you get my meaning), but it was still nice to see an email notification pop up every few minutes.

We'll skip the part where I slept badly and then spent what little was left of the morning doing boring stuff. Moving on. I needed to go grocery shopping, so of course I reasoned that since it was my birthday, I was allowed to spend a little more money than usual. That's why I am now surrounded by luxuries - ahem - such as pomegranate-flavoured iced tea and two types of lactose-free chocolate. I'm pretty sure I deserve that much after two months of (mostly) sticking to the basics.

Then Daniel came over, who proudly announced that even though he didn't have a present for me yet, he at least knew what to get me already. Heh. As we waited for my family to show up, I got a phone call from the social worker known here as A, who asked if she could quickly stop by to drop off my present. Which she then did. I'd given her a list of several CDs to choose from and was quite delighted to discover that the one she'd actually bought me was my current favourite, Biffy Clyro's Infinity Land. :D She also gave me a mug (always useful) and some more chocolate.

My mother and my sisters arrived while she was still there, so now they've met. My brother stayed home, which turned out to be oddly convenient because we wanted to go to the lake and this way Daniel fit into the car, too.

The first thing we did once we got there was to try out the recently overhauled restaurant by the water - I hadn't had the time to eat a proper lunch. For a moment we were all decidedly baffled by the menu, especially me since I needed to figure out which of the items on it I could eat without endangering my health, and none of us even knew what half of them were. Fortunately, a very friendly and patient waitress soon came to our rescue. She not only answered all of our questions, but even picked up on the nature of my particular problem without being prompted and asked me what it was that I couldn't eat so that she could have the cook put something unique together. It was such a relief; I'm not used to people being helpful anymore!

In the end, I think most of us were happy with what we found on our plates.

After that we just walked around for some time, talking and enjoying the scenery. Also, this happened:



In case you're wondering, nobody fell into the water. Daniel pwned us all by casually walking over the thing as if it were no big deal. :D I considered giving it a go myself, but seeing as I was suffering from moderate dizziness at the time, I decided that it would be a Very Bad Idea.

My mother's present is that she will take me to IKEA in two weeks or so and pay for one or two of the bigger things I'll pick. This makes me happy on several levels. (I know I mentioned on Twitter that I was postponing my IKEA trip to August, but I'm relatively certain I've discovered a way to do the shopping now and pay later, so that's not necessary anymore.)

Last but not least, they brought me my old keyboard. I'd left it at their place when I moved out because I didn't have the space for it and knew that my mother wished she could keep it, but recently I found myself missing it. When I mentioned this to her, she said she didn't need it anymore and of course it was still mine anyway, so I could have it back. I just hadn't been expecting to see it today, at all. That was another pleasant surprise.

On the whole, not a bad way to celebrate having survived a quarter of a century.

I think the waitress assumed I was underage. XD