hm. i don't even have a link to my archives page anymore. funny, i don't remember getting rid of it. must have gotten lost in the redesign somewhere. anyway, point is, permalinks are working. whee. next on the agenda: functional comments. i miss the voices.
spake the Amanda Hope at 1:54 PM (linkme)
spake the voices

I don't think I like me.

My identity keeps sort of oozing away from me here. I keep thinking "Am I stereotypical? Am I just like everyone else? Should I be more like this person, that person, the other person?" And by doing so I only mold myself into a different stereotype, which is just as uncomfortable. I just keep going back and forth between extremes.

And sometimes I wonder why why WHY other people were given the gifts that I want more than anything else and why I just want to hit the computer sometimes because I'm angry that what I want to be won't come to me more easily, as a gift of nature, instead of making me struggle for it and just watch everyone else who's been the image of what I wish I was since the day they were born.

I try too hard sometimes.

This blog thing is both a blessing and a curse.
spake the Amanda Hope at 1:17 PM (linkme)
spake the voices

okay. how about the grand recap? i haven't been home much lately (or rather, i've been home, but i've had more of an interest in sleeping than blogging. logical, no?)

so, on the fourth of july we went playgrounding. there are a few really good playgrounds in the area, so we made the circuit and finished it up with some ice cream. that was the good part of the day. later we went to the fireworks, where we were pelted by ash and had to duck live embers. that was the not-so-good part of the day.

yesterday the really notable event was seeing Requiem for a Dream. i've been meaning to see it for some time, since i kept hearing about it from various people. it was...amazing. almost dizzying in its effect. it does not allow you to escape. i haven't had my hands over my face for that much of a movie for a very long time. i can only imagine how effective it was in the theaters. wow. and did i mention the soundtrack? must get my hands on that this weekend. (this town needs music stores.)

and today? dentist appointment, work, hanging out at kat's. and now, sleeping. sleeping late, in fact. at last. =)
spake the Amanda Hope at 11:31 PM (linkme)
spake the voices

ever feel like your imagination has way too much of a grip on you?

i was wandering through the house in the dark tonight, and i started remembering when i was scared of the doorknobs, because each one had its own personality and some of them were evil, grumpy old men that would shoot me and others were only silent, eyeing me wherever i went and no doubt reporting back to the hit men stationed at the front door and the door to my parents' room. there were only two doorknobs, really, that were friendly: the ones on either side of the bathroom door. for some reason they were okay.

when i was that age i wouldn't walk around without lights on and i was terrified of going dowstairs at night because the lights were behind the door to the basement so i actually had to step into the darkness before i could flick on the lights. and how when we had to go downstairs my sister and i would argue about who had to turn on the lights, and i would usually bully her into doing it, unless i was feeling particularly brave or something. it's not that i really intended to be mean, so much as it was easy to do. i wish i could say that i was nice when i was little, but that would be quite the lie. and since i'm all into honesty and bluntness these days, i figure i might as well inflict some on myself too.

now i wander around the house with the lights off a lot of the time, and though the doorknobs aren't scary anymore and most of them have been replaced anyway i still start to feel sometimes that nothing has really changed. my imagination still has too much of a hold on me: i see things in my head that almost seem real or almost convince me that they should be real. and i'm still mean, sometimes unintentionally, without even realizing what i'm doing, and it's still too easy to do and too hard to take back.
spake the Amanda Hope at 11:10 PM (linkme)
spake the voices

well, The Haircut is over, my 14 1/2 inch braid is off to its new life as a wig, and i have a cute haircut. i'm quite happy with it, really. oh, and remind me never again to schedule a major hair appointment for a day when i'm going to be PMSing. that way i won't have to laugh at panicked late-night blog entries like i am now. :-p the only thing about this haircut, really, is that on some level it must make me look similar to someone i don't like. i can't quite identify who, but occasionally my reflection makes me somewhat nervous, as if some evil archenemy keeps popping out of the mirrors. or maybe i'm just being delusional and spazzy. it's a reasonable possiblity, as always. =)

so, tomorrow is the Fourth of July. the Fourth in B'water tends to be kind of boring. there's a parade in the morning, and fireworks in the evening, and in the middle is a long stretch of craft fair, folk music, and greasy food. therefore, we're forever trying to come up with something interesting to do during the middle of the day.

this year has not looked any more promising than past years. in fact, it's less promising, mostly because i don't have a pool to congregate at this year. from what i've been told there's a hole in the side of it. i have deemed it bad. and furthermore, a good half of my friends are working on the Fourth this year. this makes me sad.

so there will be a posse of three at the beginning of the day, and by the end it will probably be reduced to a posse of two (can two even be called a posse? oh well.) and maybe after the parade we'll go to someone's house and watch videos or something. yeah.

amanda is going to get sleep tonight. promise. and then amanda will write about something interesting. and she might even stop referring to herself in the third person, too!
spake the Amanda Hope at 8:28 PM (linkme)
spake the voices

tomorrow is The Haircut. finally.

and much as i am sick of my hair and want to get rid of it, i am fast becoming absolutely terrified about getting hair this short. shorter than i've ever had it before.

at risk of sounding entirely superficial, this rant shall follow:

i say i don't care how i look and in some ways it's true. i don't wear makeup, and my clothing choice is completely casual and comfortable. but i have nice hair and sometimes that's the only thing that keeps me from looking terrible and what if this haircut comes out bad? because i say i don't care how i look but i do, i do. somewhere deep inside me it matters, and if it didn't i never would have written that scary poem condemning my appearance or cried so many times or wanted to break mirrors. and i don't want long hair anymore but i don't want to be ugly all summer either, and ugly is a state of mind more than anything else but if i look in the mirror every day and see what i saw on that horrible day several months ago, or a year ago, or any of those other times when i hated how i looked, then how can i keep any sort of positive state of mind? sophomore year when i had that horrid haircut that i hated and everyone else loved it never mattered how many times people complimented me because the more they said it the more fake it sounded and the more i was convinced that they were lying and the more i counterbalanced what i believed to be lies with selfhate. now i've got to believe that this will be okay, and for chrissake it's only a freaking HAIRCUT, and if i never try anything new ever then where will i be, and other such logical things, but somewhere in me i think i'm convinced that i AM ugly and the only thing that's hiding it from the world is the curtain of hair that i can hide behind every day.

dear god, that sounds silly. really, i'm not overly superficial most of the time. i'll have to balance this out with a really profound entry tomorrow, so you don't all think i've lost my wits. eep.

i still can't talk myself out of being scared...
spake the Amanda Hope at 12:18 AM (linkme)
spake the voices

the trees are twisting uneasily outside; we're supposed to have some storms this evening, complete with high winds and large hail. eepers. i'll be inside, thank you. i went outside during the thunderstorm last night, and saw not only lightning but lightning bugs. i saw lightning bugs for the first time that i can remember in ohio, when someone pointed them out to me, and now that i'm home i'm seeing them here all the time. they were here all along and i'd just never noticed before. it's a shame that i've been missing out on them all these years.

anyway, the thunderstorms were a nice little early fourth of july celebration. less colorful than your traditional fireworks, perhaps, but less smoke as well, and in my opinion less dangerous as well. i suppose fireworks are all right in the hands of professionals, but i hate it when amateurs set them off in their backyards. especially after having drunken parties all day. i'm convinced that one of these days several houses will be burned down or some small children will lose fingers or something. *cringe* once when my sister and i were little around the fourth of july we found a firecracker in the backyard. i was suspicious of it, so i told my mother. fortunately we did not play with it. yipes.

i've started to revamp a few things around here. well, technically i haven't done anything yet, but i plan to make some updates by the end of the day. some links are going to be updated, and some of the personal page, and of course there will be quotes from the ohio trip. and the pagan blogs thing is going to have to go. i'm not a pagan. it's a beautiful religion, and there are a lot of things i like about it, but there are too many of my own beliefs that i can't reconcile with it. when i was at the unitarian church again for my voice recital one of the little cards explaining unitarianism caught my eye, and i started to realize that that was where i belonged. at least for now. it's certainly changed before. from lutheran to unitarian to atheist to agnostic to wiccan to pagan to pantheist and back to unitarian. almost full circle, really. i wonder if i'll ever really find something i feel comfortable calling myself. and i wonder what started this whole desire to find a religion thing. i was perfectly happy without one for years. maybe it was that whole depression thing last fall and winter? i don't know.

and i'm starting to plan yet another redesign. it'll probably look quite similar to this design, except frames-free. i have indeed gotten through my frames phase, and i have decided that unless absolutely necessary they are hateful, annoying creatures. especially the way i have to put target="_top" in my links, which i forget about half the time (like with heartless bitches the other day, must fix that too.) i doubt it will be done anytime soon, but it's in the works.

in other news, i love literary people. i've been in touch with so many people from the denison workshop, and it's great to recommend books to each other and comment on each other's writing and stuff like that. it inspires me to do more. i've barely written since i've been home, but now that i have a free day i really should. and i love when i realize that other people think the way i do. when i saw jessajune's entry about thinking in literary terms all i could think was "YES...i am not the only one!" *grin* we should take over the world.

now, i think i'll actually do the aforementioned updates.

I don't believe in trouble, I don't believe in pain
I don't believe there's nothing left but running here again...
~"Believe" from Run Lola Run soundtrack
spake the Amanda Hope at 6:10 PM (linkme)
spake the voices