[witty title]

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Since 2007, which means since before my spectacular nervous breakdown in my senior year of high school (accompanied by a sudden influx of bizarre medical problems: a medication side effect (from the only ADD med that ever worked for me, sadly) that killed my ability to feel hunger, causing severe weight loss; onset of a sinus thing, causing postnasal drip, runny nose, coughing, and headaches, that four years later is still pissing me off (paging Dr. House...); spraining and fracturing my foot trying to catch the bus on the first day of class, which the doctors never gave me crutches for, so it took me a whole semester to stop needing my elderly neighbor's cane; and my thyroid, of all organs, deciding to try and kill me--more weight loss, hair falling out, incredibly maddening hot flashes (menopausal women deserve fucking gold medals for putting up with that shit), and the medication to fix it suppressed my immune system, so the week before the 2008 presidential election I was in bed with nonstop fever and bright orange goo pouring out of my nose. Good times).

Since 2007, I have (a) gotten the highest first-attempt SAT score in the history of my school and then flunked all of my academic classes so fast I gave my teachers whiplash; (b) been hospitalised, which kind of actually made the problem worse, though I did stabilise my sleeping schedule and finish switching meds; (c) slept through my class's graduation, which I still haven't quite forgiven myself for; (d) gone to two semesters of night school to compensate for my grades, just barely passing the second one and graduating on the tenth of February 2009; (e) become a Marine Biology student at Salem State University, taking a dive in an inflatable obstacle course (yes, you read that right) my first day on campus and spending a semester on crutches; (f) missed my godson's second and third birthdays, because I am a fucking idiot.

Oh yeah, and I spent the summer of 2009 in Europe (mostly Norway). It was pretty awesome, even if they are all freaks for basing their public transportation on the honor system.

Time for breakfast. *feels accomplished for actually eating a breakfast meal more than once a week* *has really low standards for feeling accomplished*

In the order in which I did them (is that sentence grammatically correct?):

( super-duper-man )

( back to the fyewchaaaaa... )

( what's the centigrade of fahrenheit 451? )

( oh the holiness of school vacation )

( wonder if it's possible to beat someone up with a basketball )

( *obscure Anne McCaffrey joke* )

[Error: unknown template qotd] (Woohoo, somp'in ta waste ma tahm wiv.)

I don't think my parents ever tried to stop me from reading a book (probably because they either "wanted me to grow up an enlightened child" or (more likely) were too lazy(mother)/clueless(father) to bother), but there are a few vaguely relevant bits I can remember:

First; when I got into my mother's considerable stash of trash novels around the tender age of...oh...I was probably eight or ten, I don't think she was too happy about it--but that was mostly because I would squirrel the ones she wanted to read/was in the middle of reading away into my room and it would take a team of professional excavational spelunkers to find them again.

Second; in school I was always reading something under the desk/table when I was supposed to be paying attention, and while this ticked the teachers off, it wasn't until I'd switched from my regular fare (Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Sweet Valley High, Babysitters' Club, Goosebumps, Wishbone, American Girl, Boxcar Children, Anne McCaffrey, Tamora Pierce, Diana Wynne Jones, etc.) to what was clearly soft-core porn that they attempted a full-on intervention.  Also, when I (in my early primordial flailing attempts at pre-otakuness) was reading the novelized versions of the Sailor Moon anime, I would get embarrassed and recover them with paper and pretend to be reading something more intelligent than watered-down cartoonish pap that couldn't even spell the word "whoa" (it seems that, even then, I was something of an elitist).

Third; my friend Kate (who I first met when she was a beleaguered summer camp counselor and I a whirling precocious seven-year-old hellion with a vivid imagination, high IQ and a penchant for biting people; over the past decade or so, she's been something of an amalgam of teacher, mentor, babysitter, godmother, sister, idol, and friend) once forbade me from reading The Lovely Bones until I was old enough; for the first time in the history of my life I actually did what I was told, and when it was on my summer reading list in high school, she gave me her copy.

I think that's it.  EDIT:  Ooh, ooh, also!  My friend Jessica B-L (I know waaay too many Jessicas) gave me her copy of the Necronomicon when she moved down to South North Carolina with her Iraq vet combat-medic husband; before that, I would flip through it when I was over at her parents' place (I thought--and still think--that it's the most adorable thing ever), and I would randomly pick a page and read melodramatically and she would freak out and tackle me and wrestle the book away (it didn't matter whether I was reading from "The Conjuration of the Fire God" or the Acknowledgements).

(Hee, downstairs I can hear my cat fussing and scratching in her labohratohree; three guesses what that is.  Socute. ♥)