By all accounts and for all intents and purposes, I should definitely be asleep right now, but for some reason I woke up at 8 in the morning. Which I suppose is good, because Shelley apparently called my cellphone at 7:30 this morning, so I had the chance to call her back. I enjoy talking to my sister; she probably doesn't know how much I love her. I called to make sure she was okay, first of all -- she's been having a lot of really BAD anxiety attacks lately and after persuading her to see the doctor to find something to keep her relaxed and calm, I told her to call me if she started having an attack again. Thankfully, I wasn't gifted with bad anxiety attacks -- just small ones over stupid shit when I wasn't on my anti-depressants -- and I'm pretty sure Kathi doesn't have really bad ones, but Shelley has the kind where she becomes terrified she's not going to wake up in the morning if she goes to sleep, about her family, and she becomes overwhelmed to the point of crying / not sleeping ever. I am glad she got some medication to help her anxiety; she is very sweet and I hate to see her constantly in a panic and losing sleep. Anyway, she was okay. She's seemed a lot calmer these past few days, and I hope she continues to improve. For her sake.

Yesterday I had a day off and took the opportunity to hunt down the financial aid office on campus and get all of that sorted out. Very late, but since I already had to pay for my classes out of pocket (ouch), it doesn't really matter when I get the money, now. Just as long as I do. The man there was very helpful and kind and really helped me out; I honestly didn't know what the hell I was doing because it was my first time even doing financial aid at FCCJ, and I hadn't done it since I went to UNF, like two years ago. So I'd forgotten all the processes, pretty much. Buuuut all that's done and will be complete as soon as I can get my parents to sign a few papers -- and seeing as they are out of town for two more weeks, LOL. Well, if they drive to Michigan during their trip and stop by Kathi's (I think it's a possibility) I can always fax it to Kathi's school office (she's an academic advisor at her university, I believe) and have her fax the signed papers back. IF they go to Kathi's. ... Kathi being my other sister, for those not in the know.

I also e-mailed my dance / Pilates instructor to say hello before classes start and to see if she had a good summer. I think she's sort of at a loss about what to do with all of my energy, but she's very awesome and an excellent dancer. ... man, her body. Her whole FIGURE is fantastic, she has such a beautiful back, and even though she's not very tall -- you know, dancers are always supposed to be tall and have long legs, right? -- she has such grace and moves so fluidly every time she moves into a dance pose I am in awe.

Strangely enough, no, I don't have the hots for her.

I spent a few minutes in the rain -- oh, yes, it rained cats and dogs yesterday, enough that when I was in the financial aid office and finished what I had to do, I couldn't go anywhere, because there was just a WALL of water coming down on the parking lot -- after it lightened up finding my art professor's office. I already knew my dance instructor from over the summer so that wasn't a big deal, but I am a person who likes familiarity and I usually make an effort to meet all of my professors before classes start. It's just a characteristic of mine; I like to get to know people, and I am, at the very core, a comfortable person. And I like people to be comfortable around me, because I'm comfortable with pretty much everybody and everything. I was on a friendly level with all of my teachers in highschool (even the ones everybody else hated), especially with my English teacher to the point I need to call her and take her out to lunch. :/a I haven't spoken to her for a while and I hope she's doing okay. She was a hardass old British lady and she was awesome. *A*

Anyway, yeah. :D I'm prone to tangents as well. So I met my art professor and asked him about the supplies I'd need (I wasn't sure if I was supposed to be prepared first day of class or not ;A;) and to meet him, and I spent a few minutes in his office just talking about art and what we would be doing this semester. From the way his past students talked about him I expected a very vibrant young 30 year old or so man who was tall and very humorous. He was still very humorous, but to my surprise he's actually a very short late 40's man, and an excellent artist. I'm glad he wasn't weirded out by me showing up randomly to meet him, he was very kind and gave me quite a few discount coupons to art stores for my art supplies. He had a giant stack of them so I assume he meant to give them out the first day of class, but he said there was nothing wrong with being ahead of the game! He was really funny. :)

I can't help it. I love people.

I also stopped by work to say hello to Cassie, and the mid-day crew was there. ... one of the girls at work won't talk to me anymore because she found out I'm gay. Lol. :'( And she makes a point to keep at least half a room between us, as if I intended to rape her in the middle of McDonald's.

I could've been mean about it. I could've said something nasty about her reaction when she found out, and I could've insulted her, but I learned a long time ago that you don't treat fear with anger. And besides, I'm very good at turning everything into a joke, and Cassie, my manager, is very comfortable about me being gay, and she was at the front counter when it happened. So we laughed it off and I went home to make my fried apples. *A* All in all, it was a good day.

Besides, any rainy day (oh I love rain!) ending in fried apples is just glorious.

In an effort to do something together my mom opted to take the two of us to Amelia Island for a one hour guided ride along the beach. Amelia Island is only an island (to me) in the sense that it is actually surrounded on all four sides by water, but it's so connected to Northeast Florida and Southeast Georgia that you'd never know it wasn't actually attached somewhere. It, along with Little Talbot and Big Talbot Islands (who for all intents and purposes might as well not be considered islands even though by definition they are, either) is home to a state park, and also might as well be a state park in its entirety if you disregard the fact it's big enough to also have residency. Anyway. None of them are their own entities, anyway: it's all just referred to as Fernandina Beach. And isn't that far from my house. Maybe a thirty, forty minute drive at tops. It takes longer for me to get to Laura's house across town.

The scenery is really pretty, and I'm surprised I don't go more often. The last time I was there I must have been six or so -- we went to the Talbot Islands for some school fieldtrip.

I digress.

I have pictures. Not a lot, since most of our pictures were taken on a standard camera, but I did snatch a few at the stables with my digital of the horses. We weren't allowed to have cameras on the ride, but I do have two pictures from that (capitalism at its best, they offer pictures from the ride for you to purchase).



( Onward. )

The ride was highly enjoyable. It was very fuckin' bright outside but I endured, 'cause my sunglasses (my babies!) could block out a nuclear explosion. God, I love those things. And they were only like $15 at Target, very durable, and I've had them for a couple of years now. That's how much I love them.

My horse was named Ted, and he was an asshole. I say this because he only did things when he felt like doing them (actually reminds me a lot of my ex), and for the great majority of the ride pretended to ignore me. Within a few minutes of me being on his back we'd established our relationship quite well: he didn't like me, wasn't interested in me, and would rather I wasn't there, thank you. I told him he was an asshole and that if he didn't want my boots in his side he'd listen and we'd get along just fine from there. Needless to say by the second half of the ride we were actually getting along quite well.

I admit I was nervous about kicking him too hard -- I'm not used to riding horses that require a kick. Most of the horses I've ridden have been trained to go forward at a click and a squeeze of the knees -- I'm also used to guiding with my knees and only lightly with the reins -- while these horses had been trained only to go forward/pick up their pace with a good HARD kick (I seriously thought I was going to bruise him before I'd get him to pick up into a trot) and would only be led by the reins. ... oh, and the rein-leading? He totally would not agree with me on that. I pretty much let him go where he wanted because he amused me far too much; every time I laid the reins to the side to direct him he'd shake his head violently at me and snort.

So despite the fact we are very disagreeable with each other, it was an enjoyable ride. I'm not violent towards animals, so if they don't agree with me, I'm cool with it. I guess because of that Ted and I had a somewhat working relationship, all things considered. x)

It was a beautiful ride, too. There were cars and people allowed on the beach so we passed quite a few of those, but the dunes were pretty, and the beach was actually forest-lined, so one one side we had the ocean and on the other we had beachy woodlands. Still, I never suggest trotting on the beach. Not only is it the bumpiest gate normally, but the sand is mucho sink-like and makes the bounces quite abrupt and jarring. Of course, thanks to Ted, most of my ride /was/ spent trotting, simply because he kept letting himself fall behind in the line. I was last in line, which to me made it more enjoyable. I only had to worry about the people in front of me, no one in the back, so it was nice and leisurely, especially since there were only two guides (one leading the line, and another riding back and forth beside the rest of us) and the both pretty much stayed in the front for the duration of the ride. (Well, one of them had to.)

I couldn't sit down yesterday, thanks to Ted. :/ You bastard. I still hurt quite a bit -- I have never hurt this much from a horse ride period -- but it's going away. And besides, it was worth it.

Me: Wh--.. tell them they need chemo and suddenly they're bossing everybody around like they own you. 9__9
Mom: I know! When I found out he wasn't going to die I decided I wasn't going to take it anymore.


... D: You never fail to shock me, mother.

mood: stable // music: stars - the big fight

Despite the emo cut of lyrics I used for the subject line, they have nothing to do with this post. I've been downloading a lot of Stars stuff lately and I really like this song. <3 If I know you and you want more by somebody you see on my MIA posts, hit me up brutha. Huhu.

Anyway: Dad Update.

.. uh where to begin. His surgery is still scheduled for the 12th (next Wednesday). However. He had a CATscan because they wanted to look at his other organs. They found spots in his liver they couldn't immediately identify, and scheduled him for an ultrasound yesterday. ... hhh. We got the results (yesterday it seems, but due to the lack of communication in my family I only found out tonight), and while other areas they've identified as cysts, they think what's in his liver is also cancer. If that's true, what they thought had been an isolated case is.. well. Not so isolated anymore. It's been spreading. I think that means the cancer is more progressed than they originally thought, but I could be wrong.

I won't know until after they remove the problematic section in his colon and perform a pathology test on what they remove. When that's done they'll be able to see what stage the cancer is in and whether or not he needs chemotherapy (which seems more likely now with his liver added into the mix).

I don't know what they're going to do with his liver. If it's isolated parts they can probably remove those without too much trouble -- from what I've been told you can live just fine even with most of your liver gone (♥ kofi), buuuut if it's spread throughout and isn't easy to identify in sections, well, there's going to be a problem. Here's hoping he doesn't need something as ridiculous as a liver transplant because we could never afford it.

Anyway, I'm fine. Don't worry about me. Keep your fingers crossed for Daddy though.