It's not a cry you can hear at night, it's not somebody who's seen the light...

Last night I had a dream my grandpa died. Followed by my lovely Auntie Ann being diagnosed with some horrible thing blah.

Less than an hour ago my sister called and said my grandpa had died. I knew it had to be bad when my sister was on the phone. (♥) He had a stroke in his sleep and died without really waking up which is good. I haven't seen him since I was about 15 though I talked to him a little in 2010 right before I moved here. He was a lovely and funny guy when I was younger but I have basically already grieved for losing him from my life. So this feels weird. I mean this is the man who survived a tree falling on him.

I called my grandmother. I saw her much more recently during a visit to my sister's house and again talked to her in 2010. She sounded not great, and understandably so since she was with him for over 60 years. It was actually a good talk, despite me fearing it would be really awkward. She sounded a little better by the end of it, though how long that lasts, who knows. I feel...numbysad. That's a thing. But I'm going to send my grandma a letter and some pictures. I hope it cheers her up. She said she always wanted to see New Zealand so I'll get some pictures printed of the places around here too.

If it turns out my aunt is really sick, I will be so pissed off. I am pretty sure my subconscious made up the disease though, so we might be fine.

Today was actually lovely, despite my sincere hate for the day. I have always hated Thanksgiving. I used to get sick on it every year and my mother used to say my body was objecting to the holiday as much as my mind was. But it was nice to be with family I haven't seen in years, including my nephew Sean who is like 12 feet tall now, I swear. Even my step-sister who can be a Sourface McFussypants was in pleasant spirits. She actually seemed interested in my life. SHOCKER. And my nieces were good, amusing fun as always.

Then I came back online and found out my former boss, Doreen, passed away today. I worked under her in Australia and we had our ups and downs, but that was because she knew I was capable of awesomeness. So when I wasn't being awesome, she informed me. And bless her for it. When I said I might want to move, she supported me every single step of the way. She helped me apply, she sent a glowing letter of recommendation along, she checked in with me every day to see how I was doing with the decision since it was a pretty big one... She let Lewi and me housesit while she was on vacation once so we could get out of his parents house for a week. She treated me like I mattered and frankly, sometimes in Australia I needed to know that since Lewi and only a few others ever did. And she had no reason to go out of her way for me. She just did. She was a damn classy lady. I am so sad to know I'll never see her again. Not only was she classy, she was hilarious and fun.

When I got accepted to University of Canterbury, she cried and hugged me. She made everyone applaud me when I left. She made work feel like a second home. She was amazing and she will be so missed.

It is almost time, once again, for the girls of the LFoD to gather together and share a night of terrifying movies and lots and lots of sugar. This is how we celebrate Halloween in NZ. Emphasis on WE since most people don't.

So today I pulled myself out of bed (at like 4 PM shhh) and went into Riccarton to fetch supplies. It's also my oldest original character's 23rd birthday today. She was 16 when I made her. I thought the situation called for cheesecake. Bailey's cheesecake. Cause, like...she's Irish. Anyway, then I went and purchased two bags of junk food that is necessary for Halloween.

I decided to catch a different bus home today simply because it got there before the normal Orbiter bus I get. We have a new central bus station and I haven't been in there yet. It's this temporary thing in the middle of town and seeing it made me burst with love for this city. It's trying so hard.

We turned out of the bus station and onto a street. We were tooling along and everyone went silent. I looked around at the gaping, empty spaces where buildings used to be and I had no idea where I was. I didn't recognise the street so I just figured it was one of the side-streets in town. And then I noticed the Dick Smith Ness used to work at and realised I was on Columbo Street. For non-locals, that's one of the main streets through town. And it's just...gone. When I realised where I was, I felt like I might vomit. This is real. It really happened. It's not going away. And it's happening other places and it's so much worse and blahblahblah yuck.

So I had burgers and Simpsons and then I ate cheesecake. Tomorrow there will be tea and then pumpkin soup and horror movies. Clinging to the nice things is better than vomiting in horror because the world seriously, absolutely sucks.

Happy birthday, Deirdre. No character has ever made me laugh and scream and cry and want to strangle and hug a fictional person at the same time as much as you have. Thank you for being part of my brain. You make it just that little bit nicer.

No good for sanity to open one email with a remittance advice for my refund and to see it was only for $577.00 But then I opened the other one and there was the rest of the money. But there was panic there for nigh on a minute. My poor fragile sanity.

I'm feeling very blue today. I even played some Final Fantasy X which I haven't played in about two years. Ah, that ridiculous, stupid game. How I love it.

I need to go to the shops and get cat food and stuffff and I'm like bllaahhhhhh get off your ass, Lara! Christ.

(Do not let me buy DVDs, willpower. Come on. Work for me!)

My family friends and acquaintances in Japan are fine, as far as I know. My friend in Hawaii is fine too. He lives very close to the beach, but when he went to stay at his grandmother's in the middle of the island to keep away from the surge.

Now I just hope my California/Washington/Oregon people are okay.

I haven't slept. I boiled water and watched Most Haunted and read news reports and panicked.

I'm just so exhausted. The earthquake hasn't stopped affecting us here, and the damage was pretty localised. It's been quite a long time and things are nowhere near back to normal and won't be for ages. But when I look at what's happening in Japan...

Just. Fuck.

I don't know.

I posted a thingy on Tumblr last night which was metaphorical of how I'm feeling inside, even though I was talking about something else. It's here in case you feel like reading it. Behold how goddamn deep I am, you guys, omg.

I just feel really fragile. I managed to actually write something I didn't hate. In fact, I really love it. And that made me want to watch Michael Collins so I could Irish!historygasm. Yeah. If you're feeling fragile, watching Michael Collins WILL make you sob for two hours straight. Just, you know, FYI. But GOD that movie. I love it. It is so well done. And it amuses me to see Jonathan Rhys Meyers in one of his first film roles. Where he gets to use his actual accent!

I'm just worn out. And people keep asking me questions I have no way of answering and it pisses me off when it shouldn't. But I don't know when my course will start again and I don't know when my placement will start again and I don't know when real life will resume. We only just got water on at full strength and considering the way it's been going on and off for days at a time, who knows if it will stay that way. Some of the city is still without power and water at ALL, let alone the people who lost homes and families and lives. So yeah, I don't know when classes will resume again.

Stop asking.

I haven't cried during any of this. Not really. I was beginning to think I was cybernetic or something.

And then a large aftershock hit and rattled the house and I'm home alone and my girls are out and I thought it was getting worse and scarier and I broke out in frantic sobs and now I can't stop crying even though it turned out okay.

Not so robotic after all.

Still no running water, though people on this side of town are starting to get it back so this gives me hope we'll have it soon. Our stores are still going strong though. We even have five bottles of our original stash left, and we've been boiling up the stuff we got from across the road. I am so glad it's there so we can replace what we've been using. If this goes on much longer we would have run out and we stockpiled water like mad. It just goes to show that even when you do prepare, sometimes it's not enough.

So. Guys. If you can? Have emergency kits. Even if you live in a place where you think they won't be necessary. We used to think they weren't absolutely necessary here even though we had one, because the dangerous fault lines were in Wellington and on the West Coast, not in Christchurch. And then a previously unknown fault ruptured. You just never know. If you're someone who can afford an emergency kit (and please know I completely understand that not everyone can), it's responsible to have one. It means emergency rations of food provided by whatever disaster relief happens to be around can go to the people who can't afford to have an emergency kit in a disaster and who need it far more, instead of getting used up on people who should and could have been more careful. It's just goddamn socially responsible, okay? It's caring about your fellow human beings while taking care of yourself too.

Put some tinned food and toilet paper and no-wash anti-bacterial hand cleaner and batteries and flashlights/torches and candles and matches and blankets and anything else you think you might need (including pet food) in your kit. And keep clean water around and replace it often (use the old stuff to water the garden or wash the car or...something). Hell, in Melbourne a couple of years ago, some kind of plant exploded and it left part of the city without electricity and running water for days and that was just a random malfunction without any natural disaster cause. So be prepared. Please. Be as prepared as you can be. The ability to have extra food lying around in case of an emergency is a luxury and if you can, please just do it.

Sorry. Preachy. But I can tell you first-hand how important this is. Never assume this doesn't apply to you. Be safe, lovelies. Gosh, this isn't even what I came here to do. I was going to talk about how I can't write fiction because it feels so utterly useless at the moment. And I got on my soapbox instead. Oh well.

I used to spend my life in my high school theatre. There were days I could be at school from 8 in the morning until 9-10 at night. I didn't drive until I was 21 because instead of taking driver's ed, I was doing everything I possibly could in that theatre. I ate, slept and breathed that place.

When I was in my final year of high school and I was on my way to rehearsal when I saw a little girl in the hallway behind the theatre, crying. She was about eight and I went over to her to ask what was wrong. She said her mother was supposed to pick her up a half an hour before that (why she was being picked up at a high school when she was 8, I still do not know) and she was scared that her mother had been in a car accident. I asked if her mother had a cell phone and she nodded, so I led the poor girl through to the speech office so she could try calling her mother.

When there was no answer, and the girl started crying again, I told her we should go out to where she was supposed to be picked up and I would wait with her.

I ended up waiting with her for nearly 45 minutes. I kept her calmer than she probably would have been by talking about stupid things and telling her ridiculous stories about myself and my very strange friends. Her mother eventually came by and the girl hugged me and they went on their way. I have no idea why the mother was late, or what happened, but I never saw the girl again and I don't remember her name.

What I do remember, was that I was late to my rehearsal. I knew I would be, and since one of the advantages of my crazy brain is that it traps things inside its cage of memory, I had the entire play memorized already so I figured it would be okay. The director wasn't pleased however, and he informed me of this. I told him I had been waiting with a scared, little girl, and he asked me why that was my responsibility.

You know...if that's how you think, then I guess it wasn't. My responsibility was to my cast mates and my director and despite the fact that I was never late before and always went above and beyond to help and be do whatever I could to move the production forward, I was still late this time and that had inconvenienced people. I still feel like the right thing to do was to stay with the poor girl. What about my responsibility to help out another human being; to care for someone who was scared and alone? If I had been that scared little girl, I would hope someone would have extended the same kindness to me. I just apologized and we got on with it, but I never really forgot that.

I'm not someone who can pass people by. Which is why I am the one who ends up sitting with the homeless person on the street who passed out and hit their head on the pavement so hard they are bleeding into their eyes, while they wait (for over an hour) for the ambulance to come. The amount of people who walked by that day, averting their eyes so they didn't have to see, makes me feel ashamed. I don't ever want to be that kind of person. It's why I'm doing what I'm doing, despite the fact that I am not okay. The helping people is as natural as breathing. It's not going out of my way, because helping people is my way. It's everything else that's the problem. Forcing myself to leave my home, when it's the only place that I feel safe. Forcing myself to talk to people, even though I'm terrified of it. All that functioning as if I don't panic about every little thing, that's the hard part. It makes me feel like I have no right to act like I could actually help. I feel barely human. Sometimes I feel like giving up. But I won't. I can't. I'm taking responsibility. I just wish it wasn't so hard.

Today was really warm and I was sick of the waiting for something to happen and I couldn't sit around any more. I took a bus into town because Alice in Videoland said their shop would be open. I love that place. I'm SO glad the building was declared safe... So I travelled into the city with a bus driver who told me all about his quake experience. He was awesome! The Bus Exchange had been opened an hour before I got there which pleased me.

I was surprised that most of the city is still standing. There are a lot of structurally unsafe buildings, but I only saw two which had crumbled completely. On my way home I took a detour through the Sydenham Cemetery though, and it suffered. A much of monuments are lying down flat or broken into pieces. They entire place is cordoned off except for the main road through it. So heartbreaking.

On a random note, the shops have plantains and I am excited because I can make some of my Mexican recipes, yay!

Still paranoid, but at least I slept through the night last night. Awesome. It won't help that I just rented a bunch of horror movies... But OH OH Alice's had The House of Frankenstein on DVD!! I AM SO IMPRESSED! Random, old horror movies that suck FTW!!! And they were selling a used copy of Danny Bhoy for 8 bucks so I got that as well. The one in Sydney, not the one in Melbourne. This pleases me.