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

I made it to six hours awake! After sleeping for 16. I didn't even know my housemates went out to a comic convention thing this afternoon. Ali was telling me about it and I was like "You weren't gone!" and she was like "...uh huh!" Maaannnn. Comic conventions are my THANG too. Because I am a NERD. But sleep. Sweet sleep.

Now I have to go do that before I pass out. But I made it six hours. And I actually accomplished things while I was awake. I didn't get to all my tags, but I can finish the rest when I wake up. Which hopefully won't be in like twenty hours...

Frak this virus!

I have three assignments due in the next two weeks, but I have just finished one. My case study (easy peasy) is due on Friday and it is only 2,000 words. I just wrote 1,00 rambly words on service users and blah de blah for social policy. And then I have a 3,000-3,500 word essay on more social policy stuff and I cannot possibly express how bland I find social policy. But oh god. OH GOD.

My mouth is feeling slightly dry again today, but I think it's actually just because I'm having an off day and I am feeling a little (I just typed 'Littleton'...) anxious and depressed. And I think I am getting dear Alison's cold, though it could just be allergies!

I think the kitten is going to be named Echo. If you saw her, you would know why. She's a runty little thing. She needs a small name. And she is not stately. So something grandiose just doesn't fit. Echo or Clio, though I am now 99% sure it's Echo. I'll sleep on it, though feel free to weigh in there! I like opinions! She is adorable though. Every once in a while she just darts over and jumps up for a cuddle. She's perfect.

Tomorrow I have to remember to pick up a flea treatment from the vet for the new kitten, drop off my essay, hand in my form for withdrawing from my placement (asking why it has taken this long will only result in me ranting your ear off, so I would advise against it) and then going to class from 4:10 until 7. And THEN stuffing my face full of curry. Must remember to go to an ATM some time tomorrow too. Need cash for Indian foods.

I actually wrote today too. Not just essay stuff. It was wonderful. ...oh right. I should eat dinner. You know, if my appetite could return to me full time, that'd be nice too. :|

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.

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.

Stop. Sneezing.

No really. You're losing IQ this way.

Evidenced by my panicking because something weird was beside me. It's a shirt. OH NOES, WARDROBE!!! Stupid...7 in the morning. Can't sleep. If I lie down, my nose betrays me, and I can't breathe. I can not stand that feeling. It freaks me out. I can sleep sitting up, FFS.

Also, about an hour ago, there was a bang and then a TERRIFYING SOUND like something yowling from THE UNDERWORLD and I FREAKED OUT. I jumped so much my laptop almost fell off my lap. And then I called for Ariadne and she didn't come. I shook her treats, and she didn't come. I was absolutely certain that a Hellbeast had eaten my kitten (my touch with reality is thin at the best of times, and now I am sick and sleep deprived, so yes, I am being actually serious right now...) and I started tearing the room apart to find her. She was behind the curtain, staring out the window at Yoko, the kitty from next door. Who apparently makes the same sounds when she sees Ariadne, as Lewis makes when he's having a nightmare and screams in his sleep. A sort of blood-curdling, howl from hell, intermingled with a death rattle/shriek.

Honestly, the most frightening thing I have heard, ever. This is the birth of Heart Attack Kitteh, cousin to Heart Attack Pigeon.

And Yoko is a lovely kitty! I'm just grateful that sound did not come out of my tiny widdle princess. I picked her up to take her away from the Hellbeast, and she jumped out of my arms and scrambled back to look out the window again. So I know where I stand!

Staying up all night isn't good for your brain, but I did eat chips, chicken nuggets, and watch Spaced! :D