it's 7:20 on this thursday after christmas, and i'm awake. i don't know why. i'm in kind of a weird space, i guess... not a sad one, really, but weird nonetheless.

mike is flying in today. in fact, i imagine he's on a plane to SFO right now. at 9:45, i will catch the 71 to the tunnel, then change to the 194 all the way to seatac to meet him. we will have another hour of bussing before returning to my apartment. but for now, it's too early, i'm feeling tired but awake, listening to nick drake. it seems to fit.

what else have i to say? certainly lots, as it's been awhile since i've blogged. i would have posted yesterday, but blogger was down due to hacking. woo.

lord of the rings was excellent, but i'm sure you've heard that before. i'm just happy i still get to love peter jackson without tolkienites biting my head off. (few things are as pleasing to that snob side of me than people going, "oh, so you like peter jackson, huh? have you seen dead alive?" and snickering because i freaking own it. then again, many think he's a fucking freak for meet the feebles. i've seen it three times, so, uh, no comment.)

i went home on thursday afternoon. i had to pick up a fedora from a hat shop downtown for my mom to give my brother for christmas, which caused me to miss the first bus to lakewood, but i still got there eventually. well, home is kind of a misnomer... this apartment is really my home now; i think of myself as living in seattle, not olympia. besides, that home is a house they moved into while i wasn't looking. it happened between thanksgiving and winter break. i still have a room, a bed, but it's very different. i had to drive if i wanted to see becky, which i did; we hung out on saturday and made christmas cookies and i joined her family for their christmas eve afternoon dinner. my mom and i made good dinners. my sister and i made good cookies, which we all promptly ate.

the only unpleasant thing about my holiday at home was the presence of kk. we haven't exactly been on speaking terms for a few weeks now--since the night before my birthday. i remember the date because getting that upset the night before your birthday is lame. i didn't expect him to hang out much, though i knew he would be around to fix computers and such. i was wrong. i made my resolve not to talk to him; to be sure, i did everything i could to actively ignore him in every sense without being blatantly impolite on every level (i.e., i did not "forget" he was here and not count him in my dinner plans, etc.). he seemed to mostly leave me alone, except for a few pokes, until christmas day. of course, by christmas day, his presence was causing me to be a withdrawn little depressed troll, which i'm sure my family loved seeing. anyway, that morning, he tried to give me a christmas present. i refused it. everyone stared. i still refused it. they moved on. that night, after dinner, i was sitting in the living room. he approached, and said, "emily, can we talk?" "no." "okay, can i talk and you listen?" "NO."

bleh, this is not coming out the way i meant. there was so much more subtlety (and not-so-subtlety). there was crying in front of my parents at midnight because my mom bitched me out for not being "polite" and saying hi to him the first night he hung out. there was lying on the loveseat in the family room after dinner and listening to my aunt, who didn't know any better, telling kk what a good man he was for helping with the dishes in such an apparently capable and vigorous manner. there was my sister taking his side, just because he hangs out with her and tells her things he shouldn't be telling her. my mom later telling me she wished she had understood better, that this could have been avoided; that she thinks, maybe, his intent was to ruin my christmas, but that i let him. my dad just giving me a hug.

my dad is going on a new chemo treatment, by the way. apparently the spread of tumors to his lungs hasn't stopped.

i just can't stand to be around kk anymore. i don't want to talk to him because every time we talk, we don't get the message across, really. it *seems* like we do, but somehow it's contorted and manipulated and stripped down to one thought that, taken out of the larger context, is totally irrelevent when basing a whole argument on it. and it also ends up feeling like it's utterly my fault, which it just... isn't. anyway, it's fucked, so i'm drawing the goddamned line here. no fucking more. i just don't like you anymore.

not that he reads this or will talk to me online in any context, anyway.

maybe i don't have enough backstory here, but... well, whatever. there used to be that match test on thespark.com, you know? the match part was silly, but the test itself was amusing. one of the questions was something like, "Pick one: linger [or] devastate." i think i try to devastate, but in this case, i felt obliged to linger, but it still ended up devastation. funny how these things work out, whevever they may.

may the next week be less awkward than the last.