I’ve been sick at home all week, only tallying up a day and a half at school. It’s barely the end of summer, not even autumn yet, and already I have this awful sinus infection that makes me nauseous, my head heavy and dizzy, and has given me the most disgusting gunk at the back of my nose and throat – I just want to spit it out, but oh it’s just there… I’ll spare the gory details.

So sitting around at home hasn’t been really productive. I’d tried to read my American history and economic tetbooks – the pages that my friends have tried to get me to catch up on, but to no avail. When I’m sick like this, nothing works. I couldn’t even handle skim-reading the newspaper – somehow I read the same line 5 times without it registering, and completely gave up. My sole comfort so far has been watching old episodes of ER and Sex and the City online; and today I vamped this place up with a new theme. The header features a photoshopped image of layers of photos from over the summer, it’s not very exciting, but I was just so sick of seeing the old theme. In addition to all this crap, I can’t seem to stop stirring up problems with the boy. I have a short temper, an inability to express how I feel other than the negative, and me being completely burnt out just does not help, especially when he goes to a different school and I’m always preoccupied. But oh, I don’t know, it’s all a mess in my head, I just want it all to be okay. He came around for a while earlier today. Then for about two minutes after dinner. And despite all the shit that I put the both of us through, when I hug him, the smell of him is like the smell of comfort to me. It’s nice. And in those moments I feel safe.

I suck at saying goodbye. When I was younger and we would have family friends over, I would always be so depressed when they leave at the end of the evening. Or when I’m either sending a friend or family member off at the airport or am the one travelling away myself – either way, I don’t deal with goodbyes very well…

And so leaving V’s house tonight was awfully painful for me – knowing that tomorrow morning, she’ll be flying down to Palmerston North to do her vet degree for the next 5 years. Despite her coming back for Easter in April, then May for my 18th, it’s still not the same – she won’t just be a 10 minute drive down the road anymore…

I hate when I have to go all the way to a supermarket – okay that’s a slight exaggeration on effort, because there are about 6 supermarkets within a 10-minute drive from my house and I drive past them all the time – just to get one thing, only to discover that even the express lane is insanely long. But that’s okay, right? I mean, those checkouts are limited to people with 12 items or less, so theoretically it should be much, much faster in a long queue of bachelors with bottles of shampoo or beers in hand, as opposed to mothers with shopping trolleys stacked full to the top…

Unfortunately, that theory may as well go out the window when the checkout operators are stupid. We have a thing called the “one card” system, which can be used at supermarkets such as Foodtown or Countdown, that gives you extra discounts – all you have to do is swipe your card before you pay at the checkout. So here I was at 9.30pm on my way home from my piano lesson, needing to buy a 20-pack of mini chocolate bars as prizes for the sports quiz that I’m meant to conduct at House Assembly tomorrow morning, and not only did I wait a full ten minutes (if not more), for 4 people in front of me to get served (and feeling sorry for the 7 behind me), until it was finally, finally my turn. I swear, it took her at least 30seconds to pick up and scan my bag of chocolates, after which I was holding my eftpos card on the machine, ready to swipe, and she just stands there with an impatient bitchy look on her face, glaring at me – what for? the fact that I was card-in-hand, ready to pay, not waiting for her to ask me to?! After a stare-down and a half, she finally realises she hadn’t clicked the eftpos key so the machine wasn’t ready for my card, I finally make some progress towards my escape from her… and then my card was declined. For $4.55.

I’d evidently forgotten that I had dinner out on Sunday night and hadn’t transferred my money onto my card. Embarrassed, I quickly handed over $5 in cash, only to have the checkout girl give me a “WTF ARE YOU DOING?!!” look; and, juding by her half-opened mouth, she appeared as if she was just on the verge of saying it too. Honestly… how much louder could the eftpos “DECLINE” beep have been?! It was loud enough for me to have gained a sympathetic gaze from the last guy in queue, as well as send a woman chuckling, surely, surely the person whose job it was to get money off me would realise?! ARGH. Anyway, my chocolate mission took me about 20 minutes… time in which I could’ve watched an episode of something online, or driven about 15-25km!

I just watched a depressing 2-hour documentary on the Documentary Channel and I’m not very coherent right now. I hate Sundays, I really, really do.

University starts in a month… unfortunately, I’m not going to be there for yet another year, but it means that a lot of my friends are leaving. One has just been accepted on a full scholarship to the music conservatory in Singapore, a couple others are awaiting on acceptance into American Unis; but the one closest to home is V – she’s not even leaving the country but in about a week and a half she’ll be moving down to Palmerston North, which is about 7 hours drive south. Friday night we had a party, with farewells used as the excuse. I’m not sure why, maybe it’s the shitty mood that everyone’s been in, but most people go drunk much faster and with less alcohol as usual, and the party ended a lot earlier than usual. I think it’s rather ironic that some of the finest students in the country are forced to give up their (entire) social lives and move down to Palmy for up to 5 years in order to complete their veterinary degrees, as it’s the only place available in the country. Mind you, I suppose that cons them into studying much harder?

As for Valentine’s this weekend, amongst other things, I got a rose and tulip. The tulip’s an inside joke though, but I liked its shadow on the wall…

Today was the last day of a long weekend – thanks to Waitangi Day falling on a Friday this year, it merged with the weekend, instead of us getting a random week day off school – so I wasn’t in a particularly good mood, what with school having fully kicked in, and Sundays generally being rather depressing. Sitting around at home seemed like such a waste of such a nice sunny day, so the boy and I went for a long drive out to some beaches whilst I clicked away and even took some polaroids. This is one of my faves – it’s a view through the windscreen, with a blurred reflection of a polaroid I’d taken.

In other, exciting matters I just bought my ticket to see THE KILLS on March 26th – screw it being a Thursday (school) night, it’ll be bangin’!

I just had arguably the greatest summer of my life – home alone for a month and a half, equipped with a full license and summer income… what more could I have asked for?! So much yet so little has changed for me over the past two months since I last posted, I don’t even know where to begin to start blogging again. I don’t think I could ever fill the gaps, so I’m not going to even attempt it. But I’ll be sorting my photos out and hopefully uploading some soon, whoot.

Year 13, aka 7th form officially started for me yesterday; it felt weird to have my last “first day of school”, but I’m already getting really busy what with my AS Music recital and exams coming up soon, being school prefect and sports captain, hockey pre-seasons and trials underway, etc… On the bright side though, I got back my other AS Levels results a few weeks ago:
AS English Literature: 93%
AS European History: 91%
AS Photography: 74%
I’m happy with everything except for photography – don’t even get me started on the amount of people in my photography class that are in rage like me, especially when we compare our marks to the marks of classmates’ who we thought didn’t produce work as good as ours… or maybe I’m just being a bit up myself. Regardless, that’s still 50 UCAS points. So at the moment I have 170. Hopefully by the time I’ve done my AS Music, it’ll be 230. Then if all goes to plan I’ll finish this year with 460-70 in total with my A Levels and AS Economics, ha.