Emma: The street scene cast was full of that's what she said jokes
Emma: Jokes, by the way, that I have started to make ><
Sam R: That's because you have some experience now of what she actually said.
Emma: YOU DID NOT JUST SAY THAT

I love my friends.

A serious question: How do you rationalize that people are never who you want them to be?

Not pessimistically or anything. I've just been wondering that. Really, how?

"Hell is other people."

Packing people up in boxes. Does that make them all dead?

Already Gone by Kelly Clarkson

I think I've found one of my main flaws. I always see other people's. I see other people's flaws in spades, I see every mistake they make, and they all upset me. How many conversations have I had, with Kayla, or my mother, or most of the people I know - you've said this wrong, or taken this badly, or explained this incorrectly, or emphasized this cruelly, or or or.

Why can't I stop seeing what is wrong with everything? It comes in handy for essays, for projects, for acting. It comes in handy for objects, and it comes in handy for managing, but for relationships, it destroys. How can I love you when you make so many mistakes. How can I trust you when you're just so incorrect about the little things.

How do I learn to turn this off? It's not even me being judgmental. It's not the judgment that's the problem, with that I am usually quite fair. It's the fact that I notice the problem in the first place, that my eyes are so sharp they cut and carve mistakes from people's hands.

I wish I was a little more blind. I feel so guilty, and sorry, and wrong. And at the same time, it was not I who made the dozens of mistakes. How do I rationalize that? How do apportion I blame, or better yet, stop blaming altogether?

I never tried to be this wrong. I never wanted to be this hard to be with.

The thing about people
is that they all look perfect
perfectly simple
and they may be good or bad
black or white
but they're perfectly simple.

And then you get close
to one, a couple, a few
and you realize how messy they are
how gooey, and globby, and nasty
and their blacks and whites turn to grays
and it all seems very complicated.

But the thing about people
is that you haven't picked the wrong
one, a couple, a few
it's not chance, or taste, or bad luck
all people are gooey
they're sticky and caky and gross
none of them can be relied upon
for a quick fix, a short answer, an easy choice
not if you're close enough.

So say to yourself why him
why her, why them, why those
convince yourself you don't know what you saw in that
one, a couple, a few
but you figure out, eventually
there are only those who are a little less sticky
no one can really be counted on
to keep your hands clean.

even the best reality suspensions
lose their tension


even the best distracting reactions
can't get traction


time keeps going on.

I don't know what I'm doing.

My dad told me that I sounded excessively nervous and lacking conviction when trying to convince my audition partner that the auditions would be fine.

When trying to discuss this with him, and finally getting upset, he goes, "I'm sorry I said anything now; I didn't know you were going to fly off the handle" and then had the nerve to, when I asked him to give me a real, not-at-all-insulting apology, to say "Oh, now you want me to grovel, do you?"

I hate when he gets like this.

I'm back. England was good, in many ways. I'm feeling a lot about it right now, and I can't get it to sound right, so I'll save information for later. I'm jetlagged - though not too badly; I slept really well - and experiencing post-trip depression. Around the middle of today, I remembered about all that stuff - college, senior year, theatre, applications, jobs, homework, schedules - that I had gotten to sort of forget about for two weeks, and right now going back to school looks about as appealing as licking cough medicine off of the floor. I love school, and theatre, and people, and schedules. But no matter how many times I repeat that to myself, I'm sick of the whole lot, and I just want to get a quiet job at a Boots in a small english village, and never leave.

I hate the air here. I always miss English air, and as soon as I get back, I start feel trapped in stale US air. You wouldn't think it would be that noticable, or bothersome, but it is.

Also, this is the first time I've been not with Kayla for 2 and a half weeks for more than 3 hours. I did start feeling a little like I wanted some space, but only half an hour or so of it :) Now it's been 5 hours, and it's surprisingly difficult to accept that our temporary constant availability for a nice, in-person chat has been replaced by sporadic emails or texts.

And that's another thing! Technology. I used my mother's computer every 4 days for sight-seeing-planning, and never used a cell phone. The only electronic I kept on me was my digital camera. No texting, emailing, blogging, facebooking, pandora-ing, hulu-ing, or anything. Now I have all these laptops and phones and cd players, and I truthfully feel unhappy about it.

I've recently learned that there is a possibility that multi-tasking can maybe bring your IQ down. As in, not just potentially impair your ability to concentrate, but impair your intelligence, as much as an IQ test can measure that. I am very proud of my Mensa-range IQ, in the sense that I like having some concrete measure of some sort of brain power, even if it isn't my "intelligence" score, and it actually makes me really upset that I could become less intelligent/something because of my constant multitasking. Because of this, I am trying to do as many things as possible one at a time. It's surprisingly difficult.

It's 12:45 (as in almost 1 am) for me right now, and I must admit, I am tired. I woke up without any sort of alarm/pestering/provocation this morning at 9:16 am, which is virtually UNHEARD OF in terms of Emma the Sleepy. To be fair, it was probably because my body felt like it was 2:16 pm. But hey, it counts! If I sustain it, anyway, which I am trying to do.

I was going to split these things up into different posts, and I can't decide if I will yet. I tried to write something more indepth about college, and started getting incredibly freaked out. I think it's time to stop thinking about it. For just a little longer.

I hope everyone else had a wonderful past 2 and a half weeks, and will continue to have a wonderful however-long-you'd-like. Good wishes to you all.

Off to England for 16 days! I won't really be around on here, but I was barely around anyway, so it hardly matters. However, just saying :) Wish me luck on the plane; the increasing number of them dropping out of the sky does unnerve me a little, though I know how statistically unlikely it is. Will has Harlan the hamster, Best Friend's has Snowy, my potato is in a paper bag, and I'm giving my favorite pot plant to Kayla's parents at the airport so it doesn't die while I'm gone. See y'all at school, or online in approximately 17 days. Hope you all have a good end of summer!

I'm having a hamster problem. I have an adorable desert dwarf hamster who needs a home for two weeks, and I'm having a very hard time finding one. All the people I normally go to are busy, or we're not close enough right now that I feel comfortable asking them to take care of my hamster for two weeks. I mean, we'd pay them. And all they have to do is feed and water, and clean the cage just once. But STILL. It feels so incredible imposing. Do tell me if you have any ideas :)

I'm thinking a lot about ex-es right now. I took one of those silly quizzies late last night - blah blah blah romance blah blah past significant others blah etc - and I'm thinking about them a lot. They keep popping up in conversation. One of the things I've learned about myself is that I hang on too long - I internally already know it's over, no matter who fell out first, but I just don't let go of it. I'm paranoid that I'm mistaken, or that it's just me, or that's it's a choice; all that jazz. I hang on with tooth and claws, and one of the reasons - aside from the instinctive resistance to losing familiarity, or a sense of safety/security that most of us feel - is that I subconsciously am terrified of losing the image they have of me. You know that saying, something along the lines of, "You're only really dead and gone when everyone who knew you forgets you." Because a very large part of you, your persona, is what other people think of you, and thus, how they respond to you, etc. It's the same with significant others. Obviously, unless we're talking badly-matched arranged marriage or some sort of 90's-movie highschool bet, said other person saw/sees something in you. Usually more than one thing. And they think you're intelligent, or witty, or beautiful, or unique, or other pleasing adjectives - more often than not, adjectives you don't use to describe yourself. And you don't want to LOSE that you, you want to keep it, and smile at your reflection, all chuffed, and say, "You know old girl/guy/chap/human/breathing organism, you really are quite ____."

I don't know, it's not a new realization, but I didn't quite realize the extent of it for me. In usual cases, I desperately cling to already doomed relationships for more sentimental and caring reasons as well (I'm not a complete harpy), but those are reasons that I'm extremely aware of at that time, whereas this one comes up later. While I'm taking quizzies.

The relationship Buffy has with Spike in the middle of season six bothers me greatly. Like, not for a moral reason - just because it feels eerily... familiar? That isn't the right word, but just a little close to home. Except for the fact that I've never been in a relationship like that. Yet there is something there that feels.... too close to me. I almost want them to split up, despite wanting them to get together for so long.

Going to England with Kayla in 5 days. That is so soon. It crept up on me like WOAH.

My favorite character from Torchwood died in the Children of Earth miniseries, and at the same time, there was a very loss-fulled part of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's incredible how affecting characters that mean a lot to you can be when they're grieving. Like, very good eps. But... sad. Hard.

I'm one of those girls who imagines her wedding. I only do it when trying to fall asleep at night, usually - low-stress, imaginative planning is one of my best methods for getting to sleep - but I'm still one of those girls. I think about dresses, and cakes, and venues. I think about music, and first dances, and table decor. I ponder invitation styles and flower arrangements. And I test these things by imagining the scene.

I was vacuuming just now, and I realized that I never imagine my dad walking down the aisle with me. I've never imagined him at the wedding, just like I never remember him at weddings I've gone to/been in with him. This is probably not uncommon, plenty of girls are not close/happy/aware of their fathers, and maybe imagine it the exact same way.

But I don't imagine it differently because I don't like him. Or because we're not close. I imagine it that way because I'm convinced that he'll be dead by then.

Which I know is a sort of awful thought, and potentially jinxes it. I've just never, not since I was 6 or 7, taken his presence for granted in terms of the future. I used to think he wouldn't be alive to see me go to highschool, and I was wrong about that. I used to think he'd never see me go to college, and right now, it looks like he might. I've been wrong before.

I can't remember thinking about it consciously though, not before Haley and Kath. Sure, I'd cried about it in a general sense, but not specifically thought. And this week has been such a death week, even artificially - Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Torchwood both had a death last night, in the realm of our viewing positions. Both shows that Dad and I watch together, and never without each other. And while my dad is not an alien-capturing government op, or somehow connected to a vampire-and-other-evil-beings slaying magnet, he most certainly has an expiration date.

I mean, really: a chain-smoking depression prone alcoholic, who refuses to go to doctors, hates his wife, doesn't have a job or any friends, and was raised by quite twisted parents. It doesn't sound like a recipe for health, does it? And the Ward women always live longer than the men, including their fathers, but not always their mothers.

I feel that cinematic and literary sign of grief - throat getting tight, breathing becoming more erratic. I want to make him stop it. The drinking and the smoking and the wallowing. I want to threaten him out of it. I want to tell him I'll never talk to him again unless he uses nicotine patches, that if he raises another glass of cabernet I'll move to China and never come home. I want to beg him, I want to fall on the floor, I want to hold a knife to my wrist and wait until he's gone 30 days before I put it down. And NONE OF IT IS POSSIBLE. I hate this. Everyone I know is always dying, and there is nothing I can do about it. The universal problem of those who are still living - nothing you can do about it. Yet you never get used to it, you never get over it. It just drives you more and more up the bloody wall.

I want you at my wedding, and at my graduation. I want you to meet my grandchildren. and tell them those hysterically funny stories you only tell me. So put the goddamn cigarette down, start drinking more tea, and volunteer at the local fucking library.

This is, in one of those small, ordinary ways, a monumental event. This entry marks the occurrence of an almost complete turnaround in a certain opinion of mind. That opinion being that Emma Watson is an annoying eyebrow actress who practically stole my name (Emma Ward vs Emma Watson), and seemed to claim allegiance to the same things that I have for a long time - puffy brown hair, Hermione Granger, and connection to England. And while I still don't want her grubby "took me three years to get Hermione in jeans" paws on Hermione, I must now admit that she is actually a charming, beautiful, and seemingly quite intelligent young woman. I just watched her interview with David Letterman, and she was quite... I don't know, charming, beautiful and quite intelligent. Her responses were honest, if not remarkably substantial, and she was very endearing in her emotional responses and hand gestures. And, of course, she gets a few points for being mile after mile of smooth leg and slim torso, but that isn't what won me over. While she doesn't strike me as someone I want to befriend, she is definitely a far more... well-rounded, perhaps, person than I used to give her credit for.

Props to you, Emma Watson. I make peace with you, one Emma W. to another.

Basically, got EXTREMELY wet. It was fun. But extremely wet. I liked the Architects a lot, as well as Madina Lake. Thought the best shirt was "You can't spell STUD without an STD." It was from one of the sex awareness/education stalls, rather than a merch tent, but whatever. I've heard it before, but I still love it :) All in all, fun. But soggy.