@ Dane - No, my parents don’t know that I’m dating Clay. There’s quite a few reasons for this, actually. He works at the same company as my mom (which is how I met him). He’s older than me (a little over 5 years). He doesn’t have a post secondary degree. But all in all, that all pales in the face of the fact that he’s not Asian. More importantly, he’s not Chinese and he can’t speak Cantonese or Mandarin. And that’s a really big thing to my father  (and secondarily, my mom - although I think she’d rather I be happy than married to someone ‘perfect’ who makes my life a living hell). I’d tell them about it for a number of reasons. If the relationship gets serious (i.e. engagement rings, moving in together), then I’d tell them about it. I would certainly tell them before getting married because my mom’s already convinced that I’m going to get married to someone and not tell her or invite her to the wedding. Which kind of says volumes about the kind of relationship that I have with my parents. It’s not a perfect situation, but then nothing ever really is. I mean, even with a relationship half-assed detailed in a blog, I still can’t tell you when the relationship really started. Was it the day that I asked him out? Was it the day that he kissed me? Or maybe it was the day of the first hug, or the first date, or the first text message. I just don’t know. And I don’t think I’d very much like to explain a relationship to my parents (with him present) if at any given moment, they could ask “So when did you two start seeing each other?” and one of us answers with May 10th and the other with September 7th.

@ Georgina - I possibly said some really mean stuff last night. But then again… I haven’t seen him for 7 weeks. And yeah… If you read back in my blog, you’ll realize that we average probably around one argument maybe every two weeks? Well lately it’s been more like three, but still. We have arguments often. Usually he’s the one saying that he’s sorry though… because usually I’m pissed at him for canceling on me. But… (more…)

I’ve heard it a million times from people that I know. “Just be patient, Michelle” or just in general people going “You lack patience!”. Usually it’s from my family members, sometimes my friends, sometimes (although I throw something at him afterwards) from Clay. But lacking patience is generally not something that I contribute to myself. But after logging in and out of the website where my two new domains are registered yet, I can admit that I’m a little bit impatient. Thanks very much to Kristi for helping me register them at the chosen registar (they take Paypal, but they require a verified account, tsk). So now I’m just waiting for them to be actually registered. I’ve also checked a whois site a few times to see if they’re propagated/online yet. It’s been probably around 3-4 hours so far so I am fairly impatient today. Then again, I am excited so… yay! One’s going to be for my roleplaying game (after 2+ years, it’s finally moving to a domain instead of being on Freewebs!) and the other is going to be my ‘other pet project’. Which will involve a blog and such. Yay? I think so. Not revealing the names yet to anyone, but it’ll be pretty awesome and I’ll have a giant blog entry on here going “zomg, guess what’s up?!”… Or something equally as lame. I don’t know, I’ll try to keep it cheerful and not quite so nerdy. I might not succeed, but I’ll definitely try.

Family studies today was fairly boring. It was about children development and parenting styles that have a detrimental affect on the child. The unfortunate thing is that while I was listening to her speak, it was like having someone describe my father to me. There’s a portion of my notes dedicated to parents who manipulate their children through conditional love. Like, they’ll only love a child (or seem to only love a child) if they get married by a certain age, get married to a certain type of person, become a doctor or a lawyer and it was really like having someone just speak about my father. And it wasn’t in a positive, awww, let’s be proud of daddy! way either. So my father is an “authoritarian” in terms of his parenting style. Good stuff to know.

I’m currently listening to a contemporary instrumental piece by Yiruma. It’s beautiful and I’m in love with it. It’s called “River Flows in You” and is currently being mistaken for “Bella’s Lullaby” (by Carter Burwell) by the Twilighters. I don’t know why, it just is. But it’s a beautiful song anyways and deserves a listen (to those wondering, yes the soundtrack for Twilight is available for preorder but there’s like… 5 exclusive tracks that haven’t been leaked yet).

Anyways, I’m currently avoiding my father again. Hence the blogging and commenting one everyone’s latest blog entry at least once (Hey, you get hits when I avoid my father - bonus? I think so.) and texting Clay even though I know he’s currently working on a friend’s car and probably doesn’t have his cell phone on him. The latest text message that I’ve sent out includes “I need a hug.” and “Hey…”. Very vague, but then I’m not in a very “let’s be detailed!” kind of mood.

And I’m about to get started on my biology since my quiz is on Tuesday (morning… at 9am. I can hardly wait.). Well, I’m going to get started right after this:

I got an email from a visitor (Anna who didn’t include a URL) asking me if I ever feel bad about what I write about people (i.e. my father and the boyfriend) on my blog.

You write a lot of personal stuff online. Do you ever feel bad about how you portray people or go back and edit it?

To be perfectly honest, I censor myself quite a bit when I’m blogging. I’m not going to talk about every single detail of every single day. I don’t outline every single time I kiss the boyfriend or go into detail about what I did with him where. I try not to go into too much detail about anything, actually, and I do censor myself in that way. That being said… It’s my blog. It’s my place to express myself and keep a rather nice timeline about my life. I started this blog in October of last year, so it’s almost the site’s birthday. I have over 400 blog entries and it chronicles almost my entire first year of university. The things that I saw, the things that I felt. And I do try to keep things detailed while not going into too much detail. And I don’t necessarily feel bad about the way that I portray people because, let’s say there’s a blog entry about an argument that I had with Clay (I’m sure you all know there’s a lot of those around). How I portrayed him in those entries is just how I felt at the time. I don’t go back and edit it to make it all sound cheery and sunshiney because it just wasn’t at the time. That being said, I do sometimes go back and make the posts password protected. But you have to remember, despite the fact that it is a blog, I am fully aware that it’s available online and that anyone could read it. That’s why I usually name people with initials and don’t list details like the name of the company I work for or the names of my professors or school. I try for anonymity while keeping it realistic at the same time. And I do have some private blog entries no one can read except for me when I’m logged into Wordpress.

And that was perfectly long winded answer that could have been answered with “Not really and no, but I do change if anyone can access it”.

Surpass has been super in getting my account set up for me. Less than 24 hours after I sent them the money for my hosting package, my account is set up. They emailed all the information in one very nice and concise email. I like it. So I’m currently in the processing of moving everything over there. Obviously it’ll take some time to get myself settled and once all my files are over there, I’ll be pointing my domain name over there (rather than here) and crossing my fingers that there’s minimal downtime (or heads shall roll? I think so). But it’ll take a bit since I do have to access the cpanel where my site is currently hosted and for some weird reason, I can only ever seem to access it while I’m on my school’s wireless network - luckily I’ll be on campus tomorrow so I’ll just hop onto it and get all the stuff that I need.

In other news, my father and I ended our week together on a bad note. While we were in the car going to pick up my mom at the airport (who enjoyed her trip, yay) he started on about how the most intelligent decision that I could make is to quit school and (basically) become a golddigger. Why, might you ask? Well, it’s because I don’t have the drive needed to be happy and successful as a nurse. He continued on to say that I wasn’t patient enough, or compassionate enough or intelligent enough to be able to be a good nurse because I’m just “not that type of person”. Of course, he picks a time while we’re in a car that’s going 80km/hr on a highway to tell me this. I debated seriously for a few minutes to just unbuckled my seatbelt and take my chances rolling out of the car. But then decided that my ankle probably wouldn’t be able to take it as I had just rolled it that morning and it already hurt enough to walk on it. I’m too selfish to be able to help people, I’m too self-centred, too lazy, too stubborn to admit when I’m wrong and when I’ve screwed things up. Gee, thank you daddy; that’s just what every person wants to hear from their own father.

We went to my uncle and aunt’s house last night and after hearing him go on and on about me to my uncle and aunt, I just left their house and walked home (they live about three blocks from us, so not too far). My father claims that he had been “joking” and it was all in good fun. Newsflash: when you’re being cruel enough to drive someone to tears, it’s no longer funny.

That being said… When I graduate from nursing school, I will seriously consider moving to work in another province or just another part of this province (perhaps just far enough that I do have to move and can have a valid excuse not to have to see him every weekend).

Plus, he tried to get himself back into my good graces today by offering to buy me two goldfish.

The conversation that I just had with my father (F for father, M for me or Michelle):

F: Do you want this photo? [gestures to photo of me and D from work laughing, it's a little bit blurry]
M: Yes.
F: But you can’t even tell who’s in it.
M: [...] Yes, I can.
F: I’m deleting it, I don’t recognize them.
M: It’s my photos from work. You’re not deleting it.
F: But I can’t even tell who they are.
M: Well that’s because you didn’t work there.
F: How about this photo? [It's a photo of me sitting in the office, it's not blurry]
M: Yes. Keep it.
F: But it’s just some room. It could be any room.
M: It could be. But it’s not. Keep. It.
F: How about this photo? [Photo of Clay, the only one I have of him that's not blurry, has zero inappropriate gestures from anyone and he's smiling]
M: Keep it.
F: How about this one? [Seemingly boring photo of a wall; it's actually of the shoe prints I made on the wall with D one day]
M: Keep it.
F: Why do you you want all these stupid photos?
M: [mutters something and then...] Because I’m crazy. I get it from you.