I found out tonight that my grandfather is in the hospital with some sort of infection, there's not really anything else that I know at this time.

He's 94, a WWII vet (Colonel), and his wife passed several years ago. I'm worried less about him, because I've already accepted that he's not going to be around too much longer, and more about my mother, who I feel is going to take this especially hard.

So please, throw up a prayer or three (or sacrifice, if that's how you worship) to the deity of your choice for my grandfather and my family.

Freakin' finally.

Go look. It's awesome.

Also, I have a kilt. I'll post a picture of it when I get around to posting a picture of it.

So my mom called me during class. I called her back after class to chat with her. She asked me about my recent doctor's visit, where I had discovered that I have high blood pressure (130/85)and need to go on a low-sodium diet, which means no more microwave dinners, and slightly higher expenses on food. I've also gotten a prescription for non-NSAID painkillers that won't destroy my liver and kidneys, but that my insurance won't cover, so it's an out-of-pocket cost. And I need to replace my ink cartridges so I can print papers for my classes.

She promptly starts to yell at me for having too many "wants" and not knowing what I actually NEED. Um, I'm sorry, but painkillers that WON'T kill me by the time I'm 50, low-sodium foods that will help me lower my blood pressure so I'm not dead by the time I'm 30, and ink for my printer so that I don't fail my classes all falls into the NEED category in pretty much any book I've seen.

And then she starts yelling at me for wanting to add foglights and a new belt to my car so that it'll stop squealing and charge the alternator properly and so that I can drive during the fog that covers my area of the state pretty much constantly during this time of year. But no, I don't NEED either of those, either. I just WANT them, they won't actually DO anything for me.

Then the issue of the fact that I bought a $20 adjustable stainless steel cane instead of a cheap non-adjustable $10 one for my knee that I screwed up when I hit it in the shower the other day. Apparently, having one that works properly and might actually LAST is less important than saving money.

And finally, she attacked my papercrafting. Which I do to save money while still getting the props and costume parts that I want, since I know they can't afford to support full-blown castings of helmets and armor and such. Apparently, it doesn't matter that I'm saving 90% of what I'd be spending if I just bought the damn helmet, I'm still spending WAY too much on it.

This isn't counting the multiple times she's basically told me that she doesn't give a damn about what school I go to or if I go to school at all as long as I don't keep costing HER money. I'm currently using my own inheritance to pay for my classes because she figures "it's my money either way, so when I don't get an A in the class it won't matter". I was hoping to be able to use the money in my inheritance from my grandparents to take a trip to see some of my friends who live all over the country and to go to where my grandmother is buried and my grandfather will be. Nah, looks like I get to spend it on teachers who can't teach the damn subject and then test us on information that they never gave us instead, and if I HAPPEN to pass the course, I MIGHT get it back... if she decides not to automatically apply it towards the loan they gave me for D*Con after three different sources of funding backed out.... two of those three being them promising me they'd help me get there as a gift, because they know how big of a deal it is for me.

Why the hell do I even bother? I'm a failure for her no matter what because I'm costing her her precious fucking money, while my brother who stays at home, doesn't have any goals beyond get good at music and play guitar and sing in the worship band down the street from their house, is apparently a MUCH better child than I am, because he doesn't cost them as much.

I call my dad to talk to him about it, since he's usually much more rational and level-headed... and he told me, very insincerely, that he's sorry, and shrugged. As in "Quit whining, I'm not gonna do anything".

I can sell my helmet right now, make $400 easy, buy myself a job somewhere, and get the car transferred into my own name so that as soon as I have enough to move across the country, I can get as far away as I need to from them and don't have to rely on them for anything. When I'm only using my own money, they'd probably actually start to focus on the whole "I'm their damn son" thing and less on the whole "I'm costing them money" part.

I'll start with the other frustrations first. I'm currently writing this during a mental block during my all-nighter that I'm pulling to write THREE papers for my philosophy class before my math test tomorrow morning, followed by a speech in my Public Speaking class and an in-class essay in my College Composition class. In addition to this, I have a bit of catch-up work to do in my genetics class while I attempt to get the teacher fired for teaching the HIGHLY outdated concept of Darwinian evolution, which was conclusively disproven within a few years of Darwin actually positing it as an idea. I also have to finish making up work from the two times in recent history when I was sick, as it appears that I didn't get the regular flu in with everything that I got when I had con crud.

Now on to the main topic of this journal: Girls. And how they can eternally frustrate men without actually doing anything.
(Imagine the following conversation read in British accents. It somehow makes it WAY funnier)
Girl: "Well, I would date you, but you live halfway across the country"
Guy: "What good does that do me? Now I'm stuck wondering what might have been with you in ADDITION to these other women."
Girl: "Other women? I'm not the only one you think about?"
Guy: "What does it matter? It's not like we can date anyway, since you don't want to do anything long-distance and I can't just move up to live with you."
Girl: "It's the IDEA of things. You're not supposed to like more than one woman at a time."
Guy: "The whole lot of you are bloody mad! Where in the six bloody hells and three not-so-bloody-but-equally-unpleasant hells is that written?"
Girl: "It's not written, you're just supposed to KNOW it instinctively."
Guy: "All I know about women instinctively is that my wahoo goes in your hoo-ha and together we go whoopie and then we get a baby. Everything else I have to figure out, and you do NOT make it easy."
Girl: "You don't have to be so damn vulgar."
Guy: "Congrats on the oxymoron there, by the way. Now please excuse me while I use this jigsaw to cut the top of my head off, I'm sure it'll be less painful than trying to figure out what exactly you mean."

That conversation is a bit of a composite of several that I've had with various females recently. With a bit of added sarcasm and humor, but just a bit. Women seriously are that dang complicated. Currently, there's seven different women who have been bothering me to some extent, and why I can't date them right now.

And sadly for them, I'm calling the ones I can out (in other words, if you're on dA, you're getting called out on here)

Jessica (Era): Ex-fiance. She's dating someone else and is more of a friend than anything else, but there's always just a bit of a spark there, and I don't know if there ever WON'T be.

Jessica : Informed me not too long ago that the only reason she's not interested in a relationship with me is because I live too far away. Granted, I DID ask, so I can't really whine about her telling me that.

Stephanie : Oog. This is one of those complicated ones, where her family doesn't really like her and I talking because I'm FROM TEH INTERNETZ OMGZ LOCK TEH DOORS!, but she and I sorta still talk anyway, and there's definitely a "click" there, but neither of us is sure if it's enough of a "click" to try to do things anyway. Plus she lives across the country from me (in a north-south version of across, not east-west).

Kara : Ex-girlfriend, lives COMPLETELY across the country from me (in both a north-south AND east-west variety), and I'm still not sure if she's sane enough to be safe yet. But there's definitely some chemistry there.

Remi (no link, no alternate names): Met at Dragon*Con. There's "click" and there's "CLICK" and then there's "wanting to kiss as soon as we met". The inclusion of the third should explain most of it. But she lives 7 hours away and is sorta dating someone else and neither of us can really figure out if it'd actually go anywhere long-term or not.

Larissa: : This one's honestly one of the most frustrating ones on the list: She's batting for the other team right now. Not really any other reasons that I know of, but that one by itself kinda rules out anything else.

Ashley (also no link or alternate name): Also lives across the country (over by Kara), is dating someone else.

Vera : Talked for a while before D*Con '09, met at D*Con '09, and I got a bit of a crush on her. That's about it there, but I just felt like including her on the list for the sake of covering my bases.


Now for the really frustrating part? If any two of these wonderful women decided at any time that they both wished to date me... I wouldn't know who to pick. They're all "#1", so to speak, on the list of "Who I want to date". So that gets VERY frustrating at times.

On top of that, I've been incapable of coming up with anything new to draw or color or anything recently. I've been so busy with my classes and with WoW trying to de-stress from class that I haven't put any time into any of my costumes or artwork, though I finally got around to starting work on designing my Jedi costume (I'll be posting sketches and design mock-ups once I figure out how to have my printer/scanner and TV occupy the same physical space). And I'll be finishing up the soft goods for my Mandalorian soon, even if the armor itself takes another ten years. (I hope not!)

Oh, and I bought a kilt. Woo manskirt! I'll post a few pics up when I get it, which should be next Monday, if not sooner (I hope sooner... I want my kilt TODAY!).

Now I suppose I should get back to working on my papers...

I have:
Inhaled a crouton (really)
Dislocated and relocated my pinky finger
Gotten sicker than I was after four days of steady improvement
Thrown up because of my anti-nausea medication
Been confined to my room
Discovered that student clinics are all closed today
Discovered that there's a five-hour wait at the only remaining walk-in clinic in town
Eaten an entire pizza
Broken my right pinky toe
Jammed my shoulder

I need a padded room and a straightjacket, I think.