Charlie Brown

Uggggggh.

Well I should not be complaining. I slept through last night, even if it was not as long of a rest as I might have liked. Then today went by with only minor issues. Indeed, by the time I came home and finished a dinner of blended everything I felt as if i had energy to spare, as apposed to my usual drained and disconnected. So I switched on the treadmill and ran for seven minutes, then walked another three and a half. The machine told me I burned a hundred and thirty calories.

What strange times we live in. It also told me my heart rate, but I will be damned if I know what a good number for that. I feel a little like puking now, but I think I may start running every morning. I need to do something after all.

I have realized that I cannot do yoga out side of a class setting. I lack the discipline to move through the motions in any kind of helpful order. I just go right for my favourite positions and then get bored. It is also hard to be motivated to do anything when your guts hurt, which has been for over a year now. Have you ever had a stomach ache for a year? It is not too much fun.

I am realizing now that I really should have brought my pirate army with me, as apposed to my two painted armies. There are people who play locally, but I have yet to meet any of them. I could at least be painting.

No internet. Not much of anything really. I have exhausted my will to play any more games of Warcraft or Starcraft against the computers Ai, as I long ago mastered my build order and can now move through the motions with out much thought. In a few of the lower moments of my health I stooped low enough to stick some of the household DVDs into the machine.

I started with Inception, as I understand it has become something of a cultural staple. The new Matrix for the next generation. It did not turn out to be nearly as confusing as some of my peers had made it out to be, and I was a little disappointed that it came down to 'what is reality' but I did like that they left the question of Cobb open at the end.

I only made it a half an hour into the dark crystal. Do I actually like any of Jim Hensons work? I remember liking the Mumpets as a child, but I do not think I would want to sit and watch any of it every again. I Robot was horrible. Will Smiths character was horrible. I could not shake the feeling that they cast a black man for the irony alone. The story sucked, the acting sucked, they took one of my favourite books and they ruined it.

Troy is a fucking piece of shit. They spent the whole movie talking about how they want their names to live forever, and how fighting is the only path to ensure such longevity. We already know their names live forever, it is the future right now and we are still making a movie about these battles. You do not need to constantly remind me that these are old names. I know. But did you know Greece wasn't a desert back then? It was a tropical paradise. To look at the landscape in the movie you would be forgiven for wondering how this many people feed themselves. It was these wars, (and the glass industry) that turned Greece into the desert we know today. Why do all the buildings already look a thousand years old? Fuck. This is why i do not watch movies. How much CG did they use to make Brad Pitt look like a badass? Would it have broken the budget to make the place look like antiquity?

Then I watched Hero and I was reminded that film can be beautiful. Near perfect story telling, strong characters, all with out compromise. I nearly cried when Falling Snow took her life at the end. Ah, wonderful. So I went on to watch Princess Mononoke and was again quiet pleased. I was only a little surprised to see that it was Neil Gieman who did that adaptation to English. His language shines through the dialogue pretty clearly in a few places. Which is not a bad thing. Spirited Away was similarly pleasing, but I already knew that. Perhaps I just need to stick to Asian cinema. Or perhaps I will just go back to not watching anything. I think that is the more likely.

Blister on my toe. Well I guess i will not be running tomorrow after all. Oh skin. Why you gotta be like that? I did some yard work the other day and after only a few minutes I had worn a hole in my hand. How quickly I have gone all pink and soft. The tare proof leather that covered my flesh while i was still in the warehouse is now long gone. Oh well, it will not be too much longer now before the fire calloused mittens of my past return, with their black dotted burns.

I do not really like to think about it. Though I really cannot wait to get back to making things again. I should go out and get myself a brush and some black paint. I found a roll of butchers paper in the garage. It would be run to repaper the walls in my room and properly story board these ideas spread across so many note books. I never do any of this work online. But it is getting to the point where I should consider it.

Uugh, there goes my gut. Uuugh hello.

When the pain is not there, it can be hard to remember that I am ill at all. Ugh, what a reminder. It clears away and I feel light as a summers breeze. I want to dance across the lands and sing to the sun. When it comes, I can hardly do a thing. Like a fist gripping inside me, it takes every ounce of concentration just to speak. Every unnecessary moment is eschewed, only the most basic mechanical movements, the absolute minimum for what needs to be achieved. Which is very little when I feel like this.

I got a bunch of new underpants from the family this year, and I have not been able to wear any of it, as the bands around my waist is enough to cause much discomfort. So I stick to the old ones with hardly a band in them at all, or skip the whole deal and wear nothing at all. Which may yet get me in trouble, as all of my shorts are a good two or three sizes too big for me as well. I am three waist sizes smaller than I was in highschool. I do not know how heavy I am right now, as there is no scale in the house but last time I checked I was in the hundred and twenty five, hundred and thirty range. Which is where I was when I was in grade nine and weighed in for gym class. I would not be shocked if I was a little lower than that considering my diet of late.

You know, I think I am going to go lay down.

Eleven hours later.

Ugh. That was not helpful. It is now a new day, and i feel far less rested than I did when I went to sleep. I did not manage to sleep really, it was more like sitting on the edge of sleep. Never really falling, but remaining balanced between this place and that, that which would allow escape, a temporary reprieve.

My smoothy tastes nutty this morning, I am going through these hemp hearts far too quickly. At thirty one fifty a pound they are more than three time as expensive as rib eye steak. Which retails around nine fifty a pound locally. I do not think a steak smoothy would be very good, but I am going to quickly destroy my food budged if I cannot find another source of protein to blend into my diet. Maybe peanut butter. Hmm. That could work.

Cutting soy from my diet has had no notable effects as of yet, but I am not going back to it any time soon all the same. Between soy and gluten i have cut out more than eighty percent of the grocery stores selection from my consideration. Which is not that bad of a thing, most of these things are rather unhealthy things to be eating anyways.

It has started to rain. Well, I would hardly call it rain, but it the most precipitation i have seen since my arrival. Which is too bad, as many of the local birds hang out in the same spot most of the day, leaving stretches of the side walk inches deep in droppings. It is pretty gross. The birds are one of the things I really like about McAllen though. Waking up to the sound of them screaming back and forth at each other is something that has been sorely missing from my life these last few years. They have many different birds that I have never seen before, many with vibrant colours, and while I have not seen any myself I am told that parrots make their homes in the area.

The squirrels here are huge, and pretty funny. I cut the grass the other day, and left the cuttings to sit on the lawn. The squirrels then spent the next few hours running through the bunches of cut grass, grabbing at them and tossing them into the air looking for what ever might be hidden underneath.

Yup. Feelin like shit.