Got fired this weekend. Pretty lame. I didn't really want to stay there much longer anyway but it would have been nice to quit with honor and dignity and maybe another job lined up.

Apparently two weeks ago, a lady came in at 8:40 when we were about to close but I'd started cleaning early because sunday nights are slow. I wasn't paying attention to the front door because I was tired, still sick and wanted to clean my shit and go. I guess this lady felt that I deliberately ignored her and her family when I never saw them and would never ignore them if I had. That's just rude. And that's no way to get a good tip. So she sent an email to corporate and I am fired. No other complaints or write-ups or any other kind of disciplinary action in my file.

Three things really bum me out about this: Number one: I wish she would have said something at the time, something like "excuse me, we would like a table please." or even something less polite, so I could have done something for her then. I would have hooked it up for them because that's what I do when I fuck up. Instead she had to be all passive-aggressive email on me and I am fired and the manager on duty at the time was also fired because they think he closed early again. Number two: the manager who got fired is a dad. That's just fucked up. Not that dads shouldn't get fired but come on dude. He'd worked there probably half my life span. Not cool. Number three: After I toughed out all the shit with my health, sucked it up day after day and continued to be a pretty awesome waitress, this is what I get. I am never sucking it up again.

That's what she said.

Today was my first day of classes for winter quarter. I'm feeling pretty meh about school at the moment. All I did over break was feel crappy. I had my skinectomy and that knocked me the fuck out for a while. When the numbing shots wore off, the pain was worse than I expected. It felt like something had cut my bone. I was pretty depressed afterwards too, thinking about how it can come back, that I could have to go through this again and again. Just a little local anesthesia and goodbye skin. I could feel the sawing pressure when he cut it off. For a moment, before he stitched me up, I could feel my skin hanging loose around the bone, my bone exposed and cold. The whole time I felt something cool and wet seeping out all around my arm. It was horrific. I thought I was going to pass out or puke and I wasn't even looking at it. My doctor kept asking me questions to distract me, so I was laying there trying to talk about Salman Rushdie but all I could think about was my blood and bones. And then when he finished my wrist, again on my leg. Thinking about possibly having to go through this again makes me crazy. I look over my skin every day.

I feel different now. I feel old and tired. I'm afraid of the sun. When I started feeling better after surgery I got a really bad cold that knocked me back down. I spent new year's eve sick and alone. Nobody called me except some guy from work who I'd already told I couldn't work for him.

The other night at work Sarah Bonilla pointed out to me that I have the 11:11 stitched into my body, eleven stitches on my arm and eleven on my leg. 11:11 is a strange phenomenon. I did some internet investigating (internetstigating?) that gave me some food for thought. Eleven is associated with enlightenment and while I think a lot of the "angels make me look at the clock at 11:11" stuff is kind of crazy, I do think there is value in adding a level of symbolism to your life if it improves the quality of your life. I don't think my personal 11:11 enlightened me in any way, but maybe it was a call for me to pay more attention. To keep trying to live better.

But shit god damn, I wish I wasn't back in school already. It's going to be super hard for me to care about the antebellum South and 1890's England, let alone Plato and Aristotle.

I had this dream that Ray came over to my house to see me. I kept trying to tell him about my surgeries because I wanted him to feel sorry for me and therefore love me. I showed him my scars and he, all jovial and jolly, grinned and told me I wasn't very pretty anymore and he was so very glad he didn't have to deal with all my shit. I wanted him to see the crooked rivers stitched on my arm and leg, the purpling frown on one breast and the crooked smile under the nipple of the other. I thought that once he saw how I had been hurting he would be moved. I thought I could make him love me with my pain, but he just laughed and said I wasn't very pretty anymore and that was the end of the story as far as he was concerned. I had this dream a couple of times.

The joke's on you evil dream Ray. I've been using this moisturizer that makes my pores less porous and my cheeks are so smooth and soft you'd think I ripped them off a baby. Also, I am a real person whereas you, evil dream Ray, are merely the product of an over-worked and extremely anxious subconscious. I was just thinking about it in the shower and I wanted to make sure I wrote all this down. Because all the cancer in the world wouldn't make him, or anyone, love me the way I want them to.

On the plus side, I don't have any cancer anymore. I'm pretty stoked on that but also terrified of it coming back. I'm worried that no matter how much I step up my sun protection, the damage may have already been done. I'm worried about how I'm going to get health insurance after I graduate. I'm good for the next year, but shit, having melanoma pop up in two different spots at the same time indicates that I am at an increased risk for reoccurance. I can has skin check?

A couple weeks ago, the day after my skinectomy as a matter of fact, I had a really good talk with my dad. I was all hopped up on vicoden rambling to him about how I think maybe I made myself so sick by being so hard on myself all the time. I am starting to believe more in the connection between mental health and physical health and I think these tumors and these renegade cells are my body eating itself up the way I always take things out on myself. He said something like, we are always comparing our insides to other people's outsides and it's not fair to anyone and it's not constructive. I am used to seeing my dad as kind of curmudgeonly, a fuddy duddy and a goofball, the guy who borrows my little brother's car to smoke cigars in it, but when he said that to me, it reminded me that he is also very wise. Also, that I love him very much.

The dance show is this weekend. I'm still not feeling as good as I used to. I don't feel weak any more like I did after my surgery but I am still having pain in my breasts, especially when I'm warmer and moving my arms around a lot. Ballet doesn't bother me as much as carrying trays around at work. Last weekend was rough, black friday and the crowds and so many many trays to carry. On Sunday night I was ready to snap, having a tantrum in the back because my tits hurt and people are rude and I can't just say to them, hey, I just had this scary thing happen to me and it still hurts AND my breasts are kind of ugly now and I don't know how much longer they will hurt and be ugly so with that in mind would it fucking kill you to make eye contact with me or even smile or say "thank you"? The pain isn't too sharp all the time or anything but it makes everything more tiresome and I didn't do anything else but work last weekend because of being tired and needing so much energy to keep being that perky waitress when I feel this way.

Next week I am having more skin cut away around where my moles were because of the malignant melanoma or whatever. A centimeter radius around where they were. A Hello Kitty bandaid just isn't going to cut it this time. Sometimes I feel really beat down. I know I KNOW there are much worse things in the world that could happen or have happened to people I know and love but fuck it, I don't want to get cut up again so soon. It is going to be a couple of big pieces of skin and I am sick of going to the doctor and I'm scared of finding out that things are even worse. I have to get blood tests and xrays and I'm scared. Sometimes I just don't want to know.

Last night I took a hot bath and I was looking at my body, all the new scars I've gotten recently. I don't have any other scars from anything except a chicken pox scar on my forehead from when I was four. It's hard to look at the ones on my breasts. I miss having a lover/boyfriend type around. I miss being touched outside of a medical setting. I've had some opportunities lately but I don't want anyone to see my gross boobs. My right nip still hurts if something brushes it even lightly. You can't expect a boy not to go feeling around there, or train him to exclusively grope lefty. It would be nice to have that kind of distraction but it's hard for me right now.

I've been playing the piano a lot lately. When I got the mole on my wrist removed, I got some gnarly stitches that made guitar hurt in a really yucky stretched out skin kind of way. Turns out I had me some malignant melanoma there so I gotta get more of my skin cut off, more gnarly stitches. I figure it's the Lord's way of telling me I should get back to my roots. I can play "Shave and a Haircut".

I can also play other things.

I got a B+ on a paper. Oh ouch. Notoriously difficult professor so I should be proud I suppose, but I haven't seen one of them wiggly B letters in ages. I'm used to the more angular and straight forward A. Luckily, I already have a syllabus for one course next quarter and I am going to get so far ahead the year 2012 will be eating my dust.

I made another friend at school today for a grand total of 3. Things are going pretty well. Long holiday weekend full of cramming and working at a diner crammed (I hope!) with cheap, crabby holiday shoppers. Adam is coming down for the holiday weekend and next weekend is the dance show. Have to get a costume, powder blue and white for maximum washed-out effect, and backstage more cramming for finals. The next week finals and then, Liberty, Debauchery and Pleasure Reading!

And Faulkner.

Getting my surgery did on friday morning. It is what it is.

I get freaked out if I think about it too much. Sometimes people I talk to about it try to calm me down by telling me about way worse things that have happened to them or other people. I know this isn't the worst thing in the world, but that knowledge doesn't change that it is definitely the worst thing that has ever happened to me.

Got my moles removed, on my wrist and on my calf. I'm all bruised and sore around where my stitches are but I dragged myself around at work all weekend anyway. I should probably get employee of the year. Aw dang.

Talking to Sarah B. tonight about going to Hill Street Cafe this week and now I can't stop thinking about the food there. I want their soup and I want it NOW. She's been learning about the tarot and she said she'd do a reading for me. I'm pretty stoked on it.

Is it so wrong that I'm actually really looking forward to having next weekend off, even though I will probably be miserable? It'll be really nice to have a damn good excuse to be lazy for a while.

Voted yesterday. Felt totally cool going in to the polls, left a nervous wreck. I decided to go home and read myself to sleep (an easy task when you're taking a course called "Literature of Fact in the Long 18th Century) and wake up when polls closed on the East Coast. I am so unspeakably happy Barack Obama won.

Barack Obama still drives my spellcheck crazy. Hopefully this will be fixed in the next software update. Show the man some respect!

All the news coverage about how historic his presidency is has been all about race. To me, and probably most of my generation, it's also historic because it's the first time in our memories that the American people have elected an intellectual, well-spoken man who we can truly believe in. Honestly, is it any wonder that kids my age have been so apathetic about politics when they came to political awareness when Bill Clinton was getting a blowjay? With this new information introduced to us in junior high and forced to decide which to dedicate more research and time to, is it any wonder that my eighth grade class voted for dick? W. might have made a lot of us mad but Gore and Kerry weren't able to convince enough of us that they'd be better enough that we should pause the porno for a minute and vote. Barack Obama made a real change in how young people think about politics. If I tried to count the Obama shirts I see every day on campus I would probably never stop counting, not to mention the flyers for rallies, kids registering kids to vote, the students for Obama club hanging out at their table. It's been so exciting. I just hope he can deliver on his promises, but I really believe that he can. It's just so fucking beautiful to see somebody with a god damn brain taking the White House. I've never been so proud of America before.