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.

I just totally lost my shit at some fat forty year old fuck at Circle K who told me to smile.
"That ain't free and it ain't cheap."
Then I stormed out with my vitamin water muttering about what a presumptuous dickbag he was. Overreacting much? Whatevs. My ladyparts are spasming in pain with such regularity that it feels like they're trying to build up momentum to exit my body. Bitch, don't tell ME to smile.

Went to see the surgeon today. She wants to take one tumor from each side because it's the only way to know for sure what I got going on in there. She talked a lot about the aesthetics of the surgery, where my scars would be. I guess it's better to cut around the areola because the scars show less. That's cool for the one on my right but the one on my left is on the "cleavage line" so I have to decide if I want them to cut around the areola and dig a tunnel through my tit or if I want to have a little scar. I'm leaning toward the scar because the other way sounds more complicated and um, really fucking gross. It's going to be a "partial bilateral masectomy" which sounds a lot worse than it actually is. And good news! I don't have to be awake! My surgeon is actually the first doctor who made me feel like everything is going to be totally fine. Cheers to you, Doctor Tanaka!

Now I want to share a sweet story from restaurant land. A couple weeks ago, I had a lady at one of my tables bring in a thank you card for a man who had bought her and her 3 kids lunch there a couple weeks ago. I guess he's a regular who comes in by himself at lunch and picks someone, usually a single mother, and buys their meal. The servers and managers know him but he remains anonymous to the other guests. I gave the card to my manager and he said it's the first time anyone has ever come back with a thank you card for the man and he would make sure to give it to him. I've been thinking about it a lot, what motivates that man, who he is, why single moms. Maybe he has a kid he's never known or even just thinks he might. Maybe his mom raised him on her own and he knows how hard it is. Maybe he wants a family of his own but feels like time is running out. Maybe he just gives to give, no back story, no baggage.

When the woman came back she was with her husband and 3 kids and I gave them all ice cream cones on the house because that shit is sweet.

Is it so wrong that I just want a boy to cuddle with?

I went to the doctor today to look at my skin and shit. He put a little magnifying glass all over my body. I have to get two moles removed. Week after next I have an appointment with the tit surgeon. I feel like I went to the doctor once and as a consequence I have to go for the next two months. I feel like any day now they're going to find something else that's wrong.

I feel better when I dance. So I should dance more. Bonilla said I should have a passionate fling to distract myself and that sounds like a good idea because I want physical comforts and I want a boy anyway but I still feel really emotionally fucked and I don't want some dude I really like or maybe don't like that much but just want badly feeling up my tumors because the big one feels really gross and I'm sure it's only a matter of time before the others get bigger too. I miss Ray because the Ray I remember would never have told me that my tumor was gross. He used to tell me my armpit was pretty. He would tell me that I'm okay, that I'm going to be okay, that worrying will make things worse than it could possibly help them and most importantly he would make me believe all those things. Things that I know I should think but wish I could believe.