top songs ever

As requested, here is my list of top songs ever.

Some of the songs that didn't make it to the top 20, but came very close:

- finch: what it is to burn
- david gray: sail away
- brooke fraser: hymn
- kymani marley: warriors
- james brown: try me
- brand new: the quiet things that no one every knows
- coldplay: trouble
- dido: white flag
- gin blossoms: until i fall away
- lauryn hill: tell him
- matchbox 20: kody
- taking back sunday: you're so last summer
- van morrison: crazy love

and seeing this list you should know 2 things about me:

1) these are not random choices. most, if not all, of these songs are my favorite for a very specific reason, whether it be what i was doing the first time i heard it, or what i was doing the last time i heard it.

2) yes, i do realize that, apparently, many of the songs i like are depressing! my sister was right! i'm just so never going to live that down...

today's obsession

second book in the series. didn't like it as much as "twilight" at first, but love it in retrospect.

i say i didn't like it at first because our vamp hero wasn't in most of it. and let's face it, that does take one whole huge aspect of interest in the book out of it.

but in the week since i've read the book, i've had time to mull it over, re-read sections as i do, and think about the story-line more as a whole than as little bits and pieces of "when will our hero appear?!" and i've realized that this is actually a really great second installment.

i mean, it's unquestionably dark. homegirl is just absolutely obsessed with our hero, and his absence is fair to killing her. i mean that literally. she's suicidal. and there's something about peeking into this 17 year olds mind when she's just so...depressed that feels very familiar. and she just goes about plugging along, getting through the motions, and not even realizing that she's slowly learning to live again when she just thinks she can't.

the book isn't deep. it doesn't delve into her psyche to a huge extent or anything. but it's still good. and you still feel for her.

but then, then, our hero makes an appearance. so yeah, he's about ready to kill himself to, but the fact is that he left her. he up and left her. we can all understand the reasoning he used and maybe sympathize with him, but still. he left her.

and she can't even attempt to be indifferent when he comes back! where is her self-preservation? where is her pride? yes, yes, good, good, she loves him. so?! don't get me wrong, i'm all for this couple, and i wouldn't finish this series if i didn't know how it ended. but again, still.

then i guess they sort of work it out. sort of. he's back, he's with her, but there's still this huge elephant in the room, which i guess becomes a bigger issue in the next 2 books. which i can't read yet because if i start them i won't be able to put them down and i just honestly don't have the time to read anything other than school stuff right now.

oh, and i also can't read them because i won't buy them in hardcover. it's what N. refers to as my ocd kicking in. i have the first 2 books in paperback, so the last 2 books have to be in paperback as well. since they just came out, they're only available in hardcover.

it's weird, i know. i can't help it!

but i do highly suggest reading this book.

dark hour

**DISCLAIMER: i get like this every once in a while. it passes. like right now for example? i'm feeling pretty okay... so don't let this convince you that i'm dropping out of school. i am NOT dropping out of school, people!**

i actually think i touched on rock bottom yesterday.

mentally, at least.

i mean, on the way home from my night class, and from being "on" the entire day long dealing with these massive bouts of anxiety, i actually felt every ounce of adrenaline leaving my body. i was on BART and realized that i just had nothing left.

nothing.

and i got home and my brain just...quit. i didn't want to do anything anymore. i didn't want to study. i didn't want to take a shower. i didn't want to be a law student. i didn't want to change out of my school clothes and into home clothes. i didn't want to eat dinner. i didn't want to think about what i wanted to drink. i didn't want to work up the energy to care about the next day. i definitely didn't want to be a law student anymore. i didn't even want to be lawyer. i didn't want to take the bar. i didn't want to be in the bay area. i didn't want to be anywhere else. i didn't want to go to work or write memos or think about legal issues.

i mean, and i literally mean, that i just...stopped working.

and then i got up this morning and the feeling was still there. so i vaguely remember changing into my friday uniform of jeans i wore at some point that week, a tank, my uw hoodie from freshman year, no make-up, and my hair (unbrushed) in a pony tail. the only thing i could think to do was put on earrings, and that's just because they were already out on my dresser and i didn't have to actually choose them.

so i went to class in a blur, took a 3 HOUR exam in drafting, and went to lunch with M. and L. i felt like i was floating through the day on auto-pilot. you know, like when you're there but you're not really? i mean, i sat there, and i tried to talk, but i felt really...punchy. like everything i said was way more exaggerated than i meant it to be. it all sounded foreign coming out of my mouth, like my brain was slightly in the background just trying to cope with the day to day. like i was scraping the bottom of the barrel for energy to form sentences and get them out, and because i knew that i was trying to overcompensate and it all just came out...forced. and not only was everything i said overloud, but also negative, which usually isn't the case for me (at least i don't think it is). i couldn't get my self over the fact that i hated being here. i didn't want to go through another week or month or , God forbid, another entire semester. i just didn't have it in me to do it.

and i was angry that i was going to do it anyway.

i was thinking about that a lot today as i was listening to muse's "absolution," which is amazing btw.

i was thinking about why i'm here, trying to be a lawyer, and whether or not i still want to do it. or if i ever wanted to do it. it all comes down to your parents, doesn't it? i mean, my parents are amazing. they're great parents. and i can honestly say that if it wasnt' for them, specifically, i wouldn't be here. because i've seen too many childhood friends and neighbors, who were so similarly situated to me, go absolutely no where because they didn't have my parents.

i asked my dad when he visited how he and my mom managed to raise 3 fairly well-adjusted girls. and he said it worked because he and my mom almost had a silent agreement that one of them played the heavy while the other was more nurturing. and while i know that they both probably have some criticisms of each other and they way they parented us as individuals, i wish i could just tell that whatever they did worked. it may not seem that way sometimes, especially when you look at the problems in me and my sisters and you nit-pick at all the flaws, but everyone has flaws. we can't be perfect. but we're not bad. and that's because whatever they did worked.

but what i've noticed is that i whenever i get into moods like the one i'm in now, i tend to blame them. or my dad, i guess i should say, more specifically. i blamed him because, instead of fists in faces, he used the phrases, "i'm so disappointed in you," or, "you know that's unacceptable, right?" i guess he never realized that we probably would have preferred the fists.

but those words shaped us. me, most of all, out of my sisters. i couldn't stand hearing them, couldn't stomach it. and sometimes, even now when he hasn't said that in so many years, i still get shaky when i make myself hear his voice in my head biting out those five little words.

"i'm so disappointed in you."

"you know that's unacceptable, right?"

and it was mostly about grades. there was a time when i was in highschool, and my dad would call, when before even asking me how i was he'd ask how school was. that was the priority. school. me.

but i can't cast blame elsewhere anymore, and i don't really...haven't for a long time. i love my dad, he's one of my absolute favorite people in the world. and i can stand back and realize now that i was/am lucky to have him, and to have had him balanced out by my mother. because i have so much now that i wouldn't have without them. and i'm so lucky. so lucky.

i just bring this up now more as a criticism of myself than of him. because it think he's come to understand, if only a little, what these words did to us. maybe not to me, but i've fought for him to understand what they did to my little sister. and i hope that he's got that.

it was a little too late for me, i'd already come to internalize them. so when i was in college, and my grades were slipping, i'd hear that voice in my head.

"i'm so disappointed in you."

"you know that's unacceptable, right?"

and i'd pick those grades right back up. this mentality transferred over to different parts of my life as well, but i don't really want to get into that now. i'm trying to stay focused here.

anyway, then i got to lawschool. and his voice has become my voice, saying that i'm not going to disappoint anyone, i'm going to be something that they call be proud of. i'm going to be a lawyer. i'm going to go to school and be smart and get a good job.

even if i'm hating every single second of it. now that's work ethic. (N. calls it being the most stubborn person he's ever met).

but if i'm honest, then i'll admit that i'm not really hating every single second of law school. i love working for tribes. i find the work rewarding. but it's the thought of being "on" every single second of every single day for the foreseeable future that just has me feeling so trapped. because i have to stick this out. i've started. i'll finish. i have to stick it out.

i'm just not sure i want to. at least not right at this second, which is all i can really speak for since my moods have just been chaotic lately.

i tell myself that i need a vacation. it's true, but truth means so very little. my friends tell me i need sleep. can't i sleep when i'm dead? i tell myself that i won't take the bar, i'll take a year off instead and trying to just live normally and see if that works for me. but then i hear the voice and i chicken out.

i need to do something with my life.

i guess i just don't know what yet. and that's probably what terrifies me the most sometimes.

ulgh. what can i say, it's been a really bad couple of weeks.

i was thinking that most of my blogs just seem so...depressing. isn't that an indication of my life? or is it just that when life is good i'm out living it instead of blogging it? who knows.

this got way longer than i intended it to.

music to live by

This album has been seeing me through the last week or so.
I adore every single song.

floodgates

i think i have reached new and impressive levels of exhaustion.

much in keeping with the way i deal with most aspects of my life, i've managed, thus far, to compartmentalize my law school career. meaning that, in the general day to day sense of things, i try not to look too far in advance. the idea is that today, tomorrow (and perhaps even the rest of the week) is far too much to deal with as it is, so lets just shove everything else that's going to happen into little compartments in the attic of my mind. it's sort of like christmas decorations; i'll get them out when the season gets closer.

and this method has worked for me fairly well these last 2 and half years (though there have been moments of mental incapacitation where the compartments broke down and all my christmas decorations came spilling out). we don't like to talk about those moments.

HOWEVER. last night, i made the gargantuan mistake of attempting to organize the rest of my semester. this came up because i have a few things to look forward too. i'm going to visit seattle for the weekend in october, M.'s moving down to the bay in october, she and i are going to the carrie underwood concert in november, and both A. and K. are visiting in november for A.'s bday and the premiere of the twilight movie.

so yay! things to look forward to! BUT, then i had to look at the weeks in between those days to see how they would all fit in to my schedule. well. i should have just jumped off a cliff and saved myself the trouble.

between trial practice (i.e. coming up with and "performing" a mock trial), legal drafting practice exams, work work work, revising and finishing my writing requirement, making some headway on my hawaiian independence article, and taking the MPRE's, i somehow have to find the time to actually breathe.

i mean, october is okay. i'm gone the first weekend, have a work thing to do the second weekend, and the rest is generally unbooked. so i guess i can make any real moves i was planning on making for my writing requirement during that time. although i'll also be working on my trial practice case as well. and hopefully i'll come back from seattle reenergized rather than wishing i wasn't here.

november, however... well, november just blows. the first weekend is the MPRE, which means that before than i have to somehow find the time to study for it. because, after all, it's just the bar, right? the next weekend (i think, though i may have my scheduling messed up), i'll be busy both saturday and sunday during the day watching our final mock trials for trial practice. hopefully, i'll be able to convince my "firm" to do our trial that past thursday (aka, the first day of trials), because saturday night is also the carrie underwood concert. which, i know, is lame and something i can easily not go to, but i've already got the tickets and convinced M. to go to with me, so i'm sort of committed, you know? anyway, the next week K. and A. both get here, we're gonna watch the movie, and are supposed to go to the cal v. stanford game, although i can't at the moment find an extra ticket, so we'll see. and the weekend after that is thanksgiving, which means that my final deadlines (for perhaps everything school related aside from ethics, which might be due earlier, gotta check...shit) is just around the corner. by this point, my writing requirement should be all but done.

and so i'm just a little stressed.

this is why i have compartmentalized my life.

and lets not discuss the fact that my grandpa's been in the hospital for the passed week, and my brother in law was in an accident last week as well.

PLUS, i'm disenchanted with the bay area, am missing washington like crazy, and my bf doesn't really want to move back there. which is understandable. he feels about there the way i feel about here. but then, where does that leave us?

so yeah. stressed.

someone give me a damn cookie.

today's obsession

it's like being in high school all over again. read it.

i literally started the book on the bus-part of my commute to school this morning (got 25 minutes of reading in), continued it on the BART-part of my commute back home this afternoon (another 30 minutes of wordage), and then changed into my favorite sweats and tank, got myself a diet coke, and plopped my rear in the most comfortable position i've ever felt on the couch and read.

i finished the book by 7pm. it's that interesting.

did you ever read L.J. Smith's "Vampire Diaries" when you were in highschool? it's like that. angsty and teenager, with concepts of love no 17 year old could possibly understand... but i think it's that forbidden aspect of it that makes it all the better.

i've always enjoyed these types of books. the ones that take complete fantasy and blend it into the mundane. and this book is also set in washington, which was another huge plus for me. it's funny because i've been wanting to go hiking in the olympic national forest, and was briefly considering doing that during my trip up to seattle in 2 weeks, and then i read this book, where that's most of what they do is hike in the olympics. made me miss washington all the more.

and you've just got to love that stephenie meyers was basically unheard of by the reading world before this series. and then one day, bam, she's the newest j.k. rowling. amazing.

anyhow, substance wise, hey, it's a teenage book, okay? it's not the next piece of great american literature. if you want entertainment and a good love story, pick it up. if you're looking for deep characters and huge personality development, probably not your bag.

i will mention that they're turning this in to a movie. and the actor who plays cedric diggory in harry potter and the goblet of fire will be playing our vampire hero.

dreamy.

finding balance

first question: can someone please explain to me how guys can just throw on whatever, run their fingers through their need-a-haircut 'dos, grin, and still be completely photogenic? (search carter oosterhouse - yes, of HGTV green living fame). i mean, shouldn't they have to apply eye-liner and mascara like the rest of us?!

*sigh* anyway. that was my pointless question for the day.

so after my mini-meltdown this passed weekend, i decided to just take the week as it came. i compartmentalized my days and dealt. monday sucked other than the 2 hours of mindlessness i spent glued to the tube watching - wait for it - GOSSIP GIRL and OTH premiere night!

dear gossip girl: what's with the cougar? as if they need anymore beautiful people with zero to nothing morals in this small slice of heaven? and can i just say that this show has managed, in a matter of minutes, to redeem social-climbing-back-stabbing J for me? awesome. S and D irritated me as usual. B was great, even when she was getting a verbal ass kicking from mr. british. and eww, chuck. there's my review, nutshelled.

as for oth: soooo glad it was peyton. sooooooo glad. ... that's actually all i have to say about that episode. oh, except what's with the return of psycho nannie carrie and the crimes against humanity?! hello oth, kids are watching this crap!

*huff*

my 2 days of class so far has been okay. you know all that reading i mentioned for ethics? totally pointless. didn't pay one single like of attention in that entire class. and one of my authors (christine feehan - paranormal romance with a twist) just came out with the latest installment of a series i read, so i of course had to go and buy that and finish it before i could concentrate on school again. buy federal indian law went great today, as usual. i love that class. i actually feel like i'm learning something worth my while, and interesting to boot!

and i started work again at the firm! yay! talk about the perfect place to be employed. i'm not gonna lie, i'm a little worried about the work load, but i can handle it...right?

RIGHT?!