I don’t have classes until 1pm, but I woke up after getting a phone call from my boyfriend (he just wanted to say hi before he went to school) and now I can’t get back to sleep. I’m restless. I suppose it doesn’t help that there is background noise – my landlord runs a day care during the day – normally I’m not affected by it, but today I am.

Luckily for the most part I’ve been getting a good night’s sleep each night. My bed is comfortable, possibly more comfortable then the one at home for some reason. I don’t know why, considering my mattress at home has a pillow top (which is a really comfy extra piece on top) and this bed doesn’t (and if it does it isn’t as thick). Oh well, I’m not one to complain if comfortable!

My computer chair is far from comfortable though. It’s making my upper legs and bum ache. I’m feeling that bone under my left leg coming in again, which sucks because when I had it removed last time I lost a lot of blood. I don’t want to loose anymore, and it’s in such an awkward position that it made sitting and lying down painful (since it’s on the back).

I can remember my doctor’s words when I first met him. “Oh you are done growing, so you probably won’t need anymore surgeries!” Pfff. That’s just wishful thinking on both sides. I would like to be able to say I don’t need anymore surgeries, but I hate discomfort and being in more pain then I usually am, so I would take the surgery to lessen that pain and find a little bit more comfort.

Sometimes I fear that I complain too much. When I was at Sick Kids, I worried that my doctor thought of me as a whiner, not brave at all. I’m not claiming to be brave or anything, but I definitely don’t want to be a complainer in people’s eyes. So for the most part, I clench my teeth and bare it instead of making a doctors appointment to deal with my thousands of complaints and concerns. My new doctor didn’t seem to keen on talking about future possibilities for surgeries, so it’s going to be harder with him.

Plus it’ll be harder with myself. Trying to convince myself to actually book a surgery, that is. New Doctor is, well, new to me. He’s never preformed a surgery on me or even ordered x-rays. Granted, I’ve only had one visit, but still. What’s new is scary and unfamiliar.

I also don’t want to slow myself down in college. I made a slight pack with myself that I would hold off on surgeries and even complaining until after I graduated from my two year program. It can’t be that hard, I just hope my body will cooperate. Sometimes it doesn’t, but I really don’t want to miss any time. I’m trying to go for “perfect attendance”.

My MHE has always been an awkward subject with new people I meet too. They tend to ask a question that would spark the need to explain my medical disability, such as “why do you walk that way?”. Once I accidentally roped myself into having to explain when the girl asked me if I received any bursaries yet. Without thinking, I told her that one I got at commencement… the Heather Rebeka Lodge award, which was awarded to me for overcoming challenges and completing my high school education and going on to attend college. She wanted to know what challenges I overcame, so I told her about being short 2 credits due to circumstances and working extremely hard in my final year to be able to graduate with my classmates. Again, she wanted to know what circumstances they were, and again I told her about my two surgeries months after each other.

Anyways, I’m still making slow progress being 100% comfortable and sure of myself. I don’t know if it’s just my personality that causes me to be this insecure, but it’s slightly annoying.

I have to go finish the summary for chapter one now, and I suppose I should have did the summary for chapter two as well in Introduction to Psychology.

I never thought I would make it to the final camping weekend. I was almost 99.9% sure I would die of exhaustion, stress, and anger before I saw today. Luckily I didn’t, I’m still alive and kicking. I don’t know if I will be after the weekend, ask me on Sunday.

Last weekend was absolutely horrible. It rained the entire day on Saturday, and my body ached so bad I couldn’t even move. I had to keep going into my tent and trying to stay out of the cold and rain and get warm. I think I pissed off my boss and co-workers but I really didn’t care, I could barely move. Kate says its my fault for taking on a job I “couldn’t handle”.

Anyways, I quit my second job; which was working with a boy who has a developmental delay. I believe I put too much on my plate and just wasn’t able to handle it. Thats alright though, I’ve lessened the load and now I shouldn’t be too stressed out!

In other news, Harry Potter 5 comes out tomorrow. I’m pumped but slightly depressed since I won’t get to get it until Monday since I am camping and since I have a college tour that day anyway.

Have you ever had one of those weekends so full of ups and downs it felt like you were a part of a really bad soap opera that over dramatized everything? Ya. I just had one of those weekends.

Friday was a good day for me; it was my birthday, how could it have sucked? I spent it with my family and got cool presents. Saturday was a pretty decent day, I took the Non-Violent Crisis Intervention Course through work and learned a lot of valuable things. I also helped set up the dinning shelters for camp to see if we had all the pieces. Sunday was a completely different story. I was planning on going for the perfect birthday weekend where nothing goes wrong and you’re just generally happy to have reached the age of 18. I am still generally happy about being alive, but I’m completely bummed out at the same time.

Early on Sunday morning, Father’s Day, my beloved dog passed away. Shadow had been a part of our family for 8 years, and saying goodbye was so difficult. He was a major part of our lives, and I already miss every little thing about him. I miss him coming into the kitchen to bug me for a slice of cheese every time I opened the refrigerator, I miss him barking loudly every time I come home, I miss him sighing from boredom when my mom and I are on the computers instead of paying him attention, and I miss seeing him waiting at the top of the drive when we come home. That’s just a quick list of things I miss about him, the things I notice more now that he’s gone. The only good thing I have to say on that matter was that it was a quick death. I’m assuming his heart gave out as my Dad saw him in Kate’s room breathing rather heavily and tried to get him to come upstairs but he wouldn’t. Dad then went upstairs to put on a pot of coffee and by the time he came back down to check on Shadow, he had moved to the part of the hallway in front of my bedroom door and my parent’s bedroom door and died.

So Sunday really sucked for me. I was in bed completely out of sorts. I know he was a dog and to a lot of people who wouldn’t understand, there are worse things that could happen – and I am sure that’s true. But keep in mind that Shadow was a very important part of our family. He was one of us. I’m going to miss him a lot.

Monday afternoon I finally made my way down to my grandparents house. I was supposed to go on the Sunday but I didn’t feel up to it. Papa’s health seems ok; he’s progressing at the expected speed of someone who has just had triple bypass surgery. He seems depressed though, but I read online and have been told that its related to having heart surgery and it will pass when he starts feeling like his normal self. I agree with that. Papa has always been the kind of man who has to keep busy, or else he feels useless. Plus there isn’t a lot for him to do around the house.

Papa isn’t feeling up enough to coming to my Commencement on the 28th of June, as the car ride is a long one and he would have to sit outside for a couple hours – he could catch a chill. I don’t want him getting sick over seeing a silly ceremony that is very predictable anyway. He’s seen Shannon’s and Kate’s, he knows how it works. Besides, we will take lots of pictures and he will get to miss all the boring speeches! Lucky guy!

I start work tomorrow, I mean actual work, getting paid for the hours I put in. I got all of my co-op hours on Friday and sent in all of the co-op papers, so I’m now officially done with co-op. I’m an official employee, getting paid. We leave on Friday at 5pm for camp, and won’t get back until 3:30pm on Sunday. For a while, I was just going to get volunteer hours, but luckily my boss decided to put me on the payroll for that. Camp is going to be very hectic and stressful, and it will be good getting paid to sleep on a very hard ground and probably throw my body out of whack. It’s going to be interesting to see how my body reacts to sleeping in a tent, as I’ve never done it before. I’ll have to do it for 3 weekends in a row in July!

Well I’m off to read and get an early sleep, and perhaps think of some alibis for the Murder Mystery Club Night I’m helping run tomorrow.

P.S. I am a little worried that I lost all the readers I had before when I wasn’t posting a lot, so please if you are reading comment me so I know you’re still reading!

If you’ve ever experienced pushing your body to its limits and not getting anything good out of it, you’ll understand this post. Since February I’ve worked my bony bum off at my co-op, because I knew all along that I would be applying for summer student and I wanted them to see how hard of a worker I am. Not to mention, I needed every hour to count so I could graduate this year.

But my body is tired and it feels like I’ve proven nothing. Yes, they appreciate all that I’ve done. Yes, they appreciate the fact that I’m in here every day while the other co-op student calls in sick 99.9% of the time. But it still doesn’t seem to be enough, because Greg keeps talking about the really awesome nursing students they’ve interviewed. I can’t compare to a nursing student, I’m only in high school. All I have to offer is my goals for the future, my ability to work hard and stay on task, and the fact that I’ve been here forever and know the members. Plus that I’m self driven. I can complete tasks on my own or in a group. But I’m also just in high school. They already have a high school student, and they like him a lot because he knows what he’s doing and they don’t have to train him. They would have to train me.

One of the reasons why I really want this job is because I won’t have to stand for long periods of time. I’m already doing all of the work the summer students would be doing and my body – for the most part – is handling it well. I’m tired because I am pushing myself to come in everyday, but I need to break my body in and get used to coming to work everyday.

Hopefully all this hard work will pay off. I should know by Friday.

Winter and I don’t get along, we really don’t. Winter is cold while I like to be warm, winter is full of hazards like ice and snow. Oh ya, did I mention winter is cold?

Ya I know, I live in Canada; I should be used to it, but I’m not. I hate it more and more with each passing year. I think snow falls are pretty only if I’m safe and warm inside my house. I’m sure many people are like that.

My bones also hate winter. Which is believable, seeing as everyones bones hate winter, but mine really hate winter. Just yesterday I was hanging out with my boyfriend and his friends and they wanted to go for a walk to get to my boyfriends work so he could pick up his tips, and then go to one of their houses. My boyfriend lives right smack dab in the middle of both destinations, and I had to walk all the way down to the restaurant with my boyfriend and one of his friends. But by the time we got back to my boyfriends house, my bones were killing me. My hip kept cracking from the cold and my ankles were sore. So we didn’t end up going to the other persons house.

I hate walking in huge groups, because I feel like I’m slowing them down. It also seemed like I was mad because I wasn’t talking; but I’m not much of a conversationalist when I’m freezing cold, aching, and trying to prevent snot from running down my face.

It took the rest of the night for my bones to thaw out, and then I woke up 2 times last night because my ankle had [very painfully] locked up. I hate it when my ankle locks up; its sort of like a cramp but not really because its more of the bones locking up then the muscle. It hurts just as much though. I think its because I have a tumour on my ankle thats gotten pretty big. It never used to lock up.

But today my ankle is sore still from locking up. So oh joy. I just know when I leave the warmth of our house to venture outside into the cold, it will lock up again. I have to run errands today at my co-op too; shopping for the clubnight and dance, so yet again I will be slowing people down.

I hate slowing people down.

You’ve gotta hate love the people who have absolutely nothing [medically] wrong with them medically and always fake that they have something [medically] wrong with them just to get attention that they see someone who does have a medical disorder getting. It’s pathetic and rather insulting, to me anyway. My friend Jodie was just telling me about this girl at her school who literally copied everything she went through today, right down to having a fake seizure. Whats wrong with people?

I know I would love to not get the attention I get from having a medical disability, and I’m sure Jodie feels the same. But why would you fake having serious medical problems just to get attention? I’ve personally never had anyone try to copy what I go through, unlike Jodie, but there was a girl at my school who acted like a twisted ankle deserved front page news, a cast signed by everyone, and flowers and other such get well soon gifts from people. She drove me insane sitting in the middle of Art class making sure everyone was looking at her before she popped down some iron pills and gravely informed us all that she had low iron and needed to take them, even though you’re supposed to take iron pills with meals, not during fourth period. After that she then proceeded to ask the teacher if she could go for a walk around the school because she was suffering from low iron – which she did just to get out of class. Nevermind that if you have low iron then you tend to be more tired and lazy, she used it as an excuse and made everyone pity her. At that same time, I was taking iron pills in the morning due to loosing a lot of blood during a surgery which made me low in iron as well. I was tired all the time and taking long walks around the school was far from my mind, all I wanted to do was sleep.

Some people, I tell ya, it sickens me. They have good, easy lives and don’t even know it. Instead they think they have it really, really bad and try to get pity from everyone they know. I don’t even think I have it bad at all, and I’m a little drama queen (for the most part anyway). I know there are people out there worse off then me, and I would never dream of saying “oh yeah, I have it so bad!” because I don’t.

I know everybody has their insecure moments; but lately I tend to be having them a lot more. I don’t know why, or even how these insecure moments are brought on. Sometimes they just appear out of no where – hitting me hard from the side or somewhere I don’t expect them to hit me.

Usually when I have these insecure moments, they appear out of no where and they are almost always MHE related. I’ve been dating this really amazing guy for nearly six months now, and I still doubt what he says. After all, my last two breakups where MHE related – the one guy said after he dumped me that he was the best I could do with my “nasty bone thing” (well, he turned out to be wrong…the guy I’m dating now treats me amazingly) and the other guy said he was breaking up with me because I couldn’t “physically keep up” – he liked working out, ATVing, and a lot of other stuff I couldn’t do.

I’m trying to do something about it too, because I hate how I am – always doubting people and being negative (although I like to look at it as facing reality) but it’s hard. Sometimes I can vanish my insecure thoughts and get on with my days, but other times it’s really hard. Sometimes I feel so weak for thinking bad thoughts about myself – like I can’t do this, or they don’t really like me.

Maybe I am weak. I hate being insecure though. It’s annoying for me and those around me.

Yesterday, I stayed home from school (my stomach was – is actually – hurting a lot. I blame Captain Crunch Cereal) and halfway through the day I found myself bored with nothing to do. I had already finished an entire project that normally would have taken me several hours – I was so intent on finishing it that it was finished in half an hour.

I started cleaning up the family room a little bit, picking out the stuff that was mine and needed to go downstairs to my room. Then I found my yearbook from grade seven. I started flipping through it to read what people had wrote. The instead I flipped it open, I saw a little comment that read “Crippled Lady! Hava good summer!” by a kid in my class.

I decided to do a test, to see how many times people said that to me over the years. At least 3 different people said something along those lines in each of my yearbooks. Gimp was mentioned, “Broken Leg Girl” was too. It’s interesting though, because none of those kids meant to be mean, they just thought they were sharing a rather funny inside joke with me.

But I didn’t find it funny each year when I took home my yearbook and read things like “It was nice seeing ya when you were actually at school, Broken Leg Girl. Have a good summer!” I found it rather depressing. If I ever have kids, and if they ever got their hands on my yearbooks then they would probably think I’m really pathetic or something, and feel sorry for me.

I’m kind of mad that each year I paid 60 bucks for a yearbook only to have it littered with sayings like that. Now isn’t that something you want to look back on years later? I swear to God, if someone writes something like that in my grade twelve yearbook, I’ll flip and throw them all out.

I dislike how my disorder has become an “inside joke” with my peers.

I know that I’ve mentioned before my hatred of awkward questions regarding anything “odd” about my body. I’m very weird about things like that, in my really messed up mind, I believe that it’s a little rude. I mean, I don’t ask people about things on their body because I’m cautious like that – I wouldn’t want to make people feel the way I feel when asked an awkward question like that.

Last night while I was at my boyfriends house, I was asked yet another awkward question by his nine year old sister about the bubble scar on the back of my right ear. She wanted to know why it was there, and it was really awkward because I don’t know how to respond to questions like that. I know that kids ask questions, so I try not to take it to heart, but I’m always worried about people noticing the “weird” things about me. Luckily my boyfriend told her to go away and stop asking questions like that, so I didn’t have to reply. I know, I’m being really stupid about questions. People are just curious, but their curiousity makes me anxious.

I got the bubble scar from when my ears used to be pierced and a kid pulled the earing out. I’m rather weird about it, as I think it’s a little gross and I used to love having my ears pierced – I really miss the whacky earings I used to wear to draw attention away from my “sticky-out ears”.

A while ago, I went to see a plastic surgeon about removing it – but that didn’t go well. The guy was a really big jerk, and basically wouldn’t touch my ear. He said he didn’t want to “make it worse” and that I was “very shallow” for wanting it gone. That really upset me, for starters he shouldn’t be judging a girl on things that make her feel different, like my scars – which he also said I was shallow for wanting to remove them as they “are reminders” or something along those lines.

I don’t need reminders, as I have memories, and I didn’t even want to remove all of my scars, just the really big, annoying itchy ones that make me hate summer time and bathing suits. But the point of that visit was my ear. It’s a tiny bubble, barely noticable unless you stare at it, but I really want to get my ears pierced again. That bubble scar is preventing me because it’s in the way. I wanted it removed so I could repierce them. The plastic surgeon acted very rude towards my mother and I. He acted like we were really stupid and wasting his time. All this was really shocking to us because it was at Sick Kids, and usually the doctors are really polite and friendly. He’s the only doctor I’ve ever met that was really rude to me at Sick Kids. Even years later, it still really irks me. I can’t explain why really.

Don’t think I’m crazy, okay? I just believe that if you go to a plastic surgeon about something like that, he shouldn’t judge you and make you feel really stupid and selfish for wanting it gone. I still feel really stupid and selfish for wanting it gone, because a man who changes peoples noses and lips because they don’t like them told me I was being shallow. Fine, I’m shallow. I want the bubble scar on my ear and the huge ugly puffy red scars on my arm and legs gone.

I seem to have a lot of misfortune when it comes to winter. Already, it has begun. While walking up the driveway to catch the bus, I twisted my ankle. I went home today because even before I twisted my ankle, my legs, hip and back were all killing me.

Yesterday, I was at my boyfriends house. His younger sisters use me as a trampoline, and after a day of that my body has rebelled by aching. My hips are locked and very stiff, moving them takes great effort and I have to help myself by moving them with my hands. Pathetic much?

I feel like I’m 90 years old today.