I am taking a first aid course in a month. I've been meaning to for years, since the first aid I learned in girl guides is so far beyond useless at this point that it's dangerous, because I might get it in my fool head to try to use it on someone and hurt them. But anyway, a friend of mine was just in an accident which totally scared me and I've finally applied to the blood bank to be one of their hand-out-cookies-and-coffee people, so it's about time. And who knows when like, my dad might have a heart attack? How much of a chump would I feel like, just standing there...

Lately I've been feeling like fulfilling random things I feel are "civic duties" are the things that satisfy me the most. Giving blood, volunteering, learning first aid, recycling, registering to be an organ donor. Maybe next I'll register for the bone marrow registry. It's like being a congregant at the Church of Being a Firetrucking Boy Scout Or Something. (Only not the boy scouts, you know. I got issues with their whole "no gay scout leaders blah blah blah" business. Maybe the Church Of Being A Dorky Alderman On Council In A Small Town As Well As A Notary Public.)

I don't think exactly that anyone will say "Well.. she was a total bitch.. but damn, she DID recycle her tin cans." at my funeral, but I guess it's comforting to have these little things where the right thing to do is more or less obvious, where it's hard to screw up. My life is going pretty okay, but I'm always convinced in the back of my mind that I'm on the borderline between acceptable and not, that there's something I don't quite get, that I've said something wrong, that I'm offending you, that I'm not capable of doing this. Whatever "this" is. It's kind of odd because at the same time I am so totally confident, so supremely sure that I am able to handle everything by myself and do it quicker and better than your average bear. So I take on maybe a bit too much, and then I do it, and do it just fine, but at every judgement point I worry and worry and worry. School does this to me a lot, because school is judgement after judgement after judgement. Which I thrive on, but god, if you had to get regular maintenance on your worry gland I would have to install an easy-access hatch to it.

Well now that's an odd turn of phrase. I think I need another coffee.

Four years of school, plus one year of school part time before that, plus two years to worry over my application. No wonder I like playing guitar, I am all about fretting.

(I need to practice guitar more. I practiced bar chords for a week and suddenly, surprise, bar chords are easier. It's like.. magic!)

My sweater is twice as big as it was yesterday. Soon I will be wearing a dorky taupe hand-knitting sweater, mark my words. Then I'll discover that the yarn makes me itchy and never wear it again. It will be grand, grand, grand.