4/21:25

It’s Easter Monday. I slept 10 hours and 25 minutes last night; which is the most sleep I think I’ve ever gotten in a single night in the last 365 days. Despite my extravagant slumber. I really didn’t do much today. My chest muscles hurt extremely bad from my excessive coughing from all of my allergies and my mom thinks I bruised my ribs. I guess I fulfilled Lorde’s line in Ribs of “laughing ‘till our ribs get tough,” except it was due to the overwhelming amounts of pollen that is in the air. Going over to Margaret’s house almost every evening and touching all her flowers probably didn’t help either. But it’s worth it.

Anyways, I stayed in bed this morning and watched 2 JennxPenn videos. One was one of those Japanese indie games, where the object was to get home and dodge all these falling AC units and satellites and stuff. The other was a Wii “The Bachelor” game which I thought was absolutely hilarious. She named her character “Big Tit” and went up against this other girl until the end who reminded me of Jackie Kennedy (only because her name was Jackie and she had black hair and a First Lady like stance). I also watched Adele’s prank interview with the Japanese lady after I briefly watched the prank interview one with Elijah Wood. I thought it was hilarious with the woman saying her boyfriend slept with her brother and Adele just nonstop busting out laughing in her face. After I watched it, I thought what it would be like for me to be interviewed and what I would say to her. I thought about her question of “What is the difference between good music and good sex?” and how I would probably just say “Okay, good music involves an ear *points at ear*, and good sex involves a penis *points at mine*. Those are two entirely separate body parts that don’t go well together. I wouldn’t stick my penis in someone’s ear if I were you. I’m sure some very kinky people have, but I wouldn’t.” I’d also get the Japanese reporter to think I had gay sex with her brother and ex-boyfriend in the bathroom before I came to the interview.

I ate a Panera Tortellini soup for lunch at like 1:15 after Mom told me to eat because to be honest I had forgotten to. She made me some more honey lemon tea because I was complaining about how tight my chest was from all my coughing and I drank that with my soup. It was honestly really sweet of her to consider that. After I ate I went and lounged around back in my bed again because my sagging squirrel pajamas prevented me from doing anything active much. I watched some hot gay lovemaking clips from this movie called “The War Boys” that were truly sensational and just reminded me of a calm, prairie, westward expansion farmlike vibe that I can’t describe other than the rays of warm sunshine against a wheat field with soft piano music. Because that’s basically what the clips were. I also watched an almost 100 video long old playlist of “gay chicken” which is basically drunk guys kissing each other as a dare. I had no idea what it was called, but the videos were fabulous and half were filled on a flip phone. 

Mom called out to me and told me she made homemade ranch with Greek yogurt and asked if I wanted some with cucumbers. Which I of course said yes to because I love both. As we were eating, we were watching Beachfront Bargain Hunt, which we seem to always do on our days off together. It’s like our little tradition. Just that show, it’s so funny. A commercial for St. Jude’s hospital came on featuring a little girl with neuroblastoma, and Mom started telling me about how her first job at Duke was a neuroblastoma study. I had no idea she had done 2 studies at Duke, not just one. They grew neuroblastoma cancerous cells in a pea tree dish and tested them under certain pH levels of acidity to see how the cells reacted. They would inject DMSO to lower the acidity and pH levels, and in turn the neuroblastoma cells would stop reproducing and die. It was really interesting, but she told me her study lost funding, never made it to the stage where it was tested on mice even though it was proven that it worked, and she got laid off. We found her original study and one from 1977 where they tested the same thing on mice. It’s crazy how the same treatment has been being tested for almost 50 years and it’s proven it’s worked but it’s not released to the public or taken off the shelf due to lack of funding. She also told me about how she managed a breast cancer study at Quintiles and more about her 2nd time at Duke when she did the cardiovascular research and her forensic toxicology. She’s done so many things, I hope to be like her and contribute something big to the world. That’s my goal in life, to hopefully care for people and provide them with something they can’t get from someone else. 

Anyways, after that, I threw the frisbee for Lisa and Sadie and walked out to the pond. I decided not to bike over to Margaret’s because I feel like it would’ve been too hard on my lungs. The pond looks absolutely gorgeous, especially with the beginning of spring and bright green everywhere. It’s very frutiger aero. You can see the reflection of the trees in the pond perfectly. I sat down by the pond near the fallen tree and listened to “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba. Very interesting song, but still very uplifting. I was having a moody moment (was generally kinda moody the whole day) where I couldn’t really feel much of anything, so I decided to listen to the Bible app verse of the day video. A giant ant crawled into my boot so I got up and sat on the dirt landing by the walkway to get it out, which in turn led to me laying on the ground and staring up into the trees, just letting myself desteam my emotions. I listened to Ironic and Tubthumping again, multiple times, and just kinda let my mind unfog from everything before that fogged it up. It was nice to desteam and watch the bright green leaves of the two dogwood trees flutter back and forth in the wind against the bright blue sky. 

Eventually I went home and ate stirfry, and nothing much else happened notable. I visited RYM and looked up Chumbawamba, they had a lot more albums than I was anticipating. I read an article about them and one hit wonders too, it's truly fascinating how interesting bands are like that who are classified under one song but have hundreds of other ones and meanings behind that hidden in the collection. They did say they got their meaning out in Tubthumping, which is classism and the resilience of the common man. I took a stroll through the Top 100 albums and read Elliott Smith's Wikipedia article. It's truly sad how he ended up this way and hearing this quote from his then-girlfriend or someone else made me reconsider what I thought I knew about drug rehabilitation.

 "Anyone who understands drug abuse knows that you use drugs to hide from your past or sedate yourself from strong, overwhelming feelings. So when you're newly clean and coming off the medications that have been masking all those feelings, that's when you're the most vulnerable." That's when he stabbed himself twice in the chest.

Anyways, nothing much interesting after that, but I just wanted to write all this after I saw a thread on Twitter about Taylor Swift’s old tweets. They’re so casual and just like a little journal, just tapping into Twitter about her daily mishap at the coffee shop like it’s a blog. Now it’s not the same. So I thought I’d journal my day like that here. My last post was March 15, 2024, so it’s been a little over a year. 13 months. Like her number. Making everything about her. But anyways, I’m glad I did this. I hope to get more into writing soon. Mrs. Guess told my mom that she thinks I should do something involving my writing. I’ve been praying ever since that guy from the band in Camp Refuel told me I had an incredible voice and that he was praying for me about how I can use my voice, and maybe this can be practice of a start. You’ll never do it unless you put the first minute in. Anyways, nice seeing you Caleb.

Oh! One giant thing I forgot about and left out. Pope Francis died today. Literally the first thing I saw when I woke up. I saw all those posts about his health decaying so I knew it was bound to happen eventually. I truly appreciate his character, that stood out beyond what the Catholic Church normally represented and loved others the way Jesus did regardless of who they were. I saw that one of his last speeches was about a ceasefire in Gaza which I thought was truly incredible. I think he was a very good pope and it honestly made me interested in the Vatican City. It would be cool to visit it someday. I learned more about the Conclave too, I think that process is very cool too. Cool is too vague when describing something like that, but it’s all just very interesting. Liam’s birthday was also today. He turned 15. 

Anyways, off to the races, Caleb. Lick up the dirt and turn your mouth into flowers. 

- April 21, 2025.