Dear Uterus,

I feel like throwing up today. It’s not even as though you’re plaguing me with cramps, but just that thinking about them makes me feel sick to my stomach. I have that feeling in the back of my throat that’s telling me to push a finger down there. Because we both know that in certain occasions that throwing up just makes you feel better.

Luckily, over the course of my time spent with you, I’ve never actually thrown up due to your havoc on my system. There was that one time, when I was still living at my parents’ home, when I was in the bathroom fixing my hair and suddenly I had to gag over the toilet for a while because I felt for sure that something was coming up. And there was that one time at the apartment when I spent the afternoon moaning on the futon, and I ended up over the toilet, waiting. Again, there was nothing, just the joke that you played to make me stumble into the bathroom.

I’ve known of a few girls who’ve had cramps so bad they’ve spewed up chunks. And one day, I know that I’ll be one of them. I know that you have those plans. Maybe it will be today. Maybe it’ll be two years from now. But I know that at some point, I’ll be exactly like this chick:

And I’m just going to laugh it the fuck off.

Totally prepared,

Rebecca

I’ve always been told that blogs are supposed to have pictures; they separate the long runs of text and make things more interesting. In 2008 I probably posted more photos on this blog than I ever have before. However, the amount of photos that I post don’t compare to that of some of the other blogs I read. And thanks to Sonja, who replaced the dead batteries in my camera, I get to do the first blog post of the year right.

Sonja’s place was empty when I arrived with Jon and John and Christian. We were running a bit late because the liquor store was busy, but everyone else didn’t show up at the party until after eight or nine, and Rachael and Misty, a bit later, it turned out. Nevertheless, things picked up and after the countdown, we’d all settled ourselves a nice spot at the back entrance of Sonja’s place.

The dress that I bought for New Years Eve was this handmade piece by Replicca.

Just as it was with Christmas, New Years will probably also go by without a list of sorts. Yesterday I went back over my 2007 resolutions, sure of the fact that I only managed to put aside some cash. Despite that being sort of a loss for the lack of things I completed, at least I managed to do one of the important ones. This coming year I can only put aside a few more bucks, apart from the fact that LoveHoney knocked down the price on this expensive vibrator that I’ve been eyeing up since March.  So I bought it plus a few other things. But this is the 31st of December, so it doesn’t exactly count.

Come January, here are a few of the things that I do plan on doing:

• As said, put aside some more cash. I realize that my future doesn’t exactly consist of a giant house with all of the fix’ens. That’s okay. I can deal with townhouse living so long as there aren’t college students on either side of me. But I do want to have savings, and the ability to keep my cash within my savings account in the case that maybe they’ll be something that I just need to have. I guess my feelings about the commercialization of everything are backing me up here. But I am a product of my own society, and sometimes I cave. Here’s to working on that.

• Write more. Currently I’m dealing with a few weeks of not writing between maybe one week of writing a lot. I need to figure out a plan, even if it’s only an hour a night where I write and do nothing else. Anything is a start.

• Go to God’s place a little more than once every season. I’m sort of losing touch with the guy. I could go into detail, but I already had an emotional discussion with my sister on the matter and I don’t want to rehash the turmoil over my own soul. I can only say that feeling lost over what you’ve believed all your life is complicated and utterly terrifying. Maybe it doesn’t seem the same to those who never had a religion, but I think it’s important for me to at least believe that there’s an afterlife again. I miss those days.

That’s about it, really. For once I feel more than satisfied with the way that things are going. Tomorrow I’ll wake up in a new year as the same person. But for now I have to go take a shower, and pack up my vodka and cocktail mixes for Sonja’s party.

Going over the entire year of photos is really hard. For me, it isn’t entirely difficult, considering that even though I intended to take more pictures, my resolution barely surpassed itself. At least this year I actually have photos to make a scrapbook, unlike with the previous one.

So, here are the eight best photos of 2008:

This first picture is from Taylor’s 22nd birthday, which didn’t exactly turn out to be the best of nights for me. Nevertheless, I did get a few snapshots from that event. My favourite is this one of Sonja, Brennen, John, and Jon eating a hearty spoonful of yam. I think their expressions just best represent who they are.

Heather managed to visit us again this summer, and was also able to join a few of us at the free Stars benefit concert on campus. The concert was in support of ending tuition fees, something that will never actually happen. But if the corrupted university student union can get one of the top bands on Canada to play on campus, I’ll go, despite being a student. It was a great show.

We had very few ladies nights this year due to a severe amount of too much to do. Apart from me working all the time, the rest of the girls always had homework or other things to tend do. When we did manage to get together, though, the nights were always relieving. This picture of Sonja is from out pool night, which was everything we hoped it would be, like a flashback into high school, when none of us had any worries, apart from teen angst, of course.

This is but one of the many awesome pictures I took at Sonja’s place on New Years Eve 2007. It was a great night, and I can only hope that tomorrow’s repeat will be much the same.

Jon and I have only a few good couple photos. For some reason we just don’t do the picture thing that often. At Sonja’s annual cocktail party, though, Rachael insisted that we have a couple photos taken. This one was the best from that night, and is also my favourite couple picture of us.

Malones is this Irish pub on the North Shore that a bunch of us used to go to when we felt like “partying it up” outside of a household. Events there were rare, but always turned out for the best. So during the early fall, Ryan attempted to put together a night at Malones, but nobody really was into going up until the part when Ryan said that our old buddy Matt Padze was going to show. And then everybody did, because evidently nobody ever sees Padze anymore. Nevertheless, what occurred that night was nothing short of awesomeness. And then the next day, Steve and I visited Padze at the pet store he works at, where I got Higgins.

Over the course of the summer, a few barbecues were held at my place. Some were lackluster and some turned out to be just grand, with triple cheeseburgers and all. The best part was that I had a couple friends from work over, which was sort of a milestone to say the least. The night consisted of a drunken video post, many spilt drinks, and Matt passing out on the couch.

Originally I wasn’t going to post this photo because I looked so awfully bad. But it would have been wrong not to post it because it’s actually the last photo ever taken of my grandpa with my sister and I. Possibly one of the most significant events of this past year was the death of my grandfather. This happened back in May, and since then I have found myself more and more proud of having him as family. This past Christmas was difficult without him. My sister and I framed a copy of this picture for my grandma this year. When she opened it, she said, “I love it,” and she broke into bittersweet sort of tears. I’m only filled with fond memories of that man; he was always proud and dignified, and even though I look like shit in this picture, I know it’s a good one.

You may or may not have noticed as of late that I’ve been tweaking a few areas around the website. For example, there was the inclusion (finally!) of my Twitter updates in the sidebar. Speaking of which, all of you should join Twitter so that I can follow your updates and know exactly what you were doing the same time that I made an update from the can. Granted, yes, the whole concept of it might seem retarded; it took me over a year of Twittering before I finally started following people. Needless to say, I am hooked.

That said, I’m sure that some of you may have noticed that I was never updating the photos on my Flickr badge in the sidebar. I still had pictures up from the summer on there, so it’s obvious that the badge wasn’t serving much purpose. What I really wanted to have on my sidebar was practical stuff, so I’ve finally tweaked up the Flickr badge to display all of my planned Stephen Harper lolCaptions.

Last night I pulled out the calendar and cut out a few of the smaller images from the back. Aside from the monthly captions, I’ll also feature any other different Stephen Harper images that I can get my hands on and create a good caption for.