My jaw is killing me today, and it’s started to affect my left ear. I know why, too. Apparently it keeps Meg up at night. Yes, I’m a teeth-grinder. It’s come back to haunt me after a few years. Dentists call it bruxism, a disorder caused by stress or anxiety that causes people to bite or grind their teeth violently, usually while asleep (though I’ve noticed I do it a lot more often now, and am trying to make a conscious effort not to - do you think chewing gum would work?). Let me tell you, it’s killing me. And the sad thing is, I do have a mouthguard specifically made for this, but it’s down in VA, which doesn’t help me. I’ll have to be sure to get it this weekend.

What do I have to be stressed about? Work, of course, and life, and everything. Ugh. I’m exhausted just thinking about it all. I just want these certification exams to be over, I don’t want to go to Texas in July, I don’t consciously know how I feel about my mom getting remarried, my car sounds like it’s about to die, I still haven’t told my dad about me and my … persuasion, my room is never tidy because I don’t have enough places to put everything, and to top it off, Meg and I hit another wall last night. This one was a doozy. I don’t want to go into it, but let’s just say it was an ideological conflict from which I can’t actually see a resolution. We’re both extremely set in our beliefs.

Man, I feel awful. Bed is screaming my name, as is Tylenol for this goddamned head/ear/jaw-ache. I just want to crawl into a hole and not see anyone. Or maybe watch some cheesy romantic comedy.

My calf muscles feel as though I’ve spent my few free hours sprinting around John F. Kennedy Boulevard, probably in an effort to avoid catcalls from sleazy construction workers. This makes no sense, though. As far as running is concerned, I’ve pretty much neglected the treadmill, running a couple of miles once a week, tops, and the last time I did it was Thursday. So why are my legs hurting now? I guess it’s a good kind of pain, but it also could be attributed to wearing heels every day. I mean, I did that at St Andrews, sure, ‘cos that was the style and I’m a sheep like that (even though it really boggled the mind, considering the entire town was paved with cobblestones), but until I started working the corporate world in March, I hadn’t really had the opportunity or the desire to wear heels since November. Meh.

I do need to get back into the exercise groove, though. In an ideal world, I’d get up at five in the morning to run a couple of miles and lift weights before taking a shower and heading to work, but we all know that ain’t gonna happen, being the night-owl that I am. And they tell you to avoid exercising three hours before going to bed, which leaves me with a small window right after I get home from work. That, of course, is precisely the time my body decides to shut down and refuses to respond to anything except the steady hum of the television.

Reading this article on CNN is somewhat of an inspiration. Obviously exercise aids in toning and losing weight (um, duh), but apparently it has other benefits. Working out in the morning, for instance, can let you have a better night’s sleep, something I desperately need as is proven by my semi-reliance on Tylenol PM late at night. Also, the sensations equated with exercising are apparently similar to those getting their nicotine fix. I’m not out of the smokers’ loop yet, so this is particularly interesting to me. Women smokers who exercise are twice as likely to quit, says a recent study. And, finally, working out increases memory, awareness, creativity, and reaction time. What more do I need, now that I’m in the thick of exams?

And the clincher: exercise, and you have better sex. ‘Nuff said.

Meg and I had a fight last night. No, fight is not the right word for it, ‘cos we don’t do that. Fight, I mean. We bicker, we squabble, we even argue occasionally, but we don’t fight. In the nearly four years since we regained contact with each other, there has only been one occasion in which we had anything resembling a fight, but really, I just stopped talking to her for three weeks, and for a stupid reason. She left an insulting comment on my LiveJournal, and I didn’t realize it was funny at the time, that it was based on her particularly inane sense of humor. And anyway, we hadn’t actually met up by this stage, but were only in contact through the ‘net, so it doesn’t really count.

I digress. The grounds for this ‘fight,’ as it were, evolved from an incident involving a paper towel. Decency prohibits me from elaborating further, but let’s just say that I didn’t think what I did was that bad, though I can definitely see why other people would find it exceedingly insulting and uncouth. Anyway, this led Meg to say to me, “You take all the satisfaction out of being upset with you.” To explain: I internalize my problems and tend to beat myself up about them. I still maintain that it’s for the greater good, though. By targeting my problem areas, I am then able to draft means of approaching and, hopefully, overcoming my faults. I’ve always done this, especially now. Really, who’s going to call me out on my mistakes now that I’m living on my own? I don’t take criticism very well from anyone but myself, as you well know if you know me in real life. It’s just what I do.

All I wanted to do was roll over and say “piss off and let me sleep,” but the nature of relationships, I’ve found, is based upon discussion and compromise. I’m still learning, you see, as this is my first long-term relationship after years of embracing singledom. That was a period that required self-reflection, I can see now. I always maintained that people in relationships had ’settled’ for someone and had therefore rid themselves of any potential opportunity for something better. Yes, that was my mentality! I like to think I’ve grown up, matured, a bit, now that I’ve embraced the sometimes-frightening concept of commitment. That is not to say that I no longer miss being single; I do, sometimes, in certain situations. Not often, though.

But never mind that. Meg and I seem to have sorted it out for now. Now my only concern is the fact that I’m practically dying of exhaustion at work today. Late-night discussions don’t mesh well with me, not when I have to get up at six-thirty in the morning.

Plus, it’s too gorgeous outside to be completely focused on my duties. It’s the perfect day for a picnic and an impromptu game of softball. Unfortunately, this is not to be, and I’ll just have to deal with it for the next hour or so until lunch, when I can get my sun fix.

Well, I didn’t pass. And it’s not so much the embarassment of walking into work this morning and having people automatically blurt out, “Congratulations!” before I’ve had a chance to say anything, but rather the fact that I’m just pissed off at myself that’s the problem. It’s amazing how a little screw-up like this - because, let’s face it, nothing was really riding on this test, not like the Series 7 - can make me want to pack up and ship off back to my mom’s house in Virginia. Gah. I hate this self-pity bullshit, but I can’t help it sometimes. It frustrates me. But anyway, Big Boss Man just wandered by and asked me what happened. “I choked,” I said, “but rest assured I will get it done in the next week or so.” He looked at me gravely. “You know you only have two attempts.” I nodded. “Just two. Two.” I nodded again. And then he said, “Don’t do this to me,” kind of helplessly as he strode off. I guess he’s frustrated as well because of the extremely high fail rate of trainees in this branch of the Firm. I would be. Oh my god. Now I’m going to be freaking out about this test. The pressure again! Ah!

To top it off, I really think my car is about to die. My dad emailed me the other day and said that one of the problems - the humming when the car is in reverse - is the result of some kind of belt that he’s had to replace before … at “a couple hundred bucks a pop.” *sighs* Just what I need. At least I managed to find a decent dress this weekend for my mom’s wedding, $69 on sale. Not bad.

I just need to stop being so materialistic. Just because I don’t have ‘the next cool thing’ doesn’t mean I’m lacking in any way. It is written in The Millionaire Next Door that “most people have it all wrong about wealth in America. Wealth is not the same as income. If you make a good income each year and spend it all you are not getting wealthier. You are just living high. Wealth is what you accumulate, not what you spend.” And I want to be wealthy one day. I must begin to start living, as Dawn of Frugal for Life puts it, “below [my] means” and “seeing treasure in items with as much as you can imagine using [my] creativity.” So I don’t have that awesome iPod dock/speaker set that Chris has. I’ve got fifteen dollar computer speakers that work just as well for the size of my room, and it cost me almost three hundred dollars less. That’s not to say that I won’t buy myself that toy one day … but I have to really work for it.

Ugh. I just want to go to bed and stay there for a couple of weeks. Make it late July, and I’ll be a happy camper.

On an unrelated tangent, Chris and her brother had a party on Friday night at their house in celebration of the fact that their parents were down in Atlantic City. To be honest, initially I wasn’t up for a party, but I hadn’t seen Chris in what felt like a really long time, so I agreed to make an appearance. Meg was still kind of suffering from her stomach thing and, though she insisted I go to Chris’s party without her, got into a bit of a pissy mood when I agreed to it. Whoops. Ultimately, though, she called me over to her house and jumped into my car. It turned out to be a gorgeous evening, not too hot and not too many bugs, with a bunch of twenty-somethings shooting the breeze, playing beer pong, and basically just hanging out. I got a bit drunk somewhere in there, but it soon passed with the drinking of a can of Red Bull, and even managed to hold my own somewhat in beer pong. Amazing. It had been awhile since I’d be sociable, and this felt really, really good. And as an added bonus: no hangover! Woot!

Also … ladies (and gents who love the women in their life), if you have a moment, take a look at this video. I must admit that I usually don’t pay very much attention to breast cancer stuff, but this report about IBC, which was sent to me via the Firm’s office manager, was pretty shocking. Like many in the video, I’d never heard of it, or if I had (which is possible, given that I have the memory of a goldfish), I didn’t know any of the details. The fact that such a disease killed a 16-year-old who was, as they put it, “too embarrassed to tell her mother that her breasts looked weird,” is a scary enough thought as it is. Just take a look. It could be worth your while.

I had probably the worst night’s sleep in a really, really long time last night, so I’m extremely thankful it’s Friday and I can make up for it this weekend. Something was dreadfully wrong with Meg’s stomach, in that she felt an extremely sharp, immobilizing, tear-inducing pain, almost as though “someone [was] running through me with a spear,” she said. We both thought that by making herself sick, she might feel better - didn’t work. Eating a piece of plain bread to soothe her stomach - didn’t work. Drinking water - didn’t work. I was all out of ideas, plus I’d taken some Tylenol PM before I got into bed in an effort to curb my cold-and-ladyfriend-induced headache, so I was rather too doped up at three in the morning to be of any real help.

We never did figure out what was wrong. Meg looked up her symptoms online and has decided that her gall bladder exploded and she’s going to die. Somehow I doubt that, though the look of pain that often appeared on her face last night definitely concerned me. She went home this morning to get some rest. Apparently both her mom and her brother are home sick too; her brother has a 102 fever. Not nice!

Last night, some of the roommate’s friends came over and we ended up hanging out for quite a while. Jeff had gone to the Yankees game and was absolutely wasted, but hysterical as always. As drunk boys do, he ended up alone in the garage jamming along with Staind for about an hour. I’m sure it made sense to him at the time. I decided it was time for me to go to bed when a) we ran out of wine and only had Bud Lite left (bleugh), and b) Dan set fire to Jeff’s Yankees hat using a bit of citronella from the tiki torches in the backyard as fuel. After less than five minutes, only the charred brim was left smoldering on the patio. Jeff didn’t seem too fazed by this.

So, tonight … if Meg’s feeling better then we’ll either head over to Chris’s house to hang, or go play pool with Anita and her girlfriend. If she’s still unwell, I don’t know what’ll happen. I guess we’ll just play it by ear.

PS, I am so not a hot weather person. I really want to ditch work and go crash Chris’s pool. But unfortunately I’d feel too guilty about that. Gah. I really am a goody-goody sometimes.