pain(less)

I'm officially a camp counselor. I'm actually freaking out a little bit. I don't know how to answer the hard questions that I know are going to come up. All of these girls have been labeled as "at-risk" teens and pre-teens. I was (and still am to some degree) these girls. Except that I no longer am "at-risk"...I am the risk. And I know they are going to ask me how I was when I was there age. I'm not going to tell them that I was pretty much a walking skeleton, high off my ass and dragging razors across my body. Yup. That was me. I don't know how to tell them how to cope when I'm just now trying to figure that out myself.

But now, because I'm going to be hiking and such at camp, I can justify buying a new pair of hiking boots. I've had mine for a while and they're fine but it's time for them to be replaced.

An article on CNN.com is really bothering me. Apparantly there was a study done that concluded that male veterans have a higher than average suicide rate. No shit guys, our men are coming back with half of the limbs they left with and the VA doesn't do a thing to help sort out what is inside their heads before they stick a goddamned gun to their temple and pull the trigger. It's sickening to think how we treat our soldiers.

I met the most amazing Israeli man earlier at this little bodega near my writing class. He was trying to buy some ice, but didn't speak English and the clerk didn't understand Hebrew. So I stepped in. Yay for being fluent in four languages, conversational in three more. But anyways, this man lived on a Kibbutz near where I was born for 50 years, before Israel was even a soverign state. I love the Kibbutz system, completly communial living but also self-sufficiant. Before I get too old and even more cynical, I need to live on one for a month or so...just to see what it's like to be completly reliant on the community for your survival.

Also, I almost blew myself up in my chem lab this morning. I forgot to turn off the burner thing and dropped pure chlorine into distilled water. They exploded, as per the intended reaction, but I guess the fumes were explosive also and got a little too close to the flame. Another boom and tons of "What the fuck?"s later, I'm still gonna blame it on lab being at 9am and my lack of caffene that early.

MMMMM coffee.