Lately, I’ve been having a lot of drinking/drugging dreams, and it’s killing me.

I haven’t been to my addiction group or to see Matt in two weeks, mainly because I’ve felt like shit and had less sleep than usual (which is hard to do, since I normally get almost none).

Sigh.

I’m dying here, people, DYING.

In Jack’s flash-forward? He and Kate are living together and raising Aaron (his nephew, for you LOST newbs)… and they become engaged!

If you don’t hear from me for a few days, it’s because I’m visiting Cloud 9, and staying indefinitely..

I’m usually 100% spoiler-free when it comes to LOST, because I don’t want a single nanosecond of the show to be ruined for me — but, of course, there are always things that manage to leak out, anyway, when you’re uber-involved in the fandom, as most fanatical LOST fans are. (I swear, we’re like religious zealots in our devotion. Hi, my name’s Heather and I worship at the alter of Darlton.)

Anyway, one of the spoilery things I’ve been hearing rumblings about is that there’s an amazing kiss coming up between two characters, and that fans of a certain ship have reason to celebrate. Then I read this at TV Guide’s website:

4) TV Guide caught a scene shot for the May 1 episode in which Jack collapses, unconscious, on the beach. Expect Juliet to take charge and perform emergency surgery. “I get to go into Jack’s guts!” says a glee­ful Mitchell, who adds, “After reading this episode, I realized that Juliet really does truly love him.” Even so, Jack’s flash-forward revolves around Kate. We’re sworn to secrecy but will let slip that fans of “Jate” are in for a long-awaited, happy turn of events.

Now, you all know how much I love me some Matthew Fox (Jack), so it should be obvious that I’m also a diehard “Jater” (fan of a Jack/Kate pairing). Hence, it stands to reason that this turn of events? Makes me deliriously happy. Oh, yeah, baby, the Jate ship has set sail!

(The photo above is from their first kiss in season two, right before obstacle after obstacle was thrown in their path.)

If you want to see what I’m going on about, check out this gorgeous fan-vid. If you don’t fall in love with Jack, Jate and LOST after this, there’s just no hope for you!

(By the way, if you’re a LOST fan, I’ve got a LOST-related LJ. Add me if you want to see the friends-only entries.)

I didn’t write this, but my mom sent it to me; it sounds a lot like the journey I’m on right now.

A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted
by John O’Donohue

When the rhythm of the heart becomes hectic,
Time takes on the strain until it breaks;
Then all the unattended stress falls in
On the mind like an endless, increasing weight,

The light in the mind becomes dim.
Things you could take in your stride before
Now become laborsome events of will.

Weariness invades your spirit.
Gravity begins falling inside you,
Dragging down every bone.

The ride you never valued has gone out.
And you are marooned on unsure ground.
Something within you has closed down;
And you cannot push yourself back to life.

You have been forced to enter empty time.
The desire that drove you has relinquished.
There is nothing else to do now but rest
And patiently learn to receive the self
You have forsaken for the race of days.

At first your thinking will darken
And sadness take over like listless weather.
The flow of unwept tears will frighten you.

You have traveled too fast over false ground;
Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up
To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain
When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,
Taking time to open the well of color
That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone
Until its calmness can claim you.
Be excessively gentle with yourself.

Stay clear of those vexed in spirit.
Learn to linger around someone of ease
Who feels they have all the time in the world.

Gradually, you will return to yourself,
Having learned a new respect for your heart
And the joy that dwells far within slow time.

About the whole, “I’m never watching American Idol again because Michael Johns was eliminated” thing? I lied. I totally watched tonight. My only line of defense is that, as much as I did love Michael Johns, he wasn’t actually my favorite — David Cook is. And I had to support my Cookie.

I’m PMSing so freaking badly at the moment, which sucks because I had a blog entry I was intending to write, and now? Now I’m fluctuating between fits of internal rage and episodes of pathetic weepiness — which is so clearly not conducive to writing anything intelligible. (At least, not without repetitively using the word “fuck” as punctuation.)

I need chocolate, or sex, and I need it bad.

I haven’t bothered blogging about American Idol this season (for obvious reasons?), but I have still been watching religiously. Unfortunately, though, as of tonight, A.I. is officially dead to me (YOU HEAR THAT FOX NETWORK?), thanks to the craptacular results show that shit on the head of every intelligent life form in this galaxy.

Michael Johns, the Australian hottie that sounds like Eddie Vedder, was voted off in an A.I. shocker rivaling Chris Daughtry’s premature exit in season five, and the ridiculous skate-through of Vagina, er, Sanjaya Malakar last year. For fuck’s sake, the guy had never even been in the bottom three before tonight! You don’t get voted off the very first time you hit the bottom three! Dude, America, so uncool.

The audience and the other contestants looked shell-shocked — sick, even — and poor, delicious, I-wanna-fuck-him-so-bad Michael Johns looked like he might’ve thrown up in his mouth. Pretty men like him should not know such pain.

See for yourself:

Well, well, well.

I just watched an episode of Discovery Health’s show, Mystery Diagnosis. The subject was a woman who was suffering from dry eye and mouth, joint aches, fatigue and gastric troubles — but no one could tell her why and they consistently dismissed her, claiming she was a hypochondriac. (Sound familiar?) At one point, doctors decided to remove her gallbladder, but even though her acute G.I. attacks seemed to stop, the other symptoms continued. (Still sounding familiar?) Then, during a visit to an ophthalmologist, her astute doctor decided to do a Schirmer’s Test, and it came back showing almost no tear production. (You know where I’m going with this, right?) SHE WAS DIAGNOSED WITH SJOGREN’S!

This poor woman, now in her 50s, had been living a life eerily similar to mine. The same symptoms, the same insulting reaction from doctors — even the same surgery. And, even more bizarre, it was her eye doctor who put the pieces together — just like mine.

Jesus. I’d never even heard of this illness until my own diagnosis just over a month ago, and suddenly I’m seeing my own life played out on television. Very, very weird.

(By the way, I’m sending lots and lots of good vibes and love to my friend Jo, whose life virtually imploded on her last night…)

I took this shot last summer with my camera’s broken lens, no tripod, and no decent way to post-process my RAW images. But now my camera’s fixed, Photoshop CS3 is back in my life (welcome back, Lover!), I have a Wacom tablet that is my new best friend, and — in a mixed blessing of sorts — my health issues have actually given me one fairly decent advantage: Time. To borrow a line from my favorite recently-deceased Driveshaft singer, Charlie Hieronymus Pace, I’m “positively made of time!” (Come on. You had to know a LOST reference was coming somewhere. This is me, we’re talking about…)

Anyway, I met this gorgeous golden retriever last summer in Maine, as he patiently waited in the back of a pick-up for his people to finish what they were doing in the small shop on top of Cadillac Mountain.