Patience is your best strategy for now.

• Today's horoscope is ironic, as I am so on edge that my patience is practically non-existent. Hence my flipping off half the people on the road yesterday, despite being in a relatively good mood after the fantastically atrocious ball of Velveeta called Damn The Gods! Or Titans Will Clash! Or Clash of the Titans.  Whatever.  There was clashing.  There was some mention of Titans.  However, Titans proper did not actually clash, but as Titans also failed to clash in the original (of which I am also inordinately fond) that is ultimately immaterial to my enjoyment of the sheer spectacle of BAD.  I could just see the screenwriters telling Bullfinch he's got a purty mouth, because it did truly awful things to Greek mythology-- even worse than the original! And it was fabulous. It was that rare treat of a film that is so thoroughly awful that it's entertaining from start to finish. Seriously, I want to see this again and again.

• I was very confused when I took a nap the other day and woke up to a radical weather shift. Perhaps that is why the brats have been acting out on an epic scale. Books flying off the shelves, garbage cans knocked over, broken vases, the works. The citrus grove came in & now I think it's safe to go back out. Springtime in Pittsburgh.

• Jude Thaddeus: patron saint of desperate cases, hopeless situations, lost causes... and my family.  Unofficially.  I won't pretend that my family, in any of its various ancestral branches, was ever anything other than peasants scratching out a living in the old country; ergo, no faux coat of arms or patrons for us.  At any rate, I grew up with my mom constantly invoking Jude through all of the crazy stuff that happened as a kid-- hence my doing so now.  In order of increasing importance, I have a non-trivial amount of work to finish and an interview to prep for, plus the question of whether my essay will be accepted in time for graduation. Losing a significant amount of time to sight loss and such did not help.  Hence turning to the patron of desperate cases.

• Along those lines, I'm turning to aromatherapy and  other stress control measures.  Sandalwood and lavender spray for my bed, sandalwood and such in my perfume.  In a fit of fleeting madness a few weeks back, I bought two bottles from BPAL via Amazon: Shub-Niggurath ("A blend of ritual herbs and dark resins, shot through with three gingers and aphrodisiacal spices") and Mouse's Long and Sad Tale ("Vanilla, two ambers, sweet pea and white sandalwood"). I like them both, but Shub-Niggurath seems to be causing a bit of irritation and so I've been wearing the sandalwood-laced Mouse.  Of course, there were a bundle of samples, of which one reminded me disturbingly of an ex's aftershave (I raced to scrub it off), some of which were meh or too foody smelling. But I especially liked Death Cap. And I'm amused by wearing perfume called Death Cap.

• Speaking of beauty and cosmetic issues, hopefully my eye will be declared healed this week and I can resume contacts and eye make-up (both of which have been verboten the past three weeks and change now). The catch? I'm so mercurial when it comes to eye makeup. My eyes are my single best feature, so I do play them up. And I have no idea which mascara, eyeliner, eye shadow, etc I used in the days leading up to my symptoms. I use drugstore mascara and liner (along with drugstore lipsticks and foundation), so that's a bit pricey but not the end of the world if I have to toss a couple of $6 mascaras and $8 eye liners. But my Urban Decay primer potion and eye shadow palettes are a completely different matter. Those were investments on my tiny student budget, and relatively new to boot. I really don't want to have to toss out a small fortune in eye cosmetics. Woe, indeed.