I am exhausted, bone-weary, & drained. & I know they all mean the same but by using all 3 words, they seem to emphasise my pathetic state even more.

It was one of the longest & most disastrous day I had.

It's not exactly disastrous disastrous though. It's not a 'we-broke-something' disaster nor a 'oh-fuck-we-lost-something-&-have-to-pay-for-it-with-our-depleting-money' disaster. It's more like, build up disaster.

Not enough materials, non-enthusiastic & non-cooperative participants. I saw the biggest display of male temper today. & only at a tender age of 13. Tsk. So much angst.

But all in all, I'm so glad today was over.

I've never liked conflicts. I feel uncomfortable & awkward in the face of conflict. Even though it isn't my fault, I feel bad about it. Like I said before, it's my build in conscience. I just feel guilty even though I'm not even involved in the conflict. In fact, I was just part of the scenery at point of conflict. I feel a lot more comfortable when it's MY conflict, actually.

But at least it's over. It's just another day next week. I just pray we can last the entire day without any similar problems today.

& so, as the story goes, I began to feel the aftermath of today after dinner. The exhaustion seemed to seep in from every single pore & I was overwhelmed soon enough.

Decided that all I wanted to do was to curl up with a good book & I grabbed the last of the 4 books I borrowed from the library last week. The only non-fluffy one. Yeah, I read fluff. What say you? Fluff cheers me up because it's...fluff. Nothing more, nothing less. It's everything you expect. & I'm proud to say that I managed to snag a darn good fluffy book called, 'Mad, Bad & Totally Dangerous' by Susan Davis, which is about Byron's ghost coming to haunt this girl because of part of his history. The plot may seem kinda skimpy & lame here but what I love is the witty dialogue & inner turmoil the characters battle with. It was entertaining all the way till the end.

& so, the book I picked up today. It's a short collection by Stephen King, but the only story I wanted to read in it was 'Secret Window, Secret Garden'. I'm no groupie of Stephen King, trust me. Don't get me wrong (I can hear the fans sharpening their knives), I respect him. God only knows what It did to me. It put me off clowns. Forever. I can't see a clown without seeing the evil clown's grotesque painted face in It. & I watched it when I was in primary school by the way. On good ol' VCR.

& then there's another show which I watched when I was in about K2. It's about a little doll with little feet who pitter patter down the halls in the middle of the night killing people. It still haunts me in my nightmares sometimes. & I watched it in K2. Before you go about thinking that I deserve it for acting all macho, watching a horror movie like this in K2, I'm telling you now that I was tricked into it. Yeah, my dad who was then much younger & robust used to stay up late watching late-night movies or soccer matches. & that particular day, he probably wanted someone to accompany him while he watched that movie so he tricked me into watching it by telling me that it had a 'pretty cutesy dolly' in it. Yes. I fell for that damn line.

But then I read 'Thinner', & thought it to be the most ridiculous book ever written. It was so bad, I laugh just thinking about it.

& I did catch 'Secret Window' the movie, with Johnny Depp in the lead & even though it was really bad as well, I thought that maybe, just maybe the movie did the book no justice. Like how Harry Potter does sometimes.

& so, the book. The story had the makings of a great potential horror-thriller scribe, but certain tweaks might have done damage. Granted, it had the interesting history of Morton Rainey (one-time famous writer), who caught his wife in bed with another fella one fine day. It had the build up of the mysterious John Shooter turning up & accusing Morton Rainey of plagiarism & all the unfortunate events of Morton's house being burnt down, cat being killed & stuff. It had the climax when Morton was trying to find out about Shooter & uncovered all these stuff about Shooter & he went a little off the rocker. It had an ending. Not a fanastic one, but it did have one.

Somehow, the story just did not appeal to me. It just seemed wrong. In fact, I read part of the climax, skimmed the rest & skipped to the last few pages. I suppose it was kind of draggy for a short story. Too much information. Just like the movie, which had too much unimportant information. Although I must comment that Johnny Depp's acting was top-notch in it. He did look like an unsound ex-husband.

The only quote I like from the book is this:

If four hundred monkeys banged away on four hundred typewriters for four million years, one of them would produce the complete works of Shakespeare.

Very interesting stuff there. Makes me think a little, actually. Despite the fact that I was grumpy & still ended up with a rather lousy book.

I shall go to bed, hopefully, to regenerate some of the lost energy cells that were stolen from me today.

Perhaps I'll see you on the other side.