Friday, December 30, 2005

Phone Phobia

I have a phone phobia. I'm sure there's some scientific name for it but I don't know what it is. All I know is that I have never enjoyed talking on the phone the way many girls do, not even when I was a teenager. I can talk to just about anyone face to face but I cannot deal with talking to them on the phone.

I mean, I do use the phone when I have to. I'm not that bad, but I only use it as a last resort. I will email, IM, text or go see someone in person first and only call them when I have no choice in the matter. I will wait for days to return someone's phone call while I figure out if I can get around calling them at all. When I have to call someone I am not extremely good friends with I may sit down and write notes about what I'm going to say. (Like Monk does for in person conversations, if you ever saw that show.)

I just have absolutely no social phone skills. I am a shy phone person but usually very outgoing in person, go figure. I don't know how to fill pauses so they just go on and on and I have no idea how to end a conversation so I always just wait for the other person to do it. I'm always worried that whatever I say to end it will sound rude. Go figure, since whatever other people say would probably be the same thing but always comes out sounding fine from them.

And I always worry that since all the person on the other end has to go on to form impressions of me is my words that I'm going to say the wrong thing or say something the wrong way and they won't be able to see my face and since I can't see theirs, I won't know how they took what I said. And I'm a very sarcastic person and sarcasm doesn't play well over the phone sometimes so I might offend someone. I just need to see the person to bounce the conversation back and forth better.

So that's my dirty, freaky little secret for tonight.

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

The Evil Dream Catcher

I bought a dream catcher at a Native American arts and crafts exhibition after Thanksgiving but I only got around to putting it up three days ago. And every night since I've been having bad dreams. I think it's broken or else it's mad at me because my cat beat it up.

Last night was a strange, sad dream. I've had variations of this dream about my ex before where I decided to take him back and then when we were in the middle of sex I'd realize I had made a mistake and want to break it off again. This one was different but I can see that it grew out of those.

I dreamed that I decided I wanted to be friends with him again and thought he understood the same. So in the dream we were spending time together as platonic friends for about a month when we decided to take a trip together. And he was in my hotel room hanging out with me when he tried to start kissing me and stuff and I was all like, hey! What are you doing? I thought you knew I just wanted to be friends!

And he wouldn't stop kissing me (don't worry this is not ending in a tragedy) and he was very mad, saying come on. I put in my time being friends. I deserve this. When I kept refusing, he stormed out and went to his car that was parked outside and below the room. When he got there he saw that someone had splattered blue paint all over his truck and he started screaming up to me and threatening me, saying he knew I had done it (I hadn't) and he was going to get me. He was being so belligerent I had to call the police and they came and arrested him.

Only now I was stuck at this hotel with no ride home so I called my house to ask my sister to come get me and my mom answered but she couldn't hear me and she was in the middle of a conversation with my sister (as if the phone had been knocked off the hook or something). She was telling my sister everything that had just happened to me from the ex's perspective so I knew she had been talking to him about it. That was when I woke up.

I know the part about my mom having talked to him comes from the fact that she really still does. He works on my family's cars for them still even though we've been apart for like a year now. And he calls my mom now and again and they talk for like an hour. It makes me so mad. And last night before I went to bed I noticed she had her rolodex open to his phone number, hence I had the dream.

But still, I am not prone to bad dreams as a rule, so to have 3 in a row after I put up this dream catcher is just freaky. Tonight I'm going to have a little talk with it and apologize to it for my cat's rude actions. If that doesn't work then I'll take it down and mail it anonymously to an enemy.

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

I've Moved!

I've moved all my postings from my previous host to this new site so the dates you see in parentheses on all previous posts indicate their original post dates.

Christmas Day: Mom's Fam and a Christmas Miracle (12/26/05)

On Christmas Day my niece woke me up at 8:15, which I thought showed a lot of restraint on her part. She still believes in Santa but this was the first year we decided not to fill the adults’ stockings. We told her that there are lots of poor kids in the world and so we asked Santa to give more presents to the poor kids instead of to us because Christmas is about the kids. (I’m the one that came up with that idea and I think it was a pretty good one if I do say so myself.) She told me that morning that the night before she had secretly asked Santa to put something in her stocking for my cat Andy, and guess what? When she unwrapped her stocking stuffers sure enough there was a toy for Andy. She was extremely excited about all of her presents.

Next thing that happens at Christmas at my house is my mom’s family descends upon the place. They are a motley crew to say the least, and I love them all. (Well, almost all of them; I’m not obliged to love the ones that married into the family.) My mom and my Aunt Mary are the cool kids in her family. There were two turkeys, one a Butterball and the other a store brand. The Butterball was prepared with a rub and cooked in the oven to get a nice, crispy skin. The other one was just basted and cooked on the stovetop (since we can’t fit two turkeys in the oven) and does not get a crispy skin. So the Good Turkey, once it was done, was ushered into my sister’s room and hidden there for the cool families to have: Mom, Dad, Stacy, Kristy, and me; Mary, Tony, and their sons Scott and Jamie. All the uncool families had to eat from the soggy-skinned turkey but everyone got to have some of the ham.

My cousin’s wife, whose secret nickname among the cool kids is Tits, is perhaps my least favorite. She’s about a 42 DDD I’d say and the first time she came to a family function (before they were married) she tried to make a good impression with all of us by straddling my cousin and grinding him while deep tongue kissing. I mean, children had to be removed from the room. Then later that same day she walked past my poor Uncle Tony in a doorway, and despite there being plenty of room, she turned to face him and pushed her boobs against him, saying, “Oh, excuse me.” For awhile my cousin joined the army and was stationed in Seattle with her. That was a happy time for me.

There’s another aunt, C, who has somewhere between 8-12 kids. The joke with her used to always be, “How many kids does C have this year?” Now she’s hit menopause and the new big question is, “How many kids do C’s kids have this year?” There’s my cousin V’s ex-fiance, who I am soooooo happy is an ex. He used to be my least favorite because I swear he was a child molester. I never had any proof of course, but it was as if you could see the lustful gleam in his eyes when he looked at the children. I shudder just thinking about him now. Another cousin’s husband, A, is a very nice man. I worked with him as a teenager. But I think he’s just a little too happy to spend time around my sisters and I. We always get un-asked-for shoulder massages and such. Even though it’s a little creepy, though, at least I get free massages. I do love my massages.

My mom’s family, who I’ve only just mentioned the worst about here, is overall one of the best families I could imagine having. They are real and honest people. They don’t put on false faces toward you or judge you the way my dad’s family would. They accept you for who you are and welcome in new people and treat them as their own at the drop of a hat.

Nevertheless, after a few hours, I was in need of some liquid refreshment so I gathered my sisters and we retired to my bedroom where we each did a shot and had a glass of wine. Then we decided we still weren’t ready to face the crowd again and had a glass of rum and coke. We let Stacy pour the rum, which was a mistake in hindsight. She is the least experienced bartender and poured herself at first about ½ shot. After some careful coaching, she managed to pour a whole shot. Then she turned around and promptly poured about 4 shots each into Kristy’s and my glasses. Needless to say, we did not need another drink after that one.

We spent about two hours I think sitting on my bed and talking and laughing, and that is my best memory this Christmas, or for that matter it is my best memory in many, many Christmases. As a teenager, I did not get along with Stacy. It took me a few years into adulthood to get over old sibling rivalries, and by that time Kristy and Stacy no longer got along. They haven’t for years. This night was the first night that I can remember the three of us alone together being happy and truly enjoying each other. It was a little tiny Christmas miracle.

After the extended family leaves, we all gather in the living room again and finish exchanging gifts. We have a nice quiet few hours giggling at my dog unwrapping her presents and watching my niece being a kid at Christmas. When everything is finally unwrapped, we clean up and sit peacefully with one another for some time until we one at a time make our way to bed.

Those last few hours are usually my favorite part of the holiday but this year it was the couple of hours that we three sisters spent together. I know it’s probably pretty hokey of me to say but I truly mean it: All of us girls getting along and enjoying one another was the best Christmas present I could have gotten.

Xmas Eve Hilites: Grandmonster's "Sick", Dad Pisses Me Off, Doorknob Breaks (12/24/05)

I had to wake up at 7:30—way earlier than Whit would ever dare to wake me up—since we have a tradition in our family of going to the mall every Christmas Eve morning. (Did I mention that the whole lot of us are mad?) So we got there and had coffee and muffins before splitting up to do our last minute shopping. I only had my dad and my dog to shop for. (Yes, I shop for my dog. She knows how to unwrap tissue paper wrapped presents and gets very upset if she sees us unwrapping stuff and she doesn’t get anything so I must buy her chewy treats and squeaky toys every Christmas.)

My dad was still left because he’s been acting like a jerk lately and I haven’t felt much like buying a present for him. First, when asked what he wanted for Christmas he informed my mom that all he wanted was a plasma screen TV and since we couldn’t afford to get him one he was just going to ask for nothing. I mean, how old are we here? Then last week my mom was sick with a cold and laying in bed coughing. My dad comes into me as I’m making my Christmas cookies and informs me that he’s really, really worried about my mother. Can I hear her in there coughing away like that? She can’t handle doing anything with my niece. I’m like, she has a cold. I mean, I know she has cancer as well but we just came from a doctor’s visit yesterday and she is in remission and doing fine. When cancer patients have colds, guess what they do? They cough, just like me and you. But he was not done. He moved on to some statement (don’t remember his exact wording here) the general gist of which was that my niece and I are killing my mother. Did I mention he’s a therapist? He should know better than to pull this crap.

So anyway, I did of course get him a Christmas present because from Christmas Eve through Christmas night I love my whole family and see no faults. I’m just happy they’re all around. On December 26th I can go back to being angry with him if I want but not now.

When we got home from the mall we were doing some last minute wrapping before meeting my dad’s brother and his wife for pizza for lunch. We normally eat with the Grandmonster but she had called first thing this morning to inform us that she is sick so she is canceling Christmas Eve. Now, she is elderly so you might expect me to show some concern but you have to understand this woman. She got a cold once and decided to sell her condo and move into a very expensive convalescent home. Four months later she realized that these people are like five stages worse than her, as she is still walking around and driving just fine. Now she’s spent a significant chunk of her savings on this place that was way out of her budget and also sold her condo for like half the market value because she was so anxious to prove how frail she was. Another time she called the ambulance to drive her to the hospital because two days ago she had a tiny drop of blood in her stool. So sick is a relative term with her.

I think the real story is that she was upset with us for not meeting her for lunch yesterday and decided to punish us by not showing today. This is a pretty routine action with her: We do something to upset her and she cancels our next plans at the last minute. What she will just never get is that it is no punishment to us if she doesn’t show. She is just like a two-year-old cutting off her nose to spite her face. She sits home pouting while we go out anyway and have a good time.

So anyway before we left for lunch, the door handle fell off the outside of the bathroom door. My dad got really pissed about the whole thing the way dads do sometimes and I tried to come up with creative solutions: Make an instruction manual for how to open the door with no handle and tape it to the door; keep the handle (which can be pushed into the mechanism and turned to open the door before it falls out again) hidden and make people pay to use the toilet; attach it to a tire rim and hand it to people saying, “Now don’t run off with this!” None of this amused my dad, though the rest of us laughed heartily because let’s face it. I’m pretty funny.

The evening is always spent stuffing two turkeys (we also serve a ham) and doing other little things to prepare for 40-50 guests that will show up tomorrow—aka my mom’s family. This year I prepared our sun room for all the little kids by wrapping practically the entire room in plastic sheeting.

Let those little suckers try their worst! I am prepared for Christmas of ’05!

Ode to Whitney (12/22/05)

It occurred to me that in the last few posts poor Whit hasn’t been looking so great when really she is the nicest girl I know. So this entry is dedicated to how great Whit is. I met Whit on orientation night in August. I met her through Jenn, who does her GA with me. She was immediately my friend and we all went out for drinks and snacks after orientation. We got horrible service and the bill was all screwed up. We ended up receiving separate bills for the food and drinks and then no one came to get our money and when they finally came back and took our credit cards they never came back with THOSE. So we got up and went to the front of the restaurant to get our credit cards and only after we left did Whit and I realize we never paid the drinks bills since those were separate. But you bet your ass we didn’t go back once we’d left.

Second week of school I got into an accident on my way to class. I called Whit to ask her to let the prof (hey, btw, it was Prof. Bob!) know that I was going to be late. But I was all upset even though it was a minor accident because the man who hit me was being really mean and yelling at me even though I just kept saying I’m sorry, I’m sorry. And my car was only 6 weeks old. And now it was all crunched up on one side. So Whit ran up three flights of stairs (didn’t take the elevator because it was too slow) and shouted to the department secretary what happened then drove straight across town and missed class herself to make sure I was all right. We left my poor Scion in the dinky Chinese restaurant parking lot we’d pulled into and walked over to Dunkin Donuts, where Whit bought me coffee and we sat for like an hour just talking until I was calm enough to drive home. All this she did for a girl she’d only known for two weeks.

We do lots of fun stuff together too, a lot of which I’ve written about here. She is nearly as weird as me (remember the neon sticky sperm?) and she totally gets my sense of humor. It’s always nice to be friends with people that laugh at your jokes. And she is an incredibly encouraging person who wants nothing but the best for everyone she knows. (Well, except our mutual ex-friend but who can blame her about that?) And one time when I was really upset over a guy she woke up in the middle of the night to talk me through it. Is she a great friend or what?

Oh and she’s Canadian and Southern, which is why when we were discussing Thanksgiving the following sentence once came out of her mouth: “It’s not my fault y’all celebrate your Thanksgiving so late.” To which I had to respond, “You are not allowed to use y’all in a sentence where you are referring to your Canadian Thanksgiving.”

I could go on but we don’t want to give Whit too big of an ego here. So I’ll just end it here with this final statement: Whit rocks!

The Details of Sunday (12/22/05)

So Sunday . . . Whit was up and ready to go to brunch about an hour before I would have chosen but what could I do? I had committed. So after a sock fiasco I was out the door and on the way to IHOP with my hands free kit on so anyone looking would think I was talking on the phone instead of belting out tunes with my stereo. Got there and didn’t have to wait too too long but when we were seated our table was awfully close to the table next to us. The guy who was kitty corner to me was blatantly listening into our conversation. Also we had no pepper and when I asked the waitress for some, she borrowed it from the table behind us (which wouldn’t have been so bad if she had gotten them a replacement shaker instead of making us give it back to them when their food came, I mean, what is that? There are no more pepper shakers in all of IHOP??). Also I had a freak-out moment before I had enough caffeine where I thought I was pouring syrup into my coffee mug. Turns out no, it was really coffee.

So when we left we called Jenn to let her know we were on the way to pick her up. When we got there we beeped the horn and waited. A few minutes later Jenn’s boyfriend came out and we chatted with him for a few minutes after confirming that no, of course Jenn wasn’t ready yet. So after another ten minutes or so I beeped the horn again. Another five minutes go by and Jenn calls Whit. Are we there yet? Oh, we are? Well, she can’t find the sweater she wants to wear. So another five minutes later she’s in Prof. Bob and we are all on our way to go shopping.

We get to the department store and browse. Jenn is looking for photo frames, Whit is looking for the bathroom and I am looking at the PJs. (We all know how I feel about PJs.) Then we all turn our attention to the scarves. All girls love scarves matched with hats and gloves/mittens. But they are SO expensive so we don’t buy them. Except Jenn who finds the PERFECT glove match for a scarf she already owns. So we get out to the car and while Jenn is reviewing a receipt (an activity of which I never partake) she realizes the scarves/hats/gloves are 50% off. SO what are we to do? We have all fallen in love with some scarf/hat/glove set in there. I mean, we must return, right?

So we did. I decided that in good strategy I would wait in the long long line while the other two swooped in to get our predetermined accessory sets. So I waited. And waited. And waited. When I had gotten to the front of the line and let two other people go in front of me I called Jenn. Are you coming? I asked. Yes, she said. We’re on our way. I believed her. And I waited.

Ten more minutes went by. People in line thought I was a crazy lady. I called Jenn again. I said, the people in line are yelling at me. And a lady behind me obliged me by yelling when I said that. We are on our way, she said. So I waited some more.

Ten more minutes went by. I called again. What are you doing, I asked. Whit answered. Jenn lost her two year old she said. I think it was meant as a joke. I said as a joke back that I was going to go sit in the car. I didn’t. I was a loyal friend. I would not abandon my post at the front of the line. I waited some more.

Ten more minutes went by. I called again. The phone rang and rang. I thought no one would answer. Then Whit answered. Jenn won’t talk to you, she said. I said, I have watched the sun set. I am tired. My feet hurt. Are you coming? She said I thought you went to the car. I said I had just been kidding. She said she didn’t know I was just kidding (which doesn’t excuse them since when I said that I had already been waiting over 30 minutes) and they’d be right there.

By the time they got there at least an hour had passed. They went to the end of the line!!! I said, no. I have not been standing here for over an hour so you could stand at the end of the line. You come here right now!! And the lady behind me had the nerve to glower at us!! Oh I dared her to mess with ME! The betrayed friend! She took one look at my face and kept any thoughts to herself. Damn straight!! I was so upset I nearly cried. Okay so maybe I did a little.

I also called a mutual friend of ours, Mike L. I told him Whitney made me cry and let her deal with him. Boy did it make me feel good. I only wish I had a mutual friend of Jenn’s to pull the same trick with.

But then all was forgiven. That is the part of me that is not a good Capo di tutti Capi. I am too easy with my forgiveness. So we went to the mall and shopped some more. I showed Whit and Jenn the pinchy-cheeked boy. They agreed that his cheeks are very pinchable. He is a little afraid of me now even though I promised not to pinch his cheeks.

I also bought a very promisingly titled book, “How to Be a Villain.” More on that later as I read it.

Levels of Napping (12/20/05)

Any professional napper knows that there are several different levels of napdom. And I’m sure each napper has his or her own personal levels but here are mine:
  1. The Drooler. The oops, really didn’t mean to fall asleep here in front of all these people kind. Often occurs in classes or in meetings. You are in a sitting position and you head may either be supported by your propped-up elbow on the desk/table or may be laying on the desk/table, using your outstretched arm as a pillow. Worst case scenario: You were sitting straight up and once you fell asleep your head fell forward to the desk/table with a thunk, drawing everyone’s attention. (So named because in accordance with the laws of embarrassment, when you awake from these naps you often have a string of drool hanging from the corner of your mouth.)
  2. The Couch Nap, Level I. This one occurs when you are stretched out on the couch watching TV, often a football game or possibly a not so interesting movie and you just drift off to sleep without meaning to. This often occurs on a Sunday afternoon when you are watching whatever it is you can find on TV to keep yourself occupied for awhile. This is a perfectly acceptable nap, widely practiced and nothing to be ashamed of should someone else witness it.
  3. The Couch Nap, Level II. Here again you are stretched out on the couch, possibly watching TV or reading a book or newspaper. This time, however, you came prepared to nap. You have pulled a blanket or throw over yourself and have snuggled down into the couch, hoping that sleep comes and takes you. Whatever activity you are involved in (TV, reading, etc.) is merely a prelude to the nap, a ruse so that anyone walking by might think to themselves, oh well, she just accidentally drifted off to sleep while doing X. But though you may think you are being clever, the blanket is a dead giveaway that you were intending to nap the whole time.
  4. The Bed Nap, Level I. Now, once you have moved to the bed there is no denying that somewhere in the back of your head your intention was to nap. You may have decided to stretch out on the bed to get nice and comfy and read a book or something but we all know that there are two things that go on in a bed and if you are alone that rules out the first thing. Well, sort of. Well, let’s just say if you are alone with your pants on. So you drift peacefully off to sleep but this is still meant as a light nap because you do not have any covers over yourself.
  5. The Bed Nap, Level II. Okay. Now you are in for some serious napping. Not only are you on the bed but you’ve also pulled a throw or blanket that is not normally on the bed over your body. This is an important distinction because you are signaling that while yes, your intention is to nap, and nap well, you do not intend to be lazy and actually be in bed in the middle of the day. You may only be fooling yourself but there is still this element of “Oops, didn’t mean to drift off to sleep here, no really!” going on.
  6. The Bed Nap, Level III. Or, really and truly sleeping. Okay, there is no fooling anyone with this nap, not even yourself. You are now under the covers on the bed and may even have removed your pants for ease of napping. You are in for some hard-core sleep now. You may toss and turn and even snore. The lights might even be out. You will possibly be asleep for hours. (All above levels usually max out at around an hour.) If anyone ever caught you in this type of nap there would be no denying your intentions and yes, everyone would think you were being incredibly lazy.
Unless you told them you were sick . . . but that is another entry.

Thursday Through Sunday . . . Well, Mainly Through Saturday (12/20/05)

So…this was my life from Thursday through Sunday: I was woken up way too early by Whit calling or IMing me each and every one of those mornings. Thursday she made me meet her and Jenn to work on our Human Resources papers together. When we were done with them she made me go out drinking with them. Friday Whit IMed me and made me go meet her at the mall for shopping but first we had to meet for lunch where she made me drink pomegranate margaritas. Oh, and she nearly made me late for work that night. Saturday she interrupted my PJ Day and made me dress in real clothes to go meet her, Jenn, Jenn’s bf, and this guy Chris to go drinking. (More of the Saturday story later.) Sunday she IMed and texted me to get me up after I was all hung over so I could go meet her at IHOP for brunch before bringing her and Jenn shopping, and later at dinner she made me drink more alcohol. (Again, more on Sunday later.) So every day she woke me up way early and forced me to drink alcohol.

(Okay, so except for the waking me up way early part—and by way early I must confess I mean about 10:30 in the morning—I willingly volunteered to participate in all activities and did have loads of fun doing them. BUT. The waking me up before I willingly got up on my own overshadows all that.)

So Saturday. I had decided that it was PJ Day. I hadn’t had one since Thanksgiving week and felt I was deserving of it. So the day was going okay except I really wanted to take a nap around 1 pm but could NOT make myself fall asleep. My dad called and wanted me to go see King Kong. Okay. One of the greatest things about not being in a relationship right now is not having to be guilted into seeing all those guy movies. And it was PJ Day so I wasn’t going to be persuaded to leave the house to see any other movie either.

Then around 10:30 pm I check my messages and Whit has been trying to get hold of me for the last couple of hours. She wants me to go meet everyone at the Corner Pug for drinks. So she made me violate the sanctity of PJ Day on top of everything else. (Okay, so I’m always up for late night drinking with great friends, but still. Let us not forget that it was PJ Day.) So I invite my sister who just got home from college to come with us and we met at the Pug. When Jenn and her bf got there I realized that we were meeting there because they said they served late night food and poor Jenn hadn’t eaten all day. We found out that someplace in downtown West Hartford also served food late so Whit, Chris (a friend of Whit’s who I just met that night and am still trying to decide whether he’s cool or not), and Kristy swallowed the drinks we’d already ordered as fast as we could and we caravanned over to West Hartford Center.

Got there and after we sat down we came to find out that the chick at the last bar had lied to us and they did not serve food this late. (Okay so maybe she was just misinformed but it’s so much more fun to think the worst of people so let’s go with she deliberately lied.) So we got up from there (before ordering drinks so we didn’t have to chug anything down) and ended up driving to Hartford where Jenn’s bf works (poor Jenn’s bf; the whole reason we went out that night was because he had been having a hard time at work). We got some free food (yay!) and a couple more rounds of drinks and had lots of great conversation involving . . . well, I don’t really remember because I was kinda drunk but I know I laughed a lot.

Anyway, they kicked us out because it was closing time and we made plans as we were walking back to our cars to shop and eat brunch the next morning. So yes, I did willingly commit to brunch and I even was the one to tell Whit to call me when she got up the next morning so we could decide where to meet. But still. I get to blame everyone else for things even when it’s my fault because it’s my blog, remember?

Okay, so more on Sunday in my next entry.

Dedicated to Jake (12/17/05)

Jake is Whit's boyfriend. He says people who have blogs are passive-aggressive. I say people who call other people passive-aggressive are passive-aggressive. I'm considering bumping him to Broken and Chased. How's that for passive-aggressive, Mr. I-tell-you-I-don't-read-your-blog-even-though-I-secretly-do?

My AIM Categories (How I Amuse Myself by Rank Ordering the People in my Life) (12/15/05)

So I’m supposed to be working on my last paper of the semester. It’s due in a little over 4 hours. Instead I thought it would be entertaining to post on my blog about the categories I have set up for my AIM. It’s set up in mob terminology.

Capo di tutti capi: That’s me. The boss of bosses. The boss of the strongest of the five families in New York. Presides over the Commission meetings.

La Familia: Self explanatory. My sisters and one sister’s bf.

Made: Sworn into La Cosa Nostra. The closest buds. My crew.

Associates: almost-theres. They work with and for wiseguys but haven’t been sworn into The Family yet.

Cugines from the Joint: Cugines are young tough guys looking to be made. Another synonym for the joint is going away to college. Therefore, this is where my school friends are listed.

Earners: People whose expertise is making money for the family. This is where I put my work friends.

Empty Suits: Someone with nothing to offer who tries to hang around with mobsters. This is where I put people whose screen names I have but I don’t care about them at all.

Broken and Chased:
Broken is demoted in the ranks; knocked down. Chased is to be banished from the Mafia and barred from doing business with or associating with any made members. The punishment is merciful in that the person is spared death. (This is where I put people that have pissed me off. Broken people may move back up in the ranks again but chased are out for good.)

The Nose Picking Poem, and Other Favorites (12/14/05)

So here’s the Shel Silverstein nose picking poem (I’m probably breaking some copyright law by posting it):

Warning


Inside everybody’s nose
There lives a sharp-toothed snail.
So if you stick your finger in,
He may bite off your nail.
Stick it farther up inside,
And he may bite your ring off.
Stick it all the way, and he
May bite the whole darn thing off.

And here’s another of his that always struck a note with me as an older sister:

For Sale

One sister for sale!
One sister for sale!
One crying and spying young sister for sale!
I’m really not kidding,
So who’ll start the bidding?
Do I hear a dollar?
A nickel?
A penny?
Oh, isn’t there, isn’t there, isn’t there any
One kid who will buy this old sister for sale,
This crying and spying young sister for sale?
And one that I, born with true British teeth, can really appreciate:

The Crocodile's Toothache

The Crocodile
Went to the dentist
And sat down in the chair,
And the dentist said, “Now tell me, sir,
Why does it hurt and where?”
And the Crocodile said, “I’ll tell you the truth,
I have a terrible ache in my tooth,”
And he opened his jaws so wide, so wide,
That the dentist, he climbed right inside,
And the dentist laughed, “Oh isn’t this fun?”
As he pulled the teeth out, one by one.
And the Crocodile cried, “You’re hurting me so!
Please put down your pliers and let me go.”
But the dentist just laughed with a Ho Ho Ho,
And He said, “I still have twelve to go—
Oops, that’s the wrong one, I confess,
But what’s one crocodile’s tooth, more or less?”
Then suddenly, the jaws went SNAP,
And the dentist was gone, right off the map,
And where he went one could only guess . . .
To North or South or East or West . . .
He left no forwarding address.
But what’s one dentist, more or less?

Navigating Hartford, Baking Cookies, and Pinching Cheeks (12/13/05)

Today I was supposed to be in downtown Hartford at 12:30 with a group of about 15 people and Jim. We were presenting a letter to our Senator’s office protesting his statements on the war. I was one of the organizers and had warned everyone last night to not be late because we had a press conference scheduled at a certain time. So wouldn’t you know it, I was late. Whit called me because she got lost in Hartford and I felt like such an idiot because everyone assumes since I live near Hartford that I know my way around it well.

(I don’t. I have a specific formula for finding anything in Hartford: I know where a few major landmarks are. I go to the landmark that is supposed to be nearest to my destination and drive in larger and larger circles until I find where I want to be.)

So here I am trying to give Whit directions to a place I don’t know how to get to and I get off the highway and she says I see you! There we are talking to each other as we both drive lost through the city (carefully using our hands-free devices which are now law in CT). We devised a plan that she would drive in one direction and I would drive in the other until one of us found where we were supposed to be.

I found the street first so I told her how to get there and we proceeded to drive down the street looking for our building. Only they had the road closed partway down so we had to detour. We eventually found the place but we were late for the letter hand-off. We did make the press conference so that was something.

I rushed home after that and quick baked 6 dozen cookies before I had to run out and meet friends for dinner. (See, I bake cookies as my Christmas present to most people because I’m a cheap bastard.) 6 dozen down, 11 dozen to go.

I met two old friends from my previous job, Nicole and Luci. We each managed separate stores for a horrible company that makes wonderful chocolate. They still work there but I like to hang out with them and hear about how horrible things still are so I can feel good about my decision to leave and gloat to them that they are still there. (Well, the gloating is done in my head because I’m not that mean.)

We got pretty drunk. We each had 3 of those mega-sized drinks and did a shot each as well so we decided to walk it off in the mall before driving home. So, having made this decision, we had one more shot each to celebrate how responsible we were being. We swung by Luci’s store since it was in that mall and said hi to her employees. Two of them I knew and two I didn’t. One was a middle aged lady that didn’t seem like much fun but the other one was this high school kid who had a great head of 70’s style hair and very pinchable cheeks. So I called him over and asked him to come real close and I reached out to pinch his cheeks but he was too quick and ran away. (The ones on his face, you pervs!)

Then we went into the Disney store where Nicole and I found these Santa hats with Eeyore ears hanging down. They are so adorable! So we bought them and wore them around the mall. As we were leaving we went through the bookstore and I had to stop and buy the Shel Silverstein books because ever since Whit, Ben and I talked about him I’ve been obsessed with finding his poetry. Apparently, my mom gave our copies to one of my other sisters because, you know, it makes no sense to give the books of poetry to the daughter that got a bachelor’s degree in English. No, no. Let’s give them to the one that majored in art or the one that majored in music instead. They’ll appreciate them so much more. All I’m saying is, then I should be the one to get the piano.

So then I drove home singing Christmas carols in my Eeyore hat and baked 5 more dozen cookies. 6 dozen more to do in the morning. Overall, a fun day.

On Being Alone (12/11/05)

The first month and a half after my ex and I split up I would have taken him back in a heartbeat. Then I found out he had been cheating on me before we broke up and then I still would have taken him back for two reasons: To temporarily abate my pain and to have the satisfaction of being able to then dump him on his ass and cause him as much pain as possible. Another month later I got over even that desire.

I had a bunch of new friends. I had started to make plans for my life and my future looked different—it looked bright and it looked all mine. I was finally happy alone. I dated sometimes but really didn’t want a boyfriend. I only dated as a sort of hobby, something to do with my time and to have fun with. In fact, as I mentioned in a previous entry, I was very careful about who I dated. I made sure to date guys that I wouldn’t be interested in long-term; I might be attracted to them or I might think they were really fun and nice but not both.

That suited me for a long time. I was alone but I wasn’t ever lonely.

At 3 am one night this summer my ex called me drunk. I didn’t pick up the phone but he left a message that went something like, “It’s me. I just want to let you know that I’m sorry for everything.” I told my friends about it the next day and they were all concerned. Don’t you dare take him back, etc, etc. I laughed. I was like, have you seen the difference in me these past few months? I would never go back to who I was when I was with him. I never even considered for a second after those first months taking him back, not even for revenge because revenge on him didn’t matter anymore.

I was thankful for that phone call. It let me know I was truly over him. I could have picked up the phone. I could have called him back. I could probably even have taken him back but I didn’t. And so I went on, alone but not lonely, happy and content in being single and not dating the same guy more than a couple of times.

And then I met Greg. That’s the name of the guy I’ve been going on about lately. I knew he was dangerous for me because he was someone that I wanted to see more than once or twice but I couldn’t help myself. I got used to seeing him on a regular basis; I got used to him being there and I started to need him a little. I still rebelled against anything real and serious and long-term but every time I left him I liked knowing that I was going to see him at least once more. At least once more was always enough and never too much.

So then came the time a couple of weeks ago, unbeknownst to each other, when he had decided to tell me he just wanted to be friends because he thought I was too attached to him and I decided to tell him I thought we needed to see other people because this was starting to feel too much like a real relationship when it really wasn’t and I didn’t want one right now. Well he got to say his first, and I did tell him mine after, and then he said he thought we were going to be ok because we were more on the same page than he thought. So I thought good, things can go back to what they were sort of but without all the pressure and he said yeah, you could think of it that way.

That was two weeks ago and things aren’t the same; I’m not sure what they are. He was sick for a week and so everything was sort of on hold but now another week has passed and he is different toward me. We don’t talk unless I initiate things and even then not for long and he has yet to invite me over. I won’t be convinced things are ok unless we see each other and they really are. So maybe he’s changed his mind again and he wants things over now, and I could be okay with that if he told me so and I could move on.

Well that’s not true entirely. I lied when I said before we were never friends. He has been my friend. We had fun hanging out and watching movies together and I think he’s really funny and he looks at life in a way I’ve never seen before and I would like to have gotten to explore that more. Taking away all the sexual stuff, yeah, there was friendship there. So there’s that to be sad for: Another lost friendship.

But there’s more that bothers me. Thanks to Greg I’m no longer happy to be completely alone. I will be again I think but I’m not yet. I miss being with a guy that I really do like; I miss having his arms wrapped around me and feeling home and protected and right. I miss being with someone that I actually do want to see again at the end of the night.

So now I am alone and lonely. I don’t like that combination at all.

Trouble in the Computer Lab, Bar Convo, and Playing in the Snow (12/10/05)

Tuesday I had my Research Design exam. We were studying at the common table in the computer lab but I was also working on a computer off and on trying to finish my last RD paper and communicating with some political friends about a possible challenge to the sitting senator. So I had a computer open with my papers all around the desk and a Word document open and I was signed onto AIM and I had my email account open. There are 16 computers in the lab and there were maybe 6 other computers being used.

So I ran over to my computer to work for a few minutes and this girl who shall remain nameless (Hint: She’s named after Christmas) was sitting at my desk. I didn’t say anything. I just turned around and started to walk away but then this other guy says, did you need something? So I just said, no, I was just going over to my computer but I guess it’s not my computer anymore. So the Xmas girl goes, (and picture a really, really snotty voice here) “Well, there are eight other computers you could use.” Like, yeah. There are. So why don’t you just use one of the other 8 instead of the one computer that is clearly being used?? I mean, first of all I wouldn’t have sat down at a computer with someone’s stuff on the desk but even if I had, as soon as I saw they had so many things open on the computer, I would have moved to one of the many open computers. But that’s just me. I guess that’s why I wasn’t named after a major holiday.

Wednesday I can’t think of a single interesting thing that happened to me. I hate those days. Something interesting should happen every day.

Thursday Whit and I took our new friend Ben out for a drink after Barry’s class. We went to the bar where my friend Jason works and we had lots of fun. I got to catch up with Jason some more and Whit and I tried to convince Ben to skip his family fish festival (don’t ask) to bring his girlfriend and come to North Carolina with us next weekend. We didn’t succeed. We talked about TV commercials, bumble bees, Connecticut wine, the Shel Silverstein poem about the creature that lives in your nose and will eat your finger if you pick your nose, and much more.

Friday was the big storm. I had to get up at 6 in the morning to make sure that my niece didn’t have school but then I was able to sleep late afterward. I had to shovel the driveway in the afternoon since no one was home but me and I had to tend bar that night. So I went out in the foot of snow and shoveled and shoveled. It was a lot of snow. When I was almost done I realized that at some point I had dropped my keys in the driveway and shoveled them up with the rest of the snow so I then had to wade into the deep part and dig for them. Oh how fun. After I eventually found my keys I went inside and had some well-deserved hot cocoa.

Insomnia: A Guidebook (12/8/05)

I suffered fairly severe insomnia for one semester of college. I couldn’t get to sleep until about 4 am just about every morning and had early classes so I’d have to get up at 7. It’s hit me off and on since then but not for too long at a time. The worst since then was probably after I split with my ex. I ended up taking sleeping pills for awhile but it wasn’t nearly as long as a semester.

Lately has been the longest since that semester. The last 3 weeks it’s been bothering me. Here’s what it’s like for those of you that are fortunate to not have suffered from it: You’re tired. Really tired. So you should be able to sleep, right? Oh, but no. You lay down. You turn off the lights. You wait for sleep to come but in the meantime your mind starts to wander. You think of all the things that are worrying you in any way and can’t stop thinking about them. And because of that sleep won’t come.

There are a couple of tricks that usually work, which are why insomnia has gone away for me for so long. First trick I have is to read. It makes my eyes tired. (Because I’m supposed to wear reading glasses but never do but that’s another story.) But then sometimes you put the book down when you get tired enough and think you’ll fall asleep now but as soon as you close your eyes and start to relax the thoughts come back. Your mind gets so busy that no matter how tired your eyes are you can’t pass out.

Next trick: Leave the TV on. Has to be the right channel though. Has to be a show that you can listen to but don’t have to watch. This one is a really good trick because if you find the right show you can have your eyes closed and keep your brain occupied with something other than the thoughts until—hopefully—you drift off to sleep. The only thing that used to impede this trick was if a commercial happened too soon.

I find good channels to fulfill this need to be A&E, History Channel, Discovery Channel, and best of all, Court TV (as long as they aren’t playing Cops). During the bad semester I saw the entire series of “Homicide: Life on the Streets” when it played from 2-3 am on Court TV. Then they stopped playing that and played “The Profiler” which I enjoyed at first but then it got tedious. Now Court TV shows all true crime dramas, which work very well too.

If you are having a really unfortunate night and are up until after 5:30, you are S.O.L. because 5:30-6:00 am is the dead half hour. Court TV starts infomercials at 5:30 (the latest of all the channels at least) and you are stuck with nothing but news channels. Unless . . . the best is if you are still up at 6 am then on the History Channel educational TV comes on and there are no commercials (because I’m not sure if I mentioned this before but commercials are when your mind can start to wander again and you lose all sleep tendencies, which basically gives you a 10-12 minute window at best on any channel to fall asleep), AND. It’s boring. But not too boring. And you can totally listen to it with your eyes closed.

And if for some reason you are still up at 7 am, then A&E has their educational TV hour. And if you are still up at 8 am, you are probably screwed because it’s about time to get up for the day anyway. So it’s now 1:30 am and I’m feeling the sleepies pulling down the corners of my eyes but I know they are just teasing. Nevertheless, I’m going to try to sleep.

With Court TV on. In case the sleep doesn’t come.

More Non Sequiturs (12/6/05)

I love watching infomercials. My favorite is the Magic Bullet! You can make everything with it and it all takes 10 seconds or less: Guacamole, alfredo sauce, chocolate mousse, margaritas, quesadillas, pesto sauce, sorbet . . . and the guy has an Australian accent, which totally rocks! But all infomercials are great. You watch them and by the end you believe that if only you had that particular item, your life would be soooo much better.

I am personally repulsed by Chuck Norris and cannot stand to look at him because his mouth looks like a vagina. I had the same problem with Yasser Arafat.

True confession: I apply my makeup while I’m driving in the morning. It means I can stay in bed 10 minutes more in the morning. When I was in high school it took me no more than 30 minutes from getting up to walk out the door. As the years went by and I had to add lotion applying and hair drying, etc., I got up to 45 minutes. When I started closing in on an hour, I needed to find some way to cut back. So now I do my makeup while driving. Don’t worry. I don’t do any fine details while the car is moving, just base application, blush, etc. I wait for like eyeliner til I hit a red light. (Well, unless it takes too long for a red light to come.)

I’m not so good with pet names. I wish my dog’s name was something besides Goober. I let my ex name her. He’s such an ass. I also wish my cat was named something besides Chloe because if I ever have a daughter I’d like to name her Chloe. Think I could convince her the cat was named after her, not the other way around? And my other cat is named Andy. Because first he was named Amy until his one ball dropped. And Andy sounds pretty close to Amy, which he had already started answering to.

Tending Bar, New Friends and Old Friends (12/3/05)

Did nothing all day yesterday until work. Haven’t been to the bar in several weeks. I was pleasantly surprised to see the waitresses making up my garnishes. Saves me like 45 minutes of work. Was even more pleasantly surprised to see that I did not have to fix too much in the beer cooler. There is no weekday bartender so usually on Fridays there is a huge mess from all week with like a whole mess of Bud Select and Amstel Light (both of which NO ONE buys) and maybe 2 Coronas, Bud Lites, Kirins, etc. (the most popular ones) Really didn’t have to pull too much back stock either. They had actually brought out extra bottles of almost everything we were low on! And I even had a bar rag waiting for me and the ice was full. Guess I’m finally training these people right!

The only thing I really had to do was the weekly milk test. We don’t use too much milk at the bar so we pour a little into leftover sour mix containers. Since that means the milk out front isn’t dated, I first must remove the cap and sniff. Sometimes it passes the smell test but sometimes it smells like it might be starting to go so then I have to pour a little into a rocks glass and taste it. I always dread that part. It was a taste day. But as I poured it into the rocks glass it came out in clumps. So didn’t have to taste it after all. Threw that all away and got some fresh milk for the weekend.

It was pretty slow the first couple of hours so Stacey the hostess and I watched Coyote Ugly on TV. Stacey’s really cool. She is so me when I was in high school. I’ll have to write more about her sometime. Got some pity texts from my friends. (I always beg them to text me when I’m tending bar in case it’s slow.)

Also got a drunk phone call from this guy I know from school. He’s like, “Hey! What are you doing? Where you working? Where you living? Wanna do something now?” I’m like, “Ummm, I’m working. In the same town where I live. Can’t do anything because I’m working.” Then he talked to me for about five minutes about how Whit and I are pretty sweet ladies (or something like that) and he’s all alone since he moved here and all his friends are half the state away so he though it would be cool to hang out with us only he’s shy but a bottle of wine and a corkscrew took care of that problem so here he is talking to me. I felt bad I couldn’t hang out with him because he’s pretty nice and he lets Whit and I pick on him, which is always a good quality for someone to have. And I’ve been there, not having any friends around. So I texted him later that maybe next weekend we could do something.

It got busy for awhile. I’m always happier when it’s busier, as long as it’s not crazy. Got a couple at the bar, where the woman wants to be a bartender. Every weekend I get either someone who wants to be a bartender or is a bartender. One guy got a $6 drink and gave me a $5 tip so that was pretty sweet. Slowed down right about the time Stacey left, which totally sucks because the last hour and a half after she leaves is always the slowest. There was one guy left at the bar eating his sushi and we were making conversation about how there was no need for UConn to be kicking Texas Southern’s ass as bad as they were.

Then this guy walks in and goes, “Is it ok if I sit at the bar to eat or do I need to sit at a table?” And I looked at him all squinty eyed for a minute and then said, “Sure, Steve. You can sit at my bar.” Okay. Total freakiness. This Steve I haven’t seen in like 7 years at least. Haven’t seen anyone from high school in forever and then I run into Jason Thursday and now Steve tonight. We spent a good hour catching up with each other. We were part of the same group in high school but were never really close. Now he’s turned into a pretty cool guy. He and his best friend are still doing the same thing they did in high school (magic, juggling, comedy act) and are actually making a living at it.

So I was telling the UConn guy about how freaky this was, seeing two people after so long and the guy goes, “Well you know what this means,” and holds up 3 fingers. “You’re going to meet one more. These things come in threes.” I just kind of laughed and blew it off. Time for me to go home but Steve, who was staying at his parents’ house for the weekend, didn’t want to go home until they were asleep, so we went to a bar down the road for a couple of drinks. We were there for a little while and as we are getting up to leave, we turn around and holy crap! There is this girl Jen from high school.

Now I could see this happening like on Thanksgiving, or something like that. But here are three people I was friends with a long time ago (from three separate groups, too, not friends with each other) in two days. This is just weird. Got all of their contact info so now I’ve got lots to do over winter break catching up with everyone. Maybe I don’t need a job after all.

Oh, and how freaky is it that UConn guy was right?

Cool Quotes from Cool People (12/2/05)

Lenny Bruce

--Every day, people are straying away from the church and going back to God.
--Miami Beach is where neon goes to die.

Douglas Adams

--I love deadlines. I especially like the whooshing sound they make as they go flying by.
--Nothing travels faster than light, with the possible exception of bad news, which follows its own rules.
--There is a theory that states: "If anyone finds out what the universe is for it will disappear and be replaced by something more bizarrely inexplicable." There is another theory that states: "This has already happened."
--Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

Ken Kesey

--You can't really be strong until you see a funny side to things.
--I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.
--You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.
--The trouble with super heroes is what to do between phone booths.

Buddha

--Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense.
--There are two mistakes one can make along the road to truth -- not going all the way, and not starting.

Norman Mailer

--The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.
--Ultimately a hero is a man who would argue with the gods, and so awakens devils to contest his vision. The more a man can achieve, the more he may be certain.
--When considering regulations, half of what is published is probably 50 % incorrect. The rest is 75 % wrong.

Al Capone

--I don't even know what street Canada is on.
--When I sell liquor, it's called bootlegging; when my patrons serve it on silver trays on Lake Shore Drive, it's called hospitality.
--You can get much farther with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word alone.
--I am like any other man. All I do is supply a demand.

Mike Ditka

--If you're not in the parade, you watch the parade. That's life.
--Success isn't measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace.
--I'm not a mean player. You'll notice I never pick on a player who has a number above 30.
--What's the difference between a 3-week-old puppy and a sportswriter? In 6 weeks, the puppy will stop whining.

Charles Bukowski

--Show me a man who lives alone and has a perpetually clean kitchen, and 8 times out of 9 I'll show you a man with detestable spiritual qualities.
--The pest, in a sense, is a very superior being to us: he knows where to find us and how --usually in the bath or in sexual intercourse or asleep.
--Before you kill something make sure you have something better to replace it with; something better than political opportunist slamming hate horse shit in the public park.

Frank Zappa

--I never set out to be weird. It was always other people who called me weird.
--Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say that there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and that is the basic building block of the universe.

Steven Wright

--If it's a penny for your thoughts and you put in your two cents worth, then someone, somewhere is making a penny.
--You can't have everything. Where would you put it?
--I planted some bird seed. A bird came up. Now I don't know what to feed it.

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

--Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the universe.
--Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion . . . . I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.
--We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be.

Harry S. Truman

--Intense feeling too often obscures the truth.
--It is amazing what you can accomplish if you do not care who gets the credit.
--If you can't convince 'em, confuse 'em.

Winter Break Fever Has Hit (12/1/05)

Today was another awesome day at school. I have now written about 1/3 of two different papers. Then got bored. Whit and I were supposed to go out after she had a meeting but she had to revise a script for work. The poor thing has been sooo stressed lately over this script. So while she worked on that Liss and I decided to make a coffee run but Matt wanted to tag along but not to go to Wild Oats, but to the other natural food market in town since he is now boycotting Wild Oats because they are the man and the man sucks. Or something like that, not quite clear on the details.

Anyway so we dropped Matt at the store and went to Starbucks (whose coffee sucks so I bought green tea). Apparently we made Matt wait too long and he thought we decided to leave him there so he called everyone back at the school to see if we showed up there. Hehe! That is a funny joke to play for the future though! I once left my friend at a record store, drove around the block and came back. I was highly amused. She was not.

So anyhow, when we got back it was a little after 3 so Whit and I decided to go to the closest restaurant/bar we could find and get takeout to bring to Barry’s class (aka the sperm class) and we also decided to have 2 drinks while we waited for the food. So food was a little late getting made and when the bartender gave us back our credit cards, he’s like, I know where you’re from! I instantly knew it was my old friend from high school, Jason!! I was so thrilled!!! Remember when I said junior year I stopped hanging out with my friends because of my ex? Well he was one of the new friends I made at the time and we used to have so much fun together! I just can’t believe my luck to run into him!!

It’s funny when things like that happen. Like, the timing of it all. If I hadn’t waited until this year to go back to school, and if on this day I hadn’t decided to go to that bar with Whit because she had to work on her project and it was close to class time we might never have run into each other.

Anyway so we got back late and decided it would not be a good idea to go into class late since Barry had given this whole speech about it at the beginning of the year. So instead we sat in the computer lab eating our dinners. We could have just skipped altogether if it wasn’t for the fact that we had put our bags in the room already. Oh, and then so during break in between that and the next, Whit and I decided to go back to the bar for dessert and another drink.

On the way out we saw my friend Dan the cop talking to 2 of the campus cops in their cruiser so we decided to go up to them with him and chat. And it was totally weird because Carl and Bob were totally hitting on us and were like, ooh, why didn’t you invite us to go drinking? Make sure you invite us next time! But whatever. They were pretty nice anyway and now I’m friends with Carl and Bob the campus cops so if I get another ticket for parking in the lot illegally one day I know who to talk to about it.

So anyway, got the drinks, got some excellent tiramisu, and even got back to class on time this time, though the class was completely boring. I decided to give myself corn rows while the prof droned on and on about goal setting theory. This new look of mine seemed to really amuse Whit and some others in the class. Then I decided after an hour that I’d had enough and told Whit to come get me if he called break, otherwise I’d be back in 20. Just my frigging luck that he called break like 10 minutes after I left so I didn’t get to enjoy my skipping. Oh well.

The rest of the class was taken up by very artistically drawing the lettering for, “One hour left.” “Thirty Minutes Left.” And so on. I am so in winter break mode already it’s killing me these last few weeks of class.

Free Pens and the Non-Organic Mango Tango Pina Colada Smoothie (11/29/05)

I was really bored this afternoon at school. I had finished my GA stuff and had found out that the paper I thought was due today wasn’t really due until next week, so of course I didn’t work on that. I got so bored I decided to look for a job. I mean, I’m supposed to do 10 hours a week on my GA but I rarely do more than 5. I tend bar Fridays and Saturdays sometimes but after I got so bored last week while I wasn’t in school I though hey, it might not be a bad idea to get a job over winter break. So I did that for awhile but got bored with that too.

Whit IMed me around 2:45 that Staples was giving out free pens and gel things. (Don’t know what the gel things were, I never asked.) I had to go to a meeting at 3 and had class at 4 but after a very boring afternoon getting a free pen from Staples sounded downright awesome! So when I got out of the meeting I convinced Rach to come with me to Staples before class. She said we didn’t have enough time but I said of course we did. When we came back I’d park illegally in the staff lot right behind our building so we’d shave off 5 minute’s walking time.

Rach said she’d come for the pen but was reluctant because of all the gas it would waste to drive to get the free pen and that it would most likely be a crappy free pen anyway, otherwise it probably wouldn’t be free. Plus, she said we had to stop somewhere else too to make the trip worth it so we settled on Wild Oats. We got $3.99 smoothies, which I paid for since she bought me dinner a few weeks ago at our favorite Mexican restaurant. I got Organic Strawberry Banana Sunrise and she got Mango Tango Pina Colada after much discussion over whether or not she should get it since it was the only non-organic smoothie. We decided since all the ingredients except the coconut cream were organic that it was okay.

We had to wait in a really long checkout line, which put us off my pre-determined, guaranteed-to-get-to-class-in-time schedule. While we waited, Rach described in great detail how incredibly fibrous her smoothie was, and we were both highly disappointed that there was like no coconut taste, since the whole reason she got it despite the non-organic label was the expected coconut taste.

So we got out of there and went straight to Staples to get our free pens. We walked in and Rach made me ask about the pens since it was all my idea to go, so I did and the girl looked at me like I was crazy. Free pens? What the hell was I talking about? And all the other Staples employees in their red Staples smocks pointed at us and laughed mockingly, chanting, “Free pens! Free pens!” (Okay, so I’m exaggerating a little but not much.) We hung our heads in the cheap shamefulness of the whole thing and slunk out of Staples.

We did get back in time for class but the whole trip was highly disappointing since we were free penless and Rach ended up throwing away half of her $3.99 non-organic Mango Tango Pina Colada smoothie because she couldn’t handle any more fiber.

Why Matt Is Cool (11/29/05)

So I got a personal request from my friend Matt to be mentioned in the blog. Matt is the TA for Econ, so you can imagine that I spend lots of time with him, given how much econ sucks. Poor Matt didn’t want to be the TA but no one applied to be Prof. Bob’s TA so he kind of got stuck with it. Matt’s pretty cool. He came with us to Wild Oats for lunch once and he helps us with Econ even when he’s not getting paid for it.

He’s in my HR class as well. One time he sat next to Whit, Jenn, and me but he said he wouldn’t sit next to us anymore because we talk too much. We really don’t talk that much at all (just because two separate teachers have spoken to us about it doesn’t mean anything!), and I mean, almost all the time what we talk about is related to class. I swear. So now Matt won’t sit next to us in HR anymore which sucks because he’s fun.

Whit brought in these little things called Easter Eggs on a String one day. They’re made out of that gooey, sticky neon colored rubbery material, only they didn’t look anything like Easter Eggs but very much like sperm. So we were sticking sperm to our coffee cups, my apple, our pens, whatever we could think of. It was the worst possible class she could have handed them out in too because that teacher is soooo uptight (worse than Prof. Bob by far), which only made the whole thing funnier.

So I gave one to Matt during our break and he threw it up onto the ceiling of the lounge area! And it stuck! It’s been like a month and there is still a neon green sperm stuck to the ceiling of our lounge. I check that sperm out every day and every time I do I think of Matt and smile.

Oh, and he has a dog. Anyone that has a dog is automatically cooler than people that don’t.

Communication (11/28/05)

Don’t know if I’m even going to post this but I still feel the need to write it anyway. People say communication is the key to a good relationship. But the thing is, communication is only part of it. It’s really about completely open and honest communication. I’m sure you can guess that this comes from a real life example, probably to do with this guy I’ve been going on about a lot lately, and you are right.

See, I did think we did the communication thing but the truth is we only did it on the surface. I can’t speak for him. I don’t know when he started thinking anything he told me. Maybe it really was just before he told me those things. But on my end, I can’t say that I was being completely honest, and the problem was that I wasn’t just not being honest with him but with myself either, which made it completely impossible to be honest with him.

The panic attacks, the dream I had—they were symptoms of my lack of honesty with myself. See, things seemed to be possibly leading to a serious dating situation and I knew at the start that I wasn’t comfortable with that yet but I got so caught up in trying to make sure I didn’t say anything to push him away that I forgot to continue being honest with myself. I thought, if I show too little interest in moving forward I’m going to offend him.

See, that was a big thing with my ex: Finding ways not to offend him.

So I fell into this pattern of trying to reconcile myself with whatever he might or might not want from this thing to the extent that I stopped thinking about what did I really want? The panic attacks were the first clue. Then the dream was my subconscious self hitting my conscious self over the head with a large, heavy object.

And I started thinking about it all, which is what I should have been doing all this time. See, I was so worried about not making him think I didn’t like him that at some point I stopped trying to identify exactly what I wanted out of all this. But my subconscious knew: Nothing much really. Not now anyway.

The details of the dream aren’t important but what is important is that I woke up knowing that I was in over my head with this guy. Not that I liked him more than he liked me but that I probably honestly liked him less than he thought I did. I still wanted to see him, just to lighten things up significantly. And I had to figure out how to be honest about this with him now.

Didn’t get the chance to though.

Physical and Nonphysical (11/27/05)

Yeah so my dream was so right on. I woke up knowing that something serious was wrong with whatever you wanted to label what the guy and I had. I was right. At some point in the last week he had decided that we shouldn’t be together. I was so right. But he still wants me to come over and hang out sometimes. Like what is that? I mean, let’s be honest. Since the start what we had was not friendship. If it was we could hang out.

If he wanted to hang out with me really he’d want to be with me still. Wanting me to come over once in awhile still to just hang out is not even a backstep since we never did just hang out. Then he says well he’s not ruling out that something might happen in the future, oh, AND. He says when I ask him what caused this that it was just a realization “about how we get along nonphysically.” Okay. So if that is true, they why would he even care about hanging out with me now when all things physical are ruled out??

Does not make sense at all. Either we get along ok nonphysically so he wants to be friends or we don’t so he doesn’t. But…if we do get along nonphysically and we get along physically (the second part of which we know), then what is the reason why things should end between us?

So here is my theory. Correct me if I’m wrong. It was Thanksgiving weekend and lots of people were home for the weekend. He was not forthcoming at all about his weekend plans beyond that (very clearly) I was not involved. So someone he saw this weekend made him think twice about whatever we’ve been doing together. Ok. But if that was the case then be honest. Because what he said to me tonight I don’t feel was honest.

I repeat, if his “feel about how we get along nonphysically” is true, then what on earth would make him want to hang out with me still if we are not going to be physical at all?? I mean, come on. There is the physical and the nonphysical. We aren’t going to be physical anymore. And he doesn’t think we get along nonphysically. So what does that leave exactly?

And yes, there is a part of me that is bitter over this whole thing since I was on the verge of telling him that we needed to slow down. But see, I wanted to slow down. Not stop. I knew from my end that I DID think we got along both physically and nonphysically. Guess I was wrong on both counts. Gotta sort all this out and move on I guess.

Dreaming (11/26/05)

I remember my dreams almost every morning when I wake up. They are mostly the type that bring all the random aspects of my life together into one story and I don't often find much meaning in them beyond that my mind is just sorting and categorizing recent events.

When I was a lot younger, I frequently had flying dreams in which I saved friends and family from peril. I've heard that flying dreams mean that you're feeling in control, powerful, and that you can accomplish anything. Maybe that is based in some truth since I stopped having those dreams for many years and only recently started them again. Only recently have I felt in control again.

Very occasionally I have a dream that acts as an epiphany. The strange thing is that I can't remember one ever happenning when I'm sleeping in my own bed. Maybe I have to be outside of my comfort zone for these dreams to happen. The last one I remember having was a couple of years ago when I was on a road trip, and then I had one last night (again not sleeping in my own bed). Last night's involved realizations about my ex and about this guy I've been hanging out with recently, two separate realizations, though I guess since they were in the same dream they must be connected somehow. Not ready to post details yet. Still working through the ramifications.

The first nightmare I remember occurred when I was about six. I was dressed in my ballet tutu and slippers, crossing a bridge. I fell down into what in my young mind passed for hell. (I could now dream a much scarier hell.) I screamed and screamed for my parents but no one ever came. I just sat in the pit helpless. Supposedly dreaming of hell means that you are in a seemingly inescapable situation. The screaming symbolizes suppressed anger and fear. That all fits I suppose, since at the time I was going through a particularly rough period in my childhood.

A friend started a dream journal. Maybe it wouldn't be a bad idea for me to do the same. If nothing else, it would give me more amusing stories to put here. I mean, most of my dreams are pretty bizarre.

Non Sequiturs (11/26/05)

The handicapped women’s room in my department at school is separate from the regular women’s room. It looks like it used to be a storage closet. There is a door right next to the toilet that is now blocked by the support railing but they never took the door away. Instead they taped over all the cracks, and not even with duct tape but with clear packing tape. It reminds me of the John Irving book, A Widow for One Year. It is the door in the floor. Only the door in the floor is in the wall in the handicapped bathroom. I don’t want to go through the door in the floor. I will no longer use the handicapped bathroom. Not even if the other one is full and I really, really have to go.

I had to meet with Prof. Bob to go over the consumer choice theory, which totally sucks and makes absolutely no sense. Maybe part of that is because I couldn’t stop focusing on his freakishly short fingernails. I mean, we are talking circus freak short. Like take your fingernail and draw a line halfway down it. That is how short his are. Naturally. Freaky. I tried to tell other people but no one was fascinated by them the way I was.

I had to find out if this guy was gay or not. I just couldn’t tell and it was really bothering me. I like to know everything about everyone. I mean, I tell everyone everything about me. So I was all sly and I said, “So why don’t you bring your boyfriend when we go out?” Big pause. “Well I would bring JENNIE but she lives a long way away.” So I was all like, ok maybe next time. So no, not gay.

There’s a beaver hut in the swamp near my house. It’s been there for years and I look at it every day when I drive past. I never saw the beaver. One day last month I saw the beaver dead on the side of the road; a car had hit it. I’m not one of those bleeding hearts that gets upset over every dead squirrel you see, but I felt like I knew that beaver. He was a part of my daily life! I was really upset to see him dead.

Awesome bumper sticker sighting: It was like those support our troops, support breast cancer research, etc., ribbons everyone has now, only it was black and it said, “Support Lap Dances”!!

Thanksgiving Play-by-Play (11/24/05)

5:00 AM--Got up. Rubbed the turkey. Stuck it in the oven. Back to sleep.

6:30 AM--Up again. Basted the turkey. Up for good; have to baste every ½ hour. Trying to fight nausea caused by handling 24 pounds of raw bird first thing in the morning. Coffee on.


7:50 AM
--Found 90 bucks in the pocket of some jeans I haven’t worn since the summer! Score!!

9:15 AM--Put the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade on. My earliest memory of Thanksgiving is watching that. The floats, the Rockettes, the marching bands, Santa at the end bringing in Christmas. It’s awesome!


10:40 AM
--For awhile things were blissful. Thought the snow would keep the Grandmonster away but just got word she’s still coming. The drinking has commenced.

12:00 PM--Grandmonster arrived 15 minutes ago. Turkey’s done. Potatoes are still cold in the middle. Wine’s good.

12:45--Dinner served 45 minutes late, which really isn’t bad at all. Got many compliments on a nice moist bird. Guess the QT spent with it this morning paid off. Wish I were drunker; haven’t had time for more than one glass. Don’t have an immunity to the Grandmonster developed yet.

1:40 PM--Oh my God. Grandmonster is talking about how hot Bill Clinton is and my dad made a cigar joke about him. Don’t need to hear these things from them! Must put serious effort into drinking.


3:05 PM
--The Grandmonster is gone. Have that happy, fuzzy feeling from lots of wine. Good times ahead for the rest of the day.

6:45 PM--Just woke up from a 2 hour traditional Thanksgiving nap. (Hey, gimme a break! I only got 3 hours of sleep last night!)

7:30 PM--Partook in the great Thanksgiving tradition of an evening Turkey sandwich. Attempted to complete my first ever Sudoku puzzle. Those mofos are hard!

8:00 PM--Watched Survivor with Dad. One of the few bonding tools we have.


9:50 PM
--Still trying to do the sudoku puzzle. Searching for Fraggle Rock to watch with Vicky.


10:50 PM
--Listening to “Alice’s Restaurant” (because you have to on Thanksgiving) while I clean my bedroom since Vicky wants to have a sleepover.


11:50 PM
--Gave up on sudoku. Thought I was doing so well but really screwed up the whole thing, apparently. Screw sudoku!! Finishing up a last glass of wine, gonna go post this entry, and then enjoy the best part of Thanksgiving:


The End
--Peaceful house; tired, content feeling; nothing to do but relax and not set the alarm clock. You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.

The Grandmonster Comes for Thanksgiving (11/23/05)

The worst part of Thanksgiving for me is the Grandmonster. She is our only guest for the day; the rest is just our immediate family. Honest truth? Half the reason I'm more than happy to handle the meal tomorrow is to be able to avoid the Grandmonster as long as possible. My mother realized this strategy yesterday.

"I'm not going to sit in there with her the whole time while you cook," she said. "That's why you volunteered to cook again, isn't it?" Well, I told her, for over 2 decades, she has been able to hide in the kitchen the whole time. Now it's my turn.

Until I took over cooking last year, we girls would all have to take our turns sitting in there with her and my dad making painful conversation. Now, I informed her, you must do your time too.

What makes her the Grandmonster, you may ask. Judgemental, self-centered, way, way, oversensitive (the most sensitive person I have ever met, in fact, and if you knew my family, you'd know that's saying quite a lot), snobby, control freak, the list goes on and on. Perhaps a real life example would be better. Here's the day I had enough of her:

It was this past spring. My mom, fighting cancer, sick from chemotherapy, graduated college. She's the only person in her generation of the family to have achieved this. We had a party for her, not only to celebrate her graduation but to celebrate her life. She's never been the center of attention like she was that day, not even on her own wedding day (another Grandmonster story).

Grandmonster shows up a little early as we're still setting up and walks in, we say hi to each other but my arms are full of stuff so I can't give her the obligatory hug. I put the stuff down, turn around, and she's gone. So I finish getting set up then go downstairs because our present to my mom is a memory book with a page from each guest about how much we love her, etc. And of course some people didn't finish on time so I'm putting it together and wrapping it now.

Dad comes down a few minutes later to tell me Grandmonster is only staying an hour, which I already knew, which is why I'm trying to get the book together so I can go up and put in face time before she takes off since she can't handle my mom's family for too long. I get up there only 30 minutes after she arrived and she's gone. Apparently she came in, pulled a chair into the middle of the dining room (where no chairs were today bc it was all buffet style due to the large crowd) and sat there ramrod straight staring straight ahead and holding a Diet Coke. When she finished the soda she got up and left, not saying goodbye to anyone.

But that's not the end. Next day, it had already been planned that my dad, mom, and 2 friends from out of town were taking Grandmonster to brunch. He calls to say they're heading to the restaurant and she says, oh, she's too tired to drive, just go without her. He says he'll pick her up bc they really want to see her. Oh really? she says. I don't know why anyone wants to see me now when obviously no one wanted to see me yesterday. No one could even be bothered to say hello to me yesterday.

Okay. We all said hi to her. We were still getting things set up. When my mom's side of the family gets together it is incredibly casual and we all help with everything. Also, why couldn't she just get up and mingle on her own? When you go to a party of 50 people, you don't expect the hostess to spend all her time with you or even to be responsible for introducing you to everyone. Why didn't she hang out with the out of town friends that she also knows? My questions go on and on.

Then I started thinking about the way she's treated my mom since she met her. The explanation is too long to go into in this already lengthy entry. Suffice it to say, like a second class citizen that isn't worthy of her son. And here is my mom, sick with cancer, on a weekend that is supposed to be only about her and Grandmonster manages to ruin it and pull the attention back around to herself.

That was the day I decided I'd had enough of her. She's hurt me many times and I learned to stop listening to what she says to me but I can't tolerate her hurting my mother anymore. She's my dad's mother so she comes around still when it can't be avoided but I keep her at arm's length from me, my mother, and my sisters. My dad has to deal with her. We don't. We have to love her and bring her to the hospital if she gets sick, etc., but I no longer let my mother try to go out of her way to win the Grandmonster over like she used to. It's a pointless exercise and all our time could be better spent elsewhere.

Keep in mind this is just one example of many I could give. So yeah, I'll be cooking. And drinking. Mom will be too. And of course she can spend as much time in the kitchen as she wants. I was just kidding about throwing her to the Grandmonster as a sacrificial lamb.

I'm going to get through the day just fine. Thanksgiving is much more bearable around the Grandmonster if you start the day with a little Kahluah in your coffee and keep plenty of wine in the fridge.

I'm a Lonely, Lonely Girl (11/22/05)

So enough about boys for awhile. Boys stink and it's best to pretend they don't exist for as long as you can. Okay, they don't stink and I like having them around but I hate being all, oh I like him, does he like me? That is so not me. So I've said enough for awhile. Moving on.

It's gotten kinda lonely these last few days. No school since Thursday and Whit's down visiting her family in NC, Nicole's busy with work every day since it's her busy season, etc, etc. At first it was all cool.

I had a pj day on Sunday. PJ day involves getting up (eventually, when I can no longer stand to stay in bed), showering (because nobody likes a stinky girl), and putting on clean pjs. The rest of the day, nothing that can't legitimately be done in pjs gets done. I may venture outside to get the mail or walk the dog but that's about it. So that was fun.

Monday I flirted with doing one of my 3 papers I need to do this week, but come on. Who are we kidding? They're not getting done this early in the week. Went shopping. Wrote my blog entries. IMed off and on all day. That was about it.

I completely thrive on my friends and not seeing any of them since Saturday is starting to get to me. Luckily, I'm going to pick up my sister tonite from school so she'll help amuse me a little. Tomorrow during the day I have to make some stuff early for Thanksgiving, and then Thursday is of course the meal. I'll be busy with that all morning and into the afternoon.

Thanksgiving week is usually when you catch up with old high school friends but since I don't speak to them anymore, what will I do with myself Thursday nite thru Monday? I'm gonna go insane here. I took that Meyers-Briggs last month and am strongly an Extrovert, meaning that I get energy from being around other people. I totally agree with that right about now, as I'm going to start climbing the walls soon.

Only 2 more hours til I get to drive to NH and get Kristy! Yay!

My Mike and Relationship Tests (11/21/05)

Having said all I said in my last post, here’s how I know I like this guy more than the others I’ve seen since my ex. It’s because of my Mike. My Mike is a guy who I see every once in awhile in a completely casual, nonsexual way. He liked me and wanted to date after I became single again this past winter but was so incredibly shy that it took him like a month to even attempt to ask me out and even then, he would get like all the way through the setup, to the point where the next sentence would be, “So do you want to go out this weekend?” and then freeze and walk away.

After about another month of this, I realized I had better start dating again, even if I wasn’t interested in Mike physically. I knew he was the most non-threatening guy I could pick to be my first date after the ex. So I asked him out, being clear that I was only interested in something platonic at this point, and we’ve seen each other since then. I’ve seen other guys too but nothing that’s been serious. The whole time it’s been nice having my reliable Mike, knowing if I had an event where a person with a penis was required to attend with me I could bring him along. I mean, every single girl needs a Mike.

I think Mike was trying to put moves on me the last few times we went out but it’s a little hard to tell with him because he is so, so shy. He started hugging me after each date, then incorporated rubbing my back. When I went to his house to watch a movie with him, he put special romantic music on that he had cued up.

I haven’t seen Mike since I met this guy, but it’s about the time I would. And I don’t want to. I know that since I view us as just friends there is no reason for me not to see him, but I still don’t want to. Partly I’m sure it has to do with Mike’s feelings for me; if I saw him again, I’d tell him about the guy and I know that would hurt him. But I wouldn’t not tell him because I do like this guy too much to risk Mike even thinking that we might someday date while I’m with this guy.



I don’t know how much I want to expose myself in this entry because this guy does read my blog and there are some things that probably aren’t appropriate to tell him just yet. But I have definitely moved past the point I was at in the beginning with this guy. I wasn’t thinking this would or wouldn’t last in the beginning; I wasn’t really thinking much except that everything that was happening felt right. Now I am thinking more. I don’t want anything regarding my Mike to screw things up for us.

I’ve been joking with this guy about having to pass all these tests before we decide whether to get serious and it totally annoys him when I talk about us in terms of tests, which of course means I must continue to do it. But there is truth to the idea despite what he thinks on the subject. The beginning of two people getting together is all a series of tests, whether they recognize it or not. I don’t mean that if I fail one test I get booted, or even that there’s any sort of formula like three strikes and you’re out, but the whole process of getting to know someone is all about figuring out if you two could work in the end. Whether people admit it or not, if enough tests are failed, things will likely end.

And I’ve realized I don’t want to fail his tests. Not that that means I do anything differently around him; I mean, if I pass enough tests, I want it to be because of who I really am. At the end of the day, he’s going to decide he likes me a whole lot or doesn’t. And I guess this all means I have my own tests too, though I couldn’t tell you what they are. Maybe no one knows their own tests for another person until they say to themselves, “What he just did really rubbed me the wrong way.” So at the end of the day, I’m also going to decide I like him a whole lot or I don’t.

What I know now is that I’m rooting for the I like him a whole lot and he likes me a whole lot choice.

Panic Attacks and the Sex Equasions (More Casual=Sex; Less Casual=No Sex) (11/21/05)

I haven’t written about the guy in awhile because I haven’t been any clearer in my mind about him really. I’ve continued to see him and have continued to find new reasons to like him. But, as both of us are quick to point out, we are not seriously dating. Somehow other people that I’ve chosen to tell about him don’t see what we’re doing to be as casual as I do. No, we don’t see other people. We usually see each other twice a week. Yes, we’ve slept together. So he’s your bf, right? No.

I think his thoughts on me have changed in the past couple of weeks, which has led to a lot of confusion and thought on my end. See, two weeks ago he decided we shouldn’t sleep together anymore, given where we are (how casual we are, I think), that it shouldn’t be all about us hooking up. And things have been a lot less physical in these past two weeks (to endless frustration on my part because I have a very high sex drive).

I really couldn’t understand at first why things had changed physically, and to be honest it freaked me out because things fell apart physically between me and my ex about a month before we split up so I was concerned. He did his best to explain his perspective to me, and I think this is what it is: When we really were just absolutely completely casual and not thinking at all beyond say, the following week in terms of future, whatever we were doing was okay because it didn’t really mean anything. Now I think he’s considering whether he wants to get serious, so now that he’s thinking there might be a longer term future, he doesn’t want to screw it up by being so much about hooking up now. So . . . more casual= sex; less casual=no sex.

Once this was all a little clearer in my head I was happy. I mean, I really like this guy and it makes me feel great that he might want to start something real one day. Then all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe. My chest hurt. I believe this is what is referred to as a panic attack. The whole next day anytime I started thinking about us as in a real us, bf and gf, couple, me and him, him and me, getting real and serious, I started to get the panic attacks.

Guys, I have to be honest. I never thought a real fear of commitment existed but I was wrong. While I am sure that many of you fake it and exaggerate, I guess for some of you it is real. But I’ve been thinking a lot about my fears, and they don’t have to do with not being with anyone besides this guy. That part I’m fine with; monogamy is not a hard thing for me. It’s more the no foreseeable end part that starts my heart racing, and I think the reason is that I’m really happy in my life right now; I can’t say that was true last year or for several years before that.

I’m happy with this guy, happier than I was without him. But I’m afraid to lose myself in him. I know that didn’t make any sense to him when I told him but I really don’t know what other words to put to it. I was a certain person once, and then I wasn’t that girl for a long time. I let her be lost while I was with my ex, and it was no one’s fault but my own. I gave myself up for the last guy, and I’ve finally come back around to the girl I used to be, only even better. I just need to know that I am strong enough to not give that up again.

I know this guy wouldn’t want me to lose myself; he likes me for exactly who I am now. But that doesn’t help assuage my fear because I need to know that I am strong enough every day to hold onto who I’ve become instead of taking an easier way and giving in to this and that until eventually I’m not her anymore.

I know that’s all very cerebral and probably just a load of bullshit. I don’t think anyone I’ve tried to explain this to has understood, which probably means that I’m crazy but I still feel this way. The fear is real to me but I’m working on it because despite my issues, I really do like this guy and if he decides he’ll have me as his gf I want him as my bf.

If we take it slow. If I can just start thinking about it without the chest pains.

For the Girls Out There Only--Not Kidding, Boys! (11/16/05)

I love my birth control, Seasonale. I started taking it when I was with my ex but I'm still on it because as far as I'm concerned you couldn't pry it from my cold, dead hands (as NRA folks would say). I mean, I get my period like 4 times a year. And when I do, it's only for like 2 days and pantiliners only! No cramps, mood swings, anything. It totally ROCKS. It is so liberating, I want all women to get it.