What A Week… July 12, 2008

Currently, I am sitting in a hotel room in Orlando, Florida.  My parents and my little brother are sleeping not five feet away from me, and in my usual style, I can’t sleep before 2 a.m.  Boo.  My dad had his 65th birthday today, and to commemorate such a Big One, we hopped in a rental car, and came to Disney World.  Disney has always been a secret desire of my stepmother’s (she has always loved Cinderella, since she was a girl) but I have a secret notion that this trip was really formulated for me and Little Man to make some good memories before I move away to my new life in the Big City.  We needed some quality time together, and we certainly got it.  He had never ridden a roller coaster before; in fact, he swore he hated them and couldn’t ride them, but dontcha know…watching his big sister ride Space Mountain all by her lonesome got to him, and he agreed at last to try it, and he loved it.  We had a great time.  We rode every ride in both the Magic Kingdom and Epcot.  We even managed to get my dad and stepmom on a couple.  It has been a really great time, aside from the fact that my broken ankle certainly isn’t getting any better by ignoring the fact that is, indeed, broken.  I have to go to the doctor’s this week.  Like, immediately, upon my arrival back home.  

And speaking of home, I returned from my one week stint at summer stock on the beach (the puppets actually worked!! It’s some kind of miracle that I actually figured out the mechanics correctly to rig twelve puppets to one point, so that one operator could make all twelve move, just by pulling on one, tiny, itty bitty piece of monofilament.  It’s one of my biggest artistic accomplishments to date.  I’m feeling quite proud of myself!), only to find that my house had been ransacked by burglars.  The fuckers had been unable to gain entry through either the front door or the back, although they left plenty of evidence of their attempts, so they splintered and busted a window on the front side of my house, right into my living room, and then propped it open so that they could really take their time.  The house was empty for a week, so who knows how much time they spent perusing all of our belongings, but it was quite clear that they had gone through everything, and I do mean everything.  My bed even looked like someone may have slept in it. How gross is that???  The sheets were all wonky and the bed had been pushed out from the wall, and the contents of my beside table were strewn everywhere and all my drawers had been opened and rifled through…some crackhead touched every piece of clothing I own.  My jewelry box had been pilfered, but the idiots stole only the junk jewelry, leaving the three actually-valuable pieces exactly where they lay.  Idiots.  I’m glad they’re idiots, but still.  They got away with all of my SLR cameras (I had three), all of our electronics, most of my good DVDs and Playstation games, a couple of D’s turntables, a both of our change jars.  I discovered all of this when I arrived home, alone, at 2 o’clock in the morning.  I was terribly shaken up by the ordeal.  D won’t be in the house at any point for the rest of our lease, and I can’t bring myself to stay there alone, ever again, anymore…which is a great shame, because I really loved that house, and it’s the only place that’s really and truly felt like My Home since I moved out of my parents house.  We made it three whole years with only minor incidents, and two weeks before we vacate forever…this.  

I am so so terribly tired of not feeling safe in my own home.  I am sick of being too poor to afford housing in a neighbor where I won’t have to worry about finding crackheads on my front porch when I come home late at night (it’s happened plenty of times).  I am just devastated that I haven’t had one single house in the last eight years that hasn’t been a target for a break-in.  All I want is a warm, safe place to lay my head at night, cook some good meals, and do some good work.  That doesn’t seem like so much to ask.  Apparently, it is.  Most of all, I am cracking under the strain of feeling like someone is always watching me.  I’ve had the feeling of constant surveillance for about a year now, due, I think, to the fact that some hobo has taken up residence in the a tangle of bushes on the backside of our parking lot.  I had the nice police officer trek up into the bushes at 3:30 in the morning to check it out, but he said he didn’t find anything.  I think he was looking in the wrong place.  And for the second time in my life, I had to offer up a vibrator to a forensics team as a ’smooth object that I could definitively say I hadn’t moved myself’.  Do you have any idea how horrifying that is? Pair that with the fact that I made the decision to offer up D’s glass bong as another ’smooth object…’ and it makes for One Traumatic Early Morning In My Life.  The cops, at least, had a sense of humor about both objects.  The fingerprinted the bong, and bypassed the vibrator.  I didn’t get a possession ticket, so the night could have gone worse than it did, I suppose.  

In an attempt to find a silver lining in this horrible situation, I have decided that perhaps this is the perfect thing to detach me from my beloved home, my beloved roommate, my beloved state…a kick in the ass, angled north.  I will no longer have a hard time walking away from that house.  I am ready to leave it, now.  It has been a good house, a perfect space for the work that needed to be done in the three years that I lived there, and now I will say goodbye to the Crackhead Surveillance, and my most perfect kitchen.  I will miss the house, for sure, but I will not miss laying awake at night, wondering, What Was That Noise?

The good news is: FireBall found me an apartment to sublet for the month of August, conveniently located just blocks from her own, new abode.  Sometimes I think she’s too good to be true, like I will squeeze my eyes shut tight, and she will blink out of existence, just a figment of my imagination, formulated by my brain under the Extreme Duress of graduation and the end of a two year relationship.  Lucky me…she’s real, and she’s not going anywhere.  Except maybe back to South America, at some point.  The sublet is pretty perfect, if it pans out the way I think it will (it’s not set in stone, but the tone of the emails and phone messages from the woman whose looking to sublet is distinctly positive), I will be afforded the time to find something more permanent, without really stretching my bank account.  $400 for the month, utilities included.  I mean, does that even exist in a good neighborhood in Queens?  The answer is yes, yes it does, and my kind, resourceful, ingenious Not-Girlfriend has located it for me.  I think it’s adorable how much she misses me, and the lengths she will apparently go to, in order to make this transition as quick and as smooth as possible.  I could sing her praises all day long, but I’d rather just kiss her upon arrival in Queens. 

Queens makes me think of one thing (okay, well, one other thing) and that thing is Coming To America.  Remember?  Before Eddie Murphy sold his soul to childrens movies and stopped being funny?  Just let your soouuuuuuuuul glow…

Weekend Warriors June 24, 2008

I’m on a too-short lunch break, but it’s been a few days, and plenty of things have happened that deserve mention.  

The Wedding Weekend was really pretty perfect.  My roommate (D) and his girlfriend (L) and I all piled into D’s incredibly hot classic BMW and raced to the mountains on Friday after work.  It was late-ish when we arrived in Town, so we caught a quick dinner and called his friends, my friends, and eventually, we all wound up in the same place, round about 1 a.m.  It was pretty excellent.  I got to see The Minister and The DJ, who I hadn’t seen in exactly a year.  They both seem happy, and they both looked fabulous.  The Minister and I got sucked into a lengthy, philosophical discussion, as we are prone to doing, and come to find out, that is precisely what my mind been craving.  So, thanks.  D and his friends and I migrated back to the Outpost and stayed up until about 4, sitting on D’s dad’s amazing porch (it’s on the historic trolley tours…the tour guides lie and say O’Henry lived there), laughing and carrying on.  

Saturday morning, we got up, had a late breakfast on the front porch, and then L and I ran to have pedicures (awesome!) before the wedding.  We got to the wedding only a minute before the ceremony was supposed to start, but it was pouring rain (outdoor wedding) so they held the ceremony for an hour and a half, and opened up the bar.  Without serving food.  Poor planning on their part, clearly.  The white wine was really good.  I drank my fair share.  I met the groom’s aunt Jo while sneaking off to smoke cigarettes…she was friggin’ hysterical, and my wedding-stranger BFF.  As there was no wedding planner, FireBall ran around facilitating for the whole day.  It’s understandable, everyone wants her attention, everywhere she goes, so I was not surprised, or ever phased…and she looked incredible in formal wear.  Me and D and L had an amazing time…drinking, dancing, chatting, laughing, going on adventures and missions to sober up…it was more fun than three humans should be allowed at 5 pm on the streets of Small Town Appalachia.  

After the bride and groom left, the wedding party and my party migrated to an Irish pub.  FireBall came out of nowhere and jumped in the backseat of D’s car with me, as I was in the middle of a ‘costume change’, from dress to jeans.  I haven’t talked to her face in weeks, and the first time we have a real encounter, I’m half-naked in the backseat.  We had a good laugh over that.  Proceed to the bar, where we spend the next very short hour and change pressed as close to one another as humanly possible (we still haven’t kissed, even…she’s telling me she’s scared of feelings but what difference does that fear make when The Feelings are clearly present and accounted for?)  The award for most precious moment of the evening:  one, sweet instance where FB simply leaned forward a few inches and pressed her face into my chest, and held it there still and quiet, our breathing in sync, my arm around her waist, my face pressed in her hair, and I could smell the Third World on her then, in the clean, sweet, spicy way that’s unique to her.  She lifted her head when the drinks came, and I told her I missed her.  She told me she loved me.  We ate L’s french fries in silence, trying to sober up, our knees and thighs and elbows and arms pressed so close it almost hurt.  

When we said goodbye a few minutes after that, D and L stood a few feet away, trying, respectfully, to fade away.  She hugged me once, took two steps back and looked in my face, and then hugged me again, longer and tighter, before quickly retreating inside the bar as I walked slowly to catch up with my friends on the sidewalk ahead.  It was sad to say goodbye, but knowing I’ll see her soon, I was left with a feeling of elation as we drove home that night.  I like her so much.  Our thought processes are so similar, our methods and our madness so closely related that I come away from every interaction feeling like I Get It/She Gets It.  

The next morning, our last in Town, D’s dad made us delicious pancakes with fresh-from-his-garden blackberries, and sent us on our merry way, tired, hungover, and all of us grinning in the glare of the sun.  Pretty perfect, excepting the fact that we couldn’t find a roof to fly our trick kites.  

Wha…? Wha Happened? June 13, 2008

Life is moving at a breakneck speed.  I can hardly begin to process everything that has happened in the past two weeks.  Actually, one might say I am avoiding processing all that has happened in the last two weeks.  Cleaning My Life Out has been a terribly occupying chore, one I can fully immerse myself in.  At least the fidgeting stops when I’m cleaning.  Because, here’s the thing:  I have been forced to maintain a nearly impossible momentum for such a sustained period of time, that now that I have down time, I feel like I’m being irresponsible and I can’t fully relax because my brain is so damn sure that there’s something else I ought to be doing.  It’s sick.  The after-effects of brain-washing?  Perhaps.  The training was effective, regardless of my comfort level…I have to produce.  It’s become a basic need just like eating and sleeping (which I have, thankfully, been doing quite a bit of…).  I’m happy that work starts next Monday, knowing good and well how hot that paint shop is, and that I will be back to last summer’s practice of drinking 8 gallons of water a day, and peeing once.  Hot.  Like an inferno.  Like I’m standing too close to a volcano.  Like I might vomit.  But hey, at least I’ll have a routine, and my paint muscles won’t lose their memory.  

So, I’m a college graduate.  Hallejulah, I never thought I’d see the day.  I really didn’t.  I had kinda convinced myself that I wouldn’t (couldn’t) go to college because of the hilarious debacle that was high school.  Because of that, those years of such certainty that “school wasn’t for me”, there is a surreal element to this whole Graduation Thing.  Of course, it becomes more real by the day as I watch my friends and peers trickle away to pursue their interesting, lucrative lives as artists.  It’s an exciting time; the whole world feels like it’s opening up around me, but there is a lonely sensation involved, too…akin to what it feels like to go parasailing; it’s so much fun that it makes you high, but you’re alone, watching things from afar, and there’s no sound except the winds in your ears.  The big difference between my life and parasailing is that there’s no rope, I’m not tethered to the speeding boat guiding my path, and that makes me feel a bit vulnerable to simply f l o a t i n g away.  

Mind you, there are some solid anchors to keep me from going adrift…I have overhire work lined up for as soon as I get to The City, and there are some exciting possibilities on the horizon for later in the year.  I have a roommate.  I have an incredibly large (and growing every day!) network of friends in NY, so I won’t be lonely.  I don’t think I’ll feel like a lost lamb without a friend in the world.  There’s that, at least.  I mean, I know I’ll do fine for myself in New York City…there’s lots of work, there’s lots of friends, I’ll probably make decent money right from the get-go…but I’m nervous, you know?  It’s a Big Move.  It’s not just A City, it’s The City. I never wanted it for myself, never really envisioned it for myself, and I think that attitude is going to either really benefit me, or really hinder me.  I should have a clear answer on which it is in fairly short order.  I have a sneaking suspicion I’m going to love it.  The only thing to do is hope that I’m right.  

Plus, I won’t hate living in the same city as FireBall, again.  It has been surprisingly difficult, her living in a different state.  She’s still standing strong on the line that she’s scared of feelings, and therefore can’t really be in a relationship, and it’s almost laughable at this point; it’s clear that feelings are already involved, as we can’t manage to go a day without talking to one another for at least a few minutes, to supplement the texting, emailing, chatting.  I want to yell at the heavens, Come Onnnnnnn!  We’re already doin’ This Thing, so lets call a spade a spade and get on with the amazing times!  I am trying to remember that we’re already having amazing times, and that maybe that should be enough, but that’s hardly my nature.  She’s just so good, even in her only-human imperfections and neuroses, she’s so…real.  Not to mention charming, and incredibly motivated, and intelligent, and successful…there’s all that, too.  She feels so far away right now; in her words, “…might as well be Lebanon…”, and I can’t help but count the days until I see her again (8).  Her best friend’s wedding could be a perfectly magical time for everyone involved.  

I fall in love too easily.  And she’s just so loveable…

I talked to JJJ for the first time in a month, a couple of nights ago.  It was emotionally draining, and exactly what we both needed to put some closure on our relationship.  It never got angry, which happily surprised me, but it wasn’t easy explaining myself, telling her all the things I had avoided saying because I didn’t want her to hurt.  She begged me to tell her everything, all of it, and so I did, sometimes against my better judgement.  She cried a lot, I cried a little, both of us were pretty anguished, and I almost wanted to confess to making a terrible mistake, and please could she come see me so we could straighten this all out?  but I knew that was only a fleeting impulse, the memories of comfort and consolations found in one another’s arms in days past; not what I need or want, but something I used to work so hard at protecting and nurturing, and it has slipped away.  For better or for worse, the departure hurts.  I made this decision, and still the vacant pain at hearing her cry makes me doubt myself, and leaves me wondering if I will ever get any better at Being In A Relationship.  It’s hard to stick to my guns when I feel t h i s lonely.  JJJ is not the one I’m lonely for, but she is the one telling me that she wants (wanted) to give me everything because she loves me more than anything, and sometimes it’s easy to confuse wanting someone in general for wanting someone in specific.  I am working to remember the difference, every day.  To do anything else would be unfair to her, and I can’t go down that path anymore, ever again. 

Life is crazy, people.  Cray-zee.  Every day that I realize people are going to pay me to paint from now on, I feel like I hood-winked somebody, like I’m pulling a fast one.  This life is crazy and confusing, but I think it is charmed.  

Also, congratulations to my beautiful friend S, and her lovely husband D, for producing the most darling, precious, dazzling little boy, J.  Welcome to the world, J…you lucked out in the family department.  You’ll be thankful for that in 20 years.  I can’t wait to meet him!!

20 hours but who’s counting… May 30, 2008

In approximately 20 hours a lot of things will be happening, such as:

–my entire family will be in the same place, at the same time, for the first time in history (my aunt on my mom’s side has never even met my brother).  This is awesome, and more than a little nerve-wracking.  

–I will be an alumni of This Crazy School.  

–FireBall will be driving through Maryland (roughly), in a truck she and I packed in sweaty silence this afternoon.  There aren’t lots of words when two people are looking to Avoid The Inevitable like we are.  Consolation prize: her best friends here are getting married in three weeks, and after hanging out with these friends last night and having a reeeeally good time, they’ve asked me to come to their wedding…which is amazing because I will get to see FireBall sooner than either of us anticipated (it was precious how happy she was that I could actually make it), and I will have the hottest date at the wedding.  

–Lastly, I will be a fierce hot mess immediately following graduation, I’m guessing like how I carried on when I had to leave a really good session of summer camp at age 12.  I will be wearing waterproof mascara tomorrow.  Fierce. Hot. Mess.  

Then…six days at the Outer Banks, followed by a long weekend in Philly with A and D (kickin’ it old school, y’all), and then five more free days before my job starts.  I can’t wait.  It’s going to be a really good two and a half weeks, except for the fact that I’m going to be missing some people so bad I can hardly stand it.  Boo on goodbyes.  

I feel crazy…like my brain is a fruit salad, instead of gray matter.  I’m going to go fly a kite and enjoy this sensation of accomplishment and terror.  At least it’s a unique feeling.  

I need a pause button. May 26, 2008

Yeah.  So.  Six days til I’m officially college educated.  And, cue the panic.  

It’s not so much that I’m worried about working after I graduate…I’ve already got myself set up for work as soon as I hit NYC (one of the painters that graduated last year is working in fashion…doing window and showroom displays and needs help, annnnd, one of the directors I worked with at Monomoy heard I was coming to the city and has work for me as well!), and I definitely have a roommate, as of today, so that’s working out nicely, too.  It’s just that…I don’t know…I’m scared.  I think.  

This summer got booked up quick.  It feels like every time I try to relax and focus on painting and healthy living, my schedule just piles up on me, in no time!  I’m not complaining, per se…I am blessed that my schedule fills up quickly, I suppose.  I’m just so tired of having to schedule time for fun.  Whatever happened to spontaneity? 

FireBall also leaves in six days.  I hate this.  She has been out of town for these last three weekends running, and that leaves us with enough time for me to stare at her while she packs her life up.  Not exactly the grand, sweeping, romantic, farewell-for-now I might have been envisioning.  That’s okay, though.  Life is busy.  Other things take priority.  I hate that, also.  We are trying to go tubing on Wednesday…she’s never been and I think it would be an excellent afternoon spent lounging in probably still-frigid waters and trying to get right with the fact that we just found one another and now we have to say goodbye (for a Few Short Months).  I’m so stupid.  Anyone…tell me why I didn’t call her for nine months?  Idiot.  

My whole family is going to be here in six days, as well.  That’s not stressful at all.  Huh uh.  I can’t wait to see everyone and share this moment with them, as I am quite sure they are maybe happier than I am that I’ve graduated something, finally.  But then there’s the whole Good Behavior thing.  My family will be attending parties with me where I would, in their absence, get really drunk and probably end up making out with someone in the bushes.  Except, this time, Grandma will be in attendance.  Maybe I shouldn’t even bother worrying about that…it’s not like they don’t know who I am, or my capabilities for Actin’ Tha Fool.  

I’m happy that it’s only six days away.  If only I could get The Paper, and then promptly pause my life…FireBall could stay for the after-parties (and meet my family…not gonna lie, I want that to happen) instead of getting into her rental truck and driving away as I am sitting on stage in my pretty dress.  Stupid, stupid, stupid timing.  What an odd combination of a happy high point, and a heart-rending loss.  Also, I think I have spent too much time in the company of drama students.  Heart-rending loss?  Who do I think I am?  I mean, really.  Way to be melodramatic, Motorboat.  Self-deprecation aside, I am shriveling on the inside, hardly able to begin imagining what it will feel like, not to see her for months.  She has the richest eyes, framed with a fan of fine wrinkles that she hates and I find so sexy.  She has smiled so much in her life…you can read that in those wrinkles.  Her face is smooth, wrinkle-free, except for her Smile Lines.  Oh man, I’m gonna miss her.  I hate it.  

I’m trying to hang onto the notion of taking walks down endless blocks, leaves and trash crinkling around our feet, her arm through mine, and all the noise of the city fading away when she laughs.  

Jesus.  I think I’m the only person I know who lacks the good sense to avoid falling in love a month before graduation.  Who does that?  It’s absurd.  Although, I suppose everything happens for a reason.  And she is, coincidentally, everything I want in a partner.  Except present.  Damn. 

Well, that’s finished. May 23, 2008

I had my last art class today, turned in my last final project, cleaned up the paint shop one. last. time.  I feel a little crazy, in the most manic Highest Highs and this other feeling that I can’t quite pinpoint.  Maybe mourning?  I get hit with these waves of brief-but-intense emotions that I can’t even properly identify, and I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry or to hit my head on a wall until I drift off into a sweet, vacant sleep.  

I didn’t know what to do with myself after my class ended this afternoon.  We had just spent three hours eating popsicles and chatting and smoking cigarettes and looking at the other class’s translucency finals, and then there was nothing else for me to do in the paint shop.  That’s never happened before; it was a bizarre sensation.  Granted, I’ll be working there for three weeks over the summer and I’ll have p l e n t y to do, but I’ll get paid for that, and somehow that makes a difference.  That 7,000 square feet of big, colorful, cluttered, controlled chaos has been my home away from home for three years now.  I’m really gonna miss it.  I walked into HoJo’s office at the end of class, and said, Thanks for teaching me so much cool stuff.  I’m out of your hair now.  He didn’t say anything for a few seconds, and just mumbled, Come give me a kiss, and I could tell he was feeling the same tight squeeze in his lungs that I was feeling, too.  I never knew what it might mean to me to really, truly have a mentored student/teacher relationship; I see why Plato wrote books about it.  It can be a true and powerful love, based on knowledge and respect and then friendship.  Although, I guess I should have seen it coming a mile away that (Of Course) myself and the Bitchy Old Queen would grow to love each other like we do.  His absence in my daily life will be sorely felt.  

Speaking of absences being sorely felt…P (whose blog-name is FireBall from now on) leaves in a week.  Eight days, to be exact.  I am little saddened by this.  She seems a little saddened by this, too.  I can’t tell what’s going on between us right now…  To the untrained eye, it would appear that we are dating.  To me, it feels like we are dating.  I mean, for the most part, it’s just the two of us spending time together alone, and if we don’t see each other every day, we have at least an hour or two of text-based conversations.  We are both women that have a history of sleeping with other women.  Both of us always put perfume on riiiiight before we see each other (I wonder if she’s noticed, too), and yet still, not even a kiss.  I can’t figure it out.  She looked so good today, dressed up in the sauciest-yet-totally-tasteful Business Casual I ever did see, and I wanted to tell her how beautiful she looked, but we were in a small, tight room with lots of her peers and our instructors swarming everywhere…unfortunately inappropriate in that moment.  It would be nice to be able to stop turning this over and over in my brain.  There’s only one week left til she leaves.  She’s got a lot to do.  I’ve got a few things to do.  It’s bad timing.  Dammit all to hell, it’s bad timing. I suppose I’m just scared that if the moment passes, it might slip away before we even get a chance to see if it’s as amazing as I think it could be.  I think maybe she’s scared…or maybe now that we’ve gotten to know each other better, I’m not the person she thought I was…I just can’t tell.  And I don’t know how to ask.  

On a completely unrelated topic, we saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull last night.  Don’t waste your money.  I thought it was awful.  I woke up this morning, still angry at Steven Speilberg.  Harrison Ford is clearly a rusty actor (and he’s had some weird plastic surgery), Kate Blanchett couldn’t even manage a believable character, and the choices that were made where CGI is concerned were heinous and totally opposite of the spirit of the original movies.  I believed Indy was about to get smushed into the cliff by the tank because a double was really hanging off the side of a tank, gouging into a canyon wall somewhere in Egypt, on set for Last Crusade.  The giant stone ball that chases him down the corridor in Raiders of the Lost Ark, that was appealing because that ball was really chasing him.  Sure, it was a movie set, probably in a sound stage in Burbank, CA, but I believed it was a lost treasure cave in The Amazon.  The gritty realism has vanished.  All I have to say is: George Lucas, you can take your CG monkeys and shove ‘em where the sun don’t shine.  If you see the movie, you’ll know the monkeys I speak of.  I can’t believe the ending, either…I mean, really!  Anyone that knows Indiana Jones knows that  t h a t  would never happen. Boo.  Such a let down.  

 

 

Eff. May 21, 2008

I just had the most amazing, spontaneous date of my whole life.  Without going into details, I would just like to state for the record (and amusement purposes of others) that steel wool is flammable, and makes for the cheapest, longest lasting sparklers a person could hope for.  She shook her head at me, laughing, and called me a First World Citizen as she held the lighter to the steel wool, running and swinging the sparking steel in wide arcs that split the dark blue night.  The sparks hurt when they landed on my skin, but it was brief; the Wonder Factor is high with this trick, and I quickly forgot to flinch. You have to keep moving.  You have to keep spinning.   

Yeah, tell me about it.  

Crap. May 19, 2008

Tonight, I went on an impromptu date with P.  She called me as I was leaving the bookstore (buying my own copy of Einstein’s Dreams, which she lent me and I devoured…great book!), and said she needed a break…  Being more than happy to oblige, I drove over to her house and she was already sitting on the curb, waiting.  She hopped up, jumped in my car and said, We are going to see Iron Man, right?  and started giggling in such a way that I could never refuse.  Soooo, instead of reading either of the two plays I should have read this evening (M. Butterfly and The Glass Menagerie…ugh), I went on yet another cute date with my Not-Girlfriend.  It’s starting to drive me crazy.  We are entering into that really awkward territory where, if something doesn’t happen soon, it will get so weird and awkward that we might not continue to have the fun, easy, exciting times we have been having.  I can understand all the reasons for Not Getting Involved Right Now, but it’s driving me mad.  It’s giving me a complex (…maybe it’s because I’m fat…), which I can immediately deconstruct into my own need for a concrete reason that she’s not jumping in head first… Thank god one of us is logical and reasonable, I suppose.  I mean, maybe there’s something to be said for really getting to know someone first, and paying attention to timing.   Although, on the flip side, there’s something to be said for not having to endure any more hesitant ‘good nights’ or the way we sit/stand just a little too close so that our bodies just barely make contact, just enough to register the heat coming off of her.  

She’s getting us tickets for the midnight screening of the new Indiana Jones movie on the day it comes out (this Thursday).  I feel like I’ve hit pay dirt here.  Seriously.  A Fulbright scholar with a fauxhawk, an aerial dancer that speaks four languages, a pyromaniac with a taste for JD Salinger…AND she loves action movies as much as I do?  Pardon my language, but fuck.  

Frizzy Hair and Frazzled Nerves May 17, 2008

It’s Friday again.  How did that happen??  Seriously!?!  Time is funny…I wish I could articulate how much time amuses and tortures me, but I don’t think I can do that right now.  All I can do is hang on and lean into the curves.  

My to-do list is still daunting, but it’s getting pretty short.  The light at the end of the tunnel is starting to feel warm.  I still don’t know what I’m gonna do.  I feel unsettled that I don’t have a job, but it’s a bit too early still to start looking for jobs in August…I mean, I’m doing research, but so many of the job postings are for fairly immediate positions, and that just doesn’t work for me right now.  Stupid lease.  

Actually, I’m happy I have to stay here for the summer.  I have 30 years of living in this state to package up, not to mention the time I need to thoroughly enjoy one more Hot Southern Summer.  I don’t want to live my life always in a hurry to get to the next step…I’m trying really hard to appreciate the present.  Life is fleeting, after all.  

To date, I have lost 75 pounds.  It’s kinda crazy.  For the first time in my adult life, I purchased a dress that not only looks super cute on me, but I actually feel confident wearing it.  The dress creates the illusion that I have a (gasp!) waistline.  I kid, but it makes me really happy.  I weigh less than I did when I graduated high school.  I like that.  I went to my doctor last week for another saline fill, and he opted not to do the procedure (glory) because he feels I may be in the fabled Green Zone.  I have definitely figured out that there are certain foods I Just Can’t Eat Anymore, and that has been painful.  The list includes some favorites, such as: steak, pork chops, brocolli, rice, bread (unless it’s super cripsy), collard greens, apples, and…sigh…cheese.  I still try occasionally to enjoy these things, and it’s always fairly uncomfortable, and I’ll hold off for three weeks or a month, until the craving makes me forget what it actually feels like to try and digest the tasty treat.   I have lost my appetite, in general.  That’s truly the biggest problem I’m facing, five months post-surgery…I am forgetting to eat for long periods of time.  For example, I totally cracked under the pressure of the union exam, and couldn’t figure out why I was So Fatigued two and a half hours in, and getting shaky and edgy and emotional.  And then I realized I hadn’t eaten in about 20 hours.  Granted, my lack of appetite is exaggerated right now by extreme stress levels and the fact that I may or may not be falling in love, but christ! That’s not healthy.  I just don’t think to eat very often, because I so rarely feel hunger…and on the flipside, when I do eat, it’s not really satisfying, somehow.  I can still eat some good meals, but my passion for food has definitely waned a great deal.  Living on nuts and chicken pieces and greens is fine, but it’s not a culinary adventure.  It’s a small sacrifice, really.  I’m not complaining.  

I am feeling very conflicted these days.  There is so much going on at all times, in every single arena of my life, I am having a hard time keeping up, or knowing that I’m making the right decisions.  It’s so important to me to start Living Right, to create my own destiny and do it in a healthy, happy, productive, contributing fashion…but that takes so much thought.  Such careful, calculated planning.  Such thoughtful use of time and resources.  I am so much more impulsive than that, by nature…

P leaves so soon.  We are both so busy that we are not able to find the time we are both craving to spend together.  It’s really very difficult to have an unstoppable urge to share (for lack of a better word) with someone, so constantly, and simply not be able to find the time.  Recognizing that, of course!, it’s the right thing to do, at this time, to take a step back and focus on Finishing School.  There’s so much on the line right now, for both of us.  Making the correct, adult decision to take it slow, and not allow ourselves to get consumed when we can hardly spare the time…it’s hard and it feels gross Right This Minute and I want to see her so bad I can hardly stand it…but the timing is wrong.  We will have the Fall and beyond to have adventures, but that seems so far away, it will be cold then, and I want to play in the sunshine in her big backyard and drink the traditional summer drink of her Latin American upbringing and show her how to eat honeysuckle and just get lost in the amazing conversations we have.  No offense to all the really wonderful people that I dearly love who read this blog, but I am realizing, I think, that P is the coolest, most intriguing, interesting, diverse and spirited person that I’ve ever met.  The stories she tells me about her childhood and her home and her dreams inspire me and move me in ways I have never understood before.  

She just called me as I was typing this.  I guess I was thinking about her too loudly.  One of her classmates is getting married soon, and she’s in the wedding, and there have been all these parties and tastings and fittings and she literally doesn’t have a single day that isn’t booked full, before she departs.  Sad face.  My schedule is a bit more lax, and I almost wish it wasn’t.  It’d be easier if I was more distracted.  I take comfort in the small presents she leaves me in my school mailbox, and the hundreds of texts we’ve been sending (I finally got myself a chat account set up on the internets, because neither of us can afford to maintain a habit like we’ve established), and the fact that now, since we’ve been spending time together, she has begun researching ways to stay in the US after she graduates next year.  I don’t want to get my hopes up, or get too attached…there are a lot of complicated variables at play…visas and residency and taxes and all the paperwork that comes along with being here for her…there’s just no telling where this thing is gonna go.  That’s fine, that’s wonderful, really…part of the adventure…but I’m kicking myself constantly for not getting close to her until now.  And I’ve always had such good timing, up til now…

 

Don’t Be Surprised… May 12, 2008

I have held off on writing a post–a real post–for quite a while now.  All the things I have inside of me that I would normally purge into this bizarre, real but not real world of the blog-o-sphere, I have had to contain for months now, not having had the gumption until recently to right a serious wrong, and not wanting to spill the beans in such an impersonal, public forum.  Of course, I have no idea who reads this, or how often, so it could have all been for nought…I may have bottled things up for months with no real reason to do so.  JJJ never was very technically savvy or tuned in…

So, here’s the official scoop:  I had the most amazing moment of clarity while running lunchtime errands about a week and a half ago.  I could see everything so perfectly clear, all of a sudden.  I was left wondering how I had managed to keep my blinders up for so long, afterwards, driving to the post office, having to turn my car around over and over, as I kept missing my turn.  My mind races constantly, but it doesn’t usually race in such a precise, articulate manner, and I suppose this change of nature is what made me listen so closely.  And here’s what my brain told me, in no uncertain terms.  

1.  Los Angeles is a poor career choice at this precise time. I do believe it is still in the cards for me, some time in the future, but I would be sacrificing a very broad, very functional network that I have been building for five years now, and to move to L.A. would mean I would have to start from scratch.  Not necessarily a deal breaker, but combined with the fact that my brain also told me that…

2. JJJ and I had entered into a toxic cycle of unhealthy, unstable non-relationship relationship.  We weren’t together, but I certainly didn’t feel single, either.  We kept up with each other most every day, and there were expectations and obligations that friends don’t have for one another.  And that was okay for a while.  I guess it made me feel less alone, or maybe I had convinced myself that it would work itself out in time.  Except this one afternoon, driving a stack of graduation announcements to the Big Blue Box, I realized I wasn’t in love with her, not at all, and I hadn’t been for a while.  I wasn’t aware that I could fool myself for so long, let alone draw someone else into the lengthy falsity with me.  I feel terrible for flipping on a dime, but there’s no going back from it, and I broke it off with her.  It didn’t end well.  She hates me.  I doubt we will even be friends, somewhere down the line.  She told me never to contact her again, and I have to respect that.  It’s okay with me, really, because I don’t miss her.  That makes me feel cold inside.  It makes me feel like a liar and a bitch, but I never said an untrue thing to her; I meant everything I ever said, in the moment I spoke it.  I don’t know that that accounts for much, but it’s true nonetheless.  This entire scenario is compounded by the fact that I…

3.  Met someone else.  She’s amazing.  She blows my mind every time we talk.  It’s as though someone has crawled into my brain, and they’re throwing their voice from her mouth.  She’s close to my age, (actually even a year and a half older!!) and I hadn’t realized how lonesome I was for someone that could understand what it feels like to be a woman on the verge…on the verge of a career, on the verge of middle age, on the verge of fucking losing it at this school…the understanding we share is a powerful narcotic, an aphrodisiac.  She makes me laugh, she shares my values and my dreams, she’s so honest it amazes me, and my god is she hot.  It’s as if she was designed with my needs and wants in mind, so perfectly…physically, emotionally, intellectually…it’s all there.  Oh, and she moves out of the state in 18 days.  So. Effing. Typical.  I met her at the end of last summer.  I was attracted to her immediately.  I was trying to be a good girl with a girlfriend.  She gave me her number.  I missed the signals.  I never called.  I was an idiot.  I wasted so much time on a dead-end situation, when there was this amazing thing waiting for me, and all I had to was pick up the phone.  She told me a few days ago that I was a fool to wait so long to call her.  I have to agree, and it only makes me want her that much more that she will actually challenge me and hold me accountable.  I need that.  The really important moral of all this, aside from my ramblings about how much I like her, is that she served an invaluable function as A Point Of Perspective.  I had forgotten that I didn’t need to settle, that JJJ’s 50% good would never balance out the 50% bad, and that there are actually people in the world that contain ALL of the qualities I find so necessary, so attractive in a relationship.  Mind you, P and I are not in a physical relationship (yet)…I had to conclude things with JJJ, and P is more than a little uncomfortable with entering into something that will clearly be the opposite of casual, what with only 18 days left to go.  But that being said, we are definitely engaging in some kind of relationship…we’ve been going on the cutest, most fun dates ever, nearly every day, and we just can’t stop talking to one another, from the time we’re both awake, until one of us finally cuts it off at bedtime.  It’s fulfilling in an entirely different way from anything I’ve ever entered into, and that gives me hope…except for the terrible timing.  Dammit.  Also, English is her second language, and it simply couldn’t be hotter when she speaks to me in Spanish.  I’ve always been a sucker for accents.  I’m just amazed at how quickly I’m falling for her, when we have been taking pains not to get physical…and painful it is, lemme tell ya.  It’s hard not to be as close to her physically as we are emotionally.  It’s torture, actually.  

In summation, I graduate in 18 days (yep, on the same day that P leaves for NYC), I am rapidly falling in love with someone that has the potential to be good for me (finally!), and I’m moving to NYC when my lease is up in August.  I found the job of my dreams at a decorative painting studio as a conservation/restoration technician in Manhattan (I haven’t gotten it yet, but I’m gonna be positive…), I already have a roommate lined up for the move (a 3rd year grad costume design student that I adore) and I’ve never been happier, or felt lighter at heart than I do Right This Second.  

So there’s that.