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girl, you know it's true.
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| i can't think of anybody else this has happened with more than you. we spend so much time talking and learning about each other without time in between stories to really think about things. our stories overlap and intercept and weave around each other so quickly that hours go by and it is 5 am before we even realize it. i am not accustomed to learning big, important and new things about people. i'm used to talking surface topics with new acquaintances and experiencing, not necessarily learning, with the old friends that i have, so i'm out of practice, to say the least. of course that implies that i was once in practice which is a lie.
with you, all of your old stories are new facts and they are pieces of information that are handed out quickly, one after another, that it is not until i am at home being idle and alone enough to catch up with my thoughts that i think of responses. not similar stories, but proper responses to give you, like:
i was impressed that you were so disgusted by the small ways that women are disrespected, like creepy man-style catcalling. i also wanted to tell you that when i said it happened a lot, and yes "more than you even thought," i meant in a "men think they can say anything because they can get away without a response or consequences way," not in a "i'm hot stuff" way.
even though i have a habit of playing devil's advocate in our discussions and i might have made it sound like it was no big deal for you to ask your mom for what you wanted, i really respect that you think it is your mom's right to keep your dad's WWII medals and flag. the unspoken sense of ceremony behind you saying that they belonged to her more because he was her husband, her husband and you are are just his child was really...big, i guess is the best way i can put that. i really do understand why you don't think it's your place to ask and i really appreciate your thought process. it gives me a good feeling about you.
i asked my mom what she thought about square-ended chopsticks, and her first response was that it was "low-class." that's not what she really meant-- she meant that square-ended chopsticks were for a lower class of chopstick users, as in less advanced. my dad was in disbelief that they actually existed.
there are countless thoughts and responses to our conversations, sometimes days or week after the fact, where i think of the stories we tell and the things to tell you. between my memory and yours, so many will be lost. | comments: Leave a comment   |
| There are probably a baker's dozen of long stories that really should precede this, but I just wanted to preserve this one memory from last weekend that has been flashing through my mind a lot lately. It's about Mike. I will just write this in the same way it keeps replaying in my mind:
Mike and I are are lying on his bed, which is really a futon on the ground. We're cuddling and I have my head on his bare chest, my right arm slung over his stomach. I lift my head to kiss, and we are doing just that when his cat Otto somehow appears on his chest. I have no idea how he got there, I didn't see him run or jump or crawl in advance. In surprise, we break apart: Otto has all four feet square on Mike's chest and stomach, their faces, once Mike lifts his head, are about 6 inches apart.
Otto is gorgeous, a Maine Coon that is varying shades of dark gray to white and large eyes that are always asking questions. He is a very calm cat and aside from the occaisional sneezing, the smell of his poops in the litter bin and his light strands of hair clinging to the feet of my tights, he doesn't bother me too much.
Anyway, so the cat is staring right into Mike's eyes and vice-versa. They hold this gaze for a few minutes, I think, while we both pet the cat. I don't know why this moment strikes me and chooses to repeat itself in my mind, particularly. Maybe it is the tenderness that he shows toward the cat. Maybe it is because we are both petting the cat and there is this unspoken positive energy floating around, I'm not really sure. After a little while, Mike tells Otto to get off, get off! in a crescendo, and I laugh. A little push from Mike runs Otto off and back into the darkness and then we are back where we started, his arm around me and my head on his chest.
The next night I went over, got a bloody nose and bled all over him for a while before either of us even noticed. It was one big bloody mess all over the place and I was completely mortified. I expected to not hear from him again, surely. Happily, however, I did. But I'm still not sure where this is going.
*Update 01-24-10* Otto is less cool now, since he tried to claw my tights, yeouch! Bad Otto.
*Update 03-21-10* Otto is cool again because there have been several more tender moments, including one where Mike asked,
"do you like my cat?"
"i do, yeah. and i don't normally like cats."
"really? you like otto?"
"yeah. i mean some cats i get along with okay, but i really like him." Mike just looks at me for a while and smiles.
Also Otto likes to lick my hand when I am sleeping. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| | There is a story behind every one of my pimples. I can almost always guarantee when the horrible cyst-y ones will pop up on my chin; they appear approximately a day or two after a big conflict/nonconfrontation. I hold anger and sleepless nights under my skin until the feelings boil up in pus deep beneath my outer layers. I can feel them ahead of time, pulsating their arrival. Lots of them are dedicated to my mother. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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summer's not been too bad, all in all. something shifted after i came back from new york; maybe it was a new acceptance of my city (or what some-- like my sister would call "settling" or "getting too comfortable" ah, to be an idealistic teenager again) and the heat that a texas summer brings. when the 3-digit heat sets in for the season i get that 2 seconds of delicious contrast when i step out from an air conditioned building/car and into the blazing sun. after 2 seconds, however, the upper lip starts to sweat...among other places. and it is admittedly a feverish downhill run from there.
each time i take more than a few days away from jazzercise before going back in, i know i'm in for pain. the pain doesn't start to invade until 2 days after the 1st day back, but is less painful if i go 2 days in a row. so if i rest and take a day off after the 1st day back, i hurt more. amazing how the body works, isn't it? currently a whole new subset of muscles are panging to make me acutely aware of how my body moves. my armpits hurt. my inner thighs are making me walk crudely, bowleggedly. when go to the bathroom i have to ease into a sitting position, wincing all the way. but i have to say the soreness is good. even if there aren't results, it makes me more conscious of my body; how it moves and how i carry myself. i straighten my back more and engage my abs more often. it also helps to get a nice massage and stretch, to have someone slowly pull at my limbs like their personal corpulent fleshy pilates machine.
um, but then yesterday we ate 2 for 1 wednesday pineapple swiss cheeseburgers and fries at huts and followed it with splitting a coffee toffee twisted frosty while lazing on the couch watching house hunters. so.
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| hm. i've briefly dipped my most tentative toe in the waters of austin real estate. while the excitement of buying and living in a house all by myself is really scary/exciting, the reality of seeing what i can actually afford is just plain scary.
i initially wanted to stay in east austin, but after searching a little online in that neighborhood, have determined that i can only afford either an empty lot or a lot with a shack on it that is "paperwork ready for demolition! great rebuilding opportunity!!!" unless of course i want to go very very far east, like more east than the airport where there are houses i may actually live in.
if i want to stay centrally and in my budget, i'm looking at houses built in the 60s and 70s, some of which have been remodeled to look like the mid to late 80's/early 90's. huh.
south austin is an option, but how far south am i willing to go? onion creek? as it is, a handful of friends live up north and i barely see them because the trek is gas guzzling and time-consuming. i don't really want to stray so far from the area that made me love austin enough to look for a house in the first place.
foreclosures sound super exciting and have that diamond in the rough/ shuffling through thrift stores and coming across a real find feeling, but there are so many listed and all without pictures! how does one navigate those? plus jesse told me stories he'd read about people that were so livid at the circumstances of being shoved out of their home that they'd do horrible things like shit in the air conditioning vents and break pipes and create water damage behind shower tiles. you know, to get back at the banks.
oi. i tell myself that i am jumping to conclusions without the help of a professional and that i can't lose my optimism and my "i'm willing to look for as long as it takes to find exactly what i want for my money" outlook, but it is tough. meanwhile i am getting in contact with people, watching HGTV and swaying between horror and anticipation. | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| i think i associate big worry with extreme stomach behavior just because they are usually tied. i get the nervous poops or tummy churning anxiety occasionally, or in rare cases, i lose my appetite completely when somebody has done something horrific to my heart.
that's kind of how i feel this time, but there's no heartache in this case. i guess i am fairly used to having a stomach of steel so when something upsets it (other than gas), i am surprised. it is pretty rare. i still can't tell if it is something i ate (i had some maybe questionable room temp lox the day i left nyc) or a virus i caught (i rubbed up against many a smelly, equally questionable person in nyc).
so naturally, because it is something new and foreign, i push it. like a scab or a pimple, i see how far i can go to make things go back to normal. i try to force my appetite by testing out smells to see if they still make me nauseated. they do. at the tiniest twinge of hunger i try to dive back into a normal dinner. again, nausea afterward.
i don't want it to turn out like the last time i felt this way (it lasted about 3 weeks). i was a weak, tired, incomprehensible mess. the whole time i felt like a cracking shell, but then again last time i was emotionally very upset.
i want to be able to jazzercise again and eat fun meals and power through the day instead of just following through, weakly. i tried going to jazzercise today in the hopes that it would kick my appetite back in to gear (i am usually starving after jazzercise, it is normally all i can do to keep from eating my own fists), but no go. i half-assed jazzercise which made me feel stupid, and i felt like i was going to fall over. i'm not sure if it is a good idea to keep pushing myself too soon. i thought i had given myself enough time (3 days), guess not. i'll wait a little longer before i push the limits again; when i feel good and ready and strong again.
i just miss tasting! | | comments: 1 comment or Leave a comment |
| | sorry, did i say that everyday life was manageably messy? it turns out i can't really manage it after all, not sanely anyway. everything built up and i had one of my blowouts where i finally let myself be indulgent and sad and upset about life. sometimes i just get so angry and sad about everything; i am made of piss and vinegar. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| i once wrote about my fears of being like miss havisham when i get older and about settling for less than you expected; let us now take a look at the extreme opposite for me to fear (because worrying is my favorite, you know-- it was passed down for generations of women on my mother's side):
there is a lady (i'll call her marge), an acquaintance of mine, and she is what i believe would be classified as a cougar. or rather, i think she might be honored to be called this sort of carnivorous feline creature. she has a child (maybe a few?) who is moving back to...wherever marge lived before she moved to austin. marge is moving near me to be closer to "the action," as she calls it. she's renting a room in a townhouse with a "younger couple." now that her child/children are moving away, she is looking forward to getting out there and singling it up and out and all over the place.
one of her favorite watering holes, as she has informed me (and invited me to), is a restaurant/bar in north austin that is, by numerous accounts, a cougar bar. she's extolled to me the scads of available men there, and how fun it is-- while others inform me that there is the scent of older desperation in the air mixed in with the alcohol and cologne.
marge likes to reminisce, in her husky voice, tales of a former pastry chef lover, of a sensitive indian lover and of (of course) a much younger lover. her eyes go glassy when she talks about her past in terms of these men, and while her stories are somewhat entertaining, they lack the...sophistication you'd imagine of a mysterious, glamourous, well-lived older french woman (perhaps the original cougars, or pumas, you could call them). while she dresses fairly suitably (in your standard what not to wear rules), her marlboro miles and slightly leathered skin distinguish her as the tawdry american semi-replica.
and yet, she is excited to get out there. why, i cannot imagine. at 27 i feel like i've almost had enough, i more or less want to give up this whole ridiculous game in an attempt to win some purported prize that's supposedly waiting out there for me. do i really want to try and try again and eventually end up with stories like marge's? will i, someday, at 40+, after decades of trying, still be concealing and tucking and coloring myself to go to a bar for a few hours in the hopes of catching a lover to add to my repetoire? i think, right now, that i'd rather die.
bravo marge, you are braver than me. | | comments: Leave a comment |
| i wish i had hit this portion of my life 5 or 6 years ago, when it was somewhat normal to act this much a fool; before everyone else started settling down and getting serious. and before i had this more serious job that i can't just pull off on autopilot. i wish that i knew then what i know now, but of course, i am always saying that.
but then i read stuff like this, about this girl who is one year younger, and i feel better just knowing that someone out there can probably relate, if not trump my stories tenfold.
also, just for the record, my horoscope says that something terrible will happen to my feet this week. so let's see!
edit 4/19/09: since the week is nearly over, i feel safe in saying that nothing too terrible happened to my feet. the skin from a blister came off and there was some minor pain + i've been working them extra hard with jazzercise and dancing, but nothing too horrible. triumph!
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| | Security: | | | Subject: | calm | | Time: | 10:02 pm |
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| between yesterday and today, i've actively taken part in establishing a sort of calmness inside my home, a kind of therapeutic mission. i didn't realize at the time, though. i just sort of hummed along for a couple hours in my kitchen, methodically preparing dinner.
it had been a little while since i had made something substantial in my kitchen. a casserole, some baked chicken, roasted veggies, etc... yes, but not something new and exciting and a little bit time consuming. and most importantly, methodical. so i made my first risotto yesterday, a dish that requires a fair amount of checking in and stirring. it's a slow, pudding-y (have been obsessed with proper puddings and creamy, eggy, proper pudding texture, but that's another story) dish, where you need a heavy pan/pot to keep the heat even. little by little, i added broth and gave it a swirl or two before i set about doing something else, like slicing salmon or zesting lemon. then i'd check back in, stir a bit more and check to see when my spoon left an empty trail that needed to be filled with another ladle of broth. it was cool to see the starches release from the rice, to see the turning point when all of the sudden broth and butter and white wine turned into a sauce, opaque and rich.
even better is sharing things like this, when there is someone to guinea pig alongside. because while i love sharing my kitchen successes, there are only a few people i allow to be the first tasters, if any. it's kind of vulnerable.
and today has been much the same, only in making my bed. sometimes when i redress the bed it's a utilitarian affair; the changing of the sheets. but every once in a while, my mood is in the right place and i take more time in fluffing pillows or pulling fitted sheets tightly. (i have to admit, part of the reason i'm typing right now is just to keep me from my bed until a decent hour so i don't wake up in the middle of the night.)
i know some people think martha stewart and hgtv and all of that sort of domesticity is an exhibit of a kind of materialism or obsessive-compulsiveness. but i know for sure that there is something very satisfying in making something all by yourself, for yourself. because while the rest of my life is going haywire (not necessarily in a bad way, and nothing i haven't been able to handle), i know that i can always come home to my little place and feel warm and accepted and comforted for my efforts. | | comments: Leave a comment |
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girl, you know it's true.
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