Sugarhigh

A friend (you know who you are) fed me lots of sugar this evening (okay, yes, the hot chocolate was my choice- but the sundae wasn't), and so my synapses are firing away. Here's a random sampling of what's going on up there.

First, my hands ::still:: smell like terrible, cheap rubber from the mountains of promotional mouse pads that got delivered to my work today. Soap and lotion and perfume are no match for this smell. Rawr. This. Really. Angers. Me.

But despite that, I had a really awesome evening. One that I was unsure about, going into. But it turned out to be totally great. I laughed a lot and managed not to recite every line of Empire Records, and in doing so, was pleased to discover fun little details that I never noticed before. Well, let's face it, I probably noticed but have since forgotten. Which is kind of the same thing. Notably, the movie heavily plugs Gin Blossoms, which is lovely. Though I feel kind of conflicted about it because I was really thinking hard about going to see them live tonight. It's kind of ironic, when you think about it.

Speaking of feeling conflicted, I have a lot to think about. Hell, I feel conflicted about the fact that I feel conflicted. This can not be good. Do I stand strong or do I surrender? The obvious choice seems to be "stand strong" but at what point does that become "stay stubborn?" Connotation is everything.

I have recently realized that I am not even as cool as I thought I was until recently, which was not all that cool to begin with. This is a little sad, but also very freeing. I don't have to pretend to live up to anything anymore. I can embrace my dorkiness and run with it. Which I intend to do. There are so many things more important than others' perception of me, and I intend to focus more on those things than worrying about how they will look to all those people who don't know me. Intend is the key word here.

Tomorrow, I have three four five goals: 1) take a shower that stays hot all the way through (this takes some planning. Maybe 1A should be to adjust the water heater. This will also take some planning as I have no idea how to do this). 2) Finish the book I borrowed from a friend months ago. I meant to do this last weekend, but it wasn't officially a goal, so now I'm making it one. 3) Go on a photo stroll of Bellevue for an assignment. 4) Write. Lots. 5) Sort through some of the stuff that is floating around in my head. Four and five will surely go hand in hand.

I have not yet heard back from the apartment community to which I turned in an application. This community is run by the company I used to work for, so I know how things should go, and frankly, this is not how they should go. I know I'm not a high-priority applicant, but if you're going to call every other day "just to check in" after I visit, I expect you to also call me back to say "your application was approved, just so's ya know." I'm wondering if it's a sign that I should apply at the other place I'm considering, but sense is still telling me to be patient.

Patience is something I struggle with. In general. This makes me consider things that are best not shared in a public blog, so I won't. Share them, that is. If you really want to know, you can ask me. I might be inclined to share further.

Seeing as my feet are very cold, I've definitively decided it's time to get to bed. I got a new pillow today. It's probably the most exciting thing that's happened to me all week.

Don't judge me, cool kids.

It all looks so different in the dark

I'm blogging right now because I'm scared to go to bed. Which is dumb. Not scared like I think there's a monster under my bed or anything (just a snoring cat), but just because I feel like it's not the right thing to do. I'm listening to the rain pour down in buckets, and I'm simultaneously reeling from memories of wet streets in Allston and scared. to go. to bed. with this. in my brain.

Instead I'll ramble for a bit.

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Okay, that's not happening so much. Here's what's on my agenda for the weekend. I'll leave out the uninteresting parts like events I'm going to. What's really important is waking up tomorrow and finishing The Shack (because I really need to give it back to Nic. I mean, come on, it's been like two months.) in my jammies and fuzzy purple robe. Then warming up a piece of pumpkin loaf from Trader Joe's and enjoying it with a big mug of DD hazelnut coffee. Yes. That is how Saturdays should start.

Then I have actual design work to do. Squeeeeeee! By the way, that is my new favorite word.

Fast forward to Sunday. I am thinking about starting a new blog about my new favorite things, but first have to decide whether the first entry will be about Trader Joe's or the word squee. Difficult decisions.

Which reminds me, I just dropped way too much money on a new pillow, but if I can manage to keep the room from spinning, I will sleep like a baby for the rest of my days. Only, a baby who sleeps. Not one that cries all night. Note to self: think up a better analogy for sleeping well.

I just stared at this thing on my desk for like, two solid minutes wondering what on earth it could be. Granted, it was hiding half under my keyboard, but still, E. It's too small to be a taffy. Too big to be a crumb from aforementioned (second current favorite word, after squee) pumpkin bread. Weird texture. Something the cat dragged in? I was scared to touch it. Caterpillar? Then I realized it was this little tiny shell I brought back from Florida. It probably got kicked around when my monitor fell over tonight. Note to self: stop using the desk as a place to rest feet. Got it.

Today started out weird, and then it got kind of good, and now it's all weird again. I wish it wasn't so cold out. I could really use a walk in the rain right about now. Instead of feeling trapped in my condo, in my room, in a chair in front of a screen. I should have called ___ up. Oh well.

Maybe I just need to get some sleep. Does it really have to be all that scary? Really? I will insert some html and hope that things start to look like themselves again.

Something I'm trying to make sense of ::Part 2::

...Still trying to make sense of this. Bear with me.

"After a day as good as today, how do you go back to the same life as yesterday?"

Two days after the wedding, it was my last day in Florida. I was sunburnt and sweaty and sore from a morning jog on the beach. I'd checked out of the hotel but still had hours to kill before my flight. So, feeling somewhat homeless, I slathered on the sunscreen, purchased a half-day beach umbrella rental, and tried to keep as much of my body as possible submerged under sea level.

The Gulf of Mexico was a new body of water to me. This is significant if you know me, because I grew up always around water. I am home when I am near the water. And it's so unlike any other water in my memory. It's so calm. The waves break on Sand Key at about knee level, and after that you're left with soft little ripples that barely lift you, but just bend you and pull you around like a long blade of sea grass. And it's warm. It's so warm. I've taken chillier baths. At first, in the hot sticky Florida atmosphere, it's almost not a relief to step into the water. The waves seem hot as they break against your body. Which is just all the more reason to wade in up to your chin and just hang out and watch the pelicans glide by at nose-level. I decided on this trip that pelicans are my new favorite things ever. They are at once completely ridiculous animals but also beautifully designed and graceful.

So it was in this setting that I had A Moment. Or two or three. A series maybe, or possibly just one extended experience. It's hard to tell. I'll jump to the end because I don't know how else to explain it all, but I wound up simultaneously laughing and crying. Not in a I-laughed-so-hard-I-cried kind of way, or I-laughed-to-hide-my-tears kind of way. But in an enormous outpouring of the depths of my soul kind of way. Like emptying my lungs to take in my first ever real breath of air. It was difficult to do, standing in the Gulf sobbing while trying to conceal my laughter. But I can't even describe how good it felt.

And I don't know why I felt this way. It came out of nowhere, like the twister that took Dorothy to Oz. Maybe there was a bump on the head involved, but so what if it makes the world take on more color?

So why? I thought. What is this? Why here? Why now? What is this sense of catharsis coming over me? I wasn't looking for one. And I don't think it was just one thing. It was everything coming together at once. Wringing out my insides and letting me dry in the sun.

I think it was A___'s wedding, for one. Giving in, after 26 years, to the idea that, even all grown up, you can never lose the connection to where you came from. For all the good and all the bad that comes with that. That people can reconnect. That we all find our way back to our roots in our own way, and that's okay. That's good. No need to keep running. Stop running. Let the water carry you where you belong.

I think it was the realization that I can stand on my own. I've traveled alone before, but I've never vacationed alone. I've never decided to find the way all on my own, to be okay being the only single on the beach, okay with my books and my magazines. To enjoy being with myself. I've recently made a number of decisions like this. And I am so proud of myself. I never took the time to be proud of myself until now.

And, maybe most importantly, I found God. Or rather, He found me. I can't explain this bawling, guffawing changing of my soul because it's not because of anything I did. It, like all the small amazing things that have happened in my life recently, are just little evidences of His grace. I was so stubborn for so long. And then He began showing me how to open my eyes. And He turned my heart. And maybe, just maybe, standing there in the Gulf under a huge blue sky was the culmination of it. Maybe that was a kind of baptism for me. Maybe.

So how was I supposed to go back to normal life after experiencing a quiet little life-altering spiritual awakening that day? Not easily, I can tell you that. But this here, this writing about it? It helps.

Something I'm trying to make sense of ::Part 1::

"After a day as good as today, how do you go back to the same life as yesterday?"

I first wrote this line in my notebook on April 19, 2004, and it's followed me around ever since. It was especially true of a day a couple weeks ago, a day I'm only beginning to wrap my head around. I took a trip to Florida to see my first-ever friend get married. To a wonderful man, at that. And I guess if any of the rest of this is going to make any sense, I have to first talk about that.

I have very few memories of a time before A___. We went to the same preschool from early on, somewhere between 9 and 15-ish months of age. From that point forward, she appears in many, if not most, of my significant memories of childhood. To name a few: a preschool field trip where we traded tiny freshwater clam shells picked off the shores of the Delaware because we were best friends, probably the very point at which symbolism entered my life. Starting each day coloring in pictures her mother drew for us. The first time I ever had a playdate at my house: we trashed my room, pulling every stuffed animal in my inventory off the shelves and playing make-believe all day. The first sleepover I ever went to: we gave each other moisturizing facials that were bright blue and ran around the house until they dried enough to peel off. Most subsequent sleepovers went much the same way. Even though we went to different schools after age four, she remained my best friend. She was always the person I wanted to be more like. I was always just a little behind- not as good at Super Mario World, my hair never as long or flowy, certainly not as good in sports or at dancing (I still think her improv in the middle of that one dance recital video is better than the choreography- I stand by this). But despite never feeling like I was as good, I still wanted to be around her. As we matured, as she grew tall and thin and I stayed stuck at five feet and, admittedly, a little chubby, I only wanted more and more to learn how to be more like A___. I never thought to be intimidated or resentful the way I somehow learned with subsequent female acquaintances. I just enjoyed dressing up together for Halloween, being silly together, planning (for years, at that) to build a wonderful, magical flying car that we could get away in instead of cleaning up our rooms at dinnertime... I enjoyed talking about boys, music videos, just doing life together. I always imagined us being friends forever. I imagined us as grown-ups living next door to each other in Florida ('cuz that's where Disney World is- and by the way, we'd drink nothing but virgin strawberry daiquiris like we had all during our Disney trip when we were 11)... I pictured us at each other's weddings.

So even as we drifted apart during the high school years, after she became a boarder at her high school and I moved north just enough for my parents to remind me what a chore it was to cart me back and forth between our new lives and the old, even all through that time I thought about her often. The internet was still newish back then, and I'm bad at the phone, so all I really knew how to do was think about her and miss having my friend in my life.

I regret, these days, missing out on that part of her life and not including her more in that part of mine.

She caught up with me last year, at 25, after 10 years of only an email here, a family Christmas card there. And through the wonders of Facebook...

So yeah, I wouldn't have missed this wedding for anything. And even though I wondered for a while whether I was still at all relevant in the crowd, there I was in the classic wedding "This is Your Life" slideshow. The two of us wearing those silly glasses with the big noses and mustaches. Together in a preschool play. Dressed up as hippies for Halloween. And I realized I was there because we had shaped each other. I have no idea how much I gave to her, and I'm not going to flatter myself by thinking it's all that much. But I realized that so much of who I am is because of her. As much as I try to tell myself that I'm a new person every time I move or change boyfriends or start a new job. There is no denying that I came from that little girl who just wanted to be always-friends with A___. And there I was, at her wedding, seeing her all grown up and knowing that I am too. Still just a step or two behind, but just happy that she found someone who I knew instantly was right for her at the very core of who she is. Because it's who we've always been.

Findahappyplacefindahappyplacefindahappyplace...

Today was a Rough Day. A Long Day. A day that Keeps Going. I wanted to cry more than once, but decided to suck it up and be a big girl instead. So along that line of thinking, here is a list of things that didn't suck about today (aka, things that make me happy- in no particular order at all):

1) New sheets. Yes, they're a little more purple than they looked in the store, but really, how did I not know about combed cotton until today?

2) Coconut shrimp with mango chutney. 15 minutes in the oven = deliciousness.

3) Checking everything (well, all the important stuff) off my list before leaving work for the day.

4) There is a fluffy cat on my lap right now, and his eyes say "there is nowhere else in the world I would rather be than here with my mommy."

5) Clock spider in the corner? Dead. Much easier to remove than the live ones. :)

6) I received like, 1,123 long-distance hugs from old friends tonight.

7) Despite being a requirement, I get to make a collage for a school project. I like making collages even more than I like making lists.

8) I am in the midst of an Arrested Development binge, and it is wonderful. Try staying sad or angry while watching this show. I dare you.

9) Being included on a business trip to Boston is ever-so-slightly more likely after today.

10) Peanut butter and wild raw honey on wheat toast.

11) A back-and-forth game of "here's a song you'll like" with a good friend.

That's right. This list is so awesome it goes to 11.

From 10/9/09

I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy it just a little bit: sprinting through the ATL airport to catch my connecting flight, scheduled to depart in only minutes. Knowing that people were looking at me, feeling artificially important. I can admit it because I so rarely do anything that makes me actually important, therefore I can afford to indulge my narcissism on occasion.

Anyway, it wasn't just that I felt eyes on me; it was the thrill of not knowing for sure that I'd make it. It was the brilliant feeling of forcing my legs to keep carrying me (and my backpack, and my prescribed neck pillow- which, by the way, was so worth it) even though they told me they were done. It was the adrenaline that built as I first started my trek 1000 feet to the B terminal, the decision to hoof it instead of waiting for a tram. The real-life video game appeal of dodging other travelers as I careened through the airport, praying I wouldn't trip over my own feet- which almost happened a few times, let me tell you.

It was the gradual release of anxiety as I began to count down the B gates, from somewhere in the twenties down to two as I continuously weighed those numbers against the few precious remaining minutes before my flight would leave me behind without so much as a backward glance.

Then, finally, at the gate, the quiet, unannounced glory of "I win." The singular knowing, as I boarded the almost-full plane, red-faced, out-of-breath, that I had worked harder for my place than anyone else.

By the way, ATL is a hot, sticky place in October.

Deepest, sincerest apologies

...But not really. I know, what a tease. I haven't posted anything in a very long time, I realize. And there is so much to catch up on, but because it's all still happening, I can't pause to reflect just yet.

Everything is truly amazing right now, and I'm seeing the world with a level of clarity I don't think I've ever experienced before.

Hang tight, all three of you. Before long I am sure to be spending more hours of the day inside, and perhaps I will be able to fill you in on all this goodness.