1. Break hearts
2. Create an incredibly awkward situation
3. Make more to-do lists
4. Figure out a way to post things on the Internet without Mom, Dad, and co-workers seeing.
5. Nap
Monday, November 24, 2008
Friday, November 21, 2008
Diversions
I hate it when newstories distract me for a number of hours because of personal reasons. Especially when said stories have to be read for work, and then get posted about for days. It's never healthy to obsess over them, but I have to. I have to analyze the coverage, discern what it means for my clients, and make it look like I don't care. That last part is the hardest. Because when the story topic is about the plague that effects your family and yourself, it's almost impossible to make it look like you don't care.
Especially when it all happens around a certain person's two year anniversary. The Fall has suddenly become the most depressing season.
In other news, my ex is haunting me in my sleep. And I think it's because the last word's I said to him were"Fuck you." It was still deserved, but I'm thinking it might be good to fix this situation at some point.
So, now I have to do something to distract myself. Distractions and diversion were much easier back in the day... when did become so much work to just think of something new?
Monday, November 17, 2008
So Necessary
Ever felt like shit and not know what to do about it? You are so sick, tired, wasted that even a thought of getting out of bed is too much. But then you start small, you get up and drink a glass of water. Suddenly, you feel things again. Then, with the bit of energy you acquired from that one glass, you find yourself going upstairs and cooking a meal. The food fills your belly and your body sends a gentle thanks by not hurting anymore. With your new found energy, you finally are able to go outside, breathe, and jump around...bringing your physical being to a sense of euphoria you thought was not possible an hour ago as you laid underneath your covers.
This weekend was like drinking a glass of water, eating a meal, and exercising to the extreme. I forgot what it was like to spend 36 hours in pure bliss, no drama, just smiles and laughter. I was so happy and alive that I didn't even feel upset leaving my best friends behind. I wonder if my lack of kissing boys and flirting has anything do with this happy weekend? Or was it the fact I actually left the city?
But what I loved most about this weekend is that I listened to my gut, and it lead to me a magical adventure. I haven't done that in awhile, just let my impulses run rampant. My impulses make me happy.
Friday, November 14, 2008
Something New
I decided that I've had enough weekends recently where all I've done is felt sorry for myself. So, I decided to do the one thing that makes me stop feeling sorry for myself: runaway on a magical adventure in an area of the country currently being engulfed by flames.
If you need me this weekend, I'll be in Santa Barbara. I'll be the girl in the fleece onsie dino pajamas. Seriously, that's the only thing I have packed so far and I doubt I'll be returning with them (it's a constant problem when you and your friends are the same size).
If you need me this weekend, I'll be in Santa Barbara. I'll be the girl in the fleece onsie dino pajamas. Seriously, that's the only thing I have packed so far and I doubt I'll be returning with them (it's a constant problem when you and your friends are the same size).
Thursday, November 13, 2008
C...declerative statements R EZ
I figured out why it doesn't bother me that my parents are on Facebook and FriendFeed (we are ignoring the fact that I hide this from them). It comes down to space. You see, unlike the majority of the people I hang out with, I didn't have to share space with my parents during this hateful teenage years. True, I have stayed in touch with a grand total of one person from my boarding school so I can't use my peers as reference... but I am going to go ahead and say since I've established my own space and life away from my parents, I don't feel invaded when our worlds intersect online.
In contrast, those who lived with their parents until they were 18 probably feel like their parents were always all up in their junk. For them, going online was one of the only areas they could escape their leering eye. For me, it's now becoming a forum for me to catch up with them.
I never really understood why people looked so horrified when I explained that my parents are online, until probably just 30 seconds ago when I envisioned how I would react if the teachers I lived with in High School, or even my high school peers, started following me on Twitter or commenting on stuff I do on FriendFeed. It's bad enough that they are on Facebook. So yeah, I get it.
So, folks, I have my declarative statement. Nobody wants to see their high school guardian online.
Damn. Doesn't carry that punch I was hoping for. Is there a way to incorporate "dead" or "death" or "finality" or something?
In contrast, those who lived with their parents until they were 18 probably feel like their parents were always all up in their junk. For them, going online was one of the only areas they could escape their leering eye. For me, it's now becoming a forum for me to catch up with them.
I never really understood why people looked so horrified when I explained that my parents are online, until probably just 30 seconds ago when I envisioned how I would react if the teachers I lived with in High School, or even my high school peers, started following me on Twitter or commenting on stuff I do on FriendFeed. It's bad enough that they are on Facebook. So yeah, I get it.
So, folks, I have my declarative statement. Nobody wants to see their high school guardian online.
Damn. Doesn't carry that punch I was hoping for. Is there a way to incorporate "dead" or "death" or "finality" or something?
Declarative Statements
Okay - I think 2008 (like every other year) is the year of the shock statement. And by shock statement, I mean saying your competitor is dead. "Yahoo! is dead." "Facebook is dead." "Software is dead." "Steve Jobs is dead."
Points for whoever knows the famous philosopher that said "The poet is dead." Well, actually, the poet died at Auschwitz, but you get the idea.
In other news, I'm painfully oblivious to what's happening around me. Honestly, I woke up from a dream last night and wondered, "WTF?" until I realized I was dreaming actual scenes from my day and I couldn't figure out the context of anything. Life without context is exceptionally strange.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
In Honor of Trey's Triumphant Return
Alright - I'll admit it, I haven't been exactly chipper this past month. And now that Trey is back in the States, and I can continue bugging him with free text messages, I've decided it's time to instill some change.
Here are some things I hope to change:
1. The past will influence my choices, not dictate.
2. I will secure more speaking arrangements for my clients.
3. No longer will my car acquire empty brown paper bags from Peet's
4. I will get up early enought to use public transportation to work.
5. My next apartment will be close to good buslines
6. No longer will I wait 2 months before going to a grocery store
7. I will clean out the curdled milk in my fridge.
8. I will take up drinking with the locals instead of remaining up-to-date on Hulu.
9. Some weekend I will pick up my video camera and make something.
10. Actually, every weekend from here on it will consist of me making something.
11. I will go to Alcatraz before my brother visits.
12. I will build more constructive relationships with bloggers.
13. A plan for graduate or business school will be established.
14. First, I should probably decide if I'd rather go to graduate or business school
15. Convince myself I have celiac and eat less carbs
16. Return more phone calls
17. Apologize less for actions I am not sorry for.
18. Realize my personal life is not my professional life and create clear distinctions between the two. Additionally, I will not inhibit my actions in my personal life out of fear of professional backlash.
19. I will do something impulsive. Soon. Ideally something drastic.
20. No longer will I allow myeslf to stay in a state of limbo. Use my ability to ask questions at work in my personal life and identify emotions. Yes, I often have no idea if I am happy, sad, mystified, crazy, or other.
I think that's it for now.
Monday, November 10, 2008
The Twaters are coming, the Twaters are coming!
"No way. I can't believe it. I honestly can not believe it. He does realize there are, like, black people in Africa, right?" squawked the voice of a distant friend on my cell phone's speaker phone. I looked up at my companion and she was throwing her head back in mid-cackle.
"I know, right? No, no, no, wait, you have to hear Cindy's plan for when he gets back," retorted my immediately present friend who had righted herself just before her chair's tipping point. The last two legs landed with an echo through out the lofty, sterile kitchen. She looked up at me before continuing, as if waiting for me to open my mouth and begin the story just so she could take it from me.
"She's going to throw a 'Congrats, you didn't get AIDS party!'" the echo of the chair legs still reverberating as she spewed out the punchline.
"Yeah, well, we better make sure he doesn't have AIDS before we print the banners," the phone's voice retorted with static cling. "I mean, Trey?? I can see Cindy doing something like that, but Trey Waters? The boy wears pink!" The weed we smoked earlier made my mouth sealed with resin but my mind rattled with excuses as to why it would never be me absconding to Africa for two years.
The top of the list was my love of weed. What African country contains the best climate for marijuana cultivation? Are there Peace Corps programs there or are the countries with the ideal climate too stable to require aid or undergoing a mass genocide so I have to wait until the dictator is assassinated? Images of me being planted in a remote West African village and then spawning a mass drug trafficking economy with children plucking out buds floated through my head like sugar plums and dancing bears. Site monitors would visit me and see a ten year old boy driving a BMW. When they ask me how the boy got such a luxurious car, I would use the excuse I always heard growing up, "His father is a workaholic and doesn't know how to love so he gifts things to his 27 children. His 7 year old daughter owns 3 ponies."
"Can you imagine what he's like out there?" the phone continued.
"Oh, you should read his emails," the resin sealing my lips was burning off, "his villagers are always drunk. He tried to hold a meeting at 6:00 AM so nobody would show up drunk, but someone did show up wasted, yelled for 20 minutes, and then passed out in the corner."
The story was true. I didn't include Trey's exasperation regarding his frustration with working locals. And I didn't bother mentioning the visual I had of my brother waking up drunk after a party we put together while our parents were away. One friend remained passed out on the lawn chair, the plastic, empty wine bag distorting his Marine tattoo, meanwhile another friend sprawled out on our kitchen table. Trey came down the stairs in his lacrosse shorts and glasses perched awkwardly on his nose. I stopped filling the plastic garbage bag with bottles and looked up at him in amazement. The beauty of being a pothead is that you don't wake up hungover.
"You don't have to worry about that," Trey started looking at the two garbage bags waiting by the kitchen door for the mandatory dump run, "I got it." I picked up another glass bottle and dropped it within the bag, the sound of the bottle clanking next to its brothers sent a grimace and noticeable wave of nausea through him.
"Yeah, I have to do this. Mom and Dad come home in 8 hours," I dutifully replied. After years of experience cleaning up after parties, I wasn't about to ruin my perfect streak of never getting caught. Trey shrugged, and left me with the garbage bag. In his lacrosse shorts and sweat stained pool cleaning shirt, he left through the front door, carefully shutting it.
Just before the third bag hit the point of overflowing, Trey came home through the front door, slamming it shut behind him. He dropped a bagel and coffee for me on the kitchen counter and an egg sandwich for himself. He took the egg sandwich to the kitchen table, right by his passed out friend's head and shouted, "Wake up, you fucking idiot!!" He spat at his friend with the egg and cheese caught in his mouth, and turned on the Mclaughlin Group.
Eleanor's shrill voice shouted about the woman's right to dictate laws regarding her body awoke the sleeping Marine. The Marine's scratchy, booming voice was muffled by the plastic wine bag over face, but you should still clearly hear him shout, "Turn that fucking shit off!"
Trey looked outside, and said his most commonly repeated phrase, "No," with his voice rising at the sound of the "o" which morphed into an "e" sound and abruptly stopped at the realization the vowel had magically changed. He punctuated with his "no" by taking out a new garbage bag and dropping three glass bottles right by the Marine's head.
The voice on the phone was repeating herself, and I looked at the phone searching for a recordplayer's arm to fix so needle freed itself from its infinite loop, "No way Trey is in Africa. No freakin' way."
Here is where I mention that the voice on the phone was my oldest friend, a playmate I've had since I was two and still bald. I didn't talk when I was two either, but not because my mouth was sealed shut with resin. The voice on the phone had played with me while I realized the infinite possibilities of playing with dolls, she stood by me while we danced around in tutus and black leotards, she was there for me after those tragically awkward middle school dances. The voice on the other end was also there for my first (and last) sip of Parrot Bay, she was my first passenger in my car after I got my license (the Parrot Bay and driving may or may not have happened on the same day).
Somewhere between my move out to California and my first acid trip, the voice on the phone became just a voice on the phone. She moved from my hometown in Connecticut to Maryland after her Mom lost her house after a bitter divorce. I called the voice on the phone after driving by her old house and seeing it leveled to the ground, plans for a McMansion was posted on the tree I almost hit while blindly backing out of her driveway.
However, the voice on the phone had the truest reaction to hearing about Trey's commitment to Ghana for two years. People I just meet ask if I have siblings, and I say yes, I do, a brother. When they ask the necessary follow up question of where he is, and I respond he's in the Peace Corps their face lights up in amazement. "Oh, that's so wonderful! Good for him!" at first I basked in the stranger's congratulations for having such an amazing relation, but after the voice on the phone said what I had been thinking for a year, I stopped accepting the praise.
"Yeah, well, I don't think you understand just how strange it is that he's there. I mean, the boy is an alcoholic, he buys $150 flip flops, wears pink, and even got tailor made khakis in Nepal after his last pair of Brook Brother's slacks got torn."
Now that he is coming home in two days, I can't be bothered worrying about accepting undeserved praise or correcting their built up steroetypes of Peace Corps volunteers. I just repeat to myself, he gets back in two days. He gets back in two days after two years.
"I know, right? No, no, no, wait, you have to hear Cindy's plan for when he gets back," retorted my immediately present friend who had righted herself just before her chair's tipping point. The last two legs landed with an echo through out the lofty, sterile kitchen. She looked up at me before continuing, as if waiting for me to open my mouth and begin the story just so she could take it from me.
"She's going to throw a 'Congrats, you didn't get AIDS party!'" the echo of the chair legs still reverberating as she spewed out the punchline.
"Yeah, well, we better make sure he doesn't have AIDS before we print the banners," the phone's voice retorted with static cling. "I mean, Trey?? I can see Cindy doing something like that, but Trey Waters? The boy wears pink!" The weed we smoked earlier made my mouth sealed with resin but my mind rattled with excuses as to why it would never be me absconding to Africa for two years.
The top of the list was my love of weed. What African country contains the best climate for marijuana cultivation? Are there Peace Corps programs there or are the countries with the ideal climate too stable to require aid or undergoing a mass genocide so I have to wait until the dictator is assassinated? Images of me being planted in a remote West African village and then spawning a mass drug trafficking economy with children plucking out buds floated through my head like sugar plums and dancing bears. Site monitors would visit me and see a ten year old boy driving a BMW. When they ask me how the boy got such a luxurious car, I would use the excuse I always heard growing up, "His father is a workaholic and doesn't know how to love so he gifts things to his 27 children. His 7 year old daughter owns 3 ponies."
"Can you imagine what he's like out there?" the phone continued.
"Oh, you should read his emails," the resin sealing my lips was burning off, "his villagers are always drunk. He tried to hold a meeting at 6:00 AM so nobody would show up drunk, but someone did show up wasted, yelled for 20 minutes, and then passed out in the corner."
The story was true. I didn't include Trey's exasperation regarding his frustration with working locals. And I didn't bother mentioning the visual I had of my brother waking up drunk after a party we put together while our parents were away. One friend remained passed out on the lawn chair, the plastic, empty wine bag distorting his Marine tattoo, meanwhile another friend sprawled out on our kitchen table. Trey came down the stairs in his lacrosse shorts and glasses perched awkwardly on his nose. I stopped filling the plastic garbage bag with bottles and looked up at him in amazement. The beauty of being a pothead is that you don't wake up hungover.
"You don't have to worry about that," Trey started looking at the two garbage bags waiting by the kitchen door for the mandatory dump run, "I got it." I picked up another glass bottle and dropped it within the bag, the sound of the bottle clanking next to its brothers sent a grimace and noticeable wave of nausea through him.
"Yeah, I have to do this. Mom and Dad come home in 8 hours," I dutifully replied. After years of experience cleaning up after parties, I wasn't about to ruin my perfect streak of never getting caught. Trey shrugged, and left me with the garbage bag. In his lacrosse shorts and sweat stained pool cleaning shirt, he left through the front door, carefully shutting it.
Just before the third bag hit the point of overflowing, Trey came home through the front door, slamming it shut behind him. He dropped a bagel and coffee for me on the kitchen counter and an egg sandwich for himself. He took the egg sandwich to the kitchen table, right by his passed out friend's head and shouted, "Wake up, you fucking idiot!!" He spat at his friend with the egg and cheese caught in his mouth, and turned on the Mclaughlin Group.
Eleanor's shrill voice shouted about the woman's right to dictate laws regarding her body awoke the sleeping Marine. The Marine's scratchy, booming voice was muffled by the plastic wine bag over face, but you should still clearly hear him shout, "Turn that fucking shit off!"
Trey looked outside, and said his most commonly repeated phrase, "No," with his voice rising at the sound of the "o" which morphed into an "e" sound and abruptly stopped at the realization the vowel had magically changed. He punctuated with his "no" by taking out a new garbage bag and dropping three glass bottles right by the Marine's head.
The voice on the phone was repeating herself, and I looked at the phone searching for a recordplayer's arm to fix so needle freed itself from its infinite loop, "No way Trey is in Africa. No freakin' way."
Here is where I mention that the voice on the phone was my oldest friend, a playmate I've had since I was two and still bald. I didn't talk when I was two either, but not because my mouth was sealed shut with resin. The voice on the phone had played with me while I realized the infinite possibilities of playing with dolls, she stood by me while we danced around in tutus and black leotards, she was there for me after those tragically awkward middle school dances. The voice on the other end was also there for my first (and last) sip of Parrot Bay, she was my first passenger in my car after I got my license (the Parrot Bay and driving may or may not have happened on the same day).
Somewhere between my move out to California and my first acid trip, the voice on the phone became just a voice on the phone. She moved from my hometown in Connecticut to Maryland after her Mom lost her house after a bitter divorce. I called the voice on the phone after driving by her old house and seeing it leveled to the ground, plans for a McMansion was posted on the tree I almost hit while blindly backing out of her driveway.
However, the voice on the phone had the truest reaction to hearing about Trey's commitment to Ghana for two years. People I just meet ask if I have siblings, and I say yes, I do, a brother. When they ask the necessary follow up question of where he is, and I respond he's in the Peace Corps their face lights up in amazement. "Oh, that's so wonderful! Good for him!" at first I basked in the stranger's congratulations for having such an amazing relation, but after the voice on the phone said what I had been thinking for a year, I stopped accepting the praise.
"Yeah, well, I don't think you understand just how strange it is that he's there. I mean, the boy is an alcoholic, he buys $150 flip flops, wears pink, and even got tailor made khakis in Nepal after his last pair of Brook Brother's slacks got torn."
Now that he is coming home in two days, I can't be bothered worrying about accepting undeserved praise or correcting their built up steroetypes of Peace Corps volunteers. I just repeat to myself, he gets back in two days. He gets back in two days after two years.
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