D

I sat outside in the sunshine with my computer this morning. The sun was so bright that I had to cover my computer with my jean jacket to keep it from roasting and to try to make the screen visible. I may or may not have spent significant time with my face in a little tunnel of jean jacket around the screen. 

I think I picked up a sunburn. 

Skin cancer, yes, I know.

Where I used to work when I first moved here, there was a cartoon cut out and pinned on a bulletin board in a public space that went like this:

First square: guy says, "I need a good sunblock."

Second square: other guy hands him a booklet.

Third square: #1 says, "What is this?" #2 says, "A map to [State of Happiness]."

I don't think I've ever been as pale as I've been since I moved to State of Happiness. It is not a coincidence that I sit in front of my happy light 12 months out of the year here. Even in the summer, when the sun does shine most days, it doesn't warm up until 5 pm, and by then the sun is not that strong. 

That, and I seem to have picked a career that keeps a person inside all day year round. 

Oh, law. Ruining everything all over again.

The good news is that I don't get enough sunshine to get skin cancer, probably, unless I already have it from years near the Equator/in the Midwestern US. 

The bad news is that I will forever be low on Vitamin D.

space

I got on the bus today, and a middle-aged/older white guy sat down next to me.

It is worth noting that this was a row of three or four seats facing inward. I was on one end, and the rest were empty. He did not have to sit right next to me.

I had my legs crossed, as women do, and he spread his knees apart, as men do.

Every time the bus moved, he bumped into me. 

This superfluous touching started to really irritate me. I am usually the calmest person on the bus with regard to the fact that yes, people bump into each other on public transportation. Yes, there will be jostling. But this guy was taking up more than his fair share of space, and his unnecessary invasion of my space bothered me.

I had headphones on, and I was leaning away from him, looking out the front window of the bus.

When other people got on, I glanced toward the back of the bus, in the space-encroaching guy's direction, to confirm that there were many other places he could sit. 

He leaned too close to me and said something derogatory about the driver.

I could have let it go. It wasn't that big a deal, right?

But then I thought about the very many ways in which men expect to be able to take over the space around women - spreading their legs wide into women's space, leaning in too close, telling us to smile - and I thought, "If I, with my degree and career in taking-no-bullshit, can't say something when I feel like someone is creeping past my boundaries, who can?"

And so I held up my hand and said, "Just... give me some space," and turned back toward the front.

"Oh, sorry," he said. He didn't change seats, but he stopped leaning in so close.

I had to fight the urge to apologize, to tell him that it was okay, that he could take all the space he wanted, that I might have misjudged him. Women are told, aren't we, that our job is to make life comfortable for men?

I didn't apologize. He made me feel uncomfortable, and I refuse to accept that his comfort is more important than mine. I get to have space on the bus, too. Maybe I helped the next woman, who isn't feeling brave enough to say anything.

start stop start

I dragged the dog along on another run tonight. 

It goes like this: I run along at a steady pace. The dog bounds ahead, smells something, and stops dead. I keep running at a steady pace until my arm is yanked out of its socket by the leash, because the dog is firmly braced, trying to smell whatever it was he smelled. 

Also, he doesn't really understand the concept of not running directly in front of my moving feet.

I am deliberately keeping the mileage down. I know from experience that I can go out and run three miles. I also know that I will then force myself to run three miles every time I run, and this is 1. time prohibitive at the beginning, 2. demotivating because I'm out of shape and its hard, and 3. terrible for my knees.

I have this blissful hope that my knees will be better this time, if I start with only a mile or a little more per day, three or four days a week, and build up super slowly. Also, I'm walking a lot due to work and life in a bigger city, and just maybe this is making all the other muscles in my legs stronger, so my knees will have more support.

One can always hope, and I do.

comedy of errors

There is a jacuzzi in this house where I am house sitting, and last night I thought I'd take a little relaxing soak before bed.

I remembered that the owner of the house told me to make sure the jets were covered before I turned them on, so I let the tub fill for a while, and then I turned the jets on.

Water sprayed everywhere.

It turns out that the jets I was looking at - the jets to which she had gestured - were the ones at the front of the tub, and the ones at the back of the tub were higher on the tub wall.

I scrambled to turn off the jets, used my towel to soak up some of the water that was dripping down onto the carpet, and waited.

Finally the water was high enough, so I turned on the jets and got in.

Within a few minutes, water was again spraying everywhere. 

What the what?

I realized that I had knocked the plug with my foot, and water was draining out of the tub faster than it was pouring in.

I turned the jets off again, fixed the plug, and waited.

By this time, I was already feeling a little dizzy, so I turned the hot water down and the cold water up.

When the water was high enough, I turned the jets back on, but let's be honest: I was pretty much over the jacuzzi by then.

I mopped up all the water with the towel, and then I had no towel so I put my pajamas on without drying off. Mmm, dampness. Pleasant.

I felt dizzy and crappy for a while. 

This led me to google "low blood pressure hot tub" whereupon I discovered that hot tubs can cause your blood pressure to drop. Considering that my blood pressure already hovers just above weirdly low, and I get dizzy when I stand up too fast,* this may be the reason why hot tubs are never quite as awesome as I expect them to be.

Hot soaks, you and I are done. 

Until the next time someone suggests hot springs or a hot tub and I forget my aversion.

* Google research also indicates that getting dizzy when you stand up too fast is supposed to happen more to younger people. I'm getting up there in age. I feel like this part of my life should be over.

doggy jog

I took the dog for a jog tonight.

I haven't run in a year or so, and it was two years ago when last I ran on a regular basis. But I went for a hike on Sunday, and I could feel that my lungs are getting lazy. 

It took until today for me to find my running shoes. They were at my old house. Details.

I collected them and then came back to where I am housesitting, where the idea of going for a walk made the dog lose his shit. He was bounding around like a puppy.

I take him for a walk almost every day. And it appeared from the state of the house that someone else had also taken him for a walk today. (Some neighbors and family members also have keys.) 

A walk is not a new thing. Still, as he gets more comfortable with my presence in his house, he feels more free to let himself go all batty about things like this. He gets wilder, and I have to get stricter about making him "Sit. Sit. SIT. NO REALLY SIT ALL THE WAY DOWN." before and while I put the leash on.

I ran for about 15 of 20 minutes. The dog struggled with the part where I wouldn't let him smell everything in sight, but otherwise his old body managed just fine.

It is sad and pathetic that I can feel the 15 minutes of running in my legs. There needs to be more of this running in my future.

ant

There is a good chance that I either already have or I am going to eat at least one ant in my salad.

It's my own fault. I neglected to check the cheese grater for ants after I left it next to the sink last night.

Whatever. I was a missionary kid.*

This is the last of my current package of spinach, so I can't make a new salad.

And I was/am too hungry to be bothered with things like inspecting the salad for ants. I have eating to do here.

* See, e.g., this classic story. 

veggies

* Warning: this post talks about food. And gluten or the lack of it.*

The last two years have been kind of crazy. I can feel them in my body.

First there was breaking up with someone, in the aftermath of which I ate all the gummy candy. All of it. All of it in the world. There is no gummy candy left.

Then there was the moving to Gone West and working more hours than are healthy, with no time to cook or work out.

Then there was the chaos of moving/not-moving back to the Mitten.

Now there is the living in other people's houses.

Somewhere in there, I lost my habit of eating a salad every evening. I used to have a salad (topped with nuts and cheese) as my dinner every night when I lived in Gone West the first time, and I think even after I moved to Universe City. But then I started working out all the time, and I was too hungry to have a salad be my entire dinner, and slowly the salad habit went away and, in the upheaval of the last two years, I started eating many, many carbs.

Going gluten free helped a little with carbs, but it also made it harder to keep my carbs complex. It's virtually impossible to not eat meat and not eat gluten and not eat sugar. The sugar is the one that I've kept.

For a long time, I didn't really notice. I felt fine. Sort of. At least, I couldn't pin my exhaustion specifically on the salad trend, so I called it fine.

A week ago, though, I suddenly had this moment where, like realizing that you are SO HUNGRY YOU COULD GNAW ON WOOD, I needed a salad immediately. I was craving vegetables so hard that I didn't think I would make it long enough to drive the store to get them.

And boom, there is my salad habit again. I haven't gotten as elaborate yet - it's just spinach and carrots and sugar snap peas and dressing, so far - but man, it feels good.

oh, hey

I think I forgot that I have a blog. For nine years, I have faithfully posted things here, and then I just up and forgot for a couple of weeks straight.

Oh, well.

...

So, I am usually a very good driver. I frequently border on annoying, in fact. I am that car driving 58 in a 55, with a long line of cars behind me just ITCHING to pass me.

I stop fully at stop signs. Sometimes twice, if I'm coming out of a parking lot (State of Happiness law requires that you stop once before the sidewalk and once before the street. I almost always do).

As I said when I was driving to/from the Mitten, I don't even hit my brakes when I pass a police officer/state trooper/deputy sheriff on the highway. Because I don't need to, yo.

The other night, driving back to the place where I am house/dog sitting, I actually could/should have been pulled over by a Gone West police officer I passed on the highway. This is approximately the 2nd time in my life this has happened. (The first time was in Utah when I was 20 and testing the governor on T.'s Volvo.) Not only was I driving 63 in a 50 mph zone the other night (in the city, the highways here go down to 50 mph speed limits), but I was weaving from one lane to another and back.

In fairness to me, my speedometer reads fast. I might have only been going 60.

In further fairness to me, I only went over a lane because there was a car on the shoulder and in the dark I could not tell if there was anyone in it. After I passed it, I went back to the right lane.

Probably the real reason the officer did not pull me over, though, is that I'm a white woman driving a cheap little car.

Truth.

memory

Ten years ago today, I was in the Big Apple, interviewing for a law school scholarship.

I should have been in Rwanda.

There is no should, of course. I got a call from the law school, and I bought a ticket, and I didn't think of the fact that I would miss the 10 year anniversary of the start of the genocide in Rwanda.

I felt like I should have been there, even though being there, the year before, felt like an intrusion into some private grief that I couldn't share.

One April or May morning in Rwanda, up on a mountainside in the mist, I thought about 100 days. 

Because it wasn't just a day of massacres all over the country. It was 100 days - more than three full months - of fear and hiding and panic.

When you go to Rwanda and sit beneath the trees with real people, it's hard to imagine that in those same emerald green hills, in that same perfect sunshine, so very many people died.

I didn't go to genocide memorials until I'd been in Rwanda for over a year and a half. I just couldn't do it. I wanted to see life before I saw what came before. 

When I finally went to a church in the east of the country, and the museum in Kigali, the guides opened mass graves and stepped down into them. One opened a casket for us to see the disintegrating body inside. The damp air smelled of death. 

Out in the garden again, the air was fresh and clean. Flowers grew bold, as they do in the tropics. Kids shouted as they played in the distance.

Rwanda is alive with memory, but it is still so alive.

This church in Kibuye was the site of a massacre. On Sundays, the church is filled with parishioners. The mass grave is outside.

The stadium in Kibuye was another massacre site. Now teams play football next to the cemetery.

reason 934857 that I love this city

Yesterday in the square, I saw a young woman sitting on the steps dressed as a unicorn.

Not like a horse, you know. Just a little horn in the middle of her forehead.

It was strikingly pretty.

down

I parked my car in a downtown garage yesterday, in anticipation of driving to the other county, and when I went back to my car, I had a briefcase and a bag on my shoulder and a cup of coffee in my hand.

The exit of the elevator on the correct floor was on a little bit of a raised platform, which I did not notice in my hurry to get to my car. I stepped forward as if there would be ground beneath my foot. 

There was no ground beneath my foot. Not, at least, at the level I expected. It was about three inches lower, and by the time my foot hit that level, I was already toppling.

The grooved pavement was not kind to my knee, nor to my non-coffee holding hand.  My coffee sloshed all over my other hand (fortunately it was not too hot). 

There on the ground, I looked up as three cars passed without so much as rolling down their windows and asking if I was okay. (I go through life expecting people to be reasonably nice and generous. It doesn't usually bother me when they aren't, but when I am in pain, it does. A kind word would have soothed me greatly.)

I was wearing fleece lined leggings (don't knock this until you've tried it), so I couldn't see the state of my knee, and I was now worrying about being late, so I climbed off the ground, licked at my coffee-covered hand, and stumbled to my car. My non-coffee hand was red but no skin had been broken.

It wasn't until I got home that I peeled the leggings off my knee and saw the sort of knee scrape I used to get when I was a kid - the kind that takes off a whole round chunk of skin several layers deep.

Then this morning I noticed that the missing chunk of skin sits on top of some weird-looking lump that does not normally exist on my knee and is turning funny colors.

I am... probably never going to learn to walk properly, am I? I think it's a little late now.

Also, pro tip: fleece-lined leggings. They will survive when your skin does not, and you will not have to stumble into court with a hole in the knee of your tights.

could

As a lawyer who is making a job out of the air, I had to go to court in an unfamiliar county today. It was a beautiful day, and on the way back I went a little bit out of my way to stop at the K.s' to pick up a couple of things.(I am house-sitting at the moment, and I needed a different shirt to wear to an event tomorrow for ridiculous reasons that cannot even really be explained, namely institutional rules.)

I set google maps on avoid highways, and set off. I just couldn't bear the thought of closing my car windows or of driving on the freeway with the roar of the surrounding traffic.

Google maps led me to a winding road along a river. I put on my sunglasses and drove. I soaked in the sunshine.

After a while, my phone told me to turn left, and then turn left again, and then turn left again, and then turn left again. 

It seemed impossible, all these left turns onto roads I'd never heard of and roads I only knew as exits on the highway, but the roads were all curving, so I trusted the map, and suddenly I was on a familiar corner.

When I lived in Gone West the first time, I thought I might move back to Africa. When I lived in Universe City, I wanted to move somewhere, anywhere. When I lived in Gone West the second time, I was planning on leaving nearly the entire time I lived here. I kept trying to drink everything in because I knew it would soon be gone.

This time (Gone West version 2.1), I don't have an end in sight, and I felt, driving on those strange roads, a strange feeling that I could someday know the back roads around Gone West. I could belong. I could be home.

?

It turns out that I have a very hard time producing writing for public consumption during times of great uncertainty.

useful

Sometimes I think that the most useful skill I have, cultivated in East Africa, is that of driving on unlit roads when oncoming traffic has lights so bright I can't see. 

In Rwanda and Uganda, that was because no one believes in turning off their bright beams.

In the US, it is because my car is small and many big SUVs now have extra bright headlights that shine directly down into my eyes.

Either way, I have long experience in looking down to the side, away from the light, at the edge of the road and nothing more. It doesn't even give me a headache anymore the way it did when I first moved to Rwanda and would have to go to bed early whenever I went to Kigali.

hope is our four letter word

I listened to a lot of radio stations in six days of driving to the Mitten and three days of driving back to Gone West. 

For instance, I can tell you that there is a radio station in Southeastern Wyoming that calls itself "Buckin' Country." My amusement level was high.

I turned off the radio and listened to Garth Brooks on my iPhone in Cheyenne, because obviously one has to listen to Beaches of Cheyenne and Rodeo while driving through Cheyenne. 

There are songs that will forever remind me of pieces of that drive. One of them I heard for the first time along the river east of Gone West. When it comes on the radio, I see the cliffs rising on the side of the car all over again. One of them I let play for the first time in the mountains in the eastern part of State of Happiness, driving on snow under a temporarily clear blue sky. (I had always before switched away when that song came on, because it sounded boring. Now I like it.)

As I got closer to the Mitten, I started noticing all the songs that talked about doing things that everyone else thinks is crazy. 

Mostly, as I drove, I scanned the airwaves looking for two songs that summed up the entire experience.

The first one was One Republic's Counting Stars:

Lately I've been, I've been losing sleep, dreaming about the things that we could be.

Hope is our four letter word.

Everything that drowns me makes me want to fly.

(The video is super weird.)

The second was Lady Antebellum's Compass: 

Let your heart, sweet heart, be your compass when you're lost, and you should follow it wherever it may go.

 (PS. What is UP with Lady Antebellum's name? I just can't even deal with it.)

plane

Let's talk about the plane.

I get obsessive about plane crashes, and this time the media is feeding my obsession. I spent just about the entirety of last weekend glued to some sort of screen, updating over and over to see if they had found the wreckage and what caused the crash.

I always read the reports on why planes crash, if it isn't manifestly obvious, and somehow this makes me feel better about flying, because mostly the things that cause crashes get fixed and/or are pilot error, and the pilots of the planes I have flown on all seemed competent except those approximately 13 year olds who flew the plane from the Mitten to Cleveland that one time. (Hint: most non-pilot error plane crashes are caused by ice: in the engines, the fuel lines, the pitot tubes, etc.)

The funny thing is that I'm not a nervous flyer. I read about plane crashes, yes, and knowing the why makes me feel safer, but fundamentally I get on planes and either I watch everything from the window or I fall asleep. I don't need to drug myself or drink like some people I know. I think I learned this from my momma, who taught us in our multiple transcontinental flight days (i.e. the 1980s) that planes and flying are interesting and cool. Now I am fascinated by planes and if only I made enough money to pay for lessons I would be flying them.

Anyway.

Considering that I will read obsessively about almost any plane crash (the wikipedia page that lists commercial plane crashes by year was a week long time suck for me when I discovered it), you can imagine that this potential crash has me even more mesmerized. The first thing I do in the morning, after cursing my alarm, is check to see what new information has been revealed.

A day before they released information that the plane may have continued to ping the satellites for an additional four hours, I sent T. an email telling her my predictions for where they would find the plane if it had not disintegrated in midair over the Gulf of Thailand. (Most of my predictions were out of range of the amount of fuel on board, though, it turns out.)

The one comment I have: if that plane landed somewhere - and it may have, given the amount of time it was in the air - there is at least a rebel or quasi-governmental group controlling some large territory who is in on the deal. You cannot land a plane that big on a tiny airstrip in the middle of nowhere.

Oh, I have another comment: people keep talking about tracking the cell phones, and I want to laugh, because guess what? Cell phones don't work everywhere in the world. Remember the satellite phone of South Sudan? Cell phone towers no hay in some parts of the world. And cell phone towers that work with your network no hay in even larger spans of the world. (My cell phone worked in Vietnam but not in Honduras, just as one example.)

In the meantime, in between reading articles about where in the world is MH370, I have been creating myself a job and moving into the K.'s spare bedroom because I am now homeless. Details.

dizzy

Warning number one: This post contains descriptions of medical procedures.

Warning number two: My mom already heard this story. (Sorry, Momma!)

Last night, I was sitting at my computer at the dining room table. I needed something from the kitchen, so I stood up, and I stood on something sharp.

I yelped and jumped.

I leaned against the counter, turning my foot upside down against the stove to see if I could make the puncture bleed, for safety.

Just as I saw a red dot, I felt so dizzy that I had to put my foot down and hold onto the counter.

It was very strange. Yes, I had just risen to a standing position, and the low blood pressure I inherited from my momma can do that. (I think my last blood pressure reading, at the dentist of all places, was along the lines of 112/54. 52? Something like that.) It's just that this particular dizziness started long enough after I stood up that it seemed too late, somehow.

It seemed like it was related to looking at my foot. And I've never before been dizzy from any sort of medical thing, not even when I worked in an emergency room and saw some crazy stuff. When I had my wrist surgery, the surgeon finally had to tell the nurses to stop turning the screen so I could see the surgery, because he was the one who needed to see what he was doing. I always watch while medical procedures are performed upon me: shots, blood drawing, etc. I think it's fascinating.

(Oooh! I just did some research googling, and it seems that moving one's head is the cause of positional dizziness, so maybe the way I was bending my head down to see my foot caused it.)

gone west love times one million

I was walking briskly to catch a bus this afternoon, and I smiled and said hello to a guy selling the homeless newspaper.

"Hi," he said. "You have really good fashion sense, by the way."

I love this town.

(I did look cute. I've been trying to actually get dressed every day, even though I am not going to an office.)

coffee bzzzzzzzt

I have never figured out how to make coffee. Largely, this is because there is no point to my knowing how to make coffee. The only way I can tolerate coffee is when it is altered to the point of being unrecognizable by the addition of milk and sugar and possibly other flavors, like chocolate (delicious, delicious chocolate). 

Then I started feeling funny when I drank any coffee, so I had even less incentive to learn to make coffee, and I became a chai girl all the way. 

One of the people with whom I am staying works for one of the major coffee roasters in town. Since I have been neither leaving the house nor spending money, he offered to bring home some coffee. I asked for decaf.

Then the other person with whom I am staying showed me how to use the various coffee-making implements in the house. 

This morning, I decided to attempt coffee instead of my trusty Tea India. (I did not discover Tea India myself; I was given a box by some friends who accidentally ordered a case of it. But it is delicious.)

I ground the beans as instructed. I filled the little section on the stove-top pot. I added water to the proper section. I turned the stove on. 

Somehow, what I produced was an almost unpourable sludge that filled not quite 2/3 of my mug.

It smelled delicious, though, so I added a bunch of heavy whipping cream and even more skim milk, filling the cup to the top, and then some brown sugar, and I drank it right up.

Then I felt like my head was floating away for about five hours.

broke

It's been a while since I've been completely broke. Not a really long while - I was completely broke after law school - but a while. 

For the last few years, and especially the last year, my time has been worth more than my money. I could better afford to buy a lunch then to take the time to make one, because making one meant staying up a few minutes later, and I needed sleep more than anything.

I got used to being able to snap up that cereal in bulk when it was on sale, or that skirt when it finally hit the clearance rack. Shopping for clothes has been a stress reliever over the last year, and even though I only shop in the back of the store, I've still gotten used to buying things when I see them and I like them.

I can't do that now. It is a hard and fast line that I cannot cross: things cannot be purchased. 

It's freeing, actually. I didn't realize how I had come to depend on shopping to make me feel just a little less stressed out.

I still go into stores, especially downtown, because I need somewhere out of the wet and cold to wait for appointments or the bus, and I can't afford to buy coffee to pay my rent at a table in the bucks of Star.

When I go into stores now, I told a friend yesterday, they feel like museums. Children's museums, maybe, because you can touch all the pretty things and admire them, and then you put them back where you found them, and you leave. Before I met up with her, I was in the jewelry department at a discount store, trying to pass a few minutes out of the rain. I looked at all the shiny things sparkling on their little hooks. I let the stones run through my hands. I straightened the links of the chains. And then I walked away. 

Looking was weirdly almost as satisfying as any purchase. I still had the sensory satisfaction of seeing and touching all the pretty new things, and let's face it: the one thing you bring home never looks quite as lovely on its own as it did among all the other shiny new things. Plus I left with the satisfaction of knowing that I resisted a temptation. I left happy.

glad

I heard an African filmmaker talk about a movie she made, and she said, "One thing about me is that I'm not afraid to be broke. A lot of people are really afraid of being broke, but I'm not. I could do what other filmmakers do. They apply for grants, mostly from France, but it can take three years to get the money that way, and I'm impatient."

I love this.

I especially love it right now, because I need it. 

...

I'm not glad to be far away from my family - that pang still comes. But this place. I can't describe what it means to me.

I'm so glad to be here.

I walk the tree-lined streets of my neighborhood, and I'm so glad to be here.

I stand on the bustling streets downtown, and I'm so glad to be here.

I go see an African movie, and I'm so glad to be here.

When I think about it, this is the first place in this country where I've felt like I belong. I was 10-and-a-half when we left Liberia and moved to the Mitten, and I tell people sometimes that it was like Mean Girls, the movie, except that I never became the top Mean Girl. 

We moved to a place where everyone was the same, particularly in our religious community, and the penalty for being different was high. The place I came from didn't matter: no one cared about the tiny articles I found and cut out and kept, the ones that told me what was happening back in Liberia. I had to beat Liberia out of myself in order to be part of the sameness, in order to have friends, in order to be not-alone. (The guilt of doing that, by the way, when the place you are beating out of yourself is in the middle of a terrible war, is also bad.)

In college, I reached back and found Liberia again, and I held it close. I found other people who had lived in other countries. I took classes about African history and politics. I went back to the continent: to Kenya, to Liberia, and then, later, to Rwanda and Tanzania and Liberia and South Sudan and Ethiopia. But the truth about being an ex-pat in Africa is that you are always from somewhere else. I will always be white and US American. No one will ever mistake me for belonging there.

My first week in Gone West, I went to a New Year's Eve party. There was an Afro-beat band playing, and everyone dressed differently. There were women in sweatpants, in evening dresses, in white pants suits, in jeans, in long hippie skirts. There, finally, it didn't matter whether I'd figured out the right thing to wear. It didn't matter if I fit in. Gone West is sort of like that. It's a big enough city to accommodate all crowds, and yet it is not focused enough to have a thing, like the Big Apple has fashion and finance or LA has movies and suntans (I stereotype; I've never been to LA). Gone West is like a big overgrown town, where everyone does their own thing without much caring what everyone else does.

The relief of that pressure to fit in has given me the freedom to figure out who I want to be. I can wear what I want. I can be who I want. I can be a lawyer who is good at what I do without being too educated or too opinionated. I can do martial arts and wear dresses. I can be a single 30-something professional who has a full, happy life. I can be a woman who lived in several countries and misses them, but who is exactly where she wants to be.

It maybe isn't fair to the Mitten - my dad tells me how much it has changed, and how much bigger the world is there now - but when I go back, I feel those walls closing around me again. I feel too educated, too dressed up, too foreign, too single, too loud, too different. It puts me right back into that high school despair of feeling like I'll always be on the outside. Or at least, that I have to pretend to be someone else in order to be on the inside.

I've created my own inside, here, party of one, and I like who I am in it.

back

Very rarely do I write about writing. If I haven't posted anything here in a while, I figure that it's my blog, and I can write when and what I want to write. I find posts about why people haven't posted extremely boring, because I don't see any reason to make excuses about why you haven't written in a space you choose to write in or not. We are all busy. It happens. Move on.

But again, it's my blog, and I can write what I want to write, and so I will.

I haven't been able to write here for some time now, because I was too conflicted. 

I took a job back in the Mitten because ending up back there, someday, seemed inevitable, and why not now? I have a little niece and nephew to play with, and another of one or the other on the way. My parents are still young and mostly healthy. I was dating someone there. I got a job there. I was working so many hours in Gone West that it seemed to make sense to move now.

But then I went home for Christmas. The dating situation evaporated. I realized that the only people I know in that town are my family. Family is great, but I can't build my entire social life on them unless I want them to continue to be the only people I know, which means no other friends and no dating prospects. 

I moved to Gone West six years ago because I couldn't keep starting over and over and over the way my kind of international work required. I intended to stay in Gone West. Forever.

But then there were no jobs during the recession, and I moved to Universe City so that I could do the work I wanted to do. I didn't know anyone there. I started over.

Then I moved back to Gone West, even though many of my friends had moved away. I started over.

Moving back to the Mitten meant starting over again, for the third time in four years, the fourth time in six years, the - what, ninth? - time in 12 years.

I knew that I didn't want to go. I knew it through and through, but I convinced myself that it was my only real option, and so I got in my car and I went.

I left most of my belongings in Gone West, a security blanket telling me that I could come back. Just give it the summer, I told myself. Think of it like an internship.

But I kept finding reasons not to arrive. I spent six days on the road getting to the Mitten. I dallied with my sister in Mountain State. When I could have gone on to my parents' house, I stopped with friends in the Windy City. I stopped at an outlet mall just outside the state line.

And when I couldn't delay anymore, I sat in a parking lot one state over, unable to drive forward. "We'll find a way for you to go back right away," my sister promised me when I called her. "We'll find the money. Just go drop off some things at Mom and Dad's, spend the weekend with them, and we'll find a way for you to go back."

When I got to my parents' house, I sat out in the driveway, unable to go in. It wasn't until my mom came out and found me that I could get out of the car.

The only thing that made sense was to stay - I'd spent nearly all my savings (save retirement accounts) to get there.

But I couldn't stay. I couldn't start over again so soon.

It took me three days of driving (plus a day of weather delay in the Plains hanging out with some old Gone West friends) to get back to Gone West. I had to hold myself back from pushing on the accelerator harder and harder as I got close. (Admittedly, the speed limit is also lower here than in some other states *cough - Utah - cough*.)

I cried when I crossed the county line into Gone West's county, because I thought I'd lost all of this. I thought I had let it go. For something I value very deeply, yes, but lost it all the same. 

I still don't know for sure if I made the right decision. I'm still crying about it as I write. I wanted to be near my family. I still want that. I want to spend holidays with them - not just the big ones, but Mother's and Fathers Days, and the Fourth of July, and everything in between. I can't do that from here.

I have no money, not even enough to pay a month of rent. I can't afford to eat, but I have to do it anyway. There are a lot of lentils and rice in my future.

I don't have a job here. Tomorrow is Monday, and I'm going to get up without a job, and I'm going to go look for one. I'm not a person who likes not having a job. I like purpose. I like structure to my days. In a way, I'm starting over again anyway. 

Everything is uncertain, and I'm not sure what the ending will be. I'm trying to remind myself that, as terrifying as this is right now, it will be only a footnote, if that, in the story of my life. I'm trying to remind myself that I moved here without a job or a professional network in 2007.

I've learned some very important things. Among them is that I probably will end up back in the Mitten, but I have to be sure that I'm ready before I go, that I'm not just letting it happen. Another is (AGAIN - thought I'd learned this in 2007) that it isn't healthy to start over and over in too rapid a succession. Another is that you shouldn't move if it is even the slightest bit for a boy, especially the classic "I will put in no effort" sort of North American boy that makes all of us women crazy, especially if mostly you just felt like it was time for you to give up on all the qualities you really hoped your guy would have and settle for this one. Another is to save more money. Another is not to throw away all those clothes hangers or the drying rack (you'll regret it).

"This [moving back] is the most irresponsible thing I've ever done," I told my mom.

"If this is the most irresponsible thing you've ever done," she said, "you're doing pretty well."

Let's hope that turns out to be true.

observed

Some observations about the open road:

The Western part of this country is really big. Really, really big. A four hour flight does not do it justice.

The further east you go, the fewer weigh stations are open, and the more law enforcement you see along the road. They like their weigh stations out west.

The worse the weather, the fewer the law enforcement officers out and about. This is unfortunate, because that's when they seem the most necessary to help all the people. (Although it is a bit odd to pass a sheriff checking for speeders in the middle of nowhere in Mountain State while you are driving 20 miles per hour under the speed limit because of the snow blowing on the road.)

I no longer seem to care whether my total comes out to a round number when I fill my car with fuel.

If the speed limit is higher than 70, I feel no obligation to reach the speed limit. If the speed limit is 70 miles per hour or lower, I feel an obligation to go approximately the speed limit, or within five miles above it, just so as not to impede the speed of traffic. When the speed limit is 80? I will go whatever speed I want, thank you very much. You cannot force me to drive that fast if I don't wanna.

I refuse to adjust my speed just because some police officer/deputy sheriff/state trooper is checking how fast I am going. I refuse even to tap the brakes and give them the satisfaction of knowing that I noticed them. This means that I have to find a way to set my finicky, unreliable cruise control (best done while going uphill, holding a steady speed, it turns out) to the sweet spot in which it never gets to more than 7 miles per hour over the speed limit in its fluctuations. (My speedometer runs about 1-2 mph fast, so I have a little leeway.) I feel like I'm the only person on the road who doesn't automatically hit the brakes when I see a police officer. I've trained it out of myself. And probably I'll end up pulled over anyway, one day, in one of those places where they pull people over for doing 1 mph over the limit. (I hate those places.)

onward

On my drive from Gone West to my sister's place in Mountain State, I drove through five winter storm warnings in three days. And thanks to the winter storms, the drive took three days when it should have taken two. 

The morning of the third day, the highway was closed. Closed. The highway. The interstate. The major east-west thoroughfare through the middle of the country. 

I despaired of ever making it to my sister's house.

But then, 'round 10 am, they re-opened the interstate, and I made a break for it.

Not long before I left Gone West, I drove out along the river to the east on a very windy day. It was so windy that I thought there was something wrong with my car, but there was not. The only thing wrong was the wind. 

This experience served me well in the State of Wild Horses. The wind was coming from the west, so on most parts of my eastward drive on the interstate it wasn't bad, save for some gusts, but when I turned south, I had to hold my steering wheel to the right to stay straight on the road. I drove 100 miles that way, on a road that got progressively smaller and smaller as I drove into Mountain State. Like the highway, the road was clear in patches just large enough to fool me into accelerating, only to suddenly be blocked by drifts of snow or patches of ice. 

It was nerve-wracking. I was relieved to finally pull into my sister's driveway (it took two tries to get in between the snowbanks). She had a warm dinner waiting, and my long puffy coat from the Big Apple. 

After gorging myself (I'd barely eaten all day, due to trying to stay on the road), we all bundled up for Ski Town's winter celebration. It involved kids doing ski jumps in the dark carrying flares, as one does. It also involved a man skiing down a mountain in the dark with fireworks shooting out of his head, and then a whole lot of (normally lit) beautiful fireworks reflected on the snow.

It felt worth the drive.

depart

I thought all I had to do was throw my stuff into my car and drive out of Gone West. And that was true, to a certain extent, except that it turned out that I had a lot of stuff. A lot a lot of stuff. More stuff than could fit into my car.

It took me about six hours of tetris to fit most of it into my car, and also I threw away things I intended to keep, and also I left a few things in my old basement that I will have to pick up the next time I am in Gone West (sorry, roommates!).

By this time, it was 2 pm, and it had started to snow.

It doesn't snow in Gone West very often, so everyone panics when it does. Cars line up to flee the city. 

I joined them, but for a different reason. I wasn't trying to flee.

Just outside of the Gone West metro area, I moved left and slowed down to drive around a group of stopped cars, only to see that one of the cars was actually a van, on its side. I stopped, along with a couple of other cars, to see if there was anything I could do. I was certified in CPR a couple of years ago, I reminded myself.

There was only one man in the van, and he was bleeding pretty badly from his head, but the rest of him seemed okay. He had apparently been driving westbound on the highway before he flipped the van three times onto the far side of the eastbound lanes. Several people from the westbound lanes stopped, too, and one of them said that the van had passed him a ways back, going way too fast. "I'm surprised he made it this far," he said.

Once we-the-group had established that the guy was okay, found some blankets that had fallen out of the back of his van to cover him, retrieved gauze from someone's first aid kit to apply to his bleeding head, determined that emergency personnel were on their way, and removed most of the debris from the middle of the highway (apparently some people carry brooms in their vehicles), most of us left. Soon after I drove away, I saw the ambulance and police car heading toward the scene.

I thought the weather would clear once I got out of the strange little weather system that is Gone West, surrounded by mountains, but this did not happen. 

For hours, I drove through whiteout snow, trying hard to keep my car on the road, watching the reflector poles on the side of the highway to gauge if I was still approximately in my lane. Semis roared by me. I rarely got above 40 miles per hour.

I gave up and got a hotel around 8 pm. I'd barely made it 200 miles from Gone West, but at least I had gotten started.

direction

foiled

When I lived in Universe City, it seemed like the sun was always shining when I went to Gone West and the clouds descended again as I returned to Universe City. 

I don't know if this is actually true - Universe City does get substantially more rain than Gone West - but it felt true, and it was true today. As I drove on the highway toward Universe City, the pleasant warmth of the sun disappeared into fog, and I had to turn the fan in the car from cold to medium and then warm. 

I was running a little late for my own goodbye party (let's face it: when am I not running a little bit late?) when I heard a loud noise that sounded like something hit the passenger side of my car. Weird. 

The car drove just fine, so I continued on a little ways, as the car began driving less and less fine. 

Back tire, passenger side. 

Recap: 

1. 2010 - Front passenger side tire: faulty valve. Multiple flats.
2. 2011 - Rear driver side tire: weird hernia thing; replaced.
3. 2013 - Rear driver side tire: intentional puncture while parked in front of my house; all four tires replaced.
4. 2014 - Rear passenger side tire: blow out on the highway.

I don't get it. I drive a little tiny car with little tiny tires. How do they keep failing me like this? Is it normal to have so many tire issues in barely three years of owning a car? It's not the alignment. This little car drives straight indefinitely when I take my hands off the wheel, unless there is a cross wind.

I parked well off the freeway and called roadside assistance. I got a card in the mail once that I was supposed to keep in my wallet (I did not) saying that I had roadside assistance, and I happened to see it yesterday as I was cleaning out my office (end cleaning time: 1 am).

Only it would take them up to an hour to get there, and I realized that the tire place that replaces their tires for free if something goes wrong might be closed on Sunday anyway (it was). I am not going to buy a new tire from some other place if I can get this one for free.

I could have gone forward to Universe City, but once the tire was replaced, either by me or by roadside assistance, it would take a very long time on back roads, driving under 50 mph. I would completely miss my party, and I worried about the donut tire making it so far. The distance back to Gone West was shorter.

I can change a tire, but it was freezing out there. I was dressed for warm, sunny Gone West, not foggy, blustery in-between land. 

I had to take everything out of my trunk in order to get at the spare.

My hands were freezing.

The only good news in this picture is that I keep a waterproof stadium blanket in my trunk. I put it on the damp ground next to the car and went to work.

I was in the process of tightening the bolts on the spare when someone stopped to help.

I don't mean to be critical of big-city majority culture (OR MAYBE I DO), but it's worth noting that the very nice guy who stopped to help me, after many, many cars just drove by, was Latino and spoke with an accent. Kindness is still alive somewhere in the world, just possibly not here.

The nearest exit was only a mile or so off, so I took that one and stopped at the bucks of star to try to warm up.

It took more than twice as long to drive back on a winding country road along the river, but it was far prettier. I've missed that road entirely, even though it runs all the way down to Universe City, because it is so much slower than the freeway.

I'm glad I got to drive it today.

Now I'm home, in the warmth, taking this extra time to pack. I probably need the extra time, too.

so it goes

I was nice to myself this time: I scheduled my flights for two days before I had to go back to work. Plenty of time to get home, get some milk, relax, pack a little, and get some hours of work in on Sunday. 

Oh, the best-laid plans. 

We got to the airport ahead of the weather problems - we saw one rollover crash on the highway, but the vehicle occupants were walking away from it. 

By the time my flight to The Windy City was three hours delayed, I knew I wouldn't make it to Gone West. The last flight of the day out of TWC had already been cancelled, and I'd missed the earlier one.

"My advice is just to get to TWC," the agent said. "They'll prioritize the bigger flights out of a hub over the littler ones from places like this."

He didn't seem the most competent, though, and I wanted to fly out of the Mitten to avoid having my parents drive me so far, so I spent the entire drive home on hold with United. 

They never answered. 

Neither did they answer after I bought a train ticket to TWC, only to get an email that my flight was cancelled. 

Nor did they answer after I cancelled the train ticket and got an email rebooking me from TWC to Gone West... On Wednesday. At a time that was too early to take the train. 

No one here has six hours to drive me to TWC on Wednesday, and taking the train and then trying to figure out staying somewhere and then getting to the airport in the morning was not happening.

I finally hung up the phone at 3 am. At 9 am, I half-woke up, dialed again, and dozed next to my phone as it continued the horrible five note repeat that is United's hold music. 

I listened to 17 hours of that hold music between last night and tonight, and it's still ringing in my head. 

And I'm still flying out of Chicago on Wednesday. Later on Wednesday, yes, but still on Wednesday. 

Which cuts my finish work, pack, move time in State of Happiness to two weeks.

I'm just trying to ignore the rising feeling of panic and enjoy hours of catching up on Downton Abbey  with breaks to shovel the five inches of snow that accumulated between my dad shoveling the driveway in the morning and us ladies getting out there at 4 pm. 

made it

So that might have been a tad melodramatic. I mean, I went to law school, ended up with debt that I could never expect to pay back on my own, ever, at the salaries I've been making doing my save-the-world law jobs, and took the bar exam right as the economy tanked, so clearly that trumps any mere location mistake I could ever make. (PSA: DON'T GO TO LAW SCHOOL.)

I shoveled the driveway last night, and that put a lot of things into perspective. 

Then I rang in the new year sitting on my parents' couch, because I was supposed to pick my sister up at the airport at 7 something and then 10 something and then her flight got cancelled and there was nothing to do but text a good friend in Universe City. (My sister began the new year not sleeping on a cot in O'Hare airport. It makes me crazy when people say, "It could be worse!" as if that is any consolation when a person is feeling genuine human emotion like loneliness or heartbreak, and mostly I want to do violence upon the person of anyone who flippantly says such things, but there is a time and a place for it, and that is when you are in a warm house getting ready to go to bed in a bed that now contains the right kind of pillow, thanks to a trip to ike@, and the other person is trying to sleep on a cot in an airport. It could be worse.)

A. finally made it to Greater River City this morning, and my dad picked her up in time for the family Christmas party, so we ate and celebrated all afternoon. I got everything I wanted: a green and blue plaid shirt and a cozy cowl and some awesome mittens being the major high points. And I was delighted to have picked the hit of the day for four and five year olds: Magformers.

We went for a walk, all of us underdressed for 12 degree F weather, and when we finally, miserably, got back the kids had bright red cheeks and upon inspection, all potentially frost-bitten parts were red, not white. We made it. 

bleak

I feel like I should be blogging up a storm here in the Mitten. After all, I'm moving here, right? There is so much to figure out!

Deciding to move here may have been the biggest mistake of my life. 

I am not like this place, and it is not like me.

For the last year, I kept busy when I came to the Mitten. This holiday time I do not have the networking meetings or the one single friend I had made, and so I am facing the utter loneliness of living here head on. It is bleak.

The only thing I want to do is flee back to Gone West.

How can I possibly live here?

And yet, the pace that I have been keeping in Gone West is not sustainable, either. I don't have time to exercise, or to eat healthy food, or to be a sane person.

There is no good answer. There is bad, and there is bad. 

I keep wondering if I can un-quit my job, keep my room, cancel it all. I keep wondering if I should. 

IAH

If I recall correctly, the last time I flew through Houston was in 2002, when T. and I went to Honduras right before I moved to Rwanda. It looks familiar, from those three or so years when I flew to Nicaragua once and Honduras thrice. 

It's different on Christmas Day, though. The guy driving the cart smiles when he has to block me for a moment, and he says, "No, no, you're fine." And then "Merry Christmas!" as he drives away. 

A tiny boy in Christmas pajamas is toddling in front of a gate. 

Two little girls - three or so years old - are rolling on the floor in the center of the cross shape of terminal C. They wear Christmas jumpers with tights, and they sing "Jingle all the way!" as they roll right where people usually walk. I smile at their mom, who smiles back as she tries to corral them. 

early

Christmas morning, early. 

It's still dark - as dark as it can be in a big city - and as silent as ever I have heard this city. I stand in the middle of the street, listening. The only thing I can hear is the echoing bell sound of the wind chimes on our porch. I can't decide if the utter stillness is eerie, in a city this size, or peaceful. 

When my cab driver arrives, he tells me that he lived in this very house when he first moved to town 13 years ago, and the city seems  much smaller. 

We talk about the East Coast, where he came from, and the Midwest. His route to the airport is faster than that of the guy who drove me last time, and involves a street I've never seen that suddenly connects with the street I always take: a shortcut I never knew, and I'm learning a month before I leave. 

"It's never felt like home here," he says, "even though I've been here a long time."

"It's always felt like home to me, but family trumps in the end," I tell him. 

I give him a big tip, because it is Christmas and he saved me $8 even wih the tip on the faster route. 

I'm through security less than 30 minutes after I called for the cab. It's 4:15 am, and the only thing to do is find the bucks of star, where maybe a chai can compensate for the two hours of quasi-sleep I got last night. 

The barista cheerfully wishes me a merry Christmas at 4:30 am, with the line for coffee stretching out the door. 

little Christmas Eve

It's Christmas Eve, and I'm sitting in my house with rice cooking for rice-and-lentils, mostly because I forgot that stores would close early, so I have nothing to eat other than this except dry cereal (I ran out of milk this morning).

I guess I'm eating rice-and-lentils for breakfast, too.

There were a couple of stocking stuffers that I am not going to be able to pick up, thanks to my lack of foresight.

The upside is that I'm sitting in my house with rice cooking for rice-and-lentils instead of rushing about town trying to pick up a last few things.

I also have peppermint stick ice cream that will have to be finished tonight because it has melted (a pizza wedged in the top of the freezer kept it from closing fully today). 

P@ndora is playing the Fernando Ortega Holiday station. (I don't do the Jingle Bells kind of Christmas music, but pretty hymns I can enjoy.)

If only I could make myself get up and pack, this would be a perfect little Christmas Eve.

Like most years lately, I am starting my Christmas season late. We are having family Christmas on 1/1, and I will be flying on Christmas Day, with all the other cranky and/or merry passengers. It's hard to get into a Christmas mood when I am working insane hours just to keep everything afloat. I haven't decorated or wrapped a thing.

I am going to start tomorrow, though.

I just have to get this packing done, first.

Overheard in Gone West:

Homeless guy, shading his eyes as he walks toward downtown patrol guy who is sitting on his bike, leaning against a fence, "if you're just going to sit there, can't you turn off your light? It's going to give me a seizure."

Downtown patrol guy, not turning off his blinking front light, "are you serious? There are plenty of lights here that are more likely to give you a seizure than this one."

In the square, a group is singing Christmas carols, accompanied by a guitar.  I sat on the wall and sang along for a few minutes, waiting for my bus.

endings

After work yesterday, a group of us went to the usual spot: a dive bar a block from the office. A friend from Universe City was in town, and he met us there. 

We moved on to pizza in a (supposedly) haunted building and played arcade games in a dark room full of blue light. My bubble guy died over and over, and I came in third of four in pac-man, ahead only of the friend so drunk that he kept moving the pac-man joystick aimlessly long after his pac-man had disappeared off the screen.

I think I lack the hand-eye coordination most male North Americans develop as children due to the video game craze.

After my friends drifted off to eat more food and return to their hotel, I stopped back at the office for my library books. 

Books in hand, I walked alone to the central square, where couples take pictures of themselves in front of the mammoth Christmas tree. I stood there for a few minutes, taking it all in. The air was warm enough that I didn't have to rush. 

It was beautiful: the fog, the tree, the lights, the people. I wondered if it was the last time I would ever stand in that square under the holiday lights.

Very often lately, I look at parts of this city that I love so much, and I wonder if this is the last time I'll see them.

When I flew to the Mitten, I wondered if this was the last time that I would fly out of Gone West when Gone West was home.

When the sun shines through the windows at the tea shop, I wonder if this is my last sunny day in Gone West. 

When I walk through the marble hallways of the building I've gone into just about every day I've ever worked in Gone West, I wonder if I've been in some of those rooms for the last time.

The fact is that some of my last times in this city have already happened. I resigned from my job yesterday, you see, because I took a job back in My (US American) Hometown. 

I'm moving back to the Mitten.

"It's like breaking up with someone when you are still madly in love with him," I told someone, yesterday.

"But you know it's the right thing to do," she said, as a statement, not a question.

It is.

faux

"Something happened," I called to my roommate, as she put her things down in the dining room.

"What happened? Is that my faux fur?" my roommate asked, walking into my room.

"No, it's my faux fur," I said, lounging upon a yard of it on the floor.

"You bought faux fur?" she asked.

"I bought faux fur," I said.

"What happened?" 

"Well, what happened is that I went to [the fabric store] to get my scarf that I left there on Monday," I said, "and I decided to buy faux fur to make a vest. So I bought this."

Okay, look. I was inspired by this. This faux fur vest is going to happen.

And in the meantime, I can lounge upon it on the floor of my bedroom. Faux fur is surprisingly warm.

The white-orange cat is curled up on my black scarf on my orange couch, and it's awfully cute.

...

PS. Still waiting.

the wait

This is one of those moments:

I'm holding my breath.

Something - everything - is about to change, in ways I don't even know yet.

Some moments, when I think about it, I'm beaming, trying to hide the split-wide-open smile from the world that doesn't yet know what might be happening here.

And then I have to find a place to park where no one will notice that I'm weeping into my steering wheel.

Because of a strange confluence of circumstance, I have time right now, in a week when I did not expect to have time, and so I am thinking about all that may be, can be, will be. 

It is there, so close, and yet not quite certain yet.

Waiting.

 

break

I got up early (for a weekend) with the intention of going to work and getting lots done.  When I got out of the shower, though, my phone had blown up with text messages about the fact that the office didn't have power. Since power is required just to get into the building (electronic keypad, elevators), and since email wasn't isn't working, working today has been rendered an impossibility. 

There are some things that I absolutely have to get done, either today or going in early tomorrow morning, so I feel a little bit anxious, sitting here at the tea shop instead of working, but this also feels like a miraculous break after six days straight of all work related things, all the time.

Instead of working, because I can't work, I picked up a few necessities at t@rget. I watched part of an episode of Battlestar Galactica. I drank tea. And it was good. 

Leaving the t@rget parking lot, for some reason I started thinking of what I will look like when I am old. I hope I have smile wrinkles and a double chin that I don't try to hide in photos of me with the people I love. I hope I smile a huge smile that squishes my eyes shut because I am happy. 

still cold

For some reason, this swathe of State of Happiness has decided to take on the winter characteristics of the Mitten. I am less than pleased. I disapprove of all temperatures south of freezing, particularly for a place that I count on for 40 degree days that chill you to the bone with damp rather than actual cold.

Mostly I'm just annoyed because I no longer own the right equipment for weather like this. I've been getting away with cute little cardigans the last few years, but weather like this scoffs at them. Without good thick layers and a winter coat (also a thing I do not have), the cold is piercing. Piercing, I tell you.

I don't even know what to buy first. I feel like a kid standing in the middle of a circle of toys, running to one and then dropping it to run to another. 

Warm layers! Ooh, warm! Cozy! Soft!

No! A thick coat is what I need! I shall get a coat! This one looks really warm.

Shiny! This sweater is all shiny and pretty and warm...

Down!

Fleece!

Microfiber!

SPARKLES!!!

My head just exploded, and I'm still cold.

skip

I skipped going to jits tonight, because what was happening was a belt promotion. During a belt promotion, everyone sits in a big circle and takes turns rolling with the promoted one, and here are some things about that:

1. While I will happily talk in front of a large or small group of people about anything at any time, for some reason rolling in front of a group of people pretty much paralyzes me. Possibly because I am an expert talker, but a novice martial artist.
2. Because I am, in this situation, always the lower belt level (these promotions only happen with blue belts and above), I always have to start standing up, and my guard passing is abysmal, and this is embarrassing.
3. I find sitting cross-legged really uncomfortable, particularly when it goes on for an hour.
4. I know, I KNOW that I should be supporting the people being promoted, because I will hopefully one day be in their shoes, and I will be glad of the support, but I worked for 12 hours yesterday and 11 hours today, and the only reason I drag myself to martial arts in this state of exhaustion is for the exercise, and I knew that I would just sit there watching the clock and thinking desperately about how I was missing sleep and not even getting any exercise. The people being promoted do not need that kind of negativity. 

So I'm at home. When I arrived here, I realized that I had also forgotten that I scheduled a Spanish conversation on skype at 7 pm. I realized this around, oh, 7:40. I felt bad. I messaged the grandpa in Guatemala, but he was no longer around.

And now it is 9:25 pm. My teeth are brushed. My face is washed. I am ready to sleep, and I need it.

constant vigilance

I generally approach my weeks in one of two ways:

1. Blaze on through and get as much done as possible. Stay for rolling in jiu jitsu, work long hours, blog, get laundry done, stop at the grocery store, do it all.
2. Conserve, conserve, conserve. Leave jiu jitsu as soon as class is over, go to bed as quickly as possible, try to keep from getting so little sleep that I cannot bear mornings.

This week is shaping up to be version number 2. 

I fought my way to being on top of most areas of my life in the last few weeks, and now I have one motto: CONSTANT VIGILANCE, lest things should slip back into entropy as things are wont to do. But the first thing I need back is full nights of sleep. Or close to it.

a little creepy

I went to the other branch of the tea place tonight, and it was packed. I would have taken my tea elsewhere, but I was meeting a friend for dinner two blocks away, and the rain, it was cascading upon my head. I found a corner of a couch, but the girl on the other end said someone might have been sitting there. "We can fit three on this couch," she said.

When the former occupant of the couch returned, he was That Guy. 

Oh, you know That Guy. He sits a little too close, so you have to build a barricade of your bags. He sighs loudly, glancing sideways to see if you are paying attention. When you studiously examine your phone and never look up because all you want is a few quiet minutes to think, he starts to shift noticeably, moving the whole couch. When the other girl leaves the other end of the couch open, he shifts a little closer to you, if anything. He can't seem to imagine why you aren't paying attention to him, never mind that he creeps you out a little. The creepiness is partly the act, but more the entitlement.

I dated a guy like this once, minus the creepiness. The last time I saw him, we were at an event with some friends of mine, and he kept singing along with the music, thumping on the table like it was a drum, no matter how many times we asked him to stop because we were trying to think of a song for a trivia question that was not the one that was playing. He was perfectly nice, but he was putting on a show.

"I feel bad for him," one of my friends said, "because I've been that guy, hoping that the girl will see how cool you are."

So have I. So have we all. We all want to be noticed by someone we find interesting. It's just that sometimes, when That Guy sits too close to a stranger and acts like she owes him her attention, it all turns a little creepy.