Monthly Archives: November 2011

a visit

I took advantage of a trip to New York for work to do a little visit to the homestead in Hunterdon County, New Jersey.  Yeah, New Jersey.  Armpits, assholes and shopping malls.

Except my neck of the woods there is more like this:

20111101-081547.jpg

And the little towns are full of old Victorian homes, like this:

20111101-081535.jpg

You probably heard that it freakishly snowed.  It did.

20111101-081600.jpg

But it got melty pretty quickly and I got a bit of treatment for my autumn withdrawal.

20111101-081626.jpg

I got to see my family.  This is one of my family type persons:

20111101-081642.jpg

Spending time with my family is a mixed bag.  The house is seriously getting borderline Hoarders.  There is constant bickering and swiping and seemingly purposeful pushing of buttons.  They don’t typically spend quality time together, so there’s a pervasive awkwardness of people making an effort to be there, which they’re doing for my benefit.
So, it’s hard.  And I do a crap job of being patient and kind and understanding.  Instead, I feel angry and frustrated and just want to withdraw into a nap or a novel.
Much like my failed intentions to workout while travelling, I had visions of cooking lovely wholesome meals that we’d enjoy together.  But the kitchen’s too gross for me to deal and no one seems interested and something about being there saps out my pep.  Instead, we got pizza and watched movies.

I was ready to go back home to my small tidy apartment and my wonderful David, and was reminded of why I’m not eager to go more often.  And yet.  And yet.
It still breaks my heart to leave, every time.

1 Comment

Filed under Family, Friends and other Humans

Fat Tuesday

Woah.  I almost missed my posting window for today.  I have had quite the day of travel, getting from my parents’ house in NJ to JFK for a flight back to San Fran and then home to Oakland.  I did have wireless on the plane and I had grand plans for much bloggery endeavors, but WordPress was farting out on me.  And then I got very busy watching The Walking Dead on my Netflix Instant Queue, which was non-farty (mostly) on the airplane internets.

Anyway.

I’ve been away from home for a week.  I had some grand plans for maintaining a healthy lifestyle on this trip.

  • I checked out the gym at my hotel in the city
  • I packed 4 sets of workout wear
  • I scouted out the locations of the Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s closest to my hotel and planned out some ideas for foods that I could get for breakfasts and lunches
  • I made a big batch of granola bars and packed those up to come along
  • I devised a schedule for working out in the mornings
There was much plotting and anticipating and optimising about how successfully I was going to manage this.
Duh.
You know what’s coming.
I totally failed.
Working a tradeshow was exhausting.  Then going out afterwards to see friends from high school and college (while totally worth it) was also exhausting.  Getting boozy enough to be hungover in the morning didn’t help.
Then there was the pizza.  My brother wanted me to get pizza, since we don’t have proper pizza in California.  The next day, my dad, who didn’t know that there’d been a sibling pizza the night before, brought home 3 more pies for the same reason.  Meg needs pizza when she comes home to New Jersey!  It’s a royal decree.
And let’s not make it sound like I can pin this on my family, because not a one of them suggested I needed to doggedly pursue pizza connoisseurship with the level of zeal that I did.
Suffice to say, I did not get on the scale this morning.
Maybe next week.  And in the mean time, I think I need an IV of broccoli.
Carry on.

1 Comment

Filed under Fat Tuesday