March 3, 2010 · 3:50 pm

a less good day

It’s a bit of a less good day today.  But I did take a photograph for the first time in a long time.  Appropriately, I think this photograph feels like today should feel.
I pass this little Japanese maple on my street on the way to work every day.  Lately, in the incessant rain, the tree has been dotted with a thousand little droplets of rain that catch the 7 am light in this gorgeous pearly way.  I wanted to capture that – all the little drops together – but this is what came out instead.

I got another job rejection today.  It wasn’t a big deal or anything I was especially invested in.  But it seemed like a really good possibility.  And I couldn’t help thinking that this could be the one.  This could make it all better.  I know I shouldn’t get my hopes up; it’s too hard to be crushed over and over.  I just can’t help it.  I want the bad part to be over so, so badly.

Suffice it to say, I didn’t really like getting that news.  Especially since it came after I had only had the screening phone call with the HR lady that I thought had gone pretty well.  A phone call that my friend Laura agreed with me was an easy experience was was only in place to confirm that “you have a pulse.”

So there’s that.  And it’s Wednesday and it feels like there are still years to go before I don’t have to sit here and wait for someone who needs me to tell them that the thing they’re looking?  That thing they can’t find any mention of on our website?  Yeah.  It’s not there cause we don’t do it.  But let me know if I can answer any other questions at all.  Happy to help.  Byeeeee.

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March 2, 2010 · 11:04 am

profound conversations

We’ve just turned off the lights, and because he is a boy, David has fallen asleep almost instantaneously.  Because I am me, I am awake and thinking about completely random stuff.  Last night, I was remembering a story that David told me about a kid from his school who once snobbishly made some disparaging opine about those who overcook their pasta.

“David?”

“Mrphmmmm?”

“What did that kid in your school say about al dente pasta?”

“He said that people who cook their pasta more than al dente, he hates them.”

“He hates them?”

“Yes.  Well.  Something like that.”

Huh.  Well that wasn’t as interesting as I was imagining it might be.  This story that I was hoping to play out in my head a bit more has fallen rather flat.  Because that story about the pasta snob really should have been awesomely compelling.
But, I’m still awake.  Maybe I can get David to tell me something else interesting.

“What sort of people do you hate?”

“Me?  I don’t hate anyone.”

I have a long think about who the David might hate.  Surely there must be some group of people who incites his ire.

“What about bad mergers?  Don’t you hate them?”

“Yes, I hate mergerers.”

Did he just say “mergerers?”  Mergerers?  What the hell is a mergerer?

“No, not murderers!  Mergers!  Bad mergers!”

“People who won’t merge in lanes?  They annoy me,” he says.

“But you don’t hate them?”

“No.”

“Ok, but wait a minute.”

“What?”

“You hate murderers then?”

“I just don’t like them.”

And then I get the giggles.  Possibly David wishes that I would just be quiet.

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March 1, 2010 · 10:53 am

$19,756.22

It’s another first of the month, and I’m down $946.22 from the last one.  Still not quite a whole thousand less, but it’s pretty darned good, I’d say.

And!

It’s less than 20K!  Just like breaking a decade or a century in weight loss, it feels pretty good to get that number to one that starts with a 1 instead of a 2.

It feels do-able.  I can do this!  Just paying attention and facing the problem seems to have helped a lot.  I know it’s only been 2 months of concerted effort and is far too soon to be congratulating myself much… not to mention that it’s still a nauseating amount of debt… but still.

I did have a few transgressions this month:

  • There was the matter of a small fit of Anthropologie business.  I’m suffering a bit from excessive fatness and the not-fitting-ness of all of my clothes and succumbed to the pleasures of buying a few things that actually fit.
  • There was also a goodly amount of going out.  But this is one that I think I ought to just do a better job of budgeting for.  I can keep the restaurant and bar expenses down to almost nothing if I’m hermitting and not going out at all and while it does feel awfully sanctimonious to minimize that expense, I kind of think it’s necessary.  Hermitting is not something I can mentally afford to keep up.

Overall, I am feeling pleezed!  It’s a funny secret private pleased.  I can’t really go around squealing that I am just under twenty thousand dollars in debt and expect anyone else to see it as a “yay!”  But that’s quite alright.  I will just keep this little feather in my own cap.

Until next month….

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February 28, 2010 · 3:12 pm

upgrades

David woke up yesterday and decided that it was time for some shopping and that it was high time we got a new mattress and that he had himself a wii.

We’ve been sleeping on my mattress, the one that Jessica and I bought 10 years ago when we’d just moved to California.  There was a plan for getting beds:
1.  Sleep on the floor, with mats and blankets.  Save up!
2.  Buy one mattress and sleep together.  Continue with the saving.
3.  Buy a second mattress.
4.  Get box springs and frames.
After 3 nights of sleeping on the floor in our new apartment, we caved  and abandoned the plan completely.  We went into Oakland Chinatown and bought the cheapest mattresses we could find.  They were an atrocious turquoise floral pattern and generally about as crappy as they come at $100 each.  But that’s the bed I had, and I never got around to having a spare gabillion dollars to have a new one.

It’s been 10 years and as bad as the bed is, it’s my favorite place.  I don’t think there’s anything finer than waking up on a weekend morning and just lingering in this warm place with a drowsy boy, to talk and be close to one another.

It’s the same bedroom and the same headboard.  It’s just a new mattress.  But this one is our mattress.  It’s an investment in our nest of together.  As much as I’m looking forward to some better nights’ sleep, I’m more glad to be a part of this relationship and all of the new things we’ll do together.  This is the bed I made, and I can’t wait to sleep in it.

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February 26, 2010 · 12:29 pm

twenty months

photograph by virginia kuo

Twenty months ago today, I met my David, and I can’t believe that it’s still a relationship that I can measure in months.  It feels like he’s been my person for my whole life.

It also feels like I won the lottery, so it doesn’t much matter if that happened 20 months ago, or 20 years ago, or yesterday.  I seriously got the best one.

But just so you don’t get jealous, he does gurgle a lot.

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February 25, 2010 · 3:27 pm

This post will not have any accompanying photograph

While airport security is definitely a pain in the tuchis, I usually get through it without much hassle.  I take care to remove any jacket or sweater before it’s my turn to put stuff in those plastic bins.  I don’t wear shoes that have to be tied.  I pay attention.  And mostly I try to behave like I’ve got an iota of sense in my noggin.  Thus, it is fine.

But once.

I set off the beeper.  I have no idea why.  The lady upon whom the honor of waving a sensor wand thing about my person was bestowed said that sometimes the underwire of “big girls” can set them off.  Never happened before, but fine.  I will concede the huge knockers point.

Then she made me sit down and she used her hands to feel the pant legs around my ankles and all over my feet.

All suspicious eyes she says “Whatcha got in your socks there?”

“In my socks where?  Just feet!  That’s all I have in there.”

“No, what’s on the bottom of your feet?”

“Oh” I say, and to hide my shame I make a joke.  “Those are just my cloven hoofs.”

“WHAT?!”

Ok fine.  Make me admit it.  Out loud.  While David is sniggering at me.

“Those are my gross foot callouses.”  Sigh.  “Sorry.”

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February 23, 2010 · 2:13 pm

how i became a paparazzi

red headed guy

On the way home from work yesterday, I spied a guy with the most wonderful shade of red hair.  His trousers were a little too snug in the hip and thigh area, and it seemed from my vantage that his eyeglasses were unrecommended.  I quickly tucked away judgment of his doofus hipster persona into my pocket of hidden snark, because Hark! Fantastic fiery hair.

This is the hair color I would love to have!

If only my stylist would stop making my hair magenta!  THEN!  Then I could be gorgeous and content and all the little puppies would follow me around, but never pee on my rugs.

There is churning and the grinding of gears in my noggin.  A brilliant idea surfaces.

I shall take his picture!  With my camera phone!  It will be perfect!  I will have this picture of the best color red safely tucked away in my phone and I can show it to my stylist!  Never again will I have to go searching through magazines to find my holy grail of example color.  Oh, my, the cleverness of me.

So I skittered up quickly until I was walking just behind Mr Red Head.  And I foolishly darted after him across the street, against a red light, whipping out my phone.  I got the phone feature turned on and was right behind him ready to snag the shot, when I hit the button and

CUH-CLICK!

My phone makes this horrible, loud picture taking noise, right in the nape of this guy’s neck.  The other dude he’s talking to probably saw what I was up to and is just telling Mr Red Head that he has a stalker.  I wouldn’t know, because I totally ran away.

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February 12, 2010 · 2:18 pm

The opposite of Stuart Smalley

This bit of a post from Chicken & Cheese just flew out from my computer screen and bit me.  Right on the nose.

But you know what? I’m going to channel my inner Stuart Smalley and tell you that yes,
goddamnit, I am good enough. I have stories inside me — otherwise why would you keep
coming here?

That lady’s validation for being good enough, for having stories is that people go to her blog and they read it.  People like me.

But nobody comes to my blog.  Not even my actual real life friends, let alone imaginary internet ether friends.  Which means that I’m not good enough. My stories aren’t that interesting.  Or that my writing is kind of crap.  Or maybe that I don’t sit down to craft a small parable of charm and sage insight.  Rather, I ramble away to the tune of loon and leave it at that.

As I struggle to figure out who I’m supposed to be and where I’m supposed to go…  take away the “supposed to” even.  So not “what am I supposed to be doing?”  I can’t even answer “what do I want to do?”  Part of that, certainly, is to do with the belief that I’m not good enough.  I can’t be a writer.  I’m not good enough.  Or, I can’t be a writer.  I’m too lazy.  Coincidentally, that’s also why I couldn’t be a jewelry maker or a photographer or a baker.

I try to take deep calming breaths and accept that some people are ordinary.  Not everyone can have an amazing career.  Lazy people, in particular, are not likely to be exceptional.  But I am still harboring hopes that a magic drop of miracle juice will fall on me, so that I can be amazing, too.

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February 11, 2010 · 3:56 pm

Paying the $40 monthly fees counts for something?

I
joined a new gym.  In January.  And I have not gone there once.  Not a single time.  I just can’t find a groove for it.  And really, I can’t even find the gumption to even want to find that groove.

My work clock-in time is usually around 8 am.  As early as 7:40, 7:45 most days.  If I get in early enough, then there are still usually enough tickets that I can grab a bunch to do.  If I don’t get this little morning collection, then maybe I find one or two tickets here and there throughout the day, and I probably do a sum total of 10.  And this is how I end up being yelled at for doing shit at my job.  Because I have done shit.  But if I come in early, grab 15, maybe 20 tickets, and then cobble together another 5 to 10 the rest of the day, then I can sneak under the radar as having accomplished a bit of something.

Point being, early morning has become earlier than it used to be and I’m just not sure I can fit in a work out and still get into the office at 7:45.

And after work?  I have SUCH good intentions for after work.  Really.  But it’s 3:52 pm right now.  All I want to do is close my eyes on the couch in my apartment and get under a blanket.  I don’t want to do anything right now.  Not socialize.  Not cook dinner.  I don’t even want to walk the 3/4th of a mile to the bus terminal to get home.  I just want complete and utter collapse.  Working out at the gym, as far as I can tell, is too far away from “complete and utter collapse” and consequently, I just don’t want to do it.

Those are my excuses about why I’m not going to the gym.  Because I’m stubborn and lazy and generally tired.  Sooooo…. so far, the new gym plan has not been working out so great.  Oh, Margaret.  What am I going to do with you?

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February 5, 2010 · 1:30 pm

Grumpy love

MH Jeeves - Grumpy Love

I feel a bit like this… can’t focus on the wonderful thing I have around me, because I’m surrounding myself with a field of grump.  So thankful for my wonderful David, and sorry that I can’t get myself to snap out of the funk.  I do know that it’s there, though… I can see those floating hearts all around.

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