saturday. it's 6:30 but due to this relatively recent increase of sunshine, it feels hours earlier. Today i participated in a beach sweep down on Boston's south shore, in scituate. Though we did it through Boston Cares, it was sponsored by REI and the Audobon society, we were protecting the habitat of an obscenely cutesy bird with a name to match, it's called something like the piping puffin. or the plumpy piper. Or the Pipsy puffsqueak.
It is so nice sometimes to leave the city. it's terrifically difficult to leave without a car, and though i love the parks and gardens in and around here, driving to where there are highways lined with trees and farmhouses, lakes and marshes feels so healthy. In the warmish weak spring sun, it is like health itself seeping into my skin. (on a sidenote, seth ran at least four red lights today. It appears that in boston, if there is even a glimmer of hope that the light is yellow when you are anywhere near the intersection, then it is ok to keep driving. after the first two times, i stopped bracing myself for a crash.)
i got back to the house at around two and immediately crashed. all that sun and fresh air will apparently take it out of us city kids - seth and jen both said that they were headed to naps too. Then seth and i went to go play basketball for awhile at the park off river street. last week when we played, he ended up mocking me so mercilessly that i refused to talk to him until he bought me flowers. -sometimes i treat seth like a slightly bad boyfriend, i don't know why. i think it's both funny and bizarre; i've never had such a close friend of the opposite sex who i really wasn't involved in. huh. - so we played for awhile until we noticed these two little black girls standing to the side, one was maybe nine, one six or seven. they asked to play with us, and of course, who were we to say no? so we played basketball with these two little girls, both of whom were FAR better basketball players than i am! Seth was really good with them too, patient and encouraging. He should have kids. Must force him to find a nice girl and settle down...he is 35, after all.
so now i am here, offhandedly watching the movie Beautiful. i like minnie driver more and more, due to that show "the riches," i think. after this i shall head to brookline to watch the final four with my florida friends, and a miller lite or three.
Saturday, March 31, 2007
Thursday, March 29, 2007
lost men and foreign lands
the forecast for saturday, though the high is 50 degrees, mentions "abundant sunshine." Abundant Sunshine. Sun, you are so welcomed here. After this week of trial and error and overheard phone conversations, my weekend is shaping up well. Saturday i am going with berkowitz and googler and twiggs (why does everyone have a nickname but me? well, seth does call me powers..which, true to form, is more annoying than not) ; we are headed to Boston's South Shore to do a beach sweep. i am very very excited, i love the beach even on days that are cold and gray. i would probably even love a snow covered beach, but i have not ever seen one of those, and am slightly unsure as to if they exist. and i believe we are having an embroidery party on sunday. for those cutting edge embroidery designs, of course
so one thing i have noticed as i have gotten older is how i am able to view things more objectively. I have a friend, whom i have had for ages, and when i was younger, i was constantly comparing myself to her and coming up short. Comically short. Horribly short. And i felt that this was a failure on my part; if i wasn't as smart, as pretty, as patient as her, well - obviously i was wrong. And it went vice-versa, too... i was taller meant that i was too tall... i was "more artsy" - well, clearly i was not pragmatic enough, i was too demanding, i was too much of a daydreamer. i think you get the drift. But yesterday evening, as i was sitting there quietly on my sofa, too bored to watch tv and too lackadaisical to tidy the disaster that i call the living room, i found myself ruminating on this topic, running scenes and long standing beliefs through my head. It's funny, sometimes, to dwell on our lives. not funny ha-ha, unless you are a stand up comedian (and i even have doubts on how amusing they actually find things), but funny as in odd, as in who woulda thought. It gives me a good deal of peace to believe that we all do the best we can; even more so in the thought that it is up to ourselves to decide how our life should be. As in, what's good for the goose might not be so good for the gander, after all.
maybe it is distance that has given me this gift. maybe taking a step (or 1,000 miles) away from those who shaped me has allowed me to see with clarity, like a person who is farsighted. But if this is the case, how will i hold myself up when i return to them? In one breath, Charleston is a warm cocoon, filled with comfort. The marsh and the southern drawl, bright pinks and aquas and shining silver palm trees, the hot sand of august and the warm brown of summer skin, a miller light next to my beach towel. my family. But in a second breath, it is the place that i chose to leave. It can be stifling; It is filled with people with whom i have a past, not the least of whom are my immediate family. How on earth will i hold this newly-realized sense of satisfaction up when challenged head on? Yes, things have changed, but how much? this, i suppose, is just another litmus test. gaaaa.
so one thing i have noticed as i have gotten older is how i am able to view things more objectively. I have a friend, whom i have had for ages, and when i was younger, i was constantly comparing myself to her and coming up short. Comically short. Horribly short. And i felt that this was a failure on my part; if i wasn't as smart, as pretty, as patient as her, well - obviously i was wrong. And it went vice-versa, too... i was taller meant that i was too tall... i was "more artsy" - well, clearly i was not pragmatic enough, i was too demanding, i was too much of a daydreamer. i think you get the drift. But yesterday evening, as i was sitting there quietly on my sofa, too bored to watch tv and too lackadaisical to tidy the disaster that i call the living room, i found myself ruminating on this topic, running scenes and long standing beliefs through my head. It's funny, sometimes, to dwell on our lives. not funny ha-ha, unless you are a stand up comedian (and i even have doubts on how amusing they actually find things), but funny as in odd, as in who woulda thought. It gives me a good deal of peace to believe that we all do the best we can; even more so in the thought that it is up to ourselves to decide how our life should be. As in, what's good for the goose might not be so good for the gander, after all.
maybe it is distance that has given me this gift. maybe taking a step (or 1,000 miles) away from those who shaped me has allowed me to see with clarity, like a person who is farsighted. But if this is the case, how will i hold myself up when i return to them? In one breath, Charleston is a warm cocoon, filled with comfort. The marsh and the southern drawl, bright pinks and aquas and shining silver palm trees, the hot sand of august and the warm brown of summer skin, a miller light next to my beach towel. my family. But in a second breath, it is the place that i chose to leave. It can be stifling; It is filled with people with whom i have a past, not the least of whom are my immediate family. How on earth will i hold this newly-realized sense of satisfaction up when challenged head on? Yes, things have changed, but how much? this, i suppose, is just another litmus test. gaaaa.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
coffee, tea, or me? (sigh)
so, i've gone and done something silly. i've given up coffee and soda. for those familiar with my beverage habits, this is practically akin to me giving up water. i've got a handful of reasons why i've chosen to do this, but none of them are helping the pounding headache that feels oh so much like several ice picks are jabbing into my brain. nor, alas, is green tea helping all that much.
so part of this is an attempt to detox my poor little body, which is probably half pickled after st. patrick's day. Let's see..nope, i still can't think of this past saturday without getting nauseated. ..let me set the scene for you: St. Patrick's Day. A twenty dollar door charge for the pure privalege at drinking at ...omg, i can't even remember the name of the bar. but it's right by faneuil hall, of course, and by 1:30 on that ill -fated saturday, it had a line of about thirty people - a short wait compared to the other bars that we passed on the way in. Beer was cheap. and it kept being purchased for me and placed in my hand, rendering it free. Irish car bombs were handed out, cigarettes were smoked during (way too many) trips outdoors, green shots were passed around. i don't recall when i started seeing double, but i do remember about the time when i stopped thinking that it was odd. i think R's boyfriend accidentally got into a pushing fight with someone, because we got kicked out. after that, we all trooped over to another bar, another beer was placed in my hand, i took a sip and was. done. done done done.
so i somehow got myself home. it was no later that six thirty pm. i was in bed by 8:30, and up and puking by midnight. that pretty much summed up the next twelve hours....drink a sip of water, fall asleep, wake up and puke. it wasn't until 2 pm on sunday that i could swallow water without immediately ....rejecting it.
so. nuff said. two weeks off drinking. no coffee. drinking lots of healthy/ detoxifying teas. battling headache of doom. cursing latent irish genes. swallowing vitamins by the dozen. repeatedly patting down bangs and surreptiously peering into the hallway for a glimpse of oh so cute engineer.
that's it.
so part of this is an attempt to detox my poor little body, which is probably half pickled after st. patrick's day. Let's see..nope, i still can't think of this past saturday without getting nauseated. ..let me set the scene for you: St. Patrick's Day. A twenty dollar door charge for the pure privalege at drinking at ...omg, i can't even remember the name of the bar. but it's right by faneuil hall, of course, and by 1:30 on that ill -fated saturday, it had a line of about thirty people - a short wait compared to the other bars that we passed on the way in. Beer was cheap. and it kept being purchased for me and placed in my hand, rendering it free. Irish car bombs were handed out, cigarettes were smoked during (way too many) trips outdoors, green shots were passed around. i don't recall when i started seeing double, but i do remember about the time when i stopped thinking that it was odd. i think R's boyfriend accidentally got into a pushing fight with someone, because we got kicked out. after that, we all trooped over to another bar, another beer was placed in my hand, i took a sip and was. done. done done done.
so i somehow got myself home. it was no later that six thirty pm. i was in bed by 8:30, and up and puking by midnight. that pretty much summed up the next twelve hours....drink a sip of water, fall asleep, wake up and puke. it wasn't until 2 pm on sunday that i could swallow water without immediately ....rejecting it.
so. nuff said. two weeks off drinking. no coffee. drinking lots of healthy/ detoxifying teas. battling headache of doom. cursing latent irish genes. swallowing vitamins by the dozen. repeatedly patting down bangs and surreptiously peering into the hallway for a glimpse of oh so cute engineer.
that's it.
Thursday, March 08, 2007
mama llama
hooray for thursday! i am taking tomorrow off, so it is a pretend friday.
let's see.
1. i did that counting thing to fall asleep last night, and i don't think i made it out of the eighties. It's like the most amazing sleep switch EVER. like this "100. 97. 94. 91. 8.......snoooze"
2. my mom will be here within two hours! nervous/excited/wary. she's meeting me at the office so i can give her a tour (hmmm...should i tidy my desk? probably not).
3. So, i made homemade yogurt on sunday. It turned out a little watery but crazy delicious. So i strained it overnight (cheesecloth in colander, dump the yogurt in, let the excess water drain off) and i ate the resultant yogurt for breakfast with raspberries and honey. Oh. My. God. it was the fricken breakfast of the gods. it tasted just like that greek yogurt Fage, but the cost was way better. and i made it!
4. i think i have a cold. el sucko.
let's see.
1. i did that counting thing to fall asleep last night, and i don't think i made it out of the eighties. It's like the most amazing sleep switch EVER. like this "100. 97. 94. 91. 8.......snoooze"
2. my mom will be here within two hours! nervous/excited/wary. she's meeting me at the office so i can give her a tour (hmmm...should i tidy my desk? probably not).
3. So, i made homemade yogurt on sunday. It turned out a little watery but crazy delicious. So i strained it overnight (cheesecloth in colander, dump the yogurt in, let the excess water drain off) and i ate the resultant yogurt for breakfast with raspberries and honey. Oh. My. God. it was the fricken breakfast of the gods. it tasted just like that greek yogurt Fage, but the cost was way better. and i made it!
4. i think i have a cold. el sucko.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
this one might be nothing
Last night was the first time in two days that i actually got a full night's sleep. and damn, it feels good! True, the sleep was surely helped by two tylenol PM with a red wine chaser, but really sometimes you just gotta help a body out. Also, i started this counting exercise that i found on the interwebs while researching what to do when YOU JUST REALLY CANNOT SLEEP FOR THE LIFE OF YOU OH GOD. It consists of counting down from one hundred by threes. or fours. it works really well. last night i used it twice and the farthest i got was the seventies.
There is a BIG preservation conference starting today and going through the weekend; but i can't go because it costs one hundred gazillion dollars to go to any of the lectures (really, it runs about $100 per lecture).
Also, the weather here has misplaced some degrees. It doesn't seem to have any. In fact, on the national weather this morning, they had the words "frozen tundra" over New England. it made me laugh a little..until i lost feeling in my legs.
There is a BIG preservation conference starting today and going through the weekend; but i can't go because it costs one hundred gazillion dollars to go to any of the lectures (really, it runs about $100 per lecture).
Also, the weather here has misplaced some degrees. It doesn't seem to have any. In fact, on the national weather this morning, they had the words "frozen tundra" over New England. it made me laugh a little..until i lost feeling in my legs.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
how does this happen?
i've been having these dreadful nightmares lately, that keep me up lots of the night. Two nights ago i dreamt about looking out my living room window, across the way, as a seemingly faceless man (but with eyes) stared back at me. It was incredibly frightnening, in that way that nonsensical dreams can be. Last night i was so, so tired, and worried that i was getting sick, so i went to sleep around ten pm. I immediately had a terrible dream : i was in my kitchen, and a box of cereal had fallen on a lit candle and had caught on fire. I was on the telephone with my mother, and I asked her to hold on while i grabbed the flaming box. The fire immediately spread to my pant leg, and started to snake its way up my body while i stood there, unable to move or pull away. I called out for help and was told to "hold on a minute." so i watched, horrified, as the fire engulfed my body. I remember thinking "it's too late, i'm going to actually die now" and also, that it was surprising that the fire didn't hurt.
I woke up at this point, gasping for air, and looked at the clock. it was midnight on the dot. so, immediately, my mind ran wild with this, as i started to think of all the terrible things that could happen right then. Sometimes i seriously can't be left alone with my thoughts. after an hour of reading (finished my book, which i wanted to do by today anyway), i went back to a kind of shiftless sleep. i woke up again at two, and spent an hour or so completely freaking out. At this point (after all that!) remembered that i had some xanax in the living room, on my desk. so i go out there, and start to glance out the window, when i remembered the previous night's dream of the faceless man! UGH. and to top it off, i couldn't find the xanax. So today is another red-eyed, sleepy, slow day.
i blame the fire dream on a documentary i saw on sunday, while i was in full-on hangover mode. It was basically interviews with a handful of young russian children who had survived the massacre in Breslan, in september '04. It was a terrorist attack on an elementary school that lasted three days and killed more than 350 people. the documentary was riveting and heart breaking; more than once i started shamelessly sobbing. But the point i was trying to bring up is that these children, these babies really, were describing just unspeakable acts...grenades setting people on fire... two children described the burning people as kind of dancing, melting.
How does this happen? in this day and age, how does stuff like that happen? and how can i live such a nice life when this is happening? I probably sound like a petulant teenager, but goddamn it it isn't fair. we are so blessed in this country, we are we are.
I woke up at this point, gasping for air, and looked at the clock. it was midnight on the dot. so, immediately, my mind ran wild with this, as i started to think of all the terrible things that could happen right then. Sometimes i seriously can't be left alone with my thoughts. after an hour of reading (finished my book, which i wanted to do by today anyway), i went back to a kind of shiftless sleep. i woke up again at two, and spent an hour or so completely freaking out. At this point (after all that!) remembered that i had some xanax in the living room, on my desk. so i go out there, and start to glance out the window, when i remembered the previous night's dream of the faceless man! UGH. and to top it off, i couldn't find the xanax. So today is another red-eyed, sleepy, slow day.
i blame the fire dream on a documentary i saw on sunday, while i was in full-on hangover mode. It was basically interviews with a handful of young russian children who had survived the massacre in Breslan, in september '04. It was a terrorist attack on an elementary school that lasted three days and killed more than 350 people. the documentary was riveting and heart breaking; more than once i started shamelessly sobbing. But the point i was trying to bring up is that these children, these babies really, were describing just unspeakable acts...grenades setting people on fire... two children described the burning people as kind of dancing, melting.
How does this happen? in this day and age, how does stuff like that happen? and how can i live such a nice life when this is happening? I probably sound like a petulant teenager, but goddamn it it isn't fair. we are so blessed in this country, we are we are.
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