State of the Onion

Thursday was my birthday. I'm 28. The last several years I've been having trouble remembering how old I am; each birthday I'm not sure if it's that birthday or the next one. This year, I know I'm 28. It means very little, but it's comforting.

I'm still feeling like crap a lot. Still having good days, too. Good parts of days, bad parts of days. For awhile I was working and sleeping like a normal person, up and down with the sun and churning out fairly regular accomplishments without much regulation. Then it thunderstormed and I slept 15 hours and haven't gotten back on track since.

Today hurts like it should rain again. I didn't expect to spend much time with my friends on my Thursday of a birthday, but another weekend alone in the dark and quiet sucks. I feel so out of touch, seeing the people I'm closest to feels like dropping in on the lives of vague acquaintances.

Well fuck now I'm sulky teary. Maybe letting it rain from my eyeballs will relieve some of the pressure I can't control in the greater atmosphere.

Happy Birthday Neighbor Guy, Deleted

I wrote a 1, 712 word post about today. I went to Cambodian New Year and three garage sales with Neighbor Guy. We had fun. Writing about it was a word-purge that took an hour or two. Minutes after I posted it, Neighbor Guy called. Drunk. And of the many things he said, the only one I can repeat is that he didn't want me telling anyone about anything he said today.

I'm not a journalist, I don't use real names, but there are people who know or will  meet Neighbor Guy who also read this blog, and I would feel guilty if I didn't remove the post.

The only safe paragraph:

Cambodian New Year was too big an event for the temple itself, so it was held at the nearby city college. We walked in to parents with young kids and fussy babies out in the hallway; huge tables filled with Styrofoam bowls of noodles and curries and desserts and things don't translate; and monotone call-and-response chanting over a microphone. The two monks wrapped in orange sat on the raised platform with the whole room facing them, but I saw they didn't have the microphones. Two of the genuflectors at the front, dressed in white and posturing a bit higher on their knees, lead the chants.

Maybe someday things will  change and I'll post the rest.

Double-Time

I lied to Possible Boy about how far in advance I knew about the pumpkin carving last night. Not just him and not flat-out lied, but I came to the bar playing "What is this pumpkin carving?" even though it showed up on my Facebook events days ago and I'd been looking forward to it all week. Why did I blur this line? To downplay my exhuberance.
"Yippy skippy! Pumpkin carving is here at last!" Truer to my feelings, but far less socially acceptable. I imagine extremely prejudiced people go through similar double-takes before they speak; "I hate you because you're foreign" becomes "Stop taking jobs from hard-working 'Americans.'"

Tonight I am going to the symphony. With Possible Boy. I won tickets. I want it to be a date. I asked him in a date-like manner but last night I saw him and freaked out and was all panicy on the inside so I acted all casual and just friendsy on the outside. And he likes this OTHER girl, other than Other Girl, but he'll keep looking around the universe unless I make myself clear. Asking him to the symphony where it's just him and me and a concert was a big step for me, but I hide this shit and wig out a lot instead of just being open and honest and saying "This is how I feel." Instead I say weird things that fall out of my face.

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarg!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BIRDIE!!

Four Chord Progression

At my parents' house in the room that was my sister's growing up. My mom's birthday is tomorrow and my sister is coming in from Portland (Oregon) to surprise her. I'm here on the pretense that it just worked out and this way I can spend as much of my mom's birthday with her as possible. Birthdays and Mother's Day are very important to my mother. The world centers around you on your special day. She and my father both made sure to change the planets gravitational rotation for us growing up, and I see now how much she expects the same in return. So long as it stays fun and not obligatory...

I told my parents about my possible temporary career as an antiques buyer. I was more emotionally ready than I thought to deal with the responses I knew they'd have: trying to be encouraging but wary as always and full of the advice that they clearly know best not just generally about the universe but the specifics of things with which they have no experience. I feel like a total know-it-all ass when I'm with my friends, but then I get back with my family and see how far I've come and my outlook is much more hopeful.

I have trouble not sounding/being bitter when I'm with my family. I've gotten a million times better about a million things, resent the world so much less, finally don't expect perfection or see things so good and bad, black and white...but that gnarled knotty beast of misery and unhappiness still wisps up when I'm around them. It used to be one giant solid tangled mess from my stomach up through my skull, but I've worked through a lot of it. Maybe even most of it. Then I'm back here and I feel the coils. I can't apply everything I'm becoming without wanting to punch one parent or the other. Progress is progress..

Dog is whining because I won't go with him to sniff every corner of the house. Sorry dog.

Compressing

Trying to decompress a bit after many days in a row of crazy.

Starting last Tuesday:

• RCN stood me up and I got stuck home all day while developer's contractor guys switched my incongruous sink for happy-matches-the-rest-of-the-condo sink.
• crashed at NBF's house

Wednesday:

• happy 27th birthday to me!
  
• crawled back home by 7:45 AM so contractor people could come put granite on sink
• good RCN person came after I did much yelling at every RCN person possible
• therapy
• psychiatrist
• picked up NBF and dragged him around for rest of day because it's my birthday, dammit
  
• rented cargo van
• drove to Wheaton to pick up 1920s art deco table and chairs I found on Craigslist
• tried to drink a shmancy beer to celebrate but fell asleep after a few sips and was out for the night by 11 PM

Thursday:

• drove (still in cargo van) to O'Hare to pick up NBF's dad
• waited in cell phone lot while NBF's dad got his luggage
• discovered NBF's dad was actually at Midway.
• drove downtown to meet NBF's dad half-way from Midway to us
• NBF, his dad and I carried 1920s art deco table and chairs from van into condo
• picked up futon and big squishy armchair with ottoman and brought them to condo from NBF's house
• stared stupidly while NBF and his dad carried furniture up stairs
• lunch!
• drove myself in cargo van to Container Store to pick up Elfa closet components for awesome office closet that, once installed, will be the greatest thing in my life
• carried 90% of heavy closet crap up to condo all by myself when NBF and his father appeared (NBF left his cell phone and keys in the van when we parted ways for the afternoon...oops) and they helped with the last bit before I had to run off to return cargo van before Enterprise closed.
• Filled van gas tank and returned van. Flirted with fabulous boy at Enterprise place. Wondered why boy was working at Enterprise.
• Picked own car back up. Filled it with gas, washed its exterior, had 70-year-old car wash operator tell me I'm a beautiful woman and my husband should spoil me and they'll spoil me at the car wash whenever I come back, spent an hour cleaning out car's interior down to my leather wipes so it would be presentable for driving NBF's parents either that night or the next morning
• Shower. Nap.
• Back to O'Hare. Birdie's flight came in after 11.
  
• IHOP for pancakes.
• Sleep like dead people

Friday:

• Coffee with NBF's dad and Birdie at coffee shop across the street until NBF called to say he was at my doorstep, so he joined us having finished his last paper minutes before
  
• Shower and get pretty for graduation. Original pretty sun dress had to be scrapped for layered wear thanks to Chicago refusing warm weather on May 17.
• While NBF and Birdie went straight to the graduation, NBF's dad and I drove back to O'Hare to pick up NBF's mom (NBF's parents, being divorced, hadn't seen eachother in five years. Weeee!).
• Turned around to go get tickets from NBF.
• Turned back around towards O'Hare.
• Rain
• Met up with NBF's mom at the O'Hare Enterprise, which is not near the main stretch of other rental car companies and required my driving back up a one-way stretch on the Avis car return and doing several U-turns before following the Enterprise shuttle into a parking lot behind a hotel
• NBF's mom wanted NBF's dad to drive, which was the whole reason we had to go to the airport even though she was getting a rental car. Then the two of them were going to follow me since I knew where I was going. I also printed up directions for myself and them just in case. They followed closely until the very end when we had to start making turns, at which point they decided to pass me. In the end they followed the directions, which turned out to be slightly wrong, I had them stop in a parking lot, went and found them, and eventually led them into the correct parking lot. We were 15 minutes late and shouldn't have been allowed to sit in the seats Birdie texted me that she saved us, but the woman watching the door we went in was nice and we just spent 15 fewer minutes sitting through boring crap.

So NBF graduated law school and moved back East. No more NBF. Pretty devastated. Plus side: finally being forced to make new friends, leave my cave, etc. Negative side: no more NBF around to satisfy my social urges when I'm not up to doing anything beyond waddling my ass eight blocks down the way and curling up around somebody else's dog.

Birdie is super-swell. Some of our mutual college friends got married and made babies and live in the Midwest, with a pair in Champaign, IL and another in Bloomington, IN. Despite my reluctance towards long car trips (my life-long motion sickness has been worse and more migrainey in the last few years...bullshit asshit faceshit since it wasn't so long ago I did northern Ohio to Key West and back in a weekend) Birdie talked me into meeting the babies and their parents in Indianapolis and then following the Bloomington set home for the night.
So. Much. Fun.
We met up at the Children's Museum of Indianapolis which was awesome. We spent the entire time in two of the exhibits because our friends' one- and barely-two-year-olds couldn't get enough of the dinosaurs and then played themselves silly in the Playscape.
Our Bloomington-based friends' baby boy fell in love with me the moment he saw me. He wanted to show me everything and hold my hand and have me pick him up a lot. Apparently he never does this, not even with his mom's sister, and I'm not that well versed in the art of very small children, so I felt like the most special person in the universe. Both of the kids are completely awesome and gorgeous and all four parents are just so good. They don't let the kids set things on fire or anything, but they're totally cool about letting them explore and not freaking out if they fall or eat their noodles off the floor. I took a bazillion pictures (on my Flickr and Facebook if you know me in reality) and am uploading them right now. There's also a number of pictures on other people's cameras of me dressed as a turtle, palaeontologist, and bee thanks to the child-sized costumes into which I fit, provided by the museum.

My condo is now just me and my dog and the mess from my house guests that I feel strangely compelled to clean. When my apartments were messy they felt right. When my condo is messy it feels wrong. My apartments were nests. My condo is pretty. It is warm and soft because it is pretty, not because it gets filled with crap.

Piece of story I conveniently left out: Friday night. Birdie and I were going to go to the party of a completely different friend of mine, but he lives 45 minutes away by car and we were exhausted and ended up at NBF's friends' condo a block from my condo. NBF's friend is a very attractive boy but he has all kinds of crazy and baggage and story I know about so while jumping him has always been a bit tempting it's also a bit out of the question. Well, said friend has a brother. His brother was in town for graduation. His brother (henceforth known as Beetle) is also very attractive. We played Rock Band, partook of some substances, and made out to the first half of Team America before slinking off to a more private setting for fun and mutual body appreciation. I'm amazed at the difference between boys who know what they're doing and boys who don't. Boys who understand that girls also want to have fun and are not just there to please boys. I'm amazed how gratifying a compliment is when I know it's genuine. How powerful and awesome I can feel. And how much fun it can be on such a non-emotional level. That's another amazing difference: emotional versus unemotional Boy ravaging. The kiss seems less urgent, the touch itself has a different burn. It tingles and pulls from a different place. I still haven't had emotional sex, and as a result, part of me still feels like a virgin. The act may be the same, but even a kiss that means something and one that doesn't are such completely different beasts it's hard to think of them as the same thing. I wonder if and when the person on the other end can tell. One kiss is acted and thought out and just a prelude and a push below. The other I want to hold and devour. Does the kiss recipient know? I've heard such things about the difference in sex. I'd like to see for myself, but I suppose that requires significant emotional attachment to a Boy. Am I really ready for such things?

Today was my decompression day. Tomorrow I have to get back to reality. Terrifying.

Growing Up

My 26th birthday is tomorrow. I need to wake up, make calls re: my car accident last week and my health insurance, then my mom and my sister are taking me to lunch. In the evening I'm picking up NBF at the airport. Maybe I'll make him watch a me movie while we eat take-out Indian food. My presents this year are mainly furniture. I put together the first big Ikea piece tonight and am kovered in krazy glue I keep picking off my fingers.
I remember when birthdays stopped meaning toys. I remember when they stopped meaning you were the center of the universe and everybody treated you like a princess. Those felt much more tragic. This is more of a change than a loss. I asked for furniture. I'm excited about my furniture. There are grown-up things I find terribly annoying, but I want to be a silly grown-up, not a silly child. Does that make sense?

Yes, it's been awhile. Yes, I should explain the truck that rammed into me last Tuesday and all sorts of other things, but not now. I'm too out of it.

a weekend of fun and much-betterness

Birdie and her sister (Batty? jury's still out on codenaming her, but I think she might appreciate that one) came and went and fun was had despite Birdie's being throat diseased and me battling what I can only hope are the last little sputterings of this motherfuckingmigraine. Batty(?) brought me Percocets, which helped immensely. I guess regular codeine didn't do the trick but oxycodone is enough different/stronger to make a difference. I was out! I was free! I was me again! Yaaaaaay!
We ate soup at the Soup Box (I love that place and it made sense for Birdie) and then stopped by SUC's sushi restaurant but were too full of soup to eat there so he and Ex-Boss Lady joined us for drinks (Birdie and I didn't drink due to our respective ailments, but still) and I hadn't seen them in forever and I forgot how much I like SUC. Then NBF went to bed and we womenfolk went to see Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind (30 plays in 60 minutes), which I went to a bunch when I was 18 and hadn't since. It was very fun and good and they only made it through 27 3/4 of the plays. We went to the Museum of Contemporary Art and I'd forgotten to take my Effexor and then there were bright spirals and flashing lights and all my pre-migraine shit went crazy and I ended up hanging out in the park across the street where it was cool and quieter. Drugs (both illicit and licit) and a 45 minute nap fixed that before dinner. NBF turned 29 and my cousinses and Batty and NBF's high school friend and her husband joined us and we ate delicious Indian food. Then (sans-cousinses) we went to Green Mill for the last set of a group that would have been better without the flute. Then today was low-key and we took a delicious group nap and my car is inexplicably dead and I no longer have motor club (apparently the kick you out of your parents' account when you turn 25 and I just found that out in the last month and I haven't done anything about it yet) and my awesome last year's Hannukah present internal cigarette lighter jumper thing doesn't come pre-charged and I didn't know this until we opened it up and tried to use it. Moral of the story: Birdie and Batty had to take a cab to the airport because otherwise it takes a good hour and a half by public transportation and they didn't have time. Blech. I passed out again on NBF's bed while he worked on his paper, we ate leftover Indian food, and I waddled home after 5 and fell back asleep by 6. My dog, having not been out since around 10 this morning, woke me at midnight (I think he was entitled) and we walked up and down the block once and then I wrote this and now I go back to bed. I'm thinking/hoping tomorrow I will be able to go back to school, which will be super-fun trying to figure out what of the semester is still salvagable and exactly what I need to do to save it. Still, better than the migraine. Death to migraine. Love to Birdie. Back to sleeeeep now.

onward and upward

Thank you to everyone who sent me birthday wishes via phone, email, text message, Facebook message, and any other method I'm forgetting. It was a very pleasant birthday. Fizzled out a little early, but splendid while I was being social. My cousin, cousin-in-law, NBF and I went to a late lunch at Bittersweet, which was amazingly not crowded for Mother's Day afternoon, ate wonderful things, wandered over to Uncle Fun, drove to the lakefront where we tried to fly kites but there was no wind so we played frisbee catch instead and shmoozed for a long time. Then my cousinses had to go (who the hell has work meetings on Sunday nights?) and I went to NBF's to watch the long awaited last disk in Samurai 7, a strange but surprisingly good Anime series based on Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Then I came home and futzed on the computer for hours on end and now I have some random music in my head that I'm trying to get down on paper but I don't have a keyboard or perfect pitch and it's hard to plunk it out on the violin, especially when it's a two part harmony thing.

Tomorrow, I go to the premium outlet mall with my mom to try to return the skirt that doesn't look great on me.

and I smell like one, too

Happy birthday to meeeeeeeeeeeee. I am 25 now. I am oh so exceptionally old. I saw Oedipus Complex with my family, which was good but not great (I thought the male leads were fairly weak and the integration of the Freud stuff could have been much better, but the chorus was awesome) and then we went for dessert at some random place in Lincoln Park because we found a parking spot nearby. I ate a chocolate moose tart thing that was completely delicious and now I am a complete fartyfartfart-head. My brother was cranky the whole time because he wanted to be out with his friends and my dad was in his super type-A personality mode and a little tipsy from dinner (which is usually more entertaining because he drinks so infrequently). Gotta love family. They gave me presents, including my amazing new toothbrush that I picked out myself last week, a cute shirt from Benetton, and a completely fabulous Kate Spade bag*.

In flattering-but-awkward news, my improv teacher invited me to go see a play with him on Friday. I'm pretty sure in a date way. He's a great guy and perfect on paper, but I am a terrible horrible shallow human being and find him completely unattractive. Not just an absence of attraction that perhaps could change with a date or two, but an actual vague repulsion. Which is funny and sad, because I tend to be attracted to plenty of more portly and homely menfolk, and frequently fall for teachers. He just looks like an old man to me--a scruffy old man with a beer belly and a tired face. Otherwise, he should be perfect. He's brilliant (graduated Harvard Law when he was like 20) and interesting and funny and knows music and culture and understood my dorky econ references and isn't scared of me. But he might as well be a woman for the quantity of attraction I feel. I suck. I will die alone and it will be my own fucking fault. Do not pity me, dear reader, for I have designed my own fate.

After sleeping for most of the last three days, I am not tired. Maybe I will play Wheel of Fortune on my phone until I fall asleep or it is time to get up and have birthday festivities. And did I mention I am farty?


*Sunny, if you are reading this, the bag makes me think of you. In a good way.

More Or Less Harried

My apartment is hot and dry. Outside is cold and wet. Perhaps if I stick half my body out the window, it will all average out to some kind of comfortable.

Yesterday was NBF's birthday. Happy birthday, NBF! He had to be at class until I had to be at work until it was no longer his birthday, and he's a total morning person (and yet I'm still friends with him!) so I kidnapped him at sunrise and we went down to Navy Pier and I brought a tiny bottle of decent champagne and a fruit tart (which we didn't eat) and party hats and Minnie Mouse "Happy Birthday" plates and napkins for a little party. Then I took him to breakfast before we parted ways for him to go to school and me to go to the El to get back home and sleep. It was very early and he'd actually been out until 2 AM the night before (which he never does and I'd warned him I was picking him up at 6 AM) but the sheer ridiculousness of the whole thing won out and it was totally fun and he was properly amused, so all in all it was a success. In theory we're going for massages this morning before my improv class, but he was supposed to leave me a message last night as to the time and place, and I have a feeling he just crashed instead of making appointments, but we'll see. He's also taken to trying to convince me he's imaginary.

I'm getting the hang of things at work (finally!), leaving me much less frustrated at the end of the night. Still exhausting and I still need to find better shoes, but last night my parents were at the show and my cousin-in-law and I were both scheduled for the same spot where we could chat our downtime away. She is completely fabulous and we have the same sense of humor so we think everything we say is hilarious. When my parents came into the bar to find me after their show, Tina*, who is never shy, got all freaked out and sheepish and started to hide in back before I told her to to come meet my parents, at which point she asked "Is my hair ok?" and bounded out to greet them. I like seeing them when I don't see them that much. Small doses. After they left, Tina said my mom was "a knock-out" and "gorgeous" and then lamented the lack of positive parent-child relationships in her family. I have to tell her story on here one of these days. It's amazing.

I would not complain if I no longer had hair anywhere below my neck. I'm so ingrown-prone, it is a pain in my aforementioned neck.



*My wacky 54-year-old grandmother co-worker, henceforth called "Tina" because she was trying to look into the men's bathroom and I called her a "Peeping Tina."