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.

Worth It

I just took my dog on a walk down the two block stretch of beach at the end of my street. I now do this several times a day, except the occasional instance when there are already a few leashless dogs down there playing. The sun is shining and the water is rippling just enough to make it sparkle. There wasn't a single other being out. My dog sniffed things and jogged around me and at a perfect 70 degrees out I decided to stick my feet into the water, just because I could.

I'm a bit behind on my school work, thanks to the move and my migraines. I'm trying to catch up, and I will catch up, but right now I'm having a bit of trouble finishing things and prioritizing. Poop.

Then Hot Dog Sam called. I'm glad she exists. After all, how crazy can I be if there's another person who thinks and feels the same things I think and feel? We're a two person support group.

I am completely out of my old apartment! Yay! Dropped off the keys and everything. Now to begin the terrifying process of turning my piles of shit into a neat, orderly home to which I can unashamedly invite people.

Word of the week: snarky. Snark snark snark.

PLEASE ADVISE!

So I'm exhausted and my old apartment isn't actually empty yet but it's ever so close and NBF is my moving hero and I'm back at my new apartment for a few hours of rest and homework and general putzing around before I go back and hypothetically finish emptying so I can have the cleaning service come in and clean the hell out of the place tomorrow and return my key and never think about it again.

In my general putzing, I started poking around The Onion Personals again and there's a person I may actually want to contact but as I tried to write an email I realized I have no idea what to say or how to say it. He is clearly very sarcastic and I want to show that I'm sarcastic without scaring him off. I guess the question is: how do I make myself sound interesting and show my personality without scaring boys away? Is it possible? How much do I have to temper my snarkiness? Help!

Long day. Lots to do for school and some of it I just have no idea what I'm doing (particularly coming up with the muscle and joint actions for a personal exercise plan for my wellness class and writing a review of something for my freelance class but having no time or energy to find something to review). I don't get to rest this weekend because I have to finish moving and write a ton of shit for my prose forms class. But after that things should start falling into place, settling down in my new apartment so I have the time and energy to complete my otherwise reasonable workload.
It is a beautiful apartment. Walking the dog tonight along the beach under the full moon was lovely. Totally worth the one hour each way commute three days a week. Now if I only knew where my other notebook went...

Welcome to the Nuthouse

I am about to spend my first night in my new apartment. It is awesome, which is all that's kept me all day from killing something. I am a total pig and I do not know how to organize or maintain order. When my mom saw just how bad my old apartment had gotten, she decided that there is no way a person could live how I was living without it being a sign of a deeper problem and that I need to go into therapy about my messiness as a sign of self-hate or something. But my cousin was there helping and was wonderful, both in getting shit from point A to point B and in maintaining a basic level of sanity. NBF came later to help get things from the U-Haul into the new place, and he was one part brawn, three parts security blanket. Once the U-Haul was empty, we all (two parents, NBF, cousin, Me) went out for Thai, and as NBF poked me repeatedly with a satay stick, my parents quietly freaked out and threatened his life if he physically abused me. WHAT? Yes, my parents are crazy. Either that or all of my more playful friendships are abusive and I should have been locked up in a padded cell years ago for my piggy disorganization.

movin' on up

I'm moving! They were going to raise my rent by $45 a month so that I'd be paying $840 (including my $25 monthly pet rent and heat, but not gas or electric, which run me an average of $45/month). My apartment is tiny, an ok size for a studio in this area, but not a lot of room to breathe, and my neighborhood has become significantly more yuppie/frat boy in the two years I've lived here. I started apartment looking on craigslist and I also used Chicago Apartment Finders (it's a free service and I used them to find my current place), and then my landlord agreed to raise my rent to only* $815 and moving is a pain in the ass, but today I saw this place that is triple the size of my current apartment and completely beautiful and charming and half a block from the beach. It's way the hell north, up by the Jarvis stop in Rogers Park, but I like the feel of Rogers Park a lot and the immediate neighborhood is super-cute and the specific apartment has a living room and dining room in addition to a bedroom probably the size of my one room now. Oh, and the whole thing is like $800-$820 a month with all utilities and dog rent included and the building is wired for cable that most apartments can tap for free. And we met a number of other residents and they were all extremely nice and around my age (give or take) and I want it. I couldn't sign anything today, but theoretically when they open on Monday I'll get to stake my claim. Fingers crossed.

For those of you who have previously been afraid to visit me thanks to my current mess and dog, this apartment would allow me to keep my mess and dog in a separate room from company. I could have company! I could be social! Amazing!