Perpetual Expat ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ch-ch-ch-changes. Three days after that last post, life changed forever. (Read that to yourself in a deep, echoing voice, like you might hear in the darkness at the beginning of an IMAX film.) My daughter was born, and my world is topsy turvy. For a few reasons, I've decided to continue this blog at a new address, so if you know me in person, please email me if you would like the URL (that includes you, arod, whose email address I can't find!) Over and out! 7:10 p.m. - 2006-09-02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Urgent spamular information I just got the best spam subject line ever. It is so endearingly ineffectual. It makes me imagine a tiny little foreign pervert attempting to pick someone up in a bar: "My peenis is always hard and is able to move without interruption!" That's verbatim. His peenis! Peeeeeeeenis! Ah, spam--aside from being annoying, it can be so entertaining. 3:21 p.m. - 2006-08-09 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Morning in the Life Woke up around 4 a.m. This coincided with Bathroom Trip 4 or 5, I can't remember. That was worse than usual -- I had felt very thirsty last night and drank far too much water too late in the evening. So at 4 I got up, peed, felt too much random joint pain (hips) to go back to bed, and decided to try the couch. I flopped around there, then tried the floor (sitting with soles of feet touching and four pillows on my feet, slumped forward onto the pillows -- good times!), then did "pelvic rocking" exercises. At 5:15 I gave up and embraced the morning by eating a cheese stick and turning some lights on. Around 6 I ate a bowl of cereal, spilling about a cup of milk on myself and the couch in the process. Around 6:30, T woke up and I greeted him cheerfully. Around 7, I began to feel tired and like maybe, just maybe, my random joint pain had subsided enough to be trumped by my need to sleep. So I grabbed the trusty body pillow and trudged back to the bedroom and managed to sleep for another 2 hours -- score!!! And now I have awakened again, and find to my amusement that I am ravenously, alarmingly, primally hungry. As if my body forgot that already this morning I have eaten a huge bowl of cereal and a cheese stick. As if, as if I was pregnant or something. 9:38 a.m. - 2006-08-04 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I don't think you're ready for this belly What an unproductive day. It seems that I have to sandwich every productive day in between two or three amazingly UNproductive days. Days like today, where T will come home and ask what I did all day, and it just makes me grouchy to answer, because the answer is, "Watched TV, thought hard about what to eat next (because I'm desperately eating for two right now and am always famished), puttered around online, read the paper... AND THAT'S IT." I have some documents to shred; maybe I'll go do that mindless activity so that I can at least say I did that today! Well, can you blame me? Look at this belly. And this is like 3 weeks ago. I feel like I have quadrupled since then. I'm actually not that gigantic compared to many pregnant women (or compared to how I'll be in a few weeks), but trust me, it feels gigantic. I have to wake up and practically get NASA on the phone to roll over in bed at night. It's like a five-step process. Thank god T has become a heavy sleeper. And thank GOD we have air conditioning. 6:48 p.m. - 2006-08-01 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rounding the corner toward 8 months This is a great Washington Post article about American medical students attending med school in Cuba. It was eye-opening for me, having never gone through the process, to see how much it costs just to APPLY to med schools. And so depressing that the US basically had the same program Cuba now has (medical tuition scholarships in exchange for service in underserved communities), until the Reagan administration eviscerated it. Anyway, check the article out; it's not too long and quite well done. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/07/19/AR2006071901380.html In ME news, things are good here. The baby gets bigger and bigger. It doesn't kick me quite as hard as it used to, I think because it's now getting squished in there, but it still wiggles all the time. Our doula and Lamaze instructor both told me to be doing "pelvic rocking" all the time, which if you do yoga looks more or less like the cat pose -- not too hard except when you're 100 months pregnant and your belly hangs huge and heavy and your joints protest. And they want you to do it 15 minutes twice a day. Yow! It's hard. The goal is to get the baby rotated into the best position (LOA) for delivery. After doing it religiously for a few days I went swimming and became convinced that the weightlessness of the water had allowed the baby to wiggle into a breech position (which would render all of this useless, since few medical professionals will permit a vaginal breech delivery these days -- it's a recipe for a c-section). That made me fret. I'm looking forward to seeing my midwives Thursday so they can tell me what position Baby B is really in. My sister-in-law asked me yesterday what my least favorite part of pregnancy was, and I had a hard time coming up with anything. For me there have been tons of minor woes but nothing notably terrible. This morning I was sleepy but had to get out of bed because my hips hurt too much -- that's annoying. And the stretch marks are not nice. But it's not so bad, really. Part of me is getting sick of it, wants it to be done with, wants to bring on the labor and meet this little person. Part of me is like, holy crap, once this baby is born, I'm irrevocably a mom ("for-EVER," as my brother points out repeatedly), and the baby will be here for good, and I don't even have the room ready yet. 9:24 a.m. - 2006-07-24 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Gerrymandering Documentary My friend Kate's husband Jeff is working on a documentary about gerrymandering and the threat it poses to democracy. The preview just debuted online and I thought it looks pretty cool! Check it out if you are interested. The preview is at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=coC2W7ZeBw8 The film's website is at: http://www.oneeyedmanfilms.com/ 10:29 p.m. - 2006-07-15 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything is Uncomfortable I get daily emails from this photographer in SoCal. Streetscapes, landscapes, portraits. I enjoy the little taste of back home. Worth checking out if you are a SoCal expat or transplant. I think I am officially entering the stage of pregnancy where Everything is Uncomfortable. (If only everything were Illuminated instead; then I could write a novel about it and be rich and famous.) No, Everything is Uncomfortable. By morning, I am still tired but bed is just too... uncomfortable... so I get up. Lying on my back no longer works -- it gives me mild nausea and a strange squashed feeling, and it makes the baby kick like a demon. Lying on my sides often works for a while, but eventually some combination of my new belly weight and the hormones making all my tendons go loosey goosey and who knows what else, maybe my increased blood flow (that gets blamed for a lot), makes my hips feel painfully bruised, and then I know I might as well give up and get out of bed. Which is just as well, because by then I have to pee anyway. My friend Em was amazed the other day at my ability to pee. I peed before lunch, after lunch, and then had to pee again once we were a block and a half from the restaurant. So we stopped at a Borders, where I peed. Half a block later, I had to pee again. She almost couldn't believe me. I told her, look, sometimes lately I have to pee again before I've even left the bathroom. The baby has developed the ability to kick me in the bladder, but mercifully, it does not exercise this option very often. Everything is also Undignified. Tom puts this very delicately: "Your body is working really hard right now, focusing on one thing," meaning that of course other things have to slip in the hierarchy. I have all sorts of maladies that I thought only old men got. Nope -- turns out old men and pregnant ladies have a lot in common. Let's leave it at that. But aside from these normal discomforts, pregnancy is still going wonderfully. Everything looks healthy and normal. I learned at the ultrasound last month that the baby has long legs, like its daddy, which explains how it is able to kick me so much. It just wiggles around in there constantly, which I love, after the first several months when there's no real proof anything's going on in there at all, let alone going well. Now whenever I wonder how the baby's doing, odds are it will start rolling and kicking within the hour to reassure me. I can see my belly move around like swells on the ocean as the little one dances. It's amazing. I can also run my hands over my belly and get a sense of what's where -- that's a head, and that's a butt, so those are little punches and those are little kicks... Amazing. It's a little hard to fully grasp that this awe-inspiring experience is going to result in having an actual flesh and blood BABY at the end of it, yet the end is at hand, as they say -- well, 10 weeks away, plus or minus. Sometimes I wonder how different things would be if we had been able to find out the sex (the baby was being wiggly and modest at the ultrasounds). Then I could assign it a name and envision a little person. As it is, I feel like I'm inhabited by a playful little sprite... like Ariel in the Tempest, stuck inside the tree. It makes it all a little more mysterious and ethereal. 9:16 a.m. - 2006-06-22 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- War is peace! Black is white! All together now! Not only do 66% of Americans support the government keeping records of their phone calls (Washington Post article), apparently 42% feel it was inappropriate for the news media to report on the existence of this surveillance program. HAS NO ONE READ GEORGE ORWELL? 1:38 p.m. - 2006-05-12 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By the power of Grayskull!!! This Slate piece on He-Man literally made me laugh so hard I cried. It helped to read parts of it out loud to T, mainly the parts where the nostalgia blinders come off and the author notices how hilariously terrible and homoerotic it is. If only She-Ra would come out on DVD, man... I would be right there. That would make some excellent rainy day viewing. 9:24 p.m. - 2006-05-11 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Five and a half months My arms are so shaky and tired I can hardly type. This is because I just spent over an hour scrubbing the bathroom, especially the tub, which requires stretching and contortions that frankly almost count as yoga. This could be an early manifestation of the nesting I hear pregnant women do, but really I think it was a manifestation of my need to do something, anything productive today. I slept horribly again last night and was up from 4 until 6:30, so after I fell back asleep I got up late and felt groggy and unmotivated all day. Suddenly, at 3:30, I realized the day was slipping by and I had really done nothing. So I turned on the Kinks mix my brother sent me, turned it way up, and set to scrubbing. This was also inspired by the fact that eventually one bathes one's baby in the tub, and dear God, my tub is cleanish but not to where I'd want my own bare butt sitting in it, let alone my innocent child's. And baths are starting to sound really nice, which is probably really stupid, because, well, just imagine a large pregnant woman with questionable balance and ever shifting body mass and a squirming kicking being inside her abdomen trying to get into and out of a bath. Did you ever play with one of those toys as a kid where there was a ball bearing rolling around inside, making the toy move extremely unpredictably? Hilarious and fun, right? That's what I'm starting to feel like. Also I have realized I am unable to stand without doing one or more of the following: grunting in an unladylike fashion, hanging onto T, or maneuvering into four progressively more upright body positions. The baby kicked so hard earlier this afternoon that my entire belly bounced, as if I'd had a world-record-setting hiccup. It also kicked like crazy when I was at a concert Saturday that had African drums. My clever little rhythmic baby. In case I sound less than delighted, let me clarify that I still am completely in love with being pregnant. It is wonderful, and even the weird or uncomfortable or inconvenient parts are entertaining and exciting. I realize that approximately 15 gazillion women have done this exact thing since the dawn of time, but I can't help feeling like I am possibly the most amazing and fascinating one. And clearly my baby is a superstar. Just the fact that it crossed its legs at the ultrasounds to keep us from seeing its sex indicated to me that it is a spunky, free-thinking baby that will probably end up as President someday. Or something even better. 5:26 p.m. - 2006-05-08 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Websites that are too smart for me A blogger friend of a blogger friend of mine rhapsodized recently about some hot chocolate that I would like to get my grubby little eating-for-two paws on, but the website is just too hip for me or possibly my Safari. I can't glean any information beyond the home page and its hypnotic city sounds and food descriptions fading in and out. The one link I can find is to a somewhat amusing but utterly unhelpful (in terms of GETTING ME CLOSER TO THE HOT CHOCOLATE DAMMIT) website comparing the restaurant's supposedly legendary pretzel croissants to mermaids and unicorns. Fine, fine, just tell me if you have more than one location so I can give you my damn money. Lest I feel that I've aged out of this whole wacky Internet thing, I did spend some time this morning explaining to my mother-in-law via email what a "browser" is and why she doesn't need to worry that she doesn't know how to "cut and paste" since she can just "click" on the "links" in an "email" to go to a "webpage." See, I still feel smart computer-wise around those of a certain age. 1:27 p.m. - 2006-04-09 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The lotus position helps me admire my shoes The two things on my mind right now are yoga (isn't it great) and shoes (aren't my new shoes great) -- and those seem so wholly incompatible as to cause a blog post containging both to spontaneously combust. But I am a dangerous woman with dangerous ways. First, yoga. I have started taking yoga classes again after a decade-long hiatus (T: "You had YOGA classes in HIGH SCHOOL? You fruity Californians.") Really, I have the best set-up imaginable: this extremely nice woman around my age teaches a class in the building where I live, so I started going, and it's glorious. I feel so strong and limber. And tonight, I started feeling stiff and restless, as if a migraine was coming on, and I decided to do some yoga, and it worked like magic. I felt so relaxed and loose afterwards. I'm going to keep taking this class and probably add a second one that's specifically for pregnant mamas -- there's all sorts of yoga poses that are supposed to be helpful for birthing and so on. Ah. I feel so centered. Which is why it's funny to now talk about shoes. But my parents were here this past week (buying a small condo near us so they can be grandparents up close!), and I went to DSW with my mom. It was for HER, SHE'S the one who was looking for shoes, but I saw these little grassy green slipper-like mules with low heels and beads, oh, the beads, all different sparkling colors of beads, and I just had to take them home. I adore them. And then I found another pair of black and purple velvet mules that were on 60% off clearance. And I thanked the gods of DSW. There. We've all survived the collision of peaceful eastern meditation and western materialistic glee. Truly, I am a marvel of international understanding. 10:12 p.m. - 2006-03-26 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Obviously grown women acting like silly schoolgirls I think it is appropriate to inaugurate my big news here on the blog in the form of a rant about a consumer product, since those have brought me such joy in the past. So check this out. What's with the photo?? "Tee hee, look at me... what a belly!" You can't even really see how the dress falls, she's so busy being bashful. Oh, for heaven's sake. And yes, I am buying maternity clothes for a reason. 9:16 a.m. - 2006-03-24 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This post sponsored by the letter \"g\" T's laptop is showing its age in an annoying yet kind of adorable way. The "g" key pops up basically every time I touch it. T seems to be better at keeping it in place, but it literally goes flying whenever I come close. So I just leave it off when it wants its freedom, but the downside to this is that I end up skittishly searching around the house at least once a day, thinking I've lost it somehow and T will be mad. If it were my laptop, I'd be investigating an Elmer's glue-related solution, but it's not, and I'm not going to be the jerk who ruins her husband's laptop. I didn't study enough advanced philosophy or English lit to know exactly what it evokes, me searching around for the letter g--theater of the absurd, maybe? That's me, the bit character in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern who's wandering around in search of a letter. Chris Noth is on "Ellen" right now talking about driving to Las Vegas and being on the 10, and it took him 4 hours to get to the 15, so they stopped and saw a movie, and the traffic was still terrible, so "I stopped in at an airport called. uh... Ontario?" and bought a plane ticket to Las Vegas. I am amused to hear that Chris Noth is driving along the 10, like, you know, normal people, and it makes me feel even more cheated that in my 17 years as a full-time SoCal resident (albeit one on the wrong side of LA) I almost never saw a famous person. Dustin Hoffman and Jon Lovitz once, on the same night. And that's pretty much it, dammit. Yes, I am watching "Ellen" mid-day. Viva spring break. 12:00 p.m. - 2006-03-21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wow (Oscars comments part 2) John Travolta's haircut makes him look like a monkey. I love when people give heartfelt, competent speeches, like Reese Witherspoon just did. WFD, Reese. And I truly believe that Dustin Hoffman is stoned. And I don't care if you wrote the gay cowboy movie, you still shouldn't be allowed into the Oscars wearing a tuxedo jacket over jeans. You shouldn't be allowed out of the HOUSE like that. 11:27 p.m. - 2006-03-05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wow. I am watching the Oscars and I want to memorialize this moment as possibly the funniest I have ever seen on television: the Oscar treatment of "It's Hard Out Here to Be a Pimp." I hope all of you got to view this. It is hard to explain in words, really. 10:39 p.m. - 2006-03-05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note to Beelucky Note to Beelucky -- hey, are you handing out your password? if so, wouldja hand it out to me? if not, take care and good luck. :) 11:07 a.m. - 2006-02-10 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TCB I realize I am neglecting you sorely, and it's not that I don't love you. I do. It's that I'm bogged down right now with writing a blog that I actually get paid to write, and writing in an offline journal about stuff that's not online material. Plus my other blogging friends, with a couple of notable exceptions, have all slacked off at the exact same time I have, thus creating vicious peer pressure to stop blogging and hang out under the overpass and smoke. Today, on the way home from school, I saw a roadkill zone that looked like the last resting place of a small snuffalapagus. It was sad. Then amusing. Then guilt-inspiring. Then sad. School has started again and I am procrastinating with a capital P. Today I intended to come straight home and WORK, dammit. Instead, with the same drive and motivation, I came home and NAPPED. YEAH. Get out of my way, world, I want me some sleepy time on the couch. Maybe it's because the situation in Port Charles, what with the killer virus and all, was getting too scary. I needed to drift off into peaceful slumbers. But now I'm totally going to work. Totally. 5:15 p.m. - 2006-02-06 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tulips Back in Our Nation's Capital and things are good. It's cold and rainy here, and I got no relief from watching the Rose Parade, like other years. Oh well, for the week that I actually WAS in Southern California, the weather was lovely and I did thaw nicely. I can't quite believe I have to go to my internship tomorrow, especially because the guy I'm supposed to shadow all day hasn't gotten back to me about when and where to meet him. Hmmmm. Oh, I'll think of something. T brought me tulips yesterday. The flowers of domestic bliss, or so I've thought since we first set up housekeeping in a little 2-family house in Belmont one summer years ago. When we visited in the spring before signing the sublease, there were gorgeous tulips blooming, and I immediately loved it. These tulips are magenta and lovely and lighting up my kitchen, all these years later. Ah, domestic bliss. 5:33 p.m. - 2006-01-02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas! It's 70 degrees here in lovely Southern California and despite the fact that I've caught a nasty cold, life is good. I have enough strength (and time between cough/sneeze spells) to drag myself from room to room and eat candy and hors d'oeuvres and my brother's kick ass tofu scramble. Let's hope this cold goes away soon. But the 70 degrees thing is enough to keep me happy. Hope all the Christmas celebrators out there are having a wonderful day. 7:04 p.m. - 2005-12-25 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tea Will Save Us All. I've gotten out of the habit of drinking tea nightly. But it's freezing (literally, the freezing rain is an ugly thing outside), and the New York Times wants me to. I've finished creating outlines for the four essay questions that will comprise my final exam tomorrow morning. And now I just have to read them over and over and over until I dream about them and can regurgitate them onto paper on demand. Onto a screen, actually; the prof is being kind enough to let us use a computer lab instead of blue books. Hand-writing essay questions seems just ridiculously hard these days. Hard to believe that's all I did for most of my years in school. Now I can't bear not to be able to go back and add things, to copy and paste. I wonder if anything's been lost in this transition? Maybe it was better to think ahead like that, to have to commit to a path. Ah well, no time for nostalgia, must copy and paste some more. So the semester from hell will officially be over at noon tomorrow, at the conclusion of this exam, and I couldn't be happier. I'll be following that up with a trip to New York for a wedding that I have every reason to believe will be completely gorgeous and will make me cry with happiness. What fun! For now: reading and rereading and rerereading outlines. 7:00 p.m. - 2005-12-15 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sweet Talkers Serendipti's post about getting hit on by patients amused me. I don't get hit on at work currently; at least, I haven't yet. Generally people are too depressed to want to hit on anyone. (Bonus! Hah.) But last year a client hit on me repeatedly. I was freaked out, because he was much larger than I am, and we were in a little room together, and, well, ew. My kick-ass boss told me to call him on it if it happened again. "Really?!?! Call him on it?!?! Really?!?!" That goes against every nonconfrontational bone in my body. But she insisted. So the next time we met, he dropped in, and I was wearing a v-neck sweater that day -- nothing scandalous, but around this guy, I'd rather be wearing a burka. So I borrowed a colleague's scarf and draped it so that I was a big blob from neck to waist. And it worked. He didn't say a thing. And then just as we were wrapping up, he told me the scarf made my eyes look so pretty. Oohhh, so close. So I mustered up all my social worker in training courage and said, with a deadly straight face, "Mr. So and So, are you flirting with me?" You should have seen him. It was like I slapped a little kid's hand. He was all mumbled apologies and averted eyes and no's. I said, "Ok, good, because that would be inappropriate." He said, "Yeah. Because you're married." "Well, that, but really because we have a professional relationship. I'm your social worker. So we need to interact professionally, and you can't be flirting with me." I couldn't believe how well it worked. My boss had said he'd either apologize and get sheepish, or get super-smarmy and make it into a "ooh, I like 'em feisty" kind of thing. Fortunately it was the former. With the latter I was supposed to repeat myself, and tell him either he had to stop or we wouldn't work together anymore. He actually did want my help very much, so that wasn't insignificant. Anyway, it pretty much took care of it. As weeks passed, he'd occasionally make a little comment, testing the waters, and I'd ignore it, and he'd quit. And if it makes you feel any better, Dipti, last week I had a crack addict call me an incompetent liar in front of my boss and every other patient on the unit. At least yours think you're cute. ;) 6:13 p.m. - 2005-12-06 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sparkling! Oh, my whole being is just revolting at the thought of having to go to work at the psych hospital today after the lovely break that was Thanksgiving. Internship. Not job. It's only til end of April. Thus, I can survive. It's not so terrible. I'd just rather not go. Ever again. So I'm chilling online and pretending work doesn't exist, listening to music, and then I hear "Sparkle!" by Candy Butchers, and am amused, and look up the lyrics and so on, and learn that it's about a patient at a psych hospital. Bwa ha ha ha, the Internet says, you can run but you cannot hide. So I'll go eat some Raisin Bran and get on with it. 8:03 a.m. - 2005-11-29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Black and White It's really good that I'm at school plenty early before my morning class, so that I have time to think about the big gap that appears between buttons in my new black blouse, revealing my brilliant white bra. That will look really nice when I'm up in front of the class giving my presentation. Awesome. Yay Mondays. Thanksgiving was so nice with the in laws; snow, board games, Harry Potter. Now it's back to brutal finals-period reality. Tests, papers, presentations, and one glaringly white bra. 8:45 a.m. - 2005-11-28 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Won't you take me to Funkytown? I'm transcribing this interview I did for a research project, and feeling extremely sorry for myself that this is preventing me from an outing with T and his brother, who's visiting this weekend. Even though said outing is probably turning out to be a trudge across the wind-swept arctic Mall. At least this woman I interviewed used the word "funky" a lot, which I consistently mistype as "fucky," which makes me giggle. Now there's a permutation of the f-word that hasn't gotten enough usage. Try to slip it into conversation today. I'm not quite sure how I'd define it (it's really fucky that I'm sitting here in slippers transcribing until my fingers are blue?), but you can just be creative. 1:19 p.m. - 2005-11-20 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ethics Trumping Humor (damn those ethics!) Ohh, the "overheard" quotes you all are missing because of my stubborn insistence on being ethical. It would be wrong, very wrong of me, to quote things I hear in my work at the psychiatric hospital, even anonymously. But FUNNY. Oh, how funny. Here, just try this: imagine the absolute funniest thing you could imagine one psych patient saying about another patient, to a staffer. There. That's what I heard the other day. It's still making me giggle. 10:13 p.m. - 2005-11-08 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Environmentalism The entire point of my dragging myself out of bed at 5:50 a.m. to catch the commuter train to school is for me to catch up on reading. But today (after reading an article my mom sent me from the LA Times about the disgustingly corrupt Kennedy brothers and their SoCal billboard business), I looked out the window and just got silly. The fall colors were just ridiculously pretty, and I couldn't stop looking. I thought we'd missed a really gorgeous fall here, with the strange weather, but there it was this morning, rolling along outside my window. The dusky red undergrowth, the slender trunks framing strips of brilliant blue sky, the leaves dripping from above in a million beautiful shades, smoke, honey, sunshine, fire. I couldn't tear myself away, and at times I had a sense of the whole enormous mass of the world underneath me, with this few dozen miles of trees pushing out from the ground like tiny hairs from the skin of the earth. I thought about the corrupt billboard brothers and wondered how it is that people can go so wrong in a world like this, how we manage to cheat and hate and kill and destroy, when the earth is surrounding us with all this glory, silently urging us toward good. 8:30 a.m. - 2005-11-04 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- our long national nightmare (okay, my monthlong personal nightmare) Oh, the sleep deprivation. But it seems to have come to an end. The month of insanity is officially over. I still have one reference list to format for my paper due tomorrow, but basically, I'm free. T and I drove to New Jersey yesterday for my brother in law's engagement party. (Yes, ladies, the hottie brother of the groom from my wedding is officially off the market. Commence the weeping and gnashing of teeth.) The party (a marathon 8 hours or so) was in the bride's grandparents house, originally a millhouse from the early 1800s with low beams, gorgeous grounds (towering trees, piles of leaves, a creek at the end of the sloping lawn...), an enormous kitchen that something like 5 caterers spent the night working magic in, and even an Underground Railroad station in the cellar. The engaged couple has the most wonderful friends. We've met them several times before, when we were all more or less living in Boston (aka The Good Old Days). Now they're spread out from Chicago to New York to New Haven to London, but they all managed to get to this party, which was lovely of them. Now Brother In Law is trying to land a MD residency close to us in DC (and he may live with us short term while trying), which is just wonderful. Everyone come here!!! Play with me!!! My friend Emily did just that for a few days last week, inaugurating the yellow guest room (of happiness?) and allowing me to giggle more than I have in what seems like years. We spent quite a while going "eee! eeee!" which can be explained in part by this clip. We ate at a Thai place near home that I'd inexplicably never seen before -- the waitress promised me it had been open since May -- and although it was a little pricier than I'd like, it was also delicious. Panang tofu and, um, that flat noodle dish with brown sauce... (see Kate? I can be a food blogger too! Hah.) I'm delighted to have discovered it. Now I need to get someone to go with me to Bombay Gaylord. Has a better name ever existed for an Indian hole in the wall restaurant? No, I think not. 4:15 p.m. - 2005-10-30 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Reasons my friend Kate is a Superstar I dedicate this entry to my friend Kate, who is what, people? A superstar. Proof #1: Kate mailed me a videotaped copy of the Gilmore Girls episode I missed. Only Tom knows how close to insane I got upon realizing that I missed this episode, deep in the heart of my most stressful two weeks of grad school to date. When the tape arrived, I sat there on the floor in front of the TV in my sweatpants, dirty hair, bleary eyes, getting my fix, and thinking, thanks, Kate! Proof #2: Kate introduced me to one of the more entertaining blogs out there, Dooce. Whenever I read it and giggle or gasp in horror, which is just about daily, I think, thanks, Kate! Dooce is hilarious and makes me even occasionally think living in Utah would be nice for the scenery. Utah is ridiculously pretty. Then she blogs about the rest of what Utah's about, and I'm brought to my senses. Proof #3: I hear Kate is an excellent sashayer. And the world needs more sashaying. Kate = Superstar. Q.E.D. 8:30 a.m. - 2005-10-25 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Plan Dagnabbit, how am I supposed to procrastinate when I've only got one new email to read?? I've decided that I am going to finish Paper #1 (of 3) tonight, and I'm going to ditch my afternoon class to do it, and then I'm going to reward myself with the last two episodes of Sex & the City on DVD. Then tomorrow, it'll be on to paper #2. GO TEAM ME! GOOOOOOOOO TEAM! Break. Or, to take it back to a high school oldie but goodie, WHAT TIME IS IT? Paper time HUH. send me good paper vibes, everyone. 12:06 p.m. - 2005-10-21 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A plan is hatched. I've been struggling to figure out how I'm going to finish my three papers that are due within two weeks, while juggling a parental visit, an out-of-town friend visit, and, you know, LIFE. Then it hit me last night at 1 a.m., how I used to do this in college: sleep deprivation. It didn't seem like such a stroke of genius when the alarm went off at 6 this morning, but then again, it never did. To sleep deprivation, which will get me through the next two weeks!! To sleep deprivation. 7:16 a.m. - 2005-10-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Morning Poem (by Mary Oliver) if it is your nature for hours, your imagination the thorn there is still whether or not - Mary Oliver, Morning Poem 7:39 p.m. - 2005-10-08 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dear reader, I've been messing around with the template. I was very, very tired of the orange. Unfortunately, messing with html is like doing a puzzle for me. I don't know what I'm doing, and it's fun to try to figure it all out, and when it works I feel like a genius, and when it doesn't I feel like sulking. I got some things right, but now I'm sulking. But this whole exercise is just a distraction from the enormous schoolwork anvil I have dangling over my head. Sigh. Back to the salt mines. 4:19 p.m. - 2005-10-08 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am tired. My parents are visiting. It is wonderful. It is intense. It is day one. Pray for me. 9:53 p.m. - 2005-10-02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Overheard On Colesville Road, Saturday night, 8 p.m., woman walking with a large and fairly raucous group: 9:52 p.m. - 2005-10-02 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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