Perpetual Expat ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Calling All Readers Hm! It has come to my attention that several people whom I don't know are reading this page. That's not shocking, but I AM curious. So leave me a note, why don't you, just for statistical purposes! Toodles. 7:55 p.m. - 2005-05-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Pride. Prejudice. Pleased. Oh YES. I wanted to sit and chill tonight in utter comfort, after kicking the ass of a final exam, and then, the gods of cable chose to smile upon me and show the 1940 version of “Pride and Prejudice” starring Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. I love this movie passionately. Seeing Jane Austen’s England done up like this – in what I swear are dresses left over from the filming of Gone With the Wind – and all the American actors using their pseudo-English accents (“But Ma-MA!”) – oh, it is priceless. I didn’t grow up with a mother who knows the history of fashion like the back of her hand for nothing. These dresses are ALL wrong. But I love them just the same. Everyone looks so lovely in these silvery grays. The women have piles of shining curls and creamy perfect skin, and the men all have twinkling eyes and morning suits. I could swoon. Plus, everyone has theme music. When the foppish sycophant comes onscreen, they play very foppish music. When the snobbish old elitist woman comes onscreen, they play a variation on “Pomp and Circumstance.” It reminds me of the Star Wars movies (the newer ones) where they play strains of the Empire’s theme whenever evil flits across the screen. I’m counting on the new one (which I will no doubt be seeing with my Jedi husband shortly) to have a climactic moment when the full Empire’s theme is played for the first time. Oh, the drama! (This too, comes from my mother, who took me to music camp at the Hollywood Bowl until I understood the hell out of “Peter and the Wolf.”) It should be noted that historic hottie Laurence Olivier was not using a fake English accent. His accent, like his sex appeal, is real. I am reminded of a high school sleepover with Sheila, during which she printed out a photo from the newfangled Internet of Olivier in “Wuthering Heights,” and we both regretted heartily, in our horny high school way, that he was dead. There, he just said, “I’m in no humor tonight to give consequence to the middle classes at play.” I’m in no hu-mah tonight to give consequence to the middle clah-ses at play… God, I love this movie. 6:58 p.m. - 2005-05-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Talking to Strangers So the other day, coming in out of the rain, I got on the elevator with this guy who lives on my floor. This guy is in a wheelchair and has a beautiful black lab as some kind of service animal. So I said hello and he said hello. And the dog was sort of checking me out, so I said, to be chatty, "Does she mind the thunder?" And wheelchair guy looked straight at me and said, "She has a penis." I just stared at him. He stared at me. I was thinking, is he mentally ill? is he socially inept? is there any chance he could hurt me given that he is obese and in a wheelchair? Finally the guy added. "And no, he doesn't mind the thunder." I was just speechless. Evidently this was his way of telling me that his dog is male. We both got off on our floor, and he rolled away, saying to the dog, "You're a he-she, aren't you!" And that will be the last time I talk to wheelchair guy. 10:47 p.m. - 2005-05-15 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Personal/Professional I met up with my friend K from school the other day. Her boyfriend is breaking up with her in the most slow, ambiguous, torturous way. I don’t think he means to; I think he is just focused on his own pain and confusion and is neglecting to see how much he’s hurting her. It’s sad, because she’s a very sunny and talkative person, and it was very clear when all this started, because she just sort of collapsed inward, like someone turned the lights and the volume down inside her. When we met up, I realized that it was a relief for me to deal with raw human pain as a friend, rather than as a social worker. I could just sit there and say “Ooh, that SUCKS,” and offer my opinion and rant and talk about my life too. Sometimes it’s exhausting to respond to things in something other than my normal way. Social work incorporates a lot of my personality quite well, but there are restrictions. I see why the restrictions are there, but they’re hard to get used to. I may have mentioned this here already, but recently, a coworker and I were talking about a client of hers who needed an ID, because, well, you can’t do crap these days without a photo ID. For one thing, you can’t testify at a city council meeting to try to get politicians to care about you. But if you don’t have a car and you have no money and no way to get around and kids and no child care and you’ve moved so many times that who knows where your birth certificate and other paperwork is, and it takes all your energy just to stay afloat, then how are you supposed to get around to 3 different bureaucracies and pay $17 or so to get an ID? So my coworker and I were brainstorming ways to get her $17 so she could at least pay for the damn thing. And eventually she just looked at me and said with utter frustration, “I just—don’t you just—want to just GIVE her twenty bucks?” And yeah, I did. And so did she. And we couldn’t. And we see why. But it can get frustrating and make you kind of angry with the world when you see people who need so little to make a big improvement in their lives. It certainly puts things in perspective. And then there’s my client “Christine.” I have a signal I show to my fabulous supervisor when I am going through the wringer on the phone with Christine. It’s the motion of my thumb stabbing right at my heart. Just listening to Christine can suck everything out of me if I’m not careful, and sometimes even if I am careful. Sometimes she’s being strong and tired and it makes me just dizzy and numb to try to wrap my mind around how much shit life is throwing at her over and over again, and her problems seem so enormous I just want to run and hide—imagine how she must feel. And sometimes she sounds like she’s just dead inside, until she cracks and cries and tells me how scared she is of what the future holds. And I know what to do if I’m her friend, right? I get in the car, I drive to her house, I hug her and let her cry and loan her money and babysit for her and bake her some cookies and tell her she’s right and everybody else is wrong, and I get all our other friends to be nice to her and maybe throw her a surprise party or something. But no, I’m a social worker (in training), so I listen and I ask open-ended questions that feel stupid to me (“What do you hope for?”) but do seem to work some. And I don’t give her any money, and I don’t go over and bake her anything, and maybe in some circumstances I might hug her, but I’d have to really think about it and probably err on the side of not doing it. At least I can tell her that I think she’s great. And really, in many ways, it’s liberating to play the role of the social worker and remove myself from the drama a bit. That’s not something I tend to do in my personal life, and they’re empowering skills to learn. But still, it’s a relief to get a cup of coffee with K and rant about how guys are jerks. Except I should note that MY guy is not a jerk. My guy is lovely, and he’s so far away! Come home, sweetie. He’s in another state doing a training for work for TEN days. It’s funny living by myself. I leave crap around the house a lot, which is fun, until it looks too messy, and every couple of days I run around and clean it up. The worst part is how late I stay up. I just avoid bedtimes pathologically. Thank God T is around most of the time to enforce my sleep patterns to some extent. I drove up to see my friend A today – she’s really great, and it’s too bad she lives an hour away. She had a baby three weeks ago, and she let me hold him. Twice. Despite my warning her repeatedly that I’ve never held such a small baby. It seems sort of self explanatory, true, but you don’t want to mess up someone else’s kid! He was tiny and soft and smelled sweet (despite some seriously impressive farting). He waved his hands around and blinked and curled his toes and I swear there were hormones rising off me in great big comic strip style wavy lines. Then A’s mom, who was visiting, came in with home-made banana bread and tea for me, as I was holding this precious little baby. And I said to A, “Oh my God, I want my mom, I want to be a mom, can you see the estrogen coming out of my ears?” She laughed and said that she could. Then baby decided he was hungry and started making these sweet little fish-face motions towards my chest. I told him sorry, kiddo, can’t help you there, and passed him over to his mama. Well, time to hit the sack so that I can get up tomorrow and go back to studying. Today I worked my ass off from 8 a.m. to noon and then felt compelled to take the rest of the day off, what with the need to drive around and turn projects in and hold babies and chit chat with friends and whatnot. A good schedule, I think! 12:10 a.m. - 2005-05-14 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Wherever You Go From a Psychotherapy Networker article about a presentation by biologist/author Jon Kabat-Zinn on mindfulness: "If you want to live life as if it really matters, you have to inhabit each moment," he said. "Life is transient. It goes by like that," as he snapped his fingers. "When are you going to tell yourself to start living? Next month? After you learn this meditation shit really good? How often have you heard someone say, "I didn't have a moent to catch my breath'? That could be a terminal diagnosis." I love that. After you learn this meditation shit really good. This man's book is going on my reading list: "Wherever You Go, There You Are." 7:29 p.m. - 2005-05-09 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The Joy of Group Presentations I have a presentation to give in class in about 10 minutes. And I'm sitting here in the computer lab across from the other two members of my group, and they appear to be raging stressballs. I feel like I should join in out of solidarity but I just can't muster the energy. What are they doing at the 11th hour like this? Frantically reviewing slides and printing things out and discussing stuff. I just want to do the thing and get it over with. I asked if they wanted to volunteer to go first or let the other groups go ahead. "Earlier or later?" I asked. They said "Never!!" Sigh. I can't wait for this to be over. 8:51 a.m. - 2005-05-03 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cranky Old Lady You know. Here's the thing. I have been running 4-5 times a week for over 3 months now. And I have been taking garlic pills and fish oil pills and fiber supplements. And I go to the doctor this morning. And learn that since my last test, my cholesterol went UP. UP! Damn genetics. I mean, I was still feeling the glow from my morning run as I gazed upon those horrid numbers. 201 LDL. Not good. So I decided to make my doctor happy and finally start taking some cholesterol meds. We shall see whether they lower my cholesterol, or make me horribly bloated and constipated, or both! Also. Let's see. Asthma. I apparently have asthma. This became more more apparent once I started the running. Neat. I try to do something good for me, and just get another geriatric sounding diagnosis to add to the list. (Also note, I have not lost one pound from this running. Not ONE.) Oh yes, don't forget the migraines. And the eczema. At least the eczema is going away. For now. Seriously, I feel like I have the medical chart of a 75-year-old at this point... And so I went to the store and bought lots of fruits and vegetables, and then came home and spent some time on some running websites for beginners, and felt pretty supported and rad and strong. And things were looking up. Then Tom brought in the mail, and motherfucking Blockbuster... I have elaborate plans to march in there, demand that they refund the $11 they just charged me for the DVD that I have long since returned, and then I swear to god, I am going to whip out a pair of scissors and cut up my membership card into pieces right there at the cash register and leave that godforsaken store forever. Never has a store so shitty, with such awful customer service and terrible selection, taken over a niche so completely and put all of its competitors out of business to the extent that I can no longer find an independent alternative anywhere. I have one word for you assholes at Blockbuster. NETFLIX. I will be enrolling shortly. I hope they put you out of business, swiftly and brutally. So between the frustration, the empowerment, the rage, and the revenge fantasies, it has been quite a day. And I need to study for finals. So here goes. Fortunately, Tom seems to be in a very patient mood this evening. 7:34 p.m. - 2005-04-29 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Campaign against Steely Dan Who sings the song "Reelin' in the Years"? Is that Steely Dan? They should be punished severely. This song should be outlawed. Honestly, they were yelping at my from the little radio on my desk. "Are you reelin in the yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyeaaaars, something bout the tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiide, are you gatherin up your teeeeeeears..." So I go down the hall to the kitchen, wash some dishes, get more water, get a bowl, come back here, and damned if they aren't still whining about the yeeeeearrrrrrrs. Shut UP. Certain classic rock songs should just be expunged from the record. 2:02 p.m. - 2005-04-18 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Running and Housing I went running today... I am not generally an outside runner. I can manage on the treadmill, because the pace is enforced. But being outside is much harder. But I did okay. T and I went on a trail near our place. I went two miles (mostly running, some walking) and wasn't praying for death at any point, so that's good. Speaking of praying for inappropriate things, I keep reading news articles about how people have stretched their budgets thin to buy homes with adjustable rate mortgages, meaning that when rates go up, they won't be able to afford their houses, and they'll have to sell, and the "housing bubble" will burst and... it will be easier for us to get a house. I feel very bad about eagerly anticipating a real estate crash. It doesn't seem right. I shall endeavor to do better. But I would really love to be able to afford a house. Dammit. Where has the weekend gone?? Oy. 9:16 p.m. - 2005-04-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dilemma Reasons not to go to my afternoon class: Reasons to go to my afternoon class: So I'll go. Maybe I'll leave at the break. 1:53 p.m. - 2005-04-14 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Ah, the Internet OK, at Dipti's suggestion I checked out the craigslist section devoted to -- what is their euphemism? -- I don't remember, random hookups, basically. And she is right. It is the funniest thing I have seen in a long time. How many closely-cropped photos of erect penises, taken with digicams in tract houses with bed-in-a-bag sheets and miniblinds in the background, can a girl see before dissolving into hysterical laughter? The answer, I have found, is three. This is a strange world we live in, but men seem to have a lot of hope. ... I also found Dipti's story of being handed a random and -- call me cynical -- SORT of sketchy note by a stranger in a bookstore very intriguing. In many ways, it was very sweet, but Suspicious Me would have been checking to see if he tailed me to the car. I always find it so weird and questionable when men pay blatant attention to me. I remember being in a bookstore back home, shortly after meeting T, and a guy who looked a few years older than me started chatting me up and then asked me out. I said I was only in town for a few days and besides, I had a boyfriend. And he persisted! This just struck me as so weird. First, because he seemed sketchy, but then I have to wonder: do I just assume that nice boys will not blatantly hit on me and thus anyone who does is sketchy? There are strange feminism and self-esteem implications to this. Anyway, Dipti's bookstore experience also inspired me to write about my experience today. It was a gorgeously beautiful spring day. I went out for a walk and some errands. And I got 4-5 flirtations in under an hour. Four to five!! A whistle, a triple take plus an attempted conversation starter, a blatant turning-around-to-gaze-at-you-as-we-pass thing -- at that point I was starting to wonder if I was hallucinating or misinterpreting. It's so weird how they seem to occur in spurts like that... I couldn't help but look down at myself after a while, thinking, "what, have I got a BOOB hanging out or something? what is going on here?" But it was just normal me, jeans, t-shirt, hair up, no makeup. Maybe it's just the spring weather. People are feeling their oats. The first guy looked at me as we passed on the sidewalk, smiled, and said, "Hello, beautiful!" Who DOES that?? It just seemed weird. I think maybe I just revert to High School Me in such circumstances and assume that they are trying to mock or at least harass me. Hmm. Interesting. To me anyway. ... Ooooooookay, in other news: I toured a nice open house today. It's a great location, close to the train, pleasant, kids playing. They were asking $399K, and it has two bedrooms and one bathroom. That's a lot of money for a little bit of house. But it was awfully cute. The idea of buying a house fills me with terror, though. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know who to trust. I don't want to end up as one of those real-estate-section anecdotes: "Jane, 29, of Hyattsville, learned the hard way when she and her husband Ted moved into their dream home, only to discover two weeks later that the septic tank was imploding, lead paint flakes rained down upon them in their sleep, termites were in their breakfast cereal, and a train track was being built through the back yard -- all facts which the previous owners failed to disclose and the shoddy home inspector failed to identify. 'It's sad,' Jane said. 'We lost $400,000, and now live in a box. It's a nice box, but not our dream home.'" ... Has anybody seen the movie "Somewhere in Time" with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour? Christopher Reeve goes back in time by hypnotizing himself (don't ask) and ends up winning Jane's love, and I think they're snuggling post-coitally when he reaches into a forgotten pocket and pulls out - gasp! - a 1979 penny! Reminding him that he has time traveled! And breaking the spell! And causing unspecified Bad Things to happen to him, and Jane to scream "RICHARDDD!" repeatedly. Poor Chris/Richard ends up back in the '80s and dies of a broken heart. (Don't feel bad, there's a reunion in heaven, thanks to some fog machines at full blast.) Anyhoo, I opened up the car trunk the other day and saw a tattered old section of the Boston Globe. And I felt a little bit like Richard. The Gloooobbbe! Man, it takes me back. I still miss that darn city. Then, I got in the car and was driving home when I heard a version of a-ha's "Take On Me," a song which carries double nostalgia for me, because the original version was a favorite of my very young life and because the remake always reminds me of a conversation I had with my brother in a rental car in a Hawaiian parking lot, about 10 years ago. We started talking about the song and whoever was performing it, and laughing, and I always remember it hitting me then that my brother was now old enough to have cool conversations with. It was like, OH, so this is how we will interact as adults. And that was nice. I've got quite a brother. So that was Nostalgia Day at the ballpark. Hope life is treating you well, dear readers. 8:29 p.m. - 2005-04-10 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Feed me, Seymour! Ever get food cravings in a fierce, FIERCE way? At random times? I'm sitting here at 10:41 p.m., until recently making excellent progress on a paper, and suddenly all I can think about is hot blueberry muffins, fresh from the oven, with a little bit of butter maybe. My mouth is literally watering. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. 10:41 p.m. - 2005-04-03 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||
|
||||||