I'm a pretty good date
It turns out that it takes very little to turn my mood completely around. Last week found me waking up 5 or six times a night, gripped by panic or embroiled in some strange anxiety driven dream. I was officially Not Doing Well, both mentally and emotionally. Seriously, you should have seen some of the emails that flew out of my inbox. I was surprised none of my friends called Kevin to tell him I needed to be committed.
Anyway, this week is curing me of those ills. Things are slightly calmer, things are looking a bit more rosy, and tonight after work I had an awesome evening all to myself. And instead of just coming straight home and vegging out in front of the TV, I did something I hadn't done in a long time.
I had a date with myself.
I headed over to the YMCA and after getting my brand spankin' new membership card made by a sweetly shy high school student (who struck up a conversation with me about USC, since it is a college he is considering), I headed into the fitness center and found an elliptical machine just waiting for me. I'd forgotten how wonderfully hard my body could work, until 9 minutes into my 20 minute session my thighs were screaming at me just enough to make me push through it. Man, I missed the gym.
I spent a quick 15 minutes on a treadmill afterwards, cooling off and letting my heart slow back down out of the cardio training range, and when I stepped off of it, I felt like I was floating. Mmmm, endorphins. Oh, how I missed endorphins.
I decided I deserved a trip to Target after that, so I spent some time wandering the aisles and picking up Sonia Kashuk perfumes (which I really absurdly adore, considering how stupidly cheap they are) and hair dye and new earphones to use with the spiffy televisions that are mounted on all the cardio machines at the gym. Kevin's not getting home until much later tonight, so I decided I also deserved dinner at the local Souplantation. That giant salad and tasty chicken tortilla soup were even more perfect accompanied by a fantastic Jonathan Kellerman book I checked out on Sunday.
I think I need to make a date with myself more often. Time to just sit and think (or not), without anyone near me who knows me. I feel calmer tonight than I have in months.
And now there's a book and a bed and a cat all calling my name, waiting for me to snuggle in for the night. I think I'll take them up on their offer.
This just in
The world is a fucking mess these days.
There's a
nasty disease killing hundreds of children in parts of Asia, and instead of licensing the cheaper, more effective vaccine that the Chinese came up with, the countries being hardest hit by this outbreak of Japanese encephalitis are sticking with the less effective, more expensive vaccine that they can't afford to give to larger groups of children.
Another
mass casualty happened in Iraq, most likely due to fears centered on the possibility of yet another insurgent suicide bombing. Oh, and that constitution of theirs is nowhere near approval yet. And we're spending something like $186 MILLION a day there. Awesome.
The
poverty rate in America shot up AGAIN this year, bumping it up to 12.7%. Just goes to show that what some analysts (and politicos) have been saying all along is true....the jobs being added to the economy lately are not jobs that provide a living wage. It's all well and good to have the unemployment numbers go do, but what good is it if the people finally finding employment aren't finding employment they can live off of?
And do I even have to mention the devastation caused by
Hurricane Katrina? My friend's sister (who works here at The Company as well) works in the HR department for a group which has a large number of employees in the Alabama/Louisiana/Mississippi area. Today she's in Little Rock, helping administer programs to assist our displaced employees. I cannot even begin to imagine what it's like for these people right now, and all I can do is hope it gets better for them, eventually.
Man, I have got to stop reading the news in the morning. It's just an entirely too depressing way to start the day.
Melting. Goo. Hate.
Hot. So hot.
You know what sucks about Southern California? Right when everyone else in the country is gearing up for the end of summer and the onslaught of crisp nights and falling leaves, we get slammed with Santa Ana winds and temperatures shooting through the roof (Indian summer? More like Indian Heat Wave From Hell That Must Be A Curse On Us, Thanks To The Spaniards Who Invaded and Enslaved The Kumeyaay Indians). And then we all spend the months of August through October laying around panting and cursing that bright, bright SoCal sun.
Of course, most sane people in San Diego remember that this happens every year and have invested in things like central air or even one room air conditioners. But not us. No, we just plodded along through the (decidedly moreso than usual) mild summer and forgot completely that The Fires of Autumn were right around the corner.
And so, we spent the weekend draped across various pieces of furniture, trying to catch the slightest breeze that blew through the apartment. It was so hot that at one point Riley was literally sprawled across the floor while drinking some water. He just couldn't be bothered with the effort of standing up. (On the good side, when it's hot, he's quiet, so I've actually slept better this weekend than I had slept all week.) All I did today was go to the library, then come home and lay in bed between two fans and read Jennifer Weiner books. Now? Front door's wide o[en to try and get some air circulating and I'm walking around in a tank top and underwear and I do not care if anyone sees me. It is that damn hot.
The coolest room in the apartment right now is the bathroom. I'm considering sleeping in the bathtub to stay cool tonight, except our bathtub is one of those little skinny 1970's efficiency bathtubs that do not agree with my ass. And really, the heat makes me puff up like a blowfish, so do I really want to risk waking up all swollen and stuck in the bathtub?
So yeah. That was my weekend. It was hot. Oh, and my wedding shoes came in. Yay!
Best laid plans
So, the weight loss thing. Kinda fell off the track there this summer. Actually, it pretty much flew off the track at 80 miles an hour and hurtled through space before landing somewhere in the parking lot next to some kid crying about the cotton candy he just dropped. As I told Kevin the other night, I have so many things on my proverbial plate right now that my mental fortitude has been divvied up as much as it can be, and there just isn't enough left to go all balls to the wall on the diet thing right now.
A big part of this is because I have no external motivators. My health is great, better than it's been in ages (allergies aside); I'm in a great relationship with a guy who thinks I'm gorgeous; I have a well paying job where I'm respected and treated well. So all the motivation has to come from inside me, and inside me there's just a big ball of stress wrapped around the 3-Day, JournalCon and the wedding, not to mention work (which is gearing up to be hell on earth in October, which, oh look! That's when JournalCon and the 3-Day are happening! Cool! Except not.) So I'm going to do what I can to at least maintain myself when I am, and to eat better. I'm going to keep going to the WW meetings, and I'm going to switch to Core so that it's easier for me to eat (Core is easy for me for some reason, don't ask me why).
And today, I joined the YMCA. Stop laughing.
Seriously, stop laughing.
This is not your grandpa's Y that I joined.
This is a state of the art, filled with new equipment and a pool and special classes and free fitness coaching programs. And on top of that, membership at one branch covers four facilities. AND! I got to sign up without paying the joiner's fee of $100 since there was a grand opening today. Best part? A friend already belongs to the same one so we're going to be able to go together.
The one thing that sucked was that everyone, their kids and their grandparents were at the facility standing in line to sign up today because of the free registration thing. I was lucky enough to spend the half hour behind this sweet little old couple consisting of a very patient husband and a wife who couldn't decide if she really wanted to join since she doesn't know how to use the machines. According to her, it was "all young ones" there. She didn't seem to notice the oodles and oodles of other old people milling about, and obviously hadn't noticed the scads of classes listed that were
specifically designed for people with arthritis. But she was sweet, and not obnoxious, so I couldn't help but smile at her.
I've got this crazy idea that I'm going to actually start getting up at 5 in the morning and going to the gym to work out and then come home and shower and get to work at my usual 8:30 stroll in time. I figure Kevin gets up that early, so I can just adjust my bedtime and wake up time to match his and then we'd still get to spend our evenings together.
It's a good plan on paper, isn't it?
He filled the hole in my heart
(Let me preface this entire entry by saying I'm looking forward to the day when I get to start calling Kevin my husband...it's what my heart knows him as already, and I absolutely cannot wait to celebrate that with our friends and family.)I know that things have been rocking along on the wedding planning front for us, and I have a feeling I'm making it look really easy because dude, it has been falling into place pretty well. But despite appearance, there's a lot more to this getting ready for the wedding thing going on than you might think. In between deciding on invitations and prancing around the house with my veil slapped haphazardly on my head, there's been an awful lot of crap percolating in this brain of mine. There's times when the idea of me getting married freaks me RIGHT THE FUCK OUT. It's just....such an adult thing to do. I mean, I can barely be counted on to actually clean the cat box every day, how am I grown up enough to pledge my life to another person? There's times when I ache a little inside when he leaves on a simple errand because there are all these maniacs out there and he might not come back, and that scares me half to death. Loving someone this much is either really brave, really stupid, or really, really lucky.
This summer found me thinking a lot about Todd, for reasons that eluded me for a long time. I wasn't thinking of him with longing or regret; I didn't want to go track him down and have some dramatic reunion or anything but I did want to see him. It was more of an examination of what happened in that relationship, and how things went so terribly wrong. Sometimes I would be driving along and be suddenly gripped by panic because I would remember how I thought I was going to marry Todd and then he left me, left me in horribly cruel display of immaturity and my God, what makes me think that things with Kevin aren't going to end up the same way? How can I be so sure about something as amorphous as love? And in the next second I would remember...Todd and I had too much baggage, too many issues, were too young and din't communicate well, rushed in where we should have gone slow, and in the end, were just too different to be compatible. Kevin is not Todd, and my relationship with him is 180 degress from the one I had with Todd. Kevin and I talk about things, we get mad at each other, we laugh together, we're a team and not a couple. I still don't know why I wanted to see Todd; maybe so that I can close that door with an emphatic "I'm just fine". Or maybe it's to thank him, for breaking up with me at the exact right time for me to be ready to meet the man I was meant to be with.
The other thing that's affecting me more than I've let myself admit (even to myself) is all the strange family dynamics I've got going on. My father won't be there; he won't even know that his only child is getting married. That's not the missing family that bothers me the most though. My maternal grandparents, who were such a big part of my childhood, will not be there. Yet another major milestone in my life without them, and this one hurts. My grandmother would have loved Kevin. She would have laughed at his jokes and planted big lipsticky kisses on his cheek and she probably would have crocheted him a blanket. My grandfather would have watched baseball with Kevin, and discussed stats endlessly, I'm sure. My heart just breaks a little to know that they won't be there, and I know my mom's going to be feeling the same way.
And don't get me started on the significance of changing my name (which yes, I will be doing), the importance of the ritual that will be our wedding ceremony, and my mother's fear that I will go tumbling down the staircase rather than making a graceful entrance. Or hey, how about that guilt I have niggling in the back of my brain over the fact that I can get married but The Moms can't? Yeah, that's a fun one to play with!
I'm beginning to think that all these little side things, the favors and the cocktail napkins and the cake and the seating charts and the DJs and the centerpieces, were all made important not by the wedding industry but by brides who needed something to distract them from all these scary parts of getting married. Marriage is like all those other big life changes (e.g. changing careers, moving out of state, having a baby, buying a house, etc): exciting and nerve-wracking all at the same time. And during the prep for it, you wander around in a zombie-like daze of happiness and terror. I think that's the real reason I keep saying "I wish the wedding was tomorrow!" I just want to get on with it already, because the good stuff's on the other side.
(That, and I really want to wear that dress while dancing to "Dancing Queen" with all my friends.)
Time for a change, I'd say
I realized the other day that part of the reason I haven't been updating as often is because damn, I hated my old template. It was all skinny and weird shaped and a 20 word entry took up half a page. So yeah, got rid of that crapola.
I had a seriously fucked up dream last night, one that involved me somehow ending up in a psych ward with invisible barriers that I couldn't cross, even to visit family. The staff thought I had died (even though I was only sleeping), and brought my mom in to identify the body, and I don't know who she identified but it wasn't me. And so I ran down the hallway chasing after her to tell her it was all right, I was still alive and when I finally caught up to her she was just past the barrier and when she and JM saw that I was still alive, they both looked totally disappointed. Then there was some weird shit about my (post-menopausal) mom being pregnant and some escape plan and all of this was punctuated by me waking up in a small panic attack every hour and a half, only to fall back asleep and have the dream pick right back up.
So yeah, that was my night last night. Last time I eat a piece of The Moistest Cake I've Ever Tasted (not) after 8pm. Needless to say, I did pretty much nothing today at work. But don't tell my boss, 'k?
Tomorrow: a real entry, about Big Important Things.
*mwah*
Happy Birthday to the sweetest, grumpiest bastard I've ever loved
It's Kev's birthday and I spent the whole damn day with a big giant swollen eye, looking for all the world like I got into a fight with someone who punches almost hard enough to give me a black eye. My face was this weird dichotomy....all nice and normal and pretty on one half and then all swollen and red and reminiscent of Sloth on the other side. (So help me, I hope you all know who Sloth is)
But that didn't prevent me from buying him a birthday cake covered in chocolate fudge frosting (which came with the promise that it would be the moistest cake he'd ever tasted) (and also, I hate saying the word moist) (HATE IT), and my traditional gift to him....macaroni and cheese and a six pack of Pepsi. See, when we were first dating he once said that all he needs in life to be happy is a woman, some Pepsi and some mac & cheese. I do what I have to in order to keep my man happy.
(I also gave him a weekend in Santa Monica and a T-shirt that was purchased at the actual USC Bookstore, home to my many college adventures, but the mac & cheese and Pepsi probably means more to him than the other presents)
So yes, this marks four birthdays of his I've celebrated with him (of course, the first time I just sent a card)....wow, that's just crazy. I met him for the first time in person when he was just barely 25, anod now here he is knocking on 30's door. And that crazy guy is gonna marry me. How about that.
(See, and you thought I'd go an entry without mentioning the wedding! Ha!)
Suddenly sort of miserable
Have you ever thrown a party, and gotten really excited about it because a whole lot of people said they totally wanted to come and wow, it's going to be so awesome and hey, they can't wait?
And then a few days later a bunch of them say that they might not be able to make it but that was okay because dude, you still had a TON of other people who were going to come?
And then after you've made reservations at some swank restaurant for like 60 people, half of them end up saying "Oh, I can't come after all" and you get totally dejected because dang it, you planned an AWESOME party and it's going to be so fun and now NO ONE IS COMING and everyone must hate you and you hyperventilate a little over the gigantic deposit you already put down and the contract you signed saying that the restaurant would make a gajillion dollars off of your party, pinky swear?
If you have, then you know where my head is right now. Because PEOPLE!!! Why are you not registered for
JournalCon yet? Haven't you heard that there's going to be Guaranteed Karaoke? And a possible girl fight between Weetabix and Plain Jane? And possible girl love between ....well, all the women of JournalCon. And I've heard rumors of a high stakes Texas Hold 'Em game being planned on top of all that.
So if you haven't, you seriously need to get your butt in gear and go register. Because you know what happens to all those people who don't come to the party you planned....they all end up being left out of the "you had to be there..." stories and giggles and gossip. And you definitely don't want to be one of them.
(Ans also, I just typed all of this with one eye open because I am having some freak allergy attack. That is how dedicated I am to you.)
I am sheep, here me baa
Since my lovely dork of a fiance decided to tag me, I present to you The Entry To End The Dearth.
What was I doing 10 years ago?Moving into the apartment I shared with three other girls my junior year in college. It was one of the noisiest places I ever lived, located directly behind Fraternity Row with assholes who lived above us and loved to play loud music at all hours of the day. By the end of the year I was no longer speaking to the girl I shared a room with, mostly because she was a total bitch. And also, because she threw pillows at me while I slept because my snoring kept her awake. And I was afraid she might knife me in my sleep.
What was I doing 5 years ago?Hoo boy. Five years ago I was on antidepressants, and living in total non-sin with John the Asshole roommate. I think that was one of the "on again" times with Todd, too. So yeah, my life was just full of crazy goodness! Except...not.
What was I doing 1 year ago?Getting ready to go to DC for JournalCon and spending inordinate amounts of time obsessing over my hair. And sweating a lot, because it was hot.
What was I doing yesterday?Working. And also using my company printer (but not the paper!) to print up "Please send me money" beggin' letters for the Breast Cancer 3-Day.
What am I doing today?Today I am looking smooookin' in one of my cuter work outfits, which includes 3 1/2 inch teetery heels, a black straight skirt in the perfect length, and this awesome shirt that shows off just enough cleavage to get the men around here to respect my authoriteh. And then I'm going bowling.
Five snacks I enjoy:Cheetos (but only the crunchy ones)
Fruit (fresh, dried, canned...whatever, if it's fruit, I'll probably eat it)
Candy (I'm a lot like Fez that way)
Mini popcorn cakes
String cheese (why yes, I *am* 12)
Five bands I like:Everything But The Girl
Maroon 5
Modest Mouse
Black Eyed Peas
The Killers
Five things I would do with a million dollars:Pay off my student loans
Buy a house (just the down payment, obviously..thanks, San Diego housing market!)
Pay my mom back some of the money she's used to get my ass out of scrape after scrape
Buy new cars for us
Hire a personal trainer to kick my ass into shape
Five locations I would like to run away to:Bali
Ireland
Italy
Spain
Savannah, GA
Five bad habits:I crack my knuckles ALL THE TIME
I pick at my face
I tickle Kevin way too much
I never remember to get my oil changed on time
I say "like" and "dude" ALL THE DAMN TIME
Five things I like doing:Sleeping
Reading
Scrapbooking
Eating (ya think???)
Having sex
Five TV shows I like:The OC (shut up)
House
Gilmore Girls
That 70's Show
Six Feet Under
Five famous people I would like to meet:Angelina Jolie
Cindy Sheehan
Jason Statham
Morgan Freeman
Barbara Boxer
Biggest joys in my life at the moment:
Kevin
My family
The wedding (seriously, I am so excited about getting married to kevin it's bizarre)
Diet Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper
My kitties
Five favorite toys:My sticky plastic brain
My digital camera
My cell phone
My computer
The San Diego Zoo Panda Cam
Five people to tag:Measi
Weetabix
Lorster
Mare
LuvaBeans
There. Now if I could just figure out how the hell I got a giant bruise on the inside of my middle finger, I would be a complete human being.
Two things (actually three) that do not bode well
Yesterday I went over to my mom's to drop some stuff off and I promptly went into the guest bedroom where my wedding dress was hanging on the back of the door and put it on. And then I went wandering the hallway before plopping down on the couch a la Monica/Phoebe/Rachel. I think I have a sickness.
Also, I am spending most of Saturday traipsing around San Diego and eating cake. From 10:30 to 3 or so, Shannon and I are cake tasting. Yeah, yeah, I already have my cake arranged but dude, when else am I going to get to go cake tasting? Being a bride kinda rocks.
(Oo, one more also....the other day, Otter and I were discussing the bridal shower and she asked if I would want to do a money tree to raise money for the honeymoon instead of presents and before she even finished saying the words I blurted out "No way! I want presents!" I SWEAR I AM NOT THAT SHALLOW, REALLY.)
The week, it suckethed mightily.
Two friends lost their mothers.
Work was bizarrely insanely busy and involved much loud discussion and numerous panicked moments of overwhelmed flurries of activity.
One friend went back to the hospital to battle her depression. (That one was a doozy that involved her calling me in the middle of the day to ask me to please go to her house and get the sword and all of her athames out of the house. Yeah.)
Scads of emotional eating and a plethora of foods high in both fried goodness and fatty comfort led to an almost tear-jerkingly bad weigh in this morning.
So yeah, it sucked. But in the middle of it, Kev and I celebrated our 5 month engagement-versary by getting fancy shmancy new cell phones (with cameras and music ring tones and everything) then gorging ourselves on Mexican food (including a rather large margarita for me witch he said I needed because I was very high strung last week). And I had a very nice evening my a new friend and today we're going bowling before I go to a nice, low key birthday celebration for another friend and it's just....better now.
Next week will be better, right?
