return to you

[sehra]

home alone

hi.

i think i already updated today, but it all gets so confusing. what do you mean i've been home for 5 hours and i haven't accomplished anything i need to have done by tomorrow? i took a shower; i washed my hair, dammit. and i cooked dinner, thank you very much.

i keep forgetting that i'm moving this weekend. i should really try to get my stuff together, and try not to forget to bring things like: all my alcohol (that's $$), all my yarn (which is piled in a big basket along with RM and HM's yarn), and all my cd's.

did i tell you about my 4th-of-july weekend? here's what i wrote while i was at work today:

i had the most lovely weekend with C. for several weeks, we haven't been seeing much of each other, and the time we spent together was mostly work-oriented. these past few days, we finally both got a chance to relax, together.

my feelings, unfortunately, are vague, but strong - not concrete enough for an sdm post, though i've tried, i promise. picture, hmm... a bleach commercial - with curly, blonde-haired tykes running through the grass in barefeet, with the long, wavy-haired momma throwing her head back and laughing while she sweeps one of them up. everyone dressed in flowing white garments, rays of sunlight filtering down, and happiness radiating all around.

that's how my weekend was, except neither of us are blonde, we don't have any children, and we spent a lot of it snuggling rather than running around barefoot outside.

:blank:. i am such a god-awful, eye-rolling bore while i'm at work. it's too bad my desk at home makes it so uncomfortable for me to update from here. and also there is that pesky annoyance of not having my own room. hopefully when i move, everything will be scads more ergonomic, and i'll want to spend all my time online, hooray! err...

anyway, the details of our weekend were along these lines - we'd spend each night making plans for the next day:
"what should we do tomorrow?"
"let's sleep in, first of all. then we can, um, see a movie... then cook dinner, have sex, and drink all night."

our next day (all 3 of them, since we started this on thursday night) consisted of something like this:
- sleeping in. a lot. till sometime late in the afternoon.
- having sex. yummy, delicious, good-morning sex.
- sleeping some more.
- doing nothing.
- thinking about doing something.
- doing nothing.
- calling friends over to eat the dinner we've finally decided to cook.
- eating.
- getting drunk.
- having sex. raunchy, fuck-me harder, very-satisfying sex.
- sleeping.

so we followed our plans pretty well, i think. we did end up seeing one movie, but only because we'd accidentally invited a friend to see it, and she showed up. otherwise, we'd have stayed home and had more sex, which we eventually got around to anyway.

i don't remember if i mentioned it, but i was very hard up, C being too tired every night after working his multiple 80+ hour weeks to do me properly. we made up for it this weekend, almost, hence the boring news reports about it.

oh, the movie was '28 days later'. everyone raved about it, but i thought it was too slow and too long. and not really all that hot. it reminded me in a vague way of a book called blindness by José Saramago, which was a much better book than this was a movie. it reminded my friend in a more concrete way of some other book she read which followed the movie plotline a lot more closely. and it reminded C of an old movie that was also very much like this one, though more comedic, apparently. we started talking about the apocalypse, and the various scenarios that movies have played out (have you seen 'the morning after'? a very good movie for its time (during the cold war); it left quite an impression on me when i saw it as a child).

also, though i never saw nor read the beach, i have read the tesseract by alex garland (who wrote '28 days later'), and i was interested in the similarities that i found between the imagery created by the tesseract and the cinematography in '28 days' (though maybe i made it all up). friend also pointed out some art history references in the movie that were utterly lost on me, but clever when she pointed them out. finally, finally, we dropped off friend and went home to C's bed, which would have been an infinitely better choice than the movie earlier in the night.



it has come to my attention that i do not read enough journals on the irc. apparently, there is some sort of incestuous web happening here, where everyone reads everyone's journals and then talks to each other through them. i've only noticed this because i accidentally read a journal outside of the few i normally read, and then i had to read the journals by the people referred to in the first journal (which i never previously did, even though i'd seen them referenced before in one of my regular reads), and so on and so forth until i think i might be fired for reading irc journals all day. but i've stolen burns1's (that's a funny possessive) trick of copying everything into word, which seems to work allright.

but now i wonder, what will happen to me? i don't think anyone actually reads my journal. i pretty consistently get about 10 hits whenever i update, but for all i have to go on, those could be 10 different, random people each time who happen to see my journal at the top after i update. so, i'll have to live in the murky irc shadows, feeling like i'm illicitly reading these other journals, and not being able to comment on them in mine, because they will never know i'm talking to them there. i mean, i pm/email some people, but i hadn't realized what a very large communal house everyone here is living in, figuratively speaking. mostly because i don't have time to keep up with everything that happens on irc. least of all the off-topic forum; i discovered that one day and had to give it up after a week or 2. i know i'm looking for a distraction at work, but when all my time is sucked away, day after day, i have to stop, man, i can't do it all!

oh, so, i'm going to try to read more journals, and i'm going to try to say hi to people whose journals i have finally read, but i think i have to stay away from the off-topic forum. and i'm hesitant about saying hi, because i am already horribly behind on a couple emails, and i bet some people think i've forgotten about them, when the truth is that every day i add on to the letter(s) i've started, but don't finish, until too much time goes by and i have to start over. i'm sorry that i'm incompetent. but if you say hi to me, i promise i'll say hi back. so say hi, you. if you demand a more thoughtful reply, i promise you'll get it - eventually.



i think that i have reached a stage in my life where i actually do suffer from some slight pms, which never used to happen. it messes with my ability to concentrate, and it makes me eat utterly bizarre combinations of fattening food. on the other hand, this may simply be my inability to get a full night's sleep whenever i have work the next day, and the fact that i'm eating so poorly that my body just craves a lot of fat so it can store it up for my next bout of starvation. the only other time i exhibited symptoms of pms was when i was severely, clinically depressed (a state i feel i have to differentiate from merely being 'depressed', which is essentially a normal basal state for me, i think), but i got over that, eventually.

time to go make my list of things-to-do-tomorrow, which will mainly consist of the exact same items that were on my list of things-to-do-today. tomorrow is also the deadline for some work projects, so if you see me on the irc, send me away please thanks.

 

[sehra]

Mrs. A hates me

so it appears that there really are a max of 10 people who ghost-read, or at least click on, this journal every time i post. vedy vedy eenteresting.

oh NO. i was really craving some ritz crackers last night, so i went to the store, and they were on sale. awesome! but i brought them to work today, pulled them out of the grocery bag, and they are whole wheat ritz crackers!! what kinda crock is that!?! not that i have anything against whole wheat, it's my bread of choice, but not when i'm craving that rich, buttery, yummy taste of a ritz cracker.

i haven't opened them yet. i just keep eyeing them from my desk with thorough disgust.

so i just finished visiting with my friend Mr. A, who is an old pal i went to school with. the reason for our visit was that he needed to drop off a bag of mine that i gave to him ages ago in boston, when he was out there for a business trip. today, as he gave it back to me, he said, "I have to tell you something. My wife broke the lock on your bag and went through it; I'm really sorry."

i wasn't very shocked. the story goes something like this...

Mr. A worked for a company that wanted to send him on a business trip to boston, where i was living. he called me up and said, "hey, i'm coming to boston; i'll give you a ring while i'm there and we'll hang out." okay, cool. for everyone's reference, Mr. A is married (hence the "my wife" comment), with two small children - he was married even when i knew him in school; no big deal. many people find him very attractive, but he's not really my type; we just liked to hang out. and he liked to study with me, as most people did, because i am brilliant and a very good teacher, too (pardon the lack of modesty).

eventually Mr. A shows up in boston. he calls my cell phone (my only phone at the time) and says, "here i am, let's go to dinner." we meet near his hotel, we hang out, we drink, we have fun. we end up staying out so late that the T (boston's subway) stops running.

[side note: yes, boston has the lamest late-night public transportation i have ever seen in a city that bothers to sport a decent public transportation system; it always drove me crazy and even thinking about it now drives me crazy. you can't drive anywhere because of the godforsaken big dig - look it up if you haven't heard of it, biggest traffic construction project in the KNOWN UNIVERSE which moves all their highways underground, to the seventh circle of hell or something - but if you take the subway for a night out, you have to take a cab home if you want to stay out past about 12:30am. even the buses are limited, and stop running before 2am. it's utterly ridiculous. at least in my current city, we don't pretend to have a real public transportation system, we just drive and deal with it. end side note]

so, no subway. i have the option of taking a cab home or staying in Mr. A's hotel room, which has 2 beds - i would obviously sleep in the one he was not inhabiting, as we are just friends (and anyway i'm in love with another, as you may remember).

the decision is made that i am too tired and too poor to take a cab home, so i'll just crash in his hotel room. we go up to the room, i fall onto the bed (being utterly exhausted) and fall asleep. he stays up and watched tv from the other bed before, i assume, going to sleep.

the next day, i convince Mr. A to take some of my shit home with him, because at that point i was still entertaining the idea of towing a trailer cross-country back to the west coast, and i knew i was going to be cutting it close for space. so i pack a bag as full as possible with books and i forget what else, drive him to the airport, and he flies home with it. the deal is, when i get back, we'll obviously be hanging out, because we are pals, and i'll get the bag from him then.

... a few weeks pass...

i get a phone call on my cell phone one night. restricted number. person hangs up. this happens a couple times within a few minutes.

eventually, i answer the call and a woman says, "hi, i saw this number on my cell phone bill, and i don't know who this is. do you know anyone named K_ or A_?"

i should note that i have met Mrs. A, and we actually got along really well the night we met.

i said, "oh yeah, hi Mrs. A, this is S. Mr. A called me when he was out here visiting, that's why my number's on your cell phone bill."

simple enough, call is over.

... about 20 minutes pass...

phone rings again, restricted number. so i answer, and i get this catty voice screaming at me from the phone:

"did you FUCK MY HUSBAND while you were sleeping in his hotel room out there? did you?"

i actually started laughing at her, which was probably not the best reaction from her point of view. okay, she was upset. i have to admit that i see why she's pissed, although i don't think i'm that possessive... i don't think. she asked for extreme details on what we did that night, and i told her, because there was nothing to hide. and i apologized for laughing, and assured her that i really did not want to fuck her man.

anyway, we hang up, with me kind of still chuckling. later, Mr. A apologizes profusely for her behavior. i'm over it.

... more time passes...

i get back to the west coast, ignore everyone i know for several months. as i'm searching for an emerald necklace of mine that i can't find, i suddenly remember that i gave Mr. A that bag, so long ago. i can't even recall what's in it. i call his house a couple times, leave a voicemail. no call back. call again, Mrs. A answers. first contact we've had since boston, and she assures me she'll give him the message that i called.

call back another month later, actually get a hold of A. he says his wife never told him i called. typical.

anyway, eventually we got around to meeting today. his wife knew he was coming to drop the bag off and asked him if he was going to see his 'girlfriend' today. he called her as he left and said, "hey, i just got done with my girlfriend, i'm on my way home." yeah, he's rude. but it's funny.

oh yeah. so since his wife is a complete nutty basketcase bitch, she broke open the lock on my bag and searched it - as if i would hide evidence of an illicit affair in a bag i sent home with him to his house!? moronic little whore.

the annoying part is that i can't really hang out with Mr. A, and we enjoy each other's company. his wife actually answers his business cell phone (i called it yesterday, left a message - she calls back saying "who is this? i just got a call from this number, who are you?") which makes it pretty impossible for me to call him up for lunch. and the worst part is that my manager knows i'm friends with him, and he's actually a very valuable business contact, so she's pushing me to spend more time with him and do "business" stuff with him. blah.

even though i hate calling people this, i'll quote my more-liberal-with-the-shit-talking-friend:

whoa! crazy cunt!

and i hope i didn't leave my emerald necklace in that bag.

 

[sehra]

selfish girl

i miss my boy. our busy, incompatible schedules are driving me crazy. i've been pretty good about brushing it aside, until this morning, when i was so comfortable in bed, snuggled up against him. my entire drive to work, i was moping over the fact that we don't get to spend enough real time together.

i know. whine, bitch, moan. i just had an incredible weekend with him. lots of "real time". i did actually go out to dinner with him and sleep at his house last night. but with both of us wanting to decompress after work (which has to happen at our respective residences; if we traveled to see each other, we wouldn't really be decompressing, now, would we?), and me wanting to take a shower and get pretty, we didn't end up going to dinner till 10pm.

this is relatively normal; we often eat late, but i didn't even get to his house until about 9:30pm. went to dinner at an awesome restaurant, blowfish, where the music boomed at a deafening volume - makes it difficult to have a conversation. of course we still talked, and made lots of cutesy faces at each other and fed each other food, and it was nice.

but when we got to his house, i went straight upstairs, plopped on the bed, and fell asleep soon afterwards - he followed suit, as we were both exhausted from our respective days. i finally slept through the night - been having trouble with that for several days, waking up every hour on the hour - and woke to the alarm at 6am.

instead of getting up for the 7am work meeting i had agreed to yesterday, i snuggled closer to him and just felt like crying for the fact that i had to leave. i know it sounds ridiculous. but i know our busy schedules are going to take over again, and i can't stand that i don't get to see much of him anymore. when we do see each other, it always feels rushed. his other business has really started to take off, so when he's not at the restaurant, he's working on that.

he did warn me that this would happen, and i was expecting it. so i put up with it for awhile. and now i see how it's going to be - him working from the afternoon till 3 or 4am; me working from 7am till the evening.

we won't ever see each other, and it drains me.

this is one reason i was thinking so hard about us moving in together. at least then, even if we're incredibly busy and passing like ships in the night - at least there's still some guaranteed contact. i hate waiting for him to try to schedule a night off, or some time for dinner so we can schmooze each other for a few hours a week.

i do have to take the time to say that i am truly thankful for the time we do get to spend together. yesterday i had a very long, hard day at work, and i'm so happy that he got off work early enough for din-din. i'm just sorry that i passed out so quickly once we got home.

and i am so, so proud of him for all the work he's doing. i know it's incredibly stressful for him, so i'm not going to complain to him about my neediness. instead, it goes here. i'm doing my best to be supportive and giving, because i know how difficult it is to keep everything with the two jobs in balance - i don't want him to feel like i'm work, too.

i still want to stomp my feet and pout and stay home from work whenever i want and cook him dinner and give massages and get them back and hold his face and tell him how amazing he is and fall asleep every night with my arms wrapped around him and wake up smiling at each other and talk to him about nothing and talk to him about everything and be alive and live life with him.

and this is my time and my space, and i get to complain here. that the tidbits of life we're grabbing at aren't enough for me, and i want more more more more more.

i'm a selfish girl.

 

[sehra]

searching for success

somehow, while sitting here ignoring the massive pile of clothes and ... junk - the stuff i'm supposed to be packing for my move tomorrow - i thought it would be an interesting idea to look up some old friends from my last high school. granted, i picked the friends that i knew were going to be successful (although they would have categorized me as the same, back then), but now i am sitting here feeling like a loser and a failure.

let me amend that. i feel as though i should feel like a loser and a failure. i don't actually feel like one.

but i'm not earning my MBA at oxford right now; i haven't had a career in politics; i didn't get my M.D. 5 years out of high school, and i'm not bound to make any money as a lawyer, either.

however:
i have been living on my own and supporting myself since i was in high school (aka prep school) with these people.

i am very good at adapting and coping with change and new situations. i said "my last high school" because i attended three. i moved a lot (no, not a military brat), but i still excelled both academically and, i suppose socially (for the fact that i was a (nerd and a) transplant at two high schools). only the last one was a prep school with graduates who are/ are going to be big names in the world as we get older. i was there because it was supposed to be a good opportunity for me, opening doors and all that jazz, i think.

i got over the injustice of not being able to attend the ivy league schools to which i was accepted because of my mother's indifference and refusal to assist me in any way financially, including her refusal to fill out the forms i needed to apply for financial aid. please note that i do not harbor any ill will towards my mother for this. but i do think there is something wrong with a system where someone who has everything going for her (me) based on individual (but not financial) merit somehow slips through every crack possible. the details are not inconsequential, but not relevant here, either.

i am intelligent and versatile, and - so far - have been able to get a job in any industry i please.

i put myself through college and graduated with a 4.0 in a very difficult major.

i have since been accepted into programs at many ivy league schools. i've done research for and been employed in my field by a couple of them. i do think a lot of people at them have attitude problems, and i'm not necessarily upset that i didn't get my undergraduate education at one.

[but i do think that if i end up going to graduate school, i will choose one with a name, because like it or not, prestige does make a difference at that level.]

i've lived in another country on my own, and travelled through many others. i've met incredible people from all over the world and had the privilege of both learning from and teaching them.

i'm not rich. i'm in a lot of debt. i don't have many people who i'd say know me or care about me too deeply. [this is not to say that i am the same way towards others; i am the polar opposite. that fact makes me sensitive to the quality of my relationships with people.] i've regressed somewhat in my philosophical and intellectual tendencies over the past several years (to my regret - i feel too busy for it, seems like a silly excuse...), but i have learned that it's okay to have and feel emotions. the ones other than rage and anger and frustration with the world, i mean.

usually okay. actually, what i've learned is that life is a lot different when lived with a fuller range of emotion. and i like it better, i think. i think. i think....

why does being poor and solitary fit on my list of positive, successful attributes? i am poor because i took chances. because i went off and tried things that required money, and taught me a lot about myself and my boundaries (i used to think i didn't have any, ha ha). i am solitary by nature, but it keeps me grounded, or so i like to think. [i can be a social animal, but i often feel like i'm skimming on the surface of life when i'm in many social situations. not that this is always a bad thing, either.]

i haven't explained it properly, i can tell, but give me the benefit of the doubt (and maybe some sleep so i can try to explain it again later) - i feel that i've gained from these things. i couldn't have done them if i had followed the prep school -> ivy league education -> prestigious career track in the standard manner.

i'm not worried that i'm not as socially successful as many people i know. i am worried that i don't know what my expectations are for myself anymore, and therefore am having trouble defining my own version of success. which makes it a fairly challenging task to get on that track and be, you know, successful. in my own eyes.

and alas, it's 2:45am and i have to leave for work in about 3 hours, so i'll have to end it here.

except to say that despite my supposed acceptance of my current life situation, i am not going to email any of the people i found during my search. you can interpret that how you will; i've sat and thought about it, and still haven't come to a real conclusion on why i won't.

 

[sehra]

spilling over

sometimes, i can't help feeling overwhelmed.

not with my own life, but with the world at large. sometimes the magnitude of humanity and history flashes through my head, and it floods me with emotion. usually the trigger is music, music that touches something incredibly beautiful. sometimes it's just a face, a person i walk by. sometimes it's a mystery.

i can't help it, my mind just explodes with images and emotions - almost a media collage of the rise of civilization, from ancient times straight through to the bizarre status of the world today. it's as if, at certain moments in time, i'm called upon to check the balance of the world; i'm given all the evidence. and i see sadness in the big picture, but hope in individual scenes. it comes out more on the side of tears than of joy - but it's not bad. it's just neutral. it's just the way it is.

it makes me cry, makes me tremble - not so much because i'm sad, but because i'm overcome with that cascade of emotion. i have no other way to explain it - it's the ultimate empathy for everything that's ever been said, every deed that's ever been done. all the injustices in the world, all the lives lived, everything good and bad, infinite waves of karma just cascade over me.

it's hard to breathe, hard to know where to look. so i let it come, and the tears flow, and i bite my lip and wonder what to do now, where we - as a race, as a world, as a force of spirituality, as a speck in the universe - can possibly go from here. it's a glimpse of something far too big for me to understand, and it puts me back in my place.

do you understand?

 

[sehra]

moved

well, i didn't get into work till noon today. felt as if a mack truck had run me over when i woke up this morning. moving everything definitely took a toll on my poor body. yesterday i woke up in so much pain that i needed some ibuprofen so i could go back to sleep, but my arms were so weak and hurt so much that i couldn't push hard enough on the ridiculous child-proof cap to open it. catch-22.

the new neighbors were nice; they helped me and C unload the truck, so that went pretty quickly. now i have a nice room filled to the brim with boxes - even covering the entire, enormous bed. instead of organizing things last night, i wimped out and spent the night with C. tonight, i'm going to be setting up the router so that i can have a beautiful cable modem connection from home - yesssss! i have already set up my computer/desk, and i bought a nice office chair off craigslist - much better than the wooden fold-up i sat on at RM's house.

i'm so glad to be in my own space, and to not have to deal with HM and RM anymore. especially because RM managed to severely annoy me during the time that i was moving out. the story is too boring to tell. besides, her birthday is this week, and i've already made plans to take her out, so i need to get over my annoyance.

that's all i really have to say. my whole body is so sore i could cry. i'm sporting a sexy bruise on my right bicep from all the boxes i was lugging around. i don't bruise easily at all, so it's fascinating to me. the other reason i went to C's house last night was to have a go in the spa, but it would have woken up his sister, who happened to be sleeping downstairs (right next to the window by the spa). so no relief, yet. hopefully i'll boil myself tonight and feel better by tomorrow.

 

[sehra]

old or new?

i have a dilemma.

when i originally started 'a simple defense mechanism' (which is obviously not this thread, but i don't want to post this there and as far as i can tell, the people who read one, read the other) it was, clearly, for a specific purpose. what i wrote about then was a certain situation that no longer exists.

but when i still want to write that way, about the really great things that are happening, i go to that thread to post them. then i think about the past compared to the present, and it keeps me from putting things from here-and-now there because, well, they don't really fit the theme.

so, should i get over it and just keep the journal going on a relationship theme, whether good or bad, and ignore the title? or should i start a new one, just for the mushy gushy stuff?

if i start a new one, i'll probably still have to use the old one anyway, for when i'm feeling crabby about things. so maybe it's best to just keep it all together.

if you have an opinion, let me know soon, please thanks!

 

[sehra]

waking up

i'm not sure if it's the move, or what, but suddenly my mind is churning. i've got a million things to think about, and i feel like i am wasting my life away by sitting behind this desk today.

this morning, i started looking up ph.d. programs at the only nearby university i would want to attend. it freaked me out. even though my entire undergraduate career (well, the last 3 years, anyway) was focused on going to grad school, and i know i'm well-qualified, i suddenly felt inadequate. as if not being sure what i want to do for the past year or two has completely nullified all that i'd done up to that point.

plus, as i scrolled through the programs, picking the ones for which i wanted information, i suddenly felt pangs of remorse for not being qualified to do programs in 'linguistics', or 'french', or 'musical arts', or 'modern thought and literature'. even though these are all specific areas i'd love to study more than i already have.

but i'm thinking i might just do it. even though i don't feel like i have enough time to get an application and all supporting materials together, maybe i'll just do it. except... what about all the other options i've been considering? like business school, and, um... well, other stuff... like being a horticulturist and snowboarding bum!

because i've had such an obvious dearth of guidance and role-models in my life, i've wanted to be a mentor for quite some time. it's such a stronge urge that i really feel like i have to do it, to give someone else what i missed out on. when i first started checking into it, about 3 years ago, the programs in my area were not accepting anyone for months.

i tried again in boston, but after attending orientation, i realized i was too unstable out there to be of much help to anyone else. and besides, i knew within about 2-3 months of going there that i wouldn't be staying long enough to be a stable force in anyone's life.

so now that i've got a job, and a place to live, i'm looking again. apparently, everyone wants to be a 'Big Sister(tm)' out here, so they're not accepting new people in my area. but there are lots of other mentoring programs that i'm checking out. i really want to do this; it means so much to me.

yeah, so i'm thinking about all this stuff. but you're going to see me vacillate on it, i promise. because two years ago, i was all gung-ho about my ph.d. and part of the reason i edged away from it was that i was that after so many years of doing research to get READY to do research for the rest of my life, i got to the point where i wasn't sure i wanted to do it forever. i love scientific research, and i'm good at it. but i love lots of things, and i'm good at lots of things. like snowboarding, for example.

so i can't decide. the story of my life.

 

[sehra]

shitty week

wow, this is the week from hell. and it's not even really disastrous; i just have a dismal feeling about the whole week. yesterday i worked 14 hours, went to a "networking" business dinner that i didn't enjoy at all, except for the keynote speaker (when most people were falling asleep, i was actually really interested and suddenly excited about science again). today, i overslept and woke up at 7am on the dot - too bad i had a meeting at 7am today, AND i live an hour away from work. mark that being late for the 4th of 4 days this week. but fuck that, i didn't get home till after 10pm last night.

i'm trying to figure out why i feel entitled to being happy and living the way i want when i haven't really earned it. people from previous generations worked, and worked hard, for a living. and though it's not a foolproof method for an easier life, the idea is that they made money, acheived things through work that allowed them to get better rewards (more money), and in the end, they could spend it on things to make their lives more enjoyable.

well, i want my life to be enjoyable now, goddamnit. i want to eat at nice restaurants when i want; i want to take weeks at a time to snowboard (yeah, i keep mentioning it - i think i'm sick of summer); i want to not worry about my debt; i want to take extended trips to see the world; i want my kids to have a comfortable life growing up.

and unfortunately, this is a trend i see among just about everybody i know who's my age. we don't want to wait for the good stuff in life. what is our problem?? i see it; i know it isn't right, but i can't help it.

i've been through the whole stage in my life where i thought money wasn't important. and i've been through the stage where i thought, fuck yes, i need to make money! and then i've been through the stage where i thought money was important, but not as important as happiness is. and i still stand by that - my decision to leave boston was primarily motivated by a desire to become a happier, healthier person. or to put it more realistically, it was a desire to keep living. but if i had wanted to become a mad career woman, with lots of capital potential, i would have (and certainly should have) stayed. though it's debatable whether i would have survived for long.

but in general, i don't know how to find the balance now. i guess now that i've got the happiness part relatively stable, i'm moving on to being concerned about the money part. and that isn't even really it - it's more concern about the 'what am i going to do with my life' part. it is so so so so so exasperating to know that i'm intelligent and capable of anything, really, but to have nowhere to focus my energy/brains/skills. okay, rephrase: to have nowhere that i want to focus these things. and if i don't really want to do it, i simply can't. so i'm trying to figure out - what do i want!?

i'm not asking you what i want, i'm just asking.

i'm not sayin', i'm just sayin'.

enough of that for now.

_______________

our IT guy has an oddly sexy voice. odd, because in person, he is not really all that attractive. he's not a typical computer geek - he takes the time to highlight his hair, he's tall, with a relatively good build - but his voice does not match his physical appearance at all. it's always disconcerting to me when i hear him in the building and then run across him standing around talking to someone. i feel like i want to jump him when i hear him, and then i see him, and... nothing.

on the note of attraction:

i wonder if smell is as important to other people as it is to me. let me tell you, i cannot get enough of the way C smells. i don't know if that's disgusting - it's certainly not to me - but i just love it.

and the reason i notice how incredibly attracted i am to his smell is that i HATED the way my ex smelled. i mean, i didn't crinkle my nose when we were lying in bed together, but i definitely couldn't bury my face in his neck and just breathe it in.

it was so odd. the smell thing wasn't an issue until we'd been together for some years, and the relationship was disintegrating anyway. i often wondered if there was some change in our body chemistry that just produced the 'stay the fuck away from me!' pheremones between us.

it made me feel so, so bad. because we had talked about it, and he would spend so much time looking up information online about whether there was some way to change it. he wanted things to work so badly.

i feel like i should stress that there were no BAD smells - probably anyone on the street would never have noticed it. it was just something about when we were close together... i just wanted to back off.

so now that you know more than you ever wanted to about body smell and my attraction (or repulsion) to it - time to stop talking about it.
_______________

i guess that in exchange for today being a sucky day, i get the perk of it going by incredibly quickly. even though i have a lot of shit to do, and probably not enough time to get it all done, i'm happy that it's so late. but i feel like hell yet again. one of my horrible headaches is coming on (someone recently told me they're migraines, but i feel like a wuss saying that) and i just feel... bad.
_______________

on a better note, i am finally home. i got the router for the cable modem set up, so i now (obviously) have internet access - and YES it is much more ergonomic! i plan to spend much more time on the irc! well, maybe...

must go buy a bookshelf so i have somewhere to put my many boxes of books. i wish i could buy/transport minou's. and i wish her cat would get better. and i wish there were a magic wand to wave to make everything okay.

for everyone.

 

[sehra]

grandmother's gone

my grandmother passed away, apparently earlier this week. due to the outstanding quality of communication between the parental and filial levels of my family, my sister and i weren't informed of this until today. the funeral is tomorrow, so there's not much chance of either of us being able to make it (my family is spread out across the u.s.; everyone has to fly to get there). i actually heard about it from my sister, who heard from my mother via e-mail.

this also happened when my uncle (father's side of the family, this time) died several years ago. nobody but my sister even pretended to tell me about it. she was invited to the memorial service, while i was clueless about the whole situation.

back to the point at hand...

my grandmother, an m.d. and a smart, smart woman, suffered from alzheimer's for about the last 10 years of her life. i lived with her, briefly, when i was in my last year of high school, 16 years old. supposedly, this was just before the effects of alzheimer's began to show. i haven't seen her since.

she was not only 3 generations removed from me (she was very old when she had my mother - everyone thought my mom's sister, some 20 years older, was her mom. and my mother was very young when she had me), but also from an entirely different culture. her family, including my mother, immigrated from [a currently undisclosed country] with very distinct religious and cultural mores. we weren't really very close.

i wasn't raised with much of an understanding or imprinting of my cultural backgrounds, which are actually wildly diverse and pretty interesting. but i grew up in wonder-bread, middle-class, midwest america, and more than once, i've been referred to as a "white girl". even though i'm quite obviously not. this made it pretty difficult, if not impossible, for me to appreciate my grandmother as much as i should have when i was younger.

she disapproved of me (as a 16-year old) in general - my friends were all boys, and we would - heaven forbid - talk in my room, instead of properly having tea in the living room. i was too independent, not respectful enough; i spoke on the phone too much, and addressed my letters in handwriting that was too small.

but i have such great memories of visiting her when i was young. my sister and i would spend summers there, running through her multi-acre backyard, being nuisances in the enormous (to us) house. she'd always try to feed us, always. i still encounter foods and smells that i haven't experienced since i was a kid, and it brings me back to her house.

and her cooking - she loved to cook. she taught me how to cook, starting when i was about 7. i didn't learn a whole lot; i'm certainly no master chef. but i love lots of food from her culture. i wish i knew how to make more of it.

she had chihuahuas in the house - millions of them. maybe more like 17, but that's not an exagerration. she had even more at certain points in time. by the time i was living there, the chihuahuas were all gone (dead?) and a sweet old mutt had taken their place.

i wish that i had done a better job of being her daughter's daughter. she and my mother weren't close, either (runs in the family?), so maybe i was playing the role exactly as i should have. but i remember the times we'd smile and hug, and she'd be affectionate and want everything to be the best for me. and i was a typical child - i didn't want to be held, i didn't like her in my business, i didn't want to conform to her expectations of me as a "good girl".

in a way, i'm sorry that i'm not more emotional about her death. i certainly loved her, i respected her, i will miss her. i'm sorry for the way that i treated (or didn't treat) her when i lived with her. i want to have memories of being wildly happy and waterfalls of love pouring over us when we were together, but we don't work that way. i suppose the way i write about it is indicative of the vast emotional gaps between members of my family.

i'm going to miss the grandmother i remember. i know things changed a lot over the past 10 years. she didn't recognize her daughters; everything was tough. i should have tried harder to keep in touch with her, my aunt, and my grandfather. she and my grandfather were together 68 years. i'm told he's not going to the funeral because it's too hard for him. there is a memorial mass the night before, which i'm sure he's attending.

love you, grandma, and i'm glad you're finally at peace.

 

[sehra]

lazy day

burns1, you crack me up!!

i am sitting here at 3pm, having just woken up after a stressful, sad, but ultimately comforting night. i didn't get to sleep until around 7am, so there's a tiny bit of justification.

i thought i had posted about it last night, but apparently i wrote it all up and never got around to putting it in this journal.

i still have what i wrote, but it's too depressing to post during daylight hours.

i'm having barbeque ruffles and 7up that i stole from the roomies for breakfast. time for me to stock the new kitchen with some of my own food.

i'm still sitting in the midst of about 10 boxes that i haven't unpacked yet. i did assemble a nice new bookshelf last night, which gives me somewhere to put all my crap. i don't really feel like unpacking right now, though.

i am so glad it's the weekend, i can't even tell you. good riddance to last week.

i'm so hungry for good food!! i haven't eaten for almost 2 days, and now chips and soda is what i'm giving myself. :tsk: but what to eat?

i think i'll just bask in the nice weather and the fact that i have n.o.t.h.i.n.g. to do today. well, except for a few errands that i really should run.

 

[sehra]

only human

because of my grandmother's death, i got to thinking about my relationship with my mother. or, rather, letting the idea of our relationship become somewhat unseated from the depths at which i've kept it buried.

i can't really think about it, because some defensive mechanism kicks in, and i just cry instead.

i used to cry like this a lot, in boston. i'd go to work with my eyes, nose, lips so puffed up and swollen that i was a disaster. twice, i had to go to work like that. most times it subsided overnight, or i just didn't go to work, but i couldn't keep up appearances every day. especially not when i was crying in the bathroom every ten minutes when i actually was at work. every day.

think about it. every ten minutes, every day. crying so hard that my whole body hurt. it took every ounce of energy to try to keep a normal appearance for an hour. that didn't leave any energy for social interactions. so once someone looked at me, they could still tell something wasn't right, and they'd ask: "what's wrong?"

that was all it took to send me to the bathroom again.

once, when i came into work after a horrible night, one doctor with whom i worked tried to take me to the hospital. he was demanding that i go, because he thought i was having a life-threatening allergic reaction to something. i would have preferred to pass it off as allergies, but it was impossible when it looked so bad. i couldn't go to the hospital to mask my despair.

i lived like this for nearly six months. 6 months of life-wrecking depression, 3 months of it spent crying my heart out every single day. i'm telling you the truth, and i'm not exaggerating, about any of it.

the worst part was that there was no real, direct reason that i'd cry, most of the time.

at least tonight, there's my mother. and my grandmother. and me and my sister.

and the fact that please god i hope that when my mother dies, we've figured it out. i hope we can look at each other and say i love you and mean it. i hope she looks at me and sees past the fact that i'm my father's daughter; that she can be proud of me for what i've done, and not what she thinks i should have done. that whatever distance was between her and her mother doesn't exist with us.

and please, please let us make it to the time when we're ready to deal with it. because neither of us are right now.

 

[sehra]

just a day

delicious dinner last night. i was crabby from not having eaten a real meal in several days, so C took me out for good food and wine. calamari, duck, butternut squash, veggies, peach cobbler, '98 cabernet. oh yum, how i love good food and my boy. love, love, kiss, kiss.

today i'm back to having a granola bar for breakfast and ritz bits cheese sandwiches for lunch. this is because i was an hour late for work and therefore must surrender my lunch break to get my hours in today.

i was an hour late for work because every time i tried to get out of bed this morning, C grabbed me and pulled me back into bed for snuggles. i was so comfortable i kept giggling in my sleep. until i remembered that i actually did have to go to work - and that i had to go home before that, since i had left some important docs at my house.

what have i done at work today? caught up on journals, including reading beg's from beginning to end. shouldn't have started in on it, as i have lots of work to do this week and won't be in on wednesday due to a business trip. still, next on my list is tango's, though as she knows i've already caught the tail end of hers.

it's now 4pm and i am feeling slightly nauseous, weak, and headachy from the lack of food today. also from sitting and staring at word and reading from my computer screen for 7 hours straight.

oh, finished tango's journal. can't remember what's next on my list, but i'll have to wait until i get home to dive in.

i'm wearing a slinky, thin, red sleeveless shirt today, in order to survive the ridiculous heatwave that's going on here. underneath it, i'm wearing a hilarious cheap vinyl bra that's white with black straps and black jaguar spots on it. i didn't pay much attention when i was stumbling sleepily out of C's house this morning, but after coming to work and noticing that people kept staring at my chest, i checked it out in the bathroom.

the slinky shirt is see-through when it comes to the spotted bra i'm wearing. very much so; i can't blame co-workers for being drawn to stare at the wild spots covering my tiny breasts. ah well, scandal in the office. probably not many people have noticed, since i've been riveted to my computer screen most of the day.

for once, i'm looking forward to getting home to my new room and unpacking/organizing. for the past week, i've been studiously avoiding it as much as possible. i've only spent 3 nights there, come to think of it. and one of those was with C, who came to comfort me during my bad friday night.

oh wait, tonight's monday. C's only weekday off; i can't remember whether or not we have plans...

truth be told, i can't believe i've just sat here the entire work day and read journals. this morning, i was incredibly motivated to get some work done - and i did, for the first hour or so. then i opened up a journal - thought to myself, "i shouldn't be doing this; i was really rolling on getting work duties done and this will just suck me in."

obviously i don't listen to myself very well at times like these. anyway, i've got about 10 minutes left to the day, and i think i'll spend it on a bit more research. or else writing an email or two...

 

[sehra]

can't explain

very unexcited about anything and everything these days. mainly sit around being annoyed at C's work schedule. knowing that i can't see him or talk to him the entire week before, during - but especially after - work really gets me down. whoa, what happened to me? i am such an annoying girl.

i am so tempted to look for a new job, back in research again. but for one thing, i'm on contract here until november, so now's a bit early to start searching. also, i don't even really know that i want to go back to research. i mean, i spend a lot of time talking about how i don't want to do that for the rest of my life.

i know there is something out there that fits me perfectly, but i don't know what it is. i don't know how to find it.

i think i had too much potential when i was younger. i really believe that the reason i never got any guidance or useful mentoring is that people thought i didn't need it. everyone i talked to would say "you can do anything! you're great! pick what you want to do, and do it!"

well, i didn't know then and i don't know now.

and for the record, in case you're a mentor, or in a comparable position to someone young (good parent, academic advisor, high school guidance counselor, just feel like taking someone under your wing) and you're thinking of giving such incredibly inspiring advice to a confused mentee who you think has got it made, don't. give them more useful, concrete advice. analyze their personality; get to know them. and then use your experience and knowledge of the world (because you're supposedly older and wiser, or at least you've got more connections) to give them suggestions they may not have considered.

broken record, i know. it's a personal crisis, and i can't shut up about it.

it's really not anybody else's fault that i'm aimless. i should just pick something and do it. but good mentors do help, i promise! i've met so many people who have gained so much life insight from others - i feel that i've missed out.

maybe i moved too much. my parents didn't help, but lots of parents don't help. schools, scholarship programs, and internships were always excited to see me because of my numbers and my stats. i fit just about every quota you could ask for, in a funny way. but they'd grab me up, and then sort of throw me in the trophy case - forgotten. maybe i just didn't learn what i was missing out on until too late. i should have been demanding it all those years. but it's very difficult to know what you've never been exposed to.

i just ate lunch, and it's only 10:30am. looks like a long day ahead.

 

[sehra]

suspect

when i moved into the new place, last weekend, i brought along a bag of things from my old pantry.

the bag's contents were primarily alcohol, with a couple cans of coke thrown in.

one of the bottles of alcohol was a brand-new bottle of smirnoff vodka, which i had only cracked to cook with about a month ago. afterwards, i stored it in the freezer.

today, i finally remembered that i had this bag sitting in the kitchen (well, the new roommate - henceforth known as Curly - reminded me about it). started taking bottles out to put them away, and i get to the vodka bottle.

it's completely empty, except for a couple swigs at the bottom.

i exclaimed something in shock, and examined the bottle to see if it had a leak.

Curly immediately says, "It wasn't me!"

i absent-mindedly told him i hadn't thought that, and continued my examination, twisting the cap to see if it was secure. it was on there dead-tight.

well, whatever. i shrugged and commented on how i'd need to buy another bottle. i thought that somehow, maybe it had evaporated, even though that's never happened to me before.

when i was finished putting everything else away, Curly grabs the vodka bottle and asks me, "Do you wanna keep this?"

i said no, it wasn't worth keeping.

Curly promptly unscrews the lid and chugs down the remnants of the vodka.

hmmmmmmmmmmm..... :wishy:

did he do it?? what's your vote?

 

[sehra]

teach your children well

i just found out that one of my co-workers is pregnant. i suspected she was; her breasts have gotten much larger lately, i thought her belly looked a tiny bit bigger, and she recently seemed to be trying to hide the effects of morning sickness.

for some reason this is completely depressing to me. maybe because she seems younger than i am, though she's not; she's a year older. she's moving out of her mother's house, living alone for the first time, in august, under great stress and fear of doing so - didn't want to tell her mom she was leaving. she's from a fairly conservative asian culture, isn't married - though she's moving in with her boyfriend - and isn't terribly mature or independent.

yet somehow, i view the idea of her having a child as an indication that she's got her life more together than i do. which is total bullshit, i realize. i definitely didn't have the same feeling when a young secretary i used to work with told me her only goal in life was to have a child. i knew that didn't mean anything to her. it was true, too. as soon as she had the baby, she complained incessantly about how much work it was, and how she "never thought it would be this hard." that's exactly what i expected from her. but with people this age, and of a certain professional level (though non-professionals can certainly be just as capable), i expect that their decision means something a little - well, a lot - more.

this bizarre rationalization about pregnancy as a status symbol is a problem i've struggled with for a couple years, ever since i started thinking about when to have kids, and how to fit my (then ph.d.-focused) career around children. i know the jealousy i feel towards expectant mothers is stupid, petty; it doesn't mean anything and it serves no purpose but to make me feel inadequate.

yes, i want children. i think i'd be a good parent. it's a trite statement, one that doesn't do justice to the depth of my commitment to it, but most people who know me agree with my self-assessment (of being a good parent). i do think that those who decide not to have children have usually made a noble choice, if enough thought is put into it. or sometimes just the right choice, whether their rationale is noble or not. i probably think it's noble because i see it as a sacrifice - i'm sure those who make that decision see it nearly the opposite way. i have plenty of friends who choose to be child-free. at any rate, i think the amount of consideration i've given the idea gives my decision just as much importance.

it's the people who have children just because it's "what comes next", or because they feel pressure from family, or religion, or society; people who don't necessarily make a conscious decision, but just kind of go along with it - these are the decisions (or lack thereof) that i don't have much respect for. and it should go without saying that i think getting pregnant in order to trap a man into a relationship is utterly reprehensible.

accidents are exempt in all respects from this discussion, because i say so.

this is not to say, however, that a parent can't make the most of having a child. someone who chose to have a child for the wrong reasons could very well still become an excellent parent. sometimes once the baby arrives, motivations and priorities take shape, or change. case in point are some people right here - gypsy and deb come to mind, as theirs are the only journals i've read that are relevant. even though i am using them as an example in this paragraph, i am not trying to say they had their children for the wrong reasons. sorry, bad topic flow here. i hope i'm not offending them by putting them in this group. i certainly hope not, as the point is that they are admirable mothers, not least because they are both single, in difficult situations, and still manage to be exceptional parents.



family is actually the primary reason i'm so concerned about my life/career decisions right now. yes, i cite all sorts of selfish reasons as to why i want money right now. but the truth is that everything i think about is in relation to how it will affect my future family. and it really brings me down to think that i have no immediate plans for even ever having a family, when it's all i really want from life. though, i should stress, not to the point of desperation - like that secretary.

when i'm 80 years old (i only hope), and looking back on my life, what i want to see is a legacy of a happy, healthy relationship - and family - behind me. i am positive that there is nothing else i will care about at that point in time. whether i made millions of dollars, whether i got more degrees and proved to the world that i was worthy of having some additional letters after my name, whether i won the nobel prize (heh heh heh) - those things would all be nice, but - there's more to it. and there are lots of other realistically attainable goals, or standards of success, that i could measure my life by. but i still think having love in my life, learning to be and living as the best person i can, and having raised good children will have been my ultimate accomplishments.

maybe, if it came down to it, maybe the only other substitute would be helping children in severely disadvantaged/compromised situations. but i'm not sure, yet, whether i'm that strong. i'd like to think so, but since i don't have the means now, anyway, i'm not going to speculate.



i don't automatically think all children are great, or cute, or amazing. i almost always think they have great potential. but when they are obnoxious, i usually reserve my distaste for the parents. is that unfair? i don't know. my opinion depends on the context, i suppose. kids running around screaming in restaurants: parents' fault. but i've worked with lots of children - extensive babysitting, working at daycares, private preschools, urban elementary schools, volunteering with underprivileged kids in a third-world country - helping with my own mother's young children, and my father's young child. sometimes environment is the problem. the neighborhood, the school, the kids they associate with, their social status - all can have a very strong effect on children's behavior and development (obviously), and their parents might not be able to overcome all that. i realize this, and i realize that there are always other complexities behind every situation, but it doesn't make any of the problems go away.

i have the utmost respect for parents who truly care and do the best by their children. it sounds ridiculous, but i've learned that it's not the norm. not here in america, anyway. not to say good parents are a dying breed; they're just not the majority, in my experience.

my mother has an m.d.; she's utterly brilliant. but what i am most proud of are her efforts to create higher educational standards for, and to support myriad aspects of, her community - she's an unbelievable role model for her children, and she has incredible drive to make sure they're good world citizens. that sounds so cheesy, but i think that encompasses what she teaches them. and i still believe she was the best mother possible to me and my sister, given the circumstances. when i say 'her children', i mean her youngest, my half-siblings. she's learned a lot since she had me and my sister, and she's in a different place in her life now - both financially and mentally. she couldn't have done the things she may have wanted to back when she had us.

she's not practicing medicine now. for all intents and purposes, she's a housewife, a mother. but i feel so guilty using those simple terms, because they belie the enormity of what she does for her children, and for the children - and parents - of others lucky enough to know her.



i often forget about, or suppress, my desire to start a family. i know now is not the right time, even if i do think i'm as emotionally prepared as anyone without a child could be. first, i'm probably wrong about that; and second, i'm not financially prepared. probably nobody ever thinks they are, but it's pretty important to me to significantly reduce my debt before i think about any other major life changes.

i don't have anyone around who's prepared, either, and as i hope i made clear above - a loving relationship has to come first. i think it's obvious that i certainly am not the type to get pregnant for the sake of having a baby. C and i used to talk about it, a year or so ago. he would tentatively bring it up then; i was scared. still thinking too much about getting away and doing career-oriented things. as much as i craved a relationship that could lead to a family, i thought i wanted to focus on my career more. but i've changed my mind; they're balancing out, now.

and now, both of our situations have changed. he's not ready anymore; he's got way too much on his plate. maybe after the new business stabilizes, it'll be a little different. i'm not ready either; i need to get some sort of life plan figured out. not written in stone, but if i at least have a plan, i can do something more with myself, feel better about the decisions i make.

i'm sure it will always be like that. if i waited until everything were perfect, i'd probably never be able to have a child. though i think there's a lot to be said for family planning, the prevailing sentiment among those i speak with seems to be: "ready or not, here baby comes!"

maybe. if anyone cares to add their opinion to the mix, i'd be glad to hear it.

 

[sehra]

getting through the day

during the business trip yesterday, the men i was working with kept talking about how i must be really good at what i do, with the implication that i would be good at it because i am young and attractive.

well, i'm not as young as they thought, but i get that a lot, thanks to my parents' genes. both C and i look young for our respective ages, as do both of my parents. lucky for our children, should we ever have any.

i hope that i'm not successful because of my attraction quotient. i mean, if i were a model, that might mean something else. but i'm not and have no desire to be (not that i could be one). i'm glad i'm not a hideous mess, but i'd rather be judged for competence on my actual abilities.

this doesn't mean i don't enjoy the ego boost i get from people finding me attractive. i just think it's irrelevant when judging my intelligence and capabilities.

________


went out to dinner last night with T, a good friend. she and i talked about her latest crush, sex dreams, work woes, getting to know people, and the amazingly delicious food we were eating. a superficial night, which was all my brain and body could handle. it's nice that we can do that with each other, yet still have important discussions. i got to see her new studio, which is really gorgeous. made me wish, again, that i could afford to live on my own.

writing that also reminded me of minou's slumber party invitation. minou, you know that i'd be over there if i were closer! for margaritas, or to help you pack. or to distract you from your little sister - i'm very glad mine outgrew that stage.

________


Curly is getting to be a bit strange. not towards me, thankfully. he seems to have a different woman for every other day of the week. i think i've met 3 or 4 of his conquest attempts (unless i am misreading the situations), and a couple of them have been back more than once. one of them appears to be his housekeeper, but i am not so sure after last night.

the first time i met her, she came over, cleaned the house, and left. yesterday, however, i got home from work and heard some giggling in his room for a bit. after some time, he and the housekeeper(?) emerged. the door to his room was left open, so i happened to notice a flowery silk robe tossed onto his bed, with the silk belt trailing across the floor in front of the bedroom door.

oh well, as long as he's not trying to get into my pants, it's none of my business. hope he doesn't mind if C starts spending the night more often.

________


i still haven't unpacked any of my boxes, with the exception of the books i liberated after i set up the bookshelf. i can't bring myself to do it. every time i start looking at the things i have to unpack, i think that they're better left stuffed in a box. they're not quite junk, but they're not essential, either.

i wish i had my own house.

each night, i get home and pick my footing among the 14 square inches of exposed floor space in my room. when i do have time to unpack, i just sit and stare at the boxes. occasionally i open them and half-heartedly remove a couple items, then get disgusted and close the box again. these unpacking attempts usually end with me sitting at my computer for a couple hours, then throwing myself onto my bed - which i have miraculously cleaned off, if only for C to be able to sleep with me - and moping about not talking to C for the day.

yes, very exciting. is it any wonder i find excuses to leave every evening? last night was only my 5th night sleeping there. been there 12 days, and i've really only had one day where i didn't arrive home from work and immediately leave to go see someone else, or to run a night's worth of errands.

________


still need a vacation. but it's only good if i can be lazy with C. i think about calling in sick quite often - i know my body could use the rest - but i know i wouldn't be doing anything productive with a day off, anyway. and since i wouldn't be getting paid... doesn't make sense. until i really am sick enough to stay home, that is. but this is so rare that i probably won't need a real sick day for a couple years.

i had the beginnings of a killer headache last night. stabbing pain behind my eyes, flashes of bright light, and nausea. i am so thankful that i fell asleep before it got any worse. but i currently feel as though my head is going to implode. i can't shake this cloudy-brain feeling that i've had for the past several weeks.

________


despite my complaints of C-withdrawal, i did spend the night with him on tuesday. i had told him, via text message, that i had been wanting to talk with him since monday. he didn't get off work till nearly 5am, but i went over anyway. he thought i was going to tell him i was pregnant. it's been on his mind a lot lately; i'm not sure why. even though he knew i was on my period, he mentioned that he thought i was pregs last week; and he brought it up again on tuesday. i hope i'm not; i've been drinking a fair amount of beer and wine the past few weeks, and in general not taking care of myself. it's not impossible, as i had a friend who continued her period for the first 5 months of her pregnancy.

we had a good talk about my mother and grandmother and his parents (both are dead) and family. this is fairly unusual for me. i rarely seek someone out to talk to about things that are on my mind (i save it for journals, both paper and online), especially not about my family and my relationship with them. C is the only person who knows about most of it; i couldn't even talk to the Ex (with whom i lived for 6 years) about it because he'd just tune me out.

i felt really good about everything when we fell asleep in each other arms that night. i wish i could keep that feeling forever. or at least carry it around in my pocket for when i need it to counterbalance days like today (or every day) at work.

________


oh yeah, work. i feel the crushing pressure on my brain grow more intense when i think about work. in fact, i currently feel dizzy and when i just turned my head to survey my desk and the information i have posted on my calendar wall, i briefly thought i might pass out. fabulous.

i've been reading too many journals, lately. some of them are intensely fascinating to me, even though, quite honestly, i wouldn't want to spend too much time with some of these people. on the other hand, some of you are fascinating in a way that makes me want to meet you and get to know you in person. maybe, someday.

it's almost like reading people's minds. maybe that's why i'm always interested in knowing what people look like. it's like seeing the man on the street; the girl driving her car, and suddenly knowing what's running through their heads. i love that experience, regardless of the content of the thoughts. boring, scintillating, creative, expressive, irritating, inspiring, depressing, amusing, moving, mundane - all the thoughts pull me in alike. i can't stop reading, no matter how positive or negative i feel about the words i'm seeing. i'm obsessed with mental voyeurism.

know what i mean, jellybean?

________


talked to my little sisters last night. they are getting so big. miss them immensely. told my mother i'd moved; she asked about the roommates and subsequently asked, "don't you think they're strange? why don't they have families?"

i found myself explaining that Curly did in fact have a daughter, and that i didn't know about Quiet (the other roomie). what i should have pointed out, though, is that not everyone has to have a family, mother!! maybe they're gay, maybe they choose not to have a family. maybe they can't keep a relationship going, but no matter what, it's not automatically weird.

except, of course, that i am starting to think Curly is weird. and Quiet's not a whole lot better. heh for hypocrisy.

________

thank you, dear irc journal, for helping me through the day today. i really needed it. i had grand plans for getting home and being productive, maybe even riding my bike down to the gym. but now that i've battled traffic to arrive in my lovely haven, i just want to lie down.

nappy time.

 

[sehra]

dinnertime

i'm thrilled for minou. minou, i'm thrilled for you! hooray for your sister, too. i'm very glad events are falling into place. got a grin on my face, in your name.

i'm on my way to C's, to eat his fantabulous spaghetti sauce that won't be ready for at least an hour and a half. it's okay, i'm a night creature. i'm excited because he's currently in the grocery store hunting down avocados so i can sustain myself on guacomole and wine until the sauce is done.

 

[sehra]

stale

i've been treating this thread, sadly, the way the Ex and i used to treat each other and the relationship when we were both afraid of it all ending.

ignoring and avoiding it.

i get a sense of staleness whenever i start to write anything here. so i guess i'll do what i did in the relationship situation: get rid of it and start a new one.

i feel as if that sounds morbid, but i mean it lightheartedly. (just pretend it's a word, okay?)

actually, i'm going to start more than one new one. i don't care if it annoys people. i'll give the details as soon as, um, i have something else to write.

 

[sehra]

moving notice

details!

who: me, of course

what: new threads, two of 'em

where: Daily incidentals and Here. In my head. (link updated!)

why: one because i'm tired of this one, and one for a more specific purpose, which you will see when you go there

when: 1 yesterday and 1 today!