life is good

last night i had burritos with a billionaire. the night before that i had microwaved eggs while the girl from down the hall ate spam lite from the tin (yes, apparently spam is aware of its weight-conscious consumers) with a diet coke to wash it down. made my eggs look - and *smell* really good.

but back to last night. i talked to a mind-blowingly intelligent man for about 3 hours, then went and got burritos and continued the conversation. this man took a topic i thought i knew a significant amount about - i teach this topic to classes and student organizations, - and made me realize how much i have no clue about the industry.

this week was one of the most amazing and most exhausting weeks of my recent life.

we hosted my supervisor from last summer, the founder of the company i worked for and creator of the village banking model, and a multi-billion dollar investor/oil company owner/author-turned-microfinance advocator this week.
i haven’t checked my email or caught my breath in 3 days. in a good way, but i’m about to pass out. also when you’re organizing and hosting, you’re not eating, sleeping, or participating too much.

i learned so much - about microfranchizing, collateralized loans (burrito topic of conversation), planning, organizing, coordinating, speaking…

the conference ended at 5 today and then a reception/book-signing/photo-taking until 6. i ran home b/c i could not be in those shoes anymore, and changed into the only ones i could find amongst the chaos - my purple shower shoes. i threw those on with my business suit (quite a look) and walked to my car to come to work.
i was upset at first that i had to miss out on happy hours and celebrations and time with the speakers, but honestly, i’m microfinanced-out. well, maybe not - but i’m okay coming to nanny. it’s great - you feed, bathe, put the boy to sleep, then sit down and check email, relax, etc.

i walked in to three additional babies and kids who definitely have not been here the past 8 months. surprise! the cousins are in town. adorable adorable cousins. but tonight? really?
we wrestled and played with cars (’played’ at this age = put in mouth) and had some good talks about my day (they’re gonna think i’m such a freak when they watch the nanny cam..), had a bottle and a burping and everyone’s asleep.

sigh.

and i’m sitting downstairs sprawled out on the floor with baby monitors and delicious leftovers from this family that i adore. the extra kids were actually probably a blessing b/c they kept me on my toes and kept me awake. plus i think 8 months is around the perfect age for the type of conversation i can handle right now.

ohh this week is over. finals are here. less than two weeks from today and i’ll have finished my last undergraduate class. one month from today and i walk dressed in a light blue robe (if i find out where to get the robes..kind of behind on life right now..), see family, eat good food, pack up, and move on.
yowsa.

In the beginning of June I head back to the land of two dollar massages and daily yoga (I will find a yoga studio). This also happens to be the land of concrete-hard beds and constant stares, but I’m absolutely pumped.

Unlike last time, I will be in an icy icy tundra of a city, but I am confident I will survive. And pretty sure I’ll return much closer to fluency than this out-of-practice lbg is right now.

And jiaozi. I’m going to be in the jiaozi-center of the jiaozi homeland. I will get to study and live in the region where dumplings were born. How could that possibly be bad? Fattening, yes. but China’s always fattening for Westerners. Jiaozi pounds are welcome pounds.

I love new experiences. I’m so excited.

there are screams and violent noises coming from the lounge across the hall. if there weren’t music in the background and periods of dramatic singing here and there I would be worried.

but that’s not why I’m here. I’m here because I read an article about how thinking about a positive part of each day not just makes you balanced and happy, etc, but also benefits your health in concrete measurable ways.
so I just wanted to say that yesterday, I went to see a professor read. This professor is amazing and so talented and the place was packed. I stood at the back and said ‘no thank you’ when people offered seats in the front because I wanted to be able to sneak out if I needed to and because a ton of other people were standing.

Right before it began a guy from one of my classes brought a chair to the back of the room by the shelf that I was half behind, put it behind me, tapped my shoulder and pointed to the chair and smiled. It was amazing. Idk if this is just the southern way that I’m still not used to, but it was nice and friendly and so small but it made my day. well, a good 12 minutes of my day. and I sat. thank you friendly guy from class.

Today I stopped by wholefoods because I had to get gas and was right next to it and I wanted sparkling water. The sparkling water selection at wholefoods is kind of intense and I decided to look at the different kinds. I had spent 10 minutes in the sparkling water section staring when this guy came up and asked what difficult decision I was making. I told him how sparkling water costs a pretty penny and I didn’t want to mess up and choose the wrong one. We talked flavors and brands etc for a minute and then he grabbed one out of a pack and put a ‘paid’ sticker on it and told me to come back and tell him what I thought. He was the manager.

Anyway, these aren’t amazing stories just little things that could restore bit by bit someone’s faith in humanity. should  it need restoring.

just answered the phone to hysterical crying. just found out i am the world’s most useless friend to call when you’re hysterically crying. when you don’t know what to do. turns out i don’t know what to do either. i’m calm, i’m a rock, but i’m a completely useless rock. ‘it’s gonna be okay’ just doesn’t cut it in real life like it does in lifetime originals.

being 1,000 miles away doesn’t help.

my roommate on the other hand is amazing at dealing with these situations. she’s currently got me hysterically laughing over her stilt-walking skills. which meant talking about her family and her mom who passed away last year. so now she’s gotten me happily distracted picturing her jogging on stilts and she’s crying a little bit while we switch subjects…

i’m so bad at sad situations. so useless. and now with her i feel like an idiot for getting so upset over something that comes nowhere near losing a parent. i think for now we’ll just keep talking about people and presidents until there’s no more sniffling in this room… 

there’s so much pressure in my ear right now that i can’t hear or walk straight. it sounds so stupid - ‘ear ache’, but last night it woke me up for 4 hours til 5 am with the most unbearable pain in my recent life. it apparently gets worse at night. damn homey.

i had a rock midterm today and have 4 more next week. would be 5 but i’m dropping one just to not take the midterm.. i feel like death. at least i don’t need my earbuds to block out the library-talkers.

this wouldn’t be so bad - except that in 1 week i get on a plane with a 1-year old to CA and i can’t be on my deathbed when we get there. they’re nice ppl but they would kill me. at least it would be a ritz-carlton death bed..

there’s so so much i need to do.

last week during the soup swap with the other neighborhood mothers, the woman i work for and i realize we have pretty much the exact same taste in food. i took home a container of fresh homemade butternut squash soup that lasted me many a wonderful meal.

friday night there was ‘just some chicken pasta salad’ in the fridge in case i was hungry. and it was in tupperware in case i wasn’t hungry then, but maybe got hungry sometime this week. this ‘just some chicken pasta salad’ turned out to be orzo and capers, sundried tomatoes and all things farmers market. and enough for about 5 meals.

i walked in last night after a hearty 12-hour library session (of which i did work for at least and my roommate gets excited and hands me lasagna from her church ladies - they always cook for her (her mom recently died) and when they found out she had switched to a new roommate who wasn’t crazy who she liked - they made me food too. they baked her cookies and b/c she told them she thinks i ‘eat healthy’ - they baked me low-fat lemon bread.

it’ll be a fridge-stocked full-belly week. i love food.

i also received an unmarked brown box of individually packaged spices. it was a very aromatic box by the time it got here. now i need to find recipes and use my pot and spoon. i went for the expensive one b/c it was a pot/pan/wok/etc. and i need to make something other than wonton soup. though my wonton soup rocks.

okay back to work.

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.

Conclusion. I have it. Kept thinking that if I could just change my mind and like Y that that would just be best for everyone. An added bonus - staying together even longer would really upset his parents. I thought I must be crazy for turning away someone so good to me. All anyone had ever said about Y were good things. amazing things. I started to believe that he must be perfect and I must just be crazy. all it took to break this long era of self doubt was one mutual friend who - after spending 5 days straight with Y - expressed some mild annoyances. the same stupid things that had annoyed me. and they were stupid. and they were minor. and it was a brief fleeting moment of our night. but it felt so…redeeming.
not to say that I need someone to share my feelings in order to make them valid - but seriously - 2 years of hearing about his flawless selfless amazingness would make anyone crazy. and desperate to hear some criticism. ugh. i want more.
I’m also hoping things are good there. but i’ll wait to check til after finals. which are killing me. not really, but they’re not adding much to my quality of life. had my two hardest today. no idea how i pulled them off. it doesn’t stop for the next week but it won’t be as bad as today. managable. sleepless though. finishing sentences has gotten a lot harder in the last hour or so. i’m thinking sleep would be the best decision right now. gonna go see if it’s around.
 

haha, yea i considered a disclaimer at the top since you’re my one and only reader, but i decided instead to just write pretending i had complete anonymity.  
the LJ and the PG were both conveniently yet legitimately out of town:) The food was great and the company was amazing and awkward-moment free! no sake, too much champagne, a great night all around.

(and a call from the LJ saying he’s planning a get together w/ me and the PG soon. so the probability of making it out of this semester awkward-situation-free is still not looking so good.)

i promise to keep my audience in mind in future posts:)

 

i’m single now. i miss Y, but i f-ing love it. singlness. i just don’t think i’m very good at it so far.

so there’s the lumberjack. who’s decent and who likes me, but who turned from the most easy-to-be-around guy i know into the most awkward person on the planet. there may be a reason for this sudden change in awkwardness, but we’ll go ahead and omit that for now. there’s the lumberjack.
(okay fine. he was my panic-drink-myself-retarded-hookup-w/-anyone-who’s-not-Y guy. twice.)

then there’s platonic guy. who totally caught me off guard. in his defense, i’m retarded: i went back to his house for a ’sleepover’ b/c it was raining and cold and 10 times closer and he said he’d drive me to class the next morning. he invited another person back too, but they disappeared. i thought the sleepover would be great - b/c we’re just. that. platonic. i’m [insert PC word for 'retarded' here]. anyway - there’s more there, but i’m gonna just skip it get onto my weekend plans.

so the lumberjack, platonic guy, and i are all friends from last year - we met at the same thing and hung out constantly. there’s another guy too who we’re all friends with, and he’s organized a get together dinner - which have always been awesome, - so that we can all get together before thanksgiving.

ALL of us - the awkward lumberjack, his good friend platonic guy, and person #4. who knows nothing about my questionable behaviour with certain other members of the group.

that’s happening this friday at a nice hibachi sushi place downtown. the LJ doesn’t - and can’t ever - know about the LBG-platonic guy-sleepover, even though little happened b/c i pushed him off b/c he’s PLATONIC guy.

i’ll let you know how this one turns out. for now i’m just excited to see what friday night brings. it may bring sake all around so that each member of this fantastic reunion can deal with the situation.

anyway that’s my story. there’s more lot’s more. but i’ll hold on to that for now.

t-minus 5 days til i get to go HOME!!

wow i really hope there’s no way that this blog is not anonymous..

‘There is no reason to try to escape’ astrology says. Clearly, the stars don’t understand these past 3.5 years. It’s nice here. Running water, stability, no wars, enough food, luxuries. I know I’m lucky. Gratefulness: acknowledged.

There exist however, multiple multiple reasons for escape. Escape attempts, perhaps not justifiable, would be at least understandable. Especially after glancing over at the ‘daily planner’, and breaking it into hourly and monthly view. oh things are getting ugly.

and on a petty social note - i don’t want to go. i would’ve turned you down. but why didn’t you ask. shithead. you always asked. i’m so..pissed? hurt? idk yet? that yet again someone i considered such a good friend with amazing-friend status potential was simultaneously considering the best time to try to make out with me. and of course when that didn’t go as PB had planned, (and was certainly not what i had freaking planned), there is no friendship.

it’s good you know, i can’t even keep up with/find time for any of the friends i have now. horrible as it sounds.  and with finals, etc coming i’m only gonna get less available and flakier. i tend to isolate when i’ve got this much to do, b/c i can find disctractions in inanimate objects, so friends are out of the question. so good. glad it turns out he sucks.

Well a temporary escape is valid. sweet sweet slumber filled with turkey feast dreams and thoughts of home as defined by a group of 4 girls in NY. yea, this day can be over now.

“Nevertheless, there is no reason to try to escape, for you can learn something very important from this experience. Engaging the unknown now can open the door to an easier time just ahead.”