life is good

i wrote a long effort-requiring self-expressing post full of wit and information, and my computer timed out and erased it. that’s it this night is over. all i have left is:

“the benefits of his unenthusiasm include his willingness to sign off on just about any sheet of paper slash sheets of statements of bended truth that i place within reach and provide a pen.”

and:

additional info included: i’m capable. i’m amazing. i’m tired.

i’ve got a LOT of work ahead of me.

i apparently have 3 jobs. realized only b/c all 3 happened to call me in today.
i’m tired.

the real post was so much better. i hate you blog.com. you robbed me of my venting.

think the rougher bits are over. the part where everything seemed to be going wrong. and this is coming from an lbg whose current status is severely sleepless, in significant debt to the state that i’m currently living in, tons of work to do, an empty tank, finals approaching, flaking out on friends, and, well, i’m hungry.

that wasn’t supposed to be a list of complaints, but since it headed in that direction i threw that last one on because i have a while before i get to eat. currently waiting for my last obligation - last real obligation - of the day to begin. it comes with dinner. i’m hoping a warm one. my last meeting got out early so i have time to, you know, work on that huge essay due, my thesis, my life, etc, but i’m so cracked out right now that i can barely handle checking my email. and so i blog.

apparently i can’t nap. i mean it’s no big shock that i’m not good at falling asleep any time that it’s appropriate to be sleeping, but i thought surely, with all the (admittedly self-inflicted in last night’s case) lack of sleep going on i thought napping would be inevitable. instead i layed around useless for a loong part of the day and then gave up and ran my little heart out for 20 minutes so that i had enough energy to make it to these meetings. i hate breathing in the cold air when i run.

began the week by oversleeping triathalon training by 5 minutes, running to the pool after taking 1 sip of water, jumping in to catch up (b/c swimming is the one thing i can do), and then throwing my shoes and clothes back on to go run. it was transition practice. it was 40 degrees. i was soaking wet and dressed in my summer running clothes b/c they were closest to me on the floor wondering why everyone else had hats, scarves, sweatshirts, etc. - apparently you get dressed up really warmly to run when it’s below 40, etc - but no one told me that. i know it’s called ‘triathalon training’ not ‘intro to triathalon’, but help a sister out. my snot was turning to icicle and i got back to the room hacking up a lung.

i proceeded to OD on vitamin c, zinc, free samples of immune-boosting pills from whole foods, and whatever else i found in my little medicine drawer and headed to econ. my roomate and ra told me i sounded pathetic. and fine, i did, but 4 billion grams of vitamin later, i’ve barely got a sniffle.

think i’m gonna head to the sports store this weekend and ask them to keep me warm.

Y says “you’ve always had a low threshold for sleeping”. which i got a kick out of: 1. b/c you know he pronounced it ‘treshhold’ and 2. b/c i’m not sure quite what that means but i agree - OR, disagree angrily now that i think about it.. hmmm…
he’s good in my life again. he needed time. as *everyone* told me would happen. think i’ll give in and admit i don’t know what’s best w/ this one situation. but only this one.

i’m in a hillel building and the staff all left an hour ago. this is the best place to study *ever*. too bad i’m not. maybe there’s food…maybe i could find the thermostat before the seminar starts… 

That last post was one big lie. Not a sip of champagne that night - think I volunteered to be DD. And also, there will be no oodles of joy here. This week’s been one of the worst over the past 21 years.

Previous post wasn’t an entire lie however: I did, of course, go on to make bad decisions. Took slightly-less-than-perfect care of myself. ended up with 2 ACES nurses trying to convince me to go to the ER. Then made a potentially interesting situation pretty bad for a while - it’s still recovering. And I’m certainly maintaining that barely-existant amount of friendship in my immediate location.

Except now not only is it minus one more significant one, but that minus one has since decided to inform me at every inconvenient chance (and it’s midterms week. every chance is an inconvenient chance.) of my flaws and vulnerabilities and all sorts of other hurtful things that I’m really not even sure apply to me, but after so long he runs out of ammo.

People - young healthy college people - they do all sorts of things to their bodies that they shouldn’t. Over-caffeination, all-nighters, drinking excessively, eating food but not nutrition etc etc.

-4 hours later: friends came over. ransacked. went out. debated economic development over Stoli-diet cokes with H’s brothers friends. an amazing time. way past my bedtime. slept 2 hours last night. ish. too many midterms. early morning. yikes.

mood since 4 hours ago has skyrocketed. and i promise you that has nothing to do w/ the stoli. that’s all human interaction, meeting people, dancing and friends.

tomorrow: back to midterm paper writing mild to moderate panic. but no regrets.

going crazy crazy crazy. things were going so well for so long. i’ve been avoiding about 90% of my friends here recently because they all adore Y and bring him up in every conversation. so to avoid that i just disappear. another 5% know something that i also would like to avoid at all costs, so that’s also a no-go. so to avoid dealing with any aspect of this situation for as long as possible, i’ve gone friendless. well, not entirely friendless. there are one or two good ones left, but it’s gotten a smidge lonely still.

being alone sounds amazing and frightening at the same time. i’ve decided that in the long run this is definitely what i want, but have a really strong feeling that the short run is going to be a slow and painful process. not looking forward to the short run.  

still not sure quite what i want, just know that this isn’t it..

anyway. no, there is no anyway. embarrassingly enough, this is what’s eating up the majority of my time. always always on my mind and not in a good way at all.

NB’s not doing too well and Mr P’s moving to South Africa next year, school’s kicking my ass slowly… nothing else too notable is happening. actually there may very well be extraordinary things happening, but my mind is all on this one stupid situation that i’m putting so much energy into not facing. ironically enough. 
 
alright i’m going to go read. i’ll write a happier post next time. oodles of good news and joy. OODLES.

after reading i’m probably going to go out with friend #2 and co. and drink excessively. which is so not like the recent lbg. i’ve been so consistently content the past few years. and now i’m thinking that a bottle of champagne will greatly aid my judgement and attempts at solving this situation. i’ve made so many bad decisions lately though, maybe it’s only up from here? <– completely false.   

if i happen to do any more ridiculously embarrassing things or make any other poor life decisions (85% chance one or both of those occur by the end of the night), i’ll keep the blog updated. afterall, blog has now risen to friend slot #3.

 

cause when life looks like easy street there is danger at your door.

no danger here, just triathlon training. today’s “fun run” “easy run”, was neither fun nor easy. false advertising. on the up side - i never stopped. i finished and ran the whole thing. i felt like fainting for 20 minutes following the run, and my face is still an embarrassing shade of red. the kind of red that shows how out of shape you are, regardless of whether or not you completed the run.

wednesday is ‘hill work’. no one attaches words like ‘fun’ or ‘easy’ to hill work. 

on the other up-side: no coffee cravings here. cross-country ‘fun runs’ = nature’s new coffee.   

It’s one of the interns’ last day today, so we all went to the sushi place for lunch with her and we were talking. and the subject ‘total amount of people in your graduating class’ came up. and numbers like ‘43′, ‘29′, and ‘64′ followed.

turns out, i’m the only intern here that didn’t go to private high school. the only. and everyone’s doing impressive things with their lives and their summers, and enrolled in amazing top universities for their mba, phd, masters, etc degrees.

i went to a good public high school. it doesn’t matter if you go to a public or a private high school. i shouldn’t feel…intimidated by any of this.

even the foreign interns went to foreign private schools in their foreign countries. holy moly man. holy moly.

 

on another note, my last assignment was to call the DRC. I finally got through to the US Embassy there and the senior economics advisor picked up the phone. and we talked. it was awesome until we got cut-off. we got a little bit off topic in a good way talking some microfinance. i got all the information i really needed for F, but i kinda wanna call back and finish our conversation.

maybe it’ll be a slow day..  

i’m trying to grow a badonkadonk. it’s not easy, as badonkadonk’s don’t run in the family, but i’m working on it. on an only slightly related note, the corporate world has added 6 lbs to me. i’m in a perpetual war with the ‘candy bucket’, especially on no or little lunch days, and there are seemingly endless reasons to celebrate. “it’s so-and-so’s half birthday”, “blah blah’s been here 15 years today”, “it’s tuesday, let’s have pie”. cake i hate - easily refusable, but pie..

next week there’s an ‘intern appreciation’ day. they bought us all tickets to a baseball game. (the nationals…) you know what i would really appreciate? a paycheck. i kid i kid. i appreciate getting to work here in the first place, it’s honestly amazing in so many ways. mr p couldn’t understand the excitement - kids these days, they’re happy about getting to provide full-time labor for free. ridiculous.  

i am indeed ridiculous. lot’s of shenanigans at the workplace. yesterday i stuck post-its saying ‘down with the candy bucket’ around the bucket area, and today: nutrition facts. highlighted nutrition facts. monday i bring 3lbs of apples in a bowl right next to the bucket w/ more nutrition facts. they totally know it’s me… oh well.

also me: tampering with the AC. as in, turning it to 90 so that the AC doesn’t come on.. seeing as i’m the only one asking everyone if they’re cold, bundled and shivering, i suppose they probably know that this is also my doing. hmm…  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[10:13:14 AM] PR says: LBG–A will email you your next assignment
[10:13:25 AM] LBG says: ok that sounds good thanks
[10:13:25 AM] PR says: it looks like a long email….

maymester’s done tomorrow (thank goodness). it’s going out with a bang though: a 12-page paper and a final worth 40% tomorrow. egads. ..i’ll wake up early tomorrow and study. it’s not actually as much work as it sounds like.

so i got kicked out of ron the landlord’s house and severely upgraded: from a broken-down bug infested boy house..nasty nasty boy house located right next to the homeless shelter, to a freaking mansion with homecooked organic nice food and all things safe warm and cozy. like window curtains. 

where i’m living now - it’s a funny story, but one for a later day.

alright well i gg get my paper going. a bientot.

so i didn’t sleep for the rest of the semester. i bombed one test out of three because it turns out - i don’t do the all-nighter thing. especially 2+ nights in a row. it doesn’t improve my performance, it just makes me so tired that i don’t care about the exam and don’t really know that i’m taking an exam.

the one that suffered was chinese. and ended up being my worst grade. i had my philosophy final right after chinese, and since i didn’t know the answers for chinese right away, and was too tired and panicked about phil to sit and think of the answers, i decided instead to turn in a half-blank exam and get an extra 30 minutes study time for philosophy. where i also lowered my grade but did really well anyway.

finals - especially having so many in such little time - they’ll get you. i lost 7 lbs during final exams weeks. no worries - Y’s family has come to town and fattened me back up within the span of a week. that’s what they do. i’m not complaining - i adore being taken out to eat - but with them i feel like i’m being fattened..like someone’s deliberately trying to plump me up to later eat me.. i don’t think this is actually the case, especially since they called me ‘big-boned’ pre-fattening, but still i get that feeling. anyway. they’re on road-trip USA for the next few weeks, so i’m free to eat as cheaply and as little as i want to. rice and beans has finally gotten old after being daily lunch/dinner for a semester though, so i’m currently on the lookout for other cheap yet nutritious foods.. 

so i found out i got the dream internship. hooraaaaaaaaayy!! it’s basically what i think i want to do with my life, so i’m pretty chuffed. plus i’m just a fung wah away from NY.

but before summer happens i’ve got the next 2 weeks. i’m taking a class about the african american male struggles and it’s 5 hours a day. we read 2 books a night. it’s whelming. but fun. it’s a semester in 15 days instead
of 15 weeks. i respect that. it’s kinda nice actually.

i’m also living illegally in this house and the landlord knows. i have to pretend i’m just stopping by each time, but sometimes he comes and i’m getting out of the shower or napping and there’s no one else home..hard to explain. so he makes me fix things. i’m like his little laborer. laboring for my keep. i installed a window yesterday. he made me
late for class… 

it’s like a game… but it’s fair. and rent-free. he said may 26th - or something like that - is my deadline though, since all the other guys are moving out by then.. class doesn’t end til june 2nd, so i’ll be officially homeless for a week
there…

i’m thinking of asking ppl in my class to put me up. they’re all pretty cool people and i feel like someone’s gotta say yes. a lot of my friends are around and living in houses here for the summer..but i kinda wanna live with the big black guy w/ dreads and a little belly.. maybe if he doesn’t offer i’ll go to friends.. anyway, i’m working on that.

i’m gonna head ‘home’. ron probably has some leaves for me to rake or something.. he’s a tricky one this ron the landlord.