Even better concrete inlay rings than the one’s I previously gushed about. I like the 7-days ring at 22designstudios.com. Also, if you go to Mirca Maffi and click the “she” box and then click the fourth little box that appears on the left you also have a really effing awesome ring. PRETTY. I want to be all tied up with silver ribbons on my hands every day.
before we even picked a showtime, i figured that i should wait to check the rotten tomatoes reviews until after we’d seen the movie because rotten tomatoes always convinces me not to see movies even though i know that i basically always agree with their fresh ratings, and only agree with their rotten ratings about 50-70% of the time (which makes sense because a “Fresh” movie is a 6.0 or better on a 10.0 scale, so a lot of people would still mark the movie better than 5 and i could just be in that expanded group. i put too much thought into my movie ratings, don’t i?) of course, after we picked a showtime the rest of the internet got boring and i eventually wandered to rottentomatoes. here’s the verdict. 37%. That’s one person out of a hundred for every dress in the title of the movie plus ten. I figure, I’ve seen worse (I’ve also never disagreed with a rating below ten percent). So we go to the movie, cos i’ve already committed to seeing it.
i don’t exactly regret seeing it. But it is the first time that I’ve ever thought a rating was too high. to katherine heigl: don’t you think should stop spending the majority of the script pining over a largely underattractive guy named George. what works in grey’s anatomy doesn’t work every time… ask a doctor.
it seems that lately the only thing i want to blog openly about are my dreams. i have strange ones. i have dreams about unsolvable addictions. walking into every room to find people with pills boiled down into a substance injectable into their veins, and that is not the half of it because i cannot begin to explain the predictive dreams, waking from a sleep that was so sound to recall that sometime a few short hours before i woke my brain decided to betray me. i dream that i’m hunted like in munich for claiming that we should never have granted diplomatic recognition to israel (i don’t even believe that when i’m awake), being dipped into little alleys that all look like the route to the bathroom at my favorite mediterranean cafe in westport, grabbed by young palestinian beauties wrapped in their best hijabs, and i don’t even full understand it. i always remember waking up at some point before so i know my dreams only get bad before i wake up. it’s strange, and a nuissance.
i’m in illinois right now, which has been nice. i’m finally starting to talk about and deal with things again. sometimes i feel like my oversensitivity toward having feelings is somewhat of a burden, you know, i can’t just suck it up and move on. but sometimes i have opposite thoughts. for the last week, the only thing i’ve been able to feel is angry. i’ve been prickly around the house because my mom broke her hip a few months ago and so during the day I have to take care of her, which is fine. she’s great about being nice about everything which is quite a pleasant change, and she tries to let me have rests and things too. it’s just i felt like all week i’d just get settled doing something relaxing and then she’d need something else. and i knew the whole time that was only my perception of it. but i don’t know, i couldn’t really have real emotions about things i probably needed to explore and so it was making me kind of impossible in every area of life. i finally broke down that gate on saturday night and now i feel much, much better. i can’t even begin to explain it. i feel like i had been carrying around an extra weight and it’s gone now and i can hold my head up a little better. i feel like making eye contact again.
school starts wednesday. i’m pretty excited to be back and at my last semester of undergraduate ever. and i’m so anxious and nervous and EXCITED to start hearing back from grad schools. my life is going in a new direction and kyle is going with me and i cannot contain myself. i want to know where it is that we’re going and what it is that we’re doing and i can’t wait to start living it all out and making new memories.
last night, i dreamt that love could fix anything.
it’s weird, you know, how life is. there’s that one person who you love in a childish way and then that one person that you find and want to spend the rest of your life with and you’ll know who you are when you read this but the point is that sometimes things are fragmented and you’re not going to have anything to hang onto but the words that you wrote about me.
i am a superstitious some days and at work today there were like 4089384 reasons why i should end up at umn. i wanna go there a lot right now.
I realized earlier tonight that I have never told the story of Kyle and my technically first date. I would say that that thing we went on where we went to see Shortbus and to Jerusalem Cafe with Emily in November of last year was also a date. I would also say that the time he came to Topeka to hang out with me at the end of winter break last year was also a date. But then, it’s somewhat hard to gauge because we were both pursuing other people in addition to each other during that time and that night in St. Louis was the night we started clean. So there was a lot going on in my life that made writing down the details sort of difficult cos I was trying to protect feelings or something and I never actually wrote them down even privately. I guess I’ll do that now.
February 14, 2007
I flew to St. Louis at like some random time in the afternoon. I spent the morning at KSHS doing research for a paper and then got yelled at in Mezcal by Brandon and Bearman for quite a bit, but I could not be swayed. So James took me to the airport and I boarded a plane to St. Louis. I got there at 5:30 or so and there was this brilliant and wonderful moment where I was walking toward the luggage claim with my stuff and he was at the bottom of the escalator and I caught his eyes as I was fumbling with my phone to call him. It was adorable. We got all of my stuff together and tossed it in his car and headed toward Delmar so that we could get to dinner and then to the show. He took me to dinner at this Thai place that’s pretty good… We basically just randomly chose it because I love thai food and so does he. He had a few beers and we chatted in a romanticly lit back corner table over our meals. My food was even really delicious. If I’m remembering correctly i had Pad See Euaw and he had Pad Thai. After dinner we went to the Pageant and met Sid and Jessy. We got there in time for a couple songs by the Academy Is.. and then we saw some song by some other band and I only remember paying attention to the song that I remembered from the radio. Then we got ready for Jack’s Mannequin. He managed to swindle our way down to the floor and he wrapped his arms around me and whispered sweet things in my ear while screaming at Andrew to play Konstantine, and other songs. There is a recording of our first date available at jacksmannequin.org. How cute is that? After that we drove to Schnucks and bought some beer and then we headed to Sid’s where we hung out with Jessy and Sid and eventually Ashley for the rest of the night. We hid under blankets to avoid awkward moments of the evenings. And it’s like right that moment we were a team. At least, that’s how I remember it now. Really, I think things developed at a much more reasonable pace than this would suggest. But that’s the best part sometimes.
December 21, 2007
Tonight, or rather today, we spent the morning laying around bed. He stayed up really late working on debate stuff and then joined me to sleep since I have been doing this thing lately where I wake up as soon as he’s not in bed next to me and have trouble getting back to sleep. How adorable is that? I’ve never really done that before… usually I just enjoy the extra bedspace. But there’s a part of me that even when asleep feels more comfortable with him next to me. So at 11 or so, he asked if I still wanted to see Charlie Wilson’s War at 12:15. I said I did so we started to get around and I took my shower and we cuddled some more. He complemented for me looking pretty when I got dressed and said that he’s always impressed with how pretty I look every day. Then, we left the house and headed to the movie theater. We bought our tickets and headed in for the show. He handed me a power ade when I was expecting Diet Coke and I was like “aagggh, PowerAde. What a waste of the money for the soda! ick!” in my brain and then i was like “what is this?” and he said “Diet Coke?” and i said “no… it doesn’t taste like diet coke.” so then he surprised me with the actual diet coke. while this was not an intentional mix up so that he could save the day with the soda i wanted, it is an adorable example of how he always thinks of me and he knows me well enough to get diet coke, or i suppose, he would ask before he chose powerade as the drink du jour. The movie was fantastic (you should see it!) and we were all snuggly during it. After the movie, we went to Rich People’s Dillons and I bitched about Suburbia and how much I hate the people that live out there and drive out there. THERE WAS A 4-CAR CRAZY FIASCO THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN A WRECK TO TEACH THAT LEXUS A LESSON! Ack. We used my gift card from work, plus 1.89 of his money to get stuff to make shrimp tacos later. Then we headed to Washburn so I could get my check and send some transcripts. Finally, we went to the bank and deposited my check and then headed home to make our food. I cleaned the kitchen while he read net-benefits and then I caught up on my rss feeds and read some dirty letters from James Joyce. Turns out dirty letters from James Joyce are really fucking dirty. Like. really. Kind of horrifying, actually. Google that shit. We decided to postpone dinner till a more normal time, but when it finally was time for dinner we were both really hungry. And the shrimp tacos were delicious. He basically just heated up some oil and then let about 3/4 of a cup of onions simmer in it. After a minute or so of the onions simmering, he added a bunch of white shrimp that we’d gotten precooked. We added a heaping tablespoon or so of cilantro and about five round slices of pineapple cut into wedges. He seasoned it with Chipotle taco seasoning, just a little though, and then we ate it on soft corn tortillas with cheese and pico. Yumminess. After dinner we took a nap and then I headed to work and he went back to Kansas City.
So as you can see, our relationship has grown and changed a lot over the past 10 months. But in the best of ways. And I can’t wait to spend my life with him.
I’m officially done with the semester, thank God. I’m so happy that it’s over, and next semester should be relatively relaxing. It’ll just be a lot of writing and editing paper and not a lot of going to class, something that I can really look forward to, let me tell you.
Kyle’s on his way into town tonight which I’m excited about. I haven’t seen him since November 27 in the morning, which is not fun at all. I generally like to go less than two full weekends without seeing my boyfriend, and its worse when we sandwich full work weeks around them. agh. but we’re both done with the semester and get to spend a few weeks together, including some time in albuquerque in the beginning of January.
Overall, I have to say there isn’t that much new going on in my life. I’m not really stressed out about anything except that I work too much and don’t have time to just get away (the weekend is a brilliant invention). I got my application in to Minnesota and as of today they have all the materials that go along with that, long story about the graduate school admissions office being two weeks behind on processing mail could go here but instead i’ll just leave out the details and say its all taken care of which is the important part. Now, I’m focusing on getting my apps in to Boston and Iowa or wherever else I decide to apply whose deadline hasn’t already passed. Honestly, i’m just really focused on Boston and Minnesota. If I don’t get those, I don’t really want a whole lot of anything else. And that’s just how it is..
James is seeing a girl. Her name is Lauren. He’s pretty smitten in a way that I haven’t really seen him in a few years which is really nice. I mean, he’s a great guy and he deserved to have a doting female at his side, and I really like this one. It puts me in that weird place where it’s hard to be good friends with exes again because Emily is taking the news about as well as one would expect, but they’ve always been good about not making me be in the middle. Mostly, I’m just glad to have James back. He’d sort of disappeared there for a while and this girl seems to keep him up during the day (lol, and up at night being all giddy talking about her). It’s a nice change.
I may have started watching 24 three days before I said I would allow myself to do this. The good news is that I had hives so I’d have been awake all night anyway.
i was talking to tim the other day about really obvious signs that i’m probably about to hit another cycle of depression. here’s two: 1) i delete all the information on my facebook; 2) i stop blogging. for those of you who have picked up on the second, i figured i should toss an update your way.
i’ve been emersed in the joys of thanksgiving, finishing my one term paper of the semester (one?! i’ve only written 10 constructive pages this semester?! brilliant. i spoil myself sometimes.), and getting my application ready to send off to minnesota. this semester has really reaffirmed my desire to be an historian for the rest of my life. specifically, it’s knocked out my desire to go to grad school in art history and my sneaking suspicion that i might really like anthropology. the truth is, i don’t. and here’s why. i’ve always referred to art history as the mistress to my wife that is my history degree. i love it, i get excited to go see it, and sometimes i imagine how my life would be if i’d chosen it from the beginning instead of history. but this semester i’ve been spending more time in art history than history and it’s turn out as expected… i really love history not art history. the upsides are that i really like cari, and erin and sarah, and the other girls in my art history class who i see regularly. i’ve met new people who are intelligent and help me have conversations that aren’t nearly as abrasive as the ones i have with historians. the downsides are that it turns out i don’t like to write art history term papers. it’s like you read description after description after description and then you write a description. not exactly my cup of tea. i’m sure it would be more exciting if it were a primary interpretation of a work of art and not a secondary one. but we’re left with what we’re assigned…. and that’s basically meant i’ve been staring down Sowei masks for the last three weeks and all i can seem to say about them is “those rings around their neck are just indentations which are thought to be pretty.” The paper’s good though, and I’m proud of it. So that matters.
Anthropology is a whole other set of problems. I think I’ve struggled with the difference between anthropology and history in terms of African history because so much of African history is based on ethnographies and both building on the work of anthropologists and trying to correct errors they made when they asked the wrong questions or looked at the world the wrong way. So I’m finally in an anthro class this semester (well it’s my second go at it, I withdrew last year because the professor was so dumb that she was sucking the life out of my brain). It has a lot of similar experiences as art history. I discuss things a little differently… I’ve met new people on campus. It also has the added benefit of helping me to remember the ideals I had when I started college. I’m much more rallied for the fight against irrational constructions of gender, race, and class. I feel like it’s a good idea to speak up against sweatshops and those sorts of things. I really appreciate anthropology for that reason. But I can now put my finger on why I want to go into African history and not African anthropology. You ready? It’s one word: context. I feel like anthropology just ignores the context of culture. Like what it means to be Ju/wasi is what it meant to be Ju/wasi in 1954. So even though being Ju/wasi now means an entirely different set of circumstances which aren’t nomadic… anthropology just looks at modern Ju/wasi as victims of apartheid. and it ignores all the changes and adaptations of those cultures. Often, I feel like the lone historian in the room who has to contextualize subjects we talk about. Today, we talked about foot binding and one guy compared it to bulimia. Which is a misclassification of bulimia which generally arises from a psychological desire to control which emerges in part but not exclusively from social expectations to be thin. But also. It ignores all of the class elements of foot binding, the trauma of maoist cultural reforms, et cetera.
So I don’t want to be an art historian because I don’t like to describe things and I don’t want to be an anthropologist so I can contextualize things. And that makes me more excited to be an historian.
In other news, I’m surprised by how quickly diet soda became a normal taste for me and how the aspertame just neutralizes out of the flavor very quickly.
Also, Sunday I’m watching all of season six of 24. start to finish at my parents house. not getting out of bed except for food. I’m so damn excited.
kyle’s been in town for four days now and i just can’t begin to say how happy i get to have him around. he’s completely wonderful, and we’re completely in love. i’ve just never enjoyed someone’s company so damn much. it’s strange. we sleep sometimes in the morning and i climb out of bed and find a book and climb back into bed and then we watch football all day and hang out with our friends and i can’t think of a single thing i’d rather do. or we don’t sleep in and i go to class and climb back into bed with him and read until i fall asleep again and he wakes me up from my nap and then we play fight until i’m out of my grumpy mood. and we’re cute. and playful. and i attack him with sharks sometimes and then giggle at my cleverness. he is ideal.
and then we go out with my friends sometimes or his friends othertimes and it becomes completely obvious to everyone that we are a pair. i read about duprasses today. for those of you not familiar with the genius of Kurt Vonnegut or just not his lesser works, a duprass is a two person karass according to Bokonism which is the religion of the narrator of Cat’s Cradle and a karass is a group of people who are put together to accomplish some task for God but they are unaware of the specifics or even the existence of their mission. so we are like a duprass. and everyone is noticing.
we’ve been watching grey’s anatomy… like most shows on tv i didn’t know it existed until it was a season and a half in and i didn’t see a single episode until sunday night. i really like most of the characters but i also think that it’s stupid and unrealistic. it’s also pretty mindless. you’d think that eventually people would want to stop sleeping with everyone they worked with. but who knows. one of the episodes we watched involved adoption, from the perspective of mother-who-gave-child-up-for-adoption. eek. i got sort of really upset watching it. i can’t exactly say why. i just feel like there’s this part of me that i can’t explain to people that they don’t relate to. and while i think it’s a beautiful thing what she did, i’m also not sure that i’d ever want to meet her. and sometimes i think that would be a good idea but a lot of the time i think it would be a terrible one. and i wouldn’t want to be disappointed by what i found. and i don’t know that i care to add her to my life, i think i would just want to say hi and that i’m okay and that i appreciate it, you know. it’s weird. being separated from someone who you’re genetically related to.
this is the first november i’ve had in college where i’m not dramatically re-inventing myself. i’m not leaving j, i’m not involved in some scandal involving a bottle of svedka and a couple questionable decisions, i’m not trying to leave joe or work things out with steve, i’m not involved involed in some scandal involving a freshman and a couple questionable decisions. i’m just… who i was in october. and a little better put together, a little less stressed out than in years past. which is nice. i was listening to the hold steady* today and realized that the song “first night” sort of explains me in the context of my past: “Holly’s insatiable, she still looks incredible/But she don’t look like that same girl we met/on that first night/when she was golden with floorlight and beer/on that first night/she slept like she’d never been scared//And then last night/She said “Words so long never could save us.”/And then last night/She cried and she told us about Jesus//Holly’s inconsolable/Unhinged and uncontrollable/’Cause we can’t get as high as we got
on that first night.” I’m glad I’m golden with floorlight and beer again. It’s much better than alternatives which I have explored to varying degrees.
speaking of being golden with beer, i’m doing that not-getting-drunk thing i did last year again. hopefully this year sobriety doesn’t end with a trip to the hospital. lol, at lunch today Kyle asked me what our plans were for Christmas and I said that I was hoping that as long as Christmas doesn’t involve me laying in bed all day and thinking about suicide it will probably be okay.
*note: i don’t ever remember the difference between the Hold Steady and the Hush Sound. So when I was looking for some songs to check out on the album of the Hold Steady… I asked Kyle if he liked the Hush Sound. He started talking about the differences between their albums and how he had both and blah blah blah this was how I was able to discern that the Hush Sound is the shitty emo band that I’m not interested in and the Hold Steady is the shitty hipster band that I am interested in. 🙂 I laughed about it on the inside. But seriously, I kind of like that Kyle’s not as pretentious about music as I am. It means that we’re not constantly having some sort of power struggle about who’s music is more scene.
