List of thankfulness
- Laughing my way through days with my cousin who is made out of all kinds of awesome (and is visiting for a month, yay! She has been an absolute angel. Or more like a cleaning fairy godmother, with a toilet brush wand and plastic gloves and taking care of me while I work and study).
- Being ridiculously silly with my sisters on our msn chat.
- Seeing a sweet and hilarious video of the little bean eating (or trying to, as much as you can without teeth) a chicken leg, looking like a little bald hungry man who apparently doesn’t get breast fed enough (:
- Watching Tai lie contentedly in the sun, a look of absolute bliss on her face
- Sitting very still in the middle of a sunny, windy and gorgeous Fall day, with all it’s vibrantly alive colors and the crispness and sharpness in the air that made the very blood in my veins pulse with gladness.
I will try to remember these when I am feeling stressed, when my eye twitches and my heart hurts from thinking of all the studying I need to do, and all the life that needs living. There are so many beautiful things and moments in the world that make even the embarrassment of twitchy eyes all worthwhile.
Embracing mediocrity (not)
“When I started school, I was an idealist. I thought I was going to read all my books, and go to every lecture and make every office hour and skip my way happily through school. But, damn. Grad school is hard, harder than I imagined, and it doesn’t help that I’m working half time (I realize that that’s not an excuse. I just wish I could be smart enough to not have to struggle through this). Slowly my goals for myself have lowered from getting all A’s to passing; I would be so happy if I survived this semester” — Me, last week.
I wrote that when I was swamped and busy and depressed. I got done with two of my midterms this week and I hit the mean in both of them. I thought I would be happy, to just hang in there, but I’m not – in fact, I’m downright depressed. I’m trying to take things in stride but the truth is, I’m disappointed. It’s very humbling to have people who are your students do better than you in an exam. I thought I could skate through this, but I have to put in much more work — and this is my lesson for the day.
A room with a view
Because of a lot of reasons that I won’t get into right now, I hadn’t been able to close on the condo, until today. (Parenthesis: I wrote this entry one week ago, and it has actually taken until today to get everything sorted out. it’s been a pain in the ass). What that meant though was that I had to reapply for a loan — of which I was informed of exactly 1.5 weeks ago — which would have been ok in other circumstances, but now I am a student and my income is peanuts. And apparently despite the economic crisis we haven’t resorted to using peanuts as a bartering medium because the mortgage company basically pffftttdd and was like, are you serious? You look pretty rosy and healthy, have you considered being a surrogate or parting with one of your kidneys? You only need one!
That tailspinned me into panic, as I’ve been renting this apartment from the previous owner while we waited for closing and had already spent a lot of money into moving and decorating, not to mention gotten terribly fond of it. I made cushions! And wallpapered! That’s the apartment equivalent of meeting your boy’s parents, or buying him a promise ring. I was ALL IN, and it was going to be whisked away from me. That week I went back and forth from feeling all braveheart about it (I will not surrender! I will wallpaper myself into the walls if I need to) to feeling hopeless (having visions of shuffling slooooowwwwwly out of the condo with Tai and my two bags leaving a trail of sadness and desperation in the snow).
Needless to say, last week I was stressed and scrambling, thinking that I would have to give up the condo that has really become a cozy little haven for Tai and me (and my roommate and Bud), the first place that has felt like home outside of my parent’s. In the end I had to put more money down which I somehow managed to scrounge up (which leaves me with less than 100 dollars in the bank, which is… weird. I’m like a hypochondriac with no kleenexes).
But I closed today! It’s mine, mine, twenty percent mine. So even though I will probably have to watch and budget, it will be nice to be resourceful. I’m not the best (and this is an understatement) at keeping accounts, so this will be a good learning experience. But right now I feel like the luckiest girl in the world, because instead of waking up next to a smelly, unresponsive dog (who likes to cuddle me into the edge of the bed, so she gets 3/4 and I get 1/4 of the space, and wait, there’s something wrong with that) I get to wake up to this:
Priceless! (Ok fine, technically this is the view at night)
The reset button
Today I said something stupid to one of my classmates about one of our homework questions. He stared at me like I had just said ‘Wait, the Earth is not flat? And who is Christopher Columbus and why didn’t he get a medal or something, or at least a day in his name?’. Even now just thinking about it makes me blush.
I’ve thought about why this affects me more than it should, why I can’t just shrug off when I do something stupid or imperfect — and everything, everything always comes back to my childhood. But I need to start taking responsibility for my own actions and for my own self; blaming things on the past is the easier route, but not productive. Besides, the good parts of me came out of my childhood too.
So I came up with the idea of the reset button. I’m not talking about reseting my mind when things of importance happen, when you are supposed to feel hurt, or sad, or lost in order to grow and learn about yourself. But there are tiny things that I think I make out to be of more significance than they are, that maybe other people don’t even notice but cause me hours and hours of discomfort and mortification (like that time my phone rang during class and everyone stared at me and I turned beet red. Or the time I told a girl (in jest! I was teasing, I promise) that she wasn’t a true Latin American if she didn’t wear sandals only to find that she had a disfigurement. Or the countless times when I’ve pronounced words incorrectly — actually this happens to me very often; I read a lot, but don’t know how to pronounce some words. Who knew banal rhymes with “canal” instead of “anal”. English is whack).
So from now on, whenever I do something stupid or embarrassing I will just use my reset button and pretend that they haven’t happened, because people make mistakes. The good thing about such imaginary devices is that you have an unlimited pass to use as you please (:
Like, OMG, he is soooo superfine
So I have a crush. A pretty one-sided and unrequited one. When I tell this to other people, of course I want to hear that it’s not true, that there is a chance, but I kind of know in my heart of hearts that there isn’t. It’s my first crush since my relationship with my ex ended, so I’m trying to be philosophical about it and just be happy that I do have one and that in fact, I am not dead and shriveled up inside. In a way it’s nice to dream a little about someone again.
He’s so smart, and so sweet, and good and funny. And I know that everyone says the same thing about their crushes, but what I really mean is that he’s my type of smart, and my type of sweet and my type of funny. He’s finishing up his PhD in engineering, and is very involved with church. I talked to him at a friend’s birthday party, and he laughed politely at all my stupid jokes (which were very stupid and I was probably slurring because I had two drinks, and that is my limit right there. I am no heavyweight. Have I written about how I faint when I have martinis? The first time was at a party and I was dragged on my knees out of the dance floor. That’s what I get for dancing with little runts my size. The second time I fainted while trying to get out through a revolving door and got stuck in the middle. Ah, good times). He was one of the few people who took time to introduce himself and be really sweet to my sister when she was here. I know I’m seeing him through rose colored glasses, because no one is perfect, but I don’t know him so well so at this stage my impression of him is unmarred by reality.
Whereas I? I’m no good: I’m struggling with school, was labeled “smartass aunt” by my sisters, and on top of that I’m a little crazy, and not the best of Catholics. He is totally out of my league. It feels like being in high school again – geeky girl likes unattainable guy, unattainable guy dates unattainable girl, and nobody cares what the hell geeky girl does.
Ok, I’m out. I need to go write some poems comparing love to butterflies and rainbows, sigh pathetically and die under the insupportable weight made up of the shards of my broken dreams (: And then perhaps move on to homework.
