a taste of my life

Nothing surprises me anymore.  People act in such strange ways that I have no idea what someone is going to do from one day to the next.  One day someone is there, the next they’re not.  Sometimes people are understanding and there for you, and the next they actually give an irritating sigh when you try to talk to them about your life.  I’m kind of getting sick of it.  Seriously.  Obviously, I’m not perfect.  Anyone who has been near me for more than say, oh, five seconds, will see that.  I don’t profess any perfection.  And, in fact, I’m more than sure I’m more than guilty of the very things I’m complaining about right now.  The thing is, more and more people are acting strangely and I don’t know if it’s the time of year, or if it’s just me.  Is it just my perception?  Or is it something about me that is making people act this way?  And, more importantly, do I really want to know the answer anyway?

Something is in the air.  I can feel it.  And it’s not just snow, or rain, or leaves.  This is the official sad time of year.  Soon people who are normally happy, or at least content, will feel sad and depressed for no reason.  Well, there is a reason.  The lack of sunlight is the reason.  Simple, right?  I guess not for everyone.

I’ve been thinking about relationships a lot lately.  Just the basic nature of them.  They are so… private.  You can never know what a couple is like when they’re alone together.  Also, I mean, relationships are so… involved.  Let’s think about it.  Think about the amount of time you spend on a person.  Think about all the ways they are allowed to see you.  Think of that part of your heart that you just willingly! hand over to another person to do with whatever they feel like.  Hopefully, they feel like being nice!

Personally, I’ve been in too many relationships.  I remember my mom once advising me to slow down and stop falling in love with so many people.  At the time all I could think was, What?!  What do you mean stop falling in love?? At the time, love was such an agonizingly wonderful thing that I couldn’t fathom ever not being in it.  It ached, it shouted, it seared, it was so wonderfully alive… who would give that up??  Now I look back and really wish I’d listened to her because I feel like all the people I’ve loved, I’ve loved honestly, but each in a different way.  None of it can ever be duplicated.  And, I kind of wish I had saved my love for just a lucky few, rather than throwing it around out there like some out of control Frisbee.

For a long time, I had relationships that were short and intense.  The love was there, it was wonderful, and then, just like that, it was over.  Who knows why.  They messed up, I messed up, someone cheated, someone lied, whatever.  Over it was.  And there goes another piece of my heart.  But over time, everything eventually healed.  I could never understand why I couldn’t be in a relationship for longer than 3-5 months.  I wondered if there were some expiry date that I wasn’t aware of that was just my default.  I got used to it.  And I think that I purposely try to mess things up around that time.  I don’t know why.  Maybe I freak out, get scared.  Maybe I know that if it goes any longer my heart won’t just have a piece taken away, it will be completely shattered, if this person leaves me.  Who knows?

Then I had a “long-term” relationship.  Nobody was more surprised than me.  Who knew I could do that?? And, when that ended, I found out I was right.  I was completely shattered.  This person hadn’t just taken a piece of my heart.  They had taken memories, songs, facial expressions, nicknames… my entire life.  I couldn’t even stay home, there were too many memories.  I couldn’t log into MSN.  I couldn’t check my email.  I couldn’t walk down the street.  Or pass certain stores or restaurants.  I couldn’t turn on the radio.  I couldn’t look at my phone.  Nothing was right.  Everything was wrong.  This person had come into my life and just… infiltrated it and then walked away.  It’s indescribable.

And yet… I feel as though I have a better understanding of who and what I am now.  I am completely capable of having a long-term relationship.  For a long time I thought I wasn’t.  But now I know I can do it.  I can love someone who is near me, not just someone who exists on my computer, or for a few months, or across the ocean.  Somehow, even though that relationship didn’t “work out”, I feel as though it helped me to understand a vital part of myself.  And that is that I’m worth giving my entire heart to someone.  It helped me understand a few other things as well.  Sometimes people really do completely love you.  And it’s okay to completely love someone back.  And that sometimes a relationship isn’t about having a fairy tale ending, sometimes it’s just about the journey.  Sometimes it’s about learning something. 

I didn’t know these things before.  And now I do.  And I’m glad.  Because it means that whoever I’m with now, or in the future, gets a better and fuller me.  And it means that having a broken heart isn’t a bad thing, it’s just part of the learning curve.  And that means that loving someone completely is never for no reason.  There’s always a reason.  And I like that.

haha! i just realized that in an earlier entry i wrote “moleskin” notebooks instead of “moleskine”!  haha!  that strikes me as hilarious.  like i’d buy notebooks made out of MOLESKIN!!!

heh.

It’s funny how when you sit around waiting for something to happen, absolutely nothing happens.

I’ve spent my evening watching season two of Scrubs and biting the skin around my nails.

Being at home alone has afforded me a few things.  Number one, I’ve actually been consuming the food that’s in my fridge.  Number two, my dishes are all clean and accounted for.  My nails are an appropriate length.  The bottoms of my feet are smooth and non-snaggable.  The garbages have been changed.

On the other hand, I need to get my bangs trimmed.  I have a pile of magazines and books that are dying to be perused/read.  I need to figure out my budget for the next few months.  Garbage and recycleables need to be taken out.  I should figure out my last week of vacation.

Tyler and I went to The Parade of Lights last night and met up with my friend Jenny.  Warren joined us partway through.  It rained like crazy, and if it weren’t for my astute son who insisted we run back and get the umbrella, we would have been even more soaked than we were.  The parade was pretty good, though I have to say, I probably would have been bored stiff if it hadn’t been for the buckets of rain.  Somehow that one thing makes the whole night a bit more memorable!

I had ants on a log this evening!  Celery, with peanut butter, and raisins.  It’s so good, though for some reason, most of the people I’ve ever told about it have never even heard about it.  i remember when I saw it as a kid on some show and asking my mom to make it.  And I’ve loved it ever since.

Tomorrow starts a whole new week.  Right now I’m actually not looking foward to it.  Normally, I’m not concerned either way about an upcoming week.  It is what it is.  A new week.  But, somehow, time has started ticking loudly in my ear.  And I’m too chicken to do what I should be doing.  Why?  I haven’t actually figured that part out.

Back to my Smirnoff Ice and Scrubs.  Scrubs cracks me up.  So does Smirnoff Ice.

I bought myself an apple at the grocery store today.  All the way home I looked for a place to sit.  Somewhere not far out of the way.  Somewhere warm.  I saw two benches beside a bus stop.  One was covered in shadows the other was bright with sunlight.  I sat in the brightness and I polished my apple on my dirty jeans.  I dug Thoreau’s Walden out of my bag and I thought about how I’ve been wanting to read this book for so many years.  And how I’m glad I bought it.  I got lost in the words and the ideas and I finished that apple.  Shivering, I realized it had completely clouded over.  A bus slowed to a screetching stop in front of me and I gazed blankly at the bus driver who was staring at my impatiently.  He pulled away abruptly, before I could realize that he thought I’d been waiting for him, and I closed my book, tossed the apple core and continued on in my journey of the day.  Coming away with this:

“Some of you, we all know, are poor, find it hard to live, are sometimes, as it were, gasping for breath.  I have no doubt that some of you who read this book are unable to pay for all the dinners which you have actually eaten, or for the coats and shoes which are fast wearing or are already worn out, and have come to this page to spend borrowed or stolen time, robbing your creditors of an hour.” -Walden by Henry David Thoreau

I kind of resented that this man who has never met me was making me feel guilty about eating an apple and taking ten minutes to sit and read his book.  The truth was, I wasn’t headed home, I was headed to work, and here I was squandering time on a bench and I actually did feel guilty about it, which is why I slammed that book shut at the moment, tossed my apple core, and immediately started walking again.

There will be plenty of time to sit and relax under a sunny fall sky eating an apple and reading… tomorrow.

I haven’t updated this site in AGES.  My laptop having issues with Windows Live Writer, as in, it not working in any capacity whatsoever, doesn’t help.  Internet Explorer conking out before I’d had time to download an alternative was of no service either.  PLUS the fact that I’m hardly ever home or online these days, and when I am, it’s the end of the day and I’m tired.

I really need to cut my nails.  I sound like a secretary from the fifties.

I’m watching The Office and I have to tell you, it makes me laugh!  Steve Carrell is such a great dumbass.  I love lamp.

I’m overwhelmed by life.  But I’m trying to be underwhelmed.  De-whelmed?  Sigh.

I went to my favourite bookstore today and even though I haven’t been there for about five or six months, they remembered my name! And, I got a free meal from Applebee’s last week simply because I go there every week and have inadvertantly become a “regular”.  Those two things rock.

I haven’t been home much lately.  I’ve been hanging out at my boyfriend’s house, which has a cozy corner of a couch that is perfect to cuddle up in.  We watch movies or play Saint’s Row 2 or play darts or watch football (?!).  Here’s a funny story.  I get football.  True story.  The cliffhanger is that I might actually enjoy it.  The End.

I’ve cooled it on NaNoWriMo.  It was stressing me out and turned writing into not fun and sucked the joy out of my life for a period of 24 hours or so.  I can’t have that.  I have enough stress in my life.  Being competitive about writing should never be a part of that.  I may or may not keep up with the writing I’ve done up until now (I haven’t updated my word count on the NaNoWriMo site), but I’m not going to stress myself out by trying to “be as good as” or “write as fast as” or anything similar.

While I was at my favourite bookstore this afternoon I saw some moleskine notebooks that I regret not picking up while I was there.  I can still do it tomorrow after breakfast with Renee. :)  If I ever open a breakfast restaurant I’m going to call it Tiffany’s so people can say, “I’m going to have breakfast at Tiffany’s.”  Wouldn’t that be exciting?

I’m reading Slash by Slash.  It’s quite good.  A bit of information I didn’t know:  Shannon Hoon from Blind Melon did backup vocals on “Don’t Cry”.  So there you go, some trivia.  People who go to karaoke with me will understand why that even matters to me.

Time for bed.  Goodnight!

Click here to watch my progress!

I’ll post it to my blogroll links… later.

Writing has always been fun for me.  I always knew that if I ever tried to make a career out of it, it would probably just ruin the entire experience for me.  I really hope that isn’t the case with this NaNoWriMo thing I’m attempting.  I think if I start to hate writing, I might have to stop doing this.  I’m only on my third installment and I swear, it was the hardest thing in the world to sit down and try to figure out what it was that I wanted to write about.  I got caught up in this whole “Where is this story going?!” line of thinking and couldn’t see past the obvious, “Oh, to the crap pile, that’s where” answer.  I have no idea where this is going or where it’s leading or what the point is.  I have a vague idea of where I’d like it to go, and I hope somehow in the millions of revisions I’m SURE to have to make, that it will end up there.  Hope is such an overrated word.

Anyway, I made progress today even though staring at a computer screen nearly killed me.

More soon!

So I’m watching My So-Called Life and there’s this part where Angela’s Dad is talking to a woman about his wife having dinner with an ex-boyfriend.  The woman says, “Why not act jealous?” He replies, “Oh, no, we don’t play those games.”  She says, “I don’t call that a game!”  He asks, “What would you call it then?”  And she says, simply, “Considerate.”

I’ve had this conversation with people before.  About this thing called jealousy.  But in more roundabout words, I suppose.  I like a little bit of jealousy.  I mean, not crazy amounts.  Not sit in treetops peeping in windows amounts.  But I mean, enough to know that they care about losing you, you know?  I guess I think we shouldn’t take what we have for granted because seriously, it can be gone in a second, or a minute, or an hour.  It’s important to let people know they are important to you, so they never have any reason to doubt it, even if you’re off talking to someone across the room.  I guess it’s mostly about security.  I like to know that I’m safe.  All the time.  So, a little bit of jealousy?  Considerate?   For me, definitely.

Speaking of… I cannot believe that My So-Called Life ends the way it does!  Brian looooves Angela and can’t admit to it, yet Angela obviously knows, and stupid Jordan Catalano keeps like, existing…!  It’s just ends on this super high note and all you want is more, more, more!

Can anybody tell that I’m procrastinating?  I should be writing for NaNoWriMo and I’m not!  Quick, what else can I do to distract myself!!!

It’s day 2 and I’ve logged 1,687 more words!  I still can’t figure out the http://www.nanowrimo.org website, it keeps giving me an error message when I try to login.  I can’t remember the password I signed up with so that just throws a whole new monkey wrench in… I’m hoping it’s a problem with their website and not something to do with that two computers I’ve tried so far…

Anyway, the book-writing continues!  Keep checking back for updates.  If you’re at all interested in reading what I’ve got so far, feel free to message me here, or however else you can.

So I’ve committed myself to writing 50,000 words this month and wanted to log into my account at http://www.nanowrimo.org and see if there was some way to link this page to a “progess” page there, but I can’t seem to access their website right now.  Grrr.  So for right now I will just proclaim to all that know about this site that I’m now a novel writer.  We’ll see how it goes.  And possibly, at some point, maybe I’ll even post some of what I’ve written here.  But not today.  I wrote my quota today and that’s all I’m allowing myself to say.