Do they even make railroad spikes anymore?

A lovely fall day. Sunday, always Sunday. The only day I can manage to have the apartment to myself. My roommates are all out in the world, being active, being social. I, however, am sitting with a cup of coffee that I keep topping off and a bowl of cantaloupe chunks that I'm slowly picking at. So I need this alone time, I don't mind that I'm only experiencing the breeze through an open window.

This weather is very much reminding me of Portland, that life I had for a few months a couple of years ago. Two years have passed since then. That feels totally unbelievable. Why does fall always feel so, I don't know, sad? The winding down, I guess. The old memories tucked away in my insides of starting school again. Suddenly the city feels smaller, closed in around me somehow, though nothing has changed except the month. I feel anxious, too, that all of the other things I could be doing with my life are out there, flying by, only I'm not fast enough to grab them.

Listening to the same songs over and over again. The story of my life. Conversations being repeated for the probably 80th time, then specters in my dreams. Self-defeating thoughts, and then a new week starts, hopefully this one will blot out my weekend and propel me forward. For once and for all, out of the nonsense I submit to willingly and continually. Someday I will grow out of all of this. I should get a dog, so I can wake up early and focus on something other than my own, mid-20s-but-somehow-very-adolescent nonsense. Maybe a happy, Phineas Gage-esque accident. maybe a railroad spike through some personality-producing piece of my brain meat. And then everything will change in one quick instant, and I could be someone new.

Bird on a Wire

Reading an article from the New York Times book blog (“Paper Cuts”, naturally, eye-rollingly). A brief piece, highlighting an author‘s new book, new website, whatever. And it’s 1:06 AM on a Sunday, for crying out loud. I should be asleep, readying myself for a day of investigating tomorrow. So this article is about Jennifer Egan’s website, newly redesigned to represent the concept of her new novel, space and time, blah blah. Interesting, I’m sure, but the rum and coke(s) working through my system throw me into skimming mode. Anyways, one sentence in a pull quote stopped me. It was about how she came to New York in 1987 at the age of 24. One little fact of biography. So I’m one of many. Lying here in my bed, up too late, a few drinks too many deep, at least for a Sunday. Many before, many after. Whatever I’m feeling has been felt before, many times over. So I’m anonymous. Old news. A wrinkle in an endless bolt. I wish the summer would end already, if only to feel like something can change.

I stole this sweater from the costume shop

Holy shit, a whole year since the last time I wrote here. Almost unbelievable, and somehow totally believable at the same time.

Sitting on my couch. Drinking coffee in the afternoon, browsing for jobs and casually applying for one or two. It's like being Portland again, but instead of the pleasant autumn-y sounds of leaves crunching under bike wheels I'm listening to some jackass outside on my street laying on his horn in an effort to convince a double parked truck to move on. Oddly enough, it's not working.

My birthday is a week and a half away. It coincides with the wedding of a friend of mine, which I will be attending. Of course weddings are the best, but I think this one will throw my own paltry existence, my extended adolescence, intro gross relief. My friend will be getting married to an older man. She will be a step mother. And this is not to say that I wish any of these things for my own life - but how can my life be so drastically dissimilar from hers?

I've been going a little crazy lately. Maybe it's the rain clouds that keep gathering over the city but rolling on before they release any rain. The trees bend for a few minutes and day becomes evening, but then a few minutes later the light returns. A heavy rain, maybe, is what I need. Maybe it's just being young, maybe it's this crazy city. One week you get passed over for a promotion and nothing feels right anymore, when just the week before that you marveled at your own life and how well the pieces were moving. One week you're the double parked truck, driverless and immobile, when just the week before you were the line of taxis behind it, anxious and ready to move ahead and see what was at the next intersection.

Hey remember that time I found a human tooth down on Delancey?

Excuse me, since when does Pandora have commercials that you need to watch in order to start playing your channels? Am I really this out of touch with the goings on of the internet? Just a few short months ago I was spending my days at coffee shops or in our living room and Pandora was the only reason I got through my GRE studying each day. 

Wait. I moved to Portland last August. And it only took this entire year for me to get my life together and feel like more than an old-timey tramp with an old-timey hobo-stick over my shoulder. And here I am, sitting in the living room in my new apartment. Natural light pouring in through our huge windows, a nice morning outside that is undoubtedly already disgustingly humid. I feel like a king in this apartment, with its spacious room and full kitchen. You hear that, New York? A full kitchen, with a FULL-SIZED stove and a dishwasher. And a garbage disposal! 

And a room of my own. At the back of the apartment, perfect for when I need to hole up for a few hours and be alone. Which needs to happen more frequently than I would like to admit. In a city of so many people it is just necessary to be alone when I can. Although, it's amazing when you can be in a crowded subway car for thirty minutes, invading the personal space of no less than 5 different people, and still feel completely isolated. I think that everyone in this city has developed the ability to completely avoid eye contact and just pretend that they don't notice each other. It's the only way to survive the commute. Still, it feels pretty lonely. 

I was back in the Midwest last weekend, for an unpredicted funeral. Are any funerals really predicted? I watched my two cousins, both in their 30s, straight-face their way through the weekend, accepting condolences and breaking down quietly during the memorial. They both lived within thirty minutes of their parents and saw them frequently. So I made my way through the United check-in area after saying goodbye to my mom and brother and thought I was a fool for wandering so far from home. I must have looked like a silly girl, wiping tears and trying to hide my face while pulling my carry-on through the crowded security line. Any time you have to come to terms with the mortality of the people you love and mourn a loss in such a public place, it's not going to be pretty. 

But I'm here now, and I feel happy. At least this morning, I do. It's hard not to when I have a full, busy day ahead of me. Running errands and finding ways to make my home actually feel like home (on the cheap, of course). That's the key - staying busy. Because in my idle moments I still think too much about what I'm doing here and what ever will become of me. So I rush around the city, spend my own money, follow my to-do list like it's a heavenly decree. Just keep moving. 

But ain't NYC the greatest? I can't really imagine living anywhere else right now. So I guess that means something, right? Something must be right about what I'm doing if it feels like I've settled in to the just right spot. 

48 hours or so until I'm on a plane and hurtling towards dear old Manhattan. For now, I'm watching Full House (yes!), drinking coffee, doing laundry, and trying desperately to ignore the crescendo of fear and anxiety that is beginning its slow swell. I'm used to being in this particular frame of mind, hovering on the edge of monumental life change. And this time, miraculously, I actually have a plan! I'm not taking a blind leap of faith and moving to a new city with no job prospects. I actually HAVE a job and I plan to stay for the foreseeable future. So how do you like them apples?

I'm trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I will be settling in to a new life. I'm trying to tie up some loose ends- concrete ends, like dentist appointments... but also the more abstract ones. Clearing my mind to make way for new neural connections to be formed and such. Tying off old relationships. Coming to terms. You know, another day in the life. I never have been one for moving on, but I do believe that the time has come to just start over in every possible way.

Half of my mouth is currently numb after having a cavity filled this morning. I have a tiny crush on my dentist... he's young and blond and sort of adorable while hovering over my face with a very long needle filled with local anesthesia. What does this misguided crush say about my taste in men? The fact that a young man whose job description includes inflicting pain on me gets me all riled up while he's poking around my mouth at 9:30 in the morning just speaks volumes. I'm hopeless.

I love the mid-afternoon episode of Jeopardy - particularly when it's the teen tournament. Makes me feel brilliant.

I just discovered bookswim.com - which is Netflix for books. Words cannot express how excited I am to enroll. How exciting!!!

Crickets, you're on in 5

From The Ephemerist, who lifted it from the Powell's blog:

From the blog at Powell’s Books — it’s the winning word in their OED contest — comes crytoscopophilia: the urge to look through people’s windows as you pass by their houses

Probably one the things I miss the most about New York right now. Walking home from my subway stop at 86th and Lex, then walking the 4 blocks south and 3 or so blocks east to get back to my apartment. Walking the streets of the Upper East Side at dusk, before the rich people in their townhouses have drawn their curtains for the night.

It was kind of amazing (and on certain days, a little soul-crushing) to live in that part of New York and still be so irrevocably removed from it. I will never have money like that. I will be paying off my student loans until I am middle-aged. I say 'paying off' as if I'm currently contributing to that pile of debt. I'm in the middle of a deferment... reason? Income: zero. Awesome.

The snow keeps falling. When I was in Portland in the fall, tempertatures were high and it hardly rained at all. Everyone kept saying what a phenomenon it was that the weather was so nice even in to November. I experienced a damn near 70 degree day in New York, and here I am in Michigan, in what has to be record snow fall. All extremes, all the time.

Things I did yesterday:
*Ventured to Target and bought a pair of stretchy black pants. Because I've been wearing the same ratty pair of sweatpants since I came home for Christmas (yes, I've washed them - but they still make me feel gross). You know, the pair I brought because I would only need one pair, because I was only coming home for six days.

*Attempted to make rice pudding from scratch. In a slow cooker. Slow cookers are supposed to be fool proof! This according to Judy Finlayson, author of a book slow cooker recipes that I found laying around the house. Listen, Judy, don't tell me to put the slow cooker on high and leave it for 4 hours when that is going to turn my delicious rice pudding in to a glob of dessicated rice and crusty cinnamon. This is what a rice pudding fail looks like.

*Further slashed my cooking confidence by making falafel out of a box. It was gross. Out of a box! I should have known.

*Took the online Jeopardy contestant test. For the second time in my life. It was much harder than last time. Little known fact about me: One of my ultimate life goals is to be on a game show. Specifically, a trivia-related game show. But I don't think I'll be hearing from the Jeopardy producers anytime soon.

*Watched the movie "A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints" because it was free through On Demand. It was really good, I would definitely recommend it. Shia Lebouf is in it, which almost made me not watch it. He bugs me, something about the shape of his head. But he did a really good job.

I need a good book to read. I started reading Pillars of the Earth a couple of days ago, simply because it's very lengthy and I knew it would take time to read. But I just cannot get in to that sort of historical fiction. Plus, the author is primarily a mystery writer, and it shows in his lame descriptions of characters. "She had long brown hair and piercing golden eyes that seemed to see in to your soul." Setences of that nature. No thanks.

I just finished a memoir by Joan Didion. I'm kind of feeling that genre right now. Suggestions welcome. (Hey, crickets -- that's your cue to start chirping to demonstrate that no one reads this.)

Yenta hour!

Watching the Yenta Hour (aka the really awful extra hour of The Today Show aired during the mid-afternoon).

Two young women promoting their book entitled How to Love Like a Hot Girl. One of their claimed objectives is to redefine what a sexy woman is. As they sit with their cleavage pooping out of their low-cut tops, their skirts riding up to expose bare thighs and knee high boots. With too much bronzer and lip gloss, looking totally artificial.

If that isn't redefinition, I just don't know what is. Not.

Two more young woman exploiting the Sex-And-The-City-One-Night-Stands-Are-Empowering meme that is ubiquitous. Can we actually redefine sexy someday? To place more importance on things that matter and that are not fleeting and superficial? Brains over beauty? It's not going to happen, so I'll stop hoping that it ever will. Not in my lifetime, at least.

Luckily these two had Rabbi Shumley sitting next to them to balance them out. Not THAT is a man who knows whats up.

I am going to continue to be annoying by those ladies all day.