The Accidental Admin.

So my deal has changed...

2008-08-18T22:25:00.001-04:00

...but that doesn't mean that my interest in blogging about stuff has! Find me at my new place:

Where the Gone Things Go

2008-08-08T19:59:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was a shitty day, but let's forget about that. It's a given that there will be bad days and days where nothing bad happened but I will either miss friends or I will look around my apartment and, for as much as I love it (and I *really* love my apartment!), I will see my stuff in rooms that are not the same as the rooms I have lived in, in a house that looks nothing like a Boston triple-decker or three-story-actual-house-turned-into-three-apartments.

Let's focus on today. It was a damn good day. In the war I waged on my disassembled bed, I won (yesterday I didn't). There were some massive attacks--first when trying to piece together that stupid metal frame and then again when I tried to push and shove my mattress from the living room, where it had been moved 1. to access the pieces of bed frame yesterday and then 2. to sleep on when yesterday it was apparent that the bed would win. There were a few times when the mattress--far bigger than I am and almost too heavy for one person to wrangle on her own--had me fall flat on my butt on my living room floor. In the end, though, I proved victorious. I have an assembled bed--wrinkled dust ruffle that sorely needs to be ironed, but I will handle that another time, but still, a fully assembled bed. Headboard actually attached to the frame (first time in years that I managed to even do that...), properly assembled bed frame, box spring, dust ruffle, mattress. Next comes taking the sheets out and, well, "dressing" my bed.

What also made today a good day is the following little list of accomplishments:
1. I alphabetized my poetry books. As stupid as it sounds, alphabetizing things--and bringing order to my books--brings a ridiculously peaceful and wonderful happiness to me.
2. I proved victorious in the war against the used car market. I now own a nice black 1998 honda civic. The miles are certainly high, but they are reasonable for what I need, they are "good for a honda," and I managed to get the nice Lebanese man who manages the business to discount the price 10%. I also have a commitment from him to replace my front windshield which has some unsightly dings and cracks. That is being done tomorrow. The car, however, is with me.
3. I talked to Stefanie on the phone and felt like I was back home, drinking tea or a nice tall beer with her somewhere and talking.
4. Sidney sent me a postcard that arrived today. Her faith in me fuelds something super wonderful that I can not properly articulate.
5. I am going to a party of sorts at the place of a program-mate.
6. I successfully ordered broadband DSL service for my apartment today.
7. I drove to Target and got a nice new Brita water filter and a utensils tray for my kitchen drawer in which I keep utensils. Now my water can come from a pitcher that I keep in the fridge door and can be nice and chilled. And now my utensils can find order instead of threaten to start a rebellion. I don't know how the eating utensils and the cooking utensils would quite get along.
8. Benjamin and Shana are coming tomorrow from St. Louis to help me get stuff and assemble stuff from Target. It is a horrible, horrible scene if I try to do it on my own. It turns into a bookshelf unit with the back wood piece kind of nailed shut in the right direction but a little bit off and a little bit loose or a television stand that is not at nice 90 degree angles.
9. Benjamin is giving me information on his car insurance dude who he trusts, who is the sort of dude who explained to Benjamin what different stuff in the insurance meant instead of just taking him for some knowledge-less idiot. Even if this insurance dude only services the St. Louis area and not my town, 2 hours west, he will be able to hook me up with one of his colleagues in his network who can give me service. Web of trust, right?
10. I think I am doing something with L this weekend and with K, who is a new friend who works in the libraries here. Plans with old friends--Benjamin and Shana who I CAN NOT WAIT to see--and with new friends is really the best way to go. Bringing in as much of the people already in my world as a 'welcome wagon' of sorts to my emotional and psychological space and to help make room for the new friends is a huge, wonderful comfort.

That's all.
I have to go!
I need to figure out dinner and go get some beers and such to bring to tonight's party.

2008-08-04T11:19:00.002-04:00

I am here, in Missouri, and right now sitting in a coffee shop down my street and close to campus.
My internet won't be installed until tomorrow morning.
My pod will arrive tomorrow morning, and it will be unloaded on Wednesday morning.
Marvy!
I have so much crap to do.
Including car shopping.
AND I need to figure out what to do with this space, epecially since I am not an accidental admin anymore.
I'm just Stephanie.
And I am a PhD student.
And I am a person living in the midwest.
And as far as a 'job' is concerned, while I am doing some freelance work, I am first and foremost a college writing instructor. That is no longer my "moonlighting gig" I guess. It's my main gig.
Which is damn nice to be able to say.
More later, though.

A song for the new generation, sung in A minor...

2008-07-31T08:51:00.002-04:00

Last day at work!
Last day at work!
Last day at work!
Last day at work!
Last day at work!
Last day at work!

Last day of THE TROLL!
Last day of THE TROLL!
Last day of THE TROLL!
Last day of THE TROLL!
Last day of THE TROLL!
Last day of THE TROLL!

Goodbye ugly beige cubicle!
Goodbye ugly beige cubicle!
Goodbye ugly beige cubicle!
Goodbye ugly beige cubicle!
Goodbye ugly beige cubicle!
Goodbye ugly beige cubicle!

Last day at work!
Last day at work!
Last day at work!
Last day at work!
Last day at work!
Last day at work!

2008-07-30T12:31:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow is my last day.
If I were on a sitcom, I would do Cousin Balki's dance of joy.

My boxes are all hauled and loaded.
My movers were so amazing that they got everything in one pod.
They saved me $500 by doing that.

I am excited and stressed and exhausted and overwhelmed and freaking out with moving.
Shit--I am that entire bundle of status and emotion just from my apartment being empty and the sounds of my cat meowing and me talking echoing throughout the empty rooms.

Tonight I have to sweep all the floors, take out the garbage.
But first--"goodbye" dinner with Julia, haircut with the ever-fabulous Elizabeth.

Oh god it's all finally here. Tomorrow is the last day at work. Including a big, fabulous, paid-for-on-someone's-corporate-AmEx farewell lunch at Bambara. When I asked him if he was coming, the Italian Prince just looked at me and asked, "will alcohol be involved?" I told him that if he orders a glass of wine then I just may very well order a glass of wine.

In 48 hours from now I will be giving a flight attendant my boarding pass, walking onto an airplane, and claming my cat.
Shit. It's finally here.

What will the world be like when I am no longer "accidental admin", when I am just Stephanie?

Shorthand, the moving edition...

2008-07-29T17:34:00.002-04:00

in my apartment
all boxes packed
furniture moved in odd locations
a table with its legs unscrewed
large open spaces and clear pathways to the back door created
moving pods delivered to my driveway (off the back door)
1:20 until my movers come to load those suckers up
3 days until I board an airplane
(oh shit that is soon)
said goodbye last night to the writers
managed to keep my cool in their presence
managed to weep like a fool in my apartment
I have been sitting on my sofa (while it is here for me to sit on) writing my answers to my exit interview
oh jeezus it was sort of crazy and lame
2 more days of hopping on the #80 bus to go to work
2 more days of ugly beige cubicle
2 more days of The Troll and her annoying singing and talking too loudly on the phone
2 more days of Office Land and Cubicle Land and Corporate America and then hello academia

and right now I am outta here...

2008-07-28T10:48:00.003-04:00

It's my last week of work. Well, to be more precise, my last 4 days of work. It's pretty cool. I'm pretty excited. And this morning, to celebrate this, I sent out the "thank you for everything" e-mail with my non-work e-mail address to all of my colleagues. And people are coming out in droves with the "oh no don't leave us! We need you!!!!" e-mails.

They know it's a done deal; this girl is going back to school to become a full-fledged nerd. I know that to some extent that's part of the social expectation--the exchange of "it's been so lovely to work with you" and the "you're awesome, don't leave us, we love you here, come visit all the time" messages. I refuse to write or say things that I don't mean, so my words were sincere. Though my job might have been as accidental as my blog's website indicates and though my actual job may not really be to my liking or along a professional path that is viable for me, the people I have worked with--and the people whose cubicles I worked near--are pretty cool. To them I can easily offer my non-work e-mail address, best wishes for their futures, my heartfelt thanks, and the hope for continued communication.

I am sure that you are all sitting on the edge of your seats and wondering one big, important question: Is THE TROLL one of the people to whom I sent this e-mail?

My answer: not in your life.

Now don't get me wrong; I am sure that she is a lovely person whose friends think she is The Queen Bee Of Their Every-Fantasy-Filled World, and I am sure that she is recognized and valued and loved for her talents and for the ways in which her personality can sparkle. Here, however, from my vantage point, she ain't impressin' me all that much, and I can not sincerely wish her well or go to sleep at night feeling safe and secure and happy that she has my contact information. She is not the boss on my block or in my--well--cubicle aisle, and if she continues to hum and sing and la-la-la like she has been doing this morning (OR if she starts talking about szechuan cuisine, or about weight watchers, or about any of her other stupid, trivial bullshit), she might make it to the top of my Super Fantasy Hit List.

Edit: she will not make it to the top. That space is reserved for George W. Bush, John McCain, anyone who dares to consider purple the new black, all fashion designers who think that a trapeze dress is a good idea, bigots, Anne Coulter, people who drive stupid-huge SUVs without a specific need for one (ie general contractors who need to lug around lots of stuff, artists who need to lug around huge canvasses and painting supplies and materials for sculptures, athletes who need to lug around canoes and bicycles and similar things that require too much space), people who selfishly and improperly staff senior citizens centers, and the owners of Wal-Mart for building a store that does not quite celebrate the first ammendment and that is based on a highly nepotistic organizational leadership structure. Then comes The Troll.

But everyone else I will miss. And I have no qualms in telling them as much.

2008-07-24T09:41:00.002-04:00

The person I really liked in yesterday's couple of temp interviews accepted the job offer very enthusiastically. It's a relief. It's good to know that someone who seems responsible and trustworthy and even-tempered will be filling my seat once I leave. And my fingers are crossed that all of the paperwork with her temp agency happens quickly enough for her to come into the office on my last day of work so that I can train her decently enough.

One week from today, exactly, is my last day on the job. One week from tomorrow, exactly, I stop being a Bostonian. It's such a strange, bizarre mixture of excitement and stress and anxiety and joy and other sorts of blotto emotions just running amock that I don't entirely know how to process it. Yesterday evening I was sleepy and whiney and easily annoyed when it came to doing moving-related things. Specifically, Julia was awesome enough to come over and help me throw out the massive amounts of trash bags I have filled with junk as I have been packing and the massive amounts of bags of recycling. She also helped me move around a bit of the furniture in my living room to separate what Amanda bought from me and will keep when she takes over my apartment from the furniture that my movers will load into my pods. I just wanted to curl up into a ball on my sofa and close my eyes and make the world go away, but Julia was great at keeping me on task. We celebrated the throwing out of the garbage by eating Indian take out and then ripping some of her CDs that I wanted onto my iTunes. Next week I will give her some burned CDs of my favourite iTunes CDs that I know she will enjoy.

I can't believe how many boxes are in my apartment. Last night, one of my towers of boxes apparently fell over when I was asleep. I woke up this morning to stuff all over my dining room floor.

This weekend I get to pack up my stereo and disassemble my writing desk.

On my last day at work, Pencil Head is taking me out to lunch. So nice of him, so unnecessary, so lovely. On Monday after work (and before going to my last writing workshop--a thought that entirely breaks my heart), Italian Prince is taking me out to dinner.

Oh goodness gracious. It's REALLY almost here.

notes from the cubicle...

2008-07-22T12:56:00.003-04:00

1. really good seedless red grapes = total win at lunch time
2. new poem in the works = best thing ever
3. not a John Mayer fan, but for some reason I have one of his songs stuck in my head and am not annoyed by it. See what spending time in a stupid, generic cubicle does to me?!? Oh for shame!
4. just about finished with the packing...I do think it really is a matter of finishing up the kitchen stuff this weekend and then throwing out the bags before I really believe in how done I think I am.
5. old "good" friends who have entirely dropped you without explanation and who refuse to do something as silly as facebook friend you = losers to the max
6. the reality of my move and all that it means above and beyond "this PhD program will be so freaking awesome" = a bit intense
7. getting friendly with people in Missouri before I even move = totally awesome
8. only having 7 days left in which I have to hop on the 80 bus to get to work = best thing ever

2008-07-21T13:11:00.003-04:00

My heart breaks a little bit more as I get closer and closer to saying goodbye. And, at the same time, my heart expands a little bit more as I get closer and closer to all of the exciting, insane, I-can't-even-KNOW-how-awesome-it-will-be stuff of moving to Misosuri for this PhD program and this next step of my life and these people who are to become my friends and this space--mental and physical and community--that is so dedicated to me as a writer, teacher, and student.

It also helps that I only have 8 actual physical days of hopping on the bus and making my way to this office. That's a nice sort of feeling to have.

And aside from that, I don't have much more to say. Packing is almost done and the whole stupid business of "conditioning" my cat towards her carrier has begun. It's not fun. The scratches on my arms and legs will tell you as much.

related to this business of moving...

2008-07-19T23:21:00.002-04:00

When Amanda moves into this apartment she will definitely find some little surprises. Not in the bad way of finding surprises. There won't be broken stuff, and though my schedule is so busy that I have absolved myself from most concern for domestic prowess, my landlord is having a cleaning woman come in and scrub this place from ceiling to floor boards. It's just that I am at my absolute maximum limit. Aside from the stereo, the last few CDs, the iPod stereo, and the last and important kitchen things, I really can't bring myself to pack one more thing.

I am thankful that on Wednesday evening my friend Julia is coming to help me take entirely too many bags of moving/packing-generated crap down to the road for garbage pickup. Included in this pile of crap will be my rug that I have had for a few years and love but that Spike the wonder cat has used as her clawing/scratching rug and that has so much cat hair and other crap deep into it that I don't think that a rug shampoo will do so much help. It won't fit into my new apartment's living room and look as nice as it does in this apartment anyway, so I think it is definitely time to give this one up.

And let me say that I have a firm belief by now that moving stuff around and shoving things into boxes and putting some elbow grease into the taping shut of boxes and then hoisting loaded boxes into reasonable piles is a reasonable stand in for going to the gym.

2008-07-18T11:39:00.002-04:00

I can not stand The Troll.
I can not stand The Troll.
I can not stand The Troll.
I can not stand The Troll.
Thank goodness I am out of here in 2 weeks.

There are only four words to capture the essence of today:

2008-07-17T12:09:00.000-04:00

headache of epic proportions

More later, or another time. I desparately need to find a caffeine source, and some lunch, and I need to run some errands. Toodles!

2008-07-14T09:58:00.003-04:00

How the hell do I say goodbye to my writing group?

I don't know exactly how that goes or how that feels; I only know the gravity of it. There is a part of me that feels guilty about even thinking that and that admonishes me for not wondering, "how the hell do I say goodbye to my closest friends?" But it's different. My closest friends up here--the spawling, ramshackle group of us--has shrunk bit by bit over the years as other people have moved out of town for school, or a job, or a life partner. Those friends have been through this routine of saying goodbye. With my friends who have left, I have gone through the routine of saying goodbye. We have a language for that. We have our own methods for wishing each other well and keeping in touch when we can and figuring out the transition from local friendships to long-distance relationships.

But my writing group. These people who have sustained me in the most unspeakable ways over the last 3+ years and who are responsible for so much of my sanity. These people who have made me feel so incredibly loved and supported in ways that I never even imagined possible. These people who have known me at one of the most important times of both my evolution as a person and an evolution as a writer and who have challenged me and encouraged me to really open up in my writing in ways that used to scare me beyond articulation. My closest friends know the rest of my life. These people know me through my writing and through my thinking through of their poems and through the conversations we have shared about poetry, about the future, about our futures, about our writing. They became a part of my life just after one of the most heart-shatteringly traumatic events of my life and at a time when my grandmother started to decline and get sick so intensely. They have been part of my life and this strange, wonderful, necessary presence through so many personal ups and downs, and they have played a really huge role in helping me create a new vocabulary for myself that has nothing to do with "I can't," "oh, I'm not good enough," "that will never happen for me," or any of the negative messages that can so easily rush to the forefront of my mind.

THAT group, and the woman through whom we know each other--Lucie, amazing poet that she is and amazing teacher that she is and jaw-droppingly amazing person that she is--it breaks my heart to even THINK about saying goodbye to them all in three weeks. I'm not prepared to even begin to think about how that will go or how heavy it will weigh on my heart or how I will manage my last few days in Boston having said goodbye and how I will manage my first sessions with my new writing community in Missouri--even for as thankful as I am for them and for as generous and warm and welcoming and amazing as everyone has been towards me and even for the gut instinct I have that these people will be a rock-solid and important writing community for me--they are not Lucie, they are not her group, they are not, as Lucie refers to us mid-workshop, "the committee."

2008-07-13T16:26:00.004-04:00

I am steeped in worry and I feel uncomfortable writing too much about it.
It all has to do with my move to Missouri.

In other news, I am almost entirely packed except for maybe 1-2 boxes of books & miscellaneous crap and the bits of my kitchen stuff that I am putting off for the last minute (and enough to have 1 friend over at a time for dinner when I have the time over the next couple weeks). The rest of what I have is either going to have pictures taken of it and posted on Craig's list for sale or will be given to goodwill or tossed.

And my apartment is the most ridiculous box city ever. My dining room, at least, is. The rest of it just looks somewhat bare.

Neither here nor there, but with a little more pep than you would expect...

2008-07-11T09:27:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was a good day.

The first, genuine, "I feel like my old self" day I have had in a long time.
By the early evening, before I had dinner with one of my Boston favorites at one of her Boston favorites, I felt for the first time in a very long time (since snagging my apartment rental I think?) like I have everything about this move to Missouri under control--but without feeline like someone who is trying too hard to control every single itsy bitsy aspect about my life change. It's a very fine line between the two.

And last night I slept. I got maybe 6 hours of sleep total, but I actually got sleep. And that's sort of unual for me when I am majorly stressed out and when it's ungodly hot and humid out (which thankfully last night there was a bit of a break from) and when I have a lot on my mind. And sleeping 6 hours is unusual for the last month and a half or so, as I have pretty much averaged 3-4 hours of sleep a night.

And this morning I woke up to no overly-hot, overly-humid sense of things in my apartment.

It was a treat.

It was just cool enough, in fact, for me to blow dry my hair after I showered and cleaned up and know that with my hair somehow put-into-place it will not become a sweaty, soppy mess by the time I reach my office.

These things matter.
These little, teensy tiny things matter.
It's ridiculous, but they do.

What also matters is that it's Friday. And that tonight I have a party at Lou and Emily's house to go to (it's Emily's birthday! Happy birthday, Emily!!!) and I get to see friends. And next week I have some serious girl time with Stefanie and Melissa. And my writing is going smashingly this summer. And I feel good, this morning, about 3 weeks left here.

10 more towards 100

2008-07-09T14:32:00.002-04:00

71. I love a good grilled cheese sandwich.

72. I have a bad habit of mining my hair for split ends (and, the last few years, for white hairs) and then getting rid of the offending split end/white hair. I consider it to be my worst habit.

73. I love the shabby chic look, but I hate the whole "suburban card and gift shop" look (and smell! complete with jar candles!).

74. When I was younger and more foolish, I used to dream that I would somehow magically acquire the talent to mix and match furniture and home accessories so that I could bring in elements of all of the different styles of home furnishing that I love--a splash of contemporary (nice rigid lines! spare with the detailing!), five dashes of the global/multicultural, a tablespoon of mid-century Modern, a fistful of missionary/arts & crafts era, and about a cup of shabby chic. Now I am smart enough to know that I sort of suck at that, so I stick to a clean, somewhat-goes-together-but-is-not-of-the-same-brand, "I can afford this and assemble it EASILY" sort of style.

75. Cleaning my bathroom depresses me, but I feel accomplished when I have finished.

76. My favorite cleaning products are Mrs. Meyers. It's a bit on the pricey side, but I love it and consider it worth it to spend the money on (especially when I purchase from drugstore.com and they have the Mrs. Meyers on sale!). I especially love the geranium and lavender scents. I recently decided that I am not into the lemon verbana scent for dish soap, and I am considering buying the 'basil' scent when I buy my new cleaning supplies for my new apartment.

77. I think that shower curtains--the fancy, design-y plastic ones--are horribly over priced.

78. The only literary journal I subscribe to is 32 Poems. I love them, even though they keep on rejecting my work. One of these days they will take my poems dammit!!

79. I'm sort of afraid of jello. it's the jiggle factor. But in the summer, when it is hot and nasty and soupy like it is up here, I crave jello because it is cold and smoothe going down the throat (and because I love ice cream but there is only so much ice cream I can eat before I feel like a disgusting pig). I just bought my first 6 pack of individual sugar-free jello cups ever.

80. I can't stand circus peanuts, though I would give anything to be five years old again and have my grandmother offer them to me over and over again (and I almost always said yes back then!).

Oh for shame: last night's dreams

2008-07-09T12:00:00.002-04:00

One:

It is August 1. I am on the second leg of my air travel--Atlanta to St. Louis--and the plane lands at the airport. I leave with my cat and my backpack, and tired, bogged down with stuff, and overwhelmed with the enormity of moving halfway across the country (and on an airplane!), I slowly and dizzily make my way to the baggage carousel. I somehow manage to get my 2 suitcases without anything going missing, or me having to deal with mean people, or somehow getting hurt and bruised. The details of my travel from St. Louis to Columbia are such that I have to use the shuttle service, so I am standing at a curb where the shuttle is supposed to pick me up. As the shuttle pulls into space, a bomb crashes into the ground and The World Beyond the Curb--shuttle bus included--blows up and turns into a nasty fire. I am stuck there at the airport--exhausted, short, shaking, ruined--standing with my overwhelming amount of things.

Two:

It is August 1. At the airport, I have checked in my suitcases. I am with my backpack (containing laptop) and my cat carrier. Spike, my cat, has a spiked collar. We reach the security line, and I take my laptop out of bag, place both in their receptacles along with my shoes, my watch, the loose change in my pocket. Spike and I go through the security gate and the alarm rings. I explain to the security guard that my cat has a spiked collar, and he asks to open up the carrier so he can look. Spike bites his hand and makes a run for it as he unzippers the carrier. I collapse, I can't stand, I don't know what I would do without my cat.

Three:

It is August 1 and I am about to leave my apartment. My backpack is for my iPod, my cell phone, my laptop, reading material, a few small things. My cat manages to get in her carrier without me getting scratch marks or bite marks everywhere. I am checking my smaller suitcase, which has enough clothes to tide me over for a few days until my boxes arrive via pods. I am checking my larger suitcase, which has important things like cat food, Spike's water bowl, a temporary kitty litter tray, towels for the shower, etc. My friend Melissa comes to pick me up, and I give my keys to my landlords. We are in her car, and I realize that I have forgotten to pack toilet paper into my "stuff I need" suitcase.

2008-07-08T13:31:00.001-04:00

I'm OK.
exhausted.
Beyond exhausted.
But I'm here and thankfully the workday is halfway through.
Oh, and I am feeling the Missouri-love big time today.
And I am feeling the poery juju big time.
Those are good things.
Very much so.

Spinning like a top...or a merry go round...

2008-07-07T10:32:00.003-04:00

Today I am exhausted and without any focus whatsoever.
Thank you, insomnia! Thank you, ringing alarm clock!

And my apartment? It looks more wrecked and like Box City with each passing day. I gave up a while ago on trying to even worry about cleaning with the confluence of boxes and packing tape and things out of their proper order. Last night, it seems like I couldn't even be bothered to make sure that the fitted bed sheet was properly fitted onto my bed mattress before I sprawled out across the middle of my bed and tried to sleep.

I did, however, manage to find the wherewithall to wash my dishes yesterday morning. And I hope to have the wherewithall to wash dishes again tomorrow evening, as some have found their way to the realm of the dirty and I won't really be home tonight to wash. And I need to have the wherewithall to take out the trash on Thursday morning.

And I am half amazed that I managed to put on some reasonable work clothes. If I can bring a few items from the slight retail therapy binge of the last week and a half in to work tomorrow to take to the tailor's on my lunch break, then I will be I think 100% amazed.

For now, though, I will end this utterly unexciting verbal pukage and go find some more caffeine. Because I desparately need.

5 more towards 100...

2008-07-03T14:49:00.002-04:00

66. I tend to be resourceful and helpful. Not because I particularly set out to be or because I seek something in return, just because it comes as my natural response to situations.

67. My favorite Greek rock & roll music is a band called Pyx Lax. They split up, I think, a few years back, but I love their stuff like they're still making it.

68. When I was a kid I made up stories about the moon and about the constallation Orion. I still have those stories tucked away in my mind's little hope chest.

69. I often think I need a personal assistant. I find myself in these little moments where things get a bit too chaotic and a bit too close to an unmanageable edge. And I get into a sort of psychological vertigo when I need to figure out what to do and how to fix things. I am stuck with this "what the hell?!?!?" sort of questioning, and no results come to me. Though the clarity eventually comes to me and I have some good ideas on how to move forward, it would be nice, sometimes, to have someone else manage stuff for me.

70. It really does take the smallest things to make me happy and feeling all good and special again after I've been struck down. I get a strange, giggly joy over stuff as simple as going to the movie theater (and the full-pay one, not the ones that are second-release theaters, even though one of those, the Somerville Theater, is one of my favorite cinemas in town) or being invited to a friend's for dinner or actually getting a phone call from a friend (I never have friends ringing me...but that's ok, because I don't often ring people. I'm sort of scared of the phone.).

Not a good thing...

2008-07-02T12:35:00.002-04:00

Last night I had a miraculous 8.5 hours of mostly uninterrupted sleep (well, ok, I started waking up at 5 AM and looking at my clock and doing the math for how much time I had until the alarm rang...but for most of the night, no interruptions). None of the colorful-to-the-point-of-memorable dreams that I have had lately. Sadly, my cat was not in my room (I had to keep the door closed, because I had both fan and air conditioner turned on), and she was quite resentful this morning, but still. I slept.

Why, then, am I dizzy as if I got no sleep last night? Why am I so damn lightheaded and ready to drop into a deep sleep any second?

(I think the realistic answer is that because I have been averaging 3-4 hours of sleep, max, a night for most of the last month-plus, my body is starting to shut down bit by bit...the dizziness and fogginess is setting in, the lack of ability to focus is setting in...)

I think on Thursday night, since I do not HAVE to be anywhere on Friday, I am doing the air conditioning turned on all night long again (even if it sucks up electricity and inflates my bill...). And no alarm clock set for Friday. And I might take some benedryl before I go to bed to make me even drowsier and and more likely to fall asleep quickly.

I need sleep, and today I insist that I must have a real lunch (I have been horrible with feeding myself lately. I threw out the deliberate need to be entirely balanced in my nutrition until I reach Misosuri a month or so ago, as that takes some energy and thought and time, which I do not have until I am moved, but lately I have been downright horrible. I hate that. I really, really hate that.). Thankfully, plans for lunch out of the office with my friend Jenn (who I do not see enough of!). We're just going across the street, but it will be like entering an oasis of luxury somehow. Just having lunch with another person--instead of with a book, or in my cubicle--and being able to exit my office and breathe a bit without worrying whether or not my boss will notice (he is on vacation) is nice. Not that my boss ever notices or ever would care (I'm a bit paranoid about that crap).

But I need sleep.
In a hardcore sort of way.
And then I need to get all moved so I can breathe.
And I need to reset my systems when it comes to my eating and get back to where I was before this past year's craziness set in and sort of snowballed into something barely manageable.

because I am too tired for possibly write anything else...

2008-07-01T10:41:00.002-04:00

...a continuation of my journey towards 100 facts, tidbits of information, and insights to the oddities of me, The One And Only Accidental Admin...

46. When I come home from a poetry workshop and my poem was workshopped, I am usually so charged and so focused on the feedback I got and the ideas that came up--whether they came to me or my colleagues--that I begin edits immediately.

47. When I eat small things--nuts, or blueberries, or m&ms--I need to have an even amount in my hand. And I eat them two by two. Ever since I was little, I don't know why, but I do.

48. I never liked cats all that much (other than generally respecting their right to exist...) until my cat, Spike, adopted me. Now I love cats as much as I love dogs.

49. I get a strange, overwhelming, almost electrifying thrill out of being the first person to crack the spine of a paperback book. I love walking down an aisle in the bookstore running my fingers across a row of tight bindings, and when I bring a choice book home to read, after I have reached a point in my reading where cracking the binding is necessary, I love running my finger up and down the crack in the binding when the book is sitting, closed, on a table top.

50. When I am working on a poem I tend to bring a printout of my latest draft everywhere with me for a week or two. Even if I do nothing to it. It's usually folded and tucked into the cover of my day planner. If it's a poem that really matters to me--either because of the direction it's headed in or the problems it is facing--I tend to also bring along at least some of the (more helpful) copies of the draft of the poem I brought to workshop (if I workshopped it).

51. I never stopped using a day planner that was on a school calendar (or, basically, August-August). Even though I have been out of my MFA program for over 5 years and am not yet *at* my PhD program, and even though my primary source of income has been a job with a desk and offices and cubicles and such, I never really cared much for the whole January 1 being the start of a new year sort of thing. I never stopped thinking outside of the start of a school year.

52. Speaking of day planners: I always purchase the same one. It's the $3 version with a pleather cover and a university insignia that is sold, sans insignia, at regular bookstores for something like $13-15. When I moved back to boston from my MFA program and was not yet adjunct teaching at a university nearby, I had to go to my undergraduate alma mater's bookstore to get my day planners (it would be wrong to carry around an MIT- or Boston College-insigniaed book when I have no reason to have either insignia in my presence). I always felt cheap and weird and ridiculous, like the alumna who never quite tore herself away, but I couldn't resist having a day planner at a very inexpensive price, an amount of space for writing stuff for each day that I am used to, a very specific size and weight that I am used to, and that began in August/September, which is when the year, for me, REALLY begins. I am VERY excited to move to Missouri and get my 2008-2009 day planner. It is on my to-do list for my first week in town.

53. I hate excel spreadsheets with a huge passion (except for the sheet I created to track my poetry journal submissions, which is the exact same format and sheet I have been using since 2000), but I love to-do lists. Even if I don't follow through on everything, when I am in a state of panic and worry over things that are yet to come or when I am faced with a process that seems, somehow, intangible and overwhelming, I break it down into to-do lists. I did this in late february for getting myself moved to Missouri in August. When I visited MU in mid-March and met the people in my program, I was scared that my program director would think I was too uptight and freakish for him to have POSSIBLY accepted into the program. We sat down at a coffee shop and talked for a while, and in that time I showed him my file folder with my post-it-noted to-do lists (this bevy of lists includes the list that breaks things down month by month of what I needed to accomplish to get moved and the list of things to accomplish in my first week in town and my list of options for moving my things). I was really scared about his reaction, but he was awesome with me (note: EVERYONE in Missouri has been more than awesome with me. I am very lucky). Scott just looked at me and smiled and said two things: 1. if I was this organized about stuff going forward, he had no worries about me doing what I needed to do to pace myself in this program and graduate in a reasonable amount of time, and 2. I have absolutely nothing to worry about or be nervous about, because there are so many people out there who were just rooting for me and who were there to help me out and help me make things happen and--well--succeed. I literally fought back tears.

54. I strongly believe that shades of turquoise/aquamarine/teal are universally flattering on every woman, every shade of skin, every skin type. I love how it always seems that some shade of this family of colors is always "in."

55. In my shower, I have 5 different shampoos. Two of them I use constantly, and the other three I rotate in and out.

56. As much as I love music and have what I consider a massive (maybe too-huge?) music collection, there are a small handful of musicians that I can listen to at any time, no matter what I am going through, no matter my mood, no matter my energy level. One of them, who always sends me to tears, is Patty Griffin. The first time I listened to her was summer, 1997, and I was laying flat on a borrowed futon mattress in a small, hot apartment in Lancaster, PA where I had been living. The apartment was dark, there were stars outside, and I cried and cried all night long and listened to her CD over and over again. This morning, I listened to her and entirely forgot about the people swarming around me on the 80 bus from my apartment to the Lechmere T station (close to where I work). It was, I think, the best way I could have possibly come to my stupid job this morning.

57. Even though I often try to play it off like it ain't no thing and like I am too cool, smart, grown up, or rational for such things, deep down I believe in magic. I believe in the magic of the every day and in hope and that no matter how scary or freaky it may seem and how much I may not want to believe, I have a huge belief in things beyond myself or any human's capacity to fully understand and control. All of this is what moves me so profoundly that it's sort of like a mission in my life to never lose my grip on that belief.

58. Because of magic, I am a Red Sox fan. Even though I am absolutely not a sports person in the least bit.

59. I am currently deeply in love with a good polo shirt. I think it's always a great idea.

60. I hate whole milk and often think that 2% milk tastes too thick and creamy to me. 1% milk or skim tends to work better for me and not gross me out.

Oh the dreams I have...

2008-06-29T08:50:00.004-04:00

Last night my mind was a little, well, active. Between a confrontation with an old roommate (who was one of the worst ever), a tearful goodbye with another roommate, a garden in the back yard of a split-level house, a semester-long conversation with a woman who will be one of my professors, a wedding reception (on which I refuse to elaborate), and one more juicy little tidbit, I think my mind should be entirely exhausted from so much dreaming in one night.

Onto the aforementioned juicy tidbit:

My parents asked my brother and I to meet them inside Abercrombie & Fitch. It was oddly enough off of a highway and in an area such as Harvard Square that has turned, more or less, into an inside-out mall. My brother masterfully parallel parked whatever car it was that he was driving (oh the ways in which Dream World can reinvent the realities we know...), and we found our parents' heads amidst the tops of the clothing racks. They were standing, coincidentally, in an area that didn't exactly have clothing racks. When we reached them, they were standing next to a lowered Honda Accord that had a "special" paint job--it was powder blue except for all of the hems/trim areas, which had a thin stripe of white and then a regal looking dark blue. My parents said, "happy belated birthday, Stephanie!" I was confused. I asked them what was going on, if they were suggesting that I dress in A&F clothes? My dad said, "no, no, we're getting you a car. We're getting you THIS car!"

My heart sank for a moment, because for whatever reason my head is sort of set on a 1999 Toyota Corolla (in my dream world, apparently, as well as in the real world--not the fanciest of cars, but comfortable, gets good gas milage, sturdy, reliable, and at my super small amount of money I can spend, I can afford one. And for an older car, the '99 Corolla does not totally look like it belongs in the stone age). I realized, though, that if my parents were buying me a car then this meant that the money I had saved in my bank account could stay in savings instead of going towards a car, and I thanked them. I asked if we were taking this Honda Accord away from its (artful) display in the middle of a clothing store or if we were going to a dealer? They said they hadn't worked out all of the details yet, only that I can rest knowing that they're buying me a car and that they're buying me a Honda because even though they never liked Japanese cars they know that Hondas are dependable and get good gas milage. They also said that a lowered car might be nice for me since I am so short. (I do not quite know the logic in that, but since when are dreams beholden to logic?) We hugged and said goodbye, because we all had to go back to our respective lives (which in my dream somehow managed to happen all around the greater Boston area...)

As my brother and I were driving away, I asked him if they were going to buy a car up here and have it shipped to me or buy me a car out there.

*end of dream*

My only explanation for this is that I am very aware that buying a car is the one aspect of my move that is not taken care of. This will be taken care of when I am in Missouri. And last night I started to do a little bit of preliminary budgeting for when I am out there. I took the general stipend amount I will be making (exact number has not yet reached us), divvied it up by the months, plugged in all of the anticipated bills, estimated cost of grocery and cat food, estimated (and pulled out of a monkey's butt...) cost of car insurance, an idea of how much I would like to put into savings each month (I can't afford much, but even the smallest amount would be nice...), etc. All of this I did off the top of my head and with punching numbers into the calculator function of my cell phone while on the 96 bus coming home from my day.

The One In Which She Out Does Her Workaholic-ness...

2008-06-28T15:48:00.002-04:00

...brought to you in notes form! Because I am special like that! And--well--because numbered lists make me happy. Especially when they are in even, symmetrical, easily-divisible numbers.

1. I did not go to the gym this morning because I felt like bieng A Very Bad Girl. More than that, though, sleep has been tough, I am dizzy and overwhelmed half the time, and those two do not make for a good context with which one can enter a spinning room and engage in 45 minutes of intense physical activity. There is a part of me that wonders whether or not I will spin at all before I move. Thankfully, MU has a zillion spinning classes every day and the gym is near the student center, the English Department, the library, and the buildings where all of my classes will be held.

2. I finally dropped off 2 pairs of jeans to the seamstress for shortening. I bought these when I went to Missouri to apartment-hunt 2 months ago now. I pick them up on Thursday.

3. I was so stressed out and overwhelmed by the end of yesterday that I wound up taking the T to Alewife and sitting on a bus and walking around the Burlington Mall. I have no idea what possessed me, as I despise malls. Maybe it was the thought at the back of my head that there is now a Nordstrom's at that mall, even if I have heard that that particular Nordstroms sucks ass.

4. I am at a Panera Breads right now using free internet and trying to write a press release and some other things that are due to one freelance client. I am zapped of energy and focus and motivation, but I am workin' it nonetheless.

5. For reasons I can not explain I find Panera Bread quite tolerable compared to the other chain restaurants/bakeries/coffee joints/etc. that are out there. I think part of it is that Panera has free wifi and that their sodas are free refillas (all the diet pepsi I want! Yippee!). Thankfully, there are a lot of coffee shops that are nice little independent businesses in Columbia, MO that have free wifi so I will not be so much with the Panera that is down the street from my new apartment. But--well--Panera DOES have this one double chocolate chip cookie that I like. And, as I can not drink coffee, the free diet pepsi refills are a mighty nice thing...

6. I am also working for the fall this weekend. By this, I mean to say that I am doing syllabus-related things. I have narrowed down my general topic/"theme" for readings and such, and I am OK with using 2 secondary texts (likely *not* needed but definitely needed for my theme). I need to just think long and hard about how the readings will break down, what my primary texts are, and how to really structure my formal graded writing assignments so that they do not appear to be of the "writing about (insert your theme here)" sort but really fit in with the idea of exposition and argumentation. One of the people who works intensely with this stuff, who is teaching the pedagogy class from which I am seeking exemption, is an alum of the university where I got my MFA. I know about how comp/rhet is structured there and some of the principles and theories which have been carried on with hi. And I need to figure out how to still get what I want and to satisfy him--and MU's comp/rhet philosophies--enough so that I can still get what I want.

7. Earlier, just as I was setting up my computer at this Panera, I ran into the worst boss I think I have ever had. She was SO bad that 6 weeks into my job I e-mailed her while she was out of the office and resigned on the spot. I picked up my stuff and literally walked out of the office, down the parking lot, and into a movie theater where I sat down and watched Nacho Libre even though it was a stupid, stupid movie. I had to have my cell phone turned off, so I didn't hear until I checked messages later that night the way that she screamed at and berated me in my voicemail. Good riddance to her. But she talked to me like I was one of the seven wonders of the world. Whatever.

8. I am going back to work. Because it's either work, procrastinate and still have work to do, or go home and pack. Doing my work and submitting my invoices--and then preparing my class for fall--seems like the best idea for right now.

More from the "getting to know you in 100 facts" files...

2008-06-27T09:10:00.002-04:00

Let's pick up with this, ok? Let's not mention the overwhelming stress and anxiety that has, for the last few weeks, kept me from a continuous night's sleep and that has had me averaging about 3-4 hours of sleep a night. (Though last night was a good night--while in the shower, I totalled up all of my segments of sleep and it came out to something like 5.5 hours) So, to continue:

21. My favorite essential oil and, generally, my favorite scent, is lavender.
22. I pierced my nose two years ago. It looked hott. It made me look sort of hott. I had to take it out for something a bit over a year ago, when I was away for the weekend, and by the time I got home to Boston the hole closed up. For reasons that seem silly, I kept the hole closed. Now that I have a fabulous escape away from Cubicle Land and back to academia--my mother ship--I am more than very seriously considering getting my nose re-pierced. I liked it too much (even though my parents hated it). I like it too much. A little gold spec sitting nicely on my left nostril is really a wonderous thing.
23. I feel especially claustrophobic when I am caught in the middle of very tall city buildings. For this reason, I desparately hate the financial district in Boston and midtown Manhattan.
24. My first musical crush was Davey Jones from The Monkees.
25. The first "rock and roll" music I listened to and owned on tape for me to listen to ad nauseum in my bubble gum pink boombox was Lionel Richie's song, "All Night Long." I owe it all to my 4th grade music teacher, whose name I forget, and her insistance that we learn to play the chorus of that song on the recorder.
26. I have a ridiculous love of carnations. White ones are just so pretty, and they are so inexpensive, and they last so long.
27. Only one boy has ever bought me flowers. I, however, buy myself flowers rather often. Not every week, but at least once a month. I love having flowers. I love treating myself to flowers. I have been buying myself flowers fairly regularly over the last 11 years.
28. The ring tone on my cell phone is the chorus of one of my favorite songs: "Crazy" by Patsy Cline.
29. I stopped buying flour and sugar and baking things in my own apartment something like 3 or 4 years ago. I realized that living alone in a 1BR apartment I was more likely to eat all of the sweets I bake than I was to bring them into work or school or wherever. This might change, because I miss baking bread. I only know how to make baguettes, but I find the whole thing of kneading dough and letting it rise and kneading it again so relaxing. I might have to pick up my bread baking habit again when I am in Missouri. Maybe it will become part of a Sunday afternoon thing--baking bread and preparing food for the coming week?
30. Sometimes I dream in Greek. In my waking life, my sense of grammar and phrasing is hackneyed at best and in horrible shape. I need some refresher lessons. But in my dream life, sometimes everything is in Greek. And because that is the dream world, I am sure that my dreams are in perfect Greek.
31. I'm not a big jewelry person unless I find something that I love and buy it. Then I'm a jewelry person. I have a necklace I bought in 2002 that is my favorite thing ever--it's a little white gold star with pave' diamonds on the face of it, and it dangles from a simply white gold chain. I bought a beautiful turquoise, jade, & labradorite (sp?) bracelet a month and a half ago and can not stop wearing it. A woman who lives a mile or so away from me made it as part of this little jewelry business she runs, and she sold it to me from a little table in my gym's lobby (on weekends there are often artisans at my gym selling their creations).
32. Mark Rothko is, I think, my favorite painter. His work stills me in a way no one else's can.
33. One of the first things I do whenever I move someplace new is set up my bookshelves and unpack my books. Everything belongs in a specific order--alphabetical by author (and title) and in certain sections. There are distinct sections for poetry, graphic novels, fiction, and reference (however I deem a book to be 'reference'). Nonfiction is sort of the sneaky category, and when I have the wherewithall I try to sub-categorize.
34. Once I had a friend who would sneakily try to change the order of a few books on my bookshelves whenever he would come for a visit. Even the quickest glance of my shelves would make me uneasy and cause me to investigate why. Every time, it was because there were books out of order. I stopped inviting said friend over to my place. Eventually we fell out of touch.
35. I am not fond of the color purple, but I have a (deep and not-bright) purple sofa. I love my sofa. And for some reason, its purple-ness does not bother me.
36. I find doing my laundry incredibly relaxing and rewarding. Same with doing dishes.
37. Even though laundry and dishes are relaxing, I have a hard time finding the energy to actually get started with dishes or haul my crap to the laundromat.
38. I am allergic to corn, soy, beans, honey (as in I can not eat raw honey; things baked with some honey are fine), and eggplant. I also can't drink coffee at all, but I chalk that up to my beans allergy (coffee comes from a bean, the grounds steep in water, etc.).
39. I wish I were allergic to pizza and grilled cheese sandwiches and ice cream, but, sadly, I am not.
40. I love kiwis, bananas, green grapes, strawberries, blueberries, and bananas. I also love pears and apples and canteloupe and really good, sweet, ripe watermelon.
41. I am not at all a fan of honeydew melon or pineapple. Actually, I rather strongly dislike pineapple.
42. I also strongly dislike cauliflower, broccoli, okra, and cooked carrots.
43. I very strongly love spinach, tomatoes, asparagus, mushrooms, arugula, raw carrots, and squash.
44. I used to dislike spinach and tomatoes.
45. I don't know how I feel about beets. I used to hate them, but I am willing to try them since I don't even remember what they taste like. So many salads come with beets. I like the rest of the ingredients, so maybe I would enjoy beets, at least WITH the mixture of flavors in the salad? I am also willing to try brussels sprouts. I have never had them.

mantra

2008-06-26T08:59:00.000-04:00

Today will be a better day. Today needs to be a better day. Even though The Troll is in the office, even though I have to wrangle with this annoying-as-hell Excel spreadsheet, even though I have to be notetaker for a very boring meeting, today has got to be a better day than yesterday.

I'll betcha thatcha didn't know...

2008-06-22T21:09:00.002-04:00

To shake things up a bit and to bring, I hope, some levity of a different sort (there is so much heaviness in here of moving, of new adventures, of the woes of Cubicle Land, of bitching about The Troll...), bit by bit this summer I will post things about me that most of you, my lovely blogosphere, probably don't know about me. And I hope to total 100 little facts about Accidental Admin by the time I am through. Maybe some of these things will be charming, endearing, weird, or outright disgusting. Who knows until I get through all 100 things, right? But, well, let's get on with it...

1. The first time someone asked me what I want to be when I grow up was somewhere around 5 or 6 years old. My grandparents were watching my brother and me while my parents were away for some business trip my dad had to take. We were laying across my bed. My answer to my grandmother's question was that I wanted to be a teacher (grade school). This metamorphosed over the course of my childhood and early adulthood to hair stylist, interior designer, caterer, teacher (again), chemist, doctor, college professor, mathematician, historian, college professor, attorney, and then back to being a college professor.
2. For me, in the war between passion and rationality--assuming that all circumstances of safety, ethics, sincerity, and honesty are equal--passion seems to always win out.
3. I think rainbow sprinkles are far better than chocolate sprinkles
4. I have never been stung by a bee.
5. I never learned to whistle properly. I neither feel inclination to or have skill in whistling beyond my asthmatic-sounding, whispery, breath-filled version of a whistle.
6. My favorite ice cream flavor is hands down oreo cookie. I love other flavors, but oreo ice cream gets me every time.
7. The first stereo I ever owned was a bubble gum pink colored plastic boom box. It was a gift from my grandparents for Christmas one year.
8. When I was a little child, I had two nightmares that I can remember. Both were vivid and both tended to come at times when I was getting sick with the flu or laryngitis or something else equally annoying. In one dream, I was being chased down the beach by a big black horse and it was windy out, the water was rushing to the shoreline. In the other dream, my bed was a raft in a steamy swamp filled with multi-colored snakes.
9. The night before my eighth birthday I couldn't sleep. I clearly remember running between my apartment and the kitchen constantly to check the time.
10. My favorite board game is Scrabble.
11. The first time I made a fuss and sent back food to a restaurant kitchen that was not cooked properly was 5 years ago. I was at a Greek restaurant.
12. When I was a kid I begged my mom to let me get my hair permed. It was the style. She very wisely told me that it would mess up my already thick and wavy hair and that it would be a horrible idea and would cause me a lot of grief. I am glad, now, that she never gave in to my begging.
13. Though I desperately love the song "All I Want Is You" by U2, it is a song that is too attached to one of my worst memories and I don't think I can listen to it without falling into the emotional center of a sputtering volcano
14. I hate mac & cheese.
15. When my brother and I went to summer camp in Rose City, MI, it was illegal to bring candy and snacks. We were sneaky, however, and we brought candies rolled up into pairs of knee socks.
16. Root beer floats will always, to me, taste like summer and the best things about childhood.
17. Driving a reasonably long distance has a huge power to calm me down.
18. When I was a junior in high school, I was angry at my English teacher for making the class write poems. I was convinced I would be all about sciences in college and on the path to be some doctor. It wasn't until my senior year of high school, when I took an expository writing course, that I came to love writing. And how funny now that I teach people to write essays & academic papers and I can not get enough of writing poems.
19. When I am in a mood to clean my apartment--or when I even just need to convince myself that I am in a mood to clean my apartment--I pop Journey's Greatest Hits CD into the stereo. It gets me going.
20. I love cheese more than I can say, except for Swiss cheese. I really, strongly, greatly dislike Swiss cheese.

Good/Bad, again...

2008-06-19T09:36:00.002-04:00

Good: only six weeks left until I am out of here
Bad: six weeks can not come quickly enough

Good: It's close to the weekend
Bad: I am at work all day

Good: I have a zipcar rental on Sunday
Bad: Zipcar costs money. Spending. Oy.

Good: A week from tomorrow my boss begins vacation.
Bad: Frenzied Frantic Boss until vacation begins, with the risk of Frenzied Frantic Persnickety Overly Stressed Out Which Means A Little Bit Snippy Boss until then.

Good: Moving to Missouri means teaching again.
Bad: Trying to even THINK about a syllabus--and what books I would like to teach with--after a couple of years teaching at Private University For Rich Kids, where the course I taught had a pretty regimented syllabus and had some rather significant restrictions on what books could be used and what couldn't be used.

Good: Teaching again!
Bad: Fearing that I won't have enough time to myself to unwind and bring a sort of mental "closure" to the last year and a half in Cubicle Land before teaching and my Mother Ship Of A PhD Program begin.

Good: Moving--new adventures, new friends, fresh start, clean plate, new town that I think I will quite enjoy and bringing to all of that a lot of the lessons (some easy, some hard, some really challenging, some glorious, some a little painful...) I have learned in my life.
Bad: Everywhere I go these days, this city screams at me "do you see what you are giving up?!? Do you see it?!?"

Good: Making decisions in my life that come straight from my gut instincts and having the opportunity to really fulfill dreams that I have had in my life for a long time, things that have been such a big part of my little throbbing Greek heart.
Bad: The distinct awareness that in order to move towards all that I want, I have to give up all that I have come to love and cherish about what I have.

Good: Standing on my own two feet and feeling actual, sincere, real, honest-to-goodness confidence and pride in myself, my writing, my work, and my life.
Bad: Wondering if some of the people who count the most will ever get it or will ever get me.

Good: In 48 hours I will be on Weekend Mode, which means NO ALARM CLOCKS.
Bad: I can not zonk out right here and now, and I am so exhausted, heavy-lidded, and weight-on-my-shouldered that, to be honest, I have no desire to be cute or witty or "with it." I just want to go into my bedroom, close my shades, and slip between my sheets and sleep for a really long time.

Not a good sign...

2008-06-18T09:59:00.001-04:00

Fever: 103 degrees.
I am home sick.
The bad thing? Being sick.
The good thing? Curling up on my sofa instead of sitting in that godforsaken cubicle.

I reserve the right to be as elusive as I want...

2008-06-17T09:42:00.002-04:00

...so deal with it and no one will get hurt, ok? Good. And I will be elusive enough to say THIS:

There are some things that are entirely too dangerous to write about here. Not because I fear that certain coworkers will read this, but because I fear what a few specific readers already know and because I have a few specific readers who have known me since I was a little kid and are too connected to people from that world. But this thing that I really want to write about and scream from the top of every single fucking building is as huge as it is confusing and scary as all get-go. There is something really damn huge that's been inside me for a really damn long time now, and it is so huge and so uncertain and so unknown that it seems as delusional as it seems real. It could change my life. It could cause me to lose everything. It could cause me to have every single damn thing I ever wanted. And I have no freaking idea. And I realize how overwhelmingly small my capacity is to have faith in something and to believe in something that is entirely outside myself. And that kills me...

(but don't worry--the rest of me is still in tact! The effusive girl who's about to leave this topsy-turvy Cubicle Land, the poet-kid who is getting ready to start a PhD program and who writes, the music lover, the busy-person--all of that is still there! The person who can laugh at so much--still there! It's the part of me that so much is at the heart of the things that I oh-so-carefully try to skirt around or perspectiveize into something witty and nonchalant or downright exclude from this blog...THAT part of me, that girl, is standing on a precipice of two polar opposite extremes.)

2008-06-16T13:59:00.002-04:00

Saturday night was just pure love. I swear. Aside from wishing--well--for more of it, I don't know if there is anything else that I could have possibly wanted or needed to make life possible and--beyond that--glorious.

You see, Saturday night was birthday party night. Yes. Birthday party night. Though you, select few of my dear and beloved blogosphere, might find it ridiculous for a 31 year old woman to still throw herself birthday parties, I do. And I love it. And I think I will never feel ashamed or weird or attention-hogging because of it. The thing is, birthdays are my favorite holidays. I love my birthday more than I can honestly articulate without ripping open my skin and flinging my whole, bloody throbbing heart into your little clean hands, but I love birthdays in general like that. They are my favorite holiday. Mine or anyone else's. I can't deny it; I get a strange, giddy excitement over figuring out all of the ways that I can best help celebrate a birthday. It's almost as if I had pre-ordered an iPhone 3G and were counting down the days until it reached my mail (I haven't; I covet one of those in a pretty hardcore way, but I am also sort of afraid of the iPhone and what it probably really does to a monthly at&t wireless bill to actually make good use of some of the gadget's great bells and whistles). It's almost as if I knew that tomorrow was my last day in Cubicle Land and that I were leaving here to go to my Mother Ship--Academia! For a PhD program! In creative writing! And with full fellowship from my department! Well--anyway--you get my drift. I needn't continue down the path of parallel examples. Birthdays rule.

What makes them so important to me is that they are indisputable. A person who has entered your life, and from whose presence you have benefitted, got spit out into our whole big, ugly, wonderous, confusing and beautiful world all sweaty, fighting, slick-skinned, crying, and ready to fight like hell. And your world has somehow expanded and changed because of that other person's presence. No one can deny that. Other holidays are different. If you are Christian, you celebrate Easter (and if you are the religion in which I was raised--Eastern Orthodox Christian--you celebrate Easter according to a different ecclesiastical calendar than the Catholics and Protestants). If you are Jewish, you don't get one set of gifts in December. You get eight sets of gifts--one for each night of Hannukah. If you are Hindu, you light candles all over your apartment in November and invite the gods and goddesses to bless your space during that holiday whose name I constantly forget. People can argue over this stuff and proclaim one set of beliefs--and, therefore, one set of holidays the most true or right or sincere of them all. Governments can choose their holidays and slap them on calendars, decide that there will be no mail on those days, and state governments can do random things like proclaim April 18 Patriot's Day in Massachusetts, thereby forcing all busses, commuter rails, and Ts to operate on a Saturday schedule (as always happens on state and federal government holidays).

You don't get this crap with birthdays. You get the truth that a person came into the world. It's one of the most blatant, basic, everyday examples of black & white truth that I could reference off of the top of my head. And, though my birthday was on a Thursday, I celebrated on a Saturday. I had my stupid girlish romp through Back Bay during the day and a luxurious lunch out with a glass of wine and an unhurried time in the restaurant reading pages of the memoir I've currently got cracked open. I went home and lazed about in my apartment instead of doing the "right things" of washing dishes and sweeping the floor. And in the evening, I got appropriately gussied up (note: jeans. shoes arguably nicer than sneakers or my 'vogs. a piece of jewelry. a spritz of perfume...that's about as gussied up as it gets in the Accidental Admin world...). And I went to Jose's in North Cambridge where I enjoyed some margarita action before my friends arrived and then sat right in the middle of a long table full of people who have, undeniably, made my life so much better. It was my birthday celebration, but I celebrated every single person sitting at that table. The truth is, my life is what it is in large part because those amazing people to whom, six weeks from now, I will be saying some pretty tearful goodbyes and giving some pretty insanely huge hugs. They have taught me to let go, to laugh it off, to find satisfaction in my life as it is, to dream big, to never give up, to forgive myself, and--this one is sort of a real kick you in the ass sort of less--to let myself be forgiven when I've done or said something a bit stupid.

My brother sort of blipped out on the last minute and claimed exhaustion and didn't come up from New York. It's another story, but whatever. I would have loved to have him up and to include him in my really awesome, smart, creative, and independent-thinking group of friends, but aside from his absence I really had everything I needed. I had friends and laughter and conversation and lots of guacamole and mole sauce. I had kindness and friendship everywhere and a space that just perfectly fit all of us. I had a lovely Saturday night in early summer with weather that was actually pretty good. I had life and laughter everywhere. I had complete abandon from this whole stupid idea that Cubicle Land exists, and I had the distinct sense of joy that my friends--these people who in 2 months I will be missing so terribly my palms will be glued to the kitchen floor as I cry and cry over it all*--are such incredible, powerful, beautiful people and that they get to be a part of my life.

So yeah. I had a birthday party. I have one for myself every year. And, every year, I am a big pile of warm-fuzzied mush for days after the fact as I just feel excited and honored to know the people I happen to know. I'm 31 years old, but somehow it just never gets old.

* Note: and no, it's really not THAT dramatic...just makes for nice blogging...

2008-06-13T11:54:00.004-04:00

Today's focus is gratitude--for the opportunities that are just in front of me (seven weeks? six weeks? no matter, it's such a short time until I move), for the friends I have, for the resources that allow me to live in a 1BR apartment in Boston, for a beautiful and clean gym to go to, for public transportation, for comfortable sandles, for today's mild weather, for casual Friday (jeans! sandals! polo! yay!), for the fact that Pencil Head--who is likely very jet lagged and who has been pissy and stressed out all week--is working from home today, for the fact that my birthday yesterday (which turned into a not-too-remarkable-or-even-good day but no matter...) was closer to the week's end than the week's beginning, for being able to have fun with a lot of friends tomorrow night to celebrate birthdays and life and love and friendship, for poetry, for music that can touch me so much that I can buckle over in tears, for living firmly in this world, for hope.

When in doubt, when in despair, when in the middle of a tornado of stress and frustration, focusing on something--gratitude, hope, passion, etc.--helps. As stupid and idealistic and cockeyed-optimistic as it sounds, it helps. Complaining bugs me, and whining bugs me. It's not what my little Greek heart is grounded in. It's not what sources the little force that makes my eyes go big and my voice quiver and my stomach start doing flip flops when faced with an idea that I recognize as wonder! dream! passion! all of the things that I want in my life!

After work today I will try to shake off the stress and frustration of this past week by wandering around the city. I think I need to spend some time by the docks. Tomorrow morning I will exile my frustration into the pedals of the spincycle at the gym. Tomorrow night I will laugh and celebrate life beyond frustration as I hang out with good friends over margaritas, mole sauce, and the rented-shoed glory known as bowling. And on Sunday? I will celebrate the peacefulness of life by sleeping in.

But right now my stomach is growling and I need to figure out where J and I should go for lunch to take refuge from the stress and annoyance of Cubicle Land. And you'll bet that I am grateful that my stomach is growling just as it is becoming lunch time and that for all of the shittiness otherwise known as the Cambridgeside Galleria and its food options, there is also the fabulous glory of Bambara and its really good (if small) lunch menu. And by 'grateful' I mean really damn grateful.

The best thing...

2008-06-12T11:20:00.002-04:00

...about being notetaker in an all-day meeting that is in the swank hotel across the street from work, ON MY BIRTHDAY, is that I do not have to sit in my ugly beige-walled cubicle with The Troll in the cubicle next door either:

1. singing and humming random bits of shitty country songs in her squeaky, annoying off-pitch voice
2. talking about all of the menu items at this one Szechuan restaurant on the phone AD NAUSEUM
3. talking to people around her who are not me about how cool belly dancing is as a cardio exercise and how she got these great belly dancing workout DVDs in the mail from amazon.com and feels, to some extent, at one with her inner Persian Genie In A Bottle.

I mean all of this FAR TOPS the fact that I get free lunch (and that I got free lunch yesterday, as the meeting was all day long yesterday). I mean, getting free lunch is an important thing, but two days without The Troll right by me and then knowing that I return to my office-proper tomorrow, on Casual Friday--the day when my beloved blue jeans are more than allowed and encouraged--is great. Totally great.

In the meantime, happy 31st birthday to me! Yippy!!!!!!!

(a post another time why birthdays are my absolute favorite holidays ever)

2008-06-11T15:12:00.001-04:00

Breaking news (not really, but still...):

It seems as if Big Prosperous Biotech Company might become my client, at least for some writing-related projects, after I leave.

More another time. I'm in the middle of a day-long meeting.

2008-06-10T18:57:00.002-04:00

I broke down and bought an air conditioner. Lugged it home with the help of a taxi and some patience coming up the stairs.

But--get this--damned if I can figure out how to install this bad boy! I am sitting here with an air conditioner and sweating my bejeezes off. The AC unit is sittung unassembled on my bed. I have no idea whatsoever what I am doing, and the instructions sheet is majorly insufficient. I think the people who work at Daewoo need a technical writer who can actually convey information clearly and exactly to those who need to be guided towards proper installation.

Hmm.

Today, I sense, will be one very shitty day

2008-06-10T08:59:00.003-04:00

...so a very quick, early-morning list of things that, in no particular order, are somehow on my mind:

1. July 31 can not come quickly enough. As nice as my boss and my coworkers can be and as nice as it is to have health insurance and a few more paychecks ahead of me, I would really love to just walk out the door and never set foot in this place again.

2. I hate these shitty reminders of how expensive gas is and what's waiting for me once I move and buy a car.

3. The debate is on: buy a window air conditioner unit or sweat it out until I move?

4. The knots of stress-related pain in my shoulders is already quite intense. And it is only 9 AM.

5. It is hard to feel so much stress light up inside of you out of nowhere. I mean, nothing in particular happened between coming in here and seeing one e-mail from my boss (who is the nicest guy, except lately he has been a bit stressed out). Something just happens, like a switch getting flipped, and I become Queen Stress Bunny. Combine that with the anxiety over moving + heat + too much (other) stress + not enough sleep + sorely needing a real vacation and you get one insanely "flippable" kid. This morning's main job, I think, is to do what I can do not let this surge of stress and frustration in my head turn into a full-blown anxiety attack. (Though I have to say I am already getting dizzy and am on the verge of tears. Does Not Bode Well.)

6. Is there a rewind button somewhere around here? Maybe something hidden in the little space between my ring finger and my pinky, or something just under the skin right beneath my right clavicle?

This, to you, I will confess...

2008-06-09T12:36:00.002-04:00

There is a habit--maybe you would call it a ritual, maybe you would call it Silliness To The Extreme--that I developed somewhere along the way. I don't know how it happened, and it's one of those things that has been with me long enough now to be so regular that I can't think back to a time when I didn't do this: I read, every Monday when I am online, the "Weddings and Celebrations" section of the Sunday New York Times on its website. Not the whole section, just the featured wedding. I can't help myself. I love it. And I sit wherever I am (usually, thse days, from my little squat-stop in Cubicle Land) and wait until I have enough peace and privacy to read and shed some tears if I must without The Denizens of Cubicle Land looking at me as if I am even stranger than they suspected.

So yes. I will out myself as thus. I am a regular reader of other people's happiness and wedding stories. I get all into the mushiness of how people got together, fell in love, and came to want a long-term union with their beloved.

But I feel like I must also clarify something. I don't read this column every week out of some wish to necessarily get married and have some wedding that is, in some way, bizarre or frilly or otherwise remarkable enough to be a featured story in the New York Times. I know that I want, in my life, a love that is so wild and complete and whole that if it leads to marriage I will be open to it and happy to welcome it into my life. I know that I want, above and beyond that, boundless happiness and peacefulness in my life. And if I find this alone--single all my life--and if I feel complete and whole in my personhood--that I am entirely fine. A "what if" might linger in my head, but I will be fine and I will embrace all of the happiness and joy and calm that fills my little Greek heart all the same. So, as much as I want such overwhelming and beyond-what-I-can-even-imagine love in my life, I'm not the girly girl who is sitting there reading other people's love stories hoping that somehow it brings me closer to my own love story.

What it is, I feel I also must tell you, is that for as curmudgeonly as I can be and for as skeptical as I can so easily be of so much, I am, in my deepest heart, an optimist. And I am one Four-Foot-Eleven-Inch-Pile-Of-Warm-Fuzzies. It's true. I like filling my days with happiness and with the reminder that the happiness that other people have can somehow domino-effect until it pokes in my ribs and asks to be let inside. And I need reminders, wherever I can find them, that in this world where shitty things happen and pain is so ubiquitous and unremarkable that it is not everything. Even when I am in a good, solid, peaceful place in my life. Even when I am so far away from having pain inflicted upon my heart. I fill my eyes and heart and memory with stories as ammunition to use whenever I am falling into some nasty, moldy pit of a mood. It doesn't always work, but sometimes it really does. And that's important.

I must also tell you this: the stories that make the feature in the New York Times are somehow remarkable. Last weekend it was (magically) a family friend's story of finding his second wife. One weekend, many years ago, I read about a girl who was on a city bus with her mom and the person sitting behind her overheard her conversatoin, butted in, the two became friends, she stried to set him up on dates, and then somehow BAM they realized that they had a flame for each other. The story in yesterday's Times (which I just read), I think, is one of the ones that these days fills me with the brightest smile: two guys who met a while ago and fell in love finally are able to have their union legally recognized.

Admitting this--the happiness I feel when faced with same-sex couples finally able to get hitched--might put off a good handful of my (woefully few? surprisingly abundant? I have no idea!) readers, and judgement aside, we all have our reasons for believing as we do. My beliefs have me very staunchly believing that love is love and it should be celebrated, no matter same-sex or different-sex. Love in and of itself is such a tricky thing to find and hold onto and recognize as healthy and fulfilling without gender-talk thrown into the mix.

Anyhow. I don't want to get all political. I think I want to head back in the direction of my original purpose--love is awesome. It scares the shit out of me, to be honest, but the dream of it is something that can get me through any hot, muggy, humid, godforsaken Monday in Cubicle Land. I love reading about other people's success stories, and I have only hope that my life will always be so full of love and joy. I mean it already is full of love and joy, just not the kind of stuff to write in the Weddings & Celebrations section of the Sunday New York Times. Oh, and my mom and dad--if you had to talk to them--would wish for you to personally go out there and help me find a suitable husband, or to encourage me to go sleuthing and searching for one, because, as they so often remind me, I will not meet anyone with my current bucket of hobbies (which generally revolve around reading, writing, going to movies, having dinner parties with my friends--most of whom are happily partnered up--and going to my all women's gym).

There are a million things to blog about...

2008-06-08T23:03:00.002-04:00

...but I will just say this: to you, whoever you may be, who came to my reading and sat way in the back and smiled at me as you were walking out of the reading and I was walking from the podium to my seat, thank you. I don't know why, but it is this face and this mystery-person who has somehow stuck in my head. There are ten thousand reasons why you would have walked out of a poetry reading before the featured reader (and a very 'famous' poet) took the podium, but there is a voice inside me that chooses only the most positive idea--that somehow you knew what you were doing, somehow you knew who I was and somehow you were at that reading just to hear me. I have no idea who you are, but for some reason I feel compelled to give you a great big hug if I were to see you again.

Thank you.
And good night.

My reading is tonight...

2008-06-06T15:54:00.002-04:00

...and I am really, ridiculously, insanely nervous. Like I am nervous beyond any possible words, in the "my stomach is doing such tumbles that for sure I am either (miraculously) pregnant with a 5 month old roving my belly OR I could start throwing up and projectile vomiting all evening" sort of way.

Damn.

7 PM is when I am on.
I think I will be OK by, oh, 12:30 PM tomorrow, once spinning class is done and all of my energy has been left with that spincycle.

It's amazing how I have no problem at all getting in front of a classroom but I can't get up to a podium to speak. And THAT bundles of nerves is like walking down Easy Street when my reason for going to a podium is either to give a speech or presentation from someone else or to deliver an academic paper instead of the reason being me going up there to read my own goddamn poems.

I have never experienced the bundle of nerves that I feel right now or have felt before when I have had to go and read. And it's been 5 years since the last time I gave a reading (the open mic nights with this series--all of which leave me feeling like grape jelly--don't count and are all readings where the nerves would not leave me, for reading ONE POEM, until the next day).

Tonight is like major-mega-triple-whammied insane. I mean:

1. friends who have never heard me read or seen my poems will be there
2. I am "opening act" so to speak for Thomas freakin' Lux.
3. This is also the last time I will be in a reading/event with the fine, fine people of the Brookline Poetry Series. In a way this is sort of my 'farewell' to them before I move to Missouri.
4. I have not read out loud in FIVE YEARS.
5. I am reading not only my poems--some of which are amongst my most personal (and perhaps most interesting) poems--but I am reading my translations of Greek poetry along with the originals in their original Greek. And while I am pretty good with the Greek (especially after practice), when I am nervous all bets are off. Holy jeezes...
6. Everyone will have all eyes on me. ALL EYES ON ME. That always makes me nervous.

I think I seriously might need to stop off somewhere for a glass of wine (or a shot of vodka?) before the reading. Nerves such as what I am feeling do not bode well.

Oogie.

On Cubicle Land: The Hidden Glory You Never Thought Could Matter...

2008-06-05T13:28:00.002-04:00

Laurel posted, a while ago, a list of things she wants to do before she leaves NYC to return to school for her MBA. I don't have quite such a composed list--the truth is that it seems that outside of the confines of work and my 6.5' x 6.5' cubicle I don't seem to depict an image of organization of my stuff or, half the time, my time--but I do have an idea of things I absolutely want to do before I blow this pop stand.

One of those things is to have a fabulous getaway with my two favorite local gal-pals, Melissa and Stefanie, which will happen in mid-July, and another would be to have some hot, steamy and torrid affair just to shake things up a bit, but we won't go there (lest I start laughing! because I am laughing right now and it resembles something vaguely hyena-esque!). Let's push those aside for now. In the group of vague notions I have is to check out restaurants that I have wanted to go to and the "newer" restaurants that have popped up in the last couple of years. If I were not on (at least somewhat of) a budget, and if I were not hoping to save as much as my spends-too-easily little Greek heart possibly could, then I would reasonably be able to go to numerous of these restaurants numerous times. But that's not my reality. So be it. My love of restaurants comes from the same bucket of passion that contains my love of cooking and my love of good food--there is something about the artistry of food and the artistry of each sense that experiences food that speaks to me. I love to see good food plated beautifully, and I love the way that food looks--the color, the texture, the shape--when it is properly cooked and seasoned and otherwise flavored. These days, experiencing that artistry at a restaurant means a lot more of dinners planned at Indian, Thai, Greek, and Vietnamese places and a lot less of the visiting the latest and greatest that Boston has to offer. I'm not sad, I'm not complaining, I'm not feeling even the slightest notion of regret.

Last night, however, I had the most delightful treat. One of my favorite people at work--a woman who I have referred to as part of my "holy trinity of sanity" around here when talking to Pencil Head and who I will refer to in this blog, at this time, as Miss Sassafrass From San Fran--was in town. She just finished a two day seminar and had some lag time before heading off to France this afternoon for a multi-day conference that Pencil Head is also attending. We made a date to go out to dinner, and since I am the local girl, I got to choose our restaurant.

In choosing, I went outside of my usual price range. I knew there was the slight possibility that Miss Sassafrass From San Fran would pick up the bill on her company card and expense it, because it is well within her right to do so as an "employee entertainment" sort of expense, but I wanted to choose something that while outside of what I normally aim to spend would not be something so egregious and outlandish and downright awful. I wanted to have enough cash in my wallet to cover my dinner and a drink. I wanted to be prepared. I always want to be prepared. I never want to assume.

So we went to Om. Om is a newish restaurant in Harvard Square (it opened just about a year ago), and it's one of those restaurants that has vaguely been in my bucket-list of things to do and places to be before I leave for Missouri. We had a reservation, I met my friend in the lounge a bit early where we had our first glass of wine, and then came dinner. Glorious, beautiful, tasty dinner. One in which I decided to eat something I know gives me allergy-ish problems (popcorn!) because there is something special about Om's version of popcorn (which is given to each table in place of a bread basket). It has fresh herbs and parmesan and a lovely drizzle of truffle oil. And dinner--seared tuna appetizer and a main course of organic chicken and a mushroom risotto--delightful! Divine! Amazing! And very, very affordable.

I was so happy--I mean with dinner and with conversation and with spending time with my friend who lives in San Francisco and who is someone I see so rarely and usually just inside the office, and (admittedly) even happier when Miss Sassafrass whipped out her AmEx and told me I would be crazy to pay out of pocket when she could pay and expense this. I just had this moment of thinking that for as much as this job can sometimes be so thankless and so totally blotto on the nerves, every now and then "the company" will be able to pay for your dinner.

So I got to go to Om. I got to go to Om and still spend about the amount of money that is within the upper limit per person for "employee entertainment" dinners and hang out with my friend and talk and laugh and drink a glass of a pretty good pinot noir and just relax. And afterwards, I took my friend to my favorite restaurant place (which now has four locations across Boston) for truly decadent, indulgant, and oh-so-totally-worth-it dessert.

And by the time I got home, all was at least pretty OK with the world. All was definitely right with my world. And I knew that in the span of those few hours, I had everything I needed--a night out with a good friend, great conversation, good wine, good food, and one free dinner, courtesy of my own little pocket of Cubicle Land.

Good/Bad

2008-06-04T14:11:00.003-04:00

The good: being excited to move into your new apartment in Missouri
The bad: packing

The good: coworkers and current landlord all telling you how awesome you are and feeling strong, confident, excited, and that certainty that your life is moving in the right direction
The bad: the overwhelming thought of giving up everyone and everything you know for what you can anticipate and have a strong enough idea about but what is, otherwise, a big unknown to you

The good: my poetry reading on Friday night
The bad: my propensity towards anxiety and nervousness

The good: I still have about 7 weeks until I leave my job and hop on an airplane
the bad: I only have 7 weeks

The good: the comfort of knowing that as I leave for the next phase of my life I am not "burning any bridges"--I've been a good tenant, I've been a good employee, I've been a good colleague, I've been a great friend, and I have been a good service provider to my clients (both of whom I will keep once I move)
The bad: the exhaustion that comes for me with saying "good bye" to a bunch of people I have come to respect, admire, love, and learn from

2008-06-03T10:54:00.003-04:00

Tuesday, glorious Tuesday. I love this day. I am sitting in pajamas, with messy, unwashed hair and my windows flung open. I have my cat, who decided to get sick and need a vet appointment to be made to get a shot of One Very Specific Kind Of Medicine (to be mild and blogospherically correct...). My cat who decided to race out of the apartment and find her way inside a bag of garbage that was waiting to go outside. My cat who, for a moment, conjured the more adventurous incarnations she had as a stray cat on the mean streets of Gainesville Florida (note: not really that mean, just bug-filled, sweaty, humid, and sometimes littered...).

Oh cat. Oh how I love you. Oh how I do not even mind that you are now ill and will cause me to spend an extra $65 to take you to the vet. Oh how lovely it is to spend today at home instead of in my ugly, beige-walled cubicle constructing miniature voodoo dolls out of paperclips and scotch tape of The Troll so that I am prepared (!!!) for the next time she decides to belt out her tra-la-las. See, I knew you were good for something other than being a Purr Monster and meowing at me nonstop when you want me to understand that my busy schedule has gotten me home too darn late for the likes of little old you.

Oh cat, oh sweet sweet cat, it's OK. I will take you to the vet now and use up a vacation day. You will go through a day of hell, come August 1, when you are in a kitty carrier from approximately 9 AM until approximately 8 PM while I take you with me on airplanes and on long car rides to move us from Boston to Central Missouri. You will hate me then and meow like a nagging Greek mama, for sure, but that's OK. I'm taking a vacation day now and taking you to the vet and spending my precious money on you. Let's consider it an even exchange, mmm'kay? Good.

Now that we have this clear, I will leave you to go back to policing me like the nagging Greek mama you have become. I will leave you to return to your routine of following me from room to room and sleeping like you just don't even care that i am in the room when I settle into a seat on my bed, or on the sofa, or on my big cushy chair that I will be sad to leave behind when I move. I will leave you to your meow-fest every time I open the fridge and to your habit of putting your butt right in my face every time I want to sleep instead of give you attention when you meow to play at 3 AM. I have better things to do right now. Such as write a blog so that my dear, beloved blogosphere does not think that I have entirely abandoned this space.

And let's get one thing straight...

2008-05-29T20:35:00.002-04:00

When this Accidental Admin cooks her own dinner and wants "easy dinner," that looks something like this:

butternut squash ravioli with sweet italian chicken sausage and an arugula pesto
Greek "horiatiki" salad (tomato, feta, cucumber, oregano, vinaigrette)
whole wheat garlic bread
2 glasses of sancerre

All this with two simple candles lit and a movie popped into the DVD player and my windows flung open.

I love spring time!!!

Priceline.com is my bitch (or, I'm Quite A Lucky Girl)

2008-05-28T09:46:00.002-04:00

On Friday morning I priceline.commed my way into a very cheap airfare to Missouri. I also snagged a very cheap rate for the hotel in downtown Columbia and scored a rental car. All in all, I spent money I shouldn't have, and it will take what feels like a reasonably big chunk out of the money I have saved up, but the truth is that this last-minute trip cost relatively little and the money I spent to go to my home-to-be brought relatively large savings on my sanity.

The goal of my trip was to find a place to live. I think I did that. I mean, I found landlords I totally love, and I found an apartment that I am in love with. The older sister of a current tenant has expressed interest in the apartment, but I submitted my application first. I spoke with the landlords again yesterday who said that everything looks good and unless something unforseeable happens in a very short amount of time, today or tomorrow they will be sending me the lease on the apartment (with their signatures) for me to sign and return with my deposit.

The apartment is adorable. It feels almost like living in a dollhouse; it's in a victorian house that's been split up into a few different apartments, and it has nice windows and hardwood floors. The wife of the landlord couple is a pretty awesome artist, and the front lawn sports one of her sculptures (each property they own and lease has a sculpture out front). Inside the apartment, there is also some nice tile work by the bathtub and a stained glass piece that the landlord made above the bathroom mirror. There is a wide arched doorway separating the living room from the bedroom, a big kitchen, a deck off of the back/kitchen door, and both washer/dryer AND designated storage space for this one apartment in the basement. Heat is included in the rent. Around the corner is a nice little community garden. The neighborhood--I think it's called North Central (or something along those lines; it's immediately north of the official downtown/commerce/boutiques-and-restaurants-and-bars area)--has an active neighborhood association and is working hard to reconfigure itself as a neighborhood for artists and literati and scholars and the like. And the building is all graduate students in different departments of my university-to-be and something like a 10-15 minute walk from the English Department building.

Score.
All of it. Score score score.
Rock on out.

It's also the first apartment I saw. And how I even knew to contact these landlords is a story that serves as testimony to the combination of neuroses, proactivity, industry, and resourcefulness that often works to my advantage when it comes to Making Sure That I Can Take Good Care Of Myself In The Big Wide World.

On my trip I also scouted out some apartments for another incoming student, but let's push that aside for a bit. The weekend itself was fabulous. I mean, even though I had to wake up at a rather criminal time to make my 6:10 AM (direct) flight to St. Louis, the weekend was more than fabulous. Each day I did something social--Saturday night I went out for sushi and drinks with a few people in my program who are still in town, and I had a blast; on Sunday I had a rather leisurely lunch with the two poetry professors in my program and their families; on Monday, back in St. Louis before catching my flight (again, direct) to Boston, I had lunch with one of my absolute best friends, Benjamin, who lives in a cute south city bungalow-ish house with his awesome wife Shana and their awesome and huge dog Cody. Each meal I had at a different place so that I could sort of test out the area and get a bit of the lay of the land so that when I move there in (hot! humid! muggy!) August I don't have the added stress of "I really want an omelette and my moving pods have not arrived yet and where the hell do I go?" I found a great ice cream place, a great little bar (inside the independent movie theater), a great (but pricey) sushi place, a fabulous breakfast/lunch place, and a decent Thai restaurant. I also found a nice used bookstore, scouted out where the used CD stores are in town, drove around to find the different grocery stores and pharmacies, and made my way to Target so that when that inevitable moment hits where I need kitty litter AND toothpaste AND soap AND pajama bottoms. I found the Farmer's Market. I got acquainted with the town. I had a good time.

So it was a busy weekend and it was a pretty awesome weekend. I came home feeling major Missouri Love and feeling, for the first time I think since I got the acceptance phone call, like I am on top of things and like I have this whole insanely huge move to The Belly Button Of The United States under wraps. And yesterday I was out of the office doing things around my apartment, running errands, dealing with my driver's license renewal, and making sure that I have enough packing tape to make a serious effort over the next couple of weeks of reconstructing boxes and packing away the things that are non-essential to my daily life now that it is becoming summer and now that I really don't need to have all of my books on their pretty little shelves and in perfect order.

But right now? I am sitting here with crossed toes hoping that I don't get a phone call from these landlord folks telling me that they decided actually to give the apartment to the person whose sister is already their tenant. I want to live in the apartment with the nice windows, the arched doorway, and the stained glass bits over the bathroom mirror. I want to live in the grad student-filled victorian house with the nice funky sculpture in front of it. I want to live around the corner from the community garden and within easy walking distance of campus, the main downtown area, and Cafe Berlin--home of the awesomest breakfasts and a little breakfast/lunch spots that reminds me of my favorite (but now-defunct) cafe in Davis Square, the Someday Cafe.

A small, 10 item list of things that can calm me down when I am too close to the edge...

2008-05-21T14:09:00.006-04:00

1. listening to Annie Lennox's song, "Why"
2. a couple of squares of really good milk chocolate
3. taking lunch off-site--going to a restaurant and sitting there with my food and my book to read and not worrying if I make it back to my desk exactly within an hour or not
4. stealing away 15 minutes in the middle of the workday for the Kingdon of Loathing website :)
5. making dinner plans with my friends
6. taking a risk and asking a new friend for help, in some way shape or form, with one of the things I am struggling with
7. giving myself an imaginary $1000 and about 20 minutes to look around on the Nordstroms website
8. the smell of my ShiKai yuzu hand & body lotion (I have a bottle of the stuff on my desk)
9. looking through the file drawers by my desk and thinking to myself, "soon enough this will NOT BE MINE anymore!"
10. imagining how joyful it will be to be in Missouri for three whole weeks without needing to set an alarm clock and have my main job be to get acquainted with the town and to get myself settled and off of the stress of Cubicle Land office job and just geared up for my new school!!!

2008-05-21T11:24:00.002-04:00

One brief conversation with my boss this morning--his sunny disposition returned and my throat still too sore and my voice too hoarse for me to even care about whether or not I sound powered up enough--and somehow I am happy again to be here, even if that happiness only lasts for a few hours before the stress and anxiety rush back in.

Today's mantra is a reminder that I am only here for a couple more months (instead of a reminder that I only have a couple more months of paychecks where I know the exact amount going into checking and savings and a health insurance plan that I *know* what my coverage is like before I am back to the land of graduate school). This means: only a couple more months of the ugly beige cubicle, only a couple more months of The Troll, only a couple more months of worrying whether I am rocking the boat too much by wearing jeans on a Wednesday, only a couple more months of the 80 bus to Lechmere and cutting through the (depressing!) mall to get to my office, and only a couple more months of lunch rooms and cafeterias and the whole "where do I sit? Did I bring my book with me? Will anyone think I am La Freake for reading a book at lunch instead of networking or socializing or extending my actual work from my desk to the lunch table?" anxiety.

And tonight is a mantra-free zone. I am off to Small Plates for dinner with my best local gal-pals, Melissa and Stefanie. Small Plates is a new-ish tapas restaurant (but with more nouveau American cuisine than the traditional Spanish tapas...) and wine bar in Harvard Square, and it is time to have some tapas dishes and wine and enjoy a new restaurant!

I am wearing my gold dangly earrings in celebration of this.

2008-05-20T09:31:00.002-04:00

Yesterday was a very bad day. I just couldn't get out from underneath the ocean of stress clouding my head, and it sucked. It sucked even more at the gym after work when The Cough From Hell (leftover from last week's Death Flu) was so bad and left me so headachey and dizzy that I had to hop off of the elliptical trainer 15 minutes in and go put my regular clothes back on and head the heck home.

Yesterday was such a bad day that I protested its shittiness with a bowl of ice cream as my dinner.

But you know what? Today is not yesterday. And hopefully today will be better. I am loathe to think that I am at work and stuck here all day, and I have this nasty set of notes from last week's Hell Meeting that I have to continue whipping into shape to pass on to my boss. I have a doctor's appointment at 4:30, and when that is done I need to shuffle the heck over to my gym for 6 PM. That's when spinning class with the cute instructor (who is probably engaged to/dating/living with/lusting after some beautiful woman, or gay, or a confirmed bachelor, or otherwise settled into whatever status he may have chosen for himself) with the good music begins. And then het's hope that I survive well enough, with minimal incidinces of The Cough From Hell, because there is 7 PM spinning class with my favorite teacher. And part of my plan to get as far away as possible from yesterday's downward spiral into FunkVille is to spin my little heart out. Because spinning--especially GOOD spinning classes--make me feel strong and solid and connected to this earth more than willowy, uncertain, and absolutely connected to the little dust piles inside my head.

And I don't want that. There is too much of a pull in the direction towards Anxiety Land and Stress City when I am feeling stable and strong and, even if nothing more, peaceful and content. You don't want to even know what that pull feels like when I am already starting that spiral. It's sheer hell.

Also, I think that I need yellow. I have a lemon yellow v-neck sweater that I got on a very nice sale in the early autumn, but somehow, yellow has been working on me. It began in January when I started to see that bright, resilient yellow all over the storefront windows of Munich. It continued as I thought "ding ding ding! yellow and black with smatterings of white!!!" My interest in yellow was verified every time someone told me what a great sweater I was wearing and how good yellow looks on me. My question of "am I a dork wanting yellow when the rest of the world might want, this season, purple or orange?" was answered as I started to see those bright jelly bean colors--one of which is yellow. And my interest in getting some yellow clothing has become a "must!" since purchasing a lovely black & white skirt last Thursday on my after-a-shitty-work-day retail therapy excursion ($55 skirt purchased for $28! I love it!). Because a yellow top (and I think in particular a yellow BOAT NECK top) would look amazing with that skirt. Or a black top and a cute pair of yellow ballet flats. Or layered, thin t-shirts of black and yellow. Hmm.

And now that I think about it, tomorrow, since my bag will not be overstuffed with gym gear, I should bring that skirt with me and drop it off with the tailor inside the mall across the street from work. Like most things that enter my very curvy, 4'11" life, that skirt needs some major alterations and shortening before I can possibly wear it out in the world.

2008-05-19T10:06:00.002-04:00

Everything, every little step in this whole process, leaves me feeling a little bit shakey and a little bit funny. And by this, I mean that I just e-mailed off a finalized job description to the HR person who handles hiring for my type of position within my company. Before that, I spoke with the HR person who handles my department's personnel issues to let her know that I am leaving my company at the end of July. I have that queasy-stomached feeling of a person who is about to walk a plank or a rope bridge.

I don't quite know why I am feeling so strange and tentative and insecure about this, because I am leaving my job behind me for that which I have always (and most) wanted--PhD program, and at my top-choice school. I guess I could say that even though I am getting what I want here, I am leaving behind safety for a risky adventure and no matter how much that adventure is so right, it still allows a path of unknowns to unfold right in front of you. It still gives a complete understanding that by giving up the safety, you are giving up a certain amount of control. And if you're the sort who does not deal well unless you feel like you are in complete control, then things can feel a bit overwhelming.

The kicker is that I feel guilty. Because I am getting what I want, there is a part of me that thinks that I have no right to feel so tentative, so freaked out, so weird about all of this. But I also know, ultimately, that as exciting as this is--moving to the middle of the country to get a PhD and to focus on my art and on my teaching--it's a very huge life change. And life changes are scary and weird and I should stop thinking in this crazy sort of an "either/or" mechanism that my mind has been playing with. Exciting things can also be scary! Absolutely!!!

In other news, I look somewhat decent today. Black penny loafers. No socks. Black trousers with a fat cuff at the bottom. black polo. black fine-rib v-neck sweater. Hair somewhat straightened. Red coral earrings (they are new!!! check out starrydesigns.etsy.com for some really fun, cute jewelry that will not break bank and that is well-made!!!) that are carved and shaped like little rosebuds. I call this the "I am not really trying and do not have the wherewithall to try but I look halfway decent nonetheless" look. And of course I have my messenger bag with me stuffed to the gills with gym clothes, heart rate moniter strap, my shower essentials for post-workout, my cute sunglasses that I can't believe I have not either lost, scratched, or broken already, and that ever-important item in the life of Accidental Admin: a book to read in the cafeteria at lunch time.

2008-05-15T16:31:00.002-04:00

There are days where a short span of time will knock me right off my tukkus (is that how you spell it?) and keep me down and tired for most of the day. That's today. There were some stressful things this morning, and my mantra, over and over again, was an increasingly frustrated, edgy-voiced, and clipped-sounding chorus of "Two and a half more months. Two and a half more months. Two and a half more months." If I did not have fundamental faith in what a good person Pencil Head is--above and beyond what a fair and compassionate BOSS he is, what a deep-heartedly good PERSON he is--not one second of this (or of any moment at this job) would be worth it. And if I did not feel like I had such a reasonable way of knowing the guy and getting how he is, and if I did not have any faith in myself whatsoever, I would have mistaken his stressed out-ness this morning and the tone his voice took when we were problem-solving a snafu at one of the worst possible moments as an indication that I should pack my bags and leave this cubicle for someone else to occupy, that I should leave this job behind me immediately.

But I like the guy. Like I said--I *believe in him.* I get who he is and what he has at stake and what his quirks are. I have a good enough sense of his boundaries and what can set him off. When something goes wrong, whether it was my fault or not, I know how to own up to things I could have considered and tried to work around before the possibility turned into an actual problem, and I know how to calmly and clearly explain to him the things that were absolutely not my fault. And we work shit out.

But still--that whole process--it exhausts me more than I can properly articulate. I had lunch with a friend after the longest meeting ever (for which I was notetaker! Whee! I type fast, I have editing talent, and this has become one of my responsibilities), and I am thankful as all hell for it. Something big happens when you can get up from your desk, grab your purse, and physically exit the building. Even if it is only to walk across the street to the (admittedly awesome) restaurant in the hotel attached to the annoying mall. Escaping for a small while and debriefing with a friend and then talking about sunnier subjects matters. Having the best tomato soup ever (especially when you are still recovering from the Death Flu) and seeing someone who only knows you beyond the confines of Cubicle Land really really matters. Having some time with a friend of yours who is also artistic, who shares your taste in music, who is into the same sorts of cultural stuff that you're into, and who is--wait for it--ALSO A WRITER (see? aren't you happy you waited for it?) really matters.

And you come back to your desk, exhausted but satisfied more than you tend to be in the early parts of your afternoon, and you don't have to remind yourself of the one thing you know with complete and absolute certainty: ultimately, none of this stuff about your job *matters* to you. It never mattered to you, above and beyond the simple constructs of 1. paying your rent, 2. working according to an ethic that you believe in wholeheartedly, 3. developing a relationship based on respect and honesty with your boss and colleagues. It never will matter to you, but the memory of working for a person who you can believe in as much as you believe in Pencil Head will always matter to you. And--yes--two and a half more months, and then you are out of there and off to what is, for you, far sunnier pastures. Only two and a half more months. How freaking amazing IS that?!?!?

2008-05-14T15:34:00.001-04:00

Another quick note:

I blame the flu for the fact that I have a cheesy Taylor Dayne song stuck in my head. Tell it to my heart--what the hell?!? I mean, come on now...really?!?!?

Flu be damned!

2008-05-14T09:31:00.002-04:00

Quick note:

I am still sick, but today I have no fever.
Yesterday I had a fever of 102, so I stayed home from work.
It was utterly unglamorous.
When I cough it comes through so hard that I get a headache.
When I cough again the headache gets worse.
I have so much coughing to do that tylenol PM doesn't work on me.

And on top of it all, a rejection from a lovely literary journal came in the mail yesterday. I mean there's no way that the editor of Valparaiso Poetry Review would have cosmically known that a few days after he would send me my notice I would be horribly flu-ish and sinus-y and feeling like the world's worst crap, and he did include some nice words at the bottom of his note that he really hopes that I resubmit, but it still felt like even more mud in my day.

Oh well. At least my boss told me that I should go home early today. He stayed home to work from home today. I secretly think that he stayed home so that he doesn't catch the Death Flu from me before his big meetings tomorrow.

2008-05-12T11:37:00.001-04:00

Quick note: Dayquil is my friend. So is sleep. Alarm clocks are not my friend. Neither is figuring out what the hell to wear to work when all you want to do is curl up at home in your pajamas. Or wear jeans, because quite frankly blue jeans are the best clothing item ever created.

More later from the nuthouse. I'm slogging through the day and feeling a bit flu-ish.

PSA: A Simple Equation

2008-05-07T11:51:00.003-04:00

Amazing, ass-kicking spinning class last night
Warm enough weather last night to sleep with my windows open amd a heavy heavy blanket on top of me
A surprisingly decent night's sleep ("decent" means that I woke up less than 5 times in the middle of the night)
A morning of sunshine that woke me up before my alarm
Really warm weather, warranting a distinct lack of jacket in my work attire
+ Less than 3 months left in Cubicle Land
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
ONE REALLY HAPPY KID WHO CAN NOT STOP SMILING AND WHO IS RESISTING THE URGE TO JUMP UP AND DOWN AND CRANK UP THE VOLUME ON HER ITUNES AND DANCE ALL OVER HER UGLY BEIGE WALLED CUBICLE

The end.
Back to the workday.

2008-05-06T12:50:00.002-04:00

It's hard to know how to really write about last night's Crowded House concert. The easiest thing to say is that it was really good, that it's easily one of the best concerts I have been to in a very long time, if ever, that Neil Finn could likely sing to me even a warrant for my arrest and it would sound amazing. But for what is on my mind--from the first boy I ever fell for (even IF it was unrequited and even if I was a stupid 12 year old kid at the time) to the ways in which the most insanely real, meaningful joy that I feel in my life is this horribly personal and fragile thing--is too hard to write about.

So I won't.

Instead I will tell you that I am leaving around 3:30 today. And right now, as I am doing work, I am listening to Over the Rhine. And Crowded House last night was awesome. And I am drinking a diet coke right now because last night, as exhausted as I was, it was hard to stay asleep because somehow I was entirely too moved by that performance to sleep.

And I will tell you, also, that it's 70 degrees in Boston and sunny as all get-go and I wish that work--and this job--somehow ceased to exist for me. I wish I could be outside on a bench facing the Charles and reading a book or somewhere outside in some lovely patch of garden or park in Missouri, that I was already done with this job, that I was already moved to my new home, and that I just had time to enjoy the day.

And I will also tell you that I need to get back to work.

2008-05-02T16:06:00.002-04:00

Note to self: if you are on your lunch hour and are running an errand at the bank location inside the mall across the street and you find yourself craving a slice of mushroom pizza, DO NOT GIVE IN. Do not go to the food court on the first floor of the mall. Do not buy a glistening, cheesy, mushroomy slice of pizza that is on a pillow of dough. Because if you do, and if you thoroughly enjoy your lunch, then you will find yourself craving foods that are very bad for you all afternoon. Specifically, you will crave chocolate chip cookies and chocolate cake and soft serve vanilla ice cream covered with about five zillion sprinkles. And nothing will take that craving away until you start asking where on earth you can go to get cake. Or ice cream. Or--even better--cake and ice cream. With sprinkles.

2008-05-02T11:46:00.002-04:00

1. Dude, it is Friday. This makes me happier than I can imagine. Seriously, I think that Fridays are my most favorite days of the workweek...it gets pretty damn mellow around here.

2. I bought my plane ticket to Missouri for August 1 the other day. I happened to find a ridiculously good price on a one-way airfare, so I snatched it up on the internet. I then called the airline immediately and paid the stupid additional fee so that my very lovely cat can be on the plane and move with me.

3. I have 3 months until I am no longer a Bostonian. Wow. That sort of hits hard. I have also been here, yesterday, exactly 5 years since moving back after graduate school (I lived here for 4 years before I moved away for my master's degree, but whatever...).

4. This means that it is time for me to book up my social calendar with as much fun as possible with all of my friends up here. I also need to get over my beef with being on film and whip out that digital camera at every possible moment to capture pictures of me and my friends.

On "Admin Power": Do Not Pass Go!!!

2008-04-30T09:53:00.002-04:00

I have admitted before that I am not and do not aspire to be "Super Admin." I think for my boss that's a mixed bag; while Pencil Head certainly needs someone who's quick and efficient and forward-thinking to support him, he seems to appreciate and value intelligence, ambition, and a strong sense of self awareness (and all that entails, including living out in this world and not leaving one's family and friends behind). I am quick, to be honest. When it comes to work that I complete for him, most of the time I am exceptionally fast and have a turn-around time that is above and beyond what he would have hoped for. It's just that, for me, my job isn't everything. I'm lucky that he gets that and that when I admitted to him my future plans--that I am going to turn in my staff ID and exchange it for a student ID at the University of Missouri come August--my admission turned into an effortless, easy, and supportive conversation.

I can not admit, however, my complete lack of interest in becoming "Super Admin" to others around me. There seems to be a sense of sacrelig (oh for shame!) in the mere confession that one's job might not be the all-powerful high and mighty thing for her, and there seems to be a huge culture around here of "admins stick together" and "power to the admin staff!" and "what would our bosses EVER do without us to give them tissues to wipe their noses and staples to bring together their many important papers and even toilet paper to wipe their bums when they need to?" Yes, this job serves a function because we take care of some of the details that our bosses let slip through the cracks (many people who have administrative assistants are in positions that involve so much conceptual work that a good deal of the tangible, real-world details involved in transforming concept to actuality can totally seem elusive or frustrating to them). Yes, this job is one of many that, when working together, serves an important function in making the systems of my company and the aspects of our various clinical programs and therapy initiatives actually happen. No, this job is not all-important, the epi-center of its own realm, or reason enough to necessarily claim a sense of solidarity amongst others who carry out your same function.

Am I ranting a bit too much? Am I confusing anyone? Let me try to illustrate my point. For instance:

An e-mail was sent to a wide variety of admins in my company yesterday. The sender is someone who was in the process of planning an off-site for her team and wished to hold it at Fenway Park, in one of those little boxed rooms where her team could hold meetings for most of the day and end the session with the group watching a Sox game. Seems innocent enough, right? Nice. Hopefully the day does not include some stupid team-building exercise (for the sake of people on her team who might not have that "team player" or "everything is fun, boss! let me shovel some more of your crap into my mouth and tell you how yummy it is!" personality). Hopefully no one will be asked to stand up and sit down, and hopefully no one will have to "problem solve" with others on how to get a cotton ball through a tube of dried pasta with the aid of a string, a paperclip, and a piece of bubble gum.

There's a catch, though. The woman who was working to plan this day learned that boxes/rooms could be held if another day in the future was also booked. She e-mailed all of these administrative assistants (including me) (oh for shame) asking if anyone had any plans to book an off-site somewhere in the next few months, if Fenway Park was even on the radar as a possibility, etc. That seems pretty understandable, right? OK. Fine. No biggie. But all of these e-mails came in from different people who received this message. Constantly, and for about an hour. Nonstop. Pain In My Ass. Oh My Goodness. All of these people saying that there should be an "admin team offsite" and "wouldn't Fenway be just perfect?" and "of course we admins needs our own offsite" and "oh but what would our bosses do if we were not here for a day? surely they could not do their jobs."

Can you see how my last nerve would be twisted and tethered at this ridiculous barrage of e-mails? Our bosses are smart enough people. Sometimes some of them are clueless and others of them are so stressed and still others are so brain-dead and overwhelmed that the small details can slip through the cracks, but all in all, we've got a lot of pretty functional people at Big Prosperous Biotech Company. I trust them to fend for themselves, should some strange thing happen and should every single administrative assistant not be here (oh for shame!!!!) because we have some ridiculous off-site meeting.

I don't say this just because my boss, Pencil Head, is a highly functional and independent person but because a lot of the people I have met here--for all of their neuroses and for all of their flaws as human beings and for all of their really stellar qualities--are generally pretty OK. They can open their own e-mails. They can pick up their own telephones. They can find their files. They can tell their salad fork from their dinner fork. They're typically smarter than a trained monkey. Whether or not they are sincere people who are all on a pretty similar sort of mission I can not say. Whether they can fend for themselves for a day or two--well--yeah, they can.

The other thing I take great, huge, full-moon-sized issue with is the notion of the admins as a "team." Now, I don't have this problem just because I am a bit of a snobby, over-educated bookworm who likes to do dorky things like write poems and go to school and teach writing classes to kids who are paying too much for their college tuition. I have had a problem with this since way back when I was working in jobs very similar to my current position (for a couple of years I worked in a similar position with a similarly-focused clinical trial program at Big Prosperous Biotech Company). I don't understand placing such value in classifying yourself and the others who complete your same functions as a "team" and in acknowledging this more readily than the "team" that constitutes your main work group. I say this because, besides the fact that we both carry out some of the same basic tasks (complete expense reports, manage schedules, arrange travel), I have nothing in common, professionally speaking, with an administrative assistant in many other parts of my company. What do I--working in the middle of a clinical trial program--have in common with an administrative assistant who works in the legal department, in the finance department, with a sales team? How can my concern for the priorities of a research-minded and inquiry-based work group possibly compare to the concerns of a team of accountants (and their assistant), of a team of marketing professionals (and their assistant), of a team of human resource officers?

To me, all of this fuss and muss over "admin power" and "admin solidarity" that creeps up--whether in e-mails, or in the gathering of a bunch of admins on my floor to sing happy birthday to another admin and cut a cake, or however it can manifest itself (and it does, from time to time, just often enough for an easily-irate me to notice these things)--is absolutely ridiculous and reeks of self-importance, absolute insecurity, and the strongest sign possible that one is taking his or her job entirely too seriously. It's something that I have seen happen in many places where I have worked (and in the last 11 years, I think I have worked in 17 different organizations--a good many of them I have worked in concurrently. God I need to stop that!). Not only with admins but with any group of people (often people who are in the same salary range or who hold the same/similar job title) who somehow seem insecure about their position, who somehow feel underrepresented or appreciated, or who work in an organization that does not offer equal acknowledgement for the work that everyone does or that has promotion/career path structures that don't quite seem so even or so considerate of the many different types of backgrounds, experiences, education, paths to knowledge and aptitude that people in every position bring with them.

So I understand how it happens. I understand how a call to arms can come about, a request for "admin power!" can come to sound like a battle cry. At the same time, though, I think that this request reeks entirely too much of a complacency within whatever professional system or hierarchical structure is making people feel as disempowered as they feel to try to bring each other to arms. It does not often bring about a forward-thinking proactivity that can help people seek out the equal consideration they wish to have or inspire others to have no choice but to acknowledge them the way they wish to be acknowledged. (Oh god, my use of pronouns reeks of ridiculousness!)

I want nothing of it. I am not "Super Admin," I have never aspired to be The World's Best Administrative Assistant, I don't really give much of a crap over administrative team off-sites or talking with "the girls" or "the group" or whatever. Not my thing. It's definitely for some people, but definitely not for me. It's that I am so beyond ready to wash my hands entirely of anything requesting "admin power" or "what would our bosses EVER do without us there for them?". It's something I will absolutely not miss once I leave here and go to, well, my motherland (come on--a university? an English department? a creative writing program? teaching for the next five years? a schedule that does not require me to be in a cubicle from 9-5, 5 days a week? an English department BUILDING that is literally ACROSS THE STREET from the university's library? What else could possibly be a 'motherland' for me???). Academia has its own politics, and it definitely has its own sess-pool of festering crap that bugs the hell out of me, but I would gladly trade this festering sess-pool for that one in a heartbeat. I will get to make my trade in exactly 3 months (Pencil Head knows that July 31 is my last day). And then the admins who want to play for their team--the whole, complacent lot of them--can keep on keepin' on with one less rant-a-riffic girl to worry about.

2008-04-28T14:36:00.001-04:00

Sorry! Things have been chaotic. It's like the last week or so has been one humungous commercial break. No posting from me.

Sometime soon, though, I will put together something witty or, at the very least, sincere. Or perhaps wittily sincere. Or maybe sincerely witty. Who knows.

Got to dig my head out of some mud first, though. So stay tuned.

Breaking News... (or, file under "this girl is a rock star")

2008-04-18T11:06:00.003-04:00

(and this has nothing to do with cars)

The PhD program I am attending totally just upgraded my funding from "teaching assistanceship" (teaching 2 classes per term) to "creative writing fellowship" (teaching 1 class per term). All of the money is the same. It's just that for ONCE I will have an easier balance between "work" and "school." Mind you--the assistanceship, the 2 classes per term to teach, is pretty normal and is pretty much what I had when I was in my MFA program. I took 3 classes and taught 2 classes (and I worked part-time on top of that, but that's entirely another story). It is generally what one can expect when entering an MFA or PhD program in creative writing with funding.

But this time around I am teaching just one class per term. It's sort of amazing. After so many years of working multiple jobs while going to school, or working long and boring day jobs and adding on the adjunct teaching and the freelance writing, it's sort of like the universe is giving me one big fat holiday. It's pretty (expletive) amazing. I'm pretty (expletive) excited. AS IF this university and this program--which seem so entirely tailor-made for me--could not possibly get any better.

Aside from that, from the extra free time I will have, what this *means* for me is that they *really* want me. I mean, the school only accepts 2 or 3 poets per year. the creative writing program *really* wants everyone who they choose to accept. But for me to have gotten this fellowship--well, I am not last choice. I was not the person who they found a way to accept, because she has some decent stuff going on with her writing and she happens to have a solid enough academic background even though she has shitty GRE scores and not TOO many journal publications and oh my GOD what do we do about shitty GRE scores and someone who wants to get a PhD. I know that it's really the insecure voice in my head that goes to that place of "yeah I'm just their charity case" to begin with, but this--getting a fellowship, that thing that, on the one hand, is an administrative decision and on the other hand is really a way of acknowledging the faith that these people have in me as a writer--is a huge, overwhelming, and amazing sort of validation for me. It's more proof against that annoying voice in the back of my head.

Call it what you want. I call it--this fellowship, this little snippet of news--pretty damn amazing.

And a reason to celebrate when I blow this pop stand at the end of the work day.

Yay!

Five By Five: Listmania!!

2008-04-16T13:47:00.003-04:00

My attention span and my patience level are about the size of a fruit fly today, so instead of a real post, a list! So five lists, each with five random listings pulled from what information I can most immediately access in my little brain...

Five Red Wines That I Like, All Around $15 And Under...
1. Borsao (Spanish red, temperanillo grape...)
2. Bogle Petit Syrah (not my favorite petite syrah, but it's fine...does the job)
3. Red Byciclette Syrah
4. Concannon Pinot Noir (their petite syrah is also good)
5. Za Za (technically this is a pink wine, but it is made with 100% garnacha grape and is a very deep "pink"/red color...I think of it more as a "chilled" red wine!)

Five Beers That I Like...
1. Lagunitas IPA
2. Yeungling Lager
3. Pauliner Dunkel Weiss beer (dark wheat beer)
4. Young's double chocolate stout
5. Newcastle Brown Ale

Five Movies (All Made After 2001) That Can Make Me Smile When The World Just Sucks...
1. Before Sunset (its predecessor is also awesome)
2. Amelie
3. Friends With Money
4. Waitress
5. Mad Hot Ballroom

Five TV Shows I Miss Watching Even Though I Do Not Miss Having Cable...
1. Passport to Europe with Samantha Brown
2. Healthy Appetite with Ellie Krieger
3. What Not To Wear
4. America's Next Top Model (shut up)
5. Cosby Show reruns

Five Favorite Vegetables...
1. Mushrooms
2. Asparagus
3. Red peppers (raw)
4. Cucumbers
5. Squash (just about every kind...)

vroom vroom, take four...

2008-04-14T13:01:00.003-04:00

I am checking out another car tonight after work. I found it yesterday as a total fluke (quite literally--I was in a zipcar, which I do not often have, and I was driving down a road I never have driven down before even though it is a rather main road). And it has an improbably low mileage. This morning I talked to the guy at the auto shop where the car was parked and he seemed, at least, nice enough. I mean--no bad manners over the telephone, at the very least. And that's a lot more than I have gotten with people. There are too many people with bad manners! It's horrible! But this man on the phone--he and his brother just run this little auto body shop, and they have a casual little side business of buying cars cheap at auctions and then selling them at their shop.

The asking price is a bit more than the upper edge of my limit. If I like the car when I test drive, I hope that I can talk the guy down an overwhelming amount of money. Likely not going to happen, but I do have "I will pay in cash" as my bargaining chip. I would be in a little bit less of a pickle if my freelance client was not tardy in cutting me checks for the press releases I have written (at this point they are delinquent on paying me for 4 press releases, and they are delinquent with what is, to me, an overwhelming amount of money and an amount of money that is enough to be a 'deal breaker' for me in looking at cars and getting this stupid issue resolved).

I don't know what to think. It's hard, because there is a part of me that is, by now, entirely numb to it all and feeling more and more detached. But there is a part of me--the cockeyed optimist--that has a hope that this man will be a nice person and will be kind in considering my finances and my situation of needing a car with low-enough miles to get me through the next 5 years of my life. I'm trying to keep from getting hopeful and from wanting this car (and not because it is the one thing I happen to be looking at tonight--it is, honest to goodness, a really cute burgandy toyota corolla with seats that, while not luxurious, look comfortable enough to me and a cd player stereo and that seems just roomy enough for short-heighted me to cart Spike the Wonder Cat halfway across the country and once I am in Missouri to be the person who is free to offer people rides instead of always being in need of a ride).

I want to not be disappointed if this does not work out.
I want for this to work out.
I want, no matter what, for me to have a pleasant interaction with the man who is selling the car instead of walking away feeling like I had to be on the defense because he was trying to pull one over on me or he was trying to back me into a corner that I could not be put into.
I want for my check from my client to come!
I want for my (smaller) check from my other client, the Museum of Fine Arts, to come (though I know that will come sometime in the next week because I know what to expect from them vis-a-vis payment).
I want a car. I want a safe car that is comfortable, cute, within my price range, with miles that are reasonable enough for me to be able to have the same car for the next 5 years, and that has good gas mileage.
I want, ultimately, to purchase my car from people with whom I have a satisfying exchange and interaction. That's really important to me. I like supporting nice people. I like supporting people who are kind, who will listen to you, who are willing to work with you instead of supporting people who are out to nickel and dime you or get as big a profit as they possibly can and be uncaring towards the person who is giving them their hard-earned money.
I want this car search to end soon!

You know, I was writing all of this into a journal/notebook of sorts yesterday afternoon. I was in Central Square and sitting on the steps to the main post office and needed to organize my thoughts and settle into this car search instead of settling into the stress of the car search. My only real point of comparison--this horrible sort of desparation that I have been to fight off though it's been trying hard and working at me--is when I needed a place to live when I first moved to Boston almost 11 years ago. I was in the sort of temporary living situation that I don't want to discuss too specifically in here. I was looking for someplace permanent to live--anyplace, anything--and nothing worked out. I sat down and made a list for myself (I wish I still had it) of all of the things that matter to me in a place to live--how I want the roommates to be, what I envision for my lifestyle, the things I want to do in whatever place I live in, and what having a place to live in means to me--and it sort of reset my systems and helped me focus again on finding the right place to live.

Call it organizing your thoughts, call it a written down prayer, call it whatever you want. It was, for me, regardless of the ways of explaining it, a way for me to check in with myself--why does a place more permanent nad more "safe" feeling than where I had been living matter so much? What was behind the urgency that was practically consuming me? What could I possibly do about it, and which part of me did I need to project out into the world (or, at least, towards the people who were conducting roommate interviews) to mirror all of the wants and needs that a really stable, safe, and comfortable permanent living place signified? And, strangely, it worked. I had some system of thought in place. I had, if nothing else, a written list of thoughts that could become a checklist for each and every place that I looked at. If a place did not meet the most important items on my little list, then I didn't have to want to live there, just because it was close to public transportation, clean-looking, and a reasonable price of rent. I didn't have to want to live there--wow, what a revelation that was to my 20 year old self!

So this time, when this strange desparation has been at war with my sense of sanity, another list (and this is something that I have done in the past--lists of what matters to me when I am faced with a really stressful, really tough situation that I do not know how to handle). It's not that I expect, now, for a list of everything that really matters to me for a car (numerous items from my little "I want" above were on this list) to have the same result as the housing thing 11 years ago--I don't expect that because I wrote that list poof! the perfect, most magical car for me ever will come around and exactly at the price that I can afford so easily. It is, though, that I recognized my own need to re-focus this car search if I am going to continue searching for a car that will really work for me and what I need instead of, well, just plodding along down a scrap of highway. This car stuff is greater than what I can easily fathom and control on a daily basis, especially with the strange and somewhat emotional ways that my head can work. I better organize this, I better think about each thing that I could possibly want or need in a car, and I better make sure that it really represents something real and lasting inside me.

So I sat on the steps, even though I was cold, and I thought about all of the things that having a car means to me and what it is that I hope to get out of the experience of buying a car. And I thought about what I value when it comes to spending my money--the types of businesses and ventures I enjoy supporting and the types of personalities that make me feel like there is room for me as a customer to really enter into the business exchange as an equal stakeholder. And this morning, I carried that little notebook with me to work. I am determined, whenever I find myself getting to panicky as the day goes on, to refer to that list. I am determined to not feel like I have to want that car or like I have to want to resolve this issue and give my money to someone who happens to have a car to sell. I am determined to stick to my guns--even if they look like a small little list of things scrawled out in a small little notebook that happens to fit oh so easily inside my bag.

And when I am looking at the car? I am determined to refer to that list when I start to get nervous. I am determined to do what it is that always works, oddly enough, absolutely best for me when I negotiate things like getting a job or finding a place to live (or, say, when writing a statement of purpose for a grad school application...wink wink, nudge nudge...): I am going to be sincere and honest and entirely myself. I am going to explain to He Who Is With Car To Sell why my budget is so tight and that I will take good care of this car if it can be mine. I am going to explain to him a little bit about who I am as a person, and not in a defensive way, but so he can get to know me and so he can, hopefully, start to see a little picture in his head of this girl standing in front of him sitting in the driver's seat of that car and putting pedal to the metal along the highway as she heads off to Missouri to get her PhD. And I am going to hope and wish and pray to the God I am starting to pray to again and who I am starting to wonder might actually be real (even if I don't know for sure) that the right thing happens with this interaction and that I know, by gut instinct or whatever other basic, internal mechanism can possibly act as a guiding force for me, whether or not to explore this further.

And that's all there is, I think. I mean, at least, that's all there is for me to say right now, I think.

UPDATE:
The power went out at work, so I saw it as "a sign" that I should leave a few hours early and go test drive that Corolla. I did leave. I sat on the bus and went to Arlington. The bus dropped me off right in front of the place selling the car. I spoke with the man and test drove the car. I saw the trunk, I spent time adjusting the seat and the mirrors. I loved the car! I really, really loved the car. For as plain as it was (it had power NOTHING), and for the scratches on the car, I still really just loved sitting in its drivers seat and taking it out for a spin. I told the man selling the car my upper limit--and this is my absolute "if my freelance clients pay me within the next week because their money is overdue to me right now, and it has me in a bit of a bind" upper limit--and it was too low for him to go. I get the sense that he and his brother, who are selling the car together, really won't go down too much from their asking price. The guy gave me his card, though, should anything change. He was perfectly nice and perfectly understanding that my budget is tight, that right now I am spending a lot of money on rent and (even my minimal) utilities, that I have to save up money as much as I can, that I am getting ready to start a PhD program where I will be living on a very tight budget. He didn't poke at me or pressure me or prod me, and he left me feeling like even though I can't go high enough with the price to meet him anywhere on his grid of acceptability, I had a really good interaction with a man who was not about to bullshit his way into my wallet. Everything was working out except for the price tag.

Hope for this for me, ok? Hope that somehow something changes, that either some magical bucket of money turns up in tomorrow's mail pile or that my freelance clients pay me not only the overdue invoices but somehow also the ones that are not yet overdue and that I feel like I have enough in my bank account to go knocking on his door again and to ask him for a little bit of kindness and a little bit of negotiation.

I just have a feeling that this is a good car and that it could be a more-than-good car for me. For as unscientific and intangible as that is--having a feeling--in my own semi-weird view of the world, that's often more important than the quantifiable hard evidence that could be sitting right in front of me.

20 Statements: Mostly truths, a few little lies...

2008-04-14T09:03:00.003-04:00

Can you spot which items in here are true and which items in here are absolute lies?

1. My favorite vegetables are asparagus and mushrooms.
2. I had my first "job" when I was 13 years old.
3. During my freshman year of high school, I played defense for the school's soccer team.
4. The first instrument I ever played was violin.
5. The first story I ever wrote was when I was around 5 or 6 years old, and it was about Mister Monkey's day.
6. I was scared of my godfather's mustache when I was a little girl and wouldn't go near him to give him a hug, so he shaved it when I was around 3 or 4.
7. The first job I ever thought I wanted to have was to work with spaceships for NASA.
8. If I did not have food allergies to beans, corn, and soy, I would consider whether or not I could give up chicken and fish and become a vegetarian.
9. I once broke my front tooth while zipping up a jacket.
10. My biggest professional goal in life is to get a tenure-track job teaching creative writing and literature to college kids.
11. Farmer's markets make me happy.
12. I once aspired to join a roller derby team.
13. My favorite classes in high school were algebra (or, really, anything with math) and chemistry.
14. My favorite type of shirt or sweater to wear is something with a v-neck, and preferably something cashmere.
15. I prefer lavender oil to perfume, but when it comes to perfume I tend to 'go big'. And by that, I mean Prada's "Prada Tendre" perfume.
16. Most of the guys I meet I find too boring and too--well--"blah" to even consider dating or flirting with.
17. Though I don't have cable service or anything that would allow me to watch television, if I DID have such a luxury, I would always be watching one of two channels: the cooking channel and the cartoon network.
18. If I could figure out a way to have enough money in savings, a car to my name, and leave my job at Big Prosperous Biotech Company right now and leave the USA for a few months until I begin my PhD program, I would go straight to Munich and stay there, because there is no better "heaven" than Bavaria (oh the donuts! Oh the strudel! Oh the beer!).
19. I wish I had the capacity to decorate my place so that it looked interesting enough to be photographed for a magazine. I don't want perfectly coordinated stuff, I just want it to look eclectic, interesting, and somehow balanced. Sadly, though, as much as I would like to have that sort of capacity, I don't have a talent for it.
20. My greatest boy-related fantasy revolves around a bookstore, and that's all I'm saying.

When The Girl Gets Soul-Weary...

2008-04-11T13:43:00.002-04:00

...the girl gets a zipcar! I have a car from 1 PM tomorrow, which is after my spinning class (and then the ritual of showering and cleaning up) until 1 PM on Sunday. I had originally planned a zipcar for myself to drive out to the 'burbs to look at cars, but I cancelled that reservation. I decided I needed a break from anything related to car-searching. I re-scheduled my zipcar, though, because I decided that I could use a little adventure.

Now I just need to figure out what that adventure will be. My thoughts right now are something along the following:

1. drive up to Portsmouth, NH, because I have never been there
2. drive to some cute town in Vermont, because I have never been there
3. drive to Freeport, ME, and go outlet shopping and find some cheap hotel and spend the night a bit further up the coast (or drive somewhere in Maine beyond Portland, which I love, or to Ogunquitt, or to Bar Harbour...)
4. drive down to the cape and just wander around, because I have barely been to cape cod.
5. head west and drive to the Amherst/Northampton area, because it is so beautiful and I have not been there too much.
6. Drive somewhere down in Rhode Island and hang out for a while, come back home, load all of my laundry into my zipcar, and do it all.

How, blogosphere, do you vote?
Or do you have other suggestions?

From the Tired Girl Files...

2008-04-11T09:15:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I managed to forget my monthly T pass at home.
This morning I managed to remember my T pass but forget my debit card.
And of course I have 35 cents and a pile of pennies and no other cash in my wallet.
And of course this morning I also looked in my fridge and didn't find ingredients to make a reasonable lunch.

So today I am without caffeine, without lunch, and with endless refills of my water bottle. Thank goodness the weekend is almost here!!!

happy mood, good energy, and another one from the "vroom, vroom..." files?

2008-04-10T15:58:00.003-04:00

Have I turned a corner, or is it just dumb luck? I don't know, but I am enjoying this. The thing is, today is the first day in a very long time that I woke up in a good mood, had the wherewithall to make breakfast AND lunch, sustained my good mood (and a good amount of energy) getting ready to come to work and coming into the office, remembered to take out my garbage, managed to STILL STAY IN A GOOD MOOD even when the day turned a little stressful, managed to STILL STAY IN A GOOD MOOD as the day went on, and now it is 4 PM. And I am on my 4th bottle of water, I am in a good mood, and I actually feel like I have the energy to go to the gym tonight and kick ass on the elliptical trainer and then with enough squats, lunges, crunches, and push ups to make most people whimper and scream.

I have not had energy that has lasted me throughout the day since sometime last summer. It's also sometime last summer that I ran out of vitamins and then stupidly stopped taking them. I recently picked up my vitamin habit again as part of my 'get back into that good ol' stephanie spirit' campaign, and I added omega-3 softcaps to my routine, or, at least, as much of a "routine" as a multi-vitamin can possibly be.

And I am seeing another car tonight. I am NOT going to a dealer. I am going to a man's house. He posted the car at 2:24 PM on craig's list, I called and left a message at 2:34 PM, and I confirmed that I can come tonight to check it out by 3:30 PM. I secured my ride--my work friend Jenn who knows her stuff with cars and who is absolutely a strong, tough woman who will not take some dude's bullshit--within a few minutes of my phone call with Mister Amraa in Auburndale. I have no high hopes, but Jenn and I are going on an adventure. And we are going to Target on the way.

And afterwards I think I can go kick butt at the gym--whether it's because I am happy and gleeful or because the dude I am seeing this evening who is selling his car is somehow annoying and I need to unload some energy. Wish me luck. I need it!

UPDATE: That was a complete waste of time. The guy was a total sleaze over the fact that he sold the car just before I called him to say "I'm five minutes away! Come meet me in the parking lot of your apt building!" Instead of saying "sorry, but the people who just left bought the car," he said, "ok, I'll be down, and I'll be happy to show you the car." Such asshole-ish behavior!

Listmania!!!

2008-04-09T16:29:00.003-04:00

15 random songs that calm me while I am stuck in Cubicle Land:
1. Iron & Wine, "Resurrection Fern"
2. Jem, "Flying High"
3. Rosie Thomas, "Much Farther To Go"
4. Patty Griffin, "Tomorrow Night"
5. Annie Lennox, "Why"
6. Ryan Adams, "Desire"
7. Stan Getz, "Moonlight"
8. Death Cab for Cutie, "Transatlanticism"
9. The Decemberists, "Grace Cathedral Hill"
10. Feist, "Secret Heart"
11. Josh Rouse, "Snowy"
12. Lucinda Williams, "Out Of Touch"
13. The Perishers, "Sway"
14. Alison Krauss, "Forget About It"
15. Nickel Creek, "This Side"

10 Things I Would Rather Do Than Be At Work:
1. Curl up in that bench seat at the Barvard Bookstore that is within easy reach of the graphic novels, poetry, and fiction sections
2. Sit in a booth at Diesel with my laptop and endless mugs of mint tea and work on poems
3. Curl up on my sofa and read whatever book I am reading
4. Clean my kitchen
5. Do laundry
6. Take a nap that lasts from 9 AM to 5 PM
7. Wander around Boston in my favorite pair of jeans with little more than a $20 bill in my pocket, my iPod, and a comfortable pair of shoes.
8. Play scrabulous all day on facebook
9. Sit in the buddha room of the Museum of Fine Arts and think
10. Take all of my poetry books off of their shelves, make a mess, and re-alphabetize them (it is one of the funnest things for me to do when I can't focus, or I am bored, or I am really angry and need to calm down. Somehow, alphabetical order just calms me.)

5 foods I would love to eat but I can't because of my food allergies:
1. The beans dish with cannellini beans and butter beans that my dad would make when I was growing up
2. Popcorn. Enough said.
3. Fresh spring rolls from the cafe at Porter Square Books, which I can not eat because they are made with tofu. But they are cheap and fresh and so yummy!
4. Hummous
5. Babaganoush

3 Places I would like to go if I could hop on a plane and just go anywhere right now...
1. Greece. Specifically, the islands. More specifically, Rhodes.
2. To Portland, Oregon, because I want to go to Powells Books and because I can also hop in a rental car and go wine tasting in the Willamette Valley.
3. Vietnam, because I have always wanted to go.

vroom vroom, take three...(subtitle: the one where she unleashes her annoyances with this whole stupid process...)

2008-04-09T09:19:00.004-04:00

I am majorly frustrated and annoyed with car salesmen and with people who will treat you like you are the world's biggest dumbass. I am majorly frustrated with people telling me that I am, basically, "shit outta luck" because my budget for buying a car is so small and because I know that I really can't do any magical car financing and take loans just to give myself more options. And I am majorly annoyed with car salesmen who try their hardest to dick me over either on the phone or, if I go to look at a car on my own (and not with my friend, Dan, who has been awesome about helping me), in person.

It's annoying.
It's beyond annoying.
It is so beyond annoying that it is majorly unfair.

And even though more than 12 hours have passed since I was treated like a piece of chewed gum from the underside of someone's shoe, I am still annoyed.

/end rant

vroom vroom, take two...

2008-04-08T13:01:00.003-04:00

So the car I was going to see last night? Totally nasty. Totally a scenario bizarro. Everything was the opposite of what the advertisement claimed. The body had rust spots, dings, and dents. The interior leather was ripped. The car itself was on raisers, which I can only assume is because the car dealer must have known that I, the person who made arrangements to come take a look, am so short that if the car is on raisers there is no way that I could look through the windows and see that the nice leather seats--claimed to be solid, in perfect condition, nary a stain or rip--were worn and damaged. Thank goodness my friend Dan (and most of the western world) is taller than I am. He was not tall enough to see the mileage on the odometer, but I am sure that that number is not the nice, low number the ad claimed.

Tonight I am checking out a car that is closer to home. By that, I literally mean that I can get off of the #80 bus--which I take to and from work--and walk half a block to the dealership and check out the cherry red Honda Civic that had pictures and VIN included in the Craig's List advertisement. If friends of mine can come and give me backup, that's great. If not, and if this car really seems worth it, I will come back for another look (and with deposit money) and with a friend to see, tomorrow at some point.

But tonight I plan to put on my imaginary Super Hero cape and my toughest face and check that car out for all that it is, and may be, worth. I plan to ask questions about tire rotation and oil changes and transmission and warranties and miles per gallon as if I knew what I was talking about. I plan to come armed with printouts from very important sounding websites--research from the Kelly Blue Book website, information from the "how stuff works" section of the car consumer reports website, and pictures of the grimmace face that I somehow can not believable replicate. I will show those Used Car Salesmen People Who Think They Are Smarter Than I Am who is queen of the block. And if I see fit, I will bargain that price down.

And if I do not see fit, then I will cross my arms and put on my best pouty-face and cross the street and walk a few blocks down the way and go shopping at Target. I mean, what better way is there to console oneself over a shitty car than going shopping for cute socks and cheap lipglosses?

vroom vroom...

2008-04-07T09:29:00.000-04:00

Tonight I am looking at another car. This one seems interesting enough that my friend D suggested that I bring money with me as deposit. Who knows, though, and at this point I'm sort of ambivalent about it all. I need a car and I want a car and I don't have a lot of money to spend and everything feels so expensive. Even the amount of money I can spend feels like a lot of money to me.

This past weekend--or, at least Saturday--was filled with car stuff. It overwhelmed me, so in the evening I wandered around very aimlessly in Harvard Square. I people watched and had some ice cream and read and, for the first time in what feels like a long time, did not look at the cars on the street trying to figure out how they matched up to things I had seen on used car ads.

But during the day I checked out a couple of cars in used car lots that *would be* possible for me if I find a good deal. I test drove them. I also test drove some other cars that I am not looking at, though I will likely see a good handful of ads for them within my price range, because I wanted to feel these cars that really aren't going to be reliable, reasonable, or practical enough for what I need. It's good to have points of comparison, and it's good to know more about these cars so that when I see ads my head doesn't go to some really desparate place.

Dan asked me a shitload of questions and I felt like he was talking a foreign language. I don't know all of the lingo that he does. I just know this: the seats are comfortable, the buttons seem to be within easy grasp, the wheel feels OK, I can see just fine with my driver's seat pushed up as far as it needs so I can reach the pedals, I like where the stereo is located, yeah the windows seem to open and close just fine, there seems to be enough room in the trunk, when I break it feels nice and easy. I know part of it is Dan showing off, asking a ton of questions. And the other part is him giving clues to the used car salesman that he knows his stuff--he, short scrawny pale white guy who shows up in his rumpled khakis and his Harley Davidson t-shirt and his cherry-red Mustang--and he, Dan, man who knows the scoop on cars, will be the one with Mister Used Car Salesman to deal with and try to mess with, not me--short, innocent-looking white girl who looks like she should be an undergraduate student in one of the colleges around here instead of teaching undergrads in one of the colleges around here, girl-who-knows-nothing-about-cars.

I'm thankful that he knows so much and that he knows how to give clues to these guys who run the used car lots, but it's still overwhelming to me. Hearing the questions and having to answer them while Dan and Used Car Salesman are in the car with me during a test-drive is a bit frustrating to me. I want to concentrate on the road and on how the car feels to me. But I know that being able to articulate how the car feels to me is important.

Between test drives and looks, Dan was just getting more and more pumped up. He loves cars. He loves dealing with this stuff. He is exceptionally good at it. I'm really not. I get overwhelmed easily, and I just in my head start comparing the pricetag on the car with the number in my savings account. It's easy for me to go to that place in my head where Little Miss Nasty can come forward and start berating me for not saving enough money to have all the choices in the world and for feeling like Queen Wussalopoulos next to my friend who knows everything and for getting overwhelmed so easily by something that, compared to being convincing in my job as a superstar and to applying to PhD programs and having such great luck and to having accomplished so many things in my life and to something that is maybe more important in that soulful sort of way--being and becoming the sort of person who can have the friends that I am so lucky to have, is really just peanuts. Or, at least, should be peanuts and should be easy and should really not be such a big deal.

Yesterday afternoon I zoned out in one of my favorite local independent movie theaters (The Brattle, for those who care) and I watched The Wizard Of Oz. I love that movie, and being born and raised in the time I have had on this earth so far, I have never seen it on the big screen. It was nice to have that, to support an independent business I love and, at the same time, to see a movie that reminds me so much of my early childhood and that is so much about this girl finding a sense of peace and contentedness inside herself--and where she is, in the present moment, in the present place--instead of having to search for it in places and realms so beyond her. It was restoring, at least to some extent, and it lead me on this crazy path of thinking that, mutation after mutation and turn after turn, lead to this:

Ultimately, all of this crap of test drives and looking at ads and making phone calls and setting up appointments is just a game. Nothing more. Ultimately, you will have a car that suits your needs and that you feel good about, because you always wind up with stuff that your gut instinct guides you towards. It doesn't have to be your dream car or the most perfect thing ever, it just needs to be reliable and comfortable, and it just needs to feel safe. Trust that. Trust yourself. Trust that whatever money you have to spend on a car is OK, because Dan and Stefanie (who was out car hunting with us) are right in that most people really only have the cash to plunk down that you have saved up--they're willing to take out loans, which gives them different choices, and you aren't, which gives you different choices. There's nothing wrong with that, and you're just trying to be responsible to the money situation you will face once you're a grad student. Trust that you have everything you need right now and that, by the time you move to Missouri, you will have everything that you need. Including a car.

I am absolutely horrible at letting go, but that little journey of thought in my head was enough for me to forget about my car hunt enough so that when I got home and found e-mail from Dan pointing me to an advertisement on Craig's List, I was detached enough to not place big hope in it and to not outwardly criticize everything that might be wrong with the vehicle. I called the person who's selling it, and tonight Dan and I are going to Jamaica Plain to check it out. I am at that place, right now, of "whatever happens happens." I will make sure that I have deposit money, but I won't hold much importance on whether or not this does work out. It sounds like a good car with enough, as Dan says, "creature comforts," and the miles are incredibly low. The price seems incredibly low (but totally reasonable to me). We'll see. If it works out, great! Then I have the whole maze of car insurance and registering a car and getting tags to deal with. If it doesn't, well, then back to the salt mines...

The One About Honesty...

2008-04-04T14:24:00.003-04:00

This morning, in my one-on-one meeting with Pencil Head, he gave me my performance review. It's funny. It was sort of the bastard stepchild of a performance review. I say this not because of how on the spot it was and how much it took me by surprise, but because of how fast, complimentary, informal, and overwhelmingly easy it was. And any of you who read this and know Pencil Head know that he is not always the most informal person. At least, not when it comes to a work relationship and anything related to a reporting structure.

But it was informal.

And to paraphrase the entire five minute performance review, let me share this: you know that I've been really pleased with your work since you've been here, you're thorough and prompt and usually very exacting in what you do, and the times when you need to fix something you do it very quickly and to specification and with no fuss or frustration whatsoever. I've gotten so much feedback from the people on our team who you've helped over the course of this past year and people you've worked with, it's often been really informal, but in general, everyone says such great things about you and the work that you do that I can't do anything BUT give you an "exceeds expectations" mark with HR and to go in your personnel file, and this sheet of paper (Pencil Head hands me a sheet of paper) indicates your "rank" of performance as well as the raise you are getting, which will begin to pop up even in your next paycheck!

And that was basically it. I smiled, I thanked him, and I told him that in the middle of the chaos and busy-ness of crazy deadlines and his crazy travel and office moves and team reorganization and whatnot, that one of the things that has made being here so good is working with him and that I have come to value the easy rapport we have, how much respect I have for him and feel that I get from him, and whatnot. He smiled and thanked me.

So all of this was normal, right? I was truly sincere in what I said, and I know that he has no choice but to be sincere and forthright with me. I mean, by now I can read him well enough that I know when he's trying to pull one on me. It's sort of a love-fest right now in my corner of Cubicle Land, even though we just finally sorted out a bit of an expense report fiasco that, while it's on a major level my fault (and I immediately took responsibility, began to correct the problem, and laid out a plan for some down-the-road fixing of things, which he appreciated and was majorly chill about), on *some* level it's a totally understandable thing that he understood as the downside of dealing with his crazy schedule and some of the expenses involved. But it was a love fest nonetheless. He's happy with me, I'm happy with him, we have our communication down pat, we watch each other's backs, we've got a really good thing going.

OK. This is where everything changes. We are smoothe-sailing and I just had an amazing love-fest 5 minutes of performance review. And I tell him that I need to tell him something really big and that I am scared that I am shooting myself in the foot, but I need to just say this. He encourages me to just let it out. I reference discussions we had in December and January about growing my position, about giving my new responsibilities, and how at the time I had anticipated that I was here, at Big Prosperous Biotech Company without any reason to think that this would change. And then these words come out of my mouth:

"But something did change, and it's something crazy and huge. I got into my first choice PhD program."

Something inside me lifted immediately. I have been carrying the weight of this--one of the happiest surprises I have had in a very long time and definitely the absolute best thing that has happened to me, quite literally, in about 6 or 7 years--for a bit over a month and a half now.

He smiled. He just asked me, "so when does this start? In September?"

I told him that my program begins at the end of August, that I have orientation the third week of August, and that I need to work here definitely through July. We talked more about it--about what my field is (PhD in creative writing and literature), about how "new" the field is and how there are literally 24 programs in the country, what the admissions process is like, etc. I explained to him the odds (imagine this: in any year, you could have a random amount from about 120-200 applicants *in your genre* and a large program would accept maybe 4-6, a "small" program maybe 1-3...my program accepted, I think, 2), how these programs require applicants to be able to meet the criteria of a regular old literature doctoral applicant AND meet the criteria of being a serious creative writing applicant (which means having amazing writing, which means showing promise for being a critical reader of writing, etc.). I told him that my program is giving me full funding--which means tuition and health care are covered, and I am guaranteed teaching and a stipend--enough to live on, even if a little modestly--for 5 years.

He congratulated me and shook my hand. He said that it's a really big deal to get funding like that in the humanities.

He also said he would be sad to see me go, and the team would miss me--I have worked so hard and I have really become a part of things around here--but that if this is the path that I want to go on (he also said that he knows how important writing and teaching are for me), that this is such a wonderful turn of events for me. Through more discussion--including sincere and honest questions from him about where my program is, what a creative writing program is, structure-wise, the job market for writing and literature (wannabe) professors, etc.--he asserted that he really appreciates my openness and honesty with him and how much he knows I respect him, how much he respects me.

We were in full-on love-fest mode again. It's completely insane. We talked about what moving means for me, about the vaguest notions of plans for finding my replacement (worry about it in June, write up all that I have done and the thigns I have added to the regular job, think about whether it will be an outright new hire situation or a temp-to-perm situation, etc.), about the adjustment that will come when I leave Boston--and the East Coast--for a small college town in the Midwest.

I admitted to him how I heard on February 13 and how I was so happy that he was at home and sick that day, how when my cell phone rang and I knew I was getting an admissions offer I ran out into the hallway and started screaming and jumping up and down, how if he was in the office I don't know how I would have contained myself.

(It's SO TRUE--Pencil Head, who is never sick or, at least, who is almost always in the office or travelling or still in his meetings even if he IS sick, had gone home in the middle of the previous day because he felt so ill that his bosses sent him home, and he happened to still be at home when I got the call.)

We talked a bit more about school, about life, about the midwest, about my time at this company. I felt light and giddy in a way that I have not felt in a little while. We joked about how he would not hire The Troll if she were ever to apply for the job as my replacement (you should have seen the look on his face). Happy feelings and tight-like-knots boss/employee relationship (that often feels more like colleague/colleague relationship because Pencil Head has no need to pull that hierarchical crap on me and because I know he honestly respects me and takes my opinion seriously). The slightest shadow of sadness on his face about losing someone who's so good that, on her performance review, he could only tell HR that she "exceeds expectations" and that her performance review discussion really took just 5 minutes.

And at lunch--out with a friend, thank you very much, instead of a book, and out at Bambara which is my favorite place to dine out locally during my work day--I had a glass of wine with my meal to celebrate such a successful, support-filled, and encouraging discussion.

OnStyle...

2008-03-28T10:03:00.003-04:00

I can't concentrate at work today. I mean, these days concentration is hard, but Fridays are something especially strange. It's like someone sprinkled Crazy Powder in my diet cola before it reached me from the whirring mechanical arms of the soda machine. I don't know. But let's just move that aside, ok? There are more important things to think about.

This morning, as I was walking from the bus stop to work and listening to this Fillipos Pliatsikas* song for like the thousandth time and feeling like a total sassafrass, there was one thought that would not loosen its grip on me: I really don't have a personal style. My apartment is a hodge podge of things that go together well enough to look nice. My clothing is like a few variations on the same theme: work pants (or, preferably and in greater quantity, jeans) and a v-neck sweater or t-shirt of some sort. I have some really sassy handbags, but I prefer one of my two messenger bags--the big, "I mean business here" Bailey Works and the smaller, "I am just enough of a fashionista to know about these things" old-school black nylon Kate Spade messenger bag that I wanted for something like 7 years before I broke down and bought it. I have some decent pairs of (flat) shoes, but I tend to gravitate towards my black Fluevogs (even moreso than my non-athletic sneakers). To me, it's all about comfort. If I were a candidate for What Not To Wear, though, Stacey London and Clinton Kelley would tell me that I look about as interesting as a potato sack. Well, maybe with the exception of my hair. After being 2 months overdue for a haircut, I went to the fabulous Elizabeth at my local Aveda salon and my hair, now, looks appropriately sassy. But, well, I digress. I still am about as boring and blase as--well--a potato sack. Except maybe I'm an "urban" potato sack, because I tend to gravitate towards black and other dark neutral colors. And that's sort of an "urban uniform" sort of thing, isn't it? To wear tons of black?

But anyway, let's focus. I am tangenting my life away too much. There is a girl who is part of my writing group or who was, at least, 2 summers part of my writing group before she moved to Cape Cod to hang out in her parents' beach house for a while (she's back now). SHE has a personal style. Before she met her girlfriend, I remember she would go from writing group to some of the local bars, so she always came to our meeting place (my friend Lucie's fabulous North Cambridge home) dressed all sassy and her hair done all spikey and funky and "lovingly touseled" in that very deliberate sort of way. Now if I had to name her style, I don't know what I would call it. Maybe "Nerdy Harry Potter Goes Sexy"? Maybe "A Coy And Slight Take On Gender Bending"? I don't know. But whatever it is--whatever you could call it--it's something that is definitely her own style. Like she would come to writing group wearing a skirt or cropped knickers and a shirt with a men's tie very loosely knotted and a smattering of bracelets...and then really high pointy heels and a perfectly made up face. It's just sort of the epitome of how K dresses. She adds elements from men's wear and elements from women's wear in a way that fits this personality of hers that is equal parts tough girl, tomboy, and sassy, unassuming vixen.

So back to me. I have no personal style. Part of it is that I have too short an attention span to really get how I can mix and match elements that suit the different parts of me or to really develop a wardrobe that illustrates a part of me that I consider to be dominant or wish to encourage more (or balance out against other parts of me that may be more dominant). My apartment doesn't really have a big sense of style, either. It looks nice and calm and settled, but I don't really have large showings of artwork on the walls. I'm not too great at that stuff. And I don't know how to translate the the multi-faceted me into an aesthetic feng shui for my living space.

When it comes to body and living space, how do I translate myself? Is it a matter of translating the things that I do that are a big part of how I identify myself? If this is the case, how would I create a personal style out of: writer, professor, (trying not to be insouciant) Cubicle Land Dweller, wannabe cyclist, recycler, acid reader? What would a literal translation of this look like? I don't know, maybe wearing something librarian-ish, and with touseled hair, and with lots of lipgloss, and cycling shoes? I don't know. What would a metaphoric translation look like? I'm clueless. Ask Stacey London to help me. Ask Tyra Banks.

If I were to translate myself differently--outside of the things that I do that are of such great meaning to me--how would I do this? Sweet loyal girl? Tough girl? Scrappy girl who's voted most likely to knee you in the nuts if you darken her path in the wrong way? The girl who will make you dinner if you're starving, lost, and tired?

I don't quite know what to do with this. I don't quite know how to do this. There is a part of me that would love to have a personal style. As I was walking from the bus this morning, listening to this one song over and over again and feeling sassy as I stomped in rain puddles with my fat-soled 'vogs, I felt this strange joy and sassiness. Even in my lack of style. Even with the prospect of another day in the beige-walled hell of Cubicle Land when there are so many other things to do that seem so worthwhile (movies! window shopping! curling up with James Merrill's poetry! digging into the biography I am reading on Alice Waters! creating my own crazy-girl dance moves to this Fillipos Pliatsikas song I am obsessed with! making a gingersnap marscapone ice box cake! riding the city bus, staring out the window at the ways the grey skies mute the life all around me! see? the possibilities are so endless!). I felt like if I really wanted to dedicate a couple of hundred bucks to some new clothes and if I really concentrated, I might be able to get just enough stuff to turn my plain-Jane wardrobe into something that makes a statement, even if it a statement of whispers and squeaks instead of shouts and roars. I could figure something out, and even if it's a "wrong answer" it could be a starting place. I could maybe--just maybe--pull something together that would inspire me.

Let's say, though, that I did this. I found just the right things--I don't know, some green striped ribbon belts or just the right, bright splashy magenta scarfs or some other things along those lines--then what? Am I supposed to stop there, or do I keep on shopping each and every season so that I can have a "season-appropriate" sense of personal style? Do I get the matching pillows? Do I spend money on curtains and big hanging fabrics for my walls, too? And every morning when I wake up and barely make it into the shower, do I have to figure out a way to put all of the bits and pieces together so that I can shuffle out of my house, un-caffeinated, oozing (but just subtlely enough so as not to look deliberate) with personal style? Really? Do I, who can barely manage to do more than towel-dry her hair and part it properly before shoving it behind her ears, have the capacity to do that every morning? I can't even find the value in putting make up on my face. I'll likely do it wrong, anyway, or I will look ridiculous or like a poodle or a middle aged real estate agent from Wisconsin who should have a fussy hairdo to match her fussy make up. Or I will do something else wrong. Because it seems like no matter how hard I try, no matter what I get right, there is always some detail that I have overlooked. At least when it comes to my clothing or my apartment or my efforts to make the perfect dinner for friends who come over or my domestic "prowess" in cleaning my apartment if I am having friends over for the lo-fi sort of "party" that my friends can count on me to have from time to time.

So I don't know what to do about htis personal style thing. On the one hand, I can have no personal style and I can just keep on plodding along as I am--plain as all get-go, stomping in the rain in my 'vogs and listening to my music on my iPod and feeling sassy because the beat of the song inspires me to do so. I can keep on looking younger than I actually am because, at 30 years old, I have marginally mastered the art of doing something with your hair and I have not mastered the art of makeup. And I can have the as-of-now-minimal list of considerations each morning as I wake up and foible my way through the beginnings of my day, of life, until I reach my desk and find a source of caffeination. I can keep my apartment as it is--not perfect, but comfortable enough so as not to offend friends when they come over. And my attempts at domestic prowess and my ultimate fail can keep me, on one level, "endearing" to my friends.

Or I can try. I can get all girly and get all smart and cross-reference the trends in different glossy magazines and go window shopping until I find things that just "speak" to me and that look cohesive enough (though how things will really look cohesive instead of bieng rationalized as being cohesive I really don't know). I can force myself into a routine of waking up 15 minutes earlier each day and figuring out makeup and picking and choosing elements of my own clothing until I have an outfit of some sort. I can invest money in pretty pillows and curtains and get some friends of mine who are more aesthetically "with it" and interior design-savvy to help their wayward friend. I might be miserable, because it takes time and thoughtfulness and deliberate-ness to do all of these things that this time takes away from my time for reading &writing (& 'rithmetic), but I will be less in danger of being a fashion disaster. And I will, despite the youthfulness of my face and the distinct lack of age-appropriate fine lines and wrinkles, at least live up to the appearance of being a (relatively hip) almost-31-year-old woman who, as a writer--and as a professor--and as a professional Cubicle Land Dweller, some people I know would claim "is ready to own the whole world! Look at all she does! You go girl!" as if she were an Oprah in the making.

I have no idea. I mean, I think I ultimately know my answer. Stylish Goddess I May Very Well Not Be. And I think I might be OK with that. Unless, well, I am entirely too wayward, lost, misbegotten to have any sense of what is right and what is wrong, of what is good for me, of what could be an integral part to my own path for happiness...

*Fillipos Pliatsikas is a contemporary Greek singer. Until his band disbanded in 2004, he was a member of the fabulous Greek band, Pyx Lax, who sang a mixture of regular ol' rock & roll songs and contemporary Greek music of a sort that people might call "rebetika." He's all solo with his bad self these days, and I have downloaded on my iPod the ONE CD of his that is available on iTunes--"Omnia." I wish I had more CDs. I must procure more CDs. The first song on "Omnia" is called "An Tha Borousa Ton Kosmo Tha Allaza" which loosely translates to "If I could change something in the world..." or "If I could change the people..." But the song is sassy and upbeat and it incorporates some dude rapping in English with his accent-inflected voice. I could listen to that song over and over again and be so sassafrass that I could beat the rain back into the clouds or break out in dance without actually caring who around me would start laughing hysterically at the sight of me and my uberly-un-cool dance moves.

2008-03-25T10:55:00.002-04:00

The Troll is here today.
And oh my goodness IS SHE LOUD.
And a super triple dose of 'oh my goodness' is my tolerance level pretty damn low for her and her antics.
With my luck, she will probably start singing this afternoon.
Loudly.
Oh goodness gracious, what did I do in my last life to get such karma? Did I not recycle my soda bottles properly? Did I buy mis-matched sized pairs of shoes in stores that don't let you do that? Did I steal packets of gum from the pharmacy? Did I do some other sort of non-fatal, not-morally-disgusting faux pas?

Drown me in a kiddie pool of hi-c, please.
Or at the very least, switch up the days of the week so that today is Friday.
Because then it would be easier to bear the Troll. I mean, well, if I knew that I had two days ahead of me that would be completely devoid of her presence.

It seems, at least, that she's re-done her hair color. Roots Be Gone! Bad haircut, and still the wrong color for her (andyesIrealizehowdamnpettythisistocommentonhair), but at least she went and, as my former coworker Melinda would say, "got her hairs did."

Cheesy haikus related to work!

2008-03-21T09:53:00.004-04:00

Today is Friday.
Most of my colleagues aren't here.
Will I find some peace?

Today's Good Friday
for most of the Christian world.
My boss is Jewish.

Wear-your-jeans-to-work-
day is the best day each week.
Fills me with such joy.

The Troll is not here.
I will not have to hear her
off-key-voice. Oh joy!

Ugly beige cube walls,
you offend my sense of style.
Who will paint you blue?

I love the weekend.
Two days with no alarm clocks.
Two days of relief.

----------------

Enough of the silliness! I am downright giddy today. I can't explain it. Yesterday started out downright gloomy, as in "commit this girl NOW, please!" sort of gloomy. Somehow, by the time I left work, I was at least able to cope with things and handle work and the stupid things I had to take care of and my day in general. After work, well, I went to the Harvard Bookstore and found two fabulous poetry collections (an Anne Marie Macari collection and a translation/version of Hafiz's poems by Daniel Landinsky) in the used books basement. Then I went to UpStairs on the Square, a very swank and fancy and amazing restaurant located, well, right on Harvard Square, to meet up with Julia. It's Restaurant Week! Super Expensive Restaurants become far less expensive! It was still a hefty price for dinner, but significantly less so. And I had lovely company. And I drank one of the best glasses of wine I think I have ever had. And at home I found the William Merideth poetry collection I bought for 16 cents from amazon.com's whole 'buy used copies' link. And I opened my e-mail to find three really awesome e-mails waiting for me (two of which I thought might come, at some point, though I had no idea what messages they would contain, and for which I had absolutely no expectations).

Somehow all of this lead me to sleep rather well. Except that I had a strange dream, including a 'standing up for myself' sort of conversation and confrontation with a former coworker who I rather liked while we were in touch despite the fact that she totally dissed and dismissed me after we stopped working together. And then I woke up to sunshine everywhere and put Ambulance Ltd. on the stereo and got a little bit of pep into my morning.

Anyhow, enough of the blather.
Haiku Time was fun!

Statistics. See: consumerism, see: books, see: poetry, see: frivolity?

2008-03-19T12:17:00.003-04:00

Purchased in St. Louis: BLUE EARTH, Aliki Barnstone's most recent collection of poems. VOLCAN, an anthology of translated poems from Central America.

Purchased online: for 16 cents, plus shipping and handling, a used copy of a William Merideth poetry collection.

Purchased online: about a month ago, and waiting for me to read once I finish the novel I am reading, Matthea Harvey's latest poetry collection.

Purchased as a literary journal subscription: 32 Poems, which I really love and hope will one day send me something other than a rejection letter.

Considering purchasing: literary journal subscription, Mid-American Review, another lit journal I loveand hope so much will one day send me something other than a rejection letter.

Almost purchased: a copy of an issue of WITNESS, a literary journal I am considering submitting my poems to. I decided not to, when I was in St. Louis, and I am happy I did because I was able to buy a copy of GETZ AU GO GO at this righteous used CD store, Vintage Vinyl, which I am so happily listening to now. Stan Getz can get me through a stupid work day like very few musicians can.

Coveting: the image I have of when I am a 'real grown up,' meaning when I own my own living space one day (maybe when I find myself in the middle of my little cotton candy dream of having a tenured teaching position at a lovely university?), I will have a library. Complete with those floor to ceiling shelving units that have the light shining down on them. Complete with huge, overstuffed chairs that will swallow me as if they are marshmallows. Complete with big, amazing windows and plenty of side tables for me to plunk down mugs of tea and glasses of wine. Completely my own, with no one else to enter unless I give specific, deliberate permission to enter.

2008-03-18T11:01:00.002-04:00

Sometimes I feel like a salt and pepper shaker set. No, seriously, I do. It's not that I'm schizophrenic or anything. It's just that there are parts of me, of my heart, of my sense of joy, that are so compartmentalized that it sometimes bites me in the ass. Right now, most prominent is Office Self and Poetry Self. I am sitting here in my godforsaken, ugly-as-all-hell beige-walled cubicle in my work-appropriate attire (black pants with a crisp crease down the front and nice little cuffs on the bottoms! brown ballet neck 3/4-length-sleeve t-shirt! and saying all of this exhausts the hell out of me!). I am trying to concentrate and to straighten out the slog of e-mails and requests of my time and energy that rushed in during the super-brief 3 day relief from this place. The Troll whose cubicle is next to me, thankfully, is not singing this morning, though she did fuss about with some trivial, self-important drivel that was (in my ever-so-snootily applied opinion) a bit too loud. There are notes of documents to scan and fax and then fedex and I have no desire, whatsoever, to do this (though I will at some point this afternoon.). There are too many people coming by and peeping their heads in and bugging me over stupid things that they think would be 'good ideas' for my boss to do. And you know, as much as I want to pay my rent and as nice as it is to have good health insurance, I wish I could click my scuffed fluevog heels 3 times and close my eyes and be done with all of this. Somehow.

Because the thing is, Poetry Self has taken over. I spent a few days immersed in concerns of writing, literature, discussion of literature, teaching, and people who give a shit about writing, reading, and teaching. I spent a few days tooling around a college town in the middle of Missouri (my joke is that Columbia is the belly button of the belly button, the nexus of it all, and when I am there I am a little scrap of lint stuck inside...) with a track jacket and comfy jeans and hair shoved behind my ears. I spent time talking over mugs of tea and glasses of wine with poets who, for whatever reason, I trust and find a sense of sincerity in. We talked about influences and aspects of my own writing and directions I could take. We talked about poets I like and poets they know and contemporary critics, one of the more notorious of whom was once a teacher of mine. We talked about Greek music and culture and language and religion and my squeamishness around that. I was validated in ways that Cubicle Land can not possibly offer that this aspect of me--this shaggy little beast that feels so natural, so whole, so complete, so OK with the world around her and more-than-a-little-OK to exist in this world--is more than just some little part of me, that it's more than some frivolous hobby that is beyond anyone's understanding, that it's not something for which I have no place in the world. It's usually the opposite, at least with some of these people around me and with some people in my life who place far more value on my Office Self than on my Poetry Self.

There are big changes coming up in my life. I mean, huge huge changes. It's really exciting, but it's also a bit scary. I think that I need to learn to understand and accept success in entirely new ways that work for Poetry Self and that can de-program the sort of carrot & stick system that Office Self understands entirely too well (regardless of whether or not I value it--I don't--it's still something so seeped into my realm of understanding). But right now, if I am to deal with the list of unanswered e-mails and the confusion that I have at seeing this bullet-train list of things I must respond to and-figure-out-right-now, I desparately need to find a caffeine source. And preferably one that will neither make me puke or trigger all of the GI tract issues that I have easily summed up as 'allergy issues' because of the stupid, annoying list of things that I can't eat or drink.

2008-03-16T18:17:00.002-04:00

Going back to the office on Tuesday will be very hard. Going home tomorrow--the thoughts of reality, of the life of bills and oil heat and alarm clocks in a hardcore sort of rush--will be hard. There is something about poetry and friends--two of the most important things to me--and college towns and university campus--that's so much more "home" than cubicles, 9-5 schedules, task lists, deadlines, and the bullet-train barrage of meetings, e-mails, and faxes will ever be.

(It also maybe doesn't help things that I am high right now on Ted Drewe's frozen custard and that my friends took me to this totally rad used CD store, Vintage Vinyl, and an awesome bookstore, Subterranean Books, in a neighborhood called The Loop and to another great bookstore, Left-Bank Books, in some other neighborhood--I don't know what it's called, something like the Central West End I think? I don't know. All I know is that I had a lovely conversation about poetry with the cashier, and I found a collection that I had been looking to buy, and I really liked the layout of the place. Oh, and my friends took me to Fitz's for lunch--plain pub-ish American food, but really damn good root beer!)

I'm going to go curl up on Benjamin and Shana's comfy sofa with its comfy comfy pillows and wrap the nice warm wool blanket around me and read. Or maybe I will nap. Who knows.

I return to Boston tomorrow night. Then regularity will ensue. Who knows how much poetry will be included in my posts over the next few months? This trip has been unforgettable and important to me in ways I can not really write about in this blog. Something happens to me--awakens inside me--when I am in an environment that supports this whole thing of writing being at the center of my waking life and when I am around people who just seem serious about their writing and sincere towards the writers they're around. And it's sort of important for me, right now, to totally get that recognition and acknowledgement of the part of me that is writer above and beyond anything else. Very important, actually...

2008-03-15T17:11:00.002-04:00

I am in St. Louis right now with Benjamin and Shana. The three of us are all a bit on the low-energy side of things. There is so much to say and barely an ability to focus much, so a brief list for you, my dear blogosphere:

1. Heather McHugh is a total nut.
2. Her craft lectures, though, are totally brilliant.
3. After dinner last night she gave me a huge hug. She also told me to send along a poem of mine that I brought up as a 'changing point' in my writing, it's related to my grandmother, and I brought my grandmother up as Heather and I were having a conversation about what 'quality of life' means and what dying is like if you are not the one to do the dying, if you are just there to watch water recede so slowly from the shoreline.
4. I have overwhelming admiration for Scott Cairns and Aliki Barnstone and overwhelming friendship, affection, and respect for them. This is very important.
5. If you are drinking primarily wine, do not add vodka shots--even just one--to the mix. Also do not add 2 shots of some strange, candy-tasting concoction that is bright blue.
6. Talking about Lucie Brock-Broido's poems never gets old.
7. Columbia, MO is a really cool little college town.
8. The Regency Downtown, on Broadway, in downtown Columbia, has got to be the worst hotel ever. Shittiest air quality. Shittiest air flow in the room. I left that place after 2 nights of horrible sleep and the beginnings of some sinus thing.
9. On a billboard along the highway back to St. Louis, an advertisement for ANN'S BRA SHOP. It somehow sounded scary, like it should be in some scrappy building behind the 84 Lumber or something.
10. I must read William Merideth's poems. It's mandatory for me now.
11. My rental car gets the world's shittiest gas mileage. Dodge Caliber hatchback, for those who care. Cute car--easy breaks, powers up well, nice ride, comfy seats--but crappy gas mileage. The one the car rental place gave me is orange. As in: hiply putrid, dark-ish, decidedly not part of the Howard Johnsons color scheme.
12. I really love Scott Cairns and Aliki Barnstone. I can not say that enough.
13. My hands are cold.
14. Yesterday was like 60? 65? degrees in Columbia. Totally wild.
15. The best thing right now is being with Benjamin and Shana. After a couple of days of totally awesome but also totally intense and exhausting poetry-related stuff and being with a ton of people I do not know, I am so deplete of so much stuff from that 'internal resources' pool inside me. Being with friends--no agenda, no expectations, no need to be outgoing and friendly and chipper (or to even try)--best thing for me right now. They know the salty side of me and the milder side of me and love me anyway. That they are just a 2 hour drive from where I spent the last few days is really good and feels, right now, really important.

2008-03-12T10:32:00.002-04:00

Tomorrow I am flying to Missouri. I'm meeting up with a nonfiction writer at the St. Louis airport and we're getting a rental car and driving out to Columbia--smack dab in the middle of the state--for some writing-related things for a couple of days. Missouri is smack-dab in the middle of the country, so it's like the belly button, and Columbia, right in the middle, is like the belly button of the belly button. Or is it the bull's eye? I don't know. But it's right in the middle. It's that place where all locations are an extension of the roads and avenues that leave the town. It's someplace with a different time zone, with a different type of terrain, with different agriculture, with a different cost of living, with different ideas of what's proper and what's not when it comes to being genteel and having good manners. It's not Boston, but it's not Kansas (though it is right next door to Kansas). It's a place where there are some amazing writers and an amazing university, and all of this is tied to some pretty big transitions and transformations that are happening in the background of my life (soon to be the foreground, but that's another story for another time).

And get this: Columbia, Missouri (of all places) is a place that I am, in equal parts, excited to visit and really fucking scared to visit. There's so much there for me, so much risk, so much adventure, so much of an actualization of so many ideas and dreams that have been in my little pea-brained head for entirely too long now. There will be a good deal for me to say about Missouri over the next few months, and there will be a good deal of elusiveness to my discussion until I talk to Pencil Head about this. It's not quite the time, though. I don't know how I have managed to keep this from him for the past month (I am the worst at keeping secrets), but somehow I have managed. Early May I will sit him down in his office. We will talk. Then I can be much clearer, more specific, more exact with you, my dear blogosphere friends (WHO NEVER LEAVE ME COMMENTS OR SHOW ME LOVE!!!!!). But until then....

Oh, and I leave tomorrow morning. As in: I wake up butt-early to schlep myself and my stuff to the airport to fly away to Missouri (by way of Pittsburgh). I'm in Columbia until Saturday, then I am in St. Louis until Monday afternoon when I fly back to Boston. There will be no posting during that time. I'll be off doing poetry things and drinking wine and hanging out with wheat fields and being around a bunch of people I have never met before...and then finding some comfort in Shana and Benjamin's sweet little house somewhere in St. Louis for a couple days and unwinding after the scenario bizarro that I know the next few days will be out in Columbia.

I'll write on the flip-side.

I totally win...

2008-03-10T12:28:00.002-04:00

The truth is, I did do some work over the weekend. Not much, really--just about 2 and a half hours or so on Saturday, and completed here at my desk in Cubicle Land--but it was certainly enough to be felt, at least on Saturday.

I'm not complaining, you see. I mean, well, I know that I had swallowed a mega-dose of "Dude, I just don't CARE" on Friday afternoon, and for the most part that's true. Nonetheless, though, there is a deadline for a project that I actually get to work on. Though I have so much to learn and feel (note: not "am made to feel," but genuinely feel...of my own volition...) somewhat on the unskilled side of things, there are people who think that I can do this and who think that I can make a worthwhile contribution to this thing we are working on, which is part of a presentation for a major-to-do of a presentation that will be given next month. I get to work with someone who's one of my buddies (one of three women who, combined, I consider to be my Holy Trinity of Sanity in Big Prosperous Biotech Company). I get to learn some stuff. I get to take my writing skills and shift them around maybe 85 degrees and learn to use them in a new way. And, for all of the chaos and self-imposed insecurities this presents, there is one huge, fat reward:

I get to be significantly less bored at work.

This is a really big deal for me. Since I've been here, for the most part, I've been bored (I mean, well, except for composing commentary on Jazz Hands, Very Fussy Hairdo, and the woman whose cubicle is next to mine who I just think of, in my twee little head, as The Troll Who Wouldn't Stop...). Not being bored is my biggest motivation in everything I have sought out here at Big Prosperous Biotech Company, as has been one other thing--being recognized as someone who's got some smarts to her and who balances this job with a totally different role that has its own issues with being appreciated in society, my (part-time) teaching gig at Private University for Rich Kids.

So yeah. I get to be less bored at work. I'm working on a project that had me coming in on the weekend. I was so looking forward, last Friday, to a weekend that had absolutely nothing to do with Cubicle Land--not mine, not anyone else's--but there it is. There you go. Cubicle Land was very much a part of my (rain-dogged) Saturday afternoon. And I am here to tell you, in the most official sense, that I rolled with it. I rolled with the punches and came in and put together a little graphic and converted some text from one file to another similar file and pressed buttons on my computer and clicked away at my little mouse. I did this with the volume on my little laptop way up and the headphones to my iPod absolutely not plugged in. I made funny faces in the direction of The Troll's cubicle, and at one point I considered walking inside her front way and spitting just a wee little bit onto her floor.

Yes that is juvenile. No I don't care. She's really THAT much a pain in the ass.

And to wit: as if her off-key singing was not enough, and as if her melodramatic huss and fuss over Seasonal Affective Disorder and whether or not she gets in her cubicle light that somehow comes from my boss's office door being kept open at her discretion, on Friday, when I got caught in an elevator with her and I asked her about whether she was looking forward to the weekend, she just sort of huffed and puffed and rolled her eyes and proclaimed with as much self-importance as can be imparted in a 10 second elevator ride that that she works a 6 day work-week because, on top of her job here, she also teaches some pottery class of some sort at a community arts center. I mean, well, kudos to her for teaching and kudos to her for having some involvement in the arts. I just laughed a little and told her that I totally understand having minimal 'weekend' time to enjoy--that I have a few of my own jobs outside of this place and can relate to her. I tried to keep the tone of my voice even, and I kept my hands behind my back for fear that I was thwap her across the head. She asked me what it is I do outside of here, and when I mentioned to her that I have very steady freelance writing work through 2 very different clients and that I am also a teacher, she asked for details. Who are my clients? How long have I had them? I *really* teach writing? In a university? And why the heck would I want to teach at a place like Private University for Rich Kids--which over-charges for tuition and which, she claimed (and I am paraphrasing), has a somewhat glorified approach to pampering their students?

By this point we were off the elevator, in our hallway, and I was standing by my cubicle. I seriously wanted to whack her across the head, tear her poorly-dyed hair out, and take her glasses off of her face and snap them into 2 pieces. I refrained, shrugged my shoulders and told her that teaching is really the most important thing to me but right now isn't a path that will give me the job stability that I need if I am also going to afford to pay rent in Boston, and that like everyone else I am just trying to figure out how to be happy and how to keep my apartment heated in the winter. Then I turned into my cubicle and pretended to call one of my colleagues and ask a question.

So I think I went on a tangent there. What I meant to point out is that it's a bit of a bummer that my (sacred!) weekend time was infiltrated with work concerns, but at the end of the day, it's really not a big deal. The project I'm working on right now is pretty decent, the colleagues I get to work with are smart and sassy and empowered people from whom I can learn a good deal, and though I worked a few hours on Saturday, I happen to be taking Thursday and Friday of this week off (I will be in Missouri tending to the part of my life that is all poetry, all the time, but that's for another post, another time). It all evens out in the end.

And you know what? I still had what feels, to me, like a Rock Star weekend! On Friday night I had my monthly poetry series in Brookline, where I read my brand new poem (and Kathy and Vera--who are part of another writing-related circle I belong to--actually came! Yay! Squee!!!), and afterwards the usual motley crew of us went to the Turkish restaurant for dinner. On saturday morning I watched a movie I had netflixed, and then I had lunch with Julia at Casablanca's. On my way to work, I stopped at the bookstore and picked up a novel that hopefully will keep my attention. After my quick jaunt in Cubicle Land I sat in one of the most comfortable chairs ever at the Starbucks in Davis Square (yes, yes, I know it is across from Diesel, and yes I know I prefer Diesel, but oh those comfy chairs...oh the fireplace...) with an excellent mug of mint tea and my novel to crack open. On Sunday I watched a movie I had gotten over the holidays on DVD (BLUE, which I have not seen in a very long time and which is the first of the "Three Colors" films by Kieslowski, who is my favorite director), and I did a ton of laundry, and I had a lovely scrambled eggs and cheddar breakfast, and I talked to 2 friends on the phone, and I played phone tag with Sharla, and I went to Mike's to curl up with my book over a couple of slices of pizza, and I saw THE SAVAGES at the movie theater in Davis Square, and I began contemplating another poem.

And--most importantly--I managed to not think about work at all. I stopped thinking about work the moment I left my office behind me on Saturday. As far as I am concerned, I win. Absolutely.

So yeah. Weekend happened. For most of the time, I evacuated the sense of myself that is regimented, 5 days a week, with a 9-5 schedule. I wore jeans and socks and sloppy old sweaters and just ran my fingers through my hair and let myself be as sloppy as I wanted to be. I took everything in stride--talking to friends, watching movies, delighting in the beginning of a new novel, and even the small bits of work that I knew I needed to get done. It was awesome. And The Troll can go to Cubicle Hell, as far as I am concerned.

An ode to my upcoming weekend...

2008-03-07T13:35:00.005-05:00

Oh weekend, oh weekend, in which direction will you guide me?

Will I movie, will I book, will I sleep and be slovenly? Will I pajama, will I wear (real) clothes? Will I walk, will I spin, will I elliptical my days away? Will I eat, will I fast, will I get self-righteous about my choice?

Will I...oh, never mind, continuing in this way seems to be taking too much work, and right now I am a wee bit short on energy.

What I will say is that I really hope that there is no work, at least with regards to Big Prosperous Biotech Company, infiltrating my precious, sacred, and entirely-too-short weekend time. And I hope that people from work do not creep into my dreams and nightmares (as happens sometimes though, I must say, thankfully less with this job than with other jobs). And I hope that I come into the office on Monday relaxed and more prepared to face the day than I feel today, for today I am the absolute illustration of dispassion, disintrest, and disenchantment. I don't think that it is in me to even feign excitement, enthusiasm, or even the slightest bit of interest over the things that I normally find a drop of energy to fake--expense reports, catering requests, "managing my manager," PowerPoint slide sets, or the other things that are mainstays in, at least, this particular corner of Cubicle Land.

The thing is, I am not seething with frustration or anger. Today I'm not even curmudgeonly. I'm just filled with a major dose (500 mL dose, thankyouverymuch) of "Dude, I just don't CARE." And I am filled with an overwhelming desire to bundle up my little fleece jacket and my hoodie and use as a pillow for the very long nap I would like to take underneath the long expanse of table (seriously, it wraps around 3 sides of my ugly, beige-walled cubicle) that constitutes my boring, stank-as-hell desk.

And about "Dude, I just don't CARE" I want you to know this: it's a new drug and is undergoing clinical trials. I am part of its Phase 2 program. It's administered orally--you mix it with a pomegranate martini and are supposed to drink twice a day. Optimal effect, for women of child-bearing age, is to squirt a wedge of lime into the mixture before you drink it. It can be administered alone, but there are many medical professionals who have written papers on the heightened effects of "Dude, I just don't CARE" when administered along with a wedge of triple-creme camembert and a hunk of baguette. I'm part of the study arm that receives this drug sans-cheese and bread. There is a study arm with patients that have been randomized to receive the control drug--little blue valium pills--twice a day (once around lunch time and once before the patient goes to bed).

The hope of this clinical trial program is to understand the different ways in which curmudgeonly, frustrated attitudes towards work can be mitigated and the ways in which quality of life can be increased for disenchanted, not-as-patient-as-a-cactus professionals who are prone to increased anxiety and stress from their worklives. Patients receiving "Dude, I just don't CARE" are at risk of expeirencing side effects of feeling "zombie-ish" while at work, but the sponsoring company for this therapy has instilled a safety monitoring program that tracks these patients carefully should "zombie-ish" attitudes towards work spill over into a general sense of apathy about the whole of life.

Big Prosperous Biotech Company is not sponsoring this trial and is not responsible for creation of the control arm (valium). My bosses at Big Prosperous Biotech Company do not know that I am participating in this clinical trial program, but there is nothing in the company's Code of Ethics that indicates that my participation will raise a professional or moral conflict with my stupid, meaningless job.

2008-03-06T15:32:00.002-05:00

I've been more or less 'with it' today. I'm still sick, still flu-ish, but far more in-this-world than I have been the last couple of days. Still, I am dizzy and foggy and achey and sore and otherwise, well, flu-ish.

And I have reached a point of exhaustion, just from sitting here at my desk and doing stupid, stupid office things, that is beyond normal (even beyond what is normal for me). It's weird--I've been far more exhausted the last few weeks than I have been in a long time, and I have been getting a good deal more sleep (and more consistently and on a nightly basis...) than in a long time. It makes me wonder if flu is all I have or if mono, which I first got in Spring, 2004, is creeping back in.

The sad thing? I'm too scared to hear the results (too nervous of a possible "yeah kid, you have mono again" response from the MDs) to go to the hospital and get blood tests. It's most likely exhaustion and pent-up stress and a strange sort of resolution that came a couple of weeks ago, by telephone, and some anticipation of things heading my way over the next few months. It's most likely that combined with winter weather and something in my mind saying, "you know you are not meant for this, for a 9-5 every single day sort of schedule" much louder now than it ever has been. And combine that with the flu--and with the fact that I spent the first half of January all flued out with my bad self, and then I went to Germany just long enough for my body to acclimate to the time difference before coming home, and by the time I was starting to get back on track, time-wise, BAM it was February. And February turned out to be an interesting, strange, weird month full of resolution of some pent-up stress and concern and a whole new set of worries entering my horizon.

Aye.
Elliptical as I am, somehow I think there is someone out there who is reading this and who can strangely enough follow what I am saying.

2008-03-06T09:59:00.002-05:00

I love when my boss is conversational. Things have been stressful lately, because he has had some pretty tight deadlines with a variety of stuff related to our clinical trial program at Big Prosperous Biotech Company and because one of those deadlines required him to be in 3 days of intense and insane meetings with various colleagues and these two guys from the UK who are, like, two of the most important guys in the world in our general field (which I will disclose as neurology) and within the specific illness for which we have a therapy and are conducting this clinical trial program. So Pencil Head hasn't been around, and I have gotten some rather quick, to-the-point e-mails asking me questions or needing me to do things while he has been in these meetings. I've had a sense of perspective that he would be a bit crazed with the stuff of his meetings--and with our UK visitors--so I thought nothing of it and kept a lot of stuff in check (see? I call this progress!).

I've also been too sick and flu-ish to really care too much over whether my boss is being persnickety with me or how his stress is affecting our communication. And by feeling flu-ish, I mean sore throat, sore and achey body, the shakes, hot and cold spells, and--last night--fever that reached 104 degrees. Pencil Head asked me if I should even be here today. I mentioned to him that I have no more fever and that I think I am on the mend, so I am here to just plug along and do whatever work I need to get done today.

But anyway, the dude can be conversational. This morning he was leaning against my cubicle wall with a styrofoam coffee cup and was talking with me. He told me about his late nights lately (Midwestern Clinical Research Kitten, he has also been pulling some 2 AM'ers and 3 AM'ers these days...you're in good company I guess?). We talked about our UK guests. He told me about some of the contributions he made to these meetings and things he feels really proud of saying and I felt all Proud Greek Mama. Not to the extent that I wanted to pinch his cheeks and shove a piece of baklava in his mouth, because I am nowhere near being THAT kind of Greek Mama yet, but pretty close. Definitely to the point where recovering-from-extreme-sick-little-me felt warmed with admiration and respect. I brought up a little bit of relatability--some of the things I deal with when I am in the middle of teaching one of my college courses--and we were talking about late nights, about persnickety people, about some of the silly things we can do when we're feeling a little bleary and a lot tired, etc. It was one of those rare moments where, aside from the physical truth that I was sitting in a cubicle and he was within eyesight of his office, the hierarchical structure of Pencil Head boss, Accidental Admin employee, sort of vanished. We just talked like people. And as a person, I enjoyed talking to him. I enjoyed bringing up my teaching (as well as my writing, because poetry came into the discussion a couple of little times) and knowing that he was listening as a regular person and not like as someone who is my boss who has to show some kindness and personability and who is just trying to entertain me.

Next week I am out of here for a couple of days for some poetry-related stuff. I summed it up to Pencil Head as a poetry conference "somewhere in Missouri" and then finishing up the weekend visiting friends in St. Louis, but it's a bit more complicated than that. While I will be attending some readings and a couple of craft lectures, and while I will be having a couple of specific, poetry-related one-on-one conferences with a couple of poets whose work I admire and who I would love to have one day as mentors in my little poetry life, there's more at stake than I can rightfully articulate right now. I'm really psyched to get this little break from Cubicle Land (though it can't come soon enough. All of the curmudgeonly feelings about my job and about this particular version of Cubicle Land, as indicated in previous posts, hold true...it's just that I really like my boss and some of my colleagues...). I desparately need this break, and I need this particular break--so firmly entrenched in this Other Self I have, this little Greek poet chyck--even if it won't be relaxing or restful enough for me to call it a "vacation." And if this little break can end with a couple of days with friends who supply me with hug after hug after hug--something I do not get in my day to day life (and which I sorely need)? All the better.

But for now I will take casual conversations with Pencil Head. I will take his confessions of some early-morning silliness and haphazardness. And I will find comfort in the fact that he is so bleary-eyed today and so exhausted and overwhelmed and anticipate that today will be, for me, easy-going and relaxed. I sort of need it.

2008-03-04T11:45:00.001-05:00

Sometimes the middle of the week just feels like the butt-end of a vacuum cleaner. Not the part that can suck you up (with excitement! and glee!), but the part that spits all of the lint and dust and grime into a bag filled with lint and dust and grime.

The middle of the week, when you are feeling less than enthused about being stuck in Cubicle Land (and when it is in the 50s outside and nice enough to go out and play!), feels like being attacked by lint, sucked in a vacuum, with no apparent escape.

2008-03-03T14:09:00.002-05:00

I am increasingly curmudgeonly.
I am increasingly un-interested in the stuff of my job.
I am getting increasingly frustrated with the concern for details that my job entails.

And I am so aware that part of my rising frustration has to do with this thing that I can't write about here yet (though some of you--those of you, dear blogosphere, who know me from non-work-related-things or who I have a non-work-related-friendship with despite the fact that we are colleagues).

But other parts of my frustration have nothing to do with that. They are entirely attributable to the sheer ridiculousness of my job and the sheer sense of self-importance that (numerous) people in my position have over what they do. They are entirely attributable to the fact that I really jive with some of the people I work with even if what I do is not the best fit for me.

(And I will admit it: I am part snob. A good part of what bugs me is attributable to my own, sinful, stupid-as-shit snobbishness.)

Och. I could work myself into a nasty stomach ache if I am not careful about how I handle my frustrations. I'll just go search for a diet coke instead. Far better idea!!!

My weekend, statistics style...

2008-03-03T11:14:00.004-05:00

2 nights out to nicer-than-usual-for-my-budget restaurants
2 delightful desserts eaten
4 glasses of really good red wine
1 chocolate martini
3 false starts on poems
1 really solid draft of a poem written
1 book (a spiritual memoir) finished reading
1 book (poetry collection) begun to read
2 movies watched with overwhelmingly mild/mediocre interest
2 solid nights' sleep
4 new CDs purchased by way of an iTunes gift card
1 bad allergic reaction
1 hour of panic over a work snafu that is not my job to worry about but a coworker, visiting from out of state, called me about nonetheless
5 minutes taken to promptly get over the stress of said work snafu and snap back into weekend mode
1 meal of my favorite quick-to-go Greek food
2 new games of scrabble begun with friends over facebook
4 semi-drunken text messages sent over my cell phone
0 articles of clothing ruined (trust me, kids, it doesn't happen often)
5 times when I burst into overwhelmed-but-happy tears at just how lucky I am
1 time looked at strangely on the T like I am a complete alien, gremlin, robot, or other sort of inhuman freak

Quick note...

2008-02-29T17:18:00.002-05:00

Frustrations aside, personality quirks aside, personal insecurities and my OWN quirks aside, I have to say that Pencil Head is a pretty decent guy. He has not 'done anything' or 'said anything' lately to deserve this, and in a month and a half's time he might be really freaking annoyed with me over this big thing that I have to tell him (but continue to sit on), and who knows what can happen in our working relationship between now and then. It's just that on some odd sort of level I get the guy. And I get the weirdness and struggle and frustration of having parts of you (no matter how you define these parts: ideology/reality, personality/day to day existence, whatever) that are caught between two worlds (and the worlds of the moment are, if you must know, academia and corporate America). I get the ways in which he means well and the ways in which he tries (even though not always successfully) to find balance between the seriousness he feels towards his work and the strange ways in which he is both introverted and friendly in the rest of life.

He's a weird person.
He's not always the easiest to work for.
He can be the King of Foot In Mouth Disease.
He's definitely not the sort who will champion another person's career, development, or progress in any large, outward, obvious sort of way.
He is someone with preferences and biases up the wazoo.
He is someone who has a good deal of pride paired with his educational and professional background and can sometimes stand behind that pride a bit too much.
He is, though, someone who always seeks to do the right thing (and in his own quiet sort of way, at least when he is present to it).
And he is someone who underneath the stoic and prideful exterior is really just a warm fuzzy teddy bear.
And when you get a glass of wine in him, he is relaxed and silly and goofy beyond belief. His eyes get big like a Sesame Street character.
And he is someone who will have your back when you tell him that he needs to, should something go wrong.
And when I call him on something (though--very respectfully and kindly), he is someone who will admit when I am right.
And when there is something big going on and I need to balance life with work, Pencil Head is someone who is very respectful of the balancing act I have to do.

So all in all--for being in a job that can so often piss me off (see my last post) and for being in a job that is entirely not my life's work or a best fit for me or in any way, shape, or form "my calling"--having a boss who I respect on a very fundamental level (that makes it OK for me to come back to work day after day when I am going through a frustrating patch with the guy) makes a difference.

That's all.

It's almost time for the weekend to begin...

A note for those who may care...or, perhaps, a manifesto of sorts...

2008-02-28T09:26:00.005-05:00

I am not "Super Admin."
I do not get my willies from booking conference rooms when they are not necessary.
I do not get a strange high out of doing expense reports properly.
I do not find extreme joy and satisfaction in keeping another person's schedule.
I do not get all uppity about decorating my cubicle with knick-knacks or framed photos pretty pictures of flowers and gardens.
I do not find calling extra, stupid shit to do "special projects" and claiming them as being particularly "fun" or "enjoyable" or "interesting" and worthy of big smiles and largely-obvious oohs and ahhs.
I do not love worrying over every single stupid detail, but because it is my job to worry about details that my boss doesn't have the time, patience, or energy for, I smile, I gulp my personal interests, and I deal with it.
I do have a lot of respect for Pencil Head, and I understand him and like him, even when he has his dickhead moments.
I do find extreme comfort in the fact that Pencil Head is down with my teaching classes at Private University for Rich Kids whenever the opportunity arises, and I do find a sense of being known and understood in this godforsaken Cubicle Land that Pencil Head gets that this teaching is a much bigger part of who I am than my current job ever will be.
I do value being able to pay my rent and being able to have good health insurance.
I do enjoy a good many of the people I work with.
I do like giving myself the occasional visual reminder of things that make this world worth it--travel (I have a couple pictures of Florence, Munich, and Greek islands up in strategic spots), bicycles, good writing, and beautiful art.
I do value putting the skills and talents I have to use, even if my job is so far from ever being what I am well suited for.
I do like that Pencil Head doesn't seem to care when I come and go and when I take my lunch, so long as I get my work done and so long as I remain dependable and so long as he and I have some pretty clear communication.
I do take huge comfort in the fact that I can escape on my lunch break anywhere I wish and I can read or stare out a window or jot things down in a notebook.
I do value doing my job well, because that is a manifestation of this ever-abstract thing called a work ethic, and because doing my job well is what will ensure that I can keep on paying my rent, having good health insurance, affording some travel and books and other things that constitute the ways in which I live my life.

The End.

Now bugger off.

2008-02-26T08:56:00.000-05:00

So it seems that I went to bed last night a sweet, brown-haired busy-bee girl, and I woke up a snarly-mouthed, vitriol-filled curmudgeon.

And I have to complete my boss's expense report. I hate hate that shit. I hate it worse than anything on Excel. I hate it worse than office moves and powerpoint presentations and beige cubicle walls. Wait. No. I hate expense reports as much as I hate beige cubicle walls.

There is one good reason why my walls are not completely filled and decorated in nice, colorful things. But I can't talk about it just yet. I will soon, though, because it is this wonderful light at the end of the tunnel sort of thing for me (and dear blogosphere, you will understand this once I tell you, because it falls back on the heels of the things I have done this past year--and blogged about--that have brought me the most joy and sense of fulfillment on a daily basis...). But that's for later. It's a coming attraction.

And I have one other thing to say: The Troll Woman whose cubicle is next door to mine better not start singing today. If she does I might go a wee bit postal on her. And this is the inner curmudgeon poking through and seeking its fifteen minutes and talking hellfire and brimstone here.

OK. Today I have excel spreadsheets and a nasty expense report that I have been putting off for a few days. I must do it. I must, first, turn on my iTunes and create a playlist just for getting through hellish tasks. I anticipate that The Decembrists, CocoRosie, Crowded House, and Stars will fill my ears for a few hours...

2008-02-25T10:04:00.002-05:00

This is where I, precocious word freak, come up with a new word:

pajama

Not as in noun, meaning flannel pants and a ratty old t-shirt that's soft as your own skin in more humid and humane weather, but I mean verb--to pajama.

Try it.
You'll love it.

For example, this:

I pajamaed my weekend away.

And by this, I mean that except for the couple of hours that I spent in Harvard Square (look up: drinking IPAs at Shay's, getting a slice of pizza at Pinnochio's, breaking down and buying a couple of CDs because I have been, surprisingly, good this past month when it came to such purchases), I spent my weekend so blissfully in my little home, my too-cold apartment, in my favorite ratty pajamas--flannel pajama pants (that are, like all pants, entirely too long for a short little bugger like me), a red hooded sweatshirt with the front pouch's stitching that is starting to unravel, and fuzzy socks. I read poems, I began reading the novel that my friend Stefanie loaned me, I watched DVDs, I listened to music (see aforementioned CDs listend to over and over again, perhaps ad nauseum to anyone-who-is-not-me), I washed dishes, I baked cupcakes, and I performed other acts of small miracles that would be entirely lost on the naked eye.

To pajama is to take the idea of loafing around and turn it into a complete art form. It is to have a sense of 'selective memory' when it comes to figuring out what aspects of domestic life must be tended to and to keep yourself blissfully unaware of, and unrepentant towards, even the slightest notion that there is more to do than change the roll of toilet paper in your bathroom and wash your dishes and prepare a bag to take to the trash. It is to talk to friends over the instant messenger programs who live far away (one of whom you will see next month when you go to Missouri). It is to ponder the trials and tribulations of trying to save money in the world called Boston, where you can so easily become aware that every moment you are spending money, even if you use the oil heat in your too-cold apartment to heat the place up just to the bare minimum of what it takes for your pipes to not freeze. To pajama is to take a major break from everyone and everything, even if only for 2 days, and to get lost in your own coccoon of a heart so much that you don't really utter any words (except, well, when you are at Shay's: "Lagunitas IPA, please...what cd is playing on the stereo?...Keep the change...thank you..." or at the record store: "These two CDs, please...oh, and I don't need a bag, I'll use the one on my back...").

The result of pajamaing your weekend away is simply this: on a Monday morning, walking from Lechmere station to your office door, you try to figure out what the hell it was that you had to get finished today at work. After about a song on your iPod and after about half of your little walk to your building, you finally remember that stupid excel spreadsheet you've been working on. You also remember that your boss will be back in the office today after his week of vacation in sunny, warm, no-heat-needed-in-this-apartment-mister Florida with his family and returned to Massachusetts only after the snow storms already did their thing and the sky decided to hold steady, at least for a little while. You remember the annoying woman whose cubicle is next to yours--that smug, self-righteous, know-it-all look on her face and the off-key singing and the constant phone calls to facilities to beg them to make your warm office space warmer because SHE is freezing, never mind the fact that all of the cubicles around her are not the slightest bit cold. You remember the lack of windows anywhere near your ugly, sad cubicle and the nasty glow of flourescent lights that intrude upon your sense of what is right and wrong in this world.

And somehow you are not insanely bothered by it all. You have, after all, just spent a couple of days in complete opposition to all that your well-paying, well-benefitted Cubicle Land inspires. You have slept and read and written and gotten lost in your own little world without feeling the need to justify yourself to anyone. You have not had to speak to anyone, and you have looked at a computer screen only when you decided that you wanted to. And even then you were able to do it from the comfort of your own sofa and in the comfort of your favorite little flannel pajama bottoms, the dark blue ones with the crazy stars all over the place. You have, indeed, successfully pajamaed your way through the weekend.

A brief rant...

2008-02-22T09:43:00.002-05:00

Though I will have to write about her another time--more fully--this is just a brief commercial break to tell you that the woman whose cubicle is to my left looks like a troll with a bad haircut. She reminds me of a troll version of Mary Katherine Gallagher the way she walks around this place with an equal combination of smugness and insecurity. And the last few days she has been singing in her very wrong, very un-undearing, high-pitched, out-of-tune voice.

I do not know how much more of this I can handle. At least the other days this week she started somewhere around mid-day. Now it is 9:45 in the morning and she is singing and humming.

I wish upon this person sheer and utter mute-ness. I wish that she has some strange person tie her to a chair and duct tape her mouth shut, only to make her listen to a very poorly captured recording of her own horrible, off-key singing of very shitty country songs. And then her torturer must rip off that duct tape so damn fast that she is stunned in pain, even if only for a few minutes. I wish that this person somehow gets a throat-related illness so that she can not talk for weeks on end. And I wish for the rest of us who see her everyday that someone decides to give her a good hairdo complete with color that does not look like a complete and utter mixture of old, smelly straw and dingy copper pennies.

The only things that you need to know right now...

2008-02-21T11:33:00.003-05:00

1. Since I had Tony on my mind yesterday, campfires have been haunting me in the strangest ways. This is the sort of haunting that tends to come before poems and other big sorts of writings or profound mental obsessions. Don't say that you haven't been warned.

2. I would be content to sell everything I own, save the books and a few other things, and uproot.

3. Unless it is Munich or Thessaloniki or Buenos Aires (even though I have never been to Buenos Aires), I think I always want to live someplace that is close to a farmer's market and a university with a nice campus.

4. Winter like this Boston shit makes me downright lethargic.

5. 2 years ago I had started dating a guy who dumped me for many reasons, one of which was that I was smarter and more educated than he and this made him feel utterly inadequate. The other big reason was that my favorite scent is lavender, and I had this thing with lavendar scented body lotion and lavender oil in the diffuser and taking lavender baths when I was stressed (which is, admittedly, often) and he hates lavender. It took me no time to say "good riddance" to Joe From Woburn. I don't know why I remembered him, but this morning I was on the bus to work and thinking about mountain bikes and for some reason he, who enjoys riding a mountain bike, popped into my head.

6. What is it with the flushing out of men I have known? They're all pretty ridiculous (well except Tony P, he was just not right for me). And I am so utterly not interested in dating or scoping out interesting men these days.

7. I have a meeting at 1:30 with a woman who is so non-threatening but I am often intimidated by her anyway. I chalk that up to my own insecurities. She also looks like a muppet, so I have to mentally resist the urge to burst out in the "Fraggle Rock" theme song whenever I see her. After my meeting ends, I think I will be searching for diet coke and tylenol--two absolutely necessary things in my life these days.

2008-02-20T09:31:00.002-05:00

Tony P lives, maybe, an hour away from me. I don't really know this guy, and I haven't seen him in over 10 years, but somehow I don't know if he will ever be too far from my mind. You see, we met when we were spry young little teenagers at a (gulp) Greek Orthodox summer camp in New Hampshire. My parents were going to send me to a Greek Orthodox summer camp that, thankfully, was in Greece, but due to some environmental issues camp was cancelled that summer. Their blissful 3 weeks in July without my ugly mug to bother them somehow vanished, and my parents panicked. They remembered that their priest's son, who was at a Greek Orthodox seminary in Massachusetts, also worked with a summer camp that the Boston Diocese sponsored.

So I was re-routed. Like a plane trying to fly to Montreal in the middle of a snowy winter, I was rerouted from beautiful, gorgeous Greece--and a camp site that, despite the churchy-churchy-ness of it, was along the most glorious beach and seaside--to some campsite in the woods in New Hampshire. Hard times, man, hard times. I was shoved in the cabin with the older girls, and that was fine with me. I made friends. And I met Tony P, this boy who was 3 years older than me and whose dad lived in Nashua and whose mom lived in Dracut. He seemed nice, but I had more memorable conversations with a few other people. When I got home from my few weeks away, I found letters from him waiting in my mailbox (Tony P left camp 1 week before I did). He wrote about how much he missed me and about how when he realized he missed me that he realized that he somehow cared about this strange girl from NJ who was up in the woods in New England for summer camp.

And thus began one of the greatest flirtations of my little childhood life. Tony P and I never really saw each other that much (except the next summer when I surprised him at summer camp and then I happened to somehow get really shy when it came to dancing the slow songs during our camp dances or sitting next to him and holding hands at the bonfires). We wrote a ton of letters, and he made me all of these mix tapes that brought together some good music (old school U2 and REM) with stuff that I never really liked but, because I was somehow in this idealistically googley-eyed state for a boy who lived so far away, I found endearing and sweet nonetheless.

What evaded me, back at age 14 or 15, was why Tony and I would never be, as my parents told me, "a good match." I was still young enough to be (or, at least, to resemble) a good Greek Orthodox girl who was a good daughter, a sweet kid, and a bit of a conservative, preppy dresser with excellent manners. I was the over-achieving high school student in honors and AP classes. I was raised in a family that encouraged achievement and academic excellence and dreaming big for my professional life in that strange distant time of adulthood. Tony, however, was the boy with a very good heart. He didn't really have much support. His father was a bus driver and owned a double wide trailor on the edge of town. His mother lived in a condo community and owned her own tailoring and alterations business. He was on the hockey team and took the vo-tech classes and knew that he would one day make a good plumber.

When I saw him 10 and a half years ago, I was not yet done with college and on my way towards a new life and a change of scenery and academic paths in Boston. He was working as a plumber and as a plumbing equipment sales person at his local Home Depot. He was also coaching Little League hockey, which made him happy. His taste in music and my taste in music, except for those old U2 and REM songs, were nowhere near being in sync. Tony was still a good person with an honest heart, and that was important to me. But I realized that he wasn't quite the person who could understand me or the strange, colorful chaos of thoughts and feelings that were inside an uncertain, un-confident, awkward 20 year old version of myself.

In all of our lives, we never so much as kissed. I think the farthest we ever went was slow dancing at camp dances and holding hands at the bonfires. I haven't even seen him in ages, and I don't know if he even remembers me beyond, perhaps, my name and the mere memory of having gone to summer camp for a few summers, having made a bunch of mix tapes, having written a bunch of letters to some strange, short girl who lived in NJ.

The funny thing, though, is that whenever people ask me about who my first love was, it's always Tony who I mention. Never mind that when I was in the 6th grade I fell head over heels for someone else (who was, at the time, a friend of mine and also a good Greek boy in a good Greek family that was very close with my family) and that this amorous inkling also went, well, unrequited. Never mind that the mere mention of This Other Person, now, would send me fluttering in strange directions of memory and questioning and open-ended possibilities. Never mind that I was certainly too young and too inexperienced to ever really get what it meant to think that you loved someone and that my pounding little heart never understood what it felt like to be loved back.

Never mind any of this.
It doesn't matter.

When I was a kid, it was all about Tony P. I'm thinking about him this morning--I don't know why. I could try to be a major cheeseball and say that it's because I was listening to some Greek music on my iPod this morning coming into work, but I don't think that's quite it (I never really think about Tony P when I am listening to Greek music, which I do often). And I don't think it's because I talked to That Other Person (with whom I am friends these days, but I'll opt to not say more about that now) the other evening, either. And I don't think that it's because the (very big) part of me that is so focused on writing has been turning back to the translations I have dabbled in here and there of one of my favorite (Greek) poets, Yannis Ritsos. I think it's just one of those things that creeps up on you sometimes when you least expect it. Whether or not he was my "first love," Tony P--in all of his simple, honest, sincere, plumber-handed glory--is a part of my memory and is woven, somehow, into all of the ideas (and issues) that I have about love and about men and about dating and such.

But he's with me. Not so much like the monkey clawing its way up my back, but definitely as a presence and as a connection to the strange, awkward 14 year old who I once was and sometimes feel like I am so disconnected from. It's a reminder, on an ordinary and un-memorable Wednesday morning, that no matter what is or is not happening, I am in the middle of my life and am somewhere along the line of my course--that path filled with people and memories behind me and more people and memories that rest ahead of me.

Not a real update...just a few notes and ramblings...

2008-02-18T22:48:00.004-05:00

1. It's like being a kid, sitting on my hands and waiting for Christmas. I have something exciting to share, only I can't write about it just yet. I need to wait. And waiting is not my forte.
2. My friend Julia's roommate, Alex, said recently that there needs to be a word in the English language that describes the particular guilt that one feels in enjoying the unseasonably warm days that have come from time to time this past winter even though you know that there is something global warming-related influencing that nice warm weather. Today was one of those days--delightfully rainy and grey skied and humid and around 55-60 degrees all day. I loved it.
3. Book to read: Natasha Tretheway's most recent collection, NATIVE GUARD. There's a reason why it won the Pulitzer. I'm enjoying it so much.
4. I am travelling next month, just for a long weekend. It's related to Item #1 AND it's related to friends of mine who live in a particular geography of the USA. I found a ridiculously cheap airfare to this location (clue: belly button of the USA, or thereabouts) and I had to buy the ticket, had to lock in the trip. Thankfully, Pencil Head is chill when it comes to my taking days off--he knows that I know what I am doing and that I take care of things, so there's not really much for him to worry about with me. When I e-mail him tomorrow (even though he is on vacation this week) and tell him what days I am taking off next month, I know I will get the typical response from him: "ok" and a note about remembering to make sure I have backup support identified in case the need arises.
5. I had a little party at my apartment on Saturday. All you need to know: 3 bottles of good red wine, 1 bottle of Moet & Chandon, a bottle of a locally-made chardonnay, a handful of German beers (Melissa--wheat beer and dark wheat beer, which I found at one of the packies in town, and that are from the brauhauses I visited in Munich! You would've enjoyed it...), and, um, 6 wedges of good, expensive cheese. All decimated. Other party offerings were dug into quite heartily, but all that really matters when it comes to parties at my place is that I will always have the best wine and cheese that budget will allow. Because of item #1 on my list, budget seemed rather liberal for Saturday night. It's not too often that this happens.
6. I had today off from work and I enjoyed every blissful moment of it. It was nice to do laundry around 12:30 today and not wrestle with the weekend laundromat people like I usually feel I do on a Saturday or Sunday. I also had so much laundry (lots of gym clothes! Lots of knee socks!!!) that I stuffed everything into my largest suitcase for transport.
7. I saw Sweeney Todd this afternoon. It was good, even though I am not too keen on blood movies. Johnny Depp sang pretty well! I was surprised! And while I enjoyed it, I was so ready to leave by the time the movie ended. I'm not too big on lots of song in my movies, and I've been on such a foreign film, indie film, and documentary kick these last couple of years that when I watch big Hollywood productions it can sometimes seem, well, a little much for me--a little fussy, a little too produced, a little too grand.
8. A couple of weeks ago, my friend Stefanie and I went to see Persepolis. It was the first time in, I think, a couple of years (at least) that I went to the movie theatre with a friend. Wait, no, I saw Borat with Stefanie and her boyfriend Dan about a year and a half ago. I don't often see movies with other people, so I am totally off kilter with this stuff.
9. Maybe I do too many things alone? It's just so easy for me, it just feels so natural.
10. I have not had TV watching capabilities since I left my last apartment in late May, 2007 (and before I moved into that apartment in early June, 2006, I had not had TV watching capabilities other than the most basic fistful of channels...and I almost never watched the TV...). I don't miss it. About a year ago, when I was miserable with my apartment situation, I hid in my bedroom and watched TV a good deal. I used channel surfing as an avoidance mechanism, I guess, as much as reading turned into an avoidance mechanism. That's sort of sad. There are times when it might be nice to have some channels to watch and stuff, but most television (from what I remember) bores me to tears.
11. Tomorrow after work is double spinning at the gym. Wednesday morning is 7 AM spinning.
12. I have a $50 iTunes gift card to use. I've never had one of those before, and I rarely get gift certificates/cards as it is. I think I am putting too much pressure on myself to get JUST THE RIGHT albums and songs with this gift card; it was given to me by someone who, I believe, thinks very highly of himself. I don't know if he's expecting me to meet any 'cool' factor with the freedom to buy that he gave me. I think I am putting too much pressure on myself and on this situation. Maybe I should just choose a few albums from the list of stuff that I have really been wanting and call it a day?

That's it for now! My mind is too random for something more coherent. I promise a real post soon (though I will not reveal #1...hopefully I can hold out a while, but we'll see). I need to get some sleep. I have to work tomorrow. Ugh--my return to beige land and cubicle land and The World's Most Unoriginal Looking Office Space. I am so not looking forward to that.

Grumpy Girl.

2008-02-13T05:49:00.003-05:00

It's cold. Again. I mean--I knew it would be cold, it's winter (duh), but IT IS COLD. As in my fingers could ostensibly get frost bite (and I am sitting in my bedroom).

And it is early. It's 5:50 AM Boston time, and I am awake, my bag for the day fully packed, my clothes on. I am listening to music to help me wake up, and in about 20 minutes I will winterize and walk down my street for the bus.

Why so early, you may ask? Why so (expletive) (expletive) (expletive) early?

No. I am not a morning person. I am the complete, snarky-toothed antithesis of a morning person. But my gym rat friend, M, who I know because our "favorite bikes" in the spinning room are next to each other, needed help getting to the gym on Wednesday mornings and swears by the 7 AM spinning class. I told her I would come with her today, check out the instructor, and see if I could make this a regular thing (the gym buddy thing can be good, you know...even if only for getting you accountable and going to the gym...).

So I am up. In order to make the 7 AM spinning class, I need to take the 6:25 bus from my house (which will get me to the gym by 6:35--very early--but not horribly so).

And take note that last night I did my first doubled up spinning class since the start of September. I've been building myself up to get back to double classes, but MAN OH MAN last night was hard. There is a new 6 PM teacher (and that's the hour long class). Unfortunately for me, I find him exceptionally good looking. His music choices are also really, amazingly, ridiculously good. It appeals to the part of me that responds to good music and good lookin' guys, and it appeals to the part of me that is a sheer masochist--I mean, he's probably gay. Or engaged. Or Otherwise Taken. Or Otherwise Not Interested, because hell--in that class I am a complete sweat ball. And that's sort of gross. I mean--eew. Even if he were not gay or already taken, who WOULD find a sweatbomb cute? And who would find the look of effort and struggle in parts of your class endearing?

But anyway, I was getting sidetracked. What I mean by my doubling up on spinning classes last night is that I am a bit on the sore side. And I am going back to spinning soon.

Oh, and I really learned the bad effects last night of doing something as stupid as not eating before going to the gym (yesterday I hadn't eaten since about 1:30...not good...). I had the in-gym equivalent to totally bonking the way that some people do out on the road. Definitely not good.

The One In Which She Admits That She Is Not An Ice Princess...

2008-02-11T10:16:00.001-05:00

In the spirit of confessions and revelations that I feel I have been making these days, let me offer up another. And this one, dear blogosphere, comes into light with fear, sadness, and great insecurity:

I can't stand winter.
I don't think I can handle another cold winter.
I don't think I can handle another winter with snow and ice.

There. Don't we all feel better now that I have let out this baby demon from my cracked-open little heart? Don't we? I don't know. I do. Maybe we all need to take a deep breath.

Now here's the thing. I was born in Ohio. I was raised in NJ. When I was 20, I moved to Boston and lived here until I was 24. I moved away for 2 years (to Florida) for my master's degree and came back just before my 26th birthday. And I have been here since then (which is, for those who care, almost 5 years).

So one would think that I am quite a pro at handling 4 seasons, right? One would think that I've got this cold and snow and ice thing down pat--many layers of clothes, flannel pajamas and flannel bed linnens, hats with ear flaps, etc.--right?

Sad truth: I don't. I mean, well, I did. Up until I was 24 years old, winter was just one of the seasons. It wasn't the most pleasant of seasons (that is reserved for late-spring and mid-autumn, thankyouverymuch), but it was just something to deal with. I bemoaned the fact that my winter shoes never seemed to be good enough, but I trucked on anyway. I didn't think anything of exiting my apartment in the middle of a snow storm to go to the grocery store or to the bar down the way to meet a friend for a drink; I just flipped up my coat collar and tucked my head down and forged ahead like a brave little bunny. I hadn't fallen into the love of cooking a big pot of soup on my kitchen stove yet and filling up little tupperware containers with single-portions for a quick zap in the microwave, but I did have a good system down pat of cooking hearty, filling, warming foods. I even declared Saturdays as "bread baking day" and would revel in that warm, happy, cozy in-the-moment-ness of feeling my apartment heat up as my bread baked in the oven.

I had it down.
And then I had to go and shake things up and move to Florida.

Where I lived (Gainesville), there was winter. I mean, that's not what you think of when you think of Florida, right? I'm sure you think of flamingoes and palm trees and nice, hot sun all the time. I'm sure you think of pink stuccoed walls and Spanish tiled roofs. I'm sure you think of retirement community upon retirement community upon retirement community. But there is winter. Maybe not down in the lovely Palm Springs or Ft. Lauderdale version of Florida, but in the northern-central Gainesville version of Florida, there is definitely winter.

That winter seems humane to me. It consists of a few weeks of cold (read: above 35 degrees, for the most part) weather, maybe some rain, and the need to have a decent assortment of cozy sweaters and a heavy-enough coat in your wardrobe. It doesn't necessarily mean flannel sheets (at least not to me, the verified Northerner who 'immigrated' to Gainesville, as people said with a little chuckle all too often). If the weather gets really cold (meaning--30 degrees for more than a day or so), then the public schools might close for a "cold day" (akin to the "snow days" of my New Jersey childhood). Thing is, the pipes down there can't handle such cold weather and might freeze.

So there is winter. It's a no snow, no ice, not-too-cold, not-really-windy version. It's a shorter version with days that have more time between the sunrise and sunset of daily life. It's a version that my blood and biological capacity to handle cold weather seemed to embrace so much that now, almost 5 years after having returned to New England, I still long for it. Something inside me that changed--the way my blood thinned, the way that my ease of experiencing a season, the understanding that life is not always like a northeast experience of winter and I can choose my life to include a much milder experience of winter--has been screaming at me for a little while. Combine my dislike of winter and my inability to cope with a Boston winter with the general restlessness I feel, and it's a recipe for disaster.

What does this mean? I have no idea. All I know is that I chose to wear a cashmere sweater to work today. Aside from my absolute love of cashmere, there is the fact that cashmere is warm. I chose to wear knee-high socks. In fact, one of my biggest clothes-related expenditures this year (aside from the cashmere sweater I am wearing now and stuff I bought in Munich but that's besides the point) has been knee-high socks. It seemed appropriate, throughout the first half of December, as the weather got nasty and I started slipping and sliding and falling down all over the place, to at least ensure that my lower legs--with their winter-affected, dry-skinned-no-matter-how-often-I-moisturize glory--that it is imperative for me to own at least a 2 weeks' supply of knee-high socks. For those of you who count, that's 14 pairs. That's more knee-high socks than I own gym socks. And that's like woah.

Today is cold.
Today is really (expletive) (expletive) (two-word, hyphenated-expletive) cold.
I don't know how much more of this I can handle.
I'm at a breaking point.
Winter is nasty.
Even whtn it is, as this year is for Boston, a relatively "mild" winter.

I'm wishing, in a strange way, to not have left Florida upon finishing my MFA program. If I were there now, I would likely be in the middle of a mild, snow-free, three-week-long 37-45 degree version of winter. I wouldn't need so many pairs of knee-high socks. I would likely not need to own multiple pairs of flannel pajama bottoms. I would likely not be sleeping in a hooded sweatshirt and with two comforters on top of me in my bed, huddling in the exact same position all night long and traumatizing my cat as I keep her close to me for the extra warmth that she brings. I would likely not be writing this strange little bitch-fest on the horrors of cold winter weather (and it is cold even inside my office where the heat is much higher than it is at home, because oil heat is very expensive and I can not afford to keep my heat above 60 degrees as an everyday sort of thing).

I would likely not be as grumpy as I am, and my skin would likely not be as dry and splotchy as it is.

And about the fact that Florida is hot and humid as all get-go for a significant-enough chunk of the year? I have no comment other than this: during the 2 years in which I lived in Gainesville, my skin never looked so good and fresh and dewy and happy. And that's saying a lot, because, in general, people tell me that I have good skin (if only they saw the state of my lower arms and my shins in the dead cold of winter, they might think otherwise...).

I've caught the bug...

2008-02-05T13:30:00.001-05:00

It's like being a mosquito squashed hard against a piece of masking tape.

Oh, the things that happen when the things you are normally fine with--no cable TV, no antenna, no newspaper subscription (though with internet versions of newspapers, this isn't really an issue for me)--come and stare you in the face. Oh, the way that obsessions grow when you find yourself in a state of being "without" when you are normally so apathetic to these same things.

Oh, what happens when there is an election and when today is Super Tuesday and you are in a state with primaries today. And when you are actually fired up over it, when you have a clear idea of who you support, when you can't do anything but care about what it means for someone to wind up with more delegates than another candidate.

Oh the insanity of it all.

In the background, as I am doing my small tasks at work, I have the msnbc.com live video stream playing. It's almost like the constant CNN that was on the television when I was growing up. I am halfway listening to the political commentary. Every so often I am toggling between msnbc.com and cnn.com to see what updates come forward, what articles are written, what opinion pieces are posted.

For the first time since I was old enough to vote (1995 for those of you who care), I am excited about a candidate. Of the options in my political party designation, there is one candidate who tugs at me in a major way. This has never happened before. In the past, I have always had to choose who would be "good enough" or who I think might "do the least damage" of the available options.

For the first time since I was old enough to vote, there is a situation of presidential candidates who are completely free from the competition presented by a current president seeking re-election or a current vice president seeking a promotion. This fascinates me. The fact that our last two presidents were both two-term presidents, the call for change in this country that this implies--amazing. The fact that one of our political parties will have either a racial minority or a woman as presidential candidate--completely amazing to me. The fact that there is a candidate I really sincerely support (and a candidate that, should the party nomination go to, I can not feel like a totally compromised bucket of slime to get behind)--amazing. The fact that I am wishing that I had a TV equipped with cable so that I could geek out to msnbc and cnn--totally amazing.

So, instead, live video stream from work. And I know that tonight will be a late night as my post-spinning-class self stretches out in my bed, propped up by pillows, and watches video streams on my little macbook. And I know that tomorrow I could be in for an interesting mood depending on the results, whether they be positive or negative.

And I know that this morning, when my alarm rang just enough earlier than usual so that I could walk to my polling location and cast my vote, as much as I grumbled at the obscenity of getting out of my warm, soft, comfy bed (complete with purring cat!), I also said to myself, "voting day!" and jumped out of bed, turned on Sigur Ros on my iPod to give me music with enough of a rhythm to get me ready for my day and enough moodiness to fit with Boston's cold, grey, rainy, steel-wool-sky sort of a day, and made my preparations. Amazing that I almost left my apartment with confirmation of my polling location, my cycling shoes, and water bottle but no cycling shorts, sports bra, or gym t-shirt. (But I blame that on having to wake up earlier this morning) When I did leave my apartment, my Bailey Works all properly attired and an umbrella in my hands, and I walked towards my voting place, I smiled into the window of the Dunkin' Donuts on Boston Ave. and quietly asked the morning sky whether or not these people have voted, or will vote, or even care.

And then I voted.
And I still made it to work on time.
And I have been steadily caffeinating myself since, because even with the excitement of voting day (!!!) I am one tired, headachey puddle of a girl today. But that's another story.

And about who I voted for--and who you voted for--let me say this (and only this, at least for right now): I don't care who you vote(d) for (I mean, well, I do, but it's not right to say that, is it?). I care that you vote. I care that you care about this strange, amazing country in which we live. I care that you follow what's happening, that you inform yourself, that you choose your candidate not because she is a woman, or he is African American, or he comes from your state. I care that you get that even the primaries are really important. And if you've caught the bug, if you are following the newscasts, I care that you do so sincerely, that you don't bash other people's candidate of choice, that you request that the people in your world are absolutely certain as to why they are voting for whomever they have chosen.

And then I care that you don't live close enough to my apartment to also be siphoning off of the un-password-protected wifi access points in my neighborhood to slow down my computer connection tonight when I am stretched out in bed and watching television on my computer. Because that would really, totally suck.

Just Do It: A Glimpse Into The Mind Of...The Heart Of...The Body Of...

2008-01-29T21:24:00.001-05:00

I am filled with self doubt.

It crawls into me, spills all around me, tries to take me over. Today, today, no matter how many moments I found myself in the height of my confidence and self-awareness, it's the self doubt that is memorable, remarkable, monumental. It told me to not go to the gym. It told me that I am so tired, I am so out of it, I am so filled with worries that I would just suck ass if I dared to go to spinning class.

Even when I know that this class--Tuesdays, 7 PM, my gym--is my favorite class.
Even when I know that this class--spinning, any time, any where--is one of the most amazing, ass-kicking, restorative, meditative, reflective experiences that I can easily have in my daily life.
Even when I have a bag packed and with me, sitting all nice and cute under my desk at work, holding cycling shorts and shoes that are worth a lot of money and that I bought to use. As often as possible.

I find a moment of relief. Though I am cutting it short--I have exactly 8 minutes between entering the locker room and class beginning--I spot one of my fellow spinners, a girl who I usually ride next to and have gotten along with quite well. I ask if she can save my bike for me, since she will reach the room before I will, and she says she'd be more than happy to. She knows I would do the same for her in a heartbeat, and in the past I have. This reassures me enough to be zippy in changing my clothes, filling my water bottle, using the restroom, and heading up to the spinning studio. Seeing the bike I like to ride reserved for me in a class filled with people does something miraculous, even if its affect lasts ever so briefly: it puts my self doubt right in its place, right firmly under the ball of my foot.

And then class begins. K, my teacher (though somehow that word doesn't seem right anymore. It's like she's my guide. It's like I feel like I have come to find, from her and the other teachers I like, how to tap into my own ability to challenge myself, correct my form, and push forward...), is in top form. I know this will be one damn good class, and it's totally a "game on" moment. We warm up. I'm pedaling in circles. I am letting my day wash away from me like water off my back.

And then the shit hits the fan. The self doubt comes roaring louder than I could possibly articulate and lets me know that there is no way in HELL that I will overcome, there is no way in hell that she will rest squarely under my feet and pushed into the ground like a common whore. And she works her magic. She lets me know that there is no way this class will be a safe haven for me. Not tonight. No way. Not gonna happen.

My legs do not move as fast as I have remembered them moving.
My breathing can not quite get right.
The voices in my head keep on telling me that no way am I good enough for anything in this world, no way will I ever make my dreams become realities, no way will I ever be happy, or peaceful, or connected to this world in a real and lasting sort of way.

This happens often. Confidence is something relatively new to me. No matter how much I have accomplished and no matter how aware I am that I am the person who has made so many (pretty amazing) things happen in my life, it's so recent for me to be able to say that I am worth all of the love and investment and energy that other people want to send my way. It is so recent for me to totally acknowledge that I deserve the best outcome from each risk that I take, that regardless of what happens, I am a complete success.

Even if it's as big as, say, getting a promotion at work. Or getting a poem accepted for publication in a journal. Or making a new friend.
Even if it's as small as, say, kicking ass in a spinning class that is not any more remarkable than any other spinning class I have taken over these last few years.

We are 12 minutes into class. I am listening to my voice of doubt. She is on a rampage, and she has called for back up. The tops of my thighs remind me what it feels like to be water logged, what it felt like to be a 4 year old kid in my godmother's pool learning to swim, crying the whole time, while the big kids played in the deep end. My left knee is a globe of pain and uncertainty. Stitches form in my right rib cage and it is all that I can do to not crumple in the pain and ache of it all.

Everything inside me is filled with doubt, is forming a campaign to get me off of that bike and down to the locker room where I can hide in a corner, cry, completely wuss out, submit myself to every single word of self doubt that has come my way.

I know I have a choice. I know in this utterly unremarkable spinning class, I have the choice that signifies a life of choices. I can stay in. I can forgive myself if my pedal strokes are just short of where they should be and if my resistance is slightly less than where it normally would be as long as I feel like I am giving it 100%. I can furrow my brow and dig in and focus my way through to the end of class and forget about the usual euphoria and wellspring of love and joy that I feel on the other end. I can let this whole crazy thing of hanging in there be my signifier of success.

Or I can give in. I can fold into the stitch in my side and let the rising ache in my right ankle, the mounting headache with claws that grab into me as far as my eye sockets, the persistent tickle in my throat, and anything else that my self doubt conjures be my excuse. I can press the emergency brake on the spin cycle, jump off, and let myself be entirely stopped by this voice.

I can choose who I am. In that moment, I can embody every bit of will and effort and excuse and chaos inside me. This is life, isn't it? We can all choose who we are. All the time. Every moment. We can figure out what's really inside us--whatever mixture of good and bad presents itself--and choose what to highlight and what to shove into the background.

Tonight, I choose effort. I choose to let my spinning class be less than the usual euphoria and giddy-happiness, so long as I choose for it to be a complete class, so long as I choose for myself complete effort. I choose to not figure out where this self doubt is coming from but to keep on pedaling on that bike even though every "do not even GO there, girlfriend" type of message is ringing loud in my ears. I choose to focus on a random place, an entirely vacant non-place, straight ahead of me and out the window, across the street and down the way, to remind myself every fucking minute that remains until this class ends that all I have to do is use my glutes, quads, hamstrings, and calves to make circles of these pedals. That's all. Nothing more and nothing less.

Tonight, I choose who I am. I choose to be the anti-voice, that reason beyond the self doubt. I choose to be absolute effort and focus and willfulness in the face of an activity that is usually effortless, usually such a huge release, usually so natural for me. I choose to forgive the imperfections in my stride and cadence and commit to keeping solid form and as complete, fast, and strong a cadence as I can possibly give in that tired, crazy, chosen moment.

I am my self doubt. I am the voice beyond self doubt. I am knit eyebrows and arms gripping the bike handles and ten thousand rivers of sweat rolling down my face. I am musk and legs and a complete tornado of a headache. I am the force that pushes me forward and the counter-force that wishes to stop me. I am the capacity to forgive and move forward. And tonight, I am all deliberate commitment in the face of a very loud but shallow argument.

I realize, as I am pedaling and pedaling and pedaling, that there is no way in hell that I am my friend H who can shoulder 'cross bikes and run like hell up the muddiest hill out there. I am not her boyfriend, S, who can race a Pinarello as part of some super-awesome cycling team. I'm not the kid who can run a 6:30 mile. I am, instead, something--someone--entirely different. I am me. I am the girl who pushes her way through spinning class even when the voices inside her head--the gatekeepers to the really nasty hobgoblins that wreak havoc on head and heart for such overwhelmingly long stretches of time--are loud and piercing. I am the girl who knows that this one class will not be the 45 minutes of elation and sanctuary that she is used to experiencing. I am the girl who actually quite likes being who she is, who knows that she doesn't need to be the queen of the taranta to be strong and worthwhile and a complete ass-kicker. I am the girl who pushes back and who acts even in the face of self doubt. I am strong and determined and focused. I wield my ability to choose like it is the best weapon and the best shield I could ever have.

And I am the girl who finds a strange and unexpected reward at the end of spinning class: an entirely different kind of elation. A kind of freedom that has me feeling so irresistably balanced and clicked into the world around me. A deep, complete belief that, even with the self-doubt that still punches up in the air from beneath the balls of my feet, I am so totally fine and in charge.

And now, in my dark apartment, as I lay in bed and wind down towards SleepVille, I am the girl who knows who she is, who feels the muscles in her legs that she willed into action, and who is entirely at peace with the fact that self doubt exists. It's not going to go away. It's part of my deal in this world. I am the girl who has even more proof that this self doubt does not need to stop her or to inspire her to make stupid excuses and turn into The Queen Of The Lame. I am the girl who feels peace and calm and an indisputable centeredness instead of elation.

I am. I absolutely, completely, and utterly am. In this world, at my gym, in the same body that has entertained fear and worry and concern and uncertainty beyond what I can properly articulate. The heart of me, the willfulness of me, the soul of me is still there.

Always.

2008-01-24T09:20:00.000-05:00

I am back.
And in the office.
And I have diet coke by my side.

Why? Why did I have to leave that beautiful, beautiful, beautiful city? Why did I have to come back here? Boston is home to me. (Not my only home, mind you, but the home I fill right now) I know this place like the back of my hand. There is such comfort in returning here, in seeing these buildings and streets and landmarks that are so familiar to me, but there was also such great comfort in being in Munich, in discovering a city that so organically felt like home to me, too.

Yesterday, inside Terminal 2 of the really beautiful, really modern, really security-happy Munich airport (glass walls! super modern design! Brauhaus at every turn, even in the gates areas! No McDonalds or Sbarro in sight!), I was listening to a playlist of some of the sappier, more somber, more "meaningful" songs I like (shut up) and thinking about my previous few days in Munich (and Zurich...but mostly Munich) and smiling like a kid the night before her biggest and best birthday party and crying like a woman who's just been separated, and not of her own free will, from her most meaningful lover.

And like honey being sucked so easily from a flower, mantras came to me left and right:

I have to make it a priority to go back to Munich.
I have to make it a priority to keep on finding myself in this huge wide world.
I have to make it a priority to not let myself feel "stuck" in any one job, circumstance, or phase of my life.
I have to keep it a priority to live my life as I dream, as I wish, as I imagine for myself instead of how others seek to influence me.

The thing is, I am so much better for this world the more I exist in it, the more that I explore, the more that I take adventures. I am so much better for myself the more that I do not stick with what seems like the safest route to take, so long as what risks I do take feel, if nothing else, like the most truthful, honest, and sincere risks to take. While things like the prospect of cozying up to the likes of Hott German Neurologist, or other interesting-seeming men, can provide excitement, they have never, in my entire life, provided the fulfillment that discovery has. (I've always known this; it's just that lately I've been a wee bit sidetracked for a few reasons that extend beyond the prospect of Hott German Neurologist that prsented itself--in strange and fluctuating ways--over the last few months. The reminder has been great to have.)

Anyhow, I loved Munich so much. I loved my little trip more than I can say. Somewhere in the next week or two, I will have pictures from my disposable camera, which was a "stand in" for my digital camera when my luggage was lost, developed and hopefully scanned all nice and pretty. And I hope to also have my digital images transferred onto computer. Maybe I will have some to show you?

2008-01-22T07:11:00.001-05:00

Munich in the rain.

Still, this city is gorgeous. Grey skies and the rain that is sometimes a mist and sometimes harder than that can't bring this place down. The truth is that rain makes me happy. Too much of it and I will start to transform into a batty, depressive mess, but when the rain punctuates sunnier weather, when there is a slight chill to wrap the bones after days of warmth I am happy in this very deeply felt sort of way.

The fact that this rain, this peace inside me, this strange bend towards a rather bizarre and personal sort of happiness comes on my last day in Munich is poetic in that way where you know to write about it (in a poem!) would be the most trite, cliche thing ever imagined. The fact that it exists, though, in a city that has so strangely and largely captured my heart is, still, absolutely perfect.

I am writing from inside the best internet cafe I have found between here and Zurich. I'm in a neighborhood called Schwabing, which is just above the Victory Gates and the university. It's this long place that has a bar, that is super-swankly-trendy and modern in its design, that plays lo-fi ambient and down-beat music, and the people who are here are really so friendly. There are literally 2 tables and one sofa-with-sofa table that do not have a computer terminal. The staff here is friendly, and yesterday afternoon I checked my e-mail with a really great gin & tonic by my side. Today I have an individual-serving tea pot with mint tea steeping by my side.

About two blocks away from here is another great cafe, where I sat earlier and read. About two blocks, perpendicular from the line that can be drawn between this place and the other cafe, is a great bookstore. The general neighborhood, Schwabing, is totally the sort of place I would like to live if I were ever to live in Munich. It is clean and calm, its apartment buildings are these totally simple and beautiful rehabbed old buildings, and there is a really not-pretentious mix of stores, restaurants, bars, cafes, and living spaces. Public transportation is plentiful (really, 4 stops between here and Marienplatz, which is sort of the tourist center of the city, and which is where the aldstadt--or old town--is, complete with the viktualienmarkt and my hotel, which is right off the edge of the market). Something inside me feels peaceful, natural, and like the person who is living her life in an everyday sort of way (rather than the person who finds peace and an organic sense of self through the adventure of travel) when I am here. Earlier today, walking in the rain with my little messenger bag and my iPod earphones blazing with Stan Getz and just wandering through different streets I felt like I lived here, like I am of this city, like I am of the pulse of this place.

I could live here. I could honestly, sincerely, completely live here.

Last night, I went to Jazzbar Vogler, which was listed in a little sidebar list of jayy spots on the 'nightlife' section of my DK Eyewitness tourguide for Munich. I was totally surprised by this place, because I didn't exactly know what to expect from a place listed in a tour guide. All I knew was that I love jazz, I was in the mood to escape into music, and this little bar is in the same neighborhood as my hotel. It was the coziest, most welcoming little space. The lights were very dimmed, the walls that were not brick were painted a deep red, and the back-drop of the platform that serves as a stage was this set of panels of hammered tin or copper (I couldn't tell with the dim lights). It was really just like a little, tucked-away (it really was tucked away; there was not even a light to the sign on the street announcing that that very spot was Jazzbar Vogler) neighborhood bar. The bartender, who is very nice, knew many of the people who walked in. I sat at the bar for the couple of hours I hung out there and listened to music (all of which was REALLY good) and sipped on my dunkel weissbiers. I loved it so much, that feeling of just being in a local neighborhood spot in the presence of the moust touristy part of the city, and I might go back tonight (aside from how welcoming and cozy the place felt, I am just a sucker for a down to earth bar and good jazz).

God, I can't believe tonight is my last night here. I feel like I have always lived here, like this is the same to me as Boston is--my home. Even though I don't speak German, or know anyone here, or know this city beyond what fills its center (which I know is not the entirety of this place's throbbing heart).

There is so much else I could say about this place--about being in the museum yesterday, about the tears that filled my eyes from inside Frauenkirsche, about how lovely the viktualienmarkt is--but it really is this little stuff--walking around aimlessly in the neighborhoods that have somehow left a mark on me, finding little neighborhood spots, spending time reading in cafes, feeling my heart speak to me through the things that fill the everyday-ness of my own life--that make this place my own.

This is the Munich I will love and miss the most.

This is the Munich that I hope, so much, to return to.

This is the Munich that reminds me of who I am in this world, of the life that I value, of the ways in which I experience joy and the importance this has to me and the validity of that, even in the face of the wishes that other people have for me and my life.