Don't Hate Me 'Cause I'm Indie and You're Punk

Exhaustion

Las Vegas and California. Waiting on the plane to get home. Las Vegas was AH-MAZING. I'm still surprised at how little attachment I feel to California. It's familiar and full of things I love but it's not home. Given my constant desire to leave it, I don't know if it ever was. But the people I love are there and there is a very happy thing and a very sad thing happening right now and I could really use a teleporter.

I don't even try

I don't know what I'm passionate about right now. I feel hollow all the time. I'm never hungry but also never full. In February I decided to stop fighting everything all the time but I guess in my case that just makes me apathetic. Or numb. I can't even tell which.

I've been trying to learn to sit with my feelings more. Or rather, just to actually feel them. To be able to say to myself things like "I am sad that this boy doesn't like me even though it's not logical to be this sad about it" or "even though I completely understand and agree with the reason I'm losing my job it's reasonable to be sad and scared and anxious". Maybe this is the way you feel feelings all the time. This is not the way I feel feelings. Look, there's a reason Spock has always been my favorite. However, you'll be shocked to know I am not a Vulcan, even though I sometimes often act like one. The problem is that by the time I actually let myself feel things I'm feeling this huge reservoir of feeling and I can't identify where each one is coming from.

So I can tell you right now that I am sad and bitter and disillusioned; that I just suspended my OkC account for the eleventybillionth time though in truth I've been on an online dating hiatus for a month now already anyways; that none of the job listings I've read make me want to send in my resume; that I made out with a boy I had no intention of ever making out with again and I honestly don't know how I feel about it, I want to say I feel nothing about it but I don't think you can actually make out and cuddle with somebody that you like and not have feelings about it and I think it's actually that the feelings are too complicated and too many things and so I'm not sitting with those ones yet* and that I'm well aware there is some major grammatical craziness going on in this post but I just don't give a fuck.

But I can also tell you I've had moments of peace and serenity lately. That walking around in Central Park with the sun on your skin and new friend is happiness. That nighttime rambles with a flask size bottle of whiskey and friend you haven't seen in a while are kind of great even if they unexpectedly kiss you later. That I do have one single job interview lined up and it looks perfect for me. That I spent yesterday at my pastry cook's friend's home out in Fresh Meadows and got to hang out with her siblings and large friend group and remember what it feels like to be part of something stable and solid. That I have a week packed full of social activities with other BiSC goers who are fast becoming my close friends.

I can tell you that I've recently realized that I'm angry at myself for letting go of and being less vocal about things I care about to make myself more palatable or to fit into groups better. That I've taken my philosophy of "pick and choose your battles" a little too far. Hi, I'm Alana and I am a feminist and I probably don't think any of your sexist/homophobic/racist jokes are funny and yeah, I'm generally ludicrously PC and I'm ok with that. JUST SO WE'RE CLEAR.

So maybe it's not that there isn't anything going on. Maybe it's that there's too much going on. Too much swirling around in my head for me to sort through it and feel any of it. Today I decided I was just going to fake it until I make it. I cleaned my room, I did some yoga, I ate an entire pineapple and also quinoa, poached chicken, black beans and avocados. Fine... also an entire bag of cadbury mini eggs.

Baby steps back to caring people, baby steps.

*This is how I feel: I feel sad and a little angry because it was nice and it was comfortable and making out and a cuddle buddy were exactly what I needed this week and it wasn't expected so it was a nice ego boost but it wasn't with somebody with whom I am actually ok with casually making out and cuddling. So, I'm sad that it's not something I get to do in a non-casual way and a little angry with both of us for doing it. And maybe a little angry at myself for not being over him even though I said earlier it was ok to be sad. God I hate feelings. THEY DON'T EVEN MAKE SENSE A LITTLE BIT, CAN I PLEASE BE A VULCAN NOW?

Hello, Funemployment

For those of you that don't follow me on twitter or missed my tweets about it, as of April 14th, I will be unemployed. Unless I find a job by then, in which case, I will not be unemployed but will have a new job.

Yesterday I was informed that since when the gelato shop/bakery reopens it will be tiny and the restaurant will be the primary business focus and I am a baker, it just didn't make sense for the business to keep me on anymore. Which is 100% true. I had started sending out resumes in February when it became apparent that the bakery was going to drastically downsized but then there was a lot of talk about expanding the wholesale business and I figured I'd stick with it a while longer. Oh universe, you're so funny sometimes. The pastry sous chef position and what that roll entailed were created for me, to get me to come back to work when I had left last Summer and it was a really great fit for me then. With basically no bakery, it's not now. I can't disagree with their reasoning for letting me go when it's the same reason I've been thinking about leaving. It doesn't mean it doesn't suck though.

"Stability" was my word to work towards in 2012 and that was part of the reason I stuck with my job. I wasn't in love with it, but I thought sticking with it would allow me to push work a little more to the backburner and focus on getting the rest of my life back together, figuring out who I am outside of being a chef, do some volunteer work and maybe have a more regular social/love life. My job has always been where I put the most focus in my life and I wanted to let go of that a little bit. Now I'm trying to figure out whether or not that's an option.

I'm trying to figure out where the balance is between not selling out my artistic integrity and having medical benefits. Between making enough money to live comfortably in New York City and making food I can stand behind. I read these job descriptions for new bakeries and just opened cafes and most of them... I just, I just can't. I can't do it again. I've poured my heart and creative energy into so many struggling small businesses that weren't mine for too little pay and too much of my life given, and all I can think is that I just want some motherfucking stability. I just want enough money to live off, benefits and sick days. That's it. I know it's not the cool thing to say, I know my generation is supposed to be all about entrepeneurship and doing our own thing and going after what we love but fuck it. I've been doing what I love since I started culinary school at nineteen and I'm tired of being a starving artist. I'm tired of it. And I'm tired of people telling me my job is awesome without realizing that I've never worked somewhere where I could afford to regularly eat if I didn't have an employee discount. Or the look of shock at the lack of paid sick days. You probably tipped your server at your last meal more than I make an hour when I break down my shift pay even though I'm the one with the specialized trade skill.

I do something that I love, that I'm good at and it hurts my body and I can't go see a doctor about my inabilty to hold a knife for an extended period of time without part of my hand going numb.

Right now, doing something purely because I love it, seems unsustainable but I'm not very good at compromising my values and working for the man. I'm not even sure who the man is in the culinary world. I'm not sure where that leaves me in job hunting. I can't really afford to be super picky but I'm feeling really picky.

And frustrated. I'm just so effing effity eff frustrated.

Bits & Pieces (the third)

I mean, THIS WEEK, y'all, this week. Or two weeks? I don't even know. I don't even know where to start. This is going to be a little brain dump-y. Ok, a lot brain dump-y. (read: hilarious/ridiculous/rambling)

I didn't finish Scintilla because I had a carpal tunnel flare up, probably from Scintilla. What I learned from Scintilla: I actually, physically cannot write every day. So there's that. That's pretty shitty. I mean, I probably could if I didn't get paid to squeeze piping bags and shape tiny pasta but I do, so writing every day is out. And no, I couldn't really hold a pen by the end of the day either. With a break from writing and "sleeping" with a wrist brace for a few days, I seem to be doing ok. This makes me really happy because a) I can stop sleeping with the motherfucking wrist brace because sleeping with a wrist brace is more like "wake up every three hours and groggily wonder why the fuck you have this uncomfortable torture device on your wrist" b) I was freaking out because I don't have health insurance and I'm ok with paying the $100 for an urgent care appointment if it's for getting antibiotics or some shit, but carpal tunnel isn't really a "here take this things and it's fixed" sort of problem and I have no money for tests or physical therapy or, god forbid, surgery and the freaking out probably didn't help with the wrist brace induced insomnia and c) now I can write again.

And I need to write again so that I can tell you about how I haven't slept longer than three hours in one stretch EVEN WHEN I DRUGGED MYSELF for like two weeks and I am really really glad I finally have two days off IN A ROW tomorrow and Monday.

Also, I need to talk about how boys are confusing.

I suffer from chronic bitch face, my mouth naturally turns down when my face is relaxed, while this doesn't seem to really bother other women, it means I get a lot of those annoying commands from men to smile. It also seems to mean that men either think I'm a bitch, or if they've gotten me to smile, that I'm flirting with them. I either apparently have "bitchface" or "flirtface" on because apparently I unintentionally flirt A LOT when I think I'm just making conversation. (Sidenote: Yes, I am also a flirt, but when I'm intentionally flirting it's usually pretty obvious, there's a lot of smirking and eyebrow raises and taking advantage of my shortness) And then I'm too nice and I give people my number EVEN THOUGH I DIDN'T THINK WE WERE FLIRTING and then I feel awful but most of the time this isn't too much of a problem because I can just be that awful girl that ignores your calls. However, it is a problem when my drunken coworker kisses me and I didn't even see it coming a little bit.

Drunken coworker.

Kissed me.

Not the one I slept with forever ago when I wasn't working there. A new one. Like, not just new to kissing me, but new to working there. Oh, and did I mention he has a girlfriend? And I've barely every spoken to him? Except for making polite getting to know you conversation at the other sous chef's going away party, I'd pretty much never said anything other than "Hey, how are you? Which breads are you low on?".

But we left the party at the same time and we were waiting for the train and he kissed me and WHAT? So I told him it was a bad idea and then he said it was a good idea and then he looked me straight in the eyes and told me I was beautiful and I was so caught off guard (see also: drunk) that I didn't dodge a second kiss. And then he fell over, taking me with him. And then he vomited.

So here I am, in the train station, with a guy I've known two weeks and have had maybe a total of thirty minutes worth of conversation with who is falling over, vomiting, black out drunk. Sober me realizes he might've hit his head when we fell and that maybe I should've taken him to a hospital. Drunk me went into crisis mode and decided to get him in a cab and get him home.

He's a foot taller than me and does not have a small build. I have a bruise over half my right ring finger from the pressure of the claddaugh I wear from trying to pull him up by his hands. I succeed in getting him up and out of the train station. With much effort I get his address out of him and get us into a cab. Not thinking about the fact that his address could be construed as Brooklyn or Manhattan and assuming that the cabbie would stay IN THE BOROUGH WE WERE IN if I didn't specify, I focused on making sure new coworker was alive and ok and not on the fact that OH HEY WE'RE IN MANHATTAN NOW, also please pull over because new coworker needs to throw up more. So then I had to go back to Brooklyn. Most expensive cab ride ever. Fuck my life. But, I mean, what the fuck else am I supposed to do?

We finally get back to his house and the effing effity eff keys keep sticking in the lock and it's freezing and it's 3am and it takes like twenty minutes of us passing the keys back and forth to each other to get in the god damn house where we proceed to go upstairs to his bedroom and then I go to the bathroom only to find he's disappeared while I was peeing. Fuck. I find him downstairs in the other bathroom sitting on the toilet with his head in the sink. I mean, hey, I usually prefer to use the toilet for vomiting and the floor for sitting on, but at least this way he can't choke on his own vomit in his sleep. He vaguely wakes up, throws up some more. I try to force some water into him, he doesn't keep it down. I consider sleeping in the bathtub because I am a crazy person that thinks that somehow by sleeping next to a black out drunk person I'll keep them from injuring themselves. I try to pull him up and get him upstairs. No luck. Finally, I give up and let him fall asleep, head in the sink. I go up to his room, curl up on the bed, completely clothed, jacket still on because it's freezing and set an alarm for twenty minutes to go check on him. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Eventually he makes it into bed.

And that, was how this week started. I left before he woke up. I know he knows I got him home because I overheard him telling my other coworkers that he blacked out and I got him home but I have no idea what else he remembers.

So I'm pretty much just pretending none of it ever happened and he hasn't said anything about any of it to me (either the kissing or the me getting him home) but he has been really friendly and look, HOW THE FUCK DO YOU DEAL WITH THIS SITUATION? Because I'm at work, I have a professional relationship with him. I barely know him. I don't want to kiss him. But I spent multiple hours wiping vomit off his face and I've slept in his bed so it's weird. It's really fucking weird. I don't know what to do, so I'll probably just keep pretending nothing ever happened except it makes me kind of feel like a bitch to be like "hey, I've seen you crazy vulnerable and in need of help but now I'm acting like I barely know you". But I barely know him.

So anyways, apparently I have no idea how to read men because I really didn't think we were flirting but he really was determined to kiss me. Also, he was really drunk so I'm assuming it has no bearing on how sober him feels about kissing me. At least I'm hoping that's true.

Boys Are Confusing Part Two:

This past Saturday I think I almost got into my first fight with Trouble. (Pro Tip: You're not supposed to get in fights with somebody with whom you're just sleeping and have no emotional involvement, because I think that's a sign of emotional involvement. Oops.) We were in a cab and he mentioned how his new subletter was a really great guy and HE SAID "not like my other roommate" so I said "who hates me?". He again clarified that his roommate hates everyone and I again stated that I didn't really care if his roommate hates me because he was kind of a jerk.

"Really? Because he's one of my really good friends, y'know we grew up together, so his opinion really matters to me"

And then I changed the subject because a) never try to reason with drunk people especially if you are also drunk and b) why does it matter what his best friend thinks of me if we're not dating?! What?

We are talking about a guy here who once pointed to the ring on my finger and said "Are you engaged? I mean, not that it would matter if you were, I don't believe in the whole marriage thing". I thought we were firmly in this is not a relationship land, not ambiguous relationship land. Ambiguous relationship land is my actual least favorite.

Why am I meeting his best friend?

Why does his best friend's opinion matter?

Why are we seeing each other (slightly) more often?

And why is he doing cute things like pushing my hair out of my eyes and telling me it's a good to see me?

And I AM A GIRL AND I NEED TO ANALYZE ALL THESE THINGS TO DEATH BECAUSE I HAVE ALL THESE FEEEEEEEEELINGS.

Unrelated to all these things, I worked 13 hours today even though it's the day my pastry cook came back from being on vacation. I don't know either. Also I had potato chips for dinner even though I'm starting a juice cleanse on Monday. The world has been muffled all week. If you understand that statement, I am glad for the company, though also sorry. If you don't, I can't explain it. My room is a mess. I misread my DIGITAL scale all week and thought I had gained back five pounds instead of losing five pounds. I will clean my room tomorrow and I will pay to have somebody else do my laundry and I will have dinner with my family and I will start drinking all the juice on Monday and life will come back in focus again. I think. I think that's how it works.

But now, it's time to go the fuck to sleep.

It's a treacherous road with a desolated view

 Tumbalalaika is my grandmother singing me to sleep and Where Have all the Flowers Gone is her playing the piano in the sunlit living room of my great grandparents' house in the Berkeley hills.

A musical snowglobe with a basket of roses played the song played at my mother's (unsuccesful) rehab graduation and kept me company in the years she was gone.

"You're going to really like this," my father says as he puts the bright orange CD into the stereo and skips to I'm Just a Girl. Sunny summer Sunday mornings with the top down, driving me home on highway 1.

Mayonaise for the boy I spent three weeks kissing in Ireland when I was 14.

Years of late night singalongs in the Mendocino Woodlands and the smell of campfire lingering in my clothes for days are comprised of Obla Di Obla Da and Down by the Riverside.

Staying up all night next to the fire in the dining hall in the same Woodlands, with friends so close I still think of them as my family, is yelling along to Buddy Holly which is also: my first concert, Paris with Corina (another Weezer concert) endless car singalongs and dinner parties in my Berkeley apartment.

Lara and Corina are I Will Survive and the Josie and the Pussycats soundtrack. Stuck in traffic before the Rainbow Tunnel headed towards a Unitarian Universalist youth conference on a rare warm sunny day in San Francisco. Late night cookie bakes. Planning Sunday service.

Golden Age is rain on the roof of Jacob's room junior year of high school. It's panic attacks and aching and loss and grief and comfort and safety all wrapped in one. It's my favorite song and I rarely listen to it because it hurts. It hurts like you couldn't even imagine. Sometimes I don't even know how I got through that first year after my father died.

India when I was eighteen is obviously Redemption Song. The Garden State soundtrack is my return and the next semester in Turkey.

Our tiny, damp and cold (but cheap) apartment in San Francisco was Not a Pretty Girl, while I rocked out to Twin Cinema in the culinary classroom and walked towards the streetcar in the fog humming To Be Young is to Be Sad.

The truth is, I could keep doing this all night, almost every post on this blog for the last three years has been titled with song lyrics, each one awakening a very specific feeling. I'm one of those people. You know the ones, the ones that can't possibly get by on only the 16 gigs their iPhone allows, the ones that listen to albums with the shades drawn and the lights off, whole albums always, songs are meant to be listenened to in album order or on a playlist but never an album on shuffle (shudder), the ones who sometimes replay a song if a conversation interrupted really listening to it, the ones who devour new albums like they've never heard music before... One memory and one song? Impossible. I could more easily give you the soundtrack to my entire life.

But if you really must know, Summertime will always make me cry.

This post was written as part of The Scintilla Project, prompts can be found here.

Insomnia, I never miss you

I avoid going to bed like the plague these days. Even though I'm working a shift more closely resembling that of the rest of the world and should be lost in dreamland right now, I am awake. Dreamland has been scary lately. It started a few weeks ago when I had nightmare every. single. night. for close to ten days straight, waking me in the wee hours of the morning. Now they only seem to be a few times a week. But its enough to not want to sleep. A stalker in one, a dying friend in another. I'm starting to not remember the details of each and every one. There are no monsters, they're not vivid like I understand night terrors to be, but I've never experienced this before.

Until I was a teenager, I think until my dad died, really, I could count all the nightmares I'd had on one hand. I've just never remembered my dreams much and when I do they were usually bizarre gibberish or because I had been lucid dreaming. No nightmares. I vaguely remember going through a period similar to this one at some point in my late teens. But my dad had died and I was vacillating between a nice boy and a boy that threatened suicide if I didn't drive two hours in the night to see him and, I suppose, nightmares were reasonable.

Now though, they are not reasonable. I have not been anxious. Nothing crazy is going on in my life. In fact, I would say, right now I'm really embodying stability. I made a conscious decision on a date a while ago to just lean into it, but I didn't just lean into that date, I leaned into my life. I stopped fighting every thing all the time. I took a break from creating problems just so that I would have something to fix. I stripped a lot of things away so that I could create a baseline from which to add things back in. I am 90% content with my life.

I feel like there must be something I'm blatantly ignoring because otherwise, why all the bad dreams?

Letting Trouble into my Bed (Part Two)

"Have you ever been hospitalized for drinking too much?" Trouble asks me.

"No, I've never been hospitalized at all, actually"

"Have you?" he asks his roommate.

It's my first time meeting his roommate, he's been antagonistic to me right from the start with such gems as "lesbians are jealous of your haircut" and "you don't belong in Astoria, move to Brooklyn" but I'm sitting on the same side of the table with Trouble, oddly ok with this situation in which he keeps seemingly choosing me over his childhood friend.

"No, some of us can hold our liquor" the roommate responds in a tone of voice that implies there is definitely a story here.

"Have you?" I try to keep my voice cool while every part of me is certain and terrified of the answer.

"Yeah, a couple of months ago. We went out to dinner and then we went to club and then I woke up in the hospital. I know I got there in an ambulance because I read the chart and it said the NYPD called an ambulance for me. I mean, I was just really drunk. I don't know, a couple of days later all my muscles were sore and maybe I fell down some stairs or something"

I don't even know what I said in response. I don't know if I said anything. I think roommate maybe told me I should move to Brooklyn again and the conversation changed.

Later in the evening, "I don't know what's going on, I just get home from work and immediately want to start drinking".

I wanted to talk to him about it, you know I wanted to talk to him about it, if you know me or have read this blog for any significant amount of time you know, but I couldn't, because his roommate was there and later we were back at his house and drunk and well, the other "you know".

It was a strange evening, the first time the majority of our conversation wasn't banter and flirtation. I'm not sure why I got to meet his roommate, if it's just because it was the first time his roommate was around when we had plans or if it was a sort of exchange for me letting him into my room. The way he distracted roommate when roommate kept heckling me and the walking back to his house without the customary "are you coming over", arms around each others waists as he assures me that I shouldn't take roommate personally felt strangely more relationship-y than dates I've been on with guys I hoped to date. He was apologetic and just enough more inebriated than me to seem vulnerable and a little adorable. Time spent in bed involved a lot more give and take than once a month FWB normally involves. Instead of being clever, we were both being silly.

Something switched. I stopped being able to pretend that all the not texting him and not being facebook friends with him and not knowing if I'll actually see him again in about four weeks matters. They're flimsy boundaries. A way to pretend I'm not being reckless.

But do you understand? Do you understand what those moments of vulnerability, those comments about alcohol abuse mean to me? Do you understand my sudden overwhelming urge to not so much date him, as fix him?

Months ago, after our first date our mutual friend asked if I had heard from him.

"No, haven't heard from him at all in a couple of weeks"

"Gah, Trouble is like that. He can kind of be an ass. He's never actually committed to a girl, I don't know what's wrong with him, but he's hurt in some way. He's always been like that"

"YOU TOLD ME TO DATE HIM"

"I thought maybe you would be the one that changed him"

"Why didn't you tell me that was the plan?! That is the worst plan. I would've known better, I probably would've still slept with him but I would not have let myself like him so much"

And yet, here we are, months later and I think I can fix him. It's me, because I'm just that caring and loving and compassionate. Because I know how to take care of people better than themselves. Because of the narcissism of codependency.

I feel like my body is being wrenched apart. My head pulling one way and my heart the other. Every bit of my screaming "NO" and at the same time "YES" because I can see it. I can see every beautiful self destructive second of it. I can see the swirling, pulling downward spiral of every action forgiven, the begging, the pleading, the problem solving. I can see myself feeling martyred and vindicated. I can see the raw emotional clash if I let him in and he let me in and the delicious damage that would ensue. I can see it all. The happiness and the tears. The lovely, lovely extremes.

I don't think he'd ever let me in, thankfully,  because I don't think I have the strength to walk away.

And sitting in Central Park after spending a few hours at MoMA with a very nice boy, thinking about Trouble being hospitalized instead of thinking about that boy, is when I realized I needed to follow through with my New Year's resolution of finding an Al Anon meeting. The exact phrase "I need to go to a meeting" ran through my head and  I almost laughed. And then I almost cried, like I'm doing now.

Because I have to admit that I am powerless.

And it has very little to do with Trouble.

Bits & Pieces (the second)

Social Life/BiSC:

In the last week, I met Adam, Sara and Bob, which means, along with Rachael, Dominique and Nicole, I have met 10% of the people I'm going to Las Vegas with in May. And I have to say if everybody is both as awesome and attractive as those six in real life, it's going to be the most overwhelmingly amazing experience I've had in a long time. Also, I'm really gonna have to bring my A game.

I made some moderately stupid decisions in the last week so that I could meet those people. And by moderately stupid, I mean I went out twice in the last week once knowing I was getting sick and once knowing I was still sick and should be sleeping instead. The result was working with a fever last Sunday and feeling likc if I had to stand for one more second past ten hours of work I might die for most of the week. But you know what? That's the great thing about being an adult. I consciously made those decisions knowing they weren't the best idea and I accepted the consequences and the only asshole to blame was myself. And then I spent pretty much all of yesterday in bed, spent today at AMNH and wandering through Central Park, came home, took a nap because that's what my body said we should do and pretty much feel like a human again. So I think, overall, worth it.

CA v NY:

It turns out you can take the girl out of California, but you can't take the California out of the girl. My pastry cook is giving up cigarettes, soda and fast food for Lent and everybody tells her it's crazy while I'm like "that's awesome, it's really not that bad". And not to pat myself on the back for not having bad habits I never picked up, I just call that normal life. I think most of my friends back home do too. It still weirds me out that the chefs I work with eat fast food. In fact I'm so not used to people eating fast food (with the obvious exception of In'n'Out) that even non chefs eating fast food surprises me. I mean, this week I'm concerned that I'm eating organic yoghurt from humanely treated cows and bread made at a coop because they come all the way from California and I think that's a perfectly normal way to think about food. I guess it's all relative to what you're used to. Hella NorCal, yo.

Boy Stuff:

I really will make out with anyone when I'm drunk. Pretty sure Sara asked me if I would make out with like 5 different people the other night and I said "yes" everytime. Sober me would not have said "yes" that many times. Sober me is now back in charge of my love life. The "don't get drunk on the first date" rule that Michelle gave me is now in effect. Despite being single for a whole year my friends have been shocked the last few weeks when they've asked about my dating situation because there currently is none. At all. Haven't gone on a date in three weeks. There are no boys that I'm currently regularly sleeping with. (I know, it's weird for me too) I am however, currently writing 6 paragraph messages to a guy on OkC that I genuinely want to be friends with. Or more. But most of the time when I go on dates from OkC I'm kind of forcing myself and I feel like I'm putting myself in such a contrived situation because I don't know if I would always go on dates if I had met the guy IRL whereas this guys seems like somebody I would actually hang out with in the real world. So that's possibly exciting.

New Year's Goals:

I'm currently losing weight at a rate of approximately two pounds a month. Did you know I was trying to lose weight? Probably not. Mostly because I think it's the most boring thing ever to read about on other peoples' blogs and because I'm a small person I feel like people will want to punch me in the face if I complain about my weight. But look y'all, I'm a chef which means my weight has actually been somewhat of a constant struggle since I went through culinary school. It also means part of the reason I don't weigh a lot more with what I eat is because I am on my feet cooking for ten frakking hours a day and lifting fifty pound sacks and running up and down the GD stairs. Anyways, with some portion control and stopping to make myself eat actual food instead of just randomly putting whatever cookie is closest at hand in my mouth when I realize I'm starving, I'm slowly but surely losing weight and starting to feel a lot better about my body and not hate the way every piece of clothing I put on fits. Which is good, because I really don't have enough money to buy a whole new wardrobe.

Dairy is the devil. I've gone back to pretty much cutting it out entirely and feel so much better on a day to day basis.

I'm still obsessed with Blue Print Cleanse juices but have mostly just been incorporating them into my regular diet instead of going all out cleanse. I would like to do another three day cleanse soon though.

Random shit:

I read all three books in The Hunger Games trilogy in two days. I would've liked it better if they hadn't been written in such a way that it only took me two days to read them. This is why I don't usually read YA books. Good stories aren't enough, I want to read that sentence that rings so very true my heart aches, that expresses an emotion so perfectly I'm knocked on my ass. I will say that it was a good story and will probably make a pretty enjoyable movie.

Best for last: My new work schedule is 10 am-8ish pm which means I might get to have a social life again. I've only had it for a week, but I think I might love it. I'm still alternating between having Sunday/Monday off and Thursday/Sunday off, which is really weird but the new hours might make it manageable.

I'm moving to any other industrialized nation so that I don't die in the next year or become homeless to cover my health insurance payments

I've never broken a bone. I can count my emergency room visits on one hand. 1 panic attack, 1 asthma attack, 1 migraine that had me curled up, vomitting and crying on the bathroom floor, 1 boxcutter cut across two fingers. I've never had to stay in the hospital and the most major surgery I've had is having my wisdom teeth removed.

My need for health insurance has nothing to do with major catastrophes so the "low monthly payment and we'll basically start paying for shit if you're on your death bed" plans aren't really going to work for me. But neither does "just don't get sick".

For as long as I can remember, I was prone to every cold that came around. When you combine constant colds with asthma there are times (like right now) when I can barely walk a block without an inhaler. In the winter, my Eustachian tubes have an unfortunate habit of malfunctioning causing constant ear pain. Basically the solution is to take endless sudafed and spray gross shit up my nose. When I take sudafed I'm not supposed to drink coffee or use my inhaler because sudafed has a tendency to give me heart palpitations. Usually if I'm taking sudafed, I need my inhaler. Also, not the best stuff for insomnia. All this stupid sinus stuff plus sometimes bronchitis means I am that person that's probably creating super viruses by taking all of the antibiotics. Like, I'm on antibiotics 2 or 3 times a flu season.

Also, I don't know if you've noticed, but I have fucking insane allergic reactions to EVERYTHING. (And in that 2nd link the post mentions having a kidney infection the month before! If I had been born a hundred years ago, I would not have made it to 25)

Luckily, most of the time, I can pretty much manage my migraines through diet and stress reduction, so while I do need the meds about once a month, it's rarely more than that these days.

So, no, I don't have any major health problems (knock on wood) but I tend to be kind of a mess in a dress healthwise so I'm pretty much freaking out about my lack of health insurance come January. Also, I'm pretty sure I have an ear infection right now, but I can't use my current health insurance in New York, so I'm freaking out about that too because I've felt like death off and on for about a month now. The problem is, I need affordable urgent care visits and prescriptions which tends to be what you get if you can afford to pay eleventy billion dollars a month, otherwise it's all high deductible plans that don't cover office visits or prescriptions which seems totally useless to me.

It basically comes down to this:

Can I please just pay some more taxes so that the government takes care of this for me? That is all I want for Christmas/Channukah/Birthday. Socialized medicine. That's it.

Because I am actually near tears, freaking out trying to figure out how I'm going to be able to do this. This might also be related to the whole being sick and exhausted and only having one day off thing. Also the figuring out how little money I'll be making in January when my work is closed for ten days thing.

Why can't you be the FDR I wanted you to be Obama? We had such high progressive hopes for you.

Mama said there'll be days like this

Here's the things about compromising, it kind of becomes a tricky business. If you're not careful, it starts to look an awful lot like settling. Compromise is more about opportunity cost. It's about a conscious choice. Settling, I think settling is a little more like giving up.

But it's hard, when you're not happy, because settling for less than what you really want seems better than nothing at all. I'm starting to be pretty sure that's just depression being a lying bastard again though.

There were these five minutes, right, where I was just like "fuck this, it's drunken floozy time," because some human contact, some affection, I mean, it's better than none right? Mostly I thought this because I had the opportunity. A friend of a friend. He's cute and charming and funny and says things like "you have eyes the color of a country sky," which is both the most ridiculous thing anyone has half seriously said to me and it turns out kind of works on me as a line, at least if it's 3am and I've been drinking since 10:30, but then, most things do at that point.

(Side Note: It might also have to do with the person saying it, the other night a man asked if anyone had told me how beautiful I was tonight. Classic line that would've been amusing from a young guy but not from a pudgy fourty year old who later tried to put his arm around me. EVEN AT 4AM NOT OK)

Our first actual date was two days after meeting. And all the follow through and planning was him. That, plus his willingness to go on a date at 11:30pm on a Thursday after I got off work gave me some pretty high hopes. And I thought "No, this guy isn't what I really want, but I don't think I can have what I really want so maybe it's good enough and maybe I'll change my mind". I also thought "this guy is cute and charming and clearly knows it, he's going to be trouble".

I was right. After that first date... He initiates plans, he reschedules plans. He initiates plans, he reschedules plans. We're currently on round 3 of rescheduling. I don't initiate at all because guess what I seemed to have finally learned... Being jerked around? NOT ACTUALLY BETTER THAN NOTHING and DEFINITELY not better than getting some form of what you actually want. In case I had somehow forgotten this, I'm pretty sure there's basically about a year worth of blog posts to remind me that I used to be the kind of girl that put up with that bullshit, but I didn't even need to read them to know I was miserable then and I'm really not that girl anymore.

I get that guys that ask if it's "hard to walk around with such gorgeous eyes all the time" are not the guys that are looking to take somebody home to mom. That's fine. I mostly just wanted him to be a distraction from my endless work, home, sleep, never get to see friends cycle and maybe, maybe to get me over that gigantic crush that's been lingering on since, y'know, JULY. But instead I'm now all "OH MY GOD THIS WAS THE WORST IDEA EVER I LIKE THAT OTHER GUY SO MUCH MORE THAN YOU AND YOU ARE A SUPER GIGANTIC JERKFACE". Also, yes, obviously this guy has managed to hit on one of my BIGGEST pet peeves and it's not like he knew that, which was fine the first time. The third time? That's just sending the message you're just not that into me and I am not that into you, so maybe stop trying to make plans with me. Right?

So this is the one where I learn that:

a) Even though sometimes I feel like I'm writing posts I've already written a million times before, at least in some aspects, I've changed and respect myself a little more.

b) Settling? Not worth it. And if I'm still comparing, I'm still settling. Lesson learned. Hopefully.