notes

I love giving gifties. It brings me joy to pick out a present for someone, to find something that I know they will like. For me, giving someone a gift shows the person that I care about them-- I was thinking of them, I know them, and I listen to them. I guess that makes gift giving one of my love languages, or however that's supposed to work.
Anyhow, I love giving gifts! So I would definitely continue to give my nieces and nephews presents either way, but receiving the thank-you notes they send me? Icing on the cake.

Remember the little basketty thing I bought Princess for her 11th birthday? Well she liked it!

I've also recently gotten a bunch of notes from my other nieces and nephews, for their Christmas gifties. It has been really fun for me to open my mailbox and find little kid-handwritten cards inside it.

I taped the notes up on my kitchen cabinets, and they make me smile every day. I love those kids dearly, and I love that they enjoy the presents I got them.

Spot on.

This is Elena (and me, obviously):

For some reason this was the only photo of her I could find on my computer, and it is from about five years ago. Not the best photo of me, but I had just graduated from my first master's program and we were out celebrating with family, friends, and pitchers of margaritas.

Elena and I met on the bus, on our way to middle school. After that first year of getting to know each other huddled around the heaters in our flimsy school uniforms, we (along with two other girls, who will get their own post sometime) spent three years carpooling, having sleepovers, and getting ready for school dances together. Elena and I remained friends throughout high school, even though she was definitely way cooler than me. We pretty much lost touch in college, but reconnected when she moved to LA. In the years that our time in LA overlapped, we would often meet up for brunch or lunch or breakfast or dinner or some other meal at any point in the day when we both happened to be hungry. Sometimes we would take her dog for a hike in Runyon Canyon or go shopping on Melrose or at the Beverly Center. Sometimes we would sneak into the fancy hotels and hang out at the pools and Elena always knew how to play it off so the management just accepted our presence. One time Elena hosted a Cinco de Mayo party at her house, complete with a piñata.

Elena is one of those girls who could ACTUALLY pull off wearing a burlap sack and look killer in it. She does improv and standup and once actually got up on a stage and read her middle school diary in front of a crowd of people.

She also made this video:

This is essentially a documentary of my life there. Ah, the endless quest for parking. Seriously, it is SPOT ON. And, weirdly, it makes me miss LA.

WELL THEN

So. As I've mentioned, I've been trying my hand at online dating. It's been... interesting. If nothing else I've gotten an eye-opening lesson in the quality of single dudes out there. Not high quality, is what I've found so far. If I were to compare them to, say, dinner ingredients, I might tell you that you wouldn't want to make a formal meal with these guys as the entree. You'd boil them down to make guy stock for bullion cubes or deep fry them and dip them in ranch dressing. You wouldn't want to BRING OUT the flavor of these guys, is all I'm saying. You'd want to suppress it, and probably heavily season it. You'd probably want to have a few drinks with the meal in order to make it palatable, which, incidentally, is exactly what I've been doing on my recent dates. Not cannibalizing the guy, I mean. Drinking.

Uh, anyhow. A couple days ago I saw a profile that caught my eye. The guy seemed interesting enough and he made it through my fairly persnickety filtering system. And so I sent him a little message, just saying hi, and I think I might have also mentioned that I like his favorite book. Fascinating, I know, but I never know what to say in those messages.

Today I got an instant message from him. Perhaps you will remember that in the little section on my profile where it asks about the first things people notice about you, I wrote: "My hair, my tattoo, my wild hand gestures, my long-winded stories. My sparkling personality? I'm not going to put the thing most people REALLY notice about me on here, but if you meet me you'll know." Guys tend to be intrigued by this and often they do guess right away when the meet me, but sometimes I'll get a surprising answer like "It's your weird nose, isn't it?" Also, more than one guy has laughed and said that he thought maybe I had a wooden leg or something, no offense to any amputees out there.

This dude had a different idea.

MY PROFILE SUGGESTS THAT I HAVE BIG B00BS. I MIGHT WANT TO FIX THAT.

Annnnd, scene.

This interaction might have bothered me if I had ANY EXPECTATIONS AT ALL OF HUMANITY ANYMORE. Which I don't. I have accepted that there are no good guys left. This guy just CONFIRMED WHAT I ALREADY KNEW.

If you need me, I'll be packing.

Jaded Contingency Plan CDP

Awhile back, a loverly person sent me a Crappy Day Package. She told me it was to be opened on a VERY CRAPPY occasion, that I shouldn't even open the box unless I was feeling spectacularly crappy. So I held onto the box for weeks, using it as kind of a litmus test. I would ask myself: Is today crappy? Yes. But is it crappy ENOUGH for the big CDP? Maybe not.
And so the box stayed under my desk. It was nice to know I had it around, just in case I had an exceptionally crappy day. Kind of like a security blanket.

You know what's better than a security blanket? An ACTUAL blanket.

A bright, beautiful, cozy, cuddly SNUGGLE BLANKET.

I opened the box today, right after I got home from dinner. It was so worth the wait.

I went to dinner tonight with a group of gals from my school program. They are all really nice people. Lovely, really. But tonight, I left the group feeling... well, crappy. Because although I know I shouldn't compare my life to anyone else's and although I generally feel good about myself and happy with my life, being with that particular group of people brought me down a little bit. All of those gals passed their Giant Paper Things on the first try, graduated on time, took their board exams, and most of them have jobs already or are at least living settled-ish lives. Me? I spent 2011 learning that when you ASSUME, you make an ass out of yourself in front of the entire internet. I assumed I would pass my Giant Paper Thing on the first try, and ha ha ha that didn't happen. I assumed I would graduate in June and surprise! Nope. I assumed that I would take my board exam and I would have a job at least by December or January, and sigh, no. Not yet.

(Have I mentioned that I am taking my board exam in February? I'm parenthesizing this because I feel like the Universe has been doing a bit of excessive smiting of me recently, so I'm trying to fly under the radar here. I am certainly studying my ass off and hoping that I pass the exam on the first time, but no need to smite me for being cocky, Universe, for I know now not to just EXPECT that I will pass. After I finished Giant Paper Thing v 2.0, I was cautiously optimistic-- BUT I had a contingency plan in case I did not pass the second time. So. If I don't pass my board exam the first time, well I guess I'll find out when I can take it again, study even harder, and take it again. Maybe I'll have to look for a non-NP job while I study, or even move back in with my parents, but the point here is that my life will go on and things will be okay, even if they're not exactly as I planned. Planning, it seems, is what leads me to make an assume out of myself.)

Also at dinner tonight was the necessary telling of the breakup story, since most of these gals had not seen me since 'graduation' in June. So I told them about my breakup, and about how I've been on so many bad dates recently that it's like a douchebag convention. I don't know why I didn't anticipate it, but this led to the inevitable "Oh don't be cynical, you'll find him!" and "You've got plenty of time!" and "You should just concentrate on yourself for now" comments. I love these ladies-- they are all really nice and smart and whatnot and I know their hearts were in the right place, but if there is one thing I hate it is BEING TOLD HOW TO FEEL ABOUT SOMETHING. I would like to just be allowed to feel how I feel and have that be okay. I don't need anyone to try to fix it, and I ESPECIALLY don't need anyone telling me that the way I feel is wrong.
"Maybe you shouldn't be looking so hard for someone right now." I'm not desperately searching for Mr. Right at this precise moment. Right now I'm playing the field. If I meet someone amazing, great. If I don't, that's fine. I've been a little disheartened recently by the dating pool as it seems to be overwrought with asshats, but I tell those stories because I think they are funny and entertaining, not because I need you to tell me "Just stop looking and it'll happen!"
And the kicker is that I didn't even think I sounded that emo or cynical when I talked about that stuff. Maybe it is because this group of people didn't see me when I was heartbroken, sad, and angry, so they interpret Contingency Plan Julia as jaded and woeful. I feel like I'm being smart. The last thing that I want is to be waiting around to meet someone until it's too late for me to biologically have babies. I'm not saying that I have some deadline in mind, but I'm realizing that it is possible that I won't get married and I'll be damned if that means I'm giving up on my dream of having children. If finding a dude who I can stand and who wants the same things as me doesn't pan out, well then maybe I'll have to go a different direction-- maybe once I've worked for a couple of years I'll have babies by myself or maybe I'll become a foster or adoptive mom. That's not a defeatist attitude, it's realistic. But apparently it comes across as cynical and give-uppy when coupled with a breakup story, several anecdotes about douchey guys, AND a currently not-yet-employed status.

Bah. Whatever. Maybe I am jaded. But I do have a new blankie that makes me feel nice and warm in my hollow tin chest.

Dollhouse Love

My 10 year old niece got a cell phone for Christmas. I, her 29 year old aunt, got a dollhouse. No, really.

This is from a post a couple years ago that I think should illustrate why I love dollhouses so much:

My grandmother built my dollhouse and I remember it being spectacular. I think I probably remember it as more spectacular than it actually was. But that is because I loved it so much.

It lived at my grandma's house and I played with it pretty much every time I went over there. So, a lot. I would make up stories and scenarios for the dolls. I would arrange them in the various rooms. I would make extra things for the house-- a mailbox made out of a clothespin, a tiny drawing to hang on the wall. I would act out the storybooks my grandma read to me. I would take out all the furniture and things and use my grandma's cleaning products to scrub the carpet and clean the floors and then I would put the furniture back in and arrange everything nicely.

My grandmother died when I was 12 and I was devastated. I miss her more than I can accurately describe. She was really the only person I was completely myself around, when I was younger. I know our relationship would be different if she were alive today. I know that I would never appreciate her more than I did when I was a child.

I'll spare you the rest of the post, which basically describes how I was SOBBING HYSTERICALLY when I found the remnants of my dollhouse furniture mixed in with the rest of my nieces' and nephews' toys. The post was written right around the time of THIS, so I think it is safe to assume that my emotions were all over the place and I may have been expressing some displaced anguish. But. My dollhouse was a big part of my childhood. In some ways I guess I considered it a physical object that represented my relationship with my grandmother. Dollhouse = LOVE.
I was devastated when my grandmother died, devastated again when the dollhouse broke into pieces, and devastated again when I found out that the pieces had been either lost or thrown out over the years. The furniture was all I had left, and so I was happy to see it again, but also disappointed and sad that so much of it had been broken or lost.

In November, my mom and I went to the antiques faire to do some Christmas shopping. We spotted a very sweet dollhouse at one of the stands and went over to admire it.
"It's so cute," my mom said.
"I love it," I said.
We admired it some more and then went about our business. My mom bought a fancy chess set for my dad for Christmas, I bought a couple Breyer horses for my nieces.
"That dollhouse really was cute," my mom said.
"It REALLY was," I said.
"I think maybe you need a new dollhouse."
"I think maybe I do!"

And so, Christmas morning, I came out to the living room and found this by the tree:

Dollhouse = LOVE.

Winter Holiday Potpourri

I say Winter Holiday not to be politically correct, but because there were two (for me): Christmas and New Year's. Well, and Kwanzaa. I always wish people a Happy Kwanzaa on December 26th; it's the first day, you know.
Anyhow!
I had a really really lovely visit with my family over Christmas. After recent endeavors, I'd been in need of a palate-cleansing couple of weeks of just good clean family fun. And family fun there was. We did all sorts of outings, eatings, and hangin at my parents' house. The kids got together and built a rather elaborate jumps course in the back yard, where they spent HOURS pretending to be horses and, well, jumping.

Most of them have Nintendo DSs and a couple have Kindle Fires, so it was quite nice to see that their favorite thing to do was playing an outdoorsy running-around-together game. There were only a couple spectacular crashing falls. And sometimes one of them would yell "Refusal!" and then skitter sideways, giggling.

---

My nephew got a remote control helicopter for Christmas. It looked like this one (but I suspect it was a cheaper version).

Two of my brothers in law held and impromptu competition to see who could fly the helicopter, hover it, lower the grappling hook, and pick up the basket better. One of my bros in law flew the helicopter right into the wall and then hovered it over a vat of gravy as the rest of us, as though in slow-motion, yelled NOOOOOOO and tried to save the gravy. And my other bro in law flew the helicopter directly behind him, into the living room (which is full of breakable knicky knackies and decorative ceramic items), and impaled it in my mom's antique Japanese screen above the piano.
"That's an OUTSIDE toy," said my mom.

---

I wrapped some of my gifts in Flip & Tumble bags, and some in pretty scarves from the flea market. I thought they looked very festive.

My sister was teasing me about my Hippied Out San Franciscan Eco Friendly wrapping paper and I told her I couldn't hear her ALL THE WAY UP HERE ON MY HIGH HORSE.

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I went out with Jenny and a couple of her good friends on New Year's Eve Eve. It was probably my favorite New Year's celebration of recent memory. Because: whenever I have gone out on ACTUAL NYE I've always come back semi-disappointed. It has always felt like it should be a bigger deal and more FUN than it really was. And it's hard to find a bar that is cool but that isn't overly crowded or charging a ridiculous cover. And it's a pain to get there and to get home afterward. Anyhow, going out the night before solved all of those problems-- it was lots of fun and I didn't have unrealistic expectations, it wasn't overly crowded or expensive, and it was easy to get there and get home. We had a fantastic time and Jenny managed to make some guy who was trying to hit on her cry. In her defense, he did have a chin-strap beard. A CHIN-STRAP BEARD. One of the international signs for douchebag.

On actual NYE I spent the evening at my parents' house, eating Chinese food and playing board games with my nieces. By midnight I was in a bubble bath, book in hand.

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I have finally found a game I can beat my nieces at. Good old TABOO! Every other game they wipe the floor with me. They have this one game that's about the states and capitals and whoever has the most cards at the end wins. They all end up with fifteen or so and I'm over here with my sad four little cards. They even beat me at Fact or Crap and they didn't even know how to pronounce most of the historical occurrences or famous people that the game references.

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After New Year's, I took a two-day road trip with my sister and her kids to help her move into their new house. After many hours of (me) driving we arrived at the house to find that there was no hot water. My bro in law was out of town, but he kept sending his friends over to 'fix' the water heater, which involved them doing things like... flipping the circuit breaker while I watched and exasperatedly thought I TRIED THAT. WHAT ELSE YA GOT? Other things I tried to get the water heater to work: flipping the circuit breaker multiple times, breaking into my bro in law's tool box to find a wrench and opening the panel on the water heater and pressing the red reset button, glaring at the water heater, cursing at the water heater. Two days of this and then we finally had a professional come out. He did a satisfying amount of work on the water heater-- yanking out hunks of metal and scary-looking charred bits-- so my sister and I felt justified in having a professional come look at it instead of just waiting for her husband to get back into town on Friday (aka, the day before the weekend, when they probably would have had to wait until MONDAY to have a professional come out).
My sister also ordered a new fridge, which arrived on Tuesday. The delivery man heaved the thing all the way from the truck and into the kitchen and then he told me "Oh. It's not gonna fit." Apparently my sister and I neglected to incorporate the baseboards into our measurements of the fridge's space. I had no way of reaching my sis or her husband (they were both at work) and the delivery man was about to leave me with a fridge standing in the center of the kitchen and an extension cord running to the wall, AND there wouldn't be anyone to accept the delivery of different fridge on a different day, or pick out a new fridge for that matter, since they live in a wee tiny town and stores tend to close early. So I made an executive decision and, well, nobody needs to know what may or may not have happened to the baseboards but let's just focus on the fact that the fridge fits now. It FITS.

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I participated in Doing My Best's Crappy Day Present Exchange, which was super fun all around: I had fun answering the survey questions, I had fun shopping for my little gifties and sending them off, and I had fun receiving CDPs and opening them when I had a crappy day. Apparently I was not so good at chronicling the buying, wrapping, sending, receiving, or opening of the CDPs like a good little blogger, but FUN. It was fun. And I still have one CDP that I'm holding onto for a particularly crappy occurrence.

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Bowie is an indoor cat all around, but for some reason at my parents' house he THINKS he wants to go outside. Maybe it's because he sees the birds and whatnot, maybe he's jealous of the other indoor/outdoor cats, who knows? But I can tell you that he doesn't ACTUALLY want to be an outside cat because (1) he currently lives like a king and I'm certain he doesn't want to give that up, and (2) whenever he does get out he mostly hides under the porch.
The kids have gotten better at keeping the doors closed, so Bowie hasn't gotten out at my parents' house in a year or so. On the day that I was about to leave he apparently snuck out the one screenless open window in the house and I didn't even REALIZE it until two of my nieces ran into the house and shrieked that Bowie was outside, headed for the ravine. We all leaped into action; the kids grabbed flashlights and ran out to corral Bowie before he made it to the (full of coyotes and poison oak and who knows what else) ravine, and I stomped out to front door to get my sweatshirt from the car because if I was going to be hunting for my cat all night, I was at least going to be WARM. I got my sweater out of the car, turned around, and THERE WAS BOWIE just sitting under the open window (I think he had run away from all the shouting and flashing lights). I took a flying leap at him, missed as he ran into the bushes, but did manage to bruise up both my knees and twist my ankle. He ran out of the bushes, toward the porch (of course), and I grabbed him by the tail.
As a poison oak precaution (and the girls' reward for helping retrieve him) Bowie got a bath.

Maybe that'll learn him to STAY INSIDE.

New Year

A meme! Something to prompt my NYE writing! Good! Here we go.

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
Graduated from nursing school. Became a licensed Nurse Practitioner. Went on a medical mission. Went to an estate sale. Went to a flea market by myself. Rode the bus from San Diego to LA. Wrong number texted somebody.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I kept some of my resolutions more than others. I'll make some more for next year, but that's for another post.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Beckie! Lots of other people that I know less well.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

Family and friends-wise, no. But several patients I worked with died (most of them were hospice patients).

5. What countries did you visit?
El Salvador.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
A full time NP job. A bigger apartment. Better self-appreciation.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
The ones that I remember are for Bad Things. Let's let those dates fade away.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Writing and passing my Giant Paper Thing, graduating from nursing school, getting my NP license.

9. What was your biggest failure?
Giant Paper Thing.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing major. Unless heartbreak counts.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
My Silver jeans.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?  
Yours. Yes, YOURS. I could not have made it through the year without friends, both of the know-me-in-real-life and know-me-only-on-the-internet variety. There was always someone there when I was in need of comfort, laughter, snark, help packing up my ex's stuff, or a crappy day present. I am so, so lucky.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? 

Jenny's ex boyfriend. My ex boyfriend, KC. My ex boyfriend from college. My friend's husband.

Various famous people and their bad choices and secret double lives.

14. Where did most of your money go? 

Living expenses. Assorted hoop-jumping for licensure.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Graduating. Glee Live. Christmas. HP7P2. My USC Trojans. Various going out adventures and shenanigans.

16. What song will always remind you of 2011? 

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:  

a) happier or sadder? At this moment I am happier. Overall this year I was sadder.
b) thinner or fatter? I dunno. About the same.

c) richer or poorer? Poorer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?

Spending time with friends and family. Being very present in the moment. Studying.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Weeping. Feeling bad about myself.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
At my parents' house. Wrapped in new jammies and love.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?
The opposite.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Parks and Recreation.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? 

My hatred is reserved for only the WORST of the worst, so no. But there are definitely people whom I newly dislike.

24. What was the best book you read?
The Hunger Games.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?  
This song makes me think of my awesome road trip with Jenny.

26. What did you want and get?
A degree in nursing.

27. What did you want and not get? 
A new phone. Mine is held together with rubber bands now. Technically I did order a new one in 2011, but it won't arrive until 'next year' (har har). I would REALLY like to have a better, cheaper plan but so far all of my jaunts to the Verizon store have left me shaky and angry, but without a better plan or the ability to access my account online. 2012 FTW?

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Went out with friends on the weekend before it. Got a massage and lunch with a friend on my actual birthday. Went to lunch with my family the weekend after it. I turned 29.

30. What is one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? 
Having a job waiting for me after graduation, instead of being in this weird limbo of studying for board exam/applying for jobs after obtaining a prestigious degree from a fine learning institution. Because I'm getting very tired of being told that since I'm a nurse it should be easy to get a job.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
New convert to leggings, still working out the kinks.

32. What kept you sane?
Friends, family, music, Twitter, comfort food, venting, running, reading, organizing my apartment, trashy TV.

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Meh.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
Planned Parenthood.

35. Who did you miss?
My LA peeps.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
All the people on my El Salvador trip, especially Monica.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.  
Things don't always turn out how you plan, even if you plan really really well and want it very badly and work really fucking hard.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
Don't stop me now.

71. memorize the 12 Days of Christmas

Last year, Swistle blew my mind a little bit when she deconstructed first Do They Know it's Christmas, and then Winter Wonderland. I've been paying more attention to Christmas song lyrics this year, partly because of the aforementioned blown mind and partly because I was finally, FINALLY going to memorize the 12 Days of Christmas. Never say that I don't have goals, people.
As per my tradition, my car radio has been tuned to the Christmas music station since the day after Thanksgiving. Every time the 12 Days of Christmas comes on, I do my very best to belt it out, even if I'm in the car with another person and we were deep in conversation. "Hang on!" I'll say, "I have to do something! ON THE FIRST DAY OF CHRISTMAS, MY TRUE LOVE GAVE TO MEEE...."

I got to the point where I THOUGHT I had it memorized, but then recently I was singing along with the radio and I kept getting thrown off and tripping over the verses, like "TWELVE DRUMMERS D- oops, LORDS-A-LEAPING! ELEVEN PIPERS PI-, I mean, DRUMMERS DRUMMING!" And that didn't seem quite right. Because, as I remembered, the first seven days are all the birds, with a nice little time-out for the five gold rings. And then on the eighth day come the maids-a-milking, which makes for a good transition point from animals to humans because it is a human/animal combo verse (maid plus cow). And then the ninth day is ladies dancing, which makes sense because right after that comes the tenth day, with lords-a-leaping. If you've got ladies dancing, you must also have lords-a-leaping, and you should always have MORE lords-a-leaping than ladies dancing. And THEN of course, you round out the group with eleven pipers piping and twelve drummers drumming, because all of this merry-making could probably use a nice pipe and drum-based soundtrack (though I suspect the maids-a-milking probably get a little irked at this point, what with all the noise and dancing and LEAPING that's going on as they are trying to do their chores).

That was the version I memorized, and the one I heard most often on the radio, but now I was getting thrown off. So then I looked it up, and you know what I found out? Apparently, it is totally acceptable 12 Days of Christmas behavior to MIX UP THE LYRICS of the last few objects. You can even SUBSTITUTE some of the people with "fiddlers fiddling" or "ladies waiting," which makes me feel like we're being set up to fail. How can a person memorize the lyrics, if they can just CHANGE at any moment? Well, I'm crossing this item off my list because technically I DID memorize the lyrics; it's just a TRICK SONG.

Further on the subject of Christmas song lyrics, I can't listen to Baby, it's Cold Outside anymore because of the distinct date-rapey vibe (SAY WHAT'S IN THIS DRINK?). I make an exception of the Glee Cast version, because it's actually kinda cute.
And, is it just me, or is anyone else completely terrified by the concept of Frosty the Snowman? The kids build a snowman, put a hat on it, and then it COMES TO LIFE. And then, what? He threatens the kids with a broomstick in his hand, so now they're forced to follow him over the hills (probably farther than their mothers told them they were allowed to go), into town, and through an INTERSECTION. And just as they're getting kind of used to the idea of it being their lot in life to chase him around, he tells them "Sorry, I've gotta peace out" AND leaves them with a menacing "BUT I'LL COME BACK SOMEDAY." So now the poor kids have to go through life wondering which storm will bring the demon snowman back around.
I guess the message here is to always bring your OWN HAT when you're going to build a snowman, don't just use one you FIND. Lesson learned.

Stages

Denial

Anger

Depression

Comfort Food

Retail Therapy

Care Packages

Kind Words

Ridiculousness

Laughter.

Family, friends, love.

Happiness.

I give up.

There are no good guys.
There are just no good guys left. Are there? I would like to be proven wrong here, but it is definitely starting to seem like THERE REALLY ARE NO GOOD GUYS OMG.


On my online dating profile there is a section where you are supposed to write about the first things people notice about you. I wrote: "My hair, my tattoo, my wild hand gestures, my long-winded stories. My sparkling personality? I'm not going to put the thing most people REALLY notice about me on here, but if you meet me you'll know."
I'm assuming that most of you, dear readers, know what that last sentence refers to?
Anyhow, I met up with a guy a couple weeks ago and halfway through our beers he asked me about it.

Guy: So, what's the thing that people notice about you?

Me: You can't guess?

Guy: I don't know... it's not your tattoo, right? Because you mentioned that.

Me: No, not my tattoo.

Guy: Is it your nose? Your nose is kind of weird. It's your nose, isn't it?

Me: o_O


I met another boy a few weeks ago. He seemed nice, whatever. We hung out a few times... and then I mentioned something about how I would break up with a guy if he cheated on me. And then this boy gave me a speech about how cheating isn't THAT big of a deal because everybody cheats, even good guys, and KC probably cheated on me because guys usually do and a guy wouldn't give up a relationship unless there is someone else he wants, and I just don't understand because I don't have any kids (neither does he, by the way), but when you HAVE kids you realize that you have to work things out for the sake of the family, so when someone cheats then you forgive them. *pat pat on my head*
Me: O_o


And then there was last night. I went to see the Nutcracker with my friend's boyfriend's neighbor. I don't know him very well, and neither does my friend, nor her boyfriend. But we have all hung out in group settings before and I just assumed he was, y'know, NORMAL. I did NOT think he would abandon me on the street corner in an unfamiliar area of the Tenderloin. BUT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED.
Here's what went down: One of the times the group of us all hung out, dude said he wanted to see the Nutcracker. I offered to go with him, if he was looking for someone with whom to go. So then last weekend he texted me and said he was buying the tickets for Friday (last night). I told him that I had an interview in Dublin at 4pm and I would hopefully be back in time, and I asked how much my ticket was. He said not to worry about it.
I ended up leaving Dublin at 5:30 so it took me two full hours to get home. I changed, grabbed a taxi, and made it to the theater at intermission. Dude was standing at the stairs with a glass of champagne for me. I was feeling cranky and bummed that I had missed the first half of the show, not to mention starving since I hadn't eaten much all day (too nervous because of the interview). But I drank my champagne and started to feel better. We watched the second half of the show (which was amazing, by the way) and then afterward dude asked me if I was hungry. Yes, I definitely was. He suggested a fancyish restaurant. I said we could just go to Mel's because I was really craving a grilled cheese sandwich. He said okay and we started to walk. After a block or so he said he really wanted to go to the fancy place. I said that was fine, let's go. So we walked... and walked and walked. We got to the restaurant and it was packed. So dude said we would go somewhere else and we started walking again. The following is a transcription of our conversation as we walked.

Him: I went to a new bar in my neighborhood called [something about a goat, I can't remember the name]. I just thought that was the stupidest name, ever. Like, why would you open a new bar and name it that?

Me: Because it's funny? I dunno. I think it sounds funny. Goats are funny.

Him: There's this other bar, I think it's near Eleventh and Folsom-

Me [laughing]: Is it the Holy Cow?

Him: Ugh. No. I hate that place.

Me: Whaaat? You can't hate that place! It's a dive club!

Him: People dance on tables there. I tend to avoid places like that.

Me: Oh.

We walk for awhile in silence.

Me [noticing that we are passing restaurants left and right]: Um. Where are we going?

Him: Well, if you want to go to any of these places we can, but I want to find this one.... [looking at phone].

Me: Okay.

We keep walking.

Him: Oh, here it is. Right up there.

Another block.

Me: Um. Where is this place?

Him: What? Are you getting annoyed?

Me: Well, no. But I mean, I don't want to walk forever. Where is this place?

Him: Right up there [gestures vaguely ahead].

More walking. (And let me explain here-- I don't usually MIND walking. I enjoy it, even. But tonight I was wearing fancy boots and a fancy outfit and I also just kind of wanted to pick a place and get some damn food.)

Me: Sooo, um, IS it right up there?

Him: Yeah.

Me [laughing]: Okay! Well NOW I'm annoyed!

Him: You know what? [stops walking, turns to face me, gives me a fake smile, grabs my hand, and shakes it].

Me: Wha?

Him: I'm just getting a really bad vibe from you.

Me: Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean-

Him: I was really happy.

Me: And I'm bringing you down? I'm sorry, I just-

Him: [turns and walks away]

Me: [look around, realize I'm in an unfamiliar section of the Tenderloin and I don't know how to get out]

Me: O_O



I give up. There are no good guys.

D-lightful

This is D.

I met D on the first orientation day of the crazy accelerated RN part of our program. We were standing in line to get our photos taken for our name tags and I had turned away from this insufferable twit behind me and butted my way into D's conversation with another girl. I think my opening line was something about how heavy my backpack was, she agreed that hers was, too, and we've been friends ever since.
Since my specialty is Ger1atr1cs and D's is Midw1fery, we had all our classes together for only one quarter and then a few here and there for the rest of the three years. We would meet up for dinner or drinkies and I'd tell her about some 75 year old patient with a chronic illness I had seen, and she would tell me about the babies she had caught that day.

I met D when I was still with The Crazy Ex, and she was one of the first people I opened up to about how bad things really were with him. She is one of the people who never judged me, but who supported me endlessly and helped me pick up the pieces of my life after I got out of that situation. We have both gone through some rough times during our three years in school. I tend to get caught up with all the little things and stress and cry and FLIP OUT over everything, but D handles tough situations with endless grace and strength. If something is too hard to deal with at that moment she'll take a break and come back to it. "I had to put it on the shelf for awhile," she'll say. I don't think I could have gotten through the program without her.

D loves music and dances with her eyes closed. She is the girl you see at a coffee shop, studying a huge pile of books. She grows her own herbs. She'll strike up a conversation with anyone. While I tend to shy away from solo social activities and dislike most people, D will go to a concert by herself, meet a new friend on the bus ride there, and befriend the guys living in the park. She has friends named Mama Sue, Wolf, Fuzzy, and Brunch. She's the only person I know who doesn't just tolerate other people, she appreciates and, for lack of a better word, celebrates them.

She went to visit a friend a couple hours away and ended up getting LOST IN THE WOODS ALL NIGHT LONG. She'll tell you the story, which includes her getting separated from her group, losing her shoes, and sleeping in a ditch, and she'll laugh and shrug it off. "It was quite an adventure," she says. While I struggle to be open-minded and easygoing and adventurous and a light packer, D already is all of those things.

D recently moved up north to start working in a m1dw1fery practice. There was a snafu with her (out of state) license so her new workplace created a position for her to work as an RN until she could start practicing as a m1dw1fe, this week. I talked to her yesterday and she said it has been going well, but she's still nervous. I'll tell ya what, those ladies are lucky to have D working with them. Someday if/when I ever have babies, there is no question in my mind that I would want her there with me.

I miss you, girl. I don't think you know how special you are, but the rest of the world seems to. We're all lucky to have you.

For the Tots, 2011

Right around this time last year, I read a couple of posts by a certain Bloggess that inspired me to start my very first Christmas tradition of my own. I went out and bought a bunch of toys for the tots. They lived under my Christmas tree for a week or so, and then I donated them all. It made me so happy, knowing I was doing something good and helping people and putting smiles on kids' faces, plus there was the bonus of my house looking especially festive for a little while.
Here is what my tree looked like last year:

And here is what it looks like right now:

Actually, I took the photo last night. But the toys are still all there.

I may have gone a little overboard. Not that there's anything wrong with that. I bought all of these toys at Walgreens, using their buy two get one free and buy one get one free deals. I enjoy shopping in general and shopping for toys in particular, and this year I'm giving my nieces and nephews mostly stuff I found at the flea market (that they'll like!), so it was fun to go out and BUY TOYS. Lots of toys!

I'm going to donate them all this weekend. Shout out to the Bloggess for inspiring me to start doing this, and Merry Christmas to one and all!

Potpourri

This weekend was incredibly fun. On Friday afternoon Jenny and Gabriel came over and we hung out while we waited for Gabey's dad to pick him up. We watched my favorite Christmas movie and Gabey played with some early Christmas gifties I gave him. He was sweet and good and patient but his dad was about three hours late, which is an awful long time for a little boy to wait in a tiny apartment with next to no toys. Which means that my house transformed into a Justin Bieber-ified video watching/dance party space, as usual.
And Jenny caught these videos of me... singing?



Please take note that my cat is nearly the same size as Jenny's child.

And then we spent approximately twenty minutes attempting to pronounce the word anemone.
And then we went out! And the night was filled with shenanigans and tomfoolery, as per usual.


---

I spent Sunday at my parents' house, hanging out with some of my nieces and nephews and decorating their Christmas tree. It was the culmination of two solid weeks of me burning the candle at both ends, so to speak, so I spent a good amount of time sitting on the couch, handing ornaments to the kids and vaguely gesturing where I thought they should end up. My mom got out her ballerina Christmas tree topper that she keeps in the cabinet with her fine china and my brother in law climbed the ladder (my parents always get a really tall Christmas tree that has to be lashed to the ceiling beams) to put it at the top.

Bro in law: Here?

Me: Higher!

Bro in law: Here?

Me: Higher! It has to be higher than the mime!

My dad: Wait. Why... is there a mime on the tree?

Me: Lucky [10 year old niece] put it there. Is it really an ornament?

Lucky: It was in the box with all the decorations....

Me: But... why was it there? It's creepy.

My dad: It is sort of creepy.

My mom: It's an ornament! Everything becomes an ornament eventually. You sit still long enough, you end up on my Christmas tree.

---

I am currently making a batch of my tortilla soup. I found a variety of semi-gone-bad ingredients in my fridge so it's really not a question of IF I will get sick, but of WHICH ingredient will be the culprit. Will it be the partially-gloopy cilantro? The hard, stale tortillas? The shriveled onion? Only time will tell!

---

I realized the other day that I have a post on this site titled Balls, and a post titled Wangs. That's... a lot of innuendo for a site that rarely mentions intimate relations.

---

A movie that I surprisingly enjoyed, despite being exhausted and, er, dehydrated and the fact that I don't generally like primates? Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

---

I'm getting kicked out of my apartment sometime in the next few months. This isn't a surprise, nor is it a totally unwelcome occurrence. I've lived here for three and a half years and that was the approximate deal. I have loved living here, though. I love my apartment itself. I love that there's a courtyard with a hot tub that I can use to coax guests to come visit me. I love that I have a parking spot. I love that I never have to buy boxes because the cardboard recycling dumpster downstairs is usually full of them. This will come in handy for moving, methinks. Hopefully I will have a job before I move, but if not then maybe I'll take my sister's advice and move closer to her. I have an interview on Friday, though. Shhhh, don't jinx it.

---

The coming weeks will be satisfyingly Christmassy; full of buying toys for the tots, Christmas shopping, Holiday Tea with my mom, and Daniel's Christmas party. And I basically invited myself to see the Nutcracker with a friend of a friend. I plan to drink champagne at intermission, to help conversation flow a bit more freely and because I love champagne.
Oh, and I also went to Amber's Ugly Sweater Christmas Party last weekend.

The sweater I'm wearing is actually a sweatSHIRT. That someone intricately puff-painted and then... cut the sleeves off? For some reason?

estate sale birthday gifty

My niece, Princess's birthday is rather close to Christmas. When everyone was home for Thanksgiving she handed out her bday/xmas list:

The fact that she wrote "No Broken Bones" is appropriate because she has spent many a holiday in a cast, having broken one arm twice and the other three times. I initially thought "Lite Sprite" just meant Diet Sprite which, great! Easy! You want one case or three? But, no, actually it's a gimmickey toy with a very attractive commercial, apparently. I actually got into a rather heated discussion with my relatives about what "Password Journal" was referring to. THEY thought that it meant a journal where you keep all your passwords. *I* thought it meant a journal that you couldn't access unless you had the password. I feel like there's an obvious winner of that debate, but we never did confirm with Princess.

My favorite part of the list (aside from the fact that she hand wrote copies for everybody and laminated it with tape) is the note "[Princess] will enjoy any gift, even if it is not on the list. I LOVE YOU." Awwww. Hopefully she'll enjoy my present-- I bought it at an estate sale a couple weeks ago. I had been wanting to go to an estate sale for ages but I had a hard time finding listings for ones that were NOT full of priceless antiques or fine Victorian furniture. But then I looked on, duh, Craigslist (you just go to the 'items for sale' section and type in "estate sale" into the search bar). I was nervous to go to the estate sale, because it is at somebody's HOUSE and that makes me anxious, but it was actually fun. There were tons of other people there so I didn't feel weird about rifling through this lady's possessions. Plus, it was neat to get a feel for the person who had lived in the home and owned the things. I felt like maybe she would have been happy to know that her items were going to people who wanted and enjoyed them.

Anyhow, I bought this for my niece:

It's a little basketty purse thing, with an adorable strawberry design.

And it has a red checkered interior.

(I also got her those socks; she loves long socks.)

I'm pretty sure she'll enjoy it, even though it wasn't on the list.

Christmas Cheer

LOOK WHAT I BOUGHT TODAY!

Sorry for shouting. BUT I AM EXCITED! A Christmas tree! Of my very own!
I went to work today (I've been doing observations/data collection in a nursing home for the past couple weeks, as a nurse researcher on a short term project) and I learned that we're finishing up on Friday but they're going to pay us for an extra eight hours since we have been so awesome and efficient. And THEN I figured that if I bought a Christmas tree at the Delancey Street Foundation lot then I would be giving my money to an organization that does good work and that I like and support. So then, as I was driving home, I happened to pass by one of the lots and I impulse bought a tree!

Except that the lot wasn't on my way home and I had to leave and hit the ATM really quick because I hadn't realized that they didn't take credit cards. So I suppose it was premeditated Christmas tree buying after all.

When I got home, I manhandled the tree into my house all by me onesie, and then got out my storage bin of Christmas decorations.

I trimmed the tree.

I don't have a star yet, so the sparkly peace sign is substituting for the time being. Those bells are camel bells my parents brought from their trip to Israel last summer. The picture frame has a photo of Bowie in it. And the ballet slippers are a nod to my mom's traditional Christmas tree topper-- a ballerina.

And I set up the rest of the decorations.

Things are looking (and smelling) mighty festive around here. I'm so glad I talked myself into getting a tree. It was totally worth it.