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.

25 Things

Okay, I'll play this game. Here are 25 Things that you may or may not know about me:

1. My pillow is named Lumpy. There are four other pillows on my bed. None of them have names.

2. For my middle school graduation the guys wore suits and the girls wore white dresses and all the graduates had to recite a poem. Not together, I mean, individually. You had to write a graduation poem, wait for your turn, and then go up to the podium and read it. I'm sorry, EVERYONE WHO ATTENDED THAT CEREMONY. That's an unreasonable amount of terrible symbolism to have to sit through. I don't remember (or, more accurately, I have blocked out) my poem. I only remember this one guy's that started with "June fifth, it's a beautiful day." It was a freezing cold and foggy day but now every time June fifth rolls around I STILL think "June fifth, it's a beautiful day." And now maybe you will, too.

3. I hate the texture of terra cotta.

4. In first grade I would sometimes get in trouble for playing with my toys inside my desk instead of concentrating on our lessons. There was a boy who sat next to me. I don't remember his name, but I distinctly remember the know-it-all quality of his voice when he would say "Teacher! Julia's playing with her Sharing toys!"

5. I will be forever grateful to my field hockey coach for her zero-tolerance policy on wimpy handshakes. "If I teach you nothing else this summer, every one of you will have a NICE FIRM HANDSHAKE by the end of it." And, BY GOD, we did.

6. My favorite pen is the Pilot EasyTouch fine point.

7. I never knew either of my grandfathers. They both died long before I was born.

8. In sixth grade I switched to a school that had uniforms. You had to wear your uniform except on "free dress days" or special occasion days like Halloween. I remember that Halloween I decided to be a tourist. I went all out-- goofy high up shorts, Hawaiian shirt, binoculars, big camera, travel books, fanny pack. When I tried it on at home I thought it was hilarious. Once I got to school, I realized all the other kids had worn 'cooler' costumes (I don't remember how costumes were deemed cool or not cool, only that mine fell decidedly into the not cool category). I spent the day shedding pieces of the costume. That's pretty much a metaphor for my entire experience at that school.

9. I never order chicken at a nice restaurant. I learned that from my mama.

10. I used to get grossed out by blood. Just thinking about blood going making its regular ho hum journey though the heart, lungs, and body made me start to get queasy. I got over it when I took my EMT class at age 24.

11. In my high school psychology class we had to do that thing where you carry around an egg for a week and pretend it is your baby. I named mine Conrad. It was a girl.

12. Senior year in college my two friends and I lived together in an apartment building with a strict 'no pets' policy. We had two kittens and a lizard.

13. I think Hugh Jackman is hot, but only as Wolverine.

14. I think Eddie Izzard is hot, but only in full makeup.

15. Some dumb things I remember doing as a kid: cutting my thumb because I was SHAVING a bar of soap, jumping off the stair ledge and doing a front flip onto the couch, climbing around on the bookshelves, and asking my mom was it okay with her if I stuck this piece of jagged metal into the electric socket?

16. Speaking of which, I got shocked by an electric socket on my El Salvador trip when I was trying to plug in my dad's laptop (so he could study up on the complicated surgeries he was performing). After I got shocked we still needed to charge our various electronics so we decided to try the other socket in our room. We got into an argument about who would test the next socket. His point: he was the DAD and I was the daughter so it was his job to do things like test electric sockets. My point: I was a nurse and he was the SURGEON-- his hands were far more valuable than mine on this trip. And then I shoved him aside and tested the socket. It didn't shock me.

17. I have a crease line on my nose, commonly known as the allergic salute. KC has one, too. So does my littlest niece.

18. One of the first tattoo ideas I had was a pair of wings on my back. I thought that was a super cool idea but I decided not to do it because (1) I found out it is totally cliche, and (2) it would have bothered me if the wings weren't big enough to support my body weight.

19. I had a radio show in high school. I played a lot of disco.

20. One day in second grade I brought to school this really cool set of erasable crayons that my grandma had given me. I noticed that the eraser had gone missing after recess and I had a feeling that this one mean girl had taken it. I waited until the next recess and I checked inside her desk. THE ERASER WAS THERE. So I took it back and put it in my desk. And then I chickened out and put it back in her desk so she wouldn't notice that it was missing and think I had taken it.

21. I like having long hair, but I hate having hair touch my face, or the back of my neck, or my arms, or my back. Especially when I'm sleeping. When I lie down, I sweep all my hair straight up atop my head so none of it can touch me.

22. I've always loved being read to. Still do, in fact.

23. My favorite year of college was sophomore year.

24. I have rather large and too many teeth for my mouth. My front teeth are big and my adult canine teeth grew in at the top of my gumline, like fangs. It took two sets of braces, 9 tooth extractions (some of baby teeth), a jaw widener contraption that someone had to crank every night, retainers, and lots of hours spent lying on the couch with an ice pack on my face to get this fabulous smile.

25. I'm named after my mom, sorta.

meditaion, moderation, caffeination

My friend Kelly once tricked me into going to a meditation class with her. I say tricked because she told me about the stretching, the tea time, the soothing guided meditation, and the fact that it was free. She neglected to mention that the class was TWO AND A HALF HOURS LONG. After the stretching, the tea, and the soothing guided meditation (which was really not as soothing for me as I think it was for other people because I kept peeking one eye open and wondering if it was okay to change positions since my legs were going numb) I remember the man in charge (maybe he has some kind of title) telling us a story about how meditation is a Daily Activity and if you don't do it every day then you might as well not do it at all because you clearly won't be getting as much out of it. Which pretty much means that that was my last meditation class.

I have a point that I'm getting to, I promise. Just go with me on this.

A couple times in the last month or so I went to the student health center to see about my recent Tummy Issues and the doctor(s) told me that, among other things, I should try to cut out caffeine. To someone who was formerly a daily Pepsi drinker, this was not good news. I was willing to try it though, since my tummy has been all hurty and upset lately. I stopped drinking caffeinated soda and drank Sprite when the occasion presented itself. But then I started reading up on IBS and found that some of the research has pointed to fructose as one of the triggers for, uh, symptoms. So on a recent trip to Costco I bought a package of Mexican Cokes-- you know, the kind that come in glass bottles and are made with cane sugar? And I'm not sure if it is all in my head but I think I'm noticing a difference. For one thing I have been drinking a lot less soda than I used to. Maybe 2-4 times a week which I guess still sounds like a lot but not when you compare it to the 7-14 times a week that it used to be, amiright? Anyhow it seems like when I drink Sprite or regular cola that I get a tummy ache, whereas when I drink Pepsi Throwbacks or Coke from a glass bottle I do not.

Maybe I should stop drinking soda all together but if there's a sure-fire way to make me throw in the metaphorical towel or break into the bottling company late at night to drown myself in one of their mixing tanks it is telling me that I AM NEVER ALLOWED TO DRINK SODA AGAIN.

So. Moderation.


I have been doing pretty well with this plan. I haven't recently had any SEVERE tummy aches like I used to and I've been drinking more water and eating smaller frequent meals and so on.

This past Sunday night, however, I could. not. sleep. I remember lying in bed around 11. Waking up to pee around midnight. Being awake at 2ish. Being awake at 3ish. Being awake at 4ish. Being awake at 5ish. Being awake at 6ish. And having to get up at 7ish. And I got up and went to clinical since I had actually called in sick the previous week for that exact reason-- I couldn't sleep last Sunday night either!

I wondered what the hell was wrong with me. Was I just so keyed up about clinical that I couldn't relax? Was something else stressing me out?

But I didn't feel stressed out or worried. Just NOT ABLE TO SLEEP. Then, as I was brushing my teeth and fantasizing about my snuggly bed, I thought: CAFFEINE! I drank a Coke last night at about 8 pm. Could that possibly be it? It has been years and years since caffeine from soda has affected me in a noticeable way but it has also been years and years since I haven't had it regularly. So. Huh. Maybe.

And then I did a little research. I discovered that at 8:14 on Sunday Oct 24 I had posted this on Twitter.

Ah HA!

Last Sunday night I drank a Coke at about 8 pm and I couldn't sleep that night either. Mystery solved!

So apparently I'm now one of those people who has to watch out and not drink soda too late in the day. Not even two months of this and I've already become my grandmother. Not that that's a bad thing; she was pretty awesome.

Now that I'm reading back over this post I'm realizing that some people might be reaching into their mental file cabinets and relabeling my file as "Soda Drinker, Excessive" but what if I told you my favorite beverage is actually milk? And that my doctor told me to cut back on that, too? Any sympathy now? What if I tilt my head and bat my eyelashes at you?

New Jeans HAY-OH!

I have been wearing the same jeans for a rather long time. Since, oh, sophomore year of college I think? So that's eightish years.

They are Hydraulic brand and if memory serves I believe I bought them at Nordstrom. They were probably around $60 which seemed like and AWFUL LOT to pay for a pair of jeans. Especially since I decided I liked them so much that I went back and bought a second pair. They've faded over time and the hems are frayed and torn. And for some reason the back pocket buttons on ONE pair have fallen off. But I can't give them up. Because other jeans have come and gone but these babies have LASTED.

Here they are. I took the following pictures of them in a dressing room where I was fruitlessly trying on other jeans.

From the front:

From the side:

I don't know if the photos do those jeans justice for how much I like them. They are comfortable but still look pretty good. At 97% cotton/3% spandex they have enough stretch to give a little if my weight fluctuates. And did I mention they are EIGHT YEARS OLD? Maybe that's not SO long but it's eight years of heavy use-- of wearing them at least a couple times per week, in the rain, in the snow, in the mud, and throwing them in the washer and dryer.

I have certainly bought and worn many a pair of other jeans within the past eight years. But none of them had the staying power. They either would get too small or too big at some point or they would have some defect I failed to notice when I bought them: like too thick of fabric or too long of a crotchular region.

It took me a long time to realize that if I wanted new jeans that I would wear all the time, I should be looking for replacements of THOSE SPECIFIC jeans. Not that there's anything really WRONG with them right now, but just in case both pairs get torn or lost or we just stop getting along as well as we used to. And actually, I probably should retire them soonish anyway... I tend to hang onto things long after the magic has faded and all that's left is bitterness and frustration.

Anyhow! I don't want to speak too soon but I think at long last I may have found them! At Charlotte Russe, for $34.50, with 98% cotton/2% spandex.

Here are some photos of them (taken on a different day from those above, though I do seem to be wearing the exact same shirts).

From the front:

From the side:

I think (hope) we have a winner! (But I'm definitely hanging on to the old ones for as long as we can stand each other).

Healing

As a nurse I see many, many wounds. Surgical incisions, traumatic injuries, bedsores. Gaping holes in the skin right down to the bone. Bruises and abrasions and lacerations with pools of blood or swollen, angry skin.

And I am consistently amazed by how some of the most wretched and horrific wounds are able to, with time and care, heal. The tissue knits itself back together and becomes whole. The result is often imperfect with scars or uneven bumps of flesh. But the body heals.

In the metaphorical sense, I am also healing. Being victimized by verbal and emotional abuse creates wounds. They might not be visible, but they are there. Having your trust betrayed makes it hard to trust again. Being lied to makes it hard to believe in people.

Being manipulated and tormented and belittled hurts.

Areas of scarring and damage become more sensitive, more susceptible to injury. My emotional injuries are no exception. I have emotional scars, that is certain. Because of my experiences I am more cautious and sensitive. I am more likely to be triggered and upset by a seemingly innocuous occurrence because it resembles something from my past. But I think that, with time, even this will fade.

I am healing. The name calling and the hurtful remarks and the deliberate attempts to cut me down-- those memories are fading and the wounds are healing. What I am able to focus on is how quickly people sprang into action to help me. How steadfastly they (you) stood by my side.

Back in November, I wrote about how grateful I was. Even when I was in the thick of it, even through the anxiety and terror, I could still see how lucky I was. What I remember is how amazingly people came through for me. How time and again my friends picked me up and dusted me off. How fiercely, unrelentingly loyal and protective people were. How insanely far people went out of their way for me.

I got to see just how much love there is out there for me. Because of that, my scars are beautiful. And I can heal.

Applicable to many situations:

Having already tried something once makes it a lot easier to do it again.

And again and again and again....

Am I right?

quick update

- I had a nice birthday. Lovely hugs, phone calls, comments on blog, tweets, etc (THANK YOU HUNNIES!). And nice presents.

- I thought I was just having bad allergies like I do at my parents' house (usually from any or all of the following: dust, pollen, grass, animals, wood smoke, unfamiliar perfumes, more dust, more pollen) but it turns out that I have an actual cold. The kind with poppy/clogged ears, one of those keep-you-up-all-night dry tickling coughs, and a runny nose that responds neither to sniffling nor blowing. The good news is that if I'm going down I'm taking EVERYONE in my family with me since we all shared sodas at the kiddie park yesterday.

- Every night this week one of my sisters has been making a "signature cocktail" for the day. On my birthday it was POG and passion fruit rum.

- My dad is planning to do his magic show tomorrow night.

- I'm taking Miss Grace out to lunch tomorrow (well, today rather). We have lots to catch up on and I especially want to give her lovey hugs because her grandpa just died and that is just difficult and suckey.

- My life is still teeming with drama but between this cold, the signature cocktails, and the variety of medications from the bottom of my sister's purse it feels as though I'm experiencing conversations and events through a layer of cotton or that my brain has a sweater on over it or... some other way of explaining that I feel like I'm more an observer than an active participant so the upswing is that I've been less weepy than I might have otherwise been.

feeling sorry for myself

<--- This is how I felt last year on my birthday. And so far, it is looking like it might be equally awesome this year. And by that I mean not awesome at all.

My boyfriend is out of town and doesn't seem to 'get' it. And some of my family members have taken issue with my tattoo, to the point of saying... some things they possibly don't entirely mean.

Last year didn't actually suck because I ended up going out with lovely friends and imbibing myself silly. But this year many of my friends are out of town. So. Anybody have tips for pulling myself up by my metaphorical bootstraps and making the most out of my birthday? Or should I just pretend it's not happening and celebrate later in the hopes of avoiding the crushing disappointment that I feel is just around the corner?

Creative and Talented Hobbyist Dies of Packratitis

Yesterday, I looked around my apartment and started to panic. The Mess had gotten out of hand. How, you ask? Let's take a look. On part of the kitchen counter, there was this:


The main culprit here is my soap-making materials. And actually, those don't offend me too much. I like making soap. It is relaxing, fun, easy, makes great gifties, and requires me to exercise the creative side of my brain-- the side that's been sitting on the couch eating potato chips while the problem-solving side runs this yearlong marathon I call nursing school (okay, that's not true, nursing is a multifaceted discipline that requires book smarts AND creativity but whatever, I liked the image of half my brain just chillin out watching daytime TV). It's also a hobby that inspires other people to be impressed with and complimentary of me. I tell them I make soap and they say things like "Oh WOW. That's so neat! You must be so creative and talented!" So the soap-making stuff is okay. The fact that it temporarily lives on the counter doesn't upset me too much.

Except when it's in combination with this:


and this:


and, dear God, THIS:


What you can't see here is the snowboard, boots, bin of snow clothes, and suitcase from my vacation (two weeks ago) that I still hadn't taken downstairs to the storage unit. Also, you probably can't appreciate the fact that if I stood in a spot next to the couch and bent slightly, I could reach out and touch EVERY SINGLE ONE of these surfaces. This should emphasize why The Mess was starting to make me panic. My apartment is tiny. Thus, any amount of clutter makes a significant dent in the amount of available space and it starts to look horrendously bad in a much shorter amount of time than it would if it were, for instance, spread out amongst a number of rooms. Since the only surfaces are located roughly within 4 feet of each other, the clutter they collect can definitely induce a "the walls are closing in on me" feeling within a very brief amount of time.

So, last night, I cleared off the kitchen counter (not the one with the soap-making stuff, the other one), washed the dishes, and took the vacation stuff down to the storage unit. The coffee table is still a mess, though I did pick up the magazines and things that had fallen to the floor and place them on the table. I haven't really touched the computer/kitchen table, which is where I am sitting right now, surrounded by the teeming piles of junk that will eventually bury and suffocate me. I'll leave the soap making stuff out so that the rescue team/obituary writer can note how creative and talented I am.

Stress level midnight.

I had thought that writing about things I'm not supposed to be thinking about might make me *poof!* not think about them anymore. I thought that maybe by listing the fact that they existed, I wouldn't have to explore them anymore and my brain might file them under "the matter is closed" and shut the filing cabinet door with a satisfying click. But instead it made me feel even more anxious and obsessive and unable to sleep last night because I was obsessing and also coming up with new things to worry about.

This morning I have been foggily unproductive. I thought I was spending my time relaxing and lounging in bed but now I realize I was revisiting my unhealthy thoughts and allowing myself to reach that crucial point of morning hunger leading to crankiness. So now I'm up. Hurg.

So. Moving on. Maybe I should take a moment to metaphorically reward myself for some good efforts? Look at me trying to focus on the positive! Zippity effing doo dah.

I may have mentioned that I have five (FIVE!) papers due next week. Four in one class, one in the other. One of them requires a significant amount of research to be done at the hospital during clincials, so I worked on that quite a bit while I was there this week.

And yesterday, when I got home from an exhausting day/week of clinicals I thought it would feel nice to take a nap. Actually, I KNEW it would feel nice to take a nap since that's what I did when I got home from clinical on Thursday. However, I also knew that I would feel all nap-hungover and guilty afterward. So instead I made myself a late lunch and worked on papers. I was kind to myself-- offering myself an early dinner only a few hours after the late lunch and peppering my homework efforts with reading blogs I like and watching episodes of Will & Grace. And I finished TWO of the papers.

And then I even managed to get myself to one of the meetings we were supposed to attend for our Psych rotaion. I chose Overeaters Anonymous, not because of the aforementioned lunch/dinner proximity but because I thought it would be really interesting. But I had kind of been hoping to melt into the background and people kept coming up to me with their warm handshakes and their "good things happen here"s so I felt like a phony, like maybe I should do something to give their niceness back because it wasn't really meant for me. But when I explained why I was there "My name is Jewels, and I'm a nursing student and we're, um, supposed to, uh, [trails off] [smiles awkwardly]...." they were still very welcoming and appeared to be happy about the idea of healthcare professionals taking an interest. So it was good that I went-- I got to check something off my list and it was interesting. Except when I heard about people thinking about food when they're already eating or planning their day around the treat they wanted to eat later or eating after (gasp!) they're already full, I kind of went uh yeah... is that bad??

AAAARG!!!

Okay, so my computer just got stuck on italics for like 5 minutes and I nearly hurled off the table so maybe now would be a good time to take a leisurely shower, eat something, get out of the house and/or continue with my positive thinking. Maybe OH MY fucking dammit. Are you kidding me?? I JUST FIXED YOU. WHY ARE YOU IN ITALICS AGAIN. *crick* *squeak* *Jewels's head coming unhinged.*

More self personality deconstruction

I have this friend, and when she is put in awkward social situations she often turns into this outgoing, super friendly and interested version of herself. Most people tend to respond positively and want to talk to her and be around her. I tend to want to beat her with a wooden spoon, but she's probably onto something. Because I evidently lack basic social skills. When put in awkward social situations I want to escape. And since I am catagorically incapable of expressing any feeling other than the one I am experiencing, I tend to stare around the room with a horrified look in my eyes. Observing other people's social patterns without contributing one of my own. Or else I will silently judge people for their poor choices (how's that for the pot calling the kettle socially inept??).

I'm not outgoing enough to strike up effortless conversations with people and I'm not self confident enough to just stay quiet without feeling awkward. I went by myself to the wedding of a childhood friend and I spent the whole time wishing I had just sent a gift. And it didn't help that everyone with whom I struck up a conversation-- her father-in-law, her grandmother, the caterer-- would eventually pat me jovially on the shoulder and suggest that I might like to go mingle with some of the nice people my own age. And hit the dance floor with them! Didn't I like to dance!?

The other day I was at the mall and I wandered into the Sketecher's store. I realized too late, when I was already inside, that I was the only customer in the store. This probably doesn't bother, oh, anyone like it bothers me. But I guess I feel obligated to make an effort to look around if I'm the only one there, even though I've ruled out all the shoes when I walked through the door on the basis that I'm incredibly picky. I feel the same way when I am one of the few people to show up at a crappy poetry reading or show of some kind-- I want to leave but I feel like since I'm there I have to stay because it would be much more obvious if I left.

"Hi," said the nice salesman standing by the door.

"Hi" I mumbled, instead of fishing my cell phone out of my pocket and pretending to answer it as I left the store.

The salesman very nicely asked if I was looking for anything in particular and told me that the store was offering some buy one get one half off type deals. And I listened. And then I looked around. And then a woman with long black hair and a Macy's bag walked through the door and I grabbed her roughly by the shoulders and said THANK GOD YOU'RE HERE. But actually I just walked out toward my freedom, represented in this case by a soft pretzel.

almost halfway done (ish)

Tomorrow I will be halfway through with the second-to-last week of the second quarter of my prelicensure year of nursing school! Which means there are only two more quarters! And then a big, stressful test and then two years of advance practice training after that and then I'll be done with school, I promise!

I've just got to make it through a final, two term papers, and four more clinical days and then we get a big long break for December which makes me so happy I would do a little dance if the invisible evil gnomes attacking my neck/shoulder/back area would give it a rest with the jabbing and rock-pelting for a moment.