Monday, May 31, 2010

Bah! Eck!...

So BB was super nice to me this morning bailed me out of a jam with regards to I failed at my payroll duties thus leaving me without the money to pay for coffee etc this morning... so I was going to repay him with money and some food since BB has been so generous.  Problem is... BB being nice and me being nice back because that is the polite thing to do, is also the most efficient way to send mixed signals.  Now Houston we have a problem.  The kind of problem that makes the can of baked beans I ate not want to stay in my stomach.

I will say I have no problem being rejected, I can totally work with that, as I being a grown woman I know how to process it's not you it's me bs and I get it - I can deal with that.  I however can't be that woman to say it's not you it's me - because in the case of CEF and BB and others it has been them.  BB is sweet, but he's one hell of a broken man and I am not in the business of sewing hearts back together and weeding through more bs, lies and all sorts of issues in the hopes of finding someone who is able to walk with me through life.  I can't do that - I tried to do that with CEF, but knowing that I can't talk to another man, go out with my girls for the fear that I might talk to a guy. Sure a little jealousy keeps the passion alive and all that shit but in the end - that which burns red hot has a tendency to consume the bonds of trust really quickly.  Anyways I digress I was really really hoping that BB's departure for a far far away continent to work would make my life easier but I guess not...

Saturday, May 29, 2010

*Sigh*

This is the public version of the man that makes my heart swoon - and if you want to know a little trivia the lady interviewing him is the sister of a guy I went to high school with - oddly enough we (her and I) crossed paths a few times in university... small small world up here.

Anyways sort of narrowing down what I'm looking for - educated, slightly rebellious, and fun/witty.  Look folks I have a thing for the boys with mohawks, tats, piercing etc - now while I like that external image I'm not looking for a bad ass kind of person - if you know what I mean.   In the end if the right guy for me doesn't look like that then something else while have had to have shocked me into being attracted to him - and well then I can just cut his hair in the night and get him drunk on a few occasions - enough to get a sleeve tattoo done or something like that... and you think I'm kidding

PS If you don't watch The Hour get on it - tout de suite, like NOW, not later NOW
 

Friday, May 28, 2010

Revelation!

I'm poor, like not poorhouse poor but might as well be...

See I debt - who doesn't these days?  My school debt I can rationalize - it's a hell of a lot easier to pay off than my credit card debt - see... when CEF was around I had to pay for flights  (for both of us - yes that should have signaled something too), I put the deposits down, paid for the invites, engagement dinner/celebration and the list goes on and on and on.  Add to that a pretty penny per month on therapy for the last two years and you get debt.  Now I cut up said card in December.  That was a huge relief and if the world didn't function on credit the other would go the same route without hesitation.

Anyways the point is that I have to sit down and talk to my PU about said debt, mainly, if I am to go back to school in September I need him to pay it off for me in exchange for taking care of him when he's older, letting him call me S&P-y (he is the only human on this Earth with that privilege) or the knowledge that I won't have to move back in with him and still get help with my debts...  It's not a conversation I want to have but hell what's the worst that could happen?

For all those that pray this would be another thing to add to the list - as it looks right now I will have to move home if I want to go back to school or I have to get some kind of shift work... eek.

Website I Love

Thursday, May 27, 2010

A Little Honesty Time

I am a believer that if you put your fears out in the open that their power over you diminishes.

So folks here it goes:

I am scared shitless about the GRE/GRE Lit exam and graduate school and all that business.  Why?  Well a few years ago I wrote the MCAT which if we are being really honest I did not study well for - though for anyone who's taken it in it's original form I wonder if you could really ever study enough - needless to say I could have and should have studied harder. C'est la vie, and so is this.  I have been studying and reading and reading some more and working on this Shakespeare class - and as much as it all makes me tick and yadda yadda - as much as I can say it's not the MCAT saga, it's scary.  It's beyond scary.

Yep so there is the fear I have been laying out in an attempt to deflate it...

In moments like this I listen to this lovely song - this lady's word has carried me through many moments - this happens to be one of them

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

I Spell Addiction

B-O-O-K-S or P-O-W-E-L-L'-S

I had a friend ask me about my 16 books from Powell's if I NEEDED them... I need them like Lindsay Lohan needs an enabler, no, but it's going to happen without much resistance

So let's review so I can justify the purchases - actually the ridiculously cheap aspect is what I will use to justify the purchase - 16 books for $120 approx


 L-R

The Color Purple - Alice Walker

Non-Violence The History of a Dangerous Idea - Mark Kurlansky

Break Blow Burn - Camile Paglia (Poetry Anthology/Resource/Essay guide)

Howard's End - EM Forster

Intruder in the Dust - Faulkner

Gluten Free Girl - of http://www.glutenfreegirl.blogspot.com/

Diary of a Bad Year - J M Coetzee

Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger - I will note oddly enough that this book is one written in the 70's and two was recommend in a magazine Ms. J was buying - I found the recommendation - bought the book...

An Illustrated Man - Ray Bradbury - this was purchased despite my hatred for the cover art because I one heart RB and I had to read it after Criminal Minds devoted a show to it

Power Politics - Arundhati Roy is my kick me in the ass writer - she constantly reminds me I have a story - and I have a life I need to do something with - like kick other's in their brain's ass and get them going... I know that sounds weird, even weirder I will say fiction is not her strongest point, even she will admit that her fiction writing comes from a place of force and construction and her non-fiction comes from a place of need - of bursting forth in necessity.

The Translator - Leila Aboulela - I have a huge hole in my literary heart of fiction written from the perspective of an immigrant in Britain - oddly in this list I would call this the "fun" read

The Metamorphosis ... - Kafka  - Why? Because I'm tired of being in class and having someone say they love Kafka and I know nothing of it

Zora Neale Hurston - Dust Tracks on a Road - she is so much more complex and fabulous than Oprah made her book  Their Eyes Were Watching God to be

Les Miserables - V. Hugo

Mice and Men - Steinback

The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Oddly I'm Exhausted

Our lazy weekend in PDX has wiped me out and is making Hamlet my enemy - making just about any activity my enemy so I'm about to crawl back into bed and try and forget today...

But since I'm here it's time for the hodge podge posting that happens in these moments.  Wheat is evil, dairy ain't amazing either - but what is amazing is Happy Hour - Ms. J and I discovered PDX has an amazing institution for cheap ass drinkers like myself - well that and you get awesome food with it at really good prices but that all will be on the other blog - travel on over there...

Well so what did we do in PDX other than try to stay dry - well I tried to read through articles and in the process found myself struggling to find a paper topic that I had initially thought was easy - it seems my topic is part of a never ending circular discussion in which no one seems to make any kind of literary movement laterally away from the center - so it's yes to this and no to that and maybe to those ideas - does not work for me - I need something that I can even with some folly argue...  So no progress there - another place of no progress is my book addiction or my AB one for that - damn boy has reappeared in my brain - though not like that - let's start with the books.   There are books on my floor now - lots of books.  I am actually kind of scared - I have yet to know a time in my life when I owned this large a stack of books I had not read.  There have been many times I have had 20+ research books in various stacks on my floor but not like this.

As for AB it appears that after watching the SATC marathon with Ms. J on Saturday, my Mr. Big was never really a bad cold like AB - it is the weakness of the pride - the Maginot line for my heart - there is huge gaping hole in the defense structure that I still can't seem to want to build defense for.  That there is there is the issue - I know he's the shits for me in every way - it's the desire for defense that isn't present. Right now I'm going to claim a possibly lethal combination of apathy and loneliness.  I don't much care for a relationship but I wouldn't mind if I could get a little itch scratched - not that kind of itch - you know a hug, a kiss those little things that put that pep in your step. 

Oh well Hamlet is calling my name from the bed - wonder what he can do for me today.

Ms. J claims I interlock my reading, writing and music choices and it is very true normally one leads to the other so today's post in part was encouraged by this song, which I will apologize is older and so therefore all youtube has is a poor incomplete copy:

Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Ooo and while you're checking out Feminista

Check out this lovely lady: http://msbitchcakes.blogspot.com/ as Ms. J could attest to this woman lives within my skin - I would TOTALLY go through life looking exactly like her tats and all if I could have a job and a city that would embrace that - right now I think I'd be without a job in a heartbeat.  So anyways... check it out

Back in the Game

I started my first in class lecture class in longer than I can remember - actually it was probably about 2007 - three years from the classroom, it was hard to be there again.  To remember what it used to be like and what it's like now being closer to my post-doc prof's age than the majority of the class.  In the end I think I could have hugged everyone - it was awesome - it like getting a super powered acupuncture treatment combined with a runner's high - my brain lives again.

So now is the hard part - one I have class readings to add to everything else - but that isn't a huge issue in and of itself, but I still have the GRE and GRE Lit exam, AND I have the papers for this class.

The current course expectations are minor but I have to make a proposal to my prof for him to mark a paper double the length of the term paper's proposed length so I can get a paper to submit to grad school... eeek.  Back to the reading.

And yes Fort Minor is on right now...

And if you are looking for me you'll find my comments at www.thefeministafiles.blogspot.com

PS. I found someone bombastic - yes Mr. "I call genre an evaluative paradigm" - I am coming for you - you best beware.  Dude that's just a fancy term for a category, really?! You had to come out the gate with that.

PPS. I have 10 journal articles to read on the train - weeeeeee!!

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stmartain/342495493/

Monday, May 17, 2010

Sigh

I figure I should be happy - I have avoided my school reunion, but I'm not.  I feel like I need to be there to represent for all the educated single peeps out there - funny thing is I think I'm like one of maybe 5 of those in my class and the others are doctors.  You can get away with being single and a doctor because you've spent hundreds of thousand on your education, you have a title and you do very little sleeping amongst other amazing skills.  Now me - debt (check), title (no check), very little sleeping - opposite check - I do lots and lots of sleeping - everywhere I can - but that is not the point.  The point is I do not have multiple spawn, I do not have arm candy and I do not have a whole lot else either.  Does this mean I'm somehow less of person - NO, BUT to my classmates it means something is wrong with me - like for these ultra conservative folk - I go for the other team, I have leprosy, or something along those lines... you think I jest, oh I don't... so while I should be happy to avoid the where is your ____ (husband, house, title, child) - it just makes me sad that we are so stuck on those things when there are so many more things that define our lives.

Saturday, May 15, 2010

Stuck

Anne Lamott says that all writing begins with a shitty first draft.  I can see the story, I just can't some how articulate it.  So I am hoping that blogging out my outline, my character ideas.

I want there to be the structure of our Disney ideas of the world - our simplistic views of people and their motives.  The wicked witch/step mother maybe wasn't all the evil - maybe she was mentally ill - paranoid, schizophrenic - maybe she had a victim complex, maybe all of these things or none of them.  The princesses aren't perfect either - Belle broke into the Beast's home, Snow White may have run a bitchy ship, who knows and so on and so forth.  I don't want to over simplify things, I want it to be a critique of my life - of the events that happen in a life with abuse, a life of a woman in a culture that sees nothing wrong in the messages it spews out to women and men.  For example the man who made a comment about me after I pleasantly said hi out on my run this morning.  Yes, I wear a running skirt, it's not so you get a good shot at my ass, it's because it's 20 some odd degrees outside.  So while I would say you can kiss my ass, you might just take me up on that, so how about this eat my dust, and while you are it, trip on a curb and break your nose and a few teeth too for good measure.

Start - intro to the concept of our fairytale infiltrated culture
Story - the process likely starting from the end of my engagement - and tracking forward and back
End - the purpose - a no prisoners/no saviors view of events - I want to make sure that no one is saved, even the female character who's life will in part mirror mine.

Funny I still don't feel any further along

Friday, May 14, 2010

Writing

I start back to school on Tuesday - eek.  To get into the swing of things or maybe as my new coping mechanism that the warming days has started to regrow - but I've been writing some more.  I have become a little pack rat carrying around pieces of paper I've written on... anyways I am conscious that I'm not sure about the narration - it sounds very much like my posts, and while I love this format a part of me LOATHES chick literature.  To be honest I think it stunts people's ability to accept beautiful complex literature, and I don't know how to avoid contributing to that, anyways, structure will get written in somewhere but right now I'm trying not to stunt the process.

Anyways the point to this is I love music, and sometimes the music starts the writing process and sometimes it comes to mind during the process.  The first song came to mind yesterday as I was writing in a cafe waiting for my acupuncture appointment and having just survived sitting next to AB in the doctor's office waiting room.  The second I came across watching Bones - like House they can have amazing songs.

Specifically the line "making every kind of silence" but hell the whole song has distinct moments of truth - the whole holding on to make it work part - not so much and I do know it ended because of personalities - mine that depended on growth and his wanted a free spirit in the lack of commitment part

Thursday, May 13, 2010

Oh Ha Ha World, Very Funny

So because I think the world gets a kick out of the things that happen to me and well hell I guess I am in a position where I have to - guess what?

Well this afternoon when I'm nervously awaiting an exam that I have to have, I get to sit next to AB.  Yes AB managed to book an appointment for the exact same time with another doctor in the practice.  How this is feasible I do not really want to know.  I booked my appointment two months ago - I'm not rescheduling and he booked his yesterday... sigh.  I wish I could blame this whole appointment on him, which I could have until my Allergist suggested I needed to have it done to rule out any problems...

*Grumble* *Grumble* *Blush* *Sigh* *Grumble*

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Birthday Wish

I have finally decided what I want for my birthday this year - NO MORE TESTS!

I would like to take this opportunity to run down all the tests/appointments I've had in the last 12 months, which we could actually just say the last 6 months... this list is also my grand thank you to accessible health care because I can just imagine the kind of debt I would have if I had to consider paying for all of these:

September
General Practitioner visit (GP)
Sinus X-ray
Ear Nose Throat (ENT) visit - nose scope

October
Head/Neck MRI

November
General Practitioner visit

January
General Practitioner visit x 2

March/February
General Practitioner visit

March
Allergist - skin testing
General Blood work
Allergy Blood work
Tested also for STI's, Autoimmune, Parasites, Organ failure - via blood and stool (I know you wanted to know that)

April
Acupuncture

May
Acupuncture
Allergist (no answers)
Chest x-ray
General Practitioner - Physical (oh fun times)
More blood work!!

June
Abdominal and Pelvic ultrasound

I have to say there better not be anymore - I refuse, well I refuse to see anyone but my very nice and possibly handsome sports med doc (he's married) so I go just to talk to him - he's just super nice... not the point though - I want good health and no more tests.

As an aside there is much talk that everything is just stress related, and yes while I have gone through at lot of stress in the last few years a part of me wants to say that this just is damn well not fair and I know life isn't fair, but here's the deal.  I left a toxic (read:abusive) relationship with my ex-fiance and my mother and received and still receive therapy for other and related abuses, I've head my shit together for the most part, sure balls were dropped etc, but why when this was in the end the right thing to do is my body crapping out on me.  HELLO, you think you would be happy, aware that this is all good and a bazillion times better than being married to CEF and likely knocked up and around a few times...  Anyways Wednesday morning rant for y'all

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

I Vote for Laughter

We need to laugh around here - things are getting serious with all this health talk, grad school hand wringing and all that business:

Check this out - just don't have liquid in your mouth when you do.

Monday, May 10, 2010

I've been thinking

and not drinking so I figure I'm of soundish mind... TOITB has got me thinking about what I'm looking for in a partner.

I need balance.  I'm feminine - yes some of these points are going to be visible even to a blind man, so I need someone who appreciates that and gets that I also tend to use NLLL, love hockey fights - basically I need someone to cherish the wacky Gemini in me - the ying and the yang.

I need someone who understands that at my heart I am painfully shy and insecure and I break easy.  I will kick your ass and make sure you never forget, but I am like fine china in that you break it, it's broken.

I would like to stay at home for the most part with my children, I want to be present for them, and I would like my partner to be too... I want to write.  I need someone to understand that the corporate rat race doesn't work for me.

I need someone who understands my faith is important - and my cultural heritage is important too - that means I would prefer to have a pacifist centered home.

In the end despite the list, I have made peace with having all of the above but having a cat and not a man next to me in bed... at least when it gets moody I can kick him out of the house for the day and not be shamed by my neighbors or children.

Saturday, May 08, 2010

It all started with a quote from a previous post...

I have been mulling over a line I had used in a previous post, and I have the general construction of a novel sitting in my head - I just have to get it out there - so while I was on the T on Friday trying to nap, this came to my mind - I scribbled the rough idea - so here it is - the only problem is now I just want to write, write, write - that darn Fort Minor song. 

"Strip the wallpaper of my life. Take every layer that's been plastered on there haphazardly or intentionally, every layer a result of an event, a word, a perception.  When I reach the drywall, I want to remove that to, why not take it to the studs.  Take me down to the bone.  Restructure, recover, reseal, make the foundation something other than it is now, make walls where there should have been walls and remove those walls where necessity constructed them.  I want new drywall, new tape, new mud and then I want paint.  I want to paint my world, my life, my future and my past into something it was never and could possibly never be.  I want to paint in colors deep and dramatic, soft and peaceful and make a fantasy world that should have been my reality.  A reality that cannot be because my reality is a fairytale gone awry. 


I cannot strip anything from myself, except maybe my clothes, even that act can add a few more layers and some more walls.  In time you will be in there redecorating to hide the things you cannot forget.  Well I guess I could forget them but the FDA has yet to come out with the liver safe memory cleaning alternative with no calories and free of the risk that there will be even more in the end that you are hoping to forget. 


Fairytales... "

Thursday, May 06, 2010

BIG PLANS

I am hoping by emphasizing the title that it will:

a. Encourage me to embrace said plans
b. Provide justification when said plans make me feel lazy or overwhelming

Ms J is heading south this weekend, so I am on my own.  So what should S&P do while unsupervised?  None of those naughty things you might think, I would think of doing because I'm not thinking those things you are thinking I am thinking.  Oh no no no.  Actually I was considering a massage or a pedicure but those would only truly be wonderful if it wasn't so horridly cold here still.  Mother Nature has decided that because she was kindly cruel to us during a winter sporting event that can't be named for copyright reasons...winter should still be upon us... You might think I jest, but every day I look at my light winter coat and wonder if I should wear it or not, I usually don't and then spend the remainder of the day cursing my choice... Anyways we are no where near the disclosure of my plans...

1. Make ricotta cheese.  I don't know why I feel the compulsion to do so, but I do and oooooooo... brain wave I can make lemon ricotta muffins with it - now that really is a must do. (Check - Ricotta done and in fridge - PS So easy I don't think I will ever buy it from the store again, muffins done - they're okay - not like the WF ones which is a good and likely bad thing - the recipe needs work)


2. Update the food blog

3. Go for a run on Saturday morning and Sunday morning - ie. get out of the weekend funk business of staying in my pj's until the arrival of Ms. J or my PU compels me to bathe and change. (Saturday - done...)

4. READ.  Read, read, read - and maybe study too.  Now that I'm in this class I am grasping the necessity for me to get my studying self rolling again.  It is as most students know, like a train, the progress starts slow and once it warms up it's normally good, now it does get derailed but I'm going to do my best to avoid that... or WRITE - those MFA programs are starting up a siren song... but to apply I need a polished piece - ie. one solid chapter in a book - eek. (SUCCESS! - Chipped away at Vocab, Lit and Verbal - and started Catch 22 - sorry Ms. J I think I might have accomplished more that I have studying with you... or maybe I just feel better - the sun helps)

So there lovely folks are my plans.  We shall see, we shall see.

So musical selection - oddly enough I love to write to a beat and so this is one of those songs that I can really get mentally spewing to:

Wednesday, May 05, 2010

Please Explain to Me...

I love my red lipstick.  However, it has taken me years and years to accept my Jolie-esque lips and even more so to put red lipstick on them.  Normally no one looks at me, today though, today it seemed that everyone I made eye contact with had a slack-jaw/repugnant expression. Females were the primary source of this expression.  I have no answer as to why, but I do believe we, females, love to undermine whoever we can.  It doesn't help I'm having a blah, gah, grrr, mumble mumble week.  But I wonder why we are getting worse as I get older. I would love to blame "the man" "the industry" whoever, but in the end it is our decision to instead of smiling or being nice, being catty.  It was really hard.  I will say if I could have I would have removed my lipstick right there on the T.... Anyways, it's the same feeling I have when men slow down when they drive past me when I run in my running skirt...  Oddly enough, I can deal with that.  I can yell, finger, or ignore under the belief that between the knowing no better and their primary brain being located considerably south of their eyes.  But having my fellow women who know the frustration and pain of feeling daily undermined by everything around them, it's harsh.

So ladies, let's ditch the bitch, please and thanks.

Photo:http://www.flickr.com/photos/11743199@N03/1805007761/

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Okay World Enough!

Enough already with the highs and lows. I got the class that I registered for and then didn't get into but well you know the saga. After hours and hours of stalking the registration website I got in - awesome! 

But the daily dose of awesome ended there - I'm having an I feel exhausted, fat, ugly, ____ day - we all have them, no sense hiding it.  So it didn't help when I logged into FB to send a friend (Pastor type friend) a FB message that I would be late for coffee today, on the new feed was a slew of photos of AB and his gin tasting party.  Now I felt no slight in not being invited, but the issue is this:  I will wholly support an ex or non-ex having a positive relationship with someone (previous blog case in point), but if you have in your own words labelled a female a loose, drama loving, nowhere in life going person, who you don't actually want to be "friends with," then why do you have dozens upon dozens of photos with her clinging to you like a used piece of toilet paper.  She is not someone you should be dating.  And NO this is not where I say, pick me, ooo ooo, pick me.  This is where I want to slap you, remind you that you are 31 and not 13 and trashy ho's, or cheaters (the one before me) are only going to break your heart, cause drama and more importantly not promote anything positive in your life, except escapism.  But escapism is what it is, and it is frustrating to see it.  He's not the only guy who seems to get to this place in life where good friendships die and fluff abounds.  So AB get your shit together, or maybe I might just say you two deserve each other, but my pride won't let me at the moment.  Why? Well the other grand truth to that would be that I fell for and shared something very personal with a complete and utter douche and that is a really hard pill to swallow.  I am by no means not saying that is not the case, just I swallow enough nasty tasting vitamins in reality, I don't know if I am up for a emotional/mental one right now

PS. I am so, so tempted to put the photo up here...

Monday, May 03, 2010

Sadness, Joy and Quirkiness

I survived the full moon with minor patient issues, but Friday evening as I waited for a bus out of the downtown a runner with a swag bag (pre race goodie bag with your race shirt etc) ran past me.  It hit me like the wall, it was marathon weekend.  It was the first race I had planned to run this year and it was the first I had to cancel.  It hurt.  I blinked back tears.  Then I waited another 20 minutes waiting for a bus trying to shove that feeling of the bliss of crossing the finish line to the fringes of my mind.  Sunday was just as hard as I saw many with their medals.  I wanted to congratulate all of them and at the same time try to get that feeling again.  It is an addiction, it's an accomplishment that feels worthy of the effort.  After years of school being the measure of my work ethic and success there is something so primal for lack of a better word about the nature of running.

I did have the joy this weekend of seeing the pictures of a dear friend, who I've actually never met in person, get married.  MB and I met on a dating site for people of our ethnic/religious background and we instantly bonded over literature - retro science fiction to be exact.  We wrote long, long emails for a few months and then our lives changed slowly, the emails slowed.  But we have in fits and spurts done the same long long writing and then stopped.  He is someone I am so truly happy for, that he has found someone who seems to have made him blossom.  It's interesting, I think you get to this point in life where while it's not easy to see people get married and by society's standards "grow up" on the other hand you get the immense joy of seeing that they did find that one person for them.

FB a few weeks ago suggested that I add DB's mother to my friends.  So I did.  And she reciprocated.  I joked to Ms. J that step 1 is complete.  Well now for step 2... kutzpah is not my friend, but seeing as I have recently made peace with gin and tequila, I feel like what the hell.  I am going to make an attempt to plan an event where DB would show... well maybe when the playoff are over. What is said event?  Well a hint, it is a game we play to the death around these parts - or more so to the ocean dumping... or see the photo...

Photo