This November Season...

I don't normally talk about anything political, I normally keep things to my self as an act of respect.  But I must be honest, I struggle with Remembrance Day.  I understand that there are many passionately for it - I understand that in many ways and yet in many others I do not.  I am the child of two parents who saw the effect of war as children, as the enemy, we praise men for killing, on behalf of our freedom.  We think it is simple.  We think that wearing a red poppy is a simple act.  It's not.  For me it's an act that says we do not understand.  We do not understand the depth of pain that a bullet has regardless of whose gun it is shot from.  War is not simple.  It is not about sides, it is terrorism on all sides - removing humanity in those who claim to do it for freedom and those they oppose.

I am not saying you should not wear a poppy, but remember those men, like my Opa, who was the enemy, and his children - my mother and her siblings who while in Canada witnessed hate and retribution on the playgrounds and classrooms to the grocery stores.   They are my heritage and they are the reason my parents raised us as pacifists.  My family is the reason I wear a white poppy on Remembrance Day, no blood should be shed in the war games the politicians play.

New Song

I love this song! I love Sara in general and am so cheesed that I missed her in concert - I had tickets but couldn't go for some reason I cannot remember...

Grad School Diet

X was so proud to tell me that the Paeds Resident diet has been working for him.  It might be - it's making the concerned ex-gf in me panic every time I hear about how long he has gone without eating.  But apparently graduate students have their own diet... involving the following:

1. No Alcohol-if you're an unemployment graduate student you may dream about vodka like your on a deserted island without any fresh water, but no dice.  Actually I do have a little residual stock in Ms. J's freezer which I'm keeping there for the sake of rationing.  As an aside I don't have time to be drunk or hung over these days so thus only the dreaming of the booze.

2.  Budget meals - now  I am getting retty savy with the keeping things cheap business but the best meal is a grande Americano misto snuck into the library about 10 - it will keep you going until 6 when the library closes and you're too damn tired to eat when you get home, so you go to sleep. Ta-da it's a version of the residency diet.  You offset your malnutrition with a handful of vitamins and toast in the morning.

3. Fried food - when you do get to eat all you want is to stuff enough comfort carbohydrates down your yap that you will stop dreaming of them (thanks JS for helping me with this last night).

Yep so X might be right - I may just be on track to really shed those Undergraduate pounds while I pack on the debt... as long as the debt isn't on my ass I'm fine with the exchange.

In case you are a graduate student to be - it's not all that bad, actually if you can have gluten and egg whites and all sorts of other things you'll be just fine - the place is swimming with free food, all sorts of free food that would give me an expensive trip to the hospital down the street.

Thanks Ovaries!

According to "reliable sources"(Cosmo et al), you are your most subliminal-y hottest when you're ovulating.  Now, I can seriously say I do not normally agree with anything in Cosmo - it is after all a magazine that survives solely on republishing the same drivel month after after in new forms - all of it preying on our internal Madonna/Whore dichotomy.

Nevertheless - back to my ovaries - apparently they are working right now.  I had some nice eye contact with a handsome man in the Starbucks line - totally a moment.* The one that impressed me more though was as I was on the packed express bus dripping with sweat (our driver dressed in shorts was determined to offset the cold outside - dude it's time for pants).  But of course I had my purse, laptop, e-book reader and a cup of coffee all more or less balanced on my lap.  It doesn't really leave room for the removal of one's jacket.  I did manage to get one arm out but I couldn't seem to navigate the second one.  That is until this extra hand appeared removing my coat.  Manners! In a young man nonetheless! He said, "It looked like you needed help, didn't want you to spill your coffee."  Seriously I could have hugged him - I felt like my thank-you was not enough to convey how refreshing it was to have someone be kind, especially someone of his age and gender.

But back to the at moment.*  The reason I give credit to my ovaries and not my personal awesomeness is well I am a graduate student - and we for the most part do not always look awesome.  I know you can say who am I to generalize.  True. Very true.  But compared to the corporate world - the ladies in the Starbucks line in pencil skirts, lots of leg and heels (gorgeous heels), who am I?  His attention actually made me acutely aware that I feel naked now that I'm not in the corporate world.   I miss my corporate clothes.  I miss the security that came with those high heels and skirts.  Now I'm just the very adult woman trying to figure out the world of skinny jeans and flats.   All that being said, as much as that moment in Starbucks made me uncomfortable, maybe it's an indicator that I'm doing okay in this new world, at least aesthetically speaking - as for grade wise - well that remains to be seen.

Falling for You

All over again - what is it that makes us go back, and back again and back again.  It's the question I keep asking myself when I look around at the men in my new peer group.  I have this reoccurring thought, y'all are not X, so why bother.  Sure this really is not tragic - it is not like I have time to even consider dating.  But the question is then why are X and I just not together.  Well that's a simple yet complicated answer.  I think the bigger question is when do we give ourselves the freedom to move forward when we weren't the one already moving out of the relationship?

I had no problem with CEF or really any other the other guys in my life I had to deal with - I was able to in one way or another rationalize the process - shut the heart down and move on.  Even when I cared and still care for the individual like BI - I was still able to know that we would be friends and that was all - and furthermore that that was okay - that was the best thing for both of us.  I know both of us, BI and I can say that with no doubts - we were and are better as just friends. 

So what happens - how do you shut down your heart when you do not know how to.  I know how to get angry - that's how I dysfunctionally dealt with AB - get mad and burned over a long enough period of time and you eventually get closure - to burn, cut, chafe every thing that bound you two together until you get freedom.   With X I do not want that - I do not want to go down a road of systematically removing him from my life by any means possible.  I still love him - and there is no good reason I have found not to.

Friends have told me that maybe I'll just keep loving him until things work out.  The thing is - I don't think that is right.  Maybe I am wrong.