Saturday, April 21, 2012

Pushing the Limits

I'm fried these days and I find that my ability to cope with the being fried is limited.  I keep running up against the wall.  So I must confess I'm trying to actively either push through with no drama or rest.  But I'm finding the balance is still sketchy and working is not really helping the situation.  Though it is not hurting it either, two days of nanny-ing meant I could take my roommate to Coldplay for her 30th.  Extravagant for a graduate student scraping by, yes, BUT she lives with the clusterf*ck that is a graduate student, so between helping me with my laundry, my general issues resulting from brain malfunctions etc, she totally deserved it.   She also deserves the cake that I hope is not having a me like moment in the fridge at the moment.  All 7 layers of it better hold together and firm up or I might cry, given the strawberry Swiss Meringue butter cream was a disaster... so we opted for a chocolate cream cheese frosting which is divine, but well maybe a little soft for 7 thin layers of cake... eek.

Well that's enough of an update, I need my bed.

PS No word from BelgianBoy, he's on the shelf, good thing we didn't work hard at a name for him.

Thursday, April 19, 2012

This changes things...

Belgian boy as we will call him for now until I figure out if he's going to get any time on this blog beyond this moment.  A group of about 12 of us had an amazingly fun and bitter-sweet send off for him Tuesday night.  It made me realize just how much I'm going to miss him, but also what an amazing community of people we have.  All of us in a library is somber, all of us in a room with a piano, a diggery doo, a beat boxer and a book of poetry by Banjo Paterson (Man from Snowy River) being rapped and gospel-ballad sung makes for tears from laughter.  Bottom line it made me realize how much more time I should be spending with these people rather than it being all about getting out of the program just because the program and I aren't in love at the moment.   Definite relationship about the school situation.

But relationship change between me and BelgianBoy?  I think I might of torpedoed anything accidentally.  I emailed him after the party, just to say thanks I had a great time and in the rush to leave, as I needed to get a ride to the train, I didn't get a mailing address from him.  I had wanted to be able to write occasionally and email is well not the kind of thing I like to correspond via these days.  I spend too much bloody time at a screen these days - I like paper.  Email you can't carry with you if you're having crummy times.  But given that was Tuesday night and it's mid day Thursday - the day he leaves potentially forever, and there is no email response. Interesting.  I'm just going to leave it.  I have too much else on my plate at the moment.   Namely recovering from a fun night with JS, and a friendly bet gone awry.   We'll talk soon y'all

Sunday, April 15, 2012

More thoughts...

I've been catching up on my sleep and rest - going with the "screw consciousness"* approach to life, primarily because I cannot function.  I'm a hot mess - I know I'm a hot mess, coming off the sugar, caffeine, adrenaline, the existential crisis - all of it is a clusterf*ck that turns me into an even bigger one.

But back to Belgian Boy - I have been thinking back, trying to trace if I had or thought or even considered this before this past week.  And... I must confess I did.  For one brief moment in orientation - he caught my eye.  But at that time I was still dating X and I believe you can acknowledge someone's attractiveness but you leave it there when you've got someone.   But after that though we were in the same classes together and even a history tutorial together where yes he proved his thoughtfulness by baking cookies without eggs or gluten - a serious challenge.  The kicker in the what the hell am I feeling here moment?  The place we were all at, is a community house for some of the students, and one of the family's has kids.  Seeing a little three year old curled up in his lap had my uterus screaming so loud I am sure every person in the room could hear it.  I know I could.  Note to single men, genuinely being interested in small children is probably one of the top ways to indirectly turn a woman to mush.  But it is what it is - he'll make someone happy and I can take that victory.  The world needs good men and that is all I'm fighting for these days.

Though I must say, I find it incredibly amusing that I'm smacked upside the head by this, while trying to avoid a fellow classmate.  He and I have had all the same classes this past year, the same late night Tuesday class to be specific.  He's a sweet dear man, who is looking for a wife.  There is a distinction.  There is a distinction between wife and partner hunting.  Wife hunting comes across differently, it conveys to me a sense of looking for someone to make life less boring, but not necessarily considering who that person truly is.  That is not to say they're misogynists when they do so.  Absolutely not, I just do not like being hunted irrespective of who I am and where I am going in life.   And since I am up a sh*t creek without a paddle or even a boat these days when it comes to that, why would I get into a relationship where I don't get to figure that out.  But that's a bit of a detour.  He's sweet, and I'm getting all sorts of signals, the kinds that cannot be obscured in any way.  So I have taken to trying to avoid him, in an attempt to discretely give off the signal of not being interested, as I have not desire to pop a single 40 year old man's bubble...

*Supernatural - see I'm catching up on all sorts of tv and wondering if it's doing more or less damage to my brain

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bahnwolle/7070950057/sizes/z/in/pool-52239892911@N01/

Saturday, April 14, 2012

Blindsided

Maybe it was:

the obscene amount of caffeine and sugar I consumed this week
the hours in a library carrel
the Fray's new album I downloaded as a finals gift to myself
the Skype date with X that started the closure

but one day this week I met the eye of a classmate and something was in that look.  I have not been looking, quite frankly given I'm going to be out of school in a year the last thing I want to do is schlep my heart through a relationship that will inevitably end. But back to the blindside.  It actually I must confess started with a hug that he rightfully needed.  Last Thursday as most of us were preparing to hunker down and frantically pull through the next 8 days, he was reeling from a pretty scary break in a day prior at his home - his laptop gone, home vandalized and that sense of peace, that all of us value more than our stuff completely gone.  I offered, like other classmates to do whatever he needed - a place to stay, a family to eat dinner with, whatever he and his roommates needed to email me.  I hugged one of my good friends, M good-bye for the Easter weekend, turning to him to pat him on the arm or some distanced gesture - I'm a hugger but I don't normally hug men unless I know it won't be misconstrued. He had his arms open.  Of course he got the hug.   Maybe that was the thing that broke the ice, I don't know.  But this week, Wednesday, I ended up sitting in a three hour lecture with him, arm against arm.  There is something oddly charged about that kind of contact.  Not intentional and not intentionally intimate either, just the kind of contact that makes you realize how little you actually touch someone when you're single. Maybe it was that moment, or the moment he offered his coffee,  after he finished it though... I had made a comment about him being done.  It was every moment after that, there something in his eyes, a little longer glance... a little more of an attempt to be closer.

So last night, when we were given kitchen duty - the two of us in our friends tiny apartment kitchen as the rest of the group went on a grocery run, we talked and I found someone deeper and even more interesting.

BUT there are two catches to the story - isn't there always?

1. I am trying to figure out if flirting is a universal language - because if it is, there are a lot of signals going around and nothing happening or maybe just a lot from my side hitting too hard or off target altogether.

and

2. He's not Canadian - he's Belgian actually and that's the biggest catch, because he might not be back in September and he's flying out in 7 days.  So that's were this story sort of stops - sure I hugged him last night as we left for our buses in opposite directions.

So long story short - I may see him Tuesday night, he might be back and I'm stuck here wondering what the hell just hit me.

Sunday, April 08, 2012

Little Update

One week left in the semester and at least 4 weeks of work I need to accomplish.  I'm taking a break from my attempt to plow down my writer's block with this song (oh the things you can find on YouTube when you're trying to find motivation).  So while I'm not interested in a Sugar Daddy or any long term relationship - life is too damn complicated, I can say that I do still want to maintain that dating/feisty spirit in the hopes that the day I do need to get back on that horse, it won't be a million miles off in some pasture never to return.