perhaps the same bird echoed through both of us

Yesterday, separate, in the evening.

I love Rilke. I need to dig out my book of his poetry and immerse myself in his liquid sweet words. After having seen Abs' sweet black-eyed susan torso tattoo, I am sorely tempted to get a line of Rilke snaking down my side. But only if I stay thin. So maybe, if in 6 months I am still this size, I'll consider it.currently at work during the slowest week ever- ShutDown. Almost no EB people at all (or at least that we can see, I'm sure there are some in the Radcon areas that can't be left unsupervised) and most of our people are out also. I've been bringing books to read, already got through Princess Bride and my huge Omnibus of Irish Folk & Faery Tales. I brought in Cold Mountain, but it hasn't really pulled me in, and given that my eyes are dry and sore, I am not motivated to read it. So I read some news online, and perhaps will read some Hans Christian Anderson fairy tales online later.

Tomorrow at midnight, a new decade begins. 2010. Madness. In which my parents will indubitubly finalize their divorce, in which I may in fact become a REAL employee, and in which, quite early on, I will be turning 25. And Abs and EA, 21. Where does the time go? I can't recall what it was that I had hoped to have done or been by the time I was 25, but I am pretty sure I have not met past-me's expectations. Do any of us? When you were a mere 15, the age of Quincenera, what did you imagine for yourself in ten years? Does it count if you feel like in some ways you surpassed your own predictions? Even if you fell quite short of others? I never even knew there WAS Summa Cum Laude until college, never mind imagining that I could acheive it. Nor could I have guess that History was a subject that would invigorate my senses and lead me to write a senior project worthy of awards and acclaim. And a student volunteerism award? Forget about it. Ok, so I am single, chronically ill, living at home and working in a job that is intellectually far beneath me, in order to save money to pay off debts prior to entering a PhD program at some point. It is not glamorous, or even all that intersting. But what I have done, and thusly shown that I am capable of doing, are great things.

So perhaps 25 is a stepping stone. No, I might not have my doctorate and be doing what I love before 30, but I'll get there. What I have done tells me what I can do, and I aim to do it soon.

Happy 2010.

i feel it in my fingers....

I feel it in my toes....Christmas is all around me....

I like that song from Love Actually. That Bill Nighy, what a card! Well, looks like Bing has made the magic happen, we had a HUGE blizzard on Saturday, dropping a good 18 inches on us, so a White Christmas is indeed in store (the temps have been pretty frigid so it isn't going to be melting away anytime soon....) I am for the most part done with my holiday shopping, just have some gift cards to pick up for the twins. I didn't send holiday cards to people this year. No energy, no money for stamps, etc. I feel like a failure to my friends, but then, I haven't really heard from any of them (aside from Mangano) in months, aside from FB comments on random things. I wish them the best for the holiday season, I've just flaked out on telling them that. In other news, Ms. A got home today (after a major train delay) but I haven't seen her yet, allegedly she went over to Kat and Christophers to play Wii. Great. My Sunday night date with Heather was delayed due to my awful driveway (the plower didn't come till later in the evening) so we rescheduled to Tuesday. Tomorrow. I got her a bottle of wine Spellbound, some California Sirah. I also got her a box of chocolates, and a book about wine for the ladies. Hopefully she'll dig it. It is a "relaxing evening at home" type of gift. Speaking of which, I'll be doing just that this evening....wrapped up in an afghan, sipping a glass of milk and blogging. Seems good to me.

The weight has been holding in the 120s, though today a new all time low at 124.7. I tried to eat more today, even purchasing TWO donuts at dunkin, but only ate half a Boston Kreme and saved the strawberry frosted for later. Around lunch time, after eating about 1/4 of my sandwich, had a bad feeling in the digestive sense and could not make myself eat more. Around 2pm tried to eat a pear, but only got 1/2 of that down. And now, some milk. Probably better for me anyway to not mow down on every food item I see all the time.

Also- signed up for 24-hour theatre project with Intentional! Very excited, though it isn't till February 5&6. Should be fun- working with David ALWAYS is!

Happy Holidays to the blogging world!

high school?

This morning I weighed 128 pounds (unclothed btw). I haven't seen that number on a scale since I was in good ol Montville High School. A number of emotions ran through me. First, giddiness. How could I not be excited? Every woman likes to see the lowest number possible pop up on the evil scale of death. Plus, I can also see the weight loss, especially when I turn sideways, my waist looks a lot smaller. And my pants don't fit. Excepting some that I haven't been able to fit into in a while. But mostly I have to wear belts, and tighten them a lot (some pants just look stupid when you have to belt them that hard....like they bunch up and you look like you're trying to wear your grandpas pants). The second emotion was fear. Not fear because I'm concerned that I'm losing too much, or for a wrong reason (which is that I am currently unable to eat moderate quantities of food without feeling extremely nauseous), but actually I was afraid my mother would find out. Now, mind you, at the time I weighed myself this morning, she was still completely asleep....dead to the world. But I get nervous that somehow she will discover it. SHE does not think it is right for me to be losing so much so fast...that this whole nauseous all the time thing is bad. I don't think it is bad. Because in a sense, it has freed me from my constant eating problem. I used to eat a ton all the time. And mostly junk food. But now that I've been forced to limit how much I eat before my stomach starts to reject it, I have been forced to make better choices about what to eat. In order to get my nutrients, I have to choose to eat veggies and fruits and proteins, and not have big carb items or other things that will both fill my shrinking stomach faster, but also have no nutritional benefits. Occasionally I have a snack that is like a 2"x2" brownie square, or one of those mini cookies, but other than that I can't eat that much. The other factor is that I can only eat certain things that appeal to me. That is a challenge, because so often I will contemplate food options in my head, and almost instantaneously will have a gut reaction as to whether or not I'll be able to eat it. The other day for example, I ran through a lot of options, leftovers from Thanksgiving (stomach turn), spaghetti (stomach turn), leftover Chinese (huge stomach turn) and I realized there were no options that I wanted in my house. So I decided not to eat dinner at all, re-set my insulin pump so I didn't die overnight, and went to bed. I am ok with this whole thing. I like to think of it as my body suddenly realizing what is good for it and making sure that I comply. My parents, particularly my mother, have an issue with it. I think she is in fear of me developing an eating disorder, because of the nameless sibling having an eating disorder for so long and my mother knowing nothing about it. But she doesn't understand that I don't have a choice...it is extremely difficult to force feed oneself when you're nauseous....almost impossible for me actually. When I am hungry, I do eat. But when I'm not, I can't. For now, I'm just trying to secretly enjoy the svelte-ing process, and ignore my crazed mother.

my Thanksgiving feast with Stephen Hawking

I feel that perhaps the title of this post warrants explanation. I'll go back to yesterday. I returned home from work at approximately 2pm in the afternoon, after having spent the workday bored, because the little work I did on RACEs was done too fast. So I get home, and drop my things, and EA is on her computer doing something, so I don't interrupt her. Then Dad comes downstairs and inquires whether EA has written to tell me what happened at the Drs. She had not. So he explained. EA has polyps on her vocal chords, and in order for them to go away, she is on prednisone for 10 days, and must not use her vocal chords for 6 weeks, except in extreme times of need. When she has to work for ReachOut upon her return to P-Dam she will have to speak, because it is part of her job, but absolutely no singing, and as little noise made as possible. So I'm pretty good at interpreting what she is attempting to say through hand motions and lip reading. Because I'm baller. 

Fast forward to today, Thanksgiving dinner. Kat and Chris are here (Chris is TERRIBLE at reading lips) and mom's classmate Martin never shows up for dinner, so we start without him and are eating and it just isn't the same as normally, no Abs and a silent (and therefore significantly less witty) EA. After dinner and after K&C leave (taking their gassy dogs but NOT removing the obnoxious floozy chicken that Vivienne has become OBSESSED with) EA decides to use her computer to speak for her, because she can type it out and have the sound bite play it faster than having us guess what she is saying. But, the sound bite happens to sound like a quadriplegic person who types to talk....like Stephen Hawking. The voice makes her snarky comments about a million times more hilarious. George and I have been cracking up. 

We also caught up with Abs a bit, and GFred called, so that was nice to chat with him. I didn't eat that much at dinner, I tried not to take a lot because I knew I wouldn't be able to eat a lot, and even what was on my plate did not get finished. Later my thin sliver of pumpkin pie was quite filling, and I didn't eat a good portion of the pie crust. I do drink a lot of water and diet raspberry ginger ale though. And this morning, fully clothed, I weighed 131.9. After all the food, 133 even. yuck. My mother of course thinks I'm developing an issue but she doesn't seem to understand that 1- I am nauseous all the time....I can't help it. I'm lucky if I get ten bites of food in before the nausea becomes unbearable. 2- just because I like the fact that I'm losing weight does NOT mean I'm anorexic voluntarily...I just don't see the nausea as a problem really. IDK I think it is fine. And now I'm going to sign off because I'm tired.

I'm thankful for my soon-to-be-in-place job with benefits, my family and friends, and my health being much better than many lupus kids and diabetics. So thanks for that universe. 

fuck city

Spent last night in Fuck City. Literally. That is the name of Al's house where he and several other PC grads reside above a veterinarian's office. It is pretty cool. And the entryway is Connery's Quarters, dedicated to my favorite Scotsman. I slept in the living room under a mickey mouse comforter, with Mark Twain watching over me whilst I slumbered. It is a pretty sweet setup actually I really like all the little personal touches there. And seeing Al and Cole made me so happy. It was spectacular to catch up, to hear all about Al's experiences in India (and e coli who knew??) and just hearing about life. And hearing about Cole and his drag show Halloween (Alvaro as Balloon Boy??) and it was just great. Had some unfortunate low blood sugar problems, compounded by nausea problems (I have to force myself to eat lately. even when I'm hungry, and I know I'm hungry, I have to force feed myself because I just have overwhelming nausea.) So that was tricky. Then did an interview with Genesis for her senior project about women and autoimmune diseases. Then I saw Denny and dropped off some cookies for him and chatted for a bit. J-2-1 got a makeover, with paint and a break room with a sweet couch! WTF how come that never happened when WE were there??? Apparently Angela's feminine touch includes sweet accoutrements that we never got. But it was good to visit campus briefly. I even went to Starbucks (since I looked/felt like the wrath of God this morning, probably due to the low blood sugars messing up my sleep) and got a caffeine kick. Despite my exhaustion and nausea, it was a nice visit with people I love. and now I am home resting, after force feeding dinner, just relaxing. Soon I'll take my night time pain meds for my back (since I forgot to take it this morning) and hit the hay. But I felt the need to post about getting to see (part of) my Tron fam. :-)

aww butterflies are pretty....wait wtf?

See those butterfly wings of redness on my cheeks, that sort of meet in the middle over my nose? Ah yes, gotta love that lupus malar rash. AKA the butterfly rash. So, whilst in the wild, a butterfly is beautiful, graceful, and a sign of hope, on my face it means BOOO. Of course it doesn't help that I sort of look like death. I stayed home due to a horrible migraine, and body pain equivalent to being beaten with a baseball bat. I specifically use baseball bat, because I had a dream about playing baseball. Only, it wasn't normal baseball, it was pirate baseball. And it wasn't like the baseball scene in Hook. It was on a pirate ship. It was hard to determine where the bases were on the main deck. But there was some sort of otherworldly implication to this game. Like, we had to win, otherwise all these lost pirate souls would come up from davy jones locker and overcome our beautiful gold pirate ship (now, one would suppose that a gold ship would sink, but then again, it was a magic ship, and moreover, it was a DREAM). And I was up to bat. Everyone else on the team had been taken hostage. I had to win. And the whole time I'm thinking but I can't run fast, so unless I hit a home run off the end of the ship, I won't be able to run fast enough to score. More strange was that there wasn't anyone in the outfield, because there wasn't really an outfield. So who was going to catch it for an out anyway? I have no idea. I just know that suddenly, the ball came flying to me, and I hit it hard, and whoosh off it went into the ocean, and I ran (and I was ABLE to run somehow) and we won. My scraggly pirate crew and I were SAVED from the souls threatening our ship. And after that I ate rainbow tarts. Don't ask me what the heck a rainbow tart is, I don't know. But it was delicious. Then I recall a different dream in which I was babysitting a little asian baby....and later we (I don't know who all the people in the dreams were) were sitting on a couch talking, and I took a picture of us on my phone, and noticed several ghosts in the picture with us. WEIRDED OUT. All these dreams seem to have some weird magical element. Except for the last dream. That one was just my friends in my house, and Adrian was sleeping on a pile of clothes that I had to put away, and when I pulled the clothes out from under him he got really really mad, and tried to trip me as I walked away. that was just nonsense. 

Other things going on in real life are that I've been working on the play, getting aggravated with my stupid co-cast member. He is 32 but acts much younger. Very immature. And that bugs the hell out of me. We are here to do a show, we have only 13 days till we open, and he's being an ass. Trying to throw in things that we've never done before, without ASKING first, just trying to be funny, and I hate that. Improv has its own place in the theatre world, but we are NOT doing improv. We are in a scripted, well-written play, so just stick to what we have done and rehearsed. It is like that time Dave Mellisy decided that as Albert (in Bye Bye Birdie) he would KISS me, Rosie. Now, had we rehearsed that and had the director wanted to put that in at the end, that would be fine (though I would have still been ooged out because I think Dave is icky), but the fact of the matter is, Dave just threw it in during the final number, during an actual show. He was lucky I didn't just punch him. He was lucky that I'm a good enough actress to stay in character and just laugh and be happy (though I did NOT kiss back, I just broke it off and laughed and continued the dance number). ugh. Look people, the director does things the way he wants them done. The writer writes in what he wants to. Don't add shit in. Grumble. Sometimes I don't think I should do theater since some stupid people stress me out, and I don't need that. Oh well.

An actual fun moment from the week was when some co-worker assumed that I have a boyfriend, and I just started laughing. And then he is like "why is that funny?" I just said, "no I'm sorry it isn't funny funny, it is just sort of a funny concept to me." and he said "why?" and I said "I suppose since it has been like 3 years since I have dated anyone even remotely seriously, and prior to that single incident, probably about 5 years" So, other than a 3 month stint (in which I was very much in love) a total of about 8 years of solitude. I was very glad for that 3 months of in-love-ness. Mutual in love-ness I should say. because there was another time when I was in love with someone, and thought it was mutual, but it was just me imagining it. proven by the fact that we never actually dated. which makes me sound like a nutcase stalking some guy, but really there was a sort of physical leading on aspect from his end, which make me think there was something there, but no. damnable men. When I told my dad about this moment, I said, "I guess it is sort of sad that I laughed at that", still laughing. And my father said, "actually, that IS sort of sad". At which point I stopped laughing. I felt like I was being reprimanded for thinking that it was funny. At what point I gave up, I don't really know. I know I am still a romantic at heart....I still think the idea of love is very pretty. I just don't think that I think that the idea will ever be real for me. Anymore.

Of course I dream of playing baseball on a golden pirate ship. 

I feel like Garfield

It isn't that I hate Mondays. Not at all. Mondays are the days at work when I have the most real work to do, and thus feel somewhat useful and productive. I like that. And Mondays, House is on. Ain't nothin wrong with that. It is just Monday Mornings and I that do not get along. Perhaps because for two days I've been allowed to hear my alarm and instead of hitting snooze, hit DISMISS and snuggle back down into my 8 million pillows and blankets with my pup, and the two of us can sleep till like 9. But then comes Monday Morning, at 4:10, and we must take our meds, and then hit snooze. Then, ten minutes later, we hit snooze again. Then, after the third SNOOZE, we realize, no we are NOT going to get up during the 4th hour, and just re-set the alarm for 5:30. Then 5:30 does come along, and the battle with myself to sit up and rub at my gunky eyes and stretch even though stretching induces yawning, which is terribly painful, and to put on some wooly socks and my fuzzy bathrobe. So that the pup and I can venture down the stairs (hopefully not to be tripped by that ratty cat) and out into the backyard so the pup can do what she needs to do. And while she wanders through the dewy grass, I clomp around in the big LLBean boots and urge her to go faster, especially if the Monday is wet, cold, or in the summer- very mosquito-ey. Sometimes she listens, other days, not a chance. All the while, I am trying to convince my eyelids to stay open. C'mon, can't fall asleep standing up goofball. 

It is a rough start to a week, to be sure.