Because I Took This Quiz Three Years Ago

Really Long Survey (over 200)
What is your name?:	Michelle
Are you named after anyone?:	No
What's your screename?:	n/a
Would you name a child of yours after you?:	No
If you were born a member of the opposite sex what would your name be?:	Michael
If you could switch names with a friend who would it be?:	Meredith
Are there any mispronounciations/typos that ppl do w/ your name constantly?:	Not really
Would you drop your last name if you became famous?:	I think not. In fact, famous writers/scholars seem to gain names more often than they shed them. Perhaps I shall be Michelle M. DiMarzo, M.Phil/ Ph.D., Supremely Awesome
Basics
Your gender::	F
Straight/Gay/Bi::	S
Single?:	No
If not, do you want to be?:	No
Birthdate::	10/1
Your age::	22! So old.
Age you act::	Er, 22?
Age you wish you were::	30, so I could already have my PhD without the pesky work in the interim.
Your height::	5'8"
Eye color::	Brown
Happy with it?:	Yes
Hair color::	Brown
Happy with it?:	Again yes
Lefty/righty/ambidextrous::	Lefty
Your living arrangement::	Gloriously living alone
Your family::	All dead! No, seriously, only most of them. Jen's still hanging on!
Have any pets?:	By extension, I suppose
Whats your job?:	Lawyer's assistant
Piercings?:	Ears
Tattoos?:	No
Obsessions?:	None
Addictions?:	Diet Coke
Do you speak another language?:	Spanish, sort of
Have a favorite quote?:	Not one that I can ever remember
Do you have a webpage?:	On it
Deep Thoughts About Life and You in it
Do you live in the moment?:	Actually, not as much as I should.
Do you consider yourself tolerant of others?:	Yes
Do you have any secrets?:	Besides tidbits about myself I might conceal out of mere personal embarassment, no, not really.
Do you hate yourself?:	No
Do you like your handwriting?:	Yes
Do you have any bad habits?:	I tend to leave cans of Diet Coke half-finished and then refuse to drink them because they've gone flat. Also sometimes I throw out soda cans rather than recycling them.
What is the compliment you get from most people?:	That I'm intelligent.
If a movie was made about your life, what would it be called?:	Huh. I'm quite stumped. I know you're supposed to pattern this after some famous movie, but I can't think of any that apply. "Road to Windsor"? "The Royal DiMarzos"?
What's your biggest fear?:	Losing the ones I love.
Can you sing?:	Not at all
Do you ever pretend to be someone else just to look cool?:	No
Are you a loner?:	I have bouts of anti-sociality, but I wouldn't say loner.
What are your #1 priorities in life?:	To be happy, to enjoy the company of great friends, and to travel.
If you were another person, would you be friends with you?:	How could I pass up friendship with someone so fabulous?
Are you a daredevil?:	No
Is there anything you fear or hate about yourself?:	Not really
Are you passive or agressive?:	Aggressive
Do you have a journal?:	Right here
What is your greatest strength and weakness?:	Strength of mind, weakness, a tendency towards arrogance/know-it-all-ness
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?:	Sigh...I have to admit it...bigger boobs!
Do you think you are emotionally strong?:	Yes
Is there anything you regret doing/not doing in life?:	"Regrets, I've had a few..."
Do you think life has been good so far?:	I'd say yes, on the whole
What is the most important lesson you've learned from life?:	To treasure the ones you love and to make sure they know how much they mean to you.
What do you like the most about your body?:	My eyes
And least?:	My feet right now, as they are in dire need of a pedicure
Do you think you are good looking?:	Yes
Are you confident?:	Yes
What is the fictional character you are most like?:	Genevieve
Are you perceived wrongly?:	Not that I know of
Do You...
Smoke?:	Ah, the most boring part of all surveys...No
Do drugs?:	No
Read the newspaper?:	Yes
Pray?:	Yes
Go to church?:	No
Talk to strangers who IM you?:	No
Sleep with stuffed animals?:	No
Take walks in the rain?:	Gasp! Precipitation? Never.
Talk to people even though you hate them?:	I'd rather force myself to be civil to those I dislike than be ashamed later of being petty.
Drive?:	Yes
Like to drive fast?:	No
Would or Have You Ever?
Liked your voice?:	No
Hurt yourself?:	No
Been out of the country?:	Yes
Eaten something that made other people sick?:	No, but I'm getting a flashback to gross things Bill-something-or-other ate in grade school...Sara, I forgot his last name!
Been in love?:	Yes
Done drugs?:	No
Gone skinny dipping?:	No
Had a medical emergency?:	I fainted once
Had surgery?:	No
Ran away from home?:	No
Played strip poker?:	No
Gotten beaten up?:	No
Beaten someone up?:	No
Been picked on?:	No
Been on stage?:	No
Slept outdoors?:	Yes
Thought about suicide?:	No
Pulled an all nighter?:	No
If yes, what is your record?:	No
Gone one day without food?:	No
Talked on the phone all night?:	No
Slept together with the opposite sex w/o actually having sex?:	Yes
Slept all day?:	Yes
Killed someone?:	No
Made out with a stranger?:	Kind of
Had sex with a stranger?:	No
Thought you're going crazy?:	No
Kissed the same sex?:	Yes
Done anything sexual with the same sex?:	Yes
Been betrayed?:	Not really
Had a dream that came true?:	No
Broken the law?:	Yes
Met a famous person?:	No
Have you ever killed an animal by accident?:	No
On purpose?:	No
Told a secret you swore you wouldn't tell?:	Yes
Stolen anything?:	Not since I was a little kid
Been on radio/tv?:	No
Been in a mosh-pit?:	Yes
Had a nervous breakdown?:	No
Bungee jumped?:	No
Had a dream that kept coming back?:	Yes
Beliefs
Belive in life on other planets?:	I'm not sure, definitely not in our galaxy, but perhaps somewhere
Miracles?:	Yes
Astrology?:	No
Magic?:	No
God?:	Yes
Satan?:	No
Santa?:	No
Ghosts?:	No
Luck?:	Yes
Love at first sight?:	No
Yin and yang (that good cant exist w/o bad)?:	Yes
Witches?:	No
Easter bunny?:	No
Believe its possible to remain faithful forever?:	Yes
Believe theres a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow?:	No
Do you wish on stars?:	Yeah...
Deep Theological Questions
Do you believe in the traditional view of Heaven and Hell?:	Not at all
Do you think God has a gender?:	No
Do you believe in organized religion?:	No
Where do you think we go when we die?:	I'm not quite sure
Friends
Do you have any gay/lesbian friends?:	Yes
Who is your best friend?:	Sean
Who's the one person that knows most about you?:	Sean
What's the best advice that anyone has ever given to you?:	To keep around me the people who bring light into my life, and avoid those who bring darkness.
Your favourite inside joke?:	If I said it, it wouldn't be inside.
Thing you're picked on most about?:	Being forgetful
Who's your longest known friend?:	Sara
Newest?:	Heather C.
Shyest?:	Meredith
Funniest?:	Heather F.
Sweetest?:	Sara
Closest?:	Sara, Carla,
Weirdest?:	Heather
Smartest?:	Rae
Ditziest?:	None
Friends you miss being close to the most?:	Carla...also I miss Sarah H.'s evil wit
Last person you talked to online?:	Carla
Who do you talk to most online?:	I only talk to Carla online
Who are you on the phone with most?:	Sean
Who do you trust most?:	Sean
Who listens to your problems?:	All of my friends
Who do you fight most with?:	Sean
Who's the nicest?:	I'll go with "all of us" :-)
Who's the most outgoing?:	Heather
Who's the best singer?:	tie--Rae and Carla
Who's on your shit-list?:	Haha...no one
Have you ever thought of having sex with a friend?:	No
Who's your second family?:	My friends from home, my Fairfield friends
Do you always feel understood?:	Most of the time
Who's the loudest friend?:	Heather
Do you trust others easily?:	I think so
Who's house were you last at?:	Sean's
Name one person who's arms you feel safe in::	Sean
Do your friends know you?:	Yes
Friend that lives farthest away::	Carla. Come back home, you Italian wench!
Love and All That
Do you consider love a mistake?:	No
What do you find romantic?:	Car rides on winter evenings with a special someone with Bing in the background
Turn-on?:	Neck area
Turn-off?:	Headache
First kiss?:	Aaron? Manuel? I think I'd rather count Manuel.
If someone u had no interest in had interest in dating u how would u feel?:	I guess I'd have to say no
Do you prefer knowing someone before dating them or going:	Knowing, certainly
Have u ever wished it was more socially acceptable 4 a girl 2 ask a guy out:	Well, I've asked several guys out, including Sean, so I see no problem.
Have you ever been romantically attracted to someone physically unattractiv:	No
Do you think the opposite sex finds you good looking?:	Yes
What is best about the opposite sex?:	Their smell
What is the worst thing about the opposite sex?:	The Alien!
What's the last present someone gave you?:	Christmas presents
Are you in love?:	Yes
Do you consider your significant other hot?:	Yes
Who Was the Last Person...
That haunted you?:	...my mom? Just kidding. Can't say I've been haunted.
You wanted to kill?:	Let's just default to Jen.
That you laughed at?:	Sean
That laughed at you?:	Heather C.
That turned you on?:	Sean
You went shopping with?:	Sean, in a forced mall outing
That broke your heart?:	No one, really--I hardly consider Tommy as counting, because well, c'mon.
To disappoint you?:	Hm. I can't remember.
To ask you out?:	Dirk. Wow, blast from the past!
To make you cry?:	The last time I cried I think was at Heather's grandfather's funeral
To brighten up your day?:	Sean
That you thought about?:	Sean
You saw a movie with?:	Sean and Linda
You talked to on the phone?:	Sean (this is getting positively REPETITVE)
You talked to through IM/ICQ?:	Carla
You saw?:	Heather C
You lost?:	My mom
Right This Moment...
Are you going out?:	No
Will it be with your significant other?:	No
Or some random person?:	No
What are you wearing right now?:	PJs
Body part you're touching right now::	My leg
What are you worried about right now?:	Sean's car issues
What book are you reading?:	Garrison Keillor, Lake Woebegon 1956
What's on your mousepad?:	Don't have one
Use 5 words to describe how you're feeling::	Warm, slightly anxious, otherwise content
Are you bored?:	No
Are you tired?:	Yes
Are you talking to anyone online?:	No
Are you talking to anyone on the phone?:	No
Are you lonely or content?:	Content
Are you listening to music?:	Yes--Kim Kashkashian, a violist and she is incredible
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Three Years

Yesterday was my three-year anniversary with Sean. Three years ago, we went to Geppi's and to see "The Life Aquatic" (which sucked). My memory can't be that bad--I still remember our first date! Given, Sean can probably also tell you what we both ate, what we were wearing, and what played in the car on the way to the theater. I can only tell you that I know I've been incredibly blessed to have someone like him in my life.

Benazir Bhutto

I opened Google News this morning and the first headline was 'Bhutto Killed In Attack on Political Rally." I had one of those moments where I didn't exactly process what they were saying, and then I just couldn't believe it. She had just been in the headlines so much these past few months after her return to Pakistan, so many stories on NPR and the Times, that it was surreal to hear that someone had assasinated her. The suicide bomber opened fire on her and her party members before blowing himself up. They said she died of shrapnel wounds at the hospital.

I'm not sure what my opinion of her was before this happened. Obviously, she had some serious balls to go back to Pakistan after years of exile, and she claimed to be committed to bringing democracy back to the country while Musharraf seemed intent on keeping it out. When the stories ran about her return, everyone mentioned the threats against her life, and there was a bomb attack a little while ago that narrowly missed her and killed scores of onlookers, but somehow you it's easy to believe that these famous, powerful figures have some sort of innate protection surrounding them. But they don't. Bhutto was a controversial figure, but she was also that rare thing--a female, Muslim politician in a male-dominated Muslim culture. Now that she's dead, who will take her place?

The Christmas Recap

It was a great weekend to lead up to Christmas--I saw everyone I like, a few people I don't, and not a single family member! We had a dinner party at TJ's on Friday night attended by our Fairfield friends. On Saturday Sara, Rae and I braved the Westfarms mall, Borders, Best Buy, and even Toys R Us (!) in furtherance of certain people's last minute shopping. Actually, the Toys R Us stop was so Sara could purchase a Webkinz, which is a stuffed animal that's part of this online world, kind of like Second Life, but for the anklebiters. Sadly, they were sold out, but Rae, who in addition to being a brilliant med student is also a Webkinz aficionado, was so kind as to introduce us to this charming subculture. Yes, I am being highly sarcastic. On Sunday we saw Sweeney Todd, which further proved my theory that Johnny Depp is just ridiculously awesome. He can play a freaky serial killer with bad teeth and I still want to have his children!

Christmas Eve was spent at Sean's Aunt Michelle's house, where I was treated once again to the full Italian Christmas Eve dinner that is fish, fish and more fish. I have nothing against fish--some nice salmon, trout, cod etc--but I'm not big into stuffed squid, or fried smelts, or scungilli. At least this year I didn't have to see any of the crabs that went into the crab sauce, so I ate that and it was delicious. Linda is the best cook ever, as was proved at Christmas dinner as well.
I think I liked my Christmas gifts the most this year of recent memory--which for someone with my memory skills isn't saying much, but still. Linda and I will be taking a spa trip together soon, perhaps on Sunday...hot stone massage for me!

I know it's ridiculous and corny, but Sean really is the best gift I could ever ask for. I'll even put him slightly above the Pride and Prejudice DVDs I got from Rae (A&E version) and Linda (movie version). Just slightly.

In less than two weeks--three years!

Hide the Chocolate

Imagine my surprise upon arriving to work today, the day after Christmas, to discover that I'm the only one who didn't take the day off. I knew the secretary and two of the attorneys were out, but then I turned on my computer to an email from my boss explaining he'd forgotten to put it in the calendar that he, too, is out, and to 'have a nice wednesday in the office.'

At least it's not like there's a lot I can't do here that I'd be doing at home today anyway. YouTube, anyone? And, no lie, looking at bridal websites. Rae sent me a facebook message informing me that she and Sara spent an hour and a half planning my wedding online last night. Sean and I have agreed to discuss the matter again in April, after we hear about grad school admissions, but that doesn't stop my friends from concocting their schemes of grandeur! It is fun to talk about, but it's also rather frightening to think that you're expected to spend that much time, money and effort on making a single 24-hour period like the best day of your entire life. It seems so ridiculous, and yet who can escape it who does not elope?

Sara came up with a color scheme-brown, cream, and green. She's going to be the resident art director, Rae the on-site medic, and Heather, the master of ceremonies, because really I can only imagine how cracked out on champagne she'll be at that fateful occasion. Rae tells me she has even chosen the song she would like to sing, even though I'm not quite sure I even want singing...nor has Sean weighed in on the matter, but really, how much say do men even have in this process? Sean's already gotten far too comfortable with the word "no" over the past few years. It's time to take bring back the yes!

Jen will, perhaps lamentably, be my maid/matron of honor. But really, for all my griping that it's Sean's latent traditionalism that's forcing me to include her, how could I get married and not have my own sister in the bridal party? It's not like I don't speak to her or anything. She's just going to belch inappropriately, make crude jokes and run around in her underwear, and probably scare the crap out of Sean's brother. I have to know that now and accept it. However, as I told my friends, she is in no way permitted to handle ANY of the actual planning/organizing of showers, bachelorette parties, etc., unless we all want to be eating pigs in a blanket and watching one of Bill's hick cousins dance around in a John Deere cap and nothing else. Seriously.

White Christmas?

I just finished watching the Bing Crosby movie. I used to prefer Holiday Inn to the color, musical White Christmas, but after watching the former again last week and wincing at all of the awkward racism (Mamie the black servant, the Abe Lincoln song performed in blackface) and the war propaganda that's dropped right in the middle, I'm leaning towards the latter. I don't know when I became such a big Bing Crosby fan, either. Blame it on Sean's bad influence. Last night I saw High Society was going to be on TCM and I was so excited! Although in that case, at least, I can definitely say that I will always prefer the original Philadelphia Story. Bing and Frank make a passable attempt at replacing Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart, but poor Grace Kelly can't hold a candle to Katherine Hepburn's Tracy Lord.

It doesn't seem like we'll be having a white Christmas this year, though. Almost the middle of December, and barely a scrap of snow on the ground! But I won't lie--I'm grateful we're not buried under snowdrifts already. This is my first winter without the Tahoe, without her four-wheel drive and anti-lock brakes, and while Prudence is valiant, I'm not sure if she's up to the challenge.

Still, it's a little difficult to get into the Christmas spirit without any snow. I don't have a tree either, since I thought it was a little silly to decorate the apartment just for myself. Also, Jen absconded with every one of our Christmas decorations when we moved out of the house. Even my stocking--the one I had to buy and write my name on in glitter and glue when I was a teenager because no one had remembered to make one for the second child (I had a little green stocking before that with no name on it. Jen had a red velvet stocking with her name embroidered on. I suffered, I tell you.)

Sean told me a cute thing this evening. Apparently, when he needs a smile, he reads my journal entries from years ago, when I was a silly idiot writing idiot things. He didn't say the last part, I'm editorializing, but when he read a few things to me out loud...let's just say the ridiculousness factor was increased by ten to hear them said in his lovely, even tone. Ah, youth.

...God, I suddenly feel old. Maybe because I'm yawning and rubbing my eyes at 10:18 PM. Maybe because I'm going to go brush my teeth and be in bed, probably by the time the clock hits 10:30. Sigh. Like Methuselah.

Thanksgiving

Well, I just went back and read my Thanksgiving entries from previous years. Apparently I hadn't written one the last two years. Hard to think that my last Thanksgiving with my mom and my grandpa was two years ago. Last night, as I was running down my list of everything I thank God for, I imagined them all sitting at a table together, my parents and grandparents. Everyone was smiling. I tried to remember what it was to hug each of them--my grandfather's scratchy face and that smell of wood and cigars he always carried with him; my mother's iron embrace and the overwhelming scent of her perfume; hugging my dad in the den after he'd get home from work, feeling the roughness of his dark blue LLBean jacket under my hands and the five o'clock shadow on his cheek. The last image is the faintest, after all this time, and yet for some reason, today he's the one I miss the most. Maybe it's because it's the holiday that celebrates vast amounts of overeating (and let's quote my mom here: "He wasn't big-boned, my husband was fat!") or maybe because it's been more than seven years since I could hug my dad, and I dearly wish I could do so again.

That said, I'm not sad today, not really. I've still got a great family; I've got Jen, and our relationship is the best now it's ever been. I've got great friends, a pleasant job with a nice boss, a fabulous apartment, a car that hasn't broken down on me, and the best boyfriend the world has to offer. Best of all, I have a future. Who knows what it holds?

Finally, this is a quote from the first Thanksgiving list I ever posted, all the way back in my junior year of high school:

"...for my my mom. she drives me crazy, i don't understand her, and sometimes i don't even feel close to her, yet it was she "who made my hands and my feet."

Of Late

The middle of November already--how time flies. This weekend I went into New York to see my sister, to meet Bill's family, and to see Sara's new apartment. I had an excellent time: Jen and I didn't fight, not even once; Sapphire didn't pretend not to know me for the fifteen minutes I had with her in Jen's apartment; and I got to meet some of Sara's new friends from New York as well as an old friend from Providence. To make it even better, on Sunday afternoon I got to see Billy Collins read at Sacred Heart! He's drily humorous in person, and people were continually cracking up as he read his poems. It's that phenomenon where you see the humor in something and maybe smile at it when you're alone, but then the same thing makes you laugh out loud when you're in a group of people. Sadly, I didn't get to introduce myself to him as the girl whose boyfriend stalked him to get me an anniversary present that is currently framed in my kitchen. There was a long line of people eager for his autograph, and as I already have that, both in a book as well as on the poem and its accompanying faintly ominous note that reads "Hoping you and Michelle are still together..." I decided to let it go.

Off a Sense of Accomplishment

I just finished my first draft of my statement of purpose for grad school applications and sent it to my advisors. I literally went skipping through the apartment to take a victory shower. That had to be the hardest two pages I've ever written, because it has to encapsulate everything about me that's unique--my background, my qualifications, my research interests, my interest in the particular school, even a bit of my personality. The statement is the only chance you have to actually let the graduate committee hear you in your own words, so it has to be good. I hope it's good.

Eventually I will be producing seven or eight versions of this little essay, each tailored to the schools I send it to. This draft was directed at Princeton, which was probably the easiest because they have amazing faculty and unrivaled resources. It's going to be a little more difficult with a school like Temple, for example, that has a couple of great people, but not that much in the way of resources. I was disappointed to find out from Dr. Escobar that the woman at Princeton I most wanted to study with is approaching retirement and no longer taking on new grad students. She recommended I look at a woman at Temple, which put that school back on my short list--I had previously nixed it because of the resources issue. But hey, if the woman who's the tops in her field thinks it's a good option, it deserves a closer look.

I have Dr. Schwab to thank for my current feelings of relief and elation. She emailed me on Friday to ask if I could send her my CV and statement by the weekend--meanwhile, I had been procrastinating because I knew I still had weeks in which to write the damn thing. So that definitely lit a fire under my ass, and 24 hours later, voila! I guess Sean's not the only one who can work well under pressure.

Now I must go get ready for the party this evening...we're going to a the Knights of Honor dinner at Yale Commons. It's a fundraiser for Sean's high school. I was plotting that tonight I could actually have a reason to borrow one of Hubbard's fur coats, but alas, with the rain that's forecast, that seems unlikely. My mother will have to wait to blast me with lightning bolts from heaven, it seems.

The Fabulous Thing I Did On My Lunch Hour

I bought a ticket to visit Carla in Florence this March. I'm going back to Florence, even if it's only for a week.

This isn't even something I've been ruminating on; in a flight of fancy yesterday I decided to check some fares to Italy and was amazed how cheap some of them were. A midweek ticket (nonstop, for the first time in my traveling career!)in early March was really not that expensive, and when I considered that this is probably the one time in my life that I'll have a friend in a foreign city that I can shack up with, who has a kitchen that I (trans: Carla) can cook in, thus saving the costs of hotel and restaurants...it seemed like a good idea, so I did it.

I can't believe that I did it, by the way. But at the same time I'm glad I did it quickly, because I know if I let myself think about it for too long I would have up with all sorts of pragmatic reasons to deny myself the opportunity. Pipe down, there, practicality!

(And so, my fourth transatlantic count-down begins)

22

I can't believe I'm so old! I feel like up through 21, people are really prepared to cut you a lot of slack, but once you're 22 you're basically like every other adult, just with less money and no kids hanging on you in the grocery store. Oh well. My birthday was pleasant; I got some charming presents and a cake with my name on it, and no one died! A perfect celebration.

I also tried some kangaroo from Sean's meal at the restaurant we went to with his family, D'Errico's. It's an Italian restaurant but the owner likes to have different game meats on the menu. It really just tasted like steak--raw steak, since Sean likes his meat disgustingly red, but steak nonetheless. Gary said he would look into finding out where we can get ahold of rabbit meat from a butcher in the area, because I want to try my hand at making that rabbit dish Carla made for Easter.

Saturday morning I'm going to a spa for my birthday gift from Sean, and then we're moving him into his new apartment in Middletown! Sniff--the little boy is growing up and leaving the nest. Then I must get down to work on grad school applications...shudder...But it's a three day weekend, so it's all going to be OK.

Sadness

Heather's grandfather passed away on Sunday from lung cancer. I only met him once, this past summer when Rae and I crashed the Flanagans' graduation party. I'm glad I got the chance.

One week from Friday it will have been one year since my mom died. Can you believe it? I can't, really. It seems like I was just talking to her yesterday, putting in a request for baked goods at school or getting the latest gossip on Jen or something. Ironically, I realized the other day that I can't remember my last conversation with her. I know it was a couple of days beforehand, maybe that Tuesday, but I don't remember what we talked about. Probably the same usual things. So often the last few years I called her because I just wanted to talk to her, to make sure she was OK. Maybe we talked about my birthday and what I wanted, of which all I can recall is requesting a Stop and Shop gift certificate (of course, as I later learned from her to-do list, she hadn't even gotten my present by that Thursday, even though my birthday was going to be Sunday. tsk tsk) I mean, I guess it's much better to have had a fairly banal last conversation with her rather than the big fight that usually happens before someone dies in a movie, you know?

I do remember the last time I saw her, and I feel lucky that even with my poor memory, this remains very clear. She came to school the first week we were there to bring the vacuum, some diet coke and other odds and ends. I don't remember what she was wearing, maybe her leather coat, but I don't think so. She had the dog with her, and we left him penned up in my room while we went out shopping for groceries. She brought those awesome pumpkin squares and told us how she'd made two batches but the dog tripped her on the stairs and she dropped one. I wrote a poem about that, actually; in true testament to my mom's lax idea of housekeeping, when I got home the night she died, there was the stain, faded, but still brown on a blue carpet, right on the stairs. I like remembering her standing there in the townhouse kitchen with my friends, eating treats. I remember that she always looked so small standing next to other people, but if you knew her, you knew she was a whirlwind.

I miss her a lot, especially when there's something I'm proud of and I just want to be able to call her and tell her, even though I know she'd only say "Oh, very nice," in that calm way of hers. I wish I could call and tell her all the little details about my job and my apartment even though she'd probably be watching TV at the same time and only half listening. I try to imagine her visiting here, inspecting the rooms and nodding like she did when I showed her around the townhouse, but it's hard imagining her somewhere she's never been. Actually, it's sort of easier imagining my dad in here because I can imagine him complaining about my back porch and how easy it would be for a burglar. I heard his voice in my head a few days ago when I was turning on the heat in here for the first time, and I ran around making sure nothing was anywhere remotely near the baseboard heaters so it wouldn't catch on fire. Probably nothing would ever catch on fire at a mere 68 degrees, but JTD is on my shoulder like a little paranoid angel. I miss him too, and then I'll miss sitting in our table in Giovanni's, the four of us, making jokes about each other, and then I'll remember sitting in another booth, just three of us them, making fun of him. Maybe sometime Jen and I will go there and sit and laugh at both of them. She's coming next Friday, and we're going to go visit my aunts on Saturday. I anticipate that there will be some awkward crying on Jen's part and some irritation on my part, but I really am looking forward to seeing her. My mom would probably be so annoyed seeing how good we get along as soon as our parents are out of the picture! All those times she pleaded with us to be nice to each other. Turns out all we needed was for my dad's prophecy to come true. It is just the two of us now.

After Rae's Rounds

Talking to Rae about journaling and poetry and things of that nature, I looked at my journal's main page and was surprised, yet again, to see how many years of my life are represented on that little sidebar. You'd think those entries would be able to fill in all the things I've forgotten--arguments, field trips, books I read once but can't remember the title of--but I often find myself stymied by the purposeful lack of detail insisted upon by my teenage writer self.

For example, tonight Rae and I went over, once again, our mysterious departure from friendship during the latter half of sophomore year and then our equally-odd return to it that summer, without reaching any conclusion as to exactly why we stopped saying hi to each other in the halls. I can't find any answers in my journal entries from the period, just as I can't really pin down exactly what the problem was between me and Sara that led to me becoming friends with Meghan junior year. In the latter case, there are a couple of particularly angsty entries that I'm pretty certain were Sara-related, but I haven't the slightest idea what it's actually saying. I guess back then I didn't think I'd ever be using this journal for reference, just as an immediate outlet for the frustration and emotional overload of usual teenage crap.

In the end, we can probably chalk most of it up to being hormonal, self-obsessed teens who thought way too highly of their own maturity levels. I can't believe some of the things I thought were superlatively important back then. Of course, I'll probably be singing the same tune soon about the college years--heck, when I read things I wrote in freshman year, into sophomore, I DO cringe, most often at the punctuation and capitalization but also at the arguably ridiculous content. I noticed I used to use swears a lot more often, both in my writing and in my regular conversation, whereas now I try to avoid them. Once upon a time, I actually felt "rebellious" and "cool" for using those words, whereas now I look upon them as a lost opportunity to use, you know, real vocabulary. (The main exception to this progression would be the word "cunt," because despite its complete inappropriateness for use in any context I find myself to be inordinately fond of using "cuntiness" to describe the behavior of people around me, especially while I'm driving). But hey, I'm still growing.

Fire

I can't believe so much of Greece is burning. I'm reading the newspaper articles and they're showing the blazes in places Sean and I visited, like the little town of Andritsena--we stopped there for lunch in the middle of a long drive to the Temple of Vasses, but we didn't feel like being the only tourists in a restaurant at noon, so we went to a small grocery shop instead. I remember there was nothing in there I wanted to eat; Sean wound up getting some vanilla wafer crackers, and I think, and then we kept driving. As we left, the narrow road curved around a valley and I saw a herdsman standing at the top of an impossibly steep slope, while his charges grazed beneath him. I remember marveling at how nimbly their legs moved on the terrain. Now I read in the paper they've found the bodies of several missing shepherds in the hills, and dead livestock are everywhere. They said the fires moved faster than cars could drive, and more than 60 people are dead. I can't imagine what it's like there now.

Night Air

Just as I start to believe that the recent chilly temperatures mean that summer's will has been broken at last, I hear the mercury will be rising again later this week. A big BOO to that--bring on the fall, I say!

With that in mind, it's surprising how much nostalgia can be evoked from the cool breeze of a late summer's eve. Just a couple of days ago I was surprised to realize that I hadn't yet gotten the feeling like I should be getting ready to go back to school with everyone else. However, it turns out that school-days nostalgia prefers colder temperatures to the humid nights of mid-August. Now when the breeze blows through the window, carrying that particular scent that is not summer and is not quite fall, but breathes of being the cusp between the two, I feel acutely sad. The years of the 'first day of school' are, after all, over.

For all that, life's going pretty well. Jen survived her post-bar exam Mexican vacation with Bill to bring home tales of climbing the Mayan ruins, riding on a trained dolphin's back, and rappeling down into a cave and then swimming out. She also came back stocked withplenty of cheap tourist purchases, including two 'authentic' Mayan vases for me--despite my explicit request that she not bring me anything but a nice postcard or two. Too late I realize why my mother was always so blase about the trinkets I insisted on bringing her back from trips--it's just more useless crap that takes up space, however nicely it was intended. *eyes the shockingly orange pencil holder Jen brought back from Aruba*

Yesterday Sara and I visited Heather's new apartment in Norwalk, which is deliciously Flanagan-sized and filled with whimsical nooks and crannies. We helped the Flanagan paint crew for a while, but I had to leave when one of my eyes got really red and itchy. I was worried last night that I had somehow managed to get pinkeye, which would really suck, not least because I'm currently in the two weeks' no-man's-land between when my old insurance ended and my work insurance begins, and I'd really rather not pay for any prescriptions on my own. However, my eye wasn't red anymore this morning, although it was irritated here and there, so I'm not sure if it was a contact problem, the paint fumes, or what. Still, I took the precaution of wearing my glasses to work, which was kind of unpleasant; I'm so used to wearing them only at night that they made me feel weirdly slow all day, combined with the uneasiness of lacking peripheral vision--for instance, having to move my head to read from a piece of paper I was typing up instead of just looking down. Stupid four-eyes-ness! Sean says I look cute with my glasses on, though. :-)

And I'm DONE

With the GRE, at any rate. Sean and I took them on Saturday, and, after a few heart-wrenching hours wherein I was convinced that I was going to score abysmally on the math section and be forced to endure this torture a second time, I came out of it with a score of 1400 out of 1600! I didn't even score rock bottom on math, I was so excited. Sean beat me by 50 points, the sneaky devil. He actually scored better on his math than verbal, which he hadn't expected.

So all that remains is to receive our essay scores by mail--and if I do say so myself, I think I rocked those essays. I was concerned about the argument essay beforehand, because when I did the practice ones they always seemed to be about some topic I couldn't think of great examples for, like business ethics or something, but lo and behold, one of the topics on the GRE was basically "Great thinkers and artists are always out of touch with their time and society. Discuss." Boo-yah!

It wasn't even really the score itself that made me so happy--it was the blissful knowledge that FINALLY, after all these years of PSAT, SAT and AP tests, I will never have to take a standardized test ever again, and specifically, that I won't have to face the GRE a second time.

Last night I went home, threw my review books on the floor in the living room and did a little dance on them. I'm not kidding; I was holding the phone up so Sean could hear my victory dance, too. Now I can gleefully expunge all that useless mathematical knowledge from my brain, never to be heard from again. Joy!

In Which I Become A College Student (Again)

A community college student, at any rate.

I'm signing up for Elementary German I at Norwalk Community College for the fall semester--not because German is some kind of sexy language I've always wanted to learn, but because I need to demonstrate my language skills when I apply to grad school, and sadly, no one considers Spanish to be one of the high scholarly languages. Boo to that, I say! Actually I could probably get away with it if I were applying for a concentration in Spanish art, but I'm going for Italian instead. My Italian skills are pretty non-existent too (example, me trying to parse out some of the Italian side of Robert Pinsky's translation of the "Inferno" last night; I was lucky if I got a single word every three lines), but unfortunately, there aren't any night classes in Italian being offered at a college around here.

The downside to this, besides having to learn German, is that I will have to shelve my plan to take a non-credit course in Arabic conversation. I just don't want to take on too much and wind up doing poorly in the language I actually need. Also, a thumbs down to having to pay almost $500 just to audit a class.

It's really too bad that JTD isn't here anymore to converse with me in German. Sean, meanwhile, thinks this will be a great chance for him to refresh his German memory by practicing on me. I also must admit that I am looking forward to more opportunities to use the words "Jawohl!" and "Schnell!" in the future.

And Just A Quick Word

Richard III was awesome. The setting was the grounds of a mansion overlooking the Hudson River, and they cleverly set up lights all around the perimeter so that the treelines of the property were transformed into ghostly backdrops. I especially enjoyed the dream sequence, when the ghosts of Richard's victims appear to both him and the sleeping Richmond--the actors came walking slowly from the far end of the lawns, and everything was lit in an eerie green light. It was enthralling.

I also finished Harry Potter, but I won't say anything about what happened, just in case. It seems unbelievable that the books I've been reading for all these years are actually finished. The ending tied nearly everything up, but random questions continue to come to my mind, little details that she failed to address. Maybe she'll release a FAQ one day and answer everything.

My sister is taking the bar today. I hope she's doing well. The GRE is in just two weeks--less, actually, and I'm quite nervous. Fingers crossed, then, for both DiMarzos!

"I'll Have Her, But I'll Not Keep Her Long..."

I am seriously pumped to see Richard III at Boscobel on Saturday! I can even deal with the fact that I will have to wait until the wee hours of Saturday-Sunday to immerse myself in Harry Potter, because I'll finally be seeing my favorite villain on stage, and maybe engaging Lenny Stabs in another Richard vs. Iago debate. Note to self: re-read Othello so I can actually make some good points about that weasely Iago and how he's not even half the man Richard is.

My initial research for Egypt is definitely making me thankful that Sean will be contributing to this trip. The airfare alone is a lot more than just flying to Europe, and though it seems counterintuitive, things seem to be much more expensive within Egypt than in European countries. The average hotel room is about $125--that's crazy, since I got us a series of awesome hotels in Greece for about $75 a night. Greece, of course, is a relatively poor country in Europe, but I just didn't expect Egypt to be so pricey. I'd like to have us fly inside the country, too, rather than waste our time on long train rides, which will be extra.

Right now my basic plan, which is a rip-off the National Geographic Expeditions tour that I wish to heaven we could afford to go on (at $6,000 a person, it's a little bit much), has us flying into Cairo and spending a night or two there, then flying down to Abu Simbel, going from there to Aswan, then (hopefully) sailing the Nile up to Luxor/Thebes/Karnak, and flying back to Cairo. Every picture I look at, while absolutely stunning, also reminds me that unlike Greece, which was temperate and clean and Western, Egypt will be hazy, dirty, crowded and incredibly hot. Sean and I have already argued about the lengths one should go to to fit in; I said that I might try to get a tan before I go (a major feat, considering it'll be December and I don't tan) just so I'm not the absolute whitest person around. Sean disagrees, but he also wants to wear that HAT of his, which I think is silly. I'll also need to invest in a new, desert-friendly wardrobe, as I own nothing that is white, khaki, or made of linen, whereas that's pretty much half of Sean's wardrobe.

I want to ride a camel.

In Which I'm Drinking A Diet Coke at 8:45 AM

I was waiting in line at the DMV at 7:30. On the plus side, I was third in what became, by eight o'clock, a huge snaking line, so I was out of there with my duplicate title for the Tahoe by 8:15. Huzzah! Waiting at the DMV brings out the worst in people, or so I've observed in my several sojourns there over the last month. Hopefully I won't be darkening their doorstep anytime soon.

In other news...well, I'm not sure what news there is. I have a 6" by 4" purple bruise on my butt from going tubing on the Farmington river this past weekend. I think I hit the mother of all boulders in the first ten minutes. I know bruises, however ghastly, don't leave permanent scars...but this thing is freaky.

Oh yes, I saw two movies last week--Live Free or Die Hard, and Transformers. The former was an excellent action movie (I had to go by myself because silly Sean refused to see it, something about losing brain cells and whatnot). The latter, well, neither of us were really interested in going until all of his friends said it had been such an amazing film. And, you know, I watched the cartoon show once upon a time, so why not? Au contraire-it was probably the worst film I've seen in...I don't even remember when I last saw something so bad that I was shaking my head and wincing during the movie. The only good moment occurs when Optimus Prime and Megatron see each other for the first time during a battle. Otherwise, at 2.5 hrs, it was way too long for such a useless fluffball film.

Such A Day As Today Ever Was

I'm feeling quite "dear diary"-ish at the moment. This afternoon was a series of "beautiful, gorgeous, wish you were here!" moments. Everything seemed bathed in gold in the late afternoon, and the breeze was up. The Valley is quite the charming natural beauty, much more attractive than Windsor, I have to admit. Some kind of an accident on one of the major roads between Shelton and Monroe forced me onto a circuitous back road voyage that took me through some of the prettiest, leafiest stretches of road around. My destination was the Monroe Library, which is brand-brand-new (and fabulous). I laughed aloud when I realized I was passing the road that turned off into Tommy's neighborhood. Doesn't that just seem like ages ago?

Speaking of things past, for some reason in the shower I was thinking about lunches with my mom at Dom's, especially the ones where Sean would join us, and participate in the quintessential DiMarzo ritual of reading the paper and not talking. Then I got very sad all of a sudden, as it hit me once again that that's over and done with. Those Sunday mornings will never come again. We'll never slide into one of Dom's extra-large booths with her; I'll never squabble with her for first dibs on the section of the paper that I wanted. The waitresses will never come over with that special grin they saved for "Joanie." Their smiles for us are different now, sadder, because we remind them of her. And they remind me of her, and her quick little laugh, and the way she'd threaten me with her fork if I tried to sneak her chips. I miss her.

Talked to Jen tonight, another conversation that's really a monologue proceeding at breakneck pace. She told me how much she misses Mom and that, surprisingly, she enjoys talking to me; strangely enough, things I was thinking of telling her the last time we spoke. She had the unfortunate luck to get bedbugs in her apartment and had to throw out her bed. She also had to wash the cat--hiliary ensued.

In other news, still hating Carla and being jealous of Sara, as I track her progress on her blog (www.sarainitaly.blogspot.com) The grad party Linda threw for Sean and I last Friday came off swimmingly; I was especially glad to be able to see my aunts. Linda threw in a couple of hints about how the place we were at does weddings--she got married to Gary there, in fact. *shakes head* Then I crashed Heather's family party on Saturday, accompanied by Rae, who then promptly abandoned us on Sunday to start (another) new life, this time as a research assistant for the summer in Boston before she starts med school. I didn't realize how much I missed being with Rae and Heather till this weekend. Now I can't wait till Sara comes home and the four of us can get together.

Finally, Sean proposed today that we go see Swan Lake at the Met in New York next week. Our first ballet, and at the Met, no less! None too shabby...

In Which I Resolve Never to Look At Carla's Facebook Pictures Again

It's really just too damn depressing. The view from her apartment window, right smack in view of the Duomo...the Ponte Vecchio at dusk...the view of the city from the Boboli gardens. I miss Florence so much. Carla's postcard, which I got yesterday, urged me to come and visit. As much as I would love to, I can't in good conscience spend money going to a place I've already been, when there are so many other places I have to go. Plus, when I imagine how bittersweet it would be to return to Florence for only a week--maybe ten days, tops--I shake my head and think of other things. Egypt, for example. Eighteen months and counting...haha.

In Which Sean Gets a Real Job At Last

Yes, it's true: as of August 12, Sean will join the work force as a teacher of religion at Xavier High School in Middletown. It's not as wonderful as if he had been, say, working with Mr. Tressler at Northwest, but it's still pretty awesome for someone who has never yet been forced to hold a quote-unquote real job before. I'm so proud of him!!

In other news, I am the new, proud (?) owner of a 98 Toyota Corolla in beige, following a grand Flanagan family tradition. I have decided to name her Prudence. Alas, Brunhilde, your days are numbered.

Moved Out/In

Well, tonight I'll finally be spending the night in my new apartment, a little less than a month after I moved my things in. Monday we moved out of Fairfield, after a serious morning of cleaning, a pleasant lunch with Sarah's dad, and a supercool episode of mattress surfing down the stairs, which Carla missed because she was off doing serious things at the study abroad office. Our goodbye was in many ways sadder for me than saying goodbye to our general group of friends, or even to Fairfield itself; Carla was leaving for Italy, Sarah was going to D.C., and even though Meredith would be the closest geographically, it's not like living in a house with your friends. Townhouse 31 was also the last place I ever saw my mom alive, and where I was when they told me she was dead. Even though I felt like I didn't have a home after she died, the townhouse was another home, and I was sad to leave even that bit of security, small though it was, behind me.

Now that I'm here and really on my own, it's scary. It's amazing how many ways our parents are still taking care of us at an age when most of us assume ourselves to be completely independent. I went food shopping and had to buy everything I needed, because there's no one to remember to buy the ketchup or the butter if I forget, and there isn't a pantry at home over-flowing with stuff I can help myself to. I didn't know where the post office or the grocery store or any of that was until today (I did find that I'm a block away from the library, which ROCKS). Shelton seems to be a pretty OK town. It's not as pretty as Windsor, but it's a good deal livelier. Right now there's a carnival going on a couple of blocks away; the voices of people who parked on my street are drifting in the window and making Rocky bark--I'm babysitting him for a while until Sean gets back from the movies.

There are no streetlights on my street, which is weird. It's a very quiet residential road behind a school, but the JTD-voice in me is on high alert in these new premises. For example, it bothers me that there's a window in the den that opens directly onto the deck, which has stairs up from the ground. Someone could easily come up, spot my computer through the window and break in. I also have to break the habit, acquired in the townhouses, of not locking the door behind me when I come in. JTD definitely would not approve.

The End

I graduated college this morning. It seems freakishly surreal now, as if it already happened months and months ago. It was good, as ceremonies go, and the weather was cooperative. I had a tense moment after the ceremony trying to find my aunt and uncle in the crowd without the benefit of a cell phone, but we located them at last and had a great lunch with Sean's family. As casual as our family can often be, I was happy to have family members present. Of course Sr. Sally and Sr. St. Henry were there as well, as I couldn't help but feel that with them in attendance, my mom was really there watching.

Our house is in a shambles; we all have to be out by noon tomorrow. It's so strange to think my roommate is moving to Italy in three days, and I might not see her for years. Literally. Sarah's staying on the continent but she'll be far away in D.C., too. It's not really as sad as high school graduation was, because this time I have the benefit of knowing that you do stay friends with the people who mean something to you. Also, I'm probably in some kind of shock, because for the first time in my life this is not just a summer break I'm beginning; it's the start of 1.5 years of regular workaday schedule. Sean and I agreed that we have rather ambiguous feelings about it, because it's not like we're going back to school right away, but it's not like we're launching into careers we plan on continuing indefinitely, either.

Tonight we honored our group tradition one last time, and gathered in the Zen garden on Bellarmine hill for a toast. After our sappy individual toasts, we raised our glasses to "family," and I felt like I was in a Lifetime movie, for serious.

I can't believe it's time to say goodbye to Fairfield. What is there to say, besides 'breaking up is hard to do...'

End of an Era

The sale of my house closed on Friday afternoon. Sean went with me, and we sat there as the buyers signed a thick stack of papers. I only had to sign four, one of which was an agreement that no money would be exchanged between us beyond the actual terms of the sale--which of course was the entire reason for my presence at the closing! That bit of illegality took only a second, as I slipped the check into the buyer's hand after everything was signed, and then it was done.

Everyone else was in a good mood during the proceedings. The buyer's husband, who is a Nigerian immigrant who speaks eight languages, including French, engaged in a lively debate with their lawyer about things like the existence of happiness and of freedom--neither of which of the husband believed in. The lawyer was obvious a very intelligent and interesting guy, and under other circumstances I would have been delighted to listen to their conversation, but under the circumstances I just wanted everything to be over, and mostly didn't even look up. After all the time and energy and sheer frustration that had gone into getting this deal done, I hadn't anticipated how sad it would make me to actually sign the papers. I thought of my parents, and how that house was in many ways the symbol of their hopes and dreams, the place that they made a home for us, the place where we were all together...and here I was, having to sign it away to a new family. Once again I felt, hopefully for the last time, the anger and sadness that it was my responsibility to do all of this.

Despite all of my prior resentment towards the buyers, I recognized later, when I was calm, that they were very friendly and polite during these proceedings. I had to laugh to myself, though, when the wife mentioned to the lawyer that they would indeed be having a lot of big parties because they have a big family--the thought of my neighbors' faces when that happens! Oh, they'll be missing us even more that day. Of course I also thought of the paint cans, and laughed to myself again.

So here it is, a chapter that's almost closed. I haven't deposited the check yet. I still have to get in touch with the probate office and find out if it's OK with them that we skip this silly idea of a trust altogether. In addition to the sale price, there was a deposit check for $5k, and I joked to Sean that Jen would never know if...and then we dreamed about which country we'd choose to go to this time. Egypt is number one on our priority list, but since Sean is so firmly set on seeing Jerusalem and the other sites in Israel, and because they are so conveniently close to each other, we decided that our next trip abroad will be a lengthier combo tour of the two countries. Of course I'm not going to actually steal the 5k to finance it, however tempting it may be.

In other news, I'm into Churchill's third volume, "The Grand Alliance." It covers 1941 as things finally get into high gear after Russia and the U.S. are drawn in. In tandem I've been reading (sneakily, in Borders, because I don't feel like buying it) a book about the complicated relationship between Churchill and FDR, which provides complementary information about Churchill's psychology and the imaginative revisionism of his writing. Basically, it points out that no one is an objective chronicler of their own history. Churchill made his relationship with Roosevelt seem much more evenly balanced in terms of affection than it was because that's the way he wanted it to have been. Roosevelt was always the beloved and Churchill always the suitor, which apparently reflected Churchill's upbringing as the child of parents who neglected and ignored him. Pathos makes good reading!

Sigh

I'm still waiting for my house to close, days later. First they held it up over the pitiful sum of $210 because they forgot to add taxes onto the estimate for the repair of the deck, and then the bank decided not to let them have the whole $13,000 they asked for in closing costs, which would have then resulted in me receiving extra money in the final check and therefore somehow requiring me to send a check for $5700 ahead of time to the realtor so he could make the difference up to the buyer at closing...which is madness. I mean, yes, I do have that much money in my savings, so it wouldn't have been a problem, but most people in my situation probably wouldn't, and plus, who wants to send their money off into the ether on a house deal that has already been twice postponed with no guarantees? Oh yeah, and add to this that the lawyer can't be involved in this extra exchange of funds because that's not the way the contract is set up. Does it make sense to you? If not, don't worry. No one else seemed to understand the necessity for me to be fronting five grand in this deal, even if only temporarily. So after a period of intense drama this afternoon, which involved endless rounds of phone calls with Sean and his mom, my aunt, and my realtor, I decided to just go to the damned closing myself and hand over a check to the buyer at the same time as I receive my check for the price of the house plus the $5700 extra. It's an extra pain in the neck, but better than the alternative. I just want this done with.

In other news, I had my last college classes today. Anti-climactic, really. Actually it should have been terribly climactic because my very last class was History of the Third Reich, and we finished up with the Gotterdammerung, the Twilight of the Gods, when all of the Third Reich went down in an apocalyptic blaze. I knew how the story ends--I've read Speer, I've seen "Downfall," and in about five volumes I'll read it from Churchill's perspective as well--but who doesn't? Hitler goes batshit, everybody jumps ship except for Eva and Goebbels and his sorry brood, Goering tries to seize command and Himmler tries to negotiate a separate piece, then the Fuhrer goes 'poof,' the Russians take Berlin and his smoking corpse and Stalin gets to pretend for the next few years that maybe Hitler escaped and the Allies might still need him after all. It's a spectacular, operatic finish, but when it was delivered by Professor Rosenfeld at break-neck pace in a fifty-minute class, it lost a little of its solemnity. Oh well.

Out

I did it; seven months to the day after my mom died, I moved out of my house and into my apartment. The house is locked up, empty, and ready for the closing Monday. I didn't even look back when we drove away because I was too busy not crashing the Penske truck.

I don't have a home anymore. Funny how I spent so much time trying to get my mom to leave that house, and then trying to leave it myself these past months, and now I'm finally done. For better or for worse I'll never set foot in there again. I used to think, the way all kids do, that I'd always have a room there, that my mom would never make me pack up my things so she could turn it into another den or something. Now that's gone, and my grandfather's house is gone without me ever even having been inside it again, and those were the only two homes I ever knew. Sean promised me tonight that we'll have a home again together, and I know we will, but I can never get back the feeling of security that comes from being in your parents' house.

I won't even begin to catalogue the number of fiascos we had the past two days; they're all over and done with, thank god. Now all that's left is for everyone to inquire politely about how moving out went, and say "oh, good!" when I tell them everything was OK. Sean told me that I can't expect anyone else to understand exactly how hard this was, and I know I can't. I just hate the way everyone seems to think it's been so easy, like it was nothing I couldn't handle. I hate that I had to do this. I hate that I've spent so much time this year just being anxious about my to-do list. I hate that I had to be the one to handle everything because my sister washed her hands of it. I hate that I had to be the responsible one. I hate it that she died and left me here. Most of all I hate that I can't even cry about this in my own damn room, because here come Sarah and Carla up the stairs, laughing about some bollywood movie crap, and if they see I'm crying, I'm sure they'll be very concerned and ask what's wrong, but they won't understand, because they can't understand. And I'm tired of being strong and making it through. I want to be beyond this.

Uplift

I wasn't wrong; it has been an extremely stressful period since my last post. I did find a new apartment last Wednesday, in Shelton; this past Sunday I went by to pick up my keys and put down a deposit. My roommate is in her 30s, I think, and a professor of counseling at the University of Bridgeport. Her name is Cicely. We haven't even met yet, but the landlord, Jamie (who's cute, but as his mom mentioned Sunday, has a girlfriend) said she's one of the nicest people he's ever met. I liked the apartment, as it was all recently redone inside when Jamie bought the house, and what especially drew me was the extra, empty room that Jamie said would work well as a den--which was awesome, because I have my giant desk plus six boxes' worth of books to put somewhere, and they're sure as hell not fitting in the actual bedroom. Plus this apartment is only 20 minutes from my place of work and $110 cheaper a month than the place in Meriden. I was sold.

Another huge point of stress last week was trying to figure out what I'm going to do with that damned dining room set. I put it on craigslist, but I could only be there to show it on Saturday, so even though I did get a few people who came over, no one took the bait. I wasn't willing to sell it for peanuts or split the set, especially for the guy who told me that $1000 was a lot to pay for something his kid's just going to beat up. Well, sir, that's why I'm not interested in lowering the price for a bumpkin like you. I had also tried auction places in the area, one of whom offered to come appraise it but only during the week, when I couldn't be there. Finally, I thought of offering it to the sisters to use as a big-ticket item at their yearly tag sale, the sale where I've always found such great stuff. So I called Sister St. Henry on Saturday and proposed the idea; she wasn't sure if they're still having one this year, so I also told her that if they'd just like to have it, maybe for one of the hundred sitting rooms they seem to have spread out in that place, I would love to give it to them. And she left me a voicemail this morning saying they'll take it!

Physically getting is there, however, is another matter, especially since that giant hutch has to be disassembled before it can be moved. I solved this problem by hiring movers for next Saturday, both to move me to Shelton and to drop off the set in West Hartford. If not for the set I really wouldn't have needed movers; I have a total of 24 boxes, a small bureau, my desk, my bedside table, my oriental cabinet, and a TV. Not even my bed is coming, since there's already a bigger one at my new apartment. But there was no way, even with help from the guys here, that we could have moved that set without damaging it, and it really is such a nice set. Everyone asks me why I don't want it "for the future"--well, hello, first of all, where the hell would I keep it, and secondly, if I have a dining room set, I want one that invites my friends and family to use it, not one that's beautiful yet untouchable.

Let's see....crisis number 3 or 4 was disposing of all of the furniture and household items that I'm not taking and which had not been donated to Betty and Alan in January. I was contemplating the ugly idea of making a dozen runs to Goodwill when, lo and behold, I did manage to find their number on freecycle. I marked all the furniture they could have, which included my bed and another of my grandpa's desks, along with that giant table with the bench that was our play-table years ago, and amassed a heap of items that covered the whole living room floor. Mrs. Long, busybody that she is, was very suspicious of them, since for two preachers who work as home health care aides, they drive a BMW wagon. In all likelihood someone gave it to them, but she remained sniffy. She wasn't there when Betty came back with her sister and two nieces, when they got ecstatic over the idea that they now had a coffeemaker, a telephone, and a VCR. That was no feigned enthusiasm--these were just people who hadn't had the things we all ridiculously take for granted.

So, as of 9am yesterday when they brought a UHaul for the furniture and Mrs. Long, against her better judgment, I'm sure, let them in, there is nothing left inside the house besides the dining room set and what I'm taking--not a plate, not a towel. Which of course brings me to crisis number 5--the garage. I had secretly planned to leave the garage as is and let the next people deal with it. I had even put in the contract that I was willing to leave everything there--of course the realtor put this in as "negotiable," which really means nada. I just dreaded the idea of having to clean out a garage, especially in the extremely limited time I had left, when I was still trying to figure out where I'd be living, what to do with the dining room set and my mom's van, etc etc. Unfortunately, when I met the buyer--and I did, although I never wanted to--she made clear that she expected the garage to be completely emptied.

Mind you, when I met this woman (and her three kids) I was trying to pack up all my belongings by myself, as plumbers and electricians ranged around me, drilling holes and making mysterious "upgrades" that my realtor had OKed but which Mrs. Long insisted--to the buyer's realtor's face--were illegal. I had planned on a stressful but calm Saturday of packing, and instead I got the Ringling Bros. Circus, and listening to this awful woman tell me that, oh no, we're just going to rip out all those carpets (OK, I acknowledge that I, too, prefer hardwood and would probably do the same when I move into a house, but it's different for me knowing my mom put those brand-new carpets in a year ago, and this little beast is just walking in and changing everything. Can you tell I hate her?) The other realtor knew all about my "situation" and I hated my realtor for telling him. Hello, then they had a giant green sign that said "SHE NEEDS TO SELL!" Of course they knew they could play hardball then. I wish we could have sold the house to Alan and Betty, even though I doubt they could have ever afforded it--they were always so openly admiring of how beautiful the house was, and even though I don't think it's such a prize, I was flattered. The buyers, they don't deserve that house. Sean and I were joking that maybe, if we're lucky, my dad will haunt them.

So now I've enumerated all the reasons that I wanted to rip my hair out this past week. Of course, in addition to all this house business there's always school work, too, and that only added to the insanity. But it's all looking up now. I'm done with two of three final papers, and tomorrow will present in Buddhist art class, thus officially ending my participation. Friday Sean and I are heading up to clean out the garage, take everything to the dump, pick up the moving van, and bring my mom's car to New Haven where we can donate it to the Easter Seals. Saturday morning at 8am sharp, two guys from "2 Young Studs Moving, LLC" will be moving my things and the dining room set. Monday the 30th is the closing--I've cancelled all our utilities for that date, and I'm evilly hoping they forget to arrange for them so that they have no power. Muaahaha.

Everything is working out. I'm thankful.

Everyone Makes Fun of the English Major, But...

Actually I don't have much of a comeback for that. Anyway, last night was the English Awards night. I didn't win either the poetry or lit crit awards (although I have to acknowledge that the girl who won the poetry award is an excellent writer), and for some reason I was about the only senior who was inducted into the honor society, Sigma Tau Delta (or STD, as Sean helpfully pointed out)this year instead of last year. That was kind of an embarassing oversight; it's supposed to be the top third of all English majors in each year, and I have about a perfect GPA in my English major. I didn't even think about it until they named all of last year's juniors who were inducted and I realized it was virtually everyone else. Embarassing.

Anyway, so yeah, this was all made good by the final award, which went to me and Lauren as "Best Senior English Majors of 2007." It wasn't the award itself, but what Dr. Bayer and Dr. Bridgford said about me that was a definite boost for a slightly deflated pride--my favorite snippet was Dr. Bridgford saying I was the "ideal student" and one of the best students she'd worked with in 25 years. I seriously considered asking Dr. Bayers for a copy of the remarks to read to myself when I'm depressed. Haha.

Oh yes, in other news, the housing deal is going through, but I have to move out by April 30th. Um, awesome, except that's two weekends from now, and I'm finding a different apartment to live in because the house in Meriden was going to be way too far away from my job. Sigh. Going up this weekend to work on boxing stuff up, but there's still the dining room set to dispose of, and the car, and all the furniture I can't take, and of course I lost Betty and Alan's number. It's going to be an extremely stressful couple of weeks.

Another Fifteenth of April

Here it is, year number seven; not much different than the others, really, except I'm more alone now than I was last year. Today is our induction to Phi Beta Kappa, and though I'm now not the only one whose parents aren't coming, due to the awful rain, I wish so much that I could look out at the audience and see their faces. Out of the wedding picture I keep on my desk, they're all gone--my parents, my grandparents, my nana that I never knew anyway. It feels like there's no one left to call anymore. No one to be proud of me who's not my friends or Sean. There's Jen, of course, and she tries, but it's not the same.

Today I miss them both so badly it hurts. It's just not fair.

Looking Back

Wow, I just looked at my posts for the month of April last year, JELOSO! April was such a fun month! Heather came, and so did spring, and the big cart blew up on Easter, and we went to Siena and Cortona and Ravenna again. God, it was such a good time. I miss the four of us cooking dinner in our apartment, the long, leisurely meals together because we had nothing else to do.

On a more ironic note, in one of my entries I mentioned how sad I was that my mom was alone around this time of year. Little did I guess that she wouldn't live to see another of his anniversaries. But they're together now. It's a happier thought.

Why Don't I Update More Often?

I always forget, or I'm too tired when I do remember. Luckily right now I feel perky and energetic--there's so much going on, but a lot of really good things have been happening, too. Probably most important: I got a job! The only one I had interviewed for, actually, at a law firm in Stratford. I'll be an administrative assistant. Not something I would ever want to do long-term, but it'll pay the bills until I go to grad school. When I applied they asked for a salary requirement and I said $32,000, because it seemed like an OK figure, and they said they'd pay me $33,000, so good deal! Best of all, besides the two weeks vacation, is that I don't have to pay anything extra for medical insurance. That'll save me a ton.

So I will be living in Meriden and commuting about 45 minutes to Stratford. I have to get rid of the Tahoe, alas...briefly I considered backing out of living with Rachel and trying to find somewhere closer to Stratford, but for $750 a month all inclusive, in a nice little house with friendly people, can I be sure I'd find anything that sweet in New Haven?

It's also award season, and everyone has been racking them up like candy canes around here. I'm proudly sharing the Art History award with Meredith! I'm also sharing the English award with someone, I don't know who, and I found out today I'm getting the Women's Studies Alumni award for a paper I wrote on why Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique idea really doesn't hold water. Sweet. This weekend is the Phi Beta Kappa induction, which I missed last year due to being blissfully abroad. Sigh. What a lifetime ago that seems.

Meanwhile, the deal on the house seems to be going forward; we're entering the final stages of haggling. Fingers crossed. Over the Easter break I stopped by to try to pack up some of my things, and it was just so ennervating to be in that empty, listless house by myself. My room is really the only room that still has much in it, and it was depressing to try and pack that into a box. But on the plus side, I spent a couple of fun nights with Sara, and had breakfast with her, Heather and Cody at Dom's (their first time)--the last time we'll see each other before emerging on the world as freshly graduated adults.

Actual Easter was a great time too--I spent Saturday and Sunday nights at Sean's. Saturday we went to Linda's friend Phillip's condo, which was absolutely magnificent: if I ever had lots of money and a decorator that's what my house would look like too, except I could never keep it so neat. Phillip is gay, I'm sure that has something to do with it. :-) We played an interesting type of poker where every hand was dealer's choice, and Gary seemed to know every game ever invented. Surprisingly, no one really was familiar with texas hold'em, which is the only type of poker I know, so it was a learning experience for all. We played with quarters, and yes, I lost. Easter dinner was a good time; Sal and Alice, Gary's parents, were there, along with his brother Joe. Sean has such a mixed family, whereas mine was always just DiMarzos...there was just a certain flavor about our family get-togethers that I really miss.

Last night in the mall I mentioned to Sean how much I missed my mom, and he said that he really misses her too. It's so comforting to know that he knew her, the real her, like I did, and that even when I forget he'll be there to help me remember.

Backwards/Forwards

On Saturday I found a place to live after graduation! I'll be moving into a little white cape house in Meriden. I met the owner, Rachel, and looked at the house, which is great. My room is on the ground floor, definitely bigger than the one at my house. She has three dogs and one adorably fat cat. Two of the dogs are teensy lapdogs, although admirably well-behaved ones, and the third is a placid labrador that reminds me of Heather's Bailey. Their current fourth, Greg (who had the neatest room of any male I've ever met outside of Sean) is moving out in April. This piece of information became even more pertinent after yesterday's events, when I tentatively agreed to sell my house--the potential buyers want to close by April 30th if everything works out. My fingers are crossed, I know real estate deals are never sure until everything's been signed and sealed. Apparently they're first-time homebuyers, currently renting somewhere in Windsor. I'm happy to think of my home becoming someone else's first home.

Sean reminded me yesterday that tomorrow it will have been six months since my mom died. Six months, and the world's still turning. Meanwhile, this Saturday, the day my sister incidentally flies to Aruba for vacation, would have been Captain Donut's 57th birthday. And of course, April 15th, the day of our Phi Beta Kappa induction, will be his seventh anniversary. My parents got a shout-out in my bio for the ceremony. The least I could do.

Amusing recently: Sean and I contemplating what would happen if people could meet the younger versions of themselves, and laughing imagining little Mrs. D. speaking of her enemies: 'What do you mean we haven't danced on their graves? What do youMEAN we went first?!". And little JTD: "Hm, so you say all those Table Talk pies were a bad idea? What about our nightly Haagen-Daz?...Ah...I see." Hahaha. If only they were around to see the way we make fun of them.

It's a beautiful day outside. Perhaps spring has come.

Revisited

So I had originally started posting my diary entries from our Greece trip onto this blog, but I decided to delete them. I am way too lazy to transcribe the thirty-or-so pages I've got written down, and honestly, twenty years from now, what's more likely to have survived--pixelated text swimming out there in the ether, or the hard-bound journal that will shortly find a home in a storage container? I ask you.

Anyway, Greece was fantabulous, driving around was a blast, Sean and I didn't kill each other, and seeing the Parthenon was much like seeing the Colosseum--bigger than it looks in pictures, but somehow anti-climactic. Climbing around Mystras was much more exciting, even if it lacked the cache of visiting the Acropolis.

I just spoke with Rachel,a 24-year-old who owns her own house in Hamden and is looking for a roommate. Her email said the rent is $750 with all utilities, including cable and internet in the bedrooms. She has a fenced backyard with a pool, plus a finished basement with a built-in bar and a big-screen tv. All this sounds amazing, and she even said she was willing to wait till May for someone to move in if she clicked with them. Originally, though, I thought it was just her in the house, which does in retrospect seem ludicrous considering the price of the rent. As it turns out, she shares with three other people, and I would be replacing the lone male who is moving out. The house is four bedrooms, and I would have one on the ground floor. There's apparently a full bathroom on each floor.

So we chatted, and I said I would drive up this weekend to check out the house and meet her roommates. Part of me wishes I could just be moving into a place with only one other roommate--fewer toes to worry about stepping on. At the same time, though, this house does sound like an incredible deal, and if they're nice, it could be a great opportunity. Rachel manages one of her father's insurance-business offices, another girl is in a master's program, and the third is a waitress. Rachel also mentioned she loves movies and isn't a huge party person, so that's encouraging. The last thing I'd want to do is move into Animal House.

However, I've gotten some other messages from Rent.com, including another woman with an apartment in Hamden, and the girl from Minnesota who's flying out here to look for apartments in April--we agreed to meet up if neither of us has found a roommate or apartment by then. So we'll see how it all goes.

Hm

Blogger Dashboard has informed me that one of my blogs, 'veritas,' has been moved over to new Blogger--that's cool, except I never had any such blog, I can't find it by searching, and when I try signing into New Blogger it says it can't let me yet because this blog is too big. Wtf.

Sara just left on the train a little while ago, back to the W.H. for her spring break. So much fun having her around. I love my Fairfield peeps (yes, I am legit using the word), but four years of college...it gets a little old after a while. Sara and her roommate Jen bought tickets to Europe for their 42-day monster excursion, which starts the week after we graduate. I am jeloso, indeed.

But on the plus side I'm going to Greece in four days. Hah. I still can't believe that we're going to drive around the Peloponnese, just the two of us in our little Hyundai Accent that cost a ridiculous amount of money to get the automatic version of. Greece has the highest rate of car accidents of any country in the EU--whoot! We're still debating over who gets to drive where, because he thinks I drive too cautiously and I think he drives like a crazy person.

And now for our itinerary, because ten years from now I probably will have forgotten where we went if I don't have copious amounts of photographic and written evidence (as we know, this blog serves as my alternate-memory source, replacing the faulty parts bestowed upon me by Nature):

Friday: we land in Athens, pick up the rental car, and drive about 90 miles to Nafplio, a cute port town in the Peloponnese. Crash from sheer exhaustion.

Saturday: Visit Mycenae and Epidavros, both nearby.

Sunday: Pack up and drive down to Sparta, except we're not going to Sparta because it's lame (being "spartan," they failed to decorate in a way that would actually survive the millenia). We're going to Mystras, an abandoned Byzantine city on a hilltop near Sparta. It's going to be supercool unless it rains, and then it will be supercrappy. After this, we drive north to the little village of Dimitsana, where I hope to God we actually have reservations, because I had to call and talk with someone who didn't speak English, and as you might guess my Lonely Planet phrasebook Greek is not all it should be. They certainly don't have my name right, because I kept repeating "Michelle" and she kept saying back something else. So we'll see how that goes.

Monday: Visit the famous water museum that is the reason we're staying in Dimitsana on Dr. Schwab's advice. After that, we're driving west to hit up the Temple at Vasses, which is apparently one of the most complete Greek temples left around, so complete they built a giant tent around it to protect it from the elements. Finish in Olympia on the coast.

Tuesday: Check out Olympia, then drive up and cross the water at Patra to get back on the Greek mainland and to get to Delphi.

Wednesday: Poke around the Delphic oracle, treasury etc etc, then head towards Athens, possibly visiting Marathon, and drop off the car.

Thursday: visit the Acropolis so that when we meet up with Dr. Schwab for dinner we'll actually have stuff to talk about.

Friday: I hear they have ducks in the National Gardens.

Saturday: Departure, alas--we get back to JFK at 9:30 at night, and Mike, Meredith and Sarah get back from their Mexican cruise at 9:50, so we may be traveling back together, which would be one big jet-lagged bucket of funness!

So as you can tell, I am both excited and well-organized. We're talking Excel spreadsheets, people. And yes, I am an early packer, having already done a dry run to ensure that I can get everything I need for eight days into a carry-on suitcase (no checked luggage for me, bitches!). Everyone makes fun of me for this, but hey, screw you guys.

Randomly, I did make a will before I went to Italy, just in case I sort of died there, which I knew to be unlikely but I wanted to be prepared for contingencies. It was a valid will at the time because I signed it in the presence of three witnesses (Sara, Heather and Rae, naturally). Ironically I left everything to my mother, so not only is that moot, but also since I now actually have assets (read: her assets) a homemade will doesn't cut the mustard. In the absence of one Jen would get everything *gasp* Talk about unfairness. :-)

NYC

I spent a few days in New York this past week to see Heather and attend a day of the 2007 College Art Association conference, the annual meeting of all the art history professors and graduate students. It was held at the super-fine Hilton in midtown Manhattan, and I went the day after the snow had left incredible amounts of slush and mud all over the city's sidewalks, which meant I had to wear crappy sneakers on the subway and in the streets, only to change into my heels inside the building. Which was fine, until I had to wait around in the main concourse for Dr. Escobar before we went to lunch; having already put the ugly shoes on, I got quite a few looks of "oh, dear" pity from the well-heeled attendees. Nothing like a little soujourn in New York among the Carrie Bradshaws to make you feel completely rustic and unsophisticated.

Dr. E had recommended I go to the conference just to see what the field is like, to view "the madhouse," which was by no means an exaggeration. He estimated about 3,000 people attend every year. It was definitely eye-opening--in more ways than one, at $150 for a single-day ticket! At least I didn't stand out when I was actually wearing the right shoes. I talked to a few people who assumed I was a grad student, including one very nervous girl who was interviewing for a job teaching painting at some college and who thought I was an interviewee as well (Dr. Escobar later observed that she ws probably thrilled to hear I wasn't competition).

I was most nervous about going out to lunch with the members of the panel on Phillip IV that Dr. Escobar was going to be chairing in the afternoon. It was strange to see him there; he's on sabbatical and will never be my professor again, so there was less of a teacher-student thing going on. Before the conference he had given me his cell phone number in case I got lost, and while we walked to the restaurant, a Spanish place called Tintol, he told me that the reason he had warned me not to give the number out wasn't that he was worried about crazy college kids pranking him, but that he didn't want the other members of the department knowing he had a cell phone. Apparently he's kept its very existence a secret, which seems almost impossible in this day of constant connectivity.

Lunch was good. When you go to a tapas restaurant with a bunch of Spanish history, art and literature scholars, you can rely on them ordering up some good stuff. I had lamb meatballs, real tortillas made out of potato and egg,and croquetas, which are like a spicy fish stick without fish. The two eminent scholars who were joining us, Jonathan Brown and John Elliott, arrived late, and being older gentlemen were fairly quiet. The other members of the panel were all female, as well as Dr. Escobar's co-chair Amanda--who I realized was the friend he had mentioned as being a historian who focused on costume when we were in our Mannerism seminar. The youngest woman was from Puerto Rico and didn't yet have her doctorate; she's studying at the IFA under Jonathan Brown. Another woman was from Bilbao and moved to Dublin fifteen years ago, so she had a really interesting accent.

The Phillip IV panel was very interesting, since the four papers presented covered a range of topics, not just contained to the art itself, but also exploring Spanish Golden Age theater and the role of Phillip's wife Isabella as a patron. After the panelists finished, Brown and Elliott discussed the joint project for which they both received wide acclaim 25 years ago, "The Buen Retiro: A Palace for a King." Luckily I had read the first few chapters of this book before the conference, so I wasn't in the dark.

I could have stayed for another evening panel and crashed the grad student reception, but I'd been up since 6:30 in the morning, so I said goodbye to Dr. Escobar, who I won't see again till graduation, and peaced out back to Brooklyn and Heather's comfy apartment.

And then we went to have fondue with two of her friends from Paris! My time with Heather is always so lively. I'm still not quite sure if going to the conference was worth the $150 bucks, but I got to spend a couple of days with Flanny, so it's all good.

Sad

I got a thick envelope from my aunt's attorney this afternoon regarding the sale of my grandfather's house. Apparently my aunt Janice accepted an offer for the house on Thursday from a neighbor--the address said Neponset St, which is right next to East Cross. I was really surprised and moreover, sad that no one called me to tell me that the house had been sold. The cover letter of the package wasn't even addressed to me, it was just copies of correspondence between the lawyer and realtor. I had to go through and find the contract to find out exactly what as going on. The lawyer assumed, probably, that someone would have let me know in advance.

It was sad enough knowing his house had already been emptied, that I would never get to see it the way I remembered it from my childhood. Now, depending on how quickly the new owner takes possession, I may never see the inside of it again at all. Somehow I guess I had thought the house would take longer to sell, maybe until Easter when I could go up there, or even summer. I wish my own house would sell so quickly.

Everything in the estate splits among the three families: Donna, Janice, and in the absence of my father, the final third gets split between me and Jen. So, since the house sold for $325,000, that means Jen and I each get about $54,000. I don't even know how I feel about all this money business. I guess I think more calmly think about what I inherited from my mom, because I'm her daughter and that's what children do, inherit when the parent dies, but with my grandpa it's weird--my dad should have been there to inherit his money, or even my mother, but they both went before him, something I knew he never saw coming. Is it strange to say that I feel a greater emptiness from that inheritance, even though I feel the greater pain from my mom's death?

Now that I think about it, according to the terms of his will (which dated from 1987, way to update the legal documents, Pops) if he had died before my mom did, she wouldn't have actually inherited anything. It would have gone right to us. I wonder how that would have worked out? Would I have given her control of the money to put into an investment account? Would she have automatically assumed she would have control? I know my sister would have probably relied on her to figure out what to do, but what about me?

With my mom, these things are never clear. Sean and I like to joke about what she would have done in one situation or another, but in reality it's hard to pin her down. There was definitely a sense of autocracy there, the old "you do this because I said so" attitude. Sean finds all my memories of her ruling with the iron grip hilarious. For example, he's always amused by the story of this frequent occurrence in our household when I was a kid and my mom was cooking:

Me: What's for dinner?
Mom: Food.

I miss her.

One Month and Two Days and Counting...

...until Sean and I leave for Greece! Whoot!

Money Matters

Today was an accounting/bill-paying day, exactly the sort that gets me completely depressed and wanting nothing more than to run away to some tropical island where there's no such thing as a cell phone and gas heat. Among my lovely obligations: a bill for $2,000 to the Probate Office in Windsor, one for $350 for engraving my mom's name on her tombstone, a $70 AT&T bill,a $139 Verizon bill (two months' in one, as somehow I didn't receive my e-bill last month), a gas bill for $190 and $46 for the privilege of being elected into the Sigma Tau Delta, the English honor society. Good Lord.

Let's Try Zen

Wednesday night Sean and I made our first foray into Buddhist meditation at a Zen center in New Haven, housed on the second floor of a charming old-fashioned house near the hockey rink. The school is a part of the Korean Buddhist tradition (I'm learning in seminar just how different Buddhism can become as it moves among geographic regions in Asia) and its founding teacher, a monk, lives in Rhode Island but travels about to the various centers so that he can speak with people looking for guidance.

I was quite nervous when we arrived, because it seemed suddenly very foreign and uncertain. There was only one woman there, an older, gray-haired woman named Mary, who was very pleasant. She took us into the teacher's room--which definitely had the air of being inhabited only rarely, and then by an ascetic--and we settled onto some cushions for a general introduction to Budhhist meditative practices.

When meditating, you sit on a small round or rectangular pillow that is placed on top of a larger cushion. You can sit cross-legged, as I did, or with your legs tucked under your as you sit on a pillow or a small stool. You can sit in a chair, too, if you want--it doesn't seem to matter exactly how you sit as long as you sit.

A certain kind of body alignment is also advised: back straight, but not rigid; head up, earlobes centered over the shoulders; hands in the lap, palms upward, left over right (the right hand is considered to be the more "discursive" material hand and is therefore being silenced by the left, which doesn't really apply in the case of a lefty like me, I should think) and the thumbs meeting about an inch below the belly button. A feature of Korean Buddhism is that its adherents keep the eyes open, cast down on the floor in front of them, rather than shutting them.

After the physical orientation came the mental. Mary advised us either to count our breaths up to ten, starting with one again any time we found ourselves distracted, or to use a mantra. As you breathe in, in your mind you say "Clear mind, clear mind, clear mind," and as you exhale it's "Don't know." Every time you find yourself drifting, which she assured us we would very often, you have to bring yourself back. I was interested to learn that meditation doesn't involve blocking out the sounds that are going on around you, but rather welcoming them; Mary said that when she meditates, she listens to the sounds outside the room, then the sounds inside the room, and then the sounds directly around her as a way to focus.

So after we've been sitting with Mary for about forty-five minutes, we put on robes of pale gray and go with her into the meditation room, where the rest of the people who have come for the evening have already been chanting for a while. The room is completely different from the rest of the apartment, obviously redone with light, highly polished wooden floorboards and columns. A gold statue of the Buddha, to whom you must bow as you enter and exit this room, stands on a pedestal at one end. On the floor in front of it are a circle of cushions with pillows. Sean and I sit down and try to make ourselves comfortable, one of the others knocks a wooden bell, and for the next half-hour we're in silent meditation.

When I say silent, I mean silent. You could hear every tick of the clock, every person swallowing, breathing, and making other bodily rumbles, every rustle of fabric. Er, well, I was actually the only person rustling. Mary had told us if we got really uncomfortable to get up and stand for a while, but I was too embarassed to do so even after my left leg completely fell asleep. It hurt like a bitch. Up until that point, I was doing fairly well, despite having chosen the seat facing the window, so that the movements of the people in the window right next door kept attracting my eye, despite my attempts to keep it focused on the floorboards. I couldn't tell how much time had passed, but I was sure it wasn't longer than fifteen minutes--then the bell was struck again. A half hour had actually passed. Sean's legs had been so uncomfortable that he actually had a little trouble standing at first (at least he didn't rustle in vain to relieve the discomfort!). After 30 minutes of sitting meditation, there's a short period of walking meditation, during which time Mary drew us into the kitchen, as she had only indicated we should stay a half hour our first time.

Meditation is really, really difficult, both physically and mentally. Mary advised us to try only about five minutes a day at home, to get your body used to the idea of it. She also stressed that regularly joining a community is important, because sometimes you don't make room in your daily life for extended meditation. Joining is free; you can leave donations if you want to. When we left, I was immediately resolved to come back the next week; Sean a little more hesitant, but he promised to try it at least once more.

The past few days I've done little five-minute sits in the morning. I need to try out more positions and find one I can comfortably maintain for more than fifteen minutes. It makes me feel good, though, and I want to keep going. Fingers crossed that I won't rustle so much next time.

Sigh

The couple who looked at our house left me a voicemail this morning to let me know they decided not to put in an offer for it; the wife said she decided it was too much to take on a new house when their daughter will be going to college soon. I can't pretend I'm not disappointed--it would have been such a relief to be able to sell the house so quickly--but it really was almost too much to hope for that they would take it off my hands right away. However, I'm glad I signed up with the realtor, rather than waiting and hoping on these people. Also, I'm a little relieved that I won't have to handle the deal myself when it does happen, even if I do have to pay the realtor a commission.

It's ironic--now, when I'm close to selling the house, as has been my objective from day one, I feel rather wistful about the prospect of keeping it.

Signorelli, Lorenzetti et al--

What is this sudden distinction between "New Blogger" and "Old Blogger" one is now forced to make when logging in? Apparently it's meant to make anyone who hasn't switched over the the 'new' version feel like they're sorely missing out...but I like the simple format blogger has. I'm not really interested in dressing up my posts with any fancy-pants-ness, anyway.

Today marked not only my first day of classes, but also my return to working in the slide library after a whole year's absence between Florence and then being Dr. Escobar's nominal research assistant. Filing the 15th and 16th century slides was particularly depressing, since a year ago I could have been standing in the Brancacci Chapel, or in front of Donatello's David instead of squinting at it on a scrap of plastic. I could have wandered into San Marco or the Accademia on my way home this afternoon, instead of fighting the wind up past the townhouses--dull, dreary, homogenous things! But, as I often chide my roommate, dwelling on past glories doesn't help any; it just makes the present seem that much less livable.

Sean remarked a while back that this is our first spring semester spent jointly at Fairfield since we've been dating: sophomore year he was at UMASS, and last year I was gone. Now that we've been triumphantly reunited in the January deep-freeze, we celebrated by entertaining Popham with a grade-A faux-squabble in the cafeteria--he compared me to me a buffalo, I destroyed his new paper airplane, and it all ended in detente when I had the salt shaker raised and he the pepper. Hahaha. Love is grand.

Nerves

In a few hours I will be returning to the house I just recently left, in order to show it a second time to a couple who just may, god willing, want to make an offer for it. They came on Friday and did seem interested, but when they hadn't called me back by Sunday morning about seeing it with their kids--as they knew I was going back to school Sunday--I kind of decided they probably weren't interested. Then they called in the late afternoon, and we arranged to meet today so their kids can see the house.

Seeing as I've never sold a house before, I'm a little nervous. I don't know if they'd make me a verbal offer today, or maybe one in writing once they've talked it over privately with their children--I'd hope for the one in writing, because it would spare me having to negotiate a price immediately and in person. I feel at a disadvantage with the wife, who is clearly the one in command, because she knows, obviously, why I have to sell my house, and that I'd like to do it as quickly as possible. She also knows that I'm younger and have no experience with this. Linda warned me that buyers usually try to 'lowball' the seller at first to get them to come down a lot in price out of sheer surprise and panic--another reason I'd prefer a reply in writing. Gives me time to think.

I'm crossing my fingers that everything goes well. If I sell the house myself to these people, I don't even have to pay the realtor anything, which would be sweet. He tried to convince me over the phone yesterday that he could handle these people for me if I would agree to pay his commission as though they were buyers he found himself, and I declined. A few trips up to Windsor in gas money is much less than the fee I would have to pay him.

The New (and Last) Semester

And so, quicker than I ever would have thought possible, my final semester at Fairfield begins. Winter break terminated a day ahead of schedule for me; Heather couldn't make it up to hang out with Carla and I tonight after all, so we decided to come back to campus early. We ended up going to the community theater to check out Stranger Than Fiction (not half bad) with Mike, and afterwards enjoying some amaretto sours safely in the embrace of our wonderful little townhouse.

It was very bittersweet, closing the door of my house when I left this afternoon...The past three weeks have been a frenzy of cleaning, as I emptied out and shined up the house to put it on the market. Before I went home, I had accepted that there was simply no way to get the house in shape in less than a month, especially while working forty-hour weeks at StubHub. I surprised even myself.

It turned out that returning to customer service was hell, especially when I went home every night to the thousand responsibilities and tasks that needed to be done with little energy and even less optimism. So, I told them them I'd only be staying two weeks, not three, and then I proceeded to vigorously not care about my performance the second week of my employment. (I correctly figured that since a., I was only staying a very short while, and b., I had been previously acknowledged as an extremely good employee they were always happy to see back, that no one would really be checking up on me and how much work I did. Bingo!)

Ridding the house of excess furniture was much easier than I had expected, thanks to a little divine intervention that brought us to Betty and Alan, a pastor and his wife living in Manchester in an apartment with no furniture and only a blow-up bed to sleep on. We had everything to offer and they needed everything, so they took a great deal: my mother's bed and furniture, my sister's bed, tables, recliners, a couch, the kitchen table, the dishes and cups, the towels and sheets, an extra TV and phone. They came to the house on a Thursday evening to look at everything, and Alan returned with a UHaul the next day while I was at work, with Sean deputed to stay at the house. In under an hour it was done, and the house was eerily bare.

As unsettling as it was to be in such a stripped environment, to not even have a kitchen table to eat at nor anywhere really to sit besides my own bed, it made cleaning a lot easier. Once the furniture was gone and I had left StubHub for good (thank god) everything proceeded at an amazing pace. By the time I left home, I had had the house appraised, shown it to a couple who knew my next door neighbor, and signed a contract with a realtor to put the house on the market. As of today, my house is up for sale.

When I stopped by the convent to see my mom's coworkers yesterday, Sr. Sally and Sr. St. Henry asked me if Jen knew the house was up for sale; "hmm...I left her a voicemail about it, I think." They were a little surprised that this wasn't a collegiate effort, but Jen has proved to be a little less than helpful in the cleaning department. She was mainly concerned with getting her own things organized and moved to New York rather than actually being of any use. I asked her to do a few things, like take a carload of trash bags, most of which had emerged from the cleansing of her own room, to the dump--she not only complained, she demanded I reimburse her for the ten dollars she had to pay there. Two days before I'm ready to leave home she mentions over the phone that she is not, after all, taking most of the furniture she had previously laid claim to--furniture I didn't let Betty and Alan have because it was for her. It gave me no small amount of satisfaction to warn her, upon her final departure with her loads of junk earlier this month, that I would no longer feel compelled to consult her before disposing of anything in the house--it kind of lets me understand why our dear president finds unilateral action so appealing.

But that is all behind me for the present, and with the house on the market, the keys in the realtor's hands, and my mail forwarded to school, I won't have to be running up to the house every weekend like I had unpleasantly anticipated. I can enjoy my senior year for a litle while, before I get to start the usual freak-out over a place to live and gainful employment.

Think--I may never spend another night in the home I grew up in, the home where all my memories live. It's a vague sort of pain, but there nonetheless.

The New Year

I haven't posted here in almost a month. Things got fairly crazy at school as the semester came to a close; however, after a particularly harrowing week that saw me racing to finish two ten-page papers while prepping for the modern art exam that our teacher decided to hold on the last day of class, the actual two exams I had to take, in women's studies and physics, seemed somewhat less daunting.

I did find myself stressing about the results of both the art and women's studies exams, though, something I almost never do--art because I knew I had gotten one ID wrong out of six, and I wasn't certain of my final essay, and Women's studies because I needed the final exame to make up for the C+ I got on the disastrous two-question midterm. After the exam, Dr. Hohl told me that if I got an A on the exam she'd discount the earlier test, which both relieved and terrified me--what if I didn't ace it after all? As it turned out, my worries were unfounded. I got an A in modern art, an A- in women's history, and an A in everything else. At first I allowed myself to be a little disappointed at seeing the "minus" sign next to the A for women's studies, but then I recognized that even with two A-grade papers and a hopefully-fabulous final exam, a professor can't outright ignore a C+, no matter the circumstances. Therefore, I'm very grateful that I managed to get the A-.

My grade-craze this semester had a couple of motivating factors. This was one of the first semesters where I had more than one class that I was a little uncertain about--my internship, for one, where I worried not about my workplace evaluation, but about the stupid paper we had to turn in about our new-found wealth of experience. The C+ in women's studies was the first I had ever gotten on a college midterm, and it really freaked me out. Plus I just hated modern art, and I worried that that would show through. Mid-December also witness me undergoing the realization that I DO want to go to grad school--just not for English--and hence maintaining my GPA took on a further importance.

Underneath it all, though, was the desire to prove to myself and, I suppose, in some supernatural way, to my parents, that even under the stressful circumstances in which I found myself this semester that I could still maintain the kind of grades that they had always expected of me and which I have long since come to expect of myself. In this I can say I succeeded; I'm very proud of everything I was able to accomplish this semester, including some papers that, I feel, rank among the best I've ever written.

The end of the semester brought new challenges, naturally--my painful return to employment at StubHub, for example, which thankfully ends this Friday, as well as the depressing tasks associated with emptying out and cleaning out a houseful of memories. Not that there haven't been bright spots--my first Christmas with Sean and his family, exchanging gifts with my friends, New Year's celebrations in New Haven, and, this upcoming weekend, my two-year anniversary with Sean!

In the midst of everything, there are always blessings.