Almost New Year's

Has it really only been a year? 365 days ago, I remember feeling so sad over Sean's departure from Fairfield, and all crazy-conflicted over what exactly my feelings were towards him. Could everything else that has happened since then really have happened? Relativity always seems to be in effect in relationships, so that small durations of time are expanded (see my upcoming four-month stint in Florence) while longer durations are compressed, with the result that, as it so often does, it alternately feels like forever and yesterday that Sean and I started dating. Strangely, this doesn't seem to apply to friends, really. I never get the feeling that it was "only yesterday" that Sara and I became friends, or when Carla and I got to know each other. I guess once you're close friends with someone, it just feels like they've always been there for you.

Last night was, although brief, one of those magical evenings that leave me convinced that someday, when we're all divorced or widowed or otherwise unentangled, the four of us are going to be the next generation of Golden Girls. Now, I'd probably wind up being Dorothy because she's the most sarcastic one; Heather would be Blanche, for obvious reasons; Sara would have to be Rose because I just can't see Rae being Rose, plus she's the perfect size to be Sofia. I'm not sure if we'd live in Florida, though Heather would undoubtedly love the fanny-pack-adorned crowds and have fun mullet-hunting. Maybe a nice brownstone outside of the city? Or maybe, if we all make boatloads of money, we can buy that castle house in West Hartford, and have our suites and our maids with our common areas in the turret rooms. Oh, dreams..... It'll probably never happen--I mean, god willing, our spouses will not all die on us or divorce us--but it's comforting, somehow, to think of us older and grayer but still together.

Since this will be my last post before the New Year, I suppose I should think of some sort of resolution, but of course I never really make resolutions and keep them, not impossible ones like "do not fight when jen", anyway. This is my resolution: to never lose the people who matter the most to me, no matter what kind of distance or differences of lifestyle separate us. That would be the greatest blessing I think I could ever give myself.

Winter

The semester's over, and here I am back in Windsor until the 29th of January. While it was an utter relief to leave that pigsty that Carla and I were forced to call home, it was still bittersweet to be leaving Fairfield and Sean behind. Alas. I'm back at Stubhub, and I'll be working 40 hour weeks again until I leave at the end of January. I was gratified to see how excited everyone one was to have me back, surprised at how easily I slipped into the old routine, and dismayed by how incredibly stressful the last two days have been. It's the week before Christmas and it seemed that every caller had made it his or her personal mission to be as rude as possible to me. It's not my fault that you didn't realize that tickets you just bought for a game in May won't arrive in time for Christmas, nor is it my fault that Fedex lost the gift for your husband/daughter/mother. The real kicker was the possibly retarded man with a severe speech impediment who was yelling at me for "not treating him like a human being" and, later, "not treating him like a VIP" because I informed him that he could not post tickets for a game that happens in two days. Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men...right.

The good thing about so much work is that it will keep me occupied after the 10th, by which time Rae will have gone back to school and Sara and Heather will have already left to go abroad. After the 16th, the Fairfield kids go back to school. It's a depressing thought that I'll be alone with no one to hang out with after work, but then I suppose it's lucky that work leaves me so exhausted that I barely feel like hanging out. Tonight Sara and I were supposed to kibbutz over our Italy plans, make lists and our maps, but I was just too wiped to drive anywhere. My plans for the evening include taking apart my mom's latest crazy purchase, the Wovel---a gigantic shovel mounted on a wheel, which I was bribed into assembling last night--so she can take it back to the store, and watching SVU. Fascinating, I know.

I realized in moving out just how much CRAP I have. Where did I get all this stuff? Why do I keep it? I have no idea. I looked around my room last night and saw cat ears, a sword, not one but two crowns, a wand, a cone, a starfish, more stuffed animals than I know what to do with...and yet I can barely bring myself to part with any of it. Well, the stuffed animals will shortly be pared down. People need to stop giving me stuffed animals, I need to stop winning stuffed animals, because they serve no purpose, barely even a decorative function. Some, of course, are special--Racoony, Mr T the Tiger, Mr Bojangles, etc. But the raccoon I won myself at the Shad Derby? Nah. He may have sat on my desk all summer at Stubhub, but I think his time for donation has come.

Symphony Adventures

This was, in a way, my birthday weekend, since the symphony tickets were my present from Sean. It was a wonderful night, with a charming dinner at yet another Italian restaurant where I attempted to decode the lengthy list of ingredients to determine which dishes I might actually like (apparently I'm not big on "fancy" cuisine"), and the pleasure of being all dressed up for the symphony itself. It was performed in Woolsey Hall, which is part of Yale's campus, and which is just stunning inside. The music was excellent, though it began with kind of boring Salieri music, then slightly less boring Mozart, but finished strongly with Beethoven, albeit his lesser-acclaimed Fourth Symphony. Sean and I agreed that we dislike that teasing thing that classical music does--doing all this crazy leadup as if to a huge finale but than dancing away to these little delicate little melodies, and then doing it over and over again, before finally getting to the thunderous conclusion. It's like foreplay--it's good, but too much is just really really frustrating.

Last night was just one of those amazing nights when we lay awake in bed in the dark just talking for hours, about anything and everything, and feeling so incredibly close and loved that it was just the absolute best feeling I've ever had. Waking up this morning was, as expectedly, slightly less grand, since I am infamous for my not-morning-person-ness. Sean was disturbed by my fiendish aversion to the sunlight--ie, insisting on hiding under the covers even though the shades were closed. He also decided I'm inhuman in that I always sniff unfamiliar food before I'll try it, and if it doesn't smell right to me, I won't. He says this is catlike and weird, but I think it's a perfectly decent way to determine which foods I will like and which I will hate. Even if I do taste the foods that smell weird--like many, many instances of my mom's kitchen creations--I never like them. My nose does not fail me!

Today was a busy day--we helped Linda a little bit with the basement work, picking up the carpets and getting a bookcase. Sean and I built it together, which was much easier than I anticipated, and it's so pretty! All dark wood. We got all his books into it, and cleaned his room and partially Hubbard's porch, which made her so happy. Poor Linda, she works full time, is working on this basement thing, and has to deal with Hubbard's comments and her sister's demands--she really needs a break. I felt so bad for her. I need to come up with some sort of good gift for her, since I already have Hub's--who apparently mentioned to Sean something about a sweater for me, eek.

I never stop wondering at what I've done to be so incredibly blessed.

Self-Aggrandizing Recollections

Well, despite the cold it's been an interesting few days, and I feel like recording recent events. Last night was english major career night, which itself was not too interesting; however, after I asked Dr. O'Driscoll, my weirdo world lit professor who I was quite certain did not like me, if I could go, she said "well, you're going to grad school of course, right?". I replied in some combination of er, um, not really, too expensive, to which she then responded by telling me I need to go into a phD program which will pay all my expenses. Again I hedged a bit because, after all, how many jobs are out there for English professors? This is the part where Sally looked me with this strange eagle-eye stare of which only she is capable and said, in her equally odd french-english-irish accent "i only tell this to one or two students per year. think about it." and then proceeded to continue staring at me as I backed away. It was the strangest thing, almost like being caught in the gaze of a hynoptic snake, except I guess you really have to see Sally in action in order to appreciate this comparison. Anyway, not that she suddenly won me over to English grad school, but it was nice to hear, especially from a professor who I felt was stubbornly refusing to love me in the way all professors must *grins*

Speaking of, I had a chat with my Philosophy professor, Dr. Brill, the other day--she's so nice, and quite the excellent dresser as well (Sara, I feel like you would totally appreciate the way she dresses, she even has a similar figure) and anyway, Dr. Regan had apparently talked to her about how he had me in Comedy and now she has me in Tragedy, and he told her I was interested in a Fulbright, so she offered to be my second advisor in the process after Jesus, which was really nice of her. Incidentally, she went to Frieburg or however you spell that, the same place TJ's going, and she really loved it.

Dr. Bridgford, meanwhile, who is such a constant source of praise for her students (Kay and I had a long chat today about how much of a picker-upper just talking to Dr. Bridgford for like five minutes can be, she makes you so certain that you'll be a complete success in life) told me on Monday that she and Jesus were at some dinner together last week and that they were apparently excited to discover that they both have me in class--and even better, he told her that he looks forward to reading my papers because they're so well-written. Manna from the heavens--and it sucks so badly that I'll probably never have a class with him again, unless he offers Arts of Spain.

Finally, this morning's meeting with Dr. Sapp offered one really amazing and, unlike the above, practical piece of good news, related to the Greenwood Press internship I want for fall. I told him how Katy, the know-it-all, gave me such a horrible impression of the job, how she said she'd tried to quite, etc etc, but that Bridgford said it was a great experience. Dr. Sapp just looks at me and says "Er...is she a friend of yours?". No she is not, so my mind was immediately saying "Go on....". Apparently, they've had a terrible experience this semester, but not with the internship--with HER. muahahaha. He said to ignore her completely and that they have no intention of placing her anywhere next semester. I know I shouldn't feel malicious glee about this but I kind of do. So he said I can apply while I'm in Florence, interview when I come back, and if I get the job I won't go in there acting like I am the be-all-and-end-all of publishing knowledge, because that's apparently what put her on Sapp's shit list. More than any malice, though, I'm just legitmately excited about the opportunity, and so glad that it's not some crappy coffee internship. I really need to find out if I like publishing, so I can start deciding what the hell I'm going to do with the rest of my life.

As I said to Sean last night, there are just so many options that I really just don't know what to do. M.F.A and M.L.A.s might be nice, but those programs usually don't pay for you. Publishing might require me to be in the city. Art history, I don't know if I have the requisite passion, at least not a specialized passion. Creative writing--now there, I feel like I can be much more passionate about the field, and it does interest me, but would I really go get a phD in that, and would I have a job afterward? Kay told me that I'm way too practical about this and that she doesn't factor in the job market in her plans...but I'd really like to have a job, you know. Then there's the Fulbright issue: number one, am I going to do a proposal (if so, on WHAT) and b, should I bother doing it if I decide not to go to grad school? I mean, if I'm headed into the workforce anyway, a Fulbright will be a year when I have no job and I'll have to start from scratch when I get back. It's just so much to think about. I get anxious just thinking about the future. I told Sean how jealous I am of his clear path, his determination. I have determination too, but I lack a particular place to apply it at the moment.

Bah. I have to study for Mullan's crazy test. Brr.

Snow

As so often happens, I have failed to regularly update here. Lately, Sean and I have read through a lot of the older entries, especially ones from freshman year, which were plentiful, excitable, and sometimes even nonsensical. Despite inward groans about how ridiculous I often sound, it's so valuable a thing to have, simply because I can really see how far I've come. It's of special value to me as well since I don't have the greatest memory for events, even if there are a few (fusco, dirk, tommy) that I would greatly prefer to forget.

I hope I have a chance to update my journal from Italy, I really do. Even though I'll probably be keeping a print journal for one of the few times in my life--the others being my first Europe trip, and then the Southwest trip--just so I can really record my reactions to things as I see them. I found my mom's journals from her trips to Europe once; her handwriting wasn't as good then, so maybe I still have a shot at such perfection? lol.

So, as my time winds down here, I've started to really feel what it's going to be like, being separated from Sean for four months. This does not please me. Especially after, while reading the orientation manual, I found out that since the mail service is unreliable, letters can reach the US anywhere from 3 weeks to 6 freakin' months! Now yes, you may all chant "email!" but honestly, can an email ever compare to getting those crazy envelopes with the red and blue border and an international stamp? No way.

Everything will turn out as it should, I know that. Work will get done, tests will get done, the time will pass. Apparently some of my housemates were wondering over dinner if I had plans to dump Sean before I go abroad, and my mind could not even wrap itself around the magnitude of the stupidity that I would require to be able to do such a thing. Please. Almost one year later, I can say without a doubt that it's been the best year of my life.

Quickie

These days I seem to alternate between frantic anxiety about the future, and an almost zen-like acceptance of the scary inevitabilities of life. Sometimes I'm making myself near sick with worry about where I'll live, what kind of job I'll have, how Sean and I are going to handle being separated, etc etc, and sometimes I just think that it will all work itself out and there's no use worrying about it right this second.

I forced myself not to open up Greenwood Press' website to download the internship application before bedtime, because that just causes more stress and plus, I have to talk to Dr. Bridgford about it first. I've decided I want to intern fall semester, so I can get an earlier taste of whether or not I'll be into publishing. I think I'll also apply to the grant-writing program in Bridgeport. The New Yorker one sounds glamorous, but I hate the city and fetching coffee for a semester would make me hate it even more.

The knowledge that Sean will be in grad school until 2013 is a weird and foreign thought at best, and it's usually one of the things I worry about the most (this is one thing that you single people can feel a measure of satisfaction in, that you don't have to factor another person into your future plans). Long-distance relationships are never easy and heaven knows I haven't loved them in the past, but I have an incredible amount of confidence in our relationship and its ability to thrive even under adverse conditions. It will just be quite the transition when I no longer get the pleasure of seeing him on a daily basis (thinks of Sara's flower/gardener analogy, smiles). We'll be OK, I know we will. I just have to suppress the childish demand for everything in life to be easy.

Carla always emphasizes, as a Protestant would, the virtue of sacrifice, and how you can't-have-it-all-you-have-to-choose blah de blah--well dammit, I DO want it all and I intend to have it, one way or another. I'm like the Antigone of the post-modern Jean Anouihl version: I want everything to be beautiful and amazing and with all of the infinite possibility that the world ever held when I was a child and if I can't have it then I'll just let my uncle wall me up inside a tomb and hang myself. OK, so maybe I'm not quite like Antigone. But I'm still greedy, I still want so many things--most of them aren't material things, it's more ideals that I desire. Like the library with the roaring fireplace and the cushy chairs, or the living room aglow with holiday decorations like you see in those ridiculously smarmy television commercials, or the yellow kitchen with the green plates! (I really want that last one).

I think the best way to describe the way I feel is the part in HP4 (that's the Goblet of Fire) when Mad-Eye puts the Imperius Curse on Harry and tells him to jump on the desk and he resists--he says that he was both trying to jump forward and trying to stay put and just wound up just crashing head-first into the desk. Yes, that about sums it all up. I think with that it's bedtime.

Missing the Old Days...Except Not Really

So I just saw pictures of Greg and his band online from some recent gig--somehow he looks exactly like I always think of him and yet in another way I thought "whoa, who's the crazy bearded guy?". Nostalgia is a strange thing, it's welcome and unwelcome at the same time. I wouldn't trade my life right now for anything, much less the constraints of high school, but things were so much more innocent back then, if I may pretend to be so jaded at only 20 years of age. We didn't have to think about much in terms of our concrete futures besides getting into college--now we have to think about the real world, careers, relationships, and all of that. How long ago, the days when Sara and I were dating the drummer and lead singer, respectively, of a little band called Untold Inside. Even now I can't help laughing at the thought of those days. I would pay in gold for a copy of that CD, if only Heather and I could drive home from Northwest one more time yelling out the lyrics. Heterolifemate, I will always think of you when I hear "to breathe, to feel, to know I'm aliheeeeeve"...

But going forward to current times, Sean and I actually went on our second date of the semester this weekend--dating is so different when you see each other all the time! I do so love dates, though, even though the butterflies of the old days are gone. There's nothing as beautiful as strolling through town on a Saturday night with someone you love holding your hand. Not to mention the fact that there were PENGUINS, oh yes, we saw March of the Penguins for the second time, baby penguins are so frickin' cute it's disgusting, I want one desperately as a pet, and with that, goodnight.

Plotting

I really don't want to live here next year, I've realized that. As much as I love 121, I love how we've decorated it, I like having the theater parties conveniently in my basement, I just can't stand the thought of putting up with the rest of this crap my senior year. I'm tiring of always finding our house filthy, so filthy, in fact, that Sean and Mike said they had to breathe through their noses the other night in our living room! I don't want to spend senior year tidying up and grumbling with Carla about how everyone else is a pig. Carla shouldn't have to freak out and clean all the time. For crying out loud, 87 is cleaner than our house, and they're MEN!

I also just frankly don't want to live with these girls anymore. It's not that they're bad...Ioanna, for example, is a wonderful girl, but she's constantly screaming and running up and down the stairs and generally going mad. There's always people coming in and out like the place is a homeless shelter (theater people generally don't knock, either). Let's face it, I don't like people. I'm a misanthrope at heart, though by the grace of God I manage to co-habitate with Carla. Plus I'm not theater either, which automatically puts me at odds with everyone else in the house. I don't blame them, or anything, it's just something that they're involved with and I'm not. So yeah...it's noisy, filthy, and I guess I'm just getting more and more annoyed with it as time goes on. It's the only thing that's really making me count the days till I move out and go to Italy, because otherwise I'd just want to be thoroughly enjoying all my time here. However, it's difficult to enjoy life in 121 when you have to pick through rubble and crap just to find your backpack in the morning. Argh. Unfortunately, Carla does want to live here next year; mostly she wants to live with Anna, who will be her roommate in Italy. However, we have promised each other that we'll be roommates next semester no matter where we end up. I've just got my fingers crossed that it's not right back here where we started.

This grumpy entry is officially closed, and I will now return to half-heartedly pretending that I absolutely WUV this house.

Sigh

So I just sent Sara off in a Fairfield Cab--after discovering that no, the shuttle to town does not run at 11am on a Monday, hoes that they are--after three wonderful days of almost pretending that she really went here and would never ever leave me. It was so much fun, especially the hayride/pumpkin picking which was chosen as the best moment of the weekend...yeah, non-theater people can do superlatives too, so what now! But alas, all good things must come to an end, and back she goes to Providence to dance for pennies on the streetcorners.

Weird to think we have only two months left of the semester. As soon as Sara left I got this sudden wave of fatigue, of ennui, if you will--suddenly I just wanted the whole damn semester to be over so I can go home and pet my cats and play with the dog and spend time with my friends. How domestic of me, I know. Last night at the party I realized I'm getting a little bit tired of college crap. Nothing out of the ordinary, just the usual--drunk scandalously clad individuals, girls crying on the back porch, in the basement, and on the stairs, waking up to people sleeping on the couches/futons/floors and trash, crushed chips and cans everywhere. Bleh. Then again, I'm really not much of a party person to begin with. I enjoy the prep time and the first hour or so before it becomes a madhouse, but then it's like hm, perhaps I would like to retire upstairs and just chill out. This is except when I'm drunk, of course, which I didn't feel like doing last night, so Sara and I just chilled, and hid in the bathroom at one point pretending to be in a tawdry lesbian hookup, except no one banged on the door quite like we had planned despite Sara's moaning. Good thing I snagged all the comfy couch pillows early to make my bed on the floor upstairs, because people were crashing on the couches this morning and even though I liked the girls, I was still like HA bitches, who slept on the soft shit?

The slide library feels even more confining and boring than usual this morning...I can't believe Eliasoph actually answers his cell phone "Pronto!". Pretentious bastard. Hm, I hope it's not possible for anyone to ever find this journal from this computer at work. Methinks I'll be deleting site histories right about now...conveniently covering up my porn trail, as well. Sweet.

Quickie

It's great to wake up with that warm, contented snuggly feeling in the morning. Even if one paper and two midterms currently stand between you and your four-day weekend.

Am I the only one who doesn't want to live in next semester? It's still only October, and I just want to enjoy the time we have here instead of constantly focusing on what's to come. Our college career is already more than half over, so I'd really rather not hurry it up any further. I guess this is also because I've been so happy this semester, and next semester, while it will be fun and exciting, will also be Sean-less for the most part, and this makes me sad. Meow.

Right now it's the best part of fall, when the leaves are changing and the fallen ones make that dry, crackling sound as the wind kicks them about on the street. I love this time of year, it makes me think of Northwest and walking up to Bishop's Corner after school with Sara and Heather to go to Borders, never buying anything, just reading all their magazines, and then sitting in Starbucks for hours with a single cup of tea and maybe a macadamia nut cookie. The booth in the corner was the best, with the squishy chairs, we always tried to score that one first. How many hours of our high school lives did we spend in those chairs, talking about our futures, about guys, about things we'd never yet experienced but were so eager to? How often in junior and senior year did the conversation move to college, and how worried we all were about splitting up and having to find new places for ourselves, new friends? There was a real fear back then that our friendships wouldn't survive the change. Now four years later, as college draws to a close, I find myself with the same worries, not only about the girls from home but also my friends here. Sadly, we Fairfieldians lack even the bond of a shared hometown (or two) among us, and future holidays and vacations will not draw all of us back to one location. Who knows which relationships will flourish after this, as everyone moves on to work, to grad school, and which ones will simply fade away like Meghan and I? I suppose I should be more worried about the old crowd, but I'm really not. Somehow I know that those relationships, while not set in stone, have weathered enough already in these seven, eight years that I can be reasonably assured of their continued strength. I can't imagine a world without Sara, without Heather and Rae. It's just not a good world. Even if I don't get to see some of them very often *cough* rae *cough* I still just have this sense that we're there for each other. God, we're like the frickin' women in beaches, we'll be writing each other letters our whole lives and not meeting up very often till one of us dies tragically of cancer or something. On a beach. That is how it goes, right? Oh, Fitz, how I wish that you were here so you could explain the intricacies of the plot of what you considered the most horrendous chick flick of all time. Or just so that we could laugh at you a little, for old time's sake.

The happiest news of the moment, meanwhile, is that Sara is coming to visit this weekend! She's staying three whole nights, which is very exciting. We're even going to sneak her onto the bus for the hayride and pretend she's an IRC alum! All she has to do is really parrot back the lines "who are you, whose are you, and who are you called to be" and they won't know the difference. It's like T-Rex not being able to see you when you're not moving. Magic. :-)

Isabel Allende

Meredith and I went to her lecture tonight, after the Dean's office offered a bunch of leftover student tickets for free--a fortuitous thing indeed, considering I already knew it to be sold out and therefore didn't have a hope of going. It was excellent, undoubtedly the best lecture I've been to in my time here. She is a truly gifted storyteller, even the litany of her life story, which is usually so boring from lecturers, was a vivid and adventurous tale. Painful, too, when she described the death of her young daughter. Mysterious, when she read from the letter her daughter had written nine months before her illness, based on a premonitory dream, a letter that spoke of herself as already a spirit, already dead. Dreams and stories, that's what her lecture was about. She said that she wrote to be able to remember, to create a world that is her own, and she mentioned how spotty and unreliable her memory has always been, always forgetting, always blurring the past. My memory is similar. I have trouble remembering details of events that happened only months ago. My memories of my childhood are fragmented, and every day it seems like they get dimmer and farther away. Yet I have such a good memory for things I've read or written, I remember phrases that I loved when I came across years and years ago. Words stick with me, rather than people and events. That worries me. How much of my life can I write down?

Back In the Swing of Things

Here I am with a little extra time before I head down to my indentured servitude in the slide library! It's always nice to be in the house alone in the morning...and the afternoon...ok and the nighttime too. Wendy's here somewhere but she's not making any noise so we're just going to pretend she's not. Our house is luscious, I have to say. It's big, way bigger than I thought it would be, and well-decorated, including some great pieces of furniture that Tess (who is apparently the queen of finding things along the side of the road and re-painting them in funky colors) brought. I love sitting on the back porch when there's a storm going on, just watching the rain come down and the sky light up but never getting wet myself, naturally.

We've already christened the house with not one but two birthday parties; one was for Tess, where we invited people to help us paint a giant mural on canvas we put up on the wall in the basement, and the other for Meredith, where we drank a lot...It was a lot of fun except for the end when Carla got really sick and we had to clean her up, hold her hair back etc while she was yelling things along the lines of "Why won't you just let me DIE??" Eventually we took her to the health center just to be on the safe side, and they said she was fine but they'd keep her for a while, and she ended up sleeping there till 8am the next day, whereupon she returned our house via the back door--not the front one I had left unlocked--and lacking a key, decided to break and enter instead, proving once again how easy it is to break into a townhouse if the window's open: just pop the screen out and climb in!

How lovely it is to be back with my Mama Tiger! Our room (the Fortress of Solitude) looks pretty much the same as last year, right down to the lack of decor on Carla's side. Sean is another welcome sight on campus, now that he's a full-time student again, and he spends a good deal of time at 121 with his girlfriend and half-girlfriend...even though Carla says we make her sick. Sean's room in Dolan, The Land Before Time, is good-sized as well--but to my great sadness, "Dogs Playing Poker" has made its return. Ugh.

Oh, and if you haven't seen "Rome" yet and you have HBO, watch this show!! It's absolutely amazing. Sean and I are obsessed. "Pomp is shiny!"

Last Post From Home

Tomorrow I'm off to start my junior year. How crazy is that, that two years should have elapsed so quickly! I've been ready for days, and now that my departure is a scant 16 hours away it seems like nothing will fill the time. I've had Rocky to play with, of course--Rocky our soon-to-be adopted golden poodle, the pet of one of my mom's dying patients. He's a great dog, very playful but well behaved. At fourteen poinds, this creature has enough strength to literally drag me down the street in pursuit of one of those mysterious doggy scent trails. Right now he is napping peacefully in the hallway, fresh from another confrontation with a seriously aggrieved Sapphire. She does not see him as the friendly explorer he is; she only perceives that her territory has been invaded, her person threatened, and, worst of all, the precious attention of her humans diverted to another, most unworthy canine. So she hisses, and growls, and makes herself even more unpleasant than usual. The poor thing--when I'm gone and Rocky has moved in on my mother's affections, she will have few friends.

The rounds were made last evening to bid farewell to Sara and Rae. Rae's new house is utterly charming, right down to the black shutters and the cobblestones her father laid out front. I think with the passage of time, it grows easier to say goodbye at the end of the summer--not because we are any less close, as I feel only better friends with all three of them as time moves on--but because there is more of a sense of security between us now that our relationships have weathered the first tumultuous years of college. What a wonderful thing it is, to have such friends.

Tomorrow, though, I go back to Fairfield and my other friends. I look forward so much to this semester, especially now that Sean will be back with us, and our little family will be whole again once more. This year will be great. I know it will.

Wish

I've been wishing and hoping and *gasp* praying a lot lately. Partly out of fear that bad things will happen, and partly because I so dearly desire a lot of good things to come about. Then I read Sara's latest post about wanting her life to be what she had promised herself, and never having anything to regret...I don't think I'll ever reach a point where I have nothing to regret. Even now, not yet twenty, I regret so many things. Little things mostly, like friendships I allowed to lapse, words I should have said but didn't, or vice versa, relationships I shouldn't have entered into, both platonic and otherwise. But I'd like to keep the regrets to a minimum, focus instead on all the things that I celebrate--the good friends that I've stayed close to, the risks I've taken, the guy who I finally realized was right for me all along.

To that end, I whipped out my Wish Book, which I came across in a GoodWill last summer in Monroe. It's a book for--you guessed it--writing down your wishes and dreams, and someone had written a few things in it before me. From the entry she wrote on her birthday in 1997, she's 39 now. She only wrote two entries, both bittersweet. Whoever she was, she wanted life to be simple, but of course it never is. At least she had someone to love who loved her. What a difference that makes!

So here I go. My wishes are going in here, beginning tonight.

A Goodly Evening

I haven’t written on here in quite a while, but last night was just that damn good that I feel the need to record it. Sean showed up at my office with flowers, gorgeous orange-yellow roses that caused everyone to ooh and ahh. Sean himself was likewise oohed and aahed by my coworkers, especially Nikki, who told me “good job!”. It was such a pick-me-up on an otherwise blah lunch hour, which I usually spend napping on the futon in the break room (though today I am determined to go outside and use the damn hammock). He picked me up from work, too, as Mrs. D’s car was in for a tuneup and she had taken over the Tahoe. However, I will forgive her for messing up my mirrors, changing the radio and squashing the front seat as close to the steering wheel as possible, because she actually filled the car up with gas!
It’s so handy having a man about the house, especially to kill bugs. I hate doing that, and my mom won’t either. He even took out the trash, meaning I think my mom will be drawing up some adoption papers quite soon. The downside for Sean, I suppose, was having to sleep in my sister’s bed, which has been extremely rickety ever since the carpet installation guys decided to take it apart and then put it back to together really badly. The damn thing rattles when you move the headboard, and all night I could hear the squeaking whenever he moved. We’re going to try to fix that next weekend.
We didn’t really do much of anything, which is partly what made it so gloriously nice. Well, when we went to pick up my mom’s car from the darkened auto repair place in the middle of the tobacco fields, there was a moment of that hmmm let’s be crazy teenagers and go “parking”, till we realized it was extremely dark, isolated and—despite being in cozy suburban Windsor and not the backwoods of Arkansas—kinda creepy, so we hightailed it out of there. We went walking around my neighborhood instead—much less chance of being murdered—and even got to observe the cutest, fattest raccoon making a feast out of the cat’s food dish. He ate like a little person, picking up the food with his paws. Precious!!
It’s been kind of rough recently, we realized, because both Sean and I put so much emphasis on the weekends since the weeks are so long and dull, but then we always spend the weekends doing the same thing—mostly laying around Sean’s house watching television. We spend all week looking forward to the weekend, but if the weekend turns out to not be stellar, it’s a big letdown, which is not a good thing. This realization came after a particularly crappy weekend, in which Sean could barely talk for his tonsils, and I came down with some sort of deathly illness courtesy of Sara or another heretofore unknown culprit. So our goal now is not to obsess over the weekends, but also not to spend all our time at Sean’s house! In fact, I probably won’t be visiting there again the rest of the summer…Sean’s coming up here for two weekends, we’re going to Carla’s once, and the final weekend will be just a flurry of packing, shopping, and insanity, in my two whole days between ending work and starting school.
I also just hugely enjoy having Sean at my house…it makes it so very homey. It took a lot of willpower to get my butt out the door this morning and off to work, where I am currently languishing, with 10 calls currently queued up (and why am I not answering them ,you ask? Mmmm, just ‘cause.) Anyway, last night and this morning definitely put a smile on my face. And tonight…tonight…tonight—our pal Adamo from high school managed to get his little nerdy mitts on a copy of the FAMILY GUY MOVIE, and will be screening it at the movie theater at Uhart tonight. J Wheeeee!!!

Where Has July Gone?

....Actually, I don't quite care where it's gone. Hello, August! This has actually been a fantastic summer, really (due in no small part to Boyfriend of the Year down in New Haven), but September is just around the corner!

Now, they say that it's the thought that counts, and for Sean's anniversary present to me, that really was true--he looked up Billy Collins in the yellow pages and wrote him a letter asking him for a signed copy of one of his poems, explaining that his girlfriend really liked his work. And then when he didn't get a response, he got me a signed copy of a book he had edited instead. Now, this is just extraordinary in itself, that he went that far to try for such an amazing present, and it really didn't matter that Collins never wrote back, BUT, when i went down this weekend, what was waiting for me but the signed poem, framed alongside his note "hoping you and michelle are still together"!! What kind of amazing-ness is that from a boyfriend? I so lucky.

Best Fourth

I don't think it would be hyperbole to say that this was the best weekend of my summer. Spending three sunny, beautiful days at Fairfield (which is very pretty in the summer and even more pretty without the hordes of Aberzombies meandering about) with all my favorite people....luscious. I was quite delighted to find that by Sunday night I had assembled almost all of my closest friends in one place, including two roommates, one boyfriend, and my three best friends from home. It was particularly surreal to be walking up that big hill in front of the library with Sara, Rae and Heather; at one point I looked around and there was all of campus spread out behind me, everything that is not home, Windsor, and high school, and yet there they were, too, Heather clutching her gold pumps in one hand as we walked through the grass, and Rae telling us excitedly about the topiary garden people have had sex in at Wellesley. Not to mention the fact that we've only all been together like, once all summer, it's just so awesome that we're still friends, and even more awesome that they and all my school friends got along so well. It's kind of like how you feel really satisfied when your friends like your boyfriend because you know it's a really good sign...and they love Sean and they love my Fairfield friends, wheeee!

I have not drunk so much, eaten so much, laughed so much, nor played so much "Never Ever Have I Ever" in longer than I can remember. It made me that much more revved up to go back to school. I went up to the townhouses briefly to go past mine--how unassuming it looks, but oh, what a place of magical and whimsical wondrousness it shall be!! :-)

July Already?

Has anyone been keeping track of time? I guess the past two months have gone by so quickly because there's been so little downtime; work all week, in New Haven every weekend, very unlike those long, lazy summers where often for days on end I had little to besides read and lounge about. It's nice in many ways that summer has not been dragging on. Only within the past week or so have I finally felt the first pangs of summer boredom syndrome (at work, no less), when I start fervently wishing it would be late August so I can eagerly anticipate the return to school. Many times I've looked at the date and laughed, just remembering where I was a year ago, and how infinitely happier I am now...*shakes head* It's just incredible.

Tomorrow I head down to Fairfield for a 4th of July party, where I will be joined on Sunday by Rae, Heather and Sara, as well as all my school friends and various friends they'll be bringing. Rae and Heather are eager to meet Carla now that Sara's been going on about how much she loves her! Also, Messrs. Smirnoff, Bacardi, and Vino will be attending, in the company of the charming Mme. Coronita. Such a gathering of good friends! :-)

Well, I don't think my job is terrible (they're paying me not to work Monday, and today they paid for almost three hours of me reading "The Joy of Sex" in Borders and getting my hair cut) but I like this:

The Big Bad Wolf Is Real
for Jim Daniels



We don't leave our terrible jobs
as the same humans that showed up
with bag lunches and optimism because

of a good night's sleep. Something's
been milked from us, something that time
sells to abstract powers. No wonder

that happy hour is three hours long,
that rush to be useless. At least our sins
are ours, although profiteers have plans.


Rane Arroyo

Poem I Won't Name But I Like A Lot

More than mere spasm
or when focused mind

and game heart combine
as mechanism,

enthusiasm
maneuvering spine

to bliss, realigned.
More like a schism

or charmed sarcasm
at reason’s fine line,

the old soul’s design
for protoplasm’s

iconoclasm,
exquisitely mined.


Hailey Leithauser

That Feeling

I always feel this slight sense of embarassment at being happy while someone else has just suffered a harsh disappointment. It's like the love version of survivor guilt; it leads one to ask question like why do bad things happen to good people, when people who have so made so many mistakes (me) still manage to stumble onto the right thing? I have no answer.

Still, amid it all, what comes back to me is the last line of one of my favorite books, "The Oracle Glass", which I've read more times than I can count: "But inside, my heart was singing He's waiting for you, and my mind was fixed on the remembrance of his dark eyes".