As much as I may profess a dislike for K.T. Tunstall, as well as for Katharine McPhee who butchered it numerous times on Idol, "Black Horse and the Cherry Tree" is still one of my favorite songs released this year.
Lui's been here just over a week, and already we've been having a lot of Talks, which I guess is what happens when two Cancers are in a relationship, although lately it's been mostly his fault. He's afraid that I'm going to cheat on and leave him like all his previous girlfriends did; therefore he's super jealous and protective; therefore I feel the need to fight for my independence, and my it's-not-even-that-serious attitude has been coming through pretty forcefully. Don't get me wrong, I understand that he's a stranger in a strange land right now, and usually I'm pretty sensitive too, but right now... If we have to have one more conversation about his goddamn feelings, I might barf.
Also, I've decided that I'm suffering from female sexual dysfuntion, namely Sexual Aversion Disorder (note the acronym), so then we have to have more Talks about that, when again, I just don't care that much right now.
Seriously, if it weren't for my ongoing harmless flirtations with What-if Guy (henceforth W), I think I would go crazy. I'm 24. Why does my life feel so tapped out and mundane already? The other day, I was looking through my photo album circa 2003-04, and I could've cried. I look so young and fun and flirty and sexy and happy and single and, well, drunk. I know that on the inside there was all sorts of drama I didn't want to deal with, that I often had a hard time getting up and facing my own life in the mornings, but at least there was adventure. When did we become adults, and for the love of God, why?
Sometimes it's hard working here because I feel like Polly is going to walk in at any minute and pick up where she left off, and fix all the problems we've incurred, and then I can go back to being the 17-year-old I was when she was last running things. I guess the place in my brain that lets me wait for dead people to show up and take over is the same place where in my alternate life, I didn't go to France, I stayed and went on dating W and am now a completely different (and fantastically more interesting) person; it's the same place that lets Sunshine tell herself that "next time" she'll do things differently, i.e. take her CCS classes more seriously instead of putting so much time into her sorority.
Sometimes it's hard working here because it was in this office that Piano Man fucked me up against a filing cabinet; it was the piano in this rehearsal hall that earned him his nickname (thanks to C-List). Sometimes I remember those moments, and want to call or send him a message, just to see what he'd say. But then I get over it.
Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Sunday, October 15, 2006
A moment.
"Want a confidence-boost?" What-If Guy asked me. We'd been chatting online about his plans to briefly return to CA for New Years.
"Why, are you offering one?"
"Sure."
"In that case, I can always use a confidence-boost."
"You're the reason I'm coming out... All my other relationships out there are secondary behind you."
"That's not what your myspace page says," I told him.
I'm glowing.
"Why, are you offering one?"
"Sure."
"In that case, I can always use a confidence-boost."
"You're the reason I'm coming out... All my other relationships out there are secondary behind you."
"That's not what your myspace page says," I told him.
I'm glowing.
Thursday, October 05, 2006
Weak coffee and box-building
I never drink coffee anymore. Especially not instant coffee. But it's just been one of those weeks, and now that I'm finally in the office alone with no pressing emergency task, well... I'm tired.
It all started on Monday, as most weeks do. I spent the whole day trying to input information on our South East county kids, which is difficult because a lot of those families are poor, or new immigrants, or generally negligent, and therefore can't or won't give us the information we need to enroll their kids. The longer I work here, the more I see how much these children have to suffer because of the attitudes of their parents, not just by the border, but across the board: the rich, white, upstanding citizen parents can oftentimes be worse. At the very least, I'm learning not to be that way, for the sake of my own eventual children. Anyway, in the middle of this frustrating day, we got a call from one of our teachers saying he wouldn't be able to come to rehearsal that night because he's going blind/has a brain tumor/has meningitis - in any case, he needs an MRI. (They are now pretty sure it's MS, which is no less devastating.) I also found out that day that our City grant application was due by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, and that my priority Tuesday morning was going to be to copy-edit the text for grammar, punctuation, and consistency.
Tuesday morning came, I got the grant app narrative out of my email, printed it, and started marking it with a ballpoint pen and a highlighter - I would've done it straight on the computer, but I like to see what I've changed in case it's called into question later. The woman who was putting together the grant came flying into the office halfway through the day, took my scribbled-on hard copy, and went home to make the changes. When we got it back a few hours later, hardly any of said changes had been made, and the ones that had been were arbitrarily chosen. (An example: "Charters Cathedral" had been changed to "Chartres Cathedral," but "Sperckels Organ Society" had not been changed to "Spreckels Organ Society.")
My boss was up in arms. Apparently, [grant lady] means well, but is like a bull in a china shop as well as always wanting to maintain control over her pet projects - she always sends locked pdf files so that we can't fix her spelling mistakes, presumably because she assumes that whatever she's done is leagues better than any changes we would possibly want to make. So I volunteered to stay late and change the grant proposal in the computer; then on Wednesday, we'd simply have to check her latest "revision" for any major additions or deletions, and adjust my "good version" accordingly. I figured this would take about an hour, maybe two, but in actuality it took four hours. The next day, everything went according to plan: my boss and I eventually wore [grant lady] down and regained control over the proposal, although she wasn't at all pleased when she found out I'd done it the night before; and we even managed to get the thing turned in an hour or so early.
Anyway, here's my point. I was at work for ten hours on Tuesday, and frantically editing until about 3:00 on Wednesday as well. And yes, now that the adrenaline has stopped propelling me forward, I'm exhausted, which is why today, instead of working, I'm blogging; and my plans for actual work mostly involve building music-storage boxes. But the thing is, I hardly even noticed that I was at work for ten hours, because I was having fun. I wasn't filing, or inputting, or copying, or calling angry parents; I was editing. And I was thriving. I've also been working on the newsletter lately (which sadly is overseen by the same flaky woman as the grant), and people seem to be so impressed that my articles sound like real articles rather than the amateur drivel they've been publishing for the past few years (at least, this is my understanding of the situation). From my point of view, I'm just excited to be starting documents with "< Body text >" again.
In conclusion, I do have a passion, I do have a purpose, I do have something to fuel me and drive me. It's not about finding the premise for the next Great American Novel; it's about writing and editing wherever, whatever, however I can. And if I could come home every day as invigorated as I have been for the past two, well... Just imagine how exciting my sex life would become!*
*I read recently that positive stress improves the libido every bit as much as negative stress impairs it. Which seems like a really good thing to know.
It all started on Monday, as most weeks do. I spent the whole day trying to input information on our South East county kids, which is difficult because a lot of those families are poor, or new immigrants, or generally negligent, and therefore can't or won't give us the information we need to enroll their kids. The longer I work here, the more I see how much these children have to suffer because of the attitudes of their parents, not just by the border, but across the board: the rich, white, upstanding citizen parents can oftentimes be worse. At the very least, I'm learning not to be that way, for the sake of my own eventual children. Anyway, in the middle of this frustrating day, we got a call from one of our teachers saying he wouldn't be able to come to rehearsal that night because he's going blind/has a brain tumor/has meningitis - in any case, he needs an MRI. (They are now pretty sure it's MS, which is no less devastating.) I also found out that day that our City grant application was due by 5 p.m. on Wednesday, and that my priority Tuesday morning was going to be to copy-edit the text for grammar, punctuation, and consistency.
Tuesday morning came, I got the grant app narrative out of my email, printed it, and started marking it with a ballpoint pen and a highlighter - I would've done it straight on the computer, but I like to see what I've changed in case it's called into question later. The woman who was putting together the grant came flying into the office halfway through the day, took my scribbled-on hard copy, and went home to make the changes. When we got it back a few hours later, hardly any of said changes had been made, and the ones that had been were arbitrarily chosen. (An example: "Charters Cathedral" had been changed to "Chartres Cathedral," but "Sperckels Organ Society" had not been changed to "Spreckels Organ Society.")
My boss was up in arms. Apparently, [grant lady] means well, but is like a bull in a china shop as well as always wanting to maintain control over her pet projects - she always sends locked pdf files so that we can't fix her spelling mistakes, presumably because she assumes that whatever she's done is leagues better than any changes we would possibly want to make. So I volunteered to stay late and change the grant proposal in the computer; then on Wednesday, we'd simply have to check her latest "revision" for any major additions or deletions, and adjust my "good version" accordingly. I figured this would take about an hour, maybe two, but in actuality it took four hours. The next day, everything went according to plan: my boss and I eventually wore [grant lady] down and regained control over the proposal, although she wasn't at all pleased when she found out I'd done it the night before; and we even managed to get the thing turned in an hour or so early.
Anyway, here's my point. I was at work for ten hours on Tuesday, and frantically editing until about 3:00 on Wednesday as well. And yes, now that the adrenaline has stopped propelling me forward, I'm exhausted, which is why today, instead of working, I'm blogging; and my plans for actual work mostly involve building music-storage boxes. But the thing is, I hardly even noticed that I was at work for ten hours, because I was having fun. I wasn't filing, or inputting, or copying, or calling angry parents; I was editing. And I was thriving. I've also been working on the newsletter lately (which sadly is overseen by the same flaky woman as the grant), and people seem to be so impressed that my articles sound like real articles rather than the amateur drivel they've been publishing for the past few years (at least, this is my understanding of the situation). From my point of view, I'm just excited to be starting documents with "< Body text >" again.
In conclusion, I do have a passion, I do have a purpose, I do have something to fuel me and drive me. It's not about finding the premise for the next Great American Novel; it's about writing and editing wherever, whatever, however I can. And if I could come home every day as invigorated as I have been for the past two, well... Just imagine how exciting my sex life would become!*
*I read recently that positive stress improves the libido every bit as much as negative stress impairs it. Which seems like a really good thing to know.
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