Day 170: a day with the Back family...

I officially adore them. :)





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Day 169: creepy mr. Potato head

Spent some time at Jen and Sean's where they have a Mr. Potatohead.

Rich made him look all funny. Which is kinda creepyyy.



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Day 168: no softball means...

I'm home early enough to clean the bathroom! Wooohooo






I'm such a party animal.


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Day 167: what time is it?

Shrek time, apparently!





I got a new watch with my happy meal at lunch today. Sooo cool. His mouth opens and closes to show or conceal the time...

I love how at 26, I really don't care if people think it's weird for me to have happy meals and use the toys that come with it. That's the great thing about getting older: you kind of stop giving a crap about what other people think of you and do whatever you want to do. So much easier now to be comfortable in my own skin... I can't wait til I'm 80 so I can start saying even more crap without worrying AT ALL about the repercussions... Well... I guess I can wait til I'm 80...:)


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Day 166: playing it straight

With my hair!

I am seriously contemplating cutting it short...



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Day 165: I'm starting to crack

How else would you explain how I discovered this morning that I've been filling the pages of my planner with to do lists for the wrong dates??

It seems that all last week, I thought it was actually this week!





How disappointing that last Friday was not this coming Friday and now I gotta go through this week all over again!!!

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Day 164: meet Timothy and Pat

One of the best parts of my weekend job is getting to meet and talk to people...

Today, I got to talk to Timothy first. He was just hanging under our tent while his wife Pat went off browsing.

From the UK, they flew to Chicago first, spent five nights there, and AMTRAKED to New York. INSANE!!!

They were so sweet together. You could see how they loved each other just by how he took her hand as she looked at necklaces.

Older people can be so cute.




When I'm old, I hope for what I imagine they have: someone who will still explore the world with me and hold my hand all the while...

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Day 163: just another day at work...

Instead of being at the bar to watch the world cup game between us and the uk, I was out on Carmine street selling jewelry. Slow day. :(

On the bright side, I do get to see lots of different people... I found this shopper particularly cute. New York girls are so freaking fashionable/hip...



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Day 162: kinako kit kat!!!

Hisashiburi da ne!! (it's been a long time)




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Day 161: long day at the office....

One of my best traits at work is that I am good to both the company and my customers. I'm told I am a happy medium between keeping customers satisfied while still making sure the company doesn't go down in flames at the expense of good customer service...

Well, today I was a not-so-happy medium. In fact, I was a pissed off, disgruntled medium because instead of getting my work done, I spent the entire day doing revisions and putting out fires and basically wasting my time!!! Grrrrr

My desk is a war zone!!





I gave up at like 630 and just went home. Tomorrow is another day! Here's hoping it's better than today!

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Day 160: guacamole time!

Dinner at Chevy's tonight!




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Day 159: I Will Follow You Into the Dark...

So after Luca left tonight, I went into my room and tried to turn on my light, and it kind of popped and then went out. I kind of found myself in the dark for a minute, silhouette in the mirror, and thought it would be cool to see if I could catch the light from the hallway. That didn't turn out too well, but I flicked on this tiny lamp that I had in my room and that helped things a little bit...



It's funny when I think about this shot for today because it kind of parallels how I feel. Today was one of those weird days where even though you know what's coming, when unpleasant things that you already expected come along, it doesn't make you any more prepared. It can be a little difficult to handle, and it can be just a little overwhelming. At least for me. It's so easy to slip into this place where you find yourself standing in the dark, feeling for a way out, or even just staying there. Not so comfortable when all you want to do is get out, except you don't know how...

But... I'm finding myself extremely lucky in that on a day such as today, I have Luca. That little beacon of light so I don't feel so weird and lost. After six years of friendship, whether he's lived just down the street, or in another country, or on the opposite side of this island, it's nice that we've never been all that far apart, really...and I'm finding out recently that visits with him are like that bright spot in my room; something to look to when things start feeling like it's too much...

I had better days than today (though, I've also had worse)... but it was easy to forget that once I stepped out of the station and saw him across the street, leaning against the park fence and listening to his iPod with his bright yellow sneakers standing out from 50 feet away...

In the face of any kind of day, life is so much better when you know how blessed you are...

Day 158: random thoughtfulness on the walk home

On my way home from dance class, I saw this sign for Belvedere vodka at a bus stop.







Trust your instincts.

It made me think about the distance from instinct to logic and all that falls in between. How do you choose which to follow? Your gut? Your head? Your heart? Should it be a combination of all three? How do you know one thing about yourself yet realize that the opposite is also true?

What was it that led me to some of the decisions I've made in the past year that got me to where I am now? Did my gut just know things would have turned out worse if I had listened to my heart? Or did my head stop me from following my heart? It's really hard to say what drives us to the pivotal points in our lives. I guess we never really know what it is and just hope whatever helps us along our way is steering us in the right direction...

"I suppose desire isn't linear. There is no straightforward way of going where you want."

Funny how something so mundane as a bus stop could make me pensive.


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Sidebar 2: It's Getting Ok Now...

It's been a long while since I took the time for a sidebar. I am well overdue, as I think so much (though thankfully sooo much less than before!) and have all of it just waiting to be put to actual words instead of jumbling about in my head. I don't remember what it is before that I had wanted to write about, but today there are more new thoughts and I want to remember those before they hit the void with all the other lost meanderings of my mind...

I'm almost halfway through the year and feel like while I get closer to knowing more about who I am and how to be happy, I feel as far as if I've started only yesterday!

So I've been reading more often recently. I don't know what brought it on; I just one day felt like reserving books at the library and picking them up once they're ready. Right now, I have a book due back tomorrow, so I'm struggling to finish it. It's the last of four books I borrowed in the past three weeks called "Thanks For the Memories" by Cecilia Ahern.

Those well versed in chick lit would probably know Cecilia Ahern as the woman who wrote P.S. I Love You (which was way better than the movie, which I once took my parents to when it was out in the theater and while it's okay for my mom to sleep through action movies, it's kind of hilariously embarrassing when she and my dad pass out and end up snoring at a really emotional moment...but I digress).

Anyway. It's a funny coincidence that the main character in this book is a woman named Joyce. Who happens to be going through a very hard transition in her life that basically shakes her to her core. So you can imagine how much some of the things that are written on the page have spoken to me as if they were written just for me. They are the things that I've thought about a lot in the past several months, and keep reinforcing that idea in my head that I'm being watched out for... always.

"It was so easy right then to remember only the good times together and to doubt our decision. But more often than not, the easy decisions are the wrong decisions, and sometimes, we feel like we're going backward when we're actually moving forward..."

and then... at the end of that same chapter, she hears a latin phrase:

Perfer et obdura; dolor hic tibi proderit olim, which, I later read, translates to: "Be patient and tough; someday this pain will be useful to you."

I wish I had read this book sooner! But I feel like it couldn't come at a better time. As the year goes on, there are days when my initial optimism for 2010 just kind of go out the window and I find life tedious and just keep slogging through the days. It probably doesn't help that I don't get a lot of time to sleep and rest and what not. And with my crankiness and exhaustion, it can be so easy to fall back into that frame of mind that I used to find myself in. It's not nearly as bad as it used to be, but it feels like it's always going to be there... with spurts of acute, intense pain in between the memory of it all... The idea that being stuck in this kind of state is a possibility is enough to make me want to give up altogether!

But the other night, my roommate graduated from law school, and I got to see a lot of the friends that connected us together from our days in high school and college up to now as we ate and toasted (again and again) to Haj and adulthood. Up til all hours of the night and enjoying everyone's company and having the most fun I've had in months and just living in that moment... I was blown away by the paragraph I read just an hour or so ago.

"It occurs to me how happiness and sadness are so closely knitted together. Such a thin line, a threadlike divide. In the midst of emotions, it trembles, blurring the territory of exact opposites. The movement is minute, like the thin string of a spider's web that quivers under a raindrop... I think...how love and war stand upon the very same foundations. How my darkest moments, my most fearful times, when faced, became my bravest. At your weakest, you end up showing more strength; at your lowest you are suddenly lifted higher than you've ever been. They all border one another, these opposites, and s how how quickly we can be altered...A veil hangs between the two opposites, a mere slip of a thing that is too transparent to warn us or comfort us. You hate now, but look through this veil and see the possibility of love; you're sad, but look through to the other side and see happiness. Absolute composure shifting to a complete mess-- it happens so quickly, all in the blink of an eye."

I wondered a lot when I would be okay. After months of wondering, I've seen through the veil and suddenly I am. I don't have to question when. I don't have to worry that it will never happen. Because just like that Joyce figured out in her book, I've figured out in mine that being okay has happened, as if it was all in the blink of an eye.

It may not be that way always. Maybe I won't be okay tomorrow. Or next week or next month. But now I know it's possible. And for this moment, that's enough for me.

Day 157: no one really shops in a thunderstorm...

Which means I was stuck at work without much to do...







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Day 156: Morning after Haj's graduation party fun

After an entire night of drinking and debauchery in celebration of Hajin's graduation from BLS, I got home at 5, woke up at 7, and went to work the street fair until 6 pm.

This is me at the end of the day:





Not too shabby for two hours of sleep, working all day, and having a stomach that felt like death for a majority of it...if I do say so myself. :)


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Day 155: happy graduation haj!!

Love haj and her mommy!!!


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Day 154: Rich is sooo nice

Chrissy didn't have a shirt for softball today so Rich gave him his... And then wore hers.

He ripped it hard like the Hulk by the third inning...

Sexyyyyy




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Day 153: Sanity to be found on Wednesdays at 6

So with my second job at the street fairs on weekends, I basically work 7 days a week. In total, that's over 60 hours of work per week, 20 of which I am entirely on my feet and 40 of which I work in an office paperpushing and stuff... Between having to revise bills of ladings more times than I would care to do so due to errors that may or may not be beyond control and trying to sell jewelry to strangers and whatever other pressures either job entails, it can be easy to get disgruntled and pissed off and hate my life.

But I know that it was my decision to take on all of this and so it is my responsibility to make sure that I don't go nutso at either job and start getting cranky which leads me to being violent... and so comes in dance class. I've mentioned this before (that I take Bollywood Dance Classes at Dhoonya Dance) but especially in the past few weeks, I can't even begin to explain how much coming to class helps with my sanity. The combination of the upbeat Indian music, relatively easy but exhausting dance moves, and my very sweet, awesomely graceful, and really fun dance teacher Priya makes for a very good break in the craziness of my week.

I have to work extra hard to get to class on time on Wednesdays (since I can't go on Saturdays anymore), but it's sooo worth the trouble.



Today, Priya told me I should advance to Techniques class! I don't know if I'm ready to stop doing Bollywood Basics, even though I oddly feel like that kid in high school who had to repeat a grade several times. I know everything better than everyone else in the class, but then again, I've been there for like, four times longer than anyone else has too... Hrmmm.... something to think about...

Day 152: too much empanadas!

I have about two more empanadas at the empanadas shop left to try. I think. Guava and cheese? No bueno!

Chorizo is STILL good though!

But too many empanadas in on sitting mean that I get uberlazy and food coma-y...





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