I Know What You Mean
Sometimes “I know what you mean” can be very powerful words. It means you don’t have to explain yourself, even if you feel like you need to. It means someone else feels the same way you do, so you’re not alone.
Earlier today, because it’s 76 degress, sunny, and slightly breezy in a pleasant way outside today, I posted on Twitter that pretty days like today make me miss California even more. I immediately got two responses about how it was currently raining in Southern California. For some reason, I felt pretty frustrated about that. Then a friend from New York replied, “I know what you mean.”
My comment wasn’t meant to imply that California never has imperfect days. My comment about pretty days in Chicago making me miss California was supposed to communicate the following extremely convoluted feeling, which I didn’t have to elaborate in order for my New York friend to understand:
Chicago (and I understand New York) weather will do everything in its power to piss you off, plain and simple. It will swing drastically from cold to hot. Wet to dry. Humidly stale to extremely windy. Nice days are few and far between, and I feel like I’m constantly on my knees begging and pleading the atmosphere to give me reprieve from whatever version of hell I’m currently living through. And to top it off, “nice” is always relative. There is no such thing as a reliable constant. What’s “nice” in February is awful in April. What’s “nice” in July can make a mess in December. Whatever Chicago weather provides is NOT what I wanted.
In California, bad weather days are few and far between, and you always know that it won’t last long. You can also usually count on the fact that, when the current bad weather ends, some other form of randomly bad weather won’t take its place. In California, pretty days are the norm. And the norm remains the same all throughout the year. Normal in April is normal in October is normal in February.
In Chicago, nice weather is a mockery. It shows up just as you’re about to despair at life, and it never sticks around long enough to help you out of your last funk. In California, nice weather reliably keeps you sane. In California, where you don’t have to engage in guess-factoring unreliable weather patterns while planning your weekends, your commute, running errands, or managing laundry loads and dry cleaning rounds for the sake of your budget, you can concentrate on the things that really matter. Your mood doesn’t fluctuate as if you’re experimenting with psychiatric drug dosing. And when your mood rocks back and forth, up and down on the weather-dependent roller coaster, you can’t do well in life. Your relationships suffer. Your work suffers. Your mental health suffers. The people around you suffer.
Pretty days like today make me miss California.
Someone who’s recently thrown me a lifeline here in Chicago is looking forward to returning to a different state, where she calls home. While I’m incredibly sad that I already feel like I’m losing somebody I just found, the one thing I want her to know is, I know what you mean.
Points
- Finished Olive Kitteridge. Best book I’ve read in a long, long time. I am Olive Kitteridge. I don’t know how much I like that.
- Cut off most of the little hair I had to get rid of the nasty indiscriminate feelings I’ve had all week. Don’t worry – it was professionally done.
- Spent this month’s extra money on an apron. I want to bake real bread.
- The Lakers had better win tonight.
- Schwarzenegger’s newly proposed budget cuts make me want to vomit. I actually felt overwhelmingly nauseous most of the night I read the list and amounts.
- Best friend passes on the travel bug like an incredible contagion. I absolutely need to go to to 1) the beach and 2) Israel.
- Brought out the watercolors yesterday and reminded myself that being an artistically hopeless amateur isn’t necessarily the worst thing in the world.
Ew!
Last night I dreamed that I was using both hands to scoop dozens of egg yolks out of a sink to put them into some sort of container (like a bucket or something – the details here aren’t so clear.) I distinctly remember all the eggs were that vibrant yellowy-orange color, and some of them still had the thick, globby part of the white still attached. Ewwww…..
In The Age
This is probably something that doesn’t occur to anyone but me, but I have certain ages that I associate with people in my family. My cousin M, although in his late 20s, is someone I think of as being 16, because that’s probably how old he was when we had the most interaction. His older brother T, in his 30s, is someone I think of as being 24, even though that’s my current age. When T graduated from college and found a great job at the company he still works for today, he was in his early 20s and his success made an impression on my concept of what it means to start life on your own. So, in my mind, M will always be 16 and T will always be 24.
My brother R will always be 5 years old to me. I’m certain he’s aware of this, and I’m sure he dislikes it very much, but he’s too cool to let it get to him. When he was 5, I was screaming and yelling at him to get out of my room, leave my stuff untouched, and stop talking so much. As an 11 year old sister, I didn’t understand that he wanted to be a part of my life, curious about my girly belongings, and was exploring language and communication. Today is his 19th birthday, and I find myself wishing I had known better back then, even though realistically that wasn’t possible. The hard part about being siblings of opposite genders with a 6-year age gap is that we do a lot of our growing up apart from one another. By the time R got old enough for us to begin understanding each other, I was moving away to college. He moved through junior high and high school without me, and I missed out on so much of his growing up. Our personalities are as disparate as humanly possible for being two people who share so much genetic material. He’s not my little kid brother anymore (he’s about 5′10″ and I’ve lost track of how much he’s able to bench press at this point), and I’m struggling to find ways to connect with him now that he’s older. I’m hoping the feeling of disconnect is mostly on my side, with me being the mushy-girly-bonding type, and hoping even more that our relationship isn’t actually all that distant (aren’t guys generally more aloof anyway?).
Happy Birthday to my one and only brother. Two more years until Vegas. Hang in there.
Sap
In a blip of unexplained girly emotional-ness last night, I got all choked up watching D drive the car with the infamous “Nemo Mirror” away for the last time. When I told one of his best friends that D had sold the car yesterday, the immediate reaction was “NO WAY!” Then we chatted a bit about how long the car has been a part of our lives – but were most surprised to realize, in terms of car ownership longevity, how long I’ve been a part of D’s life, too (that is, two cars).
Saying goodbye really did feel like a few years ago when I lost my dog. How silly – it was just a car. But I had grown accustomed to its seats. I called a friend and she successfully distracted me with talk of lemon basil, scones, and how we wait for laundry to pile up.
The funny thing is: what struck me most about seeing the car drive away was the last view I had of its California license plates. It’s going to be one of those things I’ll always have memorized, like my home phone number growing up. I drove away from California almost a year ago (wow), but it felt very different seeing California drive away from me. Last summer, I was pretty sure my stint in Chicago would be a passing occurance – one of those things that happens but doesn’t stand out as anything remarkable, like a stop at the gas station. This would be just a couple of years while I waited for D to finish his graduate program, then the both of us would move on.
I’m happy to say that I was wrong. This summer, I’ll be gearing up for my own graduate program. Also, my foodie conversation last night brought something unexpected to my attention: that I now have new roots in Chicago in the form of an amazing friend. It won’t be so easy to say goodbye to Chicago when the time comes, after all.
No, No, No
The massive proverbial and literal headache that’s about to split my head in two right now has been building for quite some time. With a couple of Advil Sinus tablets, a great mug of tea and my iTunes, I’m going attempt to relieve some of the pressure that’s crowding my brainspace.
Right now it’s windy and rainy outside, and the poor tulips that were planted by the sidewalk the other day are bending over backwards trying to hold onto the ground while the wind tries to rip them out, bulb and all. If these rain clouds don’t vacate soon, I’ll have to find some way to rig an IV of sinus meds to keep my head from exploding.
This upcoming Sunday, there’s going to be a chemistry faculty dinner event, to which I’ve been invited. I consider myself fortunate to be in the host’s good graces, and I enjoy his company (not to mention his beautiful house). The only reason I’m hesitant to accept the invitation is because I can’t guarantee that I’ll be able to sustain good behavior on my own part with the other company expected to be there. I can’t seem to let myself out in public these days for fear of saying something utterly offensive to unsuspecting (and, to be fair, usually undeserving) victims. The pregnancy pandemic has struck too close to home recently and I’m sick and tired of babies. Furthermore, it seems that wherever I go, I have to socialize with people in my age group who are either expecting parents, new parents, or parents of young children, who are still relatively new parents.
I’ve had it with the pregnancy/baby/kid conversations. A while ago, I deleted about half of my blog subscriptions in my Google Reader because it seemed like everyone became pregnant at the same time and I wasn’t about to read months of pregnancy blogging. I had originally subscribed to their blogs because they wrote about things I enjoyed reading. As soon as every one of their blog entries migrated to thoughts on pregnancy and parenthood, I clicked that trash can as quickly as I could. There were a few times when I revisited their blogs to check in and see if I had actually missed anything interesting, but….no. It was all pregnancy all the time. No thanks.
I feel like my friends are evaporating before my eyes. If they’re not pregnant yet, they know someone who is, and they want what they see. Pregnancy is all-consuming – the process hijacks your body and your mind. Even those who are not yet pregnant, but want to be, think of nothing else. Well, newsflash: I am not pregnant and I don’t want to be at this point in time. I am happy for those embarking on their version of family life, but it’s not something I’m interested in right now. Therefore, I am going to eschew all communication relating to pregnancy, childbirth, and family planning for the time being. The obsession stops here.
Wuss
Unexplained funks seem to come around more often than they used to. Is this part of the growing up process? If so, then I’d like to head back to Toys ‘R’ Us, thanks.
Two things have been weighing on my mind – they’re totally unrelated, which makes it more difficult for me to deal with them both since they have nothing to do with each other and I can’t pacify these mutually exclusive, disquieting thoughts with a single wave of the hand.
The first is a reoccuring theme I’ve picked up from the various tv shows and real life stories I’ve been watching and hearing – some new, some old. What they have in common is some spouse saying, “I can’t do this anymore.” This particular statement gets on my nerves because the most likely reason why someone would say this is because they don’t want to do “this” anymore (whatever “this” is, and it’s usually a relationship), not because they can’t. So not only is the person demonstrating a long term failure to engage in successful communication on a regular basis, which would have prevented any occasion to warrant the use of the statement in the first place, but that lack of good communication is topped off with this final line of dialog, which is, in fact, a lie. So much for good communication skills. Another reason this statement bothers me (as if it being a lie weren’t enough to irk me) is because the person saying it, in most cases, was a willing partner in a very long-term relationship until some catacalysmic event. The “last straw event” evokes the opportunity for the individual to present an ultimatum, which is usually rejected, and the statement “I can’t do this anymore” is presented, like some event pass that lets you cross a barrier. I think this is bogus. The ultimatum-giving, relationship-ditching, says-”can’t”-when-they-mean-”don’t” individual knew what they signed up for when they committed to their long-term relationship in the first place. The spouse of a person with political ambitions? Yeah, there are going to be long hours of work and public digs into your personal life. The spouse of a career military member? There are going to be lots of things that don’t come with explanations. The spouse of an aspiring academic scholar? Research knows no regular office hours. These are the types of circumstances that are made known at the beginning of these kinds of relationships. When these circumstances don’t change (surprise!…not…), it shouldn’t come as a shock. If people change and their relationship needs evolve, fine. Don’t lie about it. “I don’t want to do this anymore” will still serve the same purpose, and it doesn’t come across as some pathetic, whiny excuse.
The second thing weighing on my mind is the reality of D selling his much-beloved car. It sounds dumb, but it breaks my heart to see him part with it because I know it has everything to do with me. He’s found someone who’s eager to provide a new home for it, and I am sorry to see that this is all finally happening. That car used to rescue me from all the social drama that threatened my sanity during my undergrad years by swooping up the hill and picking me up just in the nick of time. It even saved me and a best friend from the worst camping experience EVER. That car brought me home after my last finals in the middle of the night because we finished packing up the apartment at 7 pm and didn’t want to hang around Berkeley anymore. Aside from all the great places that car took us, what I love most about it is D can show off his parallel parking skills like WHOA in that thing. He knows and loves every centimeter of that car and could probably parallel park that thing with his eyes closed, though he’s never tried it. To be really sappy – the car also serves as a physical testament to the fact that D has always been available and accessible whenever and wherever I’ve needed him, without fail. It’s really hard to think about D parting with his car. The last time I felt something like this was when Ollie died, and though my feelings this time aren’t quite as intense, they’re certainly similar. Once August comes around, we’re looking at the option of getting a Mini Cooper, which would be akin to getting a new puppy after the old family pet has passed away. It won’t be the same, but the excitement will help the grieving process…
Didn’t Think of Singing This
I heard this song today and it made me laugh.
Shitty apartment? Check.
These past couple of weeks, there’s been one daydream (along with its variations on the same theme) that’s been creeping around the back of my mind every now and then. It usually starts off with the image of D and I graduating and moving out of Chicago and heading for either the West (preferable) or East (I guess it’ll have to do) coast. He’ll have some fantastic position lined up, and I’ll be recognized as one of the next up-and-coming policy geeks everybody wants to have on their side (remember, this is a daydream…). This initial opening sequence is passed over pretty quickly, because I realize the life of a postdoc is not particularly glamorous, nor will life just after graduation for me be particularly fabulous, either. So fast forward a handful of years and here comes the key part of this daydream: D and I moving (again) to some fabulous coastal city where he’ll begin as an assistant professor and I’ll finally get some real momentum in my own career. Highlights include buying our first residence, complete with a real-sized kitchen, parking for two, front-loading washer/dryer combination, and a dog. The other details are fuzzy and variable, but the gist always involves having our own place and making our way in the world.
But for now, the only parts that ring true are the coffee making, paper reading, talking about our plans, and fact that we are, indeed, very lucky.
Sleepfighting
I wish I had a way of finding out what really happened last night. There’s that strange state of half-sleeping when I’m aware of what is going on around me, but not entirely capable of responding – when I can hear what’s going on, understand what’s happening around me, and yet, even though I remember thinking to myself, “I need to remember this for the morning,” I almost always forget what I wanted to remember.
Last night, D and I had a battle over the blankets (of which I eventually won back posession of my fair share), complete with a shouting match (he was the one shouting, I was the one trying to comprehend what he was saying, as it was all in chemistry-speak), and everything finally ended with his elbow meeting my forehead in a rather unfriendly way. Twice. He was fast asleep througout the whole ordeal. WTF? We’ve been trying to figure out what’s causing this midnight ruckus: stress? eating too much meat? Both of those have been ruled out, so at this point I don’t care all that much why this is happening – I just want it to stop so I can get a good night’s sleep without having to defend myself. PostSecret posted this on Twitter: “Love is sleeping light so you can hear when your spouse is struggling through a nightmare and wake them up.” Well, in this case, love is waking up to struggle with your spouse’s nightmare.
Filter, Cont’d
Case in point: this post by Instaputz articulates the kind of thinking I do every day in a way I could never bring myself to write or express publicly. I’m sure it’s partly because I’m self-preserving (I’m always looking for ways to preventatively save face, so to speak, in case something happens in my future that depends on my past – ha!), and also pretty sure it’s because I try my darndest to be more like the classy role models I look up to (Grace Kelly, Jackie Kennedy, Michelle Obama), who I can’t imagine swearing like a sailor, let alone swear in a way that is so directly disrespectful to others (even if those “others” hardly deserve any respect in the first place…). But that’s what keeps a girl classy, I guess.
Sometimes I just want to lay it out there, as opinionated as I may be, just for the sake of relieving the some of the pressure I feel as a result of my own impatience. But I usually take the 3 seconds it requires to check myself, and I rarely end up spewing the kind of language Instaputz gives me great satisfaction in reading.
