It's what I have!
Ugh - I'm rested up, my chores are done, I'm at my fabulous desk, it's nice and quiet so why aren't the words coming? For the past week, I've noticed I keep starting and stopping other writing projects I'm working on and all my paintings have switched from squid to fat birds, which is all fine and good except I have a project to work on that requires people... and I don't really paint people. Not even cartoony people. Sure there have been one or two exceptions, but in general, no people.
So, not feeling the people-painting thing, I sit down to catch up on the blog. Then...... nothing. It's isn't that we don't have news, it's just that the news isn't getting my brain going.
Examples:
1. We finally sold our house in Virginia - yay! (Problem: Excellent happy news, but not that interesting to write about.)
2. We had a great visit with Mr K's parents! (Problem: Mr K already wrote it up really really well!)
3. I have new recipes and new cookbooks! (Problem: Ya'll don't wanna hear about it!)
We have French class tonight, which always has a numbing effect on my brain. Our instructor is pleasant enough but for various reasons we just hate and dread the classes. She moves too quickly and we never review. She doesn't speak English so even the most basic question of grammar leads to a 30 minute explanation as she tries to basic-French and pantomime her way through it for us with the end result that we nod and wait to look it up after she leaves... These are questions that 3 minutes of English explanation would instantly clear up but instead end up completely derailing the lesson. Topics seem to be chosen at random and nothing ties one lesson to the next. One week we did reflexive verbs... the next? Fruits and vegetables. Stuff like that.
So that's enough of a mini-rant for one day. Tell me something interesting.
Showing posts with label blah blah blah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blah blah blah. Show all posts
Monday, July 21, 2008
Monday, June 23, 2008
Who who whoooo's a night owl?
Ok - the votes are in (though voting is still open for a couple more days if you haven't expressed a preference yet) and it looks like at least half of you enjoy reading things I write about myself - you bunch of voyeurs! In my desire to please all the people all the time here's another entry for the "stuff about me" category (lucky for you this mindset brings enough neuroses with it that you won't be suffering from a lack of reading material anytime soon).
I am a night owl's night owl. Right now as I write this, it is approaching three in the morning here and I'm not even close to being ready to go to sleep. Staying up this late on my own has gotten to be something of a luxury as of late. I go to bed most nights for companionship or because I feel like I'm supposed to - I can't remember the last time I went to bed (for the night - naps are not included in this) because I was tired and ready to sleep. At midnight, I'm just starting to get my brain and hands loosened up and the words and pictures are just starting to come out, but most days I force myself to go to bed around midnight because I get up when Mr K does at 7:30 and "everybody knows" I have to get some sleep.
What this means for me is my most productive hours are spent tossing and turning in bed, trying to talk myself into falling asleep. Some nights I hash out stories, letters, pictures, and blog posts, always intending to get them down on paper/screen the next morning but by the time I wake up (which I do poorly and very slowly) these images are usually gone. Sometimes I'll scribble down a tangle of notes to try and decipher the next morning - I usually write these in the dark and, as my handwriting is nearly impossible to read when I'm doing my best to be neat, in the morning I can't decipher a word of it. For all I know, in the past couple years I've found and lost the meaning of life, the nature of the universe and a couple hot stock tips - I'll never know.
Most of my best ideas come to me late at night, however I'm also one of those 3:00 AM crisis types. You know the type - in fact, you may be the type. Without fail, the clock hits three in the morning or so and my brain does some kind of crisis data-dump and decides to run through all possible worst-case scenarios, ranging from "what if I have no money in my bank next time I try to buy some I-tunes" to "what does it say about me as a person that my biological clock runs a bit slow - if at all" - it goes downhill from there. Existential crisis as a luge.
Ignoring that bit, in general I find staying up to all hours to be a mostly positive experience that I really enjoy. For me, sitting in the living room and feeling the breeze blowing in off the porch as it slides across my back is bliss. Listening to the fevered tapping of my sloppy hunt-and-peck typing in an otherwise unbroken silence is bliss. Being the only one awake gives me time to pay attention to all the little details I would otherwise miss due to the distractions that come with daylight and other people.
On a semi-side note, you know what else is bliss? Sitting on the floor in the kitchen, lit only by the light from the fridge, eating a bite or two of whatever leftover or other treat looks good. I'm pretty convinced food tastes best late at night, eaten in the kitchen, though I don't know why this should be. In my most recently written and wretchedly abysmal novel (woo hoo!), I noticed as I wrote that the main character was always eating in the middle of the night - I went on for pages and pages about it. It seemed whenever I got stuck for an idea, she got hungry. Well, all my writing books do say "write what you know..."
I have plenty more to say about insomnia and all the things that I've found that don't cure it, but I'll save that for another day. Sleep tight and sweet dreams - I'll be along in a few.
"Always take a big bite
It's such a gorgeous sight
To see you eat in the middle of the night"
R. Smith
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
The relief of turning thirty..
(Or self-indulgent rambling as a gift to myself)
I'm one of those people (and by those people I mean nearly everyone) who is prone to finding myself choking on thoughts of my own mortality at three in the morning on any given day that I stay awake too late without a real distraction (you know - like Xbox). Two years ago, the idea of the "Big Birthday" was enough to tie my belly up in knots for a couple insomniatic hours. Despite this fact, when the BB actually rolled around, I woke up feeling calm and content. I haven't been one of those people who gets excited about birthdays for years - I've never been one to throw or attend birthday parties for myself or anything like that - a nice dinner is more than enough. The thing about my birthday that has always made me the happiest is that I share it with my mom - a fact that I feel has always made us just a little bit closer and made birthdays seem just a little more special in their own quiet way.
So I woke up feeling warm with contentment - and why shouldn't I? My best friend and the most fun person I've ever met was curled up warm against my back, the sun was just starting to pour over the Alps right outside my window, my bedside table was littered with amazing novels I've finally had the time to finish, and an ice-cold glass bottle of fruit-flavored black tea sweetened with brown sugar was waiting for me in the refrigerator. This is a far cry from my life four and a half to five years ago, when my boyfriend (not my future husband either though a very nice guy in his own right) was living far from me in another state, I was moving from a crappy job to a stressful one, I was leaving a gross city for another gross city and I was living with barely one month's rent in my bank account at any given time. Doesn't sound like much fun, does it?
Well, a lot of it wasn't, which is why turning thirty has come as something of a relief. My life now is so much calmer, yet more fulfilling than it was in my twenties. I feel like I have a much better sense of who I am and I'm more comfortable with that person - bizarre sense of humor, still-mainly-black wardrobe, big butt and all! I'm getting to the point that I feel like I have some experience to write from and things look a little clearer than they did five to seven years ago. I would like to think I worry a little less about what other people think - their opinions certainly aren't as paralyzing to me as they once were. Despite the calm that has come to some parts of my psyche, I still find myself getting completely enraged over things that would best be blown off and ignored - maybe that level of calmness is reserved for the 40-plus crowd. I still overthink things and probably always will. I still have a tendency to become overwhelmed by guilt when I've done nothing and I'm still too much of a perfectionist. Despite these facts, I feel like I'm aging well physically and mentally. Sure I have streaks of gray - and have had them for at least five years - but they're laced through huge handfuls of coarse blond hair and pretty much invisible to everyone but me. No wrinkles or anything like that so far - no doubt thanks to a combination of my black-clad teens and twenties, my late-night and overnight work schedule, and my obsession with sunscreen - not to mention some good genes (thanks mom and dad). My brain is stuffed full of books and ideas and feels much more productive than in my food-and-drink-slinging restaurant days. Even better, my painting seems to be slowly improving.
Exactly four years ago today, I was on the cusp of massive change and completely unaware of this fact. For anyone who reads this and doesn't know, I met Mr K on his birthday four years ago in four days.... or on 18 May 2004 to be less confusing. Nothing was supposed to come of it - we chatted online and I thought it was sad he wasn't doing anything for his birthday, so I suggested we meet up and go out to dinner - tacos, of course! I remember sitting next to what passed for a duck pond in Northern Virginia - really just a muddy hole next to the highway that someone thought would be improved by the addition of some over-wrought-iron (ha ha - did you get that?) benches waiting for him to arrive. We had a nice dinner and a fun chat but nothing out of the ordinary. Within two weeks, the details of which we won't be disclosing, we had become pretty much inseparable even though it took us both five or six months to realize what we had. Exactly two years later we were too busy worrying about our wedding (23 May 2006) to get into the whole birthday thing. Mr K had his BB just five days before we got hitched, leading to several weeks of "if you're not married by the time you're thirty, you wanna marry me" jokes. One year ago today, Mr K was getting ready for his first trip to Fribourg to check it out and decide if we wanted to move here.
When he opened the door to leave for work this morning, Mr K found a thick white envelope with my name on it - a birthday note and a tin of chocolates from our sweet neighbors! Things like that remind me of how wonderful this move has been for us. Two years ago I told Mr K I wanted to take a trip to Europe for my BB - today, as the BB arrived, I live here and I'm thankful for it everyday.
I'm one of those people (and by those people I mean nearly everyone) who is prone to finding myself choking on thoughts of my own mortality at three in the morning on any given day that I stay awake too late without a real distraction (you know - like Xbox). Two years ago, the idea of the "Big Birthday" was enough to tie my belly up in knots for a couple insomniatic hours. Despite this fact, when the BB actually rolled around, I woke up feeling calm and content. I haven't been one of those people who gets excited about birthdays for years - I've never been one to throw or attend birthday parties for myself or anything like that - a nice dinner is more than enough. The thing about my birthday that has always made me the happiest is that I share it with my mom - a fact that I feel has always made us just a little bit closer and made birthdays seem just a little more special in their own quiet way.
So I woke up feeling warm with contentment - and why shouldn't I? My best friend and the most fun person I've ever met was curled up warm against my back, the sun was just starting to pour over the Alps right outside my window, my bedside table was littered with amazing novels I've finally had the time to finish, and an ice-cold glass bottle of fruit-flavored black tea sweetened with brown sugar was waiting for me in the refrigerator. This is a far cry from my life four and a half to five years ago, when my boyfriend (not my future husband either though a very nice guy in his own right) was living far from me in another state, I was moving from a crappy job to a stressful one, I was leaving a gross city for another gross city and I was living with barely one month's rent in my bank account at any given time. Doesn't sound like much fun, does it?
Well, a lot of it wasn't, which is why turning thirty has come as something of a relief. My life now is so much calmer, yet more fulfilling than it was in my twenties. I feel like I have a much better sense of who I am and I'm more comfortable with that person - bizarre sense of humor, still-mainly-black wardrobe, big butt and all! I'm getting to the point that I feel like I have some experience to write from and things look a little clearer than they did five to seven years ago. I would like to think I worry a little less about what other people think - their opinions certainly aren't as paralyzing to me as they once were. Despite the calm that has come to some parts of my psyche, I still find myself getting completely enraged over things that would best be blown off and ignored - maybe that level of calmness is reserved for the 40-plus crowd. I still overthink things and probably always will. I still have a tendency to become overwhelmed by guilt when I've done nothing and I'm still too much of a perfectionist. Despite these facts, I feel like I'm aging well physically and mentally. Sure I have streaks of gray - and have had them for at least five years - but they're laced through huge handfuls of coarse blond hair and pretty much invisible to everyone but me. No wrinkles or anything like that so far - no doubt thanks to a combination of my black-clad teens and twenties, my late-night and overnight work schedule, and my obsession with sunscreen - not to mention some good genes (thanks mom and dad). My brain is stuffed full of books and ideas and feels much more productive than in my food-and-drink-slinging restaurant days. Even better, my painting seems to be slowly improving.
Exactly four years ago today, I was on the cusp of massive change and completely unaware of this fact. For anyone who reads this and doesn't know, I met Mr K on his birthday four years ago in four days.... or on 18 May 2004 to be less confusing. Nothing was supposed to come of it - we chatted online and I thought it was sad he wasn't doing anything for his birthday, so I suggested we meet up and go out to dinner - tacos, of course! I remember sitting next to what passed for a duck pond in Northern Virginia - really just a muddy hole next to the highway that someone thought would be improved by the addition of some over-wrought-iron (ha ha - did you get that?) benches waiting for him to arrive. We had a nice dinner and a fun chat but nothing out of the ordinary. Within two weeks, the details of which we won't be disclosing, we had become pretty much inseparable even though it took us both five or six months to realize what we had. Exactly two years later we were too busy worrying about our wedding (23 May 2006) to get into the whole birthday thing. Mr K had his BB just five days before we got hitched, leading to several weeks of "if you're not married by the time you're thirty, you wanna marry me" jokes. One year ago today, Mr K was getting ready for his first trip to Fribourg to check it out and decide if we wanted to move here.
When he opened the door to leave for work this morning, Mr K found a thick white envelope with my name on it - a birthday note and a tin of chocolates from our sweet neighbors! Things like that remind me of how wonderful this move has been for us. Two years ago I told Mr K I wanted to take a trip to Europe for my BB - today, as the BB arrived, I live here and I'm thankful for it everyday.
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Lights, camera, police... and a side of gluttony
Today was a productive/unproductive day. Steph was kind enough to take us to Jumbo this afternoon to get some lights and a ladder - despite having all our furniture arranged and our apartment pretty much finished, we still have naked wires hanging down from the ceiling in every room. I think I mentioned it before, but then again I've never been averse to repeating myself, so here goes: when you move into a new apartment here, it seems like ceiling lights are generally not part of the deal - each renter provides their own. We've been using floor and desk lights in every room since October or so. Our shopping trip today was meant to remedy that situation. We found several lights we liked - we're only one short for the dining room right now - in part because Mr K and I are at odds as to whether the dining room would benefit from a light... (I'm the 'aye' camp and Mr K is the 'nay' camp, in case you were wondering.)
On the way home, as we got close to our apartment, we saw the road ahead blocked off by either a parade or protest - it's so difficult to tell here sometimes. It was obvious that Steph wasn't going to be able to get through the crowd in less than 30 minutes, so we begged her to let us out near the train station and we would walk the last one third of a block - nice and easy! As we rounded the corner at our building, we saw what a good choice this had been. It seems that in addition to the parade-protest in front of our building, the police had cordoned off the park and hotel and parking lot behind our building. We stood around and watched for a few minutes - mainly because we were trying to see if it was possible to skirt the police tape and get to our favorite kebab place - nope. Still craving a bit of junk food, we headed to McDonalds (first time this year) to grab a quick lunch and get home so Mr K could grab his camera and take some pictures.
At McDonalds we had yet another mini-adventure. We're not sure if it was our faulty French or the confusion of a new employee, but somehow instead of getting Mr K's "Number Two Cheeseburger Meal" we ended up with 35 less francs and "two cheeseburger meals" in addition to my "chicken mcnugget meal." That means triple coke zero (with ice) triple french fries and two cheeseburgers - Gluttony Saturday! Clearly we've been out of the US for too long, though, as we were unable to eat the whole pile of food and had instead to store the extra fries and cheeseburger for later consumption...
As we downed our french fries and delicious, icy beverages, we stood on our balcony - Mr K with camera and me with my binoculars - and watched the police continue to accumulate in the parking lot below us. We watched as the police cleared out the hotel and brought a canine unit in to walk around. For over two hours, police wandered around the parking lot, going in and out of the hotel and shooing away anyone who approached the police tape. A large yellow van with blue lights pulled up - it looked like a bomb squad, but nothing came of it and the van's doors remained unopened. At six PM on the dot matters seemed to be taken care of - the police tape was taken down, the police loaded back into their cars, and the staff and guests allowed back in the hotel. We still have no idea what happened. Excitement!
On the way home, as we got close to our apartment, we saw the road ahead blocked off by either a parade or protest - it's so difficult to tell here sometimes. It was obvious that Steph wasn't going to be able to get through the crowd in less than 30 minutes, so we begged her to let us out near the train station and we would walk the last one third of a block - nice and easy! As we rounded the corner at our building, we saw what a good choice this had been. It seems that in addition to the parade-protest in front of our building, the police had cordoned off the park and hotel and parking lot behind our building. We stood around and watched for a few minutes - mainly because we were trying to see if it was possible to skirt the police tape and get to our favorite kebab place - nope. Still craving a bit of junk food, we headed to McDonalds (first time this year) to grab a quick lunch and get home so Mr K could grab his camera and take some pictures.
At McDonalds we had yet another mini-adventure. We're not sure if it was our faulty French or the confusion of a new employee, but somehow instead of getting Mr K's "Number Two Cheeseburger Meal" we ended up with 35 less francs and "two cheeseburger meals" in addition to my "chicken mcnugget meal." That means triple coke zero (with ice) triple french fries and two cheeseburgers - Gluttony Saturday! Clearly we've been out of the US for too long, though, as we were unable to eat the whole pile of food and had instead to store the extra fries and cheeseburger for later consumption...
As we downed our french fries and delicious, icy beverages, we stood on our balcony - Mr K with camera and me with my binoculars - and watched the police continue to accumulate in the parking lot below us. We watched as the police cleared out the hotel and brought a canine unit in to walk around. For over two hours, police wandered around the parking lot, going in and out of the hotel and shooing away anyone who approached the police tape. A large yellow van with blue lights pulled up - it looked like a bomb squad, but nothing came of it and the van's doors remained unopened. At six PM on the dot matters seemed to be taken care of - the police tape was taken down, the police loaded back into their cars, and the staff and guests allowed back in the hotel. We still have no idea what happened. Excitement!
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