bad luck driving in DC

Well folks... remember that time not too long ago where I ran that redlight leaving the ballet academy. It came and got me today in the form of a $150 ticket. *sigh* Stupid, stupid, stupid. You know... it's not even about stupidity. I just have slow reflexes when it comes to driving. So slow. :(

boundaries

Early in life we get the impulse to push the envelope. I think around 18 months, children start to test their limits. They want to see how loud they have to scream before they get a response or how many times they can throw something on the floor for mom to pick up until it is taken away. Essentially, they are learning about cause and effect and about how much impact or control they have on their surrounding environment.

This type of exploration follows us throughout life. When I was 5, I asked my mom, "where the hell is Cathy (my cousin)?" I recieved a swift smack on the mouth. I didn't know that I had said anything inappropriate. I probably saw it on tv and just wanted to test out the new phrase, but I was also testing a boundary and trying to gauge my own status. Essentially, I was trying to determine whether I was grown-up enough to say that. Apparently not.

In a way, we're just trying to see what we can get away with. It's a behavioral challenge. Exhileration comes from being on the very edge and catching a glimpse of the other side, like playing with fire.

I like to tiptoe on the line sometimes. I guess with the people I love the most and who I think love me the most. Sometimes you just want to act out and even though you're not thinking, "I want to know the boundaries of your love for me," subconsciously that is your goal or perhaps you need that reassurance.

In relationships there aren't physical bounds that can be measured, however, the boundaries are still tested for similar reasons; to determine control and status. Who has more control of the relationship? What kind of status do I have in this relationship? How much does so and so love me?

I don't have any advice in dealing with this type of behavior if you're the one being tested (perhaps I will have it figured out once I have children or something). If it happens to you, it's your own judgement call. Different relationships will have different boundaries dependent on those involved. Everyone is constantly seeking boundaries. We want to see how far out we can go even though we don't want to go beyond that point because ultimately we always want someone there to pull us back and love us.

who's your daddy?

Last night, roomie and I were discussing dads. Somehow, we came to the conclusion that my dad is the most attractive of all my friends' dads. He has a full head of hair, no gut, and is in pretty good shape. He also has wonderfully defined facial bone structure. Who knew my dad was such a stud?

negotiating friendships through life changes

As our lives move beyond high school and college, the ties of friendship are tested. It is easy to maintain friendships with people in the same location, doing the same things at the same time, not to mention the abundance of free time we had or the ease in which we shirked responsibility. Different relationships require varying levels of nourishment. There are some friends that you see once or twice a year when it's convenient and you spend hours catching up. There are friends that you have all night chat and veg sessions with every some odd weeks. There are friends that you send 12 random texts to on those particularly curious days. There is quite a spectrum and one form of friendship sustenance is not better than the other. Without set guidelines, just how a friendship operates depends on the pair.

I value each of my friends for their individual personalities and for what they bring to my life. Unfortunately, I made a poor showing of this a few days ago to a friend that I have known since 4th grade. If I made each of my friends a body part, she would be the heart. She is sensitive and loving - traits that I lack at times. We hadn't hung out or really talked in almost two months and I think that put a bit of a chip on my shoulder about her importance in my life, which in turn may have led to my poor treatment of her. As someone has been telling me, I'm "such a girl." And well, yes I am. Us girls in our quarterlives are having breakdowns left and right over the littlest things. We're facing all these changes and venturing into a world unknown. Are we crying because we're scared? Are we crying about what we might be losing? Are we crying because we don't want to let go of our post-college glow? Friendships seem to wax and wane, unfortunately those cycles are not as easy to read as other cycles we deal with. Again, I'm a girl.

It's daunting. I'm saying and doing things I'd never thought I'd do or say and I'm wondering if I've lost a piece of who I am. I think a lot of my friends are feeling similar, yet we're not really sure what is at the heart of the matter. I find myself feeling so alone at times and although I'm content with it, something does feel amiss. In all the other stages of my life, I was knee-deep in commiseration with my friends - puberty, identity crises, teenage angst, the college years. I'm beginning to wonder what friendships will endure this current phase of my life and what role I play in keeping these friendships. What must I do? What must I accept or not accept? What makes a friendship worthwhile? It's almost something we take for granted now. And we are surrounded by so many other people and things that our nearest and dearest friends almost become a second thought. I've never been very good at reaching out, but if I want to keep the friends that I've got, I think it might be time to learn.

fight or flight?

I am a flighter, if that's even a word. One mis-step and I am about-face and gone, warp speed. I don't know how we develop these instincts or if we are born as one or the other. I think flighters are chickens. Yeah, I'm a chicken.

I have a lot of respect for fighters. I envy them because they have this zeal, this confidence going into any given situation. They stand up for what they believe in and they fight because their morals tell them they should even when some fights aren't worth the trouble. P is a fighter. Many times I've been willing to abandon friendships and relationships or anything for that matter, but she won't let them go so easily. Even when she knows that someone isn't worth fighting for, she still tries because that is her nature. She thinks that every relationship is worth salvaging. To her not fighting is failure in itself.

There was a time way back when that P and I may have stopped being friends entirely. It was during summer vacation from high school. She would call me every single morning and wake me up after I explicitly told her that I just wanted to sleep in. One morning, fed up, we had a little exchange of words and one of us hung up on the other. I can't seem to recall who hung up on whom, but she was the one to initiate our reconciliation. We had a very close mutual friend so we still had that shared connection. We never really drifted apart, we just didn't talk. After months of not talking, she mailed me a card. I still have that card and I think it saved our friendship.

There was a time recently when we had a heart to heart, and again, she showed me how important our friendship was even when I would have just as easily walked away and then come to miss her like crazy, but have too much pride to say so. I'm a big, fat chicken. It is just so hard to bring myself to care sometimes, as if my emotions take longer to catch up with the rest of me. I'm glad that there are people like P in my life. I have a lot to learn from them.

six months

I've been working at the LOC for six months now. I only know vaguely what this whole operation is all about. Something about inventory, books, sending books to Ft. Meade... yeah. I inspect the trucks and then flag them for errors, if I find any. I don't really know what all the MARC records are. I don't even know the real difference between the holding record and the item record. And you probably know as much as I do about serials. You think I would have learned some of this by now. I guess I do a decent job at pretending like I know what I'm doing. I've never had to pretend in any of my previous jobs...

I don't know how much longer I'd like to keep up this charade. I've never had the same job for more than a year, so I'd like to set a personal record this time. Wish me luck... and also a raise.

good thing...

the smoke detector is outside of my room. I almost burned our apartment down on our second night there. I lit a candle and then left to observe roomie with her breadmaker. I think we were in the living room chatting when all of a sudden... BEEP!

I went into my room and discovered my glass candle holder ablaze!

I managed to blow it out, but it was quite scary.

Well, at least we know the smoke detector works. And I've learned my lesson.

"movin' on up..."

Or, moved, rather. This is our first night in our new apartment. We still have some cleaning to finish up in the old one - taking out trash, vacuuming. I'm going to miss good old 203. It was a cozy spot, but as we started our move, it became apparent that things were getting a bit cramped. We somehow accumulated tons of stuff in our time there and moving seemed like it would never end. Thank goodness we had some wonderful help. Those folks are the best. We had a shopping cart genius-cum-grocery advisor, my poor little brother, the ever-handy P, and then the egg-dropper turned couch-mover, who finished things off. My brother was quite the trooper. He was the first one here last night and then up early this morning to help us do most of the furniture. He's a great kid sometimes.

Roomie and I no longer share a bathroom, though getting used to such a teeny bathroom will take some time. Most everything else is bigger. I'm definitely making good use of the walk-in closet. Now I can confine my junk-monster tendencies (once I get more organized...). There is an impulse to fill empty space, but I'm resisting it. The thought of moving everything that I bring into this place is still entirely too fresh.

Yeah... so I guess this concludes my week. And what a week it was.

happy happy friday!

things that make me happy today
1. Hearing J's voice at 2am.
2. Hopping onto the Metro train just before the doors close
3. Wearing my rain boots (I'll post a picture, I think they would make you happy too)
4. Getting off work early
5. No longer being a bridesmaid!!!

busy busy

This has been such a busy week. All the days seem to run together. And it's not over yet. Tomorrow we sign our lease and start moving some of our stuff out of here. I hope that it goes smoothly.

I'm so tired but I feel like there is still unwinding that needs to be done. I think I can now definitely say I know what it's like to be a bridesmaid. All evening we had to get our picture taken and then while everyone was enjoying the show, we had to do all the behind-the-scenes stuff, so in other words, we did not get to watch the movie. I did get to play bride for about 5 minutes and toss the bouquet. That was really weird. I didn't get much air on the sucker, but I'll do better next time.

I had a lot of fun with the girls that I worked the promo with. We bonded. The experience brought us pretty close and we already have our reunion scheduled for next week when we get to go and watch a second free screening of the movie.

I'm glad that my bridesmaid duties are over. Perhaps in a few years I'll be ready to do it all over again. We'll see.

so, this is what being a bridesmaid is like...

None of my close friends has gotten married (I guess they'd have to be engaged first) yet, but I think I already know what it's like to be a bridesmaid. "Be here at this time" and "Wear this." I've done this gig for 3 days now and I'm beat. I guess working the promo on top of my job makes for a long day. 2 days left. Thursday is the big show.

I just got an email with pictures of the dresses. I see three dresses and one of them is kind of ugly. I hope I don't get that one, but I probably will. I know I'm not fat, but I feel like I need to starve myself for this dress. Being at the ballet academy yesterday didn't help. I really shouldn't go there anymore. It is just depressing.

my bad...

I went to the ballet academy today to have dinner with my old mentee. I thought I'd bring a pizza since the food is usually not that great. Well... they not only re-did the entire cafeteria, they also hired a new chef! So, I basically insulted him on his first day. The food really did look quite tasty. I'm impressed, but my giant pizza box was not a pleasant gesture by any means.

I think I ate too much pizza... I feel gross. And to tie a nice bow onto this fiasco, I think I ran a redlight on my way home. I saw those camera flashes. I hope the ticket isn't too much... Ugh... I should never go back to that place again...

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2008!

I worked a promo this weekend where I was wandering around DC wearing a bright pink sweatshirt and a veil. I was promoting the movie "27 Dresses". The sweatshirt said "Always a bridesmaid, never a bride" on the back. It was fun. I'm doing it for 2 more days and then on Thursday, I will be wearing a dress for the movie screening. I got to peruse some shops and also hang out in the Origins store playing with the moisturizer and the makeup. I'll try to post some pictures later, perhaps.



We move in less than a week!!! It's crazy. Hopefully it won't be too bad. Hopefully, we'll have lots of people come to help. :)

On Saturday, Mike stopped by. We got to catch up a bit since he's been in Texas and hasn't blogged in awhile. Not that I have either. After Mike left, E and Pierre came by and we made omelets and strawberry pancakes for dinner. These are some of my favorite people lately. It's just always really chill hanging out with them and there's no pressure to look cute or cater to them (not that I'm very good at that anyway).

An interesting topic came up in a chat with Pierre and E. We were talking about American men and how they don't really know how to express their feelings. They don't know how to show a girl that they love her. In some other cultures (French, Spanish, Latin in general) men are so much more passionate and wear their hearts on their sleeves. It might be the influence of the culture, how they live life, the music they listen to, the things they eat, etc. I think a lot of times, American girls have low expectations for men. So, if a girl encounters a nice guy who does something even slightly above and beyond, she is convinced that a guy must love her. Hahaha. I'm not that easy to impress. I don't think Asian cultures are overtly romantic. It's more subtle and maybe marriage isn't even based on love. Regardless, a man really has to be consistent to win my affections. I know there is room to expand on this, but I'm at work...