refuse to excuse

Some things just really burn me up.

This morning, I was ringing up two regular customers, a really nice guy and girl who work close by, and they were chatting as I was taking their order. The woman says to her colleague, "Yeah, that project really raped me," then turns to me and says, "Excuse my language," and carries on with her conversation. I had to turn away quickly, under the guise of pouring their coffee, so I wouldn't say one of the million things running through my mind, not one of them being, "Oh sure, you're excused." No, I will NOT excuse you for casually dropping the term "raped" into your conversation. 2 years of involvement in the Vagina Monologues and personally knowing rape victims has taught me better. I only wish she (yes, she - can we get back to that? Talk about girl-on-girl violence.) had the faintest idea of what that term means to millions of women. I doubt she would be able to use it so nonchalantly.

Excuse me while I step off my soapbox.

In other news, life trudges along, guided by little lanterns of hope in the shape of a cup of tea and good book at the end of the day, or weekly TV dates with Jonathan, or the biggest light of all, my family. In one week I will be flying home to be with them for 5 whole days, celebrating Thanksgiving and my mom's 50th birthday. That's been enough to get me through some really tough moments in the last week. When I get down, I just put Harry Connick, Jr. on my iTunes and fast-forward to the day after Thanksgiving, when my brother, sister, and I will help my mom and Dennis put up Christmas decorations. We will venture with flashlights into the cavernous depths of our closet under the stairs with its sloping roof and awkward angles, pulling out boxes of ornaments, lights, wreaths, and garlands. We will laugh at our first-grade attempts at art, the hand-print wreaths, the popsicle-stick picture frames. Yet, those will inevitably end up on the tree, right next to fragile glass snowflakes that could've come from a Pottery Barn catalog. It's the hodgepodge of home-made, inside joke, and elegant ornaments that make our tree so special.

Plus, we will get to bake some DELICIOUS holiday treats. I'm trying to convince my sister that WW cookies are just as good as the Pillsbury kind, but she has yet to see the potential for greatness that is applesauce. I will make her see the light!

bake me a cake as fast as you can

I stumbled across a gem of a baking blog, honey & jam, a few weeks ago when surfing for pumpkin recipes. The author, Hannah, is an adorable girl from Georgia with a talent for photography, which comes in handy when she snaps photos of her DELICIOUS-looking baked goods. Plus, she loves Jesus and isn't afraid to come right out and say it in her blog. Very refreshing.

So I have been scheming and dreaming and list-making so that next month I can start creating some Weight Watchers-friendly versions of some of my favorite honey & jam finds. Up first: pumpkin bread, pumpkin cupcakes, and root beer float cake. My taste buds are so excited just thinking about it.

Side note, I am loving this fall weather! Wind, clouds, a little bit of rain, mmm. I can wear cardigans...during the DAY! Pure joy, I tell you. Too bad a lot of the trees in my neighborhood are evergreens, so I'm missing the vibrant fall colors of Sacramento. But, I'm going home briefly next weekend, so I can get my fix.

optimism

There is so much to love about my life right now.

Jon was accepted into University of Virginia Med School. OK, not exactly my life, but nearly so. I have been there all four years while he studied, struggled, and succeeded, and now I see what it all was for. I shared a little of his sacrifice, maybe a lot, and now I can share in his joy. I am tremendously proud.

I got an interview for a position working with foster children. With opportunity comes hope, and I have been clinging to it like a life raft while drowning in a sea of disappointment that tutoring children with autism isn't what I'd thought it would be.

So many good library books are in my possession right now! Just finished The Princess Bride, currently devouring Angels and Demons, with Everything is Illuminated, Olive Kitteridge, and Pride and Prejudice and Zombies waiting in the wings.

I am interviewing at Sac State early next week, which means a) generally good things for my future, and b) a long-overdue visit home. Lately, homesickness has left me feeling empty. Just getting to see my family, even for a brief time, will be so incredibly restoring.

Jason Mraz is on shuffle on my iHome. That pretty much says it all.

Oh, and this: Love is real, it is not just in poetry and stories, it is truth and it will follow you everywhere you go from now on. Isn't that the truth.

sun < clouds

Go away, sun! Stop making me feel guilty for wanting to stay inside all day reading a good book and occasionally doing important work. My bathroom needs cleaning, my bed must be made, laundry needs folding...oh yeah, and I have two essays to write for my Sac State application which is due in precisely 4 days.

Fortunately, these only require one page double-spaced each, which is possibly why I have put this off for so insanely long. I tell myself it's just that I work best under pressure, but really I have gotten extremely good at finding ANYTHING else to do besides work on these essays. (This blog post is example #385.)

To keep myself motivated, I put aside the book I am currently reading and loving, The Help by Kathryn Stockett, until I am done with these essays. Then I will be able to read in peace without my conscience nagging at me.

friday night

Could my life get any more exciting? Tonight I simultaneously cooked tonight's dinner, tomorrow's dinner, and baked 4 dozen pumpkin chocolate chip cookies, all while watching back-to-back episodes of Criminal Minds on A&E, and now I am in bed. Fabulous. I could cite tomorrow's early morning shift at the coffee shop as an excuse for not going out, but I probably would have declined invitations anyway. I am a homebody through and through and I like it.

This week I sold my beach cruiser and got a fabulous mountain bike on craigslist. Her name is Max, short for Maxine (Linz, I told you, I name almost everything). She is purple and fierce and she has a water bottle holder. Love at first sight, let me tell you. Next step is to find a wire basket on ebay and hook that sucker up so I can pedal on down to TJ's or Henry's or the library or Balboa Park or a friend's house, all super conveniently located within biking distance from my house. MLIA. (And that A stands for AWESOME, not average.)

humdrum

How sad that "humdrum" denotes something lackluster and uninteresting. It's so fun to say, I say it like a doorbell rings, "HUMMMdrummmm" and the "m" sound tickles my mouth.

Tonight I read my sister my favorite children's stories via webcam and it made me miss home so much I thought I might start crying in the middle of "Where the Wild Things Are." But now that I'm older the gaps between home visits are getting longer. So, I won't be going home until Thanksgiving. That means another month and a half. Lucky for me both of my siblings now have webcams so I don't feel too much like I'm missing out.

Speaking of WTWTA, I just bought the soundtrack on iTunes and I think the quality of my life has fractionally improved. Karen O has a nice voice, even if she is a little nutty on stage (the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on SNL is a good example), and the songs are so whimsical and childlike and exciting, I'm even more anxious to see the film. Let the wild rumpus begin!

Today ends my work-free week. Tomorrow and Friday are both tutoring days. Next week I am expecting a call that will hopefully change all that, in a good way. And Saturday is coffee shop-ing, which I'm falling more in love with even as it's driving me crazy. I hope I won't have to give up my job there if anything else changes, it's such a nice distraction and such a different direction than what I'm doing with tutoring.

I need to put up pictures of my apartment, even if it as not as cute as either of my East Coast friends' abodes, or that of my SacTown love. Hopefully this will be on my wall soon to cheer me up.

Side note - this is the latest I have stayed up in...weeks. Add one glass of wine and you get terrible rambly nonsensical posts such as this.

I got a pretty

It's the new LG Invision and I'm hopelessly in love with it. It's super petite and lightweight, the default background image is of Amsterdam (the pretty part, not the prostitute part), and best of all, it was free! Now I just need to name it.

snip snip

Today was an experience in haircutting. I got the longest haircut of my life (2.5 hours) for the least amount I've paid outside of SuperCuts ($15 + tip) and the shortest, shortest my hair has ever been.

Aaand I love it.

the future wants to eat me.

In the last week, I have gone from helpless, sleep-depriving panic about what I wanted to do with my life to helpless, sleep-depriving panic about where I want to go about doing it. I've narrowed it down to a Master's degree in Counseling Psychology, usually a 2-year program that prepares you for getting licensed as a Marriage and Family Therapist. But, I can't decide whether to stay in California, or venture over to the East Coast and try a program in Chicago or Boston. There are some pretty cool people out there, I've heard. Decisions, decisions! But I figure I can't lose either way. As long as I can easily become licensed in California after obtaining a degree elsewhere, why not try something new?

Also, my book club has died because all the books I want to read are still on hold by 2597354 other people before me at the library. I read The Memory Keeper's Daughter a few weeks ago, and loved it. I kept it in my purse at all times in case I got a spare couple of minutes, seconds even, pumping gas or waiting in the drive-through. I'm just mad I didn't listen to my mom 2 years ago when she first recommended it to me. Moms always know best.

Time to swing by my new favorite Mexican place (conveniently located ONE BLOCK AWAY from my new house) and pick up some grub for Jon and myself. I haven't seen him since I took him to the airport on Monday for his Univ. of Virginia interview. He had UCLA today, so I'm sure he's got lots to tell me. The future is looking bright for my favorite Dodger fan :)

interpreter of maladies, aidez-moi

I feel a little bit sad every day, and I can't quite put my finger on it. Something is weighing, pressing on my heart, but I don't know what it is.

Reading Interpreter of Maladies has been helping me sleep when this mysterious grief keeps me awake in the forms of terrible half-asleep dreams. Jhumpa Lahiri is so incredibly talented, her writing rich and full of color, even when she writes about sadness and loss. I must finish the last story before my books go back to the library tomorrow.

back to the basics

Last night I cracked open my GRE prep book for the first time (which is good since I'll have to take the test in oh, a month). I read the overview of the Verbal section and felt pretty confident that I would do well. Then I moved on to the Quantitative section, which includes subjects I haven't studied since high school, including Arithmetic (maybe that was grade school), Algebra (8th grade), Geometry (freshman year), and Data Analysis (last year, byah!). I mentally dusted off the cardboard boxes in my brain that hold all this information and tried my hand at a few of the practice problems. One of them was finding the area of an isosceles triangle. I couldn't do it. I also could't remember the Pythagorean Theorem. I panicked for about 10 minutes that I would be a complete failure because I graduated with honors from a UC and couldn't do simple geometry.

Luckily, my boyfriend tutors high schoolers in math. Hopefully he accepts payment in undying love and DiGiorno pizza.

In other news: 5.2 miles today. Right on track for my half marathon in January. Feeling like a champ. I treated myself to some Body Glide as a "reward," but mostly because running is (literally) a pain without it. After I hit the 7 mile mark I might invest in one of those superserious water bottle belts...I will try not to think of it as a fanny pack.

not much I can do about that

So...the manager at the coffee shop I work at suggested that all the workers check out the negative reviews on Yelp to see what customers are complaining about and to find ways to improve the shop. According to my manager, lots of people complained about poor customer service, which upon review of the reviews (har har) I found to be pretty true. But most of the reviews say the same thing: the coffee is bad. Simple as that. Some people were nice and said things like "You don't come here for the coffee, you come here for the ambiance." That's a terrible thing to say about a COFFEE shop.

I work at a coffee shop that sells bad coffee.

I am so ashamed.

home sweet internet/microwaveless home

Just moved into my new place. It took Mabel and I all effing day (with the exception of me having work at both jobs...nice going Jen) to pack and unload the UHaul. But, our apartment is on the second story with a nice little balcony and friendly neighbors. Plus, I get my own bathroom and walk in closet. Not too shabby. Only problem is we don't have a microwave, and my instant gratification complex has taken a blow. No bowl tomato soup with my grilled cheese, and no 1min30 oatmeal. Whine whine whine.

At the moment I am sitting in a coffee shop taking a break from unpacking. We have no internet - not even a network we can steal from a neighbor! - but there is a lovely coffee place a block away with free wifi, bless them (eff you Starbucks and your $4 for 2 hours!) I need to look up a run for tomorrow morning. 5 miles, YAY. Sorry in advance, legs.

Since I'm tired of putting this off but also just plain tired, Julie & Julia gets a super short review. Two words: MUST READ. J & J snuck up on me; I had picked up a few library books and tried to read them, but I found the literature stale and boring (sorry J. Austen, but Emma is lame). I was craving something different, and Julie & Julia was a breath of fresh air. It was funny and spectacularly written. Julie Powell's voice is so evident in her writing - I love that. Her chronicle of her (mis)adventures cooking her way through Julia Child's famous French cookbook, along with surviving marriage and a shitty little apartment in New York, is at times hilarious, at others heart-wrenching. Overall, simply a joy to read. (Side note about the movie: couldn't have cast it better.)

I wish I could do the book more justice, but my bed is calling. Tomorrow's goals: not pass out from a 5 mile run (my first, yikes), find a microwave.

"vacation"

Possibly against my better judgment, I decided to go on vacation with my Dad and family to Tahoe the weekend before I have to move. I've been trying my hardest to relax, but with a research deadline hanging over my head and weird/scary dreams about my sister going to college, it's been rough getting into the vacation mindset. Margaritas help, I've found. So does running 3 miles in high altitude with a marathon-pro of a father.

Katie is moving into Berkeley today. I got to see her for about 10 minutes on Friday before leaving for Tahoe. It was hard to say goodbye, even though it's not like she's moving across the country or anything. She'll actually be closer to home than I am. But it's more than her moving away. She's growing up, and becoming less of a "little" sister. Younger, sure, but not so little. I am unspeakably proud of her and all that she's accomplished, but a part of me wants to keep her as my little seastar forever.

Just finished "Julie & Julia," and will post about that as soon as I get enough of my research duties done to quell my guilt over being so lazy about it these last few weeks.

eye of the tiger

Today I ran 3 miles without throwing up or giving up. Just wanted to brag about that to cyberspace.

4 months til the Carlsbad Half Marathon. Will I make it...?

new things, good and bad

Saying goodbye to friends is getting old. I can't seem to keep them in California, no matter how much I pout. Will someone please tell me what the East Coast has that the West Coast doesn't?? Ah, well. I'm very pleased that the people I love are starting (or continuing) new, exciting chapters in their lives, even if they are so far away. And, planning a visit in the near-ish future helps me stay positive.

Luckily, I have scored myself a new job. Using only my brilliant smile and sparkling personality, I won over the manager of a trendy coffee shop in North Park, a neighborhood of San Diego that's a hipper, less yuppie version of Downtown. Nevermind that I haven't a lick of coffee experience, so far it's going very well and I'm scheming and dreaming of saving up my money for a week-long tour of the East Coast and all my loves I've lost to Boston, Chicago, and New York. Aside from extra income, I also love that my hands smell like coffee at the end of the day.

Mabel and I turned in an application for a fabulous 2 bed/2 bath apartment, also in North Park. Fingers crossed our leasing agent doesn't screw it up and it can be all ours. I'd write more on this, but I don't want to jinx it!

Oh, and as for the book club - what was supposed to be a work-free, totally vacant week turned into a frenzy of house shopping, research, and finding another job. I'm so tired at the end of the day, I can't bring myself to focus on a book. I gave Emma a shot, but was bored five chapters in. I'm not in the mood for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie or The Art of Racing in the Rain, so I've settled on Julie & Julia. I spoiled the story for myself by seeing the movie before I'd even finished the first chapter, but Julie Powell's writing is so entertaining, I refuse to give up the book. Looking forward to reading a few more chapters tonight before getting to sleep early.

The Birth House by Ami McKay

Ami McKay's The Birth House proved a worthy opening act of my book club. Set in a seaside village in Nova Scotia in the early 1900s, McKay's novel centers on a young girl, Dora, mentored in the ways of midwifery by an eccentric old woman who has been delivering the island's children for decades. Modern medicine arrives in the form of a charming doctor promising clean, pain-free deliveries, and challenges the practices and beliefs on which Dora has been raised. As World War I unfolds across the globe, the women of the village struggle for the right to control their own bodies. A full summary can be found here.

I fell in love with this book because of its protagonist, Dora, the only daughter born into her family in something like five generations, who has just about every trouble possible thrown at her and still comes out on top, alive and kicking. Though wise and strong in her beliefs, I found myself loving Dora for her weaknesses as well, like how she longs for her own child so desperately that she puts up with, and even welcomes, the often violent advances of her good-for-nothing husband.

As a Vagina Monologues alumna, I appreciated the feminist themes of the novel, especially the inclusion of the "female hysteria" diagnosis of which 20th century physicians were so very fond of. Just by including details from this bizarre chapter in history, McKay at once brings to attention how this diagnosis was part of society's oppression of women, and makes light of how utterly, utterly ridiculous it was. Women with "hysteria" were treated with vibrators, for heaven's sake!! I was also very pleased that McKay consulted Rachel Maines' Technology of Orgasm, which is quoted in the "Outrageous Vagina Fact." Vag kudos, Ami!

I could go on, about the characters you can't help feeling passionate about (positively or negatively), the mysterious elements of midwifing that are well-researched and magically rendered, and the thoroughly modern ending, but you really ought to discover it for yourself.

book club, population: 1

I have decided to start my own book club all by myself. Meaning, I am going to make a list of all the books I want to read and blog about them after reading. This will work out great, because I have a lot of free time on my hands at the moment (thanks to work cancellations all next week), coupled with very little money (see previous parentheses) and a lovely public library within walking distance. I considered asking some friends to join my book club, but I read way too fast for most peoples' tastes and it would be unfair to expect others to keep up with me. So, I embark on this literary journey alone, with none but fictitious characters for company. (During this time it will be important to force myself to maintain contact with the outside world, knowing my tendency to hole up with a book and never see the sun or real people.)

My book list (open to suggestions):

POETRY

e. e. cummings

- Love, Selected Poems

- Another E. E. Cummings, selected and introduced by Richard Kostelanetz

- Tulips & Chimneys

- Complete poems, 1904-1962

Walt Whitman

- Selected Poems

PROSE

Emma – Jane Austen

Interpreter of Maladies – Jhumpa Lahiri

Julie & Julia – Julie Powell

Mountains Beyond Mountains – Tracy Kidder

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies - Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith

Suite Francais - Irene Nemirovsky and Sandra Smith

The Birth House – Ami McKay

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo – Stieg Larsson

The Help – Kathryn Stockett

The Last Lecture – Randy Pausch

The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

The Other Boleyn Girl – Philippa Gregory

The Portrait of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie

The Secret Life of Bees – Sue Monk Kidd

The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

The Town that Forgot How to Breathe – Kenneth J. Harvey

There’s No Place Like Here – Cecilia Ahern

Unaccustomed Earth – Jhumpa Lahiri

heliotropes

Yesterday I learned that a heliotrope is a type of plant that turns its leaves and flowers toward the sun during the day, and each night turns back toward the east in anticipation of the sunrise, to a chorus of "Here Comes the Sun," I imagine.

I am moved by their optimism and dedication. I want to plant a whole garden of them.