| job/school/rent conundum |
[22 Sep 2005|02:36am] |
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i need to get an apartment.
tefl school in 4 days.
so i have about 32 days until i can get a long-term job. job should come first, right?
boo.
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| olives |
[15 Jun 2005|10:49pm] |
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what to do with my life!
i talked to a woman who runs the TEFL certification course. i am still undecided on when to take it, but talking to her definitely made me more excited. maybe i will go to prague and mexico! i've wanted to go to prague for a long time. except that teaching there would mean having to learn some czech, which would be much harder than spanish. but still! prague!
i babysat on monday for a woman whose plans fell through at the last minute. with the agency, they have to pay you for at least 4 hours if that happens. so i played with her one-year-old for two hours, and then put him to bed, and made $44. nice.
and my sister is home! ridiculousness ensued, as always. we went out to breakfast and i laughed till i cried when she improv'ed to an evanescence song. i can't explain how she funny she is in words, because it's never as funny when i tell it. she's just something that has to be experienced in person.
tomorrow i am going to have an adventure.
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| good things |
[10 Jun 2005|11:47pm] |
walking around barefoot is one of the best things about summer. also being able to be outside at night without a jacket. and iced tea from tea bags. and skirts without nylons.
and my flower pots. they are awesome. i planted mexican heather and dahlias and gazanias and red nasturtiums and portulaca and lobelia and creeping thyme and nicotiana. and a lot of other ones i don't remember the names of. i fuss over them in the mornings, pinching back dead flowers and rearranging tangled vines. it's probably useless but it makes me feel like i'm helping.
i talked to eros today. he told me he missed me and that the worker men cut down a tree with a chainsaw and there were woodchips. exciting times when you're two.
i want to go swimming!
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| at the park |
[08 Jun 2005|01:44pm] |
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monday was a beautiful day. i went to see alejandro and isabel. it had been a little over five months since i'd seen them last, because they were in spain when i came home in march. i couldn't get over how much isabel had grown, and how much alejandro was talking (in french and in spanish)!
when i left, isabel was three months old. now she is eight, and starting to crawl, and babbling, and blowing raspberries, and cutting teeth, and she laughs when you tickle her cheeks. she is such a beautiful baby. yolanda put a little yellow barrette in her hair, which is barely two inches long. when i picked her up she would hold on to my neck, or try to grab my nose or my hair. and when she was tired she laid her head against my shoulder and curled her little hand next to her face. these small, small things break my heart and make me smile incessantly, at the same time.
i get so sentimental around children, but i can't help it. life seems so monumental and so complete, somehow, when i am with them. what is, is, and there is so much hope and beauty and love. except i don't even think like this when i'm with them. i don't have to at that moment. what is, is.
alejandro had to run over to every part of the park as soon as we got there. he found a pinecone and threw it up the slide so it would come back again. he stood on all the benches, and played with the water bubbler, and made me hide behind a tree so he could find me. he showed me how high he could jump (about three inches), and how he could climb on the jungle gym. i am babysitting for the two of them on friday, and i can't wait, i miss them already.
i know how silly i get, but honestly, i don't care. it's just such an amazing thing to be around them, and be happy, and be simple.
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| end of an era. thank god. |
[03 Jun 2005|10:46am] |
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so i am actually done. my last fear was that i didn't pass something. but grades came out today, and i passed everything. i don't ever have to go back to college!
i am all mixed up. i almost feel like i am going to cry, from relief and from stress and from the finality of it all, and from the disappointment of how i ended up, and from the aftershocks of fear, and from the realization that i don't ever have to worry about this again. i'm not quite happy yet, but i know i will be, once this sinks in and once i really start the next phase of my life.
maybe if i say it enough times it will feel truer. i am done.
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| writing to avoid writing |
[20 May 2005|08:41pm] |
I am working on the last paper I will ever have to do in college. Although i still have the lurking fear that something is going to happen in the next six days which will prevent me from graduating, and i will have to stay here again. i took my last exam, and gave my last oral presentation. and on wednesday, my last art project is due. i am beating my head against the wall with this paper. i have been trying to get it organized for hours, but ADD is prevailing.
we had a thunderstorm today. i love the summer storms here. in the morning the day will be sunny, and then the sky gets purple suddenly, and the wind picks up, and then all the rain comes down at once. the air feels so nice afterward.
i had a good time with laura last weekend. we did go to the beach and drink wine, and we went to some of savannah's quirkier bars (she was suitably impressed by the brown floral wallpaper and dining table with flowers in the bathroom of the legion). we sat on the porch for hours at night, because, as laura said, "isn't that what people do in the south?" she also said, "merlot is for people who don't like wine," and lots of very amusing things that i meant to write down, but i was drunk and forgot. they were good too.
at the beach we saw: two starfish (we saved one from a painful death-by-beaching), mating hermit crabs (at least that's what it looked like), and a purple mushroom like jellyfish/anemone. it was a good day for marine life.
and now i need to get back to my paper.
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| in may |
[13 May 2005|05:24am] |
so i now have 13 days until my last day of college. (unless i screw it up, which is unfortunately always a possibility with me and school... however, i think it is a somewhat smaller possibility than usual.) anyway 13 days. this seems both too short (to get anything done) and too long (until i can finally be done). i have been a mess the past few weeks. i don't know what to say.
my plan for when i graduate is to get certified to teach english as a foreign language. it's a four week long course, every day for seven hours, and starts in july. i know, more school. but it's not art school, and i liked spanish school, so i think i can handle english school. and then i will work for a bit, and save some money, and then hopefully go to mexico to teach.
i need to sleep normally.
laura m is coming tomorrow. i am very excited about this. i hope she won't be bored. we will go to the beach and drink wine. and i cleaned my room and am very close to being motivated enough to clean the bathroom. i'm thinking around 7am or so.
my great-grandmother might be dying. we don't know because she won't go to the doctor. she has some sort of mysterious pain, and so hospice came by and gave her pain medication, but that's all the treatment she wanted. she says if it's her time to go, she's ready, and she's at peace, and she wants to die in may because it's a beautiful month. she's 102 and as far as i know, she still drives. although i guess not right now.
it's strange, because i've only met her a dozen or so times, but i don't want her to die. i don't want anyone to die i guess. my mother has told me hundreds of stories about her, and so i feel like i know her better than i do. i hope i get to the point in my life where i'm no longer scared of death.
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| positive things #5 & 6 |
[11 Apr 2005|03:55am] |
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5. saw fever pitch and had lunch and went to target with renee today. we had a really good time, and the movie was really good. it was happy and had a good ending and it showed boston as really beautiful. it made me kind of homesick, but in a good way. it made me remember all the good things about being home. it was great to spend time with renee and we are having coffee tomorrow too.
6. had a good talk with becca. this was really helpful and encouraging. i had been feeling kind of sad about my friends here, and the fact that almost all of them graduated already. and it's a little strange to be back here after 7 months of not being here, and things have changed and gone on and i wasn't a part of any of it, and it's harder to get back to where things were. and some of it is due, too, to the fact that last year i spent most of my time hibernating and having breakdowns and neglected a lot of my friendships. and it is a hard time of the year to make it up to them, because it is almost graduation and everyone is busy and worrying about the next phase of their lives. and it's normal and i understand, but i was feeling sad. so it was good to have two good friend-experiences today.
if only i could sleep...
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| positive things #3 & 4 |
[03 Apr 2005|01:37am] |
3. turning the clocks ahead today so the evenings will be brighter.
4. have been having nice walks on the beach. on tuesday there was a very bizarre superlow tide which made the shore enormous and have miniature ravines and pools and lagoons and craters. there were a bunch of beached jellyfish wearing pink ruffled skirts. yesterday i went and it poured. my sweater got soaked through, but i like the smell of wet wool.
i saw the school therapist on tuesday (this is not part of positive things list, just a statement.) she was making some sort of unrelated statement about my mental processes when she interjected that we sometimes forget when we come down to earth that we have been around much longer. i am not sure what that was supposed to have to do with me. she mentioned again about the way we carry around traumas of our predecessors as pain. she keeps grilling me on my family history, looking for some sort of ancestral abuse or tragedy. she was disappointed when i had to tell her that my mother had a very happy childhood.
and the pope died. this seems really strange. i am not religious but i still feel kind of catholic sometimes, in that it was a backdrop to my childhood. the pope was a kind of abstract, mythical figure who was regularly and therefore sometimes mindlessly referenced and held up and prayed for. he was a fixture, not a person. the fact that i have now lived through the death of a pope makes me feel very old.
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| positive things # 1 & 2 |
[28 Mar 2005|05:34am] |
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so i am behind on the positive things. (i.e. haven't started.) i will start now and pretend i wrote them last week.
1) i took two field trips this week. on friday i went for a walk on the beach. it was a nice walk. on saturday renee and i went to the wildlife refuge and saw 5 or 6 alligators. it was fun.
2) i have only two classes this quarter and only one studio. i do not have to do any photography. instead i am taking printmaking and 20th century art history. it is much less stressful.
hmm.
that was pretty lame. eh, whatever.
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| i wish i wish |
[19 Mar 2005|11:12pm] |
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i am at home now, for two more days. i finished last quarter, i passed all my classes. i am supposed to do Positive Thinking and be proud of myself for doing so, but I can't help feeling ashamed of the low-level work i did in order to just get through it. this is not faux-modesty; i literally did my portraiture final with a 600 polaroid camera, because i couldn't bear to develop film or print, but i knew i had to turn something in. my teacher allowed me to not show them for critique, which was kind, but i'm still embarrassed.
i was supposed to love this. i did, at one point. and now i don't, but i can't even just be indifferent. i can't stop agonizing over things.
the school therapist is still bizarre. she told me how she heals people by waving her hands over them, and how she was once a medium through which people talked to the dead. her suggestions are that i open myself up to more of the divine truth and awareness present in the universe. she tells me that she sees me as a spiritual person, even if i do not.
it's been nice to be home, but i am getting scared of going back. i am so tired of crying. the last three weeks of the quarter i couldn't seem to stop.
i have everything. i should be happy, or at least content. all of my "problems" are in my head. i am embarrassed of my angst. i am embarrassed that i whine about my depression in my livejournal, but i do it anyway. i wish i were funny and could at least be amusing about it. but i always take everything too seriously, too monumentally.
i am going to start writing two positive things a week. and going for more walks. and flossing regularly.
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| counting the minutes. |
[03 Feb 2005|04:26pm] |
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 over it |
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while filling out forms with my wonderful teacher, rich, i am subjected to the following:
art school prick (i have had a class with him before and know him to be so): rich, i've got a new idea. i was thinking i'd go and find a bunch of roadkill, because, you know, i'm still into roadkill?
rich: uh-huh
a.s.p.: and i thought i'd go and spoon the roadkill and take a bunch of pictures of it.
[no response]
a.s.p.: you know, like, lie down on the asphalt and curl up with it. what do you think?
christ.
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| ride |
[01 Jan 2005|09:05pm] |
hello from wilson, north carolina. dad and i drove 12 hours today to put the bulk of the trip behind us. and our hotel has free internet! and free computers! and it just opened two days ago, so everything is clean and new!
the drive has been ok. yesterday was fairly emotional and nerve-wracking for me. first i had to say goodbye to yolanda, ara, alejandro, and isabel, which kind of broke my heart a little. and yolanda cried a bit too. i love them so much and i will miss them a ton.
then i had to pack, which, looking back, went pretty well considering how awful i am with packing (i took 2 dexedrines, so i guess that did the trick). but it didn't feel like it was going well at the time. i was getting a bit worked up about school and felt on the verge of having a panic attack. and i kept thinking i was going to die on the way there. (this feeling has lessened a bit, but i'm not there yet, so i'm still a little concerned about it, as ridiculous as it is.) i have all this anxiety about school so i guess it is seeping out, but i did ok today and i got everything packed and didn't cry today. although i did get a little teary-eyed. i'm scared.
i am writing this to get it out of my system. i will not start 2005 as a good candidate for xanax. i will finish school. i will not die in a car crash. i will not be depressed.
my dad has been great. i kept offering to drive but i think he prefers to himself, so he drove all 670 miles. a long day. but he's keeping me calm.
ok. okokok. that's enough. i feel better. i miss boston already. but i am going to be okokok.
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| end of the year musings |
[31 Dec 2004|12:59am] |
and now it's the last day of 2004.
i hate for time to pass quickly, but i'm glad this year is over. there was too much sadness, too much depression, too much cynicism, too many goodbyes, too many failures, too much shame. there were bright spots and wonderful things too, but overall it was an unhappy year. the car accident, leaving school, the classes i failed, the sadness hanging over the triplets' house, the days i wasted in bed, my love of photography disappearing, losing someone i loved, seeing friends graduate and move away, worrying that i won't change. and then guilt, always. i even feel guilty talking about my guilt, and about the things that make me feel guilty. it's embarrassing. i wish a lot of things didn't happen, and that others were different, but then, how would i have learned?
the last day of this year feels much more like an ending than in other years. or a closing. i am ready for an end. on january 1st i leave for school, to begin things.
i feel like i have so much to make up for in 2005, to my parents, to my friends, to my teachers, and to myself. i want to be someone who is vibrant, and generous, kind, motivated, reliable, patient, conscientious, strong... i want to move forward. it seems like such a long way. i'm tired. i am going to bed, and getting up tomorrow to prepare for another part in my life. i hope.
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| a haircut is not a tsunami, and neither is school. |
[30 Dec 2004|04:54pm] |
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i am leaving for savannah in 2 days. i am nervous. i am also stressed out about packing, so instead of finishing my list and doing my laundry, i decided to get my haircut. i realize this could have been a mental health disaster in my already-precarious state, but i thought about all those people who lost their lives or families or towns in the tsunami, and decided that a bad haircut was not a particularly horrific thing that could happen. also it would keep me from having to pack.
and it ended up that i got a good haircut! i told the hairstylist that i wanted a change, and then she told me about how much fun it was doing hair in the eighties, which was not in fact a bad sign. and now my hair shorter and razored and i even have bangs. but only about four of them, so even they can be camouflaged at will. i look a little bit less like a high school student. i never seem to go back to the same hair place, but i think this time i will.
on another topic, i will miss laura m. we finally went out to dinner last night, for the first time in months even though we now live about 3 minutes away. (of course i still managed to park in front of the wrong house, but laura found me in the end.) it was a good time.
i had a lot of goodbyes yesterday- my sister (for whom i procured her coveted domincan beer as a parting gift), eros and lisa, the triplets, and my therapist. it was sad. but my therapist made me a sign that has lots of motivational statements on it, like, "if i do this now, i will never have to do it again," and "hiding won't help," and "i am not a bad person." which was both nice and amusing. she is a nice therpist and i will miss her too.
mimi and poppie are here, so i am going to go help with dinner, or perhaps other things that will allow me to put of packing for just that much longer. although i am not supposed to procrastinate, i figure i should save most of my motivational energy for school. which starts in 4 days.
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| cold |
[27 Dec 2004|08:33pm] |
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mood |
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 frostbitten |
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it is so incredibly cold. 14 degrees F to be exact. yet they are predicting a high of 78 in savannah on sunday... even the weather's trying to push me along!
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| clones and cats |
[23 Dec 2004|10:44am] |
this freaks me out a bit. it's wrong, right? and kind of sick?
pet cat cloning
cloning is too complicated an issue for me to pass judgement as a whole, but cloning a dead pet cat? it seems like a pretty big burden to put on the cloned little guy- to be wanted not exactly because for its own existence but to make up for a loss? and it also seems kind of disrespectful to the pet that passed away. it's like its death doesn't count to the owner, because it has a facsimile to make up for it. salvador dali was named after a baby brother that died before he was born, and i think it fucked him up, believing that he was supposed to be a reincarnation and not an individual. i know these cats are animals and not humans, but people can love pets just as much as humans, and i think it's more the mindset that's wrong than the actual manifestion of it.
people are weird.
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[22 Dec 2004|09:36pm] |
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how much do i love my friend becca? i can't even say. so much so that even though it took me 3 and a half hours to do what should have been an hour trip because i ended up about 40 miles north of where i should have been because of my obscenely bad sense of direction, i was still in a good mood when i got to her house. and she gave me the best present complete with christmas cards (cardS!) that made me laugh so hard i had tears running down my face. i wish i had a tenth of her talent with words.
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[21 Dec 2004|01:49am] |
i love alejandro and isabel so much. they are the children of friends of my family, whom i'm babysitting my last few weeks at home. alejandro is two, and today we played a game where i would repeatedly jump like a frog ("mas rana!") and then he'd tickle my feet and yell "pi-eeee!!!" (foot), because he thinks feet are really funny. or sometimes he'd then run up and throw his arms around me to get me. with isabel, who is two months, i sang pat-a-cake and the itsy bitsy spider, and she would suddenly smile her huge, toothless smile at me and wave her arms and legs around.
how do children love like this? so quickly and wholy, no matter how many people come in and out of their lives. and it is love. sometimes today they made me want to cry.
it is such a gift, to be loved like this, even when you feel confused and sad and complicated, to be loved, and only because you yell gal-lump when you jump. and in a year they won't remember, but i will forever.
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| happysad |
[04 Dec 2004|01:50pm] |
so i did it. i gave my notice two weeks ago and yesterday was my last official day at work. (i have one more unofficial day, but it's only a few hours on wednesday that i offered to do because i was sick last wednesday.)
but i'm done. this is both a relief and sad. to her credit, joan was pretty understanding. apparently previous babysitters had left for similar reasons, so she knows that she can be tough to work for. i've been feeling less anxious and stressed since i quit. and it's been a learning experience too- i have to make people aware of my limits and not take on more that i can sanely handle. and i shouldn't feel bad about myself when i can't save someone from their own problems. that;s something that will take a long time for me to reconcile though, and for the time being, i need to put myself in work situations where i can feel content.
but leaving the kids is hard. last night bradley was sitting on my lap, and everytime i tried to put him down to finish the cleaning, he would grab onto my neck like a koala bear. and david is finally learning my name, now that i have to leave. and with shannon it's the hardest of all, because she can verbalize everything. i told her i have to go on a plane to school, and for the past several days she'll randomly say, "you have to fly away!" "yes, i have to go away to school, shannon. i'm going to miss you!" and then she says, "you can just stay here with me," or "no, you can stay home," or "i will go to school too! i will fly away too!" and sometimes she'll pout or throw herself into my arms, and it breaks my heart. i know kids are resilient, especially at this age, but it's still so sad.
i've been lucky though. when i was really stressed out and anxious, people were so supportive, and i'm grateful to everyone who has let me drone on and on about this, who has given me advice or sent their love.
and for the next month i will be working for a friend, whom i love, who has two of the cutest kids ever, a two year old and two month old. it will be such a happy change, and i think, a lot of fun too.
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