Protected: Last Day for Drama
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The Pineapple Post
I’m sitting at Panera right now after eating a delicious egg sandwich, paid for by my creativity. Remember the logo work I did for my friend Jason’s aquarium business? Well this week while having dinner to celebrate Jason’s birthday, him and his wife Tina gave me three gift cards as appreciation. One for Panera, one for iTunes, and one for Barnes and Noble. Each $50. It really was too much, and I wasn’t expecting it all. This had Tina written all over it. Tina is one of the kindest and most genuine people that I know, and Jason is great too. I feel lucky to have friends like them. I actually had a lot of fun making the logo so I didn’t want or except anything in return. But nonetheless, I accepted the gift cards since it made them so happy to give them to me.
So for Jason’s birthday, me and the rest of the birthday crew (Pete, Kerry, Rox, Mike, and Paula) helped Jason and Tina celebrate at this restaurant near my house called Tao Asian Fusion. It’s in the place of an old Applebees, but renovated just enough to make you forget that’s what it used to be. I had never been there before and I felt rather indifferent about it when I found out that was where we would be going. Well it turned out to be so incredibly delicious that I can’t wait to go back. It dawned on me that for the past year or maybe even two, I’ve only been having Panda Express (ugh) and PF Changs/Pei Wei. My last Chinese food experience was from Pei Wei and it was nearly inedible. Asian Fusion’s food was so much better that I probably looked like an idiot for how much I kept complimenting it.
Everyone ordered something different and we shared it all. I didn’t partake in the sushi, but that’s to be expected since I’m not into things that swim. I did though try everyone else’s dish and it was so good. At the end of the meal they brought out these pineapple slices. I’m not kidding, it as the best pineapple I think I’ve ever had.
So if you haven’t caught on, the meal was fantastic. The company was also really great. I have a lot of fun with those folks and I’m glad that I’ve finally fit myself into their group properly.
Besides that, this week has been busy, yet slow. I went to a scrapbooking event last night where we made a little Christmas 8×8 album that we can add pictures to later. That was all right.
My sister and I were supposed to go see Oasis and Ryan Adams, but due to combination of events (big snowstorm, Marissa up against some hard deadlines for school, and me freaking out about my cat meowing at nothing) we ended up ditching the show. Instead, I made us some of my grandma’s rice and I helped her with an InDesign project for her News Editing class. We also watched Harry Potter.
My sister’s boyfriend is kind of nerdy (in the best of ways), and loves all that kind of stuff (Harry Potter, Star Wars, etc). I absolutely adore this about him. I couldn’t be more thrilled that my sister is with a guy who likes this stuff, because it’s beginning to rub off on her a bit. It’s nice to have one other person in my family who can, no matter how little, appreciate it.
So this weekend I’m going to do the rest of my Christmas shopping, decorate my house for Christmas and do some reading. Every year I say that I’m going to read Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. I’d like to try and accomplish that this time around.
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Resolutions Check In
As the end of this year approaches, I thought I would check in with my resolutions and see how I’ve done. They were:
1. Read More
2. Stay In Touch
3. Eat Healthier and Friendlier
4. Become More Spiritual
5. Worry Less About My Love Life
I would say that overall I have done quite well, considering I usually break my resolutions. For all five, I could totally do more and improve.
I did read more this year than last year, especially lately. In the past couple of months I have been able to turn off my television and my computer, put on some music and read. I had a hard time with that when I first moved in. I felt like I always had to have the TV on for company and kind of to feel safe. Silence was eery to me, and so was just listening to music. I’ve made great strides in this department these past weeks. I’m sort of on a reading kick right now, so I want to keep that up.
Staying in touch has been inconsistent. I’m quiet and private and I dread phone calls. I need to continue working in this area.
Eating healthier and friendlier was inconsistent too. But I do believe that I’ve become a much better cook this year and know how to make better choices about food and about ingredients.
Spirituality is where I’ve lacked the most. I have made no improvements in this area. Sure I’m spiritual, but I haven’t spent any time on it in activity or reflection. Somehow I’m all right with that and I don’t know if that would make next year’s list.
Finally, my love life. This was probably my biggest area of improvement. I have definitely just been going with the flow. Granted I have made little demonstrative progress, but inside I am free from it and that’s what matters. What happens, happens.
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Guilty Pleasures
Yesterday was a memorable day.
It all began with a big snowstorm. I was delighted when I awoke to a snowy landscape and a coolness outside of my bed. I actually woke up around 5 a.m. and just enjoyed my morning. I watched some TV and played on my iPhone before getting ready to leave.
On his way to pick me up for work, Mike called to tell me that he had gone to the dry cleaner to drop off some clothes. While on the phone with him he starting yelling “FUCK! FUCK!” and then I could hear his daughter screaming in the background (we take her to school three days a week). Then he told me he had to go and hung up. Sure enough he got into an accident into the parking lot when he couldn’t stop his car from hitting a car that was pulling out of it’s parking space. Did I say car? I meant a huge freaking truck, which suffered no damage. Mike’s car on the other hand has direct damage to the hood and front bumper. Nothing too serious, but it will need some work nonetheless. The day did not start off so good.
Driving in was incredibly stressful to say the least, but we got Erica to school safely and somehow on time.
I had a whole slew of meetings scheduled that ended up being canceled for one reason or another. So I got to stay on campus all day, which was a nice thing. I ended up watching “Becoming Jane” while working. What a fantastic movie. It’s the story of Jane Austen, and although her life in some ways mimicked that of her most beloved character Elizabeth Bennett of Pride and Prejudice, it didn’t have the same happy outcome. Jane never did marry, and according to the movie she at one point tried to run away with her forbidden love but stopped. At the start of their journey she realized that he would lose everything by doing this and that the family he supported back home would lose his allowance when his eccentric uncle would immediately cut him off since he disapproved of this match so much. Realizing this, she did the right thing and let him go. He was heart broken, but she knew that it was the best thing to do. Real life doesn’t always have the happy ending. So instead she gave her characters everything they really wanted in her tales. In the movie she tells a former suitor her plan for her characters, “My characters shall have, after a little trouble, all that they desire.” To which he later replied “the good do not always come to good ends. It is a truth universally acknowledged.” Meaning that in reality a good person doesn’t always get their happy ending.
She also knew that the imagination is a very powerful thing and that the imagination is almost enough to replace the real thing if exercised properly. I could relate to that quite well. Like I said, it was a beautiful movie and really enjoyable to watch.
After work Mike and I went to Borders. I had decided that I wasn’t going to wait anymore to read Breaking Dawn. Well, more like I wasn’t going to wait anymore to have it. I was still hesitant to pick it up and read it, but I at least wanted to have it in my possession. When we entered Borders there was an author there promoting her book The Trouble with the Alphabet. Her husband approached Mike and I to talk to us about the book. We met the author and talked at great length about her book. The premise of her book is about troubled countries around the world and the human rights of children. For each letter there is a country that she describes with a portrait of a child along with information about how to help. It is a beautiful big book and her artwork is fantastic. The letter her husband happened to flip to was L, which was for Lebanon. I told them that I was Lebanese and intrigued by all this. Well after learning about it, I had to buy it. It was most definitely random, but over all very rewarding.
I felt almost childish and stupid picking up Breaking Dawn after the conversation I had just had. It was like going from a vegan restaurant right to a greasy fast food joint. I shook off the strange guilt I was feeling and just accepted the fact that this series of books is a once in a lifetime kind of thing that makes life fun and provides a beautiful place for my imagination to wander off to.
War and hunger and devastation is sometimes too overwhelming for me to think about. I’ve struggled in the past with carrying the weight of the world’s problems on my shoulders. For a time I believed that I deserved no sense of happiness when the world around my protective bubble (or shall I say border) suffered. I was afraid that I could never really enjoy all of my gifts and luck for living in this great country because the guilt would overwhelm me. I was afraid that I would spend everyday wishing I could do more and basically never really feeling like I deserved anything that was provided to me. Why me? How did I get so lucky to be born here, to grow up wealthy, to be so loved and protected and well fed?
This began when I was 18 years old and I had hard time shaking it off for the next three years. There was even a point when I seriously considered becoming a nun back then. Seriously. I don’t tell a lot of people that. Sadly for all that worry and all that trouble, I never really did anything about it. Sure, I was concerned about issues. I was in Amnesty International for a short bit, and thought a lot about it. But I never really made a difference.
My grandfather who I was very close with died and I pushed all of that grief down. I felt I had no right to it. Then an acquaintance of mine died a year later. I had gone through confirmation with her at my church. She had cystic fibrosis. Getting confirmed was very important to her, because I think she knew that she wasn’t meant to live much longer. When she died, my priest called to tell me about it and suggested that we go together to the funeral that was at a different church. I didn’t react and I didn’t go with him. I pushed it further down, trying to make room for it like one does with a trash can full of trash. I was full of feelings that I had been ignoring for two years. All because I didn’t feel worthy of feeling. How stupid. I can clearly see now it was all an excuse. An excuse to avoid my problems and an excuse not to feel because I was afraid.
I had, as Mike calls it, my “QE2″ moment. He calls me QE2 because of the movie “The Queen.” The moment is when Queen Elizabeth, a very stoic and collected woman, finally breaks down and cries over the sight of a beautiful stag while stranded in the countryside. It doesn’t last long, but it’s always there below the surface for her and for me alike. He thinks I’m just like her.
When it reached it’s boiling point, I somehow got over whatever sense of martyrdom I had apparently picked up and just got over it. I grew up and accepted this gift and my destiny. I began to feel and feel and feel. And I took advantage of life’s guilty pleasures.
So I realized that I couldn’t sink back into that philosophy again. And then the thought occurred to me that maybe these children in desperate countries need their own version of Twilight. Maybe that’s what would make them happy. A grand distraction and a way to escape their troubles. Their own guilty pleasure, without the guilt.
I went home happy after Borders and got in my bed so I could warm up a bit. I started reading. And then stopped a few chapters in. I went downstairs to have a bowl of cereal and watch TV. I ended up watching “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2,” which I had rented. That was highly enjoyable, bur right there in the middle of it I picked up my phone and called my mom.
It was something that I needed to do obviously. I had called my mom on Thanksgiving and left her a message to wish her a happy holiday and tell her that I loved her. She and I were still in a very delicate place. So then she called me back and left a similar message. A week passed and yesterday she called my work phone. I sat here paralyzed staring at the number on my display. It’s not that I didn’t want to talk to her, I just didn’t know how to talk to her. She’s a complex person. I avoided the red light on my phone all day and it wasn’t until we were driving home that I told Mike about it. He told me to listen to it on speaker so we both could hear it. That helped me get the courage to do it. So I did it and it was actually just a nice message saying hi.
So like I said before, just in a bizarre instant last night I picked up the phone and called her. I didn’t put any thought into whatsoever. She answered and then we talked. We actually avoided most discussion surrounding our fight, which led me to believe that she had a lot of regrets about it too. Otherwise, she would drive an apology out of me and make me feel bad. So we kept it kind of light. She told me in great detail about the explosion that happened near her store and then about her friend who died days later behind her store when the truck he was working on collapsed on his chest. She’s had a bad month to say the least. I told her about what I’ve been up to and that was that. We’re back on good terms apparently. It’s a relief. My sister and her have also made up, so that’s good. I’m not sure about my brother.
So after the chat I went back to watching my movie. It was a nice movie and I’m glad they made a sequel. I had read the second book, but the movie didn’t really match that. It had some elements of it, but it seemed more a collection of all the books into one nice story. It was already 11:15 or so when it ended. I went up stairs and read more of Breaking Dawn. I’m trying to really enjoy it and read it slowly. It only has 750 pages. Before I knew it, I had read 135 pages. It just moves too fast. I shut that down at like 12:15 and went to sleep. I ended up sleeping so well that I didn’t move all night long. I woke six hours later in the same position and felt completely rested and chipper.
I don’t know why I’ve gone into so much detail about my day, but it all seemed significant for some reason. I’m very aware of the present these days. I sort of feel like I have no future. I don’t mean that in an ominous way, just that I don’t really have any plans and so I’m intrigued with what each day brings. As great as I’m feeling right now, my evening is a total mystery.
On the weight loss note, I have met my first goal of 2% (3% to be exact), so that means I get a hair cut. Hooray!
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About Me
Hi! I'm Rochelle. Welcome to my blog. This is a space that’s almost like a scrapbook, a little bit of a rant room, a gallery of creative work, and a dash of nonsense. My life is not terribly exciting but I have a lot of creative energy that’s got to be focused somewhere.
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:-)
the guy in the back omg
I wish.
