updates

The girl I mentioned a few posts back as the girl I thought I could develop a crush on has an unfortunate habit of using IM speak in text messages. U know that a relationship with a person like that can only go so far. Still I flirted gamely with her and wondered why even with the spring thaw my interest in womenz has been holding steady at zero since last July.

On Friday, I won a t-shirt at a local bar that holds turtle races (it is exactly what it sounds like) for having a ticket for the turtle that came in dead last. Her name was Jolanda. I ruined my voice screaming "MOVE JOLANDA!!! MOVE!!!"

On Saturday my practice with the doo wop band was canceled when the two other members, who are married, got in a little marital spat. I said, "Hm, I don't mind if you just drop me off at home!" when they picked me up bickering in the Yaris.  Ten minutes and a trip around the block later, I was back at my front door! Oh dear, married bandmates! We shall see how long this experiment lasts for!

I met a new awesome person this weekend (thanks SB for the friend connection) who is both incredibly accomplished and incredibly modest - she sits attentively through your stories of piddling heartbreaks and very chance accidental meetings with Natalie Portman and never says a word about 1) the fucking Emmy she's won, 2) having seen Ashley Judd peeing, 3) hanging out with Oprah at the gym. I was sort of bowled over by this person's charisma a.k.a. ability to make you feel way more interesting than you actually are. New Awesome Person also had second row center (HFS!) seats to the Chazz Palminteri one-man show that is running in Chicago this week because of her connection to Oprah, and she offered me the second seat. Wowza! BFF tells me not to blow it with this potential friend by being too desperate-for-friends seeming. Thanks, BFF! I'll try!

It was 65 lovely degrees in Chicago yesterday and I sat immobile in the sun for two hours waiting for the gelato I'd eaten to finish triggering serotonin transmissions in my brain. 

Today I left the house only to walk to a nearby fruit market with Olympia and buy $.98/quart of WTF SO CHEAP SO RIPE strawberries. Olympia is a policy analyst and she was working on a paper this weekend, and I am a clerk and I was working on an opinion this weekend, so we set up our apartment like a library and I studied at the kitchen table while she studied at her desk. We shuffled around each other making tea and eating toast, and then every hour or so we'd take breaks to chatter. This went on for twelve hours. It felt kind of like college! I was going to write graffiti on the kitchen table! I made her strawberry and Nutella crepes at 6pm and then she made me chicken curry at 11pm for dinner. I really like my new roommate, come to Chicago and meet her, she's so great!

Today LF told me that she had fallen in love for the first time in six to seven years! With a yogi! And then she described in great detail the four steps of nonviolent communication, and confessed her secret love of self-help books. But do you know what? It shouldn't be a secret! I read some self-help books this year! And I think I am finally old enough to nod vigorously at instead of rolling my eyes at the touchy-feely lovey-dovey. Because all the aphorisms are true! Your life is too short and precious to tolerate mean people in it; it's best to communicate in "I feel" statements rather than snapping and yelling; being nice to a person makes that person and you feel better; God is love, etc. These lessons are simple and universal and I am embarrassed to admit that it wasn't until this year, these past six months of freezing cold lonely sadness, that I really started to learn them! I should thank that stupid fucking bitch for dumping my ass because I think it's made me into a kinder person. That wasn't meant to be so ironic!!!