gingerrose

So, I was looking something up in one of my old paper journals for reference, and I started reading back on my main journal from high school. Realizing how different high school relationships are from adult relationships is pretty hilarious. I had one boyfriend that I dated for most of high school, and it's amazing how high school relationships have an entirely different character (even when he was a few years older and was a few months from graduating when we started dating, and I was a sophomore). For one thing, I kept writing entries where I it had been something like 3 days since I'd talked to him on the phone or emailed him, and I was worried about seeming needy if I got in touch from him. 3 days?!?! I don't think I've been out of touch with Noah for 3 days in the entire time that I've known him, and that INCLUDES the period before we were dating! We talk at least once a day now, usually twice and sometimes more, and I am not at all worried that this could be needy. I can't imagine going 3 days without talking to Noah and being worried that I'd look needy if I called him. Also, it's funny how slowly high school relationships move and how little this occurred to me. I started dating my high school boyfriend on January 21 of my sophomore year, and we didn't kiss (even on the cheek!) until March 17. It never crossed my mind that normal people don't spend the first 2 months of their relationship just enjoying holding hands and hugging. We didn't even do that on purpose; we just didn't get around to kissing for a couple months. It just didn't seem like something we needed to do. I think there's a time vortex in high school relationships.

So I was reading back on old LJ entries and I found this quote in a comment I made to Alex.

"I love your brain too. Except when I'm a zombie. Then I love your brains. There's a distinct difference?"

For some reason I found that incredibly hilarious.

It must be Nostalgia Day or something, because I was also looking back at old photos on facebook from Italy and ended up realizing just how much Noah and I have grown since we met in 2008. In the pictures from the airport on our way home, we look like kids. Then I look at pictures from right now, and we look like a grown man and woman! It's crazy to think about how much we've changed in just a couple years. I'm also proud of how much we've grown personality-wise and how many bad things about my life I've let go of. One of the things I was thinking about recently was that, before I was with Noah, I had a tendency to have these weird unwritten standards about relationships that I expected my significant other to just live up to without actually being told about them. I would spend a lot of time silently fuming that whoever I was with didn't do some exact thing that I wanted, while expecting that he was just going to intercept my brain waves or something to find it out--because I certainly wasn't about to tell him or anything. I even did that for the first year and a half or so that Noah and I were together. But after several years in a relationship, I find that I've just let those things go without noticing. Not only am I better at telling Noah when I want something, but those unrealistic expectations just disappeared as well. I don't need them anymore, I guess. Right now every day I spend with Noah, and every time I remember that we've vocalized our intent to stay together no matter what, is enough for me. Knowing someone and accepting them for who they are is better than anything else I could have dreamed up.

Well, Noah will be here in like 2 hours (we're going to New Orleans tomorrow yay!) and I still want to do the dishes, neaten up the living room, finish my book, and watch a movie! Better get cracking!

I think this entry in my personal journal pretty much sums things up:

"These next couple weeks are going to be crazy! This week I have a paper and 2 article critiques to finish for my Teaching Strategies class, and I'm trying to squeeze in all my stuff before Thursday. On Thursday I'm going to work in the afternoon, then Sarah is going to pick me up and drive me to the Gaithersburg Metro station. From there I'll take the Metro to Union Station, and from there it's an 11-hour bus ride to Toronto, where I'll be for Passover! I'll be there until Sunday night, then Noah and I will take another overnight bus to NY, hang out in the city for a couple hours, then I'll take the bus back to Union Station, the Metro to Gaithersburg, and then go back to my parents' house for the night. Then Tuesday morning I'll get up early and get driven straight to work, and that very afternoon I have a presentation due for my Diagnostic-Prescriptive Assessment class. I'll careen through that week until the Saturday, when I'll pack my bags again...to get on a plane to New Orleans! Ack! Considering that the person we're staying with advised us to be ready to go out immediately after getting off the plane, I'd say it's going to be a whirlwind trip. Then I only have a little over a week until I have to take the Special Ed. PRAXIS and serve my first sunday as a Worship Assistant at church, then the next few weeks are a zillion fun spring festivals combined with final projects and my semester ending, then it's my 25th birthday and I'm going to NY to visit some relatives on Long Island and eat at my favorite NY restaurant with Noah and his family, then it's Memorial Day and Halley's wedding, then I'm going to NY again to see Noah's JPPC concert and finally introduce my parents to his parents (it's only been, what, 4 years?), then it's only a matter of weeks before I take my leave of absence from work, drive down to Florida with Noah to have a food road trip and visit his grandmother, and then start my student teaching! Before you know it, I'll be presenting my portfolio, graduating, going back to CHANGE to work, getting a teaching job, and moving on to my next stage!"

tl;dr: My life is busy.

GUYS I'm almost halfway done with the meme. I've been doing it since last year. I promise we'll get through it and I'll try to make them interesting so you're not rolling your eyes whenever you see that I've posted an entry.

Day 13: Somewhere you'd like to move or visit

Well, I'm planning to stay on the East Coast in terms of moving, so that's pretty uninteresting. Let's talk about places I want to visit, instead!

The real answer is "everywhere", but here are a few examples.

Russia: I've been interested in pretty much everything about the country since college, I guess. My freshman history teacher's specialty was Russian history, and it seemed to permeate our all-inclusive history class pretty prominently. It's one of the places I most want to go.

Various places in Southeast Asia: Noah and I are very focused on the culture (and especially the food!) of Southeast Asia, and I think it's long been a dream of ours to go together. We even considered spontaneously going and spending a year teaching in Southeast Asia, but it didn't really happen, which is good because it probably wasn't the right time now.

India: Noah's been a little apprehensive about India until recently, but this is another place I've been interested in since I studied it intensively in college (I took a lot of religion classes, including one particularly centered around Hinduism. Fascinating stuff).

Peru: Really I was thinking I wanted to go to some Latin American country somewhere, and then I thought about it and decided I'd really like to go to Peru. It would be very cool to see some Inca ruins, practice my Spanish, do lots of hiking, and eat delicious Latin American food.

There are so many more, but for some reason they're not coming to mind as readily as they usually do. I think that I haven't thought about cool travels for the future as much lately because there's so much going on that I'm intensively and single-mindedly focused on getting through each day (which is how I suddenly didn't notice several months going by, and then woke up and it was March and I don't know how that happened). I'm definitely in that last-gasp phase of grad school where you're working hard and trying to get through things and trying to get productivity out of every minute of the day. I can't wear myself out though, because up next is student teaching and that will be even harder work! Luckily I'm really close to finishing everything I need to do for right now, so maybe soon I can relax a little more.

As a final note, I was watching Donizetti's La Fille du Regiment this evening and didn't like it, even though it was a good performance. The other day I watched Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and didn't like it (I know, lots of people love it, it was too silly for me okay) even though it was a GREAT performance (I finished watching it because Anna Netrebko was, well, Anna Netrebko). I've decided I'm probably just not much of a fan of straight-up comic operas. I have 3 categories of opera I really like:

1. Straight-up drama (Otello, La Traviata, other things that are also like that but not by Verdi)

2. Dark comedy (my favorite opera, Don Giovanni, fits well into this category. It's hilarious, but the main character gets carried down to Hell in the end--doesn't get much more "dark comedy" than that.

3. Crazy modern stuff. 'Nuff said.

By which I mean, here's the meme entry I intended to do yesterday. :-P

Day 12: Bullet your whole day

I used to do this with my sister, where you write down everything you did that day, so I was already familiar with this! It's a lot harder, however, when you have a job where you're always on the go. Trying to write down everything I did while chasing clients around and stuff is pretty hilarious! Anyway, here's my day from way back on February 7.

8:00am Alarm goes off. Had a bit of a restless night with weird dreams and nightmares. Ed. notes: just like today! Was a little chilly last night, but now that it's time to get up the bed is suddenly warm and cozy.

8:09 After picking out clothes (jeans, cream-colored shirt with hearts on it, Snoopy sweatshirt) I head into the shower. I've been showering in the morning more often these days. I have to was my hair later, so this one will be quick.

8:25 It took me 16 minutes to shower, get dressed, and do my hair! It would have been shorter, but I had a hard time getting out of the shower today.

8:32 Finish making my go-to breakfast-- some bread with olive oil, and a glass of water. My favorite is oatmeal, but I was lazy this morning.

8:34 Check email, facebook, lj, webcomics.

8:44 Pack up stuff for work/class.

8:51 After putting lotion on my woefully dry skin, it's off to work. Proof of my awesome "commute": this is when I start walking...

8:59 and this is when I get inside. And it only took that long because I had to go back and get something.

9:03 While putting away my food I run into my friend/coworker/former roommate. She was talking about being recently sick with the stomach flu, which, while unfortunate, turned into a rather hilarious story.

9:06 Didn't get to check to see if my daytime 1:1, G., is here yet because I spontaneously started dancing with another client. Oh, my job.

9:10 G. was, in fact, here. I help him get his outerwear off.

9:25 After several detours, get G. out of his wheelchair and into his stander to stretch his legs.

9:33 The pledge of allegiance is over and I go to fill up my water bottle.

9:35 We check the weather and talk for awhile about winter sports.

11:15 Lots of time goes by in which we're introduced to a new client and I take G. to the bathroom. We continue doing our daily exercises.

12:10 More time goes by. I finish exercises, G.'s mom arrives and we eat lunch together. I have lentil soup and pasta, and my coworker gives me half a Reuben sandwich as a surprise! Then we head down to visit another area and to check our mail.

12:44 We head in to the pool!

2:37 Got in the pool, then got changed, had a drink, and got a picture from a recent Chinese New Year parade we participated in. Now I get on the bus with my other 1:1, J.!

3:23 I finish discharging everyone on the bus route and leave J. with one of the people who does my 1:1 job on the days I have class. The bus drops me off at the college and I check email, facebook, and lj in the library.

3:44 I work on some assignments for tonight's class--choosing and rating 4 assessments from a list of ones I could give a student, and writing questions on Post-It notes for a guest speaker tonight.

3:58 Tonight's work completed, I go upstairs and read The New York Times.

4:40 Head over to class after dropping a yoga DVD into the library return--it was due soon.

4:52 Class starts! We have a presenter today talking about special ed. law.

6:30 Class goes on break and I do a word find to decompress.

6:35 Break is over, we move on to more presentation and a brief instruction for next week.

7:20 Class is over! I start my walk home.

7:50 Home, yay! I check email/facebook/lj and take a hair-washing shower.

8:24 I call my sister and fix dinner (stuffed cabbage/daal/cauliflower).

9:10 Settle down to watch an episode from season 1 of Battlestar Galactica.

9:30 Paused to talk to Noah!

9:55 Aaaaaand, back to BSG.

10:23 I decide to be a good American and watch the State of the Union address, very belatedly. I'm a good American, not a prompt one.

11:35 I read an article for tomorrow's class, then brush my teeth and get ready for bed.

12:03 Bedtime!

So I totally did the Day 12 portion of the meme without realizing that I hadn't done the Day 11 portion yet. Luckily, I hadn't gotten around to posting it yet. So let's backtrack!


Day 11: Put your iPod on shuffle and write 10 songs that pop up.

Let's do this with my iTunes! Here were the first 10 songs:

1. "Collide", Howie Day
2. A song from Lost & Found's solo piano album, "Just George". I couldn't find the track listing online. It's, uh, track 4?
3. A song by a group called Medieval Baebes that Alex and I saw at RennFaire about...5 years ago? He bought the cd and I stole it from him. I didn't label these very well when I was putting them on Stanley, my old computer, so I don't know the title of this either--it's track 12, if you're wondering.
4. The brilliant University of Georgia a cappella version of Ben Folds' "You Don't Know Me"
5. Variation 16 from Disc 2 of Glenn Gould's performances of Bach's Goldberg Variations.
6. "Dante's Prayer", Loreena McKennitt
7. "So Sally Can Wait", Oasis. This is from a breakup mix CD that Gina made for me freshman year of college.
8. "Work Your Way Out", Ani DiFranco
9. "The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!'" by Sufjan Stevens. Of course iTunes chooses a song with the longest title ever.
10. Another song from that Medieval Baebes CD.

Apparently iTunes chooses the most random songs ever when on shuffle, because those are really bizarre and not at all representative of the music I have on there. My iTunes also goes through weird fixations--there was one time when I put it on shuffle and it played nothing but The Beatles in various combinations.

Hopefully I'll update tomorrow with what I actually had planned for today!

Today started out a whirlwind, stressful day. This weekend my landlord lost a rather large rent check, and with the holiday my bank was closed and there was no way to get in touch with them to stop payment on the check and flag my account just in case fraudulent activity occurred. So this morning I had to start my day right out the gate with frantic phone calls to the bank to get the stop payment sorted out (luckily, it wasn't very difficult). Then once I got to work, I had to get ahold of one of my supervisors to talk about a minor issue that, while not serious, was still a knot that had to be figured out. Thankfully, that got solved quickly as well. Everything seemed like it was rush rush rush busy busy busy all day, and then I got home and watched some mindless Netflix TV and drank a beer and took a short nap, and when I woke up I was suddenly feeling completely centered. It was like my world just completely slowed down. Since I start an even crazier schedule than usual next week (classes 2 evenings a week and work the other 3 evenings, plus my usual 5 days/week of daytime work), which will leave me consistently not seeing my house until at least 8 or 8:30pm every weekday, stress relief is important this week, and finally feeling like my world is moving slower really helps with that. I feel like I can actually enjoy all the things I'm doing, instead of trying to speed through them so I can pack more in.

Why don't we end with another day of the meme? :-)

Day 10: Discuss your first love and first kiss

Let's start with the first kiss, since that usually comes before the first love and is also a shorter story.

My first boyfriend's name was Scott. I think we started dating when I was 14? a freshman in high school, sometime in May. I can't remember what age I was about to turn, for some reason. Scott was a couple grades older and was one of the many older friends I was suddenly able to have now that I was in high school (middle school isn't particularly good about introducing kids to people in other grades). He asked me out backstage right before the performance of Crazy for You we were both cast in, while I wore a rather unfortunate pink dress with green butterflies on it and the entire female portion of the show's cast eavesdropped from inside the girl's dressing room (true story. The entire room erupted into girlish screaming when I agreed to go on a date with him, and he was terribly embarrassed). We didn't kiss until a couple days later, when we went to the traditional drama club cast party at IHOP. Scott was tired and was resting with his head in my lap, and we kissed. That's honestly all I remember about that. We dated for about a month and a half and then let it peter off, though we didn't actually break up for real until about 3 months later when we came back from summer break, and at that point I was just wondering when he was going to get around to doing it and wasn't particularly upset.

Needless to say, Scott was not my first love. Sure, I told him I loved him when we were together, because he said it to me and I didn't want to be rude or anything, and anyway I had no idea what really loving someone was like. My first love came sometime the next year, when I started dating Mike. We were together for a year and a half before we broke up the summer before my senior year, and it was the first time I really knew what it was like to fall in love with someone. I was kind of vaguely aware that Mike was dealing with a lot of things that were way out of my depth, but I was willing to be completely self-sacrificing because I thought that's what you did when you loved someone. He broke up with me when he left for the military, and I had always said I would never give up on him, but in my heart I had resigned even though I didn't give up trying to achieve that closeness that it was clear to everyone else I was never going to have with him. I think that love taught me that it really is a two-way street--you can help someone break down the barriers they've set up, but you can't do it alone. I could only pretend to be really close to Mike because there was only so far he would let me in, and if there was no willingness to meet me halfway, there wasn't going to be any success.

I feel like with each subsequent relationship since Mike, I've refined my love a little more and learned to love a little better. The person I dated after Mike was a wonderful person. We dated for 6 months until it became clear that we shouldn't be dating. We both pretended that we didn't care, but we did. Luckily we took that closeness we were trying to express romantically and instead fashioned it into what turned out to be one of my closest friendships. So that relationship taught me the difference between caring about someone deeply and feeling that draw to them personally, and being romantically compatible with them.

The most important thing I learned about love from Alex was that the wonderful, passionate love we had took a level of upkeep that was hard for me to sustain. It was the kind of love I'd thought was the epitome of love, the kind of love I'd been trying to attain with every other person I'd been with so far. It was the kind of lover I thought I was. But being in that relationship for 2 years made me realize that this wasn't the right kind of love for me. If it makes any sense, I just got so tired from loving Alex. More often than not I preferred to sleep alone than sleep with Alex because at the end of the day I loved him so much that I was exhausted. Sometimes I wouldn't be up to hanging out because it was taking so much pure energy to love Alex with every waking moment. I didn't have to try to love him, and it wasn't necessarily difficult, but waking up every day and having that love with me took more out of me than I realized. Had I been more skilled in how to approach love, I could have learned how to rein that in and our relationship would have been better for it. But I wasn't ready then, and seeing how much better of a person Alex is now that we're just friends made me realize that I made the right decision.

All I can say about Noah is that I feel more whole when I am with him because I can see a mirror of myself through him, and when I look in that mirror I see the person I've always wanted to be. When I look at him I realize that every single moment and experience of his life up to this moment has culminated into the living, breathing human being with me today, and it's like a microcosm of the whole world right in front of me. It is beautiful, and I am awed. And really, that-that-is what I had been looking for the whole time.

Finally on to meme day 9! At least I'm getting slightly better at this...

Day 09: How you hope your future will be like

"How you hope your future will be like"? What? I just copied it the same way it was written, believe me. But as to WHAT I hope my future will be like...

I'm hoping for mostly an indefinite continuation of all the things that make my life wonderful right now. Not that I'm hoping for my life to always go on exactly like it is right now, but the things that make my life so good are the things I'm hoping will make my life good forever.

Things that make my life so good right now (and how I hope they'll continue):

-I work with people with disabilities in a job that is super fulfilling and only feels like work a small percentage of the time. I hope that I will keep working with people with disabilities in some way, as a teacher at least for part of the time and maybe in some other way later.

-I have a wonderful Noah who is my partner and makes me so happy. I hope that I will always have a wonderful Noah.

-I see my family a lot, and they are all healthy and happy. I hope I get lots more of these family times.

-I'm starting to simplify my life and make sure that I'm not using more than I need, and that everything I have is something I need. I want to not get too overwhelmed with things and keep my life in perspective.

-My health, though worse than it was last year, is still excellent. I am very invested in making sure it stays that way, and I hope my health will always be good.

-I am part of a community where I have friends and places where I am known and comfortable activities to be involved in. I also have friends all over the country (and at least partially all over the world, now that I think of it) and I want to always be able to have a community and be able to be in touch with my friends, even the far-flung ones.

And that's pretty much how I would like my future to be!

Right now I'm intermittently watching the Sugar Bowl Michigan/Virginia Tech game while doing various other things. I had a terrific New Years at a CTY reunion with great people, and I'm working long hours at work (9-9 on Wednesdays for the next couple weeks, and picking up various hours here and there), and classes start again in a couple weeks. I'm tired, but happy. Though I am very nervous because I have a blood draw on Monday and I have a serious phobia of needles (my sister described it as "you're likely to cry, and hyperventilate"), but Noah will be in the doctor's office with me so maybe that will make it a little better. But I have an anxious feeling in my stomach when I think about it.

Hello everyone! Did you have a wonderful holiday? I know I did! I made latkes for Hanukkah (all by myself, which was a little sad, but I still felt cool) and then Noah and I went to my parents' house for Christmas. It was all very delightful. For Christmas I asked my parents to get me primarily practical things, since I'm in the process of paring down my non-practical stuff and because I suddenly have this whole place to myself that I need to fill with basic necessities. My parents did an even more spectacular job with the gift-giving than usual--I would say they were 99.999...% effective this year. Some highlights:

-a waffle iron! Some of you may be familiar with my insatiable craving for waffles. This waffle iron will be my best friend.
-arm warmers! Also my best friends.
-a beautiful quilt for my bed (which is currently still an air mattress on the floor--don't even get me started on the one horrendous mattress-shopping experience I've had so far, which has permanently temporarily put me off trying again to find a real mattress and boxspring).
-several cookbooks I'd been lusting after
-WALL-E on DVD. GUYS.

Many of my family and friends have also given me cookies and chocolate to take home. This has resulted in me having a fridge that contains one Tupperware container of bean soup, and the entire rest of the fridge is full of dessert. Oh dear.

Noah's gift was the most surprising, since he went out and replaced my aging, slightly sad 6-year-old Mac with a used but stunning 2009 Macbook!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I still haven't found the perfect name for it, a name that encompasses both how crazy awesome it is but also hints at the reliability and longevity I'm hoping it will have. Maybe I should just name it Gandalf. :-P

All of these weren't the best Christmas gift I received this year, though. Let me set the scene for what the best one is.

At my work, there's a client who isn't really verbal but mostly just sits by herself and doesn't interact with anyone. She's kind of OCD, and she likes to put together these block things. A lot of times she likes staff to help her, and she expresses this by taking one of the blocks and firmly pressing it into your hand. Last Thursday I was standing talking to another staff member, and this client comes up to me with a puzzle piece. Instead of pressing it into my hand, she looked straight at me, held it out, and said. "Florence."

I was stunned. I looked at the staff standing next to me, who was also stunned. "Did she just say 'Florence'?", she said. I later talked to the instructor in our area, who said that in all her years of working here she'd only ever heard her say one other word, and it was something not very meaningful related to her toys or something. So this is only the second word we've ever heard her say, and it's my name. I wish I could have recorded it so I could play it back forever. I never thought that hearing the sound of my own name would be the most amazing thing that could happen to me, but it totally is. I know that for a lot of people who care deeply about clients with severe disabilities, you daydream about them being able to say your name. Communication means the world to you. When I worked at Longview I used to dream at night that my nonverbal clients could talk to me. So I'm overwhelmed with the honor of the connection I have made just by being there for someone.

Anyway, all this talking and I haven't even gotten to the meme! Luckily, it's a short one tonight.

Day 08: A moment you felt most satisfied with your life.

I don't know what the moment was that I felt MOST satisfied with my life, but I definitely can remember distinct moments when I've realized that my life is so perfect. One of the biggest is that, before I got my current daytime 1:1 job, I used to sub for the organization and would go out every morning and help clients get off the buses and into their areas for the day. Every day, seeing their faces would remind me that all was right with the world. I knew that no matter what happened with them before they got here, and no matter what was going to happen with them today, right now seeing their faces makes me so happy. I don't get to do that anymore because I have a specific 1:1 I have to take care of, but I still remember that fondly.

Tonight I unpacked two boxes of stuff that my mom gave me when I moved into my current home. For basically my entire life, my mom has been packing boxes full of stuff that belongs to me, that she planned to give me when I was grown up and settled enough to use it. The fact that I'm going through these boxes now means that I am at least partially grown up and settled, which is a scary thought.

Part of this process is deciding what I want to keep and what I don't, and that's hard for me. I'm nowhere near being a hoarder, but I know that every single item in all these boxes has some kind of special significance either for me or for someone in my family. It's hard for me to let any of those things go because I feel like part of me still needs them, even if it was a part of me that looked at that Beanie Baby every day in middle school and never really noticed or loved it but it was part of my consciousness anyway. Reminding myself that someone else will find that stuffed animal at Goodwill and love it is something I have to do frequently when my childhood things have to move to a different home. I had so many toys growing up, and I only want to keep the ones that I loved the best or that I think my future children would love. Obviously I can't know what they'll love because they're not born yet, but I can't keep everything and I know there are kids right now who could love some of these things in the meantime.

One thing I am keeping is all the "grown-up" things my mom gave me, like dishes and things of that sort. I've found a huge wealth of dinnerware in these boxes, and I know I will never lack for those things because the things I have now will probably last me a lifetime, barring some kind of natural disaster or kitchen-related robbery. Some things made me smile because I grew up with them--I was touched when I pulled out that set of plain black salad bowls that we used to eat out of every day, because my mom wants me to have them now. There was a birthday plate that I have no recollection of getting but I guess is mine. There are things that belonged to my parents and I have no memory of them, but I will continue to use them because they have meaning to my family somehow.

What really strikes me is the caring that I feel when I open these boxes. I can see in them that my mom wanted to give me things that I would need to start my own life and my own family. My mom is famously protective of me, but by giving me these things I could see her giving me the go-ahead to start a life of my own with the knowledge that I will always have enough of everything that I need. I can give away so many small things that others could use more, and still have everything in abundance. Dealing with these things is such a great gift that it scares me knowing that these are no longer sitting in boxes waiting for me to deal with them. I'm using them now. It's silly that mugs and bowls, stuffed dogs and old jewelry, can make me realize that I'm finally an adult, but that seems to be what has happened.