maybe they're not so different?
For a few days now, I've had the WikiHow article on "How to Get Over a Broken Heart" tabbed open in Mozilla (don't read too much, if anything, into this), but haven't gotten around to reading it. This morning, I was closing out my massive queue of tabs, and as I was clicking by, saw one in the familiar WikiHow format. I decided to skim for a second. The first thing to catch my eye?
Step 9: Take acetaminophen for pain.?!
Skimming back up:
Step 10: Allow blisters to break on their own.
My god. Not only could you write a book about everything I didn't know about heartbreak, but apparently someone already started to!
My confused amazement was broken when I realized that apparently at some point over the past few days, I closed the "how to get over a broken heart"icle and had looked up how to treat second- and third-degree burns.
Happy Thanksgiving. There are many things I'm thankful for (oh, verily), and hope the same is true of you.
my friends are my friends because lord help me if they were my enemies
They all know too much. Witness:
K: if i ever go mad. and i mean good and mad -- none of this modern "vague discontent" bullshit. i hope my madness manifests itself in the firm and unshaking belief that i am a character in a jeeves & wooster story
K: in the happy event that such a fate befalls me, then when you hear of my fall from grace, you can just nod sagely and remark: "it is no great tragedy."
J: mmhmm. this is well known in kat's inner circle
J: (could you see me nodding sagely even as i said that?)
What a weird-ass missive for him to take so well in stride. Perhaps I have made myself too transparent. Or perhaps everyone I know is just plain old wonderful.
Too bad I won't remember any of the bastards when I'm completely out of my mind and happily dribbling tea down my chin in my own private Drone's Club.
literally literally literally not one single word of this is about what it seems to be about
So I'll never forget the day I discovered "Flight of the Conchords." It was just before their HBO show, before the advertising was really ramped up, and almost nobody on campus had heard of them. A girl in one of my writing classes played me one of their videos ("Business Time") and I laughed so hard it hurt. And after class I walked in the gorgeous spring sunshine to J's room -- the tiny single in Roble that, due to various circumstances, we basically lived in together, even though it was almost too small for even one person and we were well out of the honeymoon phase so things got fraught -- and I broke into his room even though he had classes straight up 'til dinner, and I opened my laptop and YouTube searched Flight of the Conchords.
I watched every. single. video. I watched them all multiple times, and each one made me laugh afresh. I was literally vibrating with anticipation of watching J light up the same way while we watched them together. "Get home soon!" I texted him. "I'm going to change your life."
And when he got home, I played him every. single. video. and we were both so delighted and so tickled by the humor that we could hardly believe our good fortune to be young and happy and in love in SUCH A FUCKING WONDERFUL UNIVERSE as the one in which something as amazing and unprecedented as the FotC comedy special could be aired.
We watched them endlessly. We quoted them. We sang them together, him harmonizing with my terrible voice and jesus even though there were wavers here and there, we were so in love.
We lived together in Redmond that summer, because of his internship, and made our first run at being real grown-ups in an adorable little apartment that didn't get much natural sunlight. But the sunlight it got? Mattered. We set up our laptops on the coffee table and watched the videos and started watching the HBO show and I surprised him with tickets for us to see them live. The things I remember most about that summer are occasionally grabbing his hand and running to the bedroom of our tiny, impersonal temporary apartment, and Flight of the Conchords, constantly.
Not gradually but really all at once, then, the show stopped being funny. We'd heard the songs too many times or too many bad versions. Everyone else had heard of our band and was quoting them.
The other thing that, of course, happened, wasn't all at once. So don't think I'm trying to pull some neat metaphor here, or some cloying little switcharoo. We were together for years after that summer, and if I can trust myself to remember things as they actually were, I think we were happy for a good portion of those years.
I dunno. There's not really a connection between these things, except occasionally, like tonight, I'll search for the old videos and watch them, trying to make them as funny or as wonderful as they were the first time. All the memories and even the physical sensations of the joy and anticipation are there: I laugh, my chest kind of tightens a little, contented sigh. But it isn't the first time and it will never be the first time and I guess what I'm saying is every time you do this fucking shit you can still never go back and you are wearing the tape thin in your emotional VCR and if you're not careful one day you'll have overplayed all these emotional responses of happier times and you won't even be able to conjure up facsimiles at will, so maybe just be be a bit more strategic with the heavy-duty nostalgia cues? Is all I'm saying.
points of light
Whenever I get a headache -- a really soul-crushing one -- and am not in a position to immediately swallow like seven Advil and sink into bed, I spread out my hand and clutch the top of my head like a movie monster about to rip out the frontal lobe, skull and all. Then I focus on the pain at the point of connection on each of my five fingers, to distract myself from the heavier, all-pervasive throb everywhere else. It helps a little bit.
When I don't have the luxury of looking like I'm attempting to claw myself to death (geez, headaches, inconvenient much?), I'll choose some other sensation to fixate on. The way my ankle is pressing into my chair, or ache in my shoulder, or the growth of my eyelashes in every particular moment. It helps, a little bit.
Killer killer
killer headache right now. I mean, if I could have somehow taken a cab from the T stop twenty yards from my building right up to my third-floor apartment, oh, I would have. I am today a total collapse. And sadly the usuals (bed, aspirin, Little House on the Prairie, classical music) are not doing it.
Things I am focusing on to try to break my attention from the fact that there is apparently a little man with a sledgehammer taking his sweet friggin' time fighting his way out of my brain:
- How the labels on Angostura bitters are too big for the bottles. It's charming in a lackadaisical gingerbeer afternoon way. I find it comforting that these oversized labels or undersized bottles can exist in our world.
- The feeling of seeing a place for the first time when you already know that it will become intimately familiar to you in short order. Feverishly struggling to memorize the details even though you understand that soon they will be so routine that you will not een see them.
- The desire that occurs halfway through doing something to do it again as soon as you've finished. Like, why not enjoy it this time? Might that not negate the need? How can it be right to predict your own future dissatisfaction? And yet. And yet.
Apparently my subconscious feels that discrepancies are they key to tonight's particular superglued lock.
Labels: zombie rambling
thematic
A blip of a girltalk conversation from the other day. For context, we were talking about that intense honeymoon phase of a relationship:
K: That's the best, like, when you're just friggin' insane. You want to, like, follow them into the shower. It's like, y'know, that No Doubt song, where you just want to drink their bath water.
Interlocutor: That -- that's not what that song is about.
K: No, yeah, I'm pretty sure it's about drinking the water from someone's bath, 'cause you're so like in love with them or whatever.
I: Dude, it's about
washing in their bath water.
K: Are you sure? Because my way is better.
I: That's a really weird way to internalize that song.
A google search suggests that I was totally wrong about the lyrics. MORE'S THE PITY.
Also, a youtube search for the video reveals that the song is as good as or possibly better than I friggin' remembered it.
bliss
A perfect day: cooked a bunch of yummy vegetarian food (of which, I am most excited for spicy breaded eggplant with red peppers and carmelized onions, and onion & apple dal); caught up on Glee; wrote many pages; multiple-hour girltalk with V; caught an awesome, blood-lusty BU hockey game with sister.
Um, you can probably guess which of these activities wouldn't have been on my "perfect day" list six months ago.
Time to cap it off with a bubble bath and a Jim Shepard collection. Aaaaahh.
i hate bloggers who straight-up post gchat conversations...
...but who has ten typing fingers and is hypocritical regarding pivotal axioms of blogiquette? (This guy.)
K: the kids in new 90210 are dumber even than i was in high school
K: in the applicable situation, the correct answer to: "so, you wanna go out later?" is not "yes" but rather "dude, you absolutely date-raped me then sent the whole school a sext about it"
J: ah, high school can be so complicated
K: but i mean, date-rape = don't date him anymore (lest you get raped more)
K: sext = actually i'm too old to know what it is, but probably don't date him
J: that sounds like a funny like
J: rap
J: slash PSA
Um, amazing. I may or may not have laughed to the point of tears. Although inevitably whenever someone blogs such a sentiment, it turns the tale into a shaggy dog story, so look, feel free to ignore the rest of it and focus on what the producers of Saved By the Bell could have done with a Very Special Episode, featuring Screech and Slater rapping: "Date Rape Equals Don't Date Him Anymore (Lest You Get Raped More)"
I'll bet wigs and Jason Bateman references would be involved!
[Also, only tangentially related: how lucky am I that J and I, broken up, communicate better than most, y'know, actual couples? It's a pleasure to be broken up with you, sweetness.]
what has boston done to me? because i kind of love it.
Sentences uttered by Kat on this historical day:
[at the top of the eighth, Angels score two runs, closing the gap with the Sox]: "It's okay. It's okay. We still have time!"
"Dude, that beer was friggin' delish."
[to Tash]: "Okay, J and I were talking about it, and New Moon actually doesn't look bad. I'll go see it with you."
"Dude, let's go catch a hockey game." (after which I subsequently begged Tash to see a boxing match with me. She declined, though -- boo.)
"omg, Tash, hurry the frig up so we can WATCH ANOTHER EPISODE OF BUFFY!"
Who is this new Kat, and how has Boston managed to change her so thoroughly in such a short time? My ceaseless attempts to push up against my boundaries are obviously paying off: I'm doing things I've never done before, and enjoying every minute of it. The one thing I miss is having a close network of brilliant, quirky friends who accept all of my strangeness. But I know that only patience will bring this, and I am content to actively seek it and enjoy every moment in the interim.
Man, though, I can't say enough what a blessing it is to be living in the city with my sister, and spending so much time with her. It is a great miracle, to have a sibling. I hope everyone who has one has an opportunity to appreciate it.
Also: as I was writing this blog entry, Tash and I were discussing a very pleasant afternoon we spent with her housemate, who does not often hang out in the common area. My suggestion: "I think we need to watch more sports."
Oh em gee.
severely diminished hitpoints
During the course of one of our epic during-the-workday girltalk gchat sessions about the intoxication of early love, Spin said the following, which is basically, in a nutshell, evidence of why I keep her around despite her dangerous-to-be-a-single-girl-friend-with ways:
"I love how everything becomes a little bit nicer afterwards,like 'Maybe I'm on a bus, but the most wonderful person likes me.' "
A dangerous observation, because who isn't familiar with that feeling? And who doesn't want to be destroyed by it?
So far, being single in a new city has been a wonderful experience. I've been going out on my own a lot, which is just as well, since over the years I've cultivated a taste for witty, captivating companions anyway...
Spend a decent amount of energy striking my attention out against the scores of guys I see every day, seeing if there is any sort of spark. Usually there is not. I cannot imagine caring for or about pretty much anyone I see. It is a nice feeling, actually, knowing that I will not be easily distracted.
I think being single after having been in a long, happy, loving relationship is an altogether different experience. Like the difference between a balloon that has never been inflated, versus one that has and was subsequently deflated. I mean. Not that I'm more wrinkly now. Although, I guess, possibly? I hope not.
Anyway, I ride the T for at least two hours every day, and while I do, work through half or three quarters of a book. But maybe one day soon, I'll keep my book in my bag and just stare out the window grinning for my whole commute and that, I guess, would be okay too.
a thought on well-being and the morning commute
Yesterday was a pretty yucky day -- I think the first day I've been out of sorts in Boston. Lots of little things: spilled soy milk all over my kitchen counter (a euphemistic phrase for the top of my microwave), trapped standing next to a smelly dude on the T, coming in first thing to an hour-and-a-half IT debacle, then frantically searching for the file I'd spent all the previous day preparing. The project manager for my current assignment was also having a crappy day. I walked in to find her mopping a venti Starbucks coffee off of her electronics, came back from lunch to witness a screaming match between her and one of the associates, and it pretty much went downhill from there. My bad mood was intensified with a sympathy migraine for her, and add that to the first overcast day of fall and the whole mess is bad news.
The whole day I was carrying around a collection of George Saunders stories that my sister very sweetly bought me over the weekend. But I was too busy mopping cereal and avoiding smelly dudes and feeling like crap to even consider opening it up. Plus it didn't help that I mistook the title, and thought it was his collection of loudmouth political essays, instead of short stories. I withdrew into myself as the day got worse and worse. Instead of reading during my commute, I texted and fretted.
Then I got to my sister's house and found out she'd be another half hour, so I sat in a bench, pulled out the Saunders, and finally started reading. And it can't surprise you to hear that as I read, everything just got a little bit better. Or at least a little less awful.
I think it's easy to become unhappy without a steady dose of really top-quality literature. I think your mind gets lonely or hungry or some other nice, human way of saying totally empty.
This morning, I had all the same petty inconveniences -- loud neighbors, trouble sleeping, had to sprint back up to my apartment to rescue my forgotten lunch then sprinted back down to nearly miss the T, on which a man sharing my hand rest kept accidentally touching my hip -- but I got off the train and on with the morning with only the feeling that today will absolutely be a wonderful day.
I'm so never again robbing myself of a few hours a day with an excellent book.
you, robot
Having a Roomba is like owning a particularly stupid dog. And coming from me -- already not a dog lover -- this is, I think, saying something.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the little dude is so happy to clean my floors and under my bed and what have you, and it was a terrifically worthwhile purchase (for like 75% off at Woot.com!), but watching him work is a unique experience.
There's a little sticky-uppy bit dividing my entryway from my kitchen (door jamb, maybe? is that a real thing, and not just some crazy pioneer phrase?) and Wally loves to get stuck there, scoot around in weak circles, then start flashing his lights and wailing plaintively. Like, come on, dude. Just don't go in the friggin' kitchen. Or if you do, at least stay there for more than fifteen seconds! BY TRAIPSING BLITHELY BACK AND FORTH YOU ARE INCREASING YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING STUCK.
It is frustrating, trying to reason with an inanimate object. Almost as frustrating as trying to reason with an animate one.
He has also recently acquired a taste for the power cords I try to hide from him before he goes to work. I keep them rather fenced-off with temporary barricades before he starts vacuuming, but ten minutes ago I looked over and he had somehow managed to climb over the barricades --
without moving them -- and was rolling around the cord cluster, happy as a toddler in a cookie jar.
"Wallace!"
It is funny, I think, how vainglorious we humans are about our advanced traits of reason, empathy, emotion, etc, and yet how generously we will bestow them on the most unworthy recipients. I mean, at least I'm going to assume that this welling of intense robot affection is universal, and not just my strange quirk. Surely I can't be the only person who's ever told her Roomba "I love you"?
whoa
um, not to derail and talk about my
vanity blog project on my probably-jealous original blog, but can I just gush for one second about how cool it is that on said vanity blog I actually have so many comments that I FEEL GENUINELY OVERWHELMED?
this is pretty much the coolest feeling ever.
there was this really buffed-out athletic chick in my IB program in high school who always used to spout athletic inspirational bromides. the one i remember best is: "if the work-out you did yesterday still impresses you, then you didn't work out hard enough today."
and, obviously, being me, this didn't exactly strike a chord. now, though. it's totally how i feel about the amount of work i'm putting into my other blog. (okay, and to be perfectly shallow, also how i feel about the hit count.)
it's exciting, to be feeling these surges of ambition. even if it is for something as stupid as wanting to become a semi-famous blogger.
speculation
Things the dude who lives in my hall might have been dragging up to fire escape immediately adjacent to my apartment for twenty minutes this morning, starting at 9am:
1) three super-sized garbage cans packed with aluminium cans
2) a 300-pound metallic robo-hooker body he had to stash somewhere
3) a whimsical string of 100 pots and pans, trailing them behind him as though they were on a leash
4) AHHHH I DON'T CARE PLEASE MAKE IT STOP.
Apparently whatever this magical heavy clankiness is , though, it must be impressive, as the guy vacuuming the hallway let the vacuum run outside my door without even moving it for much of the duration of the performance.
an axe
Seriously, question, guys: when did we as a society apparently decide that Kanye West is such a baller that he can do whatever the hell he wants?! Was this during the same meeting that humanity decided to allow Lady Gaga? Did I just miss that week in pop culture?
Probably. I seem to be missing them all, lately. I used to be the queen of celebrity gossip. There was literally a whole network of people poised to keep me in on the news when TomKat was about to pop. Ah, my salad days. Now when I walk into the drugstore, I am accosted by alleged celebs like "Kourtney" and "Kendra" and realize that not only do I not know who they are -- ignorance is no sin -- but I
no longer care. Distressing, no?
Still, I'll call a temporary hiatus on my pop culture moratorium to say: wtf, does Kanye think he is
literally God? It is the only explanation.
It thrilled me that Obama called him a jackass. Although now that the news is out, Obama better keep a firm grip on his mic during the State of the Union.
Oh, in real, actual earth news, all is going well on this end. Still no job (boo!), but a freshly polished floor in my apartment, so there's a trade-off. I love living in a place small enough that I can get on my hands and knees and scrub the whole floor in half an hour.
I'm on this whole mother-nature kick, so instead of whipping out the (pricey!) Olde English, I polished said floor with a mixture of vinegar and vegetable oil. Worked fantastically, but afterwards the floor was so lubed up I contemplated sending in a picture to Furniture Porn.
You're welcome for ... whatever dark interior-design fantasies that triggers.
psa
Guys, I have some news. Some dark news. Sit down, 'cause you're not going to like this.
You know those kitchen utensils you can buy, the apple-slicers? Cute little circles with a net of wedge-shaped blades, designed to instantly core and slice ann apple with the merest housewifely push downward?
They don't work.
Not only do they not work now, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret: they've never worked. Oh, sure, once or twice they'll core an apple, get your hopes up before the inevitable disillusionment. But one by one, they all leave you with nothing but a handful of shattered plastic and warped blades, just like everything else in your damn life.
"But I've seen them work!" you're telling me. "My nana used to use one every day!"
Yeah, well take a look around, champ. Is your nana here? No. It's just me, you, and the fucking truth. Combination apple core&slicers DO. NOT. WORK.
In your foolhardy youth, you probably tried to use your mom's, and maybe you broke one or two, furtively kicking the shrapnel into the space underneath the cabinets. But as you matured you thought you knew the error your ways, how it would be different now. You bought another. Another broke. But it was just from the dollar store! Surely if I get this fancy Calphalon model with the optional peach-pitting attachment--
I'm going to stop you right there, sport. They do not work. Save your money. Save what's left with your dignity. Let's just all focus on trying to move on.
