cream colored ponies and crisp apple streudels

these are a few of my favorite things:

• beefsteak tomatoes with salt
• an empty kitchen sink
• being barefoot
• nutella on a spoon
• morning cuddles
• fat infants (of any species)
• crt
• fresh-baked banana bread
• being inexplicably happy even whilst worried/stressed.

i'm a barbie girl, in a barbie world

so, i moved. the great white whale, my personal moby dick, my cold mountain... it's here! i've slayed it, or reached the top, or whatever phrase goes with the preceding sentence. i have lived in the bay area (san jose, ca, to be exact) for about a week and a half now, and i must say that i am surprised. pleasantly surprised, i suppose. actually, the most surprising thing is how unsurprised i am, which is, in its own way, quite pleasant. no nasty surprises yet, at any rate, aside from how much chris actually farts (probably not a lot by most people's standards, but waaay more than he did when we were merely dating and not living together, for the record).

so what am i doing with my life up here, hundreds of miles from my childhood home?? partying like it's 1999, swashbuckling, drinking and shagging with abandon, living up my youth before the inevitable onset of decay and a dependence on tums develops? truthfully, i am already dependent on tums for my daily happiness (not that tums make me happy, but they take away red wine induced heartburn, which while i have to endure it physically prevents me from feeling most positive emotions), and the rest of it... not so much either. mostly what i've been doing is unpacking, cleaning, laundry, cooking, washing dishes, watching movies, and, now that i have internet again, farting around online like a reclusive shut in with glass bones and a penchant for fashion blogs. that being said! being a temporary housewife isn't so bad. it's allowed my boo and i to settle into a comfortable routine, and it has allowed me to exercise my would-be chef bone. that's like a funny bone, but with more butter. for instance, i made some cornbread yesterday which- not to toot my own horn- was quite delicious. we ate it with chili last night, then i had some again with breakfast, only heated up and buttered and be-syruped. yum. i thought living with chris would give me a chance to slim down, far away from my mother's cooking, and it still has the opportunity to do that once i start working and can't spend all day tinkering in the kitchen, but i think it will also provide an opportunity to fatten him up. which is great, not because i'm a chubby chaser, but because maybe with a pinch of fat on him, a flu won't come around and slaughter him mercilessly. what was i saying?

oh, right. being a housewife hasn't been so bad, but i am itching to be working again. mostly because of those aforementioned fashion blogs and all the materialistic lust they inspire and less because of practical concerns like having money to pay bills and buy food. ah feminine vanity. society really can't complain about women being stuff-obsessed whores because it's society that breeds us to be this way, you know. but anyway, another really good reason to stop being a housewife and start being a real person again is that i have the hands of an 112 old great grandmother!!! from washing so many dishes!!! wtf man. that alone might be enough reason to cut down on the cooking and eating.

what have we learned from this blog post? let's make a list.

• san jose is lovely and full of big giant trees and houses with front porches (implied)
• i live in leafy green san jose now!
• being a housewife can be fulfulling, to an extent
• i need a job, like, yesterday, because there are limits to the pleasures of housewifery
• crocodile hands are gross
• i love tums
• my bf farts around me now
• cornbread is the bomb

... and i think that about covers everything. it's lovely to be master of my own domain, and be able to kiss my boyfriend on a daily basis, i have a lot of optimism for the near future, AND i am going to update my blog more often. not on the daily, but i'll do my best, because if there's one thing i've learned from spending too much time on the internet is that just about anyone can get paid to write nonsense for myriad sites across the web, and a blog is oftentimes the best way to start. hurray!

what are little girls made of?

So like a total weirdo, I am currently obsessed with weddings. Partly I blame Etsy, because they sent me an email containing the single most beautiful (and custom... and afforable!) wedding dress I have ever seen. Partly I blame my recent intense unhappiness, because what is better when you are unhappy than fantasizing about a day when you won't be unhappy, when ostensibly you'll be as far from unhappy as few people ever are? Or whatever. I'm bored therefore I want to get married.

Actually, it makes perfect sense. I am not one to run off to Vegas with the first meathead who would have me, so the idea of a wedding or marriage encapsulates a lot of what I want and where I want to be. If I am getting married it'll be because one, I am in a functional and strong relationship and madly in love, and two, because financially and materially, I am at a point in my life where having a nice wedding and a marriage and being a real person are achievable, tangible realities. Does that even make sense? Like, if I can afford a wedding, if I have found someone who wants to marry me despite my readily apparent insanity, if I am secure enough in my own accomplishments and financial situation to join my life- like, mentally and economically- with another person in an equal partnership... well, that would be an awesome place to be, I think.

My friends look down on me for loving weddings and the idea of marriage. They think it is hopelessly naive and old fashioned and a real character flaw that I look forward to getting and being married. My friends are generally cynical assholes though, so who cares what they think anyway. I think it's sad to expect all marriages to end in divorce- not that I am unaware of the current state of the institution, but just because the grimness is real doesn't make it any less pitiable. I don't think I have unrealistic, Disney-fied expectations of love and marriage. I have seen what marriage looks like on a day-to-day, stressed-over-money, no-sex-having, failure-to-communicate-on-a-regular-basis-basis. Yes, I too have parents, and their marriage is dysfunctional as hell. What's funny is that apparently, miserable as they are most of the time, their marriage is the one outlasting all of their peers, so maybe it isn't as miserable as all that? Parents, who knows man.

Marriage seems like a great adventure to me. Like, there's this person, and he thinks you are so great that he wants to be a part of the day to day shenanigans of your life, and for a long time. And you are partners, and you're there for each other, and even when it's a slog, it's still kind of fun because this person is your best friend and you get to see him and talk to him every day. And you can grow together and change together, and see the world together, and what's so terrible about that? About having someone to depend on, someone who cares about how you feel and wants you to be happy and you want him to be happy? Ok so getting a little cornball there, but at the same time it's all true. And I am totally in the Laura Kipnis school of thought that says marriage and love should not be work, that these beautiful and transcendent connections we forge with other people should not be hijacked by the lingo of the industrial revolution. It should be play, not that I don't imagine it's at time challenging and painful play.

I would like to believe that love can last a lifetime. I don't see why not. I am going to love my sisters for the rest of my life. Even when I hate them I love them, I don't have a choice. They are as much a part of me as my lungs, or my spleen, and only in part because we share blood. Marce and I share no blood, but she is my sister as much as the other two. Because we grew up together, and we are growing up together, and even when I thought we had gone our separate ways, the ties weren't quite severed all the way and today I doubt they ever will be. Sure it sounds kinda like a curse, this incurable love. And maybe that's what it is, and that's how it should be. I am cursed to love them and so I do and will. Why can't the same kind of thinking apply to romantic love? I will love you, husband, for ever, because I do and I must and I have no choice. Two people with their eyes wide open, knowing the perils of it all and still choosing to live their lives together and try against all odds to be happy- that is damned romantic.

I mean, to an extent anyway. If you think about it too hard you start to realize that marriage is like children in that any idiot can have one, and many idiots often do. On somewhat of a sidenote, a friend of a friend of mine recently got married and stuck her pictures all over facebook, and you gotta realize too that really ugly people get married all the time. Which sounds shallow and horrible, but goddamn man. You shouldn't wear blue eyeshadow up to your eyebrows just in general, but especially not on your wedding day. And it's like, why bother making the effort to look nice if any ugly old schlub out there can get married and you can't? Or just haven't, I guess. Not that I want to right now necessarily. It's just that seeing so many people I know- people my same age and all- get engaged and get married, it always throws me.

Hmm. So what was the point again? Oh yes. I am bored with my stupid life, can't wait to fix it, and I love that dress. Also, I think it's funny that Chris talks about us getting married even though we've been together for all of ten minutes. Knowing that he also planned to marry a certain ex of his, whom I know from close experience to be insane and also ugly, I can't take him seriously, as much fun as it is to talk hypotheticals. And, I wouldn't marry him anyway because there's no point in marrying a lawyer; they never have time for you anyway.

SO THIS IS THE NEW YEAR

and already it is so much better than the old! already i feel different, more secure. it feels as though i learned a lot in the past year, but what and pertaining to what i couldn't really say. mostly pertaining to myself, i imagine. ahh the self-centeredness of youth.

this year is already unlike any other because i am starting it off in love and i am loved in return. (sidebar: love is pretty great and a lot less painful than i'd always felt it to be). this year is already unlike the past couple because already i am taking steps to do what i mean to do instead of sitting around waiting for things to magically just sort of happen to me. this year, 2010, i will do things that are going to scare the shit out of me. and i will be anxious, and i will chew my nails off, and i will find several more snow white hairs in my bangs. and i'll lose sleep, and i'll be wracked with uncertainty, and i'll have bigger things at stake than ever before. and it will be GREAT. it's going to be fantastic and marvelous and a year like no other, and i look forward to all of it. i look forward to working hard and letting off a lot of steam and making plans and making plans come through and really especially i look forward to sharing it all with him. i can't wait to share a life with him. the mundane realities of dirty dishes and bills to be paid and building a home out of scratch all seem fairy-tale-like and beautiful from over here, because they'll be done in cahoots with him. we are going to wash dishes and become real people together and it will be lovely. i am and was going to be a real person with or without him, but for whatever reason, everything is a gladder prospect now that he's in the picture.

i'm not making resolutions this year, because they are cliched and destined for failure, but naturally and inevitably, i have a list of things i mean to work on in order to become more like who i'd like to be. also i love making lists! so here goes:

2010

• move out/up north/in with chris
• read more nonfiction, especially history, and less crap
• sleep more at night and less during the day
• learn a whole new skill, like archery or some type of dance
• improve my cooking skills beyond eggs and pancakes. successfully cook beef.
• pay off some debts (2 can be reasonably paid off this year) and improve my credit score
• learn to tell a couple of really good jokes and not fuck them up
• volunteer with real dedication for something i care about a lot
• stop leaving banana peels to rot in my car
• put real effort into writing something and trying to get it published
• learn to take a really fast shower
• get a real job
• take more pictures!!!
• go somewhere i've never gone before
• write more on a daily basis. even if it's just lists.

and so, ok, the new year started a week ago, but like, i was on vacation! haha

playing hooky? yes, please

i did the thing i should not do when making/saving money is the goal (which it is, naturally, and especially since i have a very special someone to visit as much as i can as soon as i can): i have skipped work today. ricardo's little warrior mother is going to have my scalp tomorrow. alas i care not. i have actually used my time wisely today and done many, many job applications because you know what, faceless internet? i am awesome. and i deserve a better job.

i mean, i hate to be my own cheerleader, but really! i am too awesome to sit around being an over-frustrated glorified babysitter. i have too much to offer the world to spend my days catering to the whims of a child who is more spoiled than autistic and for whom large doses of ritalin would help far more than i, in my infinite power, ever could.

so yeah. i've sent out about ten thousand resumes, at least a few of which should result in calls-back, and they are all or most for positions offering more hours and more relevant experience than what i am doing now. zut alors! i have high hopes.

i mean, maybe it is stupid to give in to discontent and search for or accept a new job when i'm just getting settled at the one i've got (which took forever to find, and feels like i've been there all my bloody life), especially when one considers that in the space of six months or so i plan to move my entire life three hundred miles to the north, in order to be nearer to not only my best friend and the larger quantity of my actual friends, but also nearer to the sweetest man i've ever met, whom i want to cover in kisses pretty much constantly, which desire is thwarted by the entire length of the state of california that lies between us currently. maybe it's stupid, but it's also so necessary if i am to avoid becoming the living dead.

speaking of friends, ahaha, wow, do i have a knack for befriending selfish and stupid people who like my ears and like validation but don't actually like being good friends or even interesting people! ah life. this is a recurring theme with me, starting up or staying in friendships that do not actual provide me any pleasure or benefit or actual... friendship. what would my therapist say about this? hahah yeah right. therapists are for idiots, and only occasionally for people with real problems.