blame it on the rain.

i'm sitting at my desk listening to a john mayer playlist on grooveshark that reminds me of my freshman year of college. i don't recall that it rained that much when i was a freshman but i just had major deja vu with the blinds down in my office, the rain falling outside and the general darkness of the room while john mayer's voice serenades me. it's a particularly dreary wednesday. perhaps this is why my mind has decided to wander off into deja vu.

unrelated, when i woke up this morning, my whole body ached. so many things are confusing about this morning. last night i went to sleep early for me and still managed to wake up ten minutes late for work. for most people, i don't think ten minutes off of their morning routine really throws off too much. it's my understanding that real adults leave some margin for error/eating breakfast/putting on make up, into their routine but as previously established, i am not a real adult. to this end, i give myself exactly 14 minutes to get from my bed to driving. this is a difficult task but it can be done. i do it most days of the week but today, i failed. i try to wake up earlier to give myself time to do other things, like my hair or makeup, but unless there is a really good motivator, i can't get myself to do anything before i know i absolutely have to. so besides being late, i had this whole body aching thing to deal with. it hurt to get dressed, brush my teeth and pet my dog. that seems excessive. it made me wonder if perhaps i was actually in some kind of fight club last night instead of happily tucked into my bed for eight hours of glorious sleep. things are less intensely sore now but still. i wonder what happened.

lately i've been reconnecting with people i formerly was friends with but went through a period of wanting nothing to do with. this isn't usually something i do. i'm notorious for not giving people a second chance, by people who have known me for a long time anyway. i just figure that if i have decided against you, why bother revisiting the topic ever again? then it occurred to me that people change sometimes. not a lot, but sometimes even that small amount of change is what is necessary to bring people back together, right? besides that, i think that it's a good thing for me to try and defrost my otherwise icy heart and i figure that the way to do that is to do things that other people find to be appropriate and stop being such a bitch all the time. this, of course, means that i need to accept some of the blame for whatever went wrong years ago, rather than just sitting around waiting for an apology. it's been hard but i like to think better in the long run. either i'll learn that it's smart for me to let people in and give a second chance when it's merited or that i should have never tried this experiment. either way i'm right and as jeremy would point out, i'll take being right, even when it's being right about being wrong.

i am a best friend kind of person. i've talked about this before. i like having one friend that knows me better than anyone else and that i'm closer to than my other friends. my college best friend and i had a falling out last year which after seven years of being friends i thought would be over something more major. i wrote at him via this blog back in december. we haven't talked much/at all/of any substance, which was particularly difficult considering this is someone that i used to confide everything in. but i made a decision. he wanted to make poor life decisions, i didn't need to sit around and wait for him. he randomly called me last night. well rather, not randomly. the detroit electronic music festival is happening this memorial day weekend, like it does every year. we used to go together, even with him having lived in california for the last five years. and a friend let me know that he had recently decided that he was going to come back for the weekend. i felt a minor twang of guilt when i ignored his call last night, opting to continue with my plans instead but i couldn't figure out how i would say "no" if he was to ask if he could stay with me during his visit. instead we texted and it was moderately awkward.

this got me thinking. debating in my mind to call him back or to text instead or what i would say when/if i called (and by in my head i also mean with jeremy's guidance as my conscience) why do i feel so much more about this than other relationships that have fallen apart? i know that i don't want to talk to him, much less see him, but i'm still entertaining the idea of having dinner with him while he's in town. part of the stupidity i think is that i think that some day in the future we might be friends again and i wouldn't want him to complain to me in ten years about the time that i wouldn't meet up with him for dinner. but then again, if we were to meet up again in ten years, it would probably be because we both realized that this whole period in time has been stupid and we need to get beyond it. i am sufficiently over thinking something that is actually an easy decision. i literally found myself thinking at one point last night "well i go to a lot of dinners and things i don't want to go to. why should this be different?" i know, it's stupid. i feel stupid even admitting it.

when my ex and i broke up, i was better at not talking to him or wanting to talk to him than i am with this former best friend. but i think that was different. we were still in love when we broke up and i knew if i didn't keep my distance, i would do something stupid. and i hate looking/being stupid. and besides that, i wanted him to be happy. we were going to make each other crazy if we stayed together or stayed friends. and i did a really good job of breaking his heart (so he told me) so he didn't want to be around me anyway. a couple of idiotic phone calls and bad choices later, i learned my lesson and decided to stay away. in this case, i keep trying to remind myself that after spending a year being upset and hurt by this former best friend, i would be stupid to subject myself to spending time with him. that's what i keep trying to reinforce, trying to get it to sink through my head. that this isn't the friend i used to live with. the friend that i used to spend a lot of my time with, traveling around, staying up all night, whatever. this is some guy that replaced him. and that guy is a douche bag who hasn't earned my friendship. it's a little harsh but i'm pretty sure it's right on.

from the girl who needs to get back to focusing on work.

until next time...

reconciliation is a dirty word.

i've always considered myself a city person, even though i have lived in the suburbs my whole life. and by "city person" i mean i enjoy cities and with the exception of like detroit and flint, i would live in one. there just aren't any major cities in michigan that i would consider living in. but real cities, like new york, chicago and dc always feel like home to me. i like the bustle. i like the culture (but not the hipster nonsense). i like the easy access to a starbucks. i am also, generally speaking, completely useless when it comes to survival skills. i've only ever camped once and it was literally for 24 hours and most of those hours were pretty bad, especially when i found the need for a bathroom that didn't exist. with this knowledge in mind, the knowledge that i overpack for even something as simple as a weekend away and i don't leave my house overnight without bringing my flat iron wtih me, i wouldn't make it in the outdoors for very long. i have a coworker who is almost entirely exactly my opposite in this respect. she frequently tells me stories about a small town that she used to live in out in utah and every time she tells me a story about her small town, i think, how charming would it be to live there and like that for a little while. but then she says something like "i lived in a trailer with nothing for cooking but a hot plate for a while" and "there would be no place to plug in a blow dryer." it becomes clear. this is something i will only ever enjoy by anecdote. leaving my hair to dry natural for an unforeseen amount of time? forget it. i'll stay here in my suburb with bars where the bartenders know my name and a convenient starbucks during multiple portions of my commute.

the other night, i had another boring dinner. it has been a couple weeks and once d asked if i wanted to go to dinner, i couldn't turn her down. she will be starting her residency soon and who knows how often i'll see here then. and it had been a little while since i had seen n so once again it seemed like it was my duty to go to this dinner. i need jen to move home; i need a fun buffer for these types of events. on my way to dinner, my car battery died which i seem to think was a sign. by the time jeremy and i found jumper cables and actually jumped my car (in the rain) i was late. i also stopped to have my battery tested on my way to dinner and it tested as fine. curious right? i walked in to find them already discussing d's vacation she just went on with her boyfriend. apparently, while she was gone on vacation, three of her friends got engaged. n was quick to make a comment that d's boyfriend should have popped the question when they were at their resort in mexico. i called it a cop out. to me, proposing on vacation is almost as lame as proposing on a holiday. it should be spontaneous and its own day. like a rainy tuesday with nothing else going on. like most of the days have been in the mitten lately.

so n is doing weight watchers because apparently it's not just for middle aged women anymore. it seems to be a part of the quarter life crisis that she and another friend are smack dab in the middle of. good for them really. i am proud of them for wanting to get healthy but weight watchers really freaks me out. it seems a little cult like to me and i don't know about approaching food as though it is an addiction. the meetings seem a little bit like AA to me. anyway, n updated us on her weight watchers adventure this week, but i was a little confused. her meetings are in the middle of the day on tuesday and she has recently started a temporary job out of town. she explained that she was upset with herself for gaining a pound this week. personally, i don't see that there is much good that can come from watching your weights so compulsively. it's kind of like weight watchers teaches overweight people the same kind of tricks that anorexics are supposed to stop doing (writing down everything you eat, tracking your weight at the same time every day, etc).

anyway, during her frustration about gaining a single pound, n said "i don't want to look fat in engagement pictures." that got mine and d's attention. we both asked if there was something perhaps she had neglected to mention since the last time we were together. she casually said "no, but i want to be engaged soon and i don't want to be fat in my pictures so i need to lose weight now." then yesterday, she said that she is concerned about how heavy she will get "when she gets knocked up." she has always talked about children as a "if" prospect but more importantly, she doesn't like kids.

so i was thinking about this today because i've noticed lately that there are a lot of things that seem to segue in the mid to late 20s. i've been curious when people made the switch from vodka to whiskey. it seems that a lot of my friends have suddenly taken to drinking this vile substance. and people who used to think about children as screaming, annoying, little people now think of them longingly. it's kind of amazing to me. perhaps it's a part of the settling into life after the quarter life crisis ends. the end of that quarter life crisis can come any time now, though i hardly think i'm going to abandon vodka.

from the girl who would do almost anything to see the sun for more than one day in every ten.

until next time...

laziness has lead to a severely curly hair day.

i notice a lot of the time that i don't actually seem to have a lot in common with most of my friends. there are a lot of suggestions that people make and when i think about doing them, all i can do is think about how much i would rather do anything else. for an example, please refer to the post about the world's most boring dinner. that took an activity i quite enjoy (dinner out with friends) and turned it awful. or text messaging, another activity i like which is frequently taken over by people texting me about how annoying their coworker is, random nonsense that i can't understand and vague ideas to try to get me to ask a question that when i do, i don't get a real answer because you "don't want to talk about it." i think a big part of this is because i fail a lot at being entertained by what seems to be considered regular activity. or maybe we just don't seem to have the same idea for what is fun. my friend n told me recently that she is "over going out every saturday night, drinking, partying, whatever and waking up hung over on sunday." i told her that was a hilarious thought because she spends maybe 5 saturdays like that a year, even in the hay day of college. she's never been a party-er but she felt the need to bring to my attention that she is over it. i wasn't entirely sure if it i was a dig against me or not. i've always been the go out saturday night and have a good time with my friends, sleep in on sunday type (though i've never been hung over) and i don't feel like i need to change that. i'll stop doing that when i'm ready to stop doing that. but as i have said before, she is obsessed with "doing what you are supposed to do" and thus at 27, she clearly shouldn't be living it up on saturday nights. thank god, it gives her more time to sit in boredom with her fascinating boyfriend. don't get me wrong, it is lovely to spend time in local downtown areas, in coffee shops or local breweries, but every weekend? this is for sure one of those times when i realize my lack of common interest with my friends.

i found out this morning that my cousin got engaged yesterday. that was a pleasant surprise to find on facebook upon arriving for yet another day of monotony work. she lives in hawaii, where right now, they are 6 hours behind us. it seems that i should have been more upset that i found this news out on facebook. this is my only cousin that is my age but she and i aren't particularly close. in fact, we have only met once in our adult life and that was last year. we have a lot in common and we get along just fine it's just we aren't that close which for some reason is a difficult concept for me to adequately express. i made the mistake of telling n that my cousin was engaged. she sent me a text message back with way too many exclamation points, which for the record is more than two ever. and while that is exciting and everything, this was too much. she said she was so excited because "they are in love and want to spend a lifetime together. it's a very happy thing." i instantly thought, hmm..is it a happy thing? i suppose it is but quite frankly, i'm ambivalent to the whole deal. maybe if it was someone who was closer to me or something. i don't know. i understand that it is a happy occasion for them but it doesn't have any bearing on my life so...i guess i just don't feel the need to appropriate emotions to it. also it seems important for me to point out that i am a cynical person. like deeply, very cynical. to me, marriage doesn't mean forever anymore. it seems to mean, as long as things are good.

more importantly i think that the beatles are wrong. you need more than love to make a relationship work forever. i'll be the first to tell you that i have no idea how to make a relationship work forever. but i managed to make one work for almost five years so that's something right? i know that love is important but that alone is not enough to keep a relationship together. if that's all you have, i think that what gets you to a point, 10 years down the road when you wake up with one kid, another one on the way and think "i'm going to have to smother my significant other with a pillow before he wakes up." so the whole business of getting excited about people getting married because they love each other...yawn. i can't be bothered to think about that as if it counts for something forever.

this lead me to the realization that n and i exist on exact opposite ends of a spectrum. she is a hopeless romantic and i am a dark cynic. life might be better if we could meet somewhere closer to the middle then her text messages would probably get on my nerves less.

from the girl who can't get enough of the show happy endings.

until next time...