only dull people are brilliant at breakfast.

when i grow up...

2012-03-01T07:35:00.002-08:00

There are few questions in my life that I'm completely incapable of answering. Usually I'm pretty good at coming up with something even when I feel not completely prepared, like earlier this week when I was on the radio and had to speak about President Obama's economic plan with a republican host. But there is one question in particular I have never been able to answer that is on my mind. Whether I've been asked in a job interview, by a political colleague or a friend I stumble around and say something vaguely intelligible (with the exception of speaking with a few very close friends where I will admit I have no answer.) And honestly, each time I throw out some answer I am always surprised by whatever it is that I've said. When asked where I see myself in five years, my mind goes blank and I immediately feel a sense of dread and something that I think is like failure. How can I have no idea? How can I have no goals? I've always viewed myself as a goal oriented person. Isn't that how most people declared "smart" or "leaders" during their educational career view themselves? Upon a closer life reflection of those years, I'm not entirely sold that I've ever actually been goal oriented which creates a whole different kind of confusion for me. I mean, sure I wanted good grades, I wanted to graduate college with a good degree, having made good friends and solid life experiences and I wanted to fall in love. After leaving college, I wanted a job that paid the bills that I was good at. Seems like pretty generic stuff to me and honestly how can I use that to really suggest that I have had goals I have worked hard for? Perhaps I should feel less stressed by this now given that it has always been the case but perception is reality right? So I always perceived myself this way and now I have no idea what I want for my life and my future. In the most general, generic way, I know what I want. I want a husband, a family, good friends and a job I love to do that I'm good at. Who that is, what job that is and how to get there is all a mystery. Perhaps, much like being an adult, knowing these things or being able to determine a clear path to achieving these things is a hoax. Everyone stumbles around and some how things come together. Perhaps it's magic or why people have religious beliefs.

As previously established, I like watching for patterns in behavior. I feel like it is the best way to really learn about people. Based on some of my observations I have been wondering about something that I feel compelled to share. Perhaps it is simply a symptom of being in your twenties or just the people I surround myself with or personality types but I think that there are stages that people go through with regards to their jobs. Stages that aren't entirely dissimilar to the stages of death and dying that Elizabeth Kübler-Ross made a relatively main stream idea. Below I will present a scenario of receiving a job followed by what I believe to be the stages of dissatisfaction and quitting.

First things first, everything goes right. You get a job that you have been looking forward to. Something that finally became available, a total career change or something you have worked hard for. You get it and everything is going just swimmingly. Time goes on, like it does, and that shine of the new job starts to fade. Things change and it's no longer as fulfilling as it was.

1. Denial. You deny that things are going differently or even badly in some cases. You try to justify that it's just a bad day, bad week, bad project. It will all be over soon enough and things will go back to normal.

2. Anger. You realize that despite your best efforts things aren't getting any better and are becoming frustrating. You get angry that no matter what you do, something is still wrong, things are still off and it causes you to be in a funk. An anger and frustration caused funk.

3. Bargaining. You can only continue to do this job if things change, if you get paid more, if your supervisor/colleagues respect you more as a coworker or you some how become re-engaged in the work that you are doing.

4. Depression. The very sad moment of realization that it's not going to get better and it's up to you to make a decision. Do you stay at this job that is clearly not fulfilling or do you cut your losses? Each day you arrive at work you think about leaving or take increased time off because you can't be there. It has become too much to bear.

And finally, 5. Acceptance. This is it. You are at peace with the fact that you can't keep coming to this job. It's time to quit. Now it's just a matter of finding a new job that hopefully is fulfilling, though at the moment the only thing that matters is that it pays. You are checked out and completely not interested in anything that is going on. It's all about getting out.

Now I'm sure that the prospect that work and dying can line up so easily is probably troubling but sometimes, a bad job kind of feels like you are slowly dying. Again, maybe it's just me and the people I've surrounded myself with that go through this. I like to think not though.

From the girl who just wants to know what she wants to be when she grows up.

Until next time...

dear monday...yawn.

2012-02-27T09:43:00.000-08:00

so pinterest is probably one of the best/worst things that has ever happened to the internet. while it is so fantastic to be able to easily access amazing ideas, links, recipes, hair tips, household ideas, decor, fashion, etc in one place it is a black hole for time. seriously. my friends and i have a term for what happens when you get on pinterest. you get sucked into what is known as a pinning vortex and before you know it, you've pinned 3 things you have to craft, 6 recipes you know that you are totally going to use for that next get together, countless outfits that you need to buy, a couple new hairstyles to try and an hour of your life is just gone. it's kind of like when facebook was new. maybe i just budget more time in my life to waste on facebook or something but it doesn't seem to take up as much time as pinterest does. then again, i don't often find things on facebook that i feel like i need to try and get frustrated because there is no sewing machine at my desk. i can pretty much read whatever article is posted right away or like the crap out of someone's meme immediately then move on with the rest of my day. pinterest gets in my head and refuses to leave.

anyway, my rants today are actually kind of connected. one of the things on pinterest that i find to be also very helpful is the many links to work out techniques, favorite work outs (that aren't running), etc. so i'm slightly more than half way to twenty eight right now and i'm not mad about it. however, this knowledge, coupled with the fact that i will be a bridesmaid twice in may of 2013, made me come to an important realization. this clip from the sweetest thing is so true. i'm not sure when my arms felt like it was okay to try to resemble bat wings but i'm not into it. i'm not talking about anything like this, no offense to madonna. i do love her but her arms freak me out. n and i have initiated what is affectionately known as operation jennifer aniston arms. see? they are so toned and strong but not gross and she is much older than me with no sign of bat wings. this is the goal. this way, when i am in inevitably strapless dresses, i won't be pissed off looking at photos people post from both of these weddings.

i think that this bat wing thing is another one of those small things about aging that has snuck up on me. like when listening to my nkotbsb pandora station and i am forced to realize that the 90s was in fact twenty years ago, not ten years ago. i watched a documentary on bill clinton last week and had to remind myself that he and al gore looked so old because it's been a long time since they occupied the white house. bah. anyway, those are my two little thoughts for today. time to run out and pick up lunch then carry on with the day.

from the girl who will probably spend some more time this afternoon on pinterest.

until next time...

i wish i was a singer for the thrill of singing on a stage in front of a roaring crowd...and the encores.

2012-02-07T11:38:00.000-08:00

i have turned my office into an adele concert. i made a playlist after lunch on youtube of her performance at the itunes festival in 2011. it is ridiculous how absolutely wonderful she is. i was lucky enough to see her live last year in royal oak and was so surprised that she is actually much better live than she is recorded. it's like recording doesn't do her justice. i came here for more than to talk about adele. what was that again? was it to take a break from the pinning vortex i feel into on pinterest while snipping the split ends off my hair while day dreaming about not being at work any more today? why yes, yes it was. that was exactly why i opened up this tab to ramble out a quick blog. honestly, it's embarrassing how bad i am at maintaining this blog. good thing no one reads it. i'm the only one who has to know that things never get posted here.

i have a few things that i feel like posting about. and since i'm pretending i'm writing for someone to read it, i'll pretend like i'm catching you up on what has happened since i last wrote. but not really catch you up. more like, tell you amusing things that have happened since i last posted. or annoying things. we'll see what happens.

my dear friend sam brought up this idea of a reverse bucket list to me recently. quite frankly, i love the concept. while it's probably healthier and better to think of things that you want to do before you die, i find this to be much funnier. so i submit for your amusement, a couple items from my reverse bucket list (in no particular order):

- attend a miley cyrus concert
- get dreadlocks
- be alone in nature
- become a CPA
- survive the zombie apocalypse (i couldn't rebuild society after that mess)

i anticipate that i will eventually have other things to add to this list. but right now, these are the only things that i can really say i don't ever want to do. wait, i don't want to whip my hair back and forth. ever.

another thought, i am again being shown that no matter how well you think you know someone, everything you know can be debunked in mere moments. how very quickly everything can change. or i suppose, how i notice that everything changes all at once. i learned from a former close friend recently that in order to move on and live your best life, you need to abandon anyone who you have made a mistake with in the past. in order to be respectful to a partner, you must get rid of those who have come before and that romantic relationships must trump friendships if you want them to succeed. not trump. replace. romantic relationships should replace friendships if you want your marriage to be properly supported in trust and loyalty. yes, this is what i've learned recently. quite recently. and this is why i am now using former to describe someone who has been a close friend for well over a decade. it's kind of sad when you think about it. i assume it would be sad if you thought about it. when i think about it, i get angry that this friend decided to explain to me that because he is twenty eight it is now time for him to grow up. that he has hit reality head on and there is no such thing as having your cake and eating it too. that it's selfish to think this way. i'm almost exactly six months younger than him. and that six months mattered when it was the difference between driving, voting and drinking but at twenty eight, all it says to me is that you are taking yourself way to seriously. it's disappointing. though from his perspective where i am this immature twenty seven year old, perhaps i am disappointing. he sounds like a fifteen year old girl to me so it's hard for me to take any of this serious. i do wonder though if like so many other marriages, especially those that are entered into hastily, ends in divorce rather than happily ever after, who he will turn to. i'm confident i won't be there waiting.

i think that's about all today. i don't want to get too worked up. it's time for me to get back to running reports and day dreaming.

from the girl who's lack of focus would be alarming if i cared.

until next time...

jokes are supposed to be funny, not hateful.

2011-12-05T13:45:00.001-08:00

i'm going to do this thing again where i break from my standard format to approach a topic that i think deserves proper attention. further rambling about girlfriends, life and the weather will have to wait until the next time i'm motivated to craft a post. last week, it was discovered that the new mayor of Troy, Michigan posted on her facebook on June 25, 2011

"I think I am going to throw away my 'I Love New York' carry bag now that queers can get married there."

i know present my open letter to mayor janice daniels.

Mayor Daniels,

As a lifelong Michigan resident, I am always excited to see my home state make national headlines. Except lately in which headlines about Michigan range from cutting off unemployment benefits to emergency financial managers taking over cities to coverage of a horrible first attempt at anti-bullying legislation. Most recently, the spotlight has been on Michigan due to a comment from your facebook this past summer.

I understand that you proudly ran for Mayor as a member of the Tea Party. Accordingly, I didn't have high expectations for what you would bring to Troy as its Mayor. I know that ideologically we could never match up. However, as a person, I thought you might have more tolerance than to use a hateful slur in a public forum. As I would hope you were aware, whether or not you were in the public eye at the time, posting on facebook is roughly the equivalent of making a statement in a crowded room. You're words have gravity and significance and in a moment, you projected your bigotry for the world to see.

I read your statement after this status came to light. While I soundly disagree with your belief that marriage is between one man and one woman, I can respect this is your personal opinion. My issue is simple, rather than keeping your opinion to yourself or tactfully express your dissatisfaction with New York's new law, you opted to be hateful.

Since that time, you have apologized for what you said. I am curious to know if this apology came as a result of knowing that people from around the metro area were coming to protest outside of city hall because of your hateful comment. Mayor, please take the time to meet with these people and understand why so many people are so upset. It is the obligation of elected officials to hold themselves to a higher standard and to be tolerant of the many that make up our country, state and your city. If this isn't something you are capable of, you should have considered that soundly before starting your campaign. I hope that you will take the time to consider what you said, talk to the people who are protesting outside of city hall even as I post this and learn from your mistake going forward.

Sincerely,

a concerned, conscientious, Michigan resident.

until next time...

have you even ever chunked a punkin?

2011-12-01T12:52:00.001-08:00

it's not any surprise to anyone with access to the internet that detroit is probably a less than desirable place to be. the media really isn't the friend of detroit. i guess there is that section of the huffington post now where bougie white folks talk about what they are doing to make detroit a better place, their little corner of a city at a time or what it means to be from detroit or introducing detroit to itself. i work in detroit and i certainly don't dislike it as much as i once did however, i would never opt to live down here. i have friends who do; friends like me from the suburbs who have decided to move into the city as "urban pioneers." this very notion pisses me off but whatever. that's not actually the point. in detroit, more so than most other places i've been, "detroit" can be interchanged with not just the city but the suburbs. if i was in another state and someone asked where i was from, i would say detroit. because it's roughly 833,892,389 times easier to say detroit than it is to explain where in the suburbs i live. if i'm in somewhere else in the state, not near people familiar with the region, i'll say i'm from detroit. if they seem to have a clue of where i'm talking about, i'll indicate that i'm from a suburb northwest of the city. point is, the region, metro detroit, can be lumped into one descriptive area to people who don't know any better. and yes, detroit has it's problems. and yes, i'm not really into the city. however...if people not from the area feel compelled to slam the city/region, it's on. it's like a sibling. i can pick on it. i can complain about not feeling safe parking my car on the road or my frustration about getting gas on my way home from work. i can complain that the snow is never fully removed from the road. but you, nondescript person who doesn't live here/isn't from here, you aren't allowed to. if you do, i'll feel compelled to stick up for the city/region and probably make you look like a fool in the process.

that aside, there are some significant perks to living in the metro detroit area. we have excellent concerts regularly and they are always well attended. it's like what we do. and i am particularly fond of our radio stations, especially one of the morning shows. i listen to it every day. actually, n and jeremy do too and we talk about it while we are each on our lengthy commutes. this morning, one of the interns was talking about wanting to break up with one of her girl friends. they were talking about the ways to end a friendship, which seem to be more difficult than ending a relationship. think about it. if you were in a relationship with someone, the mature thing to do is to have a conversation and explain that things aren't working out or you don't feel the way that you used to, etc, etc and then that's the end of that. you could do it dramatically and horribly where you cheat and get caught. but with friends...people who called into the radio and the other host of the show were talking about friends they had either dumped or been dumped by just stop talking to them. so is that the way to handle this? to just stop talking, avoiding phone calls, hide on facebook and dodge everything about this person? what about mutual friends? doesn't this get weird? the times that i have dumped friends, i've done it like this. and i'm not saying that this is right but whatever. after i've already decided that the friendship is over (this means after many attempts of communication where it all falls flat and/or someone has become an intolerable douche bag) i refuse to initiate any form of communication and will limit my response. then just so that everyone is clear, i write letters. not emails. hand written letters explaining that i have given everything that i can and that i'm over it. i have found that this is similarly not really that well received; i once experienced a back lash of an aforementioned letter where the former friend decided to announce to all our mutual friends about this letter and create drama. however, we have since fixed things and are kind of friends again. maybe it wasn't that bad.

that's the thing, i don't think that there really is a good way to stop being friends with someone. it gets messy and someone gets hurt; just like any other break up. when she was asked why she wanted to break up with her friend, the intern said "because she's just different." the female host didn't say anything but both of the men hosts asked questions, mostly trying to clarify what that means. i feel like i understood her. sometimes your friends change, you can't qualify it but it's there. "she's different" said everything to me when the intern said it. she went on to explain that her friend had gotten to a point where every time they went out, she only wanted to pick up guys. a caller called in to talk about a friend being different and that was to say that she had gotten boring. i nodded along like a crazy woman when that call came through. we all change; that's inevitable. but why is that when someone changes well, differently, that it can mess up a whole relationship? i regularly struggle with friends who i think have changed and become boring. not often to the point where i want to end our friendship but it is something that uniquely gets under my skin. and i think that i've lost friends because i've gotten boring. we all change. it's what it is. it's just too bad that sometimes when you change, you lose people that you used to be close to because you didn't change together. it sucks even more because there isn't even a good way to end these things. maybe they will do a follow up segment to this mornings show where the intern will say how she broke up with her friend. i find myself dying to know.

from the girl who is getting real bummed out that it's already getting dark out.

until next time...

hoping the weatherman is lying about impending snow.

2011-11-29T13:36:00.001-08:00

i have this habit of over-thinking things. lately, i have found that it is fun to overthink my impending ten year high school reunion. quite frankly, i can't understand why it's an exciting prospect at all. in my mind, it's a reminder of how much time has gone by though i hardly feel like the kind of adult i would expect to feel like by the time i was ten years out of high school. for others, i understand that this is some kind of exciting thing; to reconnect with old friends from the past. if facebook has taught me anything, it's that a lot of people that were friends in high school are still friends or married to each other. and there is facebook now. why do i need to get dressed up to go play nice with people that i didn't like when i was in high school anyway? the answer seems to be that i'm going to want to. and i was kind of forced into promising n that i would go. she said if i didn't go willingly then she would force me into going. i'm not much for being drugged and taken anywhere against my will. most of the over-thinking that i do stays right inside my head where it belongs but occasionally this stuff spills out of my mouth often times hits jeremy in the face. the other day he told me that i should look forward to going to my high school reunion because i have "succeeded in doing what you are supposed to do after high school." he went on to explain that he meant that i had finished college, i have a good job (with an organization that does good work that i'm proud to work for), i have made solid friends and i am involved in my community. i was quick to be snappy and say that i was actually involved with his community more so than my own and then he reminded me about the whole library board gig. he felt compelled to reiterate that i should feel proud of myself and that my former classmates will be impressed. of course, all i could think about were the many former classmates who are now married, have children, are doctors, lawyers or in pursuit of some other higher education. i conceded that unlike most of the people i went to high school with, i am involved with my community. they were all busy getting married, having children or getting higher degrees. at least i have a reputation to show for it. he is looking forward to his ten year reunion, two years after mine, which seems natural to me. he has accomplished a great deal at 25 and he should be proud. this got me to thinking about the different ways that men and women qualify success. our successes have been different but similar enough and the shortcomings that i can spot are also similar. neither of us have committed to anyone to settle down and while that causes both of us some personal angst, it doesn't bother him a societal mark of some kind of failure like it does with me. and in my mind, i can't reconcile the feeling of not being a success against the people i used to easily compete for grades with ten years ago. i do know that just because they are married, have kids, are a doctor, lawyer or some kind of ph d, that doesn't mean that they are happy. and just because i wander aimlessly most of the time, it doesn't mean i'm not happy. that should be the measure of success. that's what i need to remind myself.

yesterday, n sent me an article about women in their 20s rushing into marriage. i read it but i can't say that i was surprised even a little bit. the article talked about women rushing into marriage because they were ready for the next logical step in their relationship, because it didn't matter who they married since they didn't have that first love they pined after still and a couple other reasons. then the article talked about these same young women getting divorced. it seems to make sense to me. i don't understand why there is some rush to get married. it's is a commitment that you are making for the rest of your life. we are expected to live well into our 70s on average. probably longer depending on your genes. so even if i was to get married tomorrow and i die first at age 77, i'll still have been married for 50 years. that's a long time to spend with one person. these are the kinds of decisions that need to be given a lot of thought and not jumped into because of some trivial reason that seemed brilliant in your early 20 something mind.

why rant about this? because i think it actually connects to something else. i have a friend who isn't very good at using the manners that parents spend lots of time teaching the toddlers. please, thank yous, excuse me, etc. everything is a demand and expected. n was venting to me about this a bit yesterday and it got me to thinking. this is a friend that i made in my 20s, unlike n who i've been friends with since i was in middle school (oh those early teen days...) listening to n vent made me think of all the many things that are wrong with most of the friends i have made in my 20s. don't get me wrong, i don't think i'm exempt from this. i think we are all broken and would benefit seriously from some therapy. but of course, if i were to suggest that, it would come off as offensive, as if there is something wrong with talking to someone about stuff you can't handle on your own. please. so why do i do deal with these kinds of friends? because i'm settling. i know that it's hard to make friends the older you get. hell it's hard to meet people in general and to find people who don't suck? forget it. it seems to get harder and harder with each passing year. so i put up with it and remain frustrated because i can't divorce them. for political reasons, for practical reasons and for whatever other reasons there might be. we've be woven together and so instead of cutting someone out of my life like i would in the old days, i grin and bear it and just keep my distance as much as possible. but why should friendships be like this? because somewhere along the line i said it was okay. it was okay for me to deal with their nonsense and not vocalize my opinions when they should arise if it is for the betterment of that person or your relationship; it's my belief that's what friends should do. like i could tell n she was being a pain in my ass, i could verbally bitch slap her for something. sure, she wouldn't like it but at the end of the day, she knows that i'm not attacking her. the same works both ways.

the closest friends that i have, the friends that i choose the keep the closest, with the exception of jeremy, i have known for many, many years. our friendships have been tried, tested and forged through many of a less than pleasant situation but i know that if i need to have a good cry about something, i can pick up the phone and call any of my ooows ladies and they are there for me. maybe i didn't try as hard or was more accepting with these friends i've made in my 20s because i knew that no matter what, i already had my close friends and there really isn't room for anyone else. i think these two concepts are similar. in our 20s, we rush. we rush to do what we think is right, to live where we think is right, to take the job opportunity we think is right, to marry the person we think is right. we think too damn much. we overthink everything. and i'm as guilty as any of the rest of us but seriously, we might do better to stop for a minute, enjoy the moment we are in with the people we are with and go from there. something to think about.

from the girl who just wants to succeed at everything.

until next time...

"well you can't put angry birds champ and work noise master" on your resume

2011-10-25T12:19:00.000-07:00

i am not a secretary. i'm not saying it's a bad thing. executive assistants, office managers, paralegals...they are what make offices work really. they are the ones who remember what needs to get done and keep things moving. they are usually under appreciated especially given how much they truly do and how much they seem to know about what's going on in an office. the component of my job that is this assistant part doesn't usually bother me. what i'm talking about it is when i feel like i'm being treated like a secretary. like a 1950s secretary. objectified because i'm not smart enough to do something real but have need enough or don't have a husband and thus need to get out of the house and find a real job. every time i draft an email for my boss, every time i am instructed to look something up that she could google herself, a small part of me dies. it gets under my skin and chips away a little bit more at something inside me. it makes me absolutely crazy. mostly because it is completely unappreciated. perhaps i overestimate her ability but i think that if you are working in an office in the 21st century, it's not an absurd expectation that you can work basic functions of computers. by that i mean, print your own documents, basic understanding of microsoft excel and word and how to work google. it's not rocket science. in fact, screw needing these skills to work in an office, i don't know how you can live in the 21st century world with smart phones and genius children without knowing how to do these basic tasks. unrelated tangent, there really is something that is annoying when i have to stop what i'm doing to google something for my boss. it's like she thinks it's magic that i can find anything on the internet. shakes my head. if it is the magic she treats it as, at the very least, she could act as though she is impressed by my magical abilities.

that's not really my point, it almost never is, is it? i've been thinking a lot about gender inequity lately and feel like i should write something about it. before i get started, allow me to say that i am a pretty terrible feminist. i am one, don't get me wrong, i'm just not the best at it. bras are expensive to burn and i'm not a man hater. anyway let's get on with it then.

there was a movie out recently called "Missrepresentation" that was on the OWN network. i didn't watch it because it disrupts my sensibilities to watch anything on that network. i wasn't into Oprah when she just had a show, i'm for sure not getting on board now that she bought a network. however, at least a dozen of my facebook friends posted the link to this trailer last week and finally curiosity got the best of me and i watched it. this movie talks about the way women are portrayed in the media and how that image still continues to foster the unequal footing that women stand on in this country and what are we going to do about it. the trailer sites that women make up 51% of the US population but only make up 17% of the US Congress. one of the women in the trailer also talks about how at age seven, girls and boys are equally as likely to say that they want to be the president of the united states. when asked again at age fifteen, there is a greater disparity along gender lines.

aside from this movie, i've been noticing an increased amount of things in the news about gender inequality. dave and i were sharing articles a couple weeks ago basically about the end of men. apparently now women are succeeding more, we are finishing college at a greater rate than men and this has, not surprisingly, caused some conflicting opinions. we read an article about the end of men and how awful it is, how basically men need to stop playing video games, get to work and get women back where they belong then another article that was basically yeah, women are taking over, we don't even need men.

so all of this has been floating around in my head and has made me fairly frustrated. is it horrible that the media consistently displays women in a light that holds us to a high level of scrutiny that is unrealistic? absolutely. but we are the ones who have decided to take that message seriously. we are the majority of the population. why is it that we let them dictate what we should think about ourselves? there will always be women that exist who are like barbie or snooki, vapid, foolish and will never amount to anything. but the majority of women will do something because of their intelligence. the majority of women aren't in the entertainment industry.

there is a tool greater than the media and it's hardly revolutionary. ready for it? it's human interaction. children, both genders, need role models. they need someone to look up to. when i was a little girl, my pediatrician was a woman. i had family friends that were women and engineers and lawyers. to me, setting my sites on any of those careers weren't ruled out because of my gender and i think that is what kids need to see. we should be encouraging little girls to think they can be members of congress or their state legislature or their county commission. we should tell little girls they can be governors, senators and presidents. we should tell them they can be doctors, lawyers and engineers. we should tell them they can be anything they work hard enough to be. because they can. on the other hand, we should be encouraging little boys to get into traditionally female dominated fields because why should we only send girls into an other wise man's world if we aren't going to let boys in? we should tell little boys they can be teachers or nurses and that by entering either field it's not emasculating or something like that. children need role models and people who believe in them. if that happens, the media loses its strangle hold on telling everyone else what's right and what's wrong.

of course, the media is going to keep telling us women aren't pretty enough, that we aren't smart enough, that we need to lose 10 pounds, get botox in our foreheads and replace our wardrobe every season. it's going to tell men that if you aren't the marbollo man then you aren't a real man, you need to butch up, watch football and drink beer or you aren't a real man. the media can be a dangerous monster but it's really up to us. let it just be noise, i say. i know that it's not that easy. it would be outstanding if it was. but if people wake up and start to consider they don't have to think about something just because that's the way society or the media says to think about it, things can really change. just putting it out there.

i could go on and on because yeah there is a lot to say but i'm done for today. time to get back to some work and this delicious tea that i made two hours ago that is now cold.

from the girl who wanted to be a figure skater at seven years old (and now works an office job).

until next time...

it's 75 degrees and sunny and i'm stuck inside working...

2011-10-11T10:43:00.000-07:00

so i almost never put myself together to go to work. it takes far too long for me to dry my hair in the morning so i shower at night and dry my hair then which leaves for various states of hair appearance in the morning. most of the week it's back in a ponytail. it is without fail, if i actually do something to my hair, half of my colleagues will say something. most notably my boss which i find to be vaguely annoying. i did my hair, i didn't invite you to come in my office and have a conversation with me (my boss, not my colleagues. with them, it's usually a passing compliment.)

the other day, my dear friend jen posted a link on my facebook wall. she posted it on katie's wall and n's wall too. it was a list of bff rights and responsibilities that mindy kaling came up with and read through, which was what helped her and her best friends stay best friends through many years and undesirable living arrangements. she talks about how, as the best friend, it is her responsibility to be honest but gentle about your appearance. instead of saying "your ass looks fat in that skirt", default to saying something like "i'm not crazy about how that looks on you." she also says that when your best friend is sick, it's your job to make a run to cvs and in addition to grabbing everything over the counter for said ailment, also grab a fashion (or tabloid) magazine and favorite candy. this is an equally important part of the recovery process. i listened to her rattle through her rights and responsibilities and found myself nodding along easily. girlfriends have this kind of bond. mindy also opened this up to be a contest, the winner of the best additional rules and responsibilities would win a copy of her book. they were listed below her post on her blog and some of my favorites included:

- If you can have adventures, go have fun, and also sit on the couch and eat ice cream while watching tv, that’s your best friend.

- She tells you your newborn baby is the most beautiful thing she’s ever seen, when let’s face it, he looks like an old man alien.

- You never need the backstory. Because you already know all my business. If you happen to not know a detail (“wait, you made out with WHO?”) I can give you a sixy-second rundown of the situation and you’re all caught up.

- Attends the midnight premiere of Harry Potter with you. Every year.

- It should never come as a surprise when either one of us is asked to participate in an impromptu car concert. No matter our singing abilities, I will need you to pump up your volume, when I crank up the stereo system. I will double your excitement upon hearing “Bye Bye Bye,” by including hand motions while singing the chorus. We should both share a “let’s do this” attitude when the situation arises.

- BFFs have running tabs, but no one ever really knows how much you actually owe one another. “You can get me next time,” means I’ll pick up this sushi bill and this weekend, you’ll get me a round of drinks while we’re jamming unapologetically to Justin Bieber at the bar. Whoever dies first leaves $50 in their will to their BFF – surely this will cover any outstanding debt.

with this in mind, i clearly whipped up a quick email to my ladies to discuss this wonderful link that jen shared and suggested that we create our own additional rules and responsibilities. in my experience with having and being a best friend, this is what i feel should be included:

- when you are having a meltdown about turning 27, your best friends are right there with you and take it one step further. it obviously isn't our own fault but rather an outside condition that we have been afflicted with. accordingly we will create a psychological disorder that the DSM should recognize and create a society based around our problems that can only be cured by bitching, whining, ice cream, boy bands and love.

- no matter how much you have to complain about your siblings, your boss, your job or dissertation, the best friend is there to listen and agree with the injustice in the world.

- best friends hate the same things and will unapologetically mock the same things. this business is best done as a team.

- sometimes when you are having a meltdown or epiphany you need to talk to your best friend. it doesn't matter if you are at work, if the baby is screaming its face off like it's melting or the world is ending. this could be because something life alteringly bad happened, or something minor (but not really that minor) like a really bad hair cut. or something tragic like hearing vanilla ice on the oldies station or nirvana on the classic rock station. or it could be something awesome like hearing nkotb or tommy two tone come on the radio.

- i might make fun of your for the various stupid things that you say or do (two way street friend. you do it to me too) but if anyone else gets involved with that, i will eviscerate them with my words and make them very sad that they were born to encounter our ongoing awesomeness.

- i understand our codes and the language only we share. for instance, if you say you need help fixing the dishwasher, i know that means come over with a box of fudgsicles and medical tape.

- sporadic inside joke text messages instantly make any day better. i promise to send them whenever i can remember. also, i'll send you texts that i find to be funny even if they are super elaborate and out of the blue.

- i know that when you get really drunk you will want to tell me over and over again how much you love me. i might pretend like i don't like it but i do. it's the hauling around a drunk who's not listening i'm not really loving but even that is pretty good.

this is an ongoing list that i'm waiting for more feedback to continue crafting my list but i think it's a pretty good start. seriously, listen to that blurb on the link. it made me smile and everyone should have a smile every once and a while.

from the girl who is very happy to share this link with all (both) of you.

until next time...

it definitely gets better.

2011-09-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

here's the deal. normally, i would start rambling on about something that's on my mind, like using a consistent font as if it were my online/computer handwriting or how grateful i am that this week of work has been particularly chill after a couple of really tense weeks. that's what would usually go on. but not today. today i'm going to get serious for a minute because i've got something on my mind and i want to say it. and this is my little corner of the internet so if you don't like it, then you don't need to read it. i'm sure i'll be back to complaining about fairly average, mundane trivialities soon enough.

today i'm writing about jamey rodemeyer, the young man in new york who killed himself as a result of being bullied. i read the news of his suicide and like the many other teens who have killed themselves because they were bullied, it broke my heart. i'm not a very emotional person and i don't always commit emotions to others since i tend to have a difficult enough time doing that for myself. but this story crushed me. in a rare way, i felt my heart ache and i wanted to cry for him, for his family and for his friends. i wish i could have been there for him, to wrap my arms around him and to tell him that things do get better and that once you are done with high school you never have to see those ignorant asses who spent their time belittling you again. that those bullies only bully because they have nothing else going for them and they are the kind that peak in high school. i would have told him to take comfort in knowing that in the adult world, being different is what gives you personality and what makes people like you. i would have told him you're so close. you can make it. it really does get better.

i'm not a very touchy feely person. i never have been. but for some reason, there is a soft spot in my heart for glbt issues, all of them, and for those in the glbt community. when i was in college, this was my chief cause and while it would make more sense for me to be an out and loud feminist or something but it's never struck me the same way. i could argue any part of the right wing anti gay rhetoric and i have in a lot of instances. it is what i will always care most about. lady gaga said in an interview once that she doesn't know where she would be without her gay male friends. i've never agreed with her more. even in my post college life, this is my issue. this is my cause. this is where my heart goes out. so my heart seems to only be open to the injustices that the glbt community is faced with and my brain is located squarely in politics. this can be a wonderful thing but lately (like with the official repeal of don't ask, don't tell), particularly in my mitten, it's not.

back to the story at hand, the kids that bullied jamey went so far as to continue to pick on him after his death, when his sister (who jamey was particularly close to) was at her high school homecoming. when jeremy heard this on the today show yesterday, he told me "they already killed him. what more could these bullies want?" he was outraged. i was too. it turns out with that open bleeding heart also comes extreme outrage when things are mishandled or i am directly faced with wild injustice. i said to jeremy "the bullies' behavior is deplorable but what i want to know is where are the adults? where are the teachers, the chaperons, the administrators, the parents who should know better than to let these kids harass this kid?" where were they? where are the laws to prevent this from happening? and what are the consequences going to be for these bullies? from where i'm sitting, they are at least guilty of man slaughter. it was their behavior that killed jamey. they should be responsible.

legislators around the country should hear this story and the other stories before jamey and spring into action. anti-bullying legislation shouldn't be a bargaining issue and it certainly shouldn't be put off. this is obviously necessary. in my beloved mitten, legislators won't consider anti-bullying legislation that includes language to protect sexual orientation (let's not even get into gender identity or expression.) the gop strangle-hold on michigan politics has our legislative body voting on preventing domestic partner benefits to state employees, banning the already illegal so called partial birth abortion ban and attacking other issues that face the glbt community and women. the legislators in my state capitol have made it their business to move backwards. how can they do this when this is happening in our country?

our lack of legislative action is a silence that is painful and deadly. it's showing that this isn't something we take seriously. we weep for the families and loved ones who lose their children because of bullying and take no lead in stopping this horrible epidemic. i call it an epidemic because while i'm sure many can attest to being bullied in their childhood, there is something worse about this. maybe (read: probably) i grew up in a bubble but in my high school, it seemed to me that no one gave a damn about any one else's issues. i can't recall anyone being teased or harassed and i was friends with "the gay kid" in high school (like i wouldn't be.) other friends have shared similar stories about their high school experience, that they never felt bullied or witnessed any bullying happening.

high school kids, get it together. just because you say it on facebook or twitter or whatever else instead of in person doesn't mean it hurts less. if you are a jerk who is harassing and bullying kids in school, in person, shame on you. i hope that there is some adult who will stand up and say something to you. adults need to get it together too. i think teachers should say something if they overhear a kid getting called a name in the hallway. that time someone got called a "fag" in the hallway could have been the time that broke the camels back. but saying something to the bully let's the other kid know they aren't alone. that's critical. also adults, you vote. theoretically anyway. step one, make sure you vote. and vote for candidates that don't suck. step two, contact your legislators, the local and the federal ones and let them know this is an important issue to you and they need to consider it and act. final, elected leaders, you represent the people. and when kids are killing themselves, it's bad for all of us. you can stop that. let kids know that you care. maybe jamey would have grown up to be a congressman. we'll never know that now because no one stuck up for him, no one intervened with the bullies at school and he felt like there was only one way out.

some seriously heavy thoughts to consider but they are thoughts that need to be considered. action needs to happen and kids need to stop killing themselves because of this intolerable bigotry.

from the girl who is so sad about this totally avoidable loss.

until next time...

this time baby, i'll be recession proof.

2011-09-08T14:00:00.000-07:00

every time i eat middle eastern food, i think about how i only want to eat that whipped garlic sauce for the rest of time. seriously. why is that so delicious? but more importantly, i'm half middle eastern. why isn't this a food that my family had on hand for holidays and other such gatherings for my entire upbringing? i'm going to go ahead and blame my grandma for that one; she did the cooking in my dad's family's house when they were growing up. it should have been on her to bring the tasty garlic so that no one can come near you for hours after the fact. seriously, cigarette breath is less potent. yet, here i am eating it with bread with not a care in the world for how i'm not going to be able to breathe near anyone for a while.

so i've mentioned before that i obsessively read news articles about how f-ed the millennial generation is. i read an article today titled generation limbo: waiting it out which i must admit is a clever title. the article talked about how recent college graduates are taking longer to start their actual careers, not surprising considering the state of the economy and the relatively non-existent job creation. with the job market looking as sick as it does, with too many people out of work or underemployed, young folks aren't getting the start they need for their careers after graduating college. i also recently read an article about how student loan debt is getting outrageous. the thing with both of these articles, while fascinating, i don't understand how it can possibly be news. then again, i suppose it's not everyone who is living this first hand. there are people who read the paper who have jobs, who came of age in the 80s or 90s when things were booming and having a college degree meant you were going to have a good paying job.

then there are me and my peers. i was recently discussing this with my friend dave. it was our grandparents generation that came of age during the great depression and everyone has heard stories of rationing sugar. our parents and the generation between us and them, the gen x-ers i can't help but slightly begrudge, had it better than the generation that came before them. and then there is us, the millennials. coming of age during "the worst recession since the great depression" (i heard that last night and it just made me mad. shouldn't we just call it a depression then? it's not like "recession" has a better implication when it means the same damn thing.) we are pretty handy at finding things for cheap. we use craig's list and ebay, perhaps taking to heart that one man's junk is another man's treasure adage. there is this whole business about living social and groupon that it seems that everyone and their unemployed friend are into. the oatmeal said it best with this comic. i can't help but wonder how this is going to impact us when we are legitimate adults. i hope it's funny. perhaps i'll start storing money in various hidden places since i don't trust banks anyway. yes, eccentricity is calling my name.

where was i going? oh right, a generation in waiting. i accidentally just said that a couple sentences ago. "when we are legitimate adults." i graduated college in 2006 and i have been waiting since then. i might have been slightly more realistic than some of my friends and peers upon my college graduation but i think you can only call it realistic because i abandoned my major when i came to the quick realization that if i went to grad school, i was going to have to inflict pain on something. i accepted that i was going to graduate college and stumble around until i found something i was good at, liked doing and paid me money. i know that i am very lucky. i managed to do that and not only that, but i did it and got to stay in the mitten. i have friends all over the country now, in various kinds of grad school or working, sometimes in the field they choose in college, because they couldn't get work here. yes, it's a bummer. and even though i have a job that i enjoy and feel as though i have found a niche with something i'm good at, i am still wondering when am i going to become a real adult? when is it that i'm going to make that transition, feel financially stable (because right now it still stresses me out to pay my car payment every month on top of my other bills. i make it just fine but i feel like real adults don't get annoyed with such a payment) and start considering that it is time to grow up and settle down? perhaps i've got the wrong impression of what a "real adult" is. maybe as some people fantasize about what love is, i fantasize about what being a "real adult" is. let's call that an epiphany for now.

i've read before that a person changes their career on average 5-8 times in their lifetime. that's a crap load of times. i wonder if you can count being a student in as a career change. especially for these folks who have gone back to school, hoping that this will amp up their resume and suddenly jobs will appear and their plans will be back on. i anticipate in a couple years there will be articles written about how people are way over educated for jobs that are available and are struggling to pay back massive debt created by becoming further educated. wait, that already happened? ok, well then more articles that talk about that.

anyway, i felt like i should say something about that. it's been on my mind for a while so whether it made sense or not, it's now out of my head and i feel quite satisfied with that. it's time for me to head home from work which hopefully won't take two hours. it's only 40 miles but something has happened with the rain and kids going back to school, i think everyone has lost their damn minds and are taking it out on their driving abilities. another rant for another time.

from the girl who is going to start hiding money in walls.

until next time...

it's the end of the day, right?

2011-08-08T13:02:00.000-07:00

i've been listening to pandora pretty much all afternoon at work. the station is filled with artists like adele, kate nash, regina spektor, lily allen and the like. in the past 20 minutes, every song has been a cover. this leads me to think that based on my limited karaoke abilities, i could probably succeed at being a singer. i mean, actual talent is a very small part of what gives someone the ability to be a musical sensation (see britney spears, katy perry and ashlee simpson for examples.) no, instead what you need is a loyal gay following and something that gets them to spend their money. for britney, it used to be her sexy, glam appeal followed by her bitch has gone crazy stint followed by the recovery or whatever that was. she keeps it interesting and no matter how bad she gets, people stay loyal to that. good for her. i probably wouldn't be the kind that dances around the stage with crazy, wild sets, just a little dancing, probably some pretty back up folks who can sing and dance and play instruments since i don't play an instrument and i don't want you to listen too close. yes, that's how i would do it. and i would be a flash-in-the-pan sensation. ten years from the peak of my success, a single will play on a soft rock radio station at 2:30am and people will think, "whatever happened to her? i remember liking this song that time." ah to dream. the silly nonsense in my mind keeps me quite amused.

aside from daydreaming, a bad thing has happened to/in america. standard and poors has dropped our credit rating from AAA to AA. now, i have no idea who frank conniff is but huffington post created a collection of the best tweets about our credit rating dropping and i felt i would share: "standard & poor downgraded economy from "train wreck" to "shit storm." once markets open it could drop to "clusterfuck." (for the other 23 best tweets go here: funniest economic downgrade tweets so far) i'm not going to lie about it, i was pretty worn out by all the media coverage the debt ceiling nonsense got over the past few weeks. it was a circus without a ringleader. chaos everywhere. at the last minute, they caved and made a deal, like i knew they would. it's exactly what they did with the budget earlier this year. here's the thing, i am so tired of listening to people talk about how congress is useless. does it seem like an awful lot of messing around with not a lot of output? definitely. but i think that paul krugman of the new york times got it right in his editorial today when he said: "No, what makes America look unreliable isn't buget math, it's politics. And please, let's not have the usual declarations that both sides are at fault. Our problems are almost entirely one-sided --specifically, they're caused by the rise of an extremist right that is prepared to create repeated crises rather than give an inch on its demands." congress, and their productivity, has been stopped in its already slow moving tracks by a bunch of right wing wackos that have only one agenda in mind: make sure obama doesn't get re-elected. this mentality of doing whatever is necessary to make the president look bad is what is messing up our nation, downgrading our credit rating and creating even more uncertain for a country that needs some serious bi-partisan work to rebuild our economy and get people back to work. i'm just sayin.

instead, we get people like michelle bachmann running for president. i find her to be nearly, if not entirely, intolerable as a person, as a woman and as an elected official. she is an embarrassment and i'm not entirely convinced that she's not actually insane. some of the statements she makes or the declarations of fact that end up being complete bastardizations of american history...:shudder::. i hope that she goes away quietly, finds that her time is better spent in reality tv. dear people at tlc, i feel like michelle bachmann needs her own show. can you make it happen soon so she doesn't actually get into the presidential race? kthnxbye. i can't imagine that there are actually enough morons in the country for her to make it through the gop primary and even if she does, i don't think there are enough people to put her over the top to beat obama in 2012 but the thought alone scares me. i've always liked being an american but i don't know if i could stay if there was a bachmann white house.

now the point i'm making here, in case it isn't abundantly clear, is that it is the fault of the tea party that our country is getting f-ed in the a. it is our obligation as citizens to realize that and vote accordingly next year. for real people. don't forget or make any other ridiculous excuses, just do it. the tea party's strangle hold on congress was evident even when the gop speaker of the house couldn't get these extreme right wing folks to toe the republican line and that is the gop's greatest strength. their unfailing, blind unity. i'm tired of the protests, the misspelled, ignorant, racist signs, the people presenting nonsense as fact and most importantly, i'm tired of the tea party playing russian roulette with america. please go back to whatever backwater hole you came from and leave the rest of us alone. ok, i'm done preaching now.

from the girl who's birthday tomorrow puts her one step closer to thirty.

until next time...

it is getting mighty dark out side. i'm half expecting we are about to get tossed into oz.

2011-07-18T10:21:00.001-07:00

i had a rant earlier this year about my distaste for hipsters and last night i found myself in a bar that suddenly became swarming with hipsters. this lead me to think a few things. first i clearly need to limit the amount of time i spend in ferndale, which isn't that much to begin with but this was a disproportionate amount of hipsters given that the bar we were at is usually empty. i fear that the hipsters have found this to be ironic and now plan on showing up to pollute the otherwise fun karaoke with their renditions of songs they don't know the words to. second, i wish there were hipster free zones. i would probably pay a little bit more, like a cover or something, to get into a bar that i knew would be free of such distracting nonsense. in the same way that i would pay extra to fly on a plane with no children. it really is the small things in life that make me smile. and finally, i think i found another primary issue that i have with hipsters in general. when it comes to the bar scene, hipsters have a lot in common with bachelorette parties. they are weirdly dressed with random accessories (veils and sashes are pretty much equal to bowler hats and suspenders to me), in a place they usually aren't for some kind of rare entertainment value and everything they do is to get attention from the other bar patrons. for example, bachelorette parties can't help but scream in a pitch that shouldn't be made by any human "omgggggggggggggg you're getting married. woooooo!!!!!" which of course, gets the attention of everyone else in the bar. bleeding ears have a way of doing that. at least there is something to say for hipsters; they don't say it out loud. rather they dance by flailing their arms about, shimmying around and jumping up and down. they actually look like someone with parkinson's disease having an attack. their motions are obscure and look particularly painful, what with the tight teal blue jeans, suspenders and ill-fitting tshirt.

this tangent about hipsters wasn't really what i was looking to talk about today. but i had that opportunity from last night and it felt good to write that rant down. earlier this weekend, i think a bit of my heart unfroze. i went to walk in a parade on saturday morning for my friend sam's boss and her coworker was there with both of his children. he has two boys age 2 and seven months. i'm not usually known to be hanging around kids though i do like them generally, like when they aren't being little shits who have never been disciplined by their parents a day in their lives. that's something to be said for sam's coworker, he is a good dad. these kids were so well behaved and they were actually fun to play with. those are the kinds of kids i need to spend time with. not the kinds that stick cell phones in their mouths, throw things on the floor and whine all through out meals. saturday evening, i was out with some friends and one who was quite drunk stumbled into a conversation asking if we thought we might be able to deal with children right now if we had to do it. in her brilliant drunk moment, she said that she thinks she would be able to do it but she didn't want to before she has kids next year; she doesn't want to be fat for her wedding. this was also the same woman that lost her fiance at the end of the evening and lead us wandering around looking for her so we could all go home. it's probably best that she doesn't have a child to have to consider caring for at this point.

so this got me thinking, if i had to have a kid right now, like i got stuck with a kid right now for some reason, would i be able to do it? i asked my friend jayme what she thought she would be like and she said that she would probably freak out at first then she would probably fare pretty well. i said to her that i would probably freak out in the beginning too, if by "in the beginning" she meant the first two years of the kid's life. the thing is, i know i'm more responsible than i give myself credit for. i'm the one who has always made sure everyone else was taken care of and have been told on multiple occasions that i am the most responsible person at making bad decisions that people know. i assume it's because when i was a teenager i was looking to do the stupid things that teenagers do but i didn't want to get caught and feel the wrath of my mother. it made me a very creative thinker, thanks mom. i doubt that's what she thought would come from her strictness in my childhood but here we are.

could i do it if i had to? i think i probably could, i just wouldn't like having to do it. not now. i'm definitely still too selfish for children. i like going out on wednesday nights and singing karaoke til 2am then struggling to make it to work on time thursday mornings. i like wearing a tiara on my birthday (which for the record is different than a sash, veil, stupid hat or any hipster accessories. you only turn an age once so it should be celebrated. you could theoretically be a bachelorette more than once.) i like spending lazy sunday mornings sleeping in til noon then leisurely doing whatever strikes my fancy. i like spending my money on dresses and other things that amuse me. i don't like the idea of spending money on diapers, saving for braces, college and all those other costs that come with babies. i like vacation too much for that. i like my freedom too much for that. though those little kid outfits are so cute, like the little onesies that declare an infant's support of michigan state university. that kind of stuff i understand.

maybe in a few years i'll be in a place where i want kids but honestly, i've always been of the mindset that i wouldn't have kids until i was in my 30s anyway. just to be as stable as i can possibly be before bringing someone else into this world to mess up their chances. it's time to wrap up my day here and do some thinking about a phone call i just got. nothing like messing up a day by thinking too much about nonsense.

from the girl who got super excited about finding the west wing online just now.

until next time...

a headache for days...seems fair to blame the weather.

2011-06-24T08:01:00.000-07:00

there are some definite perks to my job. one of which is that someone baked a cake and brought it in to share and that is what i just finished having for breakfast. also our coffee here is very strong and bitter. the contrast was lovely. in addition to my very grown up breakfast, i've been sitting in my office listening to the enema of the state cd from blink 182 which came out the summer i took driver's ed. so i've been having flashbacks to my first time driving, parallel parking and hitting garbage cans this gloomy friday morning. yes, it's still raining in the mitten. apparently we are trying to become seattle. yesterday was some of the weirdest weather i can remember ever having. it was cold (for summer anyway) barely getting to the high 60s but there was something like 85% humidity so it was cold, but sticky and balmy and it was raining on and off all day.

anyway, i've been thinking about blogging a lot lately which usually doesn't translate into much, especially when there are so many other distractions during my little breaks between projects at work. jen is home for the summer which for some many reasons has me very happy. a lot of times she seems like my only girlfriend who is on the same page as me, which is refreshing. we had a chat the other day while walking around the mall parsing through a comment that two separate people have made to us. we apparently have both been told that perhaps we are the second wife type. which to both of us, came off as an insult (which seems obvious to me.) fortunately i was told this a while ago and have had time to wrap my mind around it and discuss it through with jeremy, as he was the one who told me this and insisted it wasn't an insult. i'm actually really curious how many people might react like jen and i did, even knowing that the people who were saying that would never say anything to intentionally hurt our feelings. that's not really here or there so it doesn't much matter.

during our walk around the mall, jen told me that n had shared that she thinks her boyfriend is "the one." i've always had a difficult time with this notion of "the one" because it seems mighty limiting to me and leaves you with a lot of opportunity to fail, an activity i have never been fond of. but as previously stated, n is a romantic who has developed her view of relationships and love mostly from the caricature of it in movies, tv and novels. jen asked n to explain what this felt like, as she explained that she doesn't believe she has ever felt that. it surprised me because i would have thought at least with her college boyfriend who she was with for nearly seven years, she would have felt that he was "the one" but apparently not. this got me thinking about this whole idea. i thought i found "the one" before and i like to think that i must have been wrong because otherwise we would still be together right? it's easy on a good day to think that's true. but the days when i'm in a funk and convinced i'm going to end up like dr. house... it's just dark and lonely.

so this concept is confusing to me. how can you ever be sure that you have found "the one?" is there just one person out there just for you? what happens if something horrible happens to them, like they drive their porche off a cliff going 140 mph and it bursts into flames and they die? is that it? are you out of chances after that? or is "the one" what you call someone when you want them to be the one? does it just mean that they are the one that you are with, ideally forever but in the event of unforeseen circumstances, you aren't left alone to become the cat lady? or, in an even more cynical light, is "the one" the title that you give to the person you want to convince yourself you should spend the rest of your life with?

when jen and i were talking about our friends and our singleness, we talked about what we thought needed to happen for both of us before we found our "one" (if there is such a thing.) whether there is a "one" or not, i think that this whole business, finding someone to be in a relationship with and have intelligent children and hang out with until you die can only be done properly if you know who you are. because it's not fair to ask someone to love you if you don't know who you are, right? i think that's why so many people get divorced; people are in a rush to get married and forget this important step of self-discovery. or perhaps fail to realize that self-discovery isn't actually selfish but rather necessary. i could go on but it seems unnecessary and it's time to get some things done to wrap up the day.

from the girl who is really looking forward to the weekend.

until next time...

women of a certain age.

2011-06-09T10:54:00.000-07:00

i'm starting to become convinced that mother nature is menopausal. we had an extreme winter that lingered well into spring and the last few days have been scorching hot. and when there isn't extreme cold or extreme hot, there is a lot of rain. and not just showers. ridiculous storms that take down power. i know in the mitten we have been pretty lucky. we've missed all of the wild storms, like the tornadoes that struck the south and massachusetts and the wildfires, like the one ripping across arizona. considering that this is the state of our weather lately, i'm pretty sure my conclusion is reasonable. or that al gore and science are right; global warming is real. mother nature going through "the change" is a more amusing thought for me though.

at work, we recently had a new crop of interns start with us. this takes the usually pretty empty first floor and fills it up with a bunch of law students from the end of may til the mid august. i usually enjoy having them down here. except now i can't just yell from my office to paul's without fear of disrupting their work and i sometimes worry that my 90s pandora stations might be so loud that they are actually distracting so i spend a lot of time with my door shut these days. my coworker maggie and i have been discussing their fashion choices for the last week and decided this afternoon to fill them in on this game we've been playing by telling one of the interns that he wins "best dressed intern of the day" award. now we just have to figure out how to make it seem more official. they are super competitive so they are already taking this a little seriously. i'm thinking that this should add a little fun to their work place experience and a little wacky. i think every work place needs some of that.

for the first time in a long time (two years) all of the girls are going to be together next week. jen, katie, n, d and i will all be in the same place at the same time. the last time this happened was june of 2009 when we threw katie a baby shower. it was great to be together but we didn't get to do anything super exciting, mostly because katie was pregnant. i'm very excited that everyone is going to be around at one time. the problem is, because katie is never home, she doesn't have much time to hang around. and she's bringing her whole family with her so her husband and two kids doesn't leave much time for girlfriending. it seems to be a plight of my age again. while n and d are talking about wanting to get married and have houses to decorate and babies, katie is ahead of the curve. she's already gotten herself a husband, a step daughter and had a son. i'm still trying to figure out what we are going to do with her kids so that we can have a dinner without them. i'm certainly not the type of person you want influencing your eight year old. and it's supposed to be a girlfriend night, everything i've ever seen on tv and movies says to me that means no children.

my point today wasn't actually to complain about katie having her whole family here while she's visiting. it certainly isn't what i would call ideal but it is something. what i was going to talk about was nkotbsb coming to the palace of auburn hills next week and how very exciting that is. i got a new coworker this week and she is also going to the concert. this got me thinking that everyone in my peer group gets equally as geeked about nkotbsb and i hope that this is something that will stick with us for a while. it is definitely something that brings us all together; no matter what kind of adult you have grown up to be.

alright, that's all i have for today. i'm becoming increasingly groggy at work and coffee seems to be letting me down.

from the girl who is kind of really addicted to angry birds.

until next time...

blame it on the rain.

2011-05-25T08:24:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-05-19T11:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-05-13T12:10:00.000-07:00

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...

everyone who has a fb status about napping right now is making me super jealous.

2011-04-21T12:04:00.001-07:00

another thought for today. on the drive to the long boring dinner the other day, d shared a story about her father. she has always been close with her dad, more so than her sisters are, but lately her dad was driving her crazy. we debriefed about our similar experiences which gave me an idea. all of these things that we have been confronted with in recent years would be and are much easier when we realize that it's not just us. (which is probably a selfish notion. it seems ridiculous to believe than any experience is unique to any one of us as individuals.) it is because of this conversation, i offer you this list.

shit they should have warned you about in school.

1. it's ok if you don't know what you want to be when you grow up. stumbling around is good.
2. even if you get your "dream job" it's okay to end up hating it. it happens. you will find something you do like doing. and remember, statistically, people change careers 5-8 times in their life and it's projected that generation y will change even more than that.
3. parents, particularly dads, get weird when they realize their children don't need them as much. this tends to lead to them asking a series of annoying questions, such as: "how do you plan on getting from the airport to your hotel on vacation?" there is a weird adjustment for parents when they realize their children are capable adults and there is no distraction. this is particularly bad for parents/dads who are retired or laid off or just have too much time on their hands. i recommend getting them a puppy.
4. life is full of unexpected surprises, get use to that and everything else seems a lot easier. (or get a xanax prescription.)
5. the realization that college was expensive and probably didn't teach you a lot more than how to old your own hair when you vomit will hit you in the face. it's fine because that thinking on your feet thing is way more important than whatever you were supposed to learn in class.
6. the sooner you realize that no one gives a damn, the better off you will be. no one is as concerned with what you are doing, how or when you doing whatever it is as you are. so chill out.

and finally...

7. no one has a rule book for life. it's unfair, it's awkward and it has no interest in making it easy. the trick is to realize that all the hard things you have to manage will be good lessons to take with you as you move through life. (i haven't quite figured out that last part yet but i'm working at it.)

from the girl who stumbles and falls an awful lot (but still less than i expect).

until next time...

if you want to share personal debt, you better put a ring on it.

2011-04-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

i miss college. i remember starting my last year of school and thinking, holy shit, this is the last fall that i'm going to do this. then i started to get freaked out that i was going to lose touch with the friends that i had built friendships with over the years and immediately caved to facebook. and as great as facebook is, it's not enough. nearly five years after this time, i find myself craving my college days again. hell, just a college summer would be nice. three blissful months of nothingness; drinking, staying out late, laying in the sun, working a little bit, flings. those were the days. it has been well established that i am hopelessly nostalgic so it shouldn't be surprising that i day dream about going back in time to college.

the thing is this though. i think it's more than just my nostalgia for the good times that have gone by. quite honestly, i have plenty of good times now, despite my responsibilities and dare i say it, some of the times i've had since college might have been better than some of my college experiences. age and experience has made me slightly wiser, it would seem. besides the social stuff and lack of responsibility, the thing i miss most about college is the potential. think about it. you enter at 18 and the whole world is in front of you. you are exposed to people you've never seen, different view points, more educational opportunities than you probably knew existed and nothing but opportunity standing in front of you. you can be whoever you want, you can reinvent yourself from your former high school self, you can fall in love, you can build connections for your future career, you have your whole life in front of you. and this brilliance is uniquely captured in college. it doesn't take long upon graduating for that glitz and wonder to wear off when you realize just how challenging being an adult is and how unlike in your educational incarceration, you can't plan for everything that is coming at you. there is no real four year plan. there is no syllabus or course descriptions. it's just life. there is no manual and you finally realize, all the time and money you've spent on education has in almost no way prepared you for what is actually in front of you.

so this brings me to my point. since graduating college, there have been a lot of things that have challenged my beliefs about the world. i think that's a good thing; it builds character (as if i was lacking character in the first place). after college has been a time for me to realize that some people will embrace the amorphous concept that is life and that some people will cling desperately to the notions that they have internalized as "normal" either from TV or some other place i don't understand. i don't consider myself a rebel or contrary but it would seem, especially after recent conversations with friends, that i might be. i have talked about this before, that i don't feel the need to have to do what is prescribed. that my happiness in the future is not tied to someone else's understanding of what it means to be happy. i can be happy by myself as i build a reputation and career. i can be happy if i was to be married and have children. or whatever else i might do. but i have many friends who think that the path to happiness is the one that has been paved by past generations and their examples. the examples that became the stuff of movies, tv and novels. and it seems to me, even though i admittedly struggle with the concept of happiness fairly regularly, my friends who are looking for something they think they are supposed to have struggle more.

i talked before about my friend who's boyfriend stood her up on her birthday. i had dinner with her (let's call her n) and another high school friend (let's call her d) the other night. d has been in a relationship for three years and is fairly convinced that her boyfriend isn't ever going to propose. we didn't really get too much into her relationship because n dominated. apparently, she and her boyfriend have been talking about moving in together. but not just getting an apartment together, but buying a house. upon hearing this information, i immediately had to text jeremy (because this is what we do) mostly for affirmation that i wasn't the only one who didn't realize how serious this year and a half relationship was. he was equally as surprised. the man who couldn't manage to come to dinner and drinks for her birthday was the man that she was talking about getting a 30 year mortgage for a house in the suburbs with. as you might imagine, my head nearly exploded. this seemed like a fast progression but now that i have had some time to process it, i suppose it's not that shocking. i said before that she thinks that this is what she needs to do to be happy. she is 27. she should be on the path to marriage, a house, babies, etc. apparently that path became a moving sidewalk type device. i really just want to sit her down and ask her "are you sure this is the best you can do?" before she decides to make serious life decisions. too bad i can't think of a polite way to ask.

this conversation lead to an entire dinner conversation about weddings and decorating houses. i wish i wasn't serious. the wedding part i understand. i think it is a prerequisite as girls to think and perhaps even day dream about what your dream wedding would be like. so we talked about weddings: locations, bridesmaid dresses, shoes, colors, center pieces, etc. then we moved on to discussing houses, decorating them and my apparent lack of interest in putting things on walls. and on and on we went. my margarita and blackberry were the only things that managed to keep me from drowning in boredom. this was easily the most boring conversation i can remember having in some time and i thought "is this what being an adult is?" being an adult seems to mean a lot of things and i'm hoping that it doesn't have to involve extreme boredom. perhaps eventually i'm going to want to stay in and watch the nightly news, talk about redecorating the den and the rate of my IRA. (i almost fell asleep typing that sentence.) i hope the path to happiness doesn't have to involve boredom because if it does, i'm happy to keep standing on the sideline where i think i've taken up residency. i'd like to be able to be both an adult and an interesting person.

i suppose now is a good time to wrap it up. i have some very important day dreaming about college days to get to while i wrap up my work day.

from the girl who really doesn't care about decorating.

until next time...

i really do want to keep this blog less political than it is but i can't help it. current events are outrageous.

2011-03-24T08:26:00.000-07:00

dear governor nerd,

on the cold evening of november 2, 2010, i heard the news that we would be embarking on a relationship together. i have to assume this is what it feels like to be a part of an arranged marriage. so i waited, relishing my last moments of a democratic majority in the state house and a democrat in the governor's mansion as we rolled into winter and inching closer to january. i had heard the rumors about you; you were going to be different than the others, you would save michigan and you would be like governor milliken, a moderate with the best interest of the state at heart. and while your business (and lack of political) background made me a little uncomfortable, i braced myself for the idea that maybe this could be a good thing. change is good right? and things always ache a little when change happens.

before we could even make it to our january date, you started to show your true colors, appointing former governor engler staff as your transition team. i felt betrayed. you were already breaking promises, the promises that got you elected, the promises that you would be different. january came and with you at the helm and republican leadership flanking you in the house and senate, you set off to work and i watched, hoping that it wouldn't turn into a catastrophe. as we approached your first state of the state, you were criticized for never talking about what your "plan" is for michigan. see, now that you are in office, you can't just say you are so much smarter than us. we have a right to know what's going to happen. i didn't join in criticizing you. i waited for the state of the state and listened diligently as you repeated ideas from state of the state's past and said almost nothing specific. there was no plan but there were still some good things that you said, like we need to invest in education.

before i knew it, it was february and you presented your budget proposal. you came in slashing with a machete where scalpel like precision was necessary. you came in with a wrecking ball when you just needed to make a small hole. it seemed that no one was safe. the young, the poor, the middle class, seniors, young adults. we were all pawns in your plan to make michigan a state for business. a state for business that would only be number two in the region and was being built on the backs of hard working men and women of this state. we have rolled through march and things have just kept getting worse. you have made law out of a bill that challenges citizens' fundamental right to vote for their elected officials and are sitting idle while the house and senate discuss taking away rights for domestic partnership benefits for same sex state employees, not to mention what is happening to our unions and our schools. you should be ashamed of yourself.

to be fair, i knew this had to happen. i knew the honeymoon had to end. and it has. but not just with me, with the majority of the citizens of the mitten state. you might have had many at hello but now they are wishing for a time traveling delorean driven by christopher lloyd to take us back to november 2, 2010 and have a do over. that's the fastest that people have given up on their governors, nationwide.

i know that you don't care about the politics of this because you "aren't a politician." but it is your politics that are ruining lives and you have become this state's worst nightmare. governor nerd, please listen to the people. we are the ones outside the capitol crying for justice. we are the ones considering leaving the state that has always been home because things are too horrible here. we are the ones that you need to be able to tax to support your buddies. you need us a lot more than we need you.

i'm writing to request a divorce. our relationship has gone as far as it can possibly go and whoever set up this arrangement should be punished deeply for the horror that it has been. i can't possibly be with someone who has no respect for good things and only thinks with his wallet. i await your reply (though your signature of resignation would be preferred.)

from the girl who is very worried about the future of her state.

until next time...

pandora, i really need more than 40 free hours a month. come on...

2011-03-23T09:38:00.000-07:00

so liz taylor is dead. i found that out this morning when i logged into my most potent addiction, facebook upon getting to my desk at work. i, like many of my peers who were early college students when facebook burst on the scene have what is probably an unhealthy addiction to the site. i read something recently that most people in my age group get most of their news from facebook and that facebook is the first site that they check in the morning. it's definitely the first website i go to in the morning but my email comes to my phone so i don't have to go anywhere to see it. technically i read my email first if i have any. so upon sitting at my desk and scanning through updates, i notice my newsfeed was dominated with "rip liz taylor" messages. i have a lot of gay friends so a lot of the statuses were a lot more dramatic than that. seriously. it was too much for 9:30am. it seemed that the only other thing on my newsfeed was about the very sad news that detroit's population has shrunk to the smallest the city has been since 1910. of course, i then had to read all the free press articles about this very sad topic. sorry liz, while your life was pretty incredible, the sadness of your passing has been trumped by slow death of the city of detroit and the continued damage governor nerd is doing to the state with his wrecking ball method of "fixing" the state.

this morning, i sent one of these rather depressing stories about detroit to my dear friend jayme who returned by sending me an article about mom's who are obsessed with posting crap about their kids on facebook. this sent me into a tangent about the myriad of ways that people suck at facebook. so now for your reading pleasure i provide you this: a list of things people need to stop doing on facebook (the sooner the better, really.)

1. posting ultrasound pictures. mom's to be, listen. i get it. you are super excited and it must be really amazing to be able to see the baby growing inside of you. however, it actually is just gross for those of us who just happen to be your facebook friends. i don't want to see into you no more than i want to see an x-ray of someone who just broke their arm. as cranky as i am, i don't care about belly pictures, honestly. a few, not like one every day. that's absurd. but no pictures of delivering your baby. please. it might be a miracle to you but to me it's just sick. let's make a deal. don't post pictures of your insides on facebook. just quit it.

2. incessant posting of baby/kid pictures. i'm friends with you, not your kid. there is a damn good reason that you have to be at least 13 to be on facebook. if i knew that being your friend meant that i would need to constantly see updates about your burping, vomiting, drooling, cooing center of your universe, i would have seriously reconsidered adding you. god bless the hide feature. i have taken almost every single friend i have that is a mother and hidden them. sorry but i can't take the updates about diaper rash or colic. as far as i'm concerned, the only thing you are good at here is birth control. i have never wanted a child less after having to see so much of it all over facebook.

3. posting statuses with extra letters and/or the word "bestie". never post a status like this: "ommmmmmmmmmmgggggg so exciteddd for the weekendddddd with my bestiessssssss!!!" seriously you just look illiterate and no one is that excited about anything. please calm down.

4. posting statuses to "end breast cancer". posting statuses about your bra color or where you leave your purse is actually doing nothing to beat breast cancer. just like changing your picture to a cartoon is doing nothing to stop child abuse. if you want to put an end to these things, give money to a local cancer foundation that is doing research or facility that helps abused children. if the goal is to just annoy a population on facebook, like the bra color thing to not tell all the men on facebook and leave them confused, now that's funny. if that's the stated goal, count me in.

5. posting pictures of food that you are eating/made. seriously, you are going to look through your album later and be like, why did i take a picture of this sandwich?

6. posting statuses about glee. i post quotes from tv shows from time to time, like if they are funny or something but that is the extent of it. i have no reason to make it known to the world what i'm watching at 8pm on tuesdays. but all the "gleeks" do. if i never saw another word or phrase that was morphed to suit glee (i.e. gleepeat or glee my god) it would be too soon. it's a tv show and definitely not the best thing that has ever happened to tv. i do understand that this show does do some good stuff but its "gleeks" have made it so that i never want to watch an episode.

i hope that people might take into consideration this offer for some facebook etiquette. i think it is something we are sorely missing these days. remember, if you wouldn't scream it in a crowded room, don't post it on facebook. also remember, once it's posted online, it's there forever. neighborhood friendly reminders from a cranky, relative internet stranger.

from the girl who is itching for spring to lift her mood.

until next time...

no more polite lol's for you, dede.

2011-03-22T12:29:00.000-07:00

i am not particularly fond of bruno mars. actually, i don't like either of his singles that he has out. the reason is pretty simple; i think he is a liar. look, as nice as the sentiment is, almost no one is "beautiful just the way you are" and to me it kind of feels like you are using that as a line. it is a good line though because let's admit it, how many of us would like to feel like we are beautiful (i mean like stunning, together, attractive, the stuff people judge you externally on) when you rolled out of bed? yeah it would be awesome. second, no you would not catch a "grenade" for me or anyone else. i'm calling your bluff, bruno mars. it is an empty gesture. jeremy and i have discussed this quite a bit before. it would be like saying i'd catch a javelin for you, i'd fight a polar bear for you or i'd come change a flat tire for you. come on bruno. get real. and then he did. he got real and i am very pleased. he came out with a song called the lazy song. everything about it, even the title is perfect and for once, it's completely realistic. "today i don't feel like doing anything." speak on it, bruno. you've got me now. but seriously, don't make a single about walking into a burning house for a girl. then we are done again.

the first day of spring was technically sunday but far be it for michigan to get the memo. in fact, we have a winter storm watch for this evening. there's something new to look forward to (sarcasm.) i don't know if it has something to do with the continued gray skies, the threat of more snow or the fact that i feel like i haven't slept in two days even though i have but i am crankier than usual. and this crankiness got me thinking because thinking is more fun than working. i was thinking about detroit and a festival that happened here this weekend, marche de le nain rouge which apparently caused the city to be over run by hipsters. hipsters...

on saturday, my friend dave texted me to tell me that he may have found the place where all hipsters came from. he was probably right; i have to assume that hipsters originated in los angeles. maybe new york if not la. i asked if there was a fountain of PBR and a never ending supply of american spirit cigarettes on a collection of mismatched, random, "vintage" coffee tables and weird boots growing on trees. i figure it has to be a land where there is lots of flannel and mustaches. and this place... would be my personal hell.

here is the thing about hipsters that makes me crazy. it's actually the same thing that makes me crazy about most hippies too. i have an issue when the very reason for your existence is to tell me that you think you are better than me or everyone else for that matter. i'm a vegetarian too, but that doesn't make me better or worse than any of my friends who would mainline bacon if there was a way to do it. and i don't do it for the environment or because of the poor animals who suffer. i do it because i don't like the way meat tastes. it's just what it is. i don't watch a lot of tv but that's because i've been spoiled by having tv on dvd, online and dvr. i don't like having to watch in real time. next issue with hipsters is pretty simple and it's very similar to the first. i can't stand when someone does something for the sake of being contrary. why?? do you get pleasure out of making people crazy by just doing the opposite just to be different? if so, you are all sadists. third, most hipsters are people whose lives are still financed by their parents. that they purchase their ironic shirts at american appearal on their parents credit cards and call it a vintage find. they cram too many people into a random loft in detroit because it's cool. or something.

but here is the thing that makes me craziest of all. honestly, i could probably deal with all of their hipster nonsense if it wasn't for this thing. there is no principle behind their nonsense. if they are going to spend their time gauging how awesome they are against how much everyone else sucks, then they better be doing something incredible. but they don't. instead they drink PBR, smoke crappy cigarettes and wear 90s combat boots (daria style) over their skinny jeans and complain about everyone being too mainstream.

don't look now hipsters, but you might notice that the skinny jeans with boots over them is exactly the look that all sorority girls sport, as it is a trend.

pheewww. that felt good. i know it has nothing to do with anything but it's been on my mind and i warned you, i was cranky.

from the girl who doesn't tuck her pants into her boots.

until next time...

mondays = extra cranky = ranting = posting.

2011-03-21T11:00:00.000-07:00

i heard an interesting statement the other day. that me and my fellow liberals tend to think that we are more open minded and accepting because we work to make ourselves more aware of our surroundings but this becomes problematic, in that we forget that we see things through our own culture stained eyes. this is distracting. so we are all open minded, until someone challenges what we think we know. it is still my belief that we are better than conservatives who just pretend that there is nothing beyond a black and white world but i'm biased.

aging is kind of a funny thing. i have started to notice that i don't know as much as i used to when i was a teenager. i'm pretty sure when i was 15 i was convinced that i knew everything and as i get older, i realize just how wrong i was. i kind of wish i was right though. how nice would it be to actually know everything? i guess it would only be nice up until you had to deal with everyone that you know is wrong. it was a friend's birthday this past week and in the week or so leading up to it, she was being really weird about turning 27. she kept making statements to me like "i don't want to inconvenience anyone to come out and celebrate" and "i hope people will want to come" and "i don't want people to be looking at their watches wishing they were some where else during dinner." i'm not really sure what her issue was and she really didn't clarify it for me, which was particularly annoying. i'm not a fan of people starting a conversation then stopping when i start to ask questions to get information into whatever topic it is. it's like "hey i want to talk to you about the number 9." "oh, ok, what about the number 9?" "never mind." it aggravates me in a way that few things can really aggravate me. aside from all this nonsense about her birthday and her impending worry about aging and not "being where she should be at 27" i think it was a pretty good birthday. i mean, she was still weird about everyone being at dinner and made a point to thank us multiple times and express to an out of town friend that she had a good time and it was "fun, not forced fun, that everyone seemed to enjoy."

the one minor flaw in her birthday was that her boyfriend of over a year was unable to join us. last minute, he got called into work. there are some circumstances in which i think that might be acceptable. like if he was a doctor or something. maybe if he was the new guy at work and had to prove himself. or maybe if his boss was some kind of miranda priestly the devil wears prada kind of thing. maybe his boss is. i don't know, i've never talked to him long enough to actually know what he does for work. but it seems to me that he should have made sure that he had the day off for his girlfriend's birthday, particularly as she was struggling with this particular birthday. but instead, he didn't. and she just (seemingly) brushed it off. i am quite surprised that she is just so quick to be ok with this because i was annoyed. maybe he made up for it some way that she just hasn't shared. still though, kind of a dbag move.

i was talking about this with a friend who has much more traditional, let's say, or old fashioned views when it comes to relationships. which is strange but brings me back to my original point, because she is a liberal. a feminist for all intents and purposes who believes firmly that women deserve equal rights and that this is a cause to fight for. and yet in discussing our birthday friend's relationship and their individual lives, she said to me that perhaps our birthday friend is waiting to make a life move based on when her boyfriend finishes college. what a backwards thought! i was shocked and did nothing to disguise it when she suggested that. she promptly stopped responding to me (via gchat.) i understand making plans together, making plans for the future and building a life together. i get that. but that is not what was said here. this was waiting to make a decision about a job (as in getting one, not taking one in another state or something) just a job. and if birthday friend is going to talk about building a life with her boyfriend, then that is a whole different thing. if she is happy and thinks their relationship is strong, mazel tov. go for it. but remember this is the guy who went out with his buddy on st patricks day then the next day couldn't insure that he would have the day off work to spend with her for her birthday.

anyway, i know that i am hyper critical and apparently hard to impress. i know that i have very high standards for people. but i wouldn't have those standards if some people weren't able to live up to them. i fail to believe that there is something wrong with my expectations; i think more people might need to join me to expect more out of the people we interact with and society. i am sorry that i have made two of my friends the focus of my blog today but honestly, i would have told both of them this if they ever wanted to have a conversation about my thoughts.

from the girl who is counting down days to march 31.

until next time...

i'm going to need a crown.

2011-03-14T13:39:00.000-07:00

it just seems like with every day that passes, things get a little darker in the mitten state, despite the fact that we sprung forward this weekend and now have an extra hour of sunlight. even the st. practice day weekend wasn't enough to take my mind off of what was happening with our budget and in lansing. but this weekend, unlike the rest of my week, i spent a lot of time socializing with my friends and in the grand st. patty's day weekend tradition, imbibed in the celebration. after a couple of vodka and tonics, i happened upon an idea that tickled me and i thought i would share. see, governor nerd seems to have failed civics and doesn't understand that he doesn't get to unilaterally decide what is best for the state. there needs to be balance. so this got me to thinking, in a humorous, non ignorant way (because i passed all my civics, government, history and political science classes) of what i would do if i was dictator of the state.

1. i would make it illegal to be a republican. try and cross me when your political ideology isn't allowed in my state? yeah that's right. you wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

2. i would take all the money that the state invests in major banks out and create a state bank. i would only allow the state treasurer to invest our money in this state bank or community banks and credit unions. the hope here is simple, the big, corrupt, ugly, money grubbing banks would flee my state.

3. i would take a systematic look at the budget to invest in one of the most important assets we have in this state, the kids. as cliche as it is, it's true. children are our future and i for one want those little buggers to be educated. invest in schools, invest in teachers, invest in universities. this will provide positive things for the state, as people will want to come here to teach and business will want to hire our educated workers. (smart, right?)

4. i would stop the tax credits for big businesses that aren't contributing back to the state. if you aren't using michigan workers or creating michigan jobs, i'm fine with you leaving. don't let the door hit you on the way out.

5. appropriately use money on smart programs that are working in the state, like our film incentive, the next generation battery production and solar panel creation. put michigan to work competitively in this new economy and used best practices and empirically researched best methods for making the state work better.

6. if anyone tries to undermine me and my authority, please see number 1. it is my belief that if i'm working for the best interest of the citizens of michigan, things will get better. (and you might notice that no where in this list do you see anything about providing tax cuts for millionaires, taking away rights of municipalities or undermining citizens' right to vote.)

of course, this isn't actually possible. but i know that most of my ideas aren't bad. outlawing republicans is unreasonable but the rest of the stuff actually makes sense to saving our state. i'm not the only one with these thoughts. there are good public servants out there who are working on these very things while getting cut off at the knees every step of the way by obstructionists. i am proud of those who are in lansing and in their local government who are fighting for what's right. keep it up guys. we need you.

governor nerd, there are many like myself from my generation of young people who think like this and we can work to give michigan a very bright future. we just need you to quit trying to stymie us.

from the girl who would totally be a better governor right now than the nerd.

until next time...

i'm not for bullying but i can think of one nerd who might need a swirly.

2011-03-10T09:48:00.000-08:00

i have been called a number of names in my life. sometimes they were kind, you know, shortened versions of my name, various nick names. sometimes they were rude like the time i got called a "fag enabler." (and even though that is really rude, i kind of like that i was called it. my very existence pissed off one of the westboro idiots so much they had to say something to me.) as it has been made pretty clear, i am a liberal and while i know i said a couple posts ago that i was going to try and follow a theme, right now i need to veer away from that for a quick minute. mostly because current events in my home state and in the nation are so distressing that i have to say something. this is your chance to avoid it. this is about to be a political tangent.

let me start by saying, i absolutely love the wisconsin 14 that left the state when their governor was trying to shove union busting, anti-middle class legislation down their throat. i applaud you for being brave and standing up for what is right for america. i'm sure it was no easy task to do and i'm so glad you have the tenacity to do the right thing. it is truly upsetting to see what happened last night with this bill going through. i remain hopeful though that the voices of the many who are gathered in madison in protest and the many who will be affected won't be ignored.

in my beloved mitten state, the voters did a very bad thing in november. we elected a nerd to be our governor. we hardly seems far. i didn't vote for the guy. anyway, governor nerd rode in easily as a millionaire financing his own campaign who had a message of anti-washington, claimed to not be a political insider and claimed that he would use his business savvy from his time as a CEO to fix our state. and in 2010, that was a message that people wanted to hear. allow me to be clear for a moment. i believe that there is a big difference between a public servant and a politician and i think that politicians are usually the slimey people in politics who only think about themselves. i like patterns and following them and using them to predict behavior. let's look at some patterns of governor nerd together, shall we?

--governor nerd spends his campaign talking about how we need to invest in michigan's future. that we need to invest not only in education from k-12 but preschool through college graduation. then he presents a budget proposal that would cut funding for k-12 students by $470 a student, cutting funding to public universities by 15% while also threatening to take more funding from universities if they raise their tuition above a certain percent. he says we need to invest in education and our future, then he presents cuts to critical institutions.

--governor nerd says that we need to do more to keep our young people in michigan. we need to stop the "brain drain" from the state, referring to our young people that were educated in michigan to leave the state to find jobs. he also says we need to create jobs. it's all about jobs. then he presents a budget proposal that suggests we should cap the film tax incentives. the same tax incentive that has created countless jobs, brought a tv show based in detroit, filmed in detroit to the state and is generating $6 for each dollar that is spent here. he says keeping young people and building jobs is important, then he caps incentives that are working and doing good things for the state.

--governor nerd says that we need to work to cut the deficit in the state. this is why all the radical changes, right? then he presents a budget proposal that eliminates tax breaks afforded to low income workers and seniors. and rather than using the $1.7 billion projected revenue from these cuts toward closing our budget deficit, he plans to use them to create $1.8 billion in tax incentives for corporations. he says we need to fix the deficit, then he proposes spending the tax money he's taken from the poor and seniors on corporations.

--governor nerd says that the future of the state can only be bright if it involves revitalizing the city of detroit, that the city cannot be neglected. then the emergency financial manager for the detroit public schools decides to close half of the schools in the district, bringing classroom sizes to 60 kids in a high school class. he says we need an urban agenda. then he presents a budget proposal that cuts revenue sharing from the state to municipalities. and as cities and townships reach extreme financial hardship because of this devastation to their budgets, the house and senate have passed a bill to allow for emergency financial managers to come in and unilaterally take control of the municipality. break union contracts, tell school districts to merge, overrule local elected officials and even have the right to dis-incorporate a city or township. and it is governor nerd and his administration who have the authority to decide when a municipality has reached this point where they need to be taken over by this emergency financial manager. he says we need to save the city of detroit, then he basically rolls out the red carpet to destroy not just detroit, but other cities as well as he hands them over to corporations.

does anyone else remember in 2004 when john kerry was called a flip flopper? governor nerd seems to be taking a page out of that book. in fact, for as much as he might claim otherwise, his profound ability to say one thing then do another is exactly what people don't like about politicians and what, in my book, makes you a dirty one. in the short time that he has been governor, governor nerd has done a good job of learning how to talk out of both sides of his mouth and for that, we should all be a little afraid.

one of the most upsetting things about all this to me is he doesn't seem to care. i get it, he's not "politician" so he doesn't care if he gets elected again and he doesn't care who he pisses off along the way because these changes are for the long term benefit of the state. this just in, dude, in order to get to the long term, we have to survive the short term. and just because when he is done having his turn as governor for whatever reason he decided to run, he can pick up and move. like he did to gateway when he was CEO. i hear china is lovely. but there will be lots of us who are still here, cleaning up the mess he created. thanks for that, jerk. governor nerd keeps talking about "shared sacrifice" which i can completely support but i have yet to see a single part of his budget proposal that in any way impacts him. that's what sharing means, governor nerd. please go ask any four year old. they will explain it to you. he expects me to continue to watch my peers move out of the state for work, watch young people not further their education because they can't afford it, watch cities fall apart, watch citizens lose control if they can't vote for their elected officials and what is he going to do? i would love for him to explain how this is shared for him and his fellow middle aged, wealthy, white males.

things are a mess right now and it's exceptionally difficult to not be mad. i am tired of being told that because we are in a financial crisis, the government should just take over everything. am i high or isn't it the republican party that is against big government interference? i thought that was one of their things. i guess maybe the rules and ideology changes when it's their rules. i'm not sure.

from the girl who is trying to think of the best way to fight.

until next time...

a short list of annoying things.

2011-03-04T09:48:00.000-08:00

it is finally friday, hurray. this week didn't feel particularly long, as they have started to feel lately. regardless, i am very happy to see my good friend friday and usher in a weekend of sleeping in and doing whatever i want all damn day. this weekend that is likely to include buying a plane ticket because my vacation time was approved this week and that means it's time to gtfo of michigan, for minute at least. it's also a short day at work because i have to go to a meeting where a printing guy is going to tell me all the best ways to email him a document, in case i wasn't already sure how to do this. best practice meeting was conveniently scheduled to include my whole department, which made scheduling kind of a nightmare but also made it so that when it was over, my boss said we could call it a day. well, now she isn't joining for this meeting, which leads me to believe that our original plan is still in tact.

i stumbled across a list online today of things you should never say to a stay at home mom. this list includes: "when the kids are older, do you think you'll get a real job?," "i'm sure you're not the only one who's ever wasted money on a college degree" and "i'm jealous. i wish my husband were rich so i wouldn't have to work either." there was also a list of things you should never say to a working mom. that list includes: "it must be hard missing all those special moments every day," "i'm surprised you went back to work. your husband seems so successful" and "i could never let someone else raise my children. but that's just me!" i'm sure that all of the things that were on this list would be really annoying to have someone say to you. i'm certain that i wouldn't want people to feel like it is their place to come up to me and insert their opinions about my life choices because their opinion is different than mine. wait a second...isn't that what i complain about all the time here? darling mothers of the world who are all tired of these kind of statements that you get asked based on your choices, please consider that is exactly what you do when you make annoying statements to your single friends.

it is because of this connection and my amusement with this list, that i present to you with a list of things you should never say to your single twenty something friends.

1. you think you're tired? try running around with a toddler all day.
2. it must be nice to afford a vacation since you don't have to worry about paying for a minivan, insurance and thinking about saving for college.
3. you don't know what it means to be busy.
4. aren't you ready to settle down yet?/aren't you tired of being single?
5. so, why don't you have any kids yet?

and now some thoughts on why all those things are horribly annoying to hear. ready?

1. look, i'm not trying to suggest that you aren't tired. in fact, i'm sure you are. if i had to run around with a 2 year old who woke up at 6am and in turn woke me up, i would be one cranky mofo too. but the thing is this. just because i don't have a 2 year old, that doesn't mean i'm not tired. i work then i go out. i volunteer, i do stuff. and these things that i do take the time that you use to chase around your 2 year old. whatever makes you happy but realize that you don't own being tired. (oh and really, you'd probably be less tired if you weren't up to weird hours of the night playing like farmville on facebook. just a thought.)
2. yes, i can afford to go on vacation. don't be jealous, it's ok. some day, i will have to think about financing diapers, braces and college. for me, that time isn't now so don't try to make me feel bad for wanting to gallivant and be ridiculous in my 20s.
3. my thoughts on being busy are almost the same as being tired. refer to my cranky answer to number 1 if you are still unsure why this is annoying.
4. if i was tired of being single, don't you think i'd be trying to remedy that? i mean sure, things aren't as awesome as they could be in that department of my life but as i build a career, friendships and things that will sustain me through out my life, i am in the moment not entirely too concerned with finding someone to be with until i die. and if the movies have it right, the falling in love thing will happen when i'm least expecting it. so i'll just keep not expecting it and see what happens. and no, i'm not ready to settle down yet. you'll receive some kind of notification when i do decide to settle down. it will likely be in the form of a wedding invitation or for random prying strangers, a facebook notification of a relationship status change or a ring on the curiously empty left finger that you stare at oh so condescendingly.
5. look, i don't have kids because on most days, it's almost too much to remember to feed myself something besides chocolate and coffee. i also quite enjoy doing things like staying out all night, drinking with friends, sleeping in until the afternoon and not having anyone else's bodily fluids come into contact with me. it also is my understanding that kids, while they are great and everything, change your life and quite frankly, i'm not ready for that yet.

the bottom line is pretty simple, i more or less like my life the way it is now and i would prefer not to have you make me feel as though i'm for some reason behind the curve because my life doesn't look like yours.

so all you mommys of the world, i will follow along with those 20 things i'm not supposed to say to you. i mean, i wasn't going to say any of those things to you anyway. it seems exceptionally rude and i don't really care that much about how you spend your day. you do what's good for you and your family and that's fine with me. but do me a favor, provide me this same courtesy. just because we are peers and our lives don't look anything alike, doesn't mean either of us is right or wrong and i'd like you to remember that.

from the girl who is really going to enjoy doing nothing this weekend.

until next time...

hippies don't use splenda.

2011-02-24T12:50:00.000-08:00

i drink lots of coffee. probably an alarming amount really. my friend matt recently told me that he missed me because no one drinks enough coffee where he is (which is the town i used to live in during college.) it's kind of something i'm notorious for. on a rare occasion, i find myself wanting a cup of tea and sometimes, as kind of a treat, i like to make a cup of regular black tea with a splenda and some milk. i remember my mom suggesting this to me once when i was in a particularly crappy mood and not feeling well in college and it seemed to remedy my mood. a couple months ago at work, i thought that i might make myself a cup of tea instead of banging my head in the wall from frustration or making another pot of coffee that i would feel obligated to drink. i was reminded of something very important when i got to the kitchen and had my tea all ready: hippies don't use splenda and i work in an office of hippies (more or less anyway.) it was a really disappointing moment. on the brightside though, when rummaging through cabinets last week for something else (band-aids) i found a box of splenda. i have it conveniently stashed in my desk now and that tid bit of knowledge makes me smile as i currently sip my sweet tea treat.

so i like singing karaoke. i've been going nearly every wednesday since early 2009 to a local bar to sing with some new friends that i've made. i suppose "friend" probably isn't the best word to use. "bar friend." i think that's better. it's not that they aren't nice people but i have no real interest in seeing them outside of the bar setting. we're friends on facebook and on wednesday nights, perhaps an occasional weekend evening but that's about it. maybe some day this will change but i doubt it. i'll remain open to the possibility though. anyway, one such friend realized last night that i have quite a vast amount of gay friends and through a couple shots and moaning about aging and being alone, he made a suggestion. he apparently has lots of straight (male) friends and as i have what he desires, he has suggested that he might try to set me up with one of his friends. i suppose this is to get me to do the same thing. that really wasn't made clear last night. he asked me what my type was and i thought about it for a minute. i don't really think i'm that specific but i have been told on countless occasions that i have impossibly high standards for all humans. i said the first thing that came to mind "nerdy white guy." within the next five minutes, i added on a few more qualifiers: taller than me, educated, democrat, open minded and employed. my friend laughed upon realizing that i was more specific than i might have initially let on. i could have kept going. and thinking about it now, i feel like i probably should have said something like "hipsters need not apply." i suppose i'll cross that bridge if it manifests.

i was thinking about this earlier, this whole idea of types. i think everyone has one, whether they are willing to admit it or not. we all have a type of person, if given the ability to create someone to spend the rest of our lives with, we would know exactly how to make them. without getting weird and into some tangent about some bizarre science fictiony type stuff, i'll move on (but really, think about how cool it would be. like stepford wives but less creepy.) i was wondering when types stopped mattering or started to receive less consideration. i think that is the intersection of desperation and reality, probably. when optimism gives out. but i don't think that point ever really has to come. i think it's a choice. i think that there are far too few people who are just blatantly honest with themselves. for instance, my friend jen was telling me not too long ago that she was frustrated with a relationship issue because if she's not happy, how is anyone in the relationship going to be happy? she was clear that she needed to focus on herself before she could focus on anyone else. ah, such refreshing candor. that's the kind of stuff that we are supposed to do, rather than taking a backseat in our own lives but few of us are actually as open about because we fear looking selfish. i applaud jen for this.

this is what i think, be realistic about the kind of person you are probably going to be with. life is neither a disney movie nor a nicholas sparks novel so take that into consideration when you day dream about your perfect mate. no matter what you do, prince eric is not waiting for you. but have some standards. don't just settle for whatever idiot that pays attention just because he's the idiot that pays attention. it's just a thought. figuring it out when you are in your 20s and unmarried seems like a better time to do it than to end up divorced and trying to figure out these lessons when you are in your 40s. i think anyway. i have no evidence to the contrary. but i hear divorce is expensive and if it's worse than just a break up, then shit. it sounds pretty awful. unsolicited, i know, but those are my two cents.

from the girl who likes dearblankpleaseblank.com a little too much.

until next time...

born this way.

2011-02-23T08:53:00.001-08:00

i, like many in the world, am a lady gaga fan. i think that she is an excellent performer and yes, could be the next madonna. i feel like she has staying power. even though she says "orient" (which is kind of a slur) in her most recent single, i find the song wonderful and i'm glad she has essentially created an anthem for loving yourself no matter who you are. well done lady gaga. hopefully this tune will get stuck in people's heads like it has in mind for days and the message will sink in.

i am quite fond of the idea of themes. i blame this on having a virgo mother. quite frankly, i am happier when there are rules in place that i can either decide to obey or defy. for some time, i've been trying to think of a theme for this blog and the only thing consistent i've managed is to complain. well, rant actually but rant is really just a nicer (or funnier) way of saying complain. i tend to do this a lot in my daily life. i was just telling a friend that i am always impressed when someone says "i can't complain." i stare at them befuddled for a moment and think "what's wrong with you? i can always find something to complain about." it seems fair to assume that in this case, i'm the one that has something wrong with them. that aside, i find myself thinking about relationships a lot and the myriad of things that go along with being a 20something. quite frankly, i find it to be a little bizarre that it is socially acceptable for strangers to feel as though they have a right to know about my relationship status because of my age. i get it. it's a thing, an age appropriate thing: i should want to be in a relationship, i should want to have kids and so on and so on. while i'm not entirely wild about being single, i don't think that means there is something wrong with me. in fact, i think i'm pretty good at being single. i believe this because my friends in relationships tend to come to me for advice and because unlike other single girls i know, i don't need to make it a corner stone of who i am in a depressing, woe is me, find me a husband kind of way. it's probably because the growing bitterness suits me. i suppose only time will tell with this.

now there is no manual or instruction guide for how to be a single girl. liberally speaking there is a "help" feature which comes by way of girlfriends and alcohol, who like any microsoft office program, offer answers to the most frequently asked questions vaguely, as if threatening to be helpful. don't get me wrong, i appreciate my girlfriends for the insights that they bring to my life and my various issues but sometimes you need more of a google search feature on life. (i am of the mind set that there are very few things in the world you can't solve by googling it.) not that i'm such a genius at life, human interactions or anything like that, but i think it would if nothing else be a little amusing for me to write down a sort of guide, for my fellow single ladies. i'm not entirely certain if this will be insightful or anything more than a stranger offering answers to life's faq's but i'm going to give it a try anyway. because remember, i like a theme and this is way less obnoxious than an 80s themed party (though probably not as fun.)

i stumbled upon this idea to write this sort of guide when talking to my friend dave on valentine's day. i fear that i have gotten to a point of singleness where i am not even upset that i had no valentine. to me, it was monday, and not just in the way people say it to make themselves feel better about being single. while i was chatting with dave, a girl came on the radio and announced that she was single on valentine's day, sitting at home alone upset about this fact. i had an outburst. why would you declare this on the radio? by making such an announcement, you are effectively letting everyone listening how lame you feel about your life. that might be true but come on, i don't need to hear it. you are perpetuating the idea that if you are single then you must be sad and lonely. while that might be true for you, it's not for all of us and quite frankly i find it annoying. so do us all a favor, stay off the radio on such occasions where you feel lonely. actually, it seems wise to avoid all public forums (yes, i mean facebook too.) if you wouldn't scream it in a crowded room, don't announce it online or on air. thank you.

perhaps it's about time that i get back to work. i'll try this again a little later. i hope you have enjoyed it.

from the girl who was born lebanese and "orient"

until next time...

weekdays lack grit.

2011-02-16T07:51:00.000-08:00

i work with a significant number of coffee fiends. i appreciate this about my work place right up until this happens. i part from my desk to do a pace around the first floor and refresh my coffee to find the pot is empty. this happens quite frequently actually. fortunately, the coffee maker is quick and it gives me the chance to again pace around rather than staring into my computer screen for a few moments. i just went to refill my cup while waiting for reports to export (which is taking an inordinate amount of time today) to find the familiar empty pot waiting for me. so i made a new one thinking nothing of it, went back poured myself a mug and found that it is lukewarm. it would appear that one of our lovely and new interns turned the burner off on the coffee maker. (i only blame the intern because she was the last one i saw go in the kitchen and in the seven months i've been here, i've never seen the coffee maker get turned off. i told you, fiends.) now i'm far to lazy to do anything about the current temperature of my coffee so i'm just going to pretend it's fine and enjoy it.

michigan is a tricky mofo. every year, we get this random burst of not shitty weather in february, where things go from frigid and horrible to above freezing with blasts of sunshine. and for anyone who has ever experienced a michigan winter, that first sign of sunlight is like seeing the sunshine for the first time. suddenly your mood is improved and you no longer feel like you need to scream profanities at the guy who just cut you off in traffic. i was telling my friend dave last week (who is from michigan but now resides in california and no longer shares in my plight) that i couldn't remember the last time it was sunny so the two days we had in a row were blowing my mind. in a further attempt to trick my mind into believing that winter is almost over, i have been opening my blinds at work to let the sun in, turning my space heater all the way up and taking off my shoes under my desk. you know, just to pretend that it is nearly summer or something.

i'm almost entirely certain that neither of these things are going to be the topic of my blog today. while i'm at rambling about random thoughts strolling through my mind i suppose i could say something about how excited i am for a dress i bought online yesterday to get delivered but that would just turn into a thing about what i don't like about shopping online (the waiting, for the record. i like the instant gratification of buying something then having it.) so i work in detroit, right and i am not really one of those people who are all about the city. i mean, it's fine, i'd probably like it a lot better if my car wasn't recently broken into or if the building next to my office wasn't broken into last week. but i'm not one of those young people who are obsessed with detroit coming back and being a part of that revolution. i root for detroit's success and support those who have made it their charge but i just can't care as much as others do. sorry detroit but you are a mess. and like other messes in my life, i've often found it's best to let you do your own thing and i'll do my own thing.

for some reason, there has been this charge to build a statue of robocop in the city. yeah. robocop. i'm not entirely certain why but a group of people managed to raise $50,000 in like six days to privately fund the building of this statue. i'm not sure how big it is supposed to be, why this makes sense or what message it's supposed to be conveying but i am pretty sure that it's stupid. the people who raised that money so quickly should consider using their ability and their apparent concern for the city of detroit to do something helpful, like maybe put some of that money into buying new books for the struggling detroit public schools. you know what, probably not. it's probably smarter to build a robot statue. i mean really, nothing says "take detroit seriously" like a statue of a 80s movie robot.

it would seem that i'm ADD today and have a bunch of random things to rant about. my apologies for a lack of focus. it's been a rough week so far so it seems that all i can do is complain.

from the girl who just wants it to be friday evening already.

until next time...

vday is for suckers.

2011-02-14T08:50:00.000-08:00

halmark has done a very evil thing to america. while i'm glad for the made up holidays that lead to a paid day off from work, i am always troubled by how easy it is to create bullshit holidays, such as sweetest day. there isn't any kind of false pretense that this holiday exists for any reason beyond getting people to spend money to prove to their significant other that they love them. oh and problem to cause fights, that ultimately end with spending more money, when half of the couple forgets that this made up holiday exists. i am of the mind set that if you are in a relationship with someone, you should probably be able to figure out how to express those feelings on your own without the mandatory feeling that holidays create. and more importantly, it serves as probably an even worse reminder to all single people that they are single. in case there weren't enough reminders in the first place (middle aged prying women, i'm looking at you. just because i'm standing near you in line at starbucks, doesn't make it ok to ask me why i've made it to 26 without committing myself to someone else.) that aside, well done halmark. you have done a truly excellent job at making a crap load of money capitalizing on love and lust.

at the start of writing this blog, i kind of thought that i was going to continue ranting about valentine's day and taking this time to complain generally about being single on such an absurd holiday. then a thought occurred to me. i'm not annoyed about being single today, not any more than i am any other day. truth be told, i like that the pressure isn't on me to have to pretend like i care about today. my ex used to like to make a big deal about valentine's day, anniversaries and the like. he was the romantic part of our relationship and any excuse was a good one in his book. i ultimately felt guilty because i'm pretty bad at faking things and i'm not excessively expressive so i always felt like i was kind of faking it through. anyway, as far as i am concerned, today is monday and the next idiot who posts their facebook status as something about how much their love their significant other, they are getting hidden. i can only be a good sport for so long.

this past weekend was the michigan democratic convention and as if i am not usually hopped up on politics, this was like an injection right into my veins. i always dread going because there is so much hubub, which i don't enjoy but once i'm there i always enjoy myself. i love seeing the friends that i don't get to spend that much time with and chatting (particularly when we are supposed to be listening to a speaker). so there was a lot of rah-rahing going on. trying to rally the dems into believing that we can work together and come back in 2012 from the loses in 2010. fired up and ready to go was the phrase they wanted us to internalize. i'm always excited for what's coming next and the potential that each election brings, if for no other reason than i really like voting. the message was clear on saturday and we all need to remember it. it's not going to be an easy road, but it's up to us to make it. we are democrats, after all. hard work is what we do and that is how we will win.

so on my democratic high, i found myself catching up on the news and things sunday afternoon and read an article about what the "original intent" would look like in regards to the tea party. i was reminded something upon reading that article which quickly lead me to getting really pissed off. michelle bachmann is the ringleader of the tea party idiots and any minority republican really confuses me so for a woman to be in charge of this extreme group is exceptionally unsettling. what i think she fails to realize is that if this country was to return to the days of "freedom" that the tea party spews on about, ms. bachmann would likely just be a wife to some likely abusive man. she wouldn't have the ability to vote or own property, let alone run for office. far be it for logic to be interjected in her opinions. it's probably just my liberal education that has ruined my mind and made me think that the constitution had to be amended several times to be inclusive, and we still have a way to go. meanwhile, congress is talking about taking dangerous steps to roll back women's rights to a time when we couldn't even make such basic decisions as what to do with our own bodies. it is 2011 and there are "leaders" in the US House that would have us go backwards because policies in place to jive with their narrow minded beliefs.

this is america. we still repress full groups of people because some feel as though it is their place to judge what love is, to the point that rights are restricted. and yet, members of the lgbt community identify as republicans. the republicans want to restrict the rights that were hard fought for women. and yet, there are women who are republicans. how is it possible to look at this party and think "they are looking out for my best interest?" when they couldn't more blatantly be looking out for their wallet's best interest? they want to roll our country backwards, into the early 20th century where it was the best time to be a straight, white male. this should alarm the rest of us.

it would seem i have reached the end of my rant, mostly because i need to attend to some actual work now due to a series of cranky emails from my boss after four work days of silence on her end.

from the girl who will be a democrat until i die

until next time...

"snowpocalypse" is a fancy word for "blizzard"

2011-02-03T13:34:00.000-08:00

quite frankly, i find it to be perfectly amusing when the news gets the best of otherwise rational people. i suppose they aren't as rational as i give them credit for being if they can seriously think that a snow storm predicted to bring 12-20 inches of snow would be reason to go buy up a supply of bottled water, milk and bread for the next month. i mean, it is the 21st century. it's not like that amount of snow is going to have you home bound for a month. and good thing too because people were very upset (and vocal) about their upset that the state capitol canceled legislative sessions during this snowmageddon. call me crazy, but if all the news media is calling for the snow plop of the century, other wise rational human beings are buying up grapefruit like it is their only job and something like two thirds of the country is being effected by the same storm, it's fine with me that they and their staff get a snow day. so there was a storm and there was a snow day and much to the surprise of the flamboyant news reports, we are all still here to tell the tale. maybe next time, meteorologists. in the mean time, i will continue to be amused by the panic.

i'm not going to lie, i prepared myself for the storm. and by "prepare myself" i mean i bought some dessert, diet coke and braced myself for the call that work was going to be canceled. to be fair, i assumed work was canceled before we got the official word but there was simply no way that i was going to be attempting to drive with the other commuters. this gave me the perfect chance to do one of my favorite things: sleep in on a work day with no repercussions. i can't explain why this brings me so much joy but it does. if i was oprah, i'd give it away as one of my favorite things. sleeping in on a work day and sleeping til double digit hours. truly my definition of the best way to spend a morning.

i honestly don't have much else to say that is particularly appropriate for posting online. the work day is winding to an end and i felt compelled to say something about the snowpocalypse before it was no longer fresh on my mind. i'm sure with what is expected to be -10 degree wind chills through the coming days, i'll have plenty to complain about that isn't related to the heap of snow we got the other night.

from the girl who should probably relocate somewhere warmer

until next time...

i know it's january but i need some sun stat before i lose my mind.

2011-01-20T12:45:00.000-08:00

i am rapidly growing tired of the snow. i hate snow, quite a lot actually. i don't remember being a child who liked snow. i appreciated a snow day when they appeared but those were so infrequent i think i can remember all of them from my whole schooling career, kindergarten to college graduation. it is cold, wet and a general inconvenience and there is certainly no convincing me that there is a good reason for it. and the next person who says "but it's so pretty!" is probably going to get slapped. i probably should live somewhere less tundra-y than michigan but besides this rather annoying part, i do like it here. some day, i will be a snow bird and that will be truly lovely. i'm pretty sure that is one of my biggest motivating factors to go to work daily, the promise of wintering somewhere tropical and enjoying the rest of the year in my beloved mitten. it's nice to dream, right?

my friend maralyn sent me an article the other day written by a chinese mother about her parenting technique. this was published in the wall street journal and is an excerpt from her book "Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother." the headline of the story in the wall street journal was "why chinese mothers are superior" so she automatically had my attention, considering i was raised by a japanese mother. i figured it was going to be interesting. i was met promptly by this list that caught my attention and got me to finish the rather lengthy piece.

• attend a sleepover

• have a playdate

• be in a school play

• complain about not being in a school play

• watch TV or play computer games

• choose their own extracurricular activities

• get any grade less than an A

• not be the No. 1 student in every subject except gym and drama

• play any instrument other than the piano or violin

• not play the piano or violin.

now, my mom was quite strict when i was a kid. we had rules for everything and there were certainly times in growing up where i realized that my house was way different than my friends. most of those realizations happened in high school and early college when i realized that the way i processed information or choices and consequences was quite different than my peers. i am grateful now for the strong sense of right and wrong that my mother instilled in me no matter how difficult it has made relating to people sometimes. i know i am a stronger person because of it. what the tiger mother in the article failed to realize, that had me horrified at the end of her essay was that not allowing her children any kind of socializing was going to leave them kind of weird and using this strict "eastern" way of raising her children was going to make it really hard for them to adjust to living in the "western" world. another friend sent me an editorial from cnn that a different asian author wrote, discussing his growing up with "tiger parents" and i found myself agreeing with him easily. that author wrote a memoir titled "I Love Yous are for White People" and in his editorial, he said "I'm sure I appear successful and happy on the surface. I'm a published author, a successful executive, and I have a Ph.D. in psychology. In spite of this, my parents' approach failed. I'm torn to pieces on the inside."

i'm sure that if you gave most kids the chance to tell the stories of their childhood, they will come up with some stories that make you jump back and think "what were your parents doing." i know that the trials and tribulations of my own childhood weren't nearly as dramatic as these two writers. and in the same breath, i find myself relating with the sentence that the second author wrote when in a stand alone sentence he said "it was never enough." that is exactly how i feel with my parents and will forever be a part of who i am. i don't necessarily, hold it against my mom but i know if she didn't see the world as black and white and expect me to exist within it, i'd probably be a little better off. instead, she raised someone who has been fighting becoming that uptight for as long as i can remember.

maralyn and i were discussing this, because she is my only asian friend so truly one of the very few people i know that can relate to this. we discussed the way our parents were strict and what was wrong with the tiger mom's methods. then we traveled into a curious conversation about therapy and the way people cope. i mentioned that i have told every therapist i have ever had that my problem is that i feel like no matter what i do, it's not enough; she mentioned that she just keeps things suppressed where they belong so not to get into the messy business of going through them. my degree is in psychology so there is a little bit of buying into on my end that going through your problems is ultimately going to help you but not to the same degree that i would think most of my white friends seem to believe. i told maralyn that i have been told so many times by various white people that i'll feel better if i talk about it. that seems a curious bit of advice because who really knows how to deal with what you hear from people? are you prepared to hear a story, like the one i read earlier, of the young boy who was forced to eat cow brains in his parents' vain hope that would make him smarter?

all of these articles, i think, do a good job of pointing out how different "eastern" "tiger" cultures are from "western" culture, even when the kids in question are being raised in the west. some part of it is unavoidable. the adults we become are the result of the work our parents put in, for better or for worse. i feel like i'm pretty much as american as they come and i still found myself nodding along to these stories. maybe the point that should be taken away from all this conversation about strict asian parents is that the children of these parents should strive to find some kind of balance between the strict culture of the east and the "i love you" nurturing culture of the west.

from the half tiger girl

until next time...

you have the right not to remain silent.

2011-01-19T09:33:00.000-08:00

i have noticed when a year starts and it is particularly rocky, the year tends to be pretty good. the start of 2005 was really rough, health wise mostly but it ended up being one of my best years in school and personally. 2008 started horribly, for my family and for my health (i spent months both unemployed and sick on the couch) but as jeremy pointed out to me this past weekend, that very well might be the year that as most significant thus far in defining my reputation at work. so here i am 19 days in to 2011 and in the first two weeks, i've had my car broken into, had all my writing stolen (as well as my empty glasses case and a half pack of gum) and have come down with what i assume has to be the plague but is apparently just the flu. if the flu means feeling like a zombie for 5 days while still trying to engage in anyway, coughing, fever and aches, i would seriously advise against catching it. i'm assuming i caught it as a result of driving 40 miles without a window in 10 degree weather. on the brightside, i feel like i have been properly hazed by the city of detroit: i've had the police called on me, i've been hit on by more random strangers than i can count and now my car has been broken into. perfect. anyway, i choose to be cautiously optimistic that something will happen this year that will have a profound impact on my life, just because it happens to be the pattern.

i have been thinking quite a bit lately about the state of our country, which i think is hard not to think about after what happened a couple weeks ago in tuscon. it is a truly horrifying thing to have happen and for so many innocent people to lose their lives because of this man who is crazy. the problem i see is that i don't believe that he is an isolated crazy person. for a while, i was thinking that the tea party wasn't the worst thing that could happen because mostly they were a bunch of mostly illiterate, intolerant white people who were just going to hold up ignorant signs declaring their world views while taking votes away from the republican base in the midterm elections and call it a day. i knew we were in for more problems when some of those tea party idiots started getting elected.

i just read today that the governor of alabama said: "Anybody here today who has not accepted jesus christ as their savior, I'm telling you, you're not my brother and you're not my sister, and I want to be your brother." he said this at his inauguration and i am almost literally at a loss for words. i can't understand what staff person read that over and thought "yeah that's a good line, please say that. i'm sure no one will get pissed off" or worse that the staff and governor agreed that this sentiment was acceptable. then there is the governor of ohio that issued a proclamation on monday that ohio would recognize dr. martin luther king jr day on march 17th. oops, probably should have double checked on the month before having that printed out. when i read about that, there was a whole part of the article that discussed how that governor picked an almost entirely white cabinet. fantastic. nothing like watching things go backwards instead of forward. i suppose on the bright side, in michigan we don't have a governor that is trying impose his religion on us or neglect a tremendous civil rights leader. we just have a guy without a clue.

i have had people ask me before when i was going to out grow being a democrat and it seems to be now as clearly as ever that will never be the case. because what america looks like today isn't what america is supposed to be. it is kind of horrifyingly disappointing what we've allowed to happen. anyone else remember that speaker of the house oompa loompa is trying to repeal the health care reform because....does anyone know why? i assume it's because it pisses him off. i heard something about it being a job killer but i'm pretty sure that's just republican talk for "scare the general population into doing what we want because this method worked in 2004 when we got into this...wait, almost took responsibility for something. dodged that bullet." i really wish i could understand this juvenile desire to make policy decisions based on what is inevitably going to piss off the senate and the white house. grow up, please.

my dearest dems, this is our time to get our shit together and come back in 2012. seriously, we have too much to lose if we keep electing idiots who are content on driving america backwards. (jumping off my soap box now)

anyway, it seems to me that america is supposed to have so much promise, so much going for us. can we get back to working on that and stop with the violence, bickering and general sarah palin-ing that's going on? we'd all be in a better place i think.

from the girl who turned "sarah palin" into a verb.

until next time...

day dreaming on a boring winter day

2011-01-04T08:46:00.000-08:00

happy 2011. i haven't quite tired of telling people happy new year (yet) as a greeting. there is something pleasant to me about welcoming a new year and it has nothing to do with the possibilities ahead. i'm far too much of a cynic for that. i feel like it's probably just the opposite. while 2010 was, i would say, an all around pretty good year, i'm glad that it is done. i had all i could take of it and we parted in a sensational fashion. so here we are, at the dawn of a new year, i'm struggling to learn the upgrades on my computer at work and thinking, like i do, about something more interesting. i mean, don't get me wrong, pulling lists and entering data is super great and everything, it is far more pleasant to day dream about what i would do if i won the 330 million dollar jackpot in the lottery tonight (quit my job, first thing). don't get me wrong, i do really like my job, it just kind of seems to me that i am not actually the type that was made for the 9-5. when i started, it was like the most glorious idea i had ever heard. regular employment, health insurance, personal days, evenings off...and those things are still really great. however that whole, get to work by 9am thing is really old. and the sometimes trivial things that i get caught up with my boss on. i know better than to complain (too much) online so i'll leave it there.

anyway, i was chatting with some old friends recently about work and what not and it got me thinking. i was talking with my friend jen last week about my job and my performance review that happened before our break and about how i explained my former work in the political world to my current boss. and as i spoke to my boss about that, there was a certain fondness that i can't avoid. there are lots of things that i miss and i usually just chalk that up to me being a hopeless nostalgic fool. i still remember how shitty politics can get, especially campaigns and i'm in no rush to jump onto another campaign. the thing that conversation brought up, and several other conversations in the same time period brought up, is that for me, politics is an undeniable passion. i wish i could just be a consultant and get to do my favorite parts of a campaign and know that i'll still have a job when it's all over. i said to jen that while i like my job and the experience that i am getting, i'm fairly certain i am doing the wrong thing (assuming there is actually a wrong and right thing to do in life.) she said to me "who isn't?" and went on to tell me a story about a grad school friend who is kind of like her eeyore who is apparently notorious for remarking that no one knows if they are doing the right thing. that made me like this person who i've never met. kindred spirit, you know.

i've spent the last couple hours in a text conversation with my friend michael who is telling me about his dreams as they pertain to real estate and something about a yellow brick road and emerald city. he explained how this has been a long time dream of his but a teacher we had in middle school pointed out to him why this was an unrealistic dream. michael and i have been friends since middle school, which also happens to be the first time i had a faculty member (she was my school counselor) shoot down my aspirations of being a writer. this got me to thinking about what the hell was wrong with these adults that they would steer kids away from something they were passionate. i remember very clearly what my counselor said to me; i was too smart to do something as silly as writing novels. i'm pretty sure ray bradbury, jd salinger and oscar wilde (among the other numerous authors i had to read during my education) would probably disagree that writing was something silly that only the unintelligent should do. so here my friend and i are, more than a decade past those dreams, still thinking about them and discussing them as we would like to spin them into reality.

these ideas have a lot more to do with each other than it might appear at the moment. fear not, i'll bring it together. i have all these pipe dreams that float around in my mind, writing, holding (real) elected office (someday...far from now...really far), being a consultant, etc. i've always been a dreamer but have never been good at taking the leap into what i think is the "right" thing for me to do. the hesitation, the fear is ridiculous. i know i can offer advice like "if you don't try, how will you know" and "it's better to try and fail then wonder what if" but i don't tend to follow any of the advice that i give. it's a little bit comforting to know that some of my oldest friends feel the same way but i do think that speaks ill of our educational experience that we all shared (the three of us went k-12 in the same district, 7-12 in the same schools) for not fostering that dreamy quality that kids so easily posses but that's a rant for another time.

so again blogging world, happy new year. i look forward to posting another half dozen times of so in 2011. just kidding, maybe i'll actually post more, who knows.

from the girl who likes to high five strangers and wish them a happy new year...

until next time...

an open letter to anyone paying attention

2010-12-14T13:22:00.000-08:00

to whom it may concern:

before we get started, allow me to be clear that i am very aware of the kind of person that i am. i am stubborn, opinionated and have a profound tendency to think that i am always right. i don't mean to be critical nor is it my intention to judge for the sake of judging. (you are hardly the type of person that has been okay with that rather charming side of my personality.) what i think i need to do, mostly for my own selfish reasons, is write out what's on my mind, so i know it's gone and i can stop thinking about it. i harbor no belief that you are going to listen which is why i'm not actually drafting this as an email to send to you. i'm also not sending it because i'm fairly confident that i can't find a nice way to say what i'm thinking, thus it might (read: likely will) hurt you which is not my intention. i understand that even though it is not my intention, i'm probably going to hurt you. and while an eye for an eye might leave the whole world blind, i think ghandi seriously underestimated how good it feels to throw a couple daggers when you've been hit for so long. this is probably why he was quoted and generally regarded as a good person and i have earned my reputation as a bitch.

on to the point then, for some time, i regarded you as my best friend. as the one person on this earth that i could tell whatever to and know that it would be ok, guarded, protected. i knew that you would give me advise, engage in foolish activities, travel, make new friends, etc etc etc. it was an absolute pleasure while it lasted. in seven years, most of the memories i have of the time we spent together are quite good (with really only a few exceptions.) don't get me wrong, i always expected things would change and from the days in 2003 to early 2010, things did change. a lot. and honestly, that's not the problem. i have no qualm that things were naturally going to change because that is what happens. things changed when you moved, things changed when we finished college, things change when your relationship ended. the issue i have is simple, we changed, our friendship changed, my expentations never did. this is where things got bad, i got disappointed.

perhaps i'm wrong to feel that way but i do believe that somewhere along the way you were one of many people who tried to convince me that feelings can't be wrong. i suppose maybe i'm wrong, perhaps i shouldn't have expected so much of you but to be fair, you had always lived up to my expectations. it started to feel like i was letting you down too. and we both know how i cope, or rather don't cope, with feeling like a disappointment. we did party together but it seemed that as i didn't need that to be the central focus or if i was unable to make it a central focus then i was no longer necessary. i was a play mate and as soon as i didn't want to play, i no longer had a need. that might sound dramatic but honestly, that's exactly how it felt. think about demf if you need an example. one day was more than enough for me and when i didn't want to go back, you responded as if there must be something wrong with me. there isn't and there wasn't. demf was a good time years ago and now, i'm happy to go for one day and have that be more than enough.

i'm not going to go into the issue of tfg or any of the surrounding issues that caused. i think that you should be smart enough to realize the bullshit we all got to live through while you "learned your lesson." we've actually talked about this much more thoroughly than i would ever like to discuss tfg. one thing i never said though: it kills me that he was more important to you than your friendship with me. and the choices you made with that really make me wonder if there is anyway that our friendship can be put back together. i'm inclined to say that it can't.

i feel like you are going through some kind of quarter life crisis. any semblance of stability that you have known, you are running away from, you are pushing out people close to you and creating a network of playmates and bar friends. i suppose that is fine if that's what you want but it seems like a really lonely place. more importantly, this is what i ran away from with jason all those years ago. it seems to me that what you are looking at is the bottom and quite frankly, of all the places that i have joined you, that isn't one that i'm willing to join you. i think you need to seriously examine your life and consider pulling yourself together because i'm worried about you. so worried that it only makes sense for me to pull away. please feel free to contact me if you start to take steps to put your life back together, but only then. thank you.

i'm sorry if this has hurt you but i'm pretty confident that you didn't read this. in fact, i'm pretty sure you don't know about this blog so i feel safe and more important comforted in knowing that all that junk is out of my head.

best of luck to you.

from the girl who works to maintain "bitch" status

until next time...

don't go breaking my heart.

2010-11-11T12:32:00.000-08:00

it would seem that whenever i find myself with time to actually sit down and type out a blog, my mind goes blank of all of the brilliant things that i find myself thinking about when i'm sitting in traffic or blow drying my hair. in fact, i've started to think that my most brilliant thoughts actually occur when i'm blow drying my hair. i'm not sure why; it's probably just because it is such a time consuming process and i can't hear anything, all i can do is think. again, keeping with my irregularity of actually posting blogs, it has been some time since i've managed to say anything. and in that time lots of things have happened. much like my last post, today i am without a boss or a co-worker and have made it to the point of the day where i am content to type up a little diddy rather than launching into a new project. i really wish i could just sneak off early but i know that as soon as i step foot outside, my boss will call my desk and when i don't answer, she will call my cell phone, wondering where i am and why i'm not sitting at my desk doing something on my task list. anyway, here i am, thinking through my fingertips and hoping to be if nothing else amusing. let's start with the election last week and just see where that goes.

the election just happened last week and i have more than a few thoughts about what went down. quite frankly, this notion of just not voting is not something that i can understand today or will understand ever. it is your right as an american, very similar to your right to be able to complain. it is my opinion if you don't participate, then you don't deserve your right to complain. just a thought. and the voters who didn't turn out this time are the voters who make up approximately 30 percent of the nation wide electorate: the 18-30 year olds. where were we, guys? it's not enough to go out and vote once every four years for the president and feel like you've done your business as a citizen.

i'm not sure if it is for some reason hard to remember basic government classes from high school but let me give you a little refresher on the three branches of governement and therefore why it is important to vote in the midterm elections (and listen 18-30 year olds, we aren't that far removed from school so this analogy should make a lot of sense. you wouldn't have blown of the midterm in college and still expected to pass the final. same thing with voting.) the president is the executive branch, and while that is sweet and pretty bad ass if you ask me, he isn't in a position to write or create laws, just approve or deny them. this is why it is important to vote for congress, those pesky folks who run every two years (in the house) and every six (in the senate). you'll notice them because they tend to have the most commercials on tv and occasionally get mocked by snl. without a congress that is willing to work, the president doesn't get anything accomplished. in case this was for some reason not clear, i am a democrat so when i say a congress willing to work, i mean a congress willing to work for what is right for the country. now we are in a position where the house is likely to be under the leadership of an oompa loompa and it was because my peers who got barack obama elected decided to sit on their thumbs on election day. thanks guys.

i did hear a lot of chatter before the election that lgbt voters shouldn't support democrats in this election because they haven't done enough for lgbt rights since taking control of the congress and the white house. yeah i understand that. and i was annoyed by this when i saw it coming up on facebook and whatever else but didn't say anything. now that i've had a proper amount of time to think, i've become even more pissed off about this notion. if you genuinely think that the republicans that were elected last week are the kind of people who are going to advance your agenda, i think you might need to take a closer look at what got elected (rand paul? come on.) also consider this whole branches of government thing. the house is now republican dominated, do you think that we are going to see any progressive pieces of legislation from that body making it to the president's desk? thanks for standing up and saying that you were tired of democrats not doing enough but in this game, no one won.

now besides my upset about the election (and it goes much further than the national stuff because i live in michigan and we got f-ed in the a and not in a positive life affirming kind of way) i have to imagine that there are other things rolling around in my mind. we are having unseasonably lovely weather in the mitten considering that it is nearly mid-november (thank you global warming) though the fall back means that it is nearly dark when i leave work at night, which is kind of a bummer.

it would appear that i've run out of things to ramble on about so i think it might be time for me to actually continue on with my work day.

from the girl who gets real pissed when people don't vote.

until next time...

to avoid looking out the window at the beautiful weather, i'm staring at my drawing of wilford brimley wearing a tutu juggling cats. thanks jeremy.

2010-08-20T10:42:00.000-07:00

i have once again been struck with a profound sense of motivation and by that i clearly mean i have been lacking motivation for about an hour now where i can't seem to get my mind to cooperate with the idea that it is still the work day and it is ill spent by screwing around on the internet. to be fair, i did have a very productive morning and neither my co-worker or boss (for my department) are in the building today so it's really hard to summon the desire to start a new project. so instead, i have had several glasses of water, to afford myself the time to pace back and forth from my office to the kitchen, i've done the mail with our office manager and i have considered how badly i need to paint my nails. while considering what color i would paint my nails this week (this is a saturday activity for me lately, not sure why) i was perusing a former friend's* flickr account, hoping that i might find a new picture to use as my profile picture for this blog or on my twitter account. *this former friend was someone who i used to be particularly read: very close with once upon a time in our lives and she is now quite a talented photographer. i mean, she probably was when we were friends too, i just didn't know that; 13 year olds are more interested in talking about a lot of other things that burgeoning artistic abilities. it is one of her photos that serves as the profile picture for this blog.* upon examining through about a hundred photos, i found myself realizing that everything that she snapped a picture of was something that was an experience. even something simple, like an afternoon snack of wheat thins, kiwi and a clementine was aesthetically organized in a way to be pretty. i, on the other hand, would eat that kind of snack, sitting at my desk and not think for a second to stop and look at how it looked all together in a bowl. there was a photo of a recently emptied plate with a fork and knife left haphazardly upon it and one of a crosswalk in detroit on her walk to work. it makes me think a couple of things. i am slightly jealous that i am not so creative. i wish i could look at something and just visualize how to arrange it or shoot it or whatever to make a creative and interesting image. i can't do that. my brain simple doesn't accept it. second, i think that this is kind of like the modern day equivalent of stopping to smell the roses. stop and take a photo. at least that lasts longer than a rose.

i mentioned yesterday that if given the time i would discuss my thoughts on wanting to be a robot, vampire or super hero and considering that i find myself without any other engagements for the next little while, i thought i would document those thoughts while killing time. that's right, i'm a multi-tasker. i have, for a long time, had a fascination with the idea of being able to do well everything. and the problem was, i was good enough at doing everything that i wanted through delicate juggling, excellent scheduling, not sleeping and consuming obscene amounts of coffee to get everything i wanted done. work, school, friendships, boyfriends (one at a time, for the record), leadership on extra curricular activities...you get the idea. in addition to this rather extreme desire to be able to do everything, i also fancied myself to be a person who was cold, unemotional and accordingly rational enough to always make the smartest decisions. again the problem was i became so good at this too that it became very difficult to try to convince me that i was wrong or that my approach to facing the world was at best sad. i think that part of this desire came from the early lessons that i learned quickly from my mother which can most easily be summed up like this: always do the best you can, don't accept anything less than that from yourself and understand that sometimes in life you are going to get hurt. well, when you find out at age 9 that your best is all a's, you feel a kind of pressure to keep that going. when you watch those behaviors carry over into other areas of life, you make a mental note and before you know it, it is an adult behavior that can't be shaken easily. it only took me one try of getting hurt to realize i didn't want to do that again so i carefully constructed a wall around myself to keep a distance from everyone. really. there are a good number of people who met me around my sophomore year in high school who don't know a damn thing about me but if you asked, they would say we were close in high school. i was just passing time until i got to college where i assumed i would find people that didn't seem to waste my time. because the people in high school that i did trust were the ones that hurt me, it was easier to just shut everyone down. so i did.

it was lovely for a while. lonely, yes but wow. such a wonderful feeling of safety. no one could get in, no one could hurt me, i had control. but that can only last so long, especially if you expect to grow as a human, have new relationships and so on. this was a horrifying prospect. and the very few close friends that i chose to discuss these fears with all said the same thing; they made it their business to remind me that i am not a robot. they reminded me that i'm human and therefore will experience emotions, both good and bad, and if i keep myself from some then i'm going to miss everything. yes, this makes logical sense now. at the time, you could have just as well told me to go take a long walk off a short bridge. it took a lot of undoing to get me to wrap my mind around the concept that it is okay for me to just be human.

i understand that this should not be difficult but this learning came after lots of work, visits with friends, old and new, visits with therapists (even though i never let our conversation get here, i think they did something to contribute), a failed experience with anti-depressants and lots of personal discovery. i want to be clear. i'm not good at this. i'm working at it, i've been working at it for a lot of years now and i think i'm getting a little bit better at it. but this in no way stops my desire to be a robot, vampire or superhero. i feel like you can probably deduce why but here's the bottom line: they aren't human thus don't have to deal with human emotions and trivialities. that is marvelous, i think. maybe in my next life i'll be better at this emotional stuff.

from the girl who's kind of hoping to meet edward cullen to be turned into a vampire

until next time...

you're doing well, superman does good. check yourself.

2010-08-19T09:47:00.000-07:00

there are some things in life that i am fairly certain about. first, coffee is better black. second, none of the books in the twilight saga needed to be as long as they are. third, i am crappy at writing blogs with any kind of regularity. fourth, it is pretty tricky to be a girl. there are lots of things about being a girl, eye lash curlers, high heels, the dynamic between friends, frienemies and enemies that require very delicate balance. and as it was, we don't really get a lot of formal training in these areas. in fact, we hardly know that it is happening because for the most part, it is a very natural part of our being. that last thing anyway, high heels and eye lash curlers take some getting used to. we girls are very competitive with each other. i think there is some very backwards logic that if we are better than someone else, than we succeed and they fail. and i understand that isn't nice and it shouldn't be the way that i or anyone else should think, but the simple fact of the matter is, sometimes it is. a lot of the time too. to be fair, it works to the contrary as well, where we judge ourselves against someone else's successes, even if they are things we don't want yet. i am particularly guilty in this area. i often look at friends (via facebook, aka the best device for destroy or unjustifiably boosting self-esteem ever) from high school or college who are my peers that are engaged, married, have children. i find myself immediately feeling like i'm behind the game even though i don't want to be married or have children...yet. this being the case, if you didn't already know, being a girl is a lot harder than it might look.

now i know that there are many paths in life that we all stumble down that make up our lives and that is what makes us, as humans relatively interesting. it has been my experience that most women, particularly in my generation and the one or two before me, we are obsessed with doing the best thing, being our best, always having the answers and being able to do everything. this, of course, is an impossible task. and even though i wrote that statement, i am still guilty of wanting to be able to do everything (there is an appeal i can't explain here to being a super hero, robot or vampire. maybe some day i'll explain my thoughts on that topic.) here is a giant problem with all of that. i would say that most women when confronted with a problem they don't have an answer to, they opt for what they think is the correct answer. usually this results in women making choices that don't make them happy but what they think will make other people happy, hoping that they might become happy accordingly. simply put, this plan is a fail. i could probably expand but i feel like you get it. what happens next? experience has also taught me that the people who try this method of happiness are also the kind of people who enjoy reading self-help and self-help like books that make them feel better about their lives or will serve as some kind of guide to help them better their lives. so they read books like "who moved my cheese" and "eat, pray, love" expecting some kind of gps device to make life easier rather than a crypic roadmap that still tells you the same lesson you weren't listening to in the first place.

believe it or not, the whole reason for the post is to talk about eat, pray, love. i saw the movie. *sigh*. it was a very long film and the whole time i found myself thinking, 'this is why the world hates the united states' and 'what happens when she goes back to new york at the end of this?' i find it to be a horribly childish notion that if you run away from your problems, they will go away. this just in, problems don't move on their own. it's a lot of work to get passed them. if you leave, they will be waiting for you when you get back, having grown impatient in your absence, which makes them so much worse to deal with. something to consider. i also have this suspicion that she didn't actually learn anything. my proof? it's like this. she left to go to italy, india and bali to learn how to connect with the world and like find her true self or something right? maybe i took too much away from this but to me i thought she would also be trying to live her life, as my friend shelby would say, as a strong independent woman of the 21st century. read: this does not mean go to these countries and find men who will tell you what to do, how to do it, how to feel and how to live. liz gilbert found herself a male tutor in italy who showed her around and helped her feel at home, she found that guy from texas who flat out told her she was doing the whole praying business wrong and she met that one guy from who played the creep from "no country for old men" in bali. now at least that one i can understand. you really don't fall in love by yourself but still. come on, liz gilbert. let's give these ladies whose lives you are now impacting some hope that they can be strong and stand on their own.

i'm not going to say liz gilbert is without any insight. i liked this quote: "happiness is the consequence of personal effort. you fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. you have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. and once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it." i just believe soundly that that realization could have been made anywhere in the world, not necessarily by travelling the world. the realization that you deserve happiness doesn't need to take place on a beach in bali or at an ashram in india any more than positive changes to one's life need to be vowed on new years day. if you allow the people in your life to play a role in helping you realize what you deserve, it makes it a lot easier to work towards that end.

so i guess the bottom line is this, live this life for yourself because it is the only one that you have. if you want to eat ice cream every day for a week, do it. if you need to see a therapist because you can't figure out why you don't smile, do it. do whatever you have to do to be happy because you deserve it. i'm not saying i have all the answers or that i can even do this but i do know that i can try. that is what counts. just sayin.

from the girl who probably should have never seen eat, pray, love

until next time...

all the lonely people, where do they all belong?

2010-07-20T13:27:00.000-07:00

so i just read through the last post that i wrote. and while it isn't shocking to me that a lot has changed since i made that post since i do write so infrequently, it is now amusing. in the beginning of my last post i talk about how i'm grateful to have a job, even if i hated it because in this economy, pretty much any paycheck is a good paycheck. approximately twenty-four hours after that post, i got a new job. one that i love and am so happy to be at. it is fantastic, marvelous and a bunch of other synonyms like that. it's a 9-5 grown up kind of job too, with health care and benefits. i'm quite thrilled. so now that i accepted this new position, the burden of my old job behind me, i was told by my new boss that i needed to go to manhattan for a week for training, on their dime. this sounds pretty fantastic right? now i'm not sure why this is the case but it seems that i always end up with quite interesting travel stories whenever i leave home for any period of time. oh and just for the record, i once again work in the city of detroit. i'm sure there will be more shennanigans to post about once i've been down here for more than two days. so look foward to that. let's talk about nyc for a minute though.

it starts with a 7am flight from detroit to myrtle beach, followed by a six hour layover then finally getting to new york. i figured if i got to the airport a little before 6am, i would be totally fine. but apparently, there was some convention of annoying families happening in myrtle beach and they were all on my flight. checking in at the airport isn't really that challenging, i don't think anyway. of course it seems to be when you have three children you need to get checked in too who all have bags and gameboys and ipods and all sorts of other forms of electronic entertainment. finally made it through the sea of children, through security to the gate to find the plane was delayed. i had decided that on my flight i was going to re-read twilight then move on to the other books in the saga. a quick, distracting, silly read seemed fun to me. so at the gate i waited, for a half hour, drinking a horrible cup of coffee that an older gentleman bought for me when we were chatting about how nice it would be to have a flight with no children allowed. eventually i got tired of standing so i found a spot that was relatively quiet and i read. being an adult reading twilight in a crowded gate at an airport isn't nearly as embarrassing as i thought it might be. we finally get to myrtle beach without incident. it is now 9:45am and i am in dire need of coffee, since i also decided not to sleep the night before in fear that i would oversleep and miss my flight. i have never spent time in the south. in fact, the most time i can remember spending south of the mason-dixon line besides washington dc was this stay in the airport. i walked up to the coffee shop counter and i ordered a large black coffee. keep in mind, i'm exhausted so i was talking slower than i usually do. the woman behind the counter looked at me and said:

"oh you must be from the north. you talk real fast."

lady you could have deduced i was from the north because i walked out of that door that says a flight was coming in from detroit, the door that is right across from where you are standing. but sure, let's point out the obvious. "yes. how much is it for the coffee?"

she stared at me blankly again for another couple seconds. i started to get impatient and she finally said "$2.50."

i took my coffee and set off in search of a plug to charge my phone while i read. i needed to listen to something else. the announcer on the PA announcing all the warnings about other people packing your bags and suspicious activity needing to be reported had an exceptionally annoying southern drawl and i couldn't listen to it for five hours. i finally found a plug, after finding a bunch that were labeled "plug not operative." the one i found was near a table, in a corner. so i sat there by myself, again reading twilight and listening to my phone.

it is almost time for the plane to start boarding so i went down to the gate and sat down by a pillar to once again recharge my phone. (the old battery sucked and it lost charge so fast.) after sitting there for about ten minutes, when they announced our plane was running a half hour late, a woman came up and shouted at me.

"of course you had to sit in that spot! no offense but that is annoying. just saying."

i found her outburst to be unnecessary. it's not as if she was sitting in that seat and i sat on her lap. her things weren't on the chair, nothing. i had no way of knowing if she was sitting there before but for the ten minutes i was in the chair she wasn't so i feel like it was fine that i was sitting where i was. normally i would have just let that kind of thing go but i was tired and annoyed with the delayed flight business and all the southern accents. so i said back, "yes i did need to see here. there is a plug in this pillar and i need to charge my phone. just saying." and i went back to my book.

anyway, more tales and adventures from new york later. it is now almost five and time to shut down my computer and leave work.

from the girl who is usually not as bitchy as it sounds in this post.

until next time...

mellow pandora and a papercut to end the work day

2010-06-30T13:28:00.000-07:00

so i am sitting at work, waiting impatiently for the next few minutes to go by so that i can leave and carry on with the rest of my evening. don't get me wrong, i am quite grateful to have a job, particularly in this economy but i've been doing nothing for the better part of an hour and it is getting tired. so after creeping around facebook, catching up on the news and recent tweets from friends, i decided to search through flickr, hoping to find a new picture for the background of my twitter. i happened upon a picture that i thought was alright so i went searching through other photos from that artist. she was quite clearly female and quite clearly head over heels in love with someone. naturally this lead me to thinking about twilight. apparently last night, eclipse, the next part of the twilight saga came out in theatres. i know this because i have a friend who coaches high school cheerleading and all of her girls were overwhelmingly excited about the premiere. i'll admit it. i've watched twilight and new moon. more than once in fact. i kind of like them though i'm not sure why. (for the record: team edward.) there is something appealing about vampires and werewolves running around in regular life. the writing isn't fantastic so the books were a struggle for me to get into. the thing about twilight that i still can mock and do, is the quick obsession that developed between edward and bella. i know in the movie they kept calling it love. she loves him, she needs him, he needs her, she needs to be a vampire but really, whoa. i get it with edward. apparently her blood smells delicious and he wants to suck it out of her. and actually now that i'm thinking about it, i get it with bella too. who wouldn't want to fall for the brooding, pale edward cullen? there is a point coming, i promise.

when looking through those pictures, some of the landscapes had quotes written over them like "every time i reach for you, you slip through my fingers" and others had proclamations of love like "i'll wait for you forever" and other such sentiments. this is connected to twilight in my mind and makes me wonder, what the hell kind of love are these people feeling that i've been left out on? i have been in love before and it was great. i miss that feeling frequently and i long for it again. but i don't think i've ever felt obsessed with anyone and this is what it looks like to me. these photos, the messages, bella and edward. it's an obsession. perhaps this is normal and what i felt was some kind of watered down version of love. honestly though, if that's the case, i prefer it my way. i like still being able to function but i am curious, how is it that someone loves that hard?

from the girl who still doesn't really get emotions.

until next time...

interviewed by three high schoolers in one day...hope i didn't disappoint them.

2009-05-21T14:30:00.000-07:00

apparently, i am not capable of committing to writing on any kind of reasonably schedule. seriously, the election in detroit has already happened and i only posted one of my adventures in the city. i apologize. there is no real excuse for this. i haven't been particularly busy as i no longer have a job and i don't have a car so i don't have anywhere i can really go. i am, at heart, a slacker and have spent far too much time lately playing one of those overachiever, workaholic types in my daily life so i suppose this is the place where my slacking has come to recognize its potential. now that i am here, in front of the computer, not on facebook or textsfromlastnight and writing, i might as well get into talking about another detroit shenanigan i got myself into and successfully out of.

when it comes to campaign finances, there are a lot of rules and regulations, in order to make sure everything is transparent and what not. this is my particular skill when it comes to campaign money probably because i am just crazy and compulsive enough to be good at following all of the rules. i blame it on my mother who was exceptionally strict in my youth; i had rules for rules and i have a bizarre need to the best at everything i do, so this is actually the perfect place for my crazy to come to manifest. anyway, one of these many rules is that after the close of books, any contribution over $200 has to be filed within 48 hours. so the report gets done by the people who do the reports for the mayor, gets emailed to me and i print it out. i am told that i need to go and deliver this to the clerk's office by 4:30pm. this is a simple assignment and should not be difficult in anyway. i have four copies of the report that i place in a folder (as not to destroy them before getting to the clerk's office) and i ask where the clerk's office is. i am laughed at by the finance director, because well, he tends to laugh at me when i ask where things are in detroit. he has some strange, unfounded belief that i should know where things are. i didn't even know that comerica park was around the corner from our office until a week before the election. i am obviously not well aware of where tihngs are in the city. anyway, he tells me how to get to the county building, which makes sense because mayoral candidates file their finances with the county. i head off to the county building, two turns out of my parking lot, arrive, find parking by a miracle of god and went inside at 3:45pm. i was semi-greeted by three men at the front desk, talking about something, not sure what but i can guarantee that it had nothing to do with work and i asked them where the clerk's office was. they asked which one. i thought, becuase i was in the county building, that would be an easy question but i need to remember that assuming things in detroit is what got the cops called on me so i clarified. they told me that i would need to the city building because that is where the county clerk's office is. oh sure, i should have thought of that on my own. so i ask where the city office is and they all stared at me like i was from another planet. i was told by the first one to make words that it was at 02 woodward, so to be sure i wasn't going to get lost i said, "you mean the building off jefferson with the spirit of detroit outside?" that was met with further looks that screamed "yes you dumb bitch." so i took my four reports and traveled down to 02 woodward to find the county clerk's office.

4:00pm: parking was a nightmare that close to the escape from the city and i was rapidly running out of time before the office closed and i would be screwed. so i give up and decide to park in a garage that is approximately 5 blocks away, which i know isn't far but seriously, would you want to walk around in detroit because i sure don't. i walk into the building and remember by way of the metal detectors that this is attached to the courthouse and i was going to have to go through security. i immediately started trying to figure out a way to get in with my phone because i wasn't walking back to leave it in the car and at the oakland county offices, you can't have your cell phone in the building if it has a camera. i decide to just try and play it cool and see how that works for me. i put my purse through the machine, i walk through no problem and then...

angry security lady: excuse me, miss, is that your purse? (at least she called me miss)

me: yes. (grabbing my purse off the security device)

asl: do you have an aersol can in your purse?

me: yes, i have hairspray in there. it's small enough to travel with on a plane.

asl: i'm sorry but you can not bring that in here with you.

me: are you bullshitting me? (yeah those were my exact words. this is why i don't make friends)

asl: no i'm not. you can't take that in with you. you can take it to your car, try and hide it outside or it is going to have to be thrown away.

me: now i know you are kidding me. i am parked too far away to make it there, back here and to the clerk's office before it closes. i have to drop off a finance report for the mayor. would you be willing to hold on to it right here and i will grab it on my way out? also could you tell me what floor the county clerk's office is on?

asl: second floor. well i am sorry but i can't hold it for you so you are either going to have to hide it outside or throw it away.

me: but that is like $15 hairspray. it's going to get stolen for sure if i leave it outside. throw it away i guess. (i almost cried)

asl: i'm pretty sure it will be fine outside but that is your decision. (i'm pretty sure she stole my hairspray rather than throw it away. bitch)

4:15pm, dangerously close to closing time. i run up to the second floor for the county clerk's office to my surprise it's not there. i asked where i could find the elections division of the clerk's office. so i'm told, the fifth floor. so i go running up to the fifth floor, 4:20pm and i am soundly freaking out at this point. i finally get to the clerk's office, turn in the report, look at the clock, 4:27pm. just in the nick of time. i realize at this point, i have yet to have had any caffeine at all for the day and i found a small coffee shop on the main floor. i walk in, pay and go to pump the coffee into the cup to find that it is empty (almost cried again.) i get my money back and walked past the angry security lady and out the door. it's raining, which is fantastic and i stand at the crosswalk waiting to cross the street to start the trek back to the car when some random guy starts talking to me.

random guy: hey do you have a lighter?

me: no, i'm sorry.

rg: what ar e you doing down here? you don't look like you are from around here.

me: i'm not from around here and i'm down here for work. i work for the mayor.

rg: you work for the mayor? that's pretty cool.

me: yeah. (waiting impatiently for the light to turn)

rg: are you into jazz? we should check out some jazz sometime downtown.

me: yeah, i don't think so. i have a boyfriend.

rg: that's too bad. i love asian girls.

me: umm, great.

from the girl who almost got hit by a bus to get away from a random guy hitting on her. until next time...

i'm developing arthritis in my thumbs from my blackberry.

2009-04-23T12:39:00.000-07:00

politics is a hilarious field for a lot of reasons but admittedly it is only for a certain crop of people, for better or for worse. i am admittedly new in the world of paid political staffers because i'm almost always too willing to be a volunteer. lately though, it has worked out for me that i can do what i like and get paid for it and that is truly excellent. i'm not going to get all "my life is fabulous" on you because truth be told, i'm not really sure that it's that great. working in what i thought was the field i want to be in has lead me to have as many doubts as i did when i was looking for any kind of employment. maybe i'm the doubting kind or simply the type who will always be looking for the next best thing; it doesn't really matter for my purposes here today. that is stuff that is best left for a professional. anyway, i'm sitting here at work and currently i am working for the mayor of the city of detroit as a member of the finance team. fancy right? anyway, as a part of working for the mayor of detroit, i now have to come to downtown detroit every day and in the last three weeks i have been down here working, i think i have spent more time in the city/downtown than i have in my whole life. that's kind of sad. i have lived in the detroit metro area my whole life, save for that sabbatical when i went to college up north and have never spent substantial time in the city. well i suppose i'm making up for it now. i keep having very interesting things happen to me down here, a part of that is probably because i don't look like i belong here, part is because i work with some very interesting, amazing women and at the end of the day, it's still detroit. i feel like i should document my adventures or misadventures in the city because if nothing else, i think i'll want to read them again at some point. now i've been down here for weeks already before i decided to start this so i feel as though i am going to have to backtrack a little bit. let's just pretend that today is my first day of work. so here it is, the adventures of jenny in the city.

at 11:15 at night on thursday, i received a phone call from the finance director for the mayor's campaign. the thing was, i only heard about this whole business on monday at 9:45pm when i had an impromptu interview over the phone for a job that not only did i not know it existed, i had never applied for it. i went over my background, emailed my resume after wards, the whole nine yards. and in politics, it's so much about who you know so i made sure to have the former boss toss in a great word for me because once he asks you to do something, it's almost impossible to not do it. anyway, i played all my cards right and had to go into the city for a meeting with the finance director. let's call him f.d. from now on. when he realized that i couldn't hear him on that thursday (because i was in a bar) he asked if he could call at 8:30 in the morning. i foolishly said yes. i kicked myself for that in the morning. bottom line, i got the job so hurray for me.

i commit to going down for a meeting at three in the afternoon on friday. i get there, only after getting lost for a minute and then driving through the mess that was the start of the final four madness. state fans descended on the city a whole day early and it was nice to see people walking the streets. i had my meeting and was kind of blown off by all the girls in the office, who apparently had no idea that i was coming/getting hired/who the fuck i was. that's always a great way to start. allow me to say, that i was sought out to work because of my finance experience and my background in campaign finance. it all sounded very good. when they realized that i had nothing to do, or rather assumed i had nothing to do on what they thought was my first day of work and i thought was a meeting, they found something i could do. they sent me to pick up a check. i figured, how hard could this be? i'll take a couple minutes, go get this check and then head back up to oakland county. easy enough right? so i put the address in google maps on my phone and i'm off.

imagine my surprise for a moment when i find myself heading back towards where i originally came. i get off of the expressway on seven mile and promptly turned into the ghetto. i was legitimately afraid to get out of the car and i like to think that i am kind of tough and can hold my own. so i drive to what google maps says is my destination and when i look out the window, i notice that it is a warehouse that looks like it has been condemned...in the 1980s. not very promising. now it has happened on more than one occasion where google maps has tried to lead me astray so i drove in circles for a minute before i pulled over in front of the building to re-google it. it kept telling me i was at my destination. i then called the office, hoping they would be able to tell me where i went wrong and where the actually office was. instead, the woman on the phone and i had this conversation:

me: hello, my name is jenny and i work for the mayor and i am supposed to be picking up a check from your office. are you located at 30 w whatever.
woman on the phone: umm, yes.
me: fantastic. do you by chance see a blue jeep parked outside.
w.o.p: yes (getting more frustrated by the instant)
me: okay, so how do i get inside this building?
w.o.p: you park where you are now and you go through the front door, duh. (seriously, she duh-ed me)
me: umm, okay then.

so i proceeded into the building. there is no sidewalk that lead up to the door and the substance that used to be grass was mushy and had glass sticking out of it. i'm pretty sure i got diseases just by walking to the door, not to mention touching the handle to let myself in. i came inside and found a giant window full of bullet proof glass where a man with two wandering eyes was standing next to a printing press or some similar looking device and a couple desks. i couldn't figure out what the hell was supposed to happen in there but i was sure that the guy was freaking me out. i walk up to the window and this is the exchange i have with the guy.

me: hello sir, i am here to pick up a check for the mayor from some guy i can't remember.
creep: are you the one parked out in the front?
me: (looks around to the otherwise empty space) yes.
creep: (hands the check slowly and creepy like) well, we don't get many people around here and you were driving in circles out there so we assumed you were someone shady. we don't get a lot of your type around here; it usually just people up to no good, so we call the police on you.
me: you are kidding me right?
creep: no, we called the police. you were being shady.

so i had to wait there while he called the police again to tell them that there was no reason to come out. i mean, realistically, they weren't coming out anyway but i was still in shock. after that i was resolved, i ran back to the safety of the car, drove back downtown to the office and gave the check back to the f.d. i told him that i had to leave because i thought we were only having a meeting and i had just had the cops called on me for being shady in detroit. it was time to leave. so many weeks left until the election, so many more things that can happen.

from the girl that is so shady that she gets the cops called on her in the ghetto of detroit. until next time.

love, logic and stuff.

2008-11-23T23:36:00.000-08:00

if life is like a box of chocolates, as forrest gump once said, then i have found myself with a box filled with a bunch of dark chocolate truffles and half of them are coconut (which i really don't like. coconut kind of makes me want to be sick.) it always seems that when life is particularly good, i am bound to have it made bittersweet in one fell swoop. but that's okay. i'm kind of a bitter person and i've always had a taste for bitter, i.e. black coffee, dark dark chocolate, espresso. the other day, i got a job offer from my boss, because now that the campaign is over, i need a new job and i like that i get to keep the same boss. it's a great offer and i am thrilled to accept it. but as i was receiving this excellent news, that settled my wandering and worrying mind at least about this particular dilemma, i also received a text message from the boyfriend about a job offer he received. it is a similarly awesome opportunity for him however, it will take him across the country. he has not yet accepted this offer; he told them that he wanted time to think and make his decision which includes discussing this with me. i feel that this is the time when the caring and loving girlfriend of four years would say something profound or at least helpful. i panicked. while i wasn't entirely silent or tossed up instant bad advice, i responded by saying that this was definitely something to discuss. not necessarily the most kind answer, nor the kind of answer i would have liked if the situation was reversed. like i said, i panicked.

this is, for a lot of reasons, a big decision for him. it will undoubtable be a life changing experience, whether he takes the job or not. it is my hope and desire for him, to do whatever it is that is going to make him happy. because that is what i want for him; i want him to be happy with his choice and to later not feel regret or wonder what might have happened if he took this chance. sure, that is not the answer i would want from him because it certainly does not make decision making easier. this is a relationship, a partnership so my opinion should be valued and i know that by saying i want him to do what will make him happy he will feel as though this discounts what i want in order to be happy. (i know this not just through speculation but because he has told me so.) i believe this is officially what is known as a conundrum but i do believe the choice is simple to make. do what will make you happy because if for no other reason, bitterness does not suit him.

then there is one of those damn coconut pieces again. while the job, the opportunity, the adventure might make him happy, our original plan was for him to move back to michigan after finishing grad school and we would move in together. (not get married, mind you, because i won't do that until the gays can too. fair is fair after all.) happy in one aspect but a high chance of unhappy in another. so now we are left with figuring out, if he is to move, what do we do? the vast bulk of our relationship has been a long distance experience so if he was to move, it wouldn't be a very different day to day experience. it is notably further away so no more surprise visits because he wanted to drive home to see me and i certainly couldn't just pop in unannounced just to see his face. it would require coordination and planning and would almost entirely kill spontaneity. but those are just details right? if we love each other, if we can make it work, if our relationship is as strong as we both think it is, then we can still be fine right and it's worth the gamble?

ah but of course, there is an added factor here that has yet to be laid out. it goes a little something like this. i love him, this is a true statement and he loves me, a similarly true statement. but he and i have gotten to a point in our relationship where the only thing we really talk about is work and the news. maybe it's a phase but it seems to me like things are a little bit, unemotional. we aren't cold with each other but when we say i love you when we are about to hang up on the phone, it is more like an automatic response than a genuine feeling. it is my understanding that even if you are in love, it doesn't always look beautiful and it doesn't always feel like butterflies in your stomach. but there should always be a feeling there. love is an emotion after all. our love is logical. it makes sense and we have become incredible friends. incredible friends who sleep together. i hate to think that is what he and i have come to; that this is what our relationship very likely will become. i suppose knowing that he at least partially feels the way i do, that i'm not alone in the way that i see our relationship is the silver lining to this cloud.

like alanis morissette, i believe that one and one make two and unfortunately, i think that, in this relationship, one and one have added up to two very different and separate lives. it breaks my heart to think about the gravity of what this means, the idea that maybe sometimes loves isn't enough, especially not when love becomes a logical decision rather than an emotional response. nothing is final yet; we haven't thoroughly discussed anything about this particular topic yet. but without all those particulars being laid out and using what i feel to guide me instead of what i think (this is a big deal for me, it doesn't happen often) i feel like he and i will come to a conclusion about all of this very soon. i love having such a tremendous person in my life, such a wonderful, loving and caring friend but we both deserve so much more than what either of us can offer. i hate it when the truth is a total bummer.

from the girl who let her heart smack her brain around for once, and is painfully feeling every minute of it. until next time...

musing (twice in one day after failing for weeks.)

2008-11-13T17:11:00.000-08:00

now listen, i never made any false pretenses that life would be easy as a grown up. i never really thought that things landed at your feet or necessarily went the way you planned. but i did think one thing. i've hardly ever been the kind of person that has given much thought to an affair. i'm not even thinking about it now. but my reason behind this is some giant beacon of morality. no it is much easier than all of that. two reasons really. number one, i have a hard enough time keeping up one relationship, how could i possibly imagine dealing with two? especially if i would have to be hiding them from each other? number two, i don't think i have ever seriously liked more than one person at a time and i know that i have only ever loved one person at a time. and by "at a time" i mean ever. see, this is much more simple than jesus or something. it's laziness and that shit is bullet proof.

the other night, bare in mind this is some five days after my four year anniversary, i found myself thinking what it would be like to sleep with someone else. not even necessarily have sex but to share a bed with another man. i am not much of a cuddler but the thought crossed my mind anyway. what would it be like to sleep with someone else? i wasn't particularly freaked out by my train of thought, though i probably should have been. i mean seriously, what kind of person thinks about sleeping with someone else just casually as if it was a thought about what to wear to work the next day? the problem best as i can tell is that i think i might want to. this is not to say that i want to end my relationship but i can't really see a situation where i sleep (non-sexually) with another man and stay in my relationship.

i wouldn't say that i am bored with my relationship. i love him but i fear that he and i may have made it to the end of our time together. for reasons i would rather not explicitly lay out on the internet, it has become clear to me that i may have either reassess how i feel about certain beliefs i hold on to tight, find a reasonable compromise, or experience what life may hold as a single twenty something. but i'm jumping to conclusions. it was just a thought one time. there can't possibly be harm in that.

but thought one time, what can that turn into? that is what worries me. i am quite capable of dealing with my own emotions and bullshit and certianly just because i think something does in now way lead it to be true or real.

i'll shelf it for now. no sense in worrying about non-sense that was just a thought one time.

from that girl who thinks too much until next time...

i'll never be america's next top model.

2008-11-13T16:52:00.000-08:00

ambition is a funny thing. i have never really thought of myself as the particularly ambitious type, though i know there are at least a half a dozen people that would argue with me in a new york minute if they heard me say that. the fact of the matter here is simple. (please heed this warning; i do not wish to sound arrogant but that might be how it comes off.) when i was in school, up until about eleventh grade, i was always bored because school came easy to me and there was nothing that i really liked. i oculd just coast. i found something in psychology, perhaps a kinship to those who are a little bit less than sane themselves, who knows and i coasted through college, enjoying (for the most part) only courses that fell within my personal interests and strengths. anyway, here i sit today, having just come off a major accomplishment of electing a democrat county wide in a notoriously republican county and i find myself wondering, now what?

perhaps i am addicted to the hard work, dedication, weird hours and unique experience that is campaign work and once i adjust to being in the real world again, i'll be fine. perhaps i'm still realing from an amazing slew of democratic victories that happened hardly more than a week ago that were so many months coming. i know that i'm sufficiently behind the curve when i write this since it has already been more than a week but god, i'm thrilled that barack obama is my new president. for those who are aware of my love for him, i'm sure you can imagine the stupid grin i wore when he won and still wear at the thought.

anyway, i was thinking today while i was working about what i want to do next with my life. everyone else is talking about who they will work for, what they want to do, offices they want to run for, money they will raise and the influence they will have. some have been foolish enough to ponder aloud what it would be like for all of us to serve on the county board or the state house together. while yes, i have already run for a public office and yes, i like the idea of winning and yes, i feel pretty confident that i know how to win now, i don't think that i actually ever want to hold an elected office. there is something appealing about being behind the scenes. or perhaps this is only because i haven't yet gotten to a place where i feel like i could make an effective difference as an elected official. who knows.

during "lunch" (which was really just a meeting while two of the four of us ate) it was made clear that the two gentlemen i was having lunch with had bright futures ahead of them and that it was something they were both actually looking forward to achieving. i, on the other hand, have only one aspiration that i can currently think of. i want to want something. i want to feel compelled to do something, to want to do it, to have a genuine desire and interest.

i guess this is a plight that exists outside of my work life also. i'm not particularly certain about much of anything lately, for what that's worth. i have yet to get to a point where i am happy to accept something mundane and average, accept a life of what should be rather than what life could be. but maybe this is what happens in your twenties; you realize that you can only be yourself and expect what is realistic.

reality sucks.

from the girl that isn't fierce or pretty enough to be a model (looks like a world of work for me) until next time...

not in the mood to be eaten by sharks.

2008-10-22T23:09:00.000-07:00

once upon a time, i thought that i would go to college, meet the love of my life, graduate, start a fabulous career, get married and start a family at a reasonable age (in my mind, around 28-30.) i thought that i would know what i wanted to be when i grew up and that love would find a way to prove to me it was there. i thought i would understand what people meant when they say "i just knew he/she was the one." once upon a time, my life was going to be grand, difficult like life tends to be but when i looked back from my twilight i would smile and think, i did it all. i was going to have my life together.

once upon a reality, i went to college, found and still currently maintain love, graduated, stumbled into a career, and work tirelessly. of course, life hardly ever plans out the way you think. especially when the you that is moving on to the mid morning of your life also known as the twenties. in fact, in a lot of ways i think that i am the only thing that stands between me and what my once upon a time life. there is a deeply tragic thought; that i am the one who causes myself grief and creates a disconnection between what i dreamed of and what i experience. the marvelous thing here is that there is a simple solution. if i am what is in the way, perhaps all i need to do is shift to the left to be on my way.

the thing here is while that all sounds simple, it is hard for me to know if that once upon a time thinking even fits with the person that i am that is standing away from my potential greatness. several times in recent weeks i have been called out as "hating it when people are happy." this is in response to my groans and complaints when i happen upon people in my life (via facebook) that are married and/or have/having children. my response is that i don't hate happy people; i just expect more. but what the hell does that mean? i might be unfair in thinking that the people who i see while stalking diligently through facebook aren't happy and feel as if their once upon a time adolescent dreams aren't unfolding before their eyes. perhaps there is something wrong with the way that i think. my instant thought is that they have thrown away a part of their life, that they have sacraficed the time, the only time, in their life where they have the option to be selfish, to try ridiculous things, to love freely, to make mistakes, to start a career, to finish school, to skydive or skinny deep just because you can.

alright, i'm probably being unfair in assuming that because you have a spouse or a kid or two that all good and fun things in your life come crashing to a halt. what i am aware of is that all i have to account for is myself, my job and make sporatic appearances with my family and commit time to maintaining relationships that are dear to me, romantic and friendships. this is and always has been a common theme for me. i stumble in understanding what is the rush.

here's the kicker. i've been in a relationship with my love, my lover, my one and only, my first for nearly four years and we have been together longer than most of my married friends have been with their spouses. maybe they know something i don't know or felt something i don't feel. or maybe they are impetuous. i have never been a big fan of diving in without knowing what i'm getting myself into; i'm quite afraid of being malled to death by sharks. this is not the first, nor do i assume will it be the last time that i think myself into a tizzy about things i can never possibly come to a reasonable conclusion about. i think all the time and in this instance, i know that i have worked myself to a place where i understand that i am my own worst enemy because my brain is so much better at decision making than my heart.

hope that one doesn't bite me in the ass eventually.

just a few random thoughts mulling around in my mind.

from the girl that gets a little bit ill at the thought of marriage. until next time...