Terrible Year.

This has been the worst year I have ever experienced.  Worse than probably a five year block combined.

I hold out a small bit of hope for 2017, but at this point I'm just concerned it will keep getting worse.

I'm so tired of losing people I love.  I'm tired of losing bits of myself.  I'm tired of not being able to keep up with simple parts of life.

I feel as though I hit rock bottom and then the walls began pressing in, too.  I can only hope there is nowhere to go from here but up.

I have never wanted so much in my entire life to just give up.

Someday, Forever.

I think it's no secret that Yoshi and I have had our fair share of struggles, some of them in the very recent past.

Being with him is easy because we get along so well, but being in a relationship where thoughts and feelings and opinions are valued is not.  Not every day is easy.

To be honest, there have been times where I've really genuinely thought about leaving.  After we moved in together that got a little more complicated, but during the rare instances where we've had really bad fights and I get overly emotional there are still times during which a stubborn and independent part of me thinks, "Meh, I don't need you.  I can survive on my own.  I can do whatever I want.  I'll just leave, then you'll see."

But that's not how a long-term relationship works, is it?

In a long-term relationship, a real partnership that becomes a pillar on which to base your life, you don't get to just leave because there was a hard day or a hard week or they said something wrong or they didn't pick the movie you wanted.

That would be silly, not to mention a waste of a tremendous amount of effort.  Those are things you can do, in my opinion, up until your one year anniversary.  After a year you should probably be putting more thought into your reasons to leave, like you both aren't compatible on a level that matters and causes you to be unable to continue in the relationship.

I understand there are many reasons to break up.  You're monogamous and one of you cheats.  One of you becomes drug dependent.  One of you has to move for work or family.  Sometimes even family is the reason, whether they dislike your partner or your partner cannot accept your family.

I've even had moments in which I knew I had real motive to terminate my relationship, but I couldn't do it.  I wouldn't just be turning my back on the lover who had been there for me through all my issues without trying to understand him in return, but I also would have been losing my best friend.  So in the days where I was really and truly thinking about leaving I would pretend everything was fine instead.  When he was gone my heart would be breaking but when he was home I seemed okay.  Instead of going to bed and crying I would sit closer to him on the couch.  Eventually, we grew closer again emotionally, too.

I'm not saying if you're considering leaving your relationship that you shouldn't.  Each relationship you have is different and different to each person in it.

I'm saying that when I have childish thoughts about ending mine because he isn't perfect I subconsciously find reasons not to do so and things get better.  That's how I know he's right for me.

I no longer look at him with youthful eyes and think about what he could be to me.  I see him with eyes and a heart that have experienced years with him: multiple moves, illness of various types, depression, anxiety, a million meals, an equal number of miles on the road, staying up until dawn and going to bed while the sun is still in the sky in the evening...  It isn't just the initial emotions and little compatibility tests you give each other that become love; it's the milestones you celebrate, projects you complete together, and moments that pile on top of each other year after year.

When I started this blog I was just another damaged girl in her mid-twenties who figured she'd be single forever and ever.  I had finally reached a place where I was comfortable with being single and had started to accept and release what I went through with my ex,  I liked who I was and I liked my freedom.  Later that year I met Yoshi and a year after that we started dating.

The secret is that I never really thought the relationship between the girl who always dated older guys and the dude four years younger who always dated younger girls would last.  I thought it would just be hanging out, maybe some decent sex, and then it would fizzle.  Somewhere along the line we started learning how to be with each other and really working at it because neither of us was willing to give up on the fun we had together.

So, yes.  There have been rough patches.  There will be more.  I don't think either of us would be happy if there wasn't some kind of challenge in being together.  But there will also be more moments that I will never forget and moments that I will forget that I thought I never would.  Somehow the negative never piles up as high as the positive.  I think that is as it should be.

I can't say for sure there won't be a day in the future that one of us says we can't do this anymore, but I can say that if that day did come it wouldn't be a surprise to either of us.  There would have been a lot of damage along the road we took to get to that place.

I think it's more likely we'll wake up in our seventies and wonder where the last 50 years went and how they could have passed us by so quickly.

Who knows?

That's for Future Bunny to worry about.

In The Summertime.

Living on the redwood coast is swiftly changing the way I view summer.

Having lived in California my whole life I know exactly what summer should be.  In places like Santa Cruz (where I’ve actually spent summers) and San Diego it’s sunny and 75 degrees every day, though Santa Cruz does have fog earlier in the day.  In places like Sacramento and L.A. it’s 100 degrees and sunny all day.  In Central California it’s 110 and sunny.  Santa Rosa was more like 90 degrees. 

In short, most places it’s hot and bright.

Except here.

It’s spotty fog all morning.  Then sunny around one PM with fog that hangs over the water like I do chocolate cake or Yoshi when we’re in a crowded place.

Then fog on and off the rest of the day. 

Sometimes it unexpectedly lifts from the water, sometimes it doesn’t.  Sometimes it rains.  In the summer.

I know.

I was surprised, too.

And above everything else, it’s still 65 degrees.

I’m wearing a sweatshirt and socks as I type this and I’m considering closing the window because I’m too chilly.

This is the first summer ever that I’m contemplating hot tubs instead of swimming pools.  In fact, my mom just got a swimming pool and I’m thinking about setting up my hot tub so I have somewhere warm to go.

Yesterday I washed all of our bedclothes, plus some that were in storage since the move here.  I decided to swap our heavy winter comforter with the quilt I liked to use in Santa Rosa.  We had a sheet, a light blanket, and the quilt, plus our own individual afghans, and I woke up cold.

My body is so confused.

I can’t remember what month it is.

There’s no way in hell it’s July.

Yet, if I drive into the mountains (into the mountains!  It should be colder there!) for 20 minutes I will definitely remember it’s summer because I will be too hot immediately.

So the difference between summer and winter here has nothing to do with temperature and that’s a weird adjustment to have to make.

Winter means more damp and more rain.  Sometimes it will be 55 instead of 65, sometimes the sun will shine and it will be 65 again.  Albeit a damp 65.

Summer means it’s sunny eventually, though there may be mist or light rain later at night or early in the morning.  It’s actually quite romantic in a Bronte sort of way.  The hotter it is inland the more fog there is here on the coast and the less I can see the water from my kitchen, which is annoying since watching the barges and sailboats is how I pass the time while doing dishes.

All in all, I’d rather it be cooler than hotter, so I guess this is ideal.  I’m just still not acclimatized.

Also, I have the worst allergies I’ve ever had in my life. 

In July.

Which is totally normal.

I guess.

Blockage.

I was going to write for a while today.

Instead I'm having one of those days where everything I write seems stupid.

I've made the decision to go sort through yarn instead.

El Explosivo.

Friday I made my favorite chili for dinner.  It’s an adaptation of this recipe from Damn Delicious—I LOVE Damn Delicious.  Her food is always amazing.  Apparently her recipe is adapted from a Cooking Classy recipe, so I guess I’m adapting an adaptation.

Whatever.

It’s freaking tasty.

I’ve made a separate post outlining my adaptation of this recipe for those who are interested.  It’s posted here.

Usually Yoshi and I have what we call “shit food night” on Friday, which is also our standing date night.

We’ll go for a drive, see a movie, stay home… Whatever.  Often that’s our night to eat shitty fast food because we don’t like to spend the money to go to restaurants much and even fast food can be expensive, but it used to be a vice for Yoshi and he still really enjoys getting to have that outlet.

This week I made chili and we had fast shit food on Saturday.

This was a bad idea.

Especially since the chili was served with fries and cheese.

Okay, I used 1/3 of it to make chili cheese fries, which we devoured straight from the casserole dish with forks while sitting on the floor and watching Supernatural.

It was amazing.  While we were doing it.

The next day Yoshi wanted to have a relaxing day and maybe adventure.  Since we now live on the coast in FarNorCal, we drove north for a bit into the redwood forest.  On the way out of town we got Taco Bell.

I’m sure someone out there has already surmised this was not a good idea.

Fast food when you're not accustomed to eating it is bad enough, but this was...  It was just not good.

About 45 minutes into our drive I started to feel some gurgles and as reality dawned on me I also started to wish I had stayed at home where it was safe and there was a clean bathroom that was easily accessible. 

Sadly, I was in the car near a town called Orick, which I’m sure jumps out as two things: a small “town” in the middle of nowhere and also the potential site for a mass murder/slasher film.  It is definitely at least one of those things.

I mentioned my worrisome predicament to Yoshi, fearless leader and pilot of our adventure.

He pulled off at beach parking lot with a bathroom.  You know the kind.  Something that looks like a toilet over a shit-filled hole in the ground in a small room with toilet paper but most definitely no sink.

Just what I wanted.

I mean, it’s better than digging a hole for myself.  I guess.

Luckily it was not very busy and there were for unisex bathroom units, so I picked one on the end that I thought was least likely to be disturbed and also probably the cleanest from disuse.

It was pretty clean, surprisingly.  There was even a little vent on the floor so the room didn’t smell like most beach bathrooms I’ve had the pleasure (I used the word pleasure very facetiously here) of using.  There was even a wall-mounted container of toilet seat covers and the toilet seat didn’t have the slightest smudge of feces.

What a lucky girl I am.

I prepared the “toilet.”  I sat.  I waited. 

Nothing happened.

My stomach continued to be unhappy. 

The toilet was very tall and didn’t lend to proper pooping posture, which made the situation even more difficult and frustrating.  Like, I just wanted to get in and out as quickly as possible and get on with my day adventuring in the woods.

I sat some more.

There was a breeze from below that did little to ease my discomfort.  What if something jumped up and bit me?  What if the breeze carried disease from whatever was below and my vagina rotted off from being exposed?

I could hear people in the parking lot through my little air vent and became self-conscious.  What if I exploded and could be heard halfway across the parking lot over the screaming children?

How embarrassing.

After what felt like an eternity I did some business and was able to leave, but something told me that the perfect storm, created by some bomb (poor word choice) chili cheese fries and a follow up of T. Bell, was not over. 

I felt better, but not…  Finished.

Yoshi has been with me long enough to understand this.

We went to the beach nearby.

He expressed concern because I had been gone long enough for him to worry not just about my stomach but also that I had been abducted from the bathroom.  “I was trying to memorize the license plates in the parking lot for when I had to call the cops.  I didn’t want to look like one of those dumbasses on Law & Order: SVU when they asked me if I saw anything suspicious.”

It was definitely less than 70 degrees out and the chilly breeze necessitated a sweatshirt for me since I still was feeling sub-par.  I felt uncomfortable sitting, so I lay beside him in the sand and closed my eyes.  The sun was warm and helped ease the tension I was feeling.

Particularly the tension in my stomach.

Particularly my lower stomach.

It began to dawn on me that I was going to have an emergency situation. 

Trying to run through sand to get to a toilet that is just out of reach while in an emergency shitting situation is not really on my list of favorite things.

My hands were shaking.  Yoshi was trying to help me but I was ready to cry.  In my mind I was processing which places in the nearby sad I would be least likely to be seen taking an emergency shit from the freeway or small children.

That’s when you know it’s really an emergency situation.  When you start mentally calculating how many people are likely to see you take a public dump.

I made it, if you’re curious. 

I was very fortunate.

After I was feeling better we drove to a trail head we hadn’t visited before and wandered around in the woods by a creek bed for a while.  It was amazingly beautiful.  There were banana slugs of every shape and size.

We talked about what we missed about Santa Rosa and what we like about living here and I realized something important.

As much as Santa Rosa had come to feel like home, one of the reasons we liked it is that where we lived it was easier to escape the city and go into the country.  We never loved the city as much as we loved being able to escape it.  Being here has been a big adjustment, but there is more escape and less city.

I think it’s going to work out.  Eventually.

Hopefully I’ll manage to keep from shitting my pants along the way.

Regardless, I will not be having chili cheese fries or Taco Bell for a while.  Maybe ever again.  I think I'm done with shit food Friday for a bit, too.

You'll Love Me For My Chili.

This post is regarding an adaptation I make of the Quinoa Chili recipe by Damn Delicious.

I don’t really measure things when I make food, so it’s a little hard for me to put recipes on my blog for people.  For this chili I might at some point, because it’s one of those really great heavy heartwarming dishes perfect for cold winter nights.  It’s hearty enough that it’s really easy to forget it’s vegetarian.

I’ve always been a picky eater and my dad makes the BEST chili, but I don’t like meat that much.  I’m not vegan or vegetarian, though I’ve considered it, but I hate having to fight my way around the bits of hamburger when all I really want is the beans and sauce. 

The quinoa chili is perfect for me because I don’t have to pick my way around it at all.  I just throw a little cheese on top and go to town. 

If you’re interested in the changes I make I’ll explain the way I cook a bit.  Generally, I just throw things together by instinct; I cook like my mom and my grandma, I guess.  New recipes I’ll measure most things unless I know I can eyeball.  I just don’t see the point in dirtying measuring cups if I don’t have to.  Recipes I’ve made more than twice I don’t often measure unless it’s something like a cake.

In regards to the chili, I don’t always use onion or garlic, though I do love the flavor when I brown them in olive oil and then mix them into the chili.  Sometimes I’m just lazy.  I don’t always cook the quinoa beforehand; it depends on quickly I want the chili to pull together.  More often than not I just add a little extra water to the broth and throw the rinsed uncooked chili in.  Sometimes I use canned beans, sometimes dry.  It depends on what I have on hand and whether I remember to soak the beans or not.  I prefer using dry if possible because I don’t like being restricted to the canned portions.  I like to add about a half a can extra of black beans in particular.

I store my dry goods like rice and beans in large Mason jars for ease of access and also because I like Mason jars.  They’re easy to clean, glass, and you can put just about anything in them.  Just ask Pinterest.

So I usually end up using about 2/3 a jar of black beans for the chili.  I use about a packet to a packet and a half of packaged chili seasoning because I am lazy and can’t remember to buy chili powder.  And, most importantly, I use brown sugar in my chili.

Friday night I cooked the quinoa and just tossed all the other ingredients in the pot at the same time.  I generally like to use more than one packet of chili seasoning, so I improvised and used some Tapatio.  Then I added probably 2-3 tablespoons of brown sugar.  This time it was organic because that’s what I had on hand.

Without a little brown sugar chili tastes a little too sharp to me, a little too tomato-y.  It really makes a difference.  The seasoning and the brown sugar I usually just add to taste as the chili cooks.

That’s pretty much it. 

It’s a very simple recipe to begin with and I’m not going to go out of my way to make it any harder.  

It's also pretty hard to screw up.  And it is so delicious.

Goodbye, Former Self.

Am I the only one who feels that font is an important first step to writing?

Maybe it’s because I’ve never particularly liked my handwriting.  I like to choose fonts that are sort of type-set for serious writing and for more personal venting I like fonts that look more handwritten. 

In school I used it as a procrastination technique; it would take me hours to choose the right font for a paper.  Even if I had to download a new one.  Sometimes it took so long I needed a snack or bathroom break. 

Oops.

Can’t start now.  Gotta pee instead.  

Darn.

This is not really relevant to what I had intended to write at all, but I think about it every time I start to write something because I like to write using Word and then copy and paste it into my blog.  The font is the main reason for that, even though I do just really like the format of Word.

I also like Excel.  Like, a lot. 

I love making spreadsheets. 

It’s a sickness.

I was thinking this morning about the ways in which I’ve changed over the last five years. 

When I started this blog I wanted it to be similar content-wise to Sex and the City.  The show, not so much the book.  I read the book and, to be honest, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I would. 

If you’ve watched the show but not read the book, the first season is very similar style-wise.  And for those of you who haven’t watched the show, the first season is the worst. 

The book was ultimately very depressing and Carrie isn’t a character that people really want to be.  It’s much less settled and more party girl than the show ends up being.

ANYWAY.

That is not what happened. 

The thing is, the person I was when I started this blog five years ago was happy and more comfortable in her own skin than I am now (weight gain), but I realize now she was pretty far into denial about how lost she was.  And she was still really fucked up. 

I bitched about my ex A LOT.

It took until around the summer of 2012 for me to really get over him.  It’s funny now when I think about it because I was afraid to let him go all of the way because I was terrified I’d end up alone.  After my first year at college ended I realized I was going to be happier without him, whether I found someone else or not.

I remember the moment I let go very distinctly, and I’m glad I do because it brings me peace every time it comes to mind.

I was going grocery shopping.  I had just parked in the lot and he was texting me (and hiding it from his current girlfriend).  We were fighting.  The whole time I knew him we were either fighting or I was letting him walk all over me.

I remember thinking so clearly that I didn’t really want to talk to him anymore.  I was almost surprised. 

Then he said we should stop talking.  I agreed.  I went inside and did my shopping with a feeling of lightness in my chest.  I went home.

Not long after I started really talking to Yoshi.

I got the bow tattoo on my ring finger.  Just in case I needed a reminder other than the Cherokee on my rib cage.

I started dating Yoshi. 

Eventually I just didn’t reply anymore when he tried to contact me and I know now it’s better that way.

Sometimes I regret the time I wasted letting him back in time after time, year after year, but I think if I hadn’t done that I wouldn’t have become who I am now and ultimately that person is much cooler than who I was at 20. 

I’m not saying I’m thankful, rather that I just don’t regret.

I took a rather long and unintentional break from blogging.  I didn’t have a lot of time for it in school and the things that came to mind to write about seemed silly and childish.  When I moved to Santa Rosa I didn’t have much time for it, either.

Truth be told, I really didn’t write much after finishing school.  Because of that I think I really lost touch with myself for a while there.

It took me writing consistently again and having time with myself to figure that out.  I’ve never felt so lost and been in a stable relationship before.  It was so easy to lose myself in work and blame him for everything that felt wrong.  And everything felt wrong because I wasn’t happy, but it felt like I had no idea what made me happy anymore.

I missed feeling happy. 

I missed not feeling as though I needed the antidepressants I had been taking. 

I missed feeling like myself.

Now I watch the changing winds push and pull at the summer fog and every time the clouds move out the sky reflects on the water in the most pure and cerulean blue I think I’ve ever seen. 

I’m not afraid to dream anymore.

It’s like that clear and bright reflective blue has latched onto my heart and I can feel hope again.

Even though I feel the weight of 30 breathing down my neck, I'm less freaked out by my next birthday than I was before.  I like who I am now more than who and what I was at 20.

It's okay that I don't have children and I'm not going to be married by then.  It's only 30.  

Besides, maybe instead of kids I'll have an adventure instead.  

Who knows.

Moving Upward.

The ocean is laden with fog today. 

I know this despite not having even gone outside yet because I can see to the water from my kitchen window.

I won’t lie, this may play a part in the fact that I mind washing dishes so much less lately. 

We live in a real neighborhood for the first time in years, not in some shitty shoe box apartment the middle of town.  There are no words to express how much I hated the last apartment.  It was listed as a one bedroom but it was really a studio with a large walk-in closet.  Except the walk-in closet had a window and an adjoining smaller closet.  That must have been either for a single occupant’s storage or for the man’s clothes if it was a couple like us. 

Then entryway to the complex was beautiful because it was older, so the foliage had plenty of time to grow large and beautiful.  There were walnut trees, cottonwood trees, and one pine tree.  There were large flowers and bushes accenting the edges of the lawns, and there was a creek bed separating it from another complex of nicer and larger condos that were stratospherically out of our price range.

The creek bed was lined with trees and full of feral cats.

Somehow this place was located in a time/space jump, because it seemed like all the other tenants were Mexican families with children.  The children became a wolf pack on sunny days (which there were many of because California, despite the wet weather this year, has been drought-central for about the last five) and would run the complex screaming until darkness had firmly settled its cloak around the West coast.

The screaming was all day long on weekends, especially in summer when the pool was open.  It was punctuated by the calls of a bicycle snack vendor who used a bike horn to lure people out for overpriced chips with chili powder on them, and a woman with a bell for a similar purpose who cried, "TAMALES" at the top of her lungs for several minutes.  There were also sounds that occurred at any time of the day or night: car alarms and horns, sirens, our neighbors fighting violently, cats yowling, dogs barking, bass, mariachi music, or both from people with absolutely no common decency, homeless people rooting through the dumpsters for cans, and the miscellaneous people, not necessarily tenants, who would wander through the complex shouting at each other or themselves.

The first eight months or so there was also a group of college students across the interior lawn from our unit.  They would smoke pot in their back yard until all hours of the night and sometimes, often on Thursdays, they would have parties.  One of the partygoers would inevitably end up sick and for some reason would choose to vomit somewhere on the lawn or surrounding bushes anytime between three and five AM, which is awesome when you like to sleep with your bedroom window open, have a very specific phobia, and have work the next morning.

This person is actually the primary of about three reasons I took antidepressants for a while when we lived there. 

Between that, monetary issues because everything was fucking expensive (particularly rent for our closet), and some generalized anxiety resulting from my daily commute, I was a wreck for a little bit.  Nothing compared to how I was moving here, but nine months after moving there I couldn’t compartmentalize anymore and even though I didn’t feel particularly depressed my doctor decided to put me on a moderate dose of Prozac to see if it would help my overall symptoms.

It helped.  A lot.

But when we realized the time had come to move I had just stopped taking them and we couldn’t afford for me to get a refill, anyway.

It was all just really poor timing that I don’t feel up to digging into today.

The apartment complex was on the West side of Santa Rosa, which was great for us because it was less than ten minutes out of town and 30 minutes of beautiful forested countryside to the beach. 

I think the beach drive is what I miss most, aside from people.

That drive was where we got engaged a little over two months before we moved.  It hurts not to be able to visit it whenever we want to, but at the same time I’m so glad it was a special place and we at least still live close enough to it that we can go by when we visit his family in the Central Valley or friends/family in the Bay Area.

There are places here in Humboldt that remind me of Santa Rosa.  That helps, but I think I’ll always miss it.  That’s hard to admit because I always assumed we’d move away from there.  If we decided to have a family it would take a long time to establish ourselves there and I don’t think we’d ever be able to do it the way we want to. 

I don’t want to raise a family in an apartment.  I don’t think it’s fair to children, not to have the space to play outside.  I want to own property someday.  I’m already tired of other people telling me what I can and can’t do in my home.  Mostly I’m tired of people telling me I can’t get a dog or I shouldn’t have any pets at all because obviously I’m going to let them destroy the rental property. 

I mean, don’t get me wrong, I love the smell of cat piss as much as the next woman, but if I didn’t care about my pets enough to really take care of them why would I have them?  Why would I worry about letting my cats outside enough to keep them indoors if I wasn’t going to clean up after them and make sure they were taken care of? 

It is my duty as a pet owner to provide the domesticated animals I keep with the best life possible and anyone who is not willing to do that does not deserve to have a pet.  In some cases they deserve to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

And that is one of the few things I am truly passionate about.

I miss San Francisco being a little over an hour away, depending on traffic.  I miss the drive across the Golden Gate, though I don’t miss receiving the $7.00 toll in the mail three to five weeks later.  The thing is, we rarely had the money to drive to the city for anything other than family events.  I think in two years we were able to go for dinner once.  We always planned to go to the opera, but there wasn’t money for that either.

If we had made it a priority we could have, I’m sure, but especially after the first year when we were both starting to make decent money the other problems compounded and stacked on top of each other.  We both were working full time and neither of us wanted to do anything when we got home.  Often when I came home from work I still answered emails and Skypes from the factories in China, so sometimes I felt like I was never done working.  That meant we would get something from the store or fast food for dinner and rarely did regular grocery shopping. 

I hated the tiny water closet of a kitchen in that apartment and cooking in it was miserable because there was practically no counter space, the cooking area was a range on top of what I think may have been Maytag’s answer to the EZ-Bake Oven, circa approximately 1984, and much of the teeny tiny bit of navy blue counter space that existed was covered by dirty dishes because there was no dishwasher.  The deal was that I cooked and he did dishes.  Since I rarely cooked because of the aforementioned reasons, he rarely did the dishes.  And I wouldn’t do the dishes because I was trying to press the point that it was his chore.  Sometimes there were so many that it would take over three hours to hand was them all. 

That is why I am so happy that I’m able to keep my kitchen clean and beautiful right now.  I know it’s sanitary, I like the space, and it can be a safe place for me like it should be.

I know little pieces of my heart will always be in the North Bay, sprinkled around at my favorite places: a grain of sand at Kala, a larger piece at our beach spot, a little one at the Raley’s down the street (the most beautiful, clean, and spacious grocery store I have ever seen), and sprinklings here and there at places like Taps, Old Chicago, and Jamison’s Roaring Donkey in Petaluma, and El Patio in Santa Rosa.

I miss the happiness I was able to obtain there and the people who made it feel like home to me.

I can only hope I forge friendships half as wonderful here. 

For now, though, I am able to keep myself content with watching the fog move over the ocean and seeing ships move in and out of the harbor from my kitchen, cooking delicious meals every day in a space I love, weeding in a garden I didn’t think I’d have for years still, and taking peaceful drives up the Northern California coastline to see elk, giant ferns, and even larger redwood trees. 

And, of course, the open ocean.  Because, let’s face it, that’s where my heart really has been this whole time anyway.

Dichotomy of [Wo]Man.

Does every person at some point in their adult life stop and think, “This is not who I expected to be?”

My thirtieth birthday is bearing down on me.  I can feel it, a darkness in the corner of the room, quietly breathing, watching me. 

I thought I would be so different by the time I turned 30.  Things changed so slowly after college and I feel like I’m always vacillating between wanting to be who I am now and missing the person I got to be at 23.  So often people want to go back to their teen years, but I would choose 23-25, minus the crazy ex-boyfriend.

When did I become the person constantly making lists of things that we need from the grocery store in her head?  When did I become someone perfectly content to cook and clean and put things away all day long? 

I loved my old job.  I didn’t always love some of the people I worked for at my old job, but I loved it.  I loved the place I worked for my early twenties even more.  I love feeling important.  I love how much I can accomplish and how competent I feel when I’m taking control of something and I really know what I’m doing in an office.

BUT

I feel happier and more content than I have at least in the last two years just cleaning, writing, and cooking. 

I thought I would hate being at home.  I thought I would feel trapped and resentful.  Funny, when I actually felt trapped and resentful was when I was the only one supporting us at all. 

I think what really makes the difference for me is the kitchen.

Honestly.

This is the cleanest my kitchen has been in two years.  He has always been in charge of the dishes.  That was the deal: I cook, you clean up, we do equal work.  He always seemed to have trouble following through on the dishes.  I wash them almost right away and the kitchen always looks clean.  And I feel like a domestic goddess because my kitchen is clean.

Sometimes there’s cat shit on the rug in front of the bathroom, but I can clean that up and still be a domestic goddess because my kitchen in fucking beautiful.

I just don’t understand how it came to this.

For all my independence and all my workplace competence, I enjoy being at home.  That terrifies me.  I keep thinking I should feel lost or guilty for this and so I have moments in which I am either or both.

But when I really get down to it, when I’m really and honorably truthful with myself, I am happy.  I am happy to wake up every morning with my cats, walk into my kitchen and check the weather by how much fog has gathered on top of the bay like whipped cream on a sundae, and work on cutting through the vines in the yard for a few hours.  I’m happy to do the dishes and laundry.  I’m happy to make breakfasts and lunches the night before.  I’m happy to make a weekly meal plan every Friday and look forward to making those dishes the next week. 

The only problem is that I am lonely.  Severely lonely.  Lonely enough to make small problems seem huge and make me feel bored or useless every minute I don’t find a way to stuff full of some kind of project, and sometimes that loneliness makes me feel completely lost all over again.   

Slow Recovery.

In the past few months my life has been turned completely upside down.

I forgot how cathartic writing is for me and I didn't take the time to actually write.

I've started working on a new project this week, something I will hopefully be ready to share soon.

For now, I'm just floating away from what I used to be and what I've become, hoping to find myself again someday.

Traffic Report.

This morning on my commute to work I got to see karma at work.  And between that and the fact that Colors of the Wind came on Pandora with enough time for me to hear the whole thing before getting to the office, my mood was set for the day.

During the first chunk of my drive to work I have to merge onto the 101 from a strange on-ramp; the on-ramp I use merges with another on-ramp from the street before mine and both merge onto 101 from the same lane.  It's very annoying, but there are lights that control the flow of traffic so it really could be much worse.

The karma action happened to the guy in the Jeep that was on the ramp behind me.  He was tailgating and revving his engine trying to intimidate the people in front of him so they would speed up.  Once he got behind me on the ramp I refused to speed up because I don't respond to intimidation techniques.  I'll pull over if I get tired of the bullshit, but otherwise I don't speed up for people that are trying to push me.  People just don't seem to understand that one car won't make a difference when you're already late for something, especially here.

Jeep merged onto the 101 in the middle of a line of cars before the line even dots.  Then he kept revving trying to get the black Lexus in front of him to speed up.  So the Lexus slowed down and let me over.

Then my favorite part happened.

There was a line of cars on the left preventing Jeep from moving over and zipping around.  He was stuck in another line of cars, trying to intimidate the dude in the Lexus to get him to move up the extra car length he left between his car and mine.  And Lexus slowed down a little more.  Just for good measure, just to be sure Jeep was stuck back there, wasting his gas like an idiot, until he got off the freeway two exits later.

Traffic sucks.  Everyone knows it.  But don't try to push your way through it like a dick.  You're not going to get there much faster, anyway.  I'd rather build up the good driving karma, just in case, because I have to merge A LOT and I don't like driving on the shoulder.

The moral of this story?

Don't be an asshole behind the wheel or some stodgy dude in a Lexus is going to box you in.  And I will love him for it.

Target is Magic.

I just discovered that you can pay Target to schedule deliveries to your house.

As in, Target will deliver diapers.  To you.  At your house.

I'm assuming this is like a pizza delivery where you have to live close to the Target for them to do it.  You can't live 10 or more minutes out of town like I always did.  Which, by the way is awesome in almost every way but having pizza delivered.

It's funny because I've lived in town in apartments for the last few years and I very rarely have pizza delivered because it's kind of expensive and the pizza place is usually just a few blocks from me.  I don't even have to put real pants on to go pick it up if I don't want to (let's be honest, I pretty much never want to).  It's worth it to me to go pick it up.

Except when I lived out of town with my parents it was kind of an ordeal to go pick up pizza.  We'd practically draw straws over who was going to pick it up.  12 minutes there, 12 minutes back, and you'd have to time when you left perfectly or you had zero shot at remotely hot pizza.

And yet I'm still considering moving somewhere just a bit out of town again.

Because of the changes in my diet I don't care as much about the fact that my pizza might need to be reheated when I get home.  I actually don't really care if my food isn't exactly the "right" temperature, anyway.

Unless it's soup or salad.  Cold soup = bleck and hot salad = uck.

I don't eat fast food anymore, so I'm much less worried about the fact that my french fries will be a little cold by the time I get them home.  I don't eat pizza much, either, and if I'm lucky I can bribe Yoshi to make better pizza than I can get at a shop (except Old Chicago in Petaluma because oh my God).

That being said, I hope Target does deliver to just outside of town.  Because someday I hope to have children.  And someday I'm probably going to be down to the last diaper with a blowout in progress and I will need someone to bring me diapers.  So, it's either Target or I have to make some really nice friends.

Also, it would save me from actually shopping in Target, which is only a problem because I like going to Target.  If they sold yarn it would be the perfect store.

Actually, if they deliver to my house maybe it's best they don't sell yarn, anyway.

Day 17: Some Observations.

I don't own a scale, which is something I've thought about reconsidering on and off for the last couple of weeks.

I wanted to try the plan where I give myself certain rewards for reaching certain weights, but even that takes a lot of willpower and I'm afraid I'll get overwhelmed if I have access to a scale every day.  It's really hard for me not to weigh myself all the time if I have a scale, so I'm still deciding what I want to do on that front.

Right now I'm just gauging based on how I feel and how my clothes are fitting.  This seems like a good goal, especially since my primary concern is changing my lifestyle.  How I feel has been a huge indicator and even though sometimes things get annoying I can see myself continuing what I've been doing because I feel good.

Some things are getting easier and some things are not.

For instance, I don't really have many cravings anymore, even for sugar, which I was totally hooked on.  I think it's partly because I'm breaking the addiction and partly because I eat nutrient-rich foods and drink tons of water and green tea all day, so there's nothing my body is trying to ask for.  I'm also not hungry all the time, which is nice.  But I've based so much of my food preparation in satisfying cravings that I sometimes don't know what to do with myself.

The hardest part is when I don't feel like cooking.  I haven't mastered making food and freezing for during the week yet, so on nights where I don't feel like cooking I get a little lost.  I can't bring myself to just eat some pizza or pasta, which would have been my go-to in the past, but I don't want to take the time to make a full meal.  God forbid I need to go to the grocery store.

This was part of my problem before I changed my diet, as well.  But I was just eating whatever then.

This week I intend to make a meal plan and do a bunch of the prep-work on Sunday, which will really help me during the week.  Also, it will be better for my finances than buying salads at Trader Joe's when I didn't make dinner the night before, even though they are delicious.

At just over two weeks I've reached the point where I would usually start to revert to my old ways.  Because I'm lazy and habitual.  The thing is, I've already noticed enough of a difference in my body in multiple ways that my willpower is stronger than it has been before.

My pants are looser.  My skin is softer.  My face has cleared up substantially-- I didn't have that many zits before but there is definitely a huge difference there.  I have more energy; I'm not super cranky and lethargic when I get home from work.  I feel healthier.  More inspired, actually.

I'm not willing to give up on this yet.

Especially when I finally feel like getting back in my skinny jeans might really be possible.  Also, I really want to be able to jog for more than five seconds.  Like, really bad.  But right now jogging is irritating because it entails a lot more wiggling than I really want it to.

I guess the only way to make progress on that front is to keep trying.

Dogs > People.

Today I met a dog named Noah.*

For a little dog he was pretty cute.  I think he was a Shih-tsu but he was almost completely black.  He had very big brown eyes and a squishy pigface button nose.

I was taking my lunchtime walk on the little trail by my office and his owner was walking him.  Owner said "hi" as I walked by; pretty standard.

Then this poor little dog heard me speak and decided they were following me now.  So then I had to kneel down and meet him.  I didn't want to be rude...

In a nutshell this is what happens when I'm alone and I see a dog.  I try to play it cool, but on the inside I'm even more excited than they look.  Meeting new dogs is like a billion times better than meeting new people.

I politely smile and say, "hello" but on the inside this is happening:  "Omg that person has a dog.  That's a nice looking dog.  Awwww...  He's wearing a vest...  That's so cute!  I want to get a vest for my dog...  When I get a dog.  I should get Chase a vest.  Do they make super triple-wide vests for gargantuan dogs?  Maybe I can just get him a men's vest.  It would fit him.  Man, I want a dog.  Oooh the dog noticed me!  He's coming over...  Be cool, man.  You don't want to come on too strong; it freaks the people out.  Can I pet the dog?  I want to pet the dog.  I'm gonna pet the dog.  Yesss this is going so well right now."

See?

Then I actually start talking to the dog and I sound like a crazy person.  Good thing I was wearing nice clothes today or the owner might have thought I was one of the homeless people that lives by the creek.

I meet dogs like dogs meet rawhide bones.

But have to I internalize the crazy eyes because I don't want to put off the people and decrease my chances of playing with the dog.

When I meet new people I never remember their names after hearing them once.  I remember their pets' names, though.  I don't even have to have met them.

My life basically revolves around getting to interact with animals.

I don't always like other people that much, as a group.  Actually, if I have to meet a group of new people all at once I really kind of need to be on Xanax because my anxiety skyrockets.  I can handle up to three new people at once.  More than that and I shut down.

But if you put me in a pen full of dogs or cats or rabbits I become the happiest and most comfortable person in the world.

Man, I need to work at a zoo or something.

That being said, I REALLY want to meet and be friends with an elephant.  I feel like we'd get along.  That feeling is mostly based on how much I love them and obsess over them, but that doesn't mean we couldn't or wouldn't be friends.  The only problem is that when I finally do meet an elephant I'm going to be Kristen Bell the first time she met a sloth.

If that happens, I hope the elephant comforts me.  And then I ride it into the sunset and we live happily ever after.



*Isn't that the cutest little doggy name?  He was no Ryan Gosling, but he was still very sweet.

Running in the Rain.

It was overcast and misty this morning when I left my apartment for work.  Those are the best mornings for me.  I don't mind sunlight but I generally prefer to start my mornings with the sky a little overcast.  I'm especially happy if it's misty.  It's a nice way to ease into my day.

I'm restless.

We've been in the North Bay for almost seven months and I'm just now getting to the point where I feel settled.  Not necessarily settled here.  Settled after having uprooted my life for three years to go back to school.  Seven months is how long it took for me to really feel like myself again.

The problem is that now that I'm settling back into myself I'm realizing I don't know if I want to live here forever.  Don't get me wrong, I love it here.  I just don't love how many other people love it here.  I don't love how much I have to fight with other vehicles to get anywhere, especially in rush hour to my work.  I don't love how expensive everything is, especially rental rates.  It's ridiculous what property owners/managers can get away with because the area is desirable.  It's not as bad as actually being in the city, but I can barely handle this.

I think if I lived in the city I would be less than an inch away from committing homicide.


More than anything I think my problem is that I have certain expectations; things I want in life sometime in the next year or so.  One of those things is that Yoshi and I both really want is to adopt a dog.

We have actually had a dog plan for over a year now.  He wants either a German Shepherd or Husky mix and I want a Great Dane.  But we also really want to adopt a shelter dog.  So our plan has been to adopt a shelter dog that's not a puppy but is trained and still young and healthy, then in a couple of years we want to get his dog, then a few years after that get mine (since the Great Dane will have the shortest life span it makes sense to get it last).  If we find ourselves in a situation where it works to get any of the dogs sooner, we will probably do that.

We love dogs.  Big dogs.

But right now we're having trouble even having one medium-sized dog because we already have two cats and it was hard enough to find somewhere in the North Bay that was in our budget and would allow us to have two pets.

Really, our best bet for having multiple pets while still renting is to rent a house or find a lenient property management company with a townhouse or duplex.  For what we're paying for our tiny apartment right now we should be in at least a one bedroom house.

So when I get frustrated about the fact that my sort of decent salary seems abysmal here, that's why.  It's because all of it seems to go to rent and bills, yet we have pretty much no space in our apartment so I get mad that I'm paying so much for it.  Like, every day I'm mad at my apartment for being more expensive than it's worth.

That's the area in which we live.

So, if we want to get a dog or, you know, breathe, we may have to move again.  As much as I hate moving, I don't hate this idea.  I just want to feel like I have space to take a breath, both literally and with my finances.

Also, I have this snippet of future fantasy that I'm desperate to live out.

The fantasy is this:  I want to jog with my dog on the beach in the misty rain.

That's all.  I want it to be overcast and wet, but not pouring.  I want it to be cold.  I want to be wearing my mint green fleece pullover.  I want to be in good enough shape that I can jog with the dog.  And I want the dog to be well-behaved enough that we can go out and if there aren't many people around he can be off-leash.

There are a bunch of other things that could go along with this fantasy, but for the immediate future this little snippet is all I want.

Now, what do I have to do to get there?