Playing the lottery

Naturally, and as the odds demand, I didn't win.  Somebody has to win, and you have to play to win, as the saying goes.  I didn't stay up to watch the drawing and wouldn't even know what channel they do that kind of thing on but it was fun to do something knowing that a snowball's chance in hell is still a chance.  I don't do it often so it's fun to be delusionaly hopeful once in a while.

Random and not related to anything really, it's not fair to be disappointed in people for what they aren't to you.  Sometimes they are doing it all wrong, saying all the wrong things, not doing the right things, not available, too much in your grill...whatever isn't quite right for you.  I suppose that is why people generally have circles of friends and not just one.

Depresia de primavara

My language instructors insist there is a thing called spring depression; one even took vitamins for it every year when they lived in Eastern Europe. It has been one of those months that felt like a year. I was so very low for days that I actually cried in my bed and hurt physically in a way I haven't since I thought I loved a guy who totally dissed me. The ground is still wet but the violent storm has passed I think. It's weird/troubling/curious to think this time last week God and I were in advanced discussions regarding my suicide matrix and I was earnestly straw-manning exit strategies. It's a very strange thing to be mentally besieged on all sides and then be sort of okay. It was a violent and troubling squall, but apparently just a squall. Huh.

I have finally nutted up as it concerns language instruction and enlisted the assistance of the language professor that takes every mistake as an opportunity for a teaching point and with whom I have the best chance of getting there from here. I think it hurt my professor's feelings and that grieves me on some level but I did tell her six months ago that I was concerned about the approach to language and how incompatible it was for my learning style. She dismissed my concerns and well here we are. I don't know how it was handled and I probably won't be richer for knowing but I do hope it was handled professionally and compassionately. I don't want to have to be angry at her in order to not feel guilty so I'm trying on indifference with a dash of self-preservation. As she would say, this is how it is.

This effin sucks

Totally having some clarity on what goes through the mind of someone who just doesn't want to be here anymore. It's not so much life that gets you down, it's going through life as you that gets you down. That's what never seems to change no matter how much fiddling is done with the other variables. Feeling quite unlike myself and very much like myself today. Maybe I just need a Snickers. Who the fuck knows.

BS Theater

Ever been at the dentist, tipped back, dental bib and spit-splatter shades on, light in your eyes and suddenly found your feet in stirrups and heard a speculum being prepped? Of course not, you're at the fucking dentist, where they do dental exams. Your dentist shouldn't even be able to pick a speculum out of a line-up. So why during my language exam was I asked about my ancestry and animal rights? What the really-OMFG-fuck? What do either of those things have to do with U.S. foreign policy, the situation in Middle East, almost any other fucking thing that is actually real and likely to come up while I'm overseas representing the United States Government? That was some grade A bullshit for real.

Naturally I am angry with myself for just now thinking, 'wait a minute...that was completely bullshit.' I'm primarily angry with myself for even trying to answer those questions instead of politely shutting it down and insisting we move on to something that mattered. I would have been far less annoyed with myself for getting lit up over being hostile in a foreign language than just not being able to answer a question because I haven't thought to develop the vocabulary to discuss the history of slavery in America.

*This* is why I'm increasingly militant--believe or not, I reflexively go with the flow and generally defer to authority, especially when I have no clue what is going on. But when people are assholes, and I have an epiphany much like the one I'm having now, the next time I encounter similar bullshit, my anger at myself and my anger at whatever dick-shit circumstance a current one reminds me of come together to form the 'fuck you' attitude I bring to something that out of context just seems unnecessarily hostile and angry. You know, like when I don't fucking speak some bullshit language and I'm just trying to keep up and make sure I'm paying attention to the verb and tenses and not taking the time after 'Oh shit she just asked me about animal rights, WTF' to think 'What the fuck do animal rights have to do with shit I've done or will ever be doing on behalf of the United States? I don't work for PETA. I totally shouldn't answer this question.' Bull-fucking-shit. People are dicks.

What I think when someone tells me so and so is a great guy/girl

8 times out of 10, my jury is still out on how I feel about the person giving the endorsement so...yea, please don't tell anyone you think I'm awesome because if you turn out to be a douche, I'd rather not risk the association.

Meanwhile

I've been thinking about happiness, what is/isn't, if it can be defined at all, taking naps, sleeping off headaches, and avoiding most social contact. I've kind of made myself an island. A napping island. I've been reading a lot of cracked.com and laughing, been daydreaming about real good things turning into bad things and real bad things turning into good things. I even read this article on happiness and felt like I at least had company and that company was presumably making a living writing (about her unhappiness no less--winning!).

The weather has been great and if it weren't for the pollen, I'd be loving life, but there is pollen so I'm not. The upside is my favorite tree is blooming. It's magical to me in a way that few things are once you're a bonafide grownup. This is a picture of it:

When most of the trees are still bare, this tree seems to burst out of the tangle of mangled branches with little magenta buds. It's really a random tree, not usually elegant and statuesque, able to make do in the messy undergrowth of the taller trees on the margins of parkways and unrecognizable once the leaves come in. But for those weeks when it's one of the few trees with any clothes on, it's just so darn pretty. It makes my heart glad even though everything that grows on this wretched planet hates me, especially in spring.

I've also decided that admitting you have a problem isn't even a 1/4 of the battle. Deciding to do something about a problem is half the battle and doing that thing you decided is the other half. I think I will feel compelled to share that little gem with the next person who says knowing is half the battle. I will think they are an idiot, they will think I'm insufferable and we'll both be kind of right.

Daydreaming my life away

My imagination rocks

The real world simply can not compete. Sorry real world. I had a kick ass daydream today which I naturally sabotaged because my imagination rocks but it is also still generated by me which means there are no happy endings. In real life, long ago in a college physics class, I sat next to this beautiful man--we'll call him Marc. Marc was ridiculously good looking to me, dark hair, suggestive of some kind of Greek or other European heritage. He rode a bike to school back when no one did that and he was just the nicest guy. He sometimes doodled on my paper or corrected my equations when I was clearly off the mark. Maybe he only did each of those things only once but he did do them.

The thing about Marc though was I would get a feeling that someone was looking at me, I would look at him and he would be staring at me. We would just stare at each other and then break the gaze. I didn't feel weird or awkward or anything. It was so completely natural like, 'hey there, of course we're just going to stare at each other for 15 seconds.' I never understood what was going on there but thought it must be something. It's possible he was looking over me at someone else or through me but I thought he was staring at me, that we were staring right into each other's eyes. I could literally stare right into his eyes all day. It was like nothing I've ever experienced before or since.

I don't think about him often but today he popped into my head and it.was.awesome. It goes without saying that I'm not expecting great things to come of my pending trip abroad--I'm never expecting great things and this is not a time to break set with what's been working for me. But man, this daydream was *sweet*.

*Begin dream sequence*

I walk into work the first day and who is there? Marc with the beautiful eyes. Hot damn. And Marc is miraculously single, not gay, and not a man-whore. The eye lock commences and I feel, literally feel, something in my heart/soul/upper GI-tract *click.* This is why I'm here, this is who he is, it is written. Even in this day dream I know this is the one that will end me if it ends, if it turns out to be falsehood or manipulation. So naturally, my daydream skips the rails and he turns out to be a bad guy of some ilk.

Now mind you, this is a daydream. I am awake. I am literally fighting with my imagination, to carve out a happily ever after and can not get there from here. Imagination is a place where labradors can deejay or I could be a multi-platinum hip-hop artist--a place where absolutely ANYTHING is possible.

As my good friend put it, I am "beautifully broken." Seriously, how lucky am I to have someone who means that with all his heart and soul in a way that I can't articulate but know he wouldn't change a single thing about me? That's so awesome. I seriously love that dude. He's the kind of guy who wants feedback on his wedding invitations because they worked really hard to find something unique and in the next sentence is breathless about being able to nerd out on some motorcycle testosterone vrooom vroom something something or a gun. I don't doubt that marriage is all the hard work married people say it is, I have a hard enough time living with myself, but man do I want his heart to swell a million times over making a family with a really great woman.

Something in me is always prepared to be jealous when my friends have made the decision to make someone their 'final answer' but it's just never happened. It's not like I'm thinking, 'ha-ha suckas! Imma be over here marinating in my own filth, wearing cotton underwear EVERY NIGHT, and only shaving when *I* want to! Have fun being married!' They'll probably be living that dream eventually anyway so I'm not really besting anyone. I think I've shed the ideal(ism) that anyone has an ideal existence. There are benefits to the way that all of us live that lead us to chose our present circumstance over another. This is how it is.

In other news

Being inside is awesome. I love being in my house. I love being outside with Baloo on a crisp sunny morning, listening to the storm drain creek, watching her sniff the air. Life is damn near perfect at those moments. Those kinds of moments; beautiful moonrise, leaves crunching under dog paws this is the stuff that makes my life, my life. It is an Edie Brickell, Me By The Sea existence but it has its upside.