Bridget Jones Should Have Learned About This...

One of my many weaknesses is this: I eat out way too much. It's really quite pathetic, seeing as how there are so few restaurants in Sunnydale. Only Applebee's, Chili's, and some local dive places. How I manage to eat out as often as I do, without venturing further than this area, is a little scary. I'm not living beyond my means, of course, but eating out that much is really kind of extravagant. And god only knows what the sodium level is in my body right now...I think there's saltwater in my veins, not blood.

My point is this: eating out should be a treat, not a habit.

I think most single people will relate to what I am about to say: But it's so much easier!

When you're alone, just little ol' you, it seems a little pointless to cook for one. You end up with too many leftovers, you feel wasteful, and...it's just you! Why make all that effort?

And then today, I had the epiphany. Why make the effort? Because it's worth it, whether you're cooking for one or two or ten. It's time to stop denigrating the single state, and embrace it as long as it is my life. It's okay, it's not a reflection on me as a woman or a human being. It just...is what it is. I have my apartner, Arash, and that's okay, too, for now. What matters is that I still am living with a singles-mindset, and I need to reframe it a little so that I treat myself more decently so long as I am still in the single way. Because let's be honest, I could be single for a very long time, even my entire life, and I shouldn't be spending that time living a half-life in which I treat myself shabbily and don't embrace things because I am waiting for a family to come along and make it a little more worthwhile.

All of this was a convoluted way of getting to the description in which I wax poetic on how I had dinner: I took the trouble to sit down at the kitchen table, as opposed to the bed or the couch; I lit a candle; I took little steps to make it a nicer experience.

We're just going to ignore the fact that the food I consumed was a lean cuisine meal and water. Hey, I took it out of the microwave packaging and put it on a plate; that counts for something, right? Guess I have to start somewhere.

* * * * * * *

Last week Eric and I were catching up on the phone. I happened to pull a little crazy out of the hat, and the following conversation ensued:

Eric: Mel, put the crazy down.

Me: Okay, sanity is restored.

Eric: Oh my god, you women! You're crazy! Either you're crazy or you're shallow!

Me: At least if we're crazy, we're deep.

Eric:....Sometimes it's an abyss.

On Failure

Following hard on the heels of my last post is this one...maybe a continuation?

When I moved out here to California, it was mainly because I had gone through a majorly traumatic break-up and reconciliation. During the break-up part of it, I was in constant touch with a friend of mine from New Orleans. We'll call her Tulip, for now. Tulip was going through her own traumas...Katrina recovery, a crazy boss, a fellow she loved and who loved her, yet was not willing to be with her. We were both fucked up at the time. She moved to Seattle on a whim, I decided to apply to every job in the world, to hell with the consequences. Then she and her fellow ended up together, and my boyfriend and I reconciled. But I still kept applying for jobs everywhere--I had learned that Michael was not a safe gamble, and that I had better get a job and put the relationship second.

Well, I got a job here in Southern California, and Tulip and Tulip's boyfriend ended up in Portland, of all places. And Michael and I didn't end up working out after all (SoCal has been a safe bet). That was discouraging--I don't like being a failure. But a woman I once knew said "We've all failed at relationships. That's what it means when you're single again." But regardless, I took comfort in the fact that Tulip and her boyfriend made it; they ended up together and took a leap and ended up in a brand new city together and lived happily ever after.

Until last month. Now Tulip's starting a new life without the boyfriend. It happens. I should know.

Does this mean we are failures? Maybe so, maybe in the traditional sense. But maybe not, if we really consider what we want and how our actions and choices have or have not been furthering our goals. When we're in our 20s, that's our time to screw up, to make mistakes, to fall down. But the whole point of screwing up, failing, falling down is to learn, do things differently the next time, pick yourself up and do better. If I've learned anything from Friends, it's that.

And I've decided this: when I am around 30, and I am not in a relationship that has the potential for marriage, I am out of here. I will find a new job in a city of my choice, and I will leave whatever life and relationship I have behind. It will be time to move on to better things, more potential, more choices. And that will not make me a failure. That will make me a brave girl--woman, really--with the courage, the cajones to get out there and get what I want, or at least try.

It's really all in how you spin it. And so: We're not failures, ladies. We're simply destined for better things.

Better (Yet Sadder) Than Fiction

I don't need to read any chick-lit novels. My life is a chick-lit in progress.

Case in point: tonight I went down to Newport Beach with one of my best good friends, Kristin (Codename Kissyfur). We go to a swanky little restaurant at the harbor, and we're nursing our drinks along. Being fabulous, I guess (for the sake of the story we will pretend that I have not only defined fabulousness, but have also achieved it). Talking about love and relationships. Here's an excerpt from our conversation:

Me: My longest relationship was two and a half years.
Kristin: I've never had a relationship that lasted longer than a year and a half. Does that make me a commitment-phobe?
Me: No, it makes you a failure.

(Yeah, like I'm one to talk).

Just Do It?

Who knew that a dinner could provide so many opportunities for introspection?

But then again, leave it to me to wax introspective on just about anything.

The other night, I got to enjoy one of the little benefits of working at the Library. We've got a fair amount of very generous donors and Friends, and the Friends decided to hold an "Evening with Books" activity. Men and women all over the valley opened up their very nice homes to paying guests and provided a literary-themed dinner; there was also an author guest of honor at each of the dinners. The Friends very generously gave the Library some tickets, so I was able to attend (for free!) one of the dinners. It was a tango theme.

Now, those of you who know me know that I am hell on wheels--I am my own fatal pre-existing condition. I am simply that clumsy, and so much worse. There was no tangoing for Mel. But I do love watching people dance, and so I still had a lovely time.

Every aspect of it was lovely--our hostess was a total sweetheart, very kind and real and accessible and not at all hoity-toity. She made all the food, and it wasn't just homemade--it was gourmet homemade. And to hear the other guests talk of her, tango was her life, her passion. She certainly danced like it.

I have to say, I got a little envious. I don't think I have found my life's passion yet. There's a lot that interests me, sure, but nothing about which I am a die-hard, hard-core afficianado. Will I ever get that passion?

And on that similar vein, is passion enough? Does passion ensure proficiency? What if you are passionate about something, but completely suck at it? Is that okay? Is it even possible?

Like my sister, maybe even both my sisters, there's a lot I want to try, but I am unwilling to go through the learning period. I don't want to do something until I can do it perfectly. It makes no sense, but that's how I am. And since instantly-achieved perfection is not possible, why, I just don't do it. It's sad.

Maybe I should suck it up and just do it? Let the passion carry me through? Or at least let the passion try to develop?

The Power of Words

Every weekend, I join my boyfriend, and he watches in me in semi-annoyed bemusement as I plow my way through another book. Usually around mid-day on Sunday, I will close the book with a final thunk, and announce, "Done!" And Arash will just shake his head.

Yes, I'm an obsessive, voracious reader. And a fairly fast reader, too. It's more acceptable now, when I am 27, than it was when I was 11 and had no friends. I have lots of reader friends now, and even my non-reader friends don't mind that I am a bookworm. I think they tend to be slightly amused at my verbosity and eloquence.

But sometimes I wonder...am I reading too much? Or, rather, am I reading too fast? Sometimes it feels like I am not really absorbing the words, the stories, the characters, the emotions as much as I should be. Books and stories are meant to move us, to connect with us...and if I cannot even retain the information, am I only being entertained? Entertainment is all good and well, but I want to be moved, stimulated, provoked; I want to think and feel and really connect more with the human experience.

These are the thoughts that have been with me lately. And then last night, I read a book called Before I Die. In it, a 16-year-old girl is very sick with cancer, and then learns that it has progressed very rapidly, so rapidly that the doctor tells her that there is so little time left that "I would encourage you to do the things you want to do." And so the girl gets together a list of the things she wants to do before dying: sex, drugs, love, saying yes for a whole day, get her parents back together. All sorts of things. But as she does all of the things on her list, she always thinks of more things, more items to add to the list, more reasons that life is beautiful...daffodils, hearing your lover snore beside you for years and years, ice cream, fluffy clouds, traffic jams...and so the list becomes to us, the readers, this very sad list of all the things in life that we take for granted and consider mundane (if we even consider it at all), but that a dying person finds terribly dear. And the girl's youth makes it all the more heart-rending.

I read it just before crawling into bed last night. And as I went to bed, I asked myself, "What would be on my list?" And that is what I went to bed thinking about. Seeing the Northern Lights...dancing...having a dinner party for all my dear friends...spending a day in a pool with a swim-up pool bar...reading, reading, reading...

And wouldn't you know, while I was asleep I had this terribly vivid dream in which I had cancer, and only a few months to live, and I still hadn't told my sisters. And I had so much to do.

I know I felt like I needed to internalize my reading materials more, but maybe this is a little much! Perhaps it is better to go back to the assembly-line of reading approach.

Who Says You Can't Go Home?

After a very unpleasant day, two years ago, in which every cherished dream I had looked like it was turning to dust, I've been a little more cautious in how I approach things. I look forward to things now, but with a certain jaded lack of excitement. It's actually a pretty bitter pill to swallow, not being able or willing to anticipate things as I did in another lifetime.

Lately, that's changed a little. Because there is something that is provoking a huge wave of eagerness and excitement within me: soon I will be moving to Palm Springs. Not sure why I am excited--maybe the fact that my commute won't be nearly as brutal? Or that I will be able to find an apartment with central air-conditioning--that isn't in the ghetto? Or that I will be closer to a Target, a good sports park, more educated people in my age group, more culture, more things to do? But for whatever the reason, the fact remains that for the first time that I have moved to the Armpit of America, I am excited about where I will be living. I moved to Hemet because I had to move to California. I moved to Sunnydale because I needed to, not because there were great options for me here. But my next move? I have several choices of cities, for once, and Palm Springs is there, beckoning. And I can't wait. It's been so long that I have been eager and hopeful and excited about something, it's a strange feeling.

I'm not quite sure what to do with it.

No One Gets Out Alive

My sister has done her own blog about grief, sorrow, losing someone close to you. I just read it, and it brought a burning lump into my throat and nasty, stinging tears into my eyes. But it doesn't bring me any closer to really grappling with it myself, or writing anything emotional (as opposed to matter-of-fact), or really even acknowledging it.

Our grandmother, our Mawga is not well. It's been a long time since I gave up on the idea of her getting better, the pain in her knees going away, of a miraculous recovery restoring her to her former, more energetic, mobile self. At 80-something, you just don't get better. I accept that. But what I haven't accepted, what I don't really like to think about, is her getting worse.

But my Mawga, my grandmother, my first friend in life, is getting worse.

When I was still very, very young--six, seven, eight, nine, ten--I would get very scared of Mawga dying, especially in her sleep. Before falling asleep at night, I would say to her "See you in the morning!" and wait for her to say yes, she would, as if somehow, this mundane exchange would make it true. Sometimes I would cry myself to sleep at night, thinking about Mawga not being there. Sometimes, I would have dreams where she had died, and in my dreams, I would sense the finality, the hollowness of a world with no Mawga.

If, at six, I could know that Mawga would be in my life for many, many years, I imagine my anxieties and premature grief would have been assauged. If I had known that I would have spent so many of those years growing away from Mawga, taking her for granted, and generally just being a shitty granddaughter, I imagine--I hope--that I probably would have wept with shame.

Mawga's not gone yet. She's very sick, I think, and a part of me--a tiny, little-girl part of me--is scared. The majority of me is detached, operating on an intellectual level, perhaps just acknowledging that none of us get out alive, but not yet feeling how that affects me.
I'll be going home this coming weekend to spend a tiny, tiny period of time with my grandparents, because every effing second must count, every second that I can spend with them should be the best moment I ever have. And I want as many as them as possible.