surprise

So, in addition to getting a gym membership, I've been on my whacked out version of a diet. The sole purpose is to eat smaller portions and lower the amount of calories I consume in a day. For example, the three rice krispy treats I had for dessert last night were allowed because I had sustained myself on an several servings of fresh fruit during the day.

This week I brought in an obscene amount of cubed melon to work. Now, I should note that the refrigerator rules are a little different here. We have community food stored in the door, mostly condiments and half and half, but the rest of the refrigerator is considered out of bounds. So, as per the Workplace Refrigerator Storage Rules, I put the melon in the back of the fridge on one of the shelves and I've been enjoying an enormous bowl of it for lunch every day this week. Today at 1:30 I made my way over to the kitchen for my lunch and as I glanced into the break room as I passed and I could not believe my eyes when I saw that all that cut melon was in a large bowl on one of the tables with a serving spoon in it so people could help themselves to it. Someone decided that my lunch was public domain. And the thing of it is, most of my co-workers get in early, and therefore eat lunch early and leave around 2:30. So my lunch was sitting out, getting hot and no one would be around in an hour to eat it. I was pissed and took the only course of action I thought was available to me: I would teach them all a lesson and take that fruit back with me to my desk and eat it all.

It's 3:30 now and I don't know what compelled me to believe that eating four cups of watermelon was the solution. I've gone to the bathroom at least four times to pee. And the weirdest part? Every time I pull down my pants I'm completely startled by the fact that I chose to wear neon yellow panties today.

This is my life.

unwed and childless

Over the weekend, I found myself in the position of having to ride share with someone I hardly know, a friend of a friend situation. We were going to a graduation ceremony and she brought along her 3-month-old (why, I do not know). We have met and socialized before, but she is either suffering from the new mother lobotomy or I am just that forgettable, because the first words out of her mouth after our Hellos were, "So, do you have children?" After I answered no, the rest of the ride was pretty much silent. Later on I mentioned this to BF and he said that phase usually lasts around five years, and that once the first child is in kindergarten, maybe first grade, that a woman will finally remember all those things she used to talk about before she had children. I love my friends dearly and I support them 100% in all of their life decisions, but I think I need to start making some new friends who don't plan on having children so I can have someone to talk to during the five-year hiatus.

sleepless in oc

Soooo, it's 3:30 in the morning and I'm wide awake, even after my melatonin at 9PM, a glass of vino that inadvertently turned into two and a half at 9:30PM and my allergy medicine (yes, I caved) at 11PM, which I have been taking for a week and has been successful at knocking me out until now.

Inexplicably, I have just finished a Sunday Tom Hanks Movie Marathon in the form of Cast Away, Forrest Gump and Saving Private Ryan. In spite of the fact that I took on a laundry service last week and my laundry was pretty much done, I still found some rogue items to launder today. I defrosted the freezer and disinfected the refrigerator. I took out the trash three times as I spent a good deal of time purging all of the miscellaneous junk from the hall closet. I rearranged my Netflix queue. I updated my calendar. I repacked my gym bag.

And still. Here I am.

divergence

Perception is such a weird thing. The more I think about it, the more it seems like there is no such thing as reality; or, rather, that reality is just a bunch of people and their perceptions all jostled together.

I sometimes feel like I am two people. There's me, Angela, with all her feelings and emotions, her inclination towards flights of fancy, her eternal optimism. And there's her counterpart, firmly rooted in reason and sensibility, a self-described realist, but I suspect there's a good dose of pessimism in there for balance. I used to believe that I kept myself in check by way of this level-headed doppelgänger, but it is impossible to ignore the fact that my emotions influence my perception of reality and therefore the perceptions of my alter ego, or so says my sensible bilocated friend here.

She takes over. Sometimes by force, and sometimes because I can see far enough down the path to know that I have no choice other than to hand over the reins. It hurts me every time. I know it's not permanent, I know I will be back, but I can't help but feel like a part of me is dying. Isn't life just too short to remain on guard like this? Will I come regard this as even more time lost and squandered? Every time, I question myself. I question whether or not things are what they seem to be, if I'm misreading the roadsigns, if the future if just too far away for me to interpret. I'm in the process of relenting to her, but it's different this time. I kind of want to try to muddle through it myself, just to see what happens. But I also know that I'm probably old enough to know better.

cross training

I joined 24 Hour Fitness. I couldn't help it. I have been looking for a gym for a long while now, hoping to scoop up a membership that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg. I typically have an aversion to chain gyms, and ever since my beloved Sequoia Athletic Club was closed to make way for yet another Target, I have been SOL. But it was $199 for All-Club access. That is 55¢ a day, people. I couldn't say no to that.

Just now I received my "Welcome" e-mail from "Thor" (his real name is one letter off), whom I presume to be a personal trainer at my local gym, and he said he wanted to schedule a time for my fitness evaluation. Which is exactly why I didn't want to join a chain gym. I don't need "fitness professional" to tell me that I'm out of shape. I don't want a personalized fitness program nor do I want to discuss my fitness goals. I just want access to an elliptical machine and free weights. Is that too much to ask?

When I signed up online, I knew that there was no way I would be able to make it in until next week. So at least I have a while to figure out what to say to him when I get there. I need some time to figure out how to explain to Thor that my primary goals aren't to lose weight or get in shape, it's just that I need something to counter act my smoking. I also want to be able to say, "Yeah, I can eat that slice of cake. Because I work out, so I'm allowed." Essentially, I want a free pass to my refrigerator.

writer's note

I always feel intensely guilty and exposed after I blog about something so insanely personal and publicly discuss the lives of people who don't read this blog and/or don't know of it's existence. I also have that overwhelming feeling of remorse as if I've lied; not only did I blab about our personal lives (I am not a secretive person, just extremely private), but I only gave my account and you will never have the chance to hear the other side.

I censor myself a lot here, because I've experienced the backlash of a public blog on many occasions and in very different ways. With every word I write, I ask myself if I would have a problem with my mother reading what I have to say or if my BF or my family or my friends would approve of my public discussion about the intricacies of our relationship(s). For my mother, the answer is usually no, she is pretty liberal so far as parenting is concerned. But that latter bit? I just don't know. So I just leave things out. Normally, I would have probably gone back and deleted that last entry, my paranoia having got the best of me. But I'm not.

I wrestled a lot with how to discuss BF's exes. These are women I will, hopefully, never have to meet, but that doesn't mean that I can just trash them on the internet, does it? I thought long and hard about it. I had written the majority of the entry but there was just no way around talking about the boy's mother without deleting a considerable amount of the text and losing the the intended meaning of the entry. I did the best I could and I tried to be as tactful as possible. And as a result, the entry doesn't reflect the whole reality, but it doesn't lie either. It's frustrating that I can't lay it all out there as raw as I used to back when I started blogging some ten years ago, but my conscience will not allow me.

step-mom

Alex's blog entries about the ins and outs of dating a man with kids reminded me... BF's youngest son still doesn't know who I am, and that brings up a myriad of conflicting emotions. At first glance I could say, hey, I'm not particularly fond of kids, so that works out. It's not like it was a few years ago when the boy still had it in his head that Dad was moving back to Europe to live with Mom, so I had to hide myself for weeks and months on end whenever he came to visit. I absolutely hated it at the time, but now I think it's preferable to the weird "hang out" sessions we have now. I come over to BF's house and we go to dinner and I had to be mindful of myself to make sure I don't do anything particularly intimate like reaching out to hold BF's hand in front of him.

BF hasn't said anything about holding back in that way, but I feel that public displays of affection would be inappropriate in light of the fact that he still refers to me as his "friend." So last summer, when we got home particularly late and BF just told me to spend the night I was left completely confused. Is it me, or it it weird for Dad to be sleeping in the same bed as his "friend?" After that, I stopped holding back and started to act more naturally around him, as naturally as a person who unconsciously holds her breath and whose limbs stiffen whenever a child walks into the room can, that is. The frustrating part of the whole situation is that while BF has decided on what he believes to be a more natural approach of just letting us all hang out and letting the boy slowly become acclimated to me, BF is constantly meddling trying to force us to do things together like draw or play a game, one on one. He hovers over us, observing, picking it all apart, and it just tenses me up even more. As I write this, I can feel the knots forming in my back and my cheeks flushing, like I'm right back in that moment.

BF's son is coming for roughly two months this summer, and BF has decided to cancel our vacation this year in favor of taking his vacation time to spend it with his son. I am irritated by this, but I also understand because his winter trip was postponed to spring and then canceled last minute because the boy's mother never bothered to check with his school if a two week vacation in the middle of the term was acceptable. It wasn't and since he attends a private "American" school, they had to abide by their rules. You could argue that my vacation was canceled by his ex-wife, but I still fault BF, because he didn't call the school and check for himself; he knows how she is, but somehow is constantly surprised by her laziness, ignorance and stupidity. I am not. I've come to think of her as a this large dense mass, something I cannot change, I cannot bend, I cannot break, something that I just have to accept and work around. But BF, he knows better.

On top of all of that, I found out that BF's first wife, a nurse, is thinking about moving to California for some sort of nursing exchange program. She works in pediatric oncology, which is such a huge coincidence, because my best girlfriend works in hospital administration at the oncology department of Children's Hospital of Los Angeles. It's such a turn of events, I don't know what to think or what to say about it or what to do with myself. So I'll just leave it at that.

all aboard the obama train

Kim Kardashian has endorsed Barack Obama:

"He just seemed very firm about the change, and that’s, like, his motto," Kardashian said, probably trying to allude to Obama’s "Change We Can Believe In" campaign slogan.

Well. That's it. If Kim is doing it, then I am doing it. Because Kim is my girlfriend. SRSLY.

foolishness

Groups I have recently joined on Facebook:

• I Use my Cell Phone to See in the Dark
• When I was your age, Pluto was a planet.
• I Will Go Slightly Out of My Way To Step On That Crunchy-looking Leaf
• No, I haven't seen it, but it's on my Netflix queue.
• Cute Overload owns my soul
• I FLIP MY PILLOW OVER TO GET TO THE COLD SIDE
• Hey, Fuck Off. I Just Got My Netflix Shipment.
• Banishment of Rachael Ray from American Soil

two years later...

I finally finished my 100 things post.

Please refer to #40.