Curious Notions

You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.
– Jack London

So there was a purse that was 200 dollars I really really wanted. I told myself to buy it if it ever gets to 150 dollars. Well it’s now at 140… I was talked out by Mary Ellen.. I still haven’t paid for the bedroom set yet and I did want to go to Tiffany’s. I suddenly feel better about it after I realized that for about 160 or so, I got my dad a lot of birthday presents :) Well worth skipping out on ONE purse. I don’t think he’s ever opened this many gifts at once ever. My daddy never buys anything for himself… So I figured I’d do it for him. I got him a lot of mundane gifts (undershirts, socks, work shirts) but I tried to spice them up by the packaging. I also threw in the usual Johnny Walker and some DVDs. I spent all day today finishing up. Going home for the weekend and I have Joy Luck Club tomorrow, so tonight was the night.

I’m about to back track a little. At work, our bosses are so sweet and funny that we often get gifts from clients. They usually come in the form of glorious desserts and fruit bouquets. Which means every time I walk by the break room, I always peek in to see if there would be any goodies on the table. Today there was a tower of stacked boxes. Striped, green, orange, blue, white boxes, stacked by incrementing sizes and inside delicious deserts. I thought, well I have a LOT of small gifts for my dad I should steal them to wrap some of the presents.. I stole three. This is where I got the color scheme and things just sort of fell into place.. at Walmart’s giftwrap aisle. My roomie also had a little bit of yellow wrapping paper and A LOT of yellow ribbon.. That helped. And of course the Victoria Secret’s tissue paper.

Behold!

Isn’t it great? It took me ALL night.

There are only a handful of people who almost always intellectually and philosophically stimulate me. Where a lunch can easily last four hours of nonstop talking, a five minute conversation initiated about a possible weekend together can easily morph to a 45 minute conversation about whether if the friends you keep are in fact a representation of you, is it it your duty to cut it off if their actions are not indicative of the qualities you strive to achieve/maintain? I always enjoy my conversations with this handful.

Today I was lucky to talk to TWO of these gems. Had my monthly dinner with Will. Two and a half hours of nonstop conversations over happy hour appetizers at 219 West. Many of them were questions we threw at each other. Such as, if we keep friendships as representations of who we are, if someone fails to uphold your principles, would your continued friendship with said person contradict who you’re striving to be? If yes, doesn’t that contradict the relativity of morality? Who are we to play moral cop?

Seriously, if a dear and close friend murdered someone and felt no remorse, could you stand being loyal without feeling disloyal to yourself? If you cannot stand to be his or her friend, who are you to say they are now beneath you? Could it be as innocent as you no longer have the commonality that is required for intimate relationships?

So Will and I shared our disappointment and disenchantment with certain people in our lives and then after agreeing that they are full of shit, we looked at ourselves and decided we too are full of shit. Everyone is full of shit. If everything is relative, does it ever matter what you think? feel? opine? All our opinions, gut reactions, principles, beliefs, are all discountable in one way or another. Making us all full of shit. So what makes one person’s bag of shit more tolerable than another? Is it because it’s similar to our bag of shit? So in the end it’s narcissistic tendencies?

This is the curse of overly self-aware people. No conclusions.

Last words exchanged tonight with Will

Will: “So maybe we can hang out this weekend.”

Me: “Yeah, Especially since you’re going to be maybe gone in 2 months.”

Will: “Yeah, I’ll call you maybe this weekend. I don’t know I don’t ever go out anymore.”

Me: “Yeah you don’t. Maybe Barnes and Noble?”

Will: “Book People!”

Me: Yeah! Book stores may be more us anyway.

Will: Is it more us, or are we full of shit?

After dinner with Will, had a hearty conversation with Hillary, another stimulating gem of a friend. Conversation was first initiated about a possible get together in Austin. When that fell through due to conflicting schedules, we started gossiping about our lives. Our fun girly gossips always meander pointlessly but provocatively elsewhere. We discussed when it was a okay for a boyfriend to comment on his girlfriend’s appearance, why we choose the friends we keep, and how absolutely annoying it is when being nice or friendly is perceived as kissing ass or trying to get ass. (We were just being honest, and no there’s nothing you can give me; I don’t want to sleep with you and no I’m not kissing yo ass, you narcissistic prick.)

Rules also defined my wacked search for love. With my thoughts so tempered by the quality of a man’s character, his steadfastness, his commitment to providing a quality education for children we didn’t have, his loyalty to people I didn’t know, his love for family I’d never meet, I became totally oblivious to the short-term factors that typically define good relationships: whether he’d pay for dinner, whether he’d be good in bed. If he was smart enough to quip back. If he was capable of keeping up. After 2 dates, I had a very clear sense of who was in and who was out. And after three? They so rarely got to three that it’s hard to know for sure what the rule for three was. Still even those who fit the royal flush of good men, good partner, and good prospect had trouble getting past me.

- Shannon O’ Keefe, “Twenty-eight is the new eighteeen.” It’s a Wonderful Lie: 26 Truths about Life in Your Twenties.

Me.

Link courtesy of Kat.

Divacup (Link courtesy of Mary Ellen)

Seriously, won’t it spill?

Depending on your flow empty the cup 2-3 times per 24 hour day, wash and reinsert. It can be worn up to 12 hours, even overnight. The DivaCup™ is ideal for all activities including swimming, camping, backpacking, and travelling. It is suitable for all menstruating women of all ages.

Just came home from happy hour and dinner at Dona Emilia’s. My first time drinking and dining there. For lack of any other momentous firsts, Dona Emilia served as my new thing of the week. Here’s a brief reaction: I love the athmosphere; it’s perfect to kick off the weekend. It has a lot of energy to it. Pretty interior, pretty lighting. We had a private room upstairs with a wall that looked into a wine cellar. The food? Cuban. I’ve had better cuban food at Habana’s. I ordered the Bandeja Paisa and the steak was impossible to cut. I also had better mojitos at Saba. The mojitos had sweet and sour in them.. making them taste a little… fake?

I think I’m going to be spending Friday night almost naked watching movies I’ve been meaning to watch (see the list on your left), giving myself a pedicure and perhaps I’ll be calling you to catch up :)

I leave you with a quotation.

“Loneliness is the human condition. Cultivate it. The way it tunnels into you allows your soul room to grow. Never expect to outgrow loneliness. If you expect to find people who will understand you, you will grow murderous with disappointment. The best you’ll ever do is to understand yourself, know what it is that you want, and not let the cattle stand in your way.”

- White Oleander

link courtesy of Jennifer.

Last year this month, I came across a fork. I could have easily become a flight attendant. According to an airline company I had the perfect personality to be a flight attendant. (Really, what does that mean?) I could have relocated to Chicago and travel for a living. I chose to rough it out in Austin. Since then, I worked at 3 jobs. I thought I was finally settled for a good two years at least at my current position(before I go back to school), but then today I was given a business proposition that would be a complete career change.

In a sense, I’m a yes-girl. You have an idea? Let’s do it! You want to skydive? Let’s do it! You want to get married in Florida? Okie dokie! Forks are trickier. Especially when you’re happy where you are.

Unlike choose your own adventure books, you can’t cheat and go back and redo the decision making. I keep telling myself it doesn’t really matter what you choose to do in life. You’ll always gain something. You’ll always lose something. What makes it bearable is that you can never be quite sure what exactly it is you’re foregoing. Ignorance is bliss. So what then matters? I think it is whether you can stand who you are as you’re going.

Right?

There is something optimistic and nostalgic in reading young adult books. Or revisiting books from your childhood. 4 years ago, Mary Ellen sent me Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants in a birthday package. She said it made her cry. I read it and thought it was awfully sweet and painful in an innocent way. A year or so later, I bought The Second Summer of the Traveling Pants. Lended Roomie both copies. A couple of weeks ago I found Girls in Pants, The Third Summer of the Sisterhood and just finished it minutes ago. I love how all three of these books have quotations for me to add to my collection. I love the power of girl friendships Brashares tries to convey. She seems to remember what it’s like to be 15.. and then 16.. and then 17. I wonder how she did that. It brings you back. Especially for me since I had mostly female friendships in high school, going to an all-girl’s school.

It was a perfect way to spend a Sunday inside, nursing a hangover.

The only excerpt I copied over to my reading journal:

“The crying started for each of us around then. It was inevitable. It was like that feeling of being outside in a rainfall for a while and then you just surrender to it and you realize it feels pretty nice. You wonder, why we fight the things we fight when giving into them isn’t so bad at all.”