Very Sleepy People

{4 July, 2009} Lindsay Barbie

Feel free to skip to the end for the pictures.

The beginning of this story goes back to 6 March 1986, the fateful day when Jessica was born. That is really where all of this started–her birth. Now, fastforward to the end of February of 2009. Jessica’s birthday was coming up, and I wasn’t quite sure what to get her. I was leaving on spring break the day of her birthday, so I felt rather guilty that I wouldn’t be there to begin with. I was trying to decide what to get her for her birthday, but I figured I would ask her to see if there was anything she’d like to do or anything she’d particularly like before I began scheming. She said that she didn’t want anything, she just wanted everyone to go out for her birthday. Well, shoot. Seeing as that was an impossibility and she was being particularly obstinate on the matter of gifts, I struck out on my own to think.

I figured the best place to start was to reflect upon our friendship and what I knew about Jessica. The most blatantly obvious fact of our friendship is that our personalities are very, very different. She has completely different interests. That really didn’t help me out any. Except then I realized that it did. I thought upon how disheartening it has been for me in the past when people always overlooked me and what I like and instead go for what they would like or what they think I should like. I have always known that I am somewhat unique (read: somewhat of a freak), and while I have no desire to make anyone change, it’s always nice for someone to do something I like that they maybe necessarily would not choose because it shows that they want to share that with me. There are a lot of things that Jessica likes to do that I am not a fan of, and I always try to weasel out of it. I do this only because I know that she has other people who share those interests, but it occurred to me that maybe it would be special for her if I shared in that with her since I don’t normally.

I came up with the idea of Lindsay Certificates. I would give her certificates for certain activities to take place at a time of her choosing that she could redeem whenever she wanted. I just had to decide what those activities would be. I decided to offer her two hours of television viewing (or one movie) wherein I could not complain at all. She loves awful VH1 shows, and I knew that’s what she’d choose. She threw that card down immediately upon receiving it. Another one was for a full day of shopping. Another one was for a day of playing Lindsay Barbie, and I gave her two or three blank ones that allow her to pick the activity.

Lest you think I am entirely foolish, I did put parameters. I chose my wording carefully, and I made certain there were loopholes. For me, of course. After I gave Jessica her birthday gift, she had a cat-ate-the-canary grin, and I knew I was in for trouble. However, I knew it made her happy. She has said more than once that it’s the best birthday present she’s ever received. Upon contemplation, I don’t know how I’ll ever trump that in the future.

She occasionally threatens me with using one of them, but other than the day she received them, she hasn’t used any save for the television one. In the middle of the week, though, she comes into the living room and asks me what my plans are for the following day after work. I tell her that I have none. She then proceeds to drop two cards on my lap while she stands above me grinning. I quirk an eyebrow and then pick up the notecards. They were Lindsay Certificates, two Lindsay Certificates to be exact. One for shopping and one for Lindsay Barbie. Two. At once. I had never anticipated that she would try to redeem two at once, and I was taken aback. I was sputtering out my words while shaking my head no. I was trying to come up with a valid excuse, any excuse, only to realize that I already told her that I don’t have plans and that, according to the card, that and money were my only available reasons for decline. Plainly put, I was between a rock and a hard place. I tried to use the money thing, but she said that I didn’t have to buy anything when we went shopping and that as far as the Lindsay Barbie thing went, she had it covered.

At that moment, I was torn between being proud and being annoyed. Part of me was proud because she played her hand well. She knows me well enough to anticipate my response and ask me my plans first before throwing those cards out there. She wanted to go shopping the next day, and when we got home from that, she wanted to dye my hair and cut it. I…mildly panicked. I tried to convince her to just trim up my bangs, but she said she had ideas.

The next day, she came home. She had had a rough day, and being the good friend I am, I tried to convince her that staying home and watching Gilmore Girls in our pajamas would be a good idea. No such luck. She tried to get me to leave, and I was reluctant to say the least. I kept trying to buy time, but then she unplugged my laptop. I had just plugged in Little Napoleon to charge the lifeless battery, and then she unplugged him and I check and see that I have two minutes until he powers down again. She smirks and asks me if I’m ready to go now, and I finally give in.

Walking out to the car, she says, “So, I’ve stooped to a new low.” I look at her like she’s grown a second head and respond with, “NO KIDDING.” She just bursts out laughing and then says, “No, I mean, I’ve joined a group online so I can meet other people who play RAGE.” (It’s a card game that she’s been playing since she was twelve–akin to Magic the Gathering, I think, but I don’t know anything about either one) I’m not entirely sure how that’s relevant to this story other than to point out that she held no remorse over basically shutting my laptop down in the middle of my using it and yet feels ashamed of joining an online group to meet people who share a similar interest. Messed up priorities much?

Anyway, we shop. When we arrive at the mall, I sit there playing with my hands. She opens her door. I keep staring at my hands. She informs me that it’s time to shop. I mutter something about that meaning I have to get out of the car, and she smiles and reaches across me and opens the door for me. She’s kind that way, opening doors for me and practically pushing me out. She’s somewhat merciful and we’re not there for more than two hours or so. Then we stop by CVS so she can get hair cutting shears. I had thought she was joking about the hair thing, but apparently not. When we get home, she breaks out the dye and gets started on dying both of our hair. I pull out Lady Chatterley’s Lover while she puts the dye in my hair, and I continue reading while we wait for it to set and she starts fixing pancakes for dinner. We rinse out the dye and then shower, and I put on grungy clothes (I do have some) and wrap my hair in a towel. The pancakes are ready at this point, and while I’m grabbing some, her phone rings. It’s one of her friends, a friend who knows about the Lindsay Barbie certificate. She gets off the phone, and I sigh as I turn towards her and ask how long I have until her friend gets here. She laughs and asks if she’s that obvious. I figure it’s a rhetorical question and answer only by rolling my eyes.

About the time we finish eating our pancakes, her friend arrives and they comb my hair out and start talking amongst themselves as to what they plan on doing. Jessica’s friend wants to cut my hair much shorter than Jessica does, and I intercede only to say that I don’t want it too short and that I’d like to be able to pull my hair up if I need to. (Read: If it looks awful. Going into this, I told Jessica that if she made me look awful I would wake her up at five o’clock every morning for a month with U2 songs. She hates U2. She also hates early.) I go back to reading my book while they snip and comment about how much hair I have. I don’t really hear what they’re saying. The only noise I really heard while I was reading was snip! snip! snip! I felt like I was living the female equivalent of Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart.” When they do the front of my hair and my bangs, I am forced to put the book down. I close my eyes. Jessica tells me to look at how much hair is in the bag, and I refuse, knowing that if I look at how much hair is in that bag, I will freak out.

Jessica’s friend asked me a question at some point, but I didn’t answer. Jessica told her that I probably wasn’t paying attention because I was reading. I momentarily find myself thinking how much I love her for knowing that I don’t pay attention when I read, but then I remind myself that she’s cutting my hair, and an awful lot. She is going to town on the layers with that razor in her hand, and I momentarily feel like a shrub. I mentally chuckle. By this point, I’d equated my experience with a Poe story and a shrub, and I wonder how it was the shrub analogy and not the Poe thing that caused me to question my sanity.

Then they decide to do makeup. Bwah? Why, I don’t know, because I’m just going to wash it off and go to bed, but they seem to enjoy the Lindsay Barbie thing, and apparently this is part of it. They realize that I actually have a decent amount of makeup, I just really don’t use it so much. I sat patiently through that and was pondering about how embarrassing this whole thing is. I am twenty-two years old, and here are two young women using me as their Barbie doll. They enjoy it, though, and the smile on Jessica’s face is undeniable. She’s happy, and I’m the cause of that, even if I was an insufferable prat about it at first. I like seeing her happy, and I figure that the damage is more than worth it.

Of course, I hadn’t seen myself at this point, and they actually did a really great job. It took me a day to get used to seeing myself and be able to decide, but I do like it. At the end of the evening, they both thank me for allowing them to play Barbie on me and tell me how much they enjoyed themselves.

The next day, Jessica comes home with another huge smile and says, “I have a great idea!” My smile immediately disappears and it placed by what turns out to be very visibly loud concern. Unfortunately for me, Jessica notices this. She just smiles more and laughs a bit, then she asks me what’s wrong. I try to lovingly tell her that those words rarely ever exude comfort coming from her, but that just makes her smile more. We then proceed to negotiate for about half an hour which then resulted to my acquiescing to her over her brilliant idea. Her brilliant idea was to go get manicures together. She does this once or twice a month, and she pointed out that technically, it was still a “day” of Lindsay Barbie since twenty-four hours were not up, and she said that she would pay and she pouted and downright begged and I couldn’t say no. So, I went, and I let her pick out my color, too, because I like seeing her smile.

All in all, everything turned out extremely well. I made her happy, and it actually turned out pretty well for me, too. I guess it just proved to be another exercise in trust. I mean, after all, she exercises her trust in me every time she tries something I cook, and that has the potential to make her sick. The really girly stuff is new to me, but it was not altogether unpleasant. Jessica would say that statement is my way of saying that I enjoyed it somewhat but am too stubborn to say so out of fear of her going crazy with the knowledge. And maybe she’d be right.

Ok, onto the pictures. I know that’s what you really want.

This is a picture of what my natural hair color used to look like before:

Basically light brown with a lot of red and a bit of gold.

This is what it looks like now:

And before it flattens. The new color and the green shirt show the green in my oddly colored eyes better.

After it flattens:

My hair curled that way on its own. It doesn’t listen to me, it never has.

A silly picture:

My eyes. So weird. Not quite hazel, not quite brown, but somewhere in between with black specks accessorizing.

And, lest you think I’m vain (you would be correct), a I-just-woke-up picture where my ever changing eye color actually looks dirt brown:

And with glasses! Maybe I finally removed that stick firmly situated in my posterior.

Ok, one last picture. This one is to show my manicure, because Jessica was so pleased, and for some reason that makes me feel as if I should document the occasion for the world as proof:

It kind of looks white here, but it’s more of a pearlescent baby pink.

Pretty much everyone has loved my hair. Jessica is ecstatic with the results, and I’m glad that everyone has appreciated her efforts. The general consensus seems to be that I look much better with very dark brown hair (I know some of the pictures make it look black, but it’s not. It’s almost black, but it’s definitely brown.). It seems I should have been graced with my father’s hair coloring but wasn’t. (Snarky Lindsay wants to say that if that’s the case, I should’ve dyed my hair grey.) I’m frequently told I look like a miniature female version of him anyway, so I suppose it’s fitting. If anyone asks, I just wanted to be like my daddy.

{28 June, 2009} Missed Calling?

As anyone who reads this website knows, I love Gilmore Girls. I get a lot of eye rolls about this from people who have never actually watched the show. The perception most people have of the show is that it is a “chick show”–girly and superficial. I always respond that it is not, in fact, all that girly and that the dialogue and references are actually quite witty as far as television shows go. At this point, I often get The Stare. Any of you Gilmore Girls lovers who have had this sort of encounter probably know what I am talking about. At this point all you can really do is tell them to just watch the show and give it a chance. They won’t, but at least you tried.

Occasionally, though, they will. Now, I always tell people that it within three to five consecutive episodes, they will be hooked. About a year and a half ago, I convinced my sister to give it a shot. It was at about the third episode that my sister became addicted. Now, addicted is a strong word, but that is exactly what happened. We would watch a disc at a time over my Christmas break. Of course, being that I am human, I had to sleep at some point. This was not entirely acceptable to my sister. She would sneak downstairs and start up Gilmore Girls while I was sleeping, because she couldn’t stand to wait an hour or two longer for me to wake up. At the time, I couldn’t even muster up annoyance towards her. I WAS THAT PROUD. She was so distraught when I went back to school and took my two seasons of Gilmore Girls with me that she bought the entire series in a boxset less than two weeks later.

In retrospect, my sister was an easy sell. My roommate did not want to watch Gilmore Girls. Getting her to watch Gilmore Girls was like pulling teeth. I managed to weasel her into watching it through a combination of supplication and guilt. I pulled out the pout and told her that I watch terrible, awful, mind-rotting VH1 shows with her and that it would make me happy if she would just watch a few episodes with me. Then I added the “pleeeeeease?” at the end. (It was wrong of me, and I acknowledge that, but it was for her own good. I knew she would eventually thank me for it.) She finally agreed. She watched the first episode and made fun of it the entire time. After it was done, she was asking me how I could love the show. I managed to get her to watch another one. She still wasn’t entirely enthusiastic about the experience, but then a week or two later when I was going to watch some more, I told her that I would invite her to watch it with me, but I know how much she disliked it. CLINCHER. She paused but for a moment, and then she said, “Well, I didn’t hate it. I wouldn’t mind watching it a bit more with you.” Internally, I was jumping up and down, because I knew exactly what was going to happen by the end of the evening. We sat down, and I put the DVD in. We watched an episode, and then I turned to her and asked her whether she wanted to watch more or not. She said she did. Two episodes later, she admitted that she was hooked and the show was like crack. She told me I should have just stuck a needle in her arm.

We now watch at least one episode almost every evening to wind down before bed. We have finished up the first season and are just a bit into the second. We joke that everyone in the building (our building is small) probably cringes in anticipation of Carole King singing the opening song of the show. They probably bide their time, knowing that it is going to happen in the evening, but never really sure when it will. Once Carole King’s voice starts singing, we look at each other and laugh and wonder aloud whether tonight will be the night that it proves to be too much and someone throws themself off the balcony. Friday evening, right when Carole King started singing, we loudly sang along, and we heard the patio door to the apartment above us slide open. We burst out laughing. (They play guitar at all hours of the day and night–though, thankfully, not as much as they did when we first moved in–and we consider this our own brand of revenge.) Fortunately, everyone survived the night.

I’m beginning to think that perhaps the Palladinos should be paying me off for bringing new addicts into the fold, though.

{17 June, 2009} Beyond the Sea

{15 June, 2009} Introducing…

Our new family member:

Ling Ling!

I have always wanted a bamboo plant. I have discussed this nearly every other day since Jessica and I moved into our apartment. Well, this and the fact that I really want a pot of grass since it is majorly lacking in Boston. I have this whole idea where I’ll cut my little pot of grass with scissors every week. Anyway, that is perhaps a bit off topic.

On Sunday, I went to the local Asian market with some friends of mine, and I found a Lollicup there, and I saw bamboo plants. Jessica loves Lollicup, so I knew immediately that she would agree to meet me there. Jessica got her Lollicup, and we bought our bamboo plant.

Jessica has fondly referred to our bamboo plant as our “love plant.” On the way home with our bamboo plant, we decided that it needed a name. Jessica suggested Boris, Herbert, Barthomolew and then Henry. I rejected the first three options. My counter suggestions were Jet Li and Ling Ling. Jessica visibly brightened at the latter suggestion, and so we had our name. We then decided that our plant was a he. Of course, then we discovered that Ling Ling means “darling little girl.” I proposed that maybe we change the name, but Jessica said that we already gave him a name and gender. So, the name stays.

I had wanted to take a picture of Jessica and Ling Ling, but she told me that she was “not a single mother” and told me that we were taking a family portrait. So, there we are. Here is a picture of our special little guy:

We are so proud.

I should probably mention that I have never had my own plant. Actually, I have never taken care of a plant. I tried once, but it ended up wilting a bit. I did not tell Jessica this until today. We are hoping that this ends well. I am not certain how one cares for a bamboo plant, but I am hoping water is good enough. If it is not, I suppose we will have to get Ling Ling the Second. Either way, I am very excited.

While I am on family members, I should mention that Jessica is saying good-bye to the Volvo. Soon we will have a 2009 Ford Fusion. To commemorate the occasion, I took pictures of Jessica saying good-bye to the Volvo:

You have been a good friend.

You will be dearly missed, Volvo.

It is a season of changing, and we are very excited to see what it will bring. Hopefully I will not manage to murder Ling Ling. If you happen to know anything about potted bamboo, please let me know, as I do not plan to do anything other than water Ling Ling once or twice a week.

{10 June, 2009} I Yield

To My Friend & Her Co-Conspirators,

I had hoped my patience regarding your persistent inappropriate comments would result in a pleasant ending for everyone. I quickly realized that deleting your comments only resulted in your posting more. I have looked up the IP addresses used, and I was disheartened when I discovered the destinations. I have considered my options. I could, from this point on, close all my posts and all future posts from further comments. However, as my roommate pointed out, that would be unfair to my friends and few loyal readers that do comment. I could continue to delete every comment sent, but I believe that would only provoke you further. My third option is to contact the companies which several of the comments have been sent from and alert their attention to the situation, and I have, in fact, contacted one of the companies. However, I have no desire to get anyone in trouble. I could have handled any number of things, but commenting on a somewhat emotional letter to my unborn niece crossed a line. If your intention was to anger or to hurt me, you may consider your mission a success. This leads me to my last option which is to simply give up. I’m done. You win.

{9 June, 2009} With Bated Breath

My Darling Niece,

In but ten short weeks, you are due to be born, just around the time I am set to have my Masters thesis completed. You have many people anxiously awaiting your arrival. However, it is my opinion that it will most likely be eleven or twelve weeks before you grace us with your presence because your mother and father are infamous for being late–not fashionably late, mind you–I am talking thirty minutes at the minimum kind of late. If there is a gene for tardiness, I guarantee you that you have the most dominant gene of all. You, my poor dear, are doomed before you ever even have a chance. You will have to deal with the people in your life lying to you on a daily basis about when you have to be somewhere. On the bright side, you will have the immense pleasure of passing the blame off onto your parents. It will be many years before you will fully be able to appreciate such a blessing, but once you are able to, the accompanying giddiness will never leave. There are few joys in life which never diminish over time; this is one of them.

I have known about your existence for many, many months. Your mom can vouch for me when I say that I was overjoyed from the moment I knew about you. In fact, I was the first of the family to know, a fact which warms my heart more than you could possibly conceive. You will one day realize how completely opposite your mom and I are in nearly every way except for perhaps our tenacity. We did not always have the relationship that we have now. We were close when I was small and cute, but as we both got older, our relationship deteriorated somewhat. This could be because she realized The Adorable was transient (she predicted it would happen–I recall her once telling me that cute children turned out to be ugly adults; to this day, I believe she jinxed me), or perhaps it is because she turned out to be one extremely moody young adult–regardless, the dynamic of our relationship shifted drastically over the years. This was a source of a lot of pain or me over the past five or six years, but things between the two of us have really started to improve over the last year. I think this is partially due to the fact that your mom was finally starting to be happy. She was finally getting there, but when she found out about you, she absolutely blossomed over night. It is not at all an over exaggeration to say that your mom was absolutely thrilled to find out she was pregnant with you, and I do not think I am overstepping my place in saying that you are the best surprise she has ever received. So, when she chose to share that news with me before she did with the rest of the family, I teared up. I think that moment bound us together in an intimacy previously foreign to our relationship. I know that is quite a lot to place on such a small little person who is not even born yet, but it is absolutely the truth. The changes in your mom the past several months have been absolutely phenomenal. I cannot remember a time in her life that she has ever been so joyfully happy. I think this pregnancy has made her kinder than she has ever been before, completely dispelling every pregnancy stereotype I have come across. You, my beauty, are reconstructing bridges everywhere. Being the family perfectionist, I have to say that even I am impressed by that. It also gives me a tiny shred hope that maybe you will resemble me a tiny bit. Anyone else reading this will take that for something else entirely, but I think your mom will understand. Should you one day become an engineer, I will not be surprised in the least.

My excitement about your birth is unsurpassed only by that of my trepidation. I do not have experience with babies, and until a friend of mine gave birth in January, babies were more of a concept than a reality for me. I have yet to hold a baby, and if I have my way, I will not be holding one anytime soon. The closest I have come is grasping a baby hand while said baby was safely and securely in the arms of her mother. That may not seem like a big step to most, but it was for me. I fear the fragility, and I fear that if I ever do hold a baby, one of two outcomes will occur: either my clumsiness will kick in, and I will somehow hurt the baby, or the baby will shriek in displeasure. I am not sure which of the two fears is strongest, but I have a suspicion it is the latter one more than anything. I told your mother that I love you enough to stay away until you are older and we are both less fragile. She seems to have more faith in me than I do, though, and I have no doubt that she will not give up on her efforts to convince me. As I said, we are both a force to be reckoned with, and I do not see either one of us backing down on the issue anytime soon. However, I wish for nothing more than for you to be the first baby I hold. A lot of people know me to be level-headed and calculating, but at the core I am actually quite sentimental. The idea of my own niece being the first infant I hold appeals to my sentimentality.

I have consistently been surprised by how much love I already possess for you, though I suppose I should not be. I know that it will most likely floor me when I actually meet you. Of course, when I finally do, you will probably be a homely-looking little thing (a fact your mom and I frequently joke about), but perhaps you will luck out and be among the rare collection of beautiful newborns or, depending upon when I come to visit, will have cutened up by then.

I look forward to spoiling you rotten and telling you stories about your mother. I know she and I both look forward to inundating you with Gilmore Girls. I cannot wait until you can speak to find out what terrible rendition of my name you come up with, whether it is my much feared Ninny or something much kinder like Lin. I am eagerly anticipating reading to you, especially A Little Princess, because it is one of my favorite books and quite appropriate seeing as you will be everyone’s little princess. Your mother’s name, just like little Sara Crewe in the book, means “princess.” Being half her, I think it is fitting. I also believe she will have no problem relinquishing her tiara to you, because I think she already views you as her little princess. More than even that, though, I am looking forward to getting to know you and see the beautiful woman you will become, whether you are short or tall, feminine or tomboyish, obedient or independent, sweet or sassy.

I pray for you every day, little one. You are always close to my thoughts. I cannot wait to show you this beautiful, wonderful, sometimes horrifying world we live in. Until that day, I wait patiently.

Lovingly yours,
Lindsay

{9 June, 2009} In Which I E’spresso Myself

I ordered my coffee a week and a half ago, and FedEx still has not gotten it to me. The tracking has not been updated since the 6th, and the last it said, my coffee was in Chicago. Do people not realize that people who order coffee are people who drink coffee, and that people who drink coffee are not known for being patient when it comes to waiting for said coffee?

{8 June, 2009} One Woman’s Relief is Another Woman’s Sadness

A few weeks ago, I purchased a few of books from the library. The price was right (oh, how right it was), and they were ripe for the picking. While the middle-aged librarian behind the desk took my five and went about getting my change for me, she glanced at the books I had bought. Her facial expression changed from one of disinterested neutrality (I am repetitive. And redundant!) to one of relief. I noticed the change nearly immediately, and I mentally went through a list of possible catalysts for her reaction: she saw the clock and realized she would soon be free; she saw a dear friend; the children she was previously yelling at to stop running finally, on the fourth insistence, obeyed; some disaster going on behind me that I was completely oblivious to was somehow diverted; she was thankful that those poor, lonely books were finally going to get a home; she realized–and that was when my mental postulates were interrupted by her voice as she held out a tattered dollar between her fingers to complement my mildly tattered books. “Here you go. It’s so nice to see someone your age reading something enriching for fun.”

It took me two or three seconds to quell my internal castigations and compose myself enough to smile in response to what I am sure was a good-intentioned compliment. I then gathered my books in my arms and turned around and walked away.

What I had wanted to do, though, was to ask her when was the last time she saw someone her age outside of Academia read something enriching for fun. If you ask me (which you did not, but which I am choosing to overlook), more chronologically advanced adults are no better than young adults when it comes to reading. The fact that my generation and those after mine are targeted as devouring what I call “dessert reads” that are not much better than your average television show is somewhat farcical. It is certainly well-deserved, but it is by no means an infection of youthful fancy. It is an infection, but it has transgressed age limitations. What was once perhaps a youthful indulgence has become the standard for men and women of all ages. It is a social pandemic. People no longer read to engage their mind; they read to escape it.

That is not to say that dessert reads do not have their place; they absolutely do. I just do not believe that they should be the bread and butter of an individual’s literary consumption.

I read an article, I believe through Jen, that said that an individual’s intellectual (or cognitive? I’m not sure, and there is somewhat of a difference) peak is at twenty-two years old. I think this is probably true for many people, but I think it is their own doing. Most people (Granted, there are exceptions, like me) graduate college at the age of twenty-two. Most people do not go onto grad school. This number seems to average out, given that not everybody goes to college and not everybody goes to grad school. So, for many people, they are in an environment which essentially forces them to exercise their cognitive abilities until the age of twenty-two, and thereafter are left to their own devices. The brain is just like any muscle of your body; you have to use it or else it will atrophy. Similarly, this is the only time when most people tend to read “enriching” literature. Then, when they have more freedom in the matter, they abandon it for something less cognitively straining.

Older generations pass off the blame, when the truth is, they are guilty of much the same. The interesting thing, though, is that older generations are not really trying to do anything about it. They do nothing to nurture good reading habits. This is not a plague of merely my generation. It is a plague of every generation, and it is damaging our society in a way that most people do not even notice.

{6 June, 2009} Assiduous

I’m ready to take on the list of antonyms any day now.

I attempted to be environmentally friendly by writing my to-do list on the dry erase board. The space did not accomodate my entire list, not even close. I resorted to, once again, going back to paper. I do not know if the trees sacrificed in the name of my to-do lists made a sound when they fell, but they certainly made a dent.

{4 June, 2009} A Well-Oiled Dysfunctional Machine

For those of you just looking to see pictures of the new apartment and not read my mindless prattling, please skip to the end of the post.

Jessica and I have been living here for just shy of three weeks. Being that I have lived alone for the past four years (and, arguably, essentially alone for many years prior to that), I have frequently been asked how living with someone else is. I always pause when asked this, because I am never quite certain whether I am being asked about living with another human being (and two cats) or whether I am being asked about living with Jessica in particular. The two seem to be two very distinct and different questions, and I think Jessica would agree with me in saying that they possess two markedly different answers. We are very unique individuals, and we both prefer to not have a roommate due to that fact. However, it is much easier financially to have one, especially in metro Boston. We dove into this together thinking that we could make this work.

The story of how Jessica and I met is one for a different time, but we met almost four years ago. We didn’t really become friends until about two years ago, and we didn’t start to actually hang out and become close until a little over a year ago, but when we did, our friendship quickly blossomed. We are very different people, and if you were to ask us how we fit together so well, we would tell you that we simply do not know; we just do.

I was worried about having a roommate because, while I am opinionated, I am also extremely empathetic, and I always feel bad for telling people how I feel about things that pertain to them and myself when it is something negative. I would be horribly embarrassed to ask someone to please refrain from doing something. I don’t like being reproached, and I guess I assume that it is embarrassing for everyone else, too. Jessica is one of the few people I can be honest with and who doesn’t make me feel bad about being so. I was afraid that someone would take advantage of that once they realized it, but I knew she wouldn’t. In my mind, she became an ideal candidate. The fact that she is my best friend didn’t hurt her chances either.

Jessica was living alone in a studio apartment in Allston paying way too much and living in sub par conditions. She was looking to get out at around the same time I would be done with school and looking to move.

The timing was right for both of us, and we obviously get along splendidly. Neither of us were excited about having a roommate (I was quite paranoid about it, truth be told), but we were excited by the prospect of having each other as a roommate. Our only real reservation, or at least my only real reservation, was the impact that it might have on our friendship. In my experience, friends have always been transitory. I tend to be the rock people break themselves upon, and securing my affection has always seemed to be the nail in the coffin for devastating absolutely everything. (I really should come with a warning label–Warning: Securing Her Affections May Result in Horrible Life. Best Run away Now.) However, that is not an excuse she is willing to accept. In fact, every time I go self-deprecating on her, she always responds with, “I’ll pretend I didn’t just hear that.” We discussed it, and we both came to the realization that in our friendship we have never once been angry with the other. She told me that she cannot say that of anyone else in her life. I said that I could not either. It struck us as a little odd, so we decided to remedy that by moving in together.

Three weeks later, that fact still holds true. Everyone always says that you never really know somebody until you live with them. I suppose that’s true, but I have yet to be surprised by Jessica. Both the good and the bad, nothing has come as a surprise to me, and even the things that would normally bother me and make my eye twitch don’t really bother me quite so much with her. It is a manifestation of who she is as a person, and it is part of the reason I absolutely love her. Anything less wouldn’t be her. Though, you won’t hear me complaining if she suddenly decided to magically love Gilmore Girls or stop watching VH1 all. the. time. No, the VH1 can stay. I do not understand it, but I can embrace it. From very, very far away.

Jessica would tell you that I freak her out constantly. She tells her friends that I apparate and that I am at times too quiet. I always seemingly sneak up on her unintentionally. She is absolutely convinced that I apparate. This seems to open quite a large venue of occupational opportunities for me and a wealth of cardiac arrest potential on her end.

I must confess, it is also nice to live with someone who understands anxiety attacks and panic attacks. She, too, suffers from an anxiety disorder, and so she just gets it when other people usually don’t. We are quite eccentric, and we are not at all your normal girls. I think that is part of the reason why we fit so well. But this, coupled with our lovely mental dysfunctions made us decide to call our apartment The Asylum. If you aren’t quite crazy when you enter, you undoubtedly will be when you leave. (We even have an Edvard Munch print of The Scream that we are planning to hang. It seems to fit incredibly well.)

Anyway, a lot of people have been requesting photographs. I initially was not going to post any, because I don’t think our living quarters to be that interesting, and does anyone really want to see everything? But apparently I was wrong, as I have been handed requests left and right to see absolutely everything. I have obliged to the best of my ability, but I drew the line at showing you inside my underwear drawer and giving you in-depth pictures of our closets–bedroom, coat, linen or otherwise–because that’s just creepy. I should note that I permitted Jessica to take pictures of her own room, so all of those are her handiwork, not mine.

Without further ado, I present to you: The Asylum.

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