coming to terms with "the best friend"

You know that girl in the chick flick movies, usually brunette, or wearing glasses. Maybe she is a little nerdy, or a little too close to normal weight, but for whatever reason she is the foil for the tall, elegant, blonde, slender girl who is the star of the said chick flick and therefore one half of the pre-destined couple. Back when I used to appreciate the genre more, I would watch that girl in the movie, sometimes she would have a boyfriend (although then she would tend to be even more nerdy, pregnant, etc), but most of the time she was single. So of course, it is kinda obvious why I always watched these characters more than the blonde pre-couple. But the thing was, sometimes they actually were the funniest, most interesting and wisest. These characters helped the blonde through whatever obstacle kept her from her dream man. Now I can't necessarily claim to be interesting, funny or wise, but I have played the best friend role many times over the past few years. Watching my friends encounter the best and worst parts of relationship is always a two edged sword. When my friends have good times with their significant others, I am happy for them. I love the fact that they have found someone to fit their lives with. But at the same time, I have also found myself fighting the urge to question why them and not me. And of course I hate that instinct, because as a friend I should celebrate my friend's happiness and not resent them. Sometime this past year I had a little bit if epiphany, well in all honesty it does sound rather overwhelmingly obvious. It was that no matter how many of my friends got into relationships, it didn't impact my own ability/chances to enter into my own eventual relationship. In other words, my friends' romantic lives does not have an inverse relationship to my own. Yeah, kinda obvious, yet somehow I have found that concept to be very helpful when trying to remind myself to stay positive towards my friends relationships. So while I may currently be playing the best friend role, that doesn't make my story any less interesting, or any less capable of producing love.

first official day of the Job

wish me luck

listening: Still Crazy After All These Years - Paul Simon

Today was an up day. I finally got my room a little organized and there are delightful patches of floor finally showing itself. As much as I hate packing, it is a huge relief to feel like I am making progress. Then of course nothing tops off a day like a cocktail party planned by the fabulous birthday girl and attended by lots of lovely people who I haven't seen in ages. I have discovered that plenty of cocktails, a little bit of flirting and a sexy dress can do wonders for banishing tadbits of that green monster. To Do List for Tomorrow buy bridesmaid dress finish packing maybe some laundry hug parents

reunion

things I lie awake and fume/think about

First off, this kind of rambly thought only really takes off after 11pm at night, most often when the lights are turned off and the rest of the rooms occupants are trying to sleep. But anyways in contemplating life, the universe, god and everything, I have come to the conclusion that much of my belief in god is based on my sincere desire/need for such a god to exist. You may think that this is because I need that kind of concept to make the world make sense, or that I see the divine as the necessary link to meaning outside of individual petty lives and yes that would be true. However a large part of that is because without the existence of a god, I am not sure I'll be able to be happy in content in life. Why? Well because for that to happen in my life, one of two things needs to happen. I need to either have a serious romantic long-term relationship with a man (preferably involving marriage and at some point kids) or I need to learn how to be fulfilled and happy as a long-term single person. And in all honesty at this point in my life I tend to see both of these outcomes as miracles, hence the divine need. As a 22 year old college educated and fairly independently minded woman, you may think this romantic relationship concern a little out of place. I mean really, who needs a man? Well technically I am fully aware that I don't need a man in my life, but in the past few years I have finally begun to be honest with myself about how much I want one. Not to play the pity card (because seriously that is not what I need), but at 22 years, despite countless crushes, and a few sporadic "dates", and one long messy semi-relationship (which got off the ground only long enough for me to experience some of the worst parts of romantic involvements) I have been decidedly single. Now obviously one can hardly count one's self as "single" before 16 or so, but even so that is almost 7 years of playing the best friends, giving romantic advice, without a single real romantic relationship. So of course the obvious question remains, why? Well according to most of my friends, I seem to have a good personality. While I might not dazzle everyone at parties with my stellar dance moves, ability to toss back 20 shots of alcohol, or talk to 20 different strangers, I do seem to be able to make people feel at ease and tell a few funny stories occasionally. But in the end, life does not give hold many "scholarship pageants" for personality. That leaves me with the big question of "am I just not pretty enough". So there is the crux of the matter, body image issues. The plague that effects women everywhere and has been written about everywhere by thousands of woman. And you thought this post might be actually about god or something. Now there really isn't a good end to this post, and I mean I have body-image issues that tend to center in on my weight. Well welcome to one of the biggest issues for Western women today. If for some strange reason, this issue isn't familiar to you all, try checking out either The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf or maybe "The Good Body" by Eve Ensler. Well I think this writing before bed thing has actually paid off in that I am now growing tired, maybe some other night I will write more about this whole mess. Goodnight, moon.

random mood posting

bah on pissy moods

listening: The District Sleeps Alone Tonight - Postal Service

I really like this music, and I like music in general. But I will forever be a music dork. It took me up onto a month ago to figure out that death cab for cutie and postal service have the same lead singer. I generally get most of my musical influences from my younger brother, who seems to be infinitely cooler than me, or at least in these kinds of areas. However I am learning, finally this summer during a 24 hour driving day (part of a larger week long road trip) I got an in depth lesson in how independent labels work, and some of the subtle differences between various forms of "satanism" and its relationship to death metal. Although when recently asked what I would choose for my favorite album of all time, I had to revert back to Simon & Garfunkel. Chalk it up to the brainwashing that I experienced as a childen by listening to their Central Park Concert record over and over while playing hours of lego with the younger bro, but this horribly un-hip group will always be a favorite. It also doesn't help my music cred that I tend to favor, lyrical, strongly melody, songs with hints of folk. I mean soft rock/pop isn't exactly the coolest category. But in my own defense my favorite of the three artists I saw during my first (and probably last) trip to a Loolapooluza concert, my favorite band was the Violent Femmes. I mean, who can resist a bunch of white middle aged men, who still like to rock it? In the end, I guess as much as I like learning about new music and plan on expanding my taste, I am okay with being a music dork. This is mainly due to my strong dislike for the music snob. You know those people who start to dislike artists as soon as they become poplular. Those who only like music that either sounds like mating yaks, involves lots of artistic distortion and is only listened to by 100 other people. Yeah, I would so take a music dork over a music snob.

commuting

So folks I am once again in the great state of Indiana, here at home, but of course no one else in my family is home either. Which is actually quite impressive seeing as we are now a household of 6 (all three children at home, plus the fiance). But my parents are up in South Bend, J is at some frisbee thing, and T & C are dining with friends. This afternoon, my main mission is to do laundry and pack for Chicago, plus if I am very good rip out some seams of the bridesmaid dress that I grew to hate with much passion yesterday. We'll see if some time apart has altered those feelings. Plus of course the endless task of emptying my room of the 10 plus years of stuff build-up. Does anyone know if they make Draino for bedrooms?

pre-orientation

So I am up again in Evanston. Yesterday, B, S and I drove up here (it only took us 4 hours! *note the sarcasm*). I think I am looking forward to making more friends in the city, mainly so that we can complain about the Dan Ryan together :). Anyways after a lovely reunion with Jess, we scampered off to Main St, where we had lunch at the Lucky Platter, which was delici. Then we wandered over to Starbucks, where Steph and I pulled out our laptops(Fiona and Cedric respectivily) and therefore we (or at least I) felt very city and sophistoicated. I of course soon ruined that impression by making all kinds of funny faces with Jess in front of my built in iSight camera. And then we took some that looked like this and this.

listening: Desaparecido by Manu Chao

Today, S & M (he he, those initials are funny) and B & me went up to the dunes after an enjoyable baptism service at Camp Friedenswald. It was a beautiful day, with temperatures warm, but not so unreasonable, and for one of the first times this summer, I got to spend almost all of it outdoors. The dunes were packed, but the water wasn't very crowded. We quickly figured this out by wading in and promptly freezing off our lower extremities. Apparently just because the lake has had all summer to warm up doesn't mean, doesn't mean it won't be 50 degrees. So we lazed around on our towels, and I read the last bit of my most recent Spenser novel by Robert Parker (the best sarcastic bodybuilder romantic detective from the 70s ever) and various magazines that I purchased for the sole purpose of reading on the beach. Now I must say that I know I have fair skin, so I willingly coated myself in sunscreen carefully getting even the hard to reach part of my back. However in my brilliance and offhanded thought that my legs needed some sun, I skipped that part. So now I have a nice shade of lobster red on my errrrr.... upper thigh. Yeah I would show you all a picture, but seriously I don't' like you that much :) In other news, despite all of J's great suggestions I think I have settled on Cedric as the name for this computer. Don't ask me why, but I just get very male Irish vibes from it. Well I think I want to read a little before bed.

me and the mac

two points for anyone who helps me come up with a good name for the new puter in my life

listening: The Golden Age by Beck

You know what's really cool right now? Tim and Charletta are buzzing around our kitchen for the first time in probably over 2 years and I just checked the tracking on my MacBook and apparently it just left China a few days ago.

something from the upcoming review (I am using Steph's computer)

Well it has been quite a while since my last post, not that I haven't thought of lots of interesting things to blog about during this time, but I guess I have just been too busy living those things to actually blog about. So lets see what have I been up too? I road tripped, which was amazing, long, stretching, beautiful, and above all friendship building. Then I attended the wedding of Z & E, which was simple, elegant, and rainbow perfect. After that weekend, I went east with my family to meet up with Tim & Char followed by the rest of my extended family. I really love my extended family, despite how complicated and competitive they all can be, when it really counts my family can rally around each other. For example our weekend reunion had both a very happy engagement announcement and also prayer requests for an upcoming surgery. Although, by far the hardest part of the weekend was watching my grandmother. She is very fully aware and wants so much to remain involved with the family. She has both Parkinson and this summer had hip replacement surgery. Despite how tired she gets, she insisted on attending the reunion. I think right now I have to say I hate old age, despite my healthy respect for it and the idea of life as finite, the decay of the body and sometimes the mind is so hard to watch. I think I am realizing this the most with this grandma, because I knew her when she was still a young 80, so alive and vital. Now while it is clear that her mind is still sharp, her body is becoming a burden. When I see, her I see the eventual fate of my parents and that is really hard for me to think about. I don't think I will ever be prepared for the difficulties of watching my parents age. When I was younger I used to be surprised that people in their 30's and 40's had a hard time dealing with their parents death. Part of me thought that if you were that far away from youth and so independent, the importance of your parents would fade. But now I am realizing how hard it will be to deal with the death of a parent, no matter what age. So that's a barebones update, in other news it looks like we actually have an apartment lined up in Chicago, and will hopefully be moving up in late August, early September. Oh and yeah it will be a three bedroom, which totally rocks. Becca, Steph and I have been planning and scheming and decorating (and of course Jess will join us in all of this when she arrives back from her summer travels). Let's see I also calculated it out and I logged around 5,000 miles in the car, over a 20 day period and made three trips through or to Chicago. I also impulsively bought a one day pass to Lollapooluza and saw Iron & Wine, Violent Fems and Death Cab for Cutie. It was a good day, but a little overwhelming and not entirely my scene, but it was fun to hang out with Jonathan in his element and to get to know his friend Jono. Oh and I finally did it, I bought a MacBook, which will hopefully arrive this friday. So I will try to update more this next few weeks as I attempt to A: quite my Goshen jobs, B: find or sew an amazing bridesmaid dress, C: Clean and pack up my room. I am sure I will have lots of exciting tales from those adventures. So have a great week.