I am grateful for (in no particular order):

1.) My wonderful, supportive parents.
2.) My wonderful, supportive siblings.
3.) My wonderful, supportive friends.
4.) My community here in California, and back in DC.
5.) My job.
6.) My wonderful cottage.
7.) My silly and wonderful dog, Oliver.
8.) My silly and wonderful car, Beatrice.
9.) My mentor/former professor who is helping me and supporting me through graduate applications.
10.) Graduate applications, that I might go to graduate school next year.
11.) You. Yes, you, reading this. You're part of my community, and I love you dearly.

<3

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter's oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Everyone who's been calling, writing, commenting, sending me links, supporting me, and being wonderful... thank you. I love you all so much. I'm so blessed.

Marn sent me this, and it's wonderful: http://1000awesomethings.com

He also made me this: http://spectrum.myriadcolours.com/~marnanel/explanation-of-carmens-life

You may find this amusing, but my Dr. Phil rant from last night signaled to me that I'm coming out of this weird depression/funk I've been in over the past month. Before it, all I've really been posting are music videos and halfhearted wisdom tooth updates, and generally feeling wretched.

But I think I rebooted this weekend. Seriously. Overdosing on season one of "Heroes," hanging out with Paul, making dinner, shopping for clothes... it felt really good and productive and therapeutic. And last night I went from work to an anxiety support group to Toastmasters and home again to a very excited dog. I watched True Blood and wrote. This morning, when I got a 6:00AM call on the emergency pager, I didn't bat an eyelash. After I found coverage for the staff member, I walked Oliver, did some dishes, took out the garbage, and then listened to a guided meditation podcast for twenty minutes before drifting back off to sleep. This morning, I forewent my coffee for water, ate a spinach pasta salad for lunch, and I feel GREAT.

This past month, I felt like there were too many hours in the day and I didn't know what to do with most of them. Now, I feel like there's just the right amount, and it's great. I feel very centered and relaxed, which is a first since the middle of July.

Just wanted to share. <3 you all.

I'm having my wisdom tooth out tomorrow.

Pro: There's only one tooth, and not four.
Another pro: After this is out and healed - no more wisdom tooth pain. YAY!

Con: It's covered by my jaw bone, so they basically have to chisel the tooth out of my head by breaking off part of my jawbone. WHAT THE HELL.
Another con: During the consultation, they showed me a video about all of the things that can possibly go wrong during wisdom tooth surgery, including death from anesthesia complications.
One more con: I hate dentists, doctors, needles, surgery of all types. Why did I agree to do this again?

Blegh. Swallowing my anxiety, going to bed.

Sarah left this morning.

Just now, I was trying to make pot stickers and I ALMOST BURNED DOWN MY ENTIRE KITCHEN.

Send help plz.

Today is my one-year anniversary of arriving in California.

Wow.

Last weekend, I was lucky enough to be in Jon and Kelli's wedding.

I love Jon and Kelli. Living with them was amazing. Not just because it's awesome to live with your friends, but also because I was privileged to witness the love between them grow and flourish. When I got the phone call last Fourth o' July that Jon had proposed to Kelli, I danced with joy for HOURS.

So. The wedding.

( the long version, with pictures )

My favorite shot from the whole trip:



Isn't she gorgeous?

So, to sum up for the teal deer crowd:

1.) Miss DC so hard. Miss friends even harder.
2.) Best - and geekiest - wedding ever.
3.) Contra dancing is ridiculous.
4.) I cry during everything.
5.) I am the luckiest person alive.
6.) Saw Ice-T and model wife at airport. Pilot was weird and funny.
7.) Life? Will always bring you full circle.

The weather here's been gorgeous and hot for three days now. It's fantastic. It makes me feel all strange and excited and giddy, because it means that summer is coming.

Summer. Despite the fact that I'm just going to be working through it instead of taking a break like the student I used to be, it still has me thrilled to the core. Traveling. Adventures. Running around barefoot. Reading in the grass. Iced things. Swimming. Dancing. I can smell it in the air. When I wake up, the scent of summer blowing through my windows settles on me like a blanket.

I can hardly wait.

Almost got into a major car accident because I thought there was a squirrel in my car. Turns out it was a sweatshirt. Don't ask.

While at Target, I spent 23 minutes trying to decide between brands of underwear (and cursing in frustration that they've stopped selling the kind that I really liked), only to realize that the endeavor was pointless: the "plus sized" underwear was god-awful ugly (white granny panties, WTF?), and the other kind was cute and colored and had all kinds of different cuts and looked totally hot on the model but didn't come in my size (well, underwear sizes are sort of subjective - the packaging suggested that possibly I would fit into an 8, but since the models were all really super thin I had no idea if the cut would look good, or what an "8" actually entailed, etc.). That led to this particular mindfuck:

Me (in my head): Wow. That underwear looks super-cute/hot on that model. That would look super cute/hot on me. *pause* That's stupid. I don't look like the model on the package, I just WANT the model on the package. Oh, that underwear looks cute. She looks hot. I should buy that underwear... goddamn. I am not the model.

Then I'd turn to the condescendingly named "Just My Size" brand* and they're all unflattering cuts and stupid colors (white, pink, floral... give me a break) and I'd think "over my dead body," and then I'd turn back to the other kind, and the cycle would start all over again.

I didn't buy any underwear, in case you're wondering. I bought a seven dollar iron and salsa and bread and a picture frame to replace the one that I broke with a tennis ball.

*... and can we talk about this for a second? Just My Size? What is this, some kind of three-foot-tall-Barbie-meets-Fisher-Price-tea-set-for-children? They make underwear for grown women. You're not marketing them to fourth-graders. Sheesh.

I woke up this morning around 7:30. My room was pale with early morning light. My sheets, which I'd washed the night before, were soft against my skin. I was curled up on my mattress, in a perfect position. My body temperature was absolutely, completely comfortable. It was quiet, except for the sound of birds. Oliver lay next to me, wedged up against my body. As I blinked and shifted, his tail thumped on the bed.

I was moving away from the last scenes of a dream that I can't remember, except that it was green, and lovely, and the threads that clung to me still are that of contentment and joy.

For five minutes, I lay there quietly, barely awake but aware of my surroundings, my dog by my side, the birds chirping, and me thinking I am alive and good and this day is fresh and beautiful and I have everything to be happy about.

I have these, every so often. These perfect aesthetic moments, where everything is absolute and amazing and I swell with excitement and joy at the thought of being here, being me, and being alive.

Good morning, everyone.

I just realized that I've had this LJ for over seven years. Not as long as some, I suppose, but it certain provides some very interesting insight into how I've changed and grown since early high school. When I started this journal my sophomore year of high school, I was insecure, not lovin' on my body, single, uncertain about life. Now, seven years later, I'm... uh, insecure, not lovin' on my body, single, and uncertain about life.

But. But. I know that I'm capable of a relationship and generally healthy human interactions. I'm moving towards health and body acceptance. I know more what I want. I've found some direction, began the inklings of a writing career (very, very inkly inklings). I'm living in California. I have a squooshy faced doglet who I love so much who's a good silly boy? Who?.

*cough*

I'm more confident. I have more of a sense of who I am as a person. I've experienced a lot of crazy, frightening, wonderful, beautiful stuff in those years. I've made a few enemies. I've made more friends than I deserve, and for that I am eternally grateful. I have a freakin' degree. I've driven across the country. I'm seen the other side of the world. And I'm only 22! There is so much ahead, sitting at the skyline, waiting for me to floor my gas pedal and drive through the storms.

When I started LJ - something that I'd never heard of, something that my friend Lucinda suggested I check out on a whim - I had no idea that it would grow into this, into something so incredible. I'd always been a terrible journal- and diary-keeper, but there was something about LJ that made it easier, and better. There's intimacy, and community, and advice, and well-deserved criticism (I take your criticism to heart, I really do). My Livejournal is a friend's living room, a coffee shop, a sounding board, a classroom, a therapist's office, a career center, a writer's room, a bed, and a quiet place.

I know it sounds kind of weird, but I appreciate all of you so much, and that includes the people who I've never met, but who I still think of as good friends. I'm a very open person, and that's in no small part related to this community. I've laid my stories down at your feet, I've pressed my poems into your hands and my photos to your foreheads. I've whispered my stories in your ears. And you listen. And that means more than I can express.

My first real post, that I made on January 13th, 2002, was... ridiculous. Hilariously so. I won't reproduce it here, except to say that it contains the sentence "WHY WHY WHY me????" The question echoes, weirdly, throughout the hardwood halls of my life, except that when the tone was once despairing and selfish, it's now... it's now a real question. I'm wandering through existence, my heart in a canopic jar nestled in my arms, searching for other people, for reasons, for experiences. Why me? How did I get to be so lucky? Why me?

7 years & 22 days, 2,398 journal entries & 17,815 comments later, here I am.

Thanks for being here with me.

I love Six Feet Under, but I think I'm going to start calling it People Making Really Bad Choices to Cope with Legitimate Problems. It just seems, at times, almost excessive to the point of not being realistic.

Or maybe life is just like that, and I'm just not old enough to understand.

FAFSA filed, grad school applications in, literary journal submissions posted, big client at work generally wrapping up... Sarah and I and Rebekah are going to have dinner with Frances (and Jonathan, maybe?) tonight, and I feel like I've really earned it.

I'm tired, but it's actually an okay tired.

Next on my list: procure a bike.

Work = insanely stressful. Supported living is, by far, the most surreal industry in the entire universe. Yesterday? Was a bad day.

So to unwind, Kat and Andrew and Leslie and I went to the White Horse Inn, known to locals as the "White Ho." It's a gay/lesbian bar five minutes from my apartment. And it freaking rocks.

For a $3 cover, we drank beer and watched a drag king show. And for the record: I am ridiculously gay. The girls in drag were so hot I was actually loosening my buttons. Later, a woman came over to ask if Andrew was gay (her male friends were inquiring). "I'm taken," he said, "but Carmen's newly single."

"Really?" She raised an eyebrow. "I have a girlfriend, or else I'd..." She stopped and raised her beer. "Cheers! To all of you!"

"To you!" Clink.

We grooved to the music until midnight (it was a work night, after all). It was exactly what I needed.

When I was a child, I loved helping my mother cook. My tasks varied from recipe to recipe - after all, an eight-year-old arm can only stir the cookie dough so many times before it aches from overuse - but my absolute, all time favorite job was the chopping thingie.

I don't actually know what it was called. It was glass, and had a lid that screwed onto the top, out of which protruded a thin metal plunger with a wide blue end, about the size of my palm. Inside, a cross of semi-sharp blades would sink deep into the pile of whatever was inside, chopping it into a size relative to the frequency of pushes on the plunger.

I loved that thing. My mother would fill it halfway with pecans, and I would go to town, whacking away with unmitigated enthusiasm, and the same sort of destructive glee that would later manifest itself in dancing jigs on bubble wrap and putting my foot through cardboard boxes (to "break them down"). If my mother wasn't monitoring my chopping closely enough, she was soon left with pecan dust. I can't even remember how many times the satisfying rhythmic thump of the chopper was interrupted by my mom's hands and voice. "Carmen Carmen Carmen Carmen Carmen," she'd say, prying it away from me, "that's enough. That's enough. Enough. Carmen. Enough." And once it was out of my hands, she'd tap what was left of the nuts into her bowl, a strange expression of grimness punctuated with amusement twitching on her face.

I made a cheese ball tonight. I'm having Thanksgiving in the city with my wonderful friends Frances and Jonathan, and I am in charge of a salad (which I did make, guys, don't worry!), but I had a thought tonight while standing in the grocery store. I wanted to make my mother's cheese ball. Her pineapple pecan cheese ball.

A phone call home and an hour later, I was standing in my kitchen, assembling the ingredients on the counter as Oliver shook with pleasure at my feet, his tail wagging so hard against my leg that it was beginning to hurt.

After wrestling with "finely chopping" an onion (my oversensitive nose makes this a really arduous task), I turned to the pecans.

I don't have a chopping thingie. I don't have much of anything in my kitchen. I tried to chop with a knife, like I had with the onion, but the pecan bits flew everywhere, snapping in half and launching themselves into my beautiful yellow walls. Frustrated, I did the only thing that made sense.

I put them into a bag and punched the hell out of it.

No lie. I scooped the pecans into the bag, and beat it against the counter until it cried I felt better the pecans were what could be qualified as "chopped."

What can I say? It's been a long couple of weeks.

Sarah and I had plans today to go to Monterey, but they were thwarted by us realizing that it was much further away than we had previously thought. So we pulled out a map and put our finger on Half Moon Bay.

We burned a mix CD appropriate for the theme of the trip (Your Ex-Lover is Dead featuring prominently in the lineup... I mean, with lyrics "There's one thing I want to say, so I'll be brave / You were what I wanted / I gave what I gave / I'm not sorry I met you / I'm not sorry it's over / I'm not sorry there's nothing to save," how could we go wrong?) and took off. We crawled over the winding San Mateo Bridge and then up into the mountains, coming down into a valley where people were selling flowers and fruit and metal dinosaurs the size of a house. The air was fragrant and we bought strawberries and drove all the way to the shore.

It was divine. We sat on blankets and took off our shoes and smelled the water and ate rice cakes and apples and watched the windsurfers and talked and I took pictures and every few minutes one of us would say "We're at the beach. In November."

As the day progressed, the fog that was so far out over the ocean came closer and closer. By the time the sun had vanished, the fog was creeping up onto the shore. It was eerie and lovely.

Pictures, most of them below the cut. Enjoy. :)







( more )

We stumbled back to the car, covered in sand and freezing, but incredibly content. On the way back up the mountain, we realized that we could see the sun setting over the fog.



At home, Oliver greeted us happily. We made a delicious dinner and watched Ever After.

Tomorrow, I have to take Sarah to the airport at 4:45 am. I also have a Perspective MFA Graduate Event at Mills College. Ahhh, I can't believe that I'm actually applying to grad schools. It's so surreal.

I've discovered why getting your cavities drilled and filled is so utterly alarming.

When the dentist is bent over you like that, pressing the whirring drill into your strangely numb mouth, the air fills with a burning smell. The distressing part? Your first thought is "Holy crap, I hope I didn't throw my fan belt. Should I pull over?"

Overall, though, it went okay. I tried to smile (as I usually do) to a small child on my way into my office building, and the attempt resulted in a half smile, half grimace that made her shriek in fear. Also, I'm paranoid that I'm drooling on myself.

On my way to get my first cavities EVER filled up. Eek eek eek. Wish me luck.

Dear Chuck Norris,

You're an idiot. Your show was stupid. You're not as cool as you think.

Dear Sarah Palin,

Why, in the name of God, are you still giving interviews? Why? Do you have any idea how many people cannot stand you? Even your own party is doing their best to scramble as far away from you as possible. Stop giving ridiculous interviews and GO AWAY. Hearing your voice makes my brain want to explode, even though there's no longer a threat that you might be president.

Argh.