Life Listed Chronologically

The thing about waking up and going into the woods first thing in the morning is that it defines your day. That hour I spend each morning listening and watching becomes my pace. When its raining or I manage to convince myself not to do this, my day just is not the same. Today, with the ground soggy and the air still crisp as I set off, I had to walk more carefully up and down rocky slopes covered with fallen leaves. Everything was intensified. The dry parts seemed drier and the sucking mud seemed to constantly threaten to pull my shoes off my feet. Squirrels and chipmunks were not scurrying along the ground, but audibly thumping. Several times I stopped wondering what the nose was as it was beyond the rusting of grass as small woodland creatures moved along the ground. When I finally emerged from the woods to walk along the road, the sky was purest blue and the air had warmed. It wasn't just warm but nearly hot as I thought once, twice about taking of my sweater but never did.
Thursday, October 30, 2003

Everyone is wondering when it's going to happen. When are the trees supposed to be ablaze with brillant oranges, firey reds and dazzling yellows. I look around and it appears as if the trees have changed color. The leaves on the ground are colored in those seasonal hues. But for some reason, everyone seems unsatisfied. I wonder if it because we expect it to be in someway inherently magical. If we expect these colors to signal in the fall and change our lives. I see these colors here and there as I drive, fluttering around me on my morning jog through the woods. They never are this all encompassing thing, but each day they are there and when I give myself the moment to look, I see. Maybe what is missing in the time to appreaciate rather than the lack of a brillany display of foliage. Maybe we are just so dmaned hard to satisfy.

I am contemplating working a cash register over winter break to pick up some cash. I would don a black apron and stand in a retail store in a mall for several hours for about 25% of my current hourly wage. In a way, I think it would be good to have the money. I could finally say, yes I have owrked retail rather than be made fun of by everyone else in the world that did at least on breif stint behind the register. Or maybe I'll just sit at home and make dinner for my boyfriend, mittens for homeless people and pass the month away on my terms.
Tuesday, October 28, 2003

I was awake for 40 hours last week. I was kind of wondering if I could make it to the 48 hour mark as, supposedly, one is more susceptible to hallucinations. I went to bed, ruining the closest I've gotten to the 48-hour / hallunicating point in nearly 4 years.

It felt as if I had been broken, finally. Those years of slowly adapting to the normal sleeping schedule were finally destructed. I was acting like a student and not a working drone. The predictable pattern of sleep does not do much in changing one's life for the better. More variable sleeping patterns beyond sleeping in on the weekends gives the whole world a new perspective.

I spent 95% of the first 24 hours within 5 feet of my computer, working on a paper. Lights off, in daylight to the long night listening to the guard at the old people's home coughing to watching the sky lighten and shutting my ligths back off when the were no longer needed.

The sad thing is that I felt the need to stay up until 11 or 12 pm any how. And woke the next day at 8 am. I acted as if it didn't matter despite the fact that the bags under my eyes were dragging on the floor.
Sunday, October 26, 2003

Information that is in no way vital:
1) I have taken to not wetting my toothbrush before toothpaste application or wetting the paste once it it one the brush. Maybe it's the toothpaste I'm using these days that isn't so much paste as it is gel, but I prefer to use a dry brush with gelly paste. This makes me happy but I feel if anyone should ever see me doing this, they would find it strange. This is a heads up, as if you encounter me brushing my teeth in such matter, I know it is strange, but it makes me happier, so keep your trap shut.

2) So, I've been smoking lately. What are you doing to do about it? I plan on going back to my nasty, waving hands and fake choking to death ex-smoker ways shortly. It was a learned association that typing papers goes much easier when you have 5 minute breaks where you are still looking at your work but relaxing with a cigarette. There is nothing else that can really provide other than playing games which leads to a 20 minute break instead. I have a fifteen page paper due tomorrow and I like smoking while writing papers.

3) I know too much about baseball. The men in my life over the past 6 years have slowly erroded all of the resistance to watching the sport. I will not, however, stop calling "runs" "points" as it sounds better to me to say a team is ahead a few points than a few runs. No one can stop me from doing this.

4) My boyfriend is becoming a hardcore menist (from feminist, but related to the rights of men in society). He refuses to enter a favorite soup place and has asked his friends to stop going as he thinks that the older waitresses that openly comment on his butt are out of control and inappropriate. It makes him feel uncomfortable. He knows if they were men and he was a female, it would be considered very wrong. He is totally for the rights of men to not be harassed.
Thursday, October 23, 2003

By not being able to sign on for several days, many key adventures that are sure to be formative to my life and the way I am currently looking at the world have not been told. Such information may have been best left not being recounted as it is possible it could become evidence of my tendency to:
a) slack off
b) behave in an immature manner not consistent with behavior to be expected of someone in my position.
c) walk excessively until my legs fall of, followed by strapping my legs to my back and walking on my hands until my arms fall off, followed by strapping my arms to my back and just writhing along the ground.

Edited: Pitas was down. What do expect for nothing?
Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Some people are a little confused why my schools shares the same building as the art school. They seem to wonder what those kids are up to and why we are pared together. I think it is the only logical place to put the two groups. Policy and art, side by side. Freakish nerds and nerdish freaks. They are wonderful, the kdis who sit in front with their oversized portfolios smoking cigarettes. All of them have bold statements that everyone has said before about "shaking up the system". Who "they" are is completely debatable.
Tuesday, October 14, 2003

Over the weekend I went apple picking for nearly 6 hours but did not pick one single apple unless you consider selecting one from the baskets in the "country" "farm" store picking. I did, however, see New Jersey as the trees have begun to change. Now is the time that the change happens in increments until it is overwhelming. Just a few short weeks ago, standing on the Watchung Ridge of the Reservation, looking over the low-lying areas of the Newark suburbs, I could tell the trees were starting even though, up close, they still appears to be green. But given that sweeping view, they had hints and hues. And now blazes of red and golden tops sparkle. And soon, they will all be empty, with huge piles along side the road, begging you to pull over and jump right in.

I have become a brown-noser. I have become an ultra-achiever. I attend conferences mildly related to projects I am working on at 8 am on the off hand chance my boss sees me, therefore proving my worthiness and commitment to understanding subject areas. I mention things that are left by the way-side in coversation. I bring up things that only generate more problems for me than to begin with. I have a huge binder full of primary source materials I found for my paper. I am supposed to help write a instructional book on a subject matter I know absolutely nothing of. I am not an over-achiever, I am a ultra-achiever. But, sometimes, it just feels like I am stuggling to get by, that all of this is what is necessary to keep me in good standing, to make people feel confident that paying me to go to school is worth their while. Either way, I'm a big nerd.
Monday, October 13, 2003

My groups presentation "won"/was deemed the best despite the fact that we were babbling idiots. I was happy to be done because getting to that point exhausted me.

I woke early that morning, took a walk/run with the dog, ate fruit for breakfast followed by a long shower. I ironed my clothes and dried my hair. I prepared food to take with me as I have nearly 6 hours straight of class. I got in the car and drove off to central NJ. Nearly at school, I stopped for a coffee and then got back on the road.

Five minutes later I picked my cup of coffee up and immediately, the cup flew off. Coffee spilled all over the passenger's seat, my bag, the center console, my pants. One my think this sucks, but I wasn't all that upset as only one tiny speck landed on my white button-down shirt. I stopped to clean up my seat and bag and was mostly relieved that my shirt was still in good shape.

In the parking garage at school, I got together my stuff, applied a fresh coat of lipstick and picked up my 1/3 empty coffee cup. I walked towards the stairs and went to take a sip of coffee. Another 1/3 of the cup pilled straight down the center of my top, leaving me shirt obviously stained.

For the next 15 mintues, I stood the in bathroom, slowly getting the huge tan marks off of my once-crisp white shirt. Afterwards, I used the hand dryer as my bra was now completely visible. My blue knit cardigan was blotted off and left to dry. For the remainder of the day, the dried coffee on my pants and cardigan left an aura of coffee around my while my shirt looked slightly frumpled, but, at the very least, unstained.

I retell these events in amusement as sometimes, that's just how things go. No matter what, something is bound to happen. The inevitable is inevitable. The unexpected is all that can be expected. Truism, metaphor, truism. As long as I am still the "winner" and can hold that thin thread over my classmates, it really doesn't matter.
Thursday, October 9, 2003

Tuesday, October 21, 2003

I haven't been involved in any substantive group project since high school. I purposely avoided any classes where any significant part of the grade came from a "group". But I had no choice in this one as it was one of the few required courses. In the end I realized a few things about people:
1) Beginning a sentence with "I agree, but" or "I understand, however" does not indicate agreeing or understanding but is a method for being dismissive of others.
2) People honestly believe that "contributing" invovles rephrasing sentences. Putting the first half of a sentence at the end is not doing work, it's moving words around.
3) There is a definite level of maturity and task-orientation that arises from participating in the work force. Working with people with little out-of-college experience makes it very hard to keep on task.
4) I make damn sexy power-points.

People have warned me to be careful about allowing my relationship to distract me from my school work. The boy has even said it himself, quickly ending conversations if I say I am studying. In an effort to avoid this, I have instead used my friends as a point of distraction. So much so that I spend approximately 5 times as much time with Jesse last week than the boy.

The ultimate of all the wasting time, avoiding work, or what I like to call "taking a break", was a visit to the park with my dog. The highlight that best describes the entire adventure was when we were crossing a small bridge over the pond and I let go of the dog's leash as he was pulling me and I did not want to pull him back, essentially into the pond. Jesse and the dog were jumping around and I turned around to get a stick to play fetch. In a flash, the dog turned a jumped into the pond.

Pond sounds nice and relaxing. Pond doesn't encompass the detritus at the bottom, the duck-poo smell of the place and the general sulphur-scent that rose as the dog stirred up the water. Pond also doesn't describe the fact that it is bordered by logs so that the edges are 4 foots drops in some places, making it nearly impossible for the dog to get out.

Instead, Jesse eventually bent over and helped lift a 90 pound stinking wet dog out of the "pond". And the scent rising of the two of the as we walked home stung my nose. Maybe that's my punishment for saying about 10 minutes before "he sure needs a bath" because I spent the next two hours washing both of my dogs. Jesse's cleanliness, I cannot vouch for.
Tuesday, October 7, 2003

Last night I wore a hat to keep me warm when I was stepping out to drink beers with my suburban crew. It was finally that time of year that a hat was needed. My hair looked super cute and flippy under it to the point that I couldn't handle it.

A few weeks ago, after meeting the realtor that is selling his mother's house and getting rid of the last thing that she owned and space she occupied among the living, the boy and I stopped that a cider mill, called Nettie Ochs, literally right down the street to his house. Its a strange place and I am not really sure where they even have the space for apple trees, but there are also horses nearby that I likewise don't understand where there is space. It's the suburbs, not farm land. We stopped because he was bummed when we first starting dating that they had closed the week before. We stopped becuase when they opened this year he practically shouted at me in his excitement "Nettie Ochs is open!!". We stopped because his mom liked their cider.

In the store, he insisted "buy a gallon for your mom." My mother doesn't really drink juices but I bought one and it was the best cider ever. He also informed me that for most of his life until just a few short years ago, he always thought that Ochs was a shorter version of orchard and not the name of the family who runs the place.

Earlier this week Jesse and I went for a walkin the reservation along what is known as the Watchung Ridge, esstentially a large elevated area that looks over the immeidate Newark suburbs and Manhattan. The sun was getting low in the sky and deer were boldly coming out from the trees to eat this and that off bushes. Jesse likes to tell people I was scaring the deer because I was testing to see what actions would make them go away short of pulling out a bow and arrow.
Friday, October 3, 2003

The best thing about being a student, absolutely honestly, is seeing that the next due date on my undergrad loans is "6/20/2005" and "In School Defer" listed as the status. This is feels better than I could have ever imagined!

Last night, driving in the dark, with my windows rolled up, realizing winter was coming, the turn indicators flashing as cars moved form lane to lane on the highway ahead of me struck me as particularly beautiful. I realized that if I had any ability to control the pace of my writing, to slowly describe the appearance of the yellow flash of light that then glided over to the next lane, the quiet emptiness of driving in the dark being surrounded by other people doing the exact same things, yet utterly alone, I could write a poem. My poem would be so bad that it would depress people. People might slash their wrists, not from the emotion the poem evoked but from having read something so horribly written that they could not live with the idea of a world where such crap is allowed to be written and read.

I drank a bottle of wine for dinner and had no after-effects thanks to my careful consideration of hydration. I drank about 100 oz. of water as well. I may not have been hungover, but I wasn't very well rested after having to wake up every 2 hours to use the toilet. No matter what you do, you can never win with drinking.
Thursday, October 2, 2003