cat's away

I sent at least $500 worth of clothing out into the world today, I hope. It should have been picked up by now. I will check when I get home. I thought I'd feel better about it. I did a good deed for a worthy cause, and I got rid of a bunch of stuff, though while utilitarian, was not of particular use to me, and thus burdensome to own. I do feel good about it, just not that good. There is more stuff I'd like to get rid of. In enjoy the idea of downsizing and hope it's something I can make happen someday. I've always liked the idea of a cozy nest, where the exterior belied the interior. Some of my favorite children's books were those by Francis Burney, The Secret Garden, The Little Princess. Sometimes still I drive through rundown neighborhoods and think it would be fun to rent an apartment there, or buy a condo, and completely refurbish the interior. An inviting utopia in the midst of havoc. I like having stuff, but not too much stuff such that it gets in the way. I'd rather have experiences.
I went to see Avatar yesterday with Jake. We held out and saw it in 3D on the IMAX screen, and it was just as stunning as all the rave reviews had implied. I see what they are saying about the conventionality of the story line, but it was good enough, and reiterated things that were worth saying. I liked the idea of the planet/moon as one giant, interconnected mind with more neural connections than the human brain. A mind that the inhabitants could literally plug into and upload and download to and from. And it was an amazing visual experience. I am glad we went. I'm not sure how determined T is to see it. I will find out when he returns from his trip. While I liked Avatar, it is nearly three hours long and my butt did get a little numb.
I've kept slightly odd hours this week, staying up later than usual because of Jake mostly. I'm surprised at how well I have been sleeping when I do go to bed though. I wake up sporadically through the night, particularly if his neighbors are fighting again, or if he is feeling cuddly. He's so incredibly warm all the time that while it makes me smile when he spools himself around me, it also inevitably keeps me awake until such time as he goes back to his side of the bed. It is funny that I get lonely two feet away from him and like to have some part of my body in contact with his.
I've been more self conscious around him than usual and he's probably noticed. I've never weighed this much before for any length of time and while I know I still fit well within normal parameters, I don't really care for the dimpling in my thighs, or the width of my hips. Losing this weight is proving to be more of a challenge than I've been up for as well. Eating lightly and running three days a week isn't enough like it has been before. I am going to have to at least temporarily find a way to cut back on my calorie intake rather severely, and I need to find a way to start working out at least some 5 days a week.
And so goes my year thus far. I'm still failing in the writing department. I'm working on a religious context for my short story, and toying with lengthening it, but half way through January and I've done no more than a couple pages of writing. All the same infrastructures are still in place and I haven't found a successful way to do anything with them yet. My mind continues to work on the issue, but even this blog is growing harder to maintain. Still, I want to remember, I like my details, and enjoy having access to them.

new year

I found myself reluctant to write this year end but, force of habit. I'm feeling mildly cynical, which is a difficult trap to avoid falling into when you see quite so much repetition of behavior, particularly my own. Still, I think I agree with my standing definition of cynicism in that it is a lazy pattern of thinking. Change is possible, and thinking it isn't is just an excuse not to enact it. The practicality really doesn't help though. My energy reserves are narrowly limited and I have to really want something to make it happen, want it from a rational, means to an end, point of view. It has to make sense, there needs to be a goal. In this case, like with writing, and a degree of autonomy, I may still be insufficiently motivated. Part of me just wants to do it but I'm noticing that part of me isn't particularly disciplined. I hope that's not the bit of me that's responsible for weight loss, because at the tender age of thirty something I've already hit that, just need to lose ten pounds phase. bah!
I will say it has been a nice year. I finished going to school, I did not get my Master's but I am not especially broken up about it. I toy with the idea of formalizing it but am not sure it's currently in me. I also think about going back better prepared for a somewhat more practical masters program. I do like learning, and I like to be held to a regiment of sorts. It's satisfying.
As I get older it is easier and easier to lose track of time, and I become more and more preoccupied with its loss. I hate lying awake at night wondering about the end of my life and obsessing about it. I find it frustrating to believe that nothing is going to exist for me after I die and battling with the idea that humans, that all life is more significant than that and that something ought to happen to my consciousness after I cease occupying this mortal coil. I know that wanting does not make it so and during the day I suppose I am reconciled after a fashion, but at night it keeps me awake and it is increasingly common. I hope that I can find a way to make that stop because it is a thing which is currently inevitable and I would certainly be more comfortable if I didn't have to think about it at least.
For now my life is mostly happy. I am torn sometimes between T and Jake because my life here is a comfortable one with a man I can communicate with and feel safe with but feel no particular challenge from or chemistry with. Jake by contrast is something of a bull ride. He is exhilerating, and often an adrenaline rush. There is always attraction, common interest, scintillating conversation, but with an edge of uncertainty that he is as unfamiliar with what he wants as I am with what I want. I just wish I had access to both worlds without compromise, but that is not the way this particular path is laid out and if I choose to tread it those are the drawbacks I will deal with.
I know I should be more specific about the year because a decade from now I will not be so familiar with these events as I currently am. There weren't really any highlights this year though. There has been a theme that's been playing itself out for a while, and the one thing that 'happened' was school ending. I mentioned it, and that is that. For the rest, perhaps I'll cover things more specifically for my birthday. For now that is all. Goodbye 2009.

'Tis the season

I think every non cheapskate company on the planet had their holiday party this past Friday. Here we had a luncheon, so perhaps some of the cheapskate companies had parties that day too. As has been the trend, T's company didn't have a real party either this year, but Jake's did, and I got to go. It was even more fun this year than it was last year. I finally got to wear the dress that I picked up last year, and it was universally approved of. It fit me a little more comfortably than I would have liked. I'm getting downright large, if only by my own standards. Extreme measure are in the process of being taken. But yeah, I had a great time. I just hate leaving at the end of the night.
It's funny feeling responsible for Jake's situation. I cast myself in the role of enabler sometimes and I'm not sure how justified that is. I'm not going to do anything about it for right now so I might just as well stop being preoccupied with it.
Jake is off work all week this week so I'm hoping to spend some afternoon's with him watching The Mentalist and going jogging. I also want to go see Avatar, I think in 3D. The glasses are appallingly uncomfortable but the movie looks fantastic. I suggested sneaking booze into the theater with us as it's a very very long movie and it might help me cope with the numb buttocks I know I'm going to wind up with.
I'm surprised I didn't manage to go see it over the weekend. I was a little disorganized. I generated enough enthusiasm though to persuade Jake to go get the Christmas tree he wanted, and I got to decorate it. It turned out beautifully and I have some nice stab wounds to commemorate the occasion. Spruce trees are notoriously unforgiving.
I have had fun with this season honestly. There hasn't been a lot of pressure and knowing most of the immediate family is going to be out of town has been liberating. I do need to brace myself for the possibility of things getting foisted on me last minute because T will feel obliged to perform functions he refused to prepare for. I will hope for the best and brace for the typical. I don't need to get unduly irked by petty inconvenience. Dammit, I will have fun. And on to the new year, which increasingly I suspect will be much like the old.

Writing it out

Jake invited me to his company Christmas party again this year, which surprised me mildly because I know at least one of his coworkers knows the situation with me, plus he knows them all well enough now to not require any moral support. Still, he invited me and I accepted and I have been looking forward to it mildly. Particularly as he mentioned he and some of his friends have been practicing a dance routine that sounds like it will be entertaining to watch. I was talking to him this morning about said event and was talking about how fun it will be to see especially as I have a video function on my phone. I was joking about uploading it to youtube. At some point my sallies made him rather uncomfortable and he excused himself from the conversation. Jake is notoriously self conscious and the nature of my teasing had obviously tapped a nerve. After the conversation I texted him an apology for causing him the discomfort, and he proceeded to ignore me....all day.
After a few bland notes I sent to him at random to see if it was my imagination, I asked him point blank if he was in fact ignoring me, to which he replied in the affirmative. So yeah, ouch. I basically told him I thought it was an unfair escalation on his part and that I was hurt. I got a text from him saying 'nice try'. Now, I have an only slightly sub nuclear emotional response to being accused of guilt tripping. I hate it, particularly as I sort of feel like his accusation was the pot calling the kettle black. I mean, what exactly was he trying to accomplish by snubbing me all day after I apologized to him? What's that, guilt trip you say? Yeah, anyway. He chose to elaborate on that point and attack the way I handled the situation, so I wrote back to him to try to outline my point of view. I don't know if I succeeded or failed at this point and knowing Jake I may well have failed spectacularly. I let him know I resented the accusation that I was trying to make him feel guilty, but I ended the missive with an affirmation of the sincerity of my apology.
I would rather not see this relationship crash and burn over such a trivial incident. My normal strategy has been to just take the blame and I was probably more pugilistic this time because I get tired of taking the blame when I don't feel like it all belongs to me. It has been good for me in that it has been so much more important for me to keep Jake in my life than it has been to be right or even partly right that I've developed a slightly better ability to self review and see how utterly caustic I can be, but I feel like I've gotten to the point where I want just a little more equality.
Maybe I'm fucked and this time we're going our separate ways. I can't decide if I should ask him today if he wants his key back, or wait on it. He's notably absent from messenger, and that is certainly deliberate. Guess I'll hold off on getting him a Christmas gift.

Intermission

We have contractors working on our home right now due to some drywall damage. They came over the other day to set up some equipment and cut some holes. I had to be there when they arrived to let them in etc. One of them was all kinds of entertained that I was playing Dragon Age on my XBox. Anyway, they seemed nice enough that I left them there to their own devices while I went to drop off some leftover turkey at Jake's place. He was home with a nasty head cold that I probably gave him. I didn't stay long but it had been long enough for both of us that we had a nice quicky on the couch. It felt amusingly illicit to have left my house and the workers to go have a little interlude with my lover. I know, silly of me, but that's what endorphins will do I suppose. Anyway, they'd nearly finished working when I returned so I ran a quick Heroic Daily on my paladin and went back over to Jake's place for the rest of the afternoon and evening. T had plans to watch a game so I was free for a while. We watched the rest of an interesting movie called The Nines, with Ryan Reynolds. We also fooled around some more upstairs after a pleasant dinner of grilled cheese sandwiches. I kinda like the Sam Adams Double Bock, good stuff.
I keep meaning to dive into the holiday season like I mean it. There is quite a bit to do and I just haven't been able to muster the focus. And honesty, Thanksgiving wasn't that hard to pull off. I wasn't worried about it to begin with and the actual execution was even easier than I'd anticipated. Even the MIL was reasonably well behaved and all the food turned out very well. Everyone stuck around for longer than I could have wished but that's just me being an introvert and I was not tortured in any way really. I'm still not sure what we're doing for Christmas. These people tend to plan everything at the last possible minute.
We're thinking tentatively about going back home to visit for New Year's but I don't think that's going to happen. At least I've taken some time off just in case, and it will be fun to have a vacation. I may forget how to work. Speaking of work, the classifieds are still pretty slim pickings. It will be amusing if it takes me an entire year after school is out to find a new job. I am getting too accustomed to such ease and free time. I still worry a little about what more financial self reliance is going to do to my relationship. I am hard on T and my atheism disturbs him more because I make an issue of it than for any other reason. Oh well.
I could say more but honestly I'm tired of details. I know I keep writing this in part because I'm disturbed by the swift and constant passage of time and I feel like writing it down at least gives me a somewhat better grip on where my life has gone and is going.

Seasonal

Winter always seems more real to me than Summer. Summer is a time out from the work of living. You are encouraged to play, and life is more of a pass time than a job. I can hang on to winter, I can make more things happen here. Funny to think of time as a place but all times are associated with places so I suppose it's not unreasonable. And I talk as though winter is easier to hang on to than summer but here we are at the latter end of November with Christmas looming around the corner and I'm not sure when I realized summer was over for another year.
T is out in the NW right now so I've been staying with Jake most of the week. It's been pleasant as usual and it is increasingly obvious this has become a pattern for him. I remark only because he came home rather late on Monday from work, and Tuesday is a traditional happy hour day for him and that had him out until 10pm. From this it is apparent that he takes my presence in his life for granted. This doesn't bother me, and makes me smile a bit, but it also makes me think. Just how content is he with the status quo. Are we just going to meander along this way until he literally trips across something more interesting? We have built an existence in common and aren't likely to suddenly cease getting along. I don't know, but for the time being I am content. I suspect I agonize over it more than he does, but my end is a touch more complex anyway, and I am the girl in the relationship. It's funny to entertain the prospect of an affair that spans a decade.
I continue to be frustrated in my job hunt, but with unemployment at 10% I can't complain but just so much. I was off work for a couple of days last week due to the Nor'Easter we had. It was nearly the equivalent of some of the tropical storms we've had in the area, and our work parking lot was mostly underwater. As per usual the water blew sideways in through the ventilation in our home so I need to remember to call a contractor to appraise the damage. I feel like I need to step up and make these things happen as I am the one with the free time. Sometimes, because of that, I wish I could stop having all the free time. Other times I wish I just had permission to keep on as I am so I could adapt and plan accordingly. I want to go places and do things and I need to know what kind of platform I'm working with. Of course, if I would just get it together and make self employment work it would be far less of an issue. Dream dream dream dream.
Tonight I'm supposed to go running with Jake in the neighborhood, it will be good for me as we're planning another hearty and well balanced dinner, nothing gained, nothing lost. I do feel good about working out a little harder though. I'd like to work on my speed a little I just have such an aversion to the treadmill lately. I've also been contemplating ways to break myself of my nearly debillitating carbohydrate habit. I just can't eat that much spinach, and pasta is so damned tasty.
All the rest is trivial. Dad is being really annoying with his god stuff. I just did a bunch of farming and crafting in WoW to make some stuff for an in game friend who is new. I have a niece now and no idea what to get her for Christmas. T has given me no idea what to expect for the holidays. Yep, all standard stuff. Oh yeah, mom gave away her dog, we are both relieved, and the dog seems happy.

Sum up

I'd started jogging with Jake again but it didn't last long. It's just too dark this time of year to go trekking out to the park at night. The last time we planned to we got rained out. I told T I was going to meet up with Jake and try to talk him out of going, then T ran into Jake and I at the grocery store where we'd gone to pick up some stuff for brownies for his office. T was acting oddly for the next few days and when I would ask what was wrong, he'd claim it was nothing. You can only bother a person so much before you actually create a problem so I left it alone. About a week later he confessed that it bugged him to see me at the store with Jake and then he gave me twenty questions about whose car we had taken, why I hadn't just called him to cancel, etc. T knows that Jake and I are friends and I know that it bothers him so I don't rub his nose in it, but when he goes after me over trivial shit I find it irritating. It would be one thing if he were privvy to the true nature of the relationship, but as he is not I find his reactions excessively needy and paranoid. Yes, I know, no one would take my side on that one but that's only because you all know there is more going on and I can't ask an audience to ignore that information. Bleh, I shall take my lumps.
Anyway, T had made plans to go out of town for a few days last week, and then he cancelled the trip the day before he was supposed to leave. I was annoyed. My temperament still doesn't handle changes of plans very well. He at least did reschedule and he's supposed to leave again tomorrow for a couple of days. He may or may not travel next week, and he's supposed to 'definitely' be travelling for a full week the week after that. I'm looking forward to the break. I am perfectly content having him around and my life is downright cozy. We get along well and I enjoy our routine, but I like having the variety sometimes, living the stupid fantasy for a while, and getting the hell away from my World of Warcraft habit. I can maybe watch some new movies, get some more reading done, and track down other entertainments. Plus Jake and I have tentative plans to watch the upcoming meteor shower. That should be fun if I can drag my butt out of bed at the appropriate and ungodly hour.
Halloween was on a Saturday this year. I prepared accordingly, but my entire cul de sac banded together and inadvertently thwarted me. They had a group set up complete with brazier in the middle of the street, effectively siphoning off my constituency. I have a lot of left over candy. We went out and joined them for a bit after I browbeat T into it. He claims to want to socialize more, but getting him to actually do it can be like pulling teeth....impacted wisdom teeth....growing sideways. Still, I think we both had a nice time once we got out there. I've gotten to know the folks next door a bit better, and I borrowed Big Bang Theory from them. Their eldest son has Asperger's so they're fans of the show. Now I need to finish watching it.
Things seem to be going well with Jake. It's an absurdly comfortable relationship. It was odd though, the other weekend he was mysteriously unavailable on Saturday, said he was working. I wound up going out to lunch with T and I swung by Jake's place on the way back. I hadn't seen his car at the office and I was curious to see if he was home, plus I was going to pick up my copy of Firefly, at least ostensibly. But that plan was foiled as both his cars were there plus an extra in the driveway. The other car looked a lot like the one he describes as belonging to the office manager where he works. I texted him to let him know I'd driven by, and why I'd done so in the interest of transparency, I needed him to know that I knew for some reason and that I had no intention of pursuing it. He did not elaborate on the situation and other than making humorous leading remarks to see my reaction, he has left the entire subject alone. The funniest part of the entire situation for me was my reaction to seeing that car there. It was almost exactly like my response to finding out he had slept with J. But while my body went into overdrive, my brain didn't spiral into gibbering incoherence and as far as I can tell, I'm fine. I don't know how fine, but I seem to have managed to blow it off, whatever it was.....or is.
And while there is a lot more commentary I could throw in here, I think this is enough for now.