avoiding homework

I'm having a hard time doing some rewrite of an essay I thought was just perfect to begin with...(yes, sometimes I can be quite the stubborn self-assured artiste) so I thought I'd at least do something constructive and come on here and write.

To say that I feel on top of things is as close as it gets to what is actually happening in my life. Not to say that I am actually doing all the things I ought to be doing, but the things that are coming at me a hundred m.p.h. are getting handled. And smoothly.

I don't know where this is coming from. I mean I guess I do, I'm just doing all the things I said I would do, but I'm not sure why I'm doing them. For instance, the homework that I'm avoiding? I wouldn't even think that I could do it today, why not do it tomorrow? I have time before class. Right before class, but whatever.

Last week I did my homework for my Monday afternoon class the Saturday before. That is pretty amazing for Miss Pro Cro (as my sister aptly shortened from procrastinator).

And today, my day off, I spent the morning making breakfast for Eric, a little bit of yoga, organizing a heaping pile on my shelf, packing a box of unneeded items, cleaning the shells we got on the Cape (see, that was over a month ago!), cleaned the bathroom, took a shower and now I am dressed up and beautiful for our date tonight.

Not bad for a day's work, eh?

I have to admit, there were a few slacking off moments and for sure there were thoughts like: Just do it...tomorrow.

I realized that there was a lot of procrastinating that was impeding on the other stuff I had to do. And if I just did the things I said I would when I had time to, then I wouldn't have such a hard time juggling everything. But it wasn't easy to get. I kind of get away with a lot of crap from almost everyone. One lady that I babysit for really set the final nail into my procrastination coffin.

I was supposed to babysit in the morning but I still had homework to do. So I woke up early, a few hours, and did the homework. But I took too long to do it and didn't give myself enough time to get ready. I figured it would be okay if I came a little late. I called her to let her know and then got ready and left. I was surprised when she was totally upset, because she'd had somewhere to be and wondered if maybe it wasn't going to work out if I couldn't be on time.

If anything can straighten out a procrastinator like me, it's the threat of losing esteem, friendship, and very importantly, income.

The thing is, I actually really like doing things when I have time to, instead of just doing it later. So I am going to try to keep on this roll. It's been a long life of procrastinating (which my sister can attest to) but I think I can turn the habit around.

Wish me luck.

how life happens for me...

There is a place near my school that at least every student has been to at one time or another. It is a restaurant called Thai Spoon. The food is consistent and good, the place is quiet and cozy, so it's no surprise that I end up there at least once a week, if not more. Also, the only person that I have truly made friends with meets me there once a week. I know it is hard to believe that with my high level of attractive personality I have only managed to successfully make and keep a friend. I think alot of it has to do with the fact that I feel so much older and wiser than most of my classmates, but I also have always been a bit of a loner (which I think I got from my mom). I feel quite fond of my friend, Katherine, and I enjoy her company quite a lot. She is also a fiction writing major and we share some other interests. There could be none so dorky as the two of us sitting through an entire year of Astronomy. Together.

Every Wednesday we meet. It is right after my English Composition class and I walk the block in great long strides. Katherine waits around for an hour after her English Composition II class. She has another class later and could probably make it home and back with an hour to spare, but we are friends and this is when we see each other. Wednesdays at Thai Spoon.

We always get the spinach rangoons. They are just like crab rangoons, but made with spinach. They are the best rangoons I have ever tasted. I would have never tried them because I don't really like crab rangoons (Which I now realize has something to do with the sickly flavor of the imitation crab). Katherine is a vegetarian and doesn't eat any kind of animal product, real or imitation. They are deep fried wontons with a little pocket of cream cheese mixed with spinach bits. They arrive at the table in a circle of five around a tiny bowl of sweet pink dipping sauce. The rangoons aren't pretty little cookie cutter types; they are misshapen, some with their folded parts still down, on some the oil and frying has lifted up the folds into little wings. They look to me like headless little birds with green flecks visible in their fat round bellies. I never tell Katherine this because I know she doesn't like to eat animals.

It is a little awkward that there are only five. Katherine and I are both very fair and judicious and it is a little odd when we've both had two and there is one lonely rangoon with it's wings in the air waiting to be plucked and eaten. Ocaisionally, we spilt it in half. One wing for each of us and then half of the stomach, a mush of cream cheese that is silky and light and hot with little green fibers of spinach.

It is probably the most delightful taste you can imagine in your mouth. Something crunchy but still soft and yielding, with a salty but sweet smudge of cream cheese. It is really good. I am always surprised by them. We usually eat them without saying a word, just enjoying the taste of them. It has been long enough that I think we both already feel nostalgic; looking behind there has been years of rangoons, looking ahead, there is graduation and the rangoons will grow into a memory.

Katherine and I are both nearly graduates. We have one more class of our major to finish, which we plan to take together. Considering that we met in an early installment of the fiction classes, Fiction II, it only seems fitting to end up together. Though I am looking forward to finishing school, I worry that I will lose touch with Katherine. We've made some plans outside of classes, but for the most part, we find it easier to hang out together while being at school.

They know us at the Thai Spoon. Even though all the people from last year are gone, the new crop of waitresses know us already. They smile when they see us and giggle at our table. Yesterday, the girl who is particularly friendly to us, spoke to us about coming to America from Thailand and how it was for her to learn English, from people like us, just coming to eat there. Her name is Ben.

While we were talking to Ben or she was talking to us, I noticed she had a little hickey on her neck. I don't know why I am always the one to notice these sorts of things. Maybe because I am a writer. Maybe because it was facing me more than it was Katherine. It was just a pinkish swirl but I knew it was a hickey and not some other thing because it had makeup worked over it, in an attempt to cover it up. The problem with concealor is that it fades after a while. Considering that it was nearly four in the afternoon, it probably just needed a touch-up.

When I see things like this, things that seem somewhat contrary to a person (Even Katherine didn't seem to believe it) I always think about making them a character. I always think about writing and how a character should have a secret. They should surprise you in this little way. You should think you know everything about them until there's just this glaring oversight that they would never tell you. A hickey. On a girl who came here all alone from Thailand.

I then went on from there to doing what most people would do and imagine what it would be like if our situations were reversed and I moved to Thailand and was learning the language by being a waitress in a hamburger joint or American style bar. How insane is that? I thought it was lovely when Katherine tried to tell her she was very brave and Ben didn't understand the word. That is so lovely and ironic and fascinating to me.

Sometimes I wonder why I am different. Why do I have to be the kind of person that is snagged by thoughts like those? Why can't I just be in the moment of something and not be recording it in my mind's eye, that hickey, that fading swirl of makeup, Katherine's use of bravery.

In the midst of all these heady thoughts a girl who had been sitting alone came over to our table. She asked us the time. In hindsight, I can tell this was just a ploy to begin speaking to us and it was kind of move that is pathetically adorable. She had overheard us telling Ben that we were fiction writing majors. She is one also. However, we are at the end of ours and she is just at the beginning in Fiction I. We chatted for a few minutes with her. Her voice was impeded by a disability, as were her limbs. I told her that we went to the Thai Spoon every Wednesday and if she liked, she could join us for lunch. She was so excited and happy. I hoped Katherine wouldn't mind that our time together would be changed. She said later that it was okay. Maybe it is because it is inevitable that it will change, and why not share ourselves with someone who needs friends? The girl, Joan, had not made any other friends at school. I told her that in three years, Katherine was my only friend. She said happily that maybe she could be my second friend. I found her very sweet.

In the end, I think she was very brave to approach us. It is not easy to go to school with a bunch of overly hip cool people and know who is approachable and who isn't. Maybe not so brave as leaving your homeland and traversing countries and water to end up in a Thai restaurant, like Ben, but maybe more so.

only on the cape can magical places like the zooquarium exist... 

a hermit crab held by eric's dad 

the ridges from the tide 

corportation beach, cape cod 

a two story rock tower with spiral staircase 

ice cream from smugglers 

as the relationship turns...

Many of you have been wondering how life with Eric is going (or, if not, I am going to talk about it anyway, so read or not read...) :

Our trip to the Cape was lovely. His family was amazingly kind and generous, and I had so much fun. They are a wonderful bunch of people and I really adore them. Eric and I had some nice quiet moments together, including walks to the beach; once we saw the moon half full and harvesting, it was beautiful hovering at horizon's edge along the water. Everyone helped me with a homework assignmment I had for PhotoI, which was to take A-Z pictures of one subject. I chose Cape Cod, figuring I could do it there. Now I realize, any number of things could have happened to my film and I can't go back there to shoot...but oh well, everything turned out fine. At one point, Eric's dad pulled the car over and parked while I shot the sign for the Zooquarium. Z! I think Eric and I really needed the vacation from our lives and we returned with renewed and refreshed feelings towards each other.

What has really been making a huge difference for us is the mandatory date night once a week. We go out, have dinner, hang out, talk, and actually enjoy each other's company. It feels like we get to have each other all to ourselves, and we enjoy our time. I think the date I liked most was when I met Eric near Broadway and Diversey, we went shopping for a bit and then stopped at La Creperie and had a lovely meal, then walked home along the dark streets feeling wonderful. We didn't plan a thing! I didn't try to make a plan either! There was also a really low-key date where we just went to the local thai place and then to the moon bar, and then played cribbage for a long time.

We've begun to reach a certain kind of understanding towards each other that is comforting and easy and makes for less bumps in the road. For instance, we both have busy lives and often conflicting schedules. I tend to overschedule, he tends to underschedule. Maybe that's the way of all women and men. But when I am busy doing something and he feels left out, he tells me so, or vice versa, and then we actually do something about it right then, instead of getting mad and wishing the other person would just leave us alone. Also, I've made some compromises. I've cut some of the busy out, so that there would be more time for us. And there's definite days that are solely ours, like the date night, so we can look forward to it and not feel cheated about never seeing each other.

Lately, we've been playing this game of thinking up once nice thing to do for each other. Sometimes it's daily, sometimes every other day, but it's just kinda fun. I got Eric this cool Photography magazine, he made me mini-no pudge-brownies. Just thoughtful things that don't take too much time (though the brownies took maybe a little more time) and we get to show it to each other rather than assume the other person should know by now.

Also, there is talk about the future. I know. Crazy. My roommate's on a five year plan and this is the end of year two. She wants to get her own place with her boyfriend (who is Eric's best friend) so our happy little home will be disbanded. There is talk about Eric and I moving in together, which not too long ago would have really been crazy, but is starting to seem like it might be our chance to actually be together. There's something about living with another couple that just totally interferes in our relationship (of course, it doesn't help that I have beefs about them). Part of me feels like I owe it to Eric for turning his life upside down and inside out to giving him a chance for what life could be like when there is just us. There has always been them, especially since I moved in here over a year ago, but when I had my own place, things were heavenly...we had freedom to be ourselves and that made us much more happy around each other.

The funny thing is, I have no problems with living with Eric. He's a little sloppy, but in a similar way to me. Things pile up and then one day it's too much and it has to get cleaned. I just have a lower tolerance for the piles and it takes less days for it to annoy me. He cooks, I wash dishes. I do laundry, which I am totally anal about, he keeps the clothes over there, and not all over the floor. We love my big bed and he loves my decorating panache. I think he could be doing more things with his time, rather than watch tv all night, but that's his thing to sort out, not mine.

So I guess things with Eric and I have been the best they can be, for the situation we're in. It's hard, I know, for all the people who love me and want the world for me to sit idly by and deal with my complacency about it. This is as good as it's gonna get, for right now. There's a certain damper that we constantly have over us from living in the apartment with our roommates. I met them on our first date. I kinda had a feeling of what I was in for. But I think if we take a chance of living together without them, I might find that man I found when our relationship first began, a strong, vibrant, eclectic, god-like man on earth, who makes me feel like the world was made just for us to find each other.

If I don't, trust me, you'll be the first to know and hear about it.

when all else fails...try, try, try again.

[I seem to have fallen into a rut with this page. I don't post in a while, come back lamentable, post a brief and rant-filled update and then leave again for weeks at a time. But, to my credit, I am quite the busy girl. And, I know you will still love me, despite my frequent attempts at trying to get it all right and failing.]

A strange thing has happened. I am taking a lot of my general education requirements in my last year of college because I loathed the thought of taking them at all and of course, put them off til now. Most of my classmates are young, bright kids, fresh out of high school. This makes me ten years older than some of them.

A lot of them are amazing; I think back to when I was that age and I remember a half articulate, mess of a girl who was terrified to talk to anyone I didn't know. I was comfortable with words, but only as long as they were not spoken. Some of these kids spent their high school careers being outcasts, rejects, nerds, cool, what have you, but they are all immensely further along than I was at that age.

There is one trend I've noticed though. There's not a lot of variety in their thinking. Having been groomed and grown up under the same general time, they all tend to think alike, with a simple construct or one variation of the same thing.

For instance, in my Comp I class where I have more in common with the teacher than any of the other students, we were asked to bring in images that represent poverty to us. We were told to search high and low over the next few days and find whatever we could.

In my traditional fashion, I mused over the idea for sometime, and then did it all in one rush at the last minute. I could only find images in magazines that seemed to represent the opposite of poverty, things like fur, fancy cars, nice jewelry, etc, so I clipped these things out, pasted them onto some nice black charcoal paper I have and placed a giant red circle with a line through it. To make the circle bolder, I painted it with bright red nail polish, which was shiny and rich looking. It said to me that poverty was all about seeing and knowing the things you cannot have.

When I arrived in class with the glue still drying, I was excited to show off my work. I was proud. Look at me! I collaged! My work was like a piece of art! The teacher asked the students to show their images and I, never being so bold to go first, watched as one by one they held up their images.

They were printed off the internet, mostly photographs that showed ruined towns, full of garbage and rubble, with sad children whose faces were smeared with dirt. A couple people had cartoon drawings, a magazine cover; one student who is possibly a worse procrastinator than me had ripped a photograph out of that day's newspaper. But overall, it was the same. Their source (the internet) was the same. Their lack of thought was the same. I was intrigued and slightly appalled.

Just the other day in speech class, we heard a speech given recently by Al Gore. We were asked to write a three minute speech in response and given a question to answer by our teacher. I was forced to go first because I was sitting closest to the teacher. (Damn my brownnosing tendencies!) I read my angry argument about Gore's presumptions that there is no more public discourse on events in our country and that television is to blame. I ranted, I got angry, I even made a couple good points.

At least two other people had the same question I received. Neither of them argued against Gore's points. They agreed wholeheartedly, claiming television was to blame for our nation's poor attention span to current events. All of them began their speech with the teacher's question and then answered it. I did not. The other students all took up Gore's points, except for three who did not argue seriously; they contended that they enjoyed being television viewers and hated when their favorite programs were interrupted by "breaking news."

One other eerie thing occurred. When referencing the different "serial stories" the media covers, they used examples I would not have used at all, the Michael Jackson trial, the Robert Blake trial, the attention given to "Bennifer" stories. That was when I realized that part of why my thinking was so different is that I am so much older than they. I have experienced more, done more, seen more, and known more of the world.

It has given me a new confidence, even among people my own age. I guess I just needed the contrast of being around people who weren't like-minded to realize that I had many sound opinions and thoughts and I just hadn't trusted myself to share them.

Sometimes I wonder if they know I am that much older. Some of them ask me what year I am and nod understandably when I say I am a senior. I seem to know my way around campus and offer them resources to check out that aren't advertised to new students. So maybe in their minds, I am just a little older than they are, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three. I don't know for sure if I actually pass for five years younger, but I'll take it. Heck, to actually look younger and have the experience of someone who is older? Isn't that every woman's dream?