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some general news, since i haven’t posted anything in a while…

on the apartment front:

i’m mostly moved in, and i’m really happy with the place. i love being on the third floor and having a bedroom with three windows. i also love having a fire escape, and i love using it and not having neighbors all up in my shit whenever i go anywhere. i love waking up with sunlight in my face, and i love having the best closet i’ve ever seen. love love love. the building is really old, and everything has been painted over so many times that all the fixtures appear to just be part of the wall. the floors are beautiful but super slanted—if you set a marble down, you’d never see it again. but that’s ok with me; i haven’t wanted to play marbles in a long time.

my last apartment was kind of hard to live in, and the imperfections of this one make things feel cozier, i think. if i hang something a little crookedly, it doesn’t look out of place. it looks like my life feels lately…no individual thing is perfect, but as a picture everything comes together pretty nicely. maybe that’s life in general—not just mine, and not just now. but yeah. in summary: love. even after finding a big ugly spider in my bathtub (if you know me at all, but have not seen me encounter a big ugly spider, you would not believe how much i flip out).

i’ll take pictures soon. of the apartment, not the spider, because i already put on my big girl pants and dealt with that shit. i need to brag because that’s a big accomplishment for me. shut up.

oh – this just in – my apartment now features heat! so i won’t be freezing my toes off anymore! this is a joyous day indeed.

on the this-weekend front:

pete and chris are coming to visit!!! two of my favorite irish boys being in town for st patrick’s day weekend is almost too good to be true. on the agenda so far is:

• drinking
• milkshakes
• um
• i promise i’ll come up with other activities even though at the moment i’m too excited about beer and milkshakes to brainstorm effectively.

pictures will be taken and posted!

on the honduras front:

t minus one week! this post has a lot of exclamation points! seriously though, i’m really excited. tracey is so good for my emotional well-being it’s ridiculous, and i think this trip could not have better timing. for those of you worrying, tracey is honduran and her family is there and we aren’t going anywhere without at least two people who know the country very well and two people who would make very good bodyguards. not that we’ll need them because we’re taking every. possible. precaution.

tracey is one of those friends who makes you really happy to be alive and in the moment and particularly, with her. i am not a person who is great at taking advice from others, but tracey’s words are always really insightful and therapeutic, and nobody really pulls me out of a funk faster than she does. she has this excellent ability to illuminate the worthlessness of anything or anybody that’s making your life hard while making you laugh and giving you a healthy dose of perspective. i don’t think she reads this blog but there’s a little tracey love for you. she really is the best, and i’m so excited to see her again.

on the emotions front:

i’m doing pretty well here, actually. no dad-related breakdowns. no interpersonal-relationship-related breakdowns. i’ve mostly transitioned back into the warrior mode i get into sometimes where i just don’t have any feelings about anything at all. which is great for me personally because i have a lot of shit that needs handling and my emotions were not doing me any favors in that department. also, i’ve picked up a little bit of bitterness which is interesting to me because that’s a sentiment i experience very, very rarely. i sort of like it, if only because it eases transition.

i’m also happy because i know that after a week with tracey, i’m not going to be bothered about much of anything. and that it isn’t long from now.

if there’s anything that’s bothering me this week, it’s a burgeoning theory that i keep tabs on interpersonal exchanges to an extent that really might be a serious social liability. i’d love to be as casual and random as most people i know, but i really can’t escape that everything i do is completely deliberate, and something about that seems disturbingly calculating when dealing with people who obviously don’t waste so much energy on these things. at least for me, actions always imply motives, and in my overproccessed, mathematical world, it is very disconcerting for a person’s actions to reflect a constant flux in their priorities. that level of dissonance alienates me really quickly, and a lot of times the other person has no idea how they’ve run me off. i act deliberately in order to not do this to other people, but i think this commitment might be wasted effort. is anyone else on earth this crazy about this one thing? signs point to no.

and that’s basically all that’s going on in my brain this week.

on the, uh, miscellaneous…front:

• i’ve decided to get a senegal parrot. i adopted sophie and picasso originally to make sure i could handle the responsibility of any intelligent pet before moving to a larger hookbill, and i think that experiment has gone really well. it’s taken me a long time to decide on a species, but i think a senegal would be a pretty good fit for my lifestyle. that’s priority one when i return from honduras.

• i am bad at naming things. if you come up with a good name for my parrot, there’s a burrito/beer/something awesome in it for you.

• i am boycotting the mall until august at least. WHO DECIDED THAT FIRE-ENGINE RED WAS GOING TO BE THE HOT COLOR FOR SPRING? it’s the most ridiculous thing i’ve ever heard. who comes out of the holidays and thinks that what they really is more santa-hat red in their closet? gross. seriously. go window shopping. share my outrage.

• someone in my office has been wearing cologne that smells incredible. it is very distracting and even moreso when you ponder the possible hosts and now not attracted i am to any of them.

• microsuede grosses me out. just as a concept, though. if you have something microsuede, i’m sure it’s awesome.

• my plumeria is not doing well. i’m more emotionally invested in this particular plant since my dad and i were having a plumeria grow-off and mine had been sproutin’ all kind of out of control until his surgery, at which point it promptly started to die. i remember how it started, too…i was staring at this plant the night before i flew home, and for absolutely no reason at all, that’s when it dropped a stalk—its newest, brightest, happiest looking one. this is silly, but that was the moment that i started to consider that my dad might actually die. sometimes young, beautiful things do. the plumeria is down to one leaf now, and i’m doing everything i can to nurture it back to health. the only thing that would make me feel better about this situation is going home and finding that dad’s plumeria is gorgeous and flowering. if you are fucking with our contest from beyond the grave, Dad, you win.

that’s enough for today. i would like to dedicate this post to my new neighbor, Elliott, who was kind enough to share his wireless and his beer in order to make this all possible. pictures coming soon!