I'm eating a Hershey bar for dinner (same number of calories as a Luna
bar. Don't you judge me.) It has very specific instructions for
opening. "Hold," the wrapper says on one corner, and on the other,
"Lift and Pull."

Don't you wish relationships came with directions like that? To get to
the sweet stuff, when do you hold and when do you apply force?

I'm glad I'm going on vacation because it seems the endorphins have taken over my brain. My brain is the large part of what I have going for me and I need it to work. I need to analyze situations and make wise choices and dispassionate judgments. "I want to spend every waking moment with C, either in bed or out somewhere PDAing" is probably not the most dispassionate judgment, so much.

Coworker generally calls and texts so faithfully that when he doesn't, I need to be talked down from the (trees? rafters? cliff? I guess I'm not that up on my cliches.) Talked down from some frazzled headspace. My current overblown worry is that he's pissed at me for drunkenly alluding to his suspicion that two of our coworkers, exes, are back together.

 

Oh btw, drunken? Allusions? Yeah, everybody at work knows. They've BEEN knowing. Went out with a bunch of them a couple days ago (C's out of town and you best believe I'm antsy, angsty, even) and B revealed that she had guessed and E, who knows, wouldn't stop making comments about who I was texting and A told me he'd tested me a few days ago and figured it out, and then J, who we were all supposed to be keeping it from for C's amusement, found out and flipped a glorious bitch, and it was fun and hilarious and um, now what?

Dwight and Angela and Ryan and Kelly

Q recently started dating someone she works with, too. (She's dating Jake! LULZ!) We are now adorable twin sisters in all the experiences afforded by shitting where you eat, including

 

1) acting awkward when you first see the object of desire, then growing increasingly comfortable throughout the day to the point where you need to watch your behavior

2) attempting to send sub rosa messages to the object (dropping a catchphrase the two of you established together, wearing something he commented on to work)

3) a gripping inability to think of anything else than his gorgeous physique throughout the workday

 

Every time my brain shifts to Coworker, I need to squirm in my seat.

Am I Pam?

One of the things I most admire about Coworker*: he loves his job. It is inspiring, if wistful-making, to be around someone who gets paid to do something that gtives them energy, that they feel is making a difference in some way they feel the world needs to change.

(wry trombone sound)

Clearly, I'm not there yet.

I'm going through old files right now, preparing for our move next month, and coming across papers I've written for my current degree, relics from my psych studies in college, things I've written just for fun along the way, and it's hard to even remember what I found fun or interesting or compelling about most of them. Sure, I like my turns of phrase or my conclusions, but what, then, made me feel so strongly about Pope Benedict's relations with Islam (let's say) that I actually put hands to typing and produced something about it? I don't feel that way about anything now--the creative, nay, the organizational, imperative. (One reason for this virtuous paper-purge is the very real need to find my W-2 so I can get my tax refund back before it ends up at Halliburton or somewhere.)

I'm not stoked for my classes, can barely make an effort at work, and think I'm about to hit the kitchen for more food even though I already consumed a bag of spearmint leaves today (the Walgreen's brand are my favorite guilty pleasure; also, I had meat at lunch and it did NOT fill me up for the afternoon, Fuhrman is right, Atkins is wrong and dead, end of story.) I have one good friend, a male companion who may be settling, some small savings with no goal in mind and an enuretic cat to show for the last two years in Chicago. So why the heck don't I change my situation?

I'm afraid I'm trapped by Pam Beezley-itis. Everything is fine until it's not anymore, and I just fear that it'll take me five more years to reach that point. If my job would get drunk and jealous and attempt to punch out its rivel for my affections, grad school, leading grad school to become more awesome and try harder to win me, or something, that would sure help my decision-making, although maybe not my passion. I wonder if I'm just grouchy because that W-2 is nowhere in this shit heap I call a bedroom, or if that dangerous anomie of last month is coming back.



*I know I talk about him a lot and it's not like a hopes-dreams-and-plans thing, it's more like this: he's what's new in my life, and plus if I were honest with myself the purpose of this blog is a little bit to recount the boy triumphs and tragedies.

vroom, screech, crunch

This Memorial Day weekend it was exactly a year since I'd been in a car accident.

 

Today, it's two days.

 

It was just an idiotic fender bender in Oak Park, but it makes me feel fragile and stupid.

 

Last year I totaled a beautiful rental car, fortunately without harm to any living creatures including myself. I just got a call from Mama Tolerable to the effect that the rental company is sending bills to my parents' house (the address on my driver's license . . . ) still trying to get money out of me, even though I, thank God, had all the insurance on it, and did everything right. I thought I had straightened this out with them a long time ago. She asked me if I had all the paperwork for it, and of course I snottily told her so.

 

The problem? I don't. I cleaned off my desk this weekend and clearly remember throwing the rental agreement into the recycling bag. Like I said, thought I had straightened this all out . . .

 

I think I'm about to go home and dig through the Dumpster.

 

 

Found an old journal entry (scribbled on one of the little legal pads I use at work, then buried under one of the stalagmites that SOMEHOW form on my desk) pining for Alejandro, a dude I dated right before I moved here. It is not helping my cynicism (?--how 'bout, my deuced  cold and frigid heartlessness) about Coworker. I mean I had to read until I got to his name before I figured out it was about Alejandro, so little do I now associate the feelings with him--"Because we did have something, I feel. Something unfakable by calling forth that flow of hormones. I don't know why it should matter so much. How can I say it's not just his touch that I miss, but something behind it, when his touch was joy from the beginning." Etc etc etc. Now looking back, I can say with no compunction that whatever we had probably came from the joy of being two (relatively) intellectualy compatible folk willing to hook up with each other. He was more or less the first guy I'd dated who could talk at the level I like about the things I like, so no wonder it felt like something amazing. But what's the difference between finding someone you like to talk to and also happen to like to make out with, and finding someone you actually care for?

I think it's time. Q and I were talking lately about the amazing connection you had with the people you met first week of college, and how frequently these connections fizzle once your life really begins. But that doesn't mean that you didn't have fun having those conversations--only that you somehow both couldn't sustain the interest to keep doing the same things with the same people. In the case of couples, sexuality and social pressure make it much harder to dissolve such a bond than it is for friends, especially freshman week friends--but time is still a trial that you can't fake with any other measure. Coworker is making me a little nervous on these grounds. He seems to be rushing us on the terminology quite a bit, for one thing. He's been calling me his "lady friend" to colleagues for quite some time (I mean, they still don't know it's me, but they know I exist, which is more than they do for him, if that makes any sense) and the other day he told this story in which a client spoke of me as C's girlfriend. UM. Would you have caught me relaying such a story without redaction, one month-ish in? Hayl no. Oh, that's the other thing. He was out of town for work this week and called me, seriously, almost every day. This after we'd spent time together on three days of the long weekend--at his place Saturday, out at a bar Sun where he met Q (the Bouncer's bar--AWKWARDNESS--but it couldn't have been avoided and in fact, all escaped without incident) and then on Monday, when he was swamped with work stuff, I went with him on a work-related errand.

Well, why'd you do that, Elle? That doesn't sound fun.

Well, it was, though. And that's the thing. I totally enjoy him. We can talk about work, or books, or most often random crap, and it's just so much fun. He affects (?) this sort of giddiness around me that can get so obnoxious when other guys do it--you know the kind, where all you ever talk about is how cute you both thought you were when you met each other or whatever--but it just makes me more enchanted. Q says that all my talk of one-month this and that "doesn't matter if you really like someone." But I think it does. If you haven't sttod the test of time, you have no way of knowing whether your connection is real (as I conveniently avoid describing either "real" or "connection" in this entire post) or just infatuation. Viz. Alejandro.

Slips of the lips

Last week or so we had some of Q's coworkers over on a Friday night. They'd started drinking around 3 at a work party, and by the time they made it over Q was gone. She ended up crawling into one of our empty bedrooms (sadly, in addition to the demise of our one evil roommate, we have now also lost P to a family tragedy) and <strike>passing out</strike> putting herself to bed, she insists. However, her coworkers continued merrily drinking and singing karaoke until around two, when they all left except for one, Jake, whom (oops!) I made out with. Sorry, Coworker!

 

I do feel bad about this, but Coworker shouldn't worry. Awkwardly bumping tongues with Jake made me realize just how different I feel about C--normally, after only about a month in, I'd be all like, Suck it, monogamy, we haven't had the other-people conversation yet so this is my right. Instead, it was like one big chorus of angels sang "meh" and I realized, nope, I do not want other guys. As further mitigating factors, we were drunk, it was 3 am and I have a long-imbedded aversion to passing up something when I could get it--frugal perpetual single chick that I am.

 

Whatever, so Jake went home and when I told Q about it the next morning (worrying that she might have a partially-disclosed crush on him) she was fine. We were both sorta hoping Jake wouldn't be weird, since we're about to move into his building and he is good company, but whatever. Anyway, this week Q goes to work and endures much razzing from Jake and his married sidekick, JC, about her early, uh, swoonage. Apparently in the early stages of her torpor she'd announced that she'd made out with someone from work (no one known to me) at their company retreat, but that she wouldn't tell anyone who it was. Jake and JC now have one goal in life.

However, Q was quite amused to "coincidentally" overhear the following exchange, which you'll notice is not at all stilted and has a lot in common with the way people actually talk:
JC: So, Friday night . . . did you black out at all?
Jake: Yes. Yes I did. Right after you left, I don't remember anything for the rest of the night.

Hm, track-covering, much?  Apparently the Js imagine I've fallen madly in love with Jake and, believing he returns my feelings, am prepared to stalk him all around the town . . .

The next time we see the two of them, Q and I are totally stoked for me to ask her: "So, remember your work retreat? (pause) Did you black out at all?"