What did we do this weekend?

Well, my cousin and I get the last two seats in first class. There is a woman who panics and says she has to go to the hospital and get off the plane. My cousin tells me not to be one of the rubberneckers, staring at her making a scene, and so I turn back to my vodka and tonic and waste the flight away with a Kim Harrison book and then Dracula.

It’s raining and cold, but we drive back to my house and watch The Killing Room, which is long and meandering. If you peel back the layers, it’s more than a little bit fucked up, but doesn’t seem to have a reason to exist.

In the morning we stop at a Starbucks and grab white chocolate mochas, and then move on breakfast at Friendly’s, around the corner from our friend’s house. My cousin seems to get along wonderfully with my friends, which is a relief to me. All we do is really watch TV and some movies on TV, and even though we don’t do much else, I enjoy the time we sit together on the couch, cracking jokes and generally just being present.

I always feel simpler when back there. I don’t have to feel that life is about making grandiose leaps towards some purpose. I never feel measured against them. These are some of the smartest people I know, some of the funniest. I don’t have to worry about failing to live up to something I’ve created in my head, or something that comes from comparing myself to the peers I’m typically surrounded with.

I digress.

After one of our friends leaves, we drive back over to Dave & Buster’s to play games. I meet up with a few more friends and we catch up, order drinks and sliders at the bar and just chat. The guys go off to play games.  My cousin and I obliterate zombies for a while, and then play a flight sim (I crash the commercial airliner), and then I rank 7th place in the sniper game, which I have never done before. There’s trivia and drinks and we try to buy something with the tickets that another friend has accumulated, but there isn’t much left to purchase.

The drive home is exhausting, although we do stop at a 7-11 in hopes of finding a Domo hat. We find two different types, some t-shirts, air fresheners, and other paraphernalia. Jackpot!

But I have trouble sleeping when I shouldn’t, probably because of the sliders, and maybe because of the wings, or the mojito. I don’t know.  Either way, it is a rough night, although we get good seats on the way back, too, and get to see another friend for the last time before leaving.

It was another whirlwind weekend, a good weekend. Another group of good memories to keep stored away, safe.

Friday: Sleep in. Decide not to go to the gym to instead get more sleep (which doesn’t help, because I end up looking about fifty years old that day anyway, from the pressure of everything). Get ready. Work. Get yelled at for not making deadline (although it’s not my fault I joined the project late and have been dragging it on ever since. So what that I don’t know how the hell these manufacturing processes work? You can hardly hold me to learning all of that in two months, especially having never visited on-site with the rest of the team. Whatever). Go to lunch. Burn face off at lunch but try not to show it. Finish out work, barely. Go home to pass out. Decide instead to go to the movies with the cousin. Tropic Thunder again, which is funnier this time around. Go to bed late, regrettably.

Saturday: Wake up to the looming clouds. Drive to the gym. Run a very (surprisingly) easy two and a half miles, then shower and drive slowly to work. Work for a while. Until about five o’clock, when attention is so shattered there’s no point in staying. Drive to the apartment. Clean up the legions of dead bodies, then check the mail, drop the keys through the office door, and leave. That is the last time I hope to go to that place. Drive to Target, pick up some things (unexpectedly, too), get medicine, and then stop at Ikea. Drive to Publix back near the house, and then finally drive home. Make barbecue sandwiches to make up for not visiting Fat Matt’s, then watch Charlie Bartlett.

Sunday, today: Wake up to rain hitting the side of the neighbors’ awning. Shower, eat buttery waffles with syrup, quickly burn a mix cd for the road, and get driving. It is slow work. At first nobody picks up the phone and this makes me annoyed and afraid that I’ll get lost and just end up turning around and driving back over an hour home to nothing, to work. Terrible. Finally, as I turn around for the third time on Route 10 around Athens, my friend calls and I magically find my way into downtown. I wish I could spend more time there, but we only have a few moments to say hello to one friend, drive to a local diner (very good second breakfast), and then get back on the road towards the city. We stop by my house to admire its cuteness and then go off to the airport.

Now, I’m sitting at work as the clouds roll over and then break, roll over and pour rain, and then break again. Thanks to two vanilla frappucinos I am buzzing pleasantly along on caffeine. My boss has left for the day–the first time I have ever worked later than her on a day with so much to do–and I feel reasonably confident that I am in good graces once again.

I suppose there isn’t much else at the moment. This week is shaping up to be a busy one again. Who knew life could be so crazy?

I haven’t written about the weekend, but it was wonderful for the most part.

Friday I rushed off to catch the train to the airport so fast, I forgot my shoes and my keys. The latter I wouldn’t realize until Saturday, though, and for the moment I put the annoyance of having forgotten my shoes out of my mind. The train got me to the airport, and I sped to the terminal whose plane would take me to Dulles. Having timed everything exactly, I arrived just as they called my name. Got on the plane. Settled in, and waited through the flight.

I was at the back and so I waited for a long time, but the flight seemed a bit shorter than the one to BWI is. Making stilted conversation with the guy next to me helped things to pass a bit faster as well, but mostly I read my book, No Country for Old Men. The Boy picked me up and we drove to my house, stopping for fried chicken along the way since I hadn’t eaten since two.

When we got to my house, everybody came from the innards of the house to greet us and sit with us in the living room while we caught up.  I had my brothers watch Dr. Horrible, we finished off the chicken, played with the dogs, and went to sleep.

Saturday was a date day, and the Boy and I went to DC to walk around, hold hands, eat good food, and enjoy the day. It was beautiful. In the evening we ate a fast dinner and drove to meet some friends at the movies, so we could watch Tropic Thunder together. About twenty minutes in, the fire alarm went off, and so we were herded outside to wait. Told to go home, we started to drift to the parking garage. Some of our friends had already started driving back to my house so we could hang out, since we assumed the theater had closed (it’s what the manager had said!), but we saw people re-entering. All of us ended up seeing the later showing, and had a good time because of it (plus, free food).

At night, the Boy and I cuddle in the room and watch an episode of Heroes.  In the morning, since I do not have to go home on the earliest, crack-of-dawn flight, we enjoy a rare moment of solitude, together, in the quiet of the morning.

These times are both the best to hold onto and the saddest for me; I love the moments we get to share during the brief visits right now, while we live apart. But leaving restores the inevitable distance and separation that comes between us when we can’t see one another somewhat regularly. What will this mean for the future? I’m not sure yet, and so I keep hold of what little I can, the photographs, the ticket stubs, the hugs and the late nights spent driving over and over the land from the airport to what used to be my home, and back again.

Sunday morning, when we finally get up, I get to eat eggs, pancakes, a bit of cherry yogurt, and drink coffee sweetened with cream and a little sugar.  We linger a bit longer than necessary, but I get to the airport around 11. Check in. Miss the next two flights, but have them change my priority (which ends up being downgraded anyway) so that I can try to make the 2:45 flight home.

I do, and sit in the first class seat that is by itself on the left side of the plane. But I make the most of the isolation by reading (currently Abundance, a novel about Marie Antoinette), writing, and musing about the weekend. Taking pictures of clouds out the window.

In the end, it is a long train ride back to Decatur, where I’ve left my car. My coworker has left the key hidden under the tire, visible with just a bit of string, and I am tried, aching, but happy. I return to the house with a load of sheet music. I clean, relax, and get a good night’s rest.

These things have been on my mind lately:

• Money, which I never have enough of nor will I have enough of until I am fifty, or dead, or until I win the lottery
• This cute house I saw yesterday. The owner and I met and clicked. Frankly, it was quite odd since we began to uncover similarities in our tastes and interests almost immediately, beginning with one another’s meager and self-taught piano skills, to our respective 14 years of flute playing… A sign?
• The logistics of moving into another/out of our apartment, getting utilities switched over, opening new accounts, getting a moving van, fumigating all of our things, making sure we’re all around to sign a lease lsdkjfapwoeiajpsldfkja;slkj3rpaowiagha;lfkv!!!
• My writing, which has never been all that great, I feel has declined a lot over the last year as I become busier, with less time on my hands as the months go by
• My car’s registration, which will now be even later than it is already in being switched over to the state of GA, mostly due to a gross error they made in telling me what I needed for all of this to happen. Of course, it is not their faults though. It’s mine. Of course. Despite what physical proof I have of what I was told I needed, it’s still all on me
• The impending rumored furlough at Comair, which means a variety of things that upset me and my life
• Money, which I have none of
• My fish, which continue to die. I think it’s the store-bought fish dying. I have five little babies left but I don’t dare put them in the big tank with Puffer, who will certainly eat them. They won’t be big enough for at least another month, but I’m getting tired of not being able to make coffee when I want to on weekends
• Time. I have no personal time because there are so many things going on and it seems this summer will be busy perpetually and forever and forever. I go to work, get home late, do something prescribed or planned, and go to sleep right after. In the morning I’m crabby, don’t get to read, don’t get to write, and rush off to work, to start the cycle again. Ugh
• This awful project at work that won’t go away
• My absence at the gym this week, albeit a much needed and scheduled one. Still, I feel somewhat guilty as I’ve just started to make friends and feel disgustingly inactive (although I suppose not eating dinner for two straight nights because I’ve been so busy has at least prevented me from gorging too much on unhealthy food)

Don’t worry. I believe this is a lot of stress and PMS colliding into one gigantic explosion (which will occur, I predict, on Friday). Hopefully it’ll get better, and my lifesaver necklace will bring me luck and we will get the house, move all right, make some money, and be happy. Hopefully.

Now, off to play a game to get my mind off things, and eat pizza. Then be a dork install my new RAM. An ideal evening.

On Friday, the plane is delayed because of a mechanical problem. We walk around the aiport and look for a sandwich place. I settle on the Atlanta Bread Company, a cheaper version of Panera, and by the time we walk back to one of the gates (where another flight leaving at 8 PM is) the boarding process begins. That gate agent tries to charge my cousin $50 to change our tickets to this particular flight, and he gets annoyed and leaves. We do not even have confirmed tickets; it should not cost either of us $50 to change over (but especially not him, an employee of the airline). So we speed walk back to the original gate, which is now boarding and find that we have been cleared for first class seats.

I get on the plane and mostly read The Other Boleyn Girl, finish up a letter to the boy, and fidget. The sun goes down until all we can see is the burgundy horizon over the dark expanse of twinkling lights as we approach BWI, and a little while later we land and make it out to meet the boy, who is picking us up.

It’s been a long week, and so while the bar was enjoyable (Dad’s band played at Sonoma’s in Columbia) and while I was glad for the company of some dear and rather loyal friends who promised to come out and actually did, I found myself suddenly hit with a fairly solid wall of fatigue. So we leave a bit early (12:30 or so) and wind our way back across the counties to my house in Rockville.

Saturday is The Dark Knight, which I will not spoil here (maybe next entry, when I see it again). Then it is quiet much of the afternoon, but my step mother and Dad have us all sit down and eat a birthday dinner. Banana cake follows, as does the Batman Happy Birthday balloon, which seems to be following me from place to place.

The boy buys me a necklace for our four monthiversary, a smooth jade charm on a tiny gold chain. In the center is small golden Asian character of some kind which I cannot read or interpret. The jade is a cool and mottled, and when I run my fingers over it I am reminded of a spearmint Lifesaver, the kind I used to buy for our friend Dunbar in college as an attempt to win his friendship.

And while I have all kinds of jewelry from several people, most of it is costume jewelry I have bought myself. My father has begun gifting me the old jewelry that he’d bought for my mother, but I find (as snobbish as this sounds) that her taste is radically different from mine; while she coveted heavy gold and dark stones, I prefer silver, light and small gemstones, and elegant, simple cuts in most things. Maybe it’s because I saw her wear so many necklaces, so many bracelets, and so many rings, so that by the end I simply thought they and she were terribly gaudy. I don’t know.  So, the spontaneous and surprising gift of something real, and pretty, makes the relative quietness of the evening wonderful and pleasant.

In the morning, we make it on board a flight. I go back to Decatur to grab my car from work, and then try to nap. The cousin calls so that I cannot sleep, and he and his friend (my new roommate soon) pick me up to go house hunting again. Afterwards we go straight to Acworth to visit my aunt, who gives me a few gift cards at some money for editing her paper.

It is a good weekend, but frankly I am glad to be home, able to do what I want again. More than anything now, I think I need a vacation from taking vacation, just a weekend or two  to relax, sleep in, and do nothing. I suppose I can’t really complain though, since life is going well otherwise!

Make breakfast, watch movies. Drive to Decatur in traffic, drive back. Play with the Casio’s features while waiting for flat pizza, and sweat in the afternoon sunlight. Watch a movie (”The Strangers”). Drive back. Watch some more movies, kiss, make dinner. Salmon with chives and goat cheese, rolls, and salad. Sparkling grape juice, simply because I’ve felt somewhat alcoholic recently. Stay up late talking and lounging about.

In the morning, wake early and pretty much do the same thing. Drive downtown to grab cloves, and then drive back. Wait out the afternoon heat with movies and Sprite Zero and garlic crackers with soft cheese. Go to class and sweat, laugh. Go home, shower together in the warm and already humid bathroom. Laugh some more, and order pizza (which arrives in fifteen minutes!) and watch more movies with beer. We step outside to smoke for a bit, a habit that I have long since broken but enjoy once in a blue moon for the sheer familiarity and comfort of it. Once in a while it is just nice and different to indulge and to be with someone who does not judge, but even experiments too, unafraid of new things. Around eleven at night a stranger knocks on the door. It startles us out of sleep and we spend some time looking out the windows and pacing the apartment warily before returning to rest.

The next day, a doctor’s appointment for me (clean bill of health!) and then relaxing for the morning and through the evening. Grabbing more cloves for later, eating sweet potato pie from Fat Matt’s, and lounging the rest of the day until it is late and time to go.

I wish he didn’t have to go. But it’s Tuesday, and he needs to.

If I had secured employment, I should enjoy this little break much more than I am. But I had a wonderful weekend. Can scarcely believe it is happening, and working so well too, despite the circumstances. And I took a deep breath and admitted what was really going on to my aunt last week (finally), who has kept asking me the last three months whether I am dating anyone. So I said yes, and told her who. And she seemed quietly pleased. Odd, because my immediate family seems to want to see us together too–they insisted that he come over for the ‘family’ barbecue a couple weeks ago and asked if he would be joining us for a dinner the next day–and so I am thinking this is what has been waiting to happen all this time.

And as far as I go, it was about time I started paying attention to the path my life was trying to lead me down instead of blatantly ignoring it. It’s felt good, so far, as far as my hedonistic weekend went and in general. I can be all right feeling a bit unsettled in terms of my career for the moment, as long as this inner contentment stays with me.

today:

- beat the pants off of a little kid in checkers. sort of enjoy it.

- drive up to PA to visit an old friend. it is cloudy, the roads winding, the traffic slow. listen to music to stay awake.

- back over the curb of the neighbor’s house before sliding out of the car and knocking on the door. say hello. talk.

- talk the rest of the afternoon. about love. about life, marriage, friends, college, brothers, medical conditions, the Pill, sex, and our Boys.  somewhere in there: eat lunch and harass her brother. it is the past relived and rehashed, but strangely beautiful in its rose-colored light.

- go back to her house. look at old photos and notes, drawings. relive the embarrassing moments. gossip. feel intensely old in just an hour.

- drive home. get a phone call from an ex. chat. feel hysterically sad and manically happy all at once. feel full of hope.  hang up.

- keep driving. call the Boy. talk and talk, about nothing and everything. feel amazingly good about it all. safer. better.

feel grounded. feel like connecting with oneself again. feel like there’s something to move forward towards. i’m moving forward.

Sometimes I feel like our conversation is for show. I feel that we say these words, words that unwind like thread out of our mouths, that are taken up and sewn into something false, maybe something prettier than what they should be. We say these things without meaning them, or maybe meaning them for a different reality.

“I mean… I mean, you know,” he is saying.

I am driving down 15, the fog having finally burned off. The air, I can tell, is humid, yet the sun is setting. The rest of the day had been overcast, spitting rain once in a while. It is getting dark, although I do not have to squint yet.

He continues. “You know. It’s just like… the easiest thing for us would be to get married so she can come over, and like I’m ready, you know, to make that commitment. We’ve been together, what, like two years. But we’ll of course, you know, have to see…”

Suddenly I am struck by the ridiculousness of the situation. Luckily today I am feeling mature enough to say something. But all of the weight of the last few years and all the years before this are pressing down. Tears well. I cry. Quietly, of course. He is still talking. I am gathering myself together. Somewhere in between I say, you know, I never thought I would be having this conversation with you. From this side.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he says.

Just… about us marrying and being with other people. We’re both talking about our partners and that we’re going to marry them and have families with them. I thought forever ago that when I had this conversation, it would be about you.

I feel that the gravity of my observation strikes with its intended force. He seems to pause, to consider. I am relieved when he agrees (more than half-heartedly, I tell myself. But I can’t be sure).

“Well of course I feel the same way, you know?” he says. His voice comes to me, over a distance.

And there’s lots more, more that makes me cry quietly, shaking a bit as I grip more tightly on the wheel, making sure to follow more closely the curves of the road. Yes, I say to him after a spell. Of course you’re right. Of course we’re mostly happy with where we are now. It’s just strange. He agrees again. Strange to remember the mornings together. Strange to remember holding hands. Getting off the metro late at night, walking onto Meridian under orange streetlights, my footsteps echoing against the crumbling buildings. Feeling my heartbeat quicken in anticipation of seeing him.

Knowing who I was. Knowing where I was.

Listening to his voice on the other end of the phone and knowing, just feeling, that if I fell asleep it would be the most lovely dream, and that when I woke up he would still be there on the other end. Kissing. Walking under the autumn trees and watching water ripple across the reflecting pool at the Mall, the traffic humming somewhere close by, tourists snapping photographs behind us. Feeling content with life and on top of things. Feeling in love. Feeling with every fiber of my being that this is the person I want, my equal, my best friend.
And then I remember all of the times we sat together, hushed, promising each other things. I guess I promise too many things, sometimes. All the promises: together. Married. Family. Together. For our lives.

And thinking that they maybe mean nothing now, or mean little, or that all of those things we used to scheme about, young and loving each other, have now been pushed aside, all of this hit me–hard–in the chest and I sat gulping quietly as he talked and talked.

“I mean, we wouldn’t still be with these people if we weren’t happy,” he says. It is more a statement than a question.

Yes, I say, and still feel weird. When the silence stretches on, I give up. Well, I tell him, if the world is full of infinite possibilities, who knows what will happen? I understand, of course, the choices that we’ve made have led us to this spot right now, right here: me driving home from Pennsylvania. Him driving home from DC. Us leading our respective lives. Me moving to Atlanta for a Boy. Him moving back and forth between here and Russia for a girl. Us careening in different directions, maybe permanently. And suddenly I feel hollow and small. Our choices lead us everywhere, and nowhere, and follow us from the past into the future, forever with us. I tell myself this and keep driving. Steer our chatting into more familiar realms.

Later I think that I wasn’t crying out of sadness for my choices, not desire for him or the way things were, but maybe sadness for the way things change. It is normal, I suppose, for me to think about how things were (happy), and how things are now (happy but tougher). “Relationships are mostly work, I realize now,” he had said before we hung up. I agreed, empathizing perfectly. His work is distance. My work is communication. Our small point of agreement suddenly energizes me, fills me up with hope and love. Before we end our talk, we agree to see one another a last time before I leave, for when I may be able to return, he will not be here, and vice versa.

“And there are no goodbyes,” he says, just like our mutual friend agrees. We’ll see each other again, the empty silence after the click implies. Even if it’s not soon.

I’d forgotten that I’m allergic to antibiotic ointment. Or at least generic brands of antibiotic ointment. Either way, I am now afraid to use over-the-counter medicine on any open cut or wound.

Anybody remember what happened to my face two years ago? The time that I fell down and busted open the bridge of my nose? Well, it would have been fine. Except that I used antibiotic cream, at the urging of fellow co-workers. Sure enough, a day later, it was not only oozing pus, but had exploded to a giant smear of rippling, irritated bumps. It was a horrible ailment that people would stare at (as it was in the smack center of my forehead, between my eyes). I couldn’t wear my glasses to hide the thing because the glasses would make it worse.  I think it was single handedly the worst experience of college that I remember offhand. The stares. Terrible.

Anyway, this new thing is kind of a throwback to that experience. Except nobody stares. Except for me. It’s simply uncomfortable, but nobody is the wiser. My own eyes, however (the worst critic, I am), are riveted whenever I think about it and look in the mirror. And now this. How silly. I’m allergic to antibiotics.

Well, I didn’t realize this until I woke up last night in the dark listening to the thunderstorm rumbling outside. The rain had started coming through the screen in my window, pattering lightly on the sill. I woke up, put on some Benedryl, and tried to go back to sleep. I couldn’t. I stayed awake until what must have been five o’clock, thinking and thinking about everything, sad at some points, happy at others. But mostly sad.

Today, though, has been surprisingly good despite the feelings I woke up with. After sleeping for another five hours I woke up a bit better. At least ready to put things behind me. I think I did the right thing this morning, rather than refusing to do anything at all. Now all that’s left to do is wait and see how things turn out.

I never really posted much about last weekend.

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