cow udder

well hello. I had a crazy dream last night, and I woke up feeling like all parts of my brain had been through the car wash, ya know what I mean? Like everything was scrubbed clean.

In my dream I was going to perform "for" britney spears at like the Meadowlands or some big place. Like it was known and accepted that Brit had imposters cover for her just she's too busy to like, actually perform at her own show. Long story short, I was chosen to do it and I was 1) looking for a computer so that I could update my facebook status that I would soon be ghost-performing for like 1 million peeps. 2) realizing that I hadn't shaved my legs in months, and I would soon be wearing britney-style short shorts, but I had no time and plus I was too busy looking for a computer to get onto facebook. 3) suddenly aware that not only were my legs unshaved, I had apparently grown two udder-like growths on my upper thigh. I was self-conscious and hoping no one would notice from so far away. People, I had grown like COW UDDERS on my own legs. Actually, they were more like weird looking nipples.

Anyway. Hello by the way and whats been going on on? I've been busy having coolness standoffs with high schoolers. Yeah, I lose. pretty much I feel like a dorky dinosaur in front of them, but I guess that's not really the point? connecting with them? I find myself losing focus, like not really caring if anyone learns the conjugation for "boire" or what have you. Anyway. It's nice to have a niche. To have my name appear on report cards, etc. Gossip in the teachers' room. Except when they ask me "how" I am able to teach only 1 class. They are dancing around without saying it, that I must be independently wealthy or broke. I try to sincerely confirm their suspicions and explain that I am broke, but I need to start somewhere, and then thank them for rubbing it in.

I'm still looking for ways to move to Montreal. I am also still looking for ways to keep my serotonin flowing on a daily basis. Exercise is helping, and getting out of my house too. I now have a new ESL student who am I excited about tutoring, she is young like me and Japanese.

on this lazy saturday, I am almost done reading Joy Behar's book. What a hoot, that woman. She inspires me, I think I've told you, and she started out as an English teacher. I'd love to meet her someday.

okay, I have to go get remy at umass now. we may do recycling tonight, sounds like a fabulous saturday night huh!

Toodle loo.

nov 8

Bonjour.

le 7 novembre 2009.

Whats been going on lately? Well I will try to tell you.

Had a giggly phone call chat with Jen this morning. the topic du jour was the Hs reunion. I imagine it will be much like a high school cafeteria, who is sitting with whom? Who is gonna start dancing + everyone will follow? At first glance I'm pretty sure it is a waste of time + money (it's 80 bucks). But then I don't know. It could be nice to see what everyone is doing, see who is fat or pregnant, who used to be pretty but now ugly.

Dave is going partly because it is a challenge for him to tell everyone that he has been living at his parents'/seeking spiritual and physical healing continuously over the past few years while everyone else has been working 9-5. He was the valedictorian so people will be expecting great things.

My barometer of living lately is hopeful about the future + trying to to say "fuck everyone" who stresses me out at the moment. That being asshole students, teachers, administrators. I have reached an honest moment in my career where I do not know if I would like to continue in classroom teaching. I just don't know if I really give a shit if kids learn French or do their homework. I really don't care.I was not put on this earth to care about that.

And it bothers me how teachers are put on some sort of moral pedastal, like in being teachers we are intrinsically moral police and law enforcers. That is alot of pressure to carry in one career.

The teachers who freak me out the most are people who I think go home and continue to be teachers. Like Mr. B______. I feel bad for them. they go home and they are still "Mr. B________". They microwave their dinner as Mr. B______. That must be where all the transgression happens, like when you play the teacher role for so often, you spend your life crushed by this responsibility, one day you go online + look for naughty things to jerk off to. Who knows.

All I know is that my students do NOT think that I am cool, no matter how cool I think I am, and they are always looking for a reason to hate me. I feel a little bit pathetic when I try to join a coversation with girls on the volleyball team about winter leagues. Like in some respect we are all that guy on Napolean Dynamite videotaping himself throwing the football, imagining if Coach had just put him in during the 4th quarter, they could've won state back in 86. Working with teenagers just magnifies this patheticness.

I recently have developed love feelings for Joy Behar. She has her own show so I watch it even when it's about boring things like the economy. She reminds me of me, I guess. She asks very honest questions of her guests and I flipped when she said that she used to teach high school English. I think us performer types must be attracted to teaching, because there is an audience every day. I would like to go to Forbes tomorrow + pick up "Joy Schtick" - a humor book by her.

remind: Call Tapestry

remind: forbes library

This past week I have been off bc cuz its the mestruation week, and I think I've noticed an elevation in my overall mood. Well, I have had a few "flirty" moments with dudes, and I am owing to feeling more in touch with my fertility. There was a volleyball dude at the gym, and I made sure to give him "a look". He was behind me on the elliptical machine, so he had a nice view of my ass + thighs.

Then there was a dude with a look for me at trader joes. I remember those moments from back when I was single. Now I am usually with my sig other, and we are arguing about whether we should buy eggs or over how quickly we go through coffee. I think he uses too much in the morning.

Speaking of sig other, he is currently with my car at Aikido. It's cute that he has gotten into this little activity, he goes like all the time + is always talking about it. He makes friends with aikido dudes too, and I am happy for him. We all need to water our "jardin secret"...

I currently am lamenting having very few friends. In my experience friends either get too pregnant to be friends, too religious to be a friend, too chronically ill to be friends, too much drama to just chill out + be my friend. There is also the predicament of friends being friends with someone you used to be friends with but not anymore. And then those people have a conspiratorial air and you can't really trust them, because they might go talking about you to that friend and blah blah blah. Then there are friends who every time you try to hang out with them they bring along their friend who you don't want to become friends with. And you are like, 'why did you bring so-and-so?". That's how I feel about 1 friend. She either brings a latina friend who is all "positive energy" and loves to go dancing or she brings her muslim friend who is shocked if I hold hands with my boyfriend in front of her. No intimacy can therefore happen and it's a waste of friend time for everyone.

voila for now.

jazz

well hello...

a little weekly update for my loyal fans. it is sunday night, I have the sunday vibe, latina music is on the radio, and R is preparing sushi (well WE are, but now I'm bloggin). we had a little burst of energy this afternoon at the international market looking for sushi fixins. I also cracked open a little champagne, I'm sure there is something out there that needs celebrating.

this weekend has been un-weekendly, well I was awoken early by my landlord's loud fricking voice outside my window, and I worked both days. R came to get me after work y'day + we had a sampler (4 half pints) of locally brewed beer at NBC. yummy. (you're probably noticing the trend of having no other friends besides each other) yeah. well we do like hangin out together so thats fortunate. We just survey the crowd and categorize people into two groups: people getting laid tonight, people not getting laid and analyze our research. I guess that is 'boring couple' of us, but whatev.

Part of the reason I started this blog is because I always knew my inner monologue is a bit incoherent & lacking clear transitions. Mental health wise, I know therapists say that depression starts to resemble this: lack of sentences, paragraphs, in the inner existence. Just static doldrum. So I'm trying to be my own antidepressant lately, which requires alot of introspection. Part of this so-called looking inward has me noticing how I have like no boundaires up for myself. For example, when my phone rings + its my mom I generally always answer it. Like I anticipate that she will have some lisa news, or else I have the classic "what if she's in an emergency" or what have you. So I pick up. and I am realizing that for my own mental sanity I need to be able to say "no" to the barrage of phone calls. Like, there should be times where I am in the middle of growing as a twenty-something, and can't answer the phone. I'd like to take a survey of how often you talk to your mom on the phone, because my average is about every other fricking day. Back in college I remember I instinctually told my mom to stop calling so much. Looking back, I'm really proud I was so in touch with my needs. I knew I was in a state of constant growth + I needed emotional space. Now I feel like I let anyone into that space, like any time is a good time to disturb me.

Same thing with email. Like I generally have my computer open, and if gmail tells me I have a new message I will generally stop what I am doing to go online. Some saturdays + sundays, I'm like, I know no one is emailing me, but I can't say no to the internet. I wish I could say "Any email messages I may have can wait". Once upon a time, when the internet was new, all I knew how to do online was email! and I think I would spend 5 mins online because I didn't know what other sites to visit. And its quite boring to sit + wait for an email to appear. You may as well go live your life...

x x x voila c'est tout. Demain I'm gonna play cupid un peu pour mon amie Katie. c'est cool, j'aime bien faire ca. ce mec est gentil, je l'ai rencontre une fois, et voila j'espere que c pas trop chiant.

cherish

been sitting at the computer all day... pretty much I hate doing that. took a break to buy alot of groceries.

well the weather is nice now, I've been feeling like I have less obstacles in my pathway to happiness. Or maybe its how facebook and internet are these tools that make us so distracted. Distracted by other people's lives, by what people think, by who's friends with who, by what so+so's ex thinks about whatever. If I've learned anything in my ripe old age it is that you need to pay very close attention to your self and live your own life. Like I said, I think the people living the coolest lives + being themselves are the people that do not need to check facebook every few hours. I don't actually need to know that Sam, my friend in college, cut his finger on a piece of porcelain + was therefore updating his facebook with one hand. Nope don't need to know that Erin is still pregnant + has back pain. Anyway, this just means I'm gonna try to be sparse on facebook. No compulsive self-deleting needed.

I think I overestimate people in this world. Like today I was filling out paperwork to renew my food stamp benefits (thank you massachusetts), and I was thinking how like survival is the driving force in everyone's life. But for some people I think survival is enough. Like, spirually speaking. Yeah, don't feel like developing this idea much further.

It's been a bit challenging "on the job search" lately, because I wake up every day like with no real direction, and remy is also out of school slummin' around. I usually wake up in a slight panic because I want a little alone time before he wakes up. Never really happens, but whatev. Yesterday we went on a nice hike with our friend Katie, the weather was perfect, even wore sunscreen. I have a little "cupid" streak in me, I've gotten jobs for at least 2 friends, and now I am trying to fix up katie with a French dude. So that is an upcoming project. We will meet him for coffee, then if it goes well we'll invite him to our Bub's BBQ hiking day, and so on.

I made a hard decision about attending a friend's bridal shower next weekend. Like she's having a big ass fancy wedding in September, I guess I hate all these traditions, the bridal registry and so on. You know, just get married. But there are always so many codes involved, plus I don't feel particularly close to my friends with H.S. for this reason. Katie + I were laughing about it because she went to a similar bridal shower, where she was forced to buy a gift, and she was telling me how the bride was crying opening the gifts. Like, are you seriously crying because you've received things you asked people to buy for you? Katie had bought the cheapest thing on the list - salad bowls.

Okay. I must go think about my life now. au revoir...

MV

well well well.

Just a little post to be a bit more cheerful than the last post. I have some packing to do before R + I drive to martha's vineyard! Yay fancy vacation. We're staying at my landlord's summer home. I hope it will not rain so I can wear dresses + prance around the beach.

Yesterday in the gorgeous spring sun, I was like having a little anxiety + started a fight about nothing. Pretty sure I don't wanna do that. Like, have you ever passed a couple having a fight? You walk by, like loving life, and from your perspective their fight looks like hell. But couples get stuck in little grudges & boxes.

Also, my little job is not as bad as I let on. It's actually cool to walk around + tell people when they can eat. Since its a beer garden people are generally drunk & friendly.

"Attitude is everything"... I think I saw that phrase on a pen or something. Or on a poster with a mountain range in the background.

Okay, I gotta go hang my diploma on the wall and pack! x x x

tuesday

Hello. a weird kinda day.

saturday= wish it were all mine. But I started a new job that I hate.. I literally wonder if I am still 16 sometimes, windexxing the windows while thinkin about my crush in 11th grade. But no, I'm 27 and I have a master's degree.. and I'm hoping no one I know comes into the place I work lest I should have to put a "positive spin" on having that job.

That pretty much sums up my experience lately. Like, it is so hard to look at life with pink shades on. i guess the more habitual it gets to hate yourself and feel ashamed at where you are, its hard to justify your "only a summer job" and what have you. Where I am supposed to be at 5 pm is the furthest place in the world from where I would like to be.

I am just tired of running alongside my problems, like instead of sitting on my floor with my head in my hands and wondering "why am I here, where I am, in this life? How can I change things?", I go to the gym. 30 minutes of cardio listening to Kanye west and ladytron over + over again. Then I take a shower and I feel half-ready to take on the world. Today, I just feel like a pile of mud and I don't feel like ignoring it much longer. Plus my ipod has no more battery.

My landlord today commented on how I have lost weight, echoing similar comments from just about everyone. The truth is, I am not very happy in my life right now, so I have little appetite, and I am too anxious most of the time to really eat alot. I wish I could say that I am thin "and happy". How wonderful it is to take a huge bite out of life.... I have loved eating in the past but right now I feel like I have a psychic blockade at the base of my throat.

Hard to pinpoint exactly how I got here, but I know it must be a smorgsborg of everything accumulating into this moment. The previous entry is alot of it, combined with my inability to empower myself over it. It is nice to "blame" my problems on everyone else but it is just not full reality. Lisa is alot of it I guess, like her life slowly deteriorates more + more every day, and its hard to just sit back & watch. It must crawl under my skin. In addition I have a suspicion that the sibling dynamics in a family are magnified in times of crisis. Like I feel 100 times more pressure to be the "good" child as lisa goes further into the abyss.

In less debby downer news, I interviewed a southern rock chick this week, and I went backstage w/ her bandmates and was kinda interesting. Sometimes it pays to get out of the house...

mother's day

hello.

I take a break from mother's day 2009 to write on cute band alert.

In this article I'm gonna write about my ambivalent feelings about Mother's Day. Maybe I will understand one day why Mother's need a special day on the calendar to celebrate them. I guess my ambivalence goes back a few years. Like once I was a little bit mature, i used to write my mom a heartfelt card, where I would just frankly tell her how I loved her + was grateful for all she did. This card will inevitably make my mom cry & she would hug me, and probably keep the card in her jewelry box. I was happy to make her happy on Mother's Day, but I started to feel like every year I had to reach the standard I had reached in previous Mother's Day cards. Like if one year my card was less wordy, my mom might remark that it was very sweet HOWEVER, it was less verbiose than "usual". And every year Mother's Day rolled around, I would sometimes think to myself "I just feel the same way I felt last year" and frankly there is a feeling of pressure when I used to wake up on Mother's Day and know that I couldn't walk out to the kitchen table without a gift or card. Needless to say I always feel relieved for Mother's Day to be over.

Well this year it's been kinda tough. Over the past year, I've seen my dad retire, my sister has been in and out of jail and various rehab programs, and got secretly married to her non-boyfriend Jose. I have moved in with my foreign boyfriend (well, he moved in with me). Grandma says we are living in sin, a vibe that must definitely trickle down to my parents as they nervously ask us if we are thinking of getting married anytime soon. I nervously ask myself the same question to be honest, and my anxiety in life has skyrocketted outta control. I try to draw boundaries between my parents and me in the areas of religion + politics, especially since I've met rémy. I put on my liberal "cool head" when they try to start fights over abortion or marriage or fricking homosexuality. Our family is definitely in a state of transition. Everyone is kind of searching for drama. Everyone is kind of waiting to see Lisa in a coffin. It's like that drama fuels everyone's need for their own drama.

This week, my parents decided to drive up to Massachusetts to visit me. My instinct was "um, ok" because I do generally feel like they invite themselves, but thats another story. Remy is in the middle of finals + lately we've been pretty high-anxiety no-fun kinda people. My mom made a weird reference about how she wasn't going to "get anything" from Lisa this year, suggesting that she wanted to see me to kind of compensate. She then literally asked me to buy her flowers (I can't recall the actual language used verbatim). Maybe in another time and place I will understand where my mom is coming from, why she and my dad have transmitted so much of their own anxiety onto me. R and I went to whole foods yesterday and spent 16 dollars we don't have on a bouquet of flowers for my mom. The woman who gave me life (I never liked that simplistic argument of motherhood). It goes without saying but, I never asked to be born.

Anyway it was nice to see my parents today. There was the normal anxiety last night about cleaning my apartment, and no surprise I get the comments from my mom as soon as she walks in about how messy it is, and how she should enroll us in one of those tv "home makeover" shows. She looked so pretty and youthful (she really is a looker and has always taken care of her body). In Amherst I cringed to hear the comments about how we were really in 'Obama country', and the peace flags and no-nuke demonstrators and diversity appreciation really annoyed her. When we got back home there was the unsollicited advice about how when we clean we should "focus on just one room at a time" and yada yada yada. Yeah.

So this post is in honor of Mother's Day and to recognize that Mother/daughter relationships are often the most complicated relationships of our lives. I envy girls sometimes whose mom talked to them about birth control, for example, and who just by being there for their daughter taught her to respect her body and find healthy intimacy in her life. I've found a healthy relationship, but not without so much turmoil and ambivalence. Not everyone is so lucky to be "happy" all the time. My mom continues to push her anxiety on her "good" daughter. I broke down crying in the middle of an Italian restaurant last year because my parents decided they wanted to sit me down and tell me that they wanted me to get married in a church. Not only was it premature (we are not engaged by the way), it frankly makes me all the more want to march my butt down to City Hall and tell me where to sign. They will be lucky if they are invited. I will not let a Catholic priest tell me that I now have the right to live as married woman. The same priest who will say that gayness is an abomination? Use your brain, people.

les chats

Just to show you the two little things that make me so happy in this world. I am so in love when they look at me in the eyes or yawn or just be amazing.

re-bonjour

Hey yo.
sitting at my new writing spot (places in our house get so charged with energy don't they)

I am wearing earrings, sensible earrings + I think they can really transform your look.

Well let me give you the scoop. There is an obese miserable woman who lives downstairs. Once I helped her get off a patch of ice. It was 7 in the morning + I hear her call my name. I waited a sec and contemplated not "hearing" her. Like remy wears earplugs at night, he could have pleaded deafness. But I heard her. I went down + spent the next 15 minutes pulling her (probably weighs about 3 of me) until miraculously without my arm falling off she was able to hoist her fat ass up.

Sometimes I do think to myself that I have a problem with very fat people. I think its mostly when a fat body is accompanied by a hateful and bitter personality. Which is the case with this woman. Our body says so much, I'm not talking about a size 4 versus a size 14. Like when you're a size 30 you've probably ballooned so out of proportion how can you have a proper body-image or self-love? I know this is controversial to say but no one is reading this anyway.

I was excited to watch Oprah today (5pm) because I thought it was the Elizbeth Edwards interview, but alas that won't be until Thursday.


La la la, I want chocolate, i hate the weather so much right now.
I don't know how, but I was convinced to go see "ghosts of ex-girlfriends past" at the cinemark for $5 tonight. I am ambivalent about even spending $5 there. I have a few sour memories at the cinemark, remember audrey's sex in the city midnight premiere party? When everyone dressed up in dresses and I show up in jeans with my boyfriend (faux pas).

Otherwise I was intriged when Oprah talked about how when you stop resisting the universe by "trying" to make them happen, they are more likely to happen. I'm trying to adopt that attitude in my job search. Instead of thinking I suck all the time, I should embrace my suckiness, like if it doesn't happen then there are other things out there.
Often times I do think that teaching generally attracts people with no imagination. People who just wanna take the easy road, get the vacations, etc. Why is that? No geniuses are teaching 6th grade french. But I want to be the genius teaching 6th grade french.

whatevz.