grad school, parenthood, identity crisis. welcome to the rabbit hole.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

This weekend

This weekend we:

+ Went to gymnastics
+ Had a midmorning snack with friends
+ Went on the Farm Tour
+ Finally dusted off the DSLR




+ I *gasp* went out saturday night, which was an adventure in itself

+And today, I made Lena cry while watching Mulan. It got a little emotional for her. So we're back to watching Cars 2.

Hope everyone had a great weekend. :)

Tuesday, September 4, 2012

Tandem!

Bikes bikes bikes bikes bikes GUYS. Today I rode a tandem bike. It was the coolest, weirdest, wildest experience ever. 

Ok first of all I rode my normal bike to work today, because Corey and I have class, and usually we walk but today we were going to speed racer it from class to lab meeting. So I almost die on the way to work (because I am severely out of biking-up-hill shape, also it is all up hill on my way to work) and Corey is like, Hey, I have my tandem today, want to ride that to class?

Uh, YES.

Ok so tandem bikes, two wheels, two seats, two handlebars, one set of brakes, one set of gears, one chain, two sets of pedals. The person in the back just pedals. (that would be me.)

The crazy thing about tandems are that the pedals are connected (because of the one chain thing), so you have to start pedaling at the same time, and then you need to keep pedaling the entire time the other person is pedaling. (I'm a coaster.)

The other crazy thing about tandems is that as the person in the back, you're completely at the whim of the other person. So I thought that Corey was turning widely (he was, tandem bikes are the semi truck of the bike world, you have to make wide turns) and I thought he spent too much time in lower gears (he admitted he likes lower gears), and also his girlfriend Cheryl is taller than me, so I was kind of floundering on the pedals a bit, also, you're usually supposed to be snapped in to the pedals, because it's just easier that way, and both Corey and I were not. 

So the best part of the ride was when in the middle of an uphill, my foot slipped off, so both feet slipped off, and I could not for the life of me figure out how to get my feet back on, so I just had both feet off the pedals hopefully balancing, while Corey powered us up the hill. It's a good thing he's in shape! (This happened on the way back, and I just asked Corey to stop pedaling so I could get my feet back on.)

Ohhhhmygoshhh it was so much fun, so of course we got to class, and then all I could think about was how freakin' fun riding a tandem bike was. 

Riding back was interesting, because tandems aren't as easy to maneuver as regular bikes, so I wanted to go straight through on a sidewalk back to lab, Corey wanted to take the long way by the road, so we compromised by going the wrong way one a one way street, taking a very dangerous turn onto a crosswalk, and almost getting backed into by a van. SO THAT WAS FUN.

My solo ride home was sweet. Remember the uphill the entire way to work? It's downhill all the way home. I even went a "longer" way to avoid the main, shoulderless road. I still got to coast almost the whole way.

Bikes man, bikes. 

credit

Monday, September 3, 2012

late night thought

I went through this hard core beatnik phase in high school. I'm talking memorized Ginsberg poems and afternoons spent in used bookstores. One of the things I liked most was connecting all of the dots--realizing that these were real people and they all were friends (more or less) and I loved when they all popped up in each others works.

I'm not sure when I 'grew out of' the beats, per se--I mean I think it must have been college, and I just started reading other writers, other poems, poems that I could identify more with than say-- a raging homosexual's adventures with sex and drugs in New York City in the sixties.

So I remember reading On the Road and The Dharma Bums in high school, and I remember loving them.

And then I get to college and onwards and recently now too, with the movie version of On the Road coming out soon, and I hear people talking and I start thinking too, that Keroauc was a huge misogynist, in On the Road the women basically never talk and are expendable props, and ugh! outrage! and how can I look up to this novel now!

(Okay that was all the back story leading up to my thought that I had just now.)

It just occurred to me that I didn't do a "feminist reading" of On the Road in high school, because I didn't need to. I identified with Sal, I fell in love with Japhy. I loved their California, their mountains. I'm over the "intentions of the author". I didn't go to those books to look for a woman role model, I went to them to get the hell out of Chapel Hill High School. And they did that.

Plus, if you think about it, a gender-neutral reading of On the Road is pretty much a feminist reading of it, right?

Anyway I think I'm going to reread On the Road, and then Dharma Bums right afterward. I want to know how much has changed, from high school until now.


(I had to sneak into L's room to find Dharma Bums.)


Saturday, September 1, 2012

The casualties of a heart break

Breaking up with my (now ex-)boyfriend was really hard.

I'm not trying to be melodramatic, just honest. And to put it in perspective, I've experienced an unexpected pregnancy and pushed a small human out of my vagina without any sort of narcotic drug, and heartbreak hurts worse than all that.

Six months plus removed from it, I'm starting to figure out why. What hurts more about "breaking up" than other sorts of hurt; rejection, criticism, loneliness, all other physical pain, is that these are all relatively transient. They happen, it sucks, you move on. Heartbreak (or breaking up) falls into this category too, with one big asterisk.

*Breaking up, and the subsequent heartbreak (or was it simultaneous, or was it breaking up preceded by the heartbreak?) was hard for me because in one fell swoop (and I can't think of a better description other than that) I lost my lover and my best friend.

I think those two words encompass everything that a significant other does. I'm not going to delve into the intricacies and importance of just having someone to fully complement your emotional, intellectual and physical needs, but to me, that's a lover and a best friend. And to lose this person, it's...well, it sucks. And it's hard. And it hurts.

I think writing about this earlier (and when it still hurt a lot) I likened it to waking up from a bad dream, or emerging from drowning. I'm sure I meant it then, but the reality is, or the reality now is that it's just waking up after a dream. Or coming up for air after being underwater. It's a change in reality, and now when I've wiped the water from my eyes, blinked in the sunlight, I can start to marvel at the bright beauty and consistency of the sky.

Stepping into this new reality is fun and exciting and scary, and everything is not that changed from where I left it, but everything is...different. Without my best friend.

It's also weird because losing a best friend isn't just like erasing a hard drive. There are memories and experiences and things and these things stay with you even after that best friend is gone.

It's funny what sticks with you and also what doesn't.

There are things that he introduced me to that I still love, and can enjoy without him. The Black Lips, soy chicken patties, to name a few.

There are things that I have an unexpected fondness for, the Pittsburgh Pirates, namely.

There are things that we discovered together that I still enjoy. Borderlands. (Borderlands 2, September 18 hollaa.)

I wonder why some things stick and some inexplicably don't.

I've always liked lo-fi power-anthem type songs, so that's why I still like the Black Lips. I've loved sports long before the boyfriend came along, and I really like sports writing and analysis, and one time I read this great article about why the Pirates losing seasons are really the only way the team is financially viable, and I really loved that. I also have a soft spot for the under dog. (This doesn't explain my continued support for the Pittsburgh Penguins, but maybe it's the Carolina blue vintage uniforms?)

You want to know the one thing that I absolutely cannot stand anymore? The one thing that is so incredibly painful, the one thing that brings knots to my stomach and disgust to my face?

The Fleet Foxes.

I hate the Fleet Foxes.

But why the Fleet Foxes? Out of all the things that I shared with that person, the Fleet Foxes? What about those harmless harmonizers makes me want to simultaneously throw up and shit my pants?

It's weird because the Fleet Foxes were not a band that I really liked. I mean, I heard them on the radio now and then, and I loved "White Winter Hymnal", but I never really listened to them before he played them for me one night--the first night that L and I went to visit him, actually.

And I just...I associate the Fleet Foxes with that first night. With Lena sleeping in the pack-N-play, with drinking wine on the couch, with so little and so much, to simply put it, starting off on a new adventure.

The thing that I never told him, or anyone, really, is that after that weekend, when I got home and put Lena in bed, I bought the album that he played that night. Because it was so perfect for that moment, for that adventure, and I wanted to have it for whenever I needed it.

Now that adventure is over. Or it was over. Or of course it's never actually over.

And it's easy to smile back on all of this, to wonder about the things that are different, and the things that are the same.

So R.I.P, Fleet Foxes. May you give many many more people wonderful memories, and I'm sorry I lost you in the heartbreak. Really, it wasn't you, it's me.

I'm just glad I haven't had to give up frozen pizza or Bob Dylan.