Thanksgiving

This week I had Thanksgiving with both sides of Nate's family. First we did his dad's side, which was hosted here at his dad's house not six blocks from my apartment. I was prepared for both stress and distress and found neither. (Although I did very cleverly escape one near-disaster involving the discovery of a gravy-making expert aunt after I, the non-familymember intruder, had already made the gravy.) His little cousin Brock (err, second cousin? First cousin's kid) is eighteen months old, and has discovered a method of mobility that he could not acheive just on his own. When he wants to go upstairs or outside, and he feels that he may face some difficulty, he grabs the hand of the nearest adult, indiscriminately, and literally drags them along with him. When he gets to the stairs/door/other obstacle, he takes your other hand and makes you help him. And it's all done silently.
Then over the weekend we went to his mom's and I met more of that side of the family. I already knew both sides' grandmas. This is all fun and fascinating for someone from a family that *never* gets together, and who hasn't had grandparents since first grade.
I do have to say, though, that I think I'm done with my American food eating craze, six months and fifteen pounds later. Thanksgiving is actually a little gross, a human reinactment of Hungry Hungry Hippos gone wild. It doesn't actually feel like "hohoho, I ate too much, Happy Thanksgiving" but more like "we are all the most disgusting people alive for eating that."
It didn't help that then I woke up very, very sick to my stomach at exactly 3:23 this morning. Oh well. It was kind of sweetly nostalgic of India.
And, that's it.

Temping is a lot like causing yourself pain for no reason

Me, after pushing multiple buttons through numerous menus to get to this curt answering-phone lady: "Hi, I'm calling with a message for Dr. Steinberg?"
"Hold on a minute." Says phone lady.
"mm-hmm." I almost whisper it. I can feel how disgusted she is with me.
"That sounds like fun!" says a distant male voice, as part of some looped recording for the entertainment and edification of the sad, bored person on hold. I don't get to hear what he thinks would be fun - instead I now hear that I am causing a phone to ring somewhere else, transferred, echoing in the vast mysterious halls of a labyrinthed, white hospital in New Hampshire. I eventually leave another message on someone's voicemail and write "VM" on my numbers list, next to Dr. Steinberg, for "voicemail." Meaning, Check. Done with you, Steinberg, and your hateful staff.

I hate this job. I'm filling a temporary position at Connex, inviting doctors by phone to medical conferences. Sometimes the receptionists ask me, "Are you a telemarketer?" with disdain seeping from their hearts into their voices and spilling out of my cushiony headphone earpieces.

"I, don't think so?" I said once, before I thought about what to say. I mean, they're legitimate conferences, it sounds like, right? How do I know? I'm not asking them to spend any money on anything. But what if these conferences are a sneaky clever pharmaceutical company guise to sell some drug to doctors?

There's a pause.

It's almost time for lunch. There's some company potluck lunch today, Thanksgiving-themed, that I feel awkward about because,
a)I don't really work here
b)I definitely didn't bring anything.
However, the smell of Lysol is so overpowering in this cubicle that I would subject myself to unbelievable lengths of humiliation to escape it.
So.

say anything

Dear people,
I just changed the settings so that you don't have to be a blogger member to leave a comment on this blog anymore. Anyone who can type can now leave me whatever message they like.
Thanks Sonya for pointing that out :)
Sarah

Smells like carpet

It seems like there were years of just laying there, thinking a deep river of thought but not really thinking at all. Not figuring anything out, not adding or subtracting, not remembering what someone said. After breakfast, feeling guilty that breakfast ended at eleven in the morning, although not really having any reason to move faster, to go anywhere, to accomplish anything, going back upstairs to lay back down, or lay on the floor with a My Little Pony and contemplate it. And smell its Carmex-y smell. Some say Carmex is addictive - I can at least confirm that I was addicted to its scent in my plastic toys. Like a new baby doll the first couple of months after Christmas. The less there was that had to happen, the more my life was filled with these little senses like that smell, or the motion of a leaf in the sun. Or the weight of a wheelbarrow with a brother in it.
There were also the chunks of time that seem to be filled with the mall, with all the malls that we lived near. If any concerned adult asked us, why aren't you in school? we knew to answer that our school was out that day. We only wanted to go to Sears to play their greasy-handled video games until our eyes were dry and red and we were inexplicably grumpy. We had long learned how to outsmart marketing tactics such as this. If we played the games and then didn't ask for them to be bought for us, we won. If we went around and around the food court, filling up on free samples on toothpicks, we won then too. Before the free video games I entertained myself by crawling around on the department store carpet (which all smells the same) finding random little treasures of buttons, loose change, multi-colored threads, packing peanuts, those swervy little plastic hooks that go on socks to hang them on a display. When we got too old for this and had thoroughly exhausted the video game repertiore, we perused Calvin and Hobbes, Garfield, and Jay Leno's headlines in Waldenbooks for hours on end. While I guess my mother was shopping, although looking back it was probably just a way to get rid of us all for a few hours. She never met us when she said, but we never had the nerve to show up late to the meeting point. Sometimes I'd sit in the echo-y non-place between the inside doors and the outside doors of a department store, with the square brown tiled floors and the mirrors at both ends, trying to keep my brothers from attracting attention by beating the hell out of each other, and get really mad about it all.
After a few years of filling our time thusly, I started to get sick every time we went to a mall. All we had to do was walk in the door and I would just double over with pain in the pit of my stomach that I couldn't explain. I once had a pair of shoes that were a size and a half too big because I had said they fit great, just to get out of the store. It took a long time before we made the connection with malls, but it was unwaveringly consistent. I stopped going pretty soon after that and just stayed home.
On days like today, grey, empty, not filled with working or errands or little jobs to do, I feel that panicky feeling creeping back up like it used to. Feeling guilty for not having anything to do. For being content to curl up and watch the plants grow, a skill honed over endless empty mornings and afternoons.

The End.

We drove there in the van

Last night we went to Topeka to hear a band whose name doesn't seem to stick in my head. They were pretty good, with a strange red-haired harmonica player who sang one of the songs in an almost scream that had me completely transfixed. That was worth the drive. He sounded like a crazy man.
It was overpoweringly loud, of course; which I find that I simultaneously enjoy and strongly dislike (and which, I believe, is the very definition of the word 'ambivalent'). It's impossible to have a conversation over the air-permeating decibal level of the band, and so we all end up sitting back in our dimly-lit chairs, one hand on our glass or bottle, just listening. The lead singer's red guitar kept reflecting the spotlight into my eyes. The loudness puts me in a little trance (that the merlot did nothing to hinder) and I find that in that specific situation I am able to think more clearly than in any other. I've heard people say that they can only think in the shower or in the car; I guess my primary environment for lucidity is drinking wine in a stiflingly loud bar.
I almost started feeling like I could read people more easily in that state, and it reminded me of when I was a little kid and never talked to anyone in groups but sat, trying to be invisible, and watched them. It's so much clearer what's going on in the dynamics of the people around you when you're not also trying to play into them. When you almost forget that you are even there because your perceptions of the world are completely filled by what you're seeing.
Then this afternoon Nate, Dan, Chris and I hiked to "Fairy Mound", a little hill by the lake, and laid in the grass trying to make cool sounds on blades of grass between our thumbs, which struck me so funny that I laughed enough to put me in a good mood for a few days at least.
Of these things, I have no pictures.

So instead, I give you this picture of the moon in India (in Leh in June), and the cloud just to the left of it which I believe is quite like a rabbit.



The End.

Super Idea

Second-degree BSN (Bachelor of Science in Nursing). Two years, since it would take into account all the liberal arts credits and sciences I already have, and getting a Masters in nursing (the other option) would take at least three years so this way I could get out significantly earlier. Then I could probably combine maybe all three of my job options.
But commuting to Kansas City for two years? That's just over an hour one way.... maybe I need a car first...
Today: temp agency.
-Part of my motivation for pursuing temping is watching Parker Posey in "Clockwatchers", which you should all see if you haven't.

So, the next phase of life seems to be banging my door down no matter how hard I try to ignore it... deciding what to actually do in life. I've been enjoying painting (I started to say 'this semester'. Geez, when will that end?) this summer and fall, but now that the weather is making that a less lucrative position for me, I need to start looking for something else, maybe with some long-range vision this time.
I'm still really interested in getting involved in nutrition research. Part of me is also interested in nursing (largely for the consistent pay and dependable nature of the job). I'm also really interested in social work. So, this week I'm planning to take some steps to narrow these options or move toward one of them. My goal is that by the end of the week (let's be honest - by Thanksgiving) I'll have talked to some knowledgeable and resourceful people about all three choices, done some research and have found a way to get started in pursuing one of them. We'll see how that goes.
In the meantime I'll just keep filing old tax returns and living off of them (in addition to my two-days-a-week caretaking job). Procrastination has finally paid off, as I always knew it would if I just stuck with it.

Hooray for these things

1.) My street:



2.) Jack-O-Lanterns, even when rotting and rather sour-smelling:



3.) These people (whoever they are) and their umbrella tree:



4.) These people, and the fact that they'll still give you your money back if you file three years late:



5.) This guy, (lower left corner) for running through my picture:




The End.