vacation: all I ever wanted

The hubs and I are back from an extended long weekend in sunny San Francisco. Well, the sun was intermittent, but the fun was NON-STOP. I laid in the sun. I laughed until I couldn't breathe. I smelled the salt air. I wore a sweater and a scarf on the Fourth of July and was still cold. I ate some seriously amazing food and hung out with some seriously amazing people. All in all, it was a super-fun couple of days.

out of touch

I have never been the kind of person who's really good at staying in touch with people. There are a number of reasons why this is a flaw in my personality, but I'll skip over them to the punchline: I should stop it. It's a result of this flaw that I have very few people I keep in touch with from high school and college.

Keeping in touch is a weird thing anyway, in the Facebook Era. I mean, I know exactly what basically every member of my high school class is doing now--both in terms of their careers and education and families, and in terms of what they had for lunch or what color their bra is. (That is a whole different post, which will likely never get posted.) But do I actually speak to any of them? Basically no.

For a long time, I thought of this as thoughtful pruning. And, to some extent, I still do. I have no time in my life for people who aren't pretty awesome. Everybody has to deal with a number of not-that-awesome people every day--as part of our jobs, our commutes, our web-surfing, our grocery shopping, whatever the fuck it is we do all day--and I like to keep that to an absolute minimum. Seems fair. But what got thrown out with that bathwater are all the people that I really like but just somehow never made time for. Or people that I made time for at one point in my life and just stopped later because of distance or laziness.

So this is my resolution: to be a better friend. I'd even share a milkshake. Maybe. Probably not 3 ways, though. I take my ice cream more seriously than that.

thankful

My dog got hit by a car, bounced about 10 feet off the bumper, and has NO DISCERNIBLE INJURIES. No wonder the damn dog doesn't have any fear of anything: she's indestructible. I am thankful for her continued existence and for her joie de vivre.

I'm at my grandmother's house, lounging, cooking, and prepping for Thanksgiving tomorrow. I am so thankful for my family. This holiday will be a bit bittersweet, because we can't help but feel the absence of my granddaddy, but I also am thankful to have the family that is here--and to have had the time with him that I did.

I am thankful to have great friends in my life. I am thankful especially for my dear friends Kurt and Jamie who are getting married Friday after TEN YEARS together, my dear friends Nick and Phil who are letting me stay in their apartment while they're away, and my dear friend Liz without whom I never would have made it to being a real live lawyer, and who is about to be our new roommate.

I am thankful to have my health. It's something I take too much for granted most days. My friend EJ had a heart attack last week at the age of 26. He's doing fine, but that combined with seeing my grandfather just before his death reminds me that I ought to more appreciate every miraculous thing my body can do. Run! Jump! Cook! Type! See! Smell! And good god, eat! I mean, just the blood coursing through my veins and the breath going in and out is pretty spectacular. I am thankful for that.

I am thankful to still have a job waiting for me, making way more money than any reasonable 25 year old makes. A lot has changed at the firm in the last year, and a lot has changed in the economy at large, and I am grateful for what I still have.

Also, (gross out alert) I am so, so thankful for my amazing husband. He's my my partner, my comic relief, my touchstone to sanity, and my best friend. I love you, Thomas. I'm sorry we have to spend this Thanksgiving apart. (As a bonus, the hubs comes with a fabulous in-laws package, for which I am also very thankful.)

I am thankful for so much this holiday. How spectacular is it that we have an entire holiday devoted just to eating and gratitude?

Onward and Upward

First, I want to say thank you to those of you who reached out to me when you heard about my Granddaddy. It means a lot to have such caring friends, and my family and I really appreciate all your well-wishes. Chris, as per usual, has put my feelings in to words better than I ever could, so I'll just direct you to her post.

The hubs and I are moving December 1, and I can't wait to settle into a routine. To have all my clothes accessible to me. To wake up morning after morning and not have to drive somewhere. To cook! With my own pots and pans! To take my ridiculous dog for a walk in the brutal Chicago winter morning. To find a new gym, get a new library card, a new hairdresser. To clean a bathtub. To do all the boring, annoying, fun things that you have to do when you live somewhere.

As Amy said in a comment, this has been a year of really high highs and really low lows. It has been some of the best times of my life, and yet I can't tell you how ready I am for 2009 to be over.

reevaluation

So this article (and the comments that follow it--really worth the read if you're interested and have time) sparked a discussion with a friend, and a lot of thinking on my part. I have been posting a bit about my eating/working out habits and frankly, though light-heartedly, beating myself up about them.

Here's the thing: I have a very strange relationship with my weight, as I'm guessing every American woman (and a lot of men) does, if she doesn't have a downright bad one. As a result, I have a tense relationship with food. I love it. I love it in large quantities. But I feel bad about loving it, and I feel bad about eating it. Particularly in large quantities. There's something very frustrating and heartbreaking about the idea that both of those things are simultaneously true and that it's so, so common AND that the entire culture feeds it. (See, e.g., the phrase "sinfully delicious.") And I want more than anything to STOP feeling bad about it. I want more than anything to stop and think, nah, I'd really rather have a nice salad because I WANT A FUCKING SALAD and not because I think I can't have the burger that I really want. OR to order the burger and not being thinking about how I should have really ordered that salad instead because I'm a big greasy lardass. (Well, I am greasy, because I desperately need a shower, but that's another post.) And I want people to shut the fuck up about how "unhealthy" it is to be fat. And because, of course, Kate Harding says it best, I'll just link.

Anyway, this is a rambling, likely incoherent missive and basically what I want to say is this: I am sorry if my self-talk has made you think negatively about yourselves. I know it has made me feel negatively about me, and thus I am going to try to stop it. I can't promise I'll be perfect, but I really am going to try.

"so, which crocodile dundee movie do you want to watch today?"

I feel like people are constantly saying that they love their friends, and they have the best friends in the world, and going on and on about how great their friends are. But I actually mean it. I guess the deal is that if you don't really like your friends, you should get new friends. And I don't need new friends.

The hubs and I had a BBQ* this evening and a bunch of our friends came by. In retrospect, I should have taken photos, but I'm one of those people who bought a new camera thinking it would make me take photos and it hasn't.

*I had a coworker two summers ago who used to actually say out loud B-B-Q rather than barbecue. It drove me absolutely fucking batty. Who does that? For what possible reason would you do that? BBQ actually comes up much more often than you'd think with a summer coworker, too, because she often had BBQs or went to BBQs and then would order BBQ chicken salad or BBQ chicken sandwich and then complain that there was not enough BBQ flavor and ask the waitress for a side of BBQ sauce AND OH MY DEAR LORD WOMAN, THERE IS NO ADVANTAGE TO NOT JUST SAYING THE FRENCHING WORD. IT IS NOT FASTER OR CUTER OR BETTER TO SAY THE LETTERS RATHER THAN THE FULL SYLLABLES. Though now it does bring my friends and I a little joy to say it in her honor, so I guess it's not all bad.

Anyway, I need to get back to online shopping for a GPS system while laying in bed, watching SNL with the hubs. Because I might as well be 97 years old.